Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 12.djvu/38

 NOTES AND QUERIES. [io s. XIL JULY 10, igoo.

ETON : BARNARD, HEAD MASTER. In the Scarborough Museum is a document of which the following is a copy : Eton Feb. 1 1754

I promise to relinquish all pretensions to the upper mastership of Eton school, & even in case it shou'd be offered to me to refuse ; upon condition that Mr. Hetherington & Mr. Lyne will assist me with their votes & interest to procure the under mastership.

Witness my hand E. Barnard

This document is one of a miscellaneous collection put away in drawers in the room containing books as well as curiosities, perhaps called " the library." It is in the tier second from the door, in the fourth drawer from the top.

Mr. Lionel Cust in his ' History of Eton College,' 1899, p. 115, says:

" When Dr. Sumner resigned in 1754 the post of Head-master, there seemed every probability that the Usher, Thomas Dampier, would follow in his footsteps and succeed to the post. . . . After a severe contest the post of Head-master

was conferred on Edward Barnard Barnard

was supported by the Townshend family, to one of whom he was resident tutor at Eton two years before his election."

According to ' Annals of the King's College of Our Lady of Eton beside Windsor,' by Wasey Sterry, 1898, p. 169, Barnard "was in 1752 private tutor at Eton to Charles and Henry Townshend." " Usher " (ostiarius) was the old term for " Lower Master."

William Hetherington was elected a Fellow of Eton 16 Feb., 1749, and Richard Lyne was elected 15 Jan., 1752, the latter being next in order to the former. See

Praepositorum,' &c., Etonae, Apud Jos. Pote, 1774, p. xi.
 * Registrum Regale : sive, Catalogus, I.

Thomas Dampier was Lower Master 1745-67 ; therefore he retained his lower- mastership while Barnard was Head Master. Barnard filled that post from 1754 to 1765. See ' Eton College Lists, 1678-1790,' edited by R. A. Austen Leigh (Eton College, Spot- tiswoode & Co., 1907), pp. xxx, xxxiii. Presumably either Hetherington and Lyne did not accept Barnard's self-denying offer, or Barnard cancelled it.

ROBERT PIERPOINT.

EXECUTIONER'S BLOCK. Before now the height of a beheading-block has attracted the attention of ' N. & Q.' From two illus- trations in M. Georges Cain's 'Walks in Paris ' it is plain that this point cTappui was sometimes dispensed with altogether. The copy of a woodcut on a broadside of


 * L' Execution remarquable de Madame de

Brinvilliers ' shows that lady kneeling on the scaffold without support, while the executioner holds the raised sword behind her ; and a contemporary print of the doing to death of Gontaut-Biron in 1602 exhibits him in like condition. In his case the headsman struck him so terrible a sword-blow that " his head flew to the midst

of the courtyard" (pp. 190 and 156

respectively). ST. SWITHIN.

" DISGATE " : " DISCHAUCE." (See 10 S. xi. 385.) One may be allowed to quote another, and more interesting, dis- com- pound, one, indeed, inviting criticism to " disgate." In ' The Brut, or the Chronicles of England' (E.E.T.S.), under the year 1422-3 (p. 449), there appears :

" And pat same yere, ]>e secuncl clay of Marche, ]>er was brent in Northfolk a prest pat was dysgated of hys clergy for hys mys-byleue and hys herysy.

The next entry records the death of " Richard Whyttyngton, Mercer." Date of MS. c. 1450.

Another rare dis- compound is to " dis- chauce," in 1. 471 of 'The Tale of Beryn,' c. 1400, meaning to take off the hose, or nether garments : And perfor, love, dischauce yewe nat til Vis cbek

be do. Cp. the name Chaucer. H. P. L.

" BURGATOB,." This word is not in ' N.E.D.,' but, according to The London Gazette of 14 Dec., 1701, an address was presented to William III. from ' ; the Bailiff, Burgator, and Inhabitants of the Borough of Hindon in the County of Wilts."

ALFRED F. ROBBINS.

THE EEL-PIE SHOP. The pieman is a thing of the past, for unless I am much at fault there is no living representative of this ancient craft and mystery.

During great football matches in the North hawkers of meat pies are allowed on the ground when the game is not in progress, but these bear no resemblance to the Flying Pieman and his contemporaries.

Within my own knowledge the last example in London was a character who haunted the eastern part of the City, pushing a kind of portable oven on three wheels. His cry was " Mincey mutton ! Mincey ! Mincey ! Mincey ! all 'ot, all 'ot ! Try 'em ! : I never tried them, a fact I now regret ; but perhaps I was wise. Presumably affluent piemen became proprietors of eel-pie shops, but evidently compilers of directories classi- fied them as pastrycooks, and they ceased to be identified long before lottery-office