share in this commerce. From the East came rich fabrics, ornaments and
vases, and their bearers carried back in return ermines, furs, slaves,
and, above all, amber, which whilst valued as an ornament was also
credited with wonderful powers of preserving the health of the wearer.
This commerce did not have so much social or political result as might
have been expected from four centuries of activity. The grave events
alike in Asia and Europe which followed the fall of the Samanides
interrupted its peaceful course, and before it could fall again into
the old tracks there came the tempestuous interlude of the first
Crusade.
From this it will be seen that the occurrence of Kufic coins in the
north of England is one of the evidences of the activity of the Danes,
and of their commercial intercourse with the nations of the East.
Footnote 3:
For further details on the commerce of the Arabs, and especially as
to the extended currency of Kufic coins, J. J. A. Worsaae’s “Danes in
England,” 1852; Ernest Babelon’s “Du Commerce des Arabes,” 1882; Le
Bon’s “La Civilisation des Arabes,” 1884; may be consulted.
Footnote 4:
“Remarks on the Antiquities found at Cuerdale,” p. 2.
Newspapers in 1738-39.
It may not be uninteresting to describe some of the oldest surviving
fragments of Lancashire newspapers which were formerly in the
collection of Sir Thomas Baker, and are now, with many others, in the
Manchester Free Library. After a fragment of one leaf we have “_The
Lancashire Journal_: with the history of the Holy Bible.” Monday,
October 16th, 1738. Num. xvi. The printer and publishers are thus set
forth:—“Manchester: printed and sold by John Berry at the Dial near the
Cross, and Sold by Mr. Ozly at the White-Lyon in Warrington, Mr. Sears
at the White-Lyon in Liverpool, Mr. Gough at the Spread Eagle in
Chester, Mr. Maddock, Bookseller in Namptwich, Mr. Kirkpatrick in
Middlewich, Mr. Davis, Bookseller in Preston, Mr. Sidebottom at the Sun
and Griffin in Stockport, Mrs. Lord in Rochdale, Mr. Hodgson,
Bookseller in Halifax, Mr. Rockett, Bookseller in Bradford, Mr.
Bradley, Peruke-maker in Wakefield; at which places also are taken in
all sorts of advertisements to be inserted in this Paper at Two
Shillings and Sixpence Each.” There is, after the fashion of the time,
very little local news, the object of these early journals being to
tell the people what was going on at a distance. We hear (October 16th)
of the offence given by the “French strollers” in attempting to perform
a play in their own language at the Haymarket. The “patriots” were so
riotous in their resentment that “the encouragers of these French
Vagabonds, durst not in any Coffee-House or Place where the most Polite
resort, either Publickly avow their Sentiments, or declare their
Resentment.” From Bristol there is news of rioting by the colliers of
Kingswood, as a practical objection to a reduction of wages, from
sixteen to twelve pence per day.
The next relic is _The Lancashire Journal_, published by John Berry, at
the Dial, in Manchester, Monday, July 30th, 1739. No. 57. The first or
leading article sets forth the intention of the managers to “introduce”
the journals “with a short Essay, Letter, or Discourse, on some useful
Subject, Art or Science,” if they can do it without leaving out any
“material Paragraph of News.” After a column of foreign affairs, we
have an account from “Exon” of one William Wood, who was in the County
Ward for £700 at the suit of the King. After having made his
chamber-mates drunk, he fastened a rope to the window, lowered himself
down near thirty feet, and then by the aid of a scaling-ladder got into
a field and so away. “Last Wednesday a Gentlewoman, aged 87, who lives
in Mount Street, Grosvenor Square, was married at St. George’s Chapel,
near Hyde Park Corner, to a young Gentleman of 23. The Bride was with
difficulty led into the Chapel, and was so much fatigued with standing
till the ceremony was over, that the Minute they were out of the Chapel
they were obliged to go into a Tavern to get something to revive her
exhausted spirits.” Then we learn that at the Old Bailey twenty-seven
prisoners were tried, of whom two were sentenced to be hanged, and
thirteen to be transported, whilst twelve were acquitted. Some more
paragraphs of the same nature show how ineffectual were the sanguinary
laws which condemned men to death for slight offences. In one of these
figures “Francis Trumbles the Quaker, who was to be hung for robbing
Mr. Brow on the highway.” “Last week died in Water Lane, Fleet Street,
one Anne Deacon, an elderly woman, who used to ask Alms at Church Doors
and elsewhere, in whose rooms after her death were found 100 guineas,
£35 in silver, and a bond of £150 on a considerable tradesman.” There
is a good deal more of foreign news, and the number terminates with
_two_ advertisements, one only being local, which offers an
apothecary’s shop, near the Exchange, “to be Sold or Lett. * * Enquire,
for further particulars of Mrs. Margaret Dickenson, at the Turk’s Head,
in Manchester.” No. 61, August 27th, 1739, opens with a dissertation on
the figure of the earth, followed by an account of one of the Dublin
Incorporated Society’s English Protestant Working Schools, then some
foreign news, of which our forefathers would appear to have been very
fond. This number is almost entirely filled with paragraphs relating to
our differences with Spain, diplomatic and martial. We have also news
of the siege of Belgrade, and “that the Grand Vizer has ordered a vast
quantity of scaling-ladders to be made, which looks as if he intended
to take Belgrade by storm.” From Cork we have the news that Matthew
Buckinger died there August 24th. Buckinger was born without hands or
feet, and his performances in penmanship were certainly wonderful under
the circumstances. “The King has ordered the two Hazard tables at
Kensington to be suppressed.” Two advertisements conclude this
number—one of a horse stolen or strayed from Cross Hall Park, near
Ormskirk; the other of Miller’s “Gardeners’ Dictionary” and Chambers’s
“Cyclopædia,” books on sale by Mr. Newton and Mr. Hodges, booksellers
in Manchester. The journal ends, “Manchester: Printed by John Berry, at
the Dial, near the Cross, and sold by Mr. Nichison, at the White Lyon,
in Warrington; Mr. Sears, at the White Lyon, in Liverpool; Mrs. Gough,
at the Spread Eagle, in Chester; Mr. Maddock, bookseller, in Namptwich;
Mr. Kirkpatrick, in Middlewich; Mr. Davis, in Preston; Mr. Sidebotham,
in Stockport; Mr. Rathbone, in Macclesfield; Mr. Foster, in Bolton;
Mrs. Lord, in Rochdale; Mr. Hodgson, bookseller, in Halifax; Mr.
Rockett, bookseller, in Bradford; Mr. Bradley, peruke maker, in
Wakefield; at which places also are taken in all sorts of
advertisements to be inserted in this paper, at two shillings and
sixpence each.”
Sir Thomas Baker was also the possessor of three numbers of another
early Manchester paper. Whitworth’s “_Manchester Magazine_, with the
History of the Holy Bible.” Tuesday, January 16th, 1738-9. No. 107 is a
small, dingy folio of four pages. Its opening paragraphs are devoted to
Muley Abdalah, who, in his abdicating the throne of Morocco, expressed
“a great regret that he had cut off but 2,000 heads at most.” We have
then a dreadful thunderstorm at Bristol, and a quantity of Court and
personal gossip. From “Hawick, in Northumberland, December 14th. This
day, died here (aged 105), Mr. William Baxter. He taught school in his
youth, afterwards followed malting very closely for above sixty years,
and though he lived very freely all that while he was never known to
have any disorder but one only, occasioned by a over-discharge of bad
liquor, which was carried off by a vomit.” The old gentleman was hearty
to the last, and knocked under to “a common fever, which as an Argument
of his great vigour terminated in a Phrenzy, and in a week’s Time
despatch’d him.” We hear of a wolf breaking loose, which was kept by a
gentleman who lives near the vineyard in St. James’s Park, and of the
mischief it wrought upon—two milk pails; of an attempted escape from
Newgate; and of sundry highway robberies. We have then
“A NEW RECEIPT.
Take Homer’s Invention, with Pinder’s high strain,
Theocritus’ pure Nature, Anacreon’s soft vein;
To Virgil’s sound judgment join Ovid’s free air,
And Juvenal’s keen Satyr to Horace’s sneer;
To Spencer’s Description add Milton’s Locution,
And Dryden’s close sentence to Boileau’s conclusion;
Of Antients and Monderns [Moderns] take the Flower I hope,
All these put together make our English POPE.”
Next we have a letter relating a sharp trick of some
American-Spaniards, followed by the sage reflection that “its greatly
to be lamented that the Isle of Cuba, and some other rich and fertile
places of their Empire in this part of the world, is not possest by
some more industrious People, who would find a much more laudable, as
well as profitable, Imployment than pilfering from their Neighbours.”
No. 108, January 23rd, 1738-9: “We hear a Gentleman’s Corpse is in
Arrest at an Undertaker’s in the Strand, upon a Judgment and Execution
for Debt. It’s to be hop’d the Friends of the Deceased will let the
Attorney move the Corpse, have it apprais’d by the Sheriff, and take it
in Part of his Bill and Costs.” “On Saturday between Four and Five
o’clock, a young Woman, servant at Walthamstow, coming to town, was
robb’d near Temple Mill by a Footpad; and, whilst the villain was
stripping her, being with his back towards the River, the young Woman
push’d him into the River and he was drowned. She is since gone
distracted.—On Thursday last the Rev. Dr. William Stukeley, Fellow of
the College of Physicians and a great Antiquarian, was marry’d to Miss
Gale, sister to Roger Gale, Esq.: a fortune of £10,000.” There is an
account of a shock of earthquake felt in Halifax, Huddersfield, and
other parts of the West Riding. “We hear from Banbury that a village
within a mile of that town no less than eighteen people are gone to be
dipped in the salt water for the bite of a mad dog, and that a few days
past a young man of the said village, who was bit by a dog about
Michaelmas last, died raving mad, though he had been at the salt water
for a cure.” “Manchester, January 23rd.—We hear from Bury that the
inhabitants of that place have agreed to prosecute at their joint
expense any person that shall commit an act of felony there. This is
worthy of imitation, for rogues often go unpunished lest the charge
thereof should fall upon a single person, which is very unreasonable,
because the publick reaps the benefit.” The number concludes with an
advertisement of a sale by auction at the Angel, at Manchester. From
No. 111, February 13th, 1738-9, excluding most of the foreign news, we
glean the following items:—“London, February 6th.—Last week two persons
were sent to prison by the Bench of Justices at Hick’s Hall for
endeavouring to seduce some manufacturers in the glass trade, in order
to send them to Holland, where a glass house is lately set up, and who
very much underwork us by having English coals 25 per cent. cheaper
than the manufacturers in and about London. But it is to be hoped that
the Parliament will take these affairs into consideration.—Yesterday
morning a gentleman going in a chair from a tavern in Pall Mall to his
lodgings at Knightsbridge was robbed by the two chairmen between Hide
Park Gate and Knightsbridge of his watch, money, &c.; then they pull’d
him out of the chair and threw him into a ditch, after which they made
off.—Last week Thomas Piercy, a blacksmith of Deptford, in Kent, about
25 years of age, was married to Mrs. Brookes, a gentlewoman of a
considerable fortune in the same town, aged about 70. This gentlewoman
has had four husbands before.—Prices of corn at Manchester: White
wheat, per load, from 18s. to 20s.; red wheat, from 15s. to 17s.;
barley, from 8s. to 11s.; beans, from 11s. to 12s.; meal, from 13s. to
14s.” There is plenty of talk about the convention with Spain, which
need not be repeated. These citations may suffice. They are fair
samples of what may be found in the local newspapers of the first half
of the eighteenth century. The early Lancashire journalist was a man of
many parts. Thus the _Lancashire Journal_, in December, 1740, is said
to be “printed by John Berry, Watchmaker and Printer, at the Dial near
the Cross, who makes and Mends all sorts of Pocket Watches, also makes
and mends all sorts of Weather Glasses, makes all sorts of Wedding,
Mourning, and other Gold Rings, and Earrings, etc., and sell all Sorts
of New Fation’d Mettal, Buttons for Coats and Wastcoats, and hath Great
Choice of New Fation’d Mettal, Buckles, for Men, Women, and Children,
all sorts of Knives, fine Scissors, Razors, Lancits, Variety of Japan’d
Snuff Boxes, Violins, Fluts, Flagelets and Musick Books, Box, Ivory,
and Horn, Combs, Silk, Purses, Spectacles, Coffee and Chocolate Mills,
Wash Balls, Sealing Wax, and Wax Balls for Pips, Correls, Tea Spoons,
Fiddle Strings, Spinnet Wire, Naked and Drest Babys,[5] Cards, Cain for
Hooping, Bird Cages, etc., with several other sorts of London,
Birmingham, and Sheffield, Cutler’s Wares, and variety of Dutch and
English Toys. He also sells (notwithstanding what is, has, or may be
advertised to the Contrary), the True Daffy’s Elixir, Doctor Anderson
Sick Pills, Chymical Drops, being a speedy cure for coughs, colds, and
Asthma’s, Doctor Godfreys Cordial for Children, Doctor Bateman’s Drops,
Stoughtons Elixir, Hungry Water, Spirits of Scurvy Grass, Flower of
Mustard in 3d. Bottles, Oyl of Mustard, and all sorts of Snuffs, at the
Lowest Rates.” The variety of his wares has affected both his spelling
and his punctuation.
We cannot estimate the feelings of our great-grandfathers as they
turned over the leaves of their small paper; but the antiquary of the
present day would gladly dispense with a good deal about bashaws and
conventions for a little more about those who lived and moved and had
their being in this county.
Footnote 5:
This is not a slave trading announcement as the unwary might suppose.
“Baby” is an old word for a doll. It has survived in the Lancashire
dialect in its more extended meaning of a small image or
representation. “Aw’ve a book full of babs” is a phrase in Edwin
Waugh’s most famous poem.
A Lancashire Naturalist: Thomas Garnett.
A memorial volume of the late Mr. Thomas Garnett, of Low Moor,
Clitheroe, was printed for private circulation, and some notice of it
will be of interest to many outside the narrow circle for whom it was
originally prepared. Mr. Thomas Garnett was one of three brothers. Mr.
Richard Garnett distinguished himself as a philologist, and became an
assistant-keeper in the British Museum; Mr. Jeremiah Garnett was for
many years the editor of the _Manchester Guardian_, and Mr. Thomas
Garnett settled at Clitheroe, where he passed an active life as a
manufacturer, but instead of allowing business to absorb all his
attention, he found pleasant and healthful recreation in agricultural
and scientific observation. The results are now gathered in this
volume—“Essays in Natural History and Agriculture, by the late Thomas
Garnett, of Low Moor, Clitheroe. London: printed at the Chiswick Press,
1883.” Only 250 copies were printed. The editing has been the work of
the author’s nephew, that accomplished scholar and friend of all
students, Dr. Richard Garnett, of the British Museum. The first paper
contains a number of facts and observations relating to the salmon,
chiefly based on Mr. Garnett’s experience in Lancashire. Written as
long ago as 1834, it contains a plea in favour of a wise and not
vexatious measure for the protection of the salmon fisheries. He
believed that the salmon enters and ascends rivers for other purposes
than propagation. In support of this view he cites what in Lancashire
is called “streaming.” Thus in winter the fish not engaged in spawning,
trout, grayling, chub, dace, etc., leave the streams and go into deep
water. Another reason is their impatience of heat, which leads the
grayling, if the weather is unusually hot at the end of May or
beginning of June, to ascend the mill-streams in the Wharfe, by
hundreds, and to go up the mill-races as far as they can get. The
“salmon” par he holds to be neither a hybrid, nor a distinct species,
but a state of the common salmon. In 1851 he wrote some papers
describing his own experiments in the artificial breeding of salmon.
His interest in the fish is shown by the following quotation:—“I have
had fish sent from two different gentlemen living on the banks of the
reservoirs belonging to the Liverpool Waterworks: these were beautiful
fish, three in number, more like the sea trout than the salmon, and the
largest of them weighing two pounds. I had put them into the brooks
running into the reservoirs three years before. I also learn that a
beautiful specimen of the _Ombre chevalier_ (French char) was taken out
of Rivington reservoir. About a thousand had been put in by me two
years before.”
It should be mentioned that Mr. Garnett’s experiments on the artificial
impregnation of fish ova were made without any knowledge of previous
attempts of the same kind. In answer to a suggestion made by Mr.
Garnett, the late Sir G. C. Lewis observed:—“You might as well propose
to shoot partridges only three days a week as to restrict the netting
of salmon to only three days.” In 1859, Mr. Garnett wrote some papers
on the possibility of introducing salmon into Australia, and addressed
a communication to the authorities of Tasmania and New Zealand on the
subject. He had some doubts as to success, but thought that the
experiment should be made, and that New Zealand was the likeliest place
for the experiment. In 1843, 1844, 1845, and 1848, he made experiments
in the cultivation of wheat on the same land in successive years, and
the results were communicated to the _Manchester Guardian_. He also
advocated the growing of a short-strawed wheat as peculiarly suitable
to the conditions of farming in Lancashire and Yorkshire. The
gravelling of his clay soils elicited some amusing comments from his
neighbours, one of whom remarked that he had seen land tilled (manured)
in various ways, but had never before seen a field tilled with
cobble-stones! The cultivation of cotton in India and in Peru was
another project in which he took a warm interest.
Mr. Garnett was a keen observer of natural history. Some excellent
authorities had asserted that the common wren never lined its nest with
feathers, but he showed conclusively that this was a mistake. The nest
in which eggs are laid is profusely lined with feathers, but during the
period of incubation the male frequently constructs several nests in
the vicinity of the first, none of which are lined. The existence of
these “cock-nests,” as they are called by schoolboys, was doubted, but
Mr. Garnett fully made out his case. The grey wagtail (_Motacilla
sulphurea_) sometimes looks at its own image in a window, and attacks
it with great vivacity. A superstitious neighbour was alarmed by this
conduct in a “barley-bird” (_Motacilla flava_), and thought it a
portent of evil. Her alarm was cured by the young naturalist, who
secured the bird of evil omen. Having caught a colony of the
long-tailed titmouse, Mr. Garnett and his brother attempted to rear the
half-fledged young ones, but of the six old birds, five died in
confinement. The survivor was allowed to escape in the hope that it
would come back to rear the young ones. This it did, and by the most
unwearied exertions supplied the whole brood, sometimes feeding them
ten times in a minute. Mr. Garnett took some pains to establish the
identity of the green with the wood-sandpiper. The courage of the
stoat, and the pertinacious manner in which the marsh-titmouse for a
time resisted attempts to drive her from her nest, are amongst his
curious observations. The creeper, he noticed, associated with the
titmouse in winter. The language of birds has not yet been mastered,
either by philologists or ornithologists, but it appears that the alarm
note of one is readily understood by those of other species. Mr.
Garnett desired to make some young throstles leave a nest which was in
danger of visitation from mischievous lads. He took one from the nest
and made it cry out. Its brethren quickly disappeared, the old bird set
up a shriek of alarm, and blackbird, chaffinch, robin, oxeye, blue
titmouse, wren, and marsh-titmouse, and even the golden-crested wren,
which usually appears to care for nothing; in fact all the birds in the
wood, except the creeper, came to see what was the matter. Mr. Garnett
did not share the prejudice felt by some farmers against the rook,
which he held to be serviceable to man. He reckoned that one rookery in
Wharfedale destroyed 209 tons of worms, insects and their larvæ. The
rook also, he notes, relieves the farmers from the apprehension caused
by a flight of locusts in Craven. Contrary to Waterton’s opinion, Mr.
Garnett describes the process by which birds dress their feathers with
oil from a gland. The sedge-warbler owes its local name of
“mocking-bird” to its imitative powers in copying the notes of the
swallow, the martin, the house-sparrow, spring-wagtail, whinchat,
starling, chaffinch, white-throat, greenfinch, little redpole,
whin-linnet, and other birds. Of the water-ouzel he says:—“A pair had
built for forty years, according to tradition, in a wheel-race near to
where I was born, and had never been molested by anybody, until a
gentleman in the neighbourhood, who was a great ornithologist, employed
his gamekeeper to shoot this pair. I think the natives of Calcutta were
not more indignant when an unlucky Englishman got one of their sacred
bulls into his compound, and baited him, than was our little community
at what we considered so great an outrage. The gamekeeper narrowly
escaped being stoned by myself and some more lads, any one of whom
would have shot fifty blackbirds or fieldfares without any misgiving.”
Mr. Garnett once shot what he afterwards believed to have been a
Sabine’s snipe.
His interest in the river was not confined to the salmon, and he made
some interesting observations on the propagation of lampreys, the
spawning of minnows, and the breeding of eels. A short note on the
last-named topic, by Mr. Jeremiah Garnett, is also printed. On the
formation of ice at the bottom of rivers, there are two papers, one by
Mr. Thomas Garnett, and the other by his brother, the Rev. Richard
Garnett. A shower of gossamer, the thread produced by the aëronautic
spider, is recorded as seen on the hills near Blackburn. One of Mr.
Garnett’s friends was the unfortunate Mr. Joseph Ritchie, of Otley, who
accompanied Captain Lyon’s expedition to Fezzan, and died there in
1819. To this there is an allusion in the following passage:—“In
conclusion, allow me to say that the leisure hours which a somewhat
busy life has enabled me to spend in these pursuits, have been some of
the happiest of my existence, and have awakened and cherished such an
admiration of nature, and such a love of the country and its scenes, as
I think can never be appreciated by the inhabitants of large towns, and
which I cannot describe so well as in the words of one of my friends,
in a beautiful apostrophe to England, when leaving it, never to return:—
‘To thee
Whose fields first fed my childish fantasy;
Whose mountains were my boyhood’s wild delight,
Whose rocks, and woods, and torrents were to me
The food of my soul’s youthful appetite;
Were music to my ear—a blessing to my sight.’”
Why do not more of the dwellers in rural districts employ their often
abundant leisure in natural history studies?
The Traffords of Trafford.