Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 4.djvu/598

 496 NOTES AND QUERIES. [io» s. iv. DEC. IB, 1905. suggest that the baptisms in the register be taken for a period of five years and an average struck. If a normal birth-rate were assumed—say from 30 to 35 per 1,000 per annum—the rest would be easy. A. H. FEWTRELL. Bury. In the 'Population and Parish Register Abstract,' a Governmental Blue-book printed in 1831, will be found carefully framed estimates of the population in the different counties of England, 1570 to 1750, based upon the number of entries of baptisms, burials, and marriages in the various parish registers. It may safely be said that except in isolated cases, when lists of all the inhabitants in certain parishes may have been taken for taxation or other purposes, there is no other means of estimating what the population of a parish was before 1801, the date of the first general census. Returns of persons taxed for various purposes from time to time, from the reign of Henry III. to William and Mary, will be found at the Record Office, under the title of 'Lay Subsidies.' The Hearth Tax returns of Charles ll.'s reign give the names of all the householders. GEORGE F. T. SHERWOOD 50, Beecroft Road, Brockley, S.E. I have endeavoured to estimate village population in the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries by studying the parish register, averaging the number of baptisms for ten - year periods, and then multiplying the average by 30, that is, assuming a birth-rate of 30 per 1,000. In all probability the birth-rate was higher, say 35 to 40 per 1,000, but 100 years ago or more the still-births were more numerous than now. Mr. M. Rubin (Brit. Ass., 1900) stated that 8 per cent of births were still born. This method works out with tolerable correctness. I have been enabled to check the results in some instances by contemporary figures. The error is seldom as much as 10 per cent. I have applied it to Archbishop Sheldon's census. ,, W. BRADBROOK. Bletchley. As to the eighteenth century, the popu- lations of parishes may approximately be gauged by the numeration given in the valuable ' Topographical Dictionary ' of Benjamin Pitts Capper, 1808, a laborious work showing, I think in every case, the numbers both of houses and inhabitants. J. HOLDEN MACMICHAEL. ESCUTCHEON OF PRETENCE (10th S. iv. 429). —With reference to G. B.'s inquiry when the custom of placing the arms of an heiress upon an escutcheon of pretence was first established in England, I find Boutell men- tions at p. 174 of his 'English Heraldry' that the shield of Richard Beauchamp, KG., Earl of Warwick, who died in 1439, is "a good example of the use of an Escutcheon of Pre- tence "; and he gives an illustration of the shield, drawn from the garter-plate of the ead in St. George's, Windsor. Undoubtedly it was the ancient custom to impale the arms of an heiress with those of her husband, but " the prevailing usage * (as Boutell remarks) is to marshal them upon his shield, "charged as an Escutcheon of Pre- tence." Her arms would thereafter be quar- tered with his own, by his and her sons and their descendants ; for the son of an heiress, as heir to his maternal grandfather through his mother, as well as to his own father, quarters on his shield, and transmits to his descendants, the arms of both his parents. JAMES WATSON. Folkestone. CAPT. JAMES JEFFERYES, OF BLARNEY CASTLE (10"' S. iv. 404).—Three letters written by him to Bishop Robinson, from Bender, Constantinople, and Adrianople, in 1711-14 are in Bodl. MS. Rawlinson A. 286. W. D. MACRAY. Blarney Castle was purchased in 1701 by Sir James Jefferyes, Governor of Cork, who erected a large house in front of it, which is now a ruin. A considerable linen manufacture was once carried on in the parish, but now is decayed. The chief interest of the castle arises from the Blarney Stone, and the notion that who- ever kisses it will possess a cajoling tongue and many other accomplishments; but the feat is rarely attempted, as the danger is great in being lowered by a rope from a lofty battlement. A small photograph, however, represents this hazardous experiment—one far more dangerous than sitting in St. Michael's Chair. An old friend of mine, long deceased, who was at Eton in the days of Goodall and Keate, circa 1809, told me that he was in the same form with Jefferyes of Blarney Castle. Stapylton's ' Eton School Lists' might supply some further genealogical information. JOHN PICKFORD, M.A. Newbourne Rectory, Woodbridge. CRICKET : PICTURES AND ENGRAVINGS (10"1 S. iv. 9, 132, 238).—A quaint engraving of early cricket may be seen in Bickham's ' British Monarchy,' 1749. This is a curious book, printed entirely from engraved plates,