Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 10.djvu/568

 466 NOTES AND QUERIES. n?s. x. 1922. Americans, who had fled to the hold, killed a fine Marine, William Young. On this Lieut. Falkiner, who was sitting on the booms, very properly directed three or four muskets that were ready to be fired down. Capt. Broke from his seat on the carronade slide, told Lieut. Falkiner to summon the Americans in the hold to surrender, if they desired quarter. The Americans replied we surrender ; and all hostilities ceased. The ultimate fate of the Shannon's prize, which may not be generally known, is now given. P.R.O., C.O. 231/1, Aug. 15, 1840. The Chesapeake, which once floated disdain- fully upon the waters of the Atlantic, is now completely " shivered," as to her " timbers," which latter, together with other portions of her, have been employed in the construction of a corn- mill at the village of Wickham, near Portsmouth. The wood is in good condition, and promises to continue so for some time to come. Many strangers visit Wickham Mill to gratify their curiosity. Seven Shannons have been in commission, the Chesapeake' s victor having been the fourth to bear the name. She became a Receiving Ship at Sheerness. In 1844 she was renamed St. Lawrence and broken up in 1859. E. H. FAIRBROTHER. MUTATIONS OF OLD RATCLIFFE. THE approaching State visit to Stepney compels the reflection that it is probably not generally known that the Shadwell Park Memorial to King Edward VII. and the Ratcliffe Cross Memorial to Elizabethan pioneers of British on the seas are both in what was once specifically part of Ratcliffe, long the hub of London Port. The minutes of the Old Stepney Vestry afford evide'nce of the changes in the areas of the local governments in the whole period when revolution was afoot in Whitehall and when King, Parliament, " the City," and other authorities were manoeuvring for dominance in the Port of London and the control of shipping and the armament of civil war. Thus it is recorded that at "a Vestry for Stepney Parish held on April 13, 1646 (when the end of the first Civil War in England was looming), the election of churchwardens for the current year was proceeded with. Master John Moore was elected church- warden for Shadwell ; Master William Ellis for Ratcliffe ; Master Thomas Biggs for " Lymehou^e " ; Master Thomas Grinley for Mile End ; Master William Hunt for " Popler." Captain John Ellison was elected churchwarden for Shadwell at the meeting of the Vestry of April 22, 1647. For 1648 Master Humphrey Stillgoe was elected. For 1649 Master William Cooper (presumably the Master of the James, 300 tons, which sailed for New England about April 6, 1635, with fifty -three men and women and female children ; and who was married at Stepney Church to Ellen Lambert, widow, in October, 1626). At a meeting held of the Stepney Vestry (in the house in the churchyard) on May 19, 1641 (the month of the execution of Straf- ford), it was set out that the Hamlet of Ratcliffe had of late soe largely encreased by the multitude of Buildings and number of Inhabitants that the well ordering of the same is found a burthen too heavie for one Churchwarden to execute. It was therefore ordered and decreed, so farre as in us lieth, that in the Hamlet of Ratcliffe shal be chosen two Churchwardens, one in Ratcliffe, the other upon Wapping Wall or elsewhere thereabouts, in maner and forme as other Churchwardens have beene formerly chosen, and upon these conditions ensuing. These conditions include that the two churchwardens for Ratcliffe be taken but as one in the performance and execution of the office of a churchwarden of Ratcliffe ; that they shall content themselves with such division, limits, and bounds as pro- vided, viz., the churchwarden of the original Ratcliffe to have for his division Stepney White Horse Street, Brooke Street, Ratcliffe Wall, Ratcliffe Street " unto the Old Ballast Wharf " ; while the new churchwarden for Wapping Side was to have for his division Upper Shadwell, Lower Shadwell, Ratcliffe Highway, Foxe's Lane, Wapping Wall, Pruson's Island, King Street Wapping,. Knockfergus, and Old Gravel Lane. A reference to the Queen Anne map of Joel Gascoyne shows that the arrangement of 1641 still roughly describes the Hamlet of Ratcliffe, with the exception mainly of the cantle cut off later to make a parish for the new Limehouse Church of 1712-24 ; whereas Wapping, on the western side, has since been subdivided very considerably. Shadwell was set up "on its own " in 1669 ; St. George's East, on the completion of its church and accessories, in 1730, and blossom- ing into an administrative Vestry con- spicuous in Georgian and Early Victorian times. It may be added, Spitalfields (Christ Church) was withdrawn from the League of the Hamlets Eastward of the Tower in 1729; Bow in 1730; Bethnal Green in, 1740 ; and Poplar in 1820. Me.