350
NOTES- AND QUERIES. [9 th s. vm. OCT. 26, 1901.
Cornwall is not mentioned in the Herald's
Visitation, two families of the name appear
in that of Devon, for which see Col. Vivian's
- Visitation of Devon.' Many fables are told
of Cornishmen. The Kev. Ezra Cleaveland, in his history of the Courtenays, says that one of the Carminows (a very ancient Cornish family) led a body of troops to oppose the landing of Julius Caesar, and the Rowe of Cornwall who followed the Black Prince to the Crusades lived only in imagination.
H. D.
LITTLE GIDDING : STOURBRIDGE FAIR (9 th S. viii. 204, 227, 332). The glories of Stur- bridge Fair were at their height in the Elizabethan days, when many came from far and wide to attend it for business or pleasure. It was a favourite resort of the Cambridge scholars, and it was while crossing in the ferry-boat to Chesterton, on the return from this fair, that a brawl arose, in which one of them was stabbed by Parish, a retainer of Roger, Lord North, at that time High Steward of the city of Cambridge. In Lord North's household accounts we find the following entries under " Things bowght at Sturbridg faier" :
A C salt fish.
2 Kettles, xiij.s. vjd.
a Jacke, ij.s 1 . ijcL
a frieng pane, \js. ijd.
hors meat, xvja.
20 Ib. raissins, vs.
20 Ib. Corants, vij-s 1 . vjd.
10 Ib. prewens, xxs.
Liiij Ib. gon Powder, Lviij.v. vjd. for 14 Ib.
Matches, iij.s. ixd.
Dogg Cowples, xxd.
10 Ib. Sugar, xii.s-. vjd.
Your correspondent will find some interest- ing references to Sturbridge Fair in Hey- wood and Wright's 'Cambridge University Transactions.' FRANCES BUSHBY.
Wormley Bury, Broxbourne.
Tradition assigns the first fair or market held at Sturbridge to the Roman period, but the right seems to have been regranted by King John to a hospital for lepers, which judging by the number of wealthy merchants and dealers who made it their principal mart must have benefited considerably by the grant. According to Defoe, who visited bturbridge in 1722, the fair was held in the month of September, and it was largely attended by woollen manufacturers, wool- buyers, and hop merchants. Pepys and Evelyn both allude to the fair in their diaries Harrison in | A Description of England ' (in Hohnshed's 'Chronicles'), says that Stur- bridge *air was not inferior to any of the European fairs. A much fuller reference
however, will be found in Defoe's 'Tour
through the Eastern Counties of England,'
1722, published by Messrs. Cassell & Co. in
their " National Library Series."
ALBERT GOUGH. Glandore Gardens, Antrim Road, Belfast.
The ' Portfolio of Origins and Inventions/ by William Pulleyn, revised and improved by Merton A. Thorns (London, William Tegg, 1861), p. 209, says, s.v. 'Stourbridge Fair':
" Fuller relates, Stourbridge Fair is so called from Stour, a little rivulet (on both sides whereof it is kept) on the east of Cambridge, whereof this original is reported. A clothier of Kendal, a town characterized to be laniftcii glorid ft industria prcecellens, casually wetting his cloth in water in his passage to London, exposed it there to sale on cheap terms, as the worse for wetting ; and yet, it seems, saved by the bargain. Next year he returned again, with some other of his townsmen, proffering drier and dearer cloth to be sold ; so that within a few years hither came a confluence of buyers, sellers, and lookers-on, which are the three prin- ciples of a fair. In memoria thereof, Kendal men challenge some privilege in that place, annually choosing one of the town to be chief, before whom an antic sword was carried, with some mirthful solemnities, disused of late, since these sad times, which put men's minds into more serious employ- ment. This was about 1417."
THOMAS J. JEAKES. Tower House, New Hampton.
THE TURVIN COINERS (9 th S. viii. 258, 298). Supplementary to or illustrative of F.'s interesting record I proffer the following :
"Saturday, April 28th, A.D. 1770. David Hartley and James Oldfield were convicted on the oath of James Crabtree and others, of Halifax, for impair- ing, diminishing, and lightening guineas. They were detected at Halifax, and died penitent, acknowledging the justice of the sentence passed upon them."' Criminal Chronology of York Castle,' p. 86.
GNOMON.
Temple.
In one of the earlier volumes of Household Words is a story, the title of which cannot be remembered, in which coining is intro- duced The scene is a large house, and the operations are conducted in secret. A gentle- man who has been kindly treated endeavours to penetrate the matter, and is seized upon and forcibly initiated into the mystery by being compelled to make a counterfeit coin. The nicknames of the coiners are said to be Young File, Old File, Mill, and Screw.
JOHN PICKFORD, M.A.
Newbourne Rectory, Woodbridge.
CHAPLAIN TO WILLIAM III. (9 th S. viii. 83, 154). I have a heraldic book-plate (Jacobean style) : Arms, a chevron oetween three cinquefoils pierced; crest, a lion's gamb
