Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 3.djvu/450

 NOTES AND QUERIES.

[12 8. III. OCT., 1917.

is known as the Emperor's Room, and is still used as a bedroom in the private house into which the old hotel has been turned."

The name of that hotel came from the Hunter-Blair baronets, who owned land in the parish of Portpatrick.

EDWARD S. DODGSON.

" POLITICANTING " : " POLITIC ANTER."

These are new coinages, much affected of late by the Petrograd correspondent of The Morning Post, thus :

"... .the sole defence of those who mistook politicanting Petrograd for the voice of All the Russias." Morning Post, Aug. 3, 1917.

" For a fortnight past the politicanters have been engaged talking all night and every night, with exhausted meetings summoned also at various hours during the intervening days, but nearly all the ' chin music ' is most appropriately relegated to the hours of darkness." Morning Post, Aug. 8, 1917.

See also the issue of Aug. 7, and others before and since that date.

The meaning seems to be indulging in such political agitation as can be accom- plished chiefly by speechifying, and the persons who occupy themselves with this useless form of action. They seem useful words. Are there any other instances of their employment in other newspapers, for instance ? PENRY LEWIS.

" TAHKS " : ORIGIN OF THE NAME. The following, which appeared in The Isle of Ely and Wisbech Advertiser of Aug. S, 1917, may be worth recording in ' N. & Q.' :

"It is well known in this neighbourhood that the ' Tanks ' used in the present war were named after Mr. W. Tank Burall (a relative of Mr. H. C. Burall of Wisbech), who conceived the idea, the workmen who constructed the caterpillar machines calling them after their designer's family name."

J. L. STOKES. Charterhouse, Godalming.

LIGHTS CALLED " FRATERNALIA." The (translated) abstract of an Ordinacio of Bishop Stafford, dated Aug. 30, 1414 ('Episcopal Registers, Exeter,' ed. by Pre- bendary Hingeston - Randolph : ' Stafford,' pp. 227-9), sets forth the conditions upon which the Chapel of St. Edmund, K. & M., of Kingsbridge, hitherto dependent on the " mother church " of Churchstow', is to be granted the rank and privileges of a parish church. I note in this that " whereas there are always some who from avarice and malice are wont to defraud the church and clergy, using at funerals the lights called Fraternalia," all men were thenceforth forbidden to employ the tapers belonging to any fraternity in the said chapel or its

cemetery, unless they indemnified the Rector of Churchstow beforehand by paying him 2d. ; and as to other lights, not fraternalia r those that were carried with the bodies of the dead into the cemetery were to be given to the rector for his own use, but those that were only used outside the cemetery were to remain as formerly at the disposal of execu- tors and friends. E. LEGA-WEEKES.

WE must request correspondents desiring in- formation on family matters of only private interest to affix theirnames and addresses to their queries, in order that answers may be sent to them direct.

PRINCE CHARLES EDWARD STUART IN PARIS. In connexion with the arrest of the Young Pretender in Paris en Dec. 11, 1748, Andrew Lang, in his interesting history of this adventurer's life, mentions in a foot-note that he had seen a manuscript letter addressed to Clementina Walkinshaw^ giving detailed particulars of the incident. Can any reader of ' N. & Q.' say if this letter has ever been published, and by whom it was written ? I assume Mr_ Lang did not himself know, cr he would probably have given the name of the writer.. WlLLOUGHBY MAYCOCK.

THOMAS LOVE PEACOCK AND CHERTSEY.. Some few years ago there were some particulars given in ' N, & Q.' regarding Thomas Love Peacock. He had some con- nexion with Chertsey, where his grand- mother, Mrs. Love, resided. I have a note (which, I fear, is not authentic) stating that she resided at the Abbey House. T. L. Peacock in 1837 contributed to Bentley's Miscellany a fine description of that mansion and its surroundings, but I cannot find that his people were resident there. If any of your contributors could throw light on the point of Mrs. Love's home in Chertsey I should be grateful.

(Miss) LUCY WHEELER.

81 Guildford Street, Chertsey.

[For Thomas Love Peacock and Chertsey see 10 S. xii. 88, 132, 175.]

ARRESTING A CORPSE. Can any of your readers give information as to a former legal process for the arrest of the body of a dead person, the effect of which was to prevent burial ? I recollect reading of it many years ago, and recently went over the notes in the Waverley Novels, where I supposed I must have seen it, but without success. A legal friend of mine says he