C. R. M.
Defender of the Faith (Vol. ii., pp. 442. 481.; Vol. iii., pp. 9. 94.).—Should not King Edward the Confessor's claim to defend the church as God's Vicar be added to the several valuable notices in relation to the title Defender of the Faith, with which some of your learned contributors have favoured us through your pages?
According to Hoveden, one of the laws adopted from the Anglo-Saxons by William was:
"Rex autem atque vicarius Ejus ad hoc est constitutus, ut regnum terrenum, populum Dei, et super omnia sanctam ecclesiam, revereatur et ab injuriatoribus defendat," &c.
Which duty of princes was further enforced by the words—
"Illos decet vocari reges, qui vigilant, defendunt, et regunt Ecclesiam Dei et populum Ejus, imitantes regem psalmographum," &c.—Vid. Rogeri de Hoveden Annal., par. post., §. Regis Officium; ap. Rerum Anglicarum Scriptores post Bedam, ed. Francof. 1601, p. 604. Conf. Prynne's Chronol. Records, ed. Lond. 1666, tom i. p. 310.
This law appears always to have been received as of authority after the Conquest; and it may, perhaps, be considered as the first seed of that constitutional church supremacy vested in our sovereigns, which several of our kings before the Reformation had occasion to vindicate against Papal claims, and which Henry VIII. strove to carry in the other direction, to an unconstitutional excess.
J. Sansom.
Sauenap, Meaning of (Vol. ii., p. 479.).—The word probably means a napkin or pinafore; the two often, in old times, the same thing. The Cornish name for pinafore is save-all. (See Halliwell's Arch. Dict.) I need not add that nap, napery, was a common word for linen.
George Stephens.