in the fulness of their young love, offering itself to the undescribed sympathies of a parent,-A HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Can Hope, friend, have a vision more solemnly happy than this? If it cannot, cherish it, and, believe us, it will guide you safely end refreshingly to many a green spot yet hidden in the dark future. Without it, you and we are desert wanderers; with it, as it deals only with the future, we shall hail the New Year, and bid it fling the "glory and the freshness of a dream" upon the coming months.

Reader, we have not gone beyond the idea of a common humanity; and trust us when we say, that visions like these would be more frequent, if they were only sought.

Plymouth.

E. L.

PLYMOTHIANA.-No. I.

A WEEK OUT OF A SAILOR'S LOG-BOOK.

In the early part of the sixteenth century, a practice came into vogue of collecting the remarkable sayings, apothegms, and anecdotes of learned or other disinguished personages, which were afterwards published in volumes named after the individual whose deeds or sayings they recorded, and distinguished by the termination, "ANA." Thus, we have the Walpoleana of Horace Walpole; the Johnsoniana of Dr. Johnson; and multitudes of others of minor note, too numerous to mention.

The same system became, in process of time, applied, although but partially, to towns; and hence originated the Oxoniana, attributed to the pen of witty and learned Tom Wharton of Trinity, whose own witticisms and waggeries, if collected by his contemporaries, might have furnished an entertaining as well as instructive addition to our library of ANAS, under the taking title of Whartoniana. Indeed, we are not satisfied that the vacuum might not even now be filled up by the industrious antiquarian, from the traditionary recollections of old Trinity, and the innumerable little volumes ascribed to his pen, among which the "Oxford Sausage," a work little known, perhaps, beyond the precincts of the University, may be enumerated.

But the Worthies of Plymouth were not, perhaps, less worthy of being rescued from oblivion, although Fame has not yet bestowed on them the crown of immortality in the shape of an ANA; and we doubt not that, among the repositories of our readers, various curious and interesting records are to be found which, though destitute individually of the importance required by a distinct publication, might beneficially furnish out a niche in our pages, wherein they might be safely chronicled for the benefit of the future historian of our town, and its classic and lovely vicinity. With the view of extracting for our readers contributions to so valuable a fund, we have decided on forming a distinct department for this express class of contributions, under the head of PLYMOTHIANA, which we are disposed to prefer as being more euphonous than Plymouthiana, which has a spice too much of the os magnum atque rotundum for our, perhaps, hypercritical ears.

As example has, in all ages and countries, been held to be far better than the mere abstractions of precept, we shall illustrate our object by making a commencement, and giving a series of extracts from the diary of a sailor, who was an ancestor of our unworthy selves, and who held the command at this port at two several periods during the year 1708, when Plymouth presented a widely different appearance from the large and populous town of our days; while our sister towns of Devonport and Stonehouse, now of such importance for the public establishments they contain, had done little more than exhibit the pigmy embryos of their present full-grown maturity. We cannot but regret that the dilapidated volume before us is the only one of a series of some fifty or more left by our ancestor, who, with an industry worthy of imitation, if not with a want of selection somewhat to be lamented, kept a similar diary for every year of his public life, in which he has preserved names and transactions of the highest and most trivial importance, in all the happy confusion of the gossiping fashion of the day; but being only collateral in place of direct descendants, his diaries passed in the more direct line, and we were indebted to the kindness of a lineal descendant for the curious and not altogether valueless volume we possess.

Previous, however, to commencing our extracts, we shall take leave to give some slight sketch of the writer's descent from a man who, in the unpretending character of a citizen and goldsmith, was one of the greatest benefactors to the proud metropolis of our island, and whose descendants are but discouraging examples of the gratitude of the public. Sir Hugh Middleton, the sixth son of Richard Middleton, the Governor of Denbigh Castle, in Wales, will long live in the annals of London as the bold adventurer who expended the fortune he had amassed by laborious industry in supplying the wants of his fellowcitizens, by bringing the New River from Ware, in Hertfordshire,―a stupendous undertaking for a private individual, and one which could not have been accomplished had not Royalty, which he had repeatedly upheld with his purse, come to his aid, and thus enabled him to complete it, after the anxious exertions of five years and nearly eight months, on the 29th of September, 1613; on which day his brother, Sir Thomas, was elected Lord Mayor of London, and he himself received the barren honour of knighthood from the pedantic and parsimonious James, who had come forward almost at the eleventh hour, and, guided by that sagacity which was the redeeming feature of his character, saved the work from being abandoned, after the city of London, with a fatuity hardly to be conceived, refused to advance one farthing for an undertaking so beneficial to the inhabitants. James, however, with his habitual caution, entered into a covenant with Middleton, who had toiled nearly four years, on the 2nd of May, 1612, for a moiety of the property, in consideration of paying one half of the expenses incurred and to be incurred. On the 19th of October, 1622, he was farther advanced to the dignity of a baronet, and as a scanty remuneration for having sunk the whole of his splendid fortune in the useful work which has immortalized his name, James, by a special warrant, exempted him from the payment of the fees, amounting to £1,095. The total cost of the New River was not short of £500,000, of which, if James paid his fair proportion, no less than £250,000 came out of the pocket of the

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goldsmith, whose father had, indeed, been governor of Denbigh Castle during the reigns of Edward VI., Bloody Queen Mary, and Elizabeth; but who, from the number of his children, could not be expected to leave any very splendid inheritance to the sixth of his sons. So sadly impoverished was Sir Hugh by this undertaking, that he was obliged to sell his share for a very inadequate compensation, and maintain himself in his old age by the practice of a civil engineer. On the 18th of November, 1631, Charles I. regranted to him the whole of King James's shares in the New River, for an annual rent of £500; and he died in very distressing circumstances, on the 7th of December, 1631, leaving seven children exclusive of two who died before him. He had been twice married; first to Elizabeth, daughter and heiress of John Olmstead, Esq., of Ingatestone, Essex, and secondly to Anne, the daughter of Richard Collins, Esq., of Lichfield, in Staffordshire, and widow of Richard Edwards of London. By the former, he had four children, of whom the third and fourth alone survived him. Of these, William succeeded to his title, and was the ancestor of the present family of Ellicombe, of Alphington, near Exeter. By his second wife, he left five more; the second of whom, Jane, born the 8th of May, 1601, married Doctor Peter Chamberlayne, of London, and, dying at the age of eighty-two, on the 23rd of December, 1683, was interred at Woodham Mortimer, in Essex, leaving four children, Elizabeth, Doctor Peter Chamberlayne, Dr. Hugh Chamberlayne, and John, of whose profession no record has reached us.

The family of Chamberlayne is one not undistinguished in the annals of our country, as may be learned from "Lysons' Environs of London,” vol. ii., pages 68, 79, and 88, and from the family monument erected on the outside of the south wall of the parish church of Chelsea. Oddington, in Gloucestershire, a few miles east of Stow-in-the-Wold, and close to the confines of Oxfordshire, was the ancient seat of the family, as late, at least, as the year 1616; and it is not improbable that some branches of the family may yet be found in that neighbourhood. From Gloucestershire the family appears to have removed to Chelsea, where, in the year 1694, Dr. Edward Chamberlayne (who was born in 1616, and was buried at Chelsea, on the 27th of May, 1703, in the 87th year of his age) obtained a grant from the parish of ground for a family vault, in consideration of an annual benefaction of £5 to the master of the charity schools, and a like sum to apprentice out one of the children. Dr. Edward Chamberlayne had two sons and one daughter, the eldest of whom, Peregrine Clifford Chamberlayne, a postcaptain in the navy, and distinguished both as a scholar and a traveller, died in 1691, at the early age of thirty-one, and lies interred in the family vault at Chelsea. His younger brother, Edward, who belonged originally to the Inner Temple, preferring the sea to the bar, entered the navy, and commanded a ship in several engagements: he also died young, in the twenty-ninth year of his age, in 1698. But it is Anne, their only sister, who chiefly merits our notice. This young lady, with all the martial courage which so pre-eminently distinguished our Virgin Queen, catching the naval ardour from her brothers, entered the service in male attire, as a midshipman, on board a ship commanded by one of her brothers, and obtained honourable distinction by her bravery and

skill in a desperate engagement with the French, on the 30th of June, 1690. Soon after this, she quitted the service to meet a more tranquil death, at an early age, on shore, having married John Spragg, Esq., and closed her brief and checquered existence soon after being delivered of her only child, a daughter.

But to return. Elizabeth, the eldest child of Dr. Peter Chamberlayne (or Chamberlaine) and grand-daughter of Sir Hugh Middleton, married William Walker, Esq., of Tankard's Town, in the Queen's County, in Ireland, the representative of an ancient and illustrious British family which claims direct descent from the Llewellins, Princes of Wales. By this gentleman she had three sons. William, who died unmarried before the year 1725; Sir Hovendon Walker, knight, whose diary will furnish the materials of our first numbers; and Sir Chamberlain Walker, knight, M.D., and one of the physicians to Queen Anne, from whom the writer of the present article is third in descent by the maternal side, and fifth, consequently, in the female line from the illustrious projector of the New River, which has proved such a mine of wealth to its present owners, although it involved Sir Hugh in ruin.

Both Sir Hovendon and Sir Chamberlain Walker were twice married. Sir Hovendon's first wife was the daughter of Colonel Pudsay, who died without issue. His second, was Margaret, the daughter of Judge Jaffreyson, by whom he had two daughters; Elizabeth, about whom we possess no farther information, and Margaret, whose birth is recorded in the volume before us as having taken place at Mr. Taylor's house, Channel Row, Westminster, on the 2nd of March, 1708, and died unmarried about the year 1778, either in England or Holland, but it is uncertain in which. She was personally known to the writer's mother when a child. Of Sir Hovendon's other children we are without information.

The first wife of his brother, Sir Chamberlain, was the widow of Sir Charles Rich, by whom he had no family; and his second, who was a widow, was Catherine the daughter of a gentlemen of the name of Cavendish, who left five children, from the eldest of whom, Chamberlain, the writer of this is descended.

Besides these, mention of a fourth brother, who was probably the youngest of the family, is to be met with in various parts of the volume before me; he was named after his great-grandfather, Sir Hugh Middleton Walker, and was a purser in the navy. From him most probably are descended those Walkers, to one of whom, Chamberlain Richard Maynard Walker, the writer is indebted for the diary for 1708.

His father's widow was living at Southampton in June 1708, as appears from two entries in his diary for June, in which he mentions going from Salisbury to see her, on the 21st of June, and taking leave of her on the 26th, to return to Salisbury.

But we may be told that all this has no connection with what ought to be the subject-matter of a record of facts illustrative of the Worthies of Plymouth, and designed to throw light on the history of many of the families who are to be at present found in the town or its vicinity. The charge may perhaps be just; but it is perhaps a pardonable vanity to dwell with complacency upon the honours of those who have preceded us, and to deck our persons in the tattered relics of their great

ness, ere we too descend into that tomb where all will be forgotten; and to preserve, for the emulation and example of those who follow us, names worthy of their remembrance, and deeds deserving imitation.

Besides, some account of the individual upon whose authority the facts to be recorded will be founded, appears an appropriate introduction, as furnishing an accurate standard by which to estimate his credibility.

The volume, before us, opens at sea, on the morning of Thursday, the first of January, 1708; when Captain Walker, in a squadron commanded by Sir John Norris, was proceeding down Channel to Plymouth. As a specimen of the Admiral's style of recording events, we shall here give a transcript of the diary of the first seven days; in which will be found some names not undistinguished in the naval annals of our country; slightly altering the orthography to render it less offensive to the fastidiousness of modern refinement,

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"1708. Thursday, January 1. All last night we had little wind, and this morning it was very thick weather; though at noon thought we saw Peverell's Point, about eleven leagues N. b E. Captain Huntingdon, Captain Gore, and Captain Mitchell, were aboard this morning, with Sir John Norris.

"Friday, 2. We have had troublesome weather all night; and, having had no fair sight of the land that we could depend upon, at daylight this morning stood in to make the shore; and about ten o'clock made the Start; the wind blowing fresh, with dirt and thick weather at s.E. We tried to get to Plymouth, but when we were in Bigbury Bay, proving little wind and at w. we tried to stand off to the eastward; but the tide of ebb hindered us, so we stood the other way to get into Plymouth; and, it proving fine weather, we anchored there about seven o'clock, in eight fathom water, but it was foul ground.

"Saturday, 3. This morning we weighed, and stood in farther, but the cable parted, and the anchor was left behind, being in foul ground. Captain Hosier was this morning early with Sir John Norris; and then several of the Captains, and Sir Thomas Hardy, came to see us. They drank tea with him: and afterwards Mr. Stukeley, and Mr. Holmes, came to see Sir John. Mr. Holmes, Captain Hopson, and Captain Morrice staid dinner with Sir John; and, after dinner, Captain Huntingdon came into the Sound, and all the merchant ships that could not get in last night. After dinner, Sir John Norris, Captain Hopson, and I went ashore with Mr. Holmes to his house. We met the Commissioner just as he was going to Saltash. He came ashore to speak to Sir John, and then went on. Sir John and we then, having drank a bottle of wine with Mr. Holmes, walked to our boats. Sir John and I left them, and went to see Mr. Edgecumb's house, and from thence on board, where we found Captain Huntingdon, who staid awhile with us, and then went away.

"Sunday, 4. This forenoon I went with Sir John Norris ashore to Mr. Stukeley's. Captain Hopson and Captain Morrice, dined there also with us, and one Mr. Quass, of Exeter. In the afternoon Sir John Norris, Mr. Holmes, who dined with us also, Captain Hopson, and Captain Morrice and I went to the coffee house; and from thence, leaving Mr. Holmes there, Captain Hopson and I went with Sir John

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