It is very possible that I have overlooked some common source of information to which I may be referred; and it is very possible also, that this epitaph has been reprinted in comparatively modern times, and I may not know of it. This is one of the points I wish to ascertain. J. PAYNE COLLIER. [Was there no such person as Love, and does the writer mean merely to pun upon the word? Cupid certainly played the fool in the court of Henry VIII. as much as any body.] * * * * * MARE DE SAHAM--POSTUM PUSILLUM--WATEWICH. I am much obliged by J.F.M's answers respecting those places. If he will look to the _Historia Eliensis_, lib. ii. c. 84, 85. vol. i. pp. 200-204. (_Anglia Christiana_), he may be certain whether or not he has correctly designated them. He may at the same time, if he be well acquainted with Cambridgeshire, give me the modern interpretation for _Watewich_, also mentioned in chap. 84. of the _Hist. Eliens_. W.B.M. * * * * * THE ADVENT BELLS. The Advent bells are ringing in many parishes throughout various parts of England during this month of December, if I may judge from my own neighbourhood--on the western borders of Berks--where, at least three times in the week, I hear their merry peals break gladsomely upon the dark stillness of these cold evenings, from many a steeple around. In the Roman States and the kingdom of Naples and Sicily, the "pifferari" go about playing on a kind of rough hautboy and bag-pipes, before the pictures of the Madonna, hung up at the corners of streets and in shops, all through Advent time; but why are the church bells rung in England? What reference in ancient documents can be pointed out for the meaning or antiquity of the usage? He who draws upon a joint-stock bank of literature as rich as yours, Mr. Editor, already is, should bring a something to its capital, though it be a mite. Allow me, then, to throw in mine. At p. 77. "A SUBSCRIBER" asks, "if William de Bolton was an ecclesiastic, how is it that his wife is openly mentioned?" For one of these two reasons: 1st. By the canon law, whether he be in any of the four minor orders, or in any of the three higher or holy orders, a man is, and was always, called "Clericus," but clerks in lower or minor orders did, and still do, marry without censure; 2d. The Church did, and still does, allow man and wife to separate by free mutual consent, and to bind themselves by the vows of perpetual continence and chastity, the man going into a monastery, or taking holy orders, the woman becoming a nun. Such, I suspect, was the case with Sir William de Bolton ("Sir" being the ancient title of a priest) and his wife, whose joint concurrence in the transfer of property by charter would be legally required, if, as is likely, she had an interest in it.