[We believe the following to be the precise dates:--James VIII., born June 10, 1688; died January 2, 1765-6. Charles Edward, born December 20, 1720 (sometimes printed as New Style, Dec. 31); died January 31, 1788.] _Clarence._--Whence the name of this dukedom? Was the title borne by any one before the time of Lionel, son of Edward III.? W. T. M. [The title CLARENCE was, as we learn from Camden (_Britannia_, edit. Gough, vol. ii. pp. 73, 74.), derived from the honour of Clare, in Suffolk; and was _first_ borne by Lionel Plantagenet, third son of Edward III., who married Elizabeth de Burgh, daughter and heir of William, Earl of Ulster, and obtained with her the honour of Clare. He became, _jure uxoris_, Earl of Ulster, and was created, September 15, 1362, Duke of Clarence.] * * * * * Replies. MACKEY'S "THEORY OF THE EARTH". (Vol. viii., p. 468.) About the year 1827, when the prosecutions for blasphemy were leading hundreds and thousands to see what could be said against Christianity, with a very powerful bias to make the most of all that they could find, some friends of mine, of more ingenuity than erudition, strongly recommended to my attention the works of a shoemaker at Norwich, named Mackey, who they said was more learned than any one else, and had completely shown up _the thing_. It is worth a note that I perfectly remember the cause of their excitement to have been the imprisonment of the Rev. Robert Taylor, for publishing various arguments against revelation. I examined several works of Mackey's, and I have yet one or two bound up among my wonders of nature and art. As in time to come, when neither love nor money will procure a copy of these books, some tradition may set inquirers looking after them, perhaps it may be worth while to preserve a couple of extracts for the benefit of those who have the sense to hunt the index of "N. & Q." before they give up anything. "The Virgin Andromeda, the daughter of _Cepheus_ and _Cassiopeia_, was the representative of Palestina; a long, narrow, rocky strip of land; figuratively called the daughter of Rocks and Mountains; because it is a country abounding with rocks and stones. And the Greeks, really supposing _Cepha_, a rock or stone, to have been the young ladies father, added their sign of the masculine gender to it, and it became Cepha-_us_. And mount Cassius being its southern boundary was called _Cassiobi_; from its being also the boundary of the _overflowed Nile_, called Obi, which the Greeks {566} softened into _Cassiopeia_, and supposed it to have been her mother;..."--_Mythological Astronomy, part second_, Norwich, 1823, 12mo., p. xiii.