Minor Queries with Answers.
Chandler, Bishop of Durham.—Lord Dover, in the second volume of his edition of Walpole's Letters to Sir Horace Mann, p. 373., in a note, thus speaks of this prelate:
"A learned prelate and author of various polemical works, he had been raised to the see of Durham in 1730, as it was then said, by symoniacal means."
Can any of your readers inform me where I can obtain evidence of the symoniacal means by which it is said this bishop obtained the bishopric of Durham? One would scarcely think so cautious a man as Lord Dover would refer to the imputation, without some evidence on which his lordship could rely.
Mr. Surtees, in his History of the Bishops of Durham, makes no allusion to the symoniacal means by which Chandler obtained his promotion to the see of Durham. He gives a list of the bishop's printed works, amongst which is a "charge to the grand jury of Durham concerning engrossing of corn, &c., 1740." Can you, or any of your readers, inform me where this pamphlet is to be met with? For I am curious to know how a bishop could make a charge to a grand jury. There must surely be some mistake in the title of the pamphlet.
Fra. Mewburn.
Darlington.
[The charge of simony is loosely noticed by Shaw in his History of Staffordshire, vol. i. p. 278. He says, "Edward Chandler was translated from Lichfield and Coventry to Durham in 1730; and it was then publicly said that he gave 9000l. for that opulent see." To this Chalmers, in his Biog. Dict., adds, "which is scarcely credible." The Charge by the bishop is in the British Museum: it is entitled, "A Charge delivered to the Grand Jury at the Quarter-Sessions held at Durham, July 16, 1740, concerning engrossing of corn and grain, and the riots that have been occasioned thereby." 4to., Durham.]
Huggins and Muggins.—Can any of your readers assign the origin of this jocular appellation? I would hazard the conjecture, that it may be corruption of Hogen Mogen, High Mightinesses, the style, I believe, of the States-General of Holland; and that it probably became an expression of contempt in the mouths of the Jacobites for the followers of William III., from whence it has passed to a more general application.
F. K.
Bath.
[Hugger-mugger, says Dr. Richardson, is the common way of writing this word, from Udal to the present time. No probable etymology, he adds, has yet been given. Sir John Stoddart (Ency. Metropolitana, vol i. p. 120.) has given a long article on this word, which concludes with the following remarks:—"The last etymology that we shall mention is from the Dutch title,
Hoog Moogende (High Mightinesses), given to the States-General, and much ridiculed by some of our English writers; as in Hudibras:
'But I have sent him for a token
To your Low-country, Hogen Mogen.'
It has been supposed that hugger-mugger, corrupted from Hogen Mogen, was meant in derision of the secret transactions of their Mightinesses; but it is probable that the former word was known in English before the latter, and upon the whole it seems most probable that hugger is a mere intensitive form of hug, and that mugger is a reduplication of sound with a slight variation, which is so common in cases of this kind.">[
Balderdash.—What is the meaning and the etymology of "balderdash?"
W. Fraser.
Tor-Mohun.
[Skinner suggests the following etymology: "Balderdash, potus mixtus, credo ab A.-S. bald, audax, balder, audacior vel audacius, et nostro dash; miscere, q.d. potus temere mixtus." Dr. Jamieson explains it as "foolish and noisy talk. Islandic, bulldur, stultorum balbuties." Dr. Ogilvie, however, has queried its derivation from the "Spanish balda, a trifle, or baldonar, to insult with abusive language; Welsh, baldorz, to prattle. Mean, senseless prate; a jargon of words; ribaldry; anything jumbled together without judgment.">[
Lovell, Sculptor.—What is known of this artist? That he was in advance of the age he flourished in is evinced by his beautifully executed engravings in Love's Sacrifice (fol. Lond. 1652), which for delicacy of work are far beyond anything of the period.
R.C. Warde.
Kidderminster.
[Is the name Lovell, or Loisell? for we find that Strutt, in his Dictionary of Engravers, vol. ii. p. 101., speaks of "P. Loisell having affixed some slight etchings, something in the style of Gaywood (if I mistake not), to Benlowe's Theophilia, or Love's Sacrifice.">[
St. Werenfrid and Butler's "Lives of the Saints."—One of your correspondents will perhaps explain the cause of an omission in Butler's Lives of the Saints. The life of St. Werenfrid, whose anniversary is the 14th of August, is abstracted, vol. iii. p. 492. His name occurs in the table of contents: and pages 493 and 494, where the life should have appeared, are wanting; still page 495 follows 492 correctly in type, so that the former must have been reprinted after the castration of the leaf. Was the saint deemed unworthy of the place which had been allotted to him?
J. H. M.
[In the best edition of Butler's Lives (12 vols., 1812-13), the life of St. Werenfrid is given on Nov. 7. He is honored in Holland on the 14th of August; and his life appears in Britannia Sancta on that day, but in the Bollandists on the 28th of August.]