218
NOTES AND QUERIES. [11 s. vm. SEPT. 13, ma.
BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION WANTED
(11 S. viii. 189). Sir Jonathan Trelawny,
Bishop of Winchester. Foster is almost
certainly right as to the college from which
Sir Jonathan Trelawny, Bishop of Win-
chester, matriculated. Mr. C. W. Boase
in his ' Register of Exeter College,' pt. ii.
p. 326, gives the date of his admission as com-
moner of Exeter College (probably from the
College Caution Book) as 14 April, 1668,
and his matriculation in agreement with
Foster, who gets his statement from Dr.
Chester's transcripts of the University
Matriculation Register. Mr. Twemlow had
probably very good reasons for his statement
in the article in 'D.N.B.' He had the
support of Wood, who (' Athense,' iv. 895)
says " he en t red into Ch. Ch. Mich. Term
1668, aged 18 years," and might have in-
ferred it from Welch's record of the election
to Oxford from Westminster in 1668 (p. 165),
in which Jonathan Trelawny appears second
in the list. The explanation seems to be
that Trelawny was admitted to Exeter before
the election at Westminster, which took
place on the Monday, Tuesday, and Wednes-
day-after the festival of St. Peter and St. Paul
(29 June), and, having paid his caution, was
also matriculated thence. I can offer no
evidence on the subject of the date, 11 Dec.,
1668, given as the day of his matriculation
from Christ Church. G. F. R. B. may per-
haps find, if he inquires of the authorities
at Christ Church, that this was the date of
his admission there, and may also be able
to ascertain from them the solution of the
difficulty that, while he was elected from
Westminster in July, 1668, he is both by
Wood and Mr. Twemlow said to have been
made student of Christ Church in the year
following*, e. , 1669.
JOHN R. MAGRATH.
The Rev. W. K. Stride in his history of Exeter College (1900), p. 76, says Trelawny (who, as Bishop of Exeter, was Visitor of the College of that name) " had been a Com- moner of the College in the early days of Bury's Rectorship." Arthur Bury was elected Rector in 1666 ; and as Trelawny matriculated from Christ Church in 1668, his stay at Exeter must have been, in any case, a brief one. A. R. BAYLEY.
AUTHOR WANTED (11 S. viii. 107, 158). The concisest expression of the truth that mere knowledge does not imply wisdom is Tennyson's
Knowledge comes, but wisdom lingers.
' Locksley Hall,' 141. EDWARD BENSLY.
01t
A Handbook of Lancashire Place-Names. By
John Sephton. (Liverpool, Young & Sons.)
DESPITE the recent appearance of Prof. Wyld's book on Lancashire place-names, we are glad that Mr. Sephton has not been induced to suppress his own labours in the same field. Conjecture inevitably plays a large part in the explanation of words disfigured so largely as place-names are apt to be by abrasion, false etymologies, and the transference from one language to another ; and whenever conjecture is legitimate, the play of well-informed minds is likely to be useful. Mr. Sephton's guesses are sober and scholarly ; and he seldom commits himself to a preference of one alternative to another, usually contenting himself with a simple setting down of possibilities.
The plan of the volume is good. The material is arranged in two chapters, of which the first treats of all the names which can be divided into two parts or " themes " a noun- theme, name of some natural object or human invention in the way of building or enclosure, and an adjectival or qualifying theme, which differentiates the noun-theme into a proper noun,. and forms the first member of the word. Here the noun-themes are taken in alphabetical order, and, after a brief explanation, are illustrated by the place-names derived from them found in Lancashire. The second chapter treats of those names which are composed of a single and un- common theme.
The elements of language with which we are here concerned are principally Low German and Scandinavian, with no inconsiderable admixture of the Celtic or pre-Celtic. Many of the adjectival themes are personal names, but few or none convey any history still memorable. Their interest is chiefly philological : the degradations they have undergone, whether by formation of nicknames or the careless use of them in com- position, whether by confused orthography or the addition (for whatever reason) of letters and syllables. And it cannot be said that the de- scriptive names are of a poetical or picturesque cast : they are the kind of names any people might well give in a hurry, baldly sufficing to distinguish one place from another. Our fore- fathers seem somewhat to have lacked genius for felicitous naming ; and yet it is curious to notice- how these words, originally so neutral-tinted, have in many cases taken on sonority or colour' or an air of poetry. Roseacre, for example, has a pretty sound, and carries suggestion which might fit it for a novel ; but its first theme is hreysi, Old Norse for a heap of stones, and its true meaning is probably " a stony field." Among the more interesting of the noun-themes is boolh, a Scandinavian word, used, it appears, in East Lancashire to denote outlying tracts of land where cattle were bred and kept the vaccarice of Lancashire Court Rolls. The Higher Booths and Lower Booths, near Burnley, were once vaccarice in the forest of Rossendale ; and the word occurs as the first part of two other Lan- cashire names, as well as being a subsidiary to- others. One of the most difficult names owing to the wide divergence of the variants found within a few years in the thirteenth century is
