"_A Letter to a Member of Parliament._"--Who was the author of _A Letter to a Member of Parliament_, occasioned by _A Letter to a Convocation Man_: W. Rogers, London, 1697?
[Attributed to Mr. Wright, a gentleman of the Bar, who maintains the same opinions with Dr. Wake.]
_Ancient Chessmen._--I should be glad to learn, through the medium of "N. & Q.," some particulars relative to the sixty-four chessmen and fourteen draughtsmen, made of walrus tusk, found in the Isle of Lewis in Scotland, and now in case 94. Mediæval Collection of the British Museum?
[See _Archæologia_, vol. xxiv. p. 203., for a valuable article, entitled "Historical Remarks on the introduction of the Game of Chess into Europe, and on the ancient Chessmen discovered in the Isle of Lewis, by Frederick Madden, Esq., F.R.S., in a Letter addressed to Henry Ellis, Esq., F.R.S., Secretary."]
_Guthryisms._--In a work entitled _Select Trials at the Old Bailey_ is an account of the trial and execution of Robert Hallam, for murder, in the year 1731. Narrating the execution of the criminal, and mentioning some papers which he had prepared, the writer says: "We will not tire the reader's patience with transcribing these prayers, in which we can see nothing more than commonplace phrases and unmeaning _Guthryisms_." What { 621} is the meaning of this last word, and to whom does it refer?
[James Guthrie was chaplain of Newgate in 1731; and the phrase _Guthryisms_, we conjecture, agrees in common parlance with a later saying, that of "stuffing _Cotton_ in the prisoner's ears."]
The question put by C. D., respecting the existence of letters said to have passed between Archbishop Cranmer and Calvin, and to exist in print at Geneva, upon the seeming sanction given by our liturgy to the belief that baptism confers regeneration, is a revival of an inquiry made by several persons about ten years ago. It then induced M. Merle d'Aubigné to make the search of which C. D. has heard; and the result of that search was given in a communication from the Protestant historian to the editor of the _Record_, bearing date April 22, 1843.
I have that communication before me, as a cutting from the _Record_; but have not preserved the date of the number in which it appeared[2], though likely to be soon after its receipt by the editor. Merle d'Aubigné says, in his letter, that both the printed and manuscript correspondence of Calvin, in the public library of Geneva, had been examined in vain by himself, and by Professor Diodati the librarian, for any such topic; but he declares himself disposed to believe that the assertion, respecting which C. D. inquires, arose from the following passage in a letter from Calvin to the English primate: