R.G.

Ordination Pledges.—­Your correspondent, “CLERICUS” (no. 10. p. 156.), will find by far the most elaborate and judicious examination of the import, design, and obligation of the various oaths and subscriptions required of the clergy, in the successive numbers of The Christian Observer for 1849.

E.V.

Feast of St, Michael and All-Angels.—­The difficulty started by “K.M.P.” (No. 13, p. 203.), with regard to the double second lessons for the Feast of St. Michael and All-Angels, is easily resolved by comparing the Table of Proper Lessons before and after the last review of the Prayer Book in 1662; from which it will be seen, that the proper second lessons were then appointed for the first time, while the old second lessons for Sept. 29. were retained, either from inadvertence, or to avoid the necessity of disarranging all the subsequent part of the calendar.  The present first lessons, Gen. xxxii., and Dan. x. v. 5., at the same time took the place of the inappropriate chapters, Eccles. xxxix. and xliv., which had been appointed for this day in Queen Elizabeth’s Prayer Book, 1559.

E. V.

Beaver Hat.—­Mr. T. Hudson Turner (No. 7. p. 100.) asks, “What is the earliest known instance of the use of a beaver hat in England?”

(236}Fairholt (Costume in England) says, the earliest notice of it is in the reign of Elizabeth, and gives the following quotation from Stubbe’s Anatomy of Abuses, 1580:—­

“And as the fashions be rare and strange, so is the stuff whereof their hats be made divers also; for some are of silk, some of velvet, some of taffetie, some of sarcenet, some of wool, and, which is more curious, some of a certain kind of fine haire; these they call bever hattes, of xx, xxx, or xl shillings price, fetched from beyond the seas, from whence a great sort of other varieties doe come besides.”

GASTROS.

Meaning of “Pisan."—­Mr. Turner (No. 7. p.100.) asks the meaning of the term pisan, used in old records for some part of defensive armour.

Meyrick (Ancient Armour, vol. i. p. 155, 2d ed.) gives a curious and interesting inventory of the arms and armour of Louis le Hutin, King of France, taken in the year 1316, in which we find, “Item 3 coloretes Pizanes de jazeran d’acier.”  He describes pizane (otherwise written pizaine, pusen, pesen) as a collar made, or much in fashion, at Pisa.  The jazeran armour was formed of overlapping plates.  In the metrical romance of Kyng Alisaunder, edited by Webber, occur the lines—­

   “And Indiens, and Emaniens,
    With swordes, lances, and pesens.”

Weber explains the pesens here as gorgets, armour for the neck.

In more recent MSS. pisan may be a contraction for partisan, a halberd.

I cannot agree with your correspondent “A.F.” (p.90), that the nine of diamonds was called “the curse (cross) of Scotland” from its resemblance to the cross of St. Andrew, which has the form of the Roman X; whereas the pips on the nine of diamonds are arranged in the form of the letter H.  “Mend the instance.”