Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 9.djvu/443

 n s. ix. MAY 3), 1914. j NOTES AND QUERIES.

437

reset ? I have been unable up to the present to learn anything regarding Mr. J. C. Burckharclt, who supplied the jewel, save that he died in 1849. Was he a leading jeweller, and who succeeded to his business ?

BOBT. J. SODDY. 42, Jewin Street, E.G.

"VOSSIONER" (11 S. ix. 210, 390). I have no doubt that this word denotes the person, who has the advowson, the right of presentation to a benefice or living. I find from ' N.E.D.' that early forms of this w r ord -were avoweson, voweson. There also occur the spellings advowsion, avoson. There is therefore no difficulty, as far as form goes, in explaining the word vossioner to be the -equivalent of advowsoner, the owner of an
 * advowson. ' N.E.D.' reminds us that the

word advowson ( = Lat. advocatio) meant originally the obligation to defend the rights of a benefice, to be its " advocate."

A. L. MAYHEW.

Oxford.

That vossioner did then signify an advow- soner, or " owner of an, advowson," is, indeed, very likely. At first sight our modern understanding of the words pa- tron and advowson would lead us to suppose that a man was a "patron" of a living because he was the owner of the '" advowson," and that the two words together would not be used in describing the one person. I may point out, however, that in 1535 these words are separately used m the Act for the suppression of the smaller monasteries (27 Henry VIII. cap. 28), where the various rights, possessions, and privileges belonging to these monasteries and priories, &c., are enumerated in the first section, and in the second section as

" all and singular the manors, lands churches,

chapels, advowsons, patronages and all other

interests and hereditaments to the same be- longing."

This clearly shows that a distinction was recognized between advowsons and patron- ages, just as Parson Woddomes was not only " pattron," but also " vossioner " of the church and parish of Ufton.

W. S. B. H.

PARRY BROADHEAD (11 S. ix. 370), who was still living in 1718, was son of Robert Broadhead, pewterer of London, by Mar- garet, daughter of Thos. Skinner of Wrotham, Kent. Thos. Skinner's sister Joane was the first wife of Nicholas Parry, Chief Butler 0? Gray's Inn, who was buried at Wrotham 5n 1672. G. S. PARRY.

17, Ashley Mansions, S.W.

" BLIZARD " OR " BLIZZARD " AS SUR- NAME (11 S. ix. 290, 396). This name is included in ' Surnames of the United King- dom,' by Henry Harrison (1912), vol. i. p. 37, and forty years ago it was represented near Chippenham (Wilts). A. C. C.

Dr. Barber in his ' British Surnames ' says the family name Blizard is of Saxon, origin, and means a " strong sword -player." There is little reason for supposing the Bl'zards to be of Huguenot ancestry. They were seated in this country long before the arrival of the Protestant refugees. Their principal habitat seems to have been the South Midland counties, and Foster's ' Alumni Oxoni- enses' records the graduation at Oxford of several members of the family hailing from Oxfordshire and Gloucestershire for some two centuries. During the Commonwealth a Capt. Charles Blizard left this country for Antigua, where he farmed 115 acres, leaving many descendants in that island, one of whom, the Hon. Stephen Blizard, was Speaker of the House of Assembly and Judge of the Court of Common Pleas. (For a full account of this branch of the Blizard family, see Oliver's ' History of Antigua. ' )

Sir W. Blizard, 1743-1835, surgeon to the London Hospital, belonged to a branch of the family resident in Barnes, Surrey, from Stuart times, and the Parish Register of Barnes contains over thirty references to them. I had the pleasure of contributing to The London Hospital Gazette for February and March, 1913, a fairly full account of Sir William Blizard and his family.

S. D. CLIPPINGDALE, M.D.

BIRMINGHAM STATUES AND MEMORIALS (10S. ix.202, 243., 282, 322, 363). T. Hansom. MR. WILMOT CORFIELD has made a slip in describing (ante, p. 322) the architect of Birmingham Town Hall, " whose name was given to the ' Hansom ' cab," as T. Hansom. His name was Joseph Aloysius Hansom. See H. C. Moore's ' Omnibuses and Cabs,' p. 216.

JOHN B. WAINE WRIGHT.

George Dawson. Some rather humorous incidents were associated with the ill-starred Dawson statue of 1881 (ante, p. 323). When the moment arrived for the Mayor, Alderman Baker, to unveil the statue, the mechanism for removing the covering refused to work, and for some awkward moments the Mayor was seen tugging at the cord in vain. In the strained silence was heard a stage whisper from J. H. Chamberlain, the architect of the canopy, " Pull devil pull Baker." Apropos