o died 18th August,
1513; 3. Dorothy, daughter of William Tyrrell, Esq., of Gipping in Suffolk:
the last-mentioned was the mother of his heir, Sir Philip Boteler, Kt.; but
I can nowhere find who was the mother of the son Richard, and the daughters
Mary and Joyce mentioned in his will, {364} or of Thomas Lovett's wife. I
cannot help fancying that Elizabeth Lovett was his only child by one of his
wives, and was perhaps heir to her mother. Can one of your contributors
bring forward any authority to confirm or disprove this conjecture? Whilst
I am speaking of the Lovett pedigree, I would also advert to two other
contradictions in the popular accounts of it. That most inaccurate of
books, Betham's _Baronetage_, vol. v. p. 517., says, Giles Pulton, Esq., of
Desborough, married Anne, daughter of Thomas Lovett, Esq., of Astwell: the
same author, vol. i. p. 299., calls her Catherine; which is correct?
Neither Anne nor Catherine is mentioned in Thomas Lovett the Elder's will
(_Test. Vetust._, vol. ii. p. 410). Again, Betham, Burke, and Bridges
(_History of Northamptonshire_, "Astwell") have rolled out Thomas Lovett
into two persons, and in fact have made him appear the son of his second
wife Joan Billinge, who was not the ancestress of the Lovetts of Astwell at
all. Nor was it possible she could be; for Thomas Lovett, in his will,
dated 1492, speaks of her as "Joan, my wife, late the wife of John Hawys,
one of the Justices of the Common Pleas." Now this John Hawys was living in
1487, and Lovett's son and heir, Thomas, was seventeen years old in 1492.
The abstract of Lovett's will in the _Test. Vetust._, calling Thomas Lovett
the Younger "my son and heir by the said Joan my wife," must therefore be
manifestly incorrect. I will not apologise for the minuteness of this
account, as I believe the correction of detail in published pedigrees to be
one of the most valuable features of "N. & Q.;" but I am almost ashamed of
the length of my communication, which I hope some of your readers may throw
light upon.

TEWARS.

* * * * *

OATHS.

The very remarkable distinction between the manner in which English and
Welsh witnesses take the book at the time when they are sworn, has often
struck me. An English witness always takes the book with his fingers under,
and his thumb at the top of the book. A Welsh witness, on the contrary,
takes it with his fingers at the top, and his thumb under the book. How has
this