I purchased when I was in Holland some
thirty years ago; and as I have quoted enough for the purpose of {104}
identification, I may conclude with asking some of your Dutch
correspondents, whether the tract, in this or in any other edition, is of
considerable rarity with them? In England I never saw a copy of it but that
in my possession. I may add that every paragraph is separately numbered
from 1 to 110, as if the production were one of importance to which more
particular reference might be made than even by the pagination.

THE HERMIT OF HOLYPORT.

* * * * *

THE BLACK ROOD OF SCOTLAND.

(Vol. ii., pp. 308. 409.)

I am not satisfied with what W. S. G. has written on this subject; and as I
feel interested in it, perhaps I cannot bring out my doubts better than in
the following Queries.

1. Instead of this famous cross being destined by St. Margaret for
Dunfermline, was it not transmitted by her as an heir-loom to her sons?
_Fordun_, lib. v. cap. lv. "_Quasi munus haereditarium transmisit ad
filios._" Hailes (_Annals_, sub anno 1093) distinguishes the cross which
Margaret gifted to Dunfermline from the Black Rood of Scotland; and it is
found in the possession of her son David I., in his last illness. He died
at Carlisle, 24th May, 1153. (_Fordun_, ut supra.)

2. Is not W. S. G. mistaken when, in speaking of this cross being seized by
Edward I. in the Castle of Edinburgh in 1292, he says it is in a list of
muniments, &c., found "_in quadam cista in dormitorio S. Crucis._" instead
of in a list following, "_et in thesauria castri de Edinburgh inventa
fuerunt ornamenta subscripta?_" (Ayloffe's _Calendars_, p. 827.;
Robertson's _Index_, Introd. xiii.)

3. When W. S. G. says that this cross was not held in the same
superstitious reverence as the Black Stone of Scone, and that Miss
Strickland is mistaken when she says that it was seized by King Edward, and
restored at the peace of 1327, what does he make of the following
authorities?--

(1.) _Fordun_, lib. v, cap. xvii:

"Illa sancta crux quam nigram vocant omni genti Scotorum non minus
terribilem quam amabilem pro suae reverentia sanctitatis."

(2.) _Letters to the Right Reverend the Lord Bishop of Carlisle,
occassioned by some Passages in his late Book of the Scotch Library, &c._,
ascribed to the historian Rymer: London, 1702. From a "notable piece of
Church history," appended to the second Letter, it appears that the Black