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

 .vii. JAN.g,i9oi.i NOTES AND QUERIES.

LONDON, SATURDAY, JANUARY 5, 1901.

CONTENTS. -No. 158.

NOTES Darcy Lever, 1 School Teachers in Kent, 3 The Danaids Wine in the Early Church, 4" Collate" An Adulterate Quotation" Rusticness " Two of a Name in a Family "A still small voice "Scottish Dance, 5 American Orthography " Deal " Ancient Marriage Custom -Folk-lore : Devil's Dam, 6 Ralegh's Signature Topographical Error, 7.

QUERIES : Gold Florin, 7 Elegy imitating Gray's Long

Asheton Auterac Mrs. Everett Green Source of Quotations Daisy-Names Cowper Family King, Trans- lator, 8 " Saranine " Three Estates in Parliament- Acacia in Freemasonry " Kitty-witch "Irish Wills- Area of Churchyards Owen of Lanark, 9.

REPLIES :" Shhnmozzel," 10 Skulls at Westminster- Detached Sheet, 11 "English-speaking" Healing Stone Latin Motto Latin Lines Yeomanry Records Lamb and the 'Champion' Petition to Parliament, 12 Angier, Anger, or Aungier Family" Five o'clock tea " " Hawok "Lincoln's Inn Fields "Musha," 13-Movable Stocks Camden Ancestry Rechabites, 14 " Wig"=Bun

English Accent v. Btymology Counting Another's Buttons St. Hugh's Day Columbaria Sir J. Borlase Warren, Bart. "Dude," 15-Early Steam Navigation " Owl in ivy bush "Simon Fraser, 1 Gurney Papers Grindleford Bridge "Combination" Age of Entry at Inns of Court Scanty Wedding Dress, 17 Troy Weight for Bread Mile End Pottery-Col. Moorhouse " Viva " Nursery Rimes "To keech," 18' Wedded,' 19.

NOTES ON BOOKS : Headley's 'Problems of Evolution' Burke's ' Peerage and Baronetage ' ' Debrett's Peerage ' ' Whitaker's Almanack ' ' Englishwoman's Year-Book.'

Notices to Correspondents.

DARCY LEVER.

PHILIP KENT, being a great-grandson of Darcy Lever, the last lineal male represen- tative of the main line of the Levers of Alkrington Hall, Lancashire (whose eldest daughter, Mary Isabella Lever, married, thirdly, a son of Dr. Edward Nares, the anony- mous author of 'Thinks I to Myself), and being acquainted with certain incidents in the lives of Darcy Lever and Dr. Edward Nares, touching whom inquiries have been made either in * JST. & Q.' or elsewhere, holds the pen to narrate those incidents to the best of his knowledge and ability, hoping and rather expecting that they will interest the reader.

Darcy Lever, whose work on seamanship long held its own as the standard work on that art, and is still quoted as an authority in more modern books on seamanship, was the elder son of John Lever, clerk in holy orders and nephew of Sir Ashton Lever, Knt., the founder of that Leverian museum which we read of in White's 'History of Sel- borne,' and in the foot-notes of Sir John Hawkins appended to his edition of Walton's Great Lever, Little Lever, Darcy Lever,
 * Angler.' Sir Ashton owned broad acres at

Middleton the burial-place of the family and in other parishes near Manchester, and drew from them at one time an income of 30,000^. a year. The family pedigree that hung in the hall at Alkrington, and was re- printed in the third volume of Barnes's ' His- tory of Lancashire,' carries the line back to a Baron de Lever in the reign of the Conqueror, and is for that very reason open to the gravest suspicion. Nor does it appear that any member of the race in any way distin- guished himself as did brave John Philpott, the pirate-queller, the great forefather of the Philpotts, whose name still lives in Philpot Lane, E.C. One Lever, however, did marry a Miss Byron of Rochdale, which may be deemed a kind of distinction, at least by the admirers of 'Childe Harold' and 'The Giaour.' Sir Ashton set his heart on collecting all sorts of strange birds and beasts from all quarters of the globe and enshrining them at Alkrington Hall, now the Bishop of Man- chester's palace. His hobby cost him so dear that, what with selling and mortgaging his land, his net income at the close of his life in 1786 did not exceed 3,000. a year. He died suddenly. Having quarrelled with his nephew Darcy, and by his will entailed the wreck of his fortune on his younger nephew for life, with remainder to Darcy for life, he relented in Darcy's favour and sent for him. The young man sped to Alkrington j but as he entered the room in which Sir Ash- ton awaited him, the old man, rising from his chair, fell to the ground and breathed his last. The old will took effect, and Darcy had to wait twelve years before the death of his ten-years-younger brother John brought him his 3,0001. a year for life. On his death in 1840 the land passed under the entail to a distant kinsman named Bradshaw, who sold the Hall to the Ecclesiastical Commissioners for the housing of the then new bishop.

As the manner of the birth of any thoroughly good and sterling work is a matter of literary interest, be it added that Lever's ' Seamanship ' was the fruit of actual experience before the mast. After the breach with his uncle, and a freezing failure on the stage of the Manchester theatre, he took a berth as an able seaman aboard a merchant- man bound from Liverpool to Calcutta, and performed the outward and homeward voyage twice ; so that he did not write his ' Seamanship ' as a bookish landsman " all ab sea" when on the ocean wave.

The book, which is profusely illustrated with steel engravings of ships and their tackle, including an elaborate chapter on knots of every kind, with plates to match,