which enters so fully into particulars as to give the names of the members of the society and its officers about the year 1300?
C. F. K.
Heiress of Haddon Hall.—Any one who visits Haddon Hall in Derbyshire, the property of the Duke of Rutland, is shown a doorway, through which the heiress to this baronial mansion eloped with (I think) a Cavendish some centuries ago. I have been informed that in a recent restoration of Bakewell Church, which is near Haddon Hall, the vault which contained the remains of this lady and her family was accidentally broken into, and that the bodies of herself, her husband, and some children, were found decapitated, with their heads under their arms; moreover, that in all the coffins there were dice. My informant had read an authenticated account of this curious circumstance, which was drawn up at the time of the discovery, but he could not refer me to it, and it is very possible that either his memory or mind may have failed as to the exact facts. At any rate they are worth embalming, I think, in the pages of "N. & Q." if any correspondent will kindly supply both "chapter and verse."
Alfred Gatty.
Monteith.—There is a peculiar style of silver bowl, of about the time of Queen Anne, which is called a Monteith. Why is it so designated? and to what particular use was it generally applied?
P.
Vandyking.—In a letter from Secretary Windebanke to the Lord Deputy Wentworth (Strafford Papers, vol. i. p. 161.), P. C. S. S. notices this phrase, "Pardon, I beseech your lordship the over-free censure of your Vandyking." What is the meaning of this term, which P. C. S. S. does not find in any other writing of the period? Had the costume, so usual in the portraits by Vandyke, become proverbial so early as 1633, the date of Windebanke's letter?
P. C. S. S.
Hiel the Bethelite.—What is the meaning of the 34th verse of the 16th chapter of the 1st Book of Kings? In one of Huddlestone's notes to Toland's History of the Druids, he quotes the acts of Hiel the Bethelite, therein mentioned, as an instance of the Druidical Custom of burying a man alive under the foundations of any building which was to be undertaken?
L. M. M. R.