Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 6.djvu/261

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n s. vi. SEPT. H, 1912.3 NOTES AND QUERIES.


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to his crown had been so diminished by grants and transfers connected with the war that he had not an income suitable to his station without intolerable burdening and oppressing of the poorer classes of his people ; and he earnestly desired from the Parliament that, since he had suffered many inconveniences in person and in property for the sake of recovering and securing the liberty of them all, it would please them, out of the gratitude they owed, to find means by which, with less burden to his people, he might sustain his position as was becoming. The Parlia- ment acknowledged the sincerity of the king's motives and the reasonableness, of his request, and agreed that there should be paid into Exchequer half-yearly, during the rest of the king's life, the tenth penny of all rents. Then the king on his part under- took not to impose the old regal dues or to exact pnsas or cariagia, except when making a progress through the kingdom, but to pay on the nail according to the common market, for everything in the way of pur- veyance. The words in which the king's obligation is expressed are :

" Collectas aliquas non imponet, prisas seu cariagia non capiet nisi itinerando seu transeundo per regnum more predecessoris sui Alexandri supradicti, pro quibus prisis et cariagiis plena flat solutio super unguem : et quod omnes grossaj providentiae regis cum earum cariagiis fiant totaliter sine prisis, et quod ministri regis pro omnibus rebus ad hujusmodi grossas provi- dentise faciendas, secundum commune forum patriae, in manu solvant sine dilatione."

The text of the Act is also to be found, along with a facsimile and a translation, in ' The National Manuscripts of Scotland,' vol. ii. A. D. MACBETH.

Rothesay.

HANCOCK AS A PLACE-NAME (11 S. v. 428, 513). PROF. SKEAT'S remarks are of great interest.

Two more instances have come to light : Andrew de Hancoc in an Inq. P.M. held at Newbury, 1284 (' Wilts Inq. P.M.,' Brit. Record Soc., vol. xxxvii. p. 154); Hancox, in the parish of Sedlescombe, co. Sussex (Lower's ' Hist, of Sussex,' ii. 148).

There is also " the Hancocke House " in the will of Peter Morten of Derwent, co. Derby, 1616, proved 1618 (P.C.C., Meade 108), but in this case the house might have received its name from a former owner.

MB. LIVESEY is also thanked for references to Bardsley and Barber, whose works I possess. I shall be glad of any more Hancock places. LEO CULLETON.


" POMANDER " (11 S. vi. 149). An inter- esting and well-illustrated article on the subject of pomanders appeared in The Connoisseur for March last, No. 127 (vol. xxxii. p. 151), where a pomander is described as being " a mixture of aromatic substances, carried in a small box or bag .... especially as a preservative against infection." The name and the thing itself were of French origin. The first recorded reference to it in England is stated to be in the Privy Purse expenses of Henry VII. in 1492. Strictly speaking, the pomander was originally the perfumed substance, and not the vessel which contained it ; but the latter soon usurped the name. Cavendish, in his ' Life of Cardinal Wolsey,' describes him as- holding

" in his hand a very faire orrynge, whereof the mete, or substance within, was taken out and fylled up agayn with the part of a sponge wherein was vynegar and other confecsions agaynst the pestilent ayers : to the which he most commonly smelt unto, passing among the presse or ells when he was pestered with many sewters."

That was his pomander. Later, however, when the trinket was made of gold or other precious metal, the contents were usually preparations of musk, lavender, roses, amber- gris, nutmegs, mace, cloves, or storax. It gradually gave way in the eighteenth century to the modern scent-bottle, and pomanders are now collected only as curiosi- ties of a bygone age. ALAN STEWART.

The name " pomander " (pome + amber) was originally given to a mixture of aro- matic substances usually made in the form of a ball, but was afterwards frequently transferred to the case in which this was carried. There is a good receipt for a pomander in Mr. Weddell's ' Arcana Fair- faxiana,' a facsimile reproduction of an old MS. book formerly belonging to members of the Fairfax family. This particular receipt is in the " Secretary hand " of Queen Elizabeth's time, and runs as follows :

" To Make Pomanders. Take Amber grease 32 graines, Muske 44 graines, Sevitt [Civet] 16 graines, Baum* Beniamin 6 graines, Storackes 15 graines, Labdanum 6 graines, Gumdraggon stept in Rose water very thicke, and beat them in a stone morter to strong paiste, and then mould them."

There is a simpler receipt in ' Arcana Curiosa ; or, Modern Curiosities of Art and Nature,' a translation from the French, published in 1711.

There is no resemblance between a pomander and a pot-pourri, except that


  • So I read it, but " there is a blot here."