So 
THE ESSEX NATURALIST. 
as the best, or only, known member of the family. I am glad 
to be able, after the lapse of. nearly a century, to render this 
tardy justice to Benjamin's memory. 
Benjamin never married ; he seems to have been of a retiring 
disposition, living his life in the then rural surroundings of 
Walthamstow, content to pass his leisure time in collecting and 
arranging his loved specimens, less obsessed by the claims of 
business life than either of his two brothers, the successful mer¬ 
chant of Threadneedle Street, and the opulent banker of Mansion- 
house-street ; though it may be presumed that he too had his 
part to play in the conduct of the merchant house of Edward 
Forster and Sons, of 38, Threadneedle Street, and later of 6, 
St. Helen’s Place. 
After Edward Forster’s death in 1849, the book not impro- * 
bably was acquired by William Pamplin, who had it rebound 
and at the same time inserted his own blue-paper observation 
as to the Daffodils : but there is no actual evidence as to this. 
In June, 1863, it came into the possession of the Rev. Tullie 
Cornthwaite, M.A., of Walthamstow, whose few marginal notes, 
of no special botanical value, written in a neat angular sloping 
hand, are easily distinguishable from Benjamin Forster’s irregular 
script. 
The Rev. Tullie Cornthwaite was vicar of the new district 
church of St. Peter-on-the-Forest, Walthamstow, in 1848, and 
resided on the Forest, facing the Snaresbrook Road, in the house 
now known as “ Oakhurst.” Fie was a benefactor to Waltham¬ 
stow in that he set up an iron pump on the Forest for the use 
of the inhabitants, at the corner of College Place, just outside 
his own residence, the broken base of which may still be seen : 
the much worn stone landing before the Pump is a mute testi¬ 
mony to its usefulness at a time when no public water supply 
was in being. Cornthwaite survived until 1878, and lies buried 
in St. Peter’s Churchyard. 
Tullie Cornthwaite presented the volume, about 1872, to 
Henry Ford Barclay, 5 whose autograph, like that of Cornthwaite, 
appears on the flyleaf. 
Its subsequent history is simple. Henry Ford Barclay died 
on November 12, 1891, and, fifteen months later, on February 
5Henry Ford Barclay, D.L., J.P., of “Grove House,” Grove Lane, and afterwards of “The 
Limes,” Shernhall Street, Walthamstow, and later of “ Monkhams, *' Woodford Green, a member 
of the Epping Forest Commission of 1871 and a Verderer of the Forest. 
