Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 4.djvu/266

 334 NOTES AND QUERIES. [9* s. iv. OCT. 21, by me (see 8th S. x. 60), there is another work of fiction on this subject, ' The Flying Dutch- man,' by Capt. W. J. Neale, a naval officer (3 vols., 1839). The author was the brother of the late Rev. Erskine Nealc, rector of Kirton, Suffolk, an adjacent parish to this, a very voluminous writer indeed, and Allibone's 'Dictionary' credits Capt. Neale with the authorship of twelve naval novels. He pos- sessed considerable power of description, and even at this distance of time I can remember reading one of them with the interest of boy- hood, 'The Port Admiral: a Tale of the War,' in which Napoleon Bonaparte, under the name Kannolini, is represented as visiting England in disguise. JOHN PICKFORD, M.A. Newbourne Rectory, Woodbridge. CHRISTIANITY IN ROMAN BRITAIN (9th S. iv. 229).—The earliest and only Romano-Chris- tian church found in Britain is that at Sil- chester—the Roman Calleva Attrebatum—the foundations of which were excavated in May, 1892. A plan of the remains is given in Arctueoloyia, vol. liii. p. 564, and there is a model of the foundations in Reading Museum. FREDERICK DAVIS, F.S.A. Palace Chambers, Westminster. WALWORTH : WALBROOK (9th S. iv. 246).— It has long seemed to me that Stow, in accounting for the name of Walbrook, suffered under the same misapprehension as that which CANON TAYLOR has cleared up in the case of Sir Walter Besant and Wai worth. According to Stow : — " The running water so called by William Con- querour in his saide Charter, which entereth the citie, &c. (before there was any ditch), between Bishopsgate and the late made Poaterne called Mooregate, entred the wall, and was truely of the wall called Walbrooke, not of Gualo, as some have farre fetched."—' Survey,' ed. 1603, p. 14. The late Mr. J. R. Green, in his ' Conquest of England,' p. 456, points out that " nowhere was life so likely to awake again as along the banks of the Walbrook, then and for centuries to conio a broad river-channel, between whose muddy banks the stream was still deep enough to float the small boats used in the traffic up from the Thames to the very edge of the ' Cheap,' or market-place at the hythe or port which tradi- tion fixed in the modern Bucklersbury." This stream divided the City into two nearly equal parts, and formed its chief artery of commerce from the eighth century onwards. Through its medium the trade of the foreigner was introduced into the London market, and thence, as I conceive, its designa- tion was derived. It was the Wealh-lr6c or Weala-brdc, the brook of the foreigner, for the signification of Welshman or Briton was merely a secondary one.* It is a remarkable fact that while the river nomenclature of England is in general of Celtic, and occasion- ally of still more primitive, origin, the names of the northern affluents of the Thames—the Westbourn, Tyburn, Fleet, Walbrook, and Langbourn—are all Anglo-Saxon. Of the southern tributaries, the Ravensbourne has received an English name, while the Effra and the Wandle have apparently preserved their older appellations. It is possible, of course, that the last-named stream may have been named from some ethnic source, though arguments in favour of the opposite process might not perhaps be difficult to find. W. F. PRIDEAUX. "PERFIDIOUS ALBION" (9th S. iv. 169, 234).— Burnet tells the same story of James II. and a lady he does not name, but Pepys hints at Lady Carnegie. I cannot give exact refer- ences, not having the books at hand. I know that an exactly similar event took place in circles far less exalted than those of White- hall or the Tuileries, and so may not be very rare. Guy do Maupassant may have applied some such story to Napoleon, or, on the other hand, it may be quite true, except that Eng- land and an Englishwoman had nothing to do with it. M. N. G. THE MAGNETIC POLE (9th S. iii. 447, 493 ; iv. 198, 272).—Heylin's statement had no refer- ence to a magnetic pole, but only to there being, in 1652, no declination at Corvo. About 1657 there was none in London, it being on the line of no declination. This line is never a regular meridian, but winds from one geo- graphical pole to the other, through a magnetic pole. This and the line seem con- stantly travelling westward, fast enough to get round the globe in about eight centuries. The declination in London, eastward before 1657, then turned westward, and reached its maximum in 1818. Since then it has diminished, and may again vanish about 2000. The dip was greatest about 1660, and will be least about 2000. A pole is not "a place where the needle points north and south," but where it loses all horizontal directive force, and stands upright. Ross in 1831 dis- covered the North American pole: but it must have moved west since his time. I cannot con- ceive why the 'Nautical Almanac' does not give these changes as fully as the Bureau des Longitudes in their'Annuaire.' This now tells centuries the name of the stream was always spelt Waiebroc.
 * In documents of the thirteenth and fourteenth