Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 10.djvu/456

 374 NOTES AND QUERIES. [12 S. X. MAY 13, 1922. Caudle's Curtain Lectures' was paid weekly his salary as editor of Lloyd's Weekly News. Mr. Church said this was the custom the proprietor previously adopted with all his authors when a publisher of cheap popular fiction in Shoreditch. ANDREW DE TERNANT. 36, Somerleyton Road, Brixton, S.W. I am intensely interested by MB. ARCHIBALD SPARKE'S reply, and also by the new evidence given by MR. ALECK ABRAHAMS. This is very important, but that given by MR. ANDREW DE TERNANT is more important still. It is the first I have heard of John Frederick Smith's connexion with " Lloyd's," and if he was really the author of ' Black Bess' he may also have been the author of ' Gentleman Jack,' ' Claude Duval,' ' Paul Clifford,' and ' Tom King,' all of which are in question. The British Museum Catalogue gives Edward Viles as the author of ' Black Bess,' ' Black Highwayman ' and ' Blueskin,' but it is just possible J. F. Smith wrote the stories in the position of a servant and his master took the credit, particularly as he was paid so much per week. These are points that might be cleared up. I believe there are some of Edward Viles' s descendants alive who might throw some light upon the matter. I wonder whether Mr. Thomas Catling left any notes or memoranda which would help. His evidence upon all the points in question, especially those relating to " Lloyd's " publications, would be most convincing. FRANK JAY. Two of the penny novelists named by MR. FRANK JAY are mentioned in R. L. Stevenson's paper on Popular Authors (1888). When he was a boy he found in a turret chamber of Neidpath Castle some half-a-dozen numbers of ' Black Bess ; or, The Knight of the Road,' a work by Edward Viles. . . and in the shade of a contiguous fir- wood, lying on blaeberries, I made my first acquiantance with his art. . . . Fr6m this author I passed on to Malcolm J. Errym (the name, to my present scrutiny, suggesting an anagram on Merry), author of ' Edith the Captive,' ' The Treasures of St. Mark,' ' A Mystery in Scarlet,' ' George Barington,' ' Sea-Drift,' ' Townsend the Runner,' and a variety of other well-named romances. Memory may play me false, but I believe there was a kind of merit about Errym. ... I have a curiosity to know what the Mystery in Scarlet was, and to renew acquaintance with King George and his valet Norris, who were the chief figures in the work, and may be said to have risen in every page superior to history and the ten commandments. H. OLD LONDON BRIDGE (12 S. x. 245, 314). I knew of the facts to which MR. ABRAHAMS refers, but cannot think a bridge built of arches can mean a timber bridge. Can any- one refer to an early bridge built of timber " arches." To my mind " arches " must mean stone arches. WALTER RYE. MR. ALECK ABRAHAMS rightly points out that the records quoted by MR. WALTER RYE about a bridge older than that built by Peter of Colechurch must refer to the wooden bridge, or succession of bridges, which had certainly existed since Anglo-Saxon, prob- ably since Roman, times. In the lectures to which MR. RYE so kindly refers I pointed out that an interesting side-light is thrown upon the charter to Battle Abbey (which, by the way, is not really omitted in Mr. Kingsford's index, since it is covered by the feneral reference to London Bridge, pp. 1-26) by a passage in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (Rolls Series, i. 363) saying that in 1097 many districts (scirari) which with their work belonged to London were grievously oppressed, through the wall that they wrought around the Tower, and through the bridge, which was almost carried away by flood, and through the work of the King's hall which was being built at West- minster. A wooden bridge would be liable to many such accidents : to another of them MR. RYE'S valuable discovery in the Pipe Roll of 1130/1 may well refer. I wonder if any reader could give the source of Stow's assertion that in 1163 the bridge was " newly made of timber as be- fore " by Peter of Colechurch ? The last allusion to this bridge, perhaps, is Fitz- stephen's casual mention of it in his descrip- tion of London sports, c. 1180. By then Peter had begun his pons lapideus : the dis- tinguishing adjective occurs in both entries in the Annals of Waverley (Annales Mon- astici, Rolls Series, ii. 240, 256-7) and also in the Annales Cambriae (Rolls Series, p. 54). Alike in the Annals and in the Close Roll of 1205 (Rec. Com., i. 49) he is " P. Capel- lanus de Colechurch," or Colechirche ; if Blomfield's surmise that he belonged to the Norfolk family were correct the phrase would surely have run "P. de Colechurch, Capellanus." And has MR. RYE any author- ity for his " Peter de Colkirk "? That form does not occur either in the Patent Roll of 1207 (Rec. Com., i. 58) or, apparently, in the Bridge House deeds quoted by Mr. Welch (' The Tower Bridge,' pp. 37, 53, 72). . Outside those deeds which, however, I have