Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 9.djvu/398

 324 NOTES AND QUERIES. [12S. IX. OCT. 22, 1921. presented them with a panel of glass as a specimen of his skill, representing Justice in a triumphal car and the arms of the city, which they graciously accepted " for the encouragement of the arts and sciences," and which piece is now in the old Council Chamber in the Guildhall. In the same year in which Peckitt became free of the city we find him advertising as follows : William Peckitt, son of William Peckitt the noted glove-maker next door to the Sandhill in Colliergate, York, thinks proper to advertise all gentlemen, clergymen, and others that by many experiments he has found out the art of painting or staining of glass in all kinds of colours and all sorts of figures, as Scripture pieces for church windows, arms in heraldry, &c., in the neatest and liveliest manner, specimens of which may be seen at the house aforesaid. He likewise repairs old broken painted windows in churches or in gentlemen's houses and will wait upon any person in town or country that desires it. Advt. York (? C our ant or Chronicle), July 14, 1752. The above statement by Peckitt himself, that he had found out the art by experiments, which was corroborated after his death by his daughter Harriot in a letter in The Gentleman's Magazine for May, 1817, p. 391, who there stated that he " was not instructed by anyone " and that he had " found out the secret by his own study and practice," must be accepted. It is nevertheless the more difficult to believe seeing that he produced the above-mentioned piece of work, alike excellent in drawing and tech- nique, at the early age of twenty-one. Some time subsequent to the year 1752 Peckitt took up his residence in Micklegate, in the parish of St. Martin-cum-Gregory, where the Gyles family had lived for many years, and in 1763 he married, in St. Michael- le-Belfrey Church, Mary Mitley, daughter of Charles Mitley. The entry in the Church registers is as follows : 1763. William Peckitt, par. St. Mart. Mickle- gate, glass-painter and stainer, Mary Mitley, this par. by lie. Apr. 3 by Dudley Rockett. Witnesses Ann Ward, Joh. Blansherd. Mrs. Peckitt' s father, Charles Mitley, who had died five years prior to her marriage with Peckitt, had been a man of many parts. In the St. Helen's Church registers pre- viously quoted, he was described as a carver and gilder. He was also a statuary and carved the figure of George II., now over the entrance to the Guildhall, which was placed there in 1786, but was carved in 1739 and then placed on the cross in Thursday Market. Mitley' s name also occurs as the draughtsman of a plan of a Roman hypo- caust and bath, discovered at Hovingham, ! which was drawn by him and engraved by Vertue, and published in 1745 with a description by Drake, the author of the * Eboracum.' In the same year Charles Mitley and William Carr, builder, of York, obtained a building lease of the site of the old Davy Hall, which had recently j been pulled down, and they erected on part of it the row of five houses in New I Street then called Cumberland Row, which ultimately came into the possession of Mitley's son-in-law, Peckitt the glass- painter. William Carr married Mitley's sister Diana in 1745. He died in 1757, when the property no doubt passed to his brother- in-law and partner. Mitley died the follow- ing year and Peckitt evidently became possessed of it through his marriage with Mitley's daughter in 1763. Half of the Davy Hall site fronting Davygate was taken as a burial-ground for St. Helen's parish, and there Peckitt 's father and mother were buried. On the other half was erected a house in which Peckitt lived and which, according to Hargrove, he built himself, Peckitt had four daughters, Mary, Anne, Charlotte and Harriot. Mary, probably the eldest, afterwards married Mr. John Rowii- tree, an attorney. The death of their daugh- ter Mary in 1846, aged 42, is recorded on the same tablet as that which records the death of her grandmother, Mrs. Peckitt, and which is to be seen in St. Martin-cum- Gregory Church. Anne died in 1765 in the first year of her age, and Charlotte in 1790, aged 20. A j memorial window painted by Peckitt to j commemorate the above two daughters i is in St. Martin-cum-Gregory Church and j represents a figure of Hope. Beneath is the inscription : Hujus ecclesiae, subter media semita, jacent mortalia Annae filiae Gul. Peckitt, obiit Aps
 * 30 1765 aetatis anno suae primo et Charlottae
 * filiae ejus obiit Ap. 14, 1790, in anno vicesimo

, aetatis suae. Peckitt, Ebor. 1792. ! The incised tombstone to the child Anne can be seen on the floor of the chancel. Harriot was born Oct. 12, 1776, and died in 1866. Peckitt evidently moved from Mickle- gate when he built the Davygate house, in which he lived till 1791, for Feb. 4 of that year he advertised the house in The York Chronicle "to be let and entered on at May Day next." A full description of the house as it then was appeared in the above ad- vertisement. He next moved to the house