Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 3.djvu/424

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NOTES AND QUERIES. [ii s. in. MAY 27, wn.


graduates and undergraduates frequently went abroad, either travelling or staying at some foreign University. Chaucer's " Clerk of Oxenford " had his story

Lerned at Padowe of a worthy clerk. In twelfth-century Paris there was a re- cognized "set" of such students.

The best educational writers of the six- teenth and seventeenth centuries probably on the whole advocate a later entrance than usual. Brinsley advises that seventeen years should be the earliest age for admission. John Paston at nineteen was, we know, still at Eton ; while from a mid-fourteenth- century work we have the following : Quod resoun, in age of xx yeer Goo to Oxenford.

E. M. Fox.

WOOLSTHORPE : ITS DERIVATION ( 1 1 S. iii.

368). I can contribute a small item to the solution of this question. It is that in the

  • Inquisitiones post Mortem,' vol. i. p. 167,

" Belver and Woolsthorpe " are mentioned together in 1301. This makes it probable that this is the place named " Ulfstanetorp " in Domesday Book. It is likely that the other place was named from it.

I wholly dissent from Canon Streat- feild's reference of this name to Danish origin. He has mistaken the peculiarity of the Norman spelling, which frequently substitutes Ulf for the A.-S. Wolf. The W is preserved to this day, which shows that the name is not Norse, but English ; and the reference to the " wolf " is extremely remote, viz., that English names frequently began with Wolf, without any mythological reference whatever. The whole of the argu- ment is very little to the purpose, "and would hardly now find any general acceptance.

The name evidently means " Wolfstan's thorp " ; and I see nothing peculiarly " Danish " (as it is the fashion to say) about the word thorp, which is Friesic, Gothic, and good English as well as Scandinavian. Wolf stan is one of the commonest of purely English names ; forty-eight of them are on record, from A.D. 869 onwards.

WALTER W. SKEAT.

In Mr. C. Gowan Smith's ' Translation of that Portion of Domesday Book which relates to Lincolnshire,' &c., Vlestanetorp and Westorp are alike rendered Wools- thorpe. I think Vlestanetorp probably refers to Woolsthorpe-by-Belvoir, because it occurs when the scribe is setting down the list of the lands owned by Robert de Todeni, who was the builder of Belvoir Castle. Wes-


torp rnay signify the hamlet made famous by the birth of Newton. It was owned by Walter de Aincourt, and Domesday records : " The whole of the ecclesiastical customs and tithes. . . .they say belong to the church of Grantham, as claimed by Bishop Osmund " (p. 254). Of Wools- thorpe near Colsterworth, Turnor, author of the ' History of Grantham,' wrote : "In ancient writings Wullesthorp, South Wells- thorpe " ; and he seemed to be feeling for an etymology when he added that it was " in a beautiful little valley, in which are copious wells of pure spring water " (p. 157). One of the sources of the Witham is in this- parish. ST. SWITHIN.

CHAMNEY OR CHOLMONDELEY FAMILY (11 S. iii. 3, 295). MR. ARCHER in his note on p. 3 quotes the expression " the con- traction of illiterate flunkeys " as applied to the pronunciation of " Chumley or Chulmley." In a will of Richard, 'l521 r his brother Roger is written Cholmley, while Richard is Chomley of Chomley. Surely there can be little of the " illiterate flunkey's " pronunciation in the difference between Chumley and Chomley.

ALFRED CHAS. JONAS.

PETER *DE WINT (11 S. iii. 368). Mr, Payne of Pawsey & Payne, art dealers, 1, Bury Street, King Street, S.W., could probably either lend or procure a copy of the catalogue of the exhibition at Vokins's. Mr. Payne was for a long period with the now extinct firm of Vokins. I have the catalogue of Peter de Wint's works sold at Christie's in May, 1850. The five days' sale of 493 lots realized only 2,364?. Is. 6d.

W. ROBERTS.

PORTRAIT IN PITTI GALLERY : JUSTUS SUSTERMANS (US. hi. 267, 314). For two examples of portraits by this powerful artist I would refer MR. J. B. WAINE WRIGHT to the portraits belonging to Col. G. L. Holford, of a man and of a lady, exhibited in the exhibition of Old Masters at Burlington House in 1908 ; and I would direct his attention especially to the fine portrait of the man. W. H. QUARRELL.

  • THE CHURCHES OF YORKSHIRE ' (11 S.

iii. 366). When this was issued in parts in 1855, a statement was made at the end of ' Patrington ' and ' Skirlaugh ' (at least) that those were written by the Rev. G. A. Poole. He was assisted in this and in other works by Mr. John West Hugall, architect, of Pontefract, W. C. B.