S.S.S.

George Lord Goring, well known in history as Colonel Goring and General Goring, until the elevation of his father to the earldom of Norwich, in Nov. 1644, is said by Lodge to have left England in November, 1645, and after passing some time in France, to have gone into the Netherlands, where he obtained a commission as Lieutenant-General in the Spanish army.  Lodge adds, upon the authority of Dugdale, that he closed his singular life in that country, in the character of a Dominican friar, and his father surviving him, he never became Earl of Norwich.  A recent publication, speaking of Lord Goring, says he carried his genius, his courage, and his villainy to market on the Continent, served under Spain, and finally assumed the garb of a Dominican friar, and died in a convent cell.

Can any of your readers inform me when and where he died, and whether any particulars are known respecting him after his retirement abroad, and when his marriage took place with his wife Lady Lettice Boyle, daughter of the Earl of Cork, who died in 1643?  The confusion that is made between the father and son is very great.

G.

Bands.—­What is the origin of the clerical and academical custom of wearing bands?  Were they not originally used for the purpose of preserving the cassock from being soiled by the beard?  This is the only solution that presents itself to my mind.

OXONIENSIS NONDUM-GRADUATUS.

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REPLIES.

DERIVATION OF “NEWS” AND “NOISE.”

I hasten to repudiate a title to which I have no claim; a compliment towards the close of the letter of your correspondent “CH.” (Vol. i., p. 487.) being evidently intended for a gentleman whose christian name, only, differs from mine.  The compliment in his case is well-deserved; and it will not lower him in your correspondent’s opinion, to know that he is not answerable for the sins laid to my charge.  And now for a word in my own behalf.

Indeed, CH. is rather hard upon me, I must confess.  In using the simple form of assertion as more convenient,—­although I intended thereby merely to express that such was my opinion, and not dreaming of myself as an authority,—­I have undoubtedly erred.  In the single instance in which I used it, instead of saying “it is,” I should have said “I think it is.”  Throughout the rest of my argument I think the terms made use of are perfectly allowable as expressions of opinion.  Your correspondent has been good enough to give “the whole” of my “argument” in recapitulating my “assertions.”  Singular dogmatism that in laying down the law should condescend to give reasons for it!  On the other hand, when I turn to the letter of my friendly censor, I find assertion without argument, which, to my simple apprehension, is of much nearer kin to dogmatism than is the sin with which I am charged.