L
Labyrinths
25; 208; 362; 409; 411; 413; 427; 514; 612; 653;
Lacaille, Monsieur
59;
Lagoo, 2-A
420; French spy from Canada
Lalande, Joseph-Jérôme de (1732-1807)
213; French astronomer; "Lancashire Lalande" 230; MORE...
Lambton, Lord
17; Lambton Castle, 587; Lambton's Oath ("if God should allow [Lambton] victory over the Worm, he would sacrifice unto Him the first living thing he then happen'd to see"), 591 Biblical Correspondence
Lambton, Henry
594; last of the nine generations of Lambtons to die while not in bed, pursuant
to the Worm's curse
Lambton Worm
587; a dragon "lacking Wings and a fire-breathing Capacity" that has nine pairs of gill-vents and kills in nines
Lamination
389-90
Lancaster
304; town where the Paxton Boys slaughtered the Indians; 341; MORE
Lapis
689; 689
Laplace, Pierre Simon, Marquis de (1749-1827)
10; French mathematician and astronomer. Between 1799 and 1825 his
monumental five-volume Mécanique céleste , the greatest work on celestrial mechanics since Newton's Principia, was published.
L'Appeau
377; French: "The Call" - an appeau is a hunter's call, e.g. a duck call which the hunter blows through to simulate the sound of a duck; restaurant in Paris
Lapp-land
546; region of northern Europe above the arctic circle, encompassing far-northern areas of Finland, Norway and Sweden
Larrk of the Sanguine
247; Mason's pronounciation of Lark, his sarcastic description of Dixon as a singing bird of confidence
Larry, Mr.
303; "Irish Wig-Maker at Bermondsley"
Lascar
37
Latimers
590; antidraconical [anti-dragon, i.e., anti-Lucifer, or pro-God] family in Durham; Hugh Latimer (148?-1555) was famous as a preacher. He was Bishop of Worcester in the time of King Henry, but resigned in protest against the King's refusal to allow the Protestant reforms that Latimer desired. Latimer's sermons speak little of doctrine; he preferred to urge men to upright living and devoutness in prayer. But when Mary came to the throne, he was arrested, tried for heresy, and burned together with his friend Nicholas Ridley. His last words at the stake are well known: "Be of good cheer, Master Ridley, and play the man, for we shall this day light such a candle in England as I trust by God's grace shall never be put out."
laudanum
267; Random House College Dictionary: "1. a tincture of opium
2. Obs. any preparation in which opium is the chief ingredient.
[orig. ML var. of LADANUM; arbitrarily used by Paracelsus to name a remedy
based on opium]"
Laws of Springs
697; Hooke's Law of Springs: he amount an ideal spring stretches is proportional to the applied force; MORE...
Lazarette
39; sick bay on a ship
Leadenhall Street
10; 162; 539; Address of the East India Company
Lead Mines
547; "spherickal caverns"
Learnèd English Dog
18; the Norfolk Terrier (aka L.E.D., Fang) who talks & blinks; 22; 746; 756
Lehigh
306; near where the Indians who were slaughtered "were peacefully settl'd"
73; 156; partner of Boscovich, 268; 544; Jesuit, 546
LeMaire, Isaac
157; "of the Dutch LeMaires [...] the East India Company Director and speculator"
LeMaire, Jacob
157; "of the Dutch LeMaires [...] navigator and explorer of the southern seas"
Lemonniere, Pierre Charles (1715-99)
213; French astronomer; made twelve observations of Uranus before it was recognized as a planet.
411; at Hurricanoe, 414; "Chatelaine [wife of a castle-owner] of Lepton Castle" 417; 507;
Lepton, Lord
301; a lepton is a subatomic particle, any of a group consisting of electrons,
muons and neutrinos that experience no strong interactions and are less
massive than mesons and baryons; Riditto at Castle Lepton, 410; 411; 416
6; sister of Wicks Cherrycoke and wife of J.W. LeSpark
LeSpark, Ives
9; brother of John Wade and Lomax; 96; 56; 263
LeSpark, John Wade
6; married to Elizabeth ("Zab") Cherrycoke, Wicks' sister; "If there are Account-books in which casualties are the Units of Exchange, then [LeSpark] is deeply in Arrears" Compare 31; 410; 422; w/M&D at Lepton Castle, 428; 759
47; brother of J. Wade and Ives; 759
Lethe253; in Greek mythology, Lethe is one of the rivers of Hades from which the dead must drink to forget everything said and done while alive; thus, it has come to represent forgetfulness; in Plato's Tales of Er, 537; 710
Levant Company
251
Lewis
269; selling watches
Ley-builders
681; "put up Cairns"
Ley-borne Life
651; "ley" is arable land used temporarily for hay or gazing
Leyden-Jar
294; According to Webster's, "Etymology:
Leiden, Leyden, Netherlands. Date: 1825: an electrical condenser consisting of a glass jar coated inside and outside with metal foil and having the inner coating connected to a conducting rod passed through the insulating stopper"; Danse Macabre, 294;
599; Battery, 600; 764
Leyden Pile
390
218; The term "ley lines" was coined by Alfred Watkins when explaining his theory that ancient sites around Britain had actually been constructed or formed giving alignments between and across the inhabited landscape of Britain. The sites mentioned include Stone Circles, Standing Stones, Long Barrows, Cairns, Burial Mounds and Churches; 440; MORE; Wikipedia entry
l'Grande
33; the French ship that attacks the Seahorse; 247; 688
Li
627;
Lightning
357; 462-63; Mason's Journal Entry
Lignum Vitae
764; the wood of any of several tropical American trees with very hard and
heavy wood
Link-men
362;477 (Linkmen); OED defines linkman as a man employed to carry a torch (1716,1762). 477 Dixon refers to fireflies as 'tiny Linkmen'
Linnaeus, Carolus (1707-78)
321; Swedish naturalist & physician, and founder of the modern scientific
nomenclature for animals and plants; 360; 431
Litharge
227; lead monoxide
Litteraria Expeditione et Soforthia, De
222; mock-Latin title of supposed Jesuit-related book; perhaps an indirect reference to 'Dialogo dei due massimi sistemi del mondo', the book that got Galileo into trouble
Little Bear
653; Ursa Minoris
Lloyd
617
Locust-Street
266; in Philadelphia
Lomax, Uncle
47; See LeSpark, Lomax
Longitude Act of 1714
141; offered a large cash prize for a reliable method for finding longditude at sea
Longitude (Question of)
712;
Long Reach
245; "above Gravesend"
Lonsdale, Uncle
236; Name-connected to Lon Chaney, Jr. (1907-73) who starred in The Wolf Man (1941);
López, Don Vicente
338
Lord Bishop's Castle
754; at Bishop Auckland
485; In the Bible, the 12 tribes of Hebrews named for 10 sons of Jacob (Reuben, Simeon, Judah, Zebulun, Issachar, Dan, Gad, Asher, Naphtali, and Benjamin) and the two sons of Jacob's son Joseph (Ephraim and Manasseh). The 13th tribe, Levi (the third of Jacob's sons), was set apart and had no one portion of its own. After the break in the Hebrew kingdom under Rehoboam, the tribes of Judah, Benjamin, and some Levites formed a southern kingdom called Judah; the other 10 tribes formed a northern kingdom called Israel. These 10 were later (721 B.C.) conquered and transported to Assyria. They became known as the 10 lost tribes; numerous conjectures have been advanced as to their fate, and they have been identified with various peoples.
Lot
127
441; 1762: Librettist: Isaac Bickerstaffe; Composer: Thomas Augustine Arne; Designated Genre: Pasticcio opera (i.e., an opera with contributions from two or more composers); `and he ain't just humming `Love in a Cottage' brings to mind the expression "and he ain't just whistling Dixie."
"Love Laughs at a Line"
711
Loxley, Benjamin
296; carpenter
Loxodrome
47; aka "rhumb line"; According to Webster's, "a line on the surface of the earth that makes equal oblique angles with all meridians and that is a spiral coiling round the poles but never reaching them."; 473
Loyolan
289; Ignatius Loyola (1491-1556) was a Spanish soldier and the founder, in 1534, of the Jesuits (aka the Society of Jesus), a Catholic order emphasizing missionary work.
Lucas the Cook
54; on St. Helena
Luddite
312-13; [not found at this page ref: please check]
Ludgate
10
Lunarians
21; those who subscribed to the practicability of using the positions of the stars along the moon's path to determine longitude; 437; 728
Lunars
201; observations made by Lunarians
Lunettes
269; French, eye-glasses
531; "The Lo-Pan is a disc, six or more inches in diameter, with a magnetic compass about one inch in diameter in the centre. The disc, usually red, is inscribed with sixteen or more concentric circles, subdivided by radial divisions, with appropriate lettering. It synthesises all the Chinese theories as to the cosmic harmony between the energies of nature, time-relations as indicated by the sun and moon, and the directions in space from any point on the earth." (© 1995 Pun Yin Metaphysics LtdConcept & Design by Fortune-it Cookie Entertainment Ltd); While it functions like a western compass, it is used in the practice of Geomancy to measure the flow of Ch'i; 534; 543; 544; 587; 636
Lynn, Nathan
576; friend of Tom Hynes'
Lyra
673; constellation