Notes and Queries, Number 54, November 9, 1850 | Page 3

violent thefts" here would be sheer nonsense; and when we
recollect how easy it is to mistake comit for count, the former word
being almost always thus written and often thus printed, we must, I
think, be convinced that in copying an interlineated MS., the printer
misplaced and misprinted that word, and transposed as, if the repetition
of it be not also an error.--"For," commencing the parenthesis, "we
would give much" stands for cause. The emphasis should, I think, be
{387} laid on for; and commit be accented on the first syllable. Thus
the line, though of twelve syllables, is not unmetrical; indeed much less
prosaic than with the old reading of count.
This correction, upon the principle which governs Messrs. Collier and
Knight, and which indeed should govern all of us,
"To lose no drop of that immortal man,"
ought to be satisfactory; for it is effected without taking away a letter.
The transposition of two evidently misplaced words, and the correction
of a letter or two palpably misprinted in one of them, is the whole
gentle violence that has been used in a passage which has been, as we
see, considered desperate. But, as Pope sings:
"Our sacred Shakspeare,--comprehensive mind! Who for all ages writ,
and all mankind, Has been to careless printers oft a prey, Nor time, nor
moth e'er spoil'd as much as they; Let the right reading drive the cloud
away, And sense breaks on us with resistless day."
PERIERGUS BIBLIOPHILUS.
October, 1850.
* * * * *
MASTER JOHN SHORNE.

If proof were wanted how little is now known of those saints whose
names were once in everybody's mouth, although they never figured in
any calendar, it might be found in the fact that my friend, Mr. Payne
Collier, whose intimate knowledge of the phrases and allusions
scattered through our early writers is so well known and admitted,
should, in his valuable Extracts from the Registers of the Stationers'
Company (1557-1570), have illustrated this entry,--
"1569-70. Rd. of Thomas Colwell, for his lycense for the pryntinge of a
ballett intituled 'Newes to Northumberlande yt skylles not where, to Syr
John Shorne, a churche rebell there' ... iiij^d."
by a note, from which the following is an extract:--
"Sir John Shorne no doubt is to be taken as a generic name for a shaven
Roman Catholic priest."
Reasonable, however, as is Mr. Collier's conjecture, it is not borne out
by the facts of the case. The name Sir John Shorne is not a generic
name, but the name of a personage frequently alluded to, but whose
history is involved in considerable obscurity. Perhaps the following
notes may be the means, by drawing forth others, of throwing some
light upon it. In Michael Wodde's Dialogue, quoted by Brand, we
read--
"If we were sycke of the pestylence we ran to Sainte Rooke; if of the
ague, to Sainte Pernel or Master John Shorne."
Latimer, in his Second Sermon preached in Lincolnshire, p. 475.
(Parker Society ed.), says,--
"But ye shall not think that I will speak of the popish pilgrimages,
which we were wont to use in times past, in running hither and thither
to Mr. John Shorn or to our Lady of Walsingham."
On which the editor, the Rev. G. E. Corrie, remarks that he was--
"A saint whose head quarters were probably in the parish of Shorn and

Merston near Gravesend, but who seems to have had shrines in other
parts of the country. He was chiefly popular with persons who suffered
from ague."
Mr. Corrie then gives an extract from p. 218. of the Letters relating to
the Suppression of Monasteries, edited by Mr. Wright for the Camden
Society; but we quote from the original, Mr. Corrie having omitted the
words given in our extract in Italics:--
"At Merston, Mr. Johan Schorn stondith blessing a bote, whereunto
they do say he conveyd the devill. He ys moch sowzt for the agou. If it
be your lordeschips pleasur, I schall sett that botyd ymage in a nother
place, and so do wyth other in other parties wher lyke seeking ys."
In that extraordinary poem The Fantassie of Idolatrie, printed by Fox in
his edition of 1563, but not afterwards reprinted until it appeared in
Seeley's edition (vol. v. p. 406.), we read--
"To Maister John Shorne That blessed man borne; For the ague to him
we apply, Whiche jugeleth with a bote I beschrewe his herte rote That
will truste him, and it be I."
The editor, Mr. Cattley, having explained bote "a recompense or fee,"
Dr. Maitland, in his Remarks on Rev. S. R. Cattley's Defence of his
Edition of Fox's Martyrology, p. 46., after making a reference to Nares,
and quoting his explanation, proceeds:
"The going on pilgrimage to St. John Shorne is incidentally