issue. On the other hand, the 'Dict. Nat. Biog.' states that a monumental tablet to his memory was placed in South Tedworth Church, Hants, by his "fourth" son, Henry Smith. Among Musgrave's 'Obituaries' is that of Thomas Smith, Vice-Chamberlain to the Queen Consort and M.P. for Tregony, died 3 August, 1728, being "son of John Smith, Speaker of the House of Commons." Any information as the family of this somewhat obscure Speaker will be acceptable.

W. D. PINK.

PRINTING IN THE CHANNEL ISLES. — At

practised in the Channel Islands? and what what date was the art of printing first

were its first fruits there?

E. S. DODGSON. [Stead's Caesarea; or, History of Jersey,' has the rubric Jersey, 1798. This appears to be the earliest instance.]

'IRUS,' SUPPOSED PLAY BY SHAKESPEARE.A book called Edward Pudsey's book, published in 1888 at Stratford, contains extracts from a play called 'Irus.' Is anything more known about this play? I can find no other reference to it in Shaksperian literature. REGINALD HAINES.

Uppingham.

STOYLE.-As I am seeking for the pedigrees of Stoyle families, and wish, if possible, to join them, I should be grateful for any information bearing thereon. (Rev.) B. W. BLIN-STOYLE. Langden House, Braunston, near Rugby. "BARRAR."-In the overseers' accounts of this parish for the year 1719 is the following entry: "For a pese of flannel for an under pettey coat and a barrar, 00. 01. 06." What was a "barrar"? FRANCIS R. RUSHTON.

JOHN WESLEY AND GARDENS.-1. Wesley seems to have been an admirer of gardens. In his journal (22 March, 1775) he mentions "Mr. Gordon's curious garden at Mile End," and that he "learned there the real nature of the tea-tree." Is anything to be found about this garden and is this Gordon conand gardener, at Barking, co. Essex," whose nected with "Gordon, James, sen., botanist death is announced in the Gentleman's Magazine, 20 December, 1780?

66

2. On 16 October, 1782, Wesley saw such a garden at Oxford as I verily believe all England cannot parallel," and after some description says, "for all which why should not Mr. Badcock's name, as well as Mr. Roberts's, be consigned to posterity?" Is anything to be found further about this garden or these two names!

was some

3. On 11 November, 1773, Wesley " met with a great natural curiosity, the largest elm he 6 ft. more than that which ever saw; it was 28 ft. in circumference, years ago in Magdalen College walks at Oxford." Is this elm still in existence, and where? He says it was between Northampton and Towcester. F. M. J.

REV. ARTHUR GALTON.-I shall be glad of any particulars concerning the writings, &c., of the Rev. Arthur Galton, of the Record newspaper. M. C. BOYLE.

NICOMEDE BIANCHI.—Is it known what has become of the collection of notes, letters, official documents, &c., once in the possession of the late Nicomede Bianchi, the Italian historian? He died quite recently-in 1888, I believe. L. L. K.

Beplies.

PASSING-BELL.
(10th S. i. 308.)

OCCASIONALLY in this town the passingbell is rung at the time of the funeral. We have in the Museum attached to this building a very interesting relic in the shape of the dead bell." It has more than a passing interest, because it came through the fire on the occasion of the burning of the former Museum in 1898, when so many objects of old association were destroyed, among them being the Killiecrankie and Bannockburn flags.

Mr. George Watson, who was some time curator of this Museum, and wrote a most interesting brochure, "The Annals of Jedburgh Castle,' has a short paper in this month's Border Magazine on the dead bell, from which the following quotation is taken ::

threshold of the churchyard, where they always
stopped and dispersed.'......When the body was
removed in order for burial, the bellman took the
bell and walked in front of the bier, giving notice
of the approach of the funeral procession by an
in Jedburgh, and the practice there is illustrated
occasional toll of the bell. Such was the custom
in the drawing of Jedburgh made by one of the
French prisoners in 1812, in which a funeral, with
the bellman proceeding in front, is seen under the
by a John Meikel, of Edinburgh, it is nearly a
town clock on its way to the churchyard. Made
century younger than Hawick dead bell, as is
testified by the inscription which the Jedburgh
one formerly bore: 'John Meikel, me fecit. Edr.,
1694.'
J. LINDSAY HILSON.

Public Library, Jedburgh.

stood to be only a poetical phrase. Here, at In these parts the "passing-bell" is underleast, it is popularly known as "the deed bell" (death bell). In our villages it is the practice, at the moment of death, to call up the sexton, who then goes to the church, and, without delay, rings out the announcement. "The passing-bell, or soul bell as it was also First of all he rings what are called "the termed, was tolled when a person was passing-tellers"; then, after a pause, he continues to whence the term-from this world into the next. toll slowly on his great bell. In some parts it invited prayers on behalf of the Dialect Society's Northumberland Glossary' In the English soul of the dying person, and in other parts of the country intercession for the soul of the the tellers are thus described :departed. This custom is distinctly referred to by Bede (A.D. 673-735) in connexion with the death of St. Hilda. The former of these was owing to the current belief that devils lay in wait in order to afflict the soul the very moment it was separated from the body, the opinion being that the sound of the bell had the power to terrify the evil spirits......The custom of tolling the bell at funerals dates back fully seven centuries; for Durand, who lived about the end of the twelfth century, informs us: A bell, too, must be rung when we are conducting the corpse to the church, and during the bringing it out of the church to the grave.'

When thou dost hear a toll or knell Then think upon thy passing-bell. "Another of the 'melancholy bells' employed at deaths and funerals was the dead bell...... Upon the death of a person in the times of which we speak, the intimation of such was immediately communicated to the inhabitants of the town or village. This was usually done,' says the Rev. Thomas Somerville, in his Times' (1741-1814), 'by the beadle or kirk officer, Life and who walked through the streets at a slow pace tinkling a small bell, sometimes called the dead bell and sometimes the passing-bell, and, with his head uncovered, intimated that a brother or sister, whose name was given, had departed this life. A few years ago the officer in Jedburgh was obliged to make this announcement at once,, however unreasonable the hour. A "lykewake," too, took place in the night or during the several nights intervening between the death and the funeral. As the intimation made by the passing-bell was understood to be a general invitation, great crowds attended the funeral. I may add that at the time to which I refer several of the female relatives walked in the rear of the funeral procession to the gate or

rung to tell the sex and age of a person just deceased. "Tellers, the successive strokes on a church bell, It is usual at village churches to knell the sex of an adult by nine strokes for a man, or six strokes for a woman, repeated on each of three bells. For a child three strokes are given and similarly repeated. Then follow a number of strokes on the treble bell to indicate the age, each stroke counting one year. In some places the age is given first.”

In village life all are neighbours and are acquainted with the ordinary circumstances of each other's households; so that the announcement of age and sex is generally sufficient for identification of the deceased person. When the function occurs through the night, its effect upon awakened villagers is a solemn experience, its impressiveness heightened by personal acquaintance with those for whom is heard the knell of the passing soul. R. OLIVER HESLOP.

Newcastle-upon-Tyne.

The tolling of the church bell at the burial of a parishioner is a custom identical in its origin with, and complementary to, that of tolling at the actual passing of the soul of the deceased (see Brand's 'Antiquities,' Bohn, 1854, vol. ii. p. 203). The passing-bell was, I think, sometimes called the soul bell, and the custom was prevalent much later than 1732, when Nelson alludes to it in his Fasts and Festivals of the Church' (p. 144). In hamlets and villages, where greater intimacy prevails among the people than in

cities, the tolling of the bell to register the
actual death-stroke is probably continued to
this day, and contributors will no doubt be
able to supply instances of the survival of
the "passing," as distinct from the "funeral"
bell, other than those furnished below. One
of the peculiar features of the practice is
the account rendered by the bellringer, in
the number of his strokes, of the age of the
deceased. In some districts it is always
rung exactly twenty-five hours after death,
the tenor bell for the adult and the treble for
a child, the big bell being reserved for
funerals. In rural districts, we are told in
Mr. William Andrews's 'Curious Church
Customs,' 1895, p. 129, after the passing-bell
has tolled, the sex of the deceased is indi-
cated most generally by tolling twice for a
woman and thrice for a man, and to this is
often added the age by giving one toll for
each year. In the Penny Post of 1 February,
1871, the passing-bell is described as being
then still rung "at a village near Grantham,
Lincolnshire" (p. 55). Up till 1865 in the
town of Guildford (and possibly it is still the
custom) the passing-bell was tolled every
morning after the parishioner's death until
the funeral morning; and a lady who died
about the year 1868, aged seventy-two,
remembered the passing-bell at Somerton, in
Oxfordshire.
Some information as to this
survival may also be found, I think, in
vols. xxi. and xxiv. of the Penny Post.
J. H. MACMICHAEL.
Passing-bells are by no means out of use in
very many parish churches, even in London.
At present, and as long as I can remember
during thirty years, announcements of the
nature in question are and were frequent
from the campanile of St. Peter's, Hammer-
smith. I remember the same custom obtain-
ing when I was a boy in the parish church of
Bermondsey.
0.

In the North the passing-bell is more generally known as the death bell. DR. MURRAY will find scores of references on the subject in past volumes of 'N. & Q.'

The Venerable Bede was perhaps the first to make mention of the passing bell, but if DR. MURRAY will look up Strutt's Manners and Customs' and Bourne's Antiquitates Vulgares,' he will, I think, find much of the information he desires.

Bradford.

CHAS. F. FORSHAW, LL.D.

The custom of tolling the passing-bell while a person is dying still prevails in Belgium, and probably in other Catholic countries as well. I recollect that while I was staying in

a religious house near Ghent some years since the bell was tolled at intervals all day for a member of the community who was on his death-bed. The death bell is, I believe, tolled in a different manner, so that those who hear it know at once whether it is for a passing soul or for one who has already passed. In some parts of Ireland the passing as well as the death bell are still rung, I am told, as no doubt they were in many places in England up till the commencement of the nineteenth FREDERICK T. HIBGAME. century.

I believe I am correct in saying that the passing-bell, as ordered by Canon 67, is still tolled at the parish church of Offham, St. Michael, in Kent. Why this ancient and most fitting custom should have been allowed to fall into disuse it is hard to say, but most probably negligence has been the cause, as is so often the case in regard to old customs.

JOHN SYDNEY HAM.

DR. SAMUEL HINDS, FORMERLY BISHOP OF NORWICH (10th S. i. 227).—I have made a considerable search as to the funeral of this wellknown prelate, but, so far, find no record of it. I was at the Guildhall Library about a fortnight ago, and mentioned the matter to an elderly clergyman, an entire stranger to me, who said that for a year or two before the bishop's resignation he was doing temporary duty in the Norwich diocese, and remembered many of the circumstances of the case. The bishop's resignation was entirely due to the way in which Mrs. Hinds (his second wife) was received in Norwich society. It was well known that she was much below him in station, and was (so my informant stated) a domestic servant in his household. The obituary notice of about a quarter of a column in the Times of Monday, 12 February, 1872, stated that "he resigned the see of Norwich in 1857, from domestic reasons much canvassed at the time, and retired into In the Times of the previous private life." Saturday, among the deaths, the notice reads::

"On the morning of the 7th inst., at his private residence at Notting Hill, after many years of continuous and great suffering, the Right Rev. Samuel Hinds, D.D., late Bishop of Norwich, in his 78th year."

The 'D.N.B.,' in its notice of Dr. Hinds, seems rather to bear out the statement of my clerical informant, for, while it gives full particulars of his first wife, his second marriage is thus recorded, "He married a second time some years before his death," no particulars as to his second wife being given. For many years he resided at Walmer House,

This bears out the Editor's note at the last reference, as it is evidently the song sung by Ferdinand, wherein Ariel echoes "Go thy ways," in an adaptation of 'The Tempest' by Davenant and Dryden. This fashion of alter-cruore. ing Shakespeare's plays is always to be taken into account when speaking of Pepys as a Shakespearean critic. In conclusion, may I quote a passage from some remarks that I made on this subject before the Shakespeare Club at Stratford-on-Avon ?