Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 3.djvu/322

 NOTES AND Q (JEEIES. tn s. in. APRIL 22, 1911.

that has been expended by the Mercers' Company in the Erection of the new Royal Exchange,' which was published in The Gentleman's Magazine for January, 1845, that 500Z. was paid for this statue.

G. H. WHITE.

In the first reply, ante, p. 230, col. 1, near the foot, it is said : "In the centre of the area was another statue of Charles II. in Roman costume, executed by Gibbons in 1684."

May I point out that the attribution to Gibbons is at least doubtful, and that Quellin was probably the sculptor ? See 11 S. ii. 322. ROBERT PIERPOINT.

MILES GALE (US. iii. 208). He had issue four sons and one daughter. His eldest son, Christopher Gale, was Attorney-General of North Carolina in 1703, Judge of the Admiralty of that province in 1712, and Chief Justice of Providence and the Bahama Islands in 1721. He married Sarah, relict of Harvey, Governor of North Carolina. See ' D.N.B.' (orginial edition), xx. 374.

A. R. BAYLEY.

WHITE LION OF THE HOUSE OF MARCH (US. iii. 248). The white lion of the house of March is figured as a pendant to the collar of suns and roses on the brass effigy of the Lady Isabella Plantagenet (aunt of King Edward IV.) in Little Easton Church, Essex. The attitude of the animal is different, and it is not featured in the same manner as that appended to the collar of the Stanton Harcourt memorial.

G. H. C. CRISP.

Cambridge.

THE LORDS SMEATON AND THE SMEATON OR SMITTON FAMILY (11 S. iii. 209). The Lords of Smeaton and the Smeaton family are distinct both in name and origin Smeaton, a mansion and estate in Hadding- tonshire, belonged originally to the Hep- burns. In 1538 Sir Patrick Hepburn of Wauchton gave half the lands of Smeaton and all Smeaton-Crux to his second son Adam, whose last male descendant was succeeded in 1764 by his nephew, George Buchan of Letham. He was created a baronet in 1815, and his great-grandson Sir Archibald Buchan Hepburn, 4th Baronet is the present proprietor.

Possibly the patronymic Smeaton ma;y be derived from the place-name, which signifies Smith's town, but the connexion of the Smeaton family with Haddington

hire is doubtful. An early representative >f the name, Mark Smeaton, musician, was executed in 1536 on the charge of being the over of Queen Anne Boleyn. He is not mown to have left descendants. Almost ontemporary with Mark was Thomas Smeaton, a native of Perthshire and a trenuous Reformer, who succeeded Andrew Melville as Principal of Glasgow University. He was married and had children. John Smeaton, the famous engineer, was born near Leeds in a house previously occupied his grandfather. The Rev. George Smeaton, a professor in the Free Church of Scotland, was John Smeaton' s grand-nephew, while Mr. W. H. Oliphant Smeaton, a dis- inguished literary man in Edinburgh, is the son of the professor. Another branch of the Smeaton family was long connected with Perthshire, but now belongs to Fife- shire. Of this family Donald Mackenzie Bmeaton, C.S.I., was Liberal M.P. for Stirlingshire until his death. . W. SCOTT.

GALLOWS BANK : MATTHEW COCKLING (11 S. iii. 187). In 'Derby: its Rise and Progress,' by A. W. Davison, 1906, it is stated that Matthew Cocklane was hanged for murdering an aged lady, Mrs. Vicars, near the Market-Place in Derby, on the Sunday before Christmas, 1774 : his appre- hension took place at Dublin the following October, and he was hanged in chains near Bradshaw's Hay after making a confession. A foot-note relates to the gallows incident referred to :

" A story, still told in Derby in various ways, narrates how a wager was made at the ' Green Dragon ' in St. Peter's Street that one of the company dare not offer the gibbeted corpse a basin of broth ' to warm his bones.' It was arranged that the ceremony should take place at midnight, and as the clock struck the hour the boaster mounted the ladder and exclaimed, ' Matthey, thou must be cold up there ; here's a basin o' hot broth for thee ! ' A sepulchral voice groaned, ' Blow-ow it ! ' ; whereupon the valiant one fell to the ground and fled. The conspirators had secreted a well-known itinerant ventriloquist, 'Squeaking Jemmy,' at the foot of the gibbet, and the plot was successful."

The same work tells a later story relating to the burial of Ludlam, Brandreth,^ and Turner after their execution in 1817 for murder and riot :

" In St. Werburgh's churchyard a ghost was seen flitting on dark nights from gravestone to gravestone, carrying its head under its arm. The footpath across the churchyard became deserted by all but the brave after nightfall, until someone solved the mystery by bringing down the ghost with a stone. It was Pegs, the barber -from across the way, who, with a sheet