tom. the needle remained. Now it was Sunday, and the physician, to cheer up his brother, had an entertainment in the evening, according to the cusBut the vesper bell sounded, and the physician made himself ready to go to church, it being a solemn feast of the Virgin; but some remained behind, and Bartholomew got up alone and went to the fire, and stood there meditating. His thoughts ran on the Holy Virgin, and particularly of the celebrated "Lady of Hal," and he vowed, in his heart, to go there if he was able. He had scarce said it to himself, when he felt something move about his teeth, and putting in his fingers, drew out the needle and thread. When his brother returned he was of course overjoyed at the miraculous event. Such miracles as these present little difficulty, they are of everyday occurrence; indeed the records of a hospital in one year would present us with a whole list of such. Many of the other stories, told by Lipsius, are of a similar character, and must only be regarded as ordinary events seen through a particular and special medium. I noticed, when at Hal, that the more recent miracles recorded by votive offerings were of the same kind; that is to say, mere ordinary events, having just so much of a special character as to serve as a basis for the imagination, but no more. And it would be remarkable that an intelligent mind, like that of Lipsius, could cite such instances in pure faith in their miraculous character, if we had not such frequent proofs of similar aberration. However, before this subject is quite closed, it may be as well to give an example in which the miracle is more extraordinary. Lipsius in this invokes aid for his style to narrate such wonders -the following is the substance. In 1428 there dwelt at Saint Hilaire, a village near Cambray, a labourer named Stephen Morel, whose wife's name was Firmina. She brought forth a dead child, at least so the midwife and gossips asserted, after having used all the means of restoring life. The child was accordingly buried in unconsecrated soil according to custom. The mother mourned her loss of offspring, and especially its want of the sacred rite of baptismal initiation. In her affliction, however, she did not fail in hope, and trust in the aid of Our Lady of Hal, to whose shrine she was accustomed to make an annual pilgrimage. She performed her vows daily, and even to the fifteenth day, after the death of her child, and now began boldly to assert her belief that it lived; and this seemed confirmed to her by frequent nocturnal visions. Her gossips now advised her to go to the field in which the body was buried with her husband, which she did; and they dug up the earth until they came to the corpse, when, behold, they found it fair and rosy without any mark of death. Their wonder, mixed with joy, was very great, and they scarce dared to raise it up, because it had been dead so long; so they sent to the pastor. He came, and was not less astonished; and persuaded them to bear the child to Vertenguel and there bring it up. It was now evening, and the mother gave a part of a consecrated waxen candle she had brought for a lantern, to light them on the way. They walked slowly, but the little bit of candle never diminished in the least, although it burnt from six o'clock in the evening until daylight of the following day. At length they reached Vertenguel, when they heard that the pastor was absent at a festival in the fortress of Vertaine close by. They went thither, and found the citadel closed; they knocked and knocked again, but no one came. So the door opened of its own accord, and in they went. At the inner door, they did the same, and with the same success; and at length came to a third which also opened, and left them free to enter the supper chamber. Upon which Henry Damman, the governor, rose up and asked, "Who admitted you? Are you friends or enemies?" Then drawing his sword, he advanced towards the warder and said, "Wretch, where is thy faith ?" He asserted that he had carefully closed the gates, and brought the governor's own daughter as a witness. Wonder succeeded to anger, seeing that the new visitors were unarmed and not enemies. They then besought the pastor that the child should be taken to the font and baptised. He arose, astonished at this strange matter, and about twenty persons, male and female, accompanied him from the table; even the governor ordered his horse, and with five companions joined the party. All were in the church, and the boy shewed manifest signs of life, opening and shutting his eyes and mouth, and blood ran from his nostrils; at length he uttered a cry. The child was baptized, and lived about five hours, lying on the altar of the Virgin, when it was seen to grow pale and die. The miracles however were not yet quite over. It was now carried to consecrated ground. The mother, Firmina, was at this time away in bed, where she felt her breast to arise as if giving suck, although the child was dead. With this I will conclude the wonders of Our Lady of Hal; they each of them afford us an insight into the weakness of humanity, and the ease with which the credulous deceive themselves or are deceived by others. It may be worthy of notice that in the British Museum there is one of the pilgrim's signs of Our Lady of Hal, executed about the sixteenth century; it is of copper, of circular form, and has little holes by which it could be sewn on the dress. J. G. WALLER. CORRESPONDENCE OF SYLVANUS URBAN. Mr. John Lodge's MSS. and the Liber Munerum Hiberniæ-Bas-relief of the Dance of Death at Dresden -The Immaculate Conception--The Harry the Fifth Club, or The Gang-Epitaphs of John Chapman at Elmley Castle, and of George Shipside at Redmarley, co. Worcester-The earliest Paper used in England. MR. JOHN LODGE'S MSS. AND THE LIBER MUNERUM HIBERNIA. MR. URBAN,-In your report of the sale of the Library of MSS. formed by the late Ulster King of Arms, the collections of Mr. John Lodge hold a prominent place (Aug. p. 146), and their importance in reference to the history of Ireland renders it desirable that they should not be lost sight of. The public it will be remembered have a double interest in these collections, first on account of the sources from which they are derived, and secondly by the right of purchase; and I am therefore induced to suppose that some further particulars of their origin, character, and constituent parts will be acceptable to your readers. may be, it seems that these MSS. of Mr. Lodge were by the Irish government considered as his private property, and therefore in the year 1785 they purchased them on behalf of the public by placing his widow and son the Rev. Dr. William Lodge upon the pension list, and allowing them an annuity of I believe 3007. for their lives.* And if Mr. Lodge was Deputy-Keeper of the Records deposited in the Rolls Office of the Chancery, and in Birmingham Tower of Dublin Castle, and also author of Lodge's Irish Peerage. Upon his appointment as deputy keeper, which took place in the year 1759, he found that the Calendars which had been previously made to the records committed to his charge were of little value, and he therefore entered upon the arduous task of making extracts from the original rolls of the letters patent and other inrolments (or at least of the principal entries) there to be found. It appears to be the general impression that a public officer is virtute officii bound during "office hours" to make for the public use indexes and other books of reference to the records which are placed under his charge. However that The value of a thing Be just as much as it will bring, the cost to the public of Lodge's MSS. might be estimated by ascertaining the amount paid to him as a public officer during the time he was occupied in their compilation, the additional hundreds of pounds paid to his widow and son, and the further large sum of money expended upon the editing and printing of so much of his MSS. as is contained in the Liber Munerum Hiberniæ. Upon the second meeting of the late Record Commissioners for Ireland, which took place on the 18th of February, 1811, it was ordered "that the Secretary do write to the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant in the name of this board, requesting him to hand over to the Secretary of this Commission the several manuscript books compiled by the late John Lodge, now in the office of the Under Secretary for the Civil Department, for the purposes of reference, transcript, or printing, as this board may think proper to direct."+ So highly did the Commissioners approve of this gentleman's compilations, *Record Reports for Ireland, vol. i. p. 458. +Ibid. vol. i. p. 11. that they directed the Sub-Commissioners to meet together and consider "how far his books might serve as a model for arranging and digesting all the Records of Ireland." (Same volume, page 16.) The Sub-Commissioners, however, by their report of the 23rd of July, 1811, gave it as their opinion that they could not recommend them as such model. But it was subsequently ordered by the Commissioners that two volumes of Lodge's List of Patentee Officers should be completed for publication, to be transcribed by clerks in the Secretary's office. Mr. Rowley Lascelles having been appointed to assist Mr. Duhigg in the preparation of Lodge's MSS. for the press, it was subsequently deemed advisable by the board, upon the receipt of the said Sub-Commissioners' report upon the subject, to print a volume of these MSS. with certain other collections, under the title of the "Acta Regia Hibernica," and "containing, among other matters, articles of agreement and treaties with the chieftains of the Irish septs, documents relating to the dissolution of religious houses, and a collection of charters of incorporation to cities, towns, and other public bodies;" and by a report of the 18th of January, 1819, it appears that "upwards of 3,000 fairly written pages had been formed, taken principally from the most ancient records," for this work. Upon this Acta Regia considerable progress was subsequently made by two of the Sub-Commissioners, so much so, that in 1825 "the selection of articles from the Patent, Close, Memoranda and Plea Rolls was completed to the commencement of the reign of Queen Elizabeth, as also the chronological index of same; to the collection of charters of incorporation and privileges to cities, towns, &c. 1,786 pages had been added; the charters already transcribed had been arranged, bound up, and indexed, consisting of 22 large folio volumes; besides 3 volumes of charters to public institutions, &c." Of this large amount of MS. the public has as yet obtained but little benefit, as the only portion of it that has been printed consists of charters from the 18th Hen. II. to 18th Ric. II. being 92 pages folio, and even this small portion has not yet been published. Lodge's List of Patentee Officers above referred to has been printed, and will be found in the Liber Munerum Hiberniæ, vol. i. pt. 2, p. 1 to 228. The "abstracts of all the enrolments of lands, deeds, and other matters of property remaining on record in the Rolls Office and in Bermingham Tower, from 31 Edw. I.* to the end of Hen. VII." will be found in the Rotulorum Patentium et Clausorum Cancellaria Hiberniæ Calendarium, printed and published by the Irish Record Commissioners. The like calendar of the like enrolments of the reign of Henry VIII. was printed by the same Commissioners, but has not been published; and the calendar of the like enrolments of James the First's reign has been also printed, but is yet unpublished; so that the nine volumes folio of Lodge's Abstracts of the Rolls in Sir W. Betham's Catalogue are of value so far only as they relate to the inrolments of lands, deeds, and other property of the reigns of Edward VI., Philip and Mary, Elizabeth, Charles I. and II. James II. and from thence to the 31st of George II. According to the report of the late Sub-Commissioners of the Public Records of Ireland (vol. i. p. 28) it appears that Mr. Lodge was occupied "during forty years in abstracting ancient records, many of which are since so defaced and mutilated, that it might now be impossible to abstract their contents at all." This being the case, his MSS. will probably be now found to be in many instances of greater value for historical purposes than even the original records themselves. The above mentioned Report was made in the year 1811, and there can be but little doubt that since that time the Chancery records have sustained a still greater amount of injury, a circumstance which of course tends to increase the value of these manuscripts. It should not however pass unnoticed that this same report leads to the conclusion that these MSS. cannot be considered as an abstract of all the entries or inrolments which are to be found upon the Patent and Close Rolls of the Irish Chancery, for it informs us that Mr. Lodge's "object appears to have been rather to indicate and abstract the principal grants, charters, patents, deeds, &c. than to form a complete catalogue of them all, which was so far from his intention that he wholly omits the chief mass of records in his custody, viz. statutes (private as well as public), inquisitions, equity pleadings, depositions, and decrees." It is probable, however, that the report was intended to convey that Mr. Lodge had not made nor did he intend to make abstracts of any other records in his custody than the Patent and Close Rolls, such as the Statute Rolls, inquisitions, pleadings, depositions and decrees, but to confine himself exclusively to the Patent and Close Rolls, upon which class of records, however, are frequently to be found * Betham's Catalogue of MSS. page 17, No. 118. the enrolments of statutes, inquisitions, pleadings, depositions, and decrees. It is evident however that, if this report be correct, the statement in Sir W. Betham's Catalogue that the nine volumes therein mentioned contain an "Abstract of all the enrolments of lands, deeds, and other matters of property remaining on record in the Rolls Office and in Birmingham Tower" is somewhat open to question. For the purpose of enabling us to arrive at as correct a conclusion as we can upon the subject of these MSS. of the late Mr. Lodge, I annex a copy of the Catalogue that was made of them in the year 1785, when they were sold to the government of Ireland by his widow, in order that we may be enabled to collate it with the Catalogue of Sir W. Betham's MSS. so far as it relates to Mr. Lodge's Collections. A Catalogue of Lodge's MS. Books, as annexed to the King's Letter for purchasing said MSS. dated August 15, 1785; with Observations, included in parentheses, and Addenda :· Number of Sets. I. Fourteen volumes of [MSS.] entitled Records of the Rolls, with one II. One Convert Book, folio Total Number of Vols. HI. One volume, Articles with Irish Chiefs, Denizations, General Pardons, IV. Two volumes of Wardships, Liveries, and Alienations, folio VI. One book of Miscellaneous Collections, High Sheriffs, &c. from 1600 to 1773 . VII. One book, Miscellaneous, Counties Palatine, Exclusive Grants, &c. X. Two large folio volumes, Patentee Officers, and Offices to Officers in XI. A thin marble cover, not bound, List of Patentee Officers in Ireland; +XIII. The Irish Baronage, or a List of the Peers of Ireland, from the reduc- XV. A folio volume of stenographic Notes relating to Grants of Lands, &c. the Strafford Inquisitions XVII. Another, being Memoranda and Extracts from the Rolls Office, &c. It appears to me to be very probable that the fourteen volumes entitled "Records of the Rolls," contained in the above mentioned Catalogue of Lodge's 26 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 MSS. are represented by the "Abstract of all the enrolments of lands, deeds, and other matters of property remaining on record in the Rolls Office," consisting of *This is printed in the Liber Hiberniæ, vol. i. part 1, pp. 1 to 40. This is printed in the Liber Hiberniæ, vol. i. part 1, pp. 1 to 51. Irish Record Reports, vol. i. p. 400. GENT. MAG. VOL. XLII. ? M W. Betham's entitled "Irish Parliament. A list of the members returned to serve in the Parliaments of Ireland from the year 1559." This list is printed in the Liber Hiberniæ. The book of "Miscellaneous Collections" is contained in both Catalogues. nine volumes, and contained in the Cata- contained in Lodge's Catalogue, is in Sir logue of Sir W. Betham's MSS. Taking it for granted that these nine volumes contain abstracts of all (or of the principal enrolments only, as the case may be,) the entries or enrolments to be found upon the Patent and Close Rolls of the Irish Chancery, they form the most valuable portion of Lodge's collections; and, although, as already stated, the greater part of their contents is now in print, still much remains unpublished, and as they are in many particulars, as has been already observed, more perfect at this day than the records themselves, Mr. Lodge's MSS. and Sir W. Betham's transcript are consequently of much public import ance. The fourteen volumes of Lodge's MSS. entitled "Records of the Rolls," are valuable also in another respect, namely, inasmuch as they contain extracts from the enrolments of the grants that have been made by the Crown of manors and manorial rights, fisheries, advowsons of churches, &c. since the reign of Elizabeth; to which enrolments there are to be found in the Rolls Office, Dublin, wherein the original records are deposited, indexes merely to the names of the Crown's grantees and not to the property granted. In consequence of this defect in the office indexes, the public is often put to much inconvenience and delay, and it would tend to remedy this unsatisfactory state of things were a transcript to be made of Lodge's MSS. (which are deposited in the Birmingham Tower), so far as they relate to letters patent and other enrolments made since Elizabeth's time, to be deposited with the present keeper of the Chancery Records at the Rolls Office. TheConvert Book," mentioned in the Catalogue of Lodge's MSS. at No. II. has apparently been transcribed by Sir W. Betham, and is probably that which is entitled in the Catalogue of his MSS. as "Alphabetical Lists of Converts from Popery from 1702." The Convert Rolls of Chancery are stated in a Report published by the Irish Record Commissioners to commence in 1703. The "Articles with Irish Chiefs," &c. mentioned in Lodge's Catalogue, consisting of one volume, is represented probably by Sir W. Betham's transcript entitled "Irish Rebels. Treaties with Irish Chiefs from 1536," &c. not collected but transcribed by Sir W. Betham. The two volumes of "Wardships, Liveries, and Alienations," which are mentioned in Lodge's Catalogue, are set forth under the same title in Sir W. Betham's Catalogue. The volume of "Miscellaneous, Counties Palatine," &c. which is mentioned in Lodge's Catalogue, is called a "History of the Counties Palatine of Ireland" in Sir W. Betham's Catalogue. Upon comparison, therefore, made as above stated, of the two catalogues, it would appear that Sir W. Betham had made transcripts of the principal and most valuable of Lodge's MSS. only, and that the "List of forfeited estates in Ireland, sold at Chichester House in 1703," contained in Sir W. Betham's Catalogue, forms no part of Mr. Lodge's collections. With respect to this "Book of Sales," as it is usually called, I may here observe that there are many copies to be found, but few of them are perfect. It has been stated that the most (if not the only) perfect copy in existence is now deposited in (if I mistake not) Madam Stevens's Hospital in Dublin. The same work, but under a different title, is contained in Sir W. Betham's Catalogue at No. 91. The Liber Munerum Hiberniæ, to which I have adverted, was I believe principally if not entirely compiled by Mr. Rowley Lascelles, one of the Assistant Record Commissioners for Ireland, whose object was, as is stated in his preface, to afford to all public officers "prompt and authentic information relating to Ireland," and his object has been attained; but when it is borne in mind that the matter thus put together for the convenience of an UnderSecretary for Ireland, or probably of some official of less importance, has cost the public I know not how many thousands of pounds, and that it is for the most part little more than a reprint of works of easy access, it cannot excite surprise in any to learn that soon after its publication it was deemed advisable to withhold it from the public. A few copies, however, have recently made their appearance in Ireland, and are I believe to be still obtained for about two guineas; but prior to this issue, and when the work was to be had but by a favoured few, it was usually sold for about 201. As this Liber Hiberniæ, as it is commonly called, is without an index, or even a table of contents, and is divided into many different parts, it may not be uninteresting to many to learn something of its nature and arrangement. It consists of two large volumes folio; the first con The Parliamentary Register from 1559, taining 845 pages, and the second 908 |