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LONDON, SATURDAY, JANUARY 15, 1916.

CONTENTS.- No. 3.

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other serving-knife at the British Museum, published by Mr. O. M. Dalton (Archælogia, lx. pt. ii.), which has the dimidiated coats of (a) Burgundy modern (France ancient, a bordure gobony argent and gules-but the bordure gobony engrailed), and (b) of BavariaHolland (Bavaria per fesse with HollandHainault), exemplifying the marriage, in 1385, of John the Fearless, Count of Nevers, with Margaret, eldest daughter of Albert, Count of Holland, Zeeland, and Hainault. The peculiar bordure and the absence of Burgundy ancient from (a) show that the knife was made before the death of Philip II., the Audacious, in 1404 (27, iv.), when Nevers succeeded to the coat quarterly of Burgundy ancient and modern, to which he added the Flemish lion, in pretence.

NOTES:-An Old Serving-Knife and the "Sire de Dan court," 41-Tavolara: Moresnet: Goust (Llivia?): Alleged Small Republics, 42-" Binnacle":"Tabernacle": Bar nacles," 44-General John Guise: the Rev. Samuel Guise, 45-Hampstead Sand-Barony of Wharton, 46-" Censure": its Right and Wrong Use" Lampposts" and "Fountpens"-Clockmakers-An Old Street Name-Plate -Pialéh Pasha at Chios, 47. QUERIES:-Warren Hastings on the Persian Gulf-British Herb: Herb Tobacco-The Bury, Chesham, Bucks-Lord Milner's Pedigree-Leitner-W. M. Fellows-Rich. fitzGerald, 48-Frodsham-The Two Ryhopes, co. DurhamWilliam Penn's School-Stewart Family-Memory at the Moment of Death-Death Warrants-Portsmouth: South: wick-Sixteenth-Century Dutch Print-Fryer-Pigott of Harlow-Biographical Information Wanted, 49-Author Wanted 64 Wyvill Heraldry- Billycock' Peculiar Court of Snaith-Papal Insignia-Baptism in 1644, 50. REPLIES:-History of Commerce, 50-Edgar Allan Poe J. B. Braithwaite, 51-Cromwell's Alleged League with the Devil - Baker's Chop-House, 52-Rats et Crapauds- Upon Wallace Collection No. 139, Azure, "Fat, fair, and forty-H. T. Wake The Ladies of three keys, 2 and 1, and a label of three Castellmarch'- "Popinjay." Papagei," 53- Robert Child, M.P., the Banker-Dando, the Oyster-Eater-The points or, we have a variety of the Rolin Moray Minstrels-J. G. Le Maistre-Francis Meres and John Florio, 54-"Spinet"-Walker Family, Stratford-le- arms deserving of record among the brisures Bow. 55-Author of French Song-Sir John Schorne- of a family which rose from the bourgeoisie Gunfire and Rain, 56-Falconer: St. Dunstan-in-the-West in the late fourteenth century, and ere the -Haycock Family-Duchesses who have married Commoners-Mother Huffcap. 57-"All is fair in love and mid-sixteenth had produced a Chancellor of war"-Ivy Bridge-St. Swithin and Eggs-Alcester-Burgundy, three Grand-Bailies of Autun, Biographical Information Wanted-British Army: Mascots, 58-'Passionate Pilgrim'-Tallest One-Piece Flagstaff-Song Wanted, 59. NOTES ON BOOKS: An American Garland'-'A Goliard's Song Book of the Eleventh Century.' OBITUARY:-Harry Hems.

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ambassadors and chamberlains to Burgundy and Louis XI., an hereditary GrandHuntsman of Hainault, two Archbishops of Autun, one of whom was a cardinal, &c. The label or is not known to have been borne by the Chancellor (1380-1461), the death of whose brother, in 1429, made him head of his house; nor is it among such armorials as were given by Jules d'Arbaumont

AN OLD SERVING-KNIFE AND THE in his account of the family in the Revue

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SIRE DE DANCOURT.”

Nos. 138-140 in the Wallace Collection (section of European armour and arms) are three carving- or serving-knives with long, wide blades, such as the écuyer tranchant wields in the famous miniature of John, Duke of Berry, at dinner, in the 'Très riches Heures' (Chantilly Library). Their handles are beautiful examples of the delicate art of the enameller in translucent colours. Against a diaper or trellis of floral design, covering either side of the handle, are depicted two or more coats of arms: 138 has four "great shields of Burgundy with the collar of the Fleece and the motto Aultre n'aray," adopted by Duke Philip III. upon his marriage with Isabella of Portugal in 1430. There is nothing armorially remarkable here, and the terminal dates are obviously that year and the death of Philip

in 1467.

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But Nos. 139 and 140 are heraldic rariora worthy to rank with the arms upon that

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The knife No. 140 has the insignia Ermine a barbel in pale gules dimidiating Or three (ie., one and a half) moors' heads (2 and 1) ppr. bound about the temples azure. A prominent feature of this exquisitely enamelled achievement is the cloth encircling each of the heads, its ample length falling to the base of the neck. The arms, obviously a true dimidiation of separate coats, are identified (and the identification goes back, no doubt, to the days when the knife figured in the collections of M. Louis Carrand and Count de Nieuwerkerke) as those of Sire de Dancourt, Grand Master of Artillery to Philippe le Bon," the date assigned being "about 1440."

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Who was this "Sire de Dancourt," whom, by the by neither Monstrelet nor Commines

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mentions, and who may be sought fruit- dame de Gaucourt by alliance. The grandlessly (whether as Dancourt or d'Ancourt) master had a son Charles, first of the name, in the general index to Père Anselme, who succeeded as Lord of Gaucourt, Argiin Chevalier's Bio-Bibliographie,' in the court, Châteaubrun, Naillac, &c., was Lieuvarious repertories of seals edited by Douët tenant-General and Governor of Paris, and, d'Arcq, Demay, J. Roman, and A. Coulon, dying in 1482, was buried in St. Jean en in Les chroniqueurs de l'histoire de France,' Grève, in which church there appears to of Madame de Witt (née Guizot), or in remain no vestige of his sepulture (GuilBarante's Ducs de Bourgogne ? Against hermy-Lastéyrie, Inscriptions de la France, a silence so remarkable can alone be set Ancien diocèse de Paris,' 1883; Lebeuf, Rietstap's Armorial général,' which gives Histoire de la ville et de tout le diocèse de "Dancourt (France). D'hermines à deux Paris,' new ed., i., 1863). bars de gu., and also Bouton's 'Nouveau His wife, in 1454, was Agnes (alias Colette) traité des armoiries' (1887, p. 457). Here, de Vaux, daughter of a certain Jean de no doubt, is the coat represented by the Vaux by his wife, Anne Le Bouteiller of dexter half of the arms upon Wallace Collec- Senlis, heiress to Saintines (near Senlis). tion No. 140; but, strange to relate, This Vaux is not easily traced among the Rietstap and his coadjutors, who ransacked too numerous families of the name. He the numerous French local armorials, were bore a variant, apparently, of the arms of not merely unable to cite a province for the Vaux of Hocquincourt (Argent three moors" house which gave Burgundy a 'grand-heads wreathed of the field), being assigned maître d'artillerie," but, apparently, never the following in André du Chesne's monoencountered Dancourt before their main graph upon Le Bouteiller (Revue nobilialphabet of coats was set in type. It is, in aire, 3 S. iii. 486-7, 1878): d'or à trois têtes fact, found in the Supplement to Rietstap, de more ceintes de diadèmes d'argent. Du second edition, ii., published, like Bouton Chesne, who calls her Jeanne, dates Anne Le (op. cit.), in 1887. Ere we leave Dan- Bouteiller's marriage (as does P. Anselme court to such further conjecture as it may in his Bouteiller pedigree, vi. 260) as late as deserve, Moréri's dictionary (1759 ed.) may 1468, which, however, P. Anselme clearly be cited for a sieur d'Ancourt" in Florent negatives by his statement that Charles II. Carton, the comedian-dramatist (d. 1680). de Gaucourt, son and heir of Charles I. and The possibility here, if possibility it can be Anne's daughter, Agnes, or Colette, de Vaux, called, in connexion with the fact that was enfant d'honneur du roi" in 1472. Carton de Familleureux (Hainault) bears Argent three moors' heads wreathed gules, No. 140 exemplify, as appears certain, the the arms upon Wallace Collection is, however, brought to nought by the article marriage (1454-c. 1471) of Charles I. de in Jal's Dictionnaire critique' (2nd ed., Gaucourt with Agnes de Vaux, and are such p. 466), which proves that Florent Carton's as her own signet might have borne, it would family had nothing to do with the Belgian be extraordinary if yet a second alliance house of the name, and that their arms were were citable duplicating them armorially, quite dissimilar. the detail of the adornment of the moors' In contrast to the penury of data concern-heads perhaps excepted. As it is, Daning "Dancourt are the evidences that the court's connexion with arms notoriously knife was made for Gaucourt of Picardy, those of a Picard house can but have with the well-known coat Ermine two originated in a mistranscription of the name Gaucourt. A. VAN DE PUT.

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barbel addorsed gules. Père Anselme gives a pedigree in virtue of Raoul VI., Lord of Gaucourt and of Argicourt, "grandmaître d'hôtel de France in 1453, who died in 1461-2, having married Jeanne de Preuilly, who was dead in 1455. P. Anselme's statement (3rd ed., viii. 366-7), son sceau dans une quittance du 3 janvier, 1458....est semé d'hermines avec deux poissons adossez, and the seals of 1481, catalogued by Roman ('Collection des pièces originales du Cabinet des Tîtres de la Bibliothèque Nationale,' i. 5072), are important in view of the impalement by dimidiation of the arms under discussion, which are properly those of a

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In The Standard of June 2, 1896, is a letter quoting The Tablet of May 16. The writer of the letter had always been "of opinion that the miniature Republic of Moresnet was the tiniest state in the whole world." However, he had learnt from The Tablet that there was a smaller republic, viz. Tavolara, a little island off the north-east coast of Sardinia, not far from the Bay of Terranova. He says, quoting The Tablet :"It is some three miles long, by about three thousand one hundred and thirty feet in breadth, with a population of fifty-five souls. From 1836 to 1886 Tavolara was a tiny Monarchy, but upon the death of Paolo I. (and last), and by express desire of that potentate, it became Republican in Government, with a President elected for six years, the women voting as well as the men. Italy, we are told, recognized the microscopic Republic in 1887."

I have found no other trace of this "Republic," said to exist in an island three miles long by a little over half a mile broad, or, to be as precise as the writer in The Tablet, by about four furlongs, one hundred and sixty-three yards, and one foot broad. If we take five as the average family, the fiftyfive souls which formed its population should comprise eleven men, eleven women, and thirty-three children and young persons. If one subtracts the President, twenty-one adults remain. One would like to know | whether there is a council over which the President presides.

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As to "the miniature Republic of Moresnet," I may quote from a short article headed Gaming Tables in "Neutral Moresnet,' which appeared in The Times of Aug. 25, 1903, written by "a correspondent," concerning the establishment of gaming tables in Altenberg,

"a small community of some 3,500 persons, situated in the so-called neutral territory of Moresnet, about six miles west of Aix-la-Chapelle. ...This little country, called 'Neutral Moresnet,' while owning allegiance to both Belgium and Prussia, is, in fact, an integral portion of neither. This State, territory, municipality, or whatever it may be called, is a remainder, a remnant of the first French Empire....On the readjustment of the Prusso-Dutch frontiers at the Congress of Vienna in 1815, the two States concerned, Prussia and Holland, did not arrive at a final agreement as to the fate of this triangular piece of territory, some three miles in length, and neither in 1830 (on Belgium taking the place of Holland) nor

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since has the matter been decided. This debateable territory was accordingly made subject to a joint administration, pending a final settlement. Thus the description Neutral Moresnet is not in fact quite correct in an international sense, for it is in no wise independent. At present, under the condominium of Belgium and Prussia, it is administered by two permanent commissioners appointed by them, and under these by a mayor

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nominated alternately by each country, who is assisted by a representative council....The inhabitants of this territory are quite satisfied with the state of things, and are comfortable under the twin lordship, participating as they do in the advantages each State confers. welcome is, perhaps, in the case of the indigenous sons of the soil, the immunity from military service. Originally all the dwellers on the land were exempt from scot and lot,' but since 1848 and 1854 respectively those owning Belgian and Prussian nationality are liable to conscription. Only the neutrals proper-i.e., the descendants of the population established in the country in 1815-are stil! free. Of these there are about 410 persons. Of the remaining 3,000 inhabitants Prussia and Belgium claim about one-half each.' Then follows a paragraph about the legal relations in the community being governed by the Code Napoléon.

In The Pall Mall Gazette of June 5, 1915, is a short account of the smallest Republic in the world," viz. ::

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Goust, on the northern slopes of the Pyrenees, which for close on three hundred years has been recognized as an independent State by France and Spain. The area of Goust is barely one square mile, and its inhabitants number about 150. The Government consists of a council of Ancients, who decide all disputes, and have no other duties, for the inhabitants pay neither rates nor taxes."

I have sought in vain for Goust in books and maps. There is, however, in 'The Times Atlas,' 1895, Map of France (South), a small town or village called Saillagouse (perhaps by abbreviation Gouse), in the department of Pyrénées-Orientales. It is about 2 miles east of a piece of land of irregular shape enclosed by a line, and coloured yellow amidst the surrounding pink. This · land is named Llivia. One might easily, on glancing at the map, assign it to the name Saillagouse. Its area may be reckoned as about three square miles. Longitude 2o E. almost touches its eastern corner. It appears to be some two miles north of Bourg Madame, a French town on the frontier of Spain.

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In The Geographical Journal, vol. xiii., Jan. to June, 1899, pp. 452, 557, under Geographical Literature of the Month,' Llivia, in the short comments on two books, is described as a little patch, or a small 'enclave," of Spanish territory in the French department of Pyrénées-Orientales, with a neutral road, about a mile in length, connecting it with the main body of Spain. This enclave is, according to The Times map, about 12 miles as the crow flies east of Andorra. Of Llivia I have found some interesting particulars in Au Val d'Andorre,' by Sutter-Laumann, 1888. Sutter-Laumann spells the name Livia instead of Llivia. He writes (pp. 27, 28) that it is a Spanish...

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commune entirely enclosed by French is reason to believe that the change to territory, and that it is only a village binnacle may be due to a related word without importance. used both in French and English ships.

As to the spelling, Llivia or Livia, perhaps the latter is the modern French form. În the 'Dictionnaire Général des Villes, Bourgs, Villages et Hameaux de la France,' &c., par Duclos, 1836, there are seven names beginning with Ll, all in the department of Pyrénées-Orientales. Neither Llivia nor Livia is given, I suppose because of its being Spanish territory. Saillagouse appears as in Pyrénées-Orientales, arrondissement Prades, canton Saillagouse, 505 inhabitants. Perhaps some other correspondent of "N. & Q. can add to my little list of supposititions republics. ROBERT PIERPOINT.

Fr. habitacle, originally a hut or sleepingcloset, came to mean a shrine, as in Littré's sixteenth-century quotation: "Au Louvre,

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"This Spanish ground," he says, "in our territory is the result of a fantastical (bizarre) limitation of frontiers made at the time of the famous treaty of the Pyrenees of 1659. By one of the clauses of this treaty the French communes ancien temple et habitacle des roys de which surround Livia ought, every two years, France." In ships it was the shrine of the to leave their lands uncultivated, so as to allow tutelary saint, and its original place was in the passage of the cattle which the people of front of the steersman. On the advent of Livia take to the mountain. But this clause is the compass this was probably placed in, never respected; our peasants naturally take care not to lose one year in two; and obstinately or close to, the habitacle, to have at night refuse to allow the oxen, goats, and sheep of the benefit of the lamp burning in the shrine. their neighbours to pass into their fields when the In the two N.E.D.' quotations from Marryat, harvest is a-foot; whence occur armed conflicts, the first, 1836, gives the usual binnacle," which have to be allayed in any way possible. the other, 1839 (Phantom Ship'), reverts to Finally, Livia being joined to Spain by a narrow, neutral road, where no soldier, gendarme, or bittacle," for the good reason that here it custom-house officer of either of the two nations refers to the shrine of the saint at the is allowed to circulate, this commune is the bittacle," Philip Vanderdecken being then refuge of all the smugglers of the region." in a 300-ton Portuguese ship under the protection of St. Antonio. But in the ships of non-Catholic countries the saint had been turned out, and in Dutch ships the shrine had become the kompashuisje, the compass-hut. In Southern ships the shrine became displaced by the It. bussola della calamita, Fr. boussole du compas, now la boussole; the shrine was moved aside and became the bitacle, the closet containing the ship's clock, the match-tub, Fr. marmotte, and other gear. A retired engineer of the French navy, for a long time in small ships of war, told me that he had often heard the officer of the watch, wanting a light for his pipe, call to the boy: Vas au bitacle me chercher la marmotte; and that the bitacle was a closet on the after part of the deck, near the wheel. When I mentioned to my friend the change from "bittacle " to THE first of these words was originally binnacle," he at once connected the latter "bittacle," the English form of It. abitacolo, word with tabernacle. Why, he could not Prov. abitacle, Fr. habitacle, bitacle. Skeat's explain, but the word was connected in his dictionary says it seems to have been reminiscences with bitacle. This put me originally a sheltered place for the steers-on a scent which I followed up, and I find man," and assumes that the word was a that there is a relation between the words, singular corruption of the older form bit-due perhaps to naval humour. On the tacle,' due to confusion with 'bin,' a chest." old galleys of France the habitacle was in The N.E.D.' ascribes the earlier form to front of the steersman; and not far from it, Sp. or Pg. bitaculo, and considers "a direct near the poop, was the tabernacle, a broad adoption of Fr. habitacle and shortening to plank five feet long raised above the deck, bittacle in English as phonetically less on which the captain stood when giving probable. The seventeenth-century biddikil orders. Littré gives a quotation for it; a appears to be a transitional form." captain is praised for standing calmly on the tabernacle through the whole of a violent gale. Why it was so named I cannot say ; probably from its being near the shrine. may here remark that "plank is post in Provençal, the language of the French galleys, and that the captain's post, dignified by the name of tabernacle, may have given

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BINNACLE":

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"TABERNACLE":

"BARNACLES."

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There are errors in both these explanations. The bittacle was indeed a sheltered place, but it was certainly not for the steersman, and there is no evidence of any influence from bin." Also Fr. habitacle has lost its first syllable in seamen's speech, and probably lost it very long ago; while there

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rise to our ships of post," that is, of 20 Mr. Guise's son is now living, viz., Col. guns or more, the commanders of which were Guise (p. 382). Foster (Alumni Oxonipost-captains (cf. Post," 'N.E.D.'). Re-enses') shows that there were two John. turning to the Pr. tabernacle, originally a Guises who were contemporaries at Oxford. diminutive of L. taberna, Fr. taberne, taverne, | One is described as John Guise, son of William thus affording matter for profane humour, Guise of Oxford (city), and is stated to there is evidence that the first syllable was have matriculated at Gloucester Hall on as loosely connected as that of abitacle; so July 6, 1697, aged 14. The other was the word came to have at least a third sense, John Guise, son of William Guise of Winteras shown in Mistral's 'Tresor': (1) the re- bourne, Co. Gloucester, matriculated at ligious sense; (2) the naval sense; (3) spec- Merton College, July 12, 1698, aged 15; B.A. tacles. This last meaning could only be from Christ Church, March 20, 1701/2; from the loose attachment of the first student of Middle Temple, 1700. Foster syllable, enabling bernacle to be jestingly says that the first is possibly identical with confused with bericles, berniques, barniques, the second. But this is not so. William mod. Fr. besicles, spectacles, changed from Guise of Winterbourne was not William bericles as chaise has been changed from Guise of All Souls. He was a son of Henry chaire. Attention to the different meanings Guise of the same place, and a brother of of Fr. lunette, also of Du. bril (like bericles Christopher Guise, whose daughter Eleanor derived from "beryl "), will support these was Sir Horace Mann's mother (see curious relations. Letters of Horace Walpole,' Toynbee, vol. i. p. 251n.).

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The influence of tabernacle " was probably not confined to French ships, for the 'N.E.D.' shows that the tabernacle exists in English ships, at least in rivercraft, where the mast may have to be lowered: "1886, The mizen-mast must be stepped in a tabernacle on a false transom in front of the rudder-head," that is, about the position of the tabernacle in a French galley. Some readers of N. & Q.' to whom such craft are familiar may be able to trace the story of this term in English.

Les Cycas, Cannes.

EDWARD NICHOLSON.

GENERAL JOHN GUISE : THE REV. SAMUEL GUISE, M.A. 1. THE 'D.N.B.' gives accounts of William Guise (1653-83), Fellow of All Souls, and Professor of Oriental Languages at Oxford, and of General John Guise (1683-1764), Colonel of the 6th Foot ("Guise's "), but does not mention that they were father and son. William Guise was а son of John Guise of Ablodes Court, near Gloucester. He matriculated at Oriel at the age of 16 in 1669, and was elected a Fellow of All Souls in 1674 (Foster, 'Alumni Oxonienses'). He married in 1680 Frances, daughter of George Southcote, by whom he had a son and two daughters (Wood, Life and Times,' Oxford Historical Society, vol. iii. p. 68). Hearne ('Collections,' Oxford Historical Society, vol. viii. p. 144) gives some account of the work of this great young man,' as he calls him, and reproduces his epitaph (p. 145). He says,

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According to the pedigree of the Guise family in Burke's Peerage and Baronetage,* William Guise of Winterbourne had a son named John, who was not the General. He may possibly be the John Guise, Esq., who subscribed to Hearne's Camden's 'Elizabetha' in 1717 (Hearne's Collections," vol. vi. p. 107).

The D.N.B.' mentions General Guise's pictures, given to Christ Church; and his interest in art is shown by his connexion with an early enterprise for the reproduction of well-known pictures. (See a letter from Lord Percival to his brother of Aug. 30, 1721, in Hist. MSS. Com. 7th Report, p. 247.) He was Colonel of "Guise's" from Nov. 1, 1738, till his death in June, 1765 (' N. & Q.,' 3 S. vii. 50).

2. There was another Guise, a second cousin of the General, at Gloucester Hall, about the same time. This was Samuel Guise, son of Thomas Guise of Burcester. He also matriculated in 1697. In 1711 he was Vicar of Thame, and in 1713 he proceeded to the degree of M.A. Hearne states that he applied for dispensation for one term, and "only carried it by a small majority, the reason for any one's being against him being his vile principles, he being great with Lord Wharton" (Hearne's Collections,' vol. iv. p. 208). In 1719 he became chaplain to Philip, Duke of Wharton (Foster, Alumni Oxonienses').

Samuel Guise was buried at High Wycombe. His mutilated tablet, taken down when the church was restored, has been cut down to fill a place in the floor, and there remains little more than his name and that

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