Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 2.djvu/111

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ii s. VIIL AUG. 9, 1913.] NOTES AND QUERIES.


105

One entered at 4, York Street, and passed through the front part to the roofed-in back part, which was lighted by skylights. From there a few wooden steps led up to the ground floor of the De Quincey building. On the first floor were two small rooms, one much smaller than the other. The larger room was said to be the 'Confessions' room. The whole front of the fireplace was movable, and at the back of it was a very small hiding-place. The underground, vaulted passage already mentioned was reached from the ground floor of the De Quincey building. A door on the first floor opened on to the leads of the roofed-in back part of No. 4. The whole of the back part, including the De Quincey building, was pulled down later, and the vaulted, underground passage taken away to make room for the basement of the new building then erected.

OLDHAM ELECTION, 1832, AND JOHN BRIGHT. (See US. vii. 519.) The author of ' The Life and Letters of William Cobbett ' has made a rather curious error in stating that John Bright was a candidate for Oldham in 1832, when he was just 21 years old. The candidate who has been mistaken for his better-known namesake was, according to

  • The Parliamentary Poll Book,' B. Hey-

wood Bright. John Bright does not appear to have contested a Parliamentary election until 5 April, 1843, when he was defeated at Durham. On 26 July of the same year he was returned on the unseating of his oppo- nent. F. W. READ.

DRAGONBY : A NEW PLACE-NAME. The following note by J. C. H. in The Yorkshire Weekly Post, 28 June, 1913, is worth pre- servation in the pages of ' N. & Q.' :

" The erection of some new ironworks in an outlying part of the parish of Roxby-cum-Risby, North Lincolnshire, has led to the building of a considerable number of houses for the iron- workers, all of which have been built within the last eighteen months, and so will not be recorded in the Census of 1911. A new hamlet, therefore, has arisen, and has been named Dragonby, on account of the peculiar geological formation of the ground, which ' consists of a mass of calcareous tufa deposited by a petrifying spring trickling out of the limestone rocks,' whilst on the rock side there appears a monster resembling a dragon in shape, hence the Dragonby. The site of the new hamlet has for many years been called ' Sunken Church ' field, owing to a tradition of a church, belonging to one of the monasteries, having been buried by a landslip."

The sunken church is referred to in ' The Diary of Abraham de la Pryme,' 1696 (Sur- tees Society, liv. 106). F. H. C.


" FELIX QUEM FACITJNT ALIEN A PERICTJLA-

CAUTUM." (See 11 S. vii. 146.) There is a still earlier instance of this metrical proverb- than that given at the above reference. See- Luard's edition . of ' Matthaei Parisiensis, Monachi Sancti Albani, Chronica Majora,' Rolls Series, iii. 260, where, under A.D. 1233, Paris inserts the following quotations ii> Roger of Wendover's Chronicle :

" Rumor do veteri faciet ventura timeri t

Cras poterunt fieri turpia sicut heri. Et alius sapiens :

Felix quern faciunt aliena pericula cautuni,' r EDWARD BENSLY^

SOUTHEY'S QUARTER - BOYS. It may in- terest your readers to know that the quarter - boys of Christ Church, Broad Street, Bristol r have been restored to their old use. They are armoured warriors with battleaxes, and were made by James Paty in 1728. They were on the former church tower until it was demolished in 1786, to be succeeded by the present building, at the laying of whose foundation-stone Southey was present with his father, a churchwarden, who carried on. business in Wine Street close by. Writing to his friend Bedford on 6 March, 1806, Southey thus refers to the quarter -boys at the Christ Church of his boyhood :

" There were quarter-boys to this old churchi clock, as at St. Dunstan, and I have many a time stopt with my satchel on my back to see them strike. Jjfl father had a great love for these poor quarter-boys, who had regulated all his move- ments for about twenty years ; and when the church was rebuilt, offered to subscribe largely to> their re-establishment ; but the Wine Streetera- had no taste for the arts, and no feeling for old friends, and God knows what became of the poor fellows."

Recently they passed by bequest of the late Mr. W. J. Braikenbridge into the pos- session of the Corporation, who have lent them in perpetuity to Christ Church, where a new clock to work them has been erected. The clock and quarter - boys were dedicated on Saturday, 28 June, and the Lord Mayor started them.

It is stated that there were figures outside- Christ Church quite 400 years ago, and that the first building on the site was probably a Saxon church. CHARLES WELLS*

134, Cromwell Road, Bristol.

" SUPERSUBSTANTIAL." Whitney's ' Cen- tury Dictionary ' defines this adjective and its Low -Latin prototype supersub- stantiaUs, sc. panis, as an imperfect trans- lation of Gr. 7riovo-tos, sc. apros, bread " sufficient for the day " or " for the coming day " (" daily bread "), cf. Matt. vi. 1 1. But