Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 3.djvu/480

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NOTES AND QUERIES. [io s. m. MAY 20, 1905.

Governor of ForttWilliam in Bengal, to which he succeeds by the death of our late President, the Hon. Henry Frankland, Esquire, and accordingly the commission and keys of the Fort were now delivered to him."

3. While under date of Wednesday, 18 Sep- tember, 1728, we read :

"At eight o'clock in the night arrived here John Deane, Esq., who produced the Hon. Company's commission for appointing him President and Governor of all their affairs in Bengal, which com- mission was read in the Consultation Room, Fort William, in the presence of all the Company's servants, etc., and accordingly the keys of the Fort were delivered to him by Edward Stephenson, Esquire."

Edward Stephenson was born in Cumber- land in 1691, his baptism being recorded in the parish register of Crosthwaite in that county on 8 October, 1691. His father was Edward Stephenson, of Keswick, and his mother was Rebecca Winder, only daughter of John Winder, of High Lorton, co. Cum- berland, who died in May, 1696. This John Winder left behind him numerous sons, amongst whom were his eldest son, John Winder, called to the Bar by the Hon. Society of Gray's Inn ; Samuel Winder, a merchant of renown in Mark Lane ; a third son, Jona- than Winder, who entered the New East India Company's service, and was from 1705 to 1707 one of the two chairmen of the United Council in Bengal ; and others. Re- becca Winder and Edward Stephenson had two sons, Edward and John, and a daughter named Deborah.

Doubtless by the influence of his maternal uncles, Edward Stephenson was, on 24 No- vember, 1708, when seventeen years of age, elected a writer in the East India Company' Service, and on 17 December, 1708, Mr. Samue' Winder and Mr. Jonathan Winder were accepted as his securities. He landed in Bengal 2 February, 1710, and, after serving a time in Calcutta as sub-accountant anc in other capacities, was in January, 1714 elected third in the embassy to the Mogu Emperor Farru&Asiyar at Delhi. Thi embassy assembled at Patna, but did no actually start on its journey to Delhi unti 6 April, 1715. Arriving there on 7 July 1715, it remained at Delhi for two years, anc left that city on 18 July, 1717, reaching Calcutta 22 November, 1717.

From this embassy Edward Stephenson went to Balasore, in the Bay of Bengal, to b chief of the local factory, and was subse quently transferred to the Council at Patna of which he became chief, and subsequently went as chief to Cassimbazar.

After his brief tenure of the governorship he returned to Cassimbazar, where he re

nained another year, and at the end of 172P/- e resigned his post there and went down to Calcutta, whence he sailed for England in he Eyles at the beginning of 1730. After is return home he married the lady whose eath is recorded in The Gentleman's Maga- ine on 24 February, 1744. He seems to have. ived at Borfield Lodge, Essex, and in Queen's Square, where he died 7 September, 1768. le left no will, and the administration of lis estate was granted on 23 September to- "ohn Stephenson, Esq., "the natural and awful brother and next of kin of the said deceased "(P.C.C., A. A., 1768). John Stephen- on himself died in 1771 at Mount Pleasant,. and in his will expressed his desire to be- )uried in the family vault at Keswick, in

umberland, "where my late brother Ed- ward Stephenson is interred."

Edward Stephenson was buried 29 Sept. under the chancel of Crosthwaite Church, and the following inscription is cut in the?

tone of the chancel floor :

Edward Stephenson Esquire

late Governor

of Bengal

Ob 4 Sep. 7, 1768.

t. 77.

F. DE H. L.

ROGESTVENSKY (10 th S. Hi. 304, 356). MB. HAVELOCK is quite right in his suggestion- that this is merely a variant of Rozhdest- vensky with d dropped for euphony. The- proof is that in the best Russian dictionaries e.g., in Pawlowsky's 'Russisch-Deutsches Worterbuch ' (1879) both forms are given side by side. The surname is therefore identical in meaning with our English family names- Christmas and Nowell. MR. HAVELOCK asks whence comes the symbol zh, used to trans- literate the seventh letter of the Russian alphabet. He seems to think it may be Czech, but it is merely English, sh and zh bearing the same relation to one another as s and 2. Hence it is that in the British Museum Catalogue we find authors described as Derzhavin and Zhukovsky, who in French bibliographies appear as Derjavine and Joukovsky, while the Germans write them Dershawin and Shukowsky. This German use of sh for the sound, not of English sk (which they write scA), but of the French /, deserves a word to itself by way of warning. It affects English readers, because Russian names are often transferred to our news- papers and books from a German context without retransliteration. We meet, for instance, with such a form as Bestusheff. Nothing can tell us, short of a knowledge of Russian, that the sh here represents, not the