Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 2.djvu/133

ii s. VIIL AUG. 16, 1913.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

127

—Mansfield Parkyns, who travelled in Abyssinia in 1843-5, returned to Europe through the Sudan and down the Nile to Egypt. He breaks off his narrative (' Life in Abyssinia,' London, John Murray, 2 vols., 1853) with his arrival at Khartoum. He mentions casually that he travelled in Kordofan, Nubia, and Egypt (vol. i. p. 16) ; also that he collected " about six hundred birds, and about a ton weight of nigger arms and implements " on the White Nile and in Nubia (id., p. 9). Did he leave any notes of these travels ? The ' D.N.B.' states that he returned to England in 1846. This is evidently a mistake, for Parkyns apparently remained in the Sudan for quite two years later than this. He would appear to have reached Egypt in the latter part of 1848 or the first weeks of 1849 ; for Antoine d'Abbadie, in a letter from Cairo to the editor of The Athenceum (undated, but probably written in January, 1849), wrote :

" I have had the pleasure of meeting here again M. Parkyns, whom I had left some years ago in Tigray. ...If. Parkyns has travelled in Kordo- fan ; and, having followed a new road from Adwa to Sennar, he recognized the identity of the Takaze with the Settit of the Mussulman lowlanders." The Athenceum, Feb. 10, 1849, p. 142.

That Parkyns had not in the meanwhile visited England is shown by his statement (vol. i. p. 16) that he

" was nine years travelling, eighteen months in Europe, Asia Minor, &-c., three years, of which the present work treats, and the remainder in various parts of Nubia, Kordofan, and Egypt."

In his Preface he speaks of his " final return to England (in June, 1850)," and on p. 32 he says he left Egypt in that year. Still more convincing of the error of the
 * D.N.B.' date is the following sentence :

" From the day I left Suez (March 25, 1843) till about the same time in the year 1849, I never wore any article of European dress, nor indeed ever slept on a bed of any sort not even a mattress." Vol. i. p. 84.

He does not give in his ' Life in Abyssinia ' the date of his arrival at Khartoum ; but as he started from Adowa in June, 1845 (vol. ii. p. 313), he must have spent some two or three years in travelling about the Sudan ; and it was no doubt here that he had a gun and new rifle sent out to him in 1847 (vol. i.

p. 39). As he was one of the earliest tra- vellers on the White Nile and in Kordofan, it would be interesting to know whether he put on record any account of his experiences and observations in those then little -known regions, or whether there are any manuscript notes by him in existence. He apparently contemplated the possibility of publishing some further account of his travels (see vol. i. p. 17). FREDK. A. EDWARDS.

34, Old Park Avenue, Nightingale Lane, S.W.

RICHARD COLE, RECTOR OF MICHEL- MERSH. In 1909 a query of mine was in- serted in ' N. & Q.' as to the identity of John Cole, Vicar of Hursley, near Win- chester, in 1616, who was appointed Rector of the neighbouring parish of Michelmersh on 23 Feb., 1621/2. A reply was kindly, printed at 10 S. xii. 291 saying that John was son of Edward Cole, public notary and Bishop's Registrar at Winchester, and that he was elected a Winchester scholar in 1606, and had a brother William (a scholar in 1604), and possibly a brother Edward Cole, the latter being also of Winchester, elected in 1585. But it was stated that the William and John Cole mentioned by Foster in his ' Oxford Graduates ' (p. 302, No. 21 ; p. 304, No. 20) as sons of the Rev. John Cole were really the sons of another Wykehamist.

I should very much like to establish the identity of the Cole family of Winchester, for I see in Foster (No. 20, p. 302) that a William Cole, public notary, was secretary to Bishop Duppa of Winchester from 1660 till his death in 1662, and that he Was " the most famous Simpler, or herbalist, of his time " ; but he Was " son of John Cole of Adderbury, Oxford " ! John Cole, Vicar of Hursley, who entered New College in 1606 at the age of 17, and \Vas buried at Hursley on 9 August, 1638, succeeded at Michelmersh a Richard Cole, whose personality is elusive, and Foster gives no help. He was nomi- nated to Michelmersh by King James I. on 22 Feb., 1620/21, and he signed the register page for 1621-2 in a vigorous hand, together with his two churchwardens. Only a very few entries are in his writing, notably the baptism of " Martha, daughter of Richard Cole," on the 17th of October, 1621. Her birth is given for the " 22nd day of Septem- ber between five and six of ye clock in ye fore- noon." There was also a Vastell (Castell ?) Cole, son of Richard, who was born " on the first day of January, 1619, between one and two of ye clock in ye afternoon," and baptized on the 13th day of the same month. There is, apparently, no other mention of Richard