Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 2.djvu/340

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NOTES AND QUERIES. [12 s. n. OCT. 21, i9ie.

rgood pedigree of Brassey of Hertfordshire, dmwn up by Mr. R. S. Boddington in 1877. It commences with John, who purchased Roxford in 1699, was a wealthy goldsmith -and banker in Lombard Street, and died in 1737. He names in his will of 1731 his brothers, Nathaniel, William deceased, and Thomas decease, and desires to be buried in the Quakers' ground.

Testator's son Nathaniel, the M.P., died in 1765, and the arms on his tomb are the same as those of Earl Brassey, viz. : Quarterly, per fesse indented sa. and arg.,in the first quarter a mallard (or sheldrake). His arms and crest are also on his Chippen- dale book-plate. Some City register would probably provide proofs for the above suggested line of descent, and the records of the Goldsmiths and Haberdashers should be searched.

The arms of Bracey, as quoted, are from co. Hereford, and I saw them in Harl. MS. 1140 without pedigree.

V. L. OLIVER.

Sunninghill.

EDWARD STABLER (12 S. ii. 250). I fear that the following will not add much to what MR. MERRYWEATHER already knows :

" On Wednesday evening died, to the great grief of his family and friends, Edward Stabler, Esq., one of the Aldermen of the City of York, -and who served the office of Lord Mayor in the year 1779. A gentleman who discharged the duties of public and private life with the most -conscientious integrity, and in whom were happily united all the amiable virtues that could dignify human nature and constitute the character of the ~fcrulv good man. His loss to society, to his family and his friends, will be long and severely felt and deplored." Leeds Intelligencer, Sept. 11, 1786.

The Gentleman's Magazine refers briefly to the death of Edward Stabler in the volume ior 1786, p. 908.

A. L. HUMPHREYS.

FISHERIES AT COMACCHIO (12 S. ii. 210, 257). The reply signed A. V. DE P. is so good and so satisfactory that I hesitate to Add anything further. For bibliographical reasons it may be worth while to note additional references to the subject. There Are two most illuminating articles on the Comacchio fisheries in the Revue Contem- poraine. They are headed ' La Lagune de Comacchio, ses Pecheries, son Commerce,' par Coste [membre de 1'Institut], Revue dontemporaine, Paris, torn. xiv. pp. 187- 215, 405-35, June 30 and July 15, 1854. Bellini's book, already referred to, is ' II iavoriero da pescanella laguria di Comacchio,'

by Arturo Bellini, Venezia, Vissentini, 1899, pp. 117. Other references are: Ett. Fried- laender, ' La pesca nelle lagune di Comacchio,' Firenze, Le Monnier, 1872, pp. 100; F. Carlo Ballola,' Soprauna lettera di Ett. Friedlaender sulla pesca delle mani in Comacchio,' Bologna, Mareggiani, 1876, pp. 36. A. L. HUMPHREYS.

187 Piccadilly, W.

ROYAL ARTILLERY (US. xii. 401). 1. I am informed that Lieut.-Col. Thomas Arscott Lethbridge died on June 17, 1856, at Chelsea, and was buried in Nunhead Cemetery.

J. H. LETHBRIDGE MEW.

Barnstaple.

AMERICANISMS (12 S. ii. 287). "Rare" was used, with regard to beef, &c., underdone, when I was a lad in the Midlands, 1850-60 ; and my recollection is that it was generally from persons who had some pretensions to what was in those days quite favourably called " gentility " that I heard it. I never heard " the fall," as meaning autumn, in English use ; though the American word became somewhat known through the late Henry Russell's entertainments, and the Christy Minstrels epoch of popularity which followed after. W. B. H.

With a longer experience of life and a wider knowledge of provincial English speech, MR. JOHN LANE would hardly have written as he has done. It is a far cry from Devon to Lincolnshire, but there, too, the Knave card was a Jack, though I distinctly remember my surprise at being told that it was vulgar so to call it. I believe, too, that we. usually spoke of our walking staves as sticks ; but termed tHem canes, if canes they chanced to be.

A writer in The London Chronicle, 1762, quoted by Fairholt (' Costume in England,' p. 604), remarks :

" Do not some of us strut about with walking- sticks as long as hickory poles, or else with a yard of varnished cane scraped taper, and bound at one end with waxed thread and the other tipt with a neat turned ivory head as big as a silver penny, which switch we hug under our arms?"

It was earlier than this, in Pope's day, that the dandy learnt " the nice conduct of a clouded cane."

I never heard the word " fall " used for autumn in Lincolnshire ; its significance had to be explained when I came to read ' The Wide, Wide World,' or some other American story. I think it was at Nottingham that I first noted that " rere " or " rare " meant underdone. ST. SWITHIN.