“4” and “7” are interlaced, it is true, but the “4” decidedly precedes the other figure, and is followed by a point (.).  I thinly it not improbable that this cypher, therefore, is so far enigmatic, that the figure “4” may stand for fourteen hundred (the century), and that the “7” is intended to read doubled, as seventy-seven.  In that case, the device, and such historical evidence as we possess, combine in assigning the year 1477 for the time of the erection of Caxton’s press at Westminster, in the time of Abbot Esteney.  If The Game and Play of the Chesse was printed at Westminster, it would still be 1474.  In the paragraph quoted by ARUN (Vol. ii., p. 122.) from Mr. C. Knight’s Life of Caxton, Stow is surely incorrectly charged with naming Abbot Islip in this matter.  Islip’s name has been introduced by the error of some subsequent writer; and this is perhaps attributable to the extraordinary inadvertence of Dart, the historian of the abbey, who in his Lives of the Abbots of Westminster has altogether omitted Esteney,—­a circumstance which may have misled any one hastily consulting his book.

JOHN GOUGH NICHOLS

* * * * *

MISCELLANEOUS

NOTES ON BOOKS, SALES, CATALOGUES, ETC.

The Fawkes’s of York in the Sixteenth Century, including Notices of the Early History of Guye Fawkes, the Gunpowder Plot Conspirator, is the title of a small volume written, it is understood, by a well-known and accomplished antiquary resident in that city.  The author has brought together his facts in an agreeable manner, and deserves the rare credit of being content to produce a work commensurate with the extent and interest of his subject.

We learn from our able and well-informed contemporary, The Athenaeum that “one curious fact has already arisen out of the proposal for the restoration of Chaucer’s Monument,—­which invests with a deeper interest the present undertaking.  One of the objections formerly urged against taking steps to restore the perishing memorial of the Father of English Poetry in Poets’ Corner was, that it was not really his tomb, but a monument erected to do honour to his memory a century and a half after his death.  An examination, however, of the tomb itself by competent authorities has proved this objection to be unfounded:—­inasmuch as there can exist no doubt, we hear, from the difference of workmanship, material, &c., that the altar tomb is the original tomb of Geoffrey Chaucer,—­and that instead of Nicholas Brigham having erected an entirely new monument, he only added to that which then existed the overhanging canopy, &c.  So that the sympathy of Chaucer’s admirers is now invited to the restoration of what till now was really not known to exist—­the original tomb of the Poet,—­as well as to the additions made to it by the affectionate remembrance of Nicholas Brigham.”