454 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



[2nd s. No 75., June 6. »57. 



the expense of removing them, which he under- 

 took to do, intending to make stone dykes with 

 them. As no one, certainly not a stranger in a 

 parish, can put up a monument without paying a 

 fee to the incumbent, and in one case I know of 

 100?. being asked and paid, it does seem a great 

 injustice that any future incumbent may, with the 

 consent of the churchwardens, confiscate the tablet 

 or remove it at their pleasure ; and if this is the 

 case, the sooner the public are made aware of it 

 the better. G. C. K. 



EDUCATION OP THE PEASANTRT. 



(2»'> S. iii. 87. 279. 335.) 



Doubtless the following is the case to which 

 Vbtan Rheged refers : 



"Taking the Wall Side. — On Saturday [26th Dec, 

 1841], at the Kensington Petty Sessions, Mr. James Pou- 

 part, residing atFulham, appeared before the magistrates, 

 charged with having assaulted Mr. Vincent Austin, under 

 the following circumstances. The complainant stated, 

 that as he was returning from town to Fulham, and was 

 passing over Stanford Bridge, with his right hand to the 

 wall, he met the defendant about the middle with his 

 left hand to the wall. Seeing the defendant intended 

 taking the wall side of him, he (complainant) said to him, 

 ' You are on the wrong side ; ' when defendant replied, 

 ' I always take the wall.' Complainant told him he al- 

 lowed no person to take the wall of him when he was on 

 his right side, and he stood still ; on seeing which de- 

 fendant said, ' Then I'll go back again,' and he turned 

 round, keeping close to the wall right in front of com- 

 plainant. On reaching the end of the bridge the com- 

 plainant took the opportunity of passing the defendant on 

 the wall side, and, in doing so, slightly brushed against 

 him, when the defendant raised a walking-stick he had 

 in his hand, and struck him a violent back-handed blow 

 across the left arm, the effects of which he still felt. The 

 defendant did not deny the main points of the case, but 

 declared the complainant, in passing him, instead of 

 slightly brushing him, had forcibly ejected him into the 

 road, for which he struck him, and said he never knew 

 there was a right and wrong side to a footpath. The 

 Bench said that it was an old-established rule that pe- 

 destrians should always have their right hand to the 

 wall, and equestrians their left. It was an ancient 

 custom, the observance of which induced good order in 

 crowded thoroughfares, and tended to prevent confusion. 

 They were astonished that defendant should plead igno- 

 rance of such a custom ; but as the object of complainant 

 appeared to be only to maintain his rights, the}' thought 

 a fine of 5s. with costs would be sufiicient." — Gardeners' 

 Chronicle, Jan. 2, 1841. 



The new rule referred to by Shanks' Mabe, as 

 carried out on London Bridge " in order to 

 facilitate the crowded traffic" (2"^ S. iii. 319.), 

 was adopted in 1854-5 on the recommend- 

 ation of Mr. Thomas Page, the engineer for the 

 New Bridge at Westminster, who was called in by 

 the City authorities to report on the state of the 

 bridge, &c., in 1854; and it may be as well to 

 note that in the design for the new structure at 

 Westminster, a similar provision is made on a 



somewhat extended scale to accommodate the 

 light and heavy traffic. R. W. Hackwood. 



S. P., Author of " The Loves of Amos and 

 Laura " (2""^ S. iii. 407.) — A correspondent in- 

 quires who was the S. P., author of The Loves of 

 Amos and Laura, a poem, 12mo., 1619. 



I conjecture, or rather feel a confident persua- 

 sion, that these letters are the initial letters of the 

 name of Samuel Page, of whom Meres, in 1598, 

 says that he was " among the best writers of love 

 elegies;" and Ant. Wood, that "in his juvenile 

 years he was accounted one of the chiefest among 

 our English poets to bewail and bemoan the per- 

 plexities of love in his poetical and romantic 

 writings." 



He was a Fellow of C. C. Coll., Oxford, was in 

 orders, and had the living of Deptford. Wood 

 speaks of several sermons and tracts of his, but 

 does not specify any of the lighter productions of 

 his pen ; and even Dr. Bliss, rich as he is in know- 

 ledge of this kind, says, " I fear that all his efforts 

 in this species of composition are now buried in 

 obscurity." {Ath. Ox. ii. 426.) 



A writer of this name has verses in The Odcom- 

 hian Banquet ; and, query, if he is not the S. P. 

 who joined in the celebration of Dame Helen 

 Branch ? Joseph Hunter. 



Sir William Keith (2"^ S. iii. 266.) — Mr. 

 Wetmore is mistaken in supposing Sir William 

 Keith, Governor of Pennsylvania, to have been of 

 the Powburn family, on a member of which, 

 James Keith of Powburn, a baronetcy was con- 

 ferred June 6, 1663. Sir William was great-f 

 grandson of Sir William Keith of Ludquharne or 

 Ludquhairn, in Aberdeenshire, created a baronet 

 of Scotland, with a grant of lands in New Scot- 

 land, to be called the barony and regality of Lud- 

 quhairn, July 28, 1629, and descended from the 

 Keiths of Inverugy, an ancient cadet of the 

 hereditary Great Marischals of Scotland. He 

 was succeeded by his son. Sir Alexander, second 

 baronet, and he again by his son. Sir William, 

 third baronet, of Ludquhairn, whose son. Sir Wil- 

 liam, the fourth baronet, possessed very little of 

 an estate encumbered by the improvidence of his 

 immediate progenitors. He was appointed early 

 in the eighteenth century, and it may be in the 

 lifetime of his father, who was alive in 1710, Go- 

 vernor of Pennsylvania*, and there issued from 

 the London press in 1 738 : 

 " The History of the British Plantations in America, 



* In the Scots Courant, No. 1707, is the following no- 

 tice : " London, Oct. 20, 1716. Alexander Keith, Esq., is 

 set out for Pennsylvania, where he is appointed Go- 

 vernor," Is Alexander a mistake for William ? 



