Minor Queries with Answers
Brasenose, Oxford.—I am anxious to learn the origin and meaning of the word Brasenose. I have somewhere heard or read (though I cannot recall where) that it was a Saxon word, brasen haus or "brewing-house;" and that the college was called by this name, because it was built on the site of the brewing-house of King Alfred. All that Ingram says on the subject is this:
"This curious appellation, which, whatever was the origin of it, has been perpetuated by the symbol of a brazen nose here and at Stamford, occurs with the modern orthography, but in one undivided word, so early as 1278, in an Inquisition, now printed in the Hundred Rolls, though quoted by Wood from the manuscript record."—See his Memorials of Oxford.
Cuthbert Bede, B.A.
[Our correspondent will find the notice of King Alfred's brew-house in the review of Ingram's Memorials in the British Critic, vol. xxiv. p. 139. The writer says, "There is a spot in the centre of the city where Alfred is said to have lived, and which may be called the native place or river-head of three separate societies still existing, University, Oriel, and Brasenose. Brasenose claims his palace, Oriel his church, and University his school or academy. Of these Brasenose College is still called, in its formal style, 'the King's Hall,' which is the name by which Alfred himself, in his laws, calls his palace; and it has its present singular name from a corruption of brasinium, or brasin-huse, as having been originally located in that part of the royal mansion which was devoted to the then important accommodation of a brew-house." Churton, in his Life of Bishop Smyth, p. 277., thus accounts for the origin of the word:—"Brasen Nose Hall, as the Oxford antiquary has shown, may be traced as far back as the time of Henry III., about the middle of the thirteenth century; and early in the succeeding reign, 6th Edward I., 1278, it was known by the name of Brasen Nose Hall, which peculiar name was undoubtedly owing, as the same author observes, to the circumstance of a nose of brass affixed to the gate. It is presumed, however, this conspicuous appendage of the portal was not formed of the mixed metal, which the word now denotes, but the genuine produce of the mine; as is the nose, or rather face, of a lion or leopard still remaining at Stamford, which also gave name to the edifice it adorned. And hence, when Henry VIII. debased the coin, by an alloy of copper, it was a common remark or proverb, that 'Testons were gone to Oxford, to study in Brasen Nose.'"]
G. Downing.—Can any one point out to me a biography of G. Downing, or at least indicate a work where the dates of the birth and death of this celebrated statesman may be found? He was English ambassador in the Hague previous to and in the year 1664, and to him Downing Street in London owes its name. A very speedy answer would be most welcome.—From the Navorscher.
A. T. C.
[In Pepys's Diary, vol. i. p. 2. edit. 1848, occurs the following notice of Sir George Downing:—"Wood has misled us in stating that Sir George Downing was a son of Dr. Calibut Downing, the rector of Hackney. He was beyond doubt the son of Emmanuel Downing, a London merchant, who went to New England. It is not improbable that Emmanuel was a near kinsman of Calibut; how related has not yet been discovered. Governor Hutchinson, in his History of Massachusetts, gives the true account of Downing's affiliation, which has been farther confirmed by Mr. Savage, of Boston, from the public records of New England. Wood calls Downing a sider with all times and changes; skilled in the common cant, and a preacher occasionally. He was sent by Cromwell to Holland, as resident there. About the Restoration, he espoused the King's cause, and was knighted and elected M. P. for Morpeth, in 1661. Afterwards, becoming Secretary to the Treasury and Commissioner of the Customs, he was in 1663 created a Baronet of East Hatley, in Cambridgeshire, and was again sent ambassador to Holland. His grandson of the same name, who died in 1749, was the founder of Downing College, Cambridge. The title became extinct in 1764, upon the decease of Sir John Gerrard Downing, the last heir male of the family." According to Hutchinson, Sir George died in 1684.]
Unkid.—Can any of your readers inform me as to the derivation of this word, or give any instance of its recent use? I have frequently heard it in my childhood (the early part of the present century) among the rural population of Oxon and Berks. It was generally applied to circumstances of a melancholy or distressing character, but sometimes used to express a peculiar state of feeling, being apparently intended to convey nearly the same meaning as the ennui of the French. I recollect an allusion to the phrase somewhere in Miss Mitford's writings, who speaks of it as peculiar to Berks; but as I was then ignorant of Captain Cuttle's maxim, I did not "make a note of it," so that I am unable to lay my hand on the passage.
G. T.
Reading.
[Mr. Sternberg also found this word in Northamptonshire: for in his valuable work on The Dialect and Folk Lore of that county occurs the following derivation of it:—"Unked, Hunkid, s. lonely, dull, miserable. 'I was so unked when ye war away.' 'A unked house,' &c. Mr. Bosworth gives, as the derivative, the A.-S. uncyd, solitary, without speech. In Batchelor's List of Bedfordshire Words, it is spelt ungkid."]
Pilgrim's Progress.—The common editions contain a third part, setting forth the life of Tender-conscience: this third part is thought not to have been written by Bunyan, and is omitted from some, at least, of the modern editions. Can any of your readers explain by whom this addition was made, and all about it? The subject of the Pilgrim's Progress generally—the stories of a similar kind which are said to have preceded—especially in Catholic times—the history of its editions and annotations, would give some interesting columns.
M.
[Mr. George Offor, in his Introduction to The Pilgrim's Progress, published by the Hanserd Knollys Society in 1847, notices the third part as a forgery:—"In a very few years after Bunyan's death, this third part made its appearance; and although the title does not directly say that it was written by Bunyan, yet it was at first generally received as such. In 1695, it reached a second edition; and a sixth in 1705. In 1708, it was denounced in the title to the ninth edition of the second part, by a 'Note, the third part, suggested to be J. Bunyan's, is an imposture.' The author of this forgery is as yet unknown." Mr. Offor has also devoted fifty pages of his Introduction to the conjectured prototypes of Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress. He says, "Every assertion or suggestion that came to my knowledge has been investigated, and the works referred to have been analysed. And beyond this, every allegorical work that could be found, previous to the eighteenth century, has been examined in all the European languages, and the result is a perfect demonstration of the complete originality of Bunyan."]
John Frewen.—What is known of this divine? He was minister at Northiam in Sussex in 1611; and published, the following year, a small volume of Sermons, bearing reference to some quarrel between himself and parishioners. Are these Sermons rare? Any particulars would be acceptable.
R. C. Warde.
Kidderminster.
[Accepted Frewen, Archbishop of York, was the eldest son of John Frewen, "the puritanical Rector of Northiam," as Wood calls him, and indeed his name carries a symbol of his father's sanctity. Wood has given a few particulars of John, who, he says, "was a learned divine, and frequent preacher of the time, and wrote, 1. Fruitful Instructions and Necessary Doctrine, to edify in the Fear of God, &c., 1587. 2. Fruitful Instructions for the General Cause of Reformation, against the Slanders of the Pope and League, &c., 1589. 3. Certain Choice Grounds and Principles of our Christian Religion, with their several Expositions, by Way of Questions and Answers, &c., 1621, and other things. He died in 1627 (about the latter end), and was buried in Northiam Church, leaving then behind these sons, viz. Accepted, Thankful, Stephen, Joseph, Benjamin, Thomas, Samuel, John, &c., which John seems to have succeeded his father in the Rectory of Northiam; but whether the said father was educated at Oxford, I cannot tell."]
Histories of Literature.—Can any correspondent inform me of the best, or one or two principal Histories of Literature, published in the English language, with the names of the author and publisher; as well as, if possible, the size and price?
Ilmonasteriensis.
[Our correspondent cannot do better than procure Hallam's Introduction to the Literature of Europe in the Fifteenth, Sixteenth, and Seventeenth Centuries, 3 vols. 8vo. (36s.). He may also consult with advantage Dr. Maitland's Dark Ages, which illustrates the state of religion and literature from the ninth to the twelfth centuries, 8vo., 12s. and Berrington's Literary History of the Middle Ages, 3s. 6d.]
"Mrs. Shaw's Tombstone."—In Leigh's Observations (London, 1660) are several quotations from a work entitled Mrs. Shaw's Tombstone. Where may a copy of this be seen?
R. C. Warde.
Kidderminster.
[Mrs. Dorothy Shaw's Tombstone, or the Saint's Remains, 1658, may be seen in the British Museum, Press-mark, 1418. i. 41.]
Replies
CRANMER AND CALVIN
(Vol. viii., p. 182.)
A correspondent who seems to delight in sibilants, signing, himself S. Z. Z. S., invites me to "preserve, in your columns, the letter of Calvin to Cranmer, of which Dean Jenkyns has only given extracts," as noticed by me in your Vol. vii., p. 621.
I would not shrink from the trouble of transcribing the whole letter, if a complete copy were only to be found in the short-lived columns of a newspaper, as inserted in the Record of May 15, 1843, by Merle d'Aubigné; but the Dean has given a reference to the volume in which both the letters he cites are preserved and accessible, viz. Calvin Epistles, pp. 134, 135., Genev. 1616.
S. Z. Z. S. justly observes that there are two points to be distinguished: first, Cranmer's wish that Calvin should assist in a general union of the churches protesting against Romish errors; second, Calvin's offer to assist in settling the Church of England. He adds, "The latter was declined; and the reason is demonstrated in Archbishop Laurence's Bampton Lectures." I neither possess those lectures, nor the volume of Calvin's epistles; but all I have seen of the correspondence between him and Cranmer, in the Parker Society's editions of Cranmer, and of original letters between 1537-58, and in Jenkyns' Remains of Cranmer, indisposes me to believe that Calvin made any "offer to assist in settling the Church of England." It appears from Dean Jenkyns' note, vol. i. p. 346., that Archbishop Laurence made a mistake in the order of the correspondence, calculated to mislead himself; and as to Heylyn's assertion, Eccles. Restaur., p. 65., that Calvin made such an offer and "that the Archbishop (Cranmer) knew the man and refused his offer," the Dean says:
"He gives no authority for the later part of his statement, and it can hardly be reconciled with Cranmer's letter to Calvin of March 20, 1552."
The contemptuous expression, he "knew the man and refused his offer," is, in fact, utterly irreconcilable with Cranmer's language in all his three letters to Melancthon, to Bullinger, and to Calvin (Nos. 296, 297, 298. of Parker Society's edition of Cranmer's Remains, and Nos. 283, 284, 285. of Jenkyns' edition), where he tells each of the other two that he had written to Calvin from his desire—
"Ut in Anglia, aut alibi, doctissimorum et optimorum virorum synodus convocaretur, in qua de puritate ecclesiasticæ doctrinæ, et præcipue de consensu controversiæ sacramentariæ tractaretur."
Or, as he said to Calvin himself:
"Ut docti et pii viri, qui alios antecellunt eruditione et judicio, convenirent."
Your correspondent seems to have used the word "demonstrated" rather in a surgical than in its mathematical sense.
Having taken up my pen to supply you with an answer to this historical inquiry, I may as well notice some other articles in your No. 199. For example, in p. 167., L. need not have referred your readers to Halliwell's Researches in Archaic Language for an explanation of Bacon's word "bullaces." The word may be seen in Johnson's Dictionary, with the citation from Bacon, and instead of vaguely calling it "a small black and tartish plum," your botanical readers know it as the Prunus insititia.
Again, p. 173., J. M. may like to know farther, that the Duke of Wellington's clerical brother was entered on the boards of St. John's College, Cambridge, as Wesley, where the spelling must have been dictated either by himself, or by the person authorised to desire his admission. It continued to be spelt Wesley in the Cambridge annual calendars as late as 1808, but was altered in that of 1809 to Wellesley. The alteration was probably made by the desire of the family, and without communicating such desire to the registrary of the university. For it appears in the edition of Graduati Cantabrigienses, printed in 1823, as follows:
"Wesley, Gerard Valerian, Coll. Joh. A. M. 1792. Comitis de Mornington, Fil. nat. 4tus."
In p. 173., C. M. Ingleby may like to know, as a clue to the origin of his apussee and, that I was taught at school, sixty years ago, to call & And per se, whilst some would call it And-per-se-and.
In the same page, the inquirer B. H. C. respecting the word mammon, may like to know that the history of that word has been given at some length in p. 1. to p. 68. of the Parker Society's edition of Tyndale's Parable of the wicked Mammon, where I have stated that it occurs in a form identical with the English in the Chaldee Targum of Onkelos on Exod. viii. 21., and in that of Jonathan on Judges, v. 9., as equivalent to riches; and that in the Syriac translation it occurs in a form identical with Μαμωνᾶ, in Exod. xxi. 30., as a rendering for כֹפֶר, the price of satisfaction. In B. H. C.'s citation from Barnes, even seems a misprint for ever. The Jews did not again fall into actual idolatry after the Babylonish captivity; but we are told that in the sight of God covetousness is idolatry.
Henry Walter.
Hasilbury Bryan.
BARNACLES
(Vol. viii., p. 124.)
A Querist quoting from Porta's Natural Magic the vulgar error that "not only in Scotland, but in the river Thames, there is a kind of shell-fish which get out of their shells and grow to be ducks, or such like birds," asks, what could give rise to such an absurd belief? Your correspondent quotes from the English translation of the Magia Naturalis, A.D. 1658; but the tradition is very ancient, Porta the author having died in 1515 A.D. You still find an allusion in Hudibras to those—
"Who from the most refin'd of saints,
As naturally grow miscreants,
As barnacles turn Soland geese,
In th' islands of the Orcades."
The story has its origin in the peculiar formation of the little mollusc which inhabits the multivalve shell, the Pentalasmis anatifera, which by a fleshy peduncle attaches itself by one end to the bottoms of ships or floating timber, whilst from the other there protrudes a bunch of curling and fringe-like cirrhi, by the agitation of which it attracts and collects its food. These cirrhi so much resemble feathers, as to have suggested the leading idea of a bird's tail: and hence the construction of the remainder of the fable, which is thus given with grave minuteness in The Herbal, or General Historie of Plants, gathered by John Gerarde, Master in Chirurgerie: London, 1597:
"What our eyes have seen, and our hands have touched, we shall declare. There is a small island in Lancashire called the Pile of Foulders, wherein are found the broken pieces of old and bruised ships, some whereof have been cast thither by shipwreck; and also the trunks or bodies, with the branches of old and rotten trees, cast up there likewise, whereon is found a certain spume or froth, that in time breedeth unto certain shells, in shape like those of a mussel, but sharper pointed, and of a whitish colour; wherein is contained a thing in form like a lace of silk finely woven as it were together, of a whitish colour; one end whereof is fastened unto the inside of the shell, even as the fish of oysters and mussels are; the other end is made fast unto the belly of a rude mass or lump, which in time cometh to the shape and form of a bird. When it is perfectly formed, the shell gapeth open, and the first thing that appeareth is the foresaid lace or string; next come the legs of the bird hanging out and as it groweth greater, it openeth the shell by degrees, till at length it is all come forth, and hangeth only by the bill. In short space after it cometh to full maturity, and falleth into the sea, where it gathereth feathers, and groweth to a fowl, bigger than a mallard, and lesser than a goose; having black legs, and a bill or beak, and feathers black and white, spotted in such manner as our magpie, called in some places a Pie-Annet, which the people of Lancashire call by no other name than a tree-goose; which place aforesaid, and all those parts adjacent, do so much abound therewith, that one of the best may be bought for threepence. For the truth hereof, if any doubt, may it please them to repair unto me, and I shall satisfy them by the testimony of credible witnesses."—Page 1391.
Gerarde, who is doubtless Butler's authority, says elsewhere, that "in the north parts of Scotland, and the islands called Orcades," there are certain trees whereon these tree-geese and barnacles abound.
The conversion of the fish into a bird, however fabulous, would be scarcely more astonishing than the metamorphosis which it actually undergoes—the young of the little animal having no feature to identify it with its final development. In its early stage (I quote from Carpenter's Physiology, vol. i. p. 52.) it has a form not unlike that of the crab, "possessing eyes and powers of free motion; but afterwards, becoming fixed to one spot for the remainder of its life, it loses its eyes and forms a shell, which, though composed of various pieces, has nothing in common with the jointed shell of the crab."
Though Porta wrote at Naples, the story has reference to Scotland; and the tradition is evidently northern, and local. As to Speriend's Query, What could give rise to so absurd a story? it doubtless took its origin in the similarity of the tentacles of the fish to feathers of a bird. But I would add the farther Query, whether the ready acceptance and general credence given to so obvious a fable, may not have been derived from giving too literal a construction to the text of the passage in the first chapter of Genesis:
"And God said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life, and the fowl that may fly in the open firmament of heaven?"
J. Emerson Tennent.
Drayton (1613) in his Poly-olbion, iii., in connexion with the river Dee, speaks of—
"Th' anatomised fish, and fowls from planchers sprung,"
to which a note is appended in Southey's edition, p. 609., that such fowls were "barnacles, a bird breeding upon old ships." In the Entertaining Library, "Habits of Birds," pp. 363-379., the whole story of this extraordinary instance of ignorance in natural history is amply developed. The barnacle shells which I once saw in a sea-port, attached to a vessel just arrived from the Mediterranean, had the brilliant appearance, at a distance, of flowers in bloom1; the foot of the Lepas anatifera (Linnæus) appearing to me like the stalk of a plant growing from the ship's side: the shell had the semblance of a calyx, and the flower consisted of the fingers (tentacula) of the shell-fish, "of which twelve project in an elegant curve, and are used by it for making prey of small fish." The very ancient error was to mistake the foot of the shell-fish for the neck of a goose, the shell for its head, and the tentacula for a tuft of feathers. As to the body, non est inventus. The Barnacle Goose is a well-known bird: and these shell-fish, bearing, as seen out of the water, resemblance to the goose's neck, were ignorantly, and without investigation, confounded with geese themselves, an error into which Albertus Magnus (d. 1280) did not fall, and in which Pope Pius II. proved himself infallible. Nevertheless, in France, the Barnacle Goose may be eaten on fast-days by virtue of this old belief in its marine origin.
T. J. Buckton