62 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



. [2nd S. No 108., Jan. 23. '58. 



Collet Mawhood, possibly a second cousin, and 

 with Mrs. Gyles, possibly another of his second 

 cousins. 



This Collet Mawhood I am accidentally enabled 

 to inform you was, in 1736, a tea-dealer " at y* 

 Golden Lyon and Unicorn against the New Ex- 

 change in the Strand." I have a bill and receipt 

 of his, with the above description engraved at the 

 top of it. 



This fact of "tea-dealer" helps me to link on 

 to Collet Mawhood, Horace Walpole's Captain 

 Mawhood, who died, strange as it may seem, at 

 Twickenham in 1775. On July 9, 1775, Walpole 

 thus wrote to Conway : 



" I have a great mind to tell you a Twickenham story, 

 and yet it will be good for nothing, as I cannot send j'ou 

 the accent in a letter. Here it is, and you must try to 

 set it to the right emphasis. One of our Maccaronis is 

 dead, a Captain Mawhood, the tea-rtuin^s son. He had 

 quitted the army because his comrades called him Cap- 

 tain Hyson, and applied himself to learn the Classics, and 

 freethinking ; and was always disputing with the parson 

 of the parish about Dido and his own soul. He married 

 Miss Paulius Warehouse, who had six hundred a-year; 

 but being very much out of conceit with his own canister, 

 could not reconcile himself to her riding-hood — so they 

 parted beds in three nights. Of late he has taken to 

 writing comedies, which everybody was welcome to hear 

 him read, as he could get nobody to act them." 



I quote no more than to show the relationship, 

 and there can be no doubt that Captain Hyson 

 was son of Collet Mawhood. T. M. H. 



" COMPARATIVE VAIiUE OF LAND- RENTS IN SCOT- 

 LAND AND ENGLAND IN 1770," BY THE BEY. 

 WILLIAM THOM, ETC. 



The Rev. William Thorn, A.M., of Govan, near 

 Glasgow (before adverted to in " N. & Q."), who 

 most ably and philanthropically advocated the 

 cause of the farm tenantry of Scotland oppressed 

 by their landlords (/] Sermon preached to a Con- 

 gregation of Farmers on Exod. iii. 7, 8., pp. 82., 

 1770), notices, in descanting on his subject, the 

 comparative value of land-rents in Scotland and 

 England at that period. A few brief extracts, as 

 to that in which so many changes have since oc- 

 curred, may not now be uninteresting : — 



" The rent of land at an average for twenty miles 

 round London, where there is more and better manure to 

 be got than from any city in the world, is about 12s. an 

 acre. For a circle of thirty miles round London the rent 

 Avould be much less. . . . The common people of Scotland 

 from time immemorial have, by means and causes which 

 I need not mention, been crushed down and held in miser- 

 able bondage. The free-spirited English farmer would 

 disdain to drudge, and at the same time live so poorlj', 

 as our people would be content to do. . . . In fact, by the 

 best computations that have yet been made, the rent of 

 the corn lields over all England is not more than two- 

 ninths of their produce. ' Jn Norfolk the rich lands under 

 a modern let are rented at 10s., or a little more; and 

 even so high a rent is not common, for most of the land 



is much lower; and surely if 10s. is the rent of good land 

 in England, 40s., 30s., or even 20s. an acre is too high a 

 rent for ordinary land here (Scotland)." — Chief Authori- 

 ties cited in reference to England, Sir William Petty; 

 Davenant, Tour through Great Britain, 1769. 



Very considerable benefits must have accrued to 

 Mr. Thorn's countrymen of this particular order 

 from his manly and judiciSus exposure of the 

 ruck-renting system, roupiiig of tacks, and crops. 

 Sec, which then prevailed (Letter of Advice to the 

 Farmers, Land-labourers, and Country IVadesmen 

 in Scotland, S,-c., pp. 26., 1771), and the govern- 

 ment (in a certain sense) might have thanked him 

 for compelling, through his lucid arguments and 

 expositions, so many of our valuable cultivators 

 of the soil to emigrate to North America, then 

 named the Bj-itish Plantations (A Candid Enquiry 

 into the Causes of the Late and Intended Migra- 

 tions from Scotland, pp. 65. ). The good 



citizens of Glasgow, of that generation, I have no 

 doubt, likewise held the divine in very great re- 

 spect for seeing into their comforts as to their 

 staple article of consumption, oatmeal (The Causes 

 of the Scarcity of Oatmeal in the Public Market of 

 Glasgow, pp. 29., 1763) ; not deeming it below 

 the dignity of his clerical office to attend in the 

 city meal market himself, to observe the trickery 

 of the meal-mongers — the operations of the ladle 

 dues (the latter a direct species of " Lofcop," see 

 " N. & Q.," 2"'» S. iv. 98.), and other aggravating 

 practices which greatly enhanced the price of the 

 article to the community. 



" I have (says he in the Sermon j(?/-s< referred to) spoke 

 from principle — from abhorrence of rapacity — and from 

 pity to the miserable. The subject is uncommon — 1 know 

 of none who preached in this strain except the patron 

 and ornament of Ireland (alluding to Dean Swift), whom 

 I should not dare to name, because I can never hope to 

 imitate him — except in a tender concern for your 

 wretched conditions," &c. 



If it had been possible to have brought toge- 

 ther as the representatives of the three countries, - 

 Dean Swift for Ireland, the Rev. Sydney Smith 

 for England, and the Rev. William Thorn for 

 Scotland — men of kindred minds, and of equally 

 shining abilities — I flatter myself there would 

 have been an evening's conversation which v/ould 

 have been worth recording. 



Of this very eloquent " Minister of the Gospel " 

 (as Mr. Thom styles himself), extensive and en- 

 lightened politician — a man of refined taste and 

 skill in learning and in the liberal arts — the 

 strenuous promoter of reformation among the 

 public — in his own church — in education — in the 

 schools — in the Universities — in short, actively 

 engaging himself in whatever was laudable, hu- 

 mane, patriotic, and dignified — who dared, as his 

 numerous tracts and sermons evince*, with his 



* " The Defects of an University Education, and its 

 Unsuitableness to a Commercial People, pp. 53. London, 

 1761." 



