Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 10.djvu/252

 204

NOTES AND QUERIES. [10 s. x. SEPT. 12, im

On 3 July, 1727, a portion of the Corporation took the oath of allegiance to George II. and abjurod the Pretender : Mr. Simon Martin was one of the Aldermen who failed to do so whether from disaffection is not known (ibid., p. 49). In 1728 Simon Martin was elected Mayor of Leicester (James Thompson's ' History of Leicester from the Time of the Romans,' 1849, p. 479). From Nichols's ' Leicestershire,' vol. i. p. 444, I learn that Simon Martin was elected one of the chamberlains of Leicester on 21 Sept., 1715.

I have not been able to find when Simon Martin died. In W. C. B.'s list of ' Pro- vincial Booksellers,' contributed to ' N. & Q.' in!906(10S. v. 183), appears under Leicester, " Simon Marten or Martin, 1713-37." His will cannot be found in P.C.C. between 1737 and 1746.*

When Simon Martin was an apprentice, Michael Johnson's brother Andrew was helping him in the shop at Lichfield ; and it is worth recalling that Andrew's son, Fisher Johnson, left Birmingham for Leicester in 1736. Can Simon Martin have influenced this change of residence ? Perhaps some local antiquary can tell us more of Simon Martin.

The Eev. John Hunter's Marriages. In my book, in my account of the masterful Lichfield pedagoguef (pp. 243-5), I was

Simon Martin, of St. Ives, Hunts, widower, deed., was granted to James Martin, the son (P.C.C. Admon. Act Book, 1746).
 * On 17 June, 1746, admon. of the estate of one

t From Joseph Hill's ' Book Makers of Old Bir- mingham,' 1907, I learn (p. 25) that "John Hunter, MA., late of Birmingham," was on 7 Jan., 1694, appointed master of Sclihull School, where he remained until 1704, the year in which the Rev. John Hunter was appointed head master of Lich- field School. Mr. Hill naturally concludes that the Solihull man was Johnson's schoolmaster ; and also that he had previously held the post of assistant master at Birmingham School. Hunter's descen- dant Sir Robert White-Thomson knows nothing of his parentage or earlier career. I shall be glad to know if such information is in existence.

From the Victoria History of ' Warwickshire,' 1908, vol. ii. p. 359, under Mr. A. F. Leach's account of Solihull Grammar School, I learn that " in 1694 John Hunter, M.A., of Birmingham, was appointed [master], at a salary of 22^., with 8/. for an usher."

To The Times Literary Supplement for 16 January last, p. 22, the veteran Prof. John E. B. Mayor contributed a letter in which he announced the discovery that Johnson's schoolmaster was identical with John, son of Robert Hunter, a Cheshire clergyman, who, with his brother Robert, entered Jesus College, Cambridge, on 19 April, 1678, each taking his degree of BA. in 1681/2 and of M.A. in 1685. I understand, however, that the evidence of identification is not quite conclusive. To the same periodical for 6 February, p. 46, the Professor sent some further interesting notes on Hunter and his descendants.

unable to give any accurate particulars of his first wife, Miss Norton, sister of the Rev. Thomas Norton of Warwick,* whose father was Edward Norton of that town. The Vicar of St. Mary's, Warwick, has very kindly had his registers searched from 1700 to 1716 for the Hunter-Norton marriage, but without success ; and the Vicar of St. Nicholas's, Warwick, with equal kindness and equal lack of success, has had his registers searched from 1700 to 1713 with the same object.

I was also unable to give the exact date, or the place, of Hunter's second marriage to Lucy Porter, the sister of Harry Porter, whose widow Johnson married ; though I discovered that the settlement before marriage was dated 9 June, 1726. But in Nichols's ' Literary Illustrations of the Eighteenth Century,' vol. vii. p. 362, I find a letter from the Rev. Henry White, of Lichfield Close, dated 19 March, 1794, which contains the following statement :

"Lucy Porter, sister to Mr. Porter of Birming- ham, was the second wife of my grandfather Hunter, Dr. Johnson's schoolmaster. They were married in the year 1726 at Chelsea. This fact, both as to time and place, is attested by my mother, the daughter of that marriage, now resident here, aged sixty-five."

An application to St. Luke's, Chelsea, has proved this statement to be correct. The vestry clerk has courteously sent me the following copy of the entry :

" 1726, June 10. Mr. John Hunter, of the City of Litchfield, Clerk, Widower, and Lucy Porter, of St. Lawrence Jury, London, Spinster, were maried by Licence by Mr. Frazer."

The explanation of Lucy Porter, daughter of a Birmingham mercer, being described as of St. Laurence Jewry, is to be found in the fact that her elder brother, Joseph Porter, was a merchant in Ironmonger Lane. Dr. Johnson's Verses on a Sprig of Myrtle. The Rev. Henry White's letter, from which I have just quoted, was written to controvert the well-known letter written to Boswell by Edmund Hector, on 9 Jan., 1794, in which he directly impugned the truth of Miss Seward's statement that the a Sprig of Myrtle,'
 * Verses to a Lady, on receiving from her

" were addressed to Lucy Porter, when he was enamoured of her in his boyish days, two or three

Seward said : " I regret that it is not in my power to collect more anecdotes of Dr. Johnson's infancy. My mother passed her days of girlhood with an uncle at Warwick, consequently was absent from home in the schoolboy days of the great man." The uncle was no doubt the Rev. Thomas Norton.
 * Writing to Boswell on 25 March, 1785, Miss