PINE'S TAPESTRY HANGINGS OF THE HOUSE OF LORDS.'-This work was published in 1739, and contains, besides the plates of the various sections of the tapestry, some charts of the Channel, &c., and an historical account of the defeat of the Armada. The charts are said to be copied from a work contemporary with the Armada itself; but I am told that the text is faulty and not to be depended on. Can any of your readers give me an opinion as to the general trustworthiness of the work, which appears to be based on documents in the public archives? EVIDENCE BEFORE SELECT COMMITTEES.-On November 7, 1678, before the committee of the House of Lords for examinations as to the Popish Plot, "Mr. Gilbert Whitehall is called in, but not being sworn he is ordered to attend the House to be sworn, and to attend the Committee at the next meeting" (House of Lords MSS., 1678-88; Hist. MSS. Comm., 11th Rep., app. ii. 9). Why could not the committee administer an oath? If ever there was a case where a committee should have been empowered to take sworn evidence with as little formal delay as possible one would think this was the one. Q. V. [Parliamentary committees had no power of swearing witnesses until it was conferred by Act of Parliament, at the suggestion of Mr. Torrens, a few years ago.] IVY BRIDGE.-This was one of the dark arches out of the Strand, leading down to the halfpenny steamboats. A correspondent to Willis's Current Notes, writing under date of March, 1855, says that it leads to the "Fox-under-the-Hill," which was true if you turned to the right Adelphi-wise. He adds that boatloads of fruit are landed there, and carried up thence by sturdy porters to Covent Garden Market. Was all this not extinct before the year 1855 ? C. A. WARD. Walthamstow. 'A TREATISE OF THE HOLY COMMUNION.'-We have in our theological library a little volume entitled 'A Treatise of the Holy Communion.' "London, Printed by W. Godbid, and are to be sold in Little Britain, 1677." On the title-page there is a memorandum in MS. of ancient type, "By ye Bp. of London." I believe that Henry Compton was Bishop of London in 1677. The tone of the treatise is ultra-Puritanical. Can any of your readers inform me whether Bishop Compton was really its author? J. B. H. HAVANT.-Can any of your readers explain the origin and meaning of the town name of Havant as applied to districts of the city of Chichester, in which are North, South, East, and West Pallant? There is also a Pallant in the town of Havant, and when, in the dry summer weather, some of the springs in these neighbourhoods overflow and flood meadows and convert dry lanes into rivuThe Lavants are out." Is there any connexion lets, the term used by the people of these places is, between these words? RUSTICUS. Southsea. SIR JOHN SMITH, BART.-What is known, or rather what can be learned about a baronet of the above name, who died a pensioner in the Charterhouse in or about 1701 The title dated from 1660, and the first baronet was Lord Mayor of London. Sir John is said to have left a numerous family, and his son, Sir Thomas, died a bachelor in 1727; but his name is not found in the 'Extinct Baronetage' of Sir B. Burke. Probably there are descendants of the "numerous family" of Sir John, who, if found, could make good a claim to this honour. E. WALFORD, M.A. Hyde Park Mansions, N.W. TRISTRAM WHITE.-Is anything known of this writer, who signs the preface to a curious small 4to. volume printed by William Barley, of Bishopsgate Street, London, in 1614? Its title is The Martyrdome of Saint George of Cappadocia, titular Patron of England and of the Most Noble Order of the Garter. It is dedicated by Barley to "Mr. George Shilliton, J.P., one of the chiefe Clarkes of H.M.'s High Court of Star Chamber "; and also on the following page, to "all the noble, honovrable and worthy in Great Britain bearing the name of George, and to all other the true friends of Christian chivalrie, lovers of Saint George's name and vertues." It is in the Roman type, and has a rough woodcut of St. George slaying the dragon on the title-page. Barley also published "The delightful history of Celestina the faire, done out of French into English. London, printed by A. J. for W. B. at his shop at the upper end of Gratious Street, 1596." This is in the Gothic letter, and bears on the title-page Barley's device, a death's head, crossbones, and hour-glass, &c. In the catalogue of Barley's works in Ames neither of these is found; but they are in Hazlitt and in the British Museum Catalogue of books printed before 1640, although not very fully described there. "A. J." is either Abel Jeffes or Adam Islip. J. MASKELL. "VERNER'S LAW."-Many writers dilate on the importance of "Verner's law," a sort of supplement or correction of Grimm. Where can a clear and complete description of "Verner's law" be found? sonnets answering exactly to that title, namely, Wordsworth's famous two, and one of these in a French translation and an American parody, two by Mrs. Julia Dorr, three by Ebenezer Elliot, and one each by Keats, Dante Rossetti, Theodore Watts, Lope de Vega, John Charles Earle, Antony Morehead, Richard Watson Gilder, and Edith Thomas. These, with a second French 'Sonnet on a Sonnet,' make up my little collection. Can any of your readers suggest any other sonnets that treat of the nature and functions of the sonnet? M. R. CARLYLE ON MILTON.-Where does Carlyle call Milton "the moral king of English literature" (a golden phrase !) ? JONATHAN BOUCHIER. GIFFORD'S BUILDINGS.-Said to be in Holborn. In Nichols's 'Lit. Anec.,' iv. 59, Roger l'Estrange is reported to have removed thither about 1675. Where were Gifford's Buildings situated? In Boyle's View,' 1799, they are not named, nor in the Parish Clerks' Remarks on London,' 1732. C. A. WARD. GEORGE PSALMANAZAR.-Has the real name of this literary impostor, who wrote the so-called history of the Island of Formosa, ever been discovered? He stated himself that he was of French extraction. A. H. EDWARD R. VYVYAN. SUDDEN DEATH OF AN ACTOR IN A MIRACLE PLAY-In the Theatre for August, p. 76, I read the following: "A horrible scene was witnessed in Sweden during the performance of a religious drama, 'The Passion of Our Saviour,' in the year 1513. One of the actors had to pierce the side of the person on the cross in the Crucifixion scene; in his enthusiasm he plunged his lance into him and killed him. The dead man fell from the cross upon the impersonator of the Virgin Mary, who was fatally injured, King John II., who was present, was so enraged at the occurrence, that he drew his sword, and slew the terror-stricken cause of it; whereupon the audience, furious at the loss of their favourite actor, wound up this cycle of horrors by striking off their Sovereign's head." Where is any account of this to be obtained? EDWARD R. VYYYAN. SONNETS ON THE SONNET.In the number which I send you of the Irish Monthly for October, 1887 (Dublin, Gill & Son), a paper called 'Sonnets about Sonnets' prints in full eighteen 1 DR. BLYDEN.-Edward W. Blyden, LL.D., late representative of Liberia at our Court, figures as a warm advocate of the negro race in his new book entitled 'Christianity, Islam,' &c. However praiseworthy his efforts, I think his premises unsound. I ask is this gentleman a full-blooded negro? The name Blyden, I fancy, may be Dutch, and I affirm that if he has a strain of pure European blood in his veins his whole argument falls to the ground. A. H. "A PAIR OF BALANCES."-It would be interesting to know when this absurd expression was first used. The word "balance," it need hardly be remarked, means a pair of scales (from bi for bis and lanx, a pan or scale), so that " 'a pair of balances" would mean a pair of pair of scales." There seems to be a prevailing opinion that because Burke's Peerage is bound in red and edited by an official that it is an authority to be trusted for statements referring to remote as well as recent times; but it will be found to be nothing of the sort. Numberless corrections have appeared in the pages of 'N. & Q.,' but are unheeded. A comparison of dates makes it impossible for Pierre de Courtenay to have been the ancestor of the English Courtenays, and Lord Ashburton's work, 'Genealogical Memoirs of the Royal House of France,' printed in 1825, is the only book that suggests it. MR. DORAN is referred to M. du Bouchet's folio monograph, printed at Paris in 1661, 'Hist. Gen. de la Maison Royale de Courtenay,' a copy of which will be found in the Art Library, South Kensington Museum, if not in the British Museum. There is also a long note of my own in N. & Q.,' 6th S. iii. 1. The assertion in the register of Ford Abbey (Dugdale, Mon. Angl.,' i. 786) that Reginald de Courtney was a son of Florus, a son of Louis the Fat, deserves some consideration. It is not known, so far as I am aware, that Louis had a son so named, but he had a halfbrother Florus (or Fleury), who married the heiress of Nangis, and had a daughter Elizabeth by her, who carried that fief to Ansel de Venisy, her husband. That Fleury might have had another wife, and by her a son, is a possibility. So far as dates are concerned, Reginald could have been his son, Yorkshire in the earlier years of Henry III.'s reign, A good argument for the Capetian descent of the 5, St. Peter's Terrace, Cambridge. I beg to refer MR. DORAN to the following works: A Genealogical History of the Courtenay Family. By Ezra Cleaveland, B.D. Exon, 1735. By the late Richard Barrè, Lord Ashburton. With Genealogical Memoirs of the Royal House of France. genealogical table. London, 1825. of Report of the Proceedings on the Claim to the Earldom George Oliver, D.D., and Mr. Pitman Jones. Archeo WINSLOW JONES. The English Courtenays are apparently descended from the first house of that name, and not from the son of Louis le Gros, who married the heiress of line of that family and took the name. The Capetian house of Courtenay is extinct in the male line, and even the claim of the last survivors of the name to be princes of the blood royal was very doubtful, and was not acknowledged by the crown. See 'Discours sur la Genealogie et Maison de Courtenay' (Paris, 1603), 'De Stirpe et Origine Domus de Courtenay' (Paris, 1607), and Jean du Boucher's 'Histoire Genealogique de la Maison de Courtenay' (Paris, 1661). The copy in the British Museum has manuscript notes calling the Capetian origin of the later French Courtenays in question. The only existing legitimate male descendants of Hughes Capet are the houses of Bourbon - Orleans descending from the younger brother of Louis XIV., and the Spanish Bourbons (see 'Almanach de Gotha') from Louis XIV. through Philippe of France, Duc d'Anjou. In the female lines the descendants of Hughes Capet, even in England, must be innumerable. Apropos of the vitality of the Capetians, more than twenty branches of that family have become extinct in the male line, while the then senior branch has died out four times, i.e., with Charles IV., Charles VIII., Henry III., and Henry V. (Comte de Chambord). H. L. O. I beg to refer MR. DORAN to Gibbon's 'Rise and Fall of Rome,' vol. iv. p. 224, on the "Digression on the Family of Courtenay." He will there find that the Courtenays of England are descended from the second wife of Reginald de Courtenay, whose daughter and heiress (by his first wife), Elizabeth, married Peter, the youngest son of Louis VI., who assumed the name and arms of the Courtenays. I am also interested in the descent of another son of Louis VI.; and if MR. DORAN will kindly afford JAMES II. AT TUNBRIDGE WELLS (7th S. iv. 407).-LORD WOLSELEY may be glad to be referred for information to Macaulay's History of England,' chap. iii. :— "When the Court, soon after the Restoration, came to Tunbridge Wells, there was no town, but within a mile of the spring rustic cottages...... were scattered over the Heath. Some of these cabins were movable, and were carried on sledges from one part of the Common to another. To these huts men of fashion, wearied with the din and smoke of London, sometimes came in the summer to breathe fresh air." It is probable, therefore, that James II. himself Hyde Park Mansions, N.W. aulay quoted by MR. WALFORD.] MR. HAYWARD will find the concluding lines of the further states that Miss Hickman was a Stafford- The verses, "To Miss Hickman playing on the E. Walford, M.A. Hyde Park Mansions, N.W. 4 Birkbeck Hill contains an index, which our reviewer, with pardonable enthusiasm, calls magnificent. In this, however, there is no reference to Miss Hickman. See ante, p. 179.] THE "TRIERS" (7th S. iv. 248).—Walker, in his 'Sufferings of the Clergy,' part i. pp. 170, 171, mentions the ordinance passed by Cromwell and his council on March 20, 1654, for the appointment of commissioners (commonly called "Tryers"); and that Francis Rous, Esq., with thirty-seven others there named (part laymen, part ministers), should be the commissioners. He refers in the margin to "Scobell's Collection of Acts and Ordinances made in the Parliament begun Nov. 3, 1640, and since until Sept. 17, 1656. London, 1658, folio." The list of names would be in the ordinance. Walker (pp. 176, 177) gives a specimen of the method of examination followed by these "Tryers." He does not state anything about their minute-books. W. E. BUCKLEY. MR. SAWYER will find a full list of the "Triers" in Neal's History of the Puritans,' vol. iv. p. 93, ed. 1822. Not one of the names seems to belong to any well-known Sussex family. EDWARD H. MARSHALL, M.A. The Library, Claremont, Hastings, CYPRUS (7th S. iv. 289).-Your correspondent has omitted to notice in Wright's 'Provincial Dictionary," "Cypress-cat, a tabby cat, East." Perhaps the term cyprus, as applied to a cat, was taken from the stuff so called, which Minsheu, in his 'Guide into the Tongues' (1617), defines as "a fine curled linnen." The material was made in two colours, black and white, but the black seems to have been F. C. BIRKBECK TERRY. more common. a May not the origin of Cyprus as a cat-name be found in the well-known legend of that island? According to this tradition, there was once a cape in Cyprus called Cat Cape, on which was monastery, the monks of which were required to keep an army of cats to make war on the snakes with which the island was infested. The story has often been printed. I saw it recently in 'The Book of Cats,' by C. H. Ross (Griffith & Farran). EDWARD DAkin. Kingstanley, Glos. MR. KARKEEK remarks that he has not been able to find the word cyprus in Wright with the signification of a cat with certain markings; but he might also state that Wright comes so near it as to Is this colour-"dark grey, with black stripes and markings named from cypress wood? Evelyn ('Sylva,' bk. ii. chap. iii. 15) speaks with emphasis of the wood's "crisped undulations," which have caused it to be used largely in decorative building and for other purposes. Lawn as white as driven snow, Cyprus black as e'er was crow, Gloves as sweet as damask roses, Masks for faces and for noses. Quoted in 'Kenilworth,' chap. xx. Upton, Slough, C. C. B. R. B. HENRY BENNET, EARL OF ARLINGTON (7th S. iv. 288).-In Bishop Burnet's History of His Own Times, Orr's ed., 2 vols. royal 8vo., opposite p. 252 of vol. i. is an engraving of the portrait of the earl from a painting by Sir Peter Lely, showing the In a short biographical black patch across his nose. note appended to Burnet's notice of him on p. 68, vol. i., we read :— "When at Oxford he was distinguished as an easy versifier, and several of his productions were published. Upon the king, Charles I., coming to Oxford, Bennet volunteered into his army, and was besides chosen to be his chief secretary by Lord Digby, then Secretary of State. This might have excused him from active service in arms, but his spirit would not permit; and he bore, especially upon his nose, many honourable scars acquired in the onslaught of battle. When declining in favour with Charles II., with little wit and less gratitude, this monarch allowed him to be mimicked in his presence by some of his ribald courtiers, who condescended to put a patch on their noses, and to strut about with a staff in imitation of the Earl's gait." This is given on the authority of Echard's 'History of England,' 911. "He had a scar across his nose, which was covered by a long patch, or, rather, by a small plaster, in form of a |