the band long consisted of members of the first families in England.

This band, known at first by the appellation of "The King's Spears," owes its origin to the magnificent taste of King Henry the Eighth, who, in making this addition to the splendour of his Court, seems to have taken the idea from the institution of the Yeomen of the Guard, by his father, although the motives of the two menarchs differed widely.*

The characteristic magnificence of their founder was conspicuous in their organization. They consisted at first of fifty noblemen and gentlemen, called the "King's Spears;" each of whom was attended by a demilauncer, (who was a gentleman,) an archer, and a custrel, or horse-boy; they had, besides, three led destriers, or warhorses. The following account of their institution and appointments is taken from Hall's Chronicle, vol. ii. fol. 6.

"Also this yere, [viz. 1509, 1 Hen. VIII.] the kyng ordeined fiftie gentlemenne to bee speres, euery of them to haue an archer, a demilaunce, and a custrell; and euery

These thynges thus passed," [viz. the appointment of a Privy Council, and other arrangements of affairs of state, by Henry VII. in the 1st year of his reign.] "Albeyt, that apparauntly all thynges semed to be reduced to a good poynte, and set in a sure steye: Kynge Henry beyng made wyse and expert with troubles and myschiefes before past, remembred that yt was wisdome to feare & prouide for the crafty wyles and lurkyng trappes of his secret enemyes, remembryng all me' for the moost parte embrued & exercysed in plantyng of diuision and sowynge dissencion, can not lightely leaue their pestiferous appetite & sedicious occupacion. Wherefore, for the saueguard and preseruation of his owne bodye, he co'stituted & ordeyned a certayn numbre as well of good archers as of diuerse other persons beinge hardy, stronge, and of agilitie, to geue dailye attendance on his person, whom he named Yomen of his Garde, whiche president men thought that he learned of the Frenche king when he was in Frau'ce: for men remembre not any Kyng of England before that tyme whiche vsed svch a furnyture of daily souldyours." Hall's Chron. 1542. vol. 2. fo. iii. 1 Hen. VII.

GENT. MAG. VOL. III.

SO

spere to haue three greate horses, to bee attendaunt on his persone, of the which bande the Erle of Essex was Lieuetenant, and Sir John Pechie Capitain; who endured but awhile, the apparell and charges were greate; for there were none of theam but thei and their horses were apparelled and trapped in clothe of golde, silver, and goldesmithes worke, and their servaunts richely appareled also."

Thus it appears the enormous expense attending this office, (for which I do not find that they received any remuneration,) caused the dissolution of the band, as originally constituted. They were soon remodelled, however, and though still consisting of nobles and knights of the leading families of the kingdom, they received a pension towards defraying the necessary expenses. I am unable to affix the exact date to this change, but in a contemporary MS. account of the coronation of Edw. VI. I find frequent mention of the “Pensioners" in the processions and other ceremonies, without any remark or explanation, which would argue that the name and office were not very recent.

Under Queen Mary there are frebut I have not met with any partiquent notices of this body collectively,

cular account of them.

Under Queen Elizabeth they were in high estimation, and consisted entirely of nobility and gentry of the best families. Indeed, serving the Queen as a Pensioner, was an object of ambition to the young men of the highest distinction. Sir John Holles, of Houghton, co. Notts. Knt. afterwards Earl of Clare, used to say, that while he was a Pensioner of Queen Elizabeth, "he did not know a worse man than himself in the whole band," and he was then in possession of £4,000 per annum.

Under King James I. and his son Charles I. the Gentlemen Pensioners do not seem to have numbered SO many men of high rank in their band, as under the virgin Queen, who is well known to have taken the greatest pains to fill all, even the subordinate places in her household, from the flower of the gentry.

They still, however, continued i'v

high repute, and that they were jealous of the honour of their station, as belonging to pure gentry, will appear from the subjoined award of the Earl Marshall in 1632.

By this it appears that the band took exceptions to the appointment of Master George Baker, on the ground that he was no gentleman. It need hardly be explained that this charge did not then imply the censure understood by such an expression at the present day. It had no reference to the personal qualifications of the individual, but merely implied that he was not a gentleman of blood and coat armour;" or, as the French heralds express it, un ancien gentelhomme," or gentleman of ancient descent. It is quite evident that Master George Baker was (in the phrase of the present day) "moving in good society," for I find that he was at this time married to Jane, daughter of Sir Robert Hutton, Knt. one of the Justices of the Common Pleas, which, in times when fashion had not supplanted rank, would have been considered a rather high connection. It will be seen that the result of this solemn investigation was favourable to Mr. Baker, and that he established his gentry.

Lansdowne MSS. 873. fo. 69. "Whereas exceptions hath lately been taken by some of his Majesty's Gentlemen Pensioners, that Mr. George Baker, newly admitted of that Band, was no gentleman, and therefore unfit to serve his Majesty in that place of that nearness, being of that eminence and that credit, upon his Majesty's speciall co'mand given in that behalf, I have, calling unto me, as assistants, the Right Honourable the Lord Chamberlaine of his Majesty's Household, and other Lords, (and certain Officers of Armes being likewise present,) convented the said George Baker before me, who for justification of his gentry, produced several certificates, under the hands and seals of

Thomas Baker, of Battle; Thomas Baker, of Mayfield, in the county of Sussex; and John Baker, of Groom-bridge, in the county of Kent, whereby the said parties do testify and acknowlege that the said George Baker is lineally discended from Richard Baker, younger son of Thomas, common auncestor of their family; and that they do and have

always heretofore taken and held the said George Baker to be their kinsman, and a younger branch of their house; which family of the Bakers, and their coat of armes, by the testimony of the officers then present, are found entred in severall maining in the Office of Armes, whereby books of visitations and funeralls, reit appeareth that they are ancient Gen

tlemen of Descent and Coat Armour. In consideration of which premisses, I have thought fit to certify that the said George Baker hath sufficiently proved himself to be a gentleman; and that of right, he ought of all men to be so reputed and

esteemed.

MR. URBAN,

H. N. C.

June 12.

In the course of a correspondence which took place in your Magazine between certain anonymous and very virulent opponents of mine, and myself, touching the state of Saxon philology in England, a good deal of stress was laid upon the question of accents. I now redeem the pledge given by me, to explain the system upon which 1 act, in common with the profoundest philologists in Europe. I do this, not because I have any hope of convincing the persons who have done me the honour to select me as the mark for their abuse, or because I think that it can

ever signify whether they are convinced or not, but for the purpose of giving information to those who desire and deserve it. The facts of the case are few and simple. It is quite certain that in all Saxen, Norse, and German MSS., some marks are placed over the vowels for some purpose or other: Some MSS. have more, some fewer of these marks; and the MSS. even of one period are not always consistent in their use of them. In what I am about to write 1 shall confine myself to the Saxon MSS., and to a few remarks upon the Norse in connexion with the Saxon. My reason for omitting the German MSS. here, is that they have a double system, one part of which appears to have to do with quantity, the other with tone.

Taking all Saxon MSS. without distinction of time and period, the accentuation seems to denote one of three things:

1o. That the accented vowel is long, i. e. ee, but én, oo, and ó=w. 2o, and very rarely, that the vowel is emphatically marked out for the purpose of particular distinction; and this is equivalent to italics with us; thus the Cott. MSS. of Elfric's grammar speaks of a word which ends with a short e, þæt ge-endia on sceortne é.

3o. Some words are accented for the same purpose of peculiar distinction, as under similar circumstances we use either a capital initial or capitals as in speaking of the Almighty or the Saviour by the third personal pronoun, where we should print He, or HE, the Saxon sometimes wrote Hé; but it is quite clear that in these cases it is the word and not the vowel that is accented.

The first case, which indeed is the only case concerning which any dispute has arisen (for the anonymous railers, who talk so much of the authority of MSS., were never aware of the practice of MSS. in the other two

Gothic. Old High Dutch. O. Saxon. Guth.

Gods.

Máins.

Kot.

Guot.

Mein.

points, at all), is the one to which I shall confine myself. Generally speaking, the older a MS. is, the fewer of these marks are to be found in it: they are then principally used as a distinction between words which, were it not for the difference in the length of their vowels, would be spelled alike. Take, for example, a few such words; ac, sed, ác, quercus ; ful, plenus, fûl, sordidus; is, est, ís, glacies; man, homo, mán, nefas; god, deus, gód, bonus; ne, non, né, nec; hof, atrium, hóf, extuli; heoru, ensis, heóru (nom. fem.) mitis; wid, contra, wi, liga; galan, canere, gálan (acc. def.) lascivum, &c. &c. &c.

In all these cases the marks in the MSS. correspond accurately to the relations borne by these vowels to one another in all the Teutonic languages; and these relations I shall take leave to look at a little more closely by and by, because one of your bungling men without a name has ventured to fall foul of James Grimm for

establishing and denoting them.

There is some little use, Mr. Urban, in maintaining these distinctions; although it is no doubt a bitter annoyance to your idle and ignorant friends, to be compelled either to give up the point as hopeless for Saxon, or else to study the Teutonic tongues, en masse : but we shall still feel obliged to require this of them, if it be only for the sake of forcing them to spare us the twaddle which they sometimes favour us with, from their ignorance of these distinctions :-for example, it has been gravely asserted, that the Saxons were deeply impressed with the goodness of God, and the wickedness of man's nature, (in spite of the Teutonic God, and probable Demiurgus, Mannus) as to have but one word for God and good, and one for man and evil. This is pretty and plausible, and has indeed but one fault, viz., the not having a word of truth in it. Mark!

Ang.-Sax.

God.

SO

Manna. Man. Man. So much for the theosophic and psychological views of the Saxons, respecting God and man, and good and evil. Those who do not like the

trouble of studying till they can set themselves right, may stick to the apparent coincidence between the Saxon forms, and reject not only the

distinction of accent, but that on which the distinction rests, viz., the comparison of the cognate tongues. So far what the earlier MSS. intended: but did they always stick to this? I answer, that they very seldom took the trouble to do any such thing: they very seldom thought it worth while to make distinctions for the eye, which were made by the voice in speaking, and which the context would always ascertain. But thus much the MSS. did; whenever they accented, they accented the long vowels; and what those long vowels were I will enumerate below. The second and somewhat later class of MSS. sometimes, and most capriciously in general, extended these accentuations to certain vowels, not naturally long, but rendered so by position: this I attribute entirely to Danish influence, certain vowels becoming long in Norse before certain consonants, although naturally short, and remaining short in all the Tuetonic tongues but the Norse. It is here that I think Rask errs; he followed very often his Norse analogies, and they misled him. It is here that I think Thorpe errs, when he builds upon the class of MSS. I describe as supporting Rask's views. I reject utterly the accentuation of such words as ún, wórd, &c. They are Norse accentuations, but not Saxon. The last class of MSS. are nearly all subsequent to the Conquest, and in addition to all the accumulated errors of other MSS., whether these be errors of ignorance, or the still more frequent errors of carelessness, they accent almost every i, especially where it is possible to confound it with the stroke of a u, an m or n; and some, indeed, go so far as to accent nearly every vowel indiscriminately. But there is yet a word to be said respecting Saxon MSS.: those who are very anxious to save themselves the trouble of learning how the vowels should be accented, make a great parade respecting the authority of the MSS. those who are familiar with Saxon MSS. are equally well aware, that these literateurs à la violette are not familiar with Saxon MSS. or with any MSS. whatever; nay, even that they do not know what is the case with every editor of a Greek or Latin classic. Do these profound in

vestigators of languages suppose that Dr. Blomfield would have printed the first line of the Prometheus Χθώνως μην εις τελουρων εκομην πηδων, even if he had found it so written in every MS.? I rather think that the learned prelate would have thought it necessary to correct the inaccurate Greek of his authorities, by what he knew was and must be right. However, in order to show the result of adhering to MSS. in this case, I shall take the liberty of printing a few lines carefully accented upon such authority, and to that authority_being_real, I pledge myself. (Alfr. Boeth. Rawl. p. 2).

Đá líóð þé íc wréccá géó lústbœ'rlícé sóng, íc scéál nú héófíéndé síngan, and mid swi(dé) úngérádúm wórdúm géséttán, þéáh íc géó hwílúm gécóplícé fúndé, ác íc nú wépéndé ánd gícsíéndé óf gérádrá wórdá mísfó, mé ábléndán þás úngétréówan wórúldsæ'lþá, ánd mé þá fórlétán swá blindné ón Þís dímné hól. Đá béréáfódón æ'lcéré lústbæ'rnéssé þá dá ic hím æ'fré bétst trúwódé dá wéndón hí mé héórá bæ'c tó, ánd mé míd éállé frómgéwítán. Tó hwón scéóldán lá míné fríénd séggán bæ't íc gésæ'líg món wæ'ré, hú mæ'g sé béón gésalig séde ón dám gésælbúm ðurhwúníán né mót?

In these 98 words there are 181 accentuations, all authorised by MSS. and their practice; and of these 181 there are just 38 right, and 143 wrong! As it is abundantly obvious that it is nonsense to accent every vowel, I take the liberty of requesting these supporters of authority, "authority which is but air condensed," to inform me how they will set about distinguishing the right from the wrong. The plan adopted by us is sufficiently simple: careful comparison of the various Teutonic dialects has established a law of relation between their vowels, and we accent according to that law. The Gothic language, which contains the oldest Teutonic documents that we at present possess, has twelve vowel sounds, three of which, viz. A, 1, U, are short, and seven long, viz. a'ı, EI, E', IU, a'u, o' and u' when the short vowels I and u stand before н or R, they become changed into AI' and AU'. Now comparing these vowels with those of the Saxon and German,

we find, that in old Saxon and German, A mostly remains in the same words as took it in Gothic, but that in A. S. it is under different circumstances replaced by three different vowels: before h, l, and r, it becomes ea, thus Goth. gards, alls, mahts, A. S. geard, eall, meaht. When followed in another syllable by i, the Gothic a becomes A. S. e, thus Goth. katils, A. S. cetel, and this is sometimes the case in O.H.D. and O. Sax. When followed by sc, st, sp, or by a single final consonant (except m, n, 1, h, and r) or by any single consonant and the inflections, es, e, the Goth. A becomes a in A. S. Before m and s it sometimes is replaced by a, sometimes by o. The Gothic 1 sometimes remains in the other tongues unchanged, sometimes becomes dulled into ë, and in A. S. before hand r becomes changed into eo; thus Goth. itan. O. H. D. ezzan O. Sax. and A. S. etan, edere: Goth. haírus (for hirus) ensis. O. H. D. hëru, A. Sax.hëoru. O. Nor. hiörr (=hiarru.) In A. S. this vowel is sometimes wrongly replaced by y. The Gothic U remains as u in the other languages, or is dulled into o, and especially in those cases in which, from standing before h and r, it became aú; thus Goth.waúrd, O.H.D. waort, A.S.word. But if followed by i or its equivalent ë, u in A. S. becomes y, N.H.D. ü or u. Thus Goth. Runi genus. O.H.D. chunni. A.S. cynë, and O.H.D. chuninc. A. S. cyning, rex. The Goth. A'I is represented in O.H.D. M.H.D. and N.H.D. and in O. Nor. by ei, in O. Sax. by é, and in A. S. by á: but in A. S. this á, if followed by i orë, becomes æ. The Gothic ei is represented by î in all the languages quoted, and only in the N. H. D. and N. E. does ei return in sound, though not in form, in both; thus -Goth. weins, O.H.D. O.Sax. A. S. wín, N.H.D. wein, N. E. wine. The Gothic E' becomes in A. S. æ, in O. H. D. á; the Goth. iu remains in all the older languages but the A. S., where it becomes eó,and which is sometimes replaced by y'. The Goth. au, which in O. H. D. and O. Sax. generally remains as ou or ó, becomes eá in Á. S. as Ráuds, A. S. Reád, rubes. The -Gothic ó remains as ó in O. Sax. and O. Nor. In O. H. D. it becomes uo, and in A. S. it remains as ó, except when followed by i or ë, and then it becomes

u, aú

eo

i

6

y

2 2 2 2

90

ú, iu ú, ió, &c. ió, ie In order to ascertain the length of the vowel in an A. S. word it is therefore necessary to ascertain what vowel corresponds to it in the other principal Teutonic tongues, and by this process alone can we correct the MSS. themselves. In connection with this method, we may use the etymological means afforded us by the verbal scheme, or the system of relation in which the vowels stand to one another, in the present, præt. sing., præt. pl. and past participle, of those twelve conjugations which it has pleased the same profound scholars, who prefer idleness to inquiry, to nickname irregular, but which are the foundationstones of all Teutonic etymology.

:

I have but one word to add to what I have said in spite of the ingenuity made use of to persuade myself and my friends that the ungentlemanlike productions to which I have alluded, proceeded from the University of Oxford, I have come, perhaps rather late, to a different conclusion. That my opinions as a scholar undergo thereby any change, is out of the question: but I fairly say, that if, in the expression of those opinions, I have used words which have given pain to any one, I most sincerely regret it. I claim as much excuse as may be granted to a scholar, indignant at the attempt to injure a favourite