Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 8.djvu/618

 512

NOTES AND QUERIES. [io s. vm. DEC. 28, 1907.

a while he grew homesick, went to the Grand Duke who was in command, and gave in his resignation. The Grand Duke refused to accept it, whereupon Mackenzie flared up and declared that, not being a Russian, he had a right to resign. " I know that," was the reply, " but you cannot escape if you leave the army, as we are cut off by the enemy. However, as you are determined to go, I will give you dispatches to the Tzar, which will give me an excuse for sending an escort with you; but I fear you will all perish." Mac- kenzie and his escort fought their way through and reached St. Petersburg. The Tzar, who had had no news of the army for three months, was so delighted that he offered him an estate if he would settle in Russia. Mackenzie, anxious to get home, declined. However, before he sailed he met a friend who had been travelling, and had so fallen in love with the Crimea that he wished to settle there. Mackenzie re- turned to the Tzar and asked him to fulfil his promise by giving a property in the Crimea to his friend. The Tzar agreed gladly. The property was named Mac- kenzie Farm, and was for some time the headquarters of Lord Raglan during the Crimean War.

Colin Mackenzie died unmarried in 1851, leaving the bulk of his property to an institute in Tain, of which my father, then vicar of St. Martin's-in-the-Fields, was one of the_original trustees.

E. C. MACKENZIE. Ossington Vicarage, Newark.

LITERARY ALLUSIONS (10 S. viii. 410). 1. "Jem the Penman" was the sobriquet of a dangerous criminal who attained notoriety in 1857 through a robbery of gold bullion whilst in transit from London to Boulogne in May, 1855. The matter remained a mystery until, late in 1856, one of the perpetrators confessed and turned queen's evidence. " Jem the Penman," whose real name was James Townsend Seward, was a barrister who had taken to very evil ways, and was accused of being a receiver of, and having personally assisted in melting and disposing of, the missing bullion. For some reason, he was not tried for that offence; but in March, 1857, he (being then described as a " labourer ") was tried, with a confederate named Anderson, for the forgery and uttering of a number of cheques and bills of exchange, when both were sentenced to transportation for life.

An account of these matters is contained in ' Annals of our Time,' by Joseph Irving, 1880, where it is stated of the forgeries : " To such an extent was the conspiracy carried that it was beginning to affect th& security of the entire mercantile com- munity."

Long afterwards, a play had a consider- able run in London under the name ' Jem the Penman,' and was, I believe, in part founded upon the incidents related above.

W. B. H. [Similar replies acknowledged. ]

2. See Burton's 'Anatomy of Melancholy,' partition ii. sect. ii. Memb. 4 :

" William the Conquerour in his yonger yeares, playing at Chesse with the Prince of France (Dauphine was not annexed to that Crowne in those dayes), losing a Mate, knocked the Chess-board about his pate, which was a cause afterward of much enmity betwixt them. For some such reason, it is belike, that Patritius in his 3 book Tit. 12, ' De Reg. Instit.,' forbids his Prince to play at Chesse." Ed. 2, 1624, p. 231.

Burton refers in the margin to Hayward's life of the Conqueror (see Sir John Hay- ward in the ' D.N.B.').

In chap. x. of his ' Early Kings of Norway ' Carlyle quotes from Snorro Sturleson the story of the quarrel over a game of chess between Knut and his brother-in-law Ulf. It was not the King, however, but the Jarl, who "flew angry, tumbled the chessboard over, rose, and went away."

' The Encyclopaedia Britannica ' (s.v. 'Chess'), with reference to legends which imply that William the Conqueror, Henry I., John, and Edward I. played chess, remarks that "such anecdotes must be taken quantum valeant." EDWARD BENSLY.

Univ. Coll., Aberystwyth.

In a book of ingenious brain-teasers recently published, ' The Canterbury Puzzles,' I find (pp. 91, 92) a quotation said to be taken from Hayward's ' Life of William the Conqueror,' published in 1613, which may interest, if it do not exactly answer, MR. SCULLY :

"Towards the end of his reigne he appointed his two sonnes Robert and Henry, with joynt autho- ritie, goyernours of Normandie ; the one to sup- presse either the insolence or levitie of the other. These went together to visit the French king lying at Constance, where entertaining the time with varietie of disports, Henry playea with Louis, then Dauphine of France, at chesse, and did win of him very much. Hereat Louis beganne to growe \varme in words, and was therein little respected by Henry. The great impatience of the one and the small for- bearance of the other did strike in the end such a heat between them that Louis threw the chessmen