_Marriage Tithe in Wales_ (Vol. v., p. 29.).--It is well known to your readers that the whole of the tithes in England and Wales have recently been commuted for rent-charges; and the present writer can confidently affirm that, throughout the commutation, no tithe of marriage goods has been admitted to be valid, nor does he believe that any such tithe has been claimed. Tithes in Wales have not differed in any material respect from those payable in England: an excessive subdivision of ownership being the only circumstance which is remarkable in regard to them. As each article of titheable produce is capable of becoming a separate property, and this property may again become divided amongst an indefinite number of owners, the complexity occasioned by such minute interests may be imagined. The bee, for instance, produces three distinct titheable articles,--honey, wax, and swarms,--and a case actually occurred in Wales, in which the honey belonged to one class of owners, and the wax and swarms to another class, one of the classes owning in undivided eighty-eighth parts. There have also been some curious cases of modus in Wales, of which the following may be taken as a specimen:--In a parish on the sea-coast in Pembrokeshire, an estate was exempt from tithes by a modus of a cup of ale and an egg, rendered by way of refreshment to the parson, whenever, in consequence of the state of the tide, he was compelled to pass the house of the landowner on his way to perform divine service in the parish church.
_Paul Hoste_ (Vol. iv., p. 474.).--I would recommend your correspondent ÆGROTUS to examine the new edition of P. Paul Hoste's _Treatise on Naval Tactics, translated with Notes and Illustrations_, by Captain J. Donaldson Boswall, a 4to. vol. published in 1834, when, I have no doubt, he will there find the information he is in quest of.
_John of Halifax_ (Vol. iii., p. 389.; Vol. v., p. 42.).--Since every country has its _Holywood_, and _de Sacrobosco_ does not distinguish Holy_wood_ from Hali_fax_, John of Halifax has been claimed both by Ireland and Scotland, and, if I remember right, by some foreign countries. The manuscripts of his works, as well as the earlier printed editions, call him _Anglus_ or _Anglicus_; and he lived in a time at which the natives of the three countries were as distinct as Frenchmen, Spaniards, and Italians. Bale, quoting Leland, calls him Halifax; as does Tanner: Pits gives his birth to Halifax. He was buried in the Maturin convent at Paris, where his epitaph existed in the sixteenth century. Pits implies that it appears from the epitaph that he died in 1256: Mæstlinus expressly affirms that it can be collected from the epitaph, in the _Ad Lectorem_ of his _Epitome Astronomiæ_. All the authorities believe him to be English; and Leland thought he traced him as a student at Oxford. But had the manuscripts called him anything but English, the other evidence would not have weighed them down; for there are plenty of Holywoods, and there was, notoriously, a press of foreign students to Oxford in the thirteenth century. But name and residence in England may come in aid of the manuscripts.