just as though he were D.D. of Paris. The letter is dated XV Kal. Dec. A{o} II. In 1370 he was sent to the Tartars by the pope, as bishop of Pekin and head of the Franciscan mission in Asia[1539]. The papal letter[1540] constituted him ruler of the Friars Minors in the lands ‘Saracenorum, Alanorum, Gazarorum, Gothorum, Schytarum, Ruthenorum, Jacobitarum, Nubianorum, Nestorianorum, Georgianorum, Armenorum, Indorum, Mochitarum.’ _De eruditione Principum_, by William de Prato, _ordinis Praedicatorum_ (?)[1541]. MS. Vatican, Bibl. Reginae Sueciae, cod. 1960 (Montfaucon). =John Somer=, of the Convent of Bridgwater[1542], was at Oxford in 1380[1543]. It does not appear whether he was a doctor either at this time or afterwards. He enjoyed a great reputation as an astronomer, and is said to have made use of the astronomical researches of Roger Bacon[1544]. Chaucer refers to him in his treatise on the Astrolabe[1545]. Somer is often coupled with the contemporary astronomer Nicholas of Lynn[1546], and it is possible that the following passage in Mercator’s _Atlas_, which is supposed by Hakluyt and others to refer to Nicholas, relates to John Somer[1547]. ‘That which you see described in this table of those foure Iles is taken from the journal of James Knox of Bolduc or the Busse[1548], who reporteth[1549] that a certaine English Friar, minorite of Oxford, a Mathematician, hath seene and composed the lands lying about the Pole, and measured them with an astrolabe, and described them by a Geometrical instrument.’ To this account John Dee[1550] adds the date 1360, and calls the friar a ‘Franciscan of Lynn’; Hakluyt (among other details) gives the name as ‘Nicholas de Lynna a Franciscan Friar.’ Nicholas of Lynn was a Carmelite[1551]. On the other hand, supposing that the story has a good foundation, it is more likely that the adventurous Friar was a native of some seaport on the East coast than of a Western town like Bridgwater. _Tertium opusculum Kalendarii_ (A. D. 1387-1462), composed ‘ad instantiam nobilissime Domine, Domine Johanne Principisse Wallie, ... ac matris ... Ricardi secundi ..., ad meridiem tamen Universitatis Oxonie, ex precepto reverendi Patris, fratris Thome Kyngesburi, Ministri Anglie, ... a fratre Johanne Somur (_or_ Semour) ordinis minorum, A. D. 1380.’ MSS. Brit. Mus.: Royal 2 B viii. (sec. xiv). Cotton Faustina A II, f. 1-12; and Cotton Vesp. E VII. f. 4-22. Bodl.: Digby 5, f. 73 (sec. xiv). _Cronica quaedam brevis fratris Johannis Somour ordinis sancti Francisci de conventu ville Briggewater._ MS. British Museum; Cott. Domit. A II, f. 1-6{b}.