Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 3.djvu/193

 in. FEB. -25, 1905.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

157

ruary, 1732). Messrs. Wells & Hartley were mercers in Ludgate Street at the sign of the  April, 1742). In ' The History of Signboards ' (1884, 8vo, p. 450) the sign is assumed to bear a satirical allusion to the changeableness of fashion in dress a changeableness con- sequent, no doubt, at one time, upon the variableness of the English climate, and the greater taste for colour and general attractiveness in men's costume. But the instances given or the references made to this fickleness of fashion are by no means conclusive as to this having been the origin of the sign. Possibly it was at one time the " Naked Man," and the impropriety 'became an aftergrowth, since it was not considered indelicate in the ancient religious plays for the dramatis personce to appear in the simplicity of an Edenic wardrobe. In of Syracuse has just had " measure of his body" taken by the tailor, Dromip S. ex- claims, " What, have you got the picture of old Adam new apparelled ? " There is a token extant (Beaufoy Collection, No. 878) of the "Naked Boy " in Palace Yard, Westminster. This was the sign of Thomas Lloyd, in 1725, ""one of the Cart Tail Makers to his Majesty, which Place is in the Gift of the Duke of Dorset, as Lord Steward of the Household " -(Evening Post, 21 October, 1725).
 * The Comedy of Errors,' where Antipholus

J. HOLDER MACMICHAEL.

This sign was reproduced in The Daily Graphic of 12 December, 1904, but the in- formation accompanying it is very inaccurate. The contributor of the note to The City Press is probably at fault in describing it as an "old City sign which was displayed in the seventeenth century." The sign may have originated with William Grindley, whose advertisement is quoted, and who was pro- prietor of the business before 1750. About that date he was succeeded by Mr. Butler, great-grandfather of the donor of the sign -to the Guildhall Museum. My research into the history of the house and its site is not complete; but I believe I am correct in identifying it as part of Robert Pyle's gift to the Clothworkers' Company, 1538 ; vide 'Register ' for the year 1838, p. 9 et seq. The whole of this estate was built upon about i680, and it is, therefore, preferable to identify the sign as of the eighteenth century.

ALECK ABRAHAMS.

39, Hillmarton Road.

JOSEPH WILFRED PARKINS (10 th S. iii. 108). This eccentric person contested Carlisle an 1818, not in 1825. W. W. Bean, in 'The

Parliamentary Representation of the Six Northern Counties of England,' states that there were three candidates John Christian Curwen (Whig), Sir James Graham, Bart. (Tory), and J. VV. Parkins (Whig), and that Mr. Parkins retired at 3 P.M. on the second day of the election, having polled forty-nine votes. He adds that

"Parkins was Sheriff of London and Middlesex in 1819-20. He went out to India as a poor boy and returned to England a wealthy man. He appears to have been a very eccentric person both in England and America, and for some years made himself conspicuous in various eccentric ways. It is stated that the annals of electioneering when he was a candidate for this city [Carlisle], replete as they were with tomfooleries, could scarcely produce a parallel. He went to America about 1825, and died at New York in 1840."

RICHARD WELFORD.

The above-named ex- Sheriff of London died in New York in 1840. For further par- ticulars see Gowan's ' Catalogue of American Books,' New York, 1852, No. 11, p. 29, and Gentleman's Magazine, 1840, vol. ii. p. 549. JOHN RADCLIFFE.

KANT'S DESCENT (10 th S. ii. 488 ; iii. 114). The following paragraph, showing the Prime Minister's belief in the Scottish ancestry of Kant, appeared in The 'Times about a year ago:

" Mr. Balfour and Kant. The editor of the KSniyyberffer Hartungxche Ztitunrj informs us that he has received from Mr. Balfour the following con- tribution to the jubilee number of that journal, issued in connexion with the one hundredth anni- versary of the death of the great Kunigsberg philo- sopher, Itnmanuel Kant : ' Kiinigsberg does well to keep alive every memory connected with the great man whose writings opened a new epoch in the development of philosophy. I am proud to think that, though Kant was a German of the Germans, his ancestors were countrymen of my own, so that Scotland niay have something more than a strictly philosophic interest in the perpetuation of his memory. A. J. Balfour.' "

W. S.

A propos of Andrew Kant, of Dort, men- tioned by MR. W. YOUNG, it is extremely interesting to note that Andrew was the name of the minister Cant, who figures so conspicuously in Spalding's 'Troubles' as a rabid Covenanter. The Scots descent of Kant was discussed in Scottish Xotes and Queries, First Series, i. 122, 143 ; ii. 30.

J. M. BULLOCH.

118, Pall Mall.

JOHN ECTON (10 th S. i. 327). The parish registers of St. Michael-in-the-Soke, Win- chester, record the baptisms of John, son of John Ecton, on 14 February, 1674, and of Bridgett, daughter of John Ecton, on 29 De-