12 a. ix. DEC. io, 1921.] NOTES AND QUERIES. 461 LONDON. DECEMBER 10. 1921. CONTENTS. No. 191. NOTES : Vice- Admiral Sir Christopher Mings, 461 British Settlers in America, 462 Jottings from a Notebook, 463 Nelson's Signal and the Man who hoisted it, 464 English Army Slang as used in the Great War, 465 Thomas Havard -" Symmes's Hole," 467 Columbia Market, Hackney Keats, Hampstead and Sir C. W. Dilke, 468. QUERIES : Antiquities of York Minster Gentleman Ushers of the Black Bod, 468 Norland's Academy Riddle : " The Letter H " R. D'Oyly Carte Sir W. S. Gilbert's Pedigree The Rev. Richard Snowe St. Joseph of Arima- thea Five Odd Queries Hemming Family Field-name " Acas " Oriental Brass Pot Antony Bustard, 469 Vicars of Crediton The Rev. John Cartwright R. C. Mundell George Basevi, Architect" Hop-scotch " : De- rivation of Word Ruskin : R'fertn?e sought Words of Songs wanted Authors wanted, 470. REPLIES : Verlaine at Stickney, 470 Grave to be turfed and " bryered " Devonshire House Gates, 472 Col. Chester's Extracts from Parish Registers Illicit Distilling in Scottish Highlands " The King's English " : " Ges- ture," 473 Dr. Robert Gordon, " Coul Goppagh " " Buckheen " Verbalized Surnames Principal London Coffee-houses in the Eighteenth Century Surnames as Christian Names, 474 T.R.E.O. Nigger Song or English Folk Song Ruspini Mules on Mountains The Palace of Placentia, 475 Hatchments Families of Pre-Reformation Priests, 476 " Artemus Ward " Robert Henry Newell Nickname of William Pitt (the younger) Staverton, Co. Devon Prince Lee Boo 'The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft,' 477 Brewers' Company Corporation of Hoast- men John Patrick Eden, 478. NOTES ON BOOKS : ' The Renaissance of Roman Archi- tecture ' ' A Text-book of European Archaeology ' The War List of the University of Cambridge ' ' The Beginning of the Year in the Middle Ages.' Notices to Correspondents. Jlote*. VICE-ADMIRAL SIR CHRISTOPHER MINGS. HAS the ancestry of Vice -Admiral Sir Christopher Mings, who died in June, 1666, from wounds received in a fight with the Dutch, ever been satisfactorily cleared up ? Pepys, in his ' Diary,' makes many refer- ences to him, and on the subject of his parentage states, under date Oct. 26, 1665, " Sir Christopher Mings and I together by water to the Tower : and I find him a very witty, well-spoken fellow and mighty free to tell his parentage, being a shoe- maker's son"; and again, June 13, 1666, he says, " his father being always, and at this day, a shoemaker, and his moth'er a hoyman's daughter, of which he was used frequently to boast." In the ' D.N.B.' it is stated that Sir Christopher's father was John Myngs, who was married Sept. 28, 1623, to Katherine, daughter of Christopher Parr, at Salthouse, Norfolk, and in the marriage register there he is described as "of the parish of St. Katherine in the City of London.' 5 From the place of marriage it is suggested in the ' D.N.B.' that John Myngs may have been connected with the Norfolk family of Mynnes. There may have been such a connexion, but investigations which I have made into the history of the family of Menge, Minge, Mynge, Mindge or Mings, as it is indifferently spelled, give reason for questioning it. The name appears in various parts of the south and east of Eng- land, but chiefly in Kent, where it is found in the Subsidy Rolls as early as 1348. At the present day it is rarely met with and seems to 'have nearly died" out, but there is an annual reference to it in the news- papers in connexion with a sermon preached on New Year's Day at the Church of St. Anne and St. Agnes, formerly of Aldersgate Street, but now united with St. John Zachary, Gresham Street, London, in ac- cordance with the will, dated and proved in 1622, P.C.C. (112 Saville) and Dean and Chapter of Westminster (Book Camden, folio 7), of Richard Minge, citizen and cordwainer of St. Anne and St. Agnes, Aldersgate Street. The testator was evi- dently connected with Kent, as he mentions property in that county and makes bequests to John, son of Henry Minge of New Romney, and to John Minge of Precincts of St. Katherine, shoemaker. Further, Judith Mynge of the City of Canterbury, widow (of John Minge of New Romney, who was probably the M.P. for that place in 1592/3 and 1601, and Mayor in 1598 and 1604), in her will, dated and proved 1616 in the Archdeacon's Court of Canterbury (Book 61, folio 389), leaves to " John Minge of London, an apprentice to my deceased husband's kinsman, 60." John Minge, citizen and cordwainer of London, was a party to certain Chancery proceedings in 1626, 1631 and 1640 in connexion with the will of Richard Minge of St. Anne and St. Agnes before alluded to. From these two wills it appears that in 1616 a John Minge was an apprentice in London to a kinsman of John Minge of New Romney, Kent, who, we may fairly assume, was Richard Minge, citizen and cordwainer, of St. Anne and St. Agnes, and that in 1622 he was out of his apprenticeship and pursu- ing his trade of shoemaker in the parish of St. Katherine. From the Chancery
