In the first series of Southey’s Common Place Book, at page 226., a passage is quoted from Henry Smith’s Sermons, which dwells much upon the formation of the woman from the rib of man, but not in such detail as Bishop King has done.  Notices of the Bishop may be found in Keble’s edition of Hooker, vol. ii. pp. 24, 100, 103.  It appears that after his death it was alleged that he maintained Popish doctrines.  This his son, Henry King, canon of St. Paul’s, and Archdeacon of Colchester, satisfactorily disproved in a sermon at Paul’s Cross, and again in the dedication prefixed to his “Exposition upon the Lord’s Prayer,” 4to., London, 1634.  See Wood’s Athenae Oxon., fol. edit. vol. ii. p. 294.

As for the marriage of the Princess Elizabeth, afterwards celebrated for her misfortunes as Queen of Bohemia, it was celebrated in an epithalamium by Dr. Donne, Works, 8vo. edit. vol. vi. p. 550.  And in the Somer’s Tracts, vol. iii., pp. 35, 43., may be found descriptions of the “shewes,” and a poem of Taylor the Water Poet, entitled “Heaven’s Blessing and Earth’s Joy,” all tending to show the great contemporary interest which the event occasioned.

Balliolensis.

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MINOR NOTES

Cinderella, or the Glass Slipper.—­Two centuries ago furs were so rare, and therefore so highly valued, that the wearing of them was restricted by several sumptuary laws to kings and princes.  Sable, in those laws called vair, was the subject of countless regulations:  the exact quality permitted to be worn by persons of different grades, and the articles of dress to which it might be applied, were defined most strictly.  Perrault’s tale of Cinderella originally marked the dignity conferred on her by the fairy by her wearing a slipper of vair, a privilege then confined to the highest rank of princesses.  An error of the press, now become inveterate, changed vair into verre, and the slipper of sable was suddenly converted into a glass slipper.

Jarltzberg.

Mistletoe on Oaks.—­In Vol. ii., p. 163., I observed a citation on the extreme rarity of mistletoe on oaks, from Dr. Giles and Dr. Daubeny; and with reference to it, and to some remarks of Professor Henslow in the Gardeners’ Chronicle, I communicated to the latter journal, last week, the fact of my having, at this present time, a bunch of that plant growing in great luxuriance on an oak aged upwards of seventy years.

I beg leave to repeat it for the use of your work, and to add, what I previously appended as likely to be interesting to the archaeologist of Wales or the Marches, that the oak bearing it stands about half a mile N.W. of my residence here, on the earthen mound of Badamscourt, once a moated {215} mansion of the Herberts, or Ab-Adams, of Beachley adjacent, and of Llanllowell.