which he continued to represent until 1892, when he was succeeded by Colonel Mark Lockwood, the present Member. Somewhat early he was marked for minor departmental and administrative work. He became Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department in 1874, was Financial Secretary to the Treasury from 1878 to 1889, was sworn of the Privy Council and appointed Church Estate Commissioner in 1885, and a Commissioner under the Local Government Boundaries Act in 1887. He was offered the Chairmanship of Ways and Means, which Lord Beaconsfield jocularly told him might lead to the Speakership, but he declined the offer, as he did also that of the Governorship of New South Wales. In 1878, largely owing to his thorough knowledge of Essex, he succeeded in passing the Epping Forest Act, which secured for the inhabitants of London one of the finest playgrounds possessed by any city in the world, and is of the greatest benefit to the inhabitants of metropolitan Essex. He was chairman of a Select Committee which resulted in the Metropolitan Police Force being entirely re-arranged; he was largely instrumental in re-organising the Irish Board of Works; he successfully piloted a measure for the amendment of the Beer Act, which so greatly reformed the licensing laws, and it is to him the public is indebted for the establishment of the block system on railways.

In 1867 Mr. Selwin took as his second wife Eden, daughter of J. T. Thackrah, Esq., widow of Sir Charles Ibbetson, Bart., after which he assumed his family name of Selwin-Ibbetson. He succeeded as seventh Baronet in 1869. After nearly thirty years of active, we might well say hardworking, political life in the House of Commons and as the recognised leader of the Conservative Party in Essex, Sir H. J. Selwin-Ibbetson was deservedly called to the House of Lords by Lord Salisbury in the distribution of the Queen's birthday honours in 1892, choosing for his title that of Lord Rookwood, after an interesting old manor on his estate (see E.R., i, 131). The popular appreciation of his sterling public services led to the presentation of a three-quarter length portrait, painted by Mr. Orchardson, R.A., to Lady Rookwood and himself at a large and representative gathering at Epping Town Hall on March 30th, 1893.

Lord Rookwood was an immense lover of his county, and gave up his life for its good and that of his country.

He

qualified as a J.P. for Essex on February 18th, 1859, and became one of the chairmen of Essex Quarter Sessions in 1876, in which capacity he has served with conspicuous ability; he presided on New Year's Day last, when he seemed particularly well—not a sign of failing was observed by anyone. He conformed to the new order of Local Government in a spirit of loyal devotion, and presided over the first and second meetings of the provisional County Council in January and February, 1889declining to be elected an Alderman of the County "in accordance with the determination of a long series of years not to serve ex officio on any body." He was the elected member for Harlow Division, but retired at the next election in three years' time. He was elected chairman of the Standing Joint Committee, a position very congenial to his tastes, as he was to a considerable extent father of the Police Act of 1890, under which the Joint Committee largely work, and as the senior chairman of Quarter Sessions, he felt at home, and did excellent work, having presided over forty-eight meetings in the twelve years that he was chairman of that important body. A meeting happened to be held upon the day that the announcement of his peerage appeared, and, in reply to natural congratulations, he said "his greatest gratification was the feeling that this new honour still enables me to devote the remainder of my life to the service of my county."

Lord Rookwood, from first to last, was a typical country gentleman; he spent his time and devoted his attention to county business, when not engaged upon the more important, if not more congenial, business of the state; he spent his money in working for his county's sports, being always ready, if not really anxious, to support the sports and pastimes of the people in all directions. Of his long and intimate relations with the Essex Hunt, it is impossible to speak fully, but we may add that everyone connected with the field over which he was so long Master, feels a sincere and irreparable loss.

Lord Rookwood had a sound national reputation, and the county of Essex mourns one of its most brilliant, and certainly one of its most loyal sons. He died after an operation which at first seemed to have been successful, at 39, Welbeck Street, London, on the evening of January 15th, 1902, and was buried at Hatfield Broad Oak on January 21st, amid an

impressive demonstration of respect. His third wife, formerly Miss Sophia Harriet Lawrell, daughter of Major Digby Lawrell, whom he married less than two years ago, survives him. By neither marriage had he any children, and the title now becomes extinct.

A

ISAAC TAYLOR.

NOTHER interesting link with the past is snapped by the death of Canon ISAAC TAYLOR, at Settrington Rectory, near Malton, Yorks, on October 18th last; in him we lose another representative of the famous literary family of the Taylors of Ongar (referred to at E.R. vii., 104-113; ix.1 and frontispiece, 117-the plate being portraits of his two aunts, Ann and Jane, and grandfather). Isaac Taylor the fourth was the eldest son, and second of the eleven children, of Isaac Taylor the third, author of The Natural History of Enthusiasm (1829), etc., by his wife, Elizabeth Medland; all the children were born at Stanford Rivers, Isaac on the 2nd May, 1829. He was educated at King's College, London, and at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he won numerous college prizes, and cårried off the coveted silver oration cup; in 1853 he graduated as 19th wrangler; M.A., 1857; Hon. LL.D. (Edin.), 1879; D. Litt. (Camb.), 1855.

Although coming from a strong Nonconformist stock, he was ordained in 1857 by Archbishop Sumner, who licensed him to the curacy of Trotterscliffe, Kent, where his interest in his work was exhibited in his The Liturgy and the Dissenters (1860), one of the most successful pamphlets of its time. He was curate of Kensington, under Archdeacon Sinclair (1860-1), and of St. Mark's, North Audley Street (1862-5). Dr. Tait, Bishop of London, appointed him to the vicarage of St. Matthias, Bethnal Green, one of the very poorest parishes in London, with a population of 6,000, consisting mainly of Spitalfields' silk weavers, descendants of the Huguenot refugees. † There he set to work to organise various agencies for promoting the moral and physical welfare of his neglected and destitute people. He was asked by a comparative stranger to preach in a

*For view of house see Leisure Hour, xvi. 216 (April 6, 1867).

+See a very interesting article, "Memorials of the Huguenot Colony in Spitalfields and Bethnal Green," Golden Hours, April, 1874.

church at Highgate on behalf of East London charities; his sermon, illustrating the squalid homes and daily toil of his parishioners, excited a widespread and unexpected interest, and The Burden of the Poor (published by request) produced overwhelming pecuniary support. In August, 1866, during the fearful outbreak of cholera, his parish seemed to be the very centre of

the pestilence, in some streets hardly a house being unvisited by the dreadful scourge. Mr. Taylor's organisation proved quite equal to the terrible emergency, and he was able to account in detail for the large sum over £4,000-which was entrusted to him. These trying times and his arduous labours, however, told on him, as was to be expected, and his Bishop offered him, in 1869, the incumbency of the

suburban parish, with a population of 4,000, of Holy Trinity, Twickenham; in 1874 his Bishop's appreciation was further shown by his appointment to the Rural Deanery of the united districts of Hampton and Staines. In the valuable rectory of Settrington, Yorks, which he received from his wife's uncle, Earl Brownlow, in 1875, he was able to resume the literary activity of early days, which had been quite impossible in the vast metropolitan parishes in which for 15 years he had been called to labour, and where he had conclusively proved that, although his inclination was to literature, his church work always stood first. In 1885 Archbishop Thomson appointed Dr. Taylor to the Canonry and Prebend of Kirk Fenton, in York Minster, and he acted for a short time as Rural Dean of Settrington (1887).

Quite early in life young Taylor showed that his bent was in a philological or linguistic direction; he had been warned by his tutor, when an undergraduate, that he could take a very high place in the Tripos "if he would but leave those stupid modern languages alone." After various magazine articles, useful in providing him with funds when an undergraduate for the purchase of many desired books, his first distinct literary venture was in that direction; a year after taking his degree he published a translation of W. A. Becker's Charicles (1854). The next ten years' work resulted in Words and Places (1864), at once recognised as a learned and popular work of immense labour; it opened up an entirely new subject, being almost the first English book in which the results of scientific philology were applied to the elucidation of local names. From then to now the pages of Notes and Queries show how widely spread has been the study of local history by means of this delightful text-book. The issue for October 19th-the day after his death contained an article from his pen on the names of places in South Africa. Isaac Taylor's book went through five editions during the year of its publication, and passed into a revised and enlarged edition in 1865, and a revised and compressed edition in 1873. Everybody longed for an extended edition. Undoubtedly the author looked favourably on the project, as a scheme for republication in three volumes was presented, but the only sign has been his Names and their Histories (1896). His etymological, historical, and geographical studies were probably interrupted by exceptionally hard parochial