514
NOTES AND QUERIES. [io s. vm. DEC. 28, 1907.
correctness present themselves to my mind.
Thus a most careful examination of all the
tombs and headstones around fails to dis-
close the names of any such persons as
constitute the first names on the list. Then
the earliest record of an interment in the
dathedral books refers to one no further
back than 1668. Then there is an obvious
discrepancy between these names and dates
and those in the very exact Hearth Money
Returns. Next, there are no parochial
records to fall back on. It is notorious
that the Catholic parish books in few, if
in any, instances go as far back as even
the middle of the eighteenth century.
Inscriptions on tombstones are often-
times appealed to as affording proofs of
historical and family facts ; but though I
am here reminded of the words of more than
one poet, yet I cannot help thinking that
their correctness should in important cases
be under the guardianship, if not of public
authority, at least of public criticism.
THOMAS LAFFAN.
GENEALOGIST will find information in Sir Bernard Burke's ' Landed Gentry,' Alfred Webb's ' Compendium of Irish Bio- graphy,' and ' D.N.B.,' vol. li. More in- formation may be published in the spring
of 1908. O'SCOLAIDHE.
ROTHEKHITHE (10 S. viii. 166, 316, 374). I fear that we shall have to go behind Stow, as we have gone behind Camden, if we are to elucidate place-names by the historic method.
The passage of Stow referred to has nothing in it to show that the writer was accurate in identifying Queenhithe with Edred's hithe. If, however, he is right, there must have been two places, one on cither side of the river, called by this last name.
1. The two charters 577, 578, of Birch, are dated respectively 898 and 899. The one is entitled Rethereshide, and includes the spelling ^Ederedes hyd ; the other is Retherhithe, with an alternative spelling Eredyshythe.
2. In 1127 Henry I. gave to the monks of Bermondsey Retherhithe (and other places).
3. In 1294 there was a great breach of the Thames over Bermondsey and Rether- hithe.
4. In 1302 Retherhith is " in comitatu Surreiae."
5. In 1416 Robert Brounesbury encloses the breach of Bermondsey in the parish of Retherhithe.
See ' Annales de Bermundeseia,' Rolls
Series, 434, 468, 469, 484.
6. If the Duke Athered erected any sort of defence for the City, it would hardly be in the heart of London by the waterside. But one can understand a fort or entrench- ment, with " hithe," on the Thames, opposite the Tower or a little lower down the river. EDWARD SMITH.
Putney.
CHATJCERIANA : ' THE NONNE PKEESTES TALE,' 11. 367-71 (10 S. viii. 202, 252). The two misprints mentioned by PROF. SKEAT must not be laid to my charge. Curiously enough, the day after reading my article in print for the first ' ime I had my attention drawn to mistakes in two well-known anno- tated school editions of English classics. In Mr. A. W. Verity's edition "(" Pitt Press Series," 1891) of Milton's ' Arcades and Comus,' p. 75, 1. 14,
To the heavens now I fly should be
To the ocean now I fly (see ' Comus,' 1. 976).
Again, in Mr. M. Macmillan's edition (Macmillan & Co., 1891) of ' Paradise Lost,' Book I. 1. 459 is printed (p. 14)
Maimed his brute image, head and ears lopt off!
I have often thought that some mistakes or corruptions in the text of Shakespeare must be due to unconscious cerebration in the dramatist himself or in those concerned in the printing of the text. An instance of the dramatist's unconscious blundering is seemingly "Nero" for "Trojan" in ' King Lear,' III. vi. 7. Elsewhere in the same play (II. i. 54) the Folio reading latch'd is an obvious error of the press, for the Quartos give us what Shakespeare actually wrote lancht, Q 1, or launcht, Q 2. When it is pointed out that latch=" clasp, embrace with the arms" ('N.E.D.'), the source of the error becomes manifest.
By the way, as tha volume of ' N.E.D. 1 containing L has long been available to scholars, it is high time that editors aban- doned Theobald's uncalled-for emendation lanced, and restored the undoubtedly right readins lancht or launcht. Spenser, Beau- mont, "Fletcher, Dryden, all used the same verb. A. E. ADOLPHUS.
Maharajah's College, Mysore.
LlTTLECOTE HOUSE, WILTSHIRE (10 S.
viii. 407). MR. PAGE may not be aware that Mr. Hubert Hall's ' Society in the Elizabethan Age, though of general appli- cation in a broad sense, as the title would
