404
NOTES AND QUERIES. [9* s. vn. MAY 25, 1901.
as MR. RTTTTON has pointed out, the^north-
east corner of Hyde Park was, two hundrec
and fifty years ago, called Tyburn Meadow
that St. George's Burying-Ground was estab
lished at the west end of Tyburn Field
and that finally Bayard's Watering Place,
the modern Bayswater, was declared by an
eighteenth - century Act of Parliament to
be " parcel of the Manor of Tyburn.'
The conclusion irresistibly forces itself, at
any rate on my mind, that the nucleus
of the manor was situated near the Marble
Arch. I cannot accept the argument that
the name "Tyburn" was a movable one,
which was bestowed on whatever site the
gallows occupied. When the "fatal tree'
was removed from Smithfield, that name, a
much more common one than Tyburn, did
not follow it in its wanderings. It seems to
me, with deference to many learned and
able topographers, that a readiness to adopt
the often baseless theories of our predecessors
is simply due to a disinclination to hunt out
facts for ourselves.
In conclusion, I will only advert to one more point in MR. LOFTIE'S paper, in which I regret to find myself at issue with that gentle- man. MR. LOFTIE says, "Tyburn, at the time of the Domesday Survey, was a manor which extended from Rugmere, now Blooms- bury, westward to the brook of Tyburn." Putting aside the fact that Domesday no- where defines the boundaries of Tyburn manor, I would ask MR. LOFTIE on what evidence he identifies Rugmere with Blooms- bury. Rugmere, to begin with, was in the parish of St. Pancras, while Bloomsbury was in that of St. Giles of the Lepers. I would venture to invite the attention of MR. LOFTIE to a note on 'The Prebendal Manor of Rugmere ' which I contributed to St. Pancras Notes and Queries for 2 March, 1900. From certain data, which chiefly consisted in the survival of the name in comparatively recent times, I made the deduction that the old manor of Rugmere occupied that portion of the parish of St. Pancras which lies between the boundary of the parish of St. Maryle- bone on the west, the Hampstead Road and High Street, Camden Town, on the east, the old highway between Paddington and Isling- ton on the south, and the Chalk Farm boundary of Hampstead parish on the north. As we learn from Domesday that it possessed "nemus ad sepes," it was probably an out- lying portion of the great forest of Middlesex. W. F. PRIDEAUX.
NEPTUNE AND CROSSING THE LINE. I have
always understood that the quaint custom at
sea known as the visit of Neptune, and the
disagreeable adjunct of "shaving" by the
sailors practised (unless a fine be paid as
commutation) upon those who have never
crossed the line, took place at the equator,
arid this is confirmed by the recent account
of the visit to the Ophir when passing from
the northern into the southern hemisphere. I
was therefore surprised to read, in a 'Journal
of a Tour in Unsettled Parts of North America
in 1796 and 1797,' by Francis Baily (the " Philo-
sopher of Newbury," who in later life greatly
distinguished himself in astronomy), pub-
lished' in 1856, long after the author's death
in 1844, that the ceremony seems formerly to
have been carried out on entering the torrid
zone. Baily (then in the twenty-second year
of his age) started on his voyage on 21 October,
1795, intending to land at New York, but in
consequence of a tremendous gale as the ship
was approaching the American coast, they
were driven out to sea, and, after failing to
land on the Bermudas, had at last (the ship
being almost a wreck) to make for the West
Indies, and succeeded in reaching Antigua
on 27 December, where Baily remained until
24 January, 1796, and, after a more prosperous
voyage than his first, arrived at Norfolk, on
the coast of Virginia, on the 14th of the
following month. It was on the way to
Antigua that they crossed the tropic of
Cancer on Christmas Day, 1795; and "here
it was," says Baily (p. 84),
u that Old Neptune, as is usual in such cases, came aboard and demanded a sight of those who had not entered the sanctum sanctorum before. We were I accordingly all drawn up, and he soon signalized those who had never yet crossed the line, and, having exacted his fine, departed. In case of non- compliance we should have been punished agreeably bo the manner prescribed in such cases, and which is called shaving : it is this : the sailors place you on a stick over a large tub of water, and, at a signal given, the stick is knocked from under, and you fall backwards into the tub over your head and ears in water ; when you raise your head it is immediately smeared over with pitch and tar and all the filth they can gather about the ship, and if
- hey can introduce any into your mouth, they will
5e so much the more satisfied and delighted." [t will be noticed that in the above quotation Baily calls the tropic of Cancer "the line," which I believe in nautical language now always signifies the equator. I should like
- o know when the " shaving " was transferred
Tom one locality to the other.
W. T. LYNN.
THE MAYFLOWER AND THE NATIONAL FLAG. It having been stated that the Mayflower "s represented in the fresco in the Lords' jorridor at St. Stephen's as flying the present union flag, I have climbed up to see; and
