Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 2.djvu/553

 io> s. ii. DE<. 3, 1904.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

457

by Dr. Benj. Franklin,' London, published by John Sharpe, Piccadilly, 1820 :

" Some folks seem to think they ought never to be easy till England becomes another Lubberland, where it is fancied the streets are paved with penny-rolls, the houses tiled with pancakes, and chickens, ready roasted, cry, ' Come eat me.' "

Franklin uses the same simile, somewhat varied, with regard to America, in his 'In- formation to Those who would remove to America'; vide p. 12C, same volume.

I often heard an old sailor use the same words when we youngsters asked him about the time when some marvellous event he was recounting occurred, but he usually prefaced the simile with, " It was not in my time, nor in your time, nor in anybody else's time ; it was in the time when old women sold time (? thyme), when the streets were paved with penny rolls," <kc. I asked him a day or two ago whence he obtained the expression, and his answer was that it was common in nautical circles on the Tyne about 1845.

THOS. F. MANSON.

North Shields.

I have in ray possession Nos. 1 to 77 of The Penny Mechanic, a Magazine of the Arts and Sciences No. 1 is dated Saturday, 5 November, 1836 published weekly by D. A. Doudney, London.

JOHN DUXBURY.

SHELLEY FAMILY (9 th S. xii. 426 ; 10 th S. ii. 155). Henry Shelley, of Maplederhain, was a prisoneratthe White Lion, South wark, 14 June, 1579 ('P.C.A.,' N.S., xi. 162), whence he was released on bail on 11 June, 1581, being bound to return on the following 12 August (ibid., xiii. 129). The Henry Shelley mentioned ibid., xiii. 117 ; xiv. 63, is quite another person, belonging to the Worminghurst branch one of the protagonists, in fact, of Shelley's case. 'Our Henry Shelley, as H. C. has pointed out, died in 1585 (cf. also 'S.P. Dom. Eliz.,' clxxxiii. 45). His son Thomas appears to have originally intended to be a priest, but was captured near Chichester on the way to the Continent in 1586 ('S.P. Dom. Eliz.,' ccxlviii. ,116; 'P.C.A.,' N.S., xiv. 77). He and his uncle John had apparently been induced to conform by 12 December, 1592 (ibid., xxiii. 368, where they are described as " late of Maple- durham "), but they still continued to be suspect. In 1594 Benjamin Beard, the spy (whose mother's brother Benjamin Tichborne had married a Shelley of " Maple Durham, Oxon," as G. E. C.'s 'Baronetage/ vol. i. p. 161, has it), reported that John Shelley was living at Barnes or Bails farm, in Hampshire, in an old park, pailed and locked that none could come at him without a key, and was consort-

ing with one Strange, who had been with Lord Montague, and kept "a college of priests " at Thomas Shelley's house at Alaple- durham ; and that the said house contained a hollow place in the parlour by the living cupboard where two men might well lie together, and a vault under a table, with a grate of iron for a light into the garden, as if it were the window of a cellar, and with rosemary growing against the grate (' S.P. Dom. Eliz.,' ccxlviii. 30, 116). The warrant, dated 29 September, 1596, and printed ' P.C.A.,' N.S., xxvi. 213, shows that Thomas Shelley was "in his younge yeares dis- possessed of his lande of inheritauuce," which had passed to a brother (probably the Henry hereafter mentioned), and that being then "charged with wife and children" he could not recover " any good composicion " of the said brother, "but by the meanes and order of his mother," then residing at Caen, and of his uncle John Shelley, and that John Shelley was thereby licensed to go to Caen, provided he returned within three months from the next 1 January, and put in sureties for his dutiful behaviour during his absence. On 13 November, 1605, it was suggested that it would be advisable to arrest Henry and Thomas Shelley, " of Mapledingham," in con- nexion with the Gunpowder Plot ('S.P. James I.,' xvi. 69) ; and in 1610 we meet with Henry Shelley, of Petersfield, as a recusant (ibid., liv. 80). Possibly our Thomas is the Thomas Shelley, gent., who was father of Catharine, buried at St. Dunstan's-in-the- West, 10 December, 1592, and of Edmonde, baptized at the same church, 11 March, 1592/3 (' Collect. Topogr. et Genealog.,' iv. 118 ; v. 366). JOHN B. WAINEWRIGHT.

HOLBORN (10 th S. ii. 308. 392). I do not subscribe to the opinion that ** hollo wness" is not characteristic of words connected with water. Rivers invariably have channels, and if the banks of these are rather high, we at once get the idea required. Hence it is that the * E.D.D.' gives Iioll, hollow, deep, opposed to shallow ; a depression, deep valley, ravine, a ditch, generally a dry one, a moat, *fec. I once lived quite close to a Holl Lane, which was a deep lane, a sort of cutting.

WALTER W. SKEAT.

MR. G. L. HALES may rest assured that there is no authority whatever for " the idea that the fact of criminals being driven up the Hill originated the name Oldborne Hill or Hilborn." Holeburn was Hpleburn hun- dreds of years before any criminals were dragged or driven from Newgate to Tyburn, and neither Oldborne nor Hilborn will be