Liverpool.
Suicides buried in Cross Roads (Vol. iv., pp. 116. 212.).
—This was formerly the general practice in the South of England, and it has occasionally been resorted to within the last thirty years. At Chalvington, in Sussex, there once resided, according to a popular tradition, the only honest miller ever known. About a century since, this person, finding it impossible to succeed in business, hanged himself in his own mill, and was buried in a neighbouring "crossways." An oaken stake, driven through his body, taking root, grew into a tree, and threw a singular shrivelled branch, the only one it ever produced, across the road. It was the most singular tree I ever saw, and had something extremely hag-like and ghostly in its look. The spot was of course haunted, and many a rustic received a severe shock to his feelings on passing it after nightfall. The tradition was of course received by the intelligent as a piece of superstitious folk-lore, and the story of the "only honest miller" was regarded as a mere myth, until about twenty-five years ago, when a labourer employed in digging sand near the roots of the scraggy oak tree, discovered a human skeleton. This part of the history I can vouch for, having seen, when a schoolboy, some of the bones. I must not omit to mention that the honest miller of Chalvington owned the remarkable peculiarity of a "tot" or tuft of hair growing in the palm of each hand!
MARK ANTONY LOWER.
Armorial Bearings (Vol. iv., p. 58.).
—The coat of arms described by F. I. B. is given by Robson and by Burke to the family of Kelley of Terrington, co. Devon, and the crests are similar, but I can find no authority for the coat in any work relating to that county. The ancient family, Kelly of Kelly, in Devon, bore a very different coat and crest. There is no such place as Terrington in that county, unless Torrington be meant, but no family of note bearing the name of Kelley had possessions there. I conclude, therefore, that there must be a mistake as to the county.
S. S. S.
"Life of Cromwell" (Vol. iv., p. 117.).
—No life of Cromwell was ever written by "one Kember;" there is a Life of Oliver Cromwell, Lord Protector of the Commonwealth of England, Scotland, and Ireland, the second edition (London, 1725) of which, greatly enlarged from the first, is now before me, and which has the autograph of Malone, who has on the fly-leaf asserted it to have been "written by Isaac Kimber, a Dissenting minister, who was born at Vantage in Berkshire, Dec. 1, 1692. His son, Edward Kimber, refers to it as the work of his father, in a history of England in ten volumes, which he published."
Kimber's life is a much better one than Carlyle's; but the best biography of that most extraordinary man is by Thomas Cromwell, published some twenty or thirty years since, and of which there was a second edition.