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NOTES AND QUERIES. [io* s. 11. NOV. 12, 190*.
was more serious, they were frequently infested by
highwaymen, so that there was a constant dread
of the treasure being carried off; and when this
danger was avoided, the vessels were not un-
commonly battered out of shape through the lum-
bering of the carriers' waggons in which they made
the journey. This must have been a very serious
injury to what had in the middle of the eighteenth
century become an important industry. The evi-
dence given to the Parliamentary Committee,
before the passing of the Birmingham Assay Act,
shows that there were at that time upwards of
forty master-workers who wrought in gold and
silver, besides a number of persons engaged in
allied trades, such as engravers, chasers, enamellers,
- and designers. Mr. Westwood mentions incident-
ally a fact of which we were before unaware. It appears that the silver worked up in Birmingham was in a great measure the produce of the lead- smelting works of Flintshire. Boulton & Fothergill were probably the most important firm which worked in silver at the time of the passing of the Act. Whether this be so or not, they are by far the best known now, on account of the mint they established. At the end of the eighteenth century great inconvenience was caused by the scarcity of copper money, so this firm was employed by the Government to supply the want. In 1797 its two- penny pieces and pennies were issued, and so ex- cellent was the work that some time after it was instructed to erect the coining machinery for the Mint in London, and so well was it adapted to its purpose, that we learn from Mr. Westwood it continued in use until quite modern times. The firm employed for its private work several medalists of note, among whom were some of the earlier members of the Wyon family, with whose works we are most of us familiar.
The paper by Col. Charles J. Hart, on 'The Antiquity of Wrought Iron in Britain,' is a valuable contribution to the archaeology of a subject which has not received the attention it deserves. The ages of stone and bronze are comparatively well known, but the iron age, which forms, as it were, a boundary line between the historic period and the ages that lie beyond, is much less familiar, because objects formed of iron, when buried in the earth, suffer almost always from corrosion to such a degree that it is often impossible to make out for what they were intended. We wish, though it does not strictly belong to his subject, that Col. Hart had given his readers an account of what in the Middle Ages and down to some period in the eighteenth century went by the name of osinund. It is, we need not say, correctly explained in the 'H.E.D.' as "a superior quality of iron formerly imported from the Baltic regions in very small bars or rods, for the manufacture of arrow-heads, fish- hooks, bell gear, &c." ; but most of the earlier works of reference gloss it wrongly or imperfectly, and several annotators of old documents have fallen into similar errors.
Mr. John Humphreys has contributed an article on ' Chaddesley Corbett and the Roman Catholic Persecution in Worcestershire in connection with the Titus Gates Plot,' containing much information. He gives engravings of several interesting old houses, in one of which a priest's hiding-place is still preserved. It is pleasant to find a paper on this painful subject so entirely free from passion or prejudice.
Mr. Howard S. Pearson has given an account of
j Alkerton Church, with a reproduction of its inter-
esting external sculptures.
No. III. of New Shakespeariana, a quarterly pub- lication issued by the New Shakespeare Society of New York, has portraits of the president of that society, Dr. Appleton Morgan, and of its honorary librarian, Mr. Edward Merton Dey, whose contri- butions to our columns on Shakespearian subjects have attracted and rewarded much attention. The letterpress opens with a thoughtful and erudite article by Mr. W. J. Lawrence upon ' Plays within Plays.' Quite worthy is this of the place of honour assigned it. Mr. Ashhurst is antagonistic to the views concerning Bacon in France which extorted the admiration of Mr. Mallock and Dr. Platt. The publication appeals strongly to all Shakespearian students, to most of whom doubtless it is known.
THE first edition of Shakespeare ever printed,
bound, and issued from the poet's birthplace will
shortly be given to the world by Mr. A. H. Bullen.
It is being printed in the house of Shakespeare's
friend Julius Shaw, in ten volumes, in an edition cle
luxe, with special paper and type. Each volume
will have a frontispiece. For the text, which will
make very guarded use of conjectural emendations,
that ripe and excellent scholar Mr. Bullen will be
responsible. Vol. i. will be issued to subscribers
during November. The work, which appears from
the Shakespeare Head Press, Stratford-on-Avon,
will be called " The Stratford Town Shakespeare."
10
We must call special attention to the following notices :
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WE cannot undertake to answer queries privately.
To secure insertion of communications corre- spondents must observe the following rules. Let each note, query, or reply be written on a separate slip of paper, with the signature of the writer and such address as he wishes to appear. When answer- ing queries, or making notes with regard to previous entries in the paper, contributors are requested to put in parentheses, immediately after the exact heading, the series, volume, and page or pages to which they refer. Correspondents who repeat queries are requested to head the second com- munication " Duplicate."
H. E. B. ("Heiress of the Stuarts"). See 'The Legitimist Kalendar' of the Marquis de Ruvigny and Raineval, 1899.
H. G. HOPE ("Napoleon's Horse Marengo"). Several contributions on the fate of this animal appeared at 9 th S. viii. 271, 312. NOTICE.
Editorial communications should be addressed to "The Editor of 'Notes and Queries ' "Adver- tisements and Business Letters to "The Pub- lisher" at the Office, Bream's Buildings, Chancery Lane, B.C.
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