F. C. H.
Anticipatory Use of the Cross (Vol. viii. passim).—In answer to particular inquiry, I have been furnished by a resident in Macao with an answer, of which the following is the substance:—The cross is commonly used in China, and consists of any flat boards of sufficient size, the upright shaft being usually eight to ten feet high. The transverse bar is fixed by a single nail or rivet, and is therefore often loose, and may be made sometimes to traverse a complete circle. It is not so much an instrument of punishment in itself, as it is an operation-board whereon to confine the criminal, not with nails, but ropes, to undergo—as in the case of a woman taken in adultery—the cutting away of the flesh from the bosom. He adds, that he has witnessed such punishment, and he has no doubt that the cross has been used in this way in China immemorially. Any of your correspondents will much oblige me by correcting or confirming this statement from positive testimony.
T. J. Buckton.
Lichfield.
The Marquis of Granby (Vol. ix., p. 127.).—A portrait of this nobleman constitutes the sign of a public-house at Doncaster, and of another at Bawtry, nine miles from that town. His lordship, it is said, occasionally occupied Carr House, near the former place, as a hunting-box in the middle of the last century. As an instance of his lordship's popularity, I may here add, that out of compliment to him, and for his greater convenience in hunting, at a period when there was a considerable extent of uninclosed and undrained country around Doncaster, the corporation directed several banks and passages to be made on their estate at Rossington; and in 1752, that body likewise presented the Marquis with the freedom of the borough.
C. J.
Irish Letters (Vol. ix., p. 246).—The following inscription on the monument of Lugnathan, nephew of St. Patrick, at Inchaguile, in Lough Corrib, co. Galway, is supposed to be the most ancient in Ireland:
"LIE LUGNAEDON MACC LMENUEH."
"The stone of Lugnaodon, son of Limenueh."
The oldest Irish manuscript is the Book of Armagh, which contains a copy of the Gospels, and some very old lives of St. Patrick. (See O'Donovan's Irish Grammar, Dublin, 1845, p. lii.)