I know that my friends the public have a strong idea that this subject has been thoroughly threshed out, and are apt to say and think— Shakespere and Bacon are vexation, Donnelly is as bad, His Cryptogram it puzzles me, His Cipher drives me mad. Nevertheless, I have an opinion that I have been able to fling a few novel hints upon the question, and so cast it upon the waters to sink or swim. SCOTT SURTEES. DINSDALE-ON-TEES, _May_ 14, 1888. APPENDIX. Banns. Cripp’s Laws of the Church, p. 634.—“Before the time of Pope Innocent III. there was no solemnization of marriage in the Church: but the man came to the woman’s house and led her home to his own house, which was all the ceremony then used. By the customs of the Anglo-Saxons the marriage ceremony was commonly performed at the house of the bridegroom, to which the bride had been previously taken.” (p. 638) “It was formerly the law of this country that marriages celebrated by licence, when either of the parties was under the age of twenty-one years (not being a widow or widower), without the consent of the father, or if he were not living, of the mother or guardians, should be absolutely void.” They must proceed either by publication of banns or by license. The word banns is of Saxon origin, and signifies publication or proclamation (Rogers, E. L. 509). This publication for three several Sundays or holidays, unless a license or faculty had been obtained, was enjoined by Canon Law and by the rubric “in the time of divine service” (p. 650). . . . For the avoiding of all fraud and collusion, before such license shall be granted it shall appear to the judge by the oaths of two sufficient witnesses . . . that the express consent of the parents or parent is thereunto had and obtained (Canon 103).” It is singular we find in Francis Bacon’s life, that he tried to break off the match with Sir John Villiers and Lady Hatton’s only daughter and heiress, because the mother opposed it, “he strongly advises that the match be not proceeded in without the consent of both parents required by religion and the law of God” (Campbell’s Life of Lord Bacon, p. 138). “Spurrings” they are still called in the North of England, where old customs and our fore-elders’ language linger long. I myself in a parish in Wensleydale, where they until recently “raced for the garter,” heard the Clerk, to my astonishment, after I had finished the “spurring” for the last time of asking, stand up and in broad accent and loud voice sing out, “God speed them well!” and all the people answered, Amen! It was not any way ludicrous, but really sounded solemn and a beautiful benediction from their fellow-parishioners.—(See Atkinson’s Glossary of Cleveland Dialect, “Spurrings, sb. The publication of banns of marriage: the being ‘asked’ at Church, an immediate derivative from speer, speir, even if not directly from Old Norse spyria.”)