Thomas Smith, who was an attorney in Sheffield, and died in 1774, had a brother, William Smith of Norwich, who died in 1801. Thomas Smith married Susan Battie, by whom he had a son Thomas Smith of Sheffield, and after of Dunston Hall, who married in 1791 Elizabeth Mary, only surviving child of Robert Mower of Woodseats, Esq., (by Elizabeth his wife, daughter of Richard Milnes of Dunston Hall, Esq.) It was through this lady that the Dunston estate came to the Smiths by the will of her uncle Mr. Milnes. Mr. Smith died in 1811, having had issue by her (who married secondly John Frederick Smith, Esq., of London) three sons and several daughters. The second son (Rev. Wm. Smith of Dunston Hall) died in 1841, leaving male issue; but I am not aware of the death of either of the others. The family had a grant of arms in 1816. Dunston Hall had belonged to the Milnes family for about a century.
W. St.
"Dimidiation" in Impalements (Vol. vii., p. 548.).—In reply to your correspondent's Query as to dimidiation, he will find that this was the most ancient form of impalement. Its manifest inconvenience no doubt at last banished it. Guillim (ed. 1724) says, at p. 425.:
"It was an ancient way of impaling, to take half the husband's coat, and with that to joyn as much of the wife's; as appeareth in an old roll, wherein three lions, being the arms of England, are dimidiated and impaled with half the pales of Arragon. The like hath been practised with quartered coats by leaving out half of them."
On p. 426. he gives the example of Mary, Henry VIII.'s sister, and her husband Louis XII. of France. Here the French king's coat is cut in half, so that the lily in the base point is dimidiated; and the queen's coat, being quarterly France and England, shows two quarters only; England in chief, France in base.
Sandford, in his Genealogical History, gives a plate of the tomb of Henry II. and Richard I. of England at Fontevrault, which was built anew in
1638. Upon it are several impalements by dimidiation. Sandford (whose book seems to me to be strangely over-valued) gives no explanation of them. No doubt they were copied from the original tomb.
In Part II. of the Guide to the Architectural Antiquities in the Neighbourhood of Oxford, at p. 178., is figured an impalement by dimidiation existing at Stanton Harcourt, in the north transept of the church, in a brass on a piece of blue marble. The writer of the Guide supposes this bearing to be some union of Harcourt and Beke, in consequence of a will of John Lord Beke, and to be commemorative of the son of Sir Richard Harcourt and Margaret Beke. It is in fact commemorative of those persons themselves. Harcourt, two bars, is dimidiated, and meets Beke, a cross moline or ancrée. The figure thus produced is a strange one, but perfectly intelligible when the practice of impaling by dimidiation is recollected. I know no modern instance of this method of impaling. I doubt if any can be found since the time of Henry VIII.
D. P.
Begbrook.