_Priests' Surplices._--Will some of the readers of "N. & Q." favour me with a decision or authority on the following point? Does a priest's surplice differ from that worn by a lay vicar, or vicar choral? I have been an old choir-boy; and some few years since, as a boy, used to remark that the priests' surplices worn at St. Paul's, the Chapel Royal, and Westminster Abbey, were, as a sempstress would term it, _gaged_, or stitched down in rows over the shoulders some seven or eight times at the distance of about half an inch from each other. In the cathedral churches of Durham, York, Hereford, Worcester, Gloucester, and Oxford, I have remarked their almost universal adoption; but, to the best of my belief, I have never seen such a description of vestment in use among parochial clergymen, above half-a-dozen times, and I am desirous of knowing if the _gaged_ surplice is peculiar to cathedrals and collegiate churches (I have even seen canons residentiary in them, habited in the lay vicar's surplice), or is the surplice used by choristers, undergraduates, and vicars choral, which, according to my early experience, is one without needlework, the correct officiating garment; the latter is almost universally used at funerals, where the officiating priest seldom wears either his scarf or hood, and presents anything but a dignified appearance when he crowns this _négligée_ with one of our grotesque chimney-pot hats, to the exclusion of the more appropriate college cap. AMANUENSIS. _John, Brother German to David II._--Can any of your readers solve the problem in Scotch history, who was John, brother german to King David II., son of Robert Bruce? David II., in a charter to the Priory of Rostinoth, uses these words: "Pro salute animæ nostræ, etc., ac ob benevolentiam et affectionem specialem quam erga dictum prioratum devote gerimus eo quod ossa celebris memoriæ Johannis fratris nostri germani ibidem (the Priory) humata quiescunt dedimus, etc., viginti marcas sterlingorum, etc." Dated at Scone, "in pleno parliamento nostro tento ibidem decimo die Junii anno regni sexto decimo." The expression "celebris memoriæ" might almost be held to indicate that John had lived to manhood, but is perhaps only a style of royalty; nevertheless, the passage altogether seems to lead to the inference, that the person had at least survived the age of infancy. King Robert's bastard son, Sir Robert Bruce, had a grant of the lands of Finhaven, in the neighbourhood of Rostinoth.[6] DE CAMERA. [Footnote 6: Dr. Jamieson has a note on King David II., brother, in his edition, of Barbour's Bruce; but does not quote the words of the charter so fully as they are here given.--_The Bruce and Wallace_, 4to., Edin. 1820, vol. i. p. 485.]