266 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



[2na s. No 40., Oct. 4. '56. 



of producing the best and hardest pavement. I 

 am told that no sooner were the words uttered 

 from the bench, " Now gentlemen, lay your heads 

 together and consider your verdict," than down 

 went every head in the box, and an official ap- 

 proached armed with a long wand. If any un- 

 lucky juror inadvertently raised his head, down 

 came the stick upon his pate ; and so they con- 

 tinued till the truth was struck out, in their vere- 

 dictum, an excellent plan for expediting business. 



I remember many years since witnessing a 

 somewhat analogous case to this in the church at 

 Dunchurch. I was an accidental attendant there, 

 and an excellent sermon was preached ; so good 

 a one that I am reminded of a saying attributed 

 to Cliief Justice Tindal, who, speaking of a sermon 

 that he had heard a long time before, said, " It 

 was an excellent sermon 1 know ; I only forgot all 

 about it three weeks ago." 



Notwithstanding this, the weather being very 

 hot, there were several parties fast asleep in dif- 

 ferent parts of the church. A respectable looking 

 man, who had very much the air of a church- 

 warden, bearing a long stout wand with, I believe, 

 a fork at the end of it, at intervals stept stealthily 

 up and down the nave and aisles of the church ; 

 and whenever he saw an individual whose senses 

 were buried in oblivion, he touched him with 

 his wand so effectually that the spell was broken, 

 and in an instant he was recalled to all the realities 

 of life. I watched as he mounted with wary step 

 into the galleries : at the end of one of them there 

 sat in the front seat a young man who had very 

 much the appearance of a farmer, with his mouth 

 open, and his eyes closed, a perfect picture of re- 

 pose. The official marked him for his own, and 

 having fitted his fork to the nape of his neck, he 

 gave him such a push, that, had he not been used 

 to such visitations, it would probably have pro- 

 duced an ejaculatory start highly inconvenient on 

 such an occasion. But no, everyone seemed 

 quietly to acquiesce in the usage ; and whatever 

 else they might be dreaming of, they certainly did 

 not dream of the infringement upon the liberties 

 of the subject, nor did they think of applying for 

 a summons on account of the assault. 



I am quite aware that churchwardens are in 

 these days very much in the habit of stirring up 

 the congregations, but not exactly in the way 

 adopted at Dunchurch. Now, Sir, I am curious 

 to know whether the custom still exists in that 

 parish, or whether any of your coi-respondents 

 have witnessed it practised elsewhere. K. W. B. 



STRTPE 8 " LIFE OF PARKER. 



In Sir Henry Ellis's Letters of Eminent Literary 

 Men (pp. 270, 271.) are printed letters from 

 Gibson and Potter to Strype, in which, as Cole 



remarks, "it is curious to observe Tennlson's, 

 Gibson's, and Potter's earnestness to suppress a 

 truth, for fear of oriving advantage to the Papists." 

 In St. John's College Library we have a copy 

 of Strype's Parker, enriched with the notes of 

 Baker and Richardson. On a fly-leaf, Baker has 

 transcribed a paragraph which throws light upon 

 the letters above cited, and proves that Strype 

 was compelled for many years to suppress his 

 Memorials of Parker : — 



"In a Letter from M' Strvpe, dated Low-Leyton, 

 Febr. ii. 1695, thus — 



" My Memorials of Parker, I believe, will hardly get 

 abroad, partly by reason of the bigness of it, and partly 

 because I suspect, the Bps. have no great mind, that 

 divers of the Transactions of the Reformation under Qu. 

 Eliz. should be commonlv known. They know of the 

 Book, and have had some discourse among themselves 

 about it, w^i" a certain Bp., my good Friend, will, when I 

 see him next, inform me: whom I did desire to commu- 

 nicate it to the ArchBp. of Cant., and he has had the 

 Contents of the Chapters before bim. They will be, I 

 suspect, a little tender, the Puritans should be medled 

 withall, lest it should provoke ; tho' all that I have writ, 

 is but matter of fact and History," &c. 



J. E. B. Mayor. 



St. John's College, Cambridge. 



SSlinar iJotc^. 



Notes on the ''Black Watch:' — In 1729-30 

 the government raised six companies of High- 

 landers, which from being unconnected with each 

 other were styled independent companies. To 

 distinguish them from the regular troops, who 

 from the colour of their clothes were called by the 

 Gael " Red Soldiers," these companies, being 

 dressed in their tartan, were, from its sombre ap- 

 pearance, called " Black Watch." 



In 1739 four additional companies were raised, 

 and with the former independent companies were, 

 in 1740, formed into a regiment, and numbered 

 the 43rd. In 1749, in consequence of the reduc- 

 tion of the then 42nd regiment, the number of the 

 Highland regiment was changed from the 43rd to 

 the 42nd, which number it has ever since retained. 



C. M. O. 



The Bonaparte Fam.ily. — It Is known that when 

 Bonaparte had married the daughter of Francis 

 of Austria, the latter took some pains in having 

 researches made about the origin and lineage of 

 the Bonaparte family. But Napoleon declined to 

 take any notice of it, saying, •' I am the Rudolph 

 Habsburg of my family." Still, these documents 

 have been partly published of late on the Con- 

 tinent, and exhibit a most respectable appearance. 

 Because, besides the known fact that the mother 

 of one of the Popes was a Bonaparte, the pedigree 

 branches off to Constantinople ; and there is no 

 doubt that the Bonapartes descended lineally 



