Welsh Journals

330 BYE-GONES. Dec, 1883. he was, in his opinion, without parallel. With an income of £7,000 a year, he spent it all lavishly. ' Waste not want not,' was written up in large letters in the kitchen, but that was all that was known of economy. Mr. Yorke had such an ardent and absorbing love of Literature that, as with Prospero in ' The Tempest' it abstracted him from all worldly cares. He was steeped in Virgil to the lips, and had a quotation for everything, He had the courage to take his meals at the time he liked best, and without regard to the habits of his contemporaries. He dined at four, and a good hot supper was announced at half-past nine . . He published a volume of original verses . . but the character of these verses is such as to make one honestly doubt the accuracy of the highly classic polish attributed to him by ' Nimrod.' The curious thing in this volume is that the merest common-places have a parallel passage from Virgil quoted in the margin, a proof that a great appreciation of a dead classic may be no security for the ability to write decent English verse. " Mr. Yorke was a man of unbounded good temper, and had a joke even for the misconduct of his servants. He had an agent named John Caesar, who absconded with £800 of his money. Mr. Yorke said he supposed that the man's determination was to be aut Ccesar aut nullus. He bought his wine from Alderman Harley, a London wine- merchant, and he called his wine-cellar ' The Harlean Miscellany.' He drove four horses, and when he was once told that they were in poor condition, he replied, it was just possible, as his coachman's name was Robin, and he kept pigs. He was no sportsman, and when he mounted a horse he was quite a figure of fun, for he wore a cocked hat, and his old blue militia cloak, which streamed in the wind like the sail of a yacht. " Mr. Yorke seems to have had great contempt for the little Welsh squires. Caerwys Hunt was a great institu¬ tion in those days, and when it was over and the squires had returned to their houses, he used to say that their great topic of conversation at the dinner-table was, not what horse won but who fought." On Sep. 7,1881, it was stated in Bye-gones by "H.W.L." that Mr. Yorke published a small volume of poems, chiefly humorous, entitled Crude-ditties, and a specimen was given. Is this the volume alluded to by Mr. Jones in his lecture ? He also issued Tracts of Powys. G.G. CURRENT NOTES. The current number of the British Architect contains engravings of the Churton Drinking Fountain at Whit¬ church and the Peers Testimonial at Ruthin. An extraordinary discovery of an ancient cave has been made at Windle Hall, near Weston, on the top of a sloping field, about 300 yards from the road which leads from Willeston and joins the Chester high road at Hinderton. The excavation is believed to have been made during the Danish occupation of the district. Mr. H. T. Pelham held an enquiry at Llanfyllin, on Friday, in connection with the proposed grant of a charter of incorporation under the Municipal Reform Act. If the proposal of the inhabitants is adopted the new Mayor will rule over a large area, 5,253 acres, the area of the civil parish, but a small population, 1,774. The Commissioner expressed his belief that the charter would probably be granted. The new borough, we presume, though not in existence when the College Charter was drawn up, will be entitled to elect a representative on the Governing Body of the North Wales College. At Ynysddu, Monmouthshire, last week, a statue to the popular modern Cymric poet, " Islwyn," was unveiled by Mr. Alfred Thomas, the ex-Mayor of Cardiff. Contri¬ butions towards the monument fund have been received from all parts of the country, and from distant colonies. The Disaster in the Soudan.—Mr. Edwin Baldwin Evans, who was on the Intelligence Department under Hicks Pasha, and who it is feared is among the slain, wa8 a native of Rhuddlan, near Rhyl, North Wales. His late father, John Evans, was very well known in the Princi¬ pality as a Welsh scholar and antiquarian. About sixteen years ago Mr. E. B. Evans went out to Alexandria to an English merchant. When the war broke out last year in Egypt he joined the Intelligence Department attached to Sir Garnet Wolseley's army, and subsequently, when that war was over and the present expedition sent to the Soudan, he was selected out of many candidates as chief of the Intelligence Department. DECEMBER 5, 1883, NOTES. OSWESTRY CORPORATION RECORDS. (Nov. 28, 1883.) A FOOTPATH ACROSS CAE GROES. At the Quarter Sessions held 16 July, 1802, before Richard Croxon, esq., mayor, Charles Watkin Williams Wynn, esq., recorder, and Richard Salisbury, esq., coroner, the following order was " returned to the Court," and was " confirmed " :— " We Richard Croxon, esquire, mayor, and Richard Salisbury, esquire, coroner, two of his Majesty's Justices of the Peace in and for the said Town . . . having on view found that a certain part of a footway within the liberties of the said Town across a certain field there called Cae Groes now in the holding of the Reverend James Donne clerk and belonging to him as master of the Grammar School for the length of one hundred and thirty- six yards or thereabouts . . . may be diverted and turned so as to make the same more commodious to the public and having viewed a new footpath made in lieu thereof on the outside of the said field adjoining the turn¬ pike road leading from the said town of Oswestry to Llan- forda of the length of one hundred and thirty-six yards and of the breadth of four feot or thereabouts . . . being satisfied that the said new footpath is properly made and fit for the reception of travellers do hereby order that the present footway be diverted and turned and that the same shall from henceforth be stopped up . ." Jabco. THE CHAPEL OF COLSUL.-Mr. Taylor, in his newly-published Historic Notices of Flint, refers to a grant of David ap Llewelyn, Prince of Wales, to the abbey of Basingwerk, dated 1240, whereby he gave to that abbey " the churche of Halliwelle with the chapel of Colsul." Mr. Taylor remarks :—" Mr, Pennant says that Flint must have been the site of this chapel. Mr. Thomas, in his History of the Diocese of St. Asaph, seems to infer that, because the chapel is mentioned in conjunction with Holy¬ well church, and the fact that Flint church in latter times was appendant to Northop, Colsul chapel must have been situate within the present township of Coles- hill in Holywell parish ; but at this period parochial divisions had not been made. The district was undoubtedly known as Coleshill, and being contiguous to Holywell, and both the church and chapel being in the immediate neighbourhood of Basingwerk, the Prince would naturally grant each of them to the abbey, which would