Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 11.djvu/38

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NOTES AND QUERIES. [io s. XL JAN. 9, im

In view of this discussion and of assertions made in a recent issue of The Nineteenth Century, it may be well to place a portion of the will upon record. It is dated 20 Aug., 1827 :

"My family were of the Episcopal Church, the established religion of Ireland, in which I was born and brought up with great care and attention ; and from the religious impressions which I there re- ceived, I am, under the guidance of a divine provi- dence, indebted for my future conduct and success in life. My father was a farmer in the country, with a large family. His name was William. My mother's name was Elizabeth (her maiden name was Peoples). They were both descended from a mixture of English and Scotch families who had settled in Ireland after the conquest of that country. I was born on the first day of November, Old Style, in the year seventeen hundred and fifty-two, at the place called Fanat [now Fanad, about 12 miles from Londonderry], in the county of Donegal, Ireland, and was sent by my family at the early age of four- teen years to Philadelphia, for the purpose of being brought up to mercantile pursuits, where I arrived in the month of April, 17ti6."

Thus William Patterson's father was William (not John) ; his " family were of the Episcopal Church " (not Presbyterian) ; and his father's connexion with Scotch Patterson was through a family which " had settled in Ireland after the Conquest."

R. C. ARCHIBALD.

Brown University, Providence, R.L.

THE BRILL, SOMERS TOWN. It is a little surprising that no one seems to have sug- gested what appears to be the obvious deriva- tion of this London place-name. Stukeley in his ' Itinerarium ' traces the name to Burgh Hill. He thought that he found here a camp of Julius Caesar. But from Burgh Hill we should get Brill (as in the name of a place in Bucks), not The Brill. From Walford's ' Old and New London ' we learn that some one, presumably in despair, has suggested that the name was given to a tavern here by a lover of the fish, the brill. A correspondent at 5 S. ix. 146 suggested that the name came from the ship " The Brill " which brought over William III. The correspondent was " getting warm," .as^the children say in the game of seeking a hidden object : why did he not get a little nearer ? The ship was named after a town of Holland, known officially as Brielle, the popular name being Den Briel, always in English The Brill. The town is but little known to-day, but it made a great noise in the world three hundred years ago. Its capture by " the Beggars of the Sea " in 1572 was the first important incident in the struggle between Holland and Spain a .struggle in which Elizabeth took part. In 1585 Flushing and The Brill were made over

to England as security for the cost of an auxiliary force furnished by England. "The cautionary towns " remained in English possession for more than thirty years, being restored to the States-General by James 1. in 1616 (Rymer, xv. 801-2; xvi. 786-7). We may with great probability look to thia connexion, lasting so long, for the origin of the London place-name. In what way ? Some one who had held office at The Brill during the English occupation may have built in the London suburb a house to which he gave the name as a reminder of an episode in his life. The tavern shown in a print of the last quarter of the eighteenth century might be of Elizabethan date. When houses came to be built here they may have taken from the house or tavern the names of Brill Place, Brill Row, Brill Terrace, after- wards known, collectively, as The Brill.

This is, of course, mere conjecture, but it may indicate the direction in which to look for the solution of a curious problem in the topography of London.

ALFRED MARKS.

A POEM ATTRIBUTED TO BONEFON9. A literary problem which I brought forward in ' N. & Q.' as long ago as 1900 (9 S. vi. 244) lias lately received solution elsewhere. In The American Journal of Philology, No. 114 (April June, 1908), Mr. Kirby Flower Smith contributes an article ' On the Source of Ben Jonson's Song, " Still to be Neat," and finally elucidates the question of origin. The Latin poem is in the ' Anthologia Latina ' ; the MS. in which it has survived is the Codex Vossianus (Q. 86, Ley den). It was first published by Joseph Scaliger in ' Publii Virgilii Maronis Appendix,' Lyons, Roville, 1572, p. 208. From this, or from Pithou's ' Epigrammata et Poemata Vetera,' Paris, 1590, or from the versions printed in the appendix to some early editions of Petronius, Jonson took it. The author is unknown. Readers of ' N. & Q.' who are interested in the question should consult Mr. Smith's exhaustive and scholarly article. PERCY SIMPSON.

CURIOUS HERIOTS. In the Court Rolls of Curry Rivell, Somerset, 1348-9, the following heriots frequently occur : half a horse, half an ox, and three parts of a cow. I presume the explanation is that the tenement had been divided, and that each tenant was liable for his portion of the ancient due, which would be rendered by a money pay- ment. There also occurs as heriot two acres of corn, which I think is unusual.

NATHL. J. HONE.