June 10. 1854.] 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



551 



Riding of Yorkshire, contains two handsome 

 marble monuments of Lords Preston and Wid- 

 drington. The old hall at Nunnington, now oc- 

 cupied by a farmer, was once the seat of Viscount 

 Preston, and afterwards of Lord Widdrington. 

 William, Lord Widdrington, who is said to be 

 descended from the brave Witherington, cele- 

 brated in Chevy Chace for having fought upon his 

 stumps, was of the very noble and ancient family 

 of the Widdringtons of Widdrington Castle, in 

 the county of Northumberland ; and great-grand- 

 son of the brave Lord Widdrington who was 

 slain gallantly fighting in the service of the crown 

 at Wigan, in Lancashire, in 1651. William, his 

 grandson, was unfortunately engaged in the affair 

 of Preston in 1715, when his estate became for- 

 feited to the crown, and he afterwards confined 

 himself to private life. He married a daughter of 

 the Lord Viscount Preston above mentioned, one of 

 the co-heiresses of the estate at Nunnington, and 

 was in consequence buried in the family vault in 

 174,3, aged sixty-five. For other particulars of 

 the family of Widdrington, see Camden's Britannia. 



Thomas Gill. 

 Easingwold. 



Mathew, a Cornish Family (Vol. ix., pp. 22. 

 289.). —I fear I cannot give the Rev. H. T. Ee- 

 eacombe much information on the point he 

 desires of the descent of the Devon and Cornwall 

 branches of the Mathew family, which I yet en- 

 tertain the hope some of your readers having 

 access to the Cambrian genealogical lore at Dine- 

 vawr, Penline, Margam, Fonmon, and other places, 

 may be able to graft correctly on their Welsh 

 tree. 



I was unable to corroborate in the British Mu- 

 seum the marriages given in the Heralds' Visita- 

 tion of Devon, with Starkey and Gamage. Did a 

 son of Reynell of Malston by an heir of Mathew 

 take that name ? 



Mr. Ellacombe will find by the Heralds' 

 Visitation that both of the West of England 

 branches settled before 1650 in Cornwall, the one 

 at Tresingher, the other at Milton ; but that of 

 the former, William married Elizabeth Welling- 

 ton, and John married Rebecca Soame, both re- 

 verting to settle in Devonshire, from whom, 

 perhaps, his ancestress derives. B. 



Birkenhead. 



" IIiVtis," unde deriv. (Vol. ix., p. 324.). — The 

 perfect impossibility of deriving this word from 

 '{(TTTjfii is at once evident, on the following grounds : 

 1. To obtain the letter ir, recourse is had to the 

 compound form icplffrauai ; but where have we a 

 similar instance, in any derived word, of the e 

 in «r< being thus absorbed, and the ■* taken to 

 commence a fresh word? 2. Allowing such an 

 extraordinary process, what possible meaning of 



itpia-ranai can be adduced in the slightest degree 

 corresponding to the established interpretation of 



Throwing aside the termination -is, we obtain 

 the letters ttist-, which a very slight knowledge of 

 etymology enables us to trace back to Trei'0a> ; for 

 the stem of this verb is ni© (cf. Aor. 2. imdov), 

 and the formation of the adjective tt'kttos from ire- 

 ireto-T-ai is clearly analogous to that of the word in 

 question, the long syllable and diphthong « being 

 altered into the short and single letter i, to which, 

 many similar instances may be adduced. 4>. 



There is no doubt as to the derivation of v'ums 

 from ireiBw. Compare nvfjcms from kv6.o> or wfi6a>, 



irptaris Or irpi)(TTi$ from irpj}du>, irvffTis from irwdavo/j.ai. 



Verbs of this form introduce the a into the future 

 and other inflected tenses, as ireia-w, itevooixai. L. 



Author of " The Whole Duty of Man " (Vol. vi., 

 p. 537.). — It is asserted in the English Baronet- 

 age (vol. i. p. 398., 1741), on the authority of Sir 

 Herbert Perrot Pakington, Bart., in support of 

 the claim of Lady Pakington to the authorship, 

 " the manuscript, under her own hand, now remains 

 with the family." Can this MS. now be found ? 



B. H. C. 



Table-turning (Vol. ix., pp. 88. 135., &c). — In 

 turning over Sozomen's Ecclesiastical History, I 

 observed at b. vi. ch. 34. an account of the trans- 

 action already printed in your pages from Am- 

 mianus Marcellinus. It is in brief as follows : — 

 Certain philosophers who were opposed to Chris- 

 tianity were anxious to learn who should succeed 

 Valens in the empire. After trying all other 

 kinds of divination, they constructed a tripod (or 

 table with three legs : see Servius on Virgil, 

 2En. ni. 360.) of laurel wood, and by means of 

 certain incantations and formulas, succeeded (by 

 combining the letters which were indicated, one 

 by one, by a contrivance of some kind connected 

 with the table) in obtaining Th. E. O. D. Now, 

 being anxious and hopeful for one Theodorus to 

 succeed to the throne, they concluded that he was 

 meant. Valens, hearing of it, put him and them 

 to death, and many others whose names began 

 with these letters. 



On referring to Socrates, I find that he also 

 names the circumstances just alluded to. Al- 

 though he does not give all the particulars, he 

 adds one important statement, which serves to 

 identify the thing more closely with modern 

 table-moving and spirit-rapping. " The devil," 

 he says, "induced certain curious persons to prac- 

 tise divination, by calling up the spirits of the dead 

 (uiKvofiowTeMv -n-oL^a-aa-dai), in order to find out who 

 should reign after Valens." They succeeded in ob- 

 taining the letters Th. E. O. D. 



I observe a reference to Nicephorus, b. xi. 45., 

 but have not his works at hand to consult. 



