NOTES AND QUERIES. 



[July 7. 1855. 



with fair prospects at the bar, he was prematurely 

 cut off in 1787 at the age of twenty-eight.* He 

 contemplated a History of Craven, but had 

 merely commenced his labours. From this letter 

 it would appear that he had been attracted to the 

 Countess's Memoirs. 



" Embsay Kirk, Sept. 8, 1785. 

 " I have not succeeded so well at Appleby as I 

 expected, not having met with that which was my 

 chief object, namely, the Countess of Cumberland's 

 Diary ; but I have found still more and more 

 reason to admire the spirit and industry of Lady 

 Anne, having seen the collections made by her 

 orders, and under her inspection, relative to the 

 Clifford family, which are such as, I will venture to 

 say, no other noble family in the world can show. 

 They are comprised in three enormous volumes, 

 folio, and contain not only pedigrees of every 

 branch of the family, but every grant, charter, or 

 other document concerning the Cliffords, which 

 could at that time be procured or met with. The 

 usefulness of such a collection is not to be de- 

 scribed ; it has ascertained their rights so clearly, 

 as to have settled numberless disputes, not to 

 mention those it must have prevented." 



It is strange that whilst examining these evi- 

 dences, Mr. Baynes should have overlooked the 

 autobiography ; and what is the more surprising, 

 we find in the third volume of the Biographia 

 Britannica, which was published in 1784, that Dr. 

 Kippis, in a note on the article " Clifford," speaks 

 of " papers which had been put into his hands by 

 his ingenious and learned friend Mr. Baynes," and 

 especially, he adds, "he has obliged us with a tran- 

 script of the original narratioe left of Jierself hy the 

 Countess of Dorset." '\ Who maybe the possessor 

 of this transcript ? Extracts are given from it, ac- 

 companied by this chilling remark : " The perusal 

 of this MS. has given us little satisfaction. It is 

 written in a manner extremely tedious, abounds 

 with repetitions, and the facts related in it are for 

 the most part equally minute and uninteresting." J 



Enough has been said to show how confused 

 are the statements regarding the MSS., and that 

 diligent investigation is necessary to combine the 

 materials left by the Countess, as " Memorables " 

 for her biography. Your readers will doubtless join 

 with me in the wish already expressed, that Mr. 

 Hailstone will still give us the Countess's Diary, or 

 copious extracts from it. If he should not carry 

 his original design into effect, may we not hope 



* Mr. Douce, who was a warm friend and great ad- 

 mirer of Mr. Baynes, terms him " another Crichton," and 

 adds, what will not be generally admitted, " He was cer- 

 tainly the author of the Arcfusological Epistle to Bean 

 Milles." 



t This may be accounted for by a mistake being made 

 in the date of the letter, or in the copy of it. 



X Biog. Brit., vol. iii. p. 640. 



No. 297.] 



that the gentleman who has lately read before the 

 Society of Antiquaries, of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, 

 a brief memoir of the Countess, the Rev. James 

 Raine, Jun., may undertake this task. Or if both 

 should decline it, is not this a work worthy of the 

 Roxburghe Club ? The Diary would be a fitting 

 companion to the very valuable volumes. Man- 

 ners and Household Expenses of England, the 

 splendid gift of Mr. Botfield in 1841, and the 

 Howard Household Boohs, so ably edited by Mr. 

 C01.LIER in 1844. J. H. Maekland. 



ARITHMETICAL NOTES, NO. II. 



Edmund Wingate. — The first edition of Win- 

 gate's Arithmetic, published in 1629 or 1630, is a 

 work of great rarity. I have never seen nor heard 

 of a copy. It is an incunabulum of decimal frac- 

 tions in England ; and though, owing to Kersey 

 {Comp. Aim., 1851, p. 12,), it is not absolutely 

 essential to the historian of arithmetic, yet it is 

 very desirable that it should be produced and 

 compared with the second edition. The first edi- 

 tion of Cocker, of which several copies have ap- 

 peared in sales in the last twenty years, is a mere 

 curiosity ; that of Wingate is more. It should be 

 noted, that it was common with Wingate to pub- 

 lish under the initials E. W., adding sometimes 

 " of Gray's Inn." Perhaps the obscurity of the 

 first edition is owing to this concealment : all the 

 other editions (eighteen at least) have the name 

 in full. AVingate was a landed proprietor ; and 

 persons so gifted, whenever they published trans- 

 lation, elementary writing, or anything low, seldom 

 put their names ; often it was only " a person of 

 honour." Thus we have The Gentleman Ac- 

 comptant . . . done by a Person of Honour : 

 London, 1714, 8vo. Few, either among mathe- 

 maticians or musicians, know that Lord Brounker 

 translated Descartes's Compendium of Music under 

 this mode of concealment. 



Ready Reckoner. — 



" Accompts cast up. With an Addition of Measuring 

 Timber, Boord, Waynscot, Glasse, and Land, working 

 an J' Question in Division as also rules of Fellowship. 

 By John Bill : London, 1632. ~ 12mo." 



This is the earliest approximation to the ready 

 reckoner which I have yet met with : but the body 

 of the work is only an extended multiplication table 

 of integers. My notion that the ready reckoner 

 is not a very ancient contrivance is rather con- 

 firmed by this writer never having heard of any- 

 thing of the kind. He says : 



« To the end that every man may buy and sell without 

 mis-reckoning in his accompt, and without the trouble of 

 Pen or Counters, I have with long time and much labour 

 endeavoured to finde out an Abridgement . . ." 



The eai-liest ready reckoner mentioned in my 



