80 THE ESSEX NATURALIST.
as the best, or only, known member of the family. I am glad
to be able, after the lapse of nearly a century, to render this
tardy justice to Benjamin's memory.
Benjamin never married; he seems to have been of a retiring
disposition, living his life in the then rural surroundings of
Walthamstow, content to pass his leisure time in collecting and
arranging his loved specimens, less obsessed by the claims of
business life than either of his two brothers, the successful mer-
chant of Threadneedle Street, and the opulent banker of Mansion-
house-street; though it may be presumed that he too had his
part to play in the conduct of the merchant house of Edward
Forster and Sons, of 38, Threadneedle Street, and later of 6,
St. Helen's Place.
After Edward Forster's death in 1849), the book not impro-
bably was acquired by William Pamplin, who had it rebound
and at the same time inserted his own blue-paper observation
as to the Daffodils: but there is no actual evidence as to this.
In June, 1863, it came into the possession of the Rev. Tullie
Cornthwaite, M.A., of Walthamstow, whose few marginal notes,
of no special botanical value, written in a neat angular sloping
hand, are easily distinguishable from Benjamin Forster's irregular
script.
The Rev. Tullie Cornthwaite was vicar of the new district
church of St. Peter-on-the-Forest, Walthamstow, in 1848, and
resided on the Forest, facing the Snaresbrook Road, in the house
now known as "Oakhurst." He was a benefactor to Waltham-
stow in that he set up an iron pump on the Forest for the use
of the inhabitants, at the corner of College Place, just outside
his own residence, the broken base of which may still be seen:
the much worn stone landing before the Pump is a mute testi-
mony to its usefulness at a time when no public water supply
was in being. Cornthwaite survived until 1878, and lies buried
in St. Peter's Churchyard.
Tullie Cornthwaite presented the volume, about 1872, to
Henry Ford Barclay,"' whose autograph, like that of Cornthwaite,
appears oh the flyleaf.
Its subsequent history is simple. Henry Ford Barclay died
on November 12, 1891, and, fifteen months later, on February
5 Henry Ford Barclay, D.L., J.P., of "Grove House," Grove Lane, and afterwards of "The
Limes," Shernhall Street, Walthamstow, and later of "Monkhams,'' Woodford Green, a member
of the Epping Forest Commission of 1871 and a Verderer of the Forest.