The above ceremony is thus mentioned by Chaucer in his description of the marriage of January and May; "The bride is brought a-bed as stil as ston; And whan the bed was with the preest yblessed, On the evidence relating to the consummation of the marriage between prince Arthur and the lady Catharine, Robert Viscount Fitzwater deposed that "the prince was then about fifteen, and queen Katherine elder, and that the next day after being in bed together (which he remembred after they entered to have been solemnly bless'd), he waited at breakfast on prince Arthur, &c." Lord Herbert's Life of Henry the Eighth, p. 243. It is said that some vestiges of this custom still remain among the Presbyterians in Scotland. p. 276. There is a story of two caskets, &c., in Morlini novellæ, nov. 5. Quære if the general construction of all these stories have not been borrowed from the trick related to have been put by Prometheus on Ju piter with the two bull skins filled with flesh and bones? p. 290, (note). Dr. Taylor, in his treatise De inope debitore in partes dissecando, has offered some strong arguments against the supposed mutilation of the debtor's body, and endeavoured to show that the law in question demanded nothing more than that the produce of his servitude should be divided among the creditors. Yet Aulus Gellius was of a different opinion. At a very early period, among the Jews, the creditor had a right to make a slave of the debtor. See 2 Kings, chap. iv. ver. 1. p. 301. To the explanation of sans, add that in the early editions of the dictionaries of Coles and Littelton the word is printed sance. p. 348. Morgan the herald must be acquitted of having conveyed to us the original informa tion that "Jesus Christ was a gentleman and bore arms." He was indebted for it to Dame Julian Berners, who, in her treatise on coat armour, speaks of "the gentyl Jesus," and states that "Cryst [was] a gentylman of his mother's behalf and bare cote armure.' She also tells us, that "Cain became a churl from the curse of God, and Seth a gentleman through his father and mother's blessing." So that we find J. C. was not the first gentleman. VOL. II. Page 9. IN further confirmation of the opinion here expressed, the curious reader is referred to Wlson de Colombiere's Vray theatre d'honneur, vol. ii. p. 313, for the account of a duel on appeal for murder which was fought at Valenciennes in the year 1454, where the dead body of the vanquished party was adjudged to be hanged on a gallows as a convicted murderer. The frequent use which has been made in the course of these remarks of a work cited under the title of Bartholomæus de proprietatibus rerum, may require that a more particular description of it should be given. It is a general history of nature, composed in Latin by Bartholomew Glanvile, an English Minorite or Franciscan, of the family of the earls of Suffolk. He flourished about the year 1360, and appears to have been the Pliny of his time. It was several times printed abroad in the infancy of the typographic art, and translated into the English, French, Dutch, and Spanish languages. The English version was made by John Trevisa, a Cornish man, and vicar of Barkley in Gloucestershire, at the request of his patron Thomas Lord Barkley, in the year 1398, and originally printed by Wynkyn de Worde; for there is no evidence that it came from Caxton's press in English, though it has been so asserted. Neither is the date of Wynkyn de Worde's edition, if it ever had any, been ascertained. The next edition was printed in 1535, by Thomas Berthelette, in folio. The last was published under the title of Batman uppon Bartholome, his Booke de proprietatibus rerum, &c. Printed by Thomas East, 1582, in folio. Stephen Batman appears to have been a worthy and pious character, and was chaplain to lord Hunsdon. His additions were compiled from Gesner and other writers of his own time. In a manuscript diary of expenses in the reign of Elizabeth, the price of this book is stated to have been eight shillings. |