Minor Queries with Answers.
"A Letter to a Convocation Man" (Vol. vii., pp. 358. 415.).—I beg to thank "N. & Q." for the answer to my inquiry respecting the authorship of this letter. I should be very glad to learn further particulars respecting Sir Bartholomew Shower. Was he a member of the House of Commons, as the author of the Letter intimates that he himself was? I shall also be very thankful if Tyro, or any other correspondent, will answer for me these Queries, suggested by the same Letter.
"It was the opinion, indeed, of a late great preacher, that Christians under a Mahometan or Pagan government, ought to value the peace of the country above the conversion of the people there."
Who is the preacher here referred to?
Who were the authors, and what were the titles of the many Defences of Sherlock's Vindication of the Holy and Ever Blessed Trinity, and The Divinity and Death of Christ? *
And what farther is to be learned of Mr. Papin, a Socinian, who jointed the Church of Rome about that period? †
Who was Chief Justice in 1697? Was it Chief Justice Treby? ‡
Trelawney, Bishop of Exeter, excommunicated Dr. Bury. When was the living the latter enjoyed "untouched and even unquestioned by another bishop?" §
In case the answers to these should not appear of sufficient importance to be put into type, I enclose an envelope.
W. Fraser.
Tor-Mohun.
P.S.—The misprint you point out, Vol. vii., p. 409., of Oxoniensis for Exoniensis, occurred in the Appendix to Wake's State of the Church and Clergy of England, p. 4.
[* The titles of nearly twenty works relating to Sherlock's Trinitarian Controversy will be found s. v. in the Bodleian Catalogue, vol. iii. p. 462. See also Watt's Bibliotheca Britannica.
† A long account of Mr. Papin is given in Rose's as well as in Chalmers's Biographical Dictionary.
‡ Sir George Treby was Chief Justice of Common Pleas in 1697.
§ Bishop Trelawney, it appears, suspended Dr. Arthur Bury from the rectorship of Exeter College for some heterodox notions in his work, The Naked Gospel. The affair was carried by appeal from the King's Bench to the House of Lords, when Bishop Stillingfleet delivered a speech on the "Case of Visitation of Colleges," printed in his Ecclesiastical Cases, part ii. p. 411. Wood states that Dr. Bury was soon after restored. For an account of this controversy, and the works relating to it, see Gough's British Topography, vol. ii. p. 147., and Wood's Athenæ (Bliss), vol. iv. p. 483.
Any farther communications on the above Queries shall be forwarded to the correspondent.]
Prester John.—I should be glad, through the medium of "N. & Q.," to be favoured with some information relative to this mysterious personage.
Strath Clyde.
[The history of Prester John, or of the individuals bearing that appellation, appears involved in considerable confusion and obscurity. Most of our Encyclopædias contain notices of this mysterious personage, especially Rees's, and Collier's Great Historical Dictionary. "The fame of Prester or Presbyter John," says Gibbon, "a khan, whose power was vainly magnified by the Nestorian missionaries, and who is said to have received at their hands the rite of baptism, and even of ordination, has long amused the credulity of Europe. In its long progress to Mosul, Jerusalem, Rome, &c., the story of Prester John evaporated into a monstrous fable, of which some features have been borrowed from the Lama of Thibet (Hist. Généaologique des Tartares, part ii. p. 42.; Hist. de Gengiscan, p. 31. &c.), and were ignorantly transferred by the Portuguese to the emperor of Abyssinia (Ludolph. Hist. Æthop. Comment. l. ii. c. 1.). Yet is is probable that, in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, Nestorian Christianity was professed in the horde of the Keraites.">[
Homer's Iliad in a Nut.—On the tomb of those celebrated gardeners, Tradescant father and son, these lines occur in the course of the inscription:
"Whilst they (as Homer's Iliad in a nut),
A World of Wonders in one closet shut."
Will you explain the comparison implied in the words "as Homer's Iliad in a nut?"
David.
[It refers to the account given by Pliny, vii. 21., that the Iliad was copied in so small a hand, that the whole work could lie in a walnut-shell: "In nuce inclusam Iliada Homeri carmen, in membrana scriptum tradidit Cicero." Pliny's authority is Cicero apvd Gellium, ix. 421. See M. Huet's account of a similar experiment in Gentleman's Magazine, vol. xxxix. p. 347.]
Monogram of Parker Society.—What is the meaning of the monogram adopted by the Parker Society on all their publications?
Tyro.
[The monogram is "Matthew Parker," Archbishop of Canterbury in the reign of Queen Elizabeth.]
The Five Alls.—Can any of your readers give me an interpretation of a sign on an inn in Oxford, which bears this inscription?
"THE FIVE ALLS."
I can make nothing of it.
Curiosus.
Oxford.
[Captain Grose shall interpret this Query. He says, "The Five Alls is a country sign, representing five human figures, each having a motto. The first is a king in his regalia, 'I govern all.' The second, a
bishop in pontificals, 'I pray for all.' Third, a lawyer in his gown, 'I plead for all.' Fourth, a soldier in his regimentals, 'I fight for all.' Fifth, a poor countryman with his scythe and rake, 'I pay for all!'">[
Corvizer.—In a deed of the middle of the last century, I find this addition to the name of a person residing at Conway. The word is similarly employed in a list of interments of some "common people," contained in Browne Willis's account of Bangor Cathedral. What does it mean, and whence is it derived?
H. B.
Bangor.
[An obsolete word for a cordwainer or shoemaker. See Ash's Dictionary.]