, according
to Sir Philip Warwick. According to Clarendon, 'three weeks after being
shot into the shoulder with a brace of bullets, which broke the bone.' The
bone, however, was not found broken, and the 'brace of bullets' is equally
imaginary."

This account is from a newspaper cutting of _The News_, August 3, 1828.

W. S.

Northiam.

* * * * *

PETER ALLAN.

(Vol. viii., pp. 539. 630.)

Peter Allan deserves more than a brief notice. His history is so full of
romance, the relics of his name and fame are so many, and he is withal so
little known, that I presume I may on this occasion trespass on more than
the ordinary space allotted to a "minor," but which should be a "major"
Query.

Peter Allan was born at Selkirk (?) in the year 1798. His parents were
peasants, and Peter in early life became valet to Mr. Williamson, brother
of Sir Hedworth Williamson. He afterwards became gamekeeper to the Marquis
of Londonderry, and in that capacity acquired a reputation as an unerring
shot, and a man of unusual physical strength and courage. He afterwards
married, and became a publican at Whitburn, and in the course of few years
purchased a little property, and occupied himself in the superintendence of
dock works and stone quarries. In this latter capacity he acquired the
skill in quarrying, on which his fame chiefly rests. Having a turn for a
romantic life, he conceived the strange project of founding a colony at
Marsden, a wild, rocky bay below the mouth of the Tyne, five miles from
Sunderland, and three from South Shields. The spot chosen by Peter as his
future home had been colonised some years before by one "Jack the Blaster,"
who had performed a series of excavations, and amongst them a huge round
perforation from the high land above to the beach below, through which it
is said many a cargo has passed ashore without being entered in the books
of the excise. Here the cliff is formed of hard magnesian limestone, and
rises perpendicularly from the beach more than a hundred feet. When Peter
set to work, the only habitable portions were two wild caves opening to the
sea, into which at high tide the breakers tumbled, and where during rough
weather it was impossible to continue with safety. On the face of the rock
Peter built a homestead of timber, and set up farm and tavern. In the rock
itself he excavated fifteen rooms, to each of which he gave an appropriate
name; the most interesting are