Minor Queries Answered.
Smyth's MSS. relating to Gloucestershire.—In Rudder's History of Gloucestershire, title "Nibley," p. 575., is the following passage:
"John Smyth, of Nibley, ancestor to the present proprietor, was very eminent for his great assiduity in collecting every kind of information respecting this county and its inhabitants. He wrote the Genealogical History of the Berkeley Family, in three folio MSS., which Sir William Dugdale abridged and published in his Baronage of England. In three other folio MSS. he has registered with great exactness the names of the lords of manors in the county in the year 1608, the number of men in each parish able to bear arms, with their names, age, stature, professions, armour, and weapons. The sums each landholder paid to subsidies granted in a certain year are set down in another MS. He likewise committed to writing a very particular account of the customs of the several manors in the hundred of Berkeley, and the pedigrees of their respective lords. These and some other MSS., which cost him forty years in compiling, are now (1779) in the possession of Nicholas Smyth, Esq., the fifth from him in lineal descent."
I shall feel much obliged to any of your readers who will inform me where these MSS., or any of them, may now be seen. Those that I particularly want to inspect are printed in Italics in the above quotation.
Julius Partrige.
Birmingham.
[Atkyns, in his Gloucestershire, p. 579., states that Smythe's MSS. were at the time he wrote, A.D. 1712, in the custody of his great-grandson, Sir George Smith, who generously communicated them to all that desired a perusal of them. Fosbrooke, however, in the preface to his History of Gloucestershire, published in 1807, speaks of them as being in the possession of the Earl of Berkeley. He says, "Of the noblemen and gentlemen who honoured me with support and information, the Earl of Berkeley's permission to use Mr. Smythe's MSS. in every important extent has been of essential service." Fosbrooke subsequently published, in 1821, a quarto volume of Abstracts and Extracts of Smythe's Lives of the Berkeleys from these manuscripts.]
Origin of Terms in Change-ringing.—I shall be obliged by any one informing me as to the origin and derivation of the terms "plain bob," "grandsire bob," "single bob minor," "grandsire treble," "caters," "cinques," et hoc genus omne, so well known to campanologists.
Alfred Gatty.
[Our correspondent may probably get some clue to the derivation of these terms in a work entitled Campanologia Improved; or the Art of Ringing made Easy, third edition, 12mo. 1733. We may also mention, that some Notes of Dedications of Churches and Bells in the Diocese of Gloucester will be found in the British Museum, Add. MSS. 5836. f. 189 b.]
Keseph's Bible.—About the year 1828, there was issued a thin duodecimo pamphlet by some one who took the cognomen of Keseph, and who
proposed to publish an edition of the authorised version under the title of "Keseph's Bible," with the substitution of the Hebrew terms Alehim, Aleh, Al, Adon, Adonai, &c. &c. for our English ones God, Lord, &c. &c.
Can any of your readers inform me if this was ever published? and can they also favour me with the loan of the pamphlet for a month?
The Editor of the "Chronological New Testament."
36. Trinity Square, Southwark.
[This Bible was published in 1830, as far as chap. xix. of the Second Book of Kings, with the following title: The Holy Bible, according to the Established Version: with the Exception of the Substitution of the Original Hebrew Names, in place of the English Words, Lord and God, and of a few corrections thereby rendered necessary. With Notes. London: Westley and Davis, 4to. It contains a Preface of four pages, and a list of the Meaning or Signification of the Sacred Names substituted in this edition, of nine pages. A copy of it is in the British Museum, the press mark 1276 h.]
Proclamations to prohibit the Use of Coal, as Fuel, in London.—Dr. Bachoffner, in the lecture which he is now delivering at the Royal Polytechnic Institution, mentions the fact that three separate proclamations were issued for this purpose, and that it was at last made a capital offence; and a man was actually accused, tried, condemned, and executed for burning coal within the metropolis. Now what I want to ascertain relative to the above facts, is: 1. The date of each; 2. Any particulars that you or any of your correspondents may be kind enough to furnish; 3. The name, and station, trade, or profession of the person so executed.
As Dr. Bachoffner has now often reiterated the above statement at the Polytechnic, and as it has always been received (at least when I have been there) with acclamations of surprise, I have no doubt that the particulars will interest many of your readers.
Arthur C. Wilson.
[We have not been able to find any account of the execution for burning coal noticed by Dr. Bachoffner, which probably took place during the reign of Edward I., when the use of coal was prohibited by proclamation at London in the year 1306. These proclamations are noticed in Prynne's Animadversions on the Fourth Part of Sir Edward Coke's Institutes, p. 182., where it is said, that "in the latter part of the reign of Edward I., when brewers, dyers, and other artificers using great fires, began to use sea-coals instead of dry wood and charcoal, in and near the city of London, the prelates, nobles, commons, and other people of the realm, resorting thither to parliaments, and upon other occasions, with the inhabitants of the city, Southwark, Wapping, and East Smithfield, complained thereof twice one after another to the king as a public nuisance, corrupting the air with its stink and smoke, to the great prejudice and detriment of their health. Whereupon the king first prohibited the burning of sea-coal by his proclamation; which being disobeyed by many for their private lucre, the king upon their second complaint issued a commission of Oyer and Terminer to inquire of all such who burned sea-coals against his proclamation within the city, or parts adjoining to it, and to punish them for their first offence by great fines and ransoms; and for the second offence to demolish their furnaces, kilns wherein they burnt sea-coals, and to see his proclamation strictly observed for times to come, as the Record of 35 Edw. I. informs us." On this subject our correspondent should consult Edington's Treatise on the Coal Trade; Ralph Gardiner's England's Grievance discovered in Relation to the Coal Trade; and Anderson's Origin of Commerce.]