Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 6.djvu/569

 9* s. VL DEC. is, 1900.] NOTES AND QUERIES. 473 of Nicholas Roope, Esq., to the distinction The following quotation is from the paper of the Suffolk branch of the Rope family :— ''Nicholas Roope, Esq., 1689, was appointed by King William III. Governor of Dartmouth as an appropriate reward for being the first man who gave in his adhesion to the prince on his arrival in England." The commission (by William and Mary was given at Hampton Court 18 July "in the first year of our reign," and bore the signa ture "Shrewsbury." In a letter to the Ear of Nottingham, 27 May, 1692, Nicholas Roope writes." I was the first gentleman who went unto the King and have served him faithfully since, and shall do, God will- ing." This extract is taken from the copy made, by the late Mr. W. Bancroft Randall, of a document lent to him by Mr. Walter Rope, of 27, Stafford Terrace, Kensington. The latter gentleman left England for Ceylon, 16 June, 18&0. H. SIRR. In Besley's ' Exeter Directory' for A.D. 1831 occurs the name of Burrington & Son, boot- makers, 268, High Street, which house would be then—as now—a very good shop, standing upon the site of the old East Gate, which, to the citizens' eternal shame, was pulled down in October, A.D. 1784. There appears also a Mr. Burrington, of Eldon Place. The same Besley's local directory for this current year records the names of six Burringtons at pre- sent householders in Exeter, one of whom was until quite recently in my own employ. There are no Burringtons resident in Credi- ton nowadays. A village, of nearly 700 inhabitants, in North Devon, is called Bur- rington. There is a connexion here between the landing of William of Orange and one Peter Varwell, the stout fisherman who carried the prince on shore on the occasion of his landing at Brixham (5 November, 1688). My venerable friend and neighbour, Mr. Peter Varwell—one of whose sons is a local magistrate—is not only the doughty Peter's namesake, but his direct descendant. HARRY HEMS. Fair Park, Exeter. "LIKE ONE O'CLOCK" (9th S. vi. 198, 305* 376).—Of all the hours that clocks strike the hour of one is naturally the shortest and the soonest over. Old clocks had a long interval of whirring or roaring (called, when I was a boy, swearing) between each stroke, and to hear them strike twelve was a trial of patience. Hence the rapidity with which the perform- ance was achieved at one o'clock became the synonym of speed in domestic affairs. Here I may lug in a local anecdote relating to time and time-keepers which some horologist may care to preserve. Some years ago a cannon was fired every day at one o'clock by signal from Greenwich to the top of our old castle keep. Shortly after the arrangement had been made a pitman passing by was startled by the tremendous bang of the gun just over his head, and on inquiring into the cause was told that it was the time signal proclaiming the hour of one. " Smash, man 1 he ejacu- lated, "if that's the way she strikes one I waddent like to hear her strike twelve !" RICHD. WELFORD. Newcastle-upon-Tyne. May I venture to differ from your corre- spondent MR. RATCLIFFE? The expression had its origin I believe in the manufacturing districts of the north of England. The dinner hour for certain classes of work- people is no doubt twelve o'clock, but for the bulk of factory hands one o'clock is the time when they pour forth in their thousands for their midday meal. To take Manchester as an instance. During the " fifties " I was often n the Oxford Road (one of the main thorough- ares out of the city) at one o'clock. Numerous cotton factories then abutted upon this street, and I shall never forget my first experience of the one o'clock thunder caused by the clatter on the pavement of the thousands of vooden clogs worn by the men and women .like, who swept all before them in their rush x> their homes in Hulme. The Lancashire jlog has been evolved in the course of genera- ions from the French " sabot," which is said o have been introduced into England by one if our queens in the fourteenth century. Dur North-Country wooden shoe is tipped with iron or brass, and is thus heavier than hat worn by the peasants of France. Mrs. Gaskell has, I think, described this curious ne o'clock scene and noise in her novel 'North nd South.' Many of these factories were, I >elieve, closed during the cotton famine at he time of the American Civil War and have ever been reopened. HENRY TAYLOR, Birklands, Southport. "Mr. Guppyand Mr. Jobling repair to the rag nd bottle shop, where they find Krook still sleep- ng like one p clock, that is to say, breathing stcrtorously with his chin upon his breast, and quite insensible to any external sounds, or even to gentle shaking."—Dickens's ' Bleak House,' ch. xx. Smallweed had just used this homely ex- pression in the same chapter. H. E. M. St. Petersburg. PARROT IN ' HUDIBRAS ' (9th S. vi. 266, 373). —Of course the context demands that the parrot's words should be applied to some