Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 5.djvu/99

 12S..-V. APRIL, 1919.]

NOTES AND QUERIES.

93

four whose relative positions on the four sides of the board are corresponding and identical. Obviously, if the tour may begin from one corner square, it may begin fiom all of them ; and so with all the other ascer- tained starting-points, since each has three others corresponding to it. When not only the possible starting-points, as shown by -each tour, are marked on the blank chess- board, but also their corresponding squares ^as well, not; many tours will have to be made before every square is covered and the xlemonstration is complete. B. B.

" THWERTNIC " OB ." THIERTNIE," OLD CHESHIRE CUSTOM. There are a number of allusions in the early records of Cheshire to a mysterious affair called " Thwertnic."

Thus, in Ranulph Blundeville's charter of liberties to his barons and knights, about 1216, we read that if his sheriff or any officer shall implead any of their men in the Earl's -court, " per thiertnic se defendere poterit propter Sherife-tooth quod reddunt nisi secta eum sequatur " (Ormerod, i. 53). The pleas of the barons of Dunham Massy and of Halton are to the same effect, omitting the reference to the sheriff-tooth (ibid., 526 and 705).

We also read of " a certain liberty called Thwertnyk," pertaining to the stewardship of Chester held by Roger de Montalt (ibid., 57).

An explanation by Sir Peter Leycester (ibid., 54) that the word is equivalent to "" thirdnicht," " trium noctium hospes," three nights' charges for the sheriff's diet, seems inadequate. What was this " thiert- nic " with which a man could defend himself when charged by the sheriff ? The explana- tion is deducible from. Maitland and Pollock's word is properly " thwert-ut-nay," which means a downright " No," i.e., a defence to the claim by a flat denial. The intricacies of thirteenth -century pleading are involved, but the meaning of it all seems to be this : The plaintiff's claim must be met by a " thwert-ut-nay " ; other defences may follow, but this one is indispensable, and want of it is fatal. Having made the denial, the person sued could then demand an examination of the plaintiff's " secta," or suit of witnesses. If none were ready, the claim failed, or should do so, on a protest by the defendant that he need not answer the simple assertion of the plaintiff, unsupported by the offer of evidence.
 * Hist, of English Law,' &c., ii. 608, &c. The

Now the passage in the barons' charter quoted above seems to mean simply that where the sheriff was notjprepared then and

there to back up his case wi either because he had none or ^^^ re not ready, the person charged or sued was allowed to go free on his simple plea of " No " ( = " I deny the whole thing"), subject to the payment of some fee to the sheriff for his " stuth," or maintenance. (Nothing to do with " tooth " etymologically.)

It is easy to see the abuses to which the sheriff's duty might lead when he got a fee out of the case, even if without foundation, or when a proper case was dismissed by merely paying him a fee. But this evil lasted in Cheshire until the time of Edward III., when, by a charter of Sept. 10, 1346, the Prince of Wales (the Earl of Chester), after reciting the clause in the charter of the barons,

" yet because this custom is contrary to the common law, is the origin of trouble, and de- structive to peace, &c., ordained, with the consent and at the request of the commonalty of Cheshire, that the defence of ' thwertnie ' should not be allowed in future " (Inspeximus, Charter Roll, Nov. 14, 1389).

R. STEWART-BROWN.

HEAVITBEE, co. DEVON, 1553-1653. A MS. has come into my hands which is of interest to Devonshire genealogists. On the fly-leaf is written :

" Heavitree. A Booke for Weddings, Christin- ings and Buryalls written in the year of our Lord God one thousand six hundred and fiftie and three, for the p'ish of Heavitree, being truly copied out of a booke of p'chment, belonging to the said p'ish, beginning the first day of February 1565 and compared by " (blank). The MS. contains only baptisms, from 1555 to 1653. It is written on paper in a clear hand. There is also one wedding (by an illiterate hand) dated 1681. The original register is, I believe, lost.

J. HARVEY BLOOM.

"HANDWRITING" AS A SURNAME. Com- pilers of books on surnames may like to know that Thomas Handwriting was the name of a convict transported to New South Whales on the John Barry in 1821. He figures in a list of the convicts there as taken at Dec. 31, 1837 (P.R.O., H.O. 10 : 33). J. M. BULLOCH.

" PRO PELLE CUTEM." The real meaning of this old motto of the Hudson's Eay Company has always been more or less a matter of dispute. It seems to mean " skin for skin," i.e., human skin for animal skin, for the old hunters risked their own skins to get the skin of the buffalo. I find now that Canon Matheson of Winnipeg, who knew many of the old hunters, puts an