"To these Long Beards then, whom thou hast named, let the victory happen." Thus saith the history.

Rhodegondis was Queen of France, but after her not any. Now, some may demand the reason, why the Salic law was made, by which all women were made incapable of succession in the principalities, which (as Polycronicon relates) was this:-The Crown lineally descending to a Princess of the blood, whom, for modesty's sake, he forbears to name, or at least their Chronicles are loath to publish; this lady having many princely suitors, neglected them all, and fell in love with a butcher at Paris, whom she privately sent for, and as secretly married; since which time, all of that sex were, by an irrevocable decree, disabled of all Sovereignty.

dwelt in Pannomia, and were governed by the King Albinus; the reason why they were first so called, was this: in the time that Justinus, sirnamed the Less, wore the Imperial purple, Narses the eunuch had fought under him many brave and victorious battles against the Goths, who had usurped the greatest part of Italy, from whence he expelled them, slew their King, and freed the whole country from many outrages. Notwithstanding his great good service, he was calumniated to the Emperor, and so hated by the Empress Sophia, that she sent him word, "that she would make him lay by his sword and armour, and with a distaff spin wool amongst her maids;" to which message he returned answer, "that he would make such a thread to put in her loom, that all the weavers in the empire should scarce make good Cassiope, was the famous Queen cloth on." Upon this ground he sent of Ethiope: Harpalice, of the Amato Albinus, King of the Huns, who zons; Hippolite, of Magnesia; Teuca, then inhabited Pannomia, asking him of the Illyrians. Amongst whom, let why he would dwell in the barren me not be so unnatural to merit, or so continent of Pannomia, when the ungrateful to my country (thrice most fertile country of Italy lay blest and divinely happy in her most open to his invasion? Albinus, ap- fortunate reign) as not to remember prehending the encouragement from that celebrated Princess Elizabeth of Narses, in the year 668 made his first England; she was the Saba for her incursion into the Emperor's con- wisdom, an Harpalice for her magfines, of which he having intelligence, nanimity, a Cleopatra for her bounty, caused all the women to untie their a Camilla for her chastity, an Amahair, and fasten it about their chins, lasemtha for her temperance, a Zethereby to seem men and make the nobia for her learning and skill in number of his army appear the greater. language; of whose omniscience and The spies observing them, wondered goodness all men heretofore have amongst themselves, and asked what spoken too little, no men hereafter strange people these were with the can write too much. To her suclong beards? And from hence their ceeded (though not in her absolute names were first derived, which hath monarchy, yet a Princess of unspotsince been remarkable as the most ted fame, incomparable clemency, pleasant and fertile climate of all matchless goodness, and most reItaly from them called Lombardy.-markable virtue) Queen Anne, whom Others say, that when they went to fight against the Vandals, there was a man that had the spirit of prophecy, whom they besought to pray for them, and their good success in the battle; when the prophet went to his orisons, the Queen had placed herself and her women just against the window where he prayed, with their hair disposed as before mentioned; and just as he ended his devotions, they opened their casements and appeared to him, who presently said to himself, what be these Long beards? To whom the Queen replied,

all degrees honoured, all nations loved, and no tongue was ever heard to asperse with the least calumny. Yours, &c.

Mr. URBAN,

W. R.

Queen-sq. Bloomsbury, Dec. 10.

NE asking a Lacedemonian,

66

long?" He answered, "The ignorance of physick."

The Emperor Adrian continually exclaimed, as he was dying, "that

the

the crowd of physicians had killed him *."

An ill wrestler turned physician: "Courage," says Diogenes to him, "thou hast done well, for now thou wilt throw those who have formerly thrown thee t." But physicians have this advantage, according to Nicocles, "That the sun gives light to their success, and the earth covers their miscarriages +."

Plato said, "that physicians were the only men that might lie without controul, since our health depends upon the vanity and falsity of their promises."

had bought a Morisco slave, believing that his black complexion was accidental in him, and occasioned by the ill usage of his former master, caused him to enter into a course of physick, and with great care, to be often bathed and drenched: it happened, that the Moor was nothing amended in his tawny complexion, but he wholly lost his former health."

Two pleasant Stories.

The Baron of Caupene in Chalogne and another, had between them the advowson of a benefice of great extent at the foot of the mountains called Labontan. It was with the inhabitants of this angle, as it is said of those of the vale of Angrougue. “They lived a peculiar sort of life, had particular fashions, clothes, and manners," and were ruled and governed by certain particular laws and usages, received from father to son, to which they submitted, without other constraint than the reverence due to custom. This little es

Esop pleasantly represents the tyrannical authority physicians usurp over poor creatures, weakened and dejected by sickness and fear; he says, "that a sick person being asked by his physician what operation he found of the medicines he had given him?" "I have sweat very much," says the sick man; "that is good," says the physician; another time, having asked him, "How he felt himself after his physick?" "Itate had continued from all antiquity have been very cold, and have had a great shivering upon me," said he; "that is good," replied the physician: After a third dose, he asked him again, "How he did?" Why, I find myself swelled and puffed up," said he, "as if I had the dropsy." "Better still," said the physician; one of his servants coming presently after to enquire, "how he felt him self?"Truly, friend," said he," with being too well, I am about to die."

66

There was a law in Egypt, by which the physician, for the three first days, was to take charge of his patient at the patient's own peril and fortune; but those three days being passed, it was to be at his own.

A physician boasting to Nicocles ¶ "that his art was of great authority;" "It is so, indeed," said Nicocles, "that can, with impunity, kill so many people."

Esop ** tells a story, "that one who

in so happy a condition, that no neighbouring Judge was ever put to the trouble of inquiring into their quarrels, no advocate ever retained to give them counsel, nor stranger ever called in to compose their differences; nor was ever any of them seen so reduced as to go begging. They avoided all alliances and traffick with the rest of mankind, that they might not corrupt the purity of their own government; till, as they say,

66

one of them, in the memory of their fathers, having a mind spurred on with a noble ambition, contrived, in order to bring his name into credit and reputation, to make one of his sons something more than ordinary, and, having put him to learn to write, made him, at last, a brave scrivener for the village: this fellow being grown up, began to disdain their ancient customs, and to buzz into the people's ears the pomp of the other

*Liphilinus on Epitome Dionis Vitå Adriani.

Diog. Laert. on the Life of Diogenes the Cynic, lib. vi. sect. 60. Chap. 146, of the Collection of the Monks Antonius and Maximus. § De Repub. lib. iii.

Fab. xliii.

P. 652, chap. 146, of the Collection of the Monks, Antonius and Maximus; printed at the end of Stobæus. Barbeyrae thinks this Nicocles, who here banters a certain quack, is the famous King of Salamina, to whom Socrates addressed one of his Orations. **Fab. lxxv.

parts

parts of the nation the first prank he played was, to advise a friend of his, whom somebody had offended by sawing off the horns of one of his she goats, to make his complaint of it to the King's Judges thereabouts, and so he went on in this practice till be spoiled all."

Baron, has frequently changed its possessors: it was antiently in the hands of the Blounts, and others, until it was possessed by the Stonor family, whose arms are on the North window of the Chancel, and thus blazoned.

the greatest part of the estate is now in possession of the neighbouring gentry by purchase.

Azure, two Bars Dancettée Or, In the progress of this corruption a chief of the last. It was an Oxthere happened another of more con- fordshire family of considerable ansequence, by means of a physician tiquity, and remarkable for its landwho fell in love with one of their ed property, which at one time daughters, had a mind to marry her, reached from Watlington to Readand to live amongst them." Thising, in length at least 15 miles; but man, first of all, began to teach them the names of fevers, rheurus, and impostumes, the seat of the heart, liver, and intestines,-a science, till then, utterly unknown to them, and instead of garlick, in which they were wont to cure all manner of diseases, how painful or extreme soever, he taught them, though it were but for a cough, or any little cold, to taste strange mixtures; and began to make a trade, not only of their healths, but of their lives. -They swear that, till then, they never perceived the evening air to be offensive to the head, nor that to drink when they were hot was hurtful, nor that the winds of autumn were more unwholesome than those of the spring; that since this use of physick they find themselves oppressed with a legion of unusual diseases, and that they perceive a general decay in their wonted vigour, and their lives are cut shorter by the half." W. R.

DUDCOTE, or DIDCOT, in the Hundred
of MORTON, co. BERKS.
T was supposed by an ingenious An-

IT

tiquary in its neighbourhood (Mr. Matthews, Attorney at Law of Wallingford) to borrow its etymology from Thud, in the Saxon language, or Toad in English; he having observed that many, if not most, of the villages in its neighbourhood, derive their names from animals; such as Moalesford, or Malesford; Starwell, or Starewell; Stagbourn, from Stage, a Serpent, and a multitude of others.

The extent of the Village is two miles and a half in length, one mile and a quarter in breadth, six miles and a half in circumference, and contains eleven hundred and sixteen acres.

The number of houses in it are twenty-seven, which contain about two hundred inhabitants.

John Stonore, whose tomb yet remains in Dorchester Church, was Chief Justice of the King's Bench in 1330, vid. Kennet's Par. Antiq. fol. 403. 465-6. 474.- Thos. de Stonore was witness to a grant of a manor, lands, &c. from Sir Robt. de Poynynges, &c. to Joan, relict of Sir R. Camoys in the year 1416, vid. ut supra, fol. 561-677.-In Wood's MSS. at Oxford, No. 8465, may be found the Pedigree of Stonor, as collected and fairly transcribed by Mr. Sheldon of Beoley (co. Warwick), who was the greatest Collector of Genealogic and Heraldic matter that perhaps ever lived.

The Manor was sold free by Thos. Stonor, esq. in the year 1663, to Mr. White, who disposed of it to Mr. Richard Blake, whose son Henry in the year 1778, sold it to John Baker, esq.

The Church, which is a strong Norman edifice, was probably dedicated to St. Michael, from the feast being on the Sunday next after Michaelmas.

The Register commences in the year 1562.

The Living is a Rectory, with no appropriation of tithes but to the Incumbent. Its antiquity appears in an extract from an antient valuation of the benefices in Berks (an old Manuscript, in folio, in the Archives of the Public Library at Oxon), entitled, "Liber Taxationum omnium beneficiorum in Anglia," supposed to have been compiled ann. 20 Edw. I. 1292. Decanatus de Abendon, Ecclesia de Dudecote, 15 marcs.

5 Sept. 1689, 1st W. and M. Robert Lydall, Citizen of London, and FishThe Manor, which holds a Court inonger, and Richard Matthew, of

Hamsted