LONDON, SATURDAY, JANUARY 21, 1905.

CONTENTS.-No. 56. NOTES:-The Nail and the Clove, 41-Disbenched Judges, 43-Father Paul Sarpi in English Literature, 44-Books of Lady Dilke-The Lyceum Theatre, 45-Lady Carnegie, afterwards Countess of Southesk-George Romney, 1610"But for the grace of God there goes John Bradford," 46 -Extraordinary Tide in the Thames-Robert Bloomfield 'Gutta cavat lapidem "-Marvell's Poems and Satires, 47 QUERIES:-Eighteenth-Century Plays-Charles I. in Spain - Farmer of Hartshill, 48- Danish Surnames

this?"-"As such "-Heraldic Mottoes-Sailors' Chanties

smith's Edwin and Angelina,' 49- Notes on Genesis'

Duelling-Edmond and Edward--John Cope, Engraver "God called up from dreams" "And has it come to -"God rest you merry' "Gospel of fatness"-GoldWarren-Municipal Documents-"Je ne viens qu'en Pig hanging a Man - Arithmetic "T. D." Richard

mourant," 50.

REPLIES:-Split Infinitive, 51-Coliseums Old and New,

52-"To have a month's mind "-Maze at Seville, 51

Roman Theatre at Verulam-Sir William Calvert-Verse Translations of Molière-Tarleton and the Sign of "The Tabor," 55-Cross in the Greek Church-London Cemeteries in 1860-"The Crown and Three Sugar Loaves". Holborn, 56-Bringing in the Yule "Clog"-Bishop of

it has been to me, I believe I shall be pardoned for its length.

Of the earliest lineal measures, the chief was the natural cubit, the length of the forearm from elbow to finger-tip, the mean measurement of which in men is about 18 inches. It was divided into 6 palms, or hands, each of 4 digits or finger-breadths. The division of the cubit into 24 digits probably influenced the use of this number in other measures, the scruple-division of the ounce, the grain-division of the pennyweight, and perhaps the astronomical day, into 12 digits was the first step in the duojust as the division of the half cubit or span decimal system.

Walker Family, 57.

NOTES ON BOOKS:-'Roger Ascham's English Works

Register.'

Booksellers' Catalogues.

Notices to Correspondents.

Notes.

THE NAIL AND THE CLOVE. IN the Oxford English Dictionary' the word clove (sb.") is acknowledged to be a difficulty:

"It is identical with L. clavus, 'nail,' which was also used as a lineal measure (see nail); but how the measure and weight were related is not known. Nor does it appear how the English form of the word came to be clove, although its phonetic history may have been parallel to that of clore, sb.2."

66

The term is defined as a weight formerly used for wool and cheese, equal to 7 or 8 lbs. avoirdupois."

I owe so much gratitude to the O.E.D.' that I have tried to solve the problem, and perhaps my essay may be of use when "nail" comes to the front.

My study of the subject leads me to the conclusion that the L. clavus and the Fr. clou were blundering equivalents for "nail"; the scribes of the time had got hold of the wrong nail. I propose to show this by the development of the word, first as a measure, then as a weight. It is a rather long story, for it is an episode connected with the rise of our system of measures and weights from their origin; but if the story is half as interesting to readers of N. & Q. as the working out of

adding a rather short palm (as in the cubit and a handbreadth of Ezekiel), and making this builder's cubit contain 7 palms, each of 4 digits, slightly shorter divisions than those of the common cubit. The hieroglyphic of the digit is a finger.

Before going further it may be well to note the usual divisions of the common cubit, whether in Egypt or in other countries.

1. The foot, a convenient measure, twothirds of the cubit, divided into 4 palms or 16 digits.

2. The span, half of the cubit and equal to about 9 of our inches. It has always and everywhere been a popular measure. In Southern France the popular cloth-measure, in despite of the metric system of the franchiman Government, is still the pan. The pawn of Geans (palmo of Genoa) is one of the measures mentioned in Recorde (1654). In England women measure cloth by the long finger or half-span, the length of the middle finger, from tip to knuckle, bent.

3. The palm or hand, the palmus minor. Originally 3 inches (4 digits) in England, it rose to 4 inches, becoming thus the "hand" of horse-measure.

4. I mention pour mémoire the scaft-mund of Anglo-Saxon times, or hand-shaft, the Italian sommesso - the fist with thumb extended, equal to about half a foot.

The span of the Greeks, half the Egyptian common cubit, was divided into 12 daktuloi; the Romans divided their somewhat shorter palmus major into 12 unciæ. The palmo of Por

tugal-exactly, to a hundredth of an inch, the Roman palmus (equal to 8.74 inches)-is divided into 12 dedos or digits. The modern Roman palmo (equal to 8.79 inches) is, or was, of 12 oncie, and the foot, piede, is of 16; this supports the view that the ancient uncia was, originally at least, the twelfth of the palmus major. Passing to the foot-the Greek pous (the Olympic foot, two-thirds of the Egyptian common cubit) was divided, like the modern Roman piede, into 16 daktuloi, of which the span had 12. The Roman foot, originally the same as the Greek foot, was shortened so that 5,000 feet should make the Greek land-mile of 8 stadia. It is probable that there were two divisions of the Roman foot: the original, into 16 unciæ or digiti; a later one into 12 pollices, thumb-breadths, sometimes called uncice in the generic sense of twelfths, the uncia occupying the honorary position as the twelfth of the foot, while the pollex (It. pollice, Fr. pouce) was the actual twelfth. The L. oncia, from Gr. ὀγκία, connected with ὄνυξ, certainly had the original meaning of a nail, a nail-breadth, and was thus akin to unguis. In India we find the span divided into 12 ungli, or nails. In France once or oince meant a nail.

In England for many centuries there was the same double series of lineal measures as in other countries. From the span came the popular ell-measures-the Flemish ell of 3 spans, the English and Scottish yard-ell of 4 spans, the English ell of 5 spans, corresponding to the French aune. The span was probably, as with other peoples, divided into 12 ongkice, nails or inches, for ynce, unch, or "inch" (with its doublet" ounce") is obviously derived from the Roman term. But the foot also arose at a very early period of English history. Perhaps it may not be superfluous to remark that the foot is not taken from the length of the human foot, any more than the thumb-breadth or a barleycorn was the unit of length, or a grain of some cereal the primitive unit of weight. The foot, like the minor measures, was at first a fraction (generally two-thirds) of a cubit, and was so named from its being, very roughly, about the length of a very long human foot. Our foot is not the short Roman foot, nor the long Rhineland foot of Scotland, nor the still longer French foot. It is a foot peculiar to our country, and evolved here scientifically; it became the standard measure of England, and was divided into 12 parts, called "inches," leaving the synonym "nails" for the 16 digits or nail-breadths which it contained as an extension of the popular span. In course of time it was found desirable, in order to estab

lish the use of the foot, to adopt a measure combining it with the span. So the "yard" or verge," of 3 feet, divided into 4 spans, or quarters, became a standard lineal measure. It had a rival in the ell of 5 spans (=45 inches), which survived, principally in arithmetical exercise books, up to about the last century. Now, how were these two ells, that of 4 spans and that of 5 spans, divided for cloth measure? In Wingate's Arithmetick,' 1670, I find "That a Yard, as also an Ell, is usually subdivided into four Quarters, and each Quarter into four Nails." Cocker, 1677, says the same in almost the same words.

So a nail denoted a sixteenth, either of the 4-span yard or of the 5-span ell; not any distinct length. It had become, like the Indian "anna," the generic term for a sixteenth. But with the gradual disuse of the ell the nail became the synonym of the sixteenth of a yard, and it is still among the standard imperial measures.

Passing to "nail" as a weight, we find a development of the same idea of its being a sixteenth part. Just as L. uncia, It. oncia, from the twelfth of a span, became the sixteenth of a foot, so Fr. once, from one-twelfth of the duodecimal pound, became one-sixteenth of the livre poids de marc; and so the Roman ounce, the basis of all our weights and measures (except the royal troy pound, now happily obsolete), became the sixteenth of our averdepois pound. Thus "ounce," a doublet of unch or ynch, brought the idea of "nail" into our weights as well as our measures.

Here I tread on ground beset with pitfalls. The importance of the wool trade as a source of revenue to the Plantagenet kings led to much confused legislation on our weights. The mess which the statutes of our kings, especially the Plantagenets, made with our weights and measures, creates a difficulty in distinguishing the royal fictive standards from the real standards of commerce. The greater part of the statutes on the subject is fiction, often deliberate fiction, out of which the truth is extracted with difficulty. One thing is certain-that our weights were on the convenient sexdecimal system from the dram, through the ounce, the pound, the stone, 16 of each unit making one of the next, up to the wey, or "weigh," of 256 pounds, the weight of a coomb, or boll, or half-quarter of wheat; then 8 weys were equal to a chaldron, the measure of 20 true hundredweights of wheat. Some of these larger units were halved for convenience; the wey, or load, would thus be halved to correspond with the weight carried on each side of the

pack-saddle. This lesser wey would contain 16 of the lesser stone, the London stone of 8 pounds, a weight so convenient that it survives to this day in the meat trade, and I believe in the Eastern counties for cheese. When Edward III. raised the hundred weight to 112 pounds, he divided it into 4 quarters, and each quarter into 4 units of 7 pounds. Now what name should be given to this weight? The term "nail" presents itself at once as applicable to the sixteenth of the new hundredweight. And so it was used in this sense. Andrew Halyburton, the merchant trading from the Netherlands, before 1500, uses "nall," plural "nallis," for the 7 pound weight of wool. How would the scribes of Plantagenet times, ignorant of the human origin of the term "nail," render it in their law Latin and French? Very naturally they blundered, and rendered it by L. clavus and Fr. clou, cloue, or, in the script of the time, clove. Apparently these terms "nail" and "clove" took with the people, especially the latter, and so we find the London stone of 8 pounds sometimes called a clove. Quotations under 'Clove' in the 'O.E.D.' show the wey as of 32 cloves, each by statute of 7 pounds, but by custom of 8 pounds.

One quotation (1328) is: "quæ quidem trona continet in se quatuor pisas et quatuor clavos," meaning "which Tron balance has in (or with) it 4 'weighs' or weys and 4 cloves." Now I came across, in the Guildhall Library, a document of very recent date quoting an order of 1297, in which it is said that the wool tron for the town of Lynne "continet in se quatuor pisas et quatuordecim clavos." This is translated as an auncel weighing machine provided with "4 burden points and 14 pivots or pins." So here the thirteenth-century scribe puts "nail" into Latin as clavus, and "wey" as pisa, and the end-of-the-nineteenth-century antiquary restores clavus as a pin, and pisa as the burden point of a steelyard.

It is interesting to observe how the scribes capped their rendering of "nail" as clavus by translating" weigh" as pisa. I think it probable that both terms were put into French and then into Latin. One clerk would naturally translate "weigh" by pois, as in aver de pois; then some bright colleague, perhaps the ingenious inventor of clou and clavus, would put pois into Latin in the leguminous form of pisum, modifying its termination in accordance with the old English pisa, pease.

The story I have attempted to tell shows the trend of the human mind towards three factors of measure: 24, 12, 16 (or 8). The

first gives way to the duodecimal system, which in its turn gives way, except perhaps for money, to the sexdecimal system, the system which is on the whole best adapted to mental calculation. Agricultural folk, labourers, women, prefer a system enabling them to double and to halve almost indefinitely, while offering them resting-places at superior or inferior units with familiar names, as, for instance, in our measures of capacity. Our "nail" system resembles the "anna system of India, where that term means a sixteenth. It matters little that there is no actual anna coin; the idea of a sixteenth as a division of the rupee or of any other unitland, a venture, a crop-is most convenient to the popular mind. EDWARD NICHOLSON. 1, Huskisson Street, Liverpool.

DISBENCHED JUDGES.

THE following notes are intended as supplementary to the articles on Mr. Justice Holloway and Mr. Baron Ingleby in the 'Dict. Nat. Biog.' In printing them I may mention that I have not as yet seen the lately published volume of additions and

corrections.

Sir Richard Holloway, "being well in health and of good and disposeing mind and memory, but by reason of his age infirme," made his will at Oxford, on 12 January, “in the eighth yeare of the Reigne of William the third, &c., 1696." The Spartan simplicity of the allusion to the reigning monarch by the sturdy old Jacobite is certainly comical. There were four sons: 1. John (born about 1661, died February, 1720), of St. John's College, Oxford, and of the Inner Temple, barrister-at-law. 2. Richard (born about 1664, died 10 September, 1681), of Christ Church, Oxford, and a student of the Inner Temple (1678). 3. Henry (born about 1667, died November, 1741), of Christ Church, Oxford, and of the Inner Temple, barristerat-law. 4. Peter, likewise a lawyer. To his eldest son John Sir Richard gave all his interest in his lodgings in Serjeants' Inn, in Fleet Street, London, and property "in Hockmore Streete, in the parish of Ifley, in the county of Oxon" (now transferred from Iffley to Cowley). His daughter Elizabeth Holloway was given "the house I live in, being held of Magdalen College, in Oxon, for the Terme of forty Yeares"; also, "all that meadow of pasture ground called ffryars, or the Grey ffryers, lying in or near the parish of St. Ebbe, in Oxford." Property at Church Cowley and Temple Cowley is likewise named. Holloway died at Oxford in the beginning of