Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 1.djvu/113

 io* s. i. JAN. so, 1904.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

89

COMBER FAMILY. (10 th S. i. 47.)

I AM in possession of two MS. volumes relating to this family. They are entitled " A Sketch of the Life and a Selection from the Poetry of Thomas Comber, LL.D., Rector of Buckworth and Morbourne, in the County of Huntingdon, collected by his Son Thomas Comber, A.B., late Vicar of Creech St. Michael, in the County of Somerset, and now Rector of Oswaldkirk, in the North Riding of the County of York." The sketch is very com- plete, and practically gives a history of the family for three or four generations.

Thomas Comber, the object of the sketch, was the son of Thomas Comber, D.D., some- time Dean of Durham, by Alice his wife, eldest daughter of Robert Thornton, of East Newton, and was born 16 June, 1722 ; educated at Jesus College, Cambridge, where he was entered 31 July, 1741 ; and died 9 April, 1778. In 1747 he published his work entitled 'An Attempt to shew the Evidence of Christianity equal to a Strict Metaphysical Demonstration,' a third edition of which appeared the following year : in which year also appeared his work en titled 'The Heathen Rejection of Christianity in the First Ages Considered ' (London, 8vo). Six other works of this Thomas Comber are enumerated by Watt. The author had a critical knowledge of Hebrew, Greek, Latin, French, Spanish, and Italian, and his unpublished works, which are numerous, bespeak a man of learn- ing and judgment. He was intimate with and corresponded much with both the celebrated Bishop Warburton and the historian Dr. Robertson. I see no account of this Dr. Com- ber in the 'D.N.B.' Possibly the volumes mentioned above are those inquired for in 1887 (7 th S. iii. 515), but, though I cannot remember when they were acquired, I rather think it must have been before that date.

It may be mentioned that in 1799 Thomas Comber, the son of the above-named Thomas Comber, and great-grandson of the Dean of Durham, published the 'Memories of the Life and Writings of Thomas Comber, D.D., sometime Dean of Durham, in which is introduced a Candid View of the Several Works of Dr. Comber, as well printed as MS. ; also a Fair Account of his Literary Correspondence' (London, 8vo). This may possibly contain some account of the family generally. W. A. COPINGER.

Kersal Cell, Manchester.

ST. MARY AXE : ST. MICHAEL LE QUERNE (9 th S. x. 425 ; xi. 110, 231 ; xii. 170, 253, 351, 507). With regard to the question upon which I find myself at variance with COL. PRIDEAUX, the position, I think, is this that, as he does not deny my hypotheses toto coelo, he may be said to admit tacitly their potentiality ; while my standpoint is that of probability based upon certain circumstantial evidence, which cannot be ignored, and which I have set forth at 9 th S. xii. 170. COL. PRIDEAUX says, however, that I have up to the present " failed to prove that any London church has derived its designation from a house-sign." As regards reducing the matter to demonstration, that is so, I admit ; but, on the other hand, my notes were so far from " not advancing facts in support of the probability," that they really were full of such facts facts which, in so far as they afford presumptive proof, must be reckoned with.

But I will now endeavour to show that the church of St. Mary Axe did, after all, derive its designation from an inn with the sign of an axe, and not, as COL. PRIDEAUX has ingeniously suggested, from a small stream known by that name. And if I can do so it is not, I think, overleaping the bounds of probability to suppose that the other churches to which I have alluded were similarly distinguished. If COL. PRIDEAUX could refer one to a document relating to St. Michael le Querne an early document preferably in which that church is styled "St. %iicna.e\-in-the- Corn-market" one would of course have to relinquish the belief that ' Quern " can have but one meaning that of a hand-mill and that it can no more be deemed equivalent to "corn-market" (malgre Stow) than "St. Nicholas-in-the-Flesh" could pass for "St. Nicholas-in-the-Flesh-Shambles." ind also one would have to abandon the jelief that " Querne " alludes to the sign of. either a miller or a baker to which the whole of the immediate neighbourhood resorted with grist, as was customary when querns were by no means common.

It may also be noted, perhaps, that many well-known landmarks like the Maypole; the " Man on Horseback," as the statue or harles I. at Charing Cross was called ; ^heapside Cross, &c. served the purposes of a signboard. Hence we have St. Andrew Jndershaft, from the shaft or maypole under whose shadow the church stood. But as to St. Mary Axe, in Ogilby's great map, the index to which in the British Museum is the only copy extant, Axe Yard is distinctly marked in the parish of St. Mary Axe (f. 91).