SIR GEORGE MOUAT KEITH. (See 11 S. xii. 430.) In the year 1806 I find serving as lieutenant on board the gun-brig Boxer Sir George Mouat Keith, Bart. Can any of your readers say to what family he belonged, as I do not find his name in the 'Baronetage'?

A. H. MACLEAN.

14 Dean Road, Willesden Green, N.W.

PASSAGE OF FUNERAL THROUGH CHURCH. In a village in Northants there is a feeling that a dead body must always be taken to the church and pass through it for burial; it is immaterial whether it passes north to south, or south to north. Can anybody suggest the reason for this feeling? A. G. KEALY.

Bedford.

ANN COOK.-I should be most grateful to any reader who could spare a few minutes to the frightfulness of war, I have now to help me in the following matter. Owing access to no library.

On Feb. 5, 1821, died Mary Ann, dau. of Joshua and Ann Cook, and was buried at Framlingham. A memoir of her life appeared in The Methodist Magazine for that month, I believe. I should like a note of this memoir, with the exact date of publication of the magazine, and any other information as to Miss Cook that can easily be obtained. PRIVATE BRADSTOW.

(11 S. xii. 462, 508; 12 S. i. 11.) THE Society for Constitutional Information descended from the Bill of Rights Society, which was founded in 1769 by John Horneafterwards Horne-Tooke-John Wilkes, Serjeant Glynn, and others, to urge reforms JOHN WHITFIELD, ACTOR.-Wanted in-based upon the principles legalized in the formation as to the parentage and marriage of John Whitfield, the comic actor. He died in London, 1814, and is known to have had a sister Margaret who married one William Green. William Whitfield, son of the actor, had an uncle, Thomas Lane, who devised lands in Romney Marsh, in the parish of Brookland, Kent. William Fynmore of Craven Street, Strand, was an executor to the above Thomas Lane.

GERALD FOTHERGILL 11 Brussels Road, New Wandsworth, S.W.

Bill of Rights. Its meeting-place was the London Tavern, and among the reforms it advocated were annual Parliaments, the exaction of oaths against bribery, and the exclusion of pensioners and place-holders from Parliament. The Revolution of 1688 had established parliamentary government, and safeguarded the law against the sovereign. In other words, it had established a limited monarchy, with Parliament controlling the Crown, on a sound basis. Parliamentary representation, however, was far from

satisfactory, and control by patronage was increasing. The lack of homogeneous leadership threatened the effective force of Parliament in the chaos of ministries, whilst George III. allowed no opportunity of regaining control for the Crown to escape him. It was natural, then, that advanced politicians, recalling the advantages gained by the great Whig revolution of 1688, should organize to debate methods of frustrating the growing power of the Crown.

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Jacobin societies in France during the Revolution. Together with the Revolution Society (1788-91), it was attacked by Burke in his Reflections on the Revolution in France.' Many of the most active members of one society were also attached to the other, notably Samuel Favell, who joined the Society for Constitutional Information soon after Sir William Jones became a member of it, and was one of the most active supporters of the Revolution Society during the whole of its existence. Another and more violent society, the Corresponding Society, was formed to link up these societies with similar societies in the provinces and with the revolutionary societies in France. There is much information on the activities of these societies in The Annual Register for the years 1792-4, whilst the activities of the provincial Constitutional Societies are fully discussed in John Waddington's 'Congregational History, 1700-1800, London, 1876. THOMAS WM. HUCK.

38, King's Road, Willesden Green, N.W.

The Bill of Rights Society undertook to raise funds to pay Wilkes's debts, and when Horne applied for assistance on behalf of a printer named Bingley, who was in prison on account of his connexion with reprinting The North Briton, the majority of the members declined to accede to any request until Wilkes's obligations were fully met. At a meeting held April 9, 1771, Horne said that "the society had become nothing more than a scene of personal quarrel; the public interests were absorbed in the petty faction of one individual; that regularity, decency, order, and concord were banished together.' He therefore moved: should be dissolved." As this motion was not carried the minority adjourned to another room, where they formed a new body known as the "Constitutional Society.' This society gained notoriety during the American War. On June 7, 1775, some of the members passed a resolution which was published in the newspapers, and which C. B. R. Kent, The English Radicals.'-A resulted in Horne being fined 2007. with im-general survey which touches the activities of these prisonment for one year, and in the printers of the newspapers being fined for libel. It directed that a subscription should be raised on behalf of "our beloved American fellowsubjects" who had preferred death to slavery," and were for that reason only inhumanly murdered by the king's troops at the Lexington skirmish, April 19, 1775.

MR. HORACE BLEACKLEY can obtain the

That the society facts concerning this society and the Radical

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This society evidently expired with the incarceration of its leader, but the Society for Constitutional Information was formed to take its place in 1780. Its objects were the instruction of the people in their political rights and the advocacy of parliamentary reform. The Duke of Richmond, Pitt, Fox, Sheridan, and Capell Lofft were among its early members. They, however, soon detached themselves, but Horne-Tooke, Major Cartwright, Mr. Wyvill, and others continued to support it in its demand for universal suffrage. It held an annual dinner on Dec. 16, that being the date when the Bill of Rights passed into law. It continued for about fifteen years, and took an active part in corresponding with the

activities of the time in :

Reform.-An excellent record of the events of the G. S. Veitch, The Genesis of Parliamentary period.

H. N. Brailsford, Shelley, Godwin, and their Circle.'-A spirited monograph in "The Home University Library."

men.

Walter Phelps Hall, British Radicalism,' 17911797.-A Columbia University thesis which gives a synthesis of the Radical thought of the time. W. T. Laprade, England and the French Revolution.'-A from Johns Hopkins University.

thesis

Trial of John Horne Tooke.'-To be found in Howell's 'State Trials and in several contemporary shorthand accounts published in book-form. Records of the chairmen and members present at trials, of Hardy, Thelwall, Sinclair, Margarot, &c. the meeting were brought into court.

Also other

Blackwood's Magazine for July and August, 1833, gives an original and unpleasant interpretation of Tooke's connexion with the Society.

In addition there is some slight evidence in the Narrative of Facts relating to the Late Trials,' by Thomas Holcroft (1795); in the Memoirs of Thomas Hardy,' written by himself (1833); in a very valuable collection of MSS. in the British Museum relating to the London Corresponding Society (Add. 2781 ff.); and in the records in the Office of the Privy Council for 1794, particularly May and June (33 Geo. III., 77 ff.).

ELBRIDGE COLBY.

11 Torrington Square, W.C.

The drawings in these two series illustrate a very wide range of subjects, and include antiquities of every description. The execution varies as to merit, but many of the plates are exceedingly well drawn.

ANASTATIC PRINTING (11 S. xii. 359, 403, smaller. Mr. Jewitt edited annual volumes 443; 12 S. i. 13). Having acquired nearly until 1883, but the next did not appear until all of the volumes issued by two societies 1887. This included drawings for the years formed for issuing drawings by this process, 1884, 1885, and 1886, and was prepared and from inquiry finding that these publica- partly by him, but, owing to his death in tions are not generally known, I think the June, 1886, was completed by William following particulars may be worth record- George Fretton, who also edited vol. xxiii., ing. The prospectus of the Anastatic for the years 1887, 1888, and 1889. This is Drawing Society is dated April 13, 1855, and the latest volume I have seen, and I shall be signed by the Rev. John M. Gresley, Over glad to hear of any others. The members Seile, Ashby-de-la-Zouch, who was the of this society numbered 137 in 1887. The originator and hon. secretary of the society. volumes from 1864 (the earliest I have) until The subscription was half-a-guinea, and 1868 were printed by M. Hoon of Ashbourne, each member contributing drawings was and after this at Cowell's Press, Ipswich. entitled to ten extra impressions of each of these, the size of which was limited to 7 in. by 9 in. The first volume (for 1855) was issued early in 1856. The members then numbered 145, but by the next year they had increased to 267. There are 66 plates in this volume, of which 20 copies in folio (issued at a guinea) and 140 in quarto were printed by Messrs. W. & J. Hextall, Ashby-de-la-Zouch. A volume was issued each year until 1862, but the one for 1863 was not published until 1866, there having been some delay in the completion of the plates. The preface is dated 1863, and to this a note-Nov., 1866-is added stating that in consequence of the death of Mr. Gresley the series of drawings had come to an end. The complete series of this society thus comprises nine volumes, which contain 563 plates. The first four were printed by Hextall, and the remainder by his successor in business, John Barker.

In 1859 the Ilam (Staffs) Anastatic Drawing Society was formed by the Rev. G. R. Mackarness, himself an original member of the earlier society. Under his direction nine volumes were issued, the one for 1868 (published 1869) being the last. He was succeeded as secretary by the Rev. W. F. Francis, who was responsible for the volumes issued from 1870 until 1873. From the references in later volumes, and the numbering, it appears that nothing was published in 1874 or 1875, when the editorship passed into the hands of Llewellynn Jewitt. The volume for 1873 is numbered xiii.; those for 1876 and 1877 are not numbered, but 1878 is vol. xvi. In 1876 the word Ilam is omitted from the title-page. In the preface to this volume Mr. Jewitt writes as if the original Anastatic had been amalgamated with the Ilam Society, but this, it is evident, was not the case. The lists of members of the latter are, with the exception of a few names, entirely different from those of Mr. Gresley's society, and the number very much

A report of Faraday's lecture on the process was published in The Polytechnic Review for May, 1845, and reprinted later in The Medical Times. Poole gives references to papers in The Southern Literary Messenger, xi. 383, and Littell's Living Age, v. 56, 534 (in addition to that given by MR. HUMPHREYS).

The earliest reference given in the Oxford Dictionary' is 1849, a paper on the process having been read by H. E. Strickland at the meeting of the British Association in 1848. The title only is given in the Report dated 1849. It will be seen from MR. HUMPHREYS'S reply that the word is of older date.

Gloucester.

ROLAND AUSTIN.

ENEMIES OF Books (11 S. xii. 480).-Poor tom-tit has again-as on so many occasions in garden and orchard-been wrongfully accused.

The tit is essentially practical and utilitarian. He is too intent on getting his living (insect life, sometimes garnished with the additional luxury of fat or cocoa-nut when obtainable) to risk his life and liberty in invading libraries to peck the "calf bindings.' The appearance of the tits' mischievous activities" means an insect pest. I recommend your correspondent and the Chapter Librarian to examine the books and wallpaper with a powerful glass. They will at once understand the presence of the tits.

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I am no entomologist, and cannot name the insect the bird is waging war upon, but I have had the displeasure of making both his acquaintance and that of the little woodboring beetle and so-called bookworm, and have successfully eradicated them. The insect now under trial appears to feed on the