Notes and Queries, Number 75, April 5, 1851 | Page 9

never was at Rome; and never was, either nominally or otherwise, Bishop of the Church there: and showing the grounds for the contrary assertion to be altogether baseless and untrue; being a tissue of self-contradicting forgeries and frauds, invented long subsequently to the time, evidently for the sole purpose of justifying the Papal pretensions of succession and derivation from the Apostle; as those, and all its other claims, are founded alone upon that fact, and must stand or fall with it.
The inquiry is conducted throughout with evidence of great acquaintance with Scripture and much theological learning (though the writer states himself to be a layman), without the least undue pretension, and with the most perfect temperateness and impartiality. The work would seem now well worth reprinting in a cheap and popular form.
Who was the author?
M.
[In Francis Peck's Catalogue of Discourses in the Time of King James II., No. 226., the name of HENRY CARE is given as the author. A list of his other works may be found in Watt's Bibliotheca.]
William Penn's Family.--Can any of your correspondents inform me to whom his eldest surviving son (William) was married, and also to whom the children of the said son were married, as well as those of his daughter Letitia (Mrs. Aubrey), if she had any? This son and daughter were William Penn's children by his first marriage with Miss Springett.
A. U. C.
[William Penn, eldest son (of William Penn by Miss Springett), had two children, Gulielma Maria, married to Charles Fell, and William Penn of the Rocks in Sussex, who by his first wife, Christian Forbes, had a daughter and heir, married to Peter Gaskell. Mrs. Aubrey was living in 1718. Our correspondent may also be referred to Mr. Hepworth Dixon's recently published William Penn, an Historical Biography.]
Deal, Dover, and Harwich.--Where do the following lines come from?
"Deal, Dover, and Harwich, The devil gave with his daughter in marriage; And, by a codicil to his will, He added Helvoet and the Brill."
J. H. L.
[Francis Grose, in his Collection of Proverbs, speaks of them as "A satirical squib thrown at the innkeepers of those places, in return for the many impositions practised on travellers, as well natives as strangers. Equally applicable to most other sea-ports."]
Author of Broad Stone of Honour.--Who is the author of the Broad Stone of Honour, of which mention is made in the Guesses at Truth, 1st series, p. 230., &c., and in the Ages of Faith, p. 236., works of some interest in reference to the Papal discussions which are raging at present?
NEMO.
[Kenelm M. Digby is the author of the Broad Stone of Honour.]
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Pope Joan.--Can any information be procured as to the origin of the game called Pope Joan, and (what is of more importance) of the above title, whether any such personage ever held the keys of St Peter and wore the tiara? If so, at what period and for what time, and what is known of her personal history?
NEMO.
[That Papissa Joanna is merely a fictitious character, is now universally acknowledged by the best authorities. "Clearer confirmations must be drawn for the history of Pope Joan, who succeeded Leo IV. and preceded Benedict III., than many we yet discover, and he wants not grounds that doubts it." So thought Sir Thomas Browne, in his Vulgar Errors, B. vii. Ch. 17. Gibbon, too, rejects it as fabulous. "Till the Reformation," he says, "the tale was repeated and believed without offence, and Joan's female statue long occupied her place among the Popes in the Cathedral of Sienna. She has been annihilated by two learned Protestants, Blondel and Bayle; but their brethren were scandalized by this equitable and generous criticism. Spanheim and L'Enfant attempted to save this poor engine of controversy, and even Mosheim condescends to cherish some doubt and suspicion."--The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, chap. xlix. Spanheim's work, Joanna Papissa Restituta, was printed at Leyden in 1692.]
The Well o' the World's End.--I am very anxious to find out, whether there still exists in print (or if it is known to any one now alive) an old Scotch fairy tale called "The Weary Well at the World's End?" Charles Kirkpatrick Sharpe, Esq., who is unhappily dead lately, knew the story and meant to write it down; but he became too infirm to do so, and though many very old people in the hilly districts of Lammermoor and Roxburghshire remember parts of it, and knew it in their youth, I cannot find one who knows it entirely.
L. M. M. R.
[Some references to the story alluded to by our correspondent will be found in Dr. Leyden's valuable introduction to The Complaynt of Scotland; and the story itself in Chambers's admirable collection of Scottish Folk Lore, Popular Rhymes of Scotland, p. 236. of the third edition, which form vol. vii. of the