Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 9.djvu/282

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NOTES AND QUERIES. [iis.ix. APRIL 4,1914.


PASSES TO THE LONDON PARKS (11 S. ix. 229). MR. JERNINGHAM says that he " can- not find that there was any period when no one could enter [the London parks] except those who had passes." Apparently there w*s a time during Cromwell's Protectorate when admission to Hyde Park was obtained by payment. In his edition of the ' Letters of Dorothy Osborne,' Judge Parry, in the remarks prefixed to Letter 65 (p. 242 of the new " Wayfarers' Library " edition), refers to one of Somers's Tracts, entitled ' A Character of England as it was lately Repre- sented in a Letter to a Nobleman of France, 1659 ' :

" The Frenchman by whom the letter is written [says the Judge], probably an English satirist in disguise, gives us such a graphic account of the

Parks before the Restoration that 1 have no

hesitation in quoting it at length : ' I did frequently in the spring accompany my Lord N. into a field near the town which they call Hyde Park the place not unpleasant, and which they use as our " Course," but with nothing that order, equipage, and splendour ; being such an assembly of wretched jades and hackney coaches, as, next to a regiment of car-men, there is nothing approaches the resemblance. The Park was, it seems, used by the late King and nobility for the freshness of the air and the goodly prospect, but it is that which now (besides all other exercises) they pay for here in England, though it be free in all the world beside ; every coach and horse which enters buying his mouthful and permission of the publican who has pur- chased it, for which the^ entrance is guarded with porters and long staves.' "

G. L. APPERSON.

JEREMIAH HORROCKS, ASTRONOMER, D. 1641 (US. ix. 187). I do not know of any authentic portrait of Jeremiah Horrocks. There is a painting in the Walker Art Gallery at Liverpool, ' The Founder of English Astronomy,' by Eyre Crowe. It was reproduced in ' England's History Famous Painters,' by A. G. Temple, pub- lished in 1895, and also in The Windsor Magazine about Oct., 1907. Horrocks is commemorated on a panel in Emmanuel College Chapel, Cambridge, and on tablets in Westminster Abbey, and the church of St. Michael-in-the-Hamlet, Liverpool.

THOS. WHITE.

BIRMINGHAM STATUES AND MEMORIALS (US. ix. 202, 257). I have, unfortunately, mislaid my notes, so cannot quote my autho- ritv, but believe I am correct in stating that the " long-lost statue of Edward VI." which " stood in the centre of the fapade of the tower of the Grammar School in New Street, erected in 1707," is to be attributed to Sir William Wilson, who designed, the tower,


nave, aisles, and transepts of the church of St. Mary at Warwick, completed in 1704. Sir William Wilson was also responsible for the statue of King Charles II. which, prior to restoration, adorned, or disfigured, the west front of Lichfield Cathedral.

S. J. H. PARKES.

COFFIN-SHAPED CHAPELS (11 S. ix. 51, 114, 213). I regret my mistake in Girard's name, but I wrote from a memory of thirty years. At that time the chapel in question was one of the objects of interest shown to strangers in Philadelphia. The priest who showed it me alluded specially to the fact that Girard had free-thinking tendencies, and yet was buried in a vault under the chapel. Your corre- spondent from Philadelphia can, however, easily ascertain whether such is really the case. FREDERICK T. HIBGAME.

23, Unthank Road, Norwich.

TYING LEGS AFTER DEATH : FUNERAL CUSTOMS (11 S. ix. 128, 196, 236). When quartered at Winchester in 1858, I saw a market gardener tell the bees of a death to- prevent them from leaving. He tapped each hive with the doorkey of the dead person. See also John Greenleaf Whittier's poem ' Telling the Bees.'

II. A. ST. J. M.

FORMS OF THE NAME JAMES (11 S. ix. 151,. 213). A full history of this Christian name with its many variants appears in an admirable article by Miss Charlotte Yonge in her two -volume * History of Christian Names.' JAS. CURTIS, F.S.A.

"BILLION," "TRILLION," &c. (11 S. ix. 228). The earliest known instance of these numerals in French has been found, and is due to the French mathematician Nicolas Chuquet, who wrote a treatise on algebra, under the title ' Triparty/ at Lyons, c. 1484. The MS. of this work was rediscovered in the Paris Bibliotheque Nationale, and brought to light by Marre in 1880. In thi& treatise the numeral " Byllion " was first used by Nicolas Chuquet to denote, not a million of millions, but only 1,000 millions. A later example of " trillion " in French occurs in ]5t. de la Roche's ' Arithm.' of 1520, and is quoted by Hatzfeld, Darme- steter, and Thomas: "Un trillion vault mille milliers de billions."

Aristide Marre' s edition of Nicolas Chu- quet's ' Triparty ' first appeared in the Bulletino di Storia delle Scienze Mate- matiche, Rome, 1880, followed by his-