Replies.
THE THREE ESTATES OF THE REALM.
(Vol. iv., p. 278.)
MR. FRASER'S erudite researches are well worth the space which they occupy. The conclusions to be drawn from them appear quite to support my positions:
1. The Three Estates of the Realm are, the Spiritualty, the Nobility, and the Commonalty: on this fact there is no dispute. The last is as certainly the third estate (tiers état). But MR. FRASER demurs to my ranking the Spiritual Estate as the first, quoting the Collect in the Service for the fifth of November, which runs, "the Nobility, Clergy, and Commonalty." On this point I am not prepared with a decisive authority; but certainly the language and practice of Parliament is with me. The Lords Spiritual are always named before the Lords Temporal, and precedence is allotted to them accordingly; the Archbishops ranking above the Earls (with the more recent distinctions of Marquess and Duke), and the Bishops above the Temporal Barons [Qy. What was the relative rank of the other "prelates" who were formerly in Parliament?]. To the same effect is the language of the celebrated preamble to the act 24 Henry VIII. c. 12.:—
"This realm of England is an empire ... governed by one supreme head and King ... unto whom a body politic compact of all sorts and degrees of people divided in terms and by names of Spiritualty and Temporalty, be bounden and owen."
2. The Convocations of the Clergy (which are two synods sitting in three houses) are no part of the Parliament. MR. FRASER thinks "this point was settled somewhat late in our history;" but it is proved (I submit) in the very extracts which he produces from ancient statutes. Since there is no doubt that the Clergy sat regularly in Convocation, we should not hear of their occasional presence in the House of Commons had the Convocation been deemed a part of Parliament. It is certain that Convocation never exercised the powers which belong to a chamber of Parliament; even their own subsidies to the Crown were ratified and passed in Parliament before they became legally binding. [See on the whole of this subject, Burn's Eccl. Law (Phillimore's ed.), tit. "Convocation," vol. ii. pp. 19-23.] MR. FRASER has certainly adduced instances in which the assent of the Clergy was given to particular statutes; he might have added the recital of their submission to the Crown, in the Act of Supremacy, 26 Henry VIII. c. 1. He has shown also that clerical proctors were occasionally introduced into the House of Commons, like the judges (he says) in the House of Lords. But this is far from making those proctors, or the Convocation which sent them, a part of the Parliament. Indeed it is shown that they were not by the petition of the Lower House of Convocation (cited by MR. FRASER), in which they desire "to be admitted to sit in Parliament with the House of Commons, according to antient usage." It is clear that they who so petitioned did not esteem themselves to be, as a Convocation, already part of the Parliament. The Convocation would indeed have become the Spiritual Estate in Parliament, if the Clergy had acceded to the wise and patriotic design of King Edward I. But they, affecting an imperium in imperio, refused to assemble at the King's writ as a portion of the Parliament of their country, and chose to tax themselves apart in their Provincial Synods, where they used the forms of a separate Parliament for the Church.
3. Hence the Spiritual Estate was, and still is, represented in Parliament by the Spiritual Lords. William the Conqueror having converted their sees into baronies, they were obliged, like other tenants in capite, to obey the royal summons to Parliament. When I called it a mistake to suppose that our Bishops sit in the Upper House only as Barons, I did not mean that they are not so, in the present constitution of Parliament, but that such was not the origin of the prelates being called to share in the legislation of the realm. The other clergy, however, retained their tenure of frankalmoigne, and stood aloof alike from the councils and from the burdens of the state. Attendance in Parliament being chiefly given for the purpose of voting taxes, the Commons, as well as the Clergy, looked upon it as a burden more than a privilege. But while the Clergy were quickly compelled to bear their share of the public burdens, their short-sighted policy deprived them of the voice which is now enjoyed by other degrees of Englishmen in the affairs of the country. While Convocation was sitting, the Clergy could make their sentiments known by the Bishops who represented their Estate in Parliament; and we often find the Lower House of Convocation petitioning their lordships to make statements of this kind in their places in Parliament. But in the present suspension of Convocation and the disuse of diocesan synods, the Clergy have lost their weight with the Bishops themselves; and that once formidable Estate of the Realm retains but the shadow of a representation in Parliament.
MR. FRASER will find this account of the matter fully borne out by the extract he has given from Bennet's Narrative. "The King in full Parliament charged the Prelates, Earls, Barons, and other great men, and the Knights of the shire, and the Commons," to give him counsel. Here we have a description of Parliament precisely as it is constituted at this day, and the "Prelates" are the only members of the Spiritualty. Then we read "the Prelates deliberated 'with the clergy by themselves' (i.e. in Convocation), and the Earls and Barons by themselves, and the Knights and others of the Commons by themselves; and then, 'in full Parliament' (as before), each by themselves, and afterwards all in common answered," i.e. the Clergy deliberated in Convocation, but answered in Parliament by their Prelates.
It is true, as MR. FRASER observes, that the majority of the Upper House of Parliament binds the Clergy though all the Bishops should be dissentient, as in Queen Elizabeth's Act of Uniformity. This is the result of the Spiritual Estate voting in the same chamber with the Nobility; and to avoid such a result the Commons very early demanded a chamber to themselves. The Spiritualty is thus yet further reduced under the power of the Temporalty; for "the authority of Parliament" (as Elizabeth's Act of Uniformity words it) is and must be supreme, however defective its representative constitution. It were certainly to be wished that those liberal reformers who were so shocked at burgage tenures and rotten boroughs, would extend their compassion to the disfranchised clergy, some five or six hundred of whom are "represented," without their consent or opinion asked, by a prelate appointed by the Crown.
On the whole, the Convocation is "the true Church of England by representation" (Canon 139) in such matters as belong to the Church as distinguished from the State; but in Parliament, which is the State, the Spiritualty is represented by the Bishops alone.
I am astonished that MR. FRASER should stumble at my remark, that the Three Estates still assemble in common for the final passing of every act. I had thought that the ceremony of giving the royal assent in full Parliament to bills previously deliberated upon in the two Houses apart, had been sufficiently well known.
CANON EBOR.
P.S.—Since writing the above I have lighted upon the following authorities, confirming the position that the Spiritual Estate is represented in Parliament by the Bishops, and also that it is ranked as the "First Estate of the Realm." Can MR. FRASER adduce any authority whatever for applying that designation to the Clergy in Convocation?
I. In An Account of the Ceremonies observed at the Coronation of George III. (London, Kearsley, 1791, 4to.), I read that immediately after the enthronement—
"The bishops performed their homage, and then the temporal lords, first H. R. H. the Duke of York, and H. R. H. the Duke of Cumberland, each for himself;"—
the Prelates thus taking precedence even of the blood royal. The same fact is distinctly stated in the accounts appended of the coronations of James II., William and Mary (when the Bishops did homage before Prince George); and I presume that this is the regular order in which the Estates of the Realm do homage to the Sovereign upon that most solemn occasion.
II. When the royal assent is given to any act of grace (which emanates from the Crown in the first instance), the form is for the clerk of parliament to acknowledge the royal favour in these words:
III. "Les prélats, seigneurs, et commons, en ce present parliament assemblés au nom de tout vous autre subjects remercient très humblement votre Majesté, et prient à Dieu vous donner en santé bonne vie et longue."
"Strictly speaking, the 'Three Estates of the Realm' consist of, 1st, the Lords Spiritual; 2nd, the Lords Temporal; 3rd, the Commons. Parliament fully assembled consists of the King, with the two estates of the Peerage sitting in one house, and the Commons by their representatives standing below the bar."
Dodd's Manual of Dignities, &c., tit. "Parliament," p. 266.
LEGEND OF ST. KENELM—IN CLIENT COU BACHE.
(Vol. v., p. 79.)
Your correspondent will find the ample story in the Golden Legend. It is related more succinctly by Roger of Wendover, who has been followed by later chroniclers. In the legend, as related by Roger of Wendover, the murder of Kenelm is said to have been miraculously notified at Rome by a white dove alighting on the altar of St. Peter's church, bearing a scroll in her bill, which she let fall. The scroll contained, among other things, the following lines:
"In Clente cou bache
Kenelm kine-bearn,
Lith under thorne
Havedes bereaved."
"Qui Latine sonat (says the Chronicler) in pastum vaccarum Kenelmius regis filius jacet sub spina capite privatus."
MS. Douce, fo. 66. b.
And afterwards he says:
"De hujus quoque sancte martyris quidam sic ait:
In Clent, sub spina, jacet in convalle bovina,
Vertice privatus, Kenelmus rege creatus."
"Cou bache" has been erroneously printed "cou bathe;" and travestied sometimes into coubage.
Clent is the name of the place, a wood according to the Golden Legend. Bach, or Bache, is a word that had long escaped the glossarists, with the exception of Dr. Whitaker, who says it is "a Mereno-Saxon word, signifying a bottom, and that it enters into the composition of several local names in the midland counties."
The passage in Piers Ploughman, upon which this is a gloss, occurs at p. 119. of Whitaker's edition:
"Ac ther was weye non so wys (that the way thider couthe
Bote blostred forth as bestes) over baches and bulles."
The word occurs several times in Layamon, and on two occasions the later text reads slade; in one passage we have it thus:
"Of dalen and of dunen
The cognate languages would have led us to a different interpretation of Bache. In Suevo-Gothic, Backe is "an ascent or descent, extremitas montes, alias crepido vel ora." Wachter has Backe; collis, tumulus; of which Bühel, collis clivus, is the diminutive still in use. In Swedish Backe, and in Danish Bakke, is a hill or rising ground; and Ray, in his Travels, has "a baich, or languet of land." There has probably been some confusion here, as well as in the two similar words dune and dene, for hill and valley.
S. W. SINGER.
The legend of the sainted King Kenelm is related at great length, and with very precise references to the various chroniclers in which it is to be found, in the 1st vol. (pp. 721-4.) of MacCabe's Catholic History of England. The Saxon couplet in which his death was announced at Rome is very neatly rendered in Butler's Lives of the Saints:—
"In Clent cow pasture under a thorn,
Of head bereft, lies Kenelm king-born."
A. M.
ISABEL, QUEEN OF THE ISLE OF MAN.
(Vol. iv., p. 423.)
The lady about whom FANNY inquires, was the wife of William Lord Fitz-Warine, who died in 35 Edward III. (1361), as to whom see Dugd. Bar. i. 447. The register of interments and sepulchral inscriptions in the church of the Grey Friars, London, printed in the fifth volume of Collectanea Topogr. et Geneal. (the entry is at p. 278.), which I presume to be the authority for the statement in Knight's London, does not afford further information as to this lady, who is reckoned amongst the four queens said by Weever (following Stowe) to have been interred in this church. Mr. J. G. Nichols, in his note to the entry referred to, does not add any information about the lady Isabel.
There was a Sybil, who was daughter of William Montacute, Earl of Salisbury and King of Man and Derby, one of the most distinguished characters in the heroic age of Edward III. She married Edmund, the younger of the two sons of Edmund Earl of Arundel, by Alice, sister and heir of John, last Earl of Warren and Surrey, who died in 1347 (Dugd. Bar. i. 82.). William Montacute was created Earl of Salisbury 16th March, 1337, and died in 1343, and was entombed in the church of the Friars Carmelites, London (Weever, 437.). He was connected with the family of John Earl of Surrey, for it appears from a grant made by the king in 11 Edward III. to William Earl of Salisbury, that he was entitled in reversion to certain hereditaments then held by John de Warren, Earl of Surrey, and Joan his wife (Collect. Top. et Gen. vii. 379.). The valiant Montacute, lord of Man, did not die without heirs male, for his son William was his heir; otherwise we might have supposed the dominion of the isle to have devolved on his daughter Sybil or Isabel, who, surviving Edmund her husband, may have married the Lord Fitz-Warine. Can evidence of such connexion be found? I have not met with anything to connect his family with the lordship of the Isle of Man, and am not aware that "Isabel Queen of Man" is mentioned in any record save the sepulchral register of the Grey Friars. I wish some clue could be found to a satisfactory answer.
The other branch of the question proposed by FANNY, viz., when did the Isle of Man cease to be an independent kingdom? can be answered by a short historical statement. So early as the reign of John, its sovereigns rendered fealty and homage to the kings of England. Reginald, styled King of Man, did homage to Henry III., as appears by the extract given from the Rot. Pat. 3 Hen. III., by Selden. During a series of years previously, the kings of Man, who seem to have held this isle together with the Hebrides, had done homage to the kings of Norway, and its bishops went to Drontheim for consecration. Magnus, last sovereign of Man of the Norwegian dynasty, died in 1265. From that period the shadowy crown of Man is seen from time to time resting on lords of different races, and its descent is in many periods involved in great obscurity. After the death of Magnus, the island was seized by Alexander III. of Scotland. A daughter and heiress of Reginald sued for it against John Baliol before Edward I. of England as lord paramount of Man (Rot. Parl. 31 Edw. I.). In 35 Edw. I., we find Anthony Bek, the warlike Bishop and Count Palatine of Durham, in possession of the isle; but the king of England then claimed to resume it into his own hands, as of the ancient right of the crown. Accordingly, from sundry records it appears that Edw. II. and Edw. III. committed its custody to various persons, and the latter king at length conferred his right to it upon William Montacute, Earl of Salisbury, in consideration, probably, of that valiant Earl having by his arms regained the island from the Scots, who had resumed possession, and of the circumstance that his grandmother, the wife of Simon de Montacute, was sister and heiress of one of the former kings of Man, and related to the lady who had claimed it as her inheritance on the death of Magnus. The son and heir of the grantee sold the isle to Scrope, Earl of Wiltshire, about 16 Rich. II. In the time of Hen. IV., Sir William Scrope forfeited his possessions (Dugd. Bar. ii. 250.); and the isle again came to the crown. It was granted to Percy, Earl of Northumberland, by the service of bearing the Lancaster sword on the left shoulder of the king on the day of coronation; was forfeited by Percy; and was thereupon granted by the same king to Sir John Stanley and his heirs, under which grant the Earls of Derby succeeded during many years. It was a subject of a grant to the Stanleys by Queen Elizabeth, and of an act of parliament in the reign of James I., under which the isle became vested in the Duchess Dowager of Athol, as heir of the body of James, seventh Earl of Derby, and ultimately became vested by purchase in the crown. It may be said that during the time of authentic history, the Isle of Man was not an independent kingdom, until the regality was granted by the crown, as already mentioned.
WM. SIDNEY GIBSON.
Newcastle-on-Tyne.
LONG MEG OF WESTMINSTER.
(Vol. ii., pp. 131. 172.)
When I wrote my note upon Long Meg of Westminster, I was not aware of the following passage in Fuller's Worthies (Westminster, edit. 1662, p. 236.):
"As long as Megg of Westminster.—This is applyed to persons very tall, especially if they have hop-pole-height, wanting breadth proportionable thereunto. That such a gyant-woman ever was in Westminster, cannot be proved by any good witness (I pass not for a late lying pamphlet), though some in proof thereof produce her gravestone on the south-side of the cloistures, which (I confess) is as long, and large, and entire marble as ever I beheld. But be it known, that no woman in that age was interred in the cloistures, appropriated to the sepultures of the abbot and his monkes. Besides, I have read in the records of that Abby of an infectious year, wherein many monkes dyed of the plague, and were all buried in one grave; probably in this place, under this marble monument. If there be any truth in the proverb, it rather relateth to a great gun, lying in the tower, commonly call'd Long Megg; and in troublesome times (perchance upon ill May day in the raigne of King Henry the eighth), brought to Westminster, where for a good time it continued. But this Nut (perchance) deserves not the cracking."
Grose, in his Provincial Glossary, inserts among the Local Proverbs, "As Long as Megg of Westminster," with the following note:—
"This is applied to very tall slender persons. Some think it alluded to a long gun, called Megg, in troublesome times brought from the tower to Westminster, where it long remained. Others suppose it to refer to an old fictitious story of a monstrous tall virago called Long Megg of Westminster, of whom there is a small penny history, well known to school-boys of the lesser sort. In it there are many relations of her prowess. Whether there ever was such a woman or not, is immaterial; the story is sufficiently ancient to have occasioned the saying. Megg is there described as having breadth in proportion to her height. Fuller says, that the large grave-stone shown on the south side of the cloister in Westminster Abbey, said to cover her body, was, as he has read in an ancient record, placed over a number of monks who died of the plague, and were all buried in one grave; that being the place appointed for the sepulture of the abbots and monks, in which no woman was permitted to be interred."—Edit. 1811, p. 207.
I shall not enter into the question, as to whether any "tall woman" of "bad repute" was or was not buried in the cloisters of Westminster, as it is very likely to turn out, upon a little inquiry, that the original "long Meg" was a "great gun," and not a creature of flesh and blood.
"Long Meg" is also the name of a large gun preserved in the castle of Edinburgh; and, what is somewhat extraordinary, the great bombard forged for the siege of Oudenarde, in 1382, now in the city of Ghent, is called by the towns-people "Mad Meg."
A series of stones, situated upon an eminence on the east side of the river Eden, near the village of Little Salkeld, are commonly known as "Long Meg and her Daughters."
These notices, at any rate, are suggestive, and may be the means of elucidating something perhaps more worth the knowing.
EDWARD F. RIMBAULT.
THE INTRODUCTION OF STOPS, ETC.
(Vol. v., p. 1.)
My enquiry into the use of stops in the early days of typography will, if it prove nothing else, show that the Tablet of Memory is not an authority to be depended upon on that subject. I have arranged the authorities which I have consulted in chronological order.
1480. Epistola F. Philelphi ad Sextum IV., printed at Rome.
1493. Politian's Latin translation of Herodian, printed at Bologna.
In both these books the colon and period are used, but neither the comma nor semicolon.
1523. Dialogi Platonis, printed at Nuremberg.
Here I find the comma and period, and also the note of interrogation, but not the colon or semicolon.
1523. Ascensius declynsons, with the playne Expositor, without date, place, or printer's name.
This publication is ascribed by Johnson to Wynkyn de Worde, and therefore printed between 1493 and 1534. I find in it the following amusing passage relative to the ancient art of punctuation:—
"Of the Craft of Poynting.
"There be fiue maner poynts, and divisions most uside with cunnyng men: the which, if they be wel usid, make the sentens very light, and esy to understond both to the reder and the herer, and they be these: virgil, come, parenthesis, playne poynt, and interrogatif. A virgil is a sclender stryke: lenynge forwarde this wyse, betokynynge a lytyl, short rest without any perfetnes yet of sentens: as betwene the five poyntis a fore rehersid. A come is with tway tittels this wyse: betokynynge a longer reste: and the sentens yet either is imperfet: or els, if it be perfet: ther cummith more after, longyng to it: the which more comynly cannot be perfet by itself without at the lest summat of it: that gothe a fore. A parenthesis is with tway crokyd virgils: as an olde mone, and a new bely to bely: the whyche be set theton afore the begynyng, and thetother after the latyr ende of a clause; comyng within an other clause: that may be perfet: thof the clause, so comyng betwene: wer awey, and therfore it is sowndyde comynly a note lower, than the utter clause. Yf the sentens cannot be perfet without the ynner clause, then stede of the first crokyde virgil a streght virgil wol do very wel; and stede of the later must nedis be a come. A playne poynt is with won tittel this wyse. and it cumeth after the ende of al the whole sentens betokynynge a longe reste. An interrogatif is with tway tittels, the upper rysing this wyse? and it cumeth after the ende of a whole reason: wheryn ther is sum question axside. the whiche ende of the reson, triyng as it were for an answere: risyth upwarde. we have these rulis in englishe: by cause they be as profytable, and necessary to be kepte in every mother tonge, as in latyn. Sethyn we (as we wolde to god: every precher wolde do) have kept owre rulis both in owre englishe, and latyn: what nede we, sethyn owre own be sufficient unogh: to put any other exemplis."
It is evident that what the writer of this book calls the virgil, is our comma: and his come, our colon. There is nothing, however, allusive to our semicolon.
1541. Cranmer's Bible. Here we find the comma, colon, and period, and also the note of interrogation, but not the semicolon.
1597. Gerard's Herbal contains the comma, colon, semicolon, and period.
1604. First part of Shakspeare's Henry IV., 4to. Here the comma, colon, and period are used, but not the semicolon.
1631. Baker's Well-spring of Science also uses the comma, colon, and period, but not the semicolon.
1636. Record's Ground of Arts. Here all the stops now in use are found.
1639. Cockeram's English Dictionary defines the comma, colon, and period, but not the semicolon. The latter, however, is used in the preface.
1650. Moore's Arithmetic employs all the four common stops.
1670. Blount's Glossographia defines the four common stops.
Generally speaking, the stops now in use may be found in books from about 1630. So much concerning punctuation.
P. T.
PAPERS OF PERJURY.
(Vol. ii., pp. 182. 316.)
Your correspondent S. R. will find that in Ireland, as well as in England, the custom prevailed, during the reign of Elizabeth, of inflicting a punishment for various crimes, by the public exposure of the delinquents with papers about their heads. The following "sentence" for adultery, which has been transcribed from the Book of the Commissioners of Ecclesiastical Causes (deposited amongst the records of the Court of Exchequer in Ireland, 1570-1574, p. 22.), goes so fully into detail, that it may supply to S. R. the graphic account which he requires:—
"First, that he (Henry Hunchcliffe) shall not come into, nor kepe, nor use the company of Constance Kyng hereafter, and shalbe bounde to the same effecte in a bond of recognizance of a 100l., otherwise to be committed to prison; there to be kept in such sort that neyther he to hir, nor she to him, shall have access in anywise. Secondlie, that upon Saterdaie next enseweing at ix of the clocke in the mornyng, he, the said Eyland, alias Hunchcliffe, shall come unto the crosse in the highe strete of Dublin, having on a white shete from his sholders downe to the ground, rounde aboute him, and a paper about his head whereupon shalbe written for adultery leavyng his wife in England alyve and marryeng wth an other here, and a white wande in his hand, and then and there goe up unto the highest staire of the crosse, and there sitte duryng all the time of the markette untill yt be ended; and furder decreed that Constance Kyng shall not hereafter in anywise resort or have accesse unto him, or kepe him company, and to performe the same they toke hir othe wch she gave upon the holie evangelists; and furder, after yt Hunchcliffe hath done his penance as above they decreed he shold goe to prison againe, there to remayne and abide untill yt shall please the commissioners to take furder order in this cause."
The book contains other entries of a similar kind.
J. F. F.
Dublin.