H. C.
Workington.
[Our correspondent's Query is an interesting one; but he does not seem to be aware that in our First Vol., p. 139., Mr. E. Smirke had given the names of three "bondmen of bloude" living near Brighton in 1617.]
Roman Roads near London.—In the most ancient maps of Middlesex that I have seen, there are no roads marked out. In a folio coloured map of Middlesex, published by Bowen (the date of which is, I think, 1709, although the same map has various dates, like those of Speed, where the date only is altered several times), the roads are introduced. A Roman road appears from the corner of the Tottenham Court Road, where the Hampstead Road and the New Road now meet, running through what must now be the Regent's Park, until it reaches Edgeware, and thence to Brockley Hills, called Sulloniacæ, an ancient city in Antonine's Itinerary. The lanes marking this road are so different from the other roads, as to show at once what is intended; and yet, either in this same map or in another with the same route, Watling Street is printed upon the highway that leads to Tyburn Turnpike, in a manner to show the whole of that distance is meant. The Roman road from Tottenham Court, after making its appearance in a variety of other maps up to a certain date, about 1780, is nowhere to be found since, in any of the Middlesex maps. Can any of your readers show by what authority this was first introduced, and why discontinued; and if the Watling Street branched off, upon its approach to London, where did the part crossing Oxford Street at Tyburn lead to?
John Francis-X.
Mrs. Catherine Barton.—In Brewster's Life of Sir Isaac Newton, p. 250., is the following passage:
"This accomplished nobleman was created Earl of Halifax in 1700, and after the death of his first wife he conceived a strong attachment for Mrs. Catherine Barton, the widow of Colonel Barton, and the niece of Newton."
I wish particularly to know the maiden name of this Catherine Barton; she married Mr. Conduitt, who succeeded Sir I. Newton as Master of the Mint.
J. E. R. S.
Sampford, Braintree, April 7. 1851.