Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 10.djvu/341

 9" s.x. OCT. 25, 1902.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

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PLACE-NAMES (9 th S. x. 188, 249). I have only to add to my former reply that, according to all the safe rules for the study of place- names, DR. CHARNOCK'S suggestions are very misleading. Garphar cannot be from the Welsh caer-ffair, unless the stress is on the last syllable. I fancy it is on the first. It is the qualitative syllable upon which the stress falls, and there it remains through all subsequent modifications of form in the compound. Moreover caer is not a city, but the same as the Irish cathair, a stone fort. DR. CHARNOCK'S explanation of Craigdasher is etymology pour rire. What is the earliest occurrence in Welsh literature of azure as meaning blue? Is there an azure rock at Craigdasher? If so, it must be one of the lions of the south of Scotland. And, lastly, how does DR. CHARNOCK account for the d ? No progress can be made in the elucidation of place-names until people will refrain from guesses, and content themselves with plod- ding along by the help of evidence and analogy. HERBERT MAXWELL.

SIR PATRICK CLAUD Ewms, BART. (9 th S. x. 248). Just twenty years ago a similar question appeared in ' N". & Q.' (6 th S. vi. 288). It was then noted that no information of the baronetcy was given either by Burke or Solly, and particulars were required of the title or family, to which no reply has appeared. The paragraph now quotea from the Newcastle Chronicle was copied from the 'Annual Register' of 1807, p. 549.

EVERARD HOME COLEMAN. 71, Brecknock Road. *

STAMP COLLECTING AND ITS LITERATURE FORTY YEARS Aso (9 th S. x. 81, 172). When I was at Merchiston Castle School a friend and I commenced to collect postage stamps in 1856, and we carried on the practice for some time after we left school. The idea, so far as I recollect, was our own, but we may have had some suggestion. There were no other collectors in the school, and I knew of none amongst my friends elsewhere. There were a number of boys from India, the Cape, Canada, and other British colonies. They gave us the stamps off their letters and wrote home for others. I got a number from Spain and other European countries, and laid all the correspondence I could get hold of under contribution for old English stamps. A part of the collection then made is still in existence. DAVID MURRAY.

169, West George Street, Glasgow.

HERIOT (9 th S. x. 228). The custom of exacting the best beast on the death of a

tenant of a manor by the lord, as a heriot, is far from extinct. I have seen " two cases for the opinion of counsel" on the subject within the last year ; but it is very common to compound for the heriot by a payment in money, and in some manors such a composition has become so customary that it is actually part of " the custom of the manor," and thus the tenant has a legal right to compound. Of course heriots only attach to copyholds ; and all questions relating to copyholds become every year of less importance, as the copyholds are rapidly being converted into freeholds. In many cases the rights of^the lords of the manors have become so trifling that it has not been thought worth while to exercise them ; and in course of time it becomes impossible to' trace either the title to or the extent of the manor. Several cases are recorded in the books of the accidental enhancement of the value of the heriot similar to that which MR. PICKFORD mentions. OGIER RYSDEN.

That heriots still *xist and are enforceable is well known e'.g., in 1896 the Court of Appeal decided that a claim by a lord of a manor for 63., the value of a best beast, which the lord might have seized as a customary heriot, but was prevented from seizing, was good, and that the beast could be seized, though outside the manor. This was in Western v. Bailey, Law Reports of 1897, 1 Queen's Bench, p. 86. HOUG.

The following extract is taken from sale particulars of property situated at Horsham, Sussex, sold in May, 1899 :

" House and above cottages are subject to a

claim by the Lord of the Manor of Rpughey of annual quitrents of 2d. and 6d. respectively, and to a heriot of best beast on death, and to a relief of one year's quitrent on death or alienation respectively."

I remember having been told when a child that a relative of mine, who inherited a small property in Sussex about the year 1867, redeemed a pony for the sum of about 5l., as some portion of the land was subject to a heriot. A. CUTHMAN.

There are manors still in existence where the custom of a fine of the best beast on death or alienation still endures. I have known a case of the seizure of the best horse on alienation. E. E. STREET.

Heriots are still commonly incident to manorial tenure, and are levied in many copyholds, though now usually in the form of a money payment representing the value of the " best beast." I have heard of heriots being levied in kind within the last twenty