Part 4

Your correspondent HONORÉ DE MAREVILLE has wandered too far in going to the Morea to search for this title. Clare in Suffolk was one of the ninety-five manors in that county bestowed by the Conqueror upon Richard Fitzgilbert, who (as well as his successor Gilbert) resided at Tunbridge, and bore the surname of De Tonebruge. His grandson Richard, the first Earl of Hertford, fixed his principal seat at Clare, and thenceforth the family took the surname of De Clare; and in the Latin documents of the time the several members of it were styled _Ricardus_ (or _Gilbertus_), _Dominus Clarensis_, _Comes Hertfordiensis_. The name of the lordship thus becoming the family surname, it is easy to see how in common usage the formal epithet _Clarensis_ soon became Clarence, and why Lionel, the son of Edward III., upon his marriage with Elizabeth de Burgh, the grand-niece and heiress of the last Gilbertus Clarensis, should choose as the title for his dukedom the surname of the great family of which he had now become the representative.

VOKAROS.

* * * * *

MILTON'S WIDOW.

(Vol. viii., pp. 12. 134. 200. 375. 452. 471. 544. 594.)

GARLICHITHE is again on the wrong scent. In his first communication on this subject, he allowed himself to go astray by mistaking Randle Minshull the _grandfather_ for Randle Minshull the _son_; and now, with the like fatality, he fails to discriminate between Richard Minshull the _uncle_, and Richard Minshull the _brother_, of Elizabeth Milton. A second examination of my Reply in Vol. viii., p. 200., will suffice to show him that Richard Minshull, the party to the deed there quoted, was named by me as the _brother_, and not the _uncle_, of Milton's widow, and that therefore his argument, based on disparity of age, &c., falls to the ground. On the other hand, Richard Minshull of Chester, to whom the letter alluded to was addressed, was the brother of Randle Minshull of Wistaston, and by the same token, uncle of Elizabeth Milton, and of Richard Minshull, her brother and co-partner in the deed already referred to.

GARLICHITHE, and all others who have taken an interest in this discussion, will now, I trust, see clearly that there has been nothing adduced by either MR. MARSH or myself inconsistent with ages or dates; but that, on the contrary, all our premises and conclusions are borne out by evidence clear, irreproachable, and incontestable.

All objections being now, as I conceive, fully combated and disposed of, the substance of our investigations may be summed up in a very few words. The statement of Pennant, adopted by all succeeding writers, to the effect that Elizabeth, the widow of John Milton, was a daughter of Sir Edward Minshull of Stoke, is clearly proved to be a fiction. It has been farther proved, from the parish registers, as well as from bonds and other documentary evidence, that she was, without doubt, the daughter of Randle Minshull of Wistaston, a village about three miles from Nantwich; that she was the cousin of Milton's familiar friend, Dr. Paget, and as such became entitled to a legacy under the learned Doctor's will, and that she is expressly named by Richard Minshull as his sister in the deed before quoted.

T. HUGHES.

Chester.

* * * * *

THREE FLEURS-DE-LYS.

(Vol. ix., pp. 35. 113.)

DEVONIENSIS is informed that an example of this occurs in the arms of King James's School, Almondbury, Yorkshire. The impression, as taken from the great seal of the school, in which however the colours are not distinguished, may be imperfectly described as follows: Three lions (two over one) passant gardant ----, on a chief ----, three fleurs-de-lys ----.

As it is not unlikely that some other of King James's foundations may have the same arms, it would be considered a favour if any reader of "N. & Q." possessing the information would communicate the proper colours in this case, or even the probable ones.

CAMELODUNENSIS.

DEVONIENSIS is quite right in supposing that the bearing of three fleurs-de-lys alone, horizontal, in the upper part of the shield,--in other words, {226} in chief, fess-ways,--is a very rare occurrence. I know of no instance of it in English blazon. Coupled with another and principal charge, as a fess, a chevron, a lion, &c.; or in a chief, it is common enough. Nor have I ever met with an example of it in French coat-armour. An English family, named Rothfeld, but apparently of German extraction, gives: Gules, two fleurs-de-lys, in chief, ermine. Du Guesclin bore nothing like a fleur-de-lys in any way. The armorial bearings of the famous Constable were: Argent, a double-headed eagle, displayed, sable, crowned, or, debruised of a bend, gules.

JOHN O' THE FORD.

Malta.

P.S.--Since writing the above, I have read three replies (Vol. ix., p. 84.), which do not appear to me to exactly meet the Query of DEVONIENSIS.

I understand the question to be, does any English family bear simply three fleurs-de-lys, in chief, fess-ways--without any additional charge? And in that sense my reply above is framed.

The first example given by MR. MACKENZIE WALCOTT would be most satisfactory and conclusive of the existence of such a bearing, could it be verified; but, unfortunately, in the _Heraldic Dictionaries_ of Berry and Burke, the name even of Trilleck or Trelleck does not occur. And in Malta, I have no opportunity of consulting Edmondson or Robson.

Your correspondent A. B. (p. 113.) has mistaken the three white lilies for fleurs-de-lys in the arms of Magdalen College, Oxford. Waynflete, the founder, was also Provost of Eton, and adopted the device from the bearings of that illustrious school; by which they were borne in allusion to St. Mary, to whom that College is dedicated.

MACKENZIE WALCOTT, M.A.

* * * * *

BOOKS BURNED BY THE COMMON HANGMAN.

(Vol. viii., pp. 272. 346. 625.; Vol. ix., p. 78.)

The well-known law dictionary, entitled _The Interpreter_, by John Cowel, LL.D., was burned (1610) under a proclamation of James I. (D'Israeli's _Calamities of Authors_, ed. 1840, p. 133.)

In June, 1622, the Commentary of David Pare, or Paræus _On the Epistle to the Romans_, was burned at London, Oxford, and Cambridge, by order of the Privy Council. (Wood's _Hist. and Antiq. of Univ. of Oxford_, ed. Gutch, vol. ii. pp. 341-345.; Cooper's _Annals of Cambridge_, vol. iii. pp. 143, 144.)

On the 12th of February, 1634, _Elenchus Religionis Papisticæ_, by John Bastwicke, M.D., was ordered to be burned by the High Commission Court. (Prynne's _New Discovery of the Prelates' Tyranny_, p. 132.)

On the 10th of February, 1640-1 the House of Lords ordered that two books published by John Pocklington, D.D., entitled _Altare Christianum_, and _Sunday no Sabbath_, should be publicly burned in the city of London and the two Universities, by the hands of the common executioner; and on the 10th of March the House ordered the Sheriffs of London and the Vice-Chancellors of both the Universities, forthwith to take care and see the order of the House carried into execution. (_Lords' Journals_, vol. iv. pp. 161. 180.)

On the 13th of August, 1660, Charles II. issued a proclamation against Milton's _Defensio pro Populo Anglicano_, his _Answer to the Portraiture of his Sacred Majesty in his Solitude and Sufferings_, and a book by John Goodwin, late of Coleman Street, London, Clerk, entitled _The Obstructors of Justice_. All copies of these books were to be brought to the sheriffs of counties, who were to cause the same to be publicly burned by the hands of the common hangman at the next assizes. (Kennett's _Register and Chronicle_, p. 207.) This proclamation is also printed in Collet's _Relics of Literature_, with the inaccurate date 1672, and the absurd statement that no copy of the proclamation was discovered till 1797.

In January, 1692-3, a pamphlet by Charles Blount, Esq., entitled _King William and Queen Mary, Conquerors, &c._, was burned by the common hangman in Palace Yard, Westminster. (Bohun's _Autobiography_, ed. S. W. Rix, vol. xxiv. pp. 106, 109. 113.; Wilson's _Life of De Foe_, vol. i. p. 179 _n_.)

The same parliament consigned to the flames Bishop Burnet's _Pastoral Letter_, which had been published 1689. (Wilson's _Life of De Foe_, vol. i. p. 179.)

On the 31st of July, 1693, the second volume of Anthony à Wood's _Athenæ Oxonienses_ was burned in the Theatre Yard at Oxford by the Apparitor of the University, in pursuance of the sentence of the University Court in a prosecution for a libel on the memory of Edward Hyde, Earl of Clarendon. (_Life of Mr. Anthony à Wood_, ed. 1772, p. 377.)

On the 25th of February, 1702-3, the House of Commons ordered De Foe's _Shortest Way with the Dissenters_ to be burned by the hands of the common hangman on the morrow in New Palace Yard. (Wilson's _Life of De Foe_, vol. ii. p. 62.)

In or about 1709, John Humphrey, an aged non-conformist minister, having published a pamphlet against the Test, and circulated it amongst the members of parliament, was cited before a committee, and his work was ordered to be burned by the common hangman. (Wilson's _Life of De Foe_, vol. iii. p. 52.)

The _North Briton_, No. 45., was on the 3rd of December, 1763, burned by the common hangman at the Royal Exchange, by order of the House of {227} Commons. The following account is from Malcolm's _Anecdotes of London_, 4to., 1808, p. 282.:

"The 3rd of December was appointed for this silly ceremony, which took place before the Royal Exchange, amidst the hisses and execrations of the mob, not directed at the obnoxious paper, but at Alderman Harley, the sheriffs, and constables, the latter of whom were compelled to fight furiously through the whole business. The instant the hangman held the work to a lighted link it was beat to the ground, and the populace, seizing the faggots prepared to complete its destruction, fell upon the peace-officers and fairly threshed them from the field; nor did the alderman escape without a contusion on the head, inflicted by a bullet thrown through the glass of his coach; and several other persons had reason to repent the attempt to burn that publicly which the _sovereign people_ determined to approve, who afterwards exhibited a large _jack-boot_ at Temple Bar, and burnt it in triumph, unmolested, as a species of retaliation."

I am not aware that what Mr. Malcolm terms a "silly ceremony" has been repeated since 1763.

C. H. COOPER.

Cambridge.

I know not whether you have noticed the following:

"Droit le Roy; or, A Digest of the Rights and Prerogatives of the Imperial Crown of Great Britain. By a Member of the Society of Lincoln's Inn. 'Dieu et Mon Droit.' [Royal Arms, with G. R.] London: printed and sold by W. Griffin, in Fetter Lane, MDCCLXIV."

Lord Mahon (_History of England_, vol. v. p. 175.) says:

"It was also observed, and condemned as a shallow artifice, that the House of Lords, to counterbalance their condemnation of Wilkes's violent democracy, took similar measures against a book of exactly opposite principles. This was a treatise or collection of precedents lately published under the title of _Droit le Roy_, to uphold the prerogative of the crown against the rights of the people. The Peers, on the motion of Lord Lyttleton, seconded by the Duke of Grafton, voted this book 'a false, malicious, and traitorous libel, inconsistent with the principles of the Revolution to which we owe the present happy establishment;' they ordered that it should be burned by the hands of the common hangman, and that the author should be taken into custody. The latter part of the sentence, however, no one took any pains to execute. The author was one Timothy Brecknock, a hack scribbler, who, twenty years afterwards, was hanged for being accessary to an atrocious murder in Ireland."

A copy of the book (an octavo of xii. and 95 pages) is in my possession. It was apparently a presentation copy, and formerly belonged to Dr. Disney; at whose sale it was purchased by the late Richard Heber, as his MS. note testifies. Against the political views which this book advocates, I say not one word; as a legal treatise it is simply despicable.

H. GOUGH.

Lincoln's Inn.

The following extract is at the service of BALLIOLENSIS:

"In the seventh year of King James I., Dr. Cowel's _Interpreter_ was censured by the two Houses, as asserting several points to the overthrow and destruction of Parliaments and of the fundamental laws and government of the kingdom. And one of the articles charged upon him to this purpose by the Commons, in their complaint to the Lords, was, as Mr. Petyt says, out of the _Journal_, this that follows:

"'4thly. The Doctor draws his arguments from the imperial laws of the Roman Emperors, an argument which may be urged with as great reason, and with as great authority, for the reduction of the state and the clergy of England to the polity and laws in the time of those Emperors; as also to make the laws and customs of Rome and Constantinople to be binding and obligatory in the cities of London and York.'

"The issue of which complaint was, that the author, for these his outlandish politics, was taken into custody, and his book condemned to the flames: nor could the dedication of it to his then grace of Canterbury save it."--Atterbury's _Rights, Powers, and Privileges of Convocation_, p. 7. of Preface.

WM. FRASER, B.C.L.

Tor-Mohun.

I possess a copy of _The Case of Ireland being bound by Acts of Parliament in England stated_, by William Molyneux of Dublin, Esq., which appears to have been literally "plucked as brand from the burning," as a considerable portion of it is consumed by fire. I have cut the following from a sale catalogue just sent to me from Dublin:

"Smith's (Matthew) _Memoirs of Secret Service_, Lond. 1696. Written by Charles, Earl of Peterborough, and is very scarce, being burnt by the hangman. MS. note."

JAMES GRAVES.

Kilkenny.

A decree of the University of Oxford, made July 21, 1683, condemning George Buchanan's treatise _De jure regni apud Scotos_, and certain other books, the names of which I do not know, was on March 25, 1710, ordered by the House of Lords to be burned by the hangman. This was shortly after the trial of Dr. Sacheverel.

W. P. STORER.

Olney, Bucks.

* * * * *

DIFFERENT PRODUCTIONS OF DIFFERENT CARCASES.

(Vol. vi., p. 263.)

Up to a very recent period, it was held, even by philosophers, that each of the four elements, as well as every _living_ plant and animal, both {228} brute and human, generated insects; but of all sources of this equivocal generation, none was considered more potent than the putrefaction or corruption of animal matter: as Du Bartas says:

"God, not contented to each kind to give, And to infuse the virtue generative, By His wise power, made many creatures breed, Of _lifeless bodies_ without Venus' deed." _Sixth Day._

Pliny, after giving Virgil's receipt for making bees, gives similar instances:

"Like as dead horses will breed waspes and hornets; and asses carrion, turne to be beetle-flies by a certaine metamorphosis which Nature maketh from one creature to another."--Lib. xi. c. xx.

And soon after he says of wasps:

"All the sorte of these live upon flesh, contrarie to _the manner of bees, which will not touch a dead carcasse_."

This brings Shakepeare's lines to mind:

" 'Tis seldom when the bee doth leave her comb In the _dead carrion_." _Henry IV._, Part II. Act IV. Sc. 4.

The _Belfast News Letter_ of Friday, Aug. 10, 1832, gives one of these rare occurrences:

"A few days ago, when the sexton was digging a grave in Temple Cranney (a burying-place in Portaferry, co. Down), he came to a coffin which had been there two or three years: this he thought necessary to remove. In this operation, he was startled by a great quantity of wild bees issuing forth from the coffin; and upon lifting the lid, it was found that they had formed their combs in the dead man's skull and mouth, which were full. The nest was made of the hair of the head, together with shavings that had been put in the coffin with the corpse."

This quotation is given in an interesting work of Mr. Patterson's, _Letters on the Natural History of the Insects mentioned in Shakspeare's Plays_: London, 1838.

Your correspondent R. T. shows that _serpents_ were supposed to be generated by _human_ carcases. Pliny says:

"I have heard many a man say that the _marrow of a man's backebone_ will breed to a snake."--_Hist. Nat._, x. 66.

The story of the "fair young German gentleman" reminds me of one of a gentle shepherd and his beloved Amarante, told in De Britaine's _Human Prudence_, 12th edit., Dublin, 1726, Part I. p. 171. The corpse of the "Cæsar," seen by St. Augustine and Monica, was most probably that of Maximus, Emperor of the West, slain by the soldiers of Theodosius, A.D. 388.

Sir Thos. Browne--"treating of the conceit that the mandrake grows under gallowses, and arises from the fat, or [Greek: ouron], of the dead malefactor, and hence has the form of a man--says:

"This is so far from being verified of animals in their corruptive mutations into plants, that they maintain not this similitude in their nearer translation into animals. So when the ox corrupteth into bees, or the horse into hornets, they come not forth in the image of their originals. So the corrupt and excrementitious humours in man are animated into lice: and we may observe that hogs, sheep, goats, hawks, hens, and others, have one peculiar and proper kind of vermin."--_Works_, Bohn's edit., vol. i. p. 197.

The editor furnishes the following note:

"The immortal Harvey, in his _De Generations_, struck the first blow at the root of the irrational system called _equivocal generation_, when he laid down his brief but most pungent law, _Omnia ex ovo_. But the belief transmitted from antiquity, that living beings generated spontaneously from putrescent matter, long maintained its ground, and a certain modification of it is even still advocated by some naturalists of the greatest acuteness. The first few pages of the volume entitled _Insect Transformations_ (in _The Library of Entertaining Knowledge_) are occupied by a very interesting investigation of this subject."--See also Sir T. Browne's _Works_, vol. i. p. 378., vol. ii. pp. 523, 524.; and Izaak Walton's _Complete Angler_, passim.

The equivocal generation of bees is copiously dwelt on in Bochart's _Hierozoicon_, London, 1663, fol., Part II. p. 502. Instances of their attaching themselves to dead bodies, in spite of their ordinary antipathy, are given at p. 506.

EIRIONNACH.

* * * * *

VANDYKE IN AMERICA.

(Vol. viii., pp. 182. 228.)

To your correspondent C. I would say, that his observation--that the Query was as to an _engraving_, whilst my answer was as to a _picture_--is not true; as I am sure, from memory, that MR. WESTMACOTT used the word "portraits." But I plead in extenuation of my pretended grave offence, 1. That the Query was not propounded by C., but by a gentleman to whom the information given might be, as I supposed, of some interest; more particularly as I referred to the _Travels_ of an Englishman, both of which, author and work, were accessible. 2. That, in common with the American readers of "N. & Q.," I regarded it as "a journal of inter-communication," through whose columns information might be asked for, the request to be treated with the same consideration and courtesy as though addressed to each individual subscriber. I may add that LORD BRAYBROOKE and MR. WODDERSPOON (Vol. iv., p. 17.) have urged "the necessity for recording the existence of painted historical portraits, scattered, as we know they are," &c. {229}

Now, as to the expression "worthies, famous in English history." I presume I need do no more concerning its application to Lord Orrery, Sir Robert Walpole, &c., than say, it was used as signifying "men of mark," without intending to endorse their "worth" either morally, mentally, or politically; its application to Colonel Hill and Colonel Byrd, as meaning "men of worth," might, did your limits permit, be defended on high grounds.

Then as to the possibility of Vandyke's having painted the portraits. If C. will have the kindness to look at C. Campbell's _History of Virginia_, he will find,--

"1654. At a meeting of the Assembly, William Hatchin, having been convicted of having called Colonel Edward Hill 'an atheist and blasphemer,' was compelled to make acknowledgment of his offence upon his knees before Colonel Hill and the Assembly."

This Colonel Hill, generally known as Colonel Edward Hill the Elder, a gentleman of great wealth, built the mansion at Shirley, where his portrait, brought from England, hangs in the same place, in the same hall in which he had it put up. It represents a youth in pastoral costume, crook in hand, flocks in the background. By a comparison of dates, C. will find it possible for Vandyke to have painted it. (See Bryan's _Engravers and Painters_.) It has descended, along with the estate, to his lineal representative, the present owner. Its authenticity rests upon _tradition_ coupled with the foregoing facts, as far as I know (though the family may have abundant documentary proof), and I doubt very much whether many "Vandykes in England" are better ascertained. I would add that several English gentlemen, among them, as I have heard, a distinguished ambassador recently in this country, recognised it as a Vandyke. This picture, amongst others, was injured by the balls fired from the vessels which ascended the James river, under command of General Arnold, then a British officer. On the younger Mr. Hill's tomb at Shirley is a coat of arms, a copy of which, had I one to send, would probably point out his family in England.[2]