Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 1.djvu/463

 12 8. I. JUNES, 1916.]

NOTES AND QUERIES.

457

if a portrait were found, it would be very difficult to ascertain its present whereabouts. Bramah's second son, Francis, died at Wargrave, Berks, on Dec. 15, 1840, aged 55; and I had a slight acquaintance with a clergyman, a member of the Bramah family, who, about fifty years ago, was a curate of St. James the Less, Liverpool.

R. B. P.

" JERRY-BUILDER " (11 S. xii. 482 ; 12 S. i. 19, 299, 415). The question of the origin of this expression was raised in a contem- porary some twenty- two years ago, and the solution then supplied (and, so far as I know, uncontested) was as follows :

" In the early part of this [nineteenth] century the firm of Jerry Brothers, builders and con- tractors, carried on business in Liverpool, and earned an unpleasant notoriety by putting up rapidly built, showy, but ill- constructed houses, so that their name eventually became general for such builders and their work, first in Liverpool, and afterwards through the whole of this country. 'The equivalent for ' jerry-builder ' in America is run up flimsy apartment-houses in New York. A row of these buildings collapsed before they -were completed, burying several of the workmen under the ruins. Buddensiek was convicted of manslaughter, and sentenced to ten years' im- prisonment."
 * Buddensiek.' A builder of this name used to

The circumstance of more than one of your correspondents haying alluded to the expression as being of common use in Liverpool goes far to support the theory of its origin which I have quoted.

WlLLOUGHBY MAYCOCK.

HARLINGTON, MIDDLESEX (12 S. i. 410). An account of this village may be found in Watford's ' Greater London,' i. 198 (1894), where it is described as a small straggling village of no great interest, except for the iact that Dawley Court (destroyed in 1773) once stood within its bounds, and was the residence of the great Henry St. John, Viscount Bolingbroke, in the eighteenth century. But before his time the house belonged to the Bennet family, one of whom, Henry Bennet, was a member of the "Cabal" Ministry. When in 1663 he was raised to the peerage, he chose the titles of ton " ; but, to his disgust, the Heralds' College omitted the " H " by mistake in making out the patent. This was not dis- covered until too late for any alteration, so Earl of " Arlington " he had to be, and the street named after him south of Piccadilly is " Arlington " also still. These titles are now merged in the Dukedom of Graf ton. ALAN STEWART.
 * ' Viscount Thetford and Earl of Harl ing-

Any one visiting the churchyard of SS. Peter and Paul, Harlington, will notice near the south porch a huge yew, having a girth of about twenty feet. A very in- teresting custom was connected with this tree. In the eighteenth century it used to be clipped at certain intervals into unnatural and peculiar shapes. Early in the nineteenth century, however, this custom was aban- doned. ARCHIBALD SPARKE.

FOURTEENTH- CENTURY STAINED GLASS (12 S. i. 267, 335, 375). In ' The Church of our Fathers,' vol. ii. pp. 140-42 (Hart and Frere's edition), Dr. Daniel Rock states that a bishop's pontifical ring was worn on the last finger but one of the right hand, and not passed over the second joint that is to say, it was worn on the middle phalange. It was made to fit loosely so that it would slip over a thick silk glove ; and a smaller ring, placed between it and the finger-tip, played the part of a keeper. Besides the pontifical ring, some, if not all, bishops had a thumb-ring which found place on the first joint of the appropriate member.

" Archbishop Chicheley's figure, in Canter- bury Cathedral, shows the thumb-ring and the pontifical one, and both are at the middle, not bottom, of the finger."

The custom of displaying rings otherwise than near the knuckles as at present was fashionable among lay-people in Tudor times. It is rather wonderful that the mode has not been revived, especially as it must have been rather inconvenient.

ST. SWITHIN.

FAMILY PORTRAITS MENTIONED IN WILLS (11 S. x. 427). Dame Katherine Raynsford, widow of the L.C.J. Raynsford, in 1698 bequeathed to her grandson Richard Buckly " her picture of the late Lord Justice Hale, and her largest picture of her late husband, Sir Richard Raynsford " (this is now in Lincoln's Inn Hall) ; and to her granddaughter Mrs. Ann Griffin " her picture of her said husband sett in gold with the diamonds sett about it, and that picture I desire her to keep together unalloyed in memory of him."

There are several portraits of Judge Raynsford's family at Audley End, Essex, the seat of Lord Braybrooke one painted by Lely and another by Kneller.

General Rainsford of Soho Square, who died 1809, mentions in his will a picture in his drawing-room painted by Stewart, and another portrait in his dining-room.

F. VINE RAINSFOBD.