With regard to the other vulgar error, noticed at the foot of MR. BROOKS' communication (p. 561.), that "all children under the girdle at the time of marriage are legitimate," the origin of it is more obvious. Every one knows of the "legitimatio per subsequens matrimonium" of the canonists, and how the barons assembled in parliament at Merton refused to engraft this law of the Church on the jurisprudence of England. But it is not perhaps so well known that, upon such a marriage the premature offspring of the bride and bridegroom sometimes used to perform a part in the ceremony, and received the nuptial benediction under the veil or mantle of the bride or the pallium of the altar. Hence the children so legitimated are said to have been called by the Germans _Mantelkinder_. The learning on this head is to be found in Hommel's _Jurisprudentia Numismatibus Illustrata_ (Lipsiæ, 1763), pp. 214-218., where the reader will also find a pictorial illustration of the ceremony from a codex of the _Novellæ_ in the library of Christian Schwarz. The practice seems to have been borrowed from the form of adopting children, noticed in the same work and in Ducange, verb. "Pallium, _Pallio cooperire_;" and in Grimm's _Deut. Rechts Alterth._, p. 465. Let me add a word on the famous negative given to the demand of the clergy at Merton. No reason was assigned, or, at least, has been recorded, but a general unwillingness to change the laws of England. As the same barons did in fact consent to change them in other particulars, this can hardly have been the reason. Sir W. Blackstone speaks of the consequent uncertainty of heirship and discouragement of matrimony as among the causes of rejection,--arguments of very questionable weight. Others (as Bishop Hurd, in his _Dialogues_) have attributed the rejection to the constitutional repugnance of the barons to the general principles of the canon and imperial law, which the proposed change might have tended to introduce,--a degree of forethought and a range of political vision for which I can hardly give them credit, especially as the great legal authority of that day, Bracton, has borrowed the best part of his celebrated Treatise from the Corpus Juris. The most plausible motive which I have yet heard assigned for this famous parliamentary negative on the bishops' bill at Merton, is suggested (quod minimè reris!) in an Assistant Poor-Law Commissioner's Report (vol. vi. of the 8vo. printed series), viz. that bastardy multiplied the escheats which accrued to medieval lords of manors. E. SMIRKE. A venerable person whose mind is richly stored with "shreds and patches" of folk-lore and local antiquities, on seeing the "curious marriage entry" (p. 485.), has furnished me with the following explanation.