460 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



[2'xi S. No 101., Dec. 5. '67. 



ledge and appreciation of our noble countryman 

 ■which the greatness of his merit demands at our 

 hands. We have had certainly lives enough of 

 Milton. Dry as dust, pragmatical, prejudiced, 

 passionate, half-hearted, dull, crude, fragmentary 

 lives enough ; but the Life of Milton has yet to 

 be written, unless Mr. Masson's should prove to 

 be the desideratum. Lethbedibnsis. 



aacpTte^ to Mino^ (!^\xtKiti. 



The Guillotine (2'"i S. iv. 264. 339.) — As the 

 question of the guillotine has recently been agi- 

 tated in " N. & Q.," allow me to refer your cor- 

 respondents to the eighth of the Essays on the 

 Early Period of the French Revolution, by the 

 late John Wilson Croker ; in which he will find 

 not only very ample details of the origin of the 

 guillotine, by which I mean more particularly the 

 instrument to which Dr. Guillotin has given his 

 name, but also a very curious history of similar 

 instruments of execution (for the instrument it- 

 self is an ancient one), accompanied by facsimiles 

 of early woodcuts in which it is represented. If 

 your correspondents want an account of the atro- 

 cities committed through its agency they will find 

 it in the same amusing volume. M. N. S. 



Sir Abraham Williams (2°^ S. iv. 412.) was 

 secretary to Sir Ralph Winwood, Ambassador in 

 Holland, who left him at the Hague in August, 

 1613, "to transact business" (Orig. S. P. O.). 

 By order dated March 17, 1617, he received as 

 agent for the Elector and Electress Palatine the 

 sum of 200Z. towards defraying the costs and 

 charges of a midwife and others sent by James 

 I.'s appointment to Heidelberg {Devon, Pell Re- 

 cords, Jac. I. p. 212.) ; and on April 22, 1625, up 

 to which time he still continued to be agent to the 

 Queen of Bohemia, he was knighted by Charles I. 

 at Whitehall {Knights of Charles /., p. 120.). 



W. N. S. 



Bull Baiting (2"^ S. iv. 351. 401.)— Following 

 up Delta's reply to Mr. North's query, I would 

 note that in the town of Dorchester there is the 

 name of a street or square, proving it to have 

 formerly been made use of as the locus in quo of 

 this barbarous " sport," if such it may be called. 

 Strutt in his Sports and Pastimes, saya 



".That it was universally practised on various occa- 

 sions in almost every town or village throughout the 

 liingdom, and especially in marltet towns, where we find 

 it was sanctioned by the law." 



The street in question, used as a market-place, 

 was called "Bull Stake," which name it retains 

 in deeds and legal documents to this day, although 

 of late it has also been called North Street or 

 North Square. There is also, a mile and a quar- 

 ter from the town, on the Blandford Bead, a stone 



pillar, about four feet high and a foot in diameter, 

 which I have been informed was once used for 

 the purpose of bull baiting, a ring being placed 

 on the stone to which the unfortunate animal was 

 tied. I cannot, however, vouch for this. 



Hutchinfe, in his History of Dorset, makes men- 

 tion of bull baiting at a place called MarnhuU, 

 likewise in this county, as usual at that time, 1774. 

 I quote the following : — 



« Here is Bull Baiting annually (May 3.). The Bull is 

 led in the morning into Valley Meadow, where the 

 Tenant of the Estate, by giving a Garland, appoints who 

 shall keep the Bull next year. This Estate once be- 

 longed to the Husseys, now to Edward Walter, Esquire." 



I am happy that this brutal sport has sunk into 

 desuetude. John Garland, F. L. S. 



Dorchester. 



Enigmatical Pictures (2"" S. iv. 106. 136.) —As 

 an existing illustration of the subject, I send you 

 the following extract from a recent newspaper : — 



"A North Carolina Marriage. — A singular marriage 

 lately took place in Wilkes county, N. C. A man, named 

 Holloway, married his step-mother, the second wife, the 

 widow of his own father ! She had six children, three of 

 them bj' his father, and three by himself; and having 

 nine children of his own, the couple set up housekeeping 

 with fifteen children." 



I can speak, of my own knowledge, of a case 

 where the degrees of relationship were peculiarly 

 involved, by the marriage of a gentleman to the 

 sister of his two sons-in-law. AH the marriages 

 have proved fruitful ; and the gentleman's son, by 

 bis second wife, is brother-in-law to two own 

 uncles, and uncle to two own cousins. The gen- 

 tleman to whom I refer was mayor of the chy of 

 New York a few years since. He is one of 

 "nature's noblemen;" and, assisted by his pre- 

 sent wife, he dispenses a generous but unpretend- 

 ing hospitality that makes his country seat, on 

 Long Island, one of the most agreeable places at 

 which a summer visitor can pass a few days of 

 luxurious and unruffled ease. T. 



Albany, N. T. 



Sergeant- Surgeon Troutbeck (2"'^ S. iv. 388.) — 

 F. S. will find the appointment of sergeant-sur- 

 geon to royalty is not a modern institution. I 

 have a note taken by me in 1850 from a thick 

 quarto volume in the reading-room of the British 

 Museum, viz. — 



" This year (1660) a book was published on the Nullity 

 of Church Censures, by Thos. Erastus, Proffesor in the 

 University of Heidelburgh, and translat«d into English by 

 the desire of John Troutbeck, Sergeant-Surgeon to his 

 Majesty in the Northern Parts." 



The scribe says he was in the service of the 

 said John, whom he describes as of Hope Hall, 

 Bramham. 



I am very desirous to know all that is possible 

 about that same John Troutbeck and his family. 

 If any of your kind readers can furnish any par- 



