In the Birch Collections at the British Museum there is a transcript of a Table-Book of Robert Sydney, second Earl of Leicester, made by Birch (Add. MSS. 4161.), the following extract from which, P. C. S. S. believes will not be unacceptable to the readers of "NOTES AND QUERIES:"
"The olde Countess of Desmond was a marryed woman in Edward IV.'s time, of England, and lived till towards the end of Queen Elizabeth, soe as she needes must be 140 yeares old: shee had a newe sett of teeth not long before her death, and might have lived much longer, had shee not mett with a kind of violent death; for she must needes climb a nutt-tree to gather nutts, soe falling downe, shee hurt her thigh, which brought a fever, and that fever brought death. This my cosen Walter Fitzwilliam told me. This olde lady, Mr. Harnet told me, came to petition the Queen, and landing at Bristol, shee came on foote to London, being then soe olde that her doughter was decrepit, and not able to come with her, but was brought in a little cart, their poverty not allowing them better provision of meanes. As I remember, Sir Walter Rowleigh, in some part of his History, speakes of her, and says that he saw her in England, anno 1589. Her death was as strange and remarkable as her long life was,—having seene the deaths of so many descended from her; and both her own and her husband's house ruined in the rebellion and wars."
P. C. S. S.
COLLAR OF SS.
(Vol. ii., p. 140.; Vol. iv., pp. 147. 236. 456.)
In my communication to you in August, 1850, and inserted as above, I stated that I was uncertain whether the collar of SS. was worn by the Chief Baron of the Exchequer previously to the reign of George I., as I had no portrait of that functionary of an earlier date.
I have since found, and I ought to have sent you the fact before, that the Chief Baron, as well as the two Chief Justices, was decorated with this collar in the reign of Queen Elizabeth. In the church of St. Stephen's, near Canterbury, is the monument of Sir Roger Manwood, who died Lord Chief Baron on December 14, 1592, on which his bust appears in full judicial robes (colored proper), over which he wears the collar in its modern form.
EDWARD FOSS.
Was the collar of SS. worn by persons under a vow to make a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, or to join a crusade, the S. being the initial letter of Sépulcre, or SS. for Saint Sépulcre? The appearance of the above-mentioned collar on the effigy of a person in the habit of a pilgrim in the church of Ashby-de-la-Zouch (see "NOTES AND QUERIES," Vol. iv., p. 345.), so strongly confirms the idea, that I beg leave to offer it to the consideration of any readers of the "NOTES AND QUERIES" who may be interested in the question.
E. J. M.