ntributors on this point.

But, after all, Shylock may have been a _family name_ familiar to
the great dramatist. In all my researches on the subject of _English
surnames,_ however, I have but once met with it as a generic
distinction. In the _Battel Abbey Deeds_ (penes Sir T. Phillipps,
Bart.) occurs a power of attorney from John Pesemershe, Esq., to
_Richard Shylok_, of Hoo, co. Sussex, and others, to deliver seizin
of all his lands in Sussex to certain persons therein named. The
date of this document is July 4, 1435.

MARK ANTONY LOWER.

* * * * *

TRANSPOSITION OF LETTERS.

I should be obliged if any of your readers would give me the reason
for the transposition of certain letters, chiefly, but not
exclusively, in proper names, which has been effected in the course
of time.

The name of our Queen Bertha was, in the seventh century, written
Beorhte.

The Duke Brythnoth's name was frequently written Byrthnoth, in the
tenth century.

In Eardweard, we have dropped the _a_; in Ealdredesgate, the _e_. In
Aedwini, we have dropped the first letter (or have sometimes
transposed it), although, I think, we are wrong; for the given name
Adwin has existed in my own family for several centuries.

John was always written Jhon till about the end of the sixteenth
century; and in Chaucer's time, the word _third_, as every body
knows, was written _thridde_, or _thrydde_. I believe that the _h_
in Jhon was introduced, as it was in other words in German, to give
force to the following vowel. Certain letters were formerly used in
old French in like manner, which were dropped upon the introduction
of the accents.

B. WILLIAMS.
Hillingdon, Jan. 5.

* * * * *

PICTURES OF QUEEN ELIZABETH AND CHARLES I. IN CHURCHES.

Your correspondent "R.O." will find two pictures of Charles I. of
the same allegorical character as that described by him in his note
(_ante_, p. 137.), one on the wall of the stairs leading to the
north gallery of the church of St. Botolph, Bishopsgate, and the
other in the hall of the law courts in Guildhall Yard. I know
nothing of the history of the first-mentioned picture; the latter,
until within a few years, hung on the wall, above the {185} gallery,
in the church of St. Olave, Jewry, when, upon the church undergoing
repair, it was taken down, and, by the parishioners, presented to
the corporation of London, who placed it in its p