380
NOTES AND QUERIES. [9* s. m. MAY 13, '99.
three-fourths of the book. There are 1,631 person:
bearing the name of Rigg, and 1,539 that of Satter
thwaite. As to Christian names, those which are
commonly denominated Puritan are almost entirely
absent ; yet here, if anywhere, we should hav
expected to find them in abundance, for Lancashir
was one of the most Puritan parts of Engla7id, th
only one indeed, we believe, wherein during the
Commonwealth the Presbyterian discipline was
fully established. We think if the names in this
register were compared with a similar number taken
without selection from a directory of the presen!
year more names derived from the Old Testament
would be found in the modern than in the ancienl
list. Balthazar, Bathsheba, Naamah, and Zurial
are the only ones which occur to us as markedly
strange. A child named Radagunga was bap-
tized on 18 Oct., 1618. The infant must have
derived its name in some way more or less remote
from St. Radegundis, the Thuringian princess who
became wife of Clotaire, King of Soissons. Perhaps
her mother or some other female ancestor was a
member of one of the German copper - mining
colonies which were settled in Keswick and the
neighbourhood in the sixteenth century. On
17 Nov., 1608, an infant was baptized " John which
God sent us." Presumably the little boy was a
foundling ; one wonders what name he bore when
he arrived at man's estate. Hawkshead suffered
terribly from the various visitations of the plague
which devastated the land in the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries. The editor prints in the
introduction some valuable statistics on this matter
which ought to be compared with what is known
relating to other parts of England.
In 1672 a man named Thomas Lancaster, seem- ingly a member of one of the old Hawkshead families, was convicted at Lancaster Assizes for poisoning eight persons, all of them his own family connexions. He was hanged and then gibbeted at a spot in the parish called Hye-wrey, adjoining his own home. Elderly people yet remember the stump of the gibbet still standing, but it has gone now. Fragments taken from this post are said to have formed a most excellent charm for the toothache. A curious mock court was held in the hamlet of Outgate in this parish not more than a generation ago. Its proceedings require investigation, if, indeed, anything beyond vague tradition has been preserved. The book is edited in a workmanlike manner, and the index of names is one of the most lucid we remember to have seen.
IN the Edinburgh Review for April there is a striking paper on ' The Origin of Diamonds.' Most people now know, though the statement when first advanced was received Math incredulity, that the diamond is a form of carbon ; but there are few who comprehend how it has come to take the form in which we see it. In fact, it is but in recent days that the processes from which it has resulted have been discovered. Now, however, it seems certain that the place
Where groweth the diamond stone is deep in the earth, and that it is formed under imniense pressure. Experiments in the laboratory, united with careful examination of the African diamond fields, have proved this almost to demon- stration. It is startling to be told that minute diamonds have been found in some aerolites. To what a wide field of cosmical speculation does this point the way ! The article on Sir Henry Wotton
is scholarlike and fair. The writer does not try to
elevate him above second-rate rank ; but his name
will always linger in the English memory on account
of a few good verses, and from the fact that he
made the memorable epigram which sets forth that
"an ambassador is an honest man, sent to lie
abroad for the good of his country." Though
evidently composed in English for otherwise the
point would have been lost it seems, when ren-
dered into Latin, to have been treated by dull
people as serious. Izaak Walton's life of Wotton
is, like all he wrote, very charming. The picture
is a pleasant one, and we cannot but think highly
of a man who numbered among his friends such a
diversity of intellect as is indicated by the very
names of Donne, Casaubon, De Dominis (the Bishop
of Spalato), and Bacon. Had Wotton devoted him-
self to letters only, he might have achieved wide
popularity. The writer makes him out as ambitious
This estimate we regard as a mistake. When he
accepted the legation to Venice, he seems to have
done so rather to place himself in a centre of art
and literature than for the purpose of acquiring
power in any vulgar sense. While he occupied the
post his work was discharged efficiently. It is
strange to modern ideas to find such a man giving
ear to a proposal for the assassination of the Lords
Tyrone ana Tyrconnel, and even justifying the
murder of the Duke of Guise. ' Roman Britain ' is
careful and accurate. If studied, it will modify
opinion in more than one direction; but it must
be obvious that so wide a subject cannot be effec-
tively dealt with in the narrow pages of a review.
May we not hope that some time in the near future
a self-denying person may be found who will give
the twentieth century a new 'Britannia Romana'?
ta
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