Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 5.djvu/218

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NOTES AND QUERIES.

(12 8. V. Arc;, 191 9-.

before being baked, were joined together, one on the top of the other, by a frame. The top one was open to view, the lower one closed up ; the former served all ordinary purposes, only when a dispute arose as to its authenticity the frame joining the two was broken open before the Court and the duplicate compared with it. If the proprietor of the double tablet, in order to falsify the duplicate also, had broken away the frame, he himself would thereby have destroyed the value of the record as evidence."

The same writer also points out that we meet with an arrangement similar in principle at Rome, which, first coming into use with respect to wills, afterwards, by order of the Senate, became the exclusive form of all records which had claim to evidential value. There was a twofold record an outer and an inner and the latter was closed up, and the whole fastened by thread, and sealed by the witnesses on the thread, and he cites Paul. S.R.V. xxv. 6 :

" Amplissimus ordo decrevit, eas tabulas, quse publici vel privati contractus scripturam continent, adhibitis testibus ita signari, ut in summa marginis ad mediam partem perforate triplici lino constringantur atque impositee supra linum cerse signa imprimantur, ut exteriori scripturse fidern interior servet."

Having referred to tallies, I may mention a survival of them in this locality. Clitheroe Castle is the residence and the office of the Steward of the Honour of Clitheroe. The various local pounds or pinfolds in the district having fallen into disuse and mostly disappeared, on the somewhat rare occasions when straying animals are required to be impounded they are taken to Clitheroe Castle and impounded in the Castle grounds. The person who impounds them receives from the Steward's office the half of a piece of stick split lengthwise, upon which several notches had previously been cut, and the other half is retained in the Steward's office. Whoever comes to take the animals out of pound has to bring with him, as his warrant for so doing, the half of the piece of stick that was delivered to the impounder, and if any question arose as to the genuineness of the piece of stick produced it would be soon settled by seeing if it corresponded with the half that remained in the Steward's office.

This practice appears to have been once general in the district. The late Mr. Robert Parkinson of Mitton, who died a few years ago over 80 years of age, told me that when he was a boy at Bolton-by-Bowland the pinder, when cattle were impounded, used to cut a piece of stick from the hedge, make several notches on it, then split it lengthwise, and give half of it to the impounder, retaining the other half himself.

In Speight's 'The Craven and North-West Yorkshire Highlands' the writer states:

" In Upper Settle the old Cattle Pound may still be seen, where lost or stray animals were kept till claimed by their rightful owner. This was effected in a curious way. The pinder or pound keeper broke a piece of stick in two,. giving one part to the finder and retaining the other himself, so that when the cattle were redeemed and the reward was made, this could only be done upon production of the stick, as a means of identification."

WM. SELF WEEKS.

Westwood, Clitheroe.

MASTER GUNNER.

(12 S. v. 153.)

I TAKE it that the status of a master gunner, both in the army and navy, as compared with his junior or subordinate gunners, was similar to that of the head master of a college or school in comparison with the other or under masters. As regards the army, an Ordnance List dated Mar. 8, 1715 (printed in Dalton's ' George I.'s Army,' vol. i. p. 285), mentions " Col. James Pendlebury, Master Gunner of Great Britain, to exercise scholars to shoot in great ordnance, at 190Z. per annum," with three mates at 45Z. 10s. per annum each. He held this post under three British sovereigns, from Nov. 20, 1710, having suc- ceeded Capt. Richard Silver, whose predeces- sor, Col. George Brown, held it in 1700 till his death in June, 1702. ' The True State of England,' 1734, gives Col. (Jonas) Watson as then master gunner of England (until he fell at Carthagena in 1741), and says :

" By an old Custom it is assign'd to the Master Gunner to teach all such as desire to learn the Art of Gunnery ; and he has Power to administer an Oath to his Pupils, which binds them not only to Allegiance, but that they shall not serve any Foreign Prince or State, without express Leave from their own Sovereign ; nor can he teach any but such as have taken the said Oath : when there is a want of Gunners, he certifies the Capacity of such Persons as are recommended to be Gunner* in his Majesty's Train."

In Porter's ' History of the Royal Engineers,' p. 25, John Rogers the engineer appears as also comptroller of the train at the siege of Boulogne in 1544, his train consisting of one master gunner and seventy- one gunners, &c. On p. 46 he mentions Nathaniel Nye as chief engineer and also master gunner of Fairfax's army at the siege of Worcester, in or about 1642, on behalf of the Parliament. The train for Flanders, Feb. 27, 1692, had in its gun