Such record, if found in any parish in England, would greatly tend to decide the question. Possibly some correspondent may be in a position to ascertain whether such record exists.
Lady Elizabeth had by her marriage with Dr. Young, a son only; it could not, therefore, be a daughter of Young's who died at Montpellier.
Why this word should have "set all editors of Chaucer at defiance" is not very apparent, for he himself sufficiently explains its meaning by the context. The passage in which it occurs is in _Troylus and Creseyde_, b. iii. 931. seq. thus:
"Creseyde answerde, As wisely God at reste My soule bringe, as me is for him wo, And eme, iwys, fayne wolde I dône the best, If that I a grace had for to do so. But whether that ye dwell, or for him go, I am, tyl God me bettre mynde sende, At _Dulcarnon, right at my wyttes end_.
"(Quod Pandarus). Ye nece! Wol ye here? _Dulcarnon_ is called flemyng of wretches. It semeth harde, for wretches wol nought lere For very slouthe, or other wylful tetches: This is said by hem, that be not worthe two fetches. But ye ben wyse," &c.
Now Speght, in his Glossary to the edition of 1602, says:
"Dulcarnon is a proposition in Euclide, lib. i. theorem 33. propos. 47., which was found out by Pythagoras after an whole yeeres study, and much beating of his brayne. In thankfulnes whereof he sacrificed an oxe to the gods; which sacrifice he called _Dulcarnon_. Alexander Neckham, an ancient writer, in his booke _De Naturis rerum_, compoundeth this word of _Dulia_ and _Caro_, and will have Dulcarnon to be _quasi sacrificium carnis_. Chaucer aptly applieth it to Creseide in this place: showing that she was as much amazed how to answer Troilus, as Pythagoras was wearied to bring his desire to effect."
Master Speght is somewhat in error in his solution: let us hear another expositor. I have mentioned in your pages the existence of a translation into rhymed Latin verse of the whole of Chaucer's _Troilus_, with a copious commentary by Sir Francis Kynaston; and I may now add, for Mr. Lang's satisfaction, that it is _penes me_. The following note there occurs on this word:
"_Dulcarnon_, &c. By this exposition, which Pandarus makes of the word _Dulcarnon_, it is plaine that Chaucer sets it downe here as a worde in use in his time, and such a one as the logicians do call (being a word of no significant sense) _vox significans ad placitum_, as in English _twittle twattle_, _fiddle faddle_, quibling and conundrums, and the like. So _Dulcarnon_ in those times was a word of the same signification as we at this day do use _nonplus_; as we say by a scholler that is apposed and cannot answer any further, that he is _put to a nonplus_, a phrase derived from Hercules' motto written upon the two great Gaditane pillars set on either side the Straights of Gibraltar: which Hercules constituted as the end of the world with these words, NON PLUS ULTRA: meaning that no man ever did or could go further than those pillars. For Neckham's far-fetch'd criticisme in deriving the etymologie of the word Dulcarnon from the Greeke word _Doulia_, and the Latine word _Carnium_, that is, the service of flesh, which Euclide sacrificed for joy of the invention of a probleme which he demonstrated, [and] on which he had long studied, [it] is in my minde quite from the purpose."