1829.]

The font, elevated on two steps, is a circular stone bason, banded with indented and cable mouldings it is 25 inches in diameter, and 27 inches in height.

In the chancel are sepulchral memorials to some descendants of the fa

mily of De-la-Hay, formerly of Urish Hay, in this parish, with the arms, Argent, an estoile of sixteen points Gules; to two of the Vaughans, father and son, of Hinton Court in this parish, with the arins, Sable, a chev ron between three boys' heads couped at the shoulders Argent, crined Or, wreathed round the necks with as many snakes Proper; and to some other individuals of minor importance.

Against the western wall of the nave is affixed a stone tablet, whereon is sculptured the figure of a large trout, having a chain round the back part of its head: it has been recently painted and gilt, and the names of the churchwardens added. The story told in the village respecting this fish is simply as follows:

Many years since a trout was caught in the river Dore, which runs through the parish, wearing a gold chain round the back part of its head; a plaster cast of it was immediately taken, an artist employed to execute the above, a faithful representation; and when finished it was placed in the church as a perpetual memorial of the circumstance.

It was suggested to me by a gentleman resident in the county, who has investigated its antiquities, and who has indeed published the result of a portion of his labours, that, as the church is dedicated to St. Peter, this tablet may have reference to the finding of the piece of money by Peter, as recorded in Matt. xvi. 27. To this opinion I feel inclined to dissent, first, because the stone bears no mark of great antiquity, and was put up probably long since the Roman Catholic GENT, MAG. December, 1829.

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religion had been dominant—at a time when the people never thought of their patron saint as such, except when keeping his revel or feast; secondly, because it is unlikely the sculptor would have encircled the fish with a chain, when the more obvious illustration of the subject would have been to insert a piece of money in the mouth. Perhaps your Correspondents may be able to throw some light on the matter.

This Church, singular in form, antient in structure, curious in its contents, connected as these are with local tradition, and widely-spread superstition, claims the attention of every visitor. WILLIAM SAWYER.

Mr. URBAN,

N your volume LXII. p. 395, is a view of Dore Abbey in Herefordshire, with a full account of the same, by your late ingenious correspondent Mr. James Wathen. I now request your insertion of another view of it, from a different point of sight, drawn and engraved by Mr. Malcolm (see Plate II.)

Dore Abbey was of the Cistercian order, and was founded by Robert de Ewyas, the youngest son of Harold, Lord of Ewyas, in the time of King Stephen, to the honour of the Virgin Mary. Amongst its benefactors may be enumerated King John, Robert Earl of Ferrers, Alan de Pløkenet, John la Warre, Walter de Clifford, and numerous others.

In Pope Nicholas's taxation, the spiritualties of the monastery amount to 97.138.4d.; the annual amount of the temporal possessions to 1207. 16s. 11d,

In the 26th Henry VIII. the gross revenues of this House amounted to 1187. Os. 2d. The clear income to 1017. 5s. 2d. per annum. The site was granted, 31 Henry VIII. to John Scu

damore.

A very imperfect impression of the Seal of this Abbey, is in the collection of John Caley, Esq. Its subject is, an Abbot at full length, in one hand a crucifix, in the other a book; and having on his dexter side a shield, with the arms of the Abbey, being those of the family of Tregoz, who married the heiress of the founder, Ewyas, viz. Gules, two bars gemels, and in chief a lion passant, guardant Or. The arms in the shield of the sinister side are, in this impression,

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wholly obliterated, nor can more of the legend be made out than s. c. DE DORA*.

The remains of the Abbey, now the parish Church, are at the east end of the village. They shew the effects of violence rather than of age, though the walls bear the marks peculiar to the earliest style of Church architecture. They are variegated with the tints of the saffron, green, and lead-coloured mosses; and covered by ivy on the north side, which clings to the interstices, and winding over the arches, assumes their form, permitting but partial glances of the stone that composes them. N. R. S.

In the course of in

ing the Deanery of Doncaster, I have become acquainted with the name of William Ainsworth, concerning whom there is an inquiry in the present volume, p. 290.

I first find him settled in the parish of Halifax, where he had the curacy of Lightcliffe. While there, he pub lished "Triplex Memoriale, or the substance of Three Commemoration Sermons, &c. preached at Halifax, in remembrance of Mr. Nathaniel Waterhouse, deceased; whereunto is added, an extract from the last Will and Testament of the said Mr. Nathaniel Waterhouse, containing his several gifts and donations, for pious and charitable uses. By William Ainsworth, late Lecturer at St. Peter's, Chester;" a description which supplies another fact in his history. It is a small 12mo, printed at York in 1650.

The writer speaks of being poor and neglected, and has incorporated with his work, dedications to Sir John Savile, and also to Langdale Sunderland and William Rooker, jun. Esqrs. to both of whom he professes obligation.

It appears by this work that he was in some way connected with Nathaniel Waterhouse, who endowed a monthly Lecture, and was in other ways a great benefactor to the parish of Halifax.

It was probably while he lived at Lightcliffe that he published the work mentioned by your Correspondent, a copy of which I never saw. The Mr.

Dugdale's Monasticon, new edit. vol. v. p. 553.-A seal of the Abbot Jordan of Dore, is engraved in our vol. LXXVI. p. 793.

[Dec.

Samuel Sunderland to whom it is dedicated, was Samuel Sunderland of Harden, uncle to Langdale Sunderland, and was living, aged 67, at the Heralds' visitation in 1665.

In 1661 Ainsworth was presented to the vicarage of Hooton-Pagnel, by Lady Hutton, the widow of Sir Richard Hutton; but he held not that living long, his successor James Rigby having been instituted to it May 15, 1662. He then removed to Hull, where he was preacher (I suppose lecturer) in the great Church. More than this I am unable to relate concerning him. In the Catalogue of Incumbents of Hooton-Pagnel, he is described as being M. A. Yours, &c.

Mr. URBAN,

JOSEH HUNTER.

Nov. 15. N reply to J. G. N., p. 386, allow

IN

me to observe, that the main question is, whether the Roscommon peerage remained unclaimed for twelve months after the late Earl's death, in 1816? if it did, the Crown was unquestionably entitled to treat it as an extinct peerage; and, as the present Earl was not acknowledged by the House of Peers until June 1828, the next new extinction, viz. that of Carhampton, 1829, not having been acted on, the whole case, thus considered, is without difficulty.

I suspect, however, that Lord Bloomfield, on presenting his patent, was unable to satisfy the House of Peers that the Roscommon Earldom was ever in such a state of presumed extinction; his Lordship's name does not appear in the last list of Peers of Ireland, to whom writs were issued to elect a representative Peer in the room of the Earl of Erne. The present Earl of Roscommon, it is stated, assumed the title in 1816, immediately on his predecessor's decease; and his name was included in the list of Peers, annually returned by Ulster King at Arms, to the Castle of Dublin. That the Crown did not originally consider Roscommon as an extinction, may be scen by reference to Lord Howden's patent, the alleged extinctions for which were the Barony of Callon, 1815; the Barony of Sunderlin, 1816; and the Earldom of Upper Ossory, 1818. Lord Downes's patent followed with the extinctions of the Earldom of Dublin, 1820; and the Baronies of Tyrawly and Tara, 1821. It was reserved for Lord Bloomfield's patent, to go

back to a presumed extinction of 1816. Considering the case in this point of view, the Peerage of Bloomfield seems to be a complete failure,—the creation unwarranted by law,-being supported by two only, instead of three extinctions. The only remedy then is a new patent, inserting the two extinctions, with one of those which have since accrued. By this, Lord Bloomfield would lose the precedence of 1825; but there seems to be no alternative.

I

AN OLD SUBSCRIBER.

Mr. URBAN, Maize Hill, Dec. 16. BELIEVE that the registers inquired after by a "Constant Reader," and ordered by the Act of William III. to be kept for the purpose of enabling a tax upon marriages, births, burials, &c. to be collected, were regularly kept by the parochial ministers, and at certain periods transmitted to the Stamp or other office, having jurisdiction over that revenue: that when examined, and of no further utility to the revenue, they were transferred to His Majesty's Exchequer Officers, to be by them preserved with other official documents, and that they are now in large boxes in the temporary wooden building destined to preserve the Exchequer records in Westminster Hall. I have seen a few of these Registers, and if the whole be like the few, all are useless, since they are simple numerical accounts of the information required by the statute, and contain no

names.

I now request permission to ask your antiquarian readers to oblige me by looking at the fifteenth plate of the Bayeux tapestry, as engraved by the Society of Antiquaries, and examining the breast part of the coat of mail of the Standard Bearer, who is immediately in advance of the Conqueror. Upon his breast is a square, inclosing some diagonal lines from right to left, as well as from left to right, and thereby forming the figure commonly called diamond.

I will not make any observation which may express my own idea upon the meaning of this mark, because I am anxious to have the unbiassed sen

timents of some of the able Antiquaries who are likely to read this application, and I particularly request the favour of their opinions upon the subject, because if I should be correct in my conclusion as to the object of these lines,

I shall be enabled to lay some most interesting and novel antiquarian information before the public. Yours, &c. S. G.

Mr. URBAN,

THE

Dec. 12.

THE following account of the ceremony of touching for the King's Evil, written evidently by an eye-witness, is translated from a book, entituled, "Relation, en forme de Journal, du Voyage et Sejour que le serenissime et tres puissant Prince Charles II. Roy de la Grande Bretagne afait en Hollande, depuis le 25 May, jusq' au 2 Juin, 1660. A la Haye, chez Adrian Vlacy, 1660." The portion of our history to which it belongs, the actors concerned in it, the minute particularity of its description, and the royal etiquette so ostentatiously observed by an exiled monarch in a republican state, may render it interesting to your readers. It may be compared with a communication which appeared in the Gentleman's Magazine, dated. June 1774, on the Auncient Ordre for hallowinge of the Crampe Rings, where it is asserted, on the authority of Dr. Percy, that the gift of curing the King's Evil was claimed by none of our sovereigns prior to the Stuarts. The religious part of the ceremony, which took place on Sunday, May 30, 1660, may also be compared with the office At the Healing, in some of the early editions of the Book of Common Prayer. The assertion noticed at the end of this narrative, that to lose the coin appended to the neck of the patient, was to lose the benefit of the rite, seems to me a mere pretence, invented to account for some of the many cases of failure to which this method of cure must have been liable, if ever, from the force of an excited imagination, it could have been at all efficacious in removing such a disease as the scrophula. ENEFELDENSIS.

After the sermon, several persons labouring under the King's Evil presented themselves, whom His Majesty was to touch, after several others, whom he had touched in private, on Friday and Saturday, the 28th and the 29th of this month. And as this

ceremony is performed with circumstances very remarkable, and very different from those which accompany it in France, when the King there touches such patients, it will not be improper to relate here all the particularities; constituting, as they do, an essential part of our narrative, which pro