Nov. 4. 1854.] 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



^615 



was 23,000Z. ? Did she not avail herself of the 

 failure of her agent here to resist Mr. Brown's 

 claim to the balance, availing herself of the power- 

 ful plea of possession, leaving him to find a mate- 

 rial guarantee in her Imperial orthodoxy ? What, 

 I ask, is this ? 



Can the executors now append their claim for 

 this balance, with sixty years arrears of interest, 

 to the Bill of Penalties and Costs, ere long to be 

 set forth by Lord Clarendon against the hopeful 

 scion of the notorious Czarina. Kutuzeff. 



CromwelVs Irish Grants. — Where can I find a 

 printed account of the lands distributed by Oliver 

 Cromwell to his army in Ireland ? My ancestor, 

 Thomas Phelps, a captain in Oliver's army, had a 

 grant of land in the co. Tipperary, given him by 

 Cromwell, and confirmed by Charles II. He came 

 from the neighbourhood of Gloucester in about 

 the year 1646. I wish to find out if our family 

 is the same as John De la Field Phelps', mentioned 

 in Bigland's Gloucestershire : as I see the arms are 

 the same as ours, namely, a wolf salient ; though 

 . I see that Rudder, describing the arms of the 

 same gentleman, J. De la Field Phelps, calls it a 

 " lion rampant." Why this descrepancy ? I have 

 consulted Prestwich's Republica, but cannot find 

 the name of Phelps mentioned. What other work 

 is there ? Jos. Lloyd Phelps. 



48. Lee Crescent, Birmingham. 



Augier, a Watchmaker. — I recently examined 

 an ancient watch, which is said to have belonged 

 to a character eminent in English history. The 

 name of the maker of the watch inscribed on it 

 is " Jehan Augier, a Paris." Can any of your 

 readers inform me whether the name of Augier is 

 known to antiquaries ; and, if so, at what date 

 was he living ? Jattee. 



Buying the Devil. — In what local history is 

 reprinted The Book of the Rolls of the Manor of 

 Hatfield ? I wish to see details of the — 



" Pleasant Convention, 11 Edw. III., between Robert de 

 Eoderham and John de Ichen ; the latter of whom sold 

 the Devil in a string for threepence halfpenny to the 

 former, to be delivered the fourth day after the Conven- 

 tion" — 



therein set forth. 



The newspaper cutting I copy from merely 

 remarks, that differences having arisen between 

 the parties as to the value of the property when 

 "due," the_ court adjourned the parties to a 

 warmer region for judgment. Being only brought 

 forward by the chronicler as a warning to specu- 

 lators, he is not so explicit as I could wish with 

 his references. R. C. Warde. 



Kidderminster. 



Railroads in England. — Can any of the cor- 

 respondents of " N. & Q." furnish me with an 



earlier notice of railways than that which is to be 

 met with in Roger North's Life cf the Lord 

 Keeper North, A. d. 1676 ? 



" At that period, near Newcastle-on-the-Tyne, c6a;te 

 were conveyed from the mines to the banks of the river, 

 by laying rails of timber exactly straight, and parallel; 

 and bulky carts were made with four rollers, fitting these 

 rails, whereby the carriage was made so easy that one 

 horse would draw four or five chaldrons." 



w.w. 



Malta. 



:^tn0r <!h\xtxiti toi'tt ^nStoeriS. 



The '■'■Antiquities of Killmackumpshaugh." — Can 

 you give me the name of the author of STAAEFO- 

 MENA of the Antiquities of Killmackumpshaugh, ill 

 the County of Roscommon, and Kingdom of Ire- 

 land? It is an 8vo. pamphlet, and was printed 

 in Dublin in 1790. According to the title-page, 

 it was "written by Doctor Hastier, M.R.S.P.Q.," 

 &c. ; but who was he ? Abhba. 



[The real author of this work is John Whittley Bos- 

 well. We have before us a curious explanation, in his 

 own handwriting, of the object and design of this satirical 

 production, from which we extract a few passages. H© 

 states that " the design of the work wafs to ridicule a false 

 taste which then prevailed for remote antiquarian specu- 

 lations relative to Ireland, and the weak arguments used 

 to support them, which on many occasions were even 

 more palpably erroneous than those purposely misapplied 

 here; for which purpose an affectation of learning is 

 adopted, and minutely-refined modes of reasoning; of 

 which there may be found many parallel instances in the 

 works published seriously on those subjects. To show 

 how easy it is to exhibit an appearance of knowledge on 

 such occasions, which has no real foundation, the author 

 has contrived to make a pompous exhibition of skill in 

 Hebrew and the Irish tongue, with neither of which he 

 had any acquaintance. A friend, Dr. Wm. Stokes, then 

 studying Hebrew, by searching his Lexicon occasionally 

 at the request of the author, supplied what relates to that 

 language ; and the Irish words inserted were acquired by 

 questions directed to those who were well instructed in 

 that ancient tongue, which probably was that of the 

 Gauls in the time of Julius C^sar, as well as of Great 



Britain and Ireland The name Hastier is fictitious, 



and was used without any particular design : at the time 

 the work was written, the author was too young to 

 assume the office of censor, having then just taken his 

 degree of B. A. in the University of Dublin. He is well 

 known to the Rev. Dr. Burrowes of Enniskillen, Dr. 

 Whitley Stokes, Dr. Miller, and others in the university. 

 The number of letters after Hastier, in the title-page, was 

 merely designed to imitate the affected style of those who 

 use this species of foppery." The work contains two 

 folded engravings.] 



The Zouaves. — Who and what are the Zouaves P 

 Are they Africans or Frenchmen, and when was 

 their corps first organised ? Ignoramus. 



[The Zouaves are natives of the French provinces of 

 Algiers, disciplined and exercised by French oflScers, and 

 now forming part of the French contingent employed in 

 the Crimea and the siege of Sebastopol. They hold 

 exactly the same relation to the French army that the 

 Sepoys in India have to the regular British troops.] 



