:

"But he that some fortie or fifty yeares sithens should haue asked
after a Pickadilly, I wonder who could haue understood him, or could
haue told what a Pickadilly had beene, either fish or flesh."

Little did the writer think that in future years the name would become a
"household word;" though his prophecy as to the meaning of the word has
been fulfilled by the appearance of the Query in the pages of "N. & Q."

The editor of the work, Mr. Peter Cunningham, has a long note on the above
passage; and I am indebted to him for the following.

"Ben Jonson (_Works_ by Gifford, viii. 370.) speaks of a _picardill_ as
a new cut of band much in fashion:

'Ready to cast at one whose band stands still,
And then leap mad on a neat _picardill_.'

"But Middleton, _The World tost at Tennis_, 1620, speaks of a
_pickadill_ in connexion with the shears, the needle, &c. of the
tailor; from which it appears to have been an instrument used for
plaiting the picked vandyke collar worn in those days.

"Mr. Gifford, in a note on another passage in Ben Jonson, says:

'_Picardil_ is simply a diminutive of _picca_ (Span. and Ital.), a
spear-head; and was given to this article of foppery from a fancied
resemblance of its stiffened plaits to the bristled points of these
weapons. Blount thinks, and apparently with justice, that _Picadilly_
took its name frown the sale of the 'small stiff collars so called,'
which was first set on foot in a house near the western [eastern]
extremity of the present street by one Higgins, a tailor.'"

The bands worn by the clergy and judges, &c., at the present day, are
lineal descendants of the old _picadils_, reduced to a more sober cut; and
the picked ornament alluded to by your correspondent no doubt derived its
name from its resemblance in shape to these tokens of ancient fashion.

H. C. K.

---- Rectory, Hereford.

_Mr. Justice Newton_ (Vol. vii., pp. 528. 600.; Vol. viii., p. 15.).--I did
not answer MR. F. KYFFIN LENTHALL'S first Query, because it was {111}
palpable, from the context, that the "Mr. Justice Newton" he inquired after
could not possibly be the Chief Justice who flourished in the fifteenth
century; and because I am not aware of any judge of the superior courts of
that name, during the time of the Commonwealth, or the years which
immediately preceded or followed that period. Indeed, his designation as
"Mr. J