Notes and Queries, Number 07, December 15, 1849   By: Various

A MEDIUM OF INTER COMMUNICATION FOR LITERARY MEN, ARTISTS, ANTIQUARIES, GENEALOGISTS, ETC.

"When Found, make a note of." Captain Cuttle.

No. 7.] SATURDAY, DECEMBER 15, 1849. [Price Threepence. Stamped Edition 4d.

CONTENTS.

NOTES: Marriage Contract of Mary Queen of Scots Bill of Fare of 1626, by Rev. L.B. Larking Moneta Sanctae Helenae, by T. Hudson Turner Translations of Gray's Elegy On Authors and Books, No. 2, by Bolton Corney Minor Notes: Quotations from Pope Angels' Visits Extract from Register of North Runcton The Norman Crusader Lady Jane of Westmoreland Notes in answer to Queries: Lobster in Medal of Pretender Straw Necklaces Answers to Minor Queries: Ancient Motto Political Maxim Annus Trabeationis Betterton's Duties of a Player Betterton's Essay Incumbents of Church Livings Mare de Saham Reinerius Whelps Cowley or Cowleas

QUERIES: Berkeley's Theory of Vision Dr. Johnson and Professor de Morgan Caracciolli's Life of Lord Clive Suppressed Passages in Cartwright's Poems

MINOR QUERIES: Christencat Hexameter Verses in the Scriptures

MISCELLANEOUS: Notes on Books, Catalogues, Sales, &c. Books and Odd Volumes wanted Notices to Correspondents Advertisements

MARRIAGE CONTRACT OF MARY QUEEN OF SCOTS AND THE EARL OF BOTHWELL.

[Among the curious documents which have been produced from time to time before the House of Lords in support of peerage claims, there have been few of greater historical interest than the one which we now reprint from the Fourth Part of the Evidence taken before the Committee of Privileges on the Claim of W. Constable Maxwell, Esquire, to the title of Lord Herries of Terregles. It is a copy of the Contract of Marriage between Queen Mary and the Earl of Bothwell, which, although it is said to have been printed by Carmichael, in his Various Tracts relating to the Peerage of Scotland, extracted from the Public Records , has not been referred to by Robertson, or other historians of Scotland, not even by the most recent of them, Mr. Tytler.

Mr. Tytler tells us that on the 12th of May, 1567, Bothwell was created Duke of Orkney, "the Queen with her own hands placing the coronet on his head," and that the marriage took place on the 15th of May, at four o'clock in the morning in the presence chamber at Holyrood; and that on the following morning a paper, with this ominous verse, was fixed on the palace gate:

"Mense malas Maio nubere vulgus ait."

The Contract, which is dated on the fourteenth of May, is preserved in the Register of Deeds in the Court of Session (Vol. IX. p. 86.), and as the copy produced before the House is authenticated and consequently it may be presumed a more strictly accurate one than that which Carmichael has given it seems well deserving of being transferred to our columns, and so made more available to the purposes of the historian, than it has been found to be in Carmichael's Tract , or is likely to be when buried in a Parliamentary Blue Book.]

"Decimo quarto Maij anno domini ts. lxvij, "Sederunt dni sessionis clericus regri.