um
Aberdonensium proposuit vir reverendus C. Buchanan, Coll. Bengalensis
Praefectus Vicarius. Auctore Alexandro Adamson, A.M., Coll. Marisch.
Aberd. alumno."

Allow me to repeat a Query which was inserted in Vol. ii., p. 297., asking
for any information respecting J. Adamson, the author of a rare tract on
Edward II.'s reign, published in 1732, in defence of the Walpole
administration from the attacks of the _Craftsman_.

Who was John Adamson, author of _Fanny of Caernarvon, or the War of the
Roses_, an historical romance, of which a French translation was published
in 1809 at Paris, in 2 vols. 12mo.?

E. H. A.

_Canker or Brier Rose._--Can any of your correspondents tell me why the
brier or dog-rose was anciently called the _canker_? The brier is
particularly free from the disease so called, and the name does not appear
to have been used in disparagement. In Shakspeare's beautiful Sonnet LIV.
are the lines:

"The _canker-blooms_ have full as deep a dye,
As the perfumed tincture of the roses."

In _King Henry IV._, Act I. Sc. 3., Hotspur says:

"Shall it for shame be spoken in these days,
Or fill up chronicles in times to come,
That men of your nobility and power,
Did 'gage them both in an unjust behalf,
(As both of you, God pardon it! have done)
To put down Richard, that sweet lovely rose
And plant this thorn, this _canker_ Bolingbroke."

And again, Don John, in _Much Ado about Nothing_, Act I. Sc. 3.:

"I had rather be a _canker_ in a hedge, than a rose in the grave."

ANON.

"_Short red, god red._"--In Roger of Wendover's _Chronicle_, Bohn's
edition, vol. i. p. 345., is a story how Walchere, Bishop of Durham, was
slain in his county court, A.D. 1075, by the suitors on the instigation of
one who cried out in his native tongue "Schort red, god red, slea ye the
bischop."

Sir Walter Scott, in his _Tales of a Grandfather_ (vol. i. p. 85.), tells
the same story of a Bishop of Caithness who was burned for enforcing tithes
in the reign of Alexander II. of Scotland (about 1220).

What authority is there for the latter story? Did Sir Walter confound the
two bishops, or did he add the circumstance for the amusement of Hugh
Littlejohn? Was this the formula usually adopted on such occasions? How
came the Caithness people to speak such good Saxon?

G.

_Overseers of Wills._--I have copies of several wills of the fifteenth and
sixteenth centuries, in {501} which one set of perso