Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 8.djvu/628

518 NOTES AND QUERIES. t&viiLjEM,i9ii. Brecheniauc,' Leuministre was misread by the first editor, Bees, as " Legministre, and the name of Maim appears in it as " Meigh " [with ei : : a, g : : u and h : : ri. Similarly in an Arthurian Triad Portimar of Mancetter (i.e., Manduessedum) is called Forth Uawr Gandw (lege uandw= of Mandw). These instances of g/u confusion suggest that a mistaken presentation of Magdalen as MaudaUn may be responsible for the pronunciation Mawdlen which MB. COOLIDGE has carried back to 1448. ALFRED ANSCOMBE. 30, Albany Koad, Stroud Green, N.4. HEARTH TAX (12 S. viii. 471). As hearth money was a tax levied on every hearth in all houses except cottages, it may be presumed that the seven hearths for which Win. Gates of Pontefract was respon- sible were all in a single dwelling. It may be added that the tax (2s. per hearth), which in principle was a very old one, was exceedingly unpopular. It was imposed in 1662 and withdrawn in 1689. In 1695 the window tax was imposed in its stead. F. A. RUSSELL. 116, Arran Road, S.E.6. "TENANT IN CAPITE " (12 S. viii. 429, 472). I must thank MR. FLETCHER for his reply. I remain, however, of the opinion expressed in my Note, illustrated by examples in support and these might, indeed, be multiplied into thousands that any one holding a military fee of I another was the " tenant in capite " of that other (whether that other was king, earl, baron or what-not). I will develop my position by observa- tions arising out of the legal definition quoted by MR. FLETCHER : Caput i.e., Rex, unde tenere in capite est tenere de rege, omnium terrarum capite. Now, this definition, one of the keystones of the feudal theorists, contains two, if not three, errors. The feudal caput was a thing and never an individual ; not the King-in-Person (as the definition implies), but the Crown, was the Caput of the kingdom. And therein lay, as I take it, a real fiction of the feudal system, that so immaterial a thing as a " crown," not the insigne but a mere quality, resident in and inalienable from the person of the King (as long as he was King) should be a caput. Besides this caput regni, to which all the lands of the j kingdom were appurtenant, there were ; of course others : the caput of an earldom, the caput of an honour, the caput of a barony, the caput of a knight's fee, &c. All these capita were, like the caput of the kingdom, impersonal things and only differed from it in being material, such as a castle or mansion. In actual practice the holder of a caput was tenant in capite of the lands appurtenant to his caput, and as this caput might be held of, i.e., from, anyone, to use, as in the legal definition quoted and MR. FLETCHER on his authority, the phrase " tenant in capite " as the equivalent of " tenant in capite de rege " is erroneous and a contra- diction to the large body of evidence offered to the contrary in our national records. L. GRIFFITH. THE HOODED STEERSMAN (12 S. viii. 471). Probably the reason of the steersman alone being hooded in medieval illustrations of ships is that in those days as in classical times it was for the helmsman to give orders and for the rest of the sailors to carry them out. As Virgil says (^En. v. 176) : Ipse gubernaclo rector subit, ipse magister, Hortaturque viros, clavumque ad litora torquet. So the pfeyer ' Pro Rego ' in the ' Missale Romanum ' (which is said in England on Sundays after High Mass) speaks of ' Rex noster, qui tua miseratione suscepit regni gubernacula.' The man at the helm was the master of the ship. JOHN B. WAINE WRIGHT. FOUR-BOTTLE MEN : GLASS COLLEC- TIONS (12 S. viii. 310, 357, 418). Your correspondent A. T. M., at the second reference, asks if there is any public collec- tion where his variety of antique glass bottles would find a permanent home ? The Guildhall Museum in the City and the London Museum in St. James's, W., have rcial collections of old glass bottles. Both them are always ready to accept dona- tions of curios and antiques. The British Museum has, of course, a collection of glass, but it has not been on view for years (and years), though it is hoped it may be circa 1925. J. C. WINDOW TAX AND DAIRIES (12 S. viii. 449, 492). Your correspondent MR. R. HEDGER WALLACE inquires about existing relics of the window tax. Within half-a- dozen miles of here I know of about a dozen. In most cases there is the single word