Notes and Queries, Number 34, June 22, 1850 | Page 9

to refer for such instances. I shall therefore feel obliged to any of your readers who will specify a few instances of the profanation of churchyards at different periods, or refer me to works where such may be found. Churchyards appear to have been used in special cases for sepulture from the year 750, but not commonly so used till the end of the fourteenth century. Are there any instances of sepulchral monuments, between the above dates, now existing in churchyards?
Stone crosses, evidently of Saxon or very early Roman structure, are found in churchyards, but I am not aware of any sepulchral monuments detached from the church of the same date. I shall be glad of any notices of early monuments or remarkable epitaphs in churchyards. When did churchyards cease to be places of sanctuary? What is the exact meaning of the word "yard?" and was not "God's acre" applied to Christian cemeteries before sepulture was admitted in churches or churchyards?
W. H. K.
Drayton Beauchamp, June 10.
Anthony Warton.--Who was Anthony Warton, minister of the word at Breamore, in Hampshire, and author of Refinement of Zion, London, 1657? Another Anthony Warton was matriculated at Magdalen College, Oxford, 2nd Nov., 1665, at sixteen, as son of Francis Warton, of Breamore, Hants, plebeian. He remained clerk till 1671; chaplain from 1671 to 1674; instituted vicar of Godalming, Surrey, in 1682; obiit 15th March, 1714-15. He was father of Thomas Warton, Demy and Fellow of Magdalen College, vicar of Basingstoke, Hants, and of Cobham, Surrey, Professor of Poetry in the University of Oxford, 1718-28; who was father of the more celebrated Thomas Warton, Fellow of Trinity College, Oxford, and of Joseph Warton, Head Master of Winchester School.
Manning says (History of Surrey, vol. i. p. 648.) that Anthony Warton, vicar of Breamore, Hants, was younger brother of Michael Warton, Esq., of Beverley, but originally of Warton Hall in Lancashire. Both Wood and Manning seem to have confounded the first Anthony with the clerk, &c. of Magdalen. Was the former brother of Francis?
MAGDALENENSIS.
Cardinal's Hat.--O'Halloran mentions the cardinal's hat--"birede"--"biretrum"--as the hat anciently worn by the Irish doctors. What is its history?
J. SANSOM.
Maps of London.--I should be grateful to any of your correspondents who could inform me whether there are any maps of London before that of Aggas? what they are? and where they are to be found? The date of Aggas's map is supposed to be about 1560, and must have been after 1548, as the site of Essex House in the Strand is there called "Paget Place." There is a MS. map by Anthony Van Den Wyngerde in the Sutherland Collection in the Bodleian, the date of which would be about 1559.
EDWARD FOSS.
Griffith of Penrhyn.--Can any of your correspondents refer me to a good pedigree of GRIFFITH OF PENRHYN AND CARNARVON?
WILLIAM D'OYLY BAYLEY.
Coatham, near Redcar.
The Mariner's Compass.--What is the origin of the fleur-de-lis with which the northern radius of the compass-card is always ornamented?
NAUTILUS.
Pontefract on the Thames.--Permit me to ask, through the medium of your useful publication, where Pontefract on the Thames was situate in {57} the fourteenth century? Several documents of Edw. II. are dated from Shene (Richmond); in 1318, one from Mortelak; in 1322, one from Istelworth; and several are dated Pountfrcyt, or Pontem fractum super Thamis. (See Rymer's Foedera). It is very clear that this Pountfrcyt on the Thames must have been at no great distance from Shene, Mortlake, and Isleworth, also upon the Thames; and this is further corroborated by the dates following, from the places alluded to, so closely.
N.
June 14. 1850.
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Replies.
ON THE ORIGIN AND PROGRESS OF THE STUDY OF GEOMETRY IN LANCASHIRE.
The extensive study of geometry in Lancashire and the northern counties generally is a fact which has forced itself upon the attention of several observers; but none of these have attempted to assign any reasons for so singular an occurrence. Indeed, the origin and progress of the study of any particular branch of science, notwithstanding their attractive features, have but rarely engaged the attention of those best qualified for the undertaking. Fully satisfied with pursuing their ordinary courses of investigation, they have scarcely ever stopped to inquire who first started the subject of their contemplations; nor have they evinced much more assiduity to ascertain the how, the when, or in what favoured locality he had his existence: and hence the innumerable misappropriations of particular discoveries, the unconscious traversing of already exhausted fields of research, and many of the bickerings which have taken place amongst the rival claimants for the honour of priority.
Mr. Halliwell's Letters on the Progress of Science sufficiently show that the study of geometry was almost a nonentity in England previously to the commencement of the eighteenth century. Before this period Dr. Dee, the celebrated author of the preliminary discourse to Billingsley's Euclid,