Notes On Literature, Science And Art.

elucidate the ecclesiastical history of Derbyshire . " Although a portion of Mr . Cox's interesting " Notes " had previously appeared in the Derbyshire Tunes , fully two-thirds of the volume is entirely original or else completely rewritten . Indeed the

modest title of our industrious and painstaking author ' s elaborate researches is likely to mislead the reader ; and antiquaries will , for ages to come , treasure tho work as one of the most valuable contributions to

an inexhaustible subject ever made in this country . The labour of such a work is immense ; for it is not a mere compilation from other books , but one of ori ginal research and the most careful verif ying of facts . The ClosePipePatentFine

, , , , Charter , Quo AVarranto , and Hundred Rolls , have all been dug deeply into , with the energy of a strong and skilful workman , whose heart is in his occupation . A careless labourer would never have been able to

give us the " word of warning which Mr . Cox does in the Preface to the present volume , and for which his brother antiquaries will certainly thank him , not to " rely wholly on the published abstracts of the old Record Commission , " as " in many respects they are faulty , and frequent

blunders occur in the appropriation of charters to their respective counties . " And he states as an instance , that " the church of Kneveton , in Nottinghamshire , is in several cases entered Kniveton , Derbyshire , " and that " nothing but a visit to

the Public Record Office , in Fetter Lane , or the procuring of a full transcript , " has saved him " from numerous pitfalls of this description . " The Taxation Roll of 1291 , the Valor Ecclesiasticus , the Chantry Rollsthe Inventories of Church Goods

, , the Parliamentary Survey of Livings , have all , he tells us , " again been laid under contribution . " The Heralds' Visitations , the Wolley and Mitchell MSS . in the British Museum , the Dodsworth and Ashmole MSS . in the Bodleian at Oxford ,

besides private collections of MSS ., and the Lichfield and Lincoln muniments and registers , have all been duly searched . "The latter , especially those of Lichfield , " Mr . Cox assures us , " are of great importance to the ecclesiologist : the Episcopal Registers , commencing in 1297 , are unusually complete and perfect , "—a fact one is delighted to learn , as those whose sacred

duty it was to have seen to the preservation of such documents have too often been then destroyers . Thus a well-paid funcionary at Durham , according to the Surtees Society , used to light his pipe with them , and glory in his shame ; and the Rev . John

Ryan , in his Histo-yof Shotley Spa and Vicinity of Shotley Bridge , says : — "Upon an inquiry being made about the most ancient registers" of the church of Muggloswick , in the same county of Durham , "it was said , and all the old people

confirmed the saying , ' The auld registers are in a bad state , for lang syne a parson ' s wife , when site was baking , used to tear the leaves out , to put her wigs [ whigs , a sort of tea-cake ] on . '" And my mother ' s cousin , the late Mr . George Coatesfor many years

, the leading medical practitioner in Middlesborough , told me that , in his boyhood , tho parish clerk's son at Hilton in Cleveland , used to cut strips of parchment from the parish registers to play with . So that one need not go back to the heating

of ovens with the muniments of monasteries in our English Bluebeard's time , to account altogether for the destruction of historical records which can never be

replaced , Lichfield is a really pretty gem among our English cathedrals , and one rejoices to know that the quiet old city which gave birth to sturdy Samuel Johnson placidly preserves among its archives materials so useful to the literary builderand only needing the penetrating

, eye of a Charles Cox to turn them to good account . "It will be seen , " says he , "from this analysis of the early Episcopal Registers at Lichfield , that an almost perfect list of tho rectors or vicars of the different Derbyshire parishes , from the

commencement of the fourteenth century downwards * might be formed . At one time I had the intention of attempting it ; but as these volumes are entirely unindexed , and as the writing is frequently close , crabbed , and contracted , to say nothing of numerous

places almost illegible from damp , or faded ink , I decided that the result aimed at woidd scarcely justify the enormous expenditure of time , I have , however , g iven lists of the rectors of Matlock and Eyam , as specimens of what may be clone in that

way , together with numerous occasional entries relative to the other churches . I hope , also , that I have not omitted a single