While on this subject, perhaps I may be permitted to ask whether any
reader of the "NOTES AND QUERIES" can throw light on the following
questionable statement made by a correspondent of the _Morning Herald_,
of the 16th September, 1822.

"Looking over and old volume the other day, printed in 1771,
I find it remarked that it was known as a tradition, that
Shakspeare shut himself up all night in Westminster Abbey when
he wrote the ghost scene in Hamlet."

I do not find in Wilson's _Shakspeariana_ the title of a single "old"
book printed in 1771, on the subject of Shakspere.

T.

* * * * *

SIR WILLIAM SKIPWYTH, KING'S JUSTICE IN IRELAND.

Mr. Editor,--I am encouraged by the eminent names which illustrate the
first Number of your new experiment--a most happy thought--to inquire
whether they, or any other correspondent, can inform me who was the
William de Skypwith, the patent of whose appointment as Chief Justice of
the King's Bench in Ireland, dated February 15. 1370, 44 Edward III., is
to be found in the _New Fædera_ vol. iii. p.877.? In the entry on the
Issue Roll of that year, p. 458., of the payment of "his expences and
equipment" in going there, he is called "Sir William Skipwyth, Knight,
and the King's Justice in Ireland." {24}