Notes and Queries, Number 55, November 16, 1850 | Page 9

v. l.238.:
"Victrices aquilas alium laturus in orbem."
Query, Is the medal referred to by Voltaire known to exist? and if so, is the substitution of the unmetrical and prosaic word copias due to the author of the medal, or to Voltaire himself?
L.
_National Debt._--What volumes, pamphlets, or paragraphs can be pointed out to the writer, in poetry or prose, alluding to the bribery, corruption, and abuses connected with the formation of the National Debt from 1698 to 1815?
F.H.B.
_Midwives licensed._--In the articles to be inquired into in the province of Canterbury, anno 1571 (_Grindal Rem._, Park. Soc. 174-58), inquiry to be made
"Whether any use charms, or unlawful prayers, or invocations, in Latin or otherwise, and _namely, midwives in the time of women's travail of child_."
In the oath taken by Eleanor Pead before being licensed by the Archbishop to be a midwife a similar clause occurs; the words, "Also, I will not use any kind of sorcery or incantations in the time of the travail of any woman." Can any of your readers inform me what charms or prayers are here referred to, and at what period midwives ceased to be licensed by the Archbishop, or if any traces of such license are still found in Roman Catholic countries?
S.P.H.T.
* * * * * {409}
REPLIES.
THE BLACK ROOD OF SCOTLAND.
(Vol. ii., p. 308.)
I am not aware of any record in which mention of this relique occurs before the time of St. Margaret. It seems very probable that the venerated crucifix which was so termed was one of the treasures which descended with the crown of the Anglo-Saxon kings. When the princess Margaret, with her brother Edgar, the lawful heir to the throne of St. Edward the Confessor, fled into Scotland, after the victory of William, she carried this cross with her amongst her other treasures. Aelred of Rievaulx (ap. Twysd. 350.) gives a reason why it was so highly valued, and some description of the rood itself:
"Est autem crux illa longitudinem habens palm? de auro purissimo mirabili opere fabricats, qu? in modum tech? clauditur et aperitur. Cernitur in ea qu?darn Dominic? crucis portio, (sicut s?pe multorum miraculorum argumento probatum est). Salvatoris nostri ymaginem habens de ebore densissime sculptam et aureis distinctionibus mirabiliter decoratam."
St. Margaret appears to have destined it for the abbey which she and her royal husband, Malcolm III., founded at Dunfermline in honour of the Holy Trinity: and this cross seems to have engaged her last thoughts for her confessor relates that, when dying, she caused it to be brought to her, and that she embraced, and gazed steadfastly upon it, until her soul passed from time to eternity. Upon her death (16th Nov., 1093), the Black Rood was deposited upon the altar of Dunfermline Abbey, where St. Margaret was interred.
The next mention of it that I have been enabled to make note of, occurs in 1292, in the Catalogue of Scottish Muniments which were received within the Castle of Edinburgh, in the presence of the Abbots of Dunfermline and Holy Rood, and the Commissioners of Edward I., on the 23rd August in that year, and were conveyed to Berwick-upon-Tweed. Under the head
"Omnia ista inventa fuerunt in quadam cista in Dormitorio S. Crucis, et ibidem reposita pr?dictos Abbates et altos, sub ecrum sigillis."
we find
"Unum scrinium argenteum deauratum, in quo reponitur crux quo vocatur la blake rode."--Robertson's _Index_, Introd. xiii.
It does not appear that any such fatality was ascribed to this relique as that which the Scots attributed to the possession of the famous stone on which their kings were crowned, or it might be conjectured that when Edward I. brought "the fatal seat" from Scone to Westminster, he brought the Black Rood of Scotland too. That amiable and pleasing historian, Miss Strickland, has stated that the English viewed the possession of this relique by the Scottish kings with jealousy; that it was seized upon by Edward I., but restored on the treaty of peace in 1327. This statement is erroneous; the rood having been mistaken for the stone, which, by the way, as your readers know, was never restored.
We next find it in the possession of King David Bruce, who lost this treasured relique, with his own liberty, at the battle of Durham (18th Oct., 1346), and from that time the monks of Durham became its possessors. In the _Description of the Ancient Monuments, Rites, and Customs of the Abbey Church of Durham_, as they existed at the dissolution, which was written in 1593, and was published by Davies in 1672, and subsequently by the Surtees Society, we find it described as
"A most faire roode or picture of our Saviour, in silver, called the Black Roode of Scotland, brought out of Holy Rood House, by King David Bruce ... with the picture of Our Lady on the one side of our Saviour, and St.