Several communications to the "N. & Q." have already proved how little
reliance is to be placed upon the traditions repeated by vergers and
guides to wondering lionizers. A collection of other instances, where
the test of science and archæological investigation have exposed their
falsity, would be interesting and instructive. In spite of Sir Samuel
Meyrick's judicious arrangement of the armour in the tower, the
beef-eaters still persist in relating the old stories handed down. At
Warwick Castle the rib of the dun cow is ascertained to be a bone of a
fossil elephant, and Guy's porridge-pot a military cooking utensil of
the time of Charles I. St. Crispin's chair, carefully preserved in
Linlithgow Cathedral by insertion in the wall, is of mahogany,--an
American wood! The chair of Charles I. at Leicester bears a crown,
which, having been the fashionable ornament after the Restoration,
together with the form, betrays the date. Queen Eleanor's crosses, it
now appears, were not built by her affectionate husband, but by her own
direction and with her own money. The fire-place and other objects in
belted Will's bedroom at Naworth Castle, are manifestly of later date.
The curious bed treasured up near Leicester as that occupied by Richard
III., immediately before the battle of Bosworth, is in the style
commonly called Elizabethan. Queen Mary's bed at Holyrood is of the last
century; and her room at Hardwicke is in a house which was not erected
till after her death; the tapestry and furniture, however, may have been
removed from the old hall where she was imprisoned. The tower of
Caernarvon Castle, in which the first Prince of Wales is supposed to
have been born, is not of so early a period. In short, archæologists
seem to show that there is not only nothing _new_ under the sun, but
that there is also nothing _true_ under the sun. To assume "a
questionable shape," may I request some of your correspondents to add to
the list?