cole en stiff. Brer Fox, he look at Brer Rabbit, en he sorter study. Atter while, he onslung his game bag, en say ter hisse'f, sezee: "Dese yer rabbits gwine ter was'e. I'll des 'bout leave my game tag yer, en I'll go back 'n git dat udder rabbit, en I'll make fokes b'leeve dat I'm ole man Hunter from Huntsville," sezee. En wid dat drapt his game en loped back up de road atter de sidder rabbit, en w'en he got outer sight, ole Brer Rabkit he snatch up Brer Fox game en put out-fer home. Nex' time he see Brer Fox, he holler out: "W'at you de udder day, Brer Fox?" sezee. Den Brer Fox he sorter koam his flank wid his tongue, en holler back: "I ketch a han'ful er hard sense, Brer Rabbit," sezee. Den ole Brer Rabbit he laff, he did, en up en 'spon', gezee: "Ef I'd a know'd you wuz atter dat, Brer Fox, I'd a loan't you some er mine," Bezee.*

Here we have a droll variant of an incident in the well-known Norse tale of the master thief who has undertaken to steal an ox from a man as he drives it to market. The youth places on the road the man is coming along a pretty shoe with a silver buckle. The man sees it, but as it has not a fellow he thinks it not worth while picking up. After he has passed the youth takes up the shoe and, running through the wood, places it on the road further on. When the man sees what he supposes to be the fellow of the shoe he had left lying on the road, he determines to go and take up the other, and having tied his ox to the fence, he hastened back. Meanwhile the youth takes the ox and goes off with it, and he afterwards steals two other oxen from the same man by imitating the cry of an ox, thus inducing the man to believe it was the cry of the animal he had lost during his shoe-hunting expedition.

A similar incident occurs in the Gaelic tale of the shifty lad (Campbell's collection), and it is also known to modern Greek, Bengali, and Arabic fictions, while there is an English variant in which a clever cobbler by the same device steals a calf from an Essex butcher. (See my 'Popular Tales and Fictions,' vol. ii. pp. 43–52.)

W. A. CLOUSTON.

233, Cambridge Street, Glasgow.

(To be continued.)

THE DUKEDOM OF CLARENCE.

(Concluded from p. 44.)

An interval of more than three hundred years elapsed before another creation of a dukedom of Clarence occurred. The fourth royal personage who bore this title was William Henry, third son of George III., elevated to the dukedom May 19, 1789. He was also Duke of St. Andrews in Scot

* Uncle Remus; or Mr. Fox, Mr. Rabbit, and Mr. Terrapin.' By Joel Chandler Harris. With 50 Illustrations by A. T. Elwes. London, Routledge, n.d.; but, as the woodcuts are dated 1882, probably a reprint of the original American edition (No. xv.). This, it should be mentioned, is a quite different collection from Nights with Uncle Remus,' by the same author.

land and Earl of Munster in Ireland. In consequence of the death of his two elder brothers he became king in 1830, when these titles were merged in the crown. At an early age, as it was not thought probable that he would ever ascend the throne, he was put into the navy, to win his way to distinction like ordinary mortals. He was born in 1765, and entered as a midshipman at the age of fourteen, on board the Prince George, the flagship of Admiral Digby, in 1779, and saw a good deal of service, first with the Channel fleet and subsequently in the North Atlantic. On June 17, 1785, he was gazetted lieutenant, serving under the illustrious Nelson; in the following year he was promoted to be captain; and on Dec. 3, 1790, received a commission as Rear-admiral of the Blue. Returning home without official leave, he was never again actively employed; yet he was regularly promoted through all the gradations of the service, and became a full admiral in 1801. There are episodes in his life which will not bear the strictest moral scrutiny; but as his disposition was frank, sociable, and generous, coinciding remarkably with the brusqueness and open-heartedness so often seen in seafaring men, the "sailor prince," close friendship with Canning he owed his proas he was called, was generally popular. To his motion to be Lord High Admiral in 1827. Want of tact in that high office led to much inconvenience in the service and to his own resignation after a few months' tenure of the office. For his marriage and for his accession and coronation the was invariably popular. Like his father, his intelordinary histories may be consulted. As a king he lect was narrow and his education defective; but he had sufficient good sense to be guided by prudent political advisers. He evidently understood the duty of a constitutional monarch better than either his father or his brother, his immediate predecessors on the throne.

The history of this prince is too recent and his life of too uneventful a character to be treated typically or at any length. He was less before the public than either of his two elder brothers, and fortunately came to the throne at an age when lessons of experience have been learned and the passions of youth are stilled. His wise discretion as a king, in a period of disquiet and revolutionary change, probably saved the monarchy in England, and laid the foundation of that respect for royalty which the Georges had well-nigh forfeited, and which, under the rule of the present sovereign, has risen even to enthusiasm. Moderation and good sense, added to a certain shrewdness and businesslike habit, greatly atoned in the case of the "sailor king" for the absence of those brilliant qualities which distinguished the Clarences of earlier times. The last Clarence cuts but a prosaic figure by the side of Lionel, Thomas, and George; each personally interesting and remarkable even in his errors

and delinquencies, as well as in the circumstances of his life.

Of the present holder of this royal title, Albert Victor, Duke of Clarence and Avondale and Earl of Athlone, the grandson of a sovereign whose domestic virtues and queenly discretion have endeared her to the hearts of all her subjects, everything that is royally the best may be anticipated. "Quem Deus Omnipotens conservare et dirigere velit." An elaborate account by Dr. Donaldson of the origin of the titles of Clare and Clarence, as well as of Clarencieux King at Arms, differing much from Noble, is given in the first volume of the Proceedings of the Bury and West Suffolk Archeological Institute, 8vo., 1849.

I am much obliged both to HERMENTRUDE and to MR. BLENKINSOPP for their notes and intended corrections. It seems, however, difficult to believe that Lionel was married to Elizabeth of Clarence before 1354. In 1342 he was but a boy of four years old; he was, indeed, betrothed in that year, but his marriage was never consummated till he was nearly sixteen years old, in 1354, when he was created Earl of Ulster in right of his wife. Does not the Issue Roll quoted refer to the contract of espousals only? In reply to MR. BLENKINSOPP, I called the sons of Edward III. "princes" in the general sense, not in any technical sense. They are so called in Hardynge, the rhyming chronicler, who belongs to the same century, or nearly so. J. MASKELL.

Emanuel Hospital, S.W.

May I be permitted to point out a few inaccuracies in MR. MASKELL'S interesting notes on the dukedom of Clarence?

This dignity did not actually become extinct at the decease of its possessor in each of the four previous cases in which it has been conferred. In the case of Prince George Plantagenet, its third possessor, it was forfeited owing to his attainder in 1477. Otherwise his son, Prince Edward, Earl of Warwick, would have succeeded him in the usual course. In the case of Prince William Henry, the last possessor of the title, it merged in the crown upon his accession to the throne in 1830.

Prince Lionel was only two years of age when he was betrothed to Lady Elizabeth de Burgh, the daughter and sole heir of William, Earl of Ulster, she being his second cousin once removed, of royal blood by descent from Edward I. The date of this marriage has been much disputed, but the ques

tion of the year is decided by the testimony of the Issue Roll, 16 Edw. III., which clearly proves it to have been 1342 (when the royal bridegroom was three and the bride ten years old), and not in 1354, as stated by MR. MASKELL. The patents of creation of Prince Lionel as Duke of Clarence and of his brother Prince John as Duke of La caster bear the same date, viz., Nov. 13, 136. Such being the case, the elder brother would natu ally rank as the second duke (Edward the Bl Prince being the first), and the younger as "the third.

Elizabeth de Clare, the grandmother of Elizabeth, Duchess of Clarence, was not the sole heir and representative of her brother Gilbert de Clare, the last Earl of Gloucester and Hertford of that family. The representation fell among the Despensers, the issue of Eleanor de Clare, the eldest sister and coheir of Earl Gilbert. His heir general and representative at present is the Right Hon. Mary Frances Elizabeth (Dowager Viscountess Falmouth and), Baroness Le Despenser, the lineal descendant of the said Eleanor. Elizabeth, the third sister, married John de Burgh, son and heir of Richard, Earl of Ulster, and was mother (not wife) of William, the young_earl who was murdered in 1333. Elizabeth, Duchess of Clarence, died in the end of 1363 or the beginning of 1364. Her only daughter, the Princess Philippa, was married to Edmund Mortimer, afterwards Earl of March, before her (Elizabeth's) death. This marriage took place in 1359.

Giovanni Visconti, the brother of Violante, Duke Lionel's second wife, married Isabel, the sister (not daughter) of King Charles V. of France.

In Lionel's will he leaves to Thomes Walys the golden circle with which "his brother and lord (Edward) was created prince and to Edmund Moore a like circle with which he himself was created duke." His father, King Edward III., never was Duke of Cornwall.

Thomas Plantagenet, Duke of Clarence, was born in 1388, before Sept. 30 of that year, and was not more than eleven or twelve when made Lord Lieutenant of Ireland. His grand-uncle, Lionel, Duke of Clarence, was regent of the kingdom at the age of ten. The date of his creation as duke was July 9, 1411. He never had a brother Richard. His brother Humphrey was at Troyes with him and their brother Henry V. on occasion of the betrothal of the Princess Katherine to the King of England. His wife was the third daughter of Thomas, Earl of Kent, and sister and coheir of Edmund, the last Holland Earl of Kent, but she herself was never Countess of Kent. The marriage of Thomas with the widowed Countess of Somerset took place before July 16, 1412. Her first husband, John Beaufort, Earl of Somerset (sometime Marquis of Dorset), died March 16, 1410. By him she had four sons and two daughters. Her

eldest son Henry, who succeeded his father as Earl of Somerset, died Nov. 25, 1418. C. H.

In MR. MASKELL's note on the 'Dukedom of Clarence' at 7th S. x. 1 there is a mistake for which Miss Strickland seems to have been originally esponsible. No such spear as that referred to is nown in the Abbotsford curiosity shop. The night Sir John Swinton, who is supposed to have horsed the duke-if he was not then fighting on tou after crossing the bridge, as one chronicler relates was himself, with nearly all the Scotch allies of the Dauphin, exterminated three months afterwards at Vernueil, and his spear could not have got back to Scotland. According to the contemporaneous Monstrelet, after that battle the dead were at once stripped. It is rather curious, too, that the duke, if not killed at the first onset, was not saved alive for ransom, instead of being brained by the Earl of Buchan. The best real evidence is that a chronicler relates that a knight of the name of McCausland got possession of the coronet of precious stones round the helmet of the fallen English leader, and sold it for a sum named. It is probable (pace Scott and Buchanan) that the impetuous duke was not at first recognized in the melée, and that when the battle passed on in the evening his body was afterwards found. MR. MASKELL does not precisely indicate where he found the passage beginning, "Being betrayed by his scout-master, a Lombard." Monstrelet simply gives the fact of the duke's death. It did not concern him who had helped to kill him.

R. B. S. With your permission, I should like to remark -in reference to the quotation,

"The duke, mixing himself in the throng of the battle, dismounted and attacked singly Swinton, the Earl of Buchan, who wounded him in the face, and finally dispatched him with his spear,'

"

in MR. MASKELL's learned communication on the dukedom of Clarence-that the honour of having killed the duke at the battle of Baugé has been claimed by several competitors; and, in connexion with the matter, perhaps it may not be out of place to mention the following, viz.: While at dinner on March 22, 1421, the Duke of Clarence was informed that the Earl of Buchan and his Scottish warriors were in his vicinity. The duke instantly exclaimed, "Let us attack them; they are ours. He then made a rapid march to Baugé, in the hope of surprising the Scots; but the latter were informed of the movement of the English, and were in order of battle to receive them. In the encounter which followed Clarence, conspicuous by the richness of his armour and the golden coronet which he wore over his helmet-the uniform worn by royal dukes when in battle is not now quite so gorgeous, for instance, that of the Duke of Connaught when in command of the Guards at Tel-el

Kebir-was first attacked by John Kirkmichael, who broke a lance over him, then wounded in the face by Sir William Swinton, and at last brought to the ground and killed by a blow of a mace by the Earl of Buchan.

G. Chastelaine states that he was slain by Charles le Bouleiller, a French knight (vide 'Euvres,' vol. i. p. 225, Bruxelles, 1863). Father Anselme says that Gilbert de la Fayette killed the duke "by his

own hand."

A. Stewart, in his 'History of the Stewarts,' p. 123, claims the honour for John Kirkmichael, chaplain of Lord Douglas and afterwards Bishop of Orleans; and, according to an old tradition, another Scot, "Sir John Swinton de Swinton, unhorsed the duke and wounded him in front." However, if reliance may be placed in a record on the subject in the 'Book of Pluscarden,' it certainly was not one of the claimants I have named, but a Highlander, Alexander Macausland, of Lord Buchan's household, who is to have the credit of having been the slayer of the Duke of Clarence. Conflicting as all these statements are, the tradition that "the merit of the victory belongs to the brave Swinton" is supported in modern times by the very interesting presentation, said to have been made by the last Swinton de Swinton to Sir Walter Scott, of "the point of the weapon with which his ancestor accomplished this deed of prowess. The lance of Swinton is still to be seen in the collection of antiquities at Abbotsford," (Vide 'The Scots Guards in France,' Taylor's 'History,' and also Tytler's 'History of Scotland.') 6, Freegrove Road, N.

HENRY GERALD HOPE.

I am not aware from whom MR. MASKELL quotes the account of the Duke of Clarence's death at the battle of Baugé; but the writer would appear to have fallen into the error that Sir John Swinton of Swinton and John Stewart, Earl of Buchan, were one and the same person. I believe there are no fewer than one French and four Scottish claimants to the distinction of having killed the English duke. (See "The Scots Men at Arms,' &c., by William Forbes Leith, vol. i. p. 17. Hume's History of the House of Douglas' (p. 125) gives the name of Swinton as the first assailant, and to him Sir Walter Scott attributes the glory of the encounter in the well-known lines (Lay of the Last Minstrel,' canto v. verse 4) :—

་

And Swinton laid the lance in rest That tamed of yore the sparkling crest Of Clarence's Plantagenet.

A. S. L. C. S.

MR. MASKELL, in his note upon Thomas, second son of Henry IV., says that "it is not known where or when this prince was born"; and a few lines below, referring to his appointment as Lieutenant of Ireland, he says that "he was then scarcely more than eighteen years old." He is known to have been appointed Lieutenant of Ireland on

June 27, 1401, so that by this reckoning his birth would have been in 1383. But this is certainly too early. In Doyle (i. 397) the date of his birth is given as September 29, 1387. The extract from the 'Irish Annals' refers to his second visit to Ireland in 1408. His expedition to France in 1412 was not "to help the Duke of Burgundy," but to help the Dukes of Berry, Bourbon, and Orleans against the Duke of Burgundy; and he could not have boasted that he went "to win back Aquitaine for the English Crown," seeing that it had not yet been lost. The date of his marriage with Margaret Holand, widow of the Earl of Somerset, may be approximately fixed. The earl died March 16, 1410. On June 20, 1410, and December 22, 1410, she is still referred to as his widow (Pat. 11 H. IV. 2, 10, and Iss. Roll 14 H. IV., Mich., January 25, 1413). She first appears as wife of the Duke of Clarence on July 16, 1412 (Pat. 13 H. IV. 2, 6), so that it is probable that the marriage took place shortly before he started for France.

Rochdale.

J. HAMILTON WYLIE.

THE ETYMOLOGY OF "ANLAS."-The interesting word anlas, a kind of dagger or knife, occurring in Chaucer's ' Prologue,' is fully explained by Dr. Murray in the 'New English Dictionary.' All that is known about the etymology is that it first occurs in the thirteenth century, and is said by Matthew Paris to be a native English word. It is, therefore, compounded of two Middle English words; and there I take to be simply an and laas, i.e., on" and lace"; and that the knife was so called because hung on a lace, and thus suspended from the neck.

There is a precedent for this in the A.-S. name for a kind of pouch. It was called a bi-gyrdel, i. e., 8. by-girdle," because hung at the girdle. Note that in this word the accent was on the prefix. This is clear from the alliterated line in 'Piers the Plowman' A. ix. 79; and Dr. Murray clearly explains that such was the fact.

With on, we have on-set, ón-slaught, with the accent on the prefix. The spelling an for on occurs in M.E. an-lich, alike, and in several compounds noted by Stratmann, 8.v. "an." That laas or las, a lace, was the precise word to use, we know from Chaucer, 'Prol.,' 392 :— A dagger hanging on a laas hadde he. Perhaps we may yet find the variant onlas. WALTER W. SKEAT.

SCOTCH AND AMERICAN SECRETARIES.-It is worth recalling the fact, now that the creation of a Secretary for Scotland has of late years been hailed as a novelty, though a most desirable one, the present Scotch Secretary being, of course, the Marquis of Lothian, at Dover House, Whitehall, that this is an error. For a short period (from

the death of Queen Anne to the Rebellion of 1745) "there was a third Secretary"-i. e., in addition to the two previous Secretaries of State—"and from 1768 to the loss of America in 1782 there was one for the Colonies." Vide Stockdale's 'New Companion.' But my authority does not state this fact quite correctly. I take it that the official in question was not called the Colonial Secretary, but the American Secretary. The above book (p. 80) gives as Secretaries for the Colonies (not for America specifically) from 1768 to 1782 the Earls of Hillsborough and Dartmouth, Lord George Germain, and Welbore Ellis, Esq. The Chief Clerk in the Plantation Department was Grey Eliot, Esq. The points worthy of historical notice are, (1) that the American Secretary naturally disappeared when American independence was established; and (2) that the reason for suppressing the office of Scotch Secretary was the desire (after Culloden) to unify Scotland administratively with England. Now that Culloden is simply a memory (and so is Waterloo), it has been natural enough for Scotsmen to ask-and they have obtained their request -for a secretary "of their own." Two points may be noticed in conclusion. The idea that any secretary is specifically created for, or appointed to, a department is erroneous. Several cases have occurred (and will occur again) in which a secretary has been transferred from one department to another. No effort at re-election, i.e., his "appeal to the country," is necessary. The Secretaries of State are all legally described, and are described individually, as one of Her Majesty's principal Secretaries of State." The assignment of a specific department to them, or of special functions, is one of those natural and salutary growths which greatly explain the stability of British institutions, and is sometimes vaguely ascribed to that excellent outcome of political common-sense, that admirable and informal compromise, or rather " sultant," between opposing forces, called "the British Constitution.” H. DE B. H.

re

CHAINED BOOKS.-The following valuable note on the removal of chains from books in Mr. Macray's 'Annals of the Bodleian Library, Oxford,' second edition, 1890, p. 121, seems worthy of a place in the pages of ‘N. & Q.':

"As late as the year 1751 notices occur in the librarian's account books of procuring additional chains for the library. But the removal of them appears to to have commenced as shortly afterwards as 1757, and in 1761 there was a payment for unchaining 1448 books at one halfpenny each. In 1769 some long chains were sold at twopence each, and short ones at three-halfpence, and then en masse 19 cwt. of old iron' at fourteen shillings per cwt. Several of the chains are still preserved loose, as relics."

H. B. W.

EDOUART'S SILHOUETTES.-About a year ago an inquiry appeared in N. & Q.' as to what had

The reference is to p. 145. But it was not Mary of Modena, Duchess of York, but her mother, the Duchess of Modena, to whom the ladies of the Court behaved so discourteously. The duchess accompanied her daughter to England. Evelyn saw them both on St. Andrew's Day, 1673; and in the Essex Papers,' p. 159, we read :

"The Dutchesse of Modena is gonne away this morn ing [December 30] in great wrath and displeasure with most of the Ladys of our Court, and the Duke hath already made his visitts to Mrs. Churchill."

C. UNFASTENING a Door at DEATH.-A lady friend of mine in Liverpool has an Irish maidservant who lost her mother some weeks since. A few nights afterwards my friend was disturbed in the night by the continual rattling of a chamber door, and upon making inquiries of her maid next morning as to the cause, was told that she had always kept her door open since her mother's death, as it was the proper thing to do. She could, how ever, give no reason for it. -C. C. B.

REGISTER, REGISTRAR.-The registrar of births, marriages, and deaths, and his deputies are here always called the register. This I have often heard spoken of as a vulgarism. It is, however, nothing of the kind, but an old word, which has survived in the folk-speech, but died out in literary English. The following passage from the last edition of my

• H. C. Murphy's 'Anthology of New Netherland.'

'Lincoln

Lindsey S May the 15th, 1654.

'William Collison, of Northropp, being chosen by ye inhabitants of ye said towne to be their parish Register, to enter all Marriages, Births, and Buriales that shall happen in their said towne according to ye Act of Parliament in that case prouided, was sworne and approued by me whose hand is here vnder subscribed, being Justice of Peace for ye parts afore said.'-Chris. Wray, 'Northorpe Par. Reg.'" It would be interesting to know when the change took place. In H. Herbert's translation of Fleury's is several times used in this sense, e. g.:'Ecclesiastical History,' published in 1728, register

"The name of the Register who was to take down this sentence......was Cassianus."-Vol. i. p. 505.

"The governour Dulcentius being upon his tribunal, Artimensas the register said to him: If you please, I will read the information."-Vol. i. p. 544. In the first volume of the Archaeologia, published in 1770, we find in the introduction, p. x, that at one time William Hakewill" was Register to the Society. EDWARD PEACOCK. Bottesford Manor, Brigg.

MEMORIALS OF THE PORT COWPER'S MOTHER AND FAMILY.-In the vestry of the church of St. Peter, Berkhampstead, is a flat stone with the following inscription :

Beneath this stone lyes the Body of Catherine Donne who dyed May the XXIX, in the year of our Lord MD.COXXXIII. Aged LVIII.

Here also lyes interred the Body of Ann Cowper her daughter, and late wife of John Cowper, D.D. MD.CO.XXXVII. As also the bodys of Spencer, John, Rector of this Parish who dyed November the XIII. Ann, Theodora, Judith, and Thomas, the children of the said John and Ann Cowper who all dyed Infants. WALTER LOVELL.