NOTES IN ANSWER TO QUERIES.

The Lobster in the Medal of the Pretender.

Your correspondent, Mr. B. NIGHTINGALE, desires an answer to his Query (in your No. 4), Why is the figure of a Lobster introduced into the impression upon the rare medal struck 20th June, 1688, in contempt or ridicule of Prince James Edward, the newly-born son of King James II.?

A reference to the two following works will, perhaps, supply the answer:—­

1st.  In Philemon Holland’s translation of Pliny’s Natural History (a great authority at the time) this passage occurs in book ix. cap. 30.:—­

“Lobsters, so long as they are secure of any fear and danger, go directly straight, letting down their hornes at length along their sides; ... but if they be in any fear, up go their hornes straight—­and then they creep byas and go sidelong.”

And in the next chapter (31.):—­

     “Crabs” (which were often confounded with lobsters) “when they will
     be afraid, will recule backward, as fast as they went forward.”

2nd.  In the celebrated work of Sebastian Brandt, entitled Stultifera Naxis (which went through many editions after its first appearance in 1494), is an engraving of a fool, wearing cap and bells, seated astride on the back of a lobster, with a broken reed in his hand, and a pigeon flying past him as he stares vacantly at it with open mouth.  The following lines are attached:—­

    DE PREDESTINATIONE

    “Qui pretium poseit quod non meruisse videtur,
    Atque super fragilem ponit sua brachia cannam
    Illius in dorso Cancrorum semita stabit;
    Devolet inque suum rictum satis assa Columba.”

It appears, then, to me, that the design of the medallist was to hold up to the exceration of the English people the machinations of Father Petre, who (together with Sunderland) guided the councils of the king at the juncture.  The Jesuits, like the crustaceous fish above-mentioned, were alleged to accomplish their dark and crooked designs by creeping and sedulously working their way straight forward through the mud, until some real danger presented itself, and then reculing with equal adroitness.

At this time, too, the bigoted and superstitious adherents of James had been offering their vows at every shrine, and even making pilgrimages, to induce Heaven to grant a male heir to the throne, and thus exclude the Protestant daughters of the king.  The premature and unexpected event, therefore, of the birth of a son, was pronounced by James’s friends to have been predestined by the special grace of the Most High.  All this, I apprehend, was intended to be typified by the figure of the Jesuit Petre riding upon a Lobster.

JOS.  BROOKS YATES

Straw Necklaces—­Method of keeping Notes, &c.