Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 6.djvu/505

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us. vi. NOV. 23, i9i2.] NOTES AND QUERIES.


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pamphlet which will appear on the subject next, and from which we shall give such extracts as will render the series of articles that have appeared in The Jfechanic's Magazine on the history and progress of this public work complete."

We may assume from this that either the editor prepared a series of articles on this subject, first publishing them as a pamphlet, or that they were offered him for his Maga- zine and he adopted a similar course. Three other names suggest themselves for this attribution of authorship : James Elmes, William Knight, Thomas Deakin. The last named is the least probable, but in 1832 he wrote to the Magazine, discussing the trans- verse settlement of the bridge. William Knight, F.S.A., of Canonbury, was the resident engineer, but his antiquarian taste should be more noticeable in the pamphlet. There is some analogy between his paper on the old bridge contributed to the Archceo- logia, the foot-notes to ' A Memoir of Old London Bridge ' in The Gentleman's Maga- zine (March, 1832 ; reissued as a pamphlet), and " Observer's " criticisms of the pam- phlet (vide p. 195, The Mechanic's Magazine, 1832). Of James Elmes' s qualifications it is not necessary to write, and much as I should like to attribute the authorship to Knight, there is greater probability that it was written by Elmes, then Surveyor to the Port of London.

Two other names occur, but neither has any great claims to consideration : George Allen, of 69, Tooley Street, who between 1828 and 1830 issued various plans and memorials in connexion with new bridge approaches from the south ; and Peter Jeffery, of 81, Cheapside, who in 1827 was almost equally industrious for the northern approaches. ALECK ABRAHAMS.

DENNY, DE DEENE, AND WINDSOR FAMI- LIES (10 S. xii. 424; 11 S. ii. 153, 274). The following are some fresh facts bearing upon this subject.

The first of these is very important evi- dence of the identity of the Denny and de Deene families. In a book of collections made by Thomas Starling in the time of Charles II., which is amongst the MSS. of Mr. Walter Rye, is pasted an old copy of the Denny pedigree compiled by Sir Matthew Carew about 1560, from information ob- tained from a monk named Denny at the Abbey of St. Denis, near Paris (incomplete, however, as the monk died before fulfilling is promise to furnish a full copy of his

old written Parchment Booke "), and from own collections.


At the foot of this pedigree is a drawing of the arms, a fesse dancettee, and in chief three crescents (the de Deene coat), with a casual note (the importance of the point evidently not having been guessed at) that this was the Denny s' bearing before the coat of crosses (the Windsor arms).

The heiress of the de Deenes of Deene, Northants, married a Tindall, whose de- scendants assumed the de Deene arms (as above) and the crest (sometimes described as " Denny ") a plume of five ostrich feathers issuing from a ducal coronet. But later on we find some of the Tindalls bearing the coat altered (no doubt for cadency) to a fesse dancettee. and in chief a martlet between two crescents very similar to the Dennys' second quartering.

It is stated that one of the de Deenes, dying in the French campaign of Henry V., desired that his body should be conveyed to the Abbey of St. Denis, whom he had chosen for his patron saint. He would be almost certainly identical with " John Denny, Esquire," slain in the French wars about 1420, and buried at St. Denis.

Sir Edmond Denny, Baron of the Ex- chequer, is described in a letter of one of the Excheqxier officials, 10 Nov., 1500, as " Mr. Deene." H. L. L. D.

THE QUEEN OF TAHITI'S FEATHER ROBE : THE SOLEMN LEAGUE AND COVENANT IN BEL- FAST (US. vi. 210, 315). In reply to FOUR SCORE YEARS AND TEN I am happy to be able to report that the copy of the Solemn League and Covenant that he refers to as having been in the old museum of which Mr. R. M. Young, M.R.I. A., was Hon. Secretary until its transference to the Belfast Corporation a few years ago, is still intact, and, let us hope, in as good a state of preservation as when it was first seen by your correspondent. The title- page is naturally somewhat worn and darkened with age, and the signatures of those who " declared " at Holywood, then a village a few miles from Belfast, are dim and partly illegible. Perhaps it should be explained that the famous declaration was printed in pamphlet form in Edinburgh, and blank pages were added for the signa- tures, of which there are about sixty. Those still decipherable include these names : John Wright, Thomas Reid, Thomas Baillie, Alexander Wadell, John McCormick, John Waugh, John Scott, John McBride, James Fairlie, Thomas Russel, Johnr Pentland, Alexander Gillespie, John Ma tin, James Webster, John McClelland. The first name