_Plaister or Paster--Christian Captives--Members for Calais, &c._--In
editing Tyndale's _Pathway_ (_Works_, vol. i. p. 22.), I allowed
preceding editors to induce me to print _pastor_, where the oldest
authority had _paster_. As the following part of the sentence speaks of
"suppling and suaging wounds," I am inclined to suspect that "paster"
might be an old way of spelling, "plaster." Can any of your
correspondents supply me with any instance in which "plaster" or
"plaister" is spelt "paster" by any old English writer?
In return for troubling you with this question, you may inform Mr.
Sansom, in answer to Query, Vol. ii., p. 41., that Hallam says, "Not
less than fifty gentlemen were sold for slaves at Barbadoes, under
Cromwell's government." (_Constit. Hist._, ch. x. note to p. 128., 4to.
edit.) And though Walker exaggerated matters when he spoke "a project to
sell some of the most eminent masters of colleges, &c., to the Turks for
slaves," Whitelock's _Memorials_ will inform him, under date of Sept.
21, 1648, that the English Parliament directed one of its committees "to
take care for transporting the Scotch prisoners, in the first place to
supply the plantations, and to send the rest to Venice."
To another, O.P.Q. (Vol. ii., p. 9.), you may state that the members for
Calais in the time of Edw. VI., and in the first four parliaments of
Mary, may be seen in Willis' _Notitia Parliamentaria_, where their names
are placed next to the members for the Cinque Ports. Willis states that
the return for Calais for the last parliament of Henry VIII is lost.
Their names indicate that they were English,--such as Fowler,
Massingberd, &c.
As to umbrellas, there are Oriental scholars who can inform your
inquirers that the word "satrap" is traceable to words whose purport is,
the bearer of an umbrella.
Another of your latest Querists may find the epigrams on George II.'s
(not, as he imagines, Charles I.'s) different treatment of the two
English universities in Knox's _Elegent Extracts_. The lines he has
cited are both from the same epigram, and, I think, from the first of
the two. They were occasioned by George. II's purchasing the library of
Dr. Moore, Bishop of Ely, and giving it to the university of Cambridge.
The admirer of another epigram has not given it exactly as I can
remember it in a little book of emblems more than fifty years ago:--
"'Tis an excellent world that we live in,
To lend, to spend, or to give in;
But to borrow or beg, or get a man's own,
'Tis just the worst world that ever was known."