Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 8.djvu/309

 9*8. vm. OCT. 12, i9oi.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

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league of stalwart, fierce- browed, courageous men of the Yorkshire hills? Thus Turvin was a stronghold ; and for years there was no weakness, no treachery within. The relatives and friends were themselves too perilously implicated to betray the more active agents. We must also bear in mine that the spirit of clanship bound those men and women together in any trans action, good or bad a clanship deep rooted on the Yorkshire hills to the presenl day. Then, again, they were secretly aidec by well-to-do manufacturers and tradesmen "Great Tom," as we have seen, being a woollen manufacturer in Wadsworth. Highly respectable families not far from Halifax, it is supposed, were involved in this illega] business. Farmers likewise were mixed up with the "yellow trade." Its ramifications spread far and wide.

But all this belongs to the past, though the story of reckless daring and tragic deed is handed down by father to son. There, as of old, tower those heather -clad mountains of which Kuskin has written in laudatory and enthusiastic terms ; still winds fair Turvin water in sweet quietude through Cragg Vale ; and those hills and dales screen no longer the haunts of law-breakers, but to-day they shelter the homes of industrious men and women, the descendants, many of them, of those once notorious coiners. F.

PRIVILEGES OF THE CITY OF LONDON. Sir Joseph Cockfield Dimsdale, who was elected on the 28th of September to be the chief magistrate for the ensuing year, announced that his first duty as Lord Mayor elect was to ask the meeting to pass a resolution crossing the t-a and dotting the fa of their privileges. It was :

" That in view of the approaching Coronation of our Sovereign Lord the King and his Gracious Consort, all due and proper claims be made for preserving the ancient rights, privileges, and im- munities of the City of London, and that the Town Clerk, as Clerk of this Common Hall, be directed to sign the same."

Sir Joseph, as member for the City, has, together with his colleague, the privilege, on the first day of each session, of sitting on the Treasury Bench. The Lancet states that he is the first Etonian to fill the civic chair for 130 years, and gives the following particulars as to his family, showing how interested the medical profession is in his having been elected. He

" comes of an old Essex family, whose members have, as a rule, belonged to the Society of Friends, and one of the most renowned of whom was Thomas

Dimsdale, M.D., who was born in 1712, educated at St. Thomas's Hospital, and who in 1767 published a book entitled ' The Present Method of Inoculation for the Smallpox.' This passed through many editions, and in 1768 Dimsdale was invited to Russia by the Empress Catherine for the purpose of inoculating herself and her son the Grand Duke Paul. There were ignorant persons in Russia in those days, as there are now in this country, and in case of any untoward result the Empress had relays of posthorses ready all the way from St. Petersburg to the frontier for the safe conveyance of Dimsdale out of the empire. Both patients, however, did well, and Dimsdale received the honour of being made a baron and a Councillor of State, together with a sum of 10,000^. down, an annuity of 500/., and 2.00$. for expenses. In 1784 Dimsdale was again summoned to Russia to inoculate the Grand Duke Alexander and his brother Constantino. Inocula- tion received its deathblow on the introduction of vaccination, which brought about protection with far less risk, but it is interesting to note the election of a Dimsdale to the highest civic post in London at a time when the city is suffering from an out- break of smallpox. We offer him our congratula- tions upon the honour to which he has been elected.*

A. N. Q.

KNIGHTS MADE TEMP. CHARLES I. : SCOTTISH KNIGHTHOODS. A letter from Scotland, dated 1 March, 1648 (Rushworth, vii. 1019), contains the following :

"The Lord Lowden, when he left his Majesty, had command to make five gentlemen, most of his kindred, knights, which was accordingly done. So that there are at this time Newcastle knights, Isle of Wight knights, and Chequer knights."

Who the knights thus designated were is unfortunately not stated. Bv "Newcastle knights " obviously are intended those who received the honour at the hands of the Duke then Earl of Newcastle, under the powers

onferred upon that nobleman by the king early in the Civil War (see 8 th S. ii. 27). According to the life of the duke by his wife the Duchess Margaret (edited by C. H. Firth), p. 24, the duke "conferred the honour of knighthood sparingly," knighting in all to bhe number of twelve. "Isle of Wight inights " were doubtless those thus honoured the king himself while a prisoner in the .sland. So far only one of these is known
 * or certain Sir John Duncombe, of Battles-

den, co. Bedford the somewhat curious cir-

urnstances under which he received knight- lood being told by Sir Thomas Herbert

'Memoirs,' 1815 edition, pp. 97-8). By 4 Chequer knights " we are thus left to those who received the accolade from the Earl of Loudoun. But whence the term " Chequer"? !s it an allusion to the " fess chequy " in the arms of the Campbells of Loudoun ? One of the five knights created by the earl was doubtless his own brother Sir Mungo Camp-