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CONTENTS.-N° 183. NOTES:-Drake, 501-Shakspeariana, 503-Prices of Jacobean Quartoes, 504-Dickens Coincidence-Bicentenary of Richardson-Jeremy_Taylor-Whorwood Family-Quotes-Parmesan Cheese-Lord Zevemberghes-Charles I. at Windsor, 505-Irish Ecclesiastical Appointments-Lilliput-Mortars Othello' with MS. Notes-Chinelickums: Slick, 506

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district. Then of the hundred, more or less, freeholders and leaseholders to be won over the chief were bound to him by family ties or friendship, and others were, fortunately, Plymouthians. He himself was rich, with the Queen at his back. His lawyer, Serjeant Hele, as one of the neighbourhood, knew how the tinners, under cover of their charter, had set Parliaments at defiance, and that their charter, involving an ancient royal revenue QUERIES:-Selina-Brief History of Birmingham'-Hersey (Hearne, Lib. Nig. Scac.,' 360), would not be -Stone Coffins-Pale Ale-Fleet on the Serpentine, 507St. Paul's Deanery Cemetery Guides - Burials in West- annulled to gratify Plymouth. Parliamentary minster Abbey-Marie Lachensten-Lines on Music-Stag powers of the most stringent kind were indisMatch-"How much the wife is dearer than the bride," 508 pensable, and a private Act would be impotent; Wishing-bone-Claypole-John Cholmley, M.P.-Soinswer - View of the Creation '-Paignton, 509. therefore Hele decided to play off the safety of the state, or the very national existence, against the REPLIES:-" Idol shepherd," 509- Gothic Inscription Bytake-Aitken, 510-Fluck-Rev. W. Palmer-Punning royal revenue, by petitioning Parliament, in the Motto-" Dogmatism" and "Puppyism "-Crabbe's Tales,' name of the Mayor and Commonalty of Plymouth, 511-Darcy-Sir N. Wentworth's Bequest-Winter-Bedstaff, 512-Boswell's Johnson-Vase- Chapman's All for powers to bring in the river Meavy, ostensibly Fools-Herodotus, 513-Charles Owen-Marriage- The for the preservation of the haven of Plymouth, "a Etonian,' 514 - Otherwise-Cromwell's Descendants-Crématter moaste beneficiall to the Realme" (Act 27 billon-Erasmus Earle, 515- Acrostic-Oxford Divinity Degrees-Walking Stationer-Heraldic-Mock Mayor, 516Gloves of Charles I.-Black Men as Heralds-Gray-Pluralization-Hark! the herald angels," 517-St. Andrew's Church-Dorchester School-Medal-Monogram-Saying of Lord Beaconsfield-Victualler-Bishop Ken, 518-Trial of Bishop King-" Arrant Scot"-Authors Wanted, 519. NOTES ON BOOKS:-Bertran y Bros's Rondallistica 'Dictionary of Roman Coins Annual Register'-Elvin's positions before described, and it seems that this

⚫ Dictionary of Heraldry.' Notices to Correspondents.

Notes.

SIR FRANCIS DRAKE AND THE PLYMOUTH

LEAT.

(Concluded from p. 443.) Thomas, the youngest brother and heir of Sir Francis Drake, married Mrs. Elford, a widow, whose house, near the head of the leat at Sheepstor, was pleasantly situated on the banks of the river Meavy, which coursed through her land. Drake's relative, John Amadas, was Mayor of Plymouth in 1574-5. The succeeding mayor sent men to view a river (Plymouth Corporation Accounts)-probably the rivulet running to Pennycomquick, near Plymouth-or possibly to consider the feasibility of leading in the Plym, but not the Meavy to a moral certainty. In 1581-2, Drake, himself being mayor, knew that Plymouth wanted water; and the conjecture is reasonable that, when visiting Sheepstor and observing a mountain stream running to waste higher above the sealevel than the highest ground in Plymouth, he reflected how easily the ancient Peruvians would have conducted such water to a distant town. He well knew how the intervening hills and valleys resounded with the ceaseless clamour of the tinners' clash mills, and that he could count on the support of his cousin Richard Drake, a God-fearing Puritan, wealthy and childless, who happened to be the principal mill-owner and tinner in the

Eliz.) and the supply of Her Majesty's Navy. The town was to elect for burgesses Drake's personal friends, C. Harris and Henry Bromley.*

After obtainining the Act the powers conferred on the Corporation were to be temporarily transferred to Drake by means of the customary com

was the very best method that could have been devised under the circumstances. Many years ago my cousin, once Mayor of Plymouth, informed me of the composition, and that Drake's gift was doubted. I insisted on the strength of the people's tradition, and he was struck by the absurdity of the idea that Plymouth, a town far from wealthy, should have volunteered to undertake the state's duty of preserving Plymouth Haven. As the Act of Parliament was delusive, he concluded that there was more behind the composition than we can understand now. Though a lawyer, he was no antiquary, I believe.

Certainly the Mayor and Corporation would not seriously have presented such a petition if uncountenanced in high quarters; it would have been a mockery and an offence to common sense, but pretext and strategy were necessary when fiction entered so largely into legal procedure. Had the

* Henry Bromley was the son of the Lord Chancellor, to whom Drake had presented 8001. worth of plate (Froude, Engl.,' xi. 403). Minsheu, in dedicating his Spanish Dictionary' to him, mentions that he bountifully maintained poor scholars at the university. See his portrait in Nash, Worcester,' ii. 444). The Act 27 Eliz., c. 20, is entitled "An Acte for Preservacon of the Haven of Plymowth." As it can be read at any time in the Round Room at the Record Office or in the British Museum Reading Room, a brief outline of the petition will suffice here. It represents that Plymouth had a haven safe for Her Majesty's ships and others; that the inhabitants and mariners had occasionally to go a mile for fresh water, and, consequently, these frequently lost the advantage of a favourable wind; that the haven daily filled up with sand from the

public duty assumed by Plymouth not been illusory, the means devised were utterly inadequate. The Act empowered her to dig a trench six or seven feet broad and two feet deep (Plym. Trans., vii. 469). The water, discharged through it slowly, was to scour the haven of tinners' sand brought down by rivers of, say, twenty times the volume in ordinary seasons and many hundredfold the volume in flood time.*

But writers who stood committed to a literal interpretation of the Act argued that Plymouth Haven meant Sutton Pool. This explanation is inadmissible, for Stonehouse, in her Water Act (Private Act, 36 Eliz., No. 21), claimed to be on Plymouth Haven, which is laid down as an arm of the sea of " more than 10 miles circuit" (Add. MS. 16,370). Leland describes Mount Edgcumbe as on the Haven (Itin.,' iii. 32). Tinners' refuse never entered Sutton Pool, and a contemporary plan of the leat (Charity Com., Thirty-Second Rep., pt. ii., 1837-8) proves that it flowed in another direction.t

Unquestionably Plymouth was at some expense, if only to save appearances. Thirty shillings in all were expended on plans necessary to be submitted to the assessors and Judges of Assize on their first visit. Out of this Robert Lampen, surveyor, received

tin-works and mines adjoining, and would soon be utterly decayed if some speedy remedy was not had; that the river Meavy, distant eight or ten miles, could be brought into Plymouth over hills and dry land that would be bettered by a leat which would scour and cleanse some part of the haven "to the perpetuall contynewance of the same Haven, a matter moaste beneficiall to the Realme." Powers were asked "to digge and myne a Diche or Trenche conteynenge in Bredthe betwene sixe or seaven Foote over in all Places" to convey the Meavy to Plymouth. The Act obtained the royal assent March 29, 1585 (D Ewes, Journal'). We may remark that shipmasters could always fill their kegs at Barn Pool, or other points on the coast, without going a mile inland

for water.

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These rivers conveyed from the tin-works "a mervelous greate quantitie of Sande, Gravell, Stone, Robell, Erthe, Slyme, and Filth into the said Ports and Havens, and have so filled and choked the same that where before this tyme a Shippe for portage of viij (800 tons burden) myght have easely entered at a lowe water into the same, nowe a Shippe of a hundred can skantly entre at the halfe fludde" (Act 23 Hen. VIII., c. 8, 1531-2).

† Hollar's map of Plymouth, 1643, names the leat "Sir Francis Drake's water" (King's Pamph., No. 141, and Worth, Hist. Plym.,' p. 64). Perceiving that the 3001, named would not cover the costs and compensations, it was insisted by some that the leat for half its course was an ancient leat to Warliegh Mill utilized (Plym. Trans., vii, 468). The only comment needed is to direct the reader to two contemporary plans of the leat (one Cott., Aug., i. p. 1, No. 41; and Lord Burghley's copy at Hatfield, for which see Plym. Trans., viii. 82). These duplicates trace the complete course from Sheeps

tor to Plymouth, and show no leat to Warleigh. The assertion rested on the authority of one "Old Giles," but the Plymouth tradition rested on the authority of population.

a

10s. for six days' work, "plannynge & vewinge the grounde." One Haywoode received 8s. 6d. for six days" "newe writinge the vewe four tymes," and one Jeane received 3s. for four days' assistance. The balance was "for their dyett" (Plymouth Corporation Accounts). This is all the surveying expense mentioned. But the main work of selecting the ground and taking the levels, over twentyfive miles of hilly country, with the rude instruments of the period, would have involved more than six days and the labour of a large staff of assistants at a heavier cost than 30s. However, this is of minor import comparatively with the fact that all the tinners had to be canvassed for their assent; and considering Drake's family, local, and court influence, and how he was worshipped as the hero of the day, he alone, of all men, could have prevailed all round; and with this closing remark I trust I have satisfactorily established the four points named at the commencement, though to my mind the strongest argument rests in the inherent force and internal evidence of the popular tradition.

Some parties, repenting of their bargain, attempted in 1593 to alter or explain away the Act, and the attorney of the duchy was placed on the committee not "because Sutton Pool, which the leat was intended to scour, was then, as now, part of duchy property" (Plym. Trans., viii. 518), but because the profits of the Stannary Courts had been assigned to the Prince of Wales (Act 38 Hen. VI.).

In 1602, after Drake's death, Mr. William Crymes, lord of the manor of Buckland Monachorum, deposed that, as one of the assessors, he had consented to the cutting of the leat, and had recently erected tin clash mills on Roborough Down, which he worked by diverting water from the Plymouth leat (by virtue of the tinners' charter), for so it happened that one tinner of Buckland Monachorum, who had been overlooked, had reserved his rights, and this tinner deposed that the men of his class had assented without fully weighing the consequences (Star Chamber Depositions). Mr. Crymes sustained his right, and paid the Corporation a nominal quit rent, a shilling a year, for forty years (the Rev. J. Erskine Risk, Plym. Trans., viii. 377).

Drake's munificence went further. He provided Plymouth with ample means for keeping the leat in repair, by giving her the reversion of certain grist mills, erected by him, which returned a handsome and increasing yearly income. These he might have reserved in fee to his family, with free water power in perpetuity.

It commonly happens that the excitement of party spirit incapacitates the understanding for weighing the evidence of facts, and leads writers to catch at those which they can most easily mould to their purpose, or, as George Eliot expresses it,

And Fortune, on his damned quarrel smiling,
Showed like a rebel's whore: but all's too weak :-
For brave Macbeth, like Valour's minion-
Well he deserves that name-disdaining Fortune,
With his brandished steel,

"where adverse evidence reaches demonstration parenthetical brackets have accidentally changed they must resort to devices and expedients in places. Read, therefore, thus:order to explain away contradiction" (Evangelical Teaching,' p. 158).* Their readers, who have neither leisure nor opportunity to search and examine for themselves, rely on their statements, and become the innocent means of spreading error or curtailing truth. For instance, a recent biography of Drake limits his action to sitting on a committee of the Water Act ("Dict. Nat. Biog.'). Again quoting George Eliot, "A distinct appreciation of the value of evidence-in other words, the intellectual perception of truth-is more allied to truthfulness of statement, or the moral quality of veracity, than is generally admitted" (op. cit., p. 156). H. H. DRAKE.

SHAKSPEARIANA.

'MACBETH,' I. ii. 14.-The First Folio, the only authority for the text of 'Macbeth,' thus prints :And Fortune on his damned Quarry smiling Shew'd like a Rebell's Whore: but all 's too weake: For brave Macbeth (well hee deserves that Name) Disdayning Fortune, with his brandisht Steele Which smoak'd with bloody execution

(Like Valour's Minion) carv'd out his passage,
Till hee fac'd the Slave:

Which nev'r shooke hande, nor bad farwell to him,
Till he unseam'd him from the Nave to th' Chops,
And fix'd his Head upon our Battlements.]

Which smoked with bloody execution,
Carved out his passage till he faced the slave,
And ne'er shook hands nor bade farewell to him,
Till he unseamed him from the nave to the chaps,
And fixed his head upon our battlements.
Malone, referring to Holinshed, corrected quarry in
the first line.
W. WATKISS LLOYD.

'KING JOHN,' III. i. (7th S. vii. 383).—

It is religion that doth make vows kept;
But thou hast sworn against religion,

By what thou swear'st against the thing thou swear'st,
And makest an oath the surety for thy truth
Against an oath: fthe truth thou art unsure
To swear, swears only not to be forsworn :
Else what a mockery should it be to swear!
Globe edit. 11. 279-285.

If, as I presume is the case, MR. C. J. FLETCHER has made his début in 'N. & Q.' with the excellent paper at the reference above, he deserves a hearty welcome from older contributors as a valuable accession.

I am not surprised that reader or compositor, or both, got confused in dealing with the very

Capell's unimpeachable correction of the eighth subtle dialectic of his Eminence Cardinal Pan

line

And ne'er shook hands, &c.—

is neglected, with too many the like, by most later editors; the Globe, however, drawing attention to such negligence by obelizing the line. Steevens, justly perceiving that "Till he faced the slave" was the end, not the beginning of a line, printed,

dulph. From some cause confusion has crept into
the text, but happily not, as I think, beyond
detection and removal by simple process. I pro-
pose to amend the passage thus :—

But thou hast sworn against religion
It is religion that doth make vows kept;
By what thou swear'st against the thing thou swar'st
And makest an oath the surety for thy truth
Against the truth-an oath thou art unsure
To swear. Swear only not to be forsworn:
Else what a mockery should it be to swear!

Carved out his passage, till he faced the slave; but in ignorance (at that time general) of Shakespeare's frequent employment of interlaced or run1. In 1. 3 I think it is evident that in the second on lines, he left "Like Valour's minion" un-instance we should read swar'st for "swear'st." disturbed, as a gasping half-line.

Mitford perceived that the clause in parenthesis -("Like Valour's minion")—was out of place, and made a gallant attempt to reduce the dislocation by the transposition,

Disdaining Fortune, like Valour's minion.

He so far did well in retaining a capital letter for "Valour," and thus placing it in directest opposition to Fortune. Macbeth is, in fact, contrasted, as the minion of Valour, with Macdonwald flattered by smiling Fortune; but even so the terms of the antithesis are too remote from each other to tell as intended. I do not doubt that the two clauses in

* Indeed the ingenious devices employed to explain away Drake's gift are colourless in the fresh light brought to bear upon them, and their purpose glares through all the overlay of laborious and transparent patchwork in the Transactions quoted,

alliance with John with his old oath of obedience Pandulph was contrasting Philip's new oath of to the Holy See. Swear'st and swar'st being identical in sound, the cause of misprint is obvious.

2. The transposition of "an oath" and "the truth," in 1. 5, must, I think, commend itself. "Against the truth" is equivalent to "against religion" in 1. 2.

3. "Surety" being used in the sense of warrant, "unsure," as its opposite, must mean unwarranted. Unsure in Shakspeare is by no means limited to the sense of uncertain, the sense which MR. FLETCHER assigns to the word. In '2 Henry IV.,' I. iii. 89, we find it in the sense of unsafe, a sense which would suit this passage very well, though, for the reason stated, "unwarranted" is preferable.

4. Those who know how frequently final s unwarrantably intrudes itself in the text of the First

Folio will not think that I have taken an unwarrantable liberty in eliding it from " swears "in 1. 6.

MR. FLETCHER'S second note, on 'King John,' IV. ii., needs neither emendation nor addition. He has fairly hit the nail on the head, and driven it home. R. M. SPENCE, M.A.

Manse of Arbuthnott, N.B. P.S.-"Swears," in 1. 6, may be allowed to stand if we regard it as an abbreviation for "One swears." For similar instances of ellipsis of nominative see Abbott's 'Shak. Gram.,' 390-402.

I cannot agree with MR. FLETCHER in his interpretation of III. i. 279-84; and to rely on the punctuation of the Folio to establish any particular reading is to rest on a very broken reed. The argument, to my mind, is not so difficult as the editors have found it: "It is religion that makes Vows kept, but you have sworn (second oath) against religion (which in your first oath you swore to champion). In so far as you swear against your first oath, and make your second oath a surety for your truth, thereby setting the truth against an oath (viz., your first oath), you are on unstable ground; in swearing one swears only to keep one's vow (and you have sworn to break it)." As a matter of fact, the punctuation of the Folio appears to be correct, except that there should be a stop at "unsure." HOLCOMBE INGLEBY.

'TEMPEST,' III. i. (7th S. vii. 403).—A meaning much clearer than that MR. SPENCE manages to find in the passage may be brought out from a less violent alteration of the text than is required for his interpretation. I would propose only to read least instead of "lest" in the First Folio, and to omit the "it" at the end of the sentence. The passage would then run :—

I forget:

But these sweet thoughts do even refresh my labours,
Most busy least when I do.

Ferdinand has allowed his thoughts to run on the charms of Miranda, when he awakes to the consciousness that he is forgetting his task of drudgery. But even so, he would fain argue, he gives his master no cause of complaint, inasmuch as the thoughts of her are so refreshing that he is practically busiest in his master's service when for the moment he is beguiled into entire cessation of bodily labour.

The foregoing correction was suggested to me in my sleep many years ago. I had not been speculating at all upon any mode of amending the passage, when one night, without any corresponding dream, I awoke with the words running in my head: "Most busy when least I do." It was some time before I could think what they referred to, but after a little I recognized them as pointing to the true reading of the famous crux in the 'Tempest.' H. WEDGWOOD.

This

Though unable to accept MR. SPENCE's reading in its entirety, I am yet obliged to him for throwing a light on this passage which may lead to its true interpretation. I accept his first suggestion of removing the semicolon at forget, but I would preserve the Folio punctuation in the next line, and understand the relative pronoun. form of construction is almost too common to need illustration; but I append a capital instance from this very play, the failure to understand which has, until quite lately, led the editors all astray :— A solemn air and the best comforter To an unsettled fancy cure thy brains, Now useless boil within thy skull.

6

Tempest,' V. i. 60. Were busilest analogous to the easilest in 'Cymbeline' I should prefer that reading, as requiring only the slightest alteration; but, as the analogy will not hold, perhaps busiest is the reading to be preferred. We then get this very satisfactory interpretation: "I forget everything but these sweet thoughts, which refresh even my most busiest labours, when I give way to them." "Do it" is a common expression of the day, and may mean almost anything. Cf. 'Cymbeline,' II. ii. 18:

Rubies unparagon'd,

How dearly they do't.

I may not have suggested the true solution of this difficult passage, but I think the above interpretation is worth consideration. HOLCOMBE INgleby.

Athenæum Club.

My

PRICES OF JACOBEAN QUARTOES: ENTRIES IN STATIONERS' REGISTERS.-The evidence here set forth as to prices is, as yet, too little to found any certain conclusion upon; nevertheless I give it as a first conclusion and for what it is worth. My copy of Jonson's "Execration against Vulcan. With divers Epigrams...... Printed by J. O. for John Benson......1640," has in MS. on its title-page "4d." Its leaves (including the first fly-leaf, which is part of the signatures in a) are thirty. Chapman's Conspiracie......of Charles, Duke of Byron,' 1608, has in MS. on its title-page "pret. 10d 1o Junij. 1608." Its leaves are 65 (for signature A only includes the title-leaf and the dedication-leaf, both unsigned). Assuming, then, that the fourpence for the Jonson quarto was its published, and not its second-hand price, an assumption rendered most probable by its coincidence of result with the Chapman quarto, the publisher's pricerate seems to have been one penny for every seven and a half leaves (390 lines of larger print) in the Jonson booklet, and for six and a half leaves (ll. 494) in the Chapman one.

It is true that Drummond of Hawthornden bought a Romeo and Juliet' for fourpence, that is at the rate of a penny for eleven leaves; but as

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