Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 8.djvu/492

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NOTES AND QUERIES. [io s. vm. NOV. 23, 1907.


is correct, and it is therefore important that any variations from the collations given in that work should be recorded. In dealing with Daniel's ' Civil Wars,' 1595, it is stated that the signature on leaf F 2 is misprinted E 2. In a copy in my own possession I find the signature is correctly printed. The fourth canto is, however, set up very in- correctly. In the heading of ff. 73, 77, 78, and 87, " Third " is printed instead of " Fourth " ; while f. 79 is misnumbered 80, f. 85 is misnumbered 86, and f. 87 is mis- numbered 88. W. F. PRIDEAUX.

SPANISH PLACE : HERTFORD HOUSE. It is curious how writers persist in describing the Catholic Church of St. James as of Spanish Place, Manchester Square, whereas it is, of course, in George Street hard by. It was the old Embassy Chapel which was situated in Spanish Place, and, after demoli- tion of the interior, its walls stood for years black and dreary, quite an eyesore to the district. Now the site is occupied by the inevitable flats.

Anent this locality I also read that Hertford House, Manchester Square, was "" for a long period the residence of the Spanish Ambassador." Is this correct ? If so, when ? The name of Sir Richard Wallace is the only one associated in my mind with that fine mansion.

CECIL CLARKE. Junior Athenaeum Club.

BRUTON CHURCH, WILLIAMSBURG, VIR- GINIA. (See 10 S. v. 244.) MR. HIBGAME states that he is unable to find any account of the above church, which is said to be the second oldest Episcopal church on the American continent. A Bible presented by the King was formally placed in Bruton Church by the Bishop of London on 5 Octo- ber. A brief account of the ceremony will be found in The Morning Post of 7 October ; and the special correspondent of The Church Times promised in his letter to that journal of 11 October that he would send a full report of the presentation of the Bible in his next communication. R. B. P.

LIEUT.-COL. SHAKESPEARE IN 1656. In the seventeenth century, especially during the Commonwealth, some imaginative and excited persons declared that they had seen portentous battles in the sky, and described their visions in quaint pamphlets such as that which readers of ' The Antiquary ' may remember (chap. iii.). One of them was ' A Relation of Strange and Wonderful Sights, 1 Jan. last, in the sky, near Selby.'


To this a reply was published, ' A Second Edition of the New Almanack For the Year 1656, or, the Nocturnall Revised,' 1656. It pours ridicule on the sky-gazers, and pre- tends to identify the leaders of the aerial militia, e.g., " Lieutenant Colonell Shake- speare, a very redoubted commander " (p. 10). What would the critic have said of our military balloons ? W. C. B.

" BESTURNE " IN TROUBADOUR POETRY. This was the name of contentious or com- petitive lays between rimeurs, often of Normandy and England respectively. One i such is commented on in p. 455 of Boddeker's ' Altenglische Dichtungen des MS. Harl. 2253,' in notes on T. Wright's ' Specimens of Lyric Poetry,' p. 31, beginning " Weping hauef> myn wonges wet." With regard to this, a Norman poet (see MS. Digby 86, fol. Ill) writes of

La grant guerre De rimeur de engleterre E de mei ; closing with the words :

Ceo fist richard en un este, Si 1'apela la besturne.

As to the word itself, cf. O.Fr. bestorneis, wrong side up, suggested by Dr. H. Bradley as the true reading for " westernais " in ' Allit. Po.,' i. 307, and brMourned, upset, in ' The Book of the Knight of La Tour- Landry' (E.E.T.S. 202/10) the latter, by the way, being an earlier quotation (1440) than is given in the ' N.E.D.' H. P. L.

PROVAND'S LORDSHIP, GLASGOW. The following extract from The Scotsman of Thursday, 24 October, may perhaps be con- sidered worthy of preservation in your columns :

"THE PROVAXD'S LORDSHIP DINNER. In the evening [of the 23rd] Lord Rosebery attended as principal guest the dinner of the Provand's Lord- ship Club in the Trades House. The Club was formed about a year ago by a number of public- spirited gentlemen anxious to preserve for posterity the historic old Provand's Lordship in High Street, a house which was built about the years 1455 and 1472, and is supposed to be the oldest inhabited house in Scotland. It was the residence of St. Nicholas Hospital and the prebendaries of Provand before the Reformation of 1560, and it is believed it was occupied by Mary, Queen of Scots, during her visit to Darnley. By the intervention of the Club this ancient structure has now been saved from the fate of improvement out of existence. In keeping with the aims and ideals of such a body, last even- ing's dinner was eaten amid surroundings and under conditions which took the guests back in imagina- tion to the days of Bailie Nicol Oarvie. True, but few of the guests had responded to the optional suggestion to appear in old-time garb, but the bizarre effect of modern evening dress was quite