Notes and Queries, Number 14, February 2, 1850 | Page 9

Europe and Asia? I incline to the opinion that this practice has been limited to people of Indo-Germanic or Japetic race, and I shall be obliged by any references in favour of or opposed to this view.
T.
_Meaning of "Shipster."_--Can any of your correspondents inform me what is the business or calling or profession of a Shipster? The term occurs in a grant of an annuity of Oct. 19. 2 Henry VIII., 1510, and made between "H.U., Gentilman, and Marie Fraunceys de Suthwerk, in com Surr Shipster."
JOHN R. FOX.
55. Welbeck Street, Jan. 22. 1850.
_Why did Dr. Dee quit Manchester?_--In the _Penny Cyclop?dia_, art. DEE, JOHN, I find the following statement:--
"In 1595 the queen appointed Dee warden of Manchester College, he being then sixty-eight years of age. He resided there nine years; _but from some cause not exactly known, he left it in 1604_, and returned to his house at Mortlake, where he spent the remainder of his days."
Can any of your correspondents assign the probable causes which led to Dr. Dee's resignation?
T.T.W.
Burnley, Lancashire, Jan. 21. 1850. {217}
_Meaning of "Emerod," "Caredon."_--In the Lansd. MS., British Museum, No. 70., there is a letter from Mr. Richard Champernowne to Sir Robert Cecil, dated in 1592, referring to the discovery of some articles pillaged from the Spanish carrack, which had then recently been captured and taken into Dartmouth harbour. Amongst these articles is one thus described:--"An Emerod, made in the form of a cross, three inches in length at the least, and of great breadth."
In the same volume of MSS. (art. 61.) there is the description of a dagger "with a hefte of white Caredon."
From the size of the cross described, "Emerod" can scarcely be read "Emerald," as applied by us to one of the precious stones.
Is "white Caredon" white cornelian?
Can any of your numerous correspondents give me a note in answer to the above queries?
D.
46. Parliament Street, Westminster, Jan. 25. 1850.
_Microscope, and Treatise upon it._--I am about to commence the study of the microscope. I want to know where I can purchase the most perfect instrument, and also the best Treatise upon it; this information will indeed be valuable to me, as it would enable me to go at once to the best sources without loss of time.
R.M. JONES.
Chelsea, Jan. 2. 1850.
_Old Auster Tenements._--"W.P.P." wishes to know the meaning of the expression "Old Auster Tenements," by which certain lands in the parish of North Curry, Somerset, are described in Deeds and Court Rolls.
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REPLIES
THE FIELD OF FORTY FOOTSTEPS.
The fields behind Montague House were, from about the year 1680, until towards the end of the last century, the scenes of robbery, murder, and every species of depravity and wickedness of which the heart can think. They appear to have been originally called the Long Fields, and afterwards (about Strype's time) the Southampton Fields. These fields remained waste and useless, with the exception of some nursery grounds near the New Road to the north, and a piece of ground enclosed for the Toxophilite Society, towards the northwest, near the back of Gower Street. The remainder was the resort of depraved wretches, whose amusements consisted chiefly in fighting pitched battles, and other disorderly sport, especially on the Sabbath day. Such was their state in 1800.
Tradition had given to the superstitious at that period a legendary story of the period of the Duke of Monmouth's Rebellion, of two brothers who fought in this field so ferociously as to destroy each other; since which, their footsteps, formed from the vengeful struggle, were said to remain, with the indentations produced by their advancing and receding; nor could any grass or vegetable ever be produced where these forty footsteps were thus displayed. This extraordinary arena was said to be at the extreme termination of the northeast end of Upper Montague Street; and, profiting by the fiction, Miss Porter and her sister produced an ingenious romance thereon, entitled, _Coming Out, or the Forty Footsteps_. The Messrs. Mayhew also, some twenty years back, brought out, at the Tottenham Street Theatre, an excellent melodrama piece, founded upon the same story, entitled The Field of Forty Footsteps.
In 1792, an ingenious and enterprising architect, James Burton, began to erect a number of houses on the Foundling Hospital estate, partly in St. Giles's and Bloomsbury parishes, and partly in that of St. Pancras. _Baltimore House_, built, towards the northeast of _Bedford House_, by Lord Baltimore, in 1763, appears to have been the only erection since Strype's survey to this period, with the exception of a chimney-sweeper's cottage still further north, and part of which is still to be seen in Rhodes's Mews, Little Guildford Street. In 1800, Bedford House was demolished entirely; which with its offices and gardens, had been the site where the noble family of the Southamptons, and the illustrious Russells, had