Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 8.djvu/473

 9">s.vm.DEc.7,i9oi.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

465

of the wars of Prince Maurice against the Spaniards from 1588 to 1607, concluding with the particulars of the truce for twelve years made between the Spaniards and the Dutch in 1609. B. D.

RADDON FAMILY. Will some reader tell me anything known about Raddon, and if the Raddons are descendants of Baldwyn de Raddon 1 I have been looking over the history, of Devonshire, and see just a little mentioned, and should certainly like to know more. (Miss) J. RADDON.

6, Bedford Terrace, Plymouth.

BARLICHWAY HUNDRED, WARWICKSHIRE. I notice that this hundred appears as Bax- ligwei at p. 120 of Joseph Hunter's transcript of ' The Great Roll of the Pipe for the First Year of the Reign of King Richard the First,' London, 1844. Is this correct, or is it a mis- reading 1 ? BENJ. WALKER.

Gravelly Hill, Erdington.

HENRY SEYMOUR CONWAY, 1721-95. Can any one tell me whether Field-Marshal Con- way was ever a member of Harrow School 1 Neither the 'D.N.B.' nor the Harrow Register (1800-1900) is here of use ; but on a panel of the Fourth - Form Room are carved the letters " H. S. Con way." A. R. BAYLEY.

St. Margaret's. Malvern.

ST. CLEMENT DANES.

(9 th S. vii. 64, 173, 274, 375 ; viii. 17, 86,

186, 326.)

IT seems that I was right in my surmise that H/s explanation of his remarkable statements as catalogued at p. 186 would prove to be very informing. We are now told that Osgod Clapa, who flourished in the eleventh cen- tury, is "the eponymus of Clapham" (Surrey), a place which is mentioned in a famous deed of the ninth century ! I suppose that we shall next be told that the same worthy out- law was responsible for the name of the other Claphams and the various Claptons which we find in different parts of the country.

COL. PRIDEAUX says :

" What we do know is that the termination -wich or -wick is not a native English word, and that the A.-S. wlc, a dwelling, from which it is derived, is merely borrowed from the Lat. nicuv, a village."

Now this is exactly what we do not know, and what I do not for a moment believe; and it is time the old-fashioned idea was exploded. It is utterly impossible that the immense num- ber of English inland names embodying or consisting of wick, iveek,wich, and w?/yke,ana the

large number of Dutch and Belgian wijks and Low German wiks, should be derived from Lat. vicus, which has left such a meagre legacy behind it in France and South Ger- many (where Roman influence was strongest) compared with the swarms of names derived from villa. One can understand the Ger- manic races borrowing strata (via), " a paved road," from the Romans, who taught them how to make these improved means of inter- communication ; but to borrow a word for " village " is quite a different matter.

Expert opinion in Germany and the Low Countries is now largely against the deriva- tion from vicus, the chief exception being Kluge, who evidently has not devoted enougn attention to the archaeology of the matter and to the lessons taught by place-names. Those specially interested in the question are re- ferred to Joh. Fritz's * Deutsche Stadtanlagen,' and particularly to a review of this book by R. Henning, published in the Anzeiger f. deutsches Altertum, xxv. (1899), pp. 248-9. Kluge's Latin derivation is here scouted, the reviewer proceeding :

" Wie sollten die Deutschen, die immer ihre Dorfer hatten und benannten, in einer von directen romischen Einfliissen und Ueberlieferungen ent- fernten Gegend zu der Entlehnung gekommen aein? Sollte man dann nicht eher am Rhein und in Ober- deutschland solche Namen erwarten, die hier jedoch

vollig f ehlen ? So ist das Wort und z weif ellos auch

die Sache alter, als dass fur diese Anlagen an siid- liche Einfliisse gedacht werden konnte. Sie gehen indie Zeit der altesten sachsischen (und nordischen?) Stadtegriindungen zuriick."

In short, A.-S. wic and O. Nor., O. Sax., O. Fris., and Low Ger. wik, Du. wijk O.H.G. wih, are native Germanic, connected with " weak," and can have nothing to do with Lat. vicus, which is from a different root. HY. HARRISON.

CLOCK AND WATCH FIGURES (9 th S. viii. 385). The use of IIII on clocks and watches is simply a survival. In the old Roman nota- tion both IIII and IV expressed the figure four, as IIX and VIII indicated eight, VIIII and IX nine, XIIV and XIII thirteen, and so on. But while alternative forms gradually fell into disuse, and in all other directions the numerals became standardized as we now know them, the variant form of four was per- petuated upon sundials, and from sundials was transferred to those more accurate time- tellers clocks and watches. Britten, in ' Old Clocks and Watches,' mentions the use of the IIII as remarkable, but appears to have overlooked its transmission from the sundial. On p. 178 of Britten's book is a picture of a clock by Tompion in the Pump-Room, Bath, with the