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NOTES AND QUERIES

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NOTES' AND QUERIES.


[2" 1 ' S. NO 10., MAR. 8. '56.


as competent to a clergyman to publish banns on any holiday as upon a Sunday. The limitation of publications to Sundays may be regarded there- fore as having placed a restriction on the facilities for solemnising marriages. What, in the terms of the authentic rubric, is there to restrain the so- lemnisation of a marriage within eight days from the first calling of the banns ; say in the Christmas week, the publication taking place on the Sunday before, on the festival itself, and on the Sunday after Christmas Day ? Or, to go yet further, within four days, supposing the banns to be called on Easter Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday, and the parties to be married on the Wednesday, or at the close of the Tuesday's service ? A clergyman might not find it expedient to volunteer such a course ; but were he peremptorily called upon to take it, could he justify a refusal ? On this point I should be glad to hear the opinions of some of your correspondents. In the meantime the ci- tation from Fielding is important, as illustrating the practice of the time (1742) of which he wrote, which I do not doubt but he faithfully represents. He was himself a lawyer of no mean attainments. I should be obliged by a notice of any parishes in which the original time of publication of banns has been adhered to throughout, or of those in which it has been resumed. Y. B. N. J.

Fielding is quite correct as to the publication of banns of marriage on holidays. Such was the law in England in his day ; and such it is in Ire- land at the present day. E. H. D. D.

Superstition regarding Banns of Marriage. A Worcestershire woman was asked the other day, why she did not attend church on the three Sun- days on which her banns of marriage were pro- claimed ? She replied, that she should never dream of doing so unlucky a thing ; and, on being questioned as to the kind of ill-luck that would have been expected to have followed upon her attendance at church, she said that all the offspring of such a marriage would be born deaf and dumb ; and, that she knew a young woman who would persist in going to church to hear her banns " asked out," and whose six children were in consequence all deaf and dumb !

CUTHBERT BEDS.

Pope Pius and the Common Prayer Book (2 nd S. i. 135.) Your correspondents who have been discussing this question may not have seen a little book entitled :

" A Carrier to a King ; or, Doctour Carrier (Chaplayne to EL lames of happy memory), his Motiues for renounc- ing the Protestant Religion : and persuading to Re- vnion with the Cath. Roman. Directed to his Sacred Majesty. Permissu Superiorum. 1635."

Towards the conclusion of his persuasions, the pervert chaplain, in telling King James that re-


union is not so difficult as may be supposed, makes the following demi-official proposal of accommoda- tion :

" I receaued," says B. Carrier, " assurance from some of the greatest, that if your Majesty would aijmit the an- cient subordination of the church "of Canterbury vnto that mother church by whose authority all other churches in England at the first were, and stil are subordinate vnto Canterbury, and the free vse of that' sacrament for which especially " all the churches in Christedom were first founded ; the Pope for his part would confirme the interest of all those that have present possession in any ecclesi- astical liuing in England; and would also permit the free vse of the Common Prayer-booke in English for Morning and Evening Prayer, with very little or no alter- ation."

J. O. Epitaph (l rt S. xi. 190.)

" Ere sin could blight or sorrow fade," &c., inquired after by R. W. D. is to be found in Crayford churchyard, Kent. It is on a stone

"In Memory of Fanny Sevenoaks, died Nov. 1, 1841, aged ten months. Also Francis Sevenoaks, died March 6, 1843, aged seven months."

As the occasion required, " bud " was changed to " buds," and " it " to " them."

I enclose a very sweet epitaph from a large tomb in the now closed churchyard of Old St. Pancras. It is just one hundred years old, an age seldom reached by churchyard epitaphs. The lady to whom this epitaph refers was a Miss Bas- nett, who " died the 10th day of Feb., 1756, aged twenty-three : "

" Go spotless honour and unsully'd truth, Go smiling innocence, and blooming youth : Go female sweetness, join'd with manly sense, Go winning wit, that never gave offence ; Go soft humanity, that blest the poor, Go saint-eyed patience from affliction's door ; Go modesty that never wore a frown, Go virtue and receive thy heavenly crown. Not from a stranger came this heartfelt verse, The friend inscrib'd thy tomb, whose tear bedew'd thy hearse."

EDWIN ROFFE.

Grammar Schools (2 nd S. i. 145.) The conclu- sion of the prayer used at Tiverton school is " beatam resurrectionem atque reternae felicitatis prsemia consequamur, per Jesum Christum Do- minum Nostrum." The song of "Dulce Domum " was introduced by a former head master, Dr. Richards, from Winchester College, where he had himself been educated. Y. B. N. J. forgets to mention a prescriptive usage attendant upon the floods, viz. to break open the brewery and use the tubs as punts. F- (*)

Bristol Tolsey (2 nd S. i. 133.) The Tolsey, or, as more usually written, Tolzey, in Bristol, stood at the top of Broad Street, opposite the west door of Christ Church. There is probably no print of it in existence. It was apparently no more than