John Hales attributes the multitudes of Sects, and the ignorance of the lower sort, to the neglect of catechising, which he divides into Domestical, Scholastical, and Ecclesiastical. " Parents and Masters should be admonished to look to this duty in their families: School-masters should be chosen, skilful to catechise; and they should bring their scholars to Catechetical Sermons, and examine them how they had profited: the Minister of every Parish should monthly or quarterly visit the schools;" with more to the same purport, purport, in his "Letters from the Synod of Dort," 1618.

One of the Helvetian Deputies said, that young persons, before marriage, repaired to the Minister, to be examined in the Catechism; and, if they were not perfect, he had power to defer their Marriage. "Golden Remains."

Smith's Select Discourses were published in 1673. He says of "True Religion," " it is no piece of artifice: no boiling up of the imaginative powers; nor the glowing heats of passion; though these are too often taken for it. But it is a new nature informing the souls of men, it is a god-like frame of spirit, discovering itself most of all in serene and clear minds, in deep humility, meekness, self-denial, universal love of God, and all true goodness, without partiality, and without hypocrisy." p. 372, 526. Warburton, in his Dedication to the third volume of "Divine Legation," says, "Though a rule of Right may direct the Philosopher to a principle of action, and the point of Honour may keep up the thing called Manners amongst gentlemen; yet nothing but Religion can ever fix a sober standard of behaviour amongst the common people."

It is well observed by Roberts, in the " Looker-on," that "Religion, being a connected system, is never fairly viewed but when we take in the whole, and therefore can never properly become the subject of broken and desultory conversation."

R. THOMAS MACTY, as you inform us (p.98), "accuses me of ingeniously blending together the, terms corporeally and carnally." The words of the Author whom I quoted,

De Dominis, in Cosin's History of Transubstantiation, are "carnaliter et corporaliter;" which Mr. Mac Ty may translate "carnally and corporeally," if he dislikes " corporeally or carnally," as I gave it.

He also "declaims against Transubstantiation being called a novel doctrine." Any doctrine which pretends to be Christian doctrine, and is of later origin than the first century, is in fact a novel doctrine. But that Transubstantiation was not known till more than a thousand years after the death of Christ, has often been shewn, particularly by Bishop Cosin in the History now mentioned, which, as was noted from Leslie, the adherents of the Church of Rome" have never attempted to answer." And if Mr. Mac Ty objects to "the testimony of De Dominis," he will there find that many other Authors, members of the Church of Rome, as well as others, have maintained the novelty of this monstrous tenet. When all these are refuted, the refutation may deserve to be considered. Meantime I will venture to say, I know the doctrine of Transubstantiation is not in Scripture, by which some of the most learned Romanists themselves allow it cannot be proved; and I know it is not in the Apostolical Fathers; and that those of later date also, as Chrysostom, Theodoret, Augustin, and others, teach a very different doctrine. Yours, &c.

Mr. URBAN,

THE

R. C.

March 13.

HE Correspondent who inquires about the Master of the Revels, (p. 2), nearly the same, I believė, as the Christmas Lord of Misrule, may consult the following books: Warton's History of Poetry, II. 405, III. 307, n. Strype's Mem. III. 322, 385, 388. Archæol. XV. 225. Athen. Oxon. 1. 199. Bliss's new Ed. I. 665. Fuller's Hist. Camb. 159. Wilson's Hist. of Merchant-Taylors, 620, u. Brit. Crit. vol. IX. 522. ΧΧΧΙΙ. 5. and Brand's Popular Antiquities. In Wood's Annals, II. 136, it is said that Jasper Heywood was about this time (1557) "King or Christmas Lord of Merton College, being it seems the last that bore that commendable office; that the custom, for aught he knew, had been as antient as the College itself; and that the election was (in the manner which he describes) on the 19th of November, being the Vigil of St. Ed

:

Yours, &c.

R. C.

Mr. URBAN, Dublin, March 18.
HAVE read with much pleasure,

in your Magazine for January last, an account and character of that amiable and good man, the late Sir Michael Smith. I knew him long and well; and, I verily believe, a better man did not live. I send you a few facts respecting his family. His Majesty, by letters patent, dated the 28th day of August 1799, created him a Baronet; being then a Baron of the Exchequer. When very young, he married Miss Cusack, a young lady, descended from an antient family in Ireland, one of whom was Lord Chan

cellor in the reign of Queen Mary. By this lady, who died in 1797 or 98,

be had children, Sir William Cusack Smith, one of the Barons of the Exchequer; who was educated at Christ Church College, Oxford; and particularly noticed when there, for his classical and general knowledge, by that eminent scholar Dr. Jackson, then Dean of Christ Church. Angelina, married first to Smith Steele, esq. second son of Sir Richard Steele, Bart.: some years after Mr. Steele's death, she married Burrowes, Esq. a younger son of Sir Kildare Dixon Burrowes, Bart. This lady died without issue. Sir Michael Smith's second wife, was Miss Smith, a distant relation of his father; by this lady, who survives him, he has left one son, Michael Smith, a minor. A curious fact occurred in Sir Michael's family, and one that probably never happened in any family before his time: the father and son were the Judges of the North-east Circuit in the Lent Assizes 1801. Sir Thomas More was Lord Chancellor, when his father was a Judge (I believe) of the King's Bench; but I never read or heard of father and son being Judges on the same Circuit, before 1801, GENT. MAG. May, 1813.

401

when Sir Michael Smith, and his son, the present Sir William Cusack Smith, presided in the respective Courts. Yours, &c.

Mr. URBAN,

AMICUS.

March 25.

THE Village of Bradford Abbas, in

Dorsetshire, lies on western extremity of that county, near the borders of Somersetshire. It is situate on the North bank of the river Ivil, which here becomes a considerable stream; over which there is a bridge of two arches. It takes its principal name from the broad ford over the river, and its additional one from its antient Lords, the Abbots of

Sherborne; from which town it is distant four miles, and from Yeovil three.

The Church, dedicated to St. Mary, is built of excellent free stone from Hamdon hill, below Yeovil, and is esteemed one of the handsomest village churches in Dorsetshire. It consists of a nave, North and South ailes, a chancel, a porch on the South side, and a Tower at the West end. of this very elegant Tower, I am tempted to send you a drawing (see Plate II.) which will be best explained by the following extract from the last

edition of Hutchins's History:

"The Tower consists of four stories.

The four corners are adorned with lofty octagonal buttresses, with elegant finials; and the West front is enriched by eleven niches, with fretted canopies, a large storied window with mullions and tracery, and an ornamented arched entrance

into the belfry. The niches are placed two on each side of the door, then two, one above the other, on each side of the great West window, and three in a line above the window. Images only remain in two of the higher niches. One, in the centre niche, represents a person crowned, sitting with a book upon his knees, and dressed in a rich laced mantle down to his feet; the other, in the niche to the left of this, is also sitting in a similar dress, a square cap, and without a book. Upon the corbel under the first is a defaced shield, and a blank shield on each sider of all the higher niches.

The upper corbels are ornamented with foliage, the lower are plain. There are six bells *."

Near the North-west buttress of the

Tower is an antient Stone Cross. (See

the View.)

:

* Hutchins's Dorsetshire, vol. IV. p. 6. "The

"The upper part of the shaft (which is octagonal), about eight feet high, has been broken off. On the East and West ends are images, but mutilated. The base consists of three steps; the two lowest octagonal, and the upper square; in all about three feet high. The sides of the square steps are ornamented with quatrefoils. In that to the West is an angel; to the East, a rose; and to the North and South, blank shields. *"

The Marquis of Anglesea is Patron

Smedley, M.A. is the present Vicar.

By the Return to Parliament in 1811, Bradford Abbas contained 107

houses and 114 families; consisting of 236 males and 280 females, in all 516; of whom 80 families were employed in Agriculture, and 31 in Trade, &c.

Yours, &c.

YOUR

J. B. K.

Edgbaston, near Bir

Mr. URBAN, mingham, March 21. TOUR Correspondent G. H. W. 2 of the present Volume) inquires for " the names of the fourteen Conspirators engaged in Babington's Conspiracy in the Reign of Queen Elizabeth."

For his information, I transcribe them, as under, from Sir Richard Baker's Chronicle; which contains a

very minute account of the Conspiracy above alluded to. (See pages

369 and 370.)

vage, with whom the Conspiracy chiefly originated; and Hierome Bellamy, who had concealed Babington, after he was proclaimed Traitor.(Bellamy's brother, being guilty of the same fact, had strangled himself in Prison.)

One Gifford, of Staffordshire, who had been in some degree implicated, was chiefly instrumental in the discovery of the plot, which had for its object the assassination of Queen Elizabeth by the Conspirators, who were zealots in the Roman Catholic Religion, and had imbibed the detestable doctrine, that there was merit in the murder of excommunicated... Princes, the Pope having previously published an excommunicatory Bull against Elizabeth for her exertions in opposing his Supremacy, and re-establishing the Protestant Faith.

The unfortunate Mary Queen of Scots was charged with being concerned in Babington's Plot, and in

divers other contrivances calculated to effect the destruction of Elizabeth, and after an arbitrary trial, was condemned, and beheaded at Fotherin

gay Castle.

The date of these events is referred to the year 1586.

In saying thus much, I am aware that I have gone a little beside the bare question of your Correspondent, but the greater part was necessarily involved in the reply, and the whole contains no more than appeared to be requisite to a brief elucidation of the subject in the mind of a casual reader. Yours, &c. GEORGE YATES.