Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 9.djvu/26

16 NOTES -AND QUERIES. [ 12 s.ix. and the foot of the cup made out of part of the wreckage. Perhaps some reader will be able to tell me something about the s.s. City of London, its date, and whether it was wrecked.

I agree with my friend that these cups were usually carved by members of the crew, &c.; but I think the mounting was mostly done ashore.

(11 S. x. 130; 12 g. viii. 451, 493, 515).—Some years ago I had a small collection of these clocks; a few were certainly older than 1797. I have still one left hanging in my hall. This is a good average one. The dial is 28 inches diameter, and the trunk 30 inches long. It would be rather interesting to know where some of the better ones are, and whether the actual dates of any can be authenticated. I always called mine "coaching clocks," and they seem precisely similar to those so-called "Parliament clocks." Before 1790 coaching became the chief and most important means of travelling, and in 1792, when the mailcoaches were established on the road, these large clocks became more essential to the inns and other public places than before.

The last numbers of 'N. & Q.' contain such excellent replies about the "Act of Parliament" clocks that there seems little more to say on that point; yet I should like some information about a few other details. What is the date of the earliest definite reference to any particular clock called a "Parliament clock"? Are there any returns of this assessment? Is it known how many clocks were in any county? For instance, how many clocks were assessed at 5s., we will say, in Huntingdonshire? And how many were discarded, &c., to avoid the tax? Is there any actual record of any clocks being presented or sold to a town or an inn, or otherwise disposed of to escape the tax? In the short period of the Act, what became of the clocks not used or assessed? How is it that there were so many large clocks in small houses? And so on. We know how many windows and hearths were taxed and in many cases the population of the several counties—why should we not know the number of the clocks? Were there no returns or have they been lost, or are they not yet available? Or have I missed these records? Only the other day a gentleman was alluding to his "Parliament clock"—one he thought connected with the Houses of Parliament and denoted by that name as being superior to an ordinary coaching clock.

(12 S. viii. 308, 354, 495).—If in my inquiry concerning this name I said that proper names of persons and places ending in "o" were rare in Scotland, it was merely in comparison with Cornwall. I could add to those supplied by other place-names and certainly one still extant family name, that of Patullo in Perthshire—not to mention Monboddo, who was both a person and a place.

My remark on Thurso (Caithness-shire) and Tromsöe (Norway) was based on the latest writer on Scandinavian folk lore, Miss B. Phillpotts, who holds that this termination "oe" indicates an island, and that both places named were at one time separated from the mainland as in the case of the Cornish and Breton Monts St. Michel.

Another contributor suggests that Banquo and Fleance were introduced into the play to court favour from James VI. and I., but as it is Hollinshed, not Shakespeare, who is responsible for the names, and as he died about 1580, it is difficult to follow the train of thought.

The point raised and not cleared up by the correspondence was to elucidate how no trace of the names of Banquo or Fleance seems to linger either in persons or places in Scotland, whilst all the other characters of the drama can be identified by contemporary names. Banquo's right of succession to the Crown may have been due to the historian's or the poet's imagination, but that would not solve the problem of the appearance and disappearance of the two names.

(12 S. viii. 489).—Both Mr. N. H. Nicolas, C.B., and the Rev. Percy Nicolas have been dead for more than ten or twelve years. If the manuscript has been restored to the family, it would probably be in the possession of Mr. Deighton Pollock (Norfolk Square, Hyde Park), the grandson of Sir N. H. Nicolas; or, as the executor of his uncle, he would probably know whether or not it had ever been returned.