Notes and Queries, Number 71, March 8, 1851, page 49 by Various Authors
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dents would confer a heraldic benefit if they would {195} point out other instances, which I believe to exist, where family reputation has been damaged by similar ignorance in heraldic interpretation." I have always thought this ignorance to be universal with the country people in England: I could mention several instances. First, when I was a boy at school I was shown the hatchments in Wateringbury church, in Kent, by my master, and informed that Sir Thomas Styles had murdered some domestic, and was consequently obliged to bear the "bloody hand:" and lastly, and lately, at Church-Gresley, in Derbyshire, at the old hall of the Gresley family, I was shown the marble table on which Sir Roger or Sir Nigel Gresley had cut up, in a sort of Greenacre style, his cook; for which he was obliged to have the bloody hand in his arms, and put into the church on his tomb.
H. W. D.
Anticipations of Modern Ideas by Defoe (Vol. iii., p. 137.).--The two tracts mentioned by your correspondent R. D. H., and which he states he has often sought in vain, namely, Augusta Triumphans, London, 1728, 8vo., and Second Thoughts are best, London, 1729, 8vo., are to be found in the Selection from Defoe's Works published by Talboys in 20 vols. 12mo. in 1840. They are both indisputably by Defoe, and contain, as your correspondent observes, many anticipations of modern improvements. I may mention that there is a tract, also beyond doubt by Defoe, on the subject of London street-robberies, which has never yet been noticed or attributed to him by any one. It is far more curious and valuable than Second Thoughts are best, and is perfectly distinct from that tract. It gives a history, and the only one I ever yet met with, written in all Defoe's graphic manner, of the London police and the various modes of street robbery in the metropolis, from the time of Charles II. to 1731, and concludes by suggestions of effectual means of prevention. It is evidently the work of one who had lived