Now it is evident that in 1640 the proverb was in vogue, and well understood; but organs were not at that time common in churches, especially parish churches, and as I do not know which of the many Nortons in England is Mr. Peck's Hocks Norton, I cannot help considering his derivation somewhat in the light of an anachronism.
I do not know the date of Howell's English Proverbs quoted by Mr. Halliwell in his Archaic Dictionary. Should there be such a place as Hog's Norton, or Hock's Norton, is the Hock = Hok = oak tree? Acorns and pigs were common associates.
The only instance that I recollect of pigs being connected with an organ, is in that curious freak recorded of the Abbé Debaigne, maître de musique to Louis XI., when he made a hog-organ by enclosing pigs of various ages and pitches of voice in a kind of chest; the older ones on the left hand for the bass, and the younger on the right for the treble: over all these was suspended a key-board, which, when played on, pressed long needles into the pigs' backs,—the result is left to the imagination.
THOS. LAWRENCE.
Minor Queries.
The Judge alluded to by South.
—South, in a note in his first Sermon on Covetousness (vol. iv. p. 448., 4th edition, 1727), tells us of a lawyer, "a confident of the rebels," who recommended that the Duke of Gloucester, the youngest son of Charles I., should be bound "to some good trade, that so he might eat his bread honestly." He then expresses wonder that Charles II. made this lawyer a judge; a practice, he adds, and doubtless with a meaning, "not unusual in the courts of some princes, to encourage and prefer their mortal enemies, before their truest friends."
Can any of your correspondents tell us more on the subject, and the name of the judge?
The recommendation was probably given at the time when the Duke and the Princess Elizabeth were removed from Penshurst to Carisbrooke, where, according to instructions, they were not to be treated as royal children.