Chapter 3

_Hylles' Arithmetic_.--Having seen it mentioned in the public papers that a copy of the first edition of Cocker's _Arithmetic_ (considered unique) was lately sold at an exceedingly high price by Messrs. Puttick and Simpson, I am induced to send you a {410} copy of the title-page of an arithmetical work in my possession which seems a curiosity in its way; but whether unique or not, my slender bibliographical knowledge does not enable me to determine. It is as follows:

"The Arte of Vulgar Arithmeticke, both in Integers and Fractions, _devided into two Bookes, whereof the first is called Nomodidactus Numerorum_, and the second _Portus Proportionum_, with certeine Demonstrations, reduced into so plaine and perfect Method, _as the like hath not hetherto beene published in English_. _Wherevnto_ is added a third Booke, entituled _Musa Mercatorum_: comprehending all the most necessarie and profitable Rules _vsed in the trade of Merchandise_. In all which three Bookes, the Rules, Precepts, and Maxims are _onely composed in meeter for the better retaining of them in memorie_, but also the operations, examples, demonstrations, and questions, _are in most easie wise expounded and explaned, in the forme_ of a dialogue, for the reader's more cleere vnderstanding. _A knowledge pleasant for Gentlemen, commendable for Capteines_ and Soldiers, profitable for Merchants, and generally _necessarie for all estates and degrees_. Newly collected, digested, and in some part deuised by a _welwiller to the Mathematicals_."

"_Ecclesiasticus_, cap. 19.

"Learning unto fooles is as fetters on their feete and manicles vpon their right hand; but to the wise it is a Iewell of golde, and like a Bracelet vpon his right arme.

"_Boetius_. I. _Arith_. cap. 2.

"_Omnia quaecunque a primaeua natura constructa sunt, Numerorum videntur racione formata. Hoc enim fuit principale in animo conditoris exemplar_. Imprinted at London by _Gabriel Simson_, dwelling in Fleete Lane, 1600."

The volume (which is a small quarto of 270 folios) is dedicated "To the Right Honorable sir Thomas Sackuill, Knight, Baron of Buckhurst, Lord Treasurer of England," &c. &c., by Thomas Hylles.

Perhaps one or other of your correspondents will kindly inform me whether this volume is a rarity, and also oblige me with some information regarding Thomas Hylles, its author.

SN. DAVIE, Jun.

[Professor De Morgan, in his "_Arithmetical Books from the Invention of printing to the present Time_," describes Hylles' work "as a big book, heavy with mercantile lore;" and the author as being, "in spite of all his trifling, a man of learning." A list of the author's other works will be found in Watt's _Bibliotheca Britannica_, and Lowndes's _Bibliographer's Manual of English Literature_, under the word _Hills_ (Thomas). See also Ames's _Typographical Antiquities_.]

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Replies.

VILLENAGE.

(Vol. iii., p. 327.)

Your correspondent H. C. wishes to know whether bondage was a reality in the time of Philip and Mary; and, if so, when it became extinct. It was a reality much later than that, as several cases in the books will show. Dyer, who was appointed chief justice of the Court of Common Pleas in 1559, settled several in which man claimed property in his fellow-man, hearing arguments and giving judgment on the point whether one should be a "villein regardant" or a "villein in gross." Lord Campbell, in his _Lives of the Chief Justices_, gives the following, tried before Dyer, _C.J._:

"A. B., seised in fee of a manor to which a villein was regardant, made a feoffment of one acre of the manor by these words: 'I have given one acre, &c., and further I have given and granted, &c., John S., my villein.' Question, 'Does the villein pass to the grantee as a villein in gross, or as a villein appendant to that acre?' The Court being equally divided in opinion, no judgment seems to have been given."--_Dyer_, 48 b. pl. 2.

Another action was brought before him under these circumstances:--Butler, Lord of the Manor of Badminton, in the county of Gloucester, contending that Crouch was his villein regardant, entered into certain lands, which Crouch had purchased in Somersetshire, and leased them to Fleyer. Crouch thereupon disseised Fleyer, who brought his action against Crouch, pleading that Butler and his ancestors were seised of Crouch and his ancestors as of villeins regardant, from time whereof the memory of man runneth not to the contrary. The jury found that Butler and his ancestors were seised of Crouch and his ancestors until the first year of the reign of Henry VII.; but, confessing themselves ignorant whether in point of law such seisin be an actual seisin of the defendant, prayed the opinion of the Court thereon. Dyer, _C.J._, and the other judges agreed upon this to a verdict for the defendant, for "the lord having let an hundred years pass without redeeming the villein or his issue, cannot, after that, claim them." (_Dyer_, 266. pl. 11.)

When Holt was chief justice of the King's Bench, an action was tried before him to recover the price of a slave who had been sold in Virginia. The verdict went for the plaintiff. In deciding upon a motion made in arrest of judgment, Holt, _C.J._, said,--"As soon as a negro comes into England he is free: one may be a villein in England, but not a slave." (_Cases temp. Holt_, 405.)

As to the period at which villenage in England became extinct, we find in _Litt_. (sec. 185.):--

"Villenage is supposed to have finally disappeared in the reign of James I., but there is great difficulty in saying when it ceased to be lawful, for there has been no statute to abolish it; and by the old law, if any freeman acknowledged himself in a court of record to be a villein, he and all his after-born issue and their descendants were villeins."

Even so late as the middle of the eighteenth century, when the great Lord Mansfield adorned {411} the bench, it was pleaded "that villenage, or slavery, had been permitted in England by the common law; that no statute had ever passed to abolish this _status_;" and that "although _de facto_ villenage by birth had ceased, a man might still make himself a villein by acknowledgment in a court of record." This was in the celebrated case of the negro Somersett, in which Lord Mansfield first established that "the air of England had long been too pure for a slave." In his judgment he says,--

"... Then what ground is there for saying that the _status_ of slavery is now recognised by the law of England?... At any rate, villenage has ceased in England, and it cannot be revived."--_St. Tr._, vol. xx. pp. 1-82.

And Macaulay, in his admirable _History of England_, speaking of the gradual and silent extinction of villenage, then, towards the close of the Tudor period, fast approaching completion, says:

"Some faint traces of the institution of villenage were detected by the curious as late as the days of the Stuarts; nor has that institution ever to this hour been abolished by statute."

TEE BEE.

_Villenage_ (Vol. iii., p. 327.).--In reply to the question put by H. C., I beg to say that in Burton's _Leicestershire_ (published in 1622), a copy of which is now before me, some curious remarks occur on this subject. Burton says, under the head of "Houghton-on-the-Hill," that the last case he could find in print, concerning the claim to a villein, was in Mich. 9 & 10 Eliz. (_Dyer_, 266. b.), where one Butler, Lord of the Manor of Badminton in Gloucestershire, did claim one Crouch for his villein regardant to his said manor, and made an entry upon Crouch's lands in Somersetshire. Upon an answer made by Crouch, an _ejectione firmae_ was brought in the King's Bench; and upon the evidence it was moved, that as no seizure of the body had been made, or claim set up by the lord, for sixty years preceding, none could then be made. The Court held, in accordance with this, that no seizure could be made. I do not know what the reference means; perhaps some of your legal correspondents may do so.

JAYTEE.

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MACLEAN NOT JUNIUS.

(Vol. iii., p. 378.)

Your correspondent AEGROTUS (_ante_, p. 378.) is not justified in writing so confidently on a subject respecting which he is so little informed. He is evidently not even aware that the claims of Maclean have been ably and elaborately set forth by Sir David Brewster, and, as I think, conclusively, on the evidence, set aside in the _Athenaeum_. He has, however, been pleased to new vamp some old stories, to which he gives something of novelty by telling them "with a difference." I remember, indeed, four or five years since, to have seen a letter on this subject, written by Mr. Pickering, the bookseller, to the late Sir Harris Nicolas, in which the same statements were made, supported by the same authorities,--which, in fact, corresponded so exactly with the communication of AEGROTUS, that I must believe either that your correspondent has seen that letter, or that both writers had their information from a common story-teller.

Respecting the "vellum-bound copy" locked up in the ebony cabinet in possession of the late Marquis of Lansdowne, Mr. Pickering's version came nearer to the authority; for he said, "_My informant saw_ the bound volumes and the cabinet _when a boy_." The proof then rests on the recollection of an Anonymous, who speaks positively as to what took place nearly half a century since; and this anonymous boy, we are to believe, was already so interested about Junius as to notice the fact at the time, and remember it ever after. Against the probabilities of this we might urge, that the present Marquis--who was born in 1780, and came to the title in 1809, is probably as old, or older than Anonymous; as much interested in a question believed by many persons, AEGROTUS amongst them, intimately to concern his father, and quite as precocious, for he was Chancellor of the Exchequer in 1805--never saw or heard of either the volumes or the cabinet; and, as AEGROTUS admits, after a search expressly made by his order, they could not be found. Further, allow me to remind you, that it is not more than six weeks since it was recorded in "NOTES AND QUERIES" that a "vellum-bound" Junius was lately sold at Stowe; and it is about two months since I learnt, on the same authority, that a Mr. Cramp had asserted that vellum-bound copies were so common, that the printer must have taken the Junius copy as a pattern; so that, if AEGROTUS'S facts be admitted, they would prove nothing. There is one circumstance, however, bearing on this question, which perhaps AEGROTUS himself will think entitled to some weight. It was not until 1812, when George Woodfall published the private letters of Junius, that the public first heard about "a vellum-bound" copy. If therefore the Anonymous knew before 1809 that some special interest did or would attach more to one vellum-bound book than another, he must be Junius himself; for Sampson Woodfall was dead, and when living had said nothing about it.

AEGROTUS then favours us with the anecdote about "old Mr. Cox" the printer, and that Maclean corrected the proofs of _Junius' Letters_ at his printing-office. Of course, persons acquainted with the subject have heard the story before, though not with all the circumstantialities now given. Where, I might ask, is the authority for {412} this story? Who is responsible for it? But the emphatic question which common sense will ask is this: Why should Junius go to Mr. Cox's printing-office to correct his proofs? Where he wrote the letters he might surely have corrected the proofs. Why, after all his trouble, anxiety, and mystification to keep the secret, should he needlessly go to anybody's printing-office to correct the proofs, and thus wantonly risk the consequences?--in fact, go there and betray himself, as we are expected to believe he did? The story is absurd, on the face of it. But what authority has AEGROTUS for asserting that Junius corrected proofs at all? Strong presumptive evidence leads me to believe that he did not: in some instances he could not. In one instance he specially desired to have a proof; but it was, as we now know, for the purpose of forwarding it to Lord Chatham. Junius was also anxious to have proofs of the Dedication and Preface, but it is by no means certain that he had them; the evidence tends to show that they were, at Woodfall's request, and to remove from his own shoulders the threatened responsibility, read by Wilkes: and the collected edition was printed from Wheble's edition, so far as it went, and the remainder from slips cut from the _Public Advertiser_, both corrected by Junius; but we have no reason to believe that Junius ever saw a proof, even of the collected edition,--many reasons that tend strongly to the contrary opinion. Under these circumstances, we are required to believe an anonymous story, which runs counter to all evidence, that we may superadd an absurdity.

Mr. Pickering further referred to Mr. Raphael West, as one who "could tell much on the subject." Here AEGROTUS enlarges on the original, and tells us what this "much" consisted of. The story, professedly told by Benjamin West, about Maclean and Junius, on which Sir David Brewster founded his theory, may be found in Galt's _Life of West_. But Galt himself, in his subsequent autobiography, admits that the story told by West "does not relate the actual circumstances of the case correctly;" that is to say, Galt had found out, in the interval, that it was open to contradiction and disproof, and it has since been disproved in the _Athenaeum_. So much for a story discredited by the narrator himself. Of these facts AEGROTUS is entirely ignorant, and therefore proceeds by the following extraordinary circumstantialities to uphold it. "The late President of the Royal Academy knew Maclean; and his son, the late Raphael West, _told the writer of these remarks_ [AEGROTUS himself] that _when a young man_ he had seen him [Maclean] in the evening at his father's house in Newman Street, and _once heard him repeat a passage in one of the letters which was not then published_;" and AEGROTUS adds, "a more correct and veracious man than Mr. R. West could not be." So be it. Still it is strange that the President, who was said to have told his anecdote expressly to show that Maclean was Junius, never thought to confirm it by the conclusive proof of having read the letters before they were published! Further,--and we leave the question of extreme accuracy and _veraciousness_ to be settled by AEGROTUS,--the President West was born in 1738; he embarked from America for Italy in 1759; on his return he visited England in 1763, and such was the patronage with which he was welcomed, that his friends recommended him to take up his residence in London. This he was willing to do, provided a young American lady to whom he was attached would come to England. She consented; his father accompanied her, and they were married on the 2nd of September, 1765, at St. Martin's Church. Now Maclean embarked for India in December, 1773, or January, 1774, and was lost at sea, when "the young man," Master Raphael, could not have been more than seven years of age,--nay, to speak by the card, as Master Raphael heard one of Junius' letters read before it was published, and as the last was published in January, 1772, it follows, assuming that he was the eldest child, born in nine months to the hour, and that it was the very last letter that he heard read, he _may have been_ five years and seven months old--a very "young man" indeed; or rather, all circumstances considered, as precocious a youth as he who found out the vellum-bound copy years before it was known to be in existence.

I regret to have occupied so much of your space. But speculation on this subject is just now the fashion. "NOTES AND QUERIES" is likely hereafter to become an authority, and if these circumstantial statements are admitted into its columns, they must be as circumstantially disproved.

M. J.

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Replies to Minor Queries.

_The Ten Commandments_ (Vol. iii., p. 166.).--The controversy on the division of the Ten Commandments between the Romanists and Lutherans on the one side, and the Reformers or Calvinists on the other, has been discussed in the following works--1. Goth (Cardinalis), _Vera Ecclesia, &c._, Venet., 1750 (Art. xvi. s. 7.); 2. Chamieri _Panstratia_ (tom i. l. xxi. c. viii.); 3. Riveti _Opera_ (tom. i. p. 1227., and tom. iii. _Apologeticus pro vera Pace Ecclesiastica contra H. Grotii Votum_.); 4. Bohlii _Vera divisio Decalogi ex infallibili principio accentuationis_; 5. Hackspanii _Notae Philologicae in varia loca S. Scripturae_; 6. Pfeifferi _Opera_ (Cent. i. Loc. 96.); 7. Ussher's _Answer to a Jesuit's Challenge (of Images) and his Serm. at Westminster before the House of Commons, out of Deuteronomy, chap. iv. ver_. 15, 16., _and Romans, chap. i. ver._ 23.; 8. Stillingfleet's _Controversies with Godden, Author of "Catholics no Idolaters," and_ {413} _with Gother, Author of "The Papist Misrepresented," &c._

The earliest notices of the division of the Decalogue, are those of Josephus, lib. iii. c. 5. s. 5.; Philo-Judaeus _de Decem Oraculis_; and the Chaldaic Paraphrase of Jonathan. According to these, the third verse of Exod. xx. contains the first commandment; the fourth, fifth, and sixth, the second. The same distinction was adopted by the following early writers:--Origen (_Homil. viii. in Exod._), Greg. Nazienzen (_Carmina Mosis Decalogus_), Irenaeus (lib. iii. c. 42.), Athanasius (_in Synopsi S. Scripturae_), Ambrose (_in Ep. ad Ephes. c. vi._).

It was first abandoned by Augustine, who was instigated to introduce this innovation by the unwarranted representation of the doctrine of the Trinity by the First Tablet containing three commandments. The schoolmen followed his example, and accommodated the words of God to the legislative requirements of their new divinity, progressive development, which terminated in the Church of Rome, in compelling them to command what He strictly prohibits (See Ussher's _Answer_.)

"Hath God himself any where declared this to be only an explication of the first commandment? Have the prophets or Christ and His apostles ever done it? How then can any man's conscience be safe in this matter? For it is not a trifling controversy whether it be a distinct commandment or an explication of the first; but the lawfulness or unlawfulness of the worship of images depends very much upon it, for if it be only an explication of the first, then, unless one takes images to be gods, their worship is lawful, and so the heathens were excused in it, who were not such idiots; but if it be a new and distinct precept, then the worshipping any image or similitude becomes a grievous sin, and exposes men to the wrath of God in that severe manner mentioned in the end of it. And it is a great confirmation that this is the true meaning of it, because all the primitive writers[20] of the Christian Church not only thought it a sin against this commandment, but insisted upon the force of it against those heathens who denied that they took their images for gods; and, therefore, this is a very insufficient account of leaving out the second commandment (that the people are in no danger of superstition or idolatry by it.)."--Stillingfleet's _Doctrines of the Church of Rome, 25. Of the Second Commandment_.

"If God allow the worship of the represented by the representation, he would never have forbidden that worship absolutely, which is unlawful only in a certain respect."--Ibid. _Answer to the Conclusion_.

With your permission I shall return to this subject, not of Images, but of the Second Commandment, in reply to MR. GATTY'S Queries on the division at present adopted by the Jews, &c.

T. JONES.

Chetham's Library, Manchester.

[Footnote 20: Thus St. Augustine himself: "In the first commandment, any similitude of God in the figments of men is forbidden to be worshipped, not because God hath not an image, but because no image of Him ought to be worshipped, but that which is the same thing that He is, nor yet that for Him but with Him."--See what is further cited from Augustine by Ussher in his _Answer_.]

_Mounds, Munts, Mount_ (Vol. iii., p. 187.).--If R. W. B. will refer to Mr. Lower's paper on the "Iron Works of the County of Sussex" in the second volume of the _Sussex Archaelogical Collections_, he will find that iron works were carried on in the parish of Maresfield in 1724, and probably much later. It is therefore probable that the lands which he mentions have derived their names from the pit-mounts round the mouths of the pits through which the iron ore was raised to the surface. In Staffordshire and Shropshire the term _munt_ is used to denote fire-clay of an inferior kind, which makes a large part of every coal-pit mount in those counties. If the same kind of fire-clay was found in the iron mines of Sussex, it is not necessary to suggest the derivation of the word _munt_.

I take this opportunity of suggesting to MR. ALBERT WAY that the utensil figured in page 179. of the above-mentioned work is not an ancient mustard-mill, but the upper part of an iron mould in which cannon-shot were cast. The iron tongs, of which a drawing is given in page 179., were probably useful for the purpose of drawing along a floor recently cast shot while they were too hot to be handled.

V. X. Y.

_San Graal_ (Vol. iii., pp 224. 281.).--Roquefort's article of nine columns in his _Glos. de la L. Rom._, is decisive of the word being derived from _Sancta Cratera;_ of _Graal, Greal_, always having meant a vessel or dish and of all the old romancers having understood the expression in the same meaning, namely, _Sancta Cratera, le Saint Graal, the Holy Cup or Vessel_, because, according to the legend, Christ used it at the Paschal Supper; and Joseph of Arimathea afterwards employed it to catch the blood flowing from his wounds. Many cities formerly claimed the honour of possessing this fabulous relic. Of course, as Price shows, it was an old Oriental magic-dish legend, imitated in the West.

GEORGE STEPHENS.

Stockholm.

_Epitaph on the Countess of Pembroke_ (Vol. iii., pp 262. 307.).--It has been asserted that the second part of this epitaph was written by Lady Pembroke's son; among whose poems, which were published in 1660, the whole piece was included. (Park's _Walpole_, ii. 203. _note_; Gifford's _Ben Jonson_, viii. 337.) But it is notorious, that no confidence whatever can be placed in that volume (see this shown in detail in Mr. Hannah's edit. of Poems by Wotton and Raleigh, pp. 61. 63.); nor have we any right to distribute the two parts between different authors. There are at least _four_ {414} old copies of the whole; two in MSS. which are referred to by Mr. Hannah; the one in Pembroke's _Poems_; and the one in that Lansdowne MS., where it is ascribed to William Browne. Brydges assigned it to Browne, when he published his _Original Poems_ from that MS. at the Lee Priory Press in 1815, p. 5. Upon the whole, there seems to be more direct evidence for Browne than any other person.

R.

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MISCELLANEOUS.

NOTES ON BOOKS, SALES, CATALOGUES, ETC.