Volume 4 — Notes.

LADY HOPTON.

I have thought that the following old letter, relative to a family once of some distinction, and especially as describing a very remarkable individual, from whom a multitude of living persons are immediately descended, might be of sufficient interest to occupy a place in "NOTES AND QUERIES." It has never, that I am aware of, been published; but it has long been preserved, amongst similar papers, with the accompanying endorsement:—"Though Mr. Ernle's letter relating to Lady Hopton and her family contains some fabulous accounts, and is in some parts a little unintelligible, yet it may be urged in confirmation of the truth of the several descents therein mentioned. He was the son of Sir John Ernle, and could not but have some general knowledge of his grandmother's relations."

This Mr. Ernle, afterwards knighted, died A.D. 1686.

Sir Arthur Hopton lived at Witham Friary, co. Somerset, and the heroine of this document was, according to the pedigree in Sir R. C. Hoare's Monastic Remains of Witham, &c., Rachel, daughter of Edmund Hall of Gretford, co. Lincoln, Esq. The date of Sir Arthur's death is not there given, but he was made a K.B. in 1603.

C. W. B.

"I will give you as good an account as I can remember of our wise & good Grandmother Hopton, who I think was one Hall's daughter of Devonshire without title, & had an elder brother, without child, who said to his younger brother's wife, who was then with child, if she would come to his house, & lie in, he would give his estate to it if a daughter, & if a son it should fare never the worse: so she had my grandmother, & he bred her up & married her to Sir Arthur Hopton of Somerset: who had 4000 a year, & she as much.

"By him she had 18 children; 10 daughters married; whose names were: Lady Bacon, Lady Smith, Lady Morton, Lady Bannister, & Lady Fettiplace; Bingham, Baskett, Cole, Thomas, & my Grandmother Ernle; these daughters & their children have made a numerous company of relations. The duke of Richmond & Lord Maynard married our Aunt Bannister's daughters & heirs (one to Rogers, the other to Bannister).[1] Fettiplace, which was also Lord Jones, his daughter & heiress married Lord Lumley, now Scarbro.

"Cole's heir to Popham of Wilts: & Hungerford, & Warnford married Jones, & some Mackworth, & Wyndham in Wales; some Morgan, & Cammish, & Kern, with many others that I have forgot. The sons were Mr Robt Hopton, Sir Thomas, Sir Arthur. Robt had one son, wch was the Lord Hopton of great worth, who married the Lord Lewen's widow, and had no child: so the estate went to the daughters. But our Grandfather Hopton, having so good an estate, thought he might live as high as he pleased, & not run out: but one day he was going from home but cd not, but told his Lady she wd be left in great trouble, for the great debts he had made on his estate; & that he knew he should live but few days, & cd not die in peace, to think what affliction he should leave her in: so she desired him to be no way concerned for his debts, for he owed not a penny to any one. So he died of a gangrene in his toe in a few days. Now she had set up an Iron-work, & paid all he owed, unknown to him. And she married all her daughters to great estates, & great families: her eldest, I think, to one Smith, who was a younger son, & went factor to a merchant into Spain; he had a very severe master & was very melancholy & walked one morning in Spain intending to go & sell himself a galley-slave to the Turks: but an old man met him, & asked him why he was so melancholy; bid him cheer up himself, & not go about what he intended, for his elder brother was dead, letters were coming to him to return home to his estate; bid him consider & believe what he said, & that when he went for England, the first house he entered, after this landing, he would marry the gentleman's eldest daughter: which he did. The Lady Hopton's way of living was very great: she had 100 in her family; all sorts of trades; and when good servants married she kept the families, & bred them up to several trades. She rose at six of the Clock herself: went to the Iron-work, & came in about 9; went with all her family to prayers, & after dinner she & her children & grand-children went to their several works with her in the dining-room, where she spun the finest sheets that are. Every year she had all her children & grandchildren met together at her house; & before they went away, would know if any little or great animosities were between any of them; if so, she would never let them go, till they were reconciled."

NOTES ON NEWSPAPERS—THE TIMES.

There were sold of The Times of Tuesday, Feb. 10th, 1840, containing an account of the Royal nuptials, 30,000 copies, and the following curious calculations were afterwards made respecting this publication. The length of a column of The Times is twenty-two inches. If every copy of The Times then printed could be cut into forty-eight single columns, and if those forty-eight columns were tacked to each other, they would extend 494 miles and 1,593 yards. To give some idea of the extent of that distance, it may be sufficient to say that one of the wheels of the mail which runs from Falmouth to London, and again from London to Easingwold, a small town twelve miles beyond York, might run all the way on the letter-press so printed, except the last 167 yards. The same extent of letter-press would reach from London to Paris, and back again from Paris to Canterbury, and a little further. The 30,000 papers, if opened out and joined together, would cover a length of twenty-two miles and 1,280 yards; or, in other words, would reach from The Times office, in Printing-house Square, to the entrance hall in Windsor Castle, leaving a few yards for stair carpets. It is recorded that 20,000 copies were in the hands of the newsmen at eight o'clock in the morning. Since 1840, the circulation of The Times has greatly increased; and what was then deemed wonderful on an extraordinary occasion, is now exceeded daily by 8,000 copies—the present daily circulation being about 38,000 copies, which are worked by greatly improved machinery at the rate of between 8,000 to 10,000 per hour. On the 2nd of last May, The Times containing an account of the opening of the Great Exhibition by the Queen, circulated to the enormous number of 52,000 copies, the largest number ever known of one daily newspaper publication. Nothing can illustrate more forcibly than these statements the great utility of the machinery employed in multiplying with so miraculous a rapidity such an immense number of copies. When we look at the great talent—the extensive arrangement—the vast amount of information on a variety of topics—the immense circulation—the rapidity with which it is thrown off, and the correctness of the details of The Times paper—we are constrained to pronounce it the most marvellous political journal the world has ever seen. What would our forefathers have said to this wonderful broadsheet, which conveys information of the world's movements to the teeming population of the United Kingdom, and also to the people of other and distant climes.

H. M. BEALBY.

North Brixton.

FOLK LORE.

Devonshire Superstitions.

—Days of the week:

Tuesday and Wednesday are lucky days.

Thursday has one lucky hour, viz. the hour before the sun rises.

Friday is unlucky.

It is very unlucky to turn a featherbed on a Sunday; my housemaid says she would not turn my bed on a Sunday on any account.

My informant cannot recollect the consequences of sneezing on Wednesday and Thursday.

If you sneeze on a Saturday night after the candle is lighted, you will next week see a stranger you never saw before.

A new moon seen over the right shoulder is lucky, over the left shoulder unlucky, and straight before prognosticates good luck to the end of the moon.

Hair and nails should always be cut during the waning of the moon.

Whatever you think of when you see a star shooting, you are sure to have.

When you first see the new moon in the new year, take your stocking off from one foot, and run to the next style; when you get there, between the great toe and the next, you will find a hair, which will be the colour of your lover's.

When you first see the new moon after mid-summer, go to a stile, turn your back to it, and say,—

To see a Lover in a Dream.

—Pluck yarrow from a young man's grave, saying as you do so—

Sleep with the yarrow under the pillow.

J. M. (4)

Some time ago I was in the neighbourhood of Camelford (a small town in Cornwall), and inquiring the name of a church I saw in the distance, was told that its name was Advent, though it was generally called Saint Teen. Now Teen in Cornish = to light. Can this name have been applied from any peculiar ceremonies observed here during Advent?

J. M. (4)

Minor Notes.

Curious Inscription.

—I obtained the following inscription from a person in the country, and you wish to make a "note" of it, it is perfectly at your service. The arrangement of the letters is curious.

"Bene.

At. ht Hiss to

Ne LI esca Theri

Neg —— Ray. C. Hanged.

F ..... Roma bvs. y. L.

if et oli .... Fele SS. C.

la. YB: year than. D.C.

La Ys —— he Go ..... th

Erp —— E. L F bvtn

ows H e'st

Urn E D T odv Sth

E R

Se ==== Lf.

An old Record. J. H. W...... Birch Hill, May, 1844."

R. H.

Glass in Windows formerly not a Fixture.

—In Brooke's Abridgement, tit. "Chatteles," it appears that in the 21st Hen. VII., A.D. 1505, it was held that though the frame-work of the windows belonged to the heir, the glass was the property of the executors, and might therefore be removed by them, "quar le meason est perfite sauns le glasse." In A.D. 1599 Lord Coke informs us it was in the Common Pleas "resolved per totam curiam, that glass annexed to windows by nails, or in any other manner, could not be removed; for without glass it is no perfect house."

J. O. M.

D'Israeli: Pope and Goldsmith.

—Mr. D'Israeli congratulates himself with much satisfaction, in his Essay on the Literary Character, both in his Preface, p. xxix., and in the text, p. 187. vol. i., in having written this immortal sentence:

"The defects of great men are the consolation of the dunces."

—more particularly as it appears Lord Byron had "deeply underscored it." Perhaps he was unaware that Pope, in a letter to Swift, Feb. 16, 1733, had said:

"A few loose things sometimes fall from men of wit by which censorious fools judge as ill of them as they possibly can, for their own comfort."

And that Goldsmith says:

"The folly of others is ever most ridiculous to those who are themselves most foolish."—Citizen of the World.

JAMES CORNISH.