Briefer Notices

BRIEFER NOTICES By Henry J. Cadbury In the volume, Essays in the History of Art Presented to Rudolf Wittkower (London, 1967), Charles Mitchell has written on Benjamin West's "Death of Nelson" (pp. 265-273, with six plates). The artist's motives and intentions are fully discussed, also the differences both from his earlier "Death of Wolfe" and from his contemporary competitors with the same theme. This newest study gives excuse to mention here at this late date an article by the same author on a work by the same painter in the Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, VII (1944), 20-33: "Benjamin West's 'Death of General Wolfe' and the Popular History Piece." * * * Daniel Boone in Pennsylvania is a pamphlet by the late Paul A. W. Wallace published by the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, Harrisburg, Pa. (1967, 21 pages). It describes his Quaker ancestry and the family's movements from England, and within Pennsylvania—Abington, North Wales, and Oley, where in 1734 Daniel was born. The larger house on this site near Exeter Meeting in Berks County is now a memorial cared for by the above named commission, though Daniel has become famed as a Kentucky pioneer and a symbol of a wider aspect of history. The Library, Fifth Series, XVI (1961), 146-149, gives a full bibliographical description of the copy of the rare "First Edition of William Penn's Great Case of Liberty of Conscience, 1670" issued in Dublin and now in the Library of the Representative Church Body of the Church of Ireland, Dublin. The article is by Olive C. Goodbody and M. Pollard. * * * An article by a Friend and reproducing unpublished illustrations made by Sydney Parkinson, a Quaker natural history artist who sailed with Captain Cook in 1768-1771, is published in Endeavour, UI 58Quaker History XXVII, No. 100 (January, 1968), 3-10. It is contributed by William T. Stearn and is entitled "The Botanical Results of the Endeavour Voyage." * * * Early Bristol Quakerism, The Society of Friends in the City, 16541700 , by Russell Mortimer (Bristol Branch of the Historical Association , The University, Bristol, 1967, 22 pages, illustrated) is a welcome addition to the pamphlet histories of local British Quakerism. It differs in that Bristol was a particularly important center (important for America, too), and that the author writes from a background of very thorough knowledge of the subject. In selecting from this knowledge he divides the matter up in a way to be informative to the non-Quaker, rather than to elaborate on such noteworthy episodes as James Nayler's ride into Bristol, or the marriage there of Margaret Fell and George Fox. * * * Gary B. Nash has contributed to the Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, CXII (1968), 54-73, an article "City Planning and Political Tension in the Seventeenth Century: The Case of Philadelphia." It is a detailed account of the alterations of original grants of land, necessary or arbitrary, between 1681 and 1684, and of the controversy between purchasers and William Penn on that account—one fruitful cause of the friction between Pennsylvanians and the proprietary that lasted or worsened over the years. * * * Mention should have been made years ago of a full account by H. F. Swansen of "The Norwegian Quakers of Marshall County, Iowa," in Norwegian American Studies and Records, X (1938), 127-134. It deals with the pioneers of the group at Le Grand and later at Stavanger, as they called it. Additions to their number came from Illinois and Wisconsin, but also direct from Norway, e.g. Roldal. In 1885 they transferred affiliation to the Conservative Iowa Yearly Meeting, built a meetinghouse in 1886, and in 1891 Stavanger Boarding School (discontinued in 1915). For many years the Stavanger Meeting was the only one in the United States which was Norwegian speaking. * * * In spite of the large number of yearly meetings in American Quakerism, scarcely one of them has been provided with a separate Briefer Notices59 history. An exception is the History of Indiana Yearly Meeting (General Conference), by Seth E. Furnas, Sr., 1968 (98 pages mimeographed , and several illustrations). It is based on reminiscences of the founders and on the Yearly Meeting minute books. * * * T. Canby...