part of which is now the Mercers' chapel in Cheapside, was called "The
Hospital of St. Thomas the Martyr _of Acon_." Erasmus, also, in his
_Pilgrimages to Walsingham and Canterbury_ (see J.G. Nichol's excellent
translation and notes, pp. 47. 120.), says that the archbishop was
called "Thomas _Acrensis_."

Edward Foss.


_"Imprest" and "Debenture."_--Perhaps the following may be of some use
to D.V.S. (Vol. ii., p. 40.) in his search for the verbal raw material
out of which these words were manufactured.

Their origin may, I think, be found in the Latin terms used in the
ancient accounts of persons {107} officially employed by the crown to
express transactions somewhat similar to those for which they appear to
be now used. Persons conversant with those records must frequently have
met with cases where money advanced, paid on account, or as earnest, was
described as "de prestito" or "in prestitis." Ducange gives "præstare"
and its derivatives as meaning "mutuo dare" with but little variation;
but I think that too limited a sense. The practice of describing a
document itself by the use of the material or operative parts expressing
or defining the transaction for which it was employed, is very common.
In legal and documentary proceedings, it is indeed the only one that is
followed. Let D.V.S. run over and compare any of the well-known
descriptions of writs, as _habeas corpus_, _mandamus_, _fi. fa._: or
look into Cowell's _Interpreter_, or a law dictionary, and he will see
numerous cases where terms now known as the names of certain documents
are merely the operative parts of Latin _formulæ_. "Imprest" seems to be
a slightly corrupted translation of "in prestito;" that part of the