Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 4.djvu/184

 264 NOTES AND QUERIES. W* a iv. sept, so, -99. These channels are very smooth, and being of the right width, they are used by heavily laden carts and waggons, which thusobtain considerable help up the hills. As a matter of fact, they are stone tram- ways, and were laid expressly to facilitate the coaches in their journeys between London and Birming- ham. The London and Birmingham Railway was being made by George Stephenson, and there was the alarm that as soon as it was completed the locomotive would do all the work of the stage coach. If the coaches ceased to run, and all the traffic was monopolized by the new-fangled rail- roads, turnpikes would no longer be profitable in- vestments. The only way, then, to preserve the vested interests of those having shares in turn- pike trusts was to accelerate the coaches and enable them, in the matter of speed, to outrun the railway trains. The Turnpike Commissioners for this stretch of road accordingly laid out a con- siderable sum in reducing the height of the hills, removing thousands of loads from the tops to the bottoms, and laying the tramways on which the coaches should run when going up. About 300 men were employed in the work of removing the earth and laying the granite tramways; and they were all under the superintendence of Mr. Savage, who had the entire management of the whole work. How well the work was done an inspection would im- mediately show: it is as good now as the day it was finished, more than sixty years ago. Every one knows now how futile was the attempt, to pit horse- flesh against the steam engine, but Mr. Savage was a grown man when the best men of Northamptonshire still had faith in the old methods of transit." K. Elizabeth, Lady Harrington. — Genea- logists who have puzzled themselves over Elizabeth, Lady Harrington, will welcome the following narrative. After fighting a duel (1455) on Clistheath, near Exeter, the combatants, Thomas Courtenay, Earl of Devon, and Lord Bonville, " lovingly embraced each other, and ever after there was a great love and amity between them" (Westcot, Holinshed). This earl's three sons, successively Earls of Devon, fell on the Lancastrian side, and so ended the main line of Courtenay. Lord Bonville, his son, and his grandson fell within the space of two months, 1460-1, on the Yorkist side, and ended Bonville. Edward, the blind Earl of Devon, grandfather of Earl Thomas above, had a daughter Elizabeth, said to have died young, 1381 (Vivian, 'Visit. Corn.' and ' Visit. Devon,' and others); but Ezra Cleave- land states correctly, and no more, that she married John, Lord Harrington.^ He was succeeded by his brother William, whose daughter, Elizabeth, was Lady Harrington in her own right. Thus there were two ladies living bearing the same name and title; the elder became second wife of Lord Bonville above, but retained her titular name, and died 1471 (Inq. p.m. 11 Edw. IV, No. 64), leaving, as heirs the two surviving daughters of her nephew, Thomas, Earl of Devon, aforesaid; so the strife that ended happily was between the husband and nephew of the elder Elizabeth, Lady Har- rington, who most probably arranged the union between her first husband's niece, the younger Elizabeth, Lady Harrington, and her second husband's son, William Bonville, whose son became Lord Harrington jure matris, and died, leaving a daughter and heiress, Cicely, one year old, the future grandmother of Lady Jane Grey. H. H. Drake. Horns. —Letter by letter the grand work under Dr. Murrays editorship is making dictionaries of phrase superfluous, and dimi- nishing the subjects of the kind left for dis- cussion in ' N. & Q.' From ' N. & Q.'s earliest days and long before it has been a puzzle why the bearing of horns, usually a sign of honour and dignity, should in one particular instance be spoken of as the accompaniment of humiliation, namely, in that of a husband deceived by his wife. We knew from Arte- midorus that the idea was embodied in a saying current in the early part of the second century, so that no explanation of obviously later origin could be accepted; but we had to say with Coleridge, "No one has discovered even a plausible origin." Now, however, we are presented by Dr. Murray with an account of the origin referable to the very earliest times, which claims a place in ' N. & Q.' in connexion with previous correspondence on the subject. Dunger ('Germania,' xxix. 59) refers to the practice formerly prevalent of planting or engrafting the spurs of a cas- trated cock on the root of the excised comb, where they grew and became horns, some- times of several inches long. He shows that German Hahnreh or Hahnrei, "cuckold," originally meant capon. Killigrew. "Sent to Coventry." — Neither of the quotations given in the 'Historical English Dictionary ' is very convincing. The follow- ing seems better than either. It occurs in a letter from Marlborough to Harley, of 29 Aug., • 1707, among the Marlborough despatches at the Record Office:— " If Monsr de Focani be weary of Coventry, where he has been alone I believe these tenn months, I know no reason why he may not remove to Litch- field if the Queen please to allow it: he desired himself to be sent to Coventry to avoid being with the French." A. E. S. Angelina Gushington.—This pen-name, on the title-page of ' Thoughts on Men ana Things,' so frequently misleads the compilers