S.R.  MAITLAND.

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REPLIES TO MINOR QUERIES.

John Ross Mackay (No. 8. p. 125.).—­In reply to the Query of your correspondent “D.,” I beg to forward the following quotation from Sir N.W.  Wraxall’s Historical Memoirs of his Own Time, 3rd edition.  Speaking of the peace of Fontainbleau, he says,—­

“John Ross Mackay, who had been private secretary to the Earl of Bute, and afterwards during seventeen years was treasurer of the ordnance, a man with whom I was personally acquainted, frequently avowed the fact.  He lived to a very advanced age, sat in several parliaments, and only died, I believe in 1796.  A gentleman of high professional rank, and of unimpeached veracity, who is still alive, told me, that dining at the late Earl of Besborough’s, in Cavendish Square, in the year 1790, where only four persons were present, including himself, Ross Mackay, who was one of the number, gave them the most ample information upon the subject.  Lord Besborough having called after dinner for a bottle of champagne, a wine to which Mackay was partial, and the conversation turning on the means of governing the House of Commons, Mackay said, that, ’money formed, after all, the only effectual and certain method.’  ‘The peace of 1763,’ continued he, ’was carried through and approved by a pecuniary distribution.  Nothing else could have surmounted the difficulty.  I was myself the channel through which the money passed.  With my own hand I secured above one hundred and twenty votes on that most important question to ministers.  Eighty thousand pounds were set apart for the purpose.  Forty members of the House of Commons received from me a thousand pounds each.  To eighty others, I paid five hundred pounds apiece.’”

DAVID STEWARD.

Godalming, March 19. 1850.

Shipster.—­Gourders.—­As no satisfactory elucidation of the question propounded by Mr. Fox (No. 14. p. 216.) has been suggested, and I think he will scarcely accept the conjecture of “F.C.B.,” however ingenious (No. 21. p. 339.), I am tempted to offer a note on the business or calling of a shipster.  It had, I believe, no connection with nautical concerns; it did not designate a skipper (in the Dutch use of the word) of the fair sex.  That rare volume, Caxton’s Boke for Travellers, a treasury of archaisms, supplies the best definition of her calling:—­“Mabyll the shepster cheuissheth her right well; she maketh surplys, shertes, breches, keuerchiffs, and all that may be wrought of lynnen cloth.”  The French term given, as corresponding to shepster, is “cousturiere.” Palsgrave also, in his Eclaircissement de la Langue francoyse, gives “schepstarre, lingiere:—­sheres for shepsters, forces.”  If further evidence were requisite, old Elyot might be cited, who renders both sarcinatrix and sutatis (? sutatrix) as “a shepster, a seamester.”