Replies to Minor Queries.
William Chilcott (Vol. iii., pp. 38. 73.).—The few notes which follow are very much at the service of your correspondent. William Chilcott, M.A., was rector of St. George's, Exeter, where he died on May 30, 1711, at the age of forty-eight. The coat of arms on the tablet to his memory indicates that he married a Coplestone. His daughter Catherine died in August, 1695. The first edition of the Practical Treatise concerning Evil Thoughts was printed at Exeter in 1690, and was dedicated to his parishioners. Robert Chilcott, whom I take to be the brother of William, was rector of St. Mary-Major in Exeter, and died Feb. 7, 1689.
There does not appear to be any evidence that the persons above mentioned, were descended from the Chilcotts of Tiverton, though the identity of the Christian names renders it probable. If the object were to trace their ancestors or their descendants, much might be added to the suggestions of E.A.D. by searching the registers at Tiverton, and by comparing Prince's Worthies of Devon, ed. 1810, p. 213., and Polwhele's Devon, vol. iii. p. 351., with Harding's Tiverton; in various parts of which eight or nine individuals of the name are mentioned; especially vol. i. book ii. p. 114.; vol. ii. book iii. pp. 101, 102. 167. 183., and book iv., p. 20., where the connexion of the Chilcotts with the families of Blundell, Hooper, Collamore, Crossing, Slee, and Hill, is set forth. Failing these, the object might be attained by reference to the registers at Stogumber, co. Somerset, and of Northam, near Bideford, with the inscribed floorstones in the church there. Something might perhaps be learned of their descendants by reference to the registers at Exeter, and those at Morchard-Bishop, where a John Chilcott resided in 1700; Nympton St. George, where a family of the same name lived about 1740; North Molton, where C. Chilcott was vicar in 1786; and Dean Prior, where Joseph Chilcott was vicar about 1830. A Mr. Thomas Chilcott, who was an organist at Bath, married Ann, daughter of the Rev. Chichester Wrey. This lady died in 1758, and was buried at Tavistock, near Barnstaple. The coat of arms on the tablet to her memory is almost identical with the coat of the Rev. William Chilcott of Exeter first above mentioned.
J. D. S.
Fossil Elk of Ireland (Vol. iii., p. 121.).—In the Edinburgh Journal of Science, New Series, vol. ii., 1830, p. 301., is a curious paper by the late Dr. Hibbert Ware, under the title of "Additional Contributions towards the History of the Cervus Euryceros, or Fossil Elk of Ireland." It is illustrated with a copy of an engraving of an animal which Dr. H. W. believes to have been the same as the Irish elk, and which was living in Prussia at the time of the publication of the book from which it is taken, viz. the Cosmographia Universalis of Sebastian Munster: Basiliæ, 1550.
Dr. H. W. in this paper refers to a former one in the third volume of the first series of the same journal, in which he advanced proofs that the Cervus was a race which had but very recently become extinct.
W. C. Trevelyan.
Edinburgh, Feb. 19. 1851.
Canes Lesos (Vol. iii. p. 141.).—In a note to Beckwith's edition of Blount's Jocular Tenures, 4to. 1815, p. 225., Mr. Allan of Darlington anticipates your correspondent C. W. B., and says, respecting Blount's explanation of "Canes lesos," "I can meet with no such word in this sense: why may it not be dogs that have received some hurt? læsos from lædo." Clancturam should be clausturam, and so it is given in the above edition, and explained "a tax for fencing."