Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 11.djvu/573

 10 s. XL JUNE 12, 1909.] NOTES AND QUEEIES.

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possible to the place, where the crime was committed and there it hangs till it falls to dust. This is what is called in this country ' hanging in chains.' The lower classes do not consider it a great disgrace to be simply hanged, but have a great horror of the hanging in chains, and the shame of it is terrible to the relatives of the condemned."

M. de Saussure was intimate with the best set in England, and afterwards was secretary with Lord Kinnoull at one of the Continental embassies. E. S. S.

The following instance is given in ' High- ways and Byways in Derbyshire,' by J. B. Firth (first edition, 1905), after relating a brutal murder of long ago at Old Brampton, and the consequent execution at Gibbet Moor :

" Nor was that evil name given without a

cause The miscreant was sentenced to be

hanged alive in chains by the cottage door where his victim had lived, and there the gibbet was set up. He was long in dying it is said that a passing traveller took mercy on him and gave him food and his screams as he swung on his gibbet were so piercing that they disturbed the peace of the Lord of Chatsworth in his house over the hill. Thenceforward, the legend adds, no criminal was ever gibbeted alive in Derbyshire."

Mr. Firth assigns no date to the occurrence-

W. B. H.

COPERNICUS : ITS ETYMOLOGY (10 S. xi. 409). It may interest MR. PLATT to learn that Copernicus has inscribed his name, in one of his books, in Greek characters (with the acute accent upon the first syllable) :

Bl^SAtOV NlKoXfOV TOV KoiTtpVlKOV. It is

possible that his Germanized family name Koppernigk or Koppernick may have be- longed, in its origin, to a Slavonic stem, kopr or koper being found in all Slavonic languages as the name for anise, dill, or fennel (c./. Miklosich's ' Dictionnaire de six Langues Slaves,' Vienna, 1885). But his father Niklas Koppernigk, whose ancestors came from Silesia, had first lived, as a merchant, at Cracow, and afterwards at Thorn, where the celebrated son was born in 1473. To identify the proper name Coper- nicus with the Slovenian word Copernik, the sorcerer or Zauberer, found by your correspondent in Pletersnik's Slovenian Dic- tionary (though without analogy in any other Slavonic language), appears to be ingenious, but very questionable. Let us be content, instead of reducing his fame to that of a magician, to perpetuate it with that of a great astronomer, according to the inscription of his monument at Thorn : " Nicolaus Copernicus terrse motor, sous caelique stator." For a refutation of the presumed Polish derivation of his name cf.

Sybel's ' Historische Zeitschrift,' 1872, an essay by L. Prowe, to whom we owe like- wise a complete biography of Copernicus in 2 vols. (1883-84) as well as the critical edition of Copernicus' s chief work in Latin, ' De Revolutionibus Orbium Caelestium,' Thoruni, 1873. H. KBEBS.

SIR THOMAS BROWNE : ANNE TOWNSHEND (10 S. xi. 410). From the arms cut on Thomas Townshend's gravestone in S. Peter Mancroft Church, Norwich (on a chevron three garbs) it would appear that his wife was a Cradock. Blomefield in his ' History of Norfolk,' s.v. ' Horstead,' x. 443, states that his first wife was Bridget, daughter of Sir Charles le Gros, of Crostwick, who died s. p. 1662, and his second wife was Anne, j daughter of Nevill Cradock, gent., of Kent. J Elisabeth Cradock, of St. Michael-at-Plea, Norwich, in her will, proved 3 April, 1711, desires to be buried "in St. Peter's Church, Norwich, near to y e plaice of Interment of y e Lady Browne, in a decent manner, privately, in y 6 morning, in a leaden coffin. " She leaves 100Z. to Mr. Nevil Witherly, late of St. Paul's, Co vent Garden, and 100Z. to his wife and 100L to his daughter, Mrs. Bridget Witherly. She further leaves her own picture and that of the Earl of Yar- mouth t Robert Doughty, gent., of Norwich and the chinaware on her cupboard to Mrs. Catherine Doughty, his wife ; her silver candlesticks to Mrs. Francis Witherly, sister to Mr. Nevil Witherly, and her silver cup, cover and salver to Mrs. Ann Beastland, sister to Mr. Nevil Witherly.

The Doughtys are mentioned in Thomas Townshend's will. His sister Catherine mar- ried Robert Doughty. The inference is 1 that Nevil Cradock married a sister of Sir Thomas Browne. His sisters were Anne, i Jane, and Mary. The late Mr. Charles Williams, F.R.C.S., of Norwich, who devoted I much attention to the Browne genealogy, j in his paper on Sir Thomas Browne's father's I will, printed in the papers of the Norfolk ! and Norwich Archaeological Society, vol. xvi., pp. 132-146, states that " of the
 * daughters (of Thomas Browne, mercer, of

I London) nothing whatever is known." The above-named daughters were living in 1613, the date of the will, and he refers to his wife as then being enceinte, so there may have been another child.

FRED. JOHNSON. 8, Theatre Street, Norwich.

Anne Townshend was the second wife of Thomas Townshend, and according to Blomefield's 'Norfolk' was a daughter of