Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 8.djvu/497

 10 s. VIIL NOV. 23, 1907.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

411

" I am the more large upon this Particular, because it would be a general Discouragement to the Contrivers of useful and profitable Inventions, if others should be encouraged to reap the Crop of what they with such charge and labor have sown.

" The Principal Office to which all Accompts &c. are daily transmitted, is in Lyme Street, at the Dwelling-house of the said Mr. Dockwra, formerly the Mansion-house of Sir Robert Abdy, Knt."

It seems more than probable that the speaks had their origin in the opposition of a, powerful Court party, who had fears that their income derived from the General Post Office was in jeopardy. In the accounts of the Post Office for the year ending 3 Oct., 1692, there appears no less a sum than 11,850Z. (a very large sum in those days) paid in "pensions" to five persons, viz., the Duchess of Cleveland, 2,700?. ; the Mar- quess of Carmarthen, 3,500Z. ; the Earl of Rochester, 3,400Z. ; the Earl of Bath, 1,875Z. ; and Mr. William Dockwra, 375Z.
 * ' dangerous Attaques " of which De Laune

Of these it would appear to us in these days that the only proper charge on the Post Office was the last and smallest, viz., that to the inventor of the Penny Post branch of the service.

One is hardly surprised to find that such plain speaking in reference to exalted per- sonages cost poor De Laune his ears in the pillory, and his life in a debtor's cell.

WM. NORMAN.

FLEET STREET, No. 7 (10 S. viii. 248, 350). My note was intended as only a brief record of the change of business at this address. By an oversight, I did not refer to p. 358 of The Archaeological Journal (December, 1895) : the information there provided in Mr. F. G. Hilton Price's paper on 'The Signs of Old Fleet Street' would have prevented an omission which I regret.

The few early directories at hand give the following data : 1783-4-5, John Lee, haber- dasher ; 1811-17, Sale & Co., boot and shoe makers.

The only illustration of the old premises that has come before my notice is that pro- vided on the cover of ' A General Catalogue of Law Books ' issued by Henry Butter- worth, 1850. ALECK ABRAHAMS.

MR. JAGGARD is, I think, in error as to his statement with regard to No. 7 ever having been occupied by Henry Smith. Smith's sign was the " Holy Trinity " (not the "Trinity"), and he did not dwell within Temple Bar, but without a circumstance which Mr. E. Gordon Duff correctly con- notes ; see his ' Printers, Stationers, and

Bookbinders of Westminster and London from 1476 to 1535' (1906, p. 176). Neither had Smith's father-in-law, Robert Redman, anything to do with No. 7, Fleet Street. Ames in his ' Typographical Antiquities,' 1786, vol. ii. p. 706, also says that "Henry Smy the dwelt at the sign of the Holy Trinity without Temple Bar, in St. Clement's Parish." J. HOLD EN MACMICHAEL.

The earliest mention of the shop between the two Temple gates is found in the colo- phon of an undated book, a translation of the ' Sileni Alcibiadis ' of Erasmus, printed for John Gowghe, and therefore not later than 1543, in which year he died. This book was to be sold " in Fletestrete between the two temples in the shop of Hary Smyth stacioner." This H. Smyth printed a num- ber of law books about 1545-6, but his address was then the sign of the "Trinity," outside Temple Bar, in St. Clement's parish. He died in 1550. About 1552-3 we find Richard Tottell in occupation of the shop between the two Temple gates. He was the son of an Exeter fishmonger, and was made free of the Stationers' Company in August, 1547, and therefor could not have carried on business on his own account before that time.

There still remains to be discovered who was the tenant of the shop from the time of Smyth's removal to the time of Tottell's settlement there, and perhaps a little more information on this point might be obtained from an examination of the Lay Subsidy Rolls of 4 April, 35 Henry VIIL, i.e. 1544, for St. Bride's parish, Faringdon Without. E. GORDON DUFF.

DEFOE'S 'COLONEL JACQUE ' (10 S. viii. 87). At this reference I asked where a copy of the first edition of this book, with title-page dated 1722, could be seen. Three months have elapsed, and I have not re- ceived a single answer to my query, although I have given time for replies to come from America, where bibliography has several eminent professors.

According to Lowndes, who has been fol- lowed by other bibliographers, the first edition of ' Colonel Jacque ' was published in 1722, the second in 1723, and the third in 1724. I have been a collector in a small way for considerably more than thirty years, and as during my experience I had never met with a copy with title - page dated 1722, I asked if such a copy could anywhere be seen.

' Colonel Jacque,' according to Lee, was published on 20 Dec., 1722. Then, as now,