to quell by main force the disturbances with which the country was then agitated.

Dreading the portentous aspect of the times, and particularly apprehensive of the aggressive spirit of the Roman Catholics, the Londoners presented an urgent petition to the King (then at York), intreating him to return, call a new parliament, and redress the grievances of which they complained. This had the desired effect. On his return to London on the 25th of November he was received with demonstra

tions of loyalty and respect, which, as is well known, were transient and evanescent.

With this year the entries terminate, extending over a period of rather more than a hundred years, and possessing, no doubt, many points of interest which would amply repay a more laborious examination than I was enabled to bestow upon them. Yours, &c.

ALFRED WM. HAMMOND.

Kennington.

MR. URBAN,-In the Minor Correspondence of your June number you have been pleased to allude in graceful terms to the purchase by my father of the Portrait by Holbein of John Hales, the Founder of the Free Grammar School at Coventry, and also to the ultimate purpose he had in view in becoming possessed of it, viz. for presentation to the Grammar School. I am, from the latter circumstance, the more desirous to correct a mistake which has crept into your account, which may tend to affect its perfect authenticity and consequent historic value, as an original pic ture of the founder by Holbein, in the minds of its future custodians at Coventry. The mistake made is to suppose the St. Mary's Hall portrait (which is at best but a fancy portrait of the founder, of a late date, and indifferently executed,) to be a copy of the painting above alluded to.

It seems that Carlisle in his "Endowed Grammar Schools," dated 1818, speaks of a portrait of the founder as hanging in the school; and the late Mr. Reader, in his Coventry MSS. (unpublished) mentions, and particularly describes, a portrait of the founder as having been presented to the school by dame Anna, widow of Sir John Hales, Bart. in the year 1704. But Mr. Carlisle had been misinformed, as my father, an old pupil at the Grammar School, can testify; no portrait of the founder, or of any of the Hales family, having been in the school for more than half a century. I am also inclined to believe the picture

presented by Lady Hales to the school to be identical with the portrait in St. Mary's Hall, which sometime during the last century was probably placed in its present position by the corporation of Coventry. At all events it is this one which was etched by Mrs. Dawson Turner. As far as I have been able to ascertain, there appears to be no other original portrait of John Hales the founder extant than the one by Holbein, painted in 1554, and hitherto unengraved, which differs in every particular from the St. Mary's Hall portrait; it is also interesting to note that since the date it bears, exactly three hundred years ago, till now, it has never left the possession of the Hales family, and of their direct inheritants by descent, on their extinction in the Foleshill branch. That it was painted by Holbein is the tradition with which it has been handed down, and of whose master-hand it, in addition, bears every evidence. Finally, it seems but conclusive to suppose that John Hales, being Clerk of the Hanaper in Chancery, should, in compliment to his legal chief, Chancellor Sir Thomas More, patronise the great painter, who was the protégé of More, and consent to be painted by him.

I am collecting a few particulars of Hales and his family, which, as connected with the school which educated Sir William Dugdale, may on that account, if on no other, be acceptable to you. Yours, &c. JOSHUA W. BUTTERWORTH. Fleet Street, June 20.

MR. URBAN,-The following record of a little incident in the earlier annals of this university, in the "good old times," may not be unworthy of a five minutes' perusal. One generally finds that, in accordance with the particular views of the speaker or the writer, these "good old times" may signify either that the world has relaxed its propriety by perpetrating polkas in place of minuets, or that it has

fallen into effeminacy by drinking two or three glasses of claret, and a cup of coffee, instead of a bottle or two of port and none; that Old Charley was a far superior being to A 55, and that the box of the York House was a better mode of reaching one's destination than a ticket for a first-class carriage by the broad-gauge Express.

The offender in the present story, Mr. Gregory Ballard, was not sowing his wild

oats as a Freshman, but scattering them, as it appears, broad-cast, and by the bushel, in his bachelor's gown. Yet he lived to repent him of his past follies, to attain to the respectable position of Registrar of that University, which he had outraged, to marry and to settle, and, eventually, to be claimed as an ancestor, without a blush at his enormities, by your correspondent.

In the Register marked N. f. 186, &c. the following story is told, and which I shall somewhat abbreviate. Gregory Ballard, being then of the degree of B.C.L. of St. John's College, treats the Vice-Chaucellor with contumely. The Vice-Chancellor declares that he saw Mr. Ballard "about twelve of the clocke in the night drincking and bowsing in the bottom of a

seller at the signe of the Catherine weele, and so guilty of noctivagation." The ViceChancellor thereupon calls together the Heads of Colleges and Halls, and the Viceregents of those absent, and consults with them, telling them that, having ordered Mr. Ballard on his oath to go to the Castle, Ballard refused, answering "scornfully and fleeringly." The meeting is of opinion that the statutes have been violated, and agrees to meet again, Ballard being, in the meantime, admonished to appear. At this second meeting it was determined that if Ballard did not make an apology in the Convocation House he should be punished. But, discretion being the better part of valour, Ballard submitted.

Yours, &c. L.

The Antiquities of the Borough of Leeds described and illustrated. By James Wardell, Member of the Archæological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, Author of the Lays of Ebor, the Municipal History of Leeds, etc. 8vo. pp. 32. (Sixteen plates.)-We are always glad to witness a revision of the history and antiquities of a place which has formed the topic of our old topographers; for, amidst the general progress of archæology, as of every other science, those very subjects are liable to fall most into arrear and into neglect, which have formerly had the advantage of the best writers of their day. Such authors have maintained a reputation so high that their compatriots have unwisely imagined that nothing remained to be learned beyond what their pages contain. The present spread of local associations for the promotion of archæological research will lead to a different conclusion. It will be the object of the societies now in operation in Essex and in Warwickshire to lead the way to a history of the former county superior to that of Morant, and to one of the latter which may supersede the timehonoured Dugdale, even in the improved edition of Dr. Thomas. In discussing the antiquities of Leeds the author of the small volume before us reviews the ground long since described by Thoresby, and subsequently commented upon by Dr. Whit. aker; but many things have been both lost and found, forgotten and learned, ever since the time of the latter.

Mr. Wardell has performed his task under a systematic arrangement: dividing the subjects of his notice into six periods

-the British, Roman, Saxon, Danish, Norman, and Medieval.

In

In opposition to the opinion of many antiquaries, and even of his predecessor Whitaker, Mr. Wardell adheres to the idea that Leeds was the Caer Luitcoith, or "city of the wood," of Nennius; but in this we cannot think he is judicious. The same place occurs under another orthography as Caer-lindcoet, and there can be little doubt that it was intended to designate Lincoln. The district of Loidis with the adjacent wood of Elmete is first mentioned in the narrative of Bede. the Domesday survey it is described as Ledes. Osmondthorpe, in Temple Newsam, one of the townships of Leeds, is generally admitted (says Mr. Wardell) to be Bede's villa regia in regione Loidis. "Here (be adds) numerous remains of this the Saxon - period formerly existed, consisting of trenches, pavements, and causeways; and the names of fields, as the Coney-shaw and the Coney-garth, meaning the King's-wood and the King'sfield, make known their Saxon origin.' Here is one of the old errors that our author should have corrected; for the Coney-shaw and the Coney-garth, names so frequent in the North of England, refer only to the presence of rabbits. A fragment of ancient stained glass," representing a king, with a shield bearing the arms of the East-Anglian kingdom," which was lately in one of the windows of the old hall at Osmondthorpe, has led to the conclusion "that Edwin, who was so hospitably entertained and restored to his throne by Redwald king of the East