Oxford.
Minor Queries.
Bishop Hall's Resolutions.
—A small edition of Bishop Hall's Resolutions and Decisions of Cases of Conscience, printed in 1650, and consequently in the author's lifetime, has, as its frontispiece, a "vera effigies" of the venerable writer. On a fly-leaf there is, in the handwriting of the former possessor,—a man of much literary information,—this note: "The following portrait of Bishop Hall is rare and valuable." I should esteem it a favour if some one of your correspondents would inform me how far this is a correct estimate of the print.
S. S. S.
Mother Huff and Mother Damnable.
—Can any of your correspondents favour me with an account of Mother Huff? She is mentioned in Bishop Gibson's edition of the Britannia, in a list of wild plants found in Middlesex. In Park's Hampstead, p. 245., is the following extract from Baker's comedy of Hampstead Heath, 4to. 1706, Act II. Sc. 1.:
"Arabella. Well, this Hampstead's a charming place: to dance all night at the Wells, and be treated at Mother Huff's," &c.
The place designated as "Mother Huff's" was, I think, the same as that known as "Mother Damnable's." The latter personage is mentioned in Caulfield's Remarkable Characters. Who was Mother Damnable? Can any of your correspondents furnish any additions to Caulfield's account of Mother Damnable?
S. WISWOULD.