12 s. vii. AUG. 7, i92o.] NOTES AND QUERIES. Ill AUTHOR OF QUOTATION WANTED. I shall be very grateful for the discovery of the authorship of a poem in which the following lines occur : Where shall I find the noble British land ? Lo, I at length a northern speck espy Which in the sea doth lie As seems a grain o' th' sand. For this will mortals sin and bleed ? Of civil wars is this the meed ? And is it this, good lack, that we, O irony of words ! do call Great JBritannie ? The horses were of tempered light'ning made. "Their hoofs were shod with diamond ; Not such as here are found, But such light solid ones as shine On the eternal rocks of the heavenly crystalline. I think it is late seventeenth century. I have not seen the. book for forty years, and remember aaothing about it except that its colour was green. HUBERT WALTER. Uiginish, Dunvegan, I. of Skye. MUSHROOM FREEMEN: MANDAMUS VOTERS. (12 S. vii. 69.) THE " Mushroom Freemen " referred to were honorary freemen elected by the common council of the City of Durham, after the death of the previous member, for the express purpose of influencing the election to fill the vacancy and to secure the return of
- Gowland. The facts are to be found in the
' History Political and Personal of the Boroughs of Great Britain ' (London, MDCCXCII.). It appears that the right of election at Durham was in the Corporation and Freemen,
- and there was an ancient by-law of the
Corporation by which none could be ad- mitted freemen until their claim had passed three quarterly guilds. The normal method of acquiring a right to the freedom was either by servitude, or election into com- panies at certain guilds, holden by those companies. At the election in question the majority of the Corporation supported Gowland, while the City was in favour of Lambton. The petition by Lambton against the return of Gowland alleged, amongst other .things, that John Drake Bainbridge and several other Aldermen, long after Gowland and Lambton had declared themselves candi- dates, and within a few weeks of the election took upon themselves illegally to displace out of the Common Council several of the most substantial and respectable inhabitants and to substitute other persons of inferior character and station, whose only recom- mendation was their known attachment to Gowland ; that Bainbridge procured himself to be appointed Mayor ; and that he and several of the Aldermen havingunduly garbled a common council for their purpose, pro- fessed to repeal the above mentioned by- law, and having thus .got rid of what would have been an obstacle to their scheme, some of the before-mentioned Aldermen within a month before the writ for the election was issued illegally and against the consent of a large majority of trading companies, ad- mitted upwards of 200 occasional freemen for no other purpose, but to increase the poll for Gowland ; and that the persons so admitted were strangers to the city, residing at a distance, and most of them unknown to the wardens of the companies, but strenuous partizans of Gowland and under the influence of the Mayor and his con- federate Aldermen. There was also a peti- tion by freemen contending that the above- mentioned proceedings of the Mayor and his confederates were a gross injury, violation and invasion of the rights and franchises of the legal freemen. The result of the petitions was that Gowland was unseated, and it was ordered " that the deputy clerk of the crown should attend the house as the next morning to amend the return for the said city of Durham by razing out the name of Ralph" Gowland, Esq., and inserting the name of John Lambton, Esq. instead " (Citing ' Commons Journals,' vol. xxix 337). To prevent similar attempts to pack the electorate of a constituency for an approach- ing election the well-known Durham Act was passed in 3rd George III., by cap. xv. of which no person was to have a right to vote at a parliamentary election who had not been possessed of his franchise twelve calendar months before the first day of election ; but this provision was not to extend to persons who were entitled to their freedom by birth, marriage or servitude, according to the custom of the borough. The before - mentioned * History of Boroughs ' does not give particulars of the Morpeth election for 1768, and I have not at hand any book of reference that does. It however gives an account of the election for that borough in 1774 to which your corre- spondent also refers.
