Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 7.djvu/78

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NOTES AND QUERIES. [9 th s. TO JAN. 26, 1901.

it is done to prevent another death taking place in the same house. There are many descendants of Jews in Antioquia, "new Christians " from Spain in the early Spanish days. The type of face and character is well preserved. IBAQUE.

GOSSAGE OF SPRATTON, NORTHAMPTON- SHIRE. Where can any information be obtained of this extinct family 1

(Mrs.) J. HAUTENVILLE COPE.

ISulhamstead, Berks.

BERNERS FAMILY. (9 th S. vi. 231, 278, 453.)

THE property held by the Barrow family in Islington was the manor of Newington- Barrow, at present known as Highbury, which subsequently came into the possession of the Knights Hospitallers of St. John of Jerusalem. This family became extinct with Dame Alice of Barrow about 1277. I cannot find that the Berners family inter- married with the Islington Barrows. Maud, the daughter of Walter Barrow of Fitzwalter, belonged to an Essex family.

There can be no reasonable doubt that the Berners family held the manor of Iseldon long prior to the marriage of Ralph de Berners with Maud Barrow. It is recorded in the Black Book of the Exchequer that the Bishop of London certified, on the occasion of the collection of an aid levied in 1 2 Henry II for the marriage of the king's daughter, that Ralph de Bernieres held the half-part of a knights fee of the Bishop of London as of his castle of Stortford. No place is named wherein this and other knights' fees were said to lie but from subsequent books of knights' fees is gathered that they lay in Islington and the date of their creation must be referred to the reign of Henry I., and, in fact, in that compilation of knights' fees con- tained in the book known as ' Testa deNevill,' and having reference to the times of John, Henry III., and Edward L, this knight's fee as it subsisted at a period of less than a cen- tury after the compilation of the Black Book is, amongst others, thus described : " Scutage of the county of Middlesex.... Also of

Moreover, in the inquisition of Sir Ralph de

hls decease ' on 25 Jan -

Middles

P. 360,

" The same Sir Ralph, on the day he died, held his manor of Yseldon with the appurtenances of the Lord Bishop of London, by the service of half a knight's fee and two shillings rent payable at the castle of the same bishop of Stortford." This half-knight's fee, which is recorded more than a hundred years before the marriage of the third Ralph de Berners with Maud Barrow, can only be referred to the manor afterwards known as Iseldon-Berners and now as Barnsbury.

Mr. Tomlins modestly termed his book a 'Perambulation,' but it is really a valuable history, compiled by a trained lawyer who knew exactly the meaning of the word "evidence," and who based his statements, not on the uncorroborated assertions of pre- vious chroniclers, but on first-hand examina- tion and collation of our public records. He takes every manor in Islington in turn, and deals with each in what I must consider, with deference to your old and valued correspond- ent A. H., a very methodical manner; out I must admit that his book is rather hard read- ing, and that the "purple patches" of mingled fact and ^ fiction which adorn the "popular" local histories of the present day are lament- ably absent. W. F. PRIDEAUX.

" CLUZZOM " (9 th S. vi. 506). This word is given in the ' E.D.D.' under * Clossem.' The second meaning is " to seize, clutch, snatch ; to appropriate." A South Notts quotation runs, " The farmers took the land bit by bit, till they 'd clozzumed the hull parish." The form cluzzum, with the meaning " to grasp in a tight embrace, to squeeze," is attributed to West Yorkshire, and the quotation (from Mr. Addy's 'A Glossary of Words used in the Neighbourhood of Sheffield '), " Cluzzum me to thee, lad ! " is given. ARTHUR MAYALL.

During many years I have frequently heard this verb to clizzom (not cluzzom) playfully used by a lady long resident in London, but born and bred (1830-52) in Northamptonshire, where I believe it was then common. She would say, for instance, in allusion to a per- son who was covetous or selfish, that he (or she) wanted to " clizzom " (or " clizzom hold of") everything, which is very similar in meaning to that mentioned by C. C. B.

W. I. K. V.

LiEUT.-CoL. MOORHOUSE (9 th S. vi. 410 ; vii. 18). He was not buried at Madras, as your correspondent J. H. L. thinks. He must have been a popular officer at Fort St. George, for when the news of his death reached the fort, application was made by his friends to the vestry of St. Mary's to permit his body to be