Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 2.djvu/47

 ii s. vm. JULY 19, i9i3.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

LONDON, SATURDAY, JULY 19, 1913.

CONTENTS. No. 186.

3JOTE3 : Mingay " with the Iron Hariri,'' 41 Huntingdon- shire Booksellers and Printers, 44 "Tredekeiles "John Phillip's Connexion with Dyce, 45 The Marquessate of Lincolnshire Unnoted Shakespeare Allusions in Thomas Shad well, 46 Capt. William Harvey, R.N. Maimonides and Evolution Baretti's Copy of his ' Discours sur Shakespear,' 47.

QUERIES: "L'Entente Cordiale," 47 Danvers Family of Swithland and London Wedding - Pieces British Troopship wrecked on Reunion Island Portcullis as a Coat of Arm*, 48 Parke and Scoles in Egypt and Nubia "The Eight and Fortie Men" Milton Humbug Dr. Gregory Sharpe's Correspondence Oak Trees in a Gale" Wear the blue," 49 Lines in a Parish Register- Glasgow Men as PapU Zouaves Pennington Braddock Family Napoleon I. and Duelling " The Crooked Billet" "The Two Reynoldses," 50.

/REPLIES: Old-Time Children's Books: 'Lady Anne,' 50 Byron and the Hobhouse MS. Derived Senses of the Cardinal Points, 51 The Largest Square in London Izaak Walton and Tomb - Scratching, 52 'The Toma- hawk ' : Matt Morgan Wilderness Row, 53 The Younger Van Helmont The Twelve Good Rules George Walker, Governor of Londonderry, 5 1 Authors of Quo-

ge

Cawthorne, 56-Grillion's Club The Parliamentary Soldiers and Charles I. History of Churches in Situ " Raising Feast," 57" Pull one's leg "Boys in Petti- coats and Fairies Private Schools Scott's ' Woodstock ' : the Rota Club Dancing on " Midsummer Night," 58.

'Celtic Place- Names ''The Aldermen of the City of London' Catholic Record Society.
 * NOTE3 ON BOOKS : The Jews of To-day'' Aberdeen '

Booksellers' Catalogues.

Notices to Correspondents.

MINGAY "WITH THE IRON HAND."

MEMOIRS of most of the oddities embalmed in Charles Lamb's essay on " the old benchers of the Inner Temple " are contained in the volumes of the ' D.N.B.,' but some of them are unchronicled. The chief of these is James Mingay, K.C.

He is brought into Elia as an after- thought :

" I had almost forgotten Mingay with the iron hand but he was somewhat later. He had lost his right hand by some accident and supplied it with a grappling hook, which he wielded with a tolerable adroitness. I detected the substitute before I was old enough to reason whether it were artificial or not. I remember the astonish- ment it raised in me. He was a blustering loud- talking person and I reconciled the phenomenon to my ideas as an emblem of power, somewhat like the horns in the forehead of Michael Angelo's Moses."

W. C. Townsend adds (' Twelve Eminent Judges,' i. 427) that it was the fashion in

those days for the leading counsel to walk in the Temple Gardens in the summer evenings, and that Erskine and Mingay were the chief attractions.

James Mingay had a traditional connexion \vith the Inner Temple. Francis Mingay of Ilketshall St. Margaret, Suffolk, was a Master of the Bench of that Inn in 1617. His mother was a sister of Sir Edward Coke, and he is described in the ' Visitation of Surrey ' (Harl. Soc., 1899) as " of Southwark, Justice of the Peace, and of the Inner Temple." The family was conspicuous in Norfolk and Suffolk for many generations.

James Mingay was a native of Thetford. He was born there on 9 March, 1752 (Old Style), baptized at St. Peter's Church on 10 June, and educated at Thetford Grammar School under Mr. Galloway.

In the very inadequate Memoir a memoir without a date of James Mingay which is prefixed to ' A Collection of Remarkable and Interesting Criminal Trials,' by W. M. Medland and Charles Weobly, 1803,. &c. a work not to be found at the British Museum or in any law-library in London, save at Lincoln's Inn, and there in two volumes only, instead of three it is said that his father was a miller in Suffolk, and that he was sent to the Bar as the loss of his right arm had rendered him unfit for manual labour in the mill. This statement about his father is erroneous ; he was a surgeon, and both parents seem to have been pos- sessed of property. The other Memoir of him is an anonymous volume entitled ' Sketches of the Characters of the Hon. Thomas Erskine and James Mingay, interspersed with Anecdotes and Professional Strictures ' (1794), which says that, through sympathy with his misfortune, the Duke of Grafton, whose chief seat was near Thetford, became his patron. The accident is said to have occurred at Cringleford Mill, near Norwich, when he was a boy (Chambers, ' Norfolk History,' 1829, ii. 798). Charles Lamb, as we have seen, was impressed by the hook, and Mingay himself put on record that his will was written with his left and only hand " in a state of lameness from an accident." In The Wits' Magazine, i. 235 (1784), is the following * Impromptu ' on hearing Mr. Mingay in the Court of King's Bench : Since so well, with one arm, Mingay handles

a cause,

How great, had he two, must have~been his applause.

This Memoir of 1794 states in a vague way that Mingay passed the "allotted time atCam- bridge." We have, by a recent publication,