10* s. V.MAY 5, 1906.] NOTES AND QUERIES.
351
PORTMAN FAMILY (10 th S. v. 48, 150, 17*
198, 217, 272). I agree with MR. RUTTON i
dismissing the "Men of the Gate " as a moder
invention. In Anglo-Saxon days a pot
signified a market-town, of which the chie
fiscal and magisterial authority was th
port-gerefa, or portreeve, while the portma
was merely an ordinary burgess. Those wh
are interested in the matter may refer t
Mr. J. H. Round's valuable articles on * Port
and Portreeves' in the fifth and sixt
volumes of The Antiquarian Magazine. A
regards the word "Portman," Mr. Rounc
refers to Gomme's 'Index of Municipa
Offices,' p. 66, and he adds in a note :
" I am indebted to my friend, Mr. York Powell for an interesting reference to a Scandinavian poem by Olaf's poet, on the sack of Canterbury unde ^Ethelroed ('The Unready'), in which it is boastec that 'many a sorrow 'befel the proud pcertom ('Corpus Poeticum Boreale,' ii. 126), that is to say the ' portmen ' (burgenses). Also, for the fact tha 'portman ' (Mid. E.) waaadopted into Welsh in the sense of a merchant, but later sank to the sense o: a pedlar" (o.c., v. 283, note).
As regards this latter statement, it may be pointed out that the portreeve, as the chiei official of a mercantile town, was in close relations with the trading community. Stubbs (* Constitutional History,' ed. 1875, i. 404) shows that the portreeve of Canter- bury was connected with the "ceapmanne gild,"^ and that the same was probably the case in London. (See also ibid , i. p. 416, note.) At Leicester, and probably in other trading towns, the burgesses had their " portman mote"; while at Ipswich the "portmen" survived at least as late as the time of Henry VIII., when they gave a lease of the meadow called "Portman" Medue, otherwise called "Odynholme " j and in 14 James I. we read of a mortgage on the Portmen's Meadow (Ninth Report Hist. MSS. Comm., Part I. Appendix, pp. 235b, 256b). Whether the name of this meadow still survives I cannot say. The name of Portman is therefore of the same nature as those of Burgess, Merchant, Marchant, or Pedler, which are not uncommon at the present day, and the family seems to have belonged to the class of minores yentes until it attained a "county" position through some fortunate marriages. But the same remark is equally applicable to the Howards. W. F. PRIDEAUX.
The following derivation of this surname, from Mark Antony Lower's 'Patronymica Britannica,' has been sent me by a friend :
" Portman ; A civic officer with duties similar to those of a modern mayor. The courts of this functionary were formerly called 'portmanmi-
motes.' Portreeve is synonymous. The family
of this name in Somerset appear to have been
eminent so early as the reign of Edward I."
K. T.
BALLAD BY REGINALD HEBER : W. CRANE (10 th S. v. 184, 253). I shall be glad if MR. WALTER CRANE can supplement the infor- mation given at the latter reference. lam desirous of tracing the connexions of three brothers, Thomas, Samuel, and Joseph Crane, all of Chester. Samuel was a bookseller who, in 1775, commenced business in Liverpool. In 1777 he married a Miss Glass. In 1786 he, in conjunction with his brothers, Thomas and Joseph, who were grocers and manu- facturers of stoae and Prussian blue in Chester, opened a bank in Liverpool. It was not a success, failing in 1788. The book- selling business was continued by Samuel Crane until 1796. Between that date and 1800 no Liverpool directory was issued, and in the latter year the name of Crane has disappeared.
From the 'D.N.B.' I find that the father of the Thomas Crane who was born in 1808 was a bookseller in Chester. Mr. Walter Crane's note mentions that his grandfather's name was also Thomas.
What I wish to learn is : (1) What con- nexion, if any, there was between the
- rio of brothers and the members of MR.
WALTER CRANE'S family ; (2) if Crane Street, Chester, is named after any member of either family. There are no old directories n the public library at Chester to enable a searcher to find clues. J. H. K.
COPYING LETTERS (10 th S. v. 287). Samuel lartlib was acquainted with the process. In Evelyn's 'Diary' (27 Nov., 1655) we read: 4 He [Hartlib] told me of an ink that would
- ive a dozen copies, moist sheets of paper
>eing pressed upon it, and remain perfect."
Knowledge of the invention must have lied out entirely, for at the date of Watt's mtent, 1780, so far as I am aware, there was 10 suggestion that the process was in use, r even known. This patent was for the rocess, not merely for the press.
RHYS JENKINS.
PROVINCIAL BOOKSELLERS (10 th S. v. 141, 83, 242, 297). MR. SOTHERAN is mistaken.
did not leave out his ancestors. I found o pamphlet bearing their names in the pllection upon which my list is founded.
- ut I said that copious additions might be
made from the many local bibliographies ; nd Davies's 'York Press,' 1868, mentions everal members of the Sotheran family, the arliest date being 1768. Forty-five years
