Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 9.djvu/383

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9" s. ix. MAY io, 1902.] NOTES AND QUERIES.


375


by Fox's own coat, and the sinister by the (canting) three silver owls and three red roses on a chief of Bishop Oldham, of Exeter.

Among the most interesting lecterns is that in use at Southwell Cathedral. It is not wrought, however, in the form of a pelican, but in the more common shape of a brazen eagle with expanded wings. Presented in 1805 by Sir Ricnard Kaye, subsequently Dean of Lincoln, it bears the inscription Orate pro an'a Radulphi Savage, et pro an'abus

  • 0mn. Fidelium Defunctorum.'" It was

formerly the property of the neighbouring abbey of Newstead ; and at the dissolution the monks hid some documents inside and threw it into the lake. In the eighteenth century it was discovered, and passed into the hands of a Nottingham dealer.

A. R. BAYLEY.

There was another pelican in Durham Cathedral long before the placing there of that dreadful bird now used as a lectern. (See ' Bishop Cosin's Correspondence,' vol. i. p. 168 n., Surtees Soc , 52.) Peter Smart complains :

"They have taken out of the cathedrall church the old holy Font which was comely, like to that at St. Paul's at London, and in other cathedralls, and instead thereof they erected a mausoleum, towring up to the roph of the church ...... and dis-

figur'd it, not only with uncomely braveries, but with abominable idols, one of a dove, which they call the Holy Ghost (set there by Mr. Cosen, to cross the Dean, whose pellican he pul'd down feed- ing her yong ones with her own blood)."


This was designed by Sir Gilbert Scott after the pattern of the ancient lectern which is described in the * Rites of Durham.' It is of pale brass enriched with silver and jewels. At the time when it was erected it was unique in England. ST. SWITHIN.

Representations of the pelican are also to be found in stone, wood, glass, or metal- in churches at Freiburg, Strasburg, Nurem- berg, Magdeburg, Basle, and Lund. They are described in Evans's 'Animal Symbolism in Ecclesiastical Architecture,' pp. 66, 83, 128

W. S.

THE SMALLEST CHURCH IN ENGLAND (9 th S ix. 47). Since the claim put forward by the Bishop of Carlisle that the church of Wast head (it was given as Wasdale Head in the paper I saw) is the smallest church in Eng land, the subject has several times been dis cussed in the public press. It would appeal that there is at least one equally small church that of Lullington, Sussex but as this L only the chancel of the original edifice it claim is somewhat weakened. The churche


it the following places are, I believe, very mall : Greensted, Essex ; Perivale, Middle- ex ; Hulcote, Beds ; St. Lawrence, Isle of

  • Vight ; Chilcombe, Dorset ; Hazeleigh,

ssex ; Grosmont, Monmouth ; Warlingham, Surrey ; Wythburn, Cumberland ; Kilpeck, lereford. An extension of this list, with any particulars concerning those mentioned, would be welcomed by JOHN T. PAGE. West Haddon, Northamptonshire.

CHILDREN'S AFFIRMATIONS (9 th S. ix. 185, 273). This deeply interesting question will, ! hope, receive the attention of many con-

ributors. I am conversant with the wet

and dry finger affirmation, but this method was far from common here in my young days. In order to prove that a boy was celling the truth we used, after a statement lad been made which seemed in any way doubtful, to ejaculate, "What '11 you eat?" The reply would generally be, "Fire," but in extreme cases the formula would be, ** Fire and brimstone and all the very world."

JOHN T. PAGE.

West Haddon, Northamptonshire.

The following scale of affirmations is not unknown among schoolboys : " Is that true ? ' "Yes." "Will you take your oath on it?" Yes." "Will you take your Bible oath on it?" "Yes." "Will you cut your throat if it isn't true?" "Yes."- 4 ' Will you bet a penny on it? " "No, I '11 not go that length" ! J. G. WALLACE- JAMES.

Haddington.

SIR JOHN OLDCASTLE (9 th S. ix. 308).-Sir John Old castle, who was hanged as a traitor and then burnt as a heretic in December, 1417, was the fourth husband of Joan, Baroness Cobham, and left no issue. Lady Cobham, however, by her second husband, bir Reginald Braybrooke, Knt., had a daughter and heiress, also called Joan, who married Sir Thomas Brooke, Knt, and their eldest son was sum- moned to Parliament 13 January, 1445, as "Edwardus Broke, de Cobham, Chivaher. His descendants are, I believe, very nume- rous, though the Barony of Cobham, a barony by writ, was forfeited by the attainder of Henry Brooke, sixth Lord Cobham, in 1604.

THE WEST BOURNE (9 th S. viii. 517 ; ix. 51, 92, 190, 269, 291).-! have to thank MR. RUTTON for his kindly attempt to dispel the doubts which I expressed in my first paper on this subject, but I fear that the reasons which he gives for his somewhat dogmat conclusion that "primarily West Bourne was the name of the stream" will not carry con-