Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 10.djvu/430

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NOTES AND QUERIES. [io s. x. OCT. 31, im

Crusoe,' * The Pilgrim's Progress,' ' Sandford &nd Merton,' ' Don Quixote,' and others, including the not quite so suitable master- pieces of Smollett and Fielding.

A question arises. Rushlights, as we see, were used in Galway and Westmorland at a time when means of communication were extremely limited. How, in places so far apart, is this identity of fabrication and use of the homely and now superseded rushlight to be explained ? HENRY SMYTH.

Stanmore Road, Edgbaston.

I do not think rushlights are yet to be numbered as things only of the past.

A few years ago I walked from the Llyfnant Valley to Plynlimmon, and, while resting in .a cottage far from anywhere, found rushes being collected and stored as rushlights for the winter. Indeed, not many weeks ago I brought some from another farm not far from Trawsfynydd, where they were made and stored for the same purpose. The rush pith with its coating of wax is in appearance very like a length of macaroni. I have no doubt rushlights are still in use at this farm .and many others. Lucis.

MONASTIC ESTATES (10 S. x. 250). I know of nothing to support the statement to which N. M. & A. refer, but in the ' Italian Relation of England' (Camden Soc., xxxvii.) it is said as follows :

"When King William the Bastard conquered England for the crown, all the land that was not lit for cultivation was divided into a number of parts called ' military services,' giving and assigning to each service, or, as they were otherwise named, fee, b'O acres of land ; an acre being about as much as two oxen can cultivate in a year. It is computed that there are at present 96,230 of these fees ; but the English church is in possession of 28,015 of them ; the remainder are the property of the crown or of the barons of the realm, who, however, pay acknowledgments to the crown for them. There is not a foot of land in all England which is not held either under the King or the Church, and many monasteries also pay acknowledgments to the King for their possessions ; a great number of them having been founded out of the royal funds, by the crown, after the conquest by King William." JOHN B. WAINEWRIGHT.

ALDERMAN'S WALK (10 S. x. 290). The only aldermen's names one finds connected with the Bishopsgate -Ward are those of Sir Thomas Knesworth, Mayor in 1505 ; Sir Richard Pipe in 1578 ; Sir James Pemberton in 1611 ; Sir Richard Gurney in 1641 ; Sir Joseph Sheldon in 1675 ; Sir Owen Buckingham in 1704 ; and Sir Samuel Pennant in 1749. The naming of the " Walk " must have been before 1761, for in that year's edition of Dodsley's * London

and its Environs ' " Alderman's Walk " occurs as situated in Bishopsgate Street. Possibly it was so named because some alderman contrived it. Alderman Parsons' s Stairs, St. Catherine's, was so named, accord- ing to the same authority, from the ground landlord. J. HOLDEN MACMICHAEL.

In a map of the Ward of Bishopsgate Street, 1754, this passage is described as "Dashwood's Walk." Sir William Dash- wood was Lord Mayor in 1703. In Elmes's ' Topographical Dictionary,' 1831, it is said to extend " behind the* church into the churchyard." It was then known as Alder- man's Walk. WM. NORMAN.

Was not Alderman's Walk simply the path leading to the Ward Room situated in Bishopsgate Churchyard, now used as the Parish Hall ? If so, as the Alderman presided at Ward Motes and other Ward functions, it had to be traversed by him, and so derived its name.

G. YARROW BALDOCK.

HIGH TREASON AND ITS PUNISHMENT (10 S. x. 229, 314). In ' The New House of

Commons, July, 1892 Reprinted from

The Times, 1892,' is the following (p. 251) :

''O'Brien, James Francis Xavier (A.P.) b. 1837

Was tried in 1867 for high treason, and sentenced

to be hanged, drawn, and quartered ; sentence commuted to penal servitude for life, subsequently released under an amnesty. M.P., South Mayo from 1885."

See also the similar lists of members of the House of Commons of July, 1895, and October, 1900 (where " b. 1831"). In these Parliaments Mr. O'Brien sat for Cork City.

Mr. Henry W. Lucy in his ' Later Peeps at Parliament,' 1905, p. 65, says of Mr. J. F. X. O'Brien :

" Having been convicted of crimenlceice majestatis, he was, in accordance with the statute of the good old days of Edward III., ordered to be hanged, drawn, and quartered."

If I remember rightly, it was Mr. O'Brien who brought in a Bill to allow any Irishman, who desired to do so, to put an " O " or a " Mac " at the beginning of his surname.

ROBERT PIERPOINT.

In venturing to break a lance with so eminent an authority as SIR HARRY POLAND I almost feel, as it were, like a fool rushing in "where angels fear to tread"; but I make so bold, nevertheless, as to demur to his statement that the " last sentence for high treason " was in 1848. In May, 1867, the Fenian prisoners Burke and Doran were