Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 2.djvu/312

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NOTES AND QUERIES. [11 s. vm. OCT. is, 1913. (See Magazine of History, New York, 1909-10.)

The first mention of this Humphrey Halley in the Company's books at Fishmongers' Hall

"appears in a Court Minute, dated the 13th January, 1631, where he is described as 'Humfrie Halleye, of the Company of Vintners, London, dwelling in a tenement, belonging to this Company, called "The Unicorn," in Lombard Street,' and petitioned to have a new lease, &c."

(See 'Extracts from British Archives, Third Series,' in Magazine of History, New York, 1909-10.)

Some mention of "The Unicorn" appears on pp. 202-5 of The Grasshopper" in Lombard Street,' by John Biddulph Martin (London, the Leadenhall Press Ltd., 1892). Was this "Unicorn" not identical with its namesake first above mentioned?

A London record-searcher mentions an

"Indenture of 17 April, 1665, re sale of property at Bushey, Hertfordshire, for 150l., to Edmund Halley, citizen and salter, of London (Close Roll 4190)."

This document has not been examined. The purchaser was the astronomer's father, who died in 1684. The identity and surname of his first wife Ann have not been ascertained.

—A week or two ago, as I walked through a field in East Suffolk Avhere they were carrying the barley, I was asked for a "largesse." It did me good to hear the fine old word again, and it was a pleasure to respond to the appeal. Arrived at a small town a few miles further on, I heard the Town Crier preface his tidings with "Oyez! Oyez! Oyez!" and conclude with "God save the King!"

In these iconoclastic days, when so much that is venerable is being improved off the face of the earth, and good old English supplanted by odious slang, a note may be acceptable to record that East Anglia still clings to some, at least, of its Norman-French words and phrases.

LANGUAGE AND PHYSIOGNOMY. (See 10 S. _xii. 365, 416.) I have picked up a crumb of fact concerning this interesting subject from the report of a lecture on ' The Alpha- bet ' lately delivered in the Bostal Lane General Institute, Abbey Wood, by Prof. Gilbert Murray. He said

" he had heard from travellers to remote places in South Arabia that the features of the people there became distorted owing to the violence with which they pronounced their consonants."

ST. SWITHIN.

THE PILGRIM FATHERS : JOHN ALDEN. It may have been remarked at the recent ceremony of the unveiling of the memorial to the Pilgrim Fathers at Southampton that one who claimed to be a lineal descend- ant of John Alden, the companion of Miles Standish in Longfellow's well-known poem of ' The Courtship,' was present, and that in his speech at the after-proceedings this gentleman (a member of the English Parlia- ment) was most emphatic in his expression of disbelief in any form of persecution by the Pilgrim Fathers.

The historian of ' The British Empire in America,' a work first published about the year 1720, however, devotes a long chapter to the persecution of Baptists and Quakers in New England, as also of those of the inhabitants who were charged with " witch- craft " ; and the author gives a lengthy list of the names of such persons as were im- prisoned for each of these " offences." Amongst these he mentions Capt. John Alden as having been one of the victims of the "witchcraft" persecution, and writes thus of him :

" Captain John Alden, a person of as good a character for sense, courage, and virtue as any in the country, lay fifteen weeks in prison, and then made his escape.... He returned when the storm was over, surrendered himself to the superior court at Boston, and was cleared by proclamation in April, 1693."

There can be little doubt that this Capt. Alden was a son of the original John Alden who went over with the Pilgrim Fathers in the Mayflower, for we have an American author of a short biography of Duxbury notabilities in the eighteenth century, pub- lished at Boston in 1817, who thus writes :

" John Alden, another active man of the first ship's crew, settled in Duxbury on the north side of Blue River, and a part of his farm is now in possession of one of his descendants, Judah Alden, Esquire. Captain John Alden, son of the aforesaid John Alden, commanded the sloop Mary, a vessel belonging to the Government, in 1668 and 1669 in several expeditions against the French and Indians."

M. N.

ELIZABETH JOANNA WESTON. It has not yet been settled to which Weston family the " English Sappho " belonged. In a letter, dated 12 Oct., 1598, to her only brother, John Francis, who was then study- ing at Ingolstadt, she mentions an " affinis noster, Ludomilla Kellea," with her two little boys, who was returning to England. This may be a clue in the hands of genea- logists. According to a Hungarian paper, her daughter Felicitas was an ancestress of Louis Kossuth. L. L. K.