Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 9.djvu/380

 310 NOTES AND QUERIES. [12 s. is. OCT. is, 1921. HATCHMENTS. I shall feel much obliged if you will allow me to ask any one of your | readers who may be a pundit on such matters a question as to the practice, which obtained very generally up to some fifty years ago, of affixing to the front of the house of the head of a " family of distinc- tion " at his death, a hatchment. I am surprised to hear it stated that the custom prevailed in the family of peers only and never in the case of commoners. I am quite sure that this is not the case, but I should be glad to have my view con- j firmed or corrected. W. BATHS OB SALTING TANKS. One ' fre- quently comes across receptacles carved out of- solid stone in the form of a small bath, j The size over all is about three feet by two, and both externally and internally j the bottom slopes considerably, giving anj internal depth of about one foot, tapering | to an inch or two. At the deeper end isj an outlet formed either by a hole through} the stone, just below the top edge, or by a channel in the top edge. I have heard this described variously as a Roman bath (!) and a medieval salting tank ; and should be very glad of en- lightenment as to its true nature. I have seen one specimen so unworn that it may have been intended for some fairly modern trade purpose, HERBERT C. ANDREWS. JOHN CBAWFTJRD. John Crawfurd of Auehinames, Renfrewshire (died 1814), sat in Parliament first as Member for Old Sarum (1768) and afterwards for Ren- frewshire and for the Glasgow District of Burghs (1774-1790). His name is frequently mentioned in the Memoirs of Charles James Fox, whose close friendship he enjoyed. A bachelor, he was a great favourite in the fashionable circles of his day, and any references regarding him, more especially from the gossipy Memoirs and Journals of the period, will be welcomed. J. R. A. SUNDIAL : CHRONOGRAM MOTTO. While on a holiday in Hadleigh, Suffolk, I came across a reference to a sundial which used to be on a church there ; it had for its motto, " Deus mihi lux et salus," which gives the " chronogram " 1627 for the date. The sundial has disappeared. Are there any examples of dial mottoes of this type in existence now ? JASPER BRITTAIN. WILSON : PRATT : SYMES : LE HUNTE. Can anyone give me the ancestry of Elizabeth Wilson, who married Sir "John, Pratt circa 1710 ? Also the parents and grandparents of Sir John ? I want also the ancestry of the Rev. Abraham Symes of Hillbrook, Co. Wicklow, who, in 1769, married Anne Le Hunte of Co. Wexford. KATHLEEN A. N. WARD. SIR RICHARD BROWN, BART., was a Brigadier, commanding as Lieutenant, in " The Queen's Troop of His Majestie's Horse -Guards," in 1684. His name is not given in Burke's ' Extinct Baronetage ' of 1844. What is known about him ? J. H. LESLIE, Lieut. -Colonel. Cows : A HERTFORDSHIRE BELIEF. - " The Country-Maids commonly observe to dry a Cow of a Sunday Morning, and then she will always calve in the Day-time, as they say " (Win. Ellis of Little Gaddes- den, ' The Practical Farmer ; or, The Hert- fordshire Husbandman,' 1759, p. 124). Has this belief been noted in other parts? E. E. SQUIRES. Hertford. A HERTFORDSHIRE TOWN : NAME WANTED. " There is a town in Hertford- shire, not far from London, of which they say that there is nobody poor enough to keep the town-hogs, or rich enough to keep a hog -heard " (Defoe, ' Behaviour of Servants,' 1724, p. 260). Has the town alluded to ever been identi- fied ? E. E. SQUIRES. Hertford. OLIVER CROMWELL ON HUNGARY. I am told by a friend that Louis Kossuth, ad- dressing a meeting in Liverpool on Dec. 13 or 14, 1858, quoted a long passage from a speech which, he alleged, Oliver Crom- well had delivered in Parliament and in which he referred to Hungary as the bul. wark of Christianity. My informant has been unable to find any contemporary record of this incident. Can any reader refer my friend to any historian of Crom- well's time in confirmation of Kossuth's statement ? L. L. K. " ARTEMUS WARD " (CHARLES F. BROWN).- John Camden's Introduction to Artemus Ward His Book,' in 1865, included quotations from a New York paper setting out the humorist's career to 1864, and