Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 10.djvu/259

 .ii s. x. SEPT. 26, mi]; NOTES AND QUERIES ,

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Th<> system of " booking " at the start of railroad travelling was similar to that in use for travelling by coach, when all names of passengers were entered on the " waybill," which was held by the guard.

RESULT OF CRICKET MATCH GIVEN OUT ix CHURCH (11 S. x. 167, 218). When quartered in Ireland in the seventies the R.C. priest enabled me to recover a valuable dog that had been lost in his parish by his announcing during service the fact of the loss, and that if the " boys " would assemble after service, the owner would assist in their sweeping tactics and give 10. to the finder.

HAROLD MALET, Col. Author of ' Annals of the Road.'

Racketts, Hythe, Southampton.

"RACK-RENT" (11 S. x. 208). This is " a rent of the full value of the tenement, or near it " ('Blackstone's Commentaries,' ii. 43). If the rent paid is less than this full value, it is not a rack-rent. Thus, if the .highest yearly sum that any tenant will 'pay for being allowed to occupy a given piece of land is 601., a tenant paying that rent pays a rack-rent. But if terms are agreed whereby the tenant pays less rent, e.g., if he pays the landlord 1,OOOZ. down for granting the lease and consequently only pays (say) 20Z. yearly rent, the 20Z. is not a rack-rent. BACCHIA.

FIELDING'S ' TOM JONES ' : ITS GEO- GRAPHY (US. ix. 507 ; x. 191). MR. P. S. DICKSON'S contributions and further queries concerning the geography of Fielding's ' Tom Jones ' will succeed, one greatly hopes, in eliciting the needed information.

An answer to one query I beg to submit. MR. DICKSON says :

"Justice Willoughby, who presided at the trial of the man accused of horse-stealing, came from Noyle (viii. 11). Where was it ? "

The Willoughby family formerly resided at West Knoyle, in Wiltshire, a village five miles north of Semley Station, and about three miles west of Hindon, where the accused was apprehended during fair-time. West Knoyle Church contains tablets and other memorials to the Willoughby family, and the parish stocks still stand near the church entrance.

It is a little inaccurate to say that Justice Willoughby "presided at the trial of the man

( ,f horse-stealing," for Willoughby was only on the Commission of the Peace magistrates at that date enjoyed the titular " Justice whose functions ended after he

committed the prisoner to take his trial,, and bound over the witness (Francis Bridle) in a recognizance. The prisoner was tried, in fact, at Salisbury Assizes by Sir Francis Page (called by " Partridge " Lord Justice Page), who presided over the Western Circuit during the Summer Assizes of 1737, and for the last time in 1739, dying in 1741.

It may be germane to add that East Knoyle, situate about a mile and a half south-east of West Knoyle, was the birth- place of Sir Christopher Wren, to whom Fielding in his ' Journal of a Voyage to Lisbon ' pays so gracious a tribute on the " Queen of Portugal " gliding past Greenwich Hospital, on June 30, 1754.

The geographical error respecting " Bell- isle," to which MR. DICKSON refers, has been noted by Mr. Austin Dobson in ' At Prior Park ' (Chatto & Windus), 1912, p. 143, n. 2,

Personally I should be grateful if any reader could suggest the probable locality Fielding had in mind when he wrote in ' Joseph Andrews ' (bk. iii. chap, v.) :

" Adams continued his subject [i.e., a disputa- tion on schools] till they came to one of the beautifullest spots of ground in the universe- It was a kind of natural amphitheatre formed by the winding of a small rivulet which was planted with thick woods ; and the trees rose gradually above each other, by the natural ascent of the ground they stood on, which ascent, as they hid with their boughs, they seemed to have been dis- posed by the design of the most skilful planter- The soil was spread with a verdure which no paint could imitate : and the whole place might have raised romantic ideas in elder minds than those of Joseph and Fannv, without the assistance of love."

At this stage of their journey westward I think it may be taken that the travellers had traversed Wiltshire, and had come upon this enchanting spot somewhere in Somer- setshire. J. PAUL DE CASTRO.

1, Essex Court, Temple.

PALMERSTON (NOT) IN THE WRONG TRAIIT (11 S. x. 209). The story referred to prob- ably took its origin from the following incident. In 1852, Lord Palmerston, in a letter to his brother after his resignation,, wrote :

" I waited to learn the name of my successor to give up the seals. There was a misunder- standing. 1 had come down here [Broadlandsl before the day appointed for that purpose, and John Russell sent me a message by Lord Stanley of AMerley to say that, if it would be inconvenient to me to come to town, the seals might be sent down to Windsor, where the Queen was, and where the Council was to be held for swearing-in Lord Granville. I understood this message to