Notes and Queries, Number 84, June 7, 1851: A Medium of Inter-communication for Literary Men, Artists, Antiquaries, Genealogists, etc.Various
History
Notes and Queries, Number 84, June 7, 1851: A Medium of Inter-communication for Literary Men, Artists, Antiquaries, Genealogists, etc.
Various
Questions and answers -- Periodicals
Is this sum the amount of the proceeds of the tax laid, as our chronicle
records, upon glass windows? If so, or from whatever source obtained, it
may, in passing, be remarked, that it appears to be ridiculously
inadequate to meet the requirements of the case; for, according to the
Bishop, in another place (p. 316.):
"About five millions of clipped money was brought into the
exchequer, and the loss that the nation suffered, by the recoining
of the money, amounted to two millions and two hundred thousand
pounds."
The window duties have of late provoked much discussion, and it would
prove of some interest, if, through the medium of your pages, any of
your correspondents would take the trouble to investigate a little
further the subject of this note. It very easily admits of confirmation
or denial.
2. The principal reason, however, for now writing, is to request answers
to the two following Queries: 1. What amount of money was respectively
coined during 1696, and the following year, in the cities of York,
Bristol, Chester, and Exeter? and 2. In what parish of each of these
places, including Norwich, was the mint situated?
And now let me add a sentence or two respecting the compiler of the
above-named chronicle, which I am induced to do, as his name is closely
connected with that of one of the most celebrated controversial writers
of the Augustan age of Anne and George I., the friend of Whiston, of
Newton, and of Hoadley, and the subject of Pope's sarcastic allusion:
"We nobly take the high priori road,
And reason downwards till we doubt of God."
It appears, on the authority of a MS. letter before me, dated Aylsham,
Norfolk, Jan. 25, 1755, and addressed to Mr. Nehemiah Lodge, town clerk
of Norwich, by Mr. Thos. Johnson, who was speaker of the common council
of that city from 1731 to 1736, that Nobbs
"Was many years clerk of St. Gregory's parish in Norwich, where he
kept a school, and was so good a scholar as to fit youths for the
university, amongst whom were the great Dr. Samuel Clarke, and his
brother, the Dean of Salisbury."
The old man's MS. is very neatly written, and arranged with much method.
It was made great use of, frequently without acknowledgment, by
Blomefield, in the compilation of his history; and besides the chronicle
of events immediately connected with the city, there are interspersed
through its pages notices of earthquakes, great famines, blazing stars,
dry summers, long frosts, and other similar unusual occurrences. The
simplicity, and grave unhesitating credulity, with which some of the
more astonishing marvels, culled, I suppose, from the pages "of
Holinshed or Stow," are recorded, is very amusing. I cannot refrain from
offering you a couple of examples, and with them I will bring this
heterogeneous "note" to a close.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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