204
NOTES AND QUERIES.
. ix. MARCH is, 1902.
for, strange to say, it seems to have almos
completely dropped out of common speech fo
at least fifty years before it became the sub
ject of Bacon's note. I have been unable t<
find it in any part of the writings of Peele
Greene, Marlowe, or other poets and drama
tists of the same or an earlier period. Bacon
and men of his acquaintance and scholars like
Gabriel Harvey use it frequently. Shake
speare, on the other hand, uses " real " and its
variants only five times, whereas Beaumon
and Fletcher in twenty plays employ it eigh
times, and Ben Jonson twenty-three. I cai
quote sixty-nine passages from Bacon's work
in which the word occurs, and have no doub
if I were to go over all his work I coulc
find it many times more. Now if Bacor
wrote the Shakespeare plays why is it thai
we find " real " so seldom in them ? See how
much closer Ben Jonson is to Bacon in his
vocabulary than Shakespeare. The wore
does not occur in Shakespeare in any work
that is known to have been written earliei
that 1598, whereas it is a common word in
Bacon before that time. C. CRAWFORD.
53, Hampden Road, Hornsey, N.
(To be continued.)
RICHARD ARGENTINE, ALIAS SEXTEN. In
the account of this "physician and divine"
in the ' D.N.B.,' vol. ii. p. 80, it is stated that
"in January, 1563/4, he appears to have been
living at Exeter, but the statement that he was a
prebendary of Exeter and Wells is without foun-
dation."
This statement can scarcely be regarded as strictly accurate, for, according to the Com- position Books at the Record Office, Richard Argentine, clericus, compounded for the first- fruits of one of twenty -four prebends in Exeter Cathedral on 20 March, 4 Eliz. (1561/2). A cleric of the same name compounded in respect of Stokeleigh Poraeroy rectory, Devon on 16 February, 4 Eliz. (1561/2), and of Stoke
7i ?2X ng rector 3 7 > D evon, on 1 August, 5 Eliz. (looo).
Argentine's career starts in the 'Dictionary' with his going to Ipswich "in a serving-man's coat, and becoming "successively usher and master of the grammar school" there He perhaps was the native of Milton, Dorset, who under the name of Richard Sexten, or
SSmi'- uf m . 8ch J? r at Winchester in 1524 (Kirby),and was Fellow of New College Oxford 1528-38 M.A. 1536 (Foster, 'Alumni Oxon.). According to an old marginal note against his name in the Winchester CoHege register this Sexten became doctor of me!
Under Ster ^Podidascalus Tat 1 am ignorant, however, of the
reasons why writers have stated that Richard
Argentine was "alias Sexten" (see Tanner,
- Bibliotheca Britannico - Hibernica,' 48 ;
Cooper, 'Athense Cantab.,' i. 275), and should be glad of information upon the point.
According to the 'Dictionary' Argentine was rector of St. Helen's, Ipswich, 1556-68. The index to the Composition Books men- tions no composition in respect of this rectory intermediate between that by William Baker on 29 September, 1554, and that by William Burges on 15 June, 1570. Perhaps some Ipswich correspondent may be able to throw further light on Argentine's connexion with this rectory. H. C.
'THE CAMBRIDGE CONFESSOE.' In 18363 there appeared at Cambridge (printed for [. Stevenson, Trinity Street, and J. Fraser, Regent Street, London) the first and only number of the Cambridge Confessor; or, ike Guide to the, Church, which was apparently intended to rival the ' Tracts for the Times,' then in course of publication at Oxford. It is stated in the introduction, which is dated 6 May, 1836, that the publication would appear monthly during term, arid that the contents would be " partly original and partly selected." The sub-title of the first number is 'The Claims of the Catholic Church on the Love and Reverence of the Faithful,' 12 pp. 8vo, and it bears a close resemblance to its Oxford prototype. I believe that the publication stopped at the first number on account of the small support which the venture received, though in point of quality
- he number is at least equal to some of the
Tracts for the Times.' The title was some- what unfortunate, as it suggested auricular onfession, and so cast suspicion on the
hole thing. Amongst those who were con- lected with the publication was the late lev. Henry Goldsmith Vignes, vicar of Sun- bury from 1842 to 1895, or thereabouts. I ma told by a son of Mr. Vignes that a Mr. Duller Maitland was also interested in the Cambridge Confessor. This I take to be
illiam Fuller Maitland, Esq., of Stansted, issex, who died in 1876, and was well known LS a collector of pictures.
Perhaps these few facts relating to an nterpiise which might have achieved great esults may be worth recording in your pages
R, B. P.
" WAGUES." This word, employed as the quivalent of the stangs or single-trees used o assist in the propulsion of the rush-cart, is f great interest, if only on account of its bsolescence. It had a derivative waguers, meaning the men who pushed at the wagues, i
