NOT ON THE MAP!

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXXI, 29 March 1938, Page 2

NOT ON THE MAP!

A HISTORIAN ASTRAY [By Air Mail —From Our Own Correspondent] LONDON, 3rd March. Some daring historia.i has asserted, greatly to the civic offence of all true Liverpolians, that prior to 1635 Liver- , pool was not even marked on the map. This calumny has been properly rebuked by a member of the Gladstone • family, whose associations are far more with Liverpool than with Hawarden. and date back to the bad old days of the slave ti*ade. Not only is Liverpool on Christopher Saxton’s famous 1577 ‘ map, and also on a coastal map of 1525. , but on the great MSS map in the ? Bodleian of circa 1350. Moreover, falling into a real booby trap, the daring * historian confused the Mersey, which is, of course, Liverpool’s river, with Mersea in Essex, and thereby cites Liverpool’s contribution to the French wars as a barque and six men! It is ‘ true, however, that Liverpool’s trade was negligible until, after the Great Plague and Fire of 1665 and 1666, numbers of London merchants removed to Lancashire’s great seaport and opened up a prosperous trade with the plantations. Even in Stuart times Liverpool as a port was of far less importance than Parkgate, round the corner from Liverpool at the estuary of the Cheshire Dee. Cromwell used Park-

gate as the embarkation port 'for his troops going to Ireland, as did illstarred James II when he set out for the Boyne. Though Liverpool boasted Francis Bacon as its M.P., even at the restoration its population did not exceed a thousand. But Parkgate to-day is a picturesque shrimping village. ■ whereas lordly Liverpool has near on a million population and a ’third of the Empire’s transit commerce. Such are ‘ the ups and downs of rival townships, i But Parkgate has the distinction of 1 being the little port off whose treaeher- j ous shores Milton’s friend was druv, ned. and therefore is immortally associated with “Lycidas,” described by the late j Professor Raleigh, who was at one time 1 Professor of English at Liverpool University, as “the touchstone of taste in English literature.’’ So Liverpolians— j that, and not “Liverpolitans,” still less | “Liverpudlians,” is the correct form— | have not got things all their own way. CUFF LINKS “COME-BACK” , In the United States there has arisen a big demand for cuff-links. One firm : of manufacturers reports that “Ameri- j can men have bought more cuff-links i in the last four months than they bought in the previous four years." and other makers confirm the great increase of business. The cause of the demand is stated to be a change of fashion in shirts. Americans have largely returned to the wearing of soft folded-back cuffs, which had lost popularity in favour of single cuff's fastened with a button.