Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 1.djvu/197

 n s. i. MAR. 5, i9io.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

189

of the frigate Amethyst. At the end of one of the two accounts given is appended in parentheses the authority, " Congdon's Ply- mouth Telegraph." Was this the name of a local newspaper, or did it indicate that Congdon was the proprietor of a news- agency which circulated its information by means of the semaphore telegraph in use at the period ? ALFRED F. BOBBINS.

QUEEN MARY II. I recently bought from a bookseller's catalogue "A Brief History of the Pious and Glorious Actions of the Most Illustrious Princess, Mary, Queen of England, &c. Faithfully Collected by J. S., n London, 1695, 134 pp., 12mo. Who is " J. S." (not Jonathan Swift, Dean ?) ?

CHARLES S. KING, Bt. St. Leonards-on-Sea.

THE BRAZILS. Can an one tell me wh

Brazil was formerly called Brazils " ? Was it because

also Brazil

th was

divided into provinces or " captaincies And when did the plural form cease to b used ? A. C. L.

RICHARD HENRY ALEXANDER BENNETT was M.P. for Launceston 1802-6, Enniskillen in 1807, and Newport 1807-12. I should be glad to learn the respective dates of his birth and death, and also the date of his father's death. G. F. R. B.

GENERAL WILLIAM GRINFIELD (D. 1803). I should be glad to obtain particulars of his parentage and the date of his birth. From the obituary account in Gent. Mag. (1803 p. 1256 ; 1804, p. 179) it appears that he survived his wife only three days. Who was she ? G. F. R. B.

TEMPLE STANYAN (1677 ?-1752). Who was his first wife, and what was the date of the marriage ? The ' Diet. Nat. Biog., ? liv. 88, says nothing about her.

G. F. R. B.

' A CRITICAL REVIEW OF THE PUBLICS BUILDINGS, &c., IN LONDON,' 1734. This interesting little work is generally attributed to John Ralph, and in the copy before me the dedication is signed " J. Ralph of New- bury." It is possible this is not authentic, and the attribution should be to James Ralph, author of ' The Touchstone ; or, Essays on the Reigning Diversions of the To wn,' 1728, and many miscellaneous writings.

The first edition, printed by C. Ackers for J. Wilford in St. Paul's Churchyard and J. Clarke in Duck Lane, is dated 1734, and the supposed second edition was published

by Dodsley in 1771. There are some resemblances between the two editions, but the books are different in size, and the matter was almost entirely rewritten.

A copy of another issue recently came into my possession, and, although it wants the title-page, there are sufficient indications to justify me in identifying it as being a second edition, so making Dodsley's reissue the third. My copy has been reset in smaller type, the pagination extending only to p. 92, instead of p. 119. The Title and Dedication form A2-A3 ; Preface, pp. i-vi, pp. 1-82 ; Supplement, 83 ; Appendix, 84-91 ; Index, 5 pp. The Appendix, which in the first edition deals only with the Guildhall and Surgeons'- Hall, is here extended by a correspondence (reprinted from The Weekly Miscellany) defending the Dean and Chapter of Westminster from the author's criticisms. Neither the B.M. nor the Guildhall has a copy of this edition, so the object of my query is to ascertain by whom it was issued. ALECK ABRAHAMS.

ROMAN AUGURS. What Roman said that he wondered how two augurs could meet without laughing ? The saying has been attributed both to Cicero and to Cato.

M. N. G.

NOTTINGHAM EARTHENWARE TOMBSTONE : W. SEFTON. In St. Mary's Churchyard, Nottingham, stands the only earthenware headstone known to exist in the whole county, the chief importance of which rests on its early date. Church's ' Handbook of English Earthenware,' 1884, refers to the existence of many such tombstones in several of the churchyards of the Potteries (Burslem and Wolstanton being cited), adding that the dates on these range from 1718 to 1767, one being as late as 1828. The Nottingham example, as well as being the oldest memorial of any kind in the churchyard wherein it tands, appears to antedate any hitherto recorded example of an earthenware tomb- tone, for it is to the memory of Eliza- >eth and Mary, daughters of William and Elizabeth Sefton, who respectively died in 707 and 1714. Consequently, unless earlier xamples exist than those cited by Church, ne is naturally tempted to wonder whether )y the father of these children, concerning whom nothing is to be learnt from local iterature. It was to be presumed that the atter was a potter, and that he baked the memorial in his own kiln. Tobacco-pipes rearing the same name have recently been
 * he fashion may not have been introduced