The foregoing announcement was intended to be sent to "N. & Q." some weeks since. I am now induced to forward it without further delay, because I see the subject of surnames introduced in to-day's number by two different correspondents. COWGILL, the first of these, could, if so disposed, render me efficient help. As to the remarks of J. H. on the works of "Lower and others" (what others?), they clearly show that he has never read what he so summarily condemns, or he would not now have to ask for the supposed number of surnames in England, which is given in my third edition, vol. i., preface, p. xiii. Though I am, perhaps, more fully aware than any other person of the defects and demerits of my English Surnames, I think the literary public will hardly deny me the credit of "some study and research," praise which has been awarded me by better critics than J. H. It is not my practice to notice the censures of anonymous writers, but I cannot forbear adverting to two points in J. H.'s short communication. In the first place his desire for a work giving all the names used in England, and "showing when they were first adopted or brought into this country," shows his entire want of acquaintance with the existing state of the nomenclature of English families. A glance at a few pages of so common a book as the London Directory, will convince any competent observer that there are hundreds upon hundreds of surnames that would baffle the most imaginative etymologist. Secondly, J. H. proposes that an author treating on the subject of family names, should begin "with the Britons." Does he really suppose that the Celtic possessors of our island bore family names according to the modern practice? If so, "Lower and (many) others" can assure him that his antiquarian and historical knowledge must be of a somewhat limited kind.
MARK ANTONY LOWER.
Lewes.
REV. JOHN PAGET.
(Vol. iv., p. 133.; Vol. v., pp. 66. 280.)
Since the Notes, kindly transmitted from Holland in answer to my Query respecting the family of the Rev. John Paget, appeared in "N. & Q.," I have discovered that the Pagets to whom my Query related, as well as the others alluded to by your correspondents, were all of the family of Paget of Rothley, Leicestershire, of whom a (partially incomplete) pedigree is given in Nichols's Leicestershire, vol. iv. p. 481. I was led to this conclusion by finding that Robert Paget (the writer of a preface before alluded to "from Dort, 1641") mentions in his will Roadley (Rothley) in Leicestershire as his birthplace, and speaks of his brother George as residing in his "patrimoniall house" there: he is probably the Robert, son of Michael Paget, and great-grandson of the Rev. Harold Paget, vicar of Rothley in 1564, who is mentioned in the pedigree as born at Rothley in 1611: he died at Dordt in 1684. The pedigree gives him an uncle named Thomas, born in 1589 (two indeed of that name, and both born the same year!); this will do very well for the Rev. Thomas Paget, incumbent of Blackley, and rector of Stockport; and another named John, who died, aged seven, in 1582: still I cannot help believing that John Paget, the writer, was this Robert's uncle, and feel mightily disposed to metamorphose one of the two Thomases into John. The Rev. Thomas Paget died in October, 1660, leaving his property to his two sons, Nathan M.D., and Thomas a clergyman. What relation was he to that Mr. Paget to whom Dee, the astrologer (see his Diary, p. 55. Camden Society, 1842), sold a house in Manchester in 1595? His son, Dr. Nathan, in a Thesis on the Plague, printed at Leyden in 1639, describes himself on the title-page as Mancestr-Anglus. According to Mr. Paget's will, dated May 23, 1660, he was then minister at Stockport, Cheshire; and I am inclined to think him identical with Thomas Paget, rector of St. Chads, Shrewsbury, from 1646 to 1659, although Owen and Blakeway (History of Shrewsbury, 2 vols. 4to. 1825) consider the latter to be son of John (James?) Paget, Baron of the Exchequer, temp. Car. I.: this descent is, I am confident, erroneous. Thomas Paget appears to have gone to Amsterdam in 1639 on the death of the Rev. John Paget, and to have returned to England in 1646, in which year his son John (who must have been much younger than his two other sons, and is, moreover, not mentioned in his will dated 1660) was baptized at Shrewsbury. Dr. Nathan Paget was an intimate friend of Milton, and cousin to the poet's fourth wife, Elizabeth Minshull, of whose family descent (which appears to be rather obscure) I may, at another time, communicate some particulars.
Whilst the subject of the Pagets (a very interesting one to me), I cannot refrain from noticing, even at the risk of encroaching on your space, a singular mistake of Anthony à Wood respecting another writer (though of an entirely different family) of the name of Paget. Speaking of the Rev. Ephraim Paget (Athen. Oxon., vol. ii. p. 51.) he says:
"One of both his names (his uncle I think) translated into English Sermons upon Ruth, Lond. 1586, in oct., written originally by Lod. Lavater; but whether the said Ephraim Paget was educated at Oxon, I cannot justly say, though two or more of his sirname and time occur in our registers."
Had Anthony ever seen the book in question, he would have been aware that the title-page informs him that it was translated by Ephraim Pagitt, a child of eleven years of age; and as, according to the said Anthony's account, Ephraim was born in 1575, he would also at once have seen that Ephraim himself—not that ideal personage, his "uncle of the same name"—was the translator.
CRANMORE.