10 S. XI. JAN. 9, 1909.]

NOTES AND QUERIES.

29

"CLASKET."-I should be grateful for It was lying east and west, which seems information concerning the origin of the to indicate, but not to prove with absolute word Clasket as used in Clasketgate, certainty, that it was buried in Christian Careful search was made for any The gate-house times. a thoroughfare of Lincoln. which formerly stood there was, it is thought, trace of metal, but nothing of the kind was of Norman origin, and it was in the Clasket found. The mound was 8 ft. high, and about The tenant and others Gate-House that some of the Knights 60 ft., in diameter. LINDIMP. were of opinion that it was not composed of Templars were imprisoned. the same kind of soil as the other part of the field.

AUTHORS OF QUOTATIONS WANTED.-
1. One smile can glorify a day,

One word true hope impart,
The least disciple need not say
There are no alms to give away
If love be in the heart.

2. O Christ, how beautiful Thou art!
Mine eye is overcome with light:
'Tis we are dead, not Thou.

Torquay.

A. J. DAVY.

RICHARD THOMPSON, SURGEON R.N.I shall feel greatly obliged for information relative to the career of this naval officer, particularly the place and date of his death. He was living circa 1780-1800. Perhaps possessors of old Navy Lists will kindly Were there help. contemporary any Thompsons with the same Christian name F. N. C. in the Navy?

VILLAGE NAMES FEMININE.-When two villages of the same name lie near together they are frequently distinguished by the suffix Magna or Parva. Why the feminine gender? The Latin vicus and pagus are masculine. Is the reference to urbs, which is feminine?

It would be very interesting to discover, if possible, the object for which this cross was made and why it was buried. Is it likely that it may be a survival from preour opinion, Christian times? This, in is extremely improbable. Can it be a Christian cross of very early time, buried in a heathen mound for the purpose of reconciling it to the faith? or may it be a cross -perhaps deemed miraculous-which was hidden in the hill to preserve it from destruction when the ornaments and other treasures were removed from the churches in the reigns of Edward VI. and Elizabeth ? Each of these interpretations has been suggested, but no one of them is, to our minds, N. M. & A. entirely satisfactory.

DUTTON SEAMAN, CITY COMPTROLLER.-
Dutton Seaman purchased on 11 June, 1740,
for 4,000l., the office of Comptroller of the
City of London. By his wife Elizabeth
he had an only son, Dutton, of the Inner
Temple and Rotherby Hall, Leicestershire.
I desire to ascertain the maiden name of
She was buried

the Comptroller's wife.
T. M. W.
at Rotherby on 3 April, 1786.

Sandgate.

R. J. FYNMORE.

THOMAS HAGGERSTON ARNOTT.-I shall be glad if any readers of N. & Q.' can give me information concerning the family of Thomas Arnott of Sunderland, whose son Thomas Haggerston Arnott was apprenticed to a master mariner in 1819. Thomas Arnott, sen., is believed to have married a member of the ancient Durham family of GEO. W. HILL. Haggerston. Junior Constitutional Club, Piccadilly, W.

CROSS AT HIGHAM-ON-THE-HILL.-At the time of publication we had given to us The Leicestershire Architectural Society's Journal, vol. ix. part i., because it contained an account of a wooden cross that had been found buried under a mound in a field at Higham-on-the-Hill in that county. The tenant of the farm was desirous of moving this hillock to fill up a pit in another part of the farm. He was therefore requested by the rector to observe with care anything of interest that might be found during the work. He was careful to do so, and soon reported that he had found in the centre East London burial-ground? MEDICULUS. of the earthwork two pieces of wood in the CHANTREY AND OLIVER, MINIATURISTS.— form of a cross-the longer measuring about 18 ft., the cross-piece about 2 ft. shorter. Is anything known of two miniature porThey trait-artists, Chantrey and Oliver, about Both were believed to be oak. Oliver probably continued were much decayed. The cross-piece, it 1790-1800? would seem, had not been fastened to the further into the nineteenth century. Both The stem were in London; but Oliver came of a stem, but merely laid across it. E. M. BEECHEY. was pierced with three oblong openings, Shropshire family. Milverton, Somerset. and there were also two in the cross-piece.

BRITTEN.-What was the situation of this

Replies.

PHILLIS WHEATLEY AND HER
POEMS.

66

(10 S. x. 385.)

WHILE the notice of Phillis Wheatley in The Knickerbocker, referred to by MR. THORNTON, may be correct in its general outlines, it is incorrect in its details. Thus it was not in 1770," but on 18 Aug., 1771, that Phillis was baptized and received into the church " (H. A. Hill's History of the Old South Church,' ii. 102). And MR. THORNTON is much astray in stating that the editio princeps of her poems is that published by J. James at Philadelphia in 1787.

66

Proposals For Printing by Subscription, A Collection of Poems, wrote at several times, and upon various occasions, by Phillis, a Negro Girl, from the Strength of her own Genius, it being but a few Years since she came to this Town an uncultivated Barbarian from Africa,"

"Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral. By Phillis Wheatley, Negro Servant to Mr. John Wheatley, of Boston, in New England. London: Printed for A. Bell, Bookseller, Aldgate; and sold by Messrs. Cox and Berry, King-Street, Boston.

of 24 Jan., 1774, and was reprinted in Phila-
delphia by J. Crukshank in 1786; so that
the Philadelphia edition of 1787, called
by MR. THORNTON the editio princeps, was
at least the third edition. Meanwhile,
however, the publication of another work
was contemplated in 1779. The Evening
Post (Boston) of 30 Oct., 1779, contained
"Proposals, For Printing, By Subscription, A
Volume of Poems and Letters, On Various Subjects,
Dedicated to the Right Honourable Benjamin
Franklin, Esq.; One of the Ambassadors of the
Peters."
United States, at the Court of France, By Phillis
This work, which was to contain thirty-
three poems
and thirteen letters, apparently

never saw the light.

But while the 1773 edition was the editio princeps of her collected poems, single poems had been published before, and were published after, that date. An Elegiac Poem, sacred to the memory of the Rev. George Whitefield,' was separately printed were printed in The Censor (a Boston maga-(in two or more editions) in 1770, and was zine) of 29 Feb., 1772. This edition was included in the Rev. Ebenezer Pemberton's aparently never published. On 8 May, Heaven the Residence of the Saints,' a 1773, Phillis sailed from Boston to London, sermon on the same topic, reprinted at and reached Boston again on 13 September. London in 1771; Farewell to America, Her efforts to publish her poems, unsuccessful To Mrs. S. W.' (no doubt her mistress, Mrs. in Boston in 1772, met with success in London Wheatley), was printed in The Boston Postin 1773; and no doubt the editio princeps Boy of 10 May, 1773; a letter and a poem of her collected poems is addressed to Washington were printed in The Pennsylvania Magazine for April, 1776 (ii. 193); An Elegy, sacred to the Memory of that great Divine, the Reverend and Learned Dr. Samuel Cooper,' was printed in 1784; while Liberty and Peace, a Poem,' was also printed in 1784, the year of Phillis's death. Nor was this all. A portion of a letter addressed to the Rev. Samson Occom, the Indian, was printed, as a Specimen of her Ingenuity," in The Boston Evening Post of 24 March, 1774; the publication of thirteen letters was contemplated in 1779; and seven letters (written between 1772 and 1779) were printed by the late Charles Deane one of the most learned of Massachusetts historians-in the Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society for November, 1863 (vii. 267-78). The originals of five of the last letters are now owned by that society, and I have just examined them.

MDCCLXXIII."

66

This contained an engraved portrait of Phillis, Published according to Act of Parliament, Sept 1st 1773 by Arch Bell, Bookseller No 8 near the Saracens Head Aldgate." Phillis took with her to London a "Letter sent by the Author's Master to the Publisher,' and an attestation of the authenticity of the poems signed by some of the best-known men then living in Boston, including Governor Hutchinson, Lieut.Governor Oliver, John Hancock (afterwards Governor), James Bowdoin (afterwards Governor), and seven clergymen. The former was printed in Some Account of Phillis, a Learned Negro Girl,' in The Gentleman's Magazine for May, 1773 (xliii. 226); the latter was placed on exhibition by the London bookseller; and both were printed in the 'Poems.' A review of the Poems appeared in The London Magazine for September, 1773 (xlii. 456).

The London edition was advertised for sale by Cox & Berry in The Boston Gazette

66

"" 66

Negro Poet (or poetess)," the surprising African poetess,' the famous Phillis Wheatley," &c., not to mention "her celebrated miscellaneous poems." In the face of this absolutely overwhelming mass of contemporary evidence in favour of the authenticity of the poems, MR. THORNTON raises for the first time (so far as the present writer is aware) the question of their genuineness, and asserts that "the internal evidence stamps them as a literary fraud." "Is it credible,” he asks, except to a Judæus Apella,' that a full-blooded negro child, in less than twelve years, could acquire such a knack of versifying, and so much classical knowledge, and classical instinct too, as is here displayed? This argument, like that of the so-called Baconians, fails to carry conviction. ALBERT MATTHEWS. Boston, U.S.

66

66

SPEAKERS OF THE HOUSE OF COMMONS (10 S. x. 489).-G. H. S. will find a complete list of Speakers of the House of Commons from the earliest authentic records of Parliament (1260) at pp. 247-51 of Haydn's Book of Dignities,' continued to the present time (1890) by Horace Ockerby, published by W. H. Allen. This list gives, besides the dates of the tenure of office, the constituency by which each Speaker was returned to the House of Commons.

The list given in Haydn ends in 1886 with the election, for the third time, of Mr. A. W. (now Viscount) Peel. It can be completed to date by the addition of the names of Viscount Selby (Mr. William Court Gully, M.P. for Carlisle 1886 to 1905), Speaker 1895 to 1905, and of the Right Hon. James William Lowther, M.P. for the Penrith division of Cumberland, elected Speaker in June, 1905, whose impartiality, dignity, and sense of humour make everybody who is under his sway hope that he may establish a record for the long duration in his person

of the exalted office which he fills.

A list of Speakers of the House of Commons, with dates of appointment, appears under Speaker, The,' in The Dictionary of English History,' edited by Sidney J. Low and F. S. Pulling, and published by Cassell & Co. in 1889. For other information respecting the holders of the office G. H. S. could not do better than consult the 'D.N.B.' JOHN COLES, Jun. Frome.

In it

I would recommend to the notice of G. H. S. a work entitled Parliament, Past and Present,' by Arnold Wright and Philip Smith, which I have often found very useful. It was published only a year or so ago by Messrs. Hutchinson & Co. will be found much interesting matter on the subject asked about. The index is full, and in it is given a list of over sixty holders of this office, besides references to many pages of the book where things connected with the Speakership are mentioned. W. E. HARLAND-OXLEY.

Westminster.

66

THE TYBURN (10 S. x. 341, 430, 494).—I have refrained from saying anything on this subject hitherto, on account of its difficulty. I was also wholly puzzled to imagine how the proposed derivation from the A.-S. two- could be sustained. There The first are two fatal objections to this. is that the w would not be lost; and secondly, even if it could be, it would give a modern Teeburn, and not Tyburn at all. the elision The last article says that of the letter w in tweo presents no difficulty,' because "two is pronounced too." But the cases are not parallel: the w in tw (or other combinations) is never lost unless the sound of o or u follows. But the sound of eo had nothing of the nature of an o or u about it. This is why the old form Twiford remains Twiford still; it never became Tiford, nor is ever likely to pass into such a form. I have explained more than a hundred instances of the loss of w in the Cambridge Phil. Soc. Trans., vol. v. part 5.

If one is reduced to guessing, it would be easy to suggest that, after all, Tyburn might be derived from Tye and Burn, on the same principle that beef-eater was found, after all, A tye is to be derived from beef and eater. the regular Essex, Suffolk, Kent, and Sussex word for a croft or enclosure, and is even applied to an extensive common pasture see the English Dialect or Dictionary.' The etymology is simple enough, viz., from the verb to tie, A.-S. tigan; and it must be remembered that

common;

6