Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 9.djvu/379

 ii s. ix. MAY 9, 1914.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

373

THE ROADS BOUND LONDON SEVENTY YEARS AGO : RHUBARB (11 S. ix. 82, 157, 274, 316). The first man to grow rhubarb in this country was (so far as is known) John Parkinson the herbalist, in the reign of James I. Parkinson tells us (' Theatrum Botanicum,' p. 157) that he received seeds of the plant (Rheum Rhaponticum) from Sir Matthew Lister (who had them from Prosper Alpinus of Padua), and raised plants from them. He seems even to have tried it as a vegetable, for he says :

" The leaves have a fine acid taste ; a syrup, therefore, made with the juice and sugar, cannot but be very effectual in dejected appetites." (Quoted by Ellacombe.) A hundred years before this, seeds supposed to be of rhubarb had been sent to Sir Thomas Cromwell ; but nothing seems to have come of this, for Gerard knows nothing of rhubarb grown in this country, though his editor Johnson, in the edition of 1633, says it is " to be found growing in some of our choice gardens," the reference probably being to Parkinson's and other herbalists' ^gardens. C. C. B.

LOMBARD STREET BANKERS : SIR STEPHEN E VANCE (11 S. ix. 230, 272. 298). He was M.P. for Bridport, 1690-98; Governor of the Hudson's Bay Company, 16916 and 1700-12. He was in partnership with William Hales as a goldsmith in 1702, having formerly carried on business in conjunction with Peter Percivale as far back as 1677. The house of Evans & Hales stopped pay- ment in 1721. He is stated to have com- mitted suicide at the end of Anne's reign, if I read my notes correctly ; but this ig probably too early a date, and I am unable at this moment to verify my reference, which is to Gentleman's Magazine, 1798, p. 929. MR. ABRAHAMS (ante, p. 230) is incorrect in say- ing that Mr. Hilton Price's works " do not afford any information " on Evance's firm. He will find some of the details I have given in Price's ' Handbook of London Bankers ' (p. 128).

SIR RICHARD "DRAKE " HENEGAN (11 S. ix. 89). He was made a Knight of the Guelphic Order in 1817, and died 28 Dec., 1872, aged 89. I can find no evidence of his being entitled to the prefix Sir. Knights of the Guelphic Order were not so styled unless they received knighthood in England, and his name does not appear in The London Gazette, or in Shaw's ' Book of Knights,' or any other list of knights with which I am acquainted. I believe his second name was not Drake, but Drakeford.

ALFRED B. BEAVEN.

PLURALITIES (US. ix. 290). At one time- there can hardly have been any limit, to- judge from the case of Reinbold, or Regen- bald, who was Chancellor of Edward the- Confessor, and was taken into his service by the Conqueror. According to Dr. Round, who styles him the "first great pluralist,' r sixteen churches, rich in tithes and glebe, had passed into his hands before his death (' Feudal England,' p. 426).

MILO AS A SURNAME (US. ix. 250, 311). Is Milo at the second reference really a surname ? If the man is styled simply Milo of Oystergate, it looks like a Christian name, i.e., Miles in its regular Latinized form. G. H. WHITE.

St. Cross, Harleston, Norfolk.

BOTHWELL (11 S. ix. 306). I find four of the name in the ' Belfast Commercial) Directory.' Possibly one of these R. A. Bothwell, 41, Tate's Avenue, Belfast might set L. V. on the track.

QUIEN SABE.

See Burke' s ' Extinct and Dormant Peer- age ' (ed. 1846, p. 718), s.v. ' Bothwell, Lord Holyroodhouse.' W. T.

THE LIGHT BRIGADE AT BALACLAVA (US. ix. 186, 253, 334). The thirty dis- mounted men would have been those on guard, sick, regimentally employed, bat- men, and prisoners ; and not a large number for a cavalry brigade's absentees from parade. HAROLD MALET, Colonel.

AUTHORS WANTED (11 S. ix. 328).

The kiss of the sun for pardon. This is the last verse of a poem by Dorothy Gurney beginning

The Lord God planted a garden ; but in the third line the poet wrote One is r not " You are." My impression is that the poem appeared in Country Life. It is quoted in * A Garden in Venice,' by F. Eden (1904).

" BALLONI " (11 S. viii. 468 ; ix. 18). See Sir Thomas Coningsby's ' Journal of the Siege of Rouen, 1591 ' (in the "Camden Mis- cellany," vol. i.), pp. 29 and 30:

" Oct. 19, 20. The 19. and 20. we passed in making good cheare, coursing in the fields, ryding of horses, playing at ballone and the lyke."

" Oct. 22 The 22 daie we passed with playinge at tennys in the forenoone, and at playinge at ballon in th' afternoone with the lieuetenant- gouvernor of Deape, and the victorie fell on our syde."

JOHN B. WAINEWRIGHT.