io« s. iv. DBC. 16.1905.] NOTES AND QUERIES. 495 Clarges (born 1635, Hied 1695). and this 1 take upon me to affirm as an abtolute fact." This gentleman was criticizing the work of another with whom he seems to have been at variance ; of course he never produced his authority for the statement, though re- peatedly called on to do so (see Boaden's ' Portraits of Shakspere'), he himself being the originator of it. There is no record or tradition of Sir Thomas Clarges having been the possessor of the Chandos portrait, which is the painting referred to. V. R. P. PURCHAS. LORD BATHURST AND THE HIGHWAY- MAN (10th S. iv. 349, 415).-It is evident that the writer in T. P.'s Weekly has con fused the names of Bathurst and Berkeley. Probably Mr. O. V. E. Russell first read the story in Lord Stanhope's ' History of Eng- land.' The date is indicated b}7 Horace Walpole, who, writing to Sir Horace Mann from Strawberry Hill on 14 November, 1774, says: " Two evenings ago Lord Berkeley shot a highwayman." The Gent. Ma;/. (1774), p. 538, gives a different version of the occur- rence. HORACE BLEACKLEY. Fox Oak. This was an oft-told tale in recounting the deeds of highwaymen at country folks' fire- sides on winter nights in the forties, and I can even now feel the thrill which the first hearing gave me. The hero, as I heard it, was not a lord or a squire, but a merchant on his round. THOS. RATCLIFFE. Worksop. Lord Berkeley is given as the hero of this story by Lord Stanhope in his ' History of England,' vol. vii. p. 313 (8vo ed.). R. L. MORETON. At vol. i. p. 21G of Grantley Berkeley's ' Life and Recollections' appears a tale of his father's meeting with a highwayman, but the tale there told is certainly not that mentioned by your correspondents at the above pages. HAROLD MALET, Col. W. COLE, CAMBRIDGE ANTIQUARY (10th S. iv. 429).—R. M. should have inquired in the MS. Department at the British Museum, •where the MSS. of the Rev. William Cole (1714-82) are amongst the most often con- sulted of those of any genealogical antiquary. Horace Walpole, just going to the opera, received one of these volumes from its tran- scriber, and stayed at home to read three- fourths of it. Cole says of his books that he treated them as his friends, entrusted them •with his most secret thoughts, and engaged them not to speak until twenty years after his departure. They contain "what the world will call an ample collection of scanda- lous rubbish heaped together "—much too severe a self-criticism. Few collections are of greater interest at the present day. Accounts of the collection will be found in Temple Bar for October, 1891, and in the 4 Records of Buckinghamshire ' of the Bucks Archaeological Society, 1904. GEORGE F. T. SHERWOOD. 50, Beeoroft Road, Brockley, S.E. His works are still in manuscript, and, for- tunately, are in the British Museum, Addit. MSS. 5799-5861. The first three volumes are imperfect indexes to the rest. His extracts from wills are in 58C1. Every will m volumes I and K of the Registers of the Consistory Court of the Bishop of Lly is here abstracted and indexed. The period covered is 1515 to 1558. These were the earliest volumes which could be found in Cole's time, but volume A, begin- ning 1448, is now at Peterborough. At the end of his manuscript, Addit. Mb. 5861, p. 222, is this :— "1781 Friday March 16th. Thank God, this is the last will of this volume, which has been more than ordinary tedious, as the gout in one foot has tormented me much towards the conclusion ot it. He died soon afterwards. It should be remembered that volumes 1 and K do not contain all the wills for the period mentioned. Volumes F, H, L, M, JN, U cover parts of the same period, and the registers of the Archdeacon's Court begin about 1520. w- M- *• PICKERIDGE" : " PUCKERIDGE" (10th S. iy. 367) —If " pickeridge " is of Romance origin, it may be worth while to quote from the " Dic- cionario Catalan-Castellano, por F. M. 1<. tr. ,, M. M. [who were they 1]. Barcelona: Iroprenta y Libreria de Pablo Riera. 1839.' There one reads, " Picor, f. pruitja: picazon, comezon. rascazon,pmrito," i.e. the itch. Un p. 509 there is, " Pruitja, f. picazon. comezon, mordicacion, hormiria, hormiyueo, /wrwu- frueamiento, quemazon." Compare piqure m French. E. S. DODGSON. POPULATION OF A COUNTRY PARISH (10th S. iv 428).—Would it not be possible to compute the population of a country parish at any given period from the parish church registers f Of course any calculation based upon the registers would be affected by the Noncon- formist element in the pariah. In many cases this would not exist at all. and in others it might be estimated with some approach to accuracy by any one with a very slight knowledge of local history. I would
