A DEVONIAN.
316. Rectitudines Singularum Personarum.
—This interesting Anglo-Saxon document is necessarily well known to many of your readers. Will they favor me with a Note, stating what they consider to be its date? In the mean time, I will say that it is not improbable that the date may be referrible to temp. Ethelredi II. The service of Sæ weard is insisted upon, and it is fair to suppose that such would not have been the case if the textus had been written at a period anterior to those times, when the coast was wasted by the piratical incursions of the Northmen. In the title "thegnes riht" it is mentioned in priority to "heafod weard" and "fyrdweard." It is again mentioned in the title "cotsetlan riht." This document was doubtless written by a priest, and probably by a secular one, for some of its concluding words show a habit, or at least a possibility, of migration on the part of the writer, viz.:
"Be thære theode theawe, the we thænne onwuniath."
The Latin translation, which accompanies the original, is of a date manifestly later than the Norman Conquest. The phraseology which it exhibits, and the gross mistakes which it contains, are sufficient evidence of the fact.
In the title "be thaw the beon bewitath," the words "self lædan" are translated "ipse minare." Sometimes the translator does not understand his original: in the first title he converts "bocriht" into "testamenti rectitudo;" and of the words "sceorp to frithscipe," he leaves the first word as he finds it.
H. C. C.
317. Sir Henry Tichborne's Journal.
—I should be obliged to any of your numerous correspondents or readers for any information given respecting a diurnal written by Sir Henry Tichborne, third baronet of Tichborne, co. Hants, of his Travells into France, Italy, Loretto, Rome, and other places, in the years 1675, 1676, and 1678.
Is the original in existence, or where might this MS. be found? Has any of your readers seen or heard of it?