Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 1.djvu/167

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128. I. FEB. 26, 1916.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

161

LONDON, SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 26, 1916.

CONTENTS.—No. 9.

NOTES:—The Cultus of King Henry VI., 161—Some Notes on "Canions," 162—English Books Reprinted Abroad, 164—The Sawing-Horse—Family of J. M. W. Turner—"Cæsar gloriosus es"—Mack Surname—"Harpastum": Football, 165.

QUERIES:—David Martin, Painter, 1737-98—Joseph Bramah—Corbett of Hanford, Staffs—"Monialis"—'Anecdotes of Monkeys'—St. Mary Cray (Sudcrai)—The Knave of Clubs in Churches—Rev. Matthew Drift of Lavenham—Jane Butterfield, 166—"By the skin of his teeth"—'London Directory,' 1677—Disraeli and Mozart—Two Oil Paintings Wanted—Lawrence: Gedding—Battersea Training College, 167—Thomas Holcroft's Descendants—'On the Banks of Allan Water'—"Trefira Saracin"—"Battels"—Foulke Salusbury—"Boniface," an Innkeeper—Author Wanted—Descendants of Anne Askew, 168—'Supplement to Munchausen's Travels'—Orange Lodge Apron—Claverhouse—Powdered Glass—"L'hyvet"—The Sussex Ironworks—Hayler, the Sculptor—Wright, Payne, and Wilder Families—A Jewish History of England—James Bentham: Portrait Wanted, 169.

REPLIES:—Gunfire and Rain: a Retrospect of the Autumn Manœuvres of 1873, 170—'De Imitatione Christi': Autograph MS., 171—Clockmakers: Campigne—"Colly my cow!"—Statue of Maximilian—Rushton, 172—Father Christmas and Christmas Stockings, 173—George Inn, Borough—Allan Ramsay—'The Tommiad'—The Black Hole of Calcutta—Author of French Song Wanted, 175—Recruiting for Agincourt in 1415—Rebellion at Eton—English Prayer Book printed at Verdun, 176—Cruelty to Animals—Memory at the Moment of Death, 177—Shrines and Relics of Saints—"A stricken field"—Authorized Version of the Bible—Thunder Family, 178.

NOTES ON BOOKS:—'The Peace of the Augustans.'

Curiosities of the Seventeenth Century.

Notices to Correspondents.

Notes

THE CULTUS OF KING HENRY VI.

The cult of King Henry VI., than whom, says Polydore Vergil, "there was not in the world a more pure, more honest, and more holy creature," widely assumed a formal character and definite proportions that are far more distinct, and that longer persevered, than is usually supposed. In spite of Bacon's flippancy, and Hall's cheap sneer that expense deterred Henry VII. from pursuing the cause at Rome, there can be no possible doubt that it was the chaotic upheaval of the Reformation which alone prevented an official canonization. Already had Blakman, the Carthusian, collected authoritative evidence of sanctity, an important treatise, 'De Virtutibus et Miraculis Henrici VI." And so in "The English Martyrologe. Conteyning a summary of the lives of the . . . . Saintes of the three kingdomes . . . . by a Catholicke Priest (I. W.)," 8vo, 1608, a book attributed to John Wilson and also to John Watson, under May 22 we find:—

"At Windesore the deposition of holy K. Henry the sixt of that name of England, who being a most vertuous and innocent Prince, was wrongfully deposed by King Edward the 4, and cast into the tower of London, where a little after he was most barbarously slayne by Richard Duke of Glocester, in the year of Christ one thousand foure hundred three score and eleven. His body was buryed in the Monastery of Chertsey, where presently it begun to doe miracles, which being seene, it was, with great solemnity and veneration, translated to Windesore, and there honourably interred in the Chappell of S. Gregory, whereat also it pleased God, in witnesse of his innocent life, to worke many miracles. Moreover it is recorded that his Velvet Hat,^[1] which he used to weare, being put on men's heads, that were troubled with the head-ake were presently cured. He builded the famous schoole of Eaton, and was the founder of the King's Colledg in Cambridge. King Henry the seaventh dealt which [sic] Pope Julius the second about his canonization, but by reason of both their deaths the same was broken off."

'N. & Q.,' 2 S. i. 509 (June 28, 1856), has already given us a note with reference to this subject, and quotes two short Latin prayers "made by K. Henri VI.," as well as a prose, invocation, and collect of the King. These two prayers composed by the King, together with the prose, &c., have been printed in various editions of the 'Horæ in usum Sarum.' With regard to the cult, the two short prayers, beautiful in them- selves, are of course nothing to the point, but the invocation ("V. Ora pro nobis Denote Rex Henrice. R. Ut per te cuncti superati sint inimici") is highly important, a detail which should have been more clearly brought out when it was previously quoted. In a fifteenth-century 'Horæ B.M.V.' (Stowe MSS. 16) we find written in a very late fifteenth- or early sixteenth-century script entirely differing from the rest of the 'Horæ,' which are in an earlier and better character an antiphon and collect affording certain evidence of a regular cult:—

"Rex Henricus pauperum et ecclesiae defensor, ad misericordiam pronus, in caritate feruidus, in pietate deditus, et clerum decorauit, quem Deus sic beatincauit.

"[V.] Ora pro nobis beate serue Dei Henrice.

"[R.] Ut digni efficiamur [promissionibus Christi.].

"Oremus.

↑ Blakman specially notes that Henry VI. always preferred clothes "pulli coloris."

[1] Blakman specially notes that Henry VI. always preferred clothes "pulli coloris."

[1]