Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 5.djvu/136

 128

NOTES AND QUERIES. [9* s. v. FEB. 17, 1900.

Cobridge published a series of busts of the most eminent men of the time (1828) similar to those above mentioned, but does nob allude in any way to the story connected with them. CHAKLES DRURY.

" CHILDERPOX." Kinderblattern, Kinder- pokken, Bamkopper, la verole des petits enfans, are familar terms. References and quotations or other information wanted concerning the question whether smallpox was at any period, but more particularly in the seventeenth century, called the children's disease, or any other name to the same effect, in English or the Scandinavian tongues. Cfiilderpox or bairnpox would somewhat resemble the analogues of the four above - mentioned names for variola in German, Dutch, Norse, and seventeenth-century French respectively, but I have not myself been able to find these particular compounds in English dictionaries.

C. G. S.-M.

author of the volume published under this title by Messrs. Longman & Co. in 1836 1 It is not to be found in the 'Dictionary of Anonymous Literature.' D. M. R.
 * ADVENTURES IN THE MOON.' Who was the

STEDMAN FAMILY. My ancestor Nathaniel Stedman, supposed to have been born about 1720, is said to have been a man of ancient family seated on the borders of Wales, and to have kept his hunters and hounds, but to have impoverished himself by his extrava- gances, and to have become steward to Lord Abergavenny. He was at Speld hurst, near Tunbridge Wells in Kent, in 1763, and appears to have been buried in Sevenoaks churchyard in 1791. He is said to have had a large family, including his eldest son Nathaniel, born 1749, who married Ann Samson, a mountaineer's daughter. Nathaniel the younger had a son named John, who was baptized at St. Mary's or St. Benedict's, Huntingdon, in October, 1775. Nathaniel the younger came to Sevenoaks the following year, and thence to Rochester with his son John about 1787, where he died in 1807. The arms contained three boars' heads, and perhaps other charges, but they have been lost sight of for some years. Burke in his 4 General Armory' gives the arms of Stedman (Salop) as Ar., a chev. gu., between three boars heads couped (another erased) sa. Crest, a peacock's head between two wings, in the beak an adder ppr. I am most anxious to know Nathaniel the elder's seat or county, and whose daughter he married ; also where Nathaniel the younger was born, and where and when married ; the full description of the

lost arms, and to what particular Stedman family in Salop the arms described by Burke belong, and the name of their seat, together with any other particulars. I shall be most thankful to receive information. I might add that my father has an old book published in 1718 with these words written in it : "Nath. Nath. Joh.," "Hellen Fraunces her Book," " Margaretta Roberts."

R. J. M. STEDMAN. 309, High Street, Rochester.

WINSTANLEY'S WONDERS. What were these 1 They are mentioned in a letter of the year 1735. H. T. B.

WOORE, IN SALOP. Can any one divine the meaning of this place-name, which, in its present form, is unique? It is not, I think, recorded in any Anglo-Saxon charter, and first appears in Domesday Book as Wavre. Kemble, in his index to ' Codex Diplomaticus,' records a Wsefer (Somerset 1 ?) as in charter 463, but the name is not to be found there, though it is probably elsewhere, and in- correctly indexed. This name I am unable to trace in any modern form. Domesday Book also records Wavra in Warwickshire, subsequently written Waure (u = v between vowels or before -re\ now, Dugdale says, represented by Brownsover ! also another Wavre in Warwickshire, and a Wavre in Northamptonshire, which I cannot clearly identify ; a Wavretone in Cheshire, now Wavertori ; a Wavretreu, near Liverpool, now Wavertree (pronounced Wartree), and a Wavertune in Herefordshire (not identified). Warton, three miles north-east of Newport (Salop), was Waverton in 1273. Waverley, in Surrey, in the twelfth century was Wauerlea (uv). There is a river Waver in Cumber- land, and a parish Waverton situate upon it ; a river Weaver and a Weaverham in Che- shire ; a Waverton, alias Warton, in Warwick- shire, four miles north-west of Atherstone ; a Wavre in Canton Neufchatel, Switzerland; a Wavre fifteen miles south-east of Brussels ; a Wavre- Notre- Dame and a Wavre-Saint- Catharine, both in the province of Antwerp ; and a Wavrin in France, eight miles south- west of Lille ; there is also a Wawre on the Vistula, north of Warsaw. It would seem that wavre has a tendency to become war, waure, and Jaraieson's ' Scottish Dictionary ' gives waver and wawer, and ivar and wave, as synonyms. Wcefer is only given by Toller- Bosworth (' Anglo-Saxon Dictionary ') as in compound connected with a theatre, spectacle, or show, and wcefre as having the meaning of modern "waver." Wafer (a wafer) appears to be Middle English only, borrowed from