Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 2.djvu/621

 ii. DEC. 24, 1904.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

513

of vestry minutes, churchwardens' accounts, and rate-books. The collection consists of considerably more than 4,400 manuscripts, and no fewer than 63 parishes and 17 wards of the City are represented. B. KETTLE. Guildhall Library, E.G.

MARY CARTER (10 th S. ii. 409). Possibly the information sought for by DR. STANLEY B. ATKINSON may be obtained from the fol- lowing work, which is offered for 4s Qd. by Messrs. Henry R. Hill & Son, 61, New Oxford Street, W.C., in their Catalogue of Second-hand Books, No. 75, December, which has just reached me :

" No. 157. Cromwell (The House of). A Genea- logical History of the Family and Descendants of the Protector. By James Waylen. A new edition, revised by J. G. Cromwell. 8vo, cloth, Stock, 1897."

I have a copy of Betham's 'Genealogical Tables,' London, 1795, but in Table dclxvi., 'House of Cromwell,' he merely gives Mary (fifth child and fourth daughter) as daughter of Bridget Cromwell (born 1624, married 5 January, 1647, died 5 September, 1681) and Henry Ire ton, Lord Deputy of Ireland 1651, and married to Nicholas Carter.

FRANCIS H. HELTON.

9, Broughton Road, Thornton Heath.

VACCINATION AND INOCULATION (10 th S. ii. 27, 132, 216, 313, 394, 456). Lady Mary Wortley Montagu was certainly one of the great benefactors of the human race, and it would indeed be a disgrace to this country if no memorial of her existed. Like other great discoverers, she made no claim to finality. Her method was improved upon, and by the end of the eighteenth century the operation had come to be attended with comparatively slight risk. Of 5,964 people inoculated in the three years 1797 - 9 only three died. During this century inoculation was practically the only means of mitigating in any degree the terrors of that frightful scourge which, as Macaulay says, was u always present, filling the churchyards with corpses, tormenting with constant fears all whom it had not yet stricken, leaving on those whose lives it spared the hideous traces of its power." Had the practice of inoculation continued it would, no doubt, have become by the present time, through improved methods and selection of cases, a safe and simple operation, attended with but little risk and only a passing inconvenience. But another method was discovered by which these results were arrived at more rapidly, and the original method was, as a matter of course, suppressed. But this fact in no way diminishes the honour due to the heroic dis-

coverer (or rather the introducer, for the custom was an ancient one), who risked the life of her own child in order to mitigate the terrors and sufferings of her fellow- countrymen. She remains, for all time, the pioneer, in this country at least, of those later researches in preventive inoculation by means of which so many lives have been saved, and which promise still greater results- in the future. To take exception to a memorial in Lichfield Cathedral seems on a par with a suggestion to destroy all mementoes of, say, George Stephenson, because his original locomotives have not been found equal to the requirements of the twentieth century. J. FOSTER PALMER.

8, Royal Avenue, S.W.

Lady M. W. Montagu's claim is indisputable; but inoculation did not at once "take on." An entry in Mrs. Langdon's MS. Diary, from which I have already quoted, runs thus : 23 March, 1770, " received a letter from Leeds, heard of dear George's welfare, he is inoculated

for the smallpox providence has given

such abundant success to that means with respect to so many who have submitted to it." It was opposed by the bishops till 1760, and its adoption may be credited to Benjamin Jesty, of Downshay, near Corfe Castle, it becoming very general about 1797. A. H.

CLOCK BY W. FRANKLIN (10 th S. ii. 448). In augmentation to your note on this matter, if MR. RICHARDS will refer to ' Old Clocks and Watches and their Makers,' by Britten, p. 313, he will find illustrations of spandrils or corners given, and mention made that the double cupid and crown came in about the time of Queen Anne; though from his query I gather that this is an adornment in the shape of a casting put on above the square dial, and I think he will find that this was not introduced till about 1740-50.

I should advise that the works and hands of the clock be carefully looked at by a competent clockmaker who understands the works of old clocks, as in many long clocks now, though the dials are old, the works and case are new, or comparatively so.

H. J. GIFFORD.

SIR WALTER L'ESPEC (10 th S. ii. 287). When I read the query at the above reference I opened my eyes in wonderment. A Richard Speke at Whitelackington in 1183 ! I should like to know the source of your querist's information. The Spekes are not found at Whitelackington for a space of 250 years after the above date, as I shall subsequently explain. At that early date the Montsorrels were lords of Whitelackington. In 1166