I venture to think that, with Lord Walter's no matter regarding the dates of Bertram's "De Riddlesford pedigree, the problem birth and second marriage. of the identity of Emeline de Reddesford is solved, but I am afraid the parentage of Lesceline, the first wife of Hugh de Laci, still requires elucidation, as positive proof is at present lacking. FRANCIS H. RELTON. 9, Broughton Road, Thornton Heath. P.S.-The above had already left my hands when MR. ST. CLAIR BADDELEY'S second communication appeared in your columns. The suggestion he makes, and for which I beg to thank him, is of so important a character that I have endeavoured to obtain such additional evidence as I could in support of it, or, in the alternative, in favour of the statement I submitted that Bertram de Verdon was married, secondly, in c. 1140. Unfortunately, I find that I have mislaid my note giving the reference for the date quoted for this marriage, but as Langford, in his Staffordshire Past and Present,' i. 300, stated that Maud de Ferrers, Bertram's first wife, died "s.p. 1139," I saw no reason to doubt the correctness of the date of the second marriage. According, however, to 'Sketches of the Earlier Verduns' in Lynam's The Abbey of St. Mary, Croxden, Staffordshire,' as will be seen from the following extracts, neither of the above dates would appear to be reliable : 66 Bertram II. was of age, and but little more, in 1159 (p. vi); Maud, born more or less about 1140, who was the first wife of Bertram II. de Verdon " (p. ix), married "before 1166" (p. xi), and was dead without issue ante 1179, because "in the Cottonian Charter Bertram especially names Rohais as then his wife. By the Chronicle it seems the date of this Charter was 1179; perhaps it was as late as 1180; we may take it therefore that Bertram had married Rohais in or by 1179....he does not say he had any son.... If that was a fact, then Maud was dead without issue, and by Rohesia as yet he has no issue manifestly."—P. x. Tabulated, the position is as follows:Maud, dau. of Bertram II. Rohais, b. c. 1165 de Verdon, [see below]; b. c. 1138, in or by 1179; † 1192. † 1215, Robert Ferrers, second Earl of Derby, b. c. 1140; before 1166; = + 8. p. before 1179. 1st wife. "no older, actually, than c. 50." [MR. ST. C. B. at p. 254]. 2nd wife. It will thus be seen that your correspondent's suggestion is as near accurate as In my above remarks I have referred to two matters upon which some light is thrown by Lynam in his before-mentioned work, namely, (1) regarding the identity of Lesceline de Verdon, Countess of Ulster and (2) respecting the date at which Nicholas de Verdon acquired, and from whom, the Irish estates, some of which formed a portion of Lesceline's dowry. As regards the first our author says: 66 "By the dates it might appear that she [Lesceline, Countess of Ulster] was more probably the sister of this Thomas [who, he states but very little before, and very little after"], at p. x, was born about 1180, and in any case and daughter accordingly of Bertram II.”— (p. xvi.) And he adds that 64 Eustacia was doubtfully old enough to have any issue at the death of Thomas in 1199."-Ib. He concludes : "It is not unlikely that she [Lesceline] was in fact daughter of Bertram II., for she held two castles of the fee of Nicholas in Ireland of her maritagium."-Pat. 10 Hen. III. m. 3, m. 5, and 5 dors.; Cal. Doc. Ireland,' i. 1371-2-3-4, 1386. Ib. With reference to the second matter Lynam writes:— 06 'Nicholas was still a minor till about 1203, Dugdale's narrative states that in 6 John he fined 1001. [m.], a courser, and a palfrey for livery of the lands in Ireland whereof his father died seized.' He proceeds:— of age by 21 Aug., 1203, when to him is committed "He [Nicholas] must presumably have been father held it [Liberate 5 John, m. 9], and it is custody of the bridge of Drogheda as Bertram his likely his fine was agreed at about the same time. The fine, however, is inter alia 'for having his lands in Ireland whereof Bertram his father was seized in his demesne as of fee at his death' ['Cal. Doc. Ireland,' i. 251]. This is clear on the point that there at least Nicholas succeeded his father, not his brother Thomas."-Ib. From this it would appear, as the castles of Rathour and Le Nober formed part of the estates of Bertram in Ireland, and were Lesceline's marriage to Hugh de Lacy would only acquired by Nicholas in 1203, that be more correctly assigned to c. 1203 than to 1192, as suggested by your correspondent. Westminster Hall, he soon obtained a large practice in it; so much so, that when he became a Q.C. the junior Bar had reason to be grateful for his promotion. I knew him well, and during the years that I was in practice in that Court I was often "with him as his junior. I cannot say whether Serjeant Spinks was in any way related to him. Neither the Serjeant nor the Doctor has been accorded a niche in the 'D.N.B.' Wм. E. BROWNING. FIRE AND NEW-BIRTH (11 S. viii. 325).The following may interest W. H.-A. When in charge of the first Atlantic cable station in Newfoundland, 1858, we gathered wild raspberries on certain spots along the track of the telegraph land-lines, and only on the track where the earth had been disturbed. On making inquiries I was told that the wild raspberry made its appearance when the virgin soil was turned up, and also on the ground laid bare by forest fires. H. A. C. SAUNDERS. | hardly say that the fact that his son (if MOUNT KRAPAK (11 S. viii. 329).-By the date given in one of the extracts Voltaire had already settled down permanently at Ferney in France, where he spent the last twenty years of his life. The place is close to the Swiss frontier, and can be reached by electric train from Geneva in about half an hour. The Krapacks are in reality the Carpathian Mountains between Hungary and Austrian Poland; but if a Mount Krapak exists anywhere else, it must be sought for at Ferney, or Ferney-Voltaire, as it is now officially called in honour of the "patriarch of Ferney," who has practically founded the village. The château he formerly occupied is about half a mile from the tram terminus. L. L. K. THE ROAR OF GUNS (11 S. viii. 269, 310).-Apropos of the above subject. some of your readers may possibly welcome two more instances. if they have not 'FUDGE IN IRELAND' (11 S. viii. 329).— already appeared in your columns. On This clever brochure was written (in a single22 May, 1794, the firing of the heavy guns night. it was said) by my mother's brother, at the Battle of Tournay in the Austrian Andrew Meredith Graham, bookseller, of Netherlands was said to have been heard in College Green, in collaboration with Pat East Kent. And, more remarkable still, Fitzpatrick, a shining light of the Irish Bar the heavy firing in one of the Napoleonic at that time. As the reading public took engagements in the English Channel was it for the work of "Thomas Brown the heard at Penn in Buckinghamshire. This Younger" (though it was noticeably inferior latter story is, I think, mentioned in some history I read of the orphanage established in that village by Burke for the children of the French émigrés, but I cannot lay my hand on the exact reference. Penn, one ought to add, stands unusually high BRADSTOW. THE PILGRIM FATHERS: JOHN ALDEN (11 S. viii. 306).-The 66 term 'Pilgrim Fathers' is used only of those 41 men who, with their families (amounting in all to 101 persons), landed in Cape Cod Harbour in December, 1620, and there founded the Colony of New Plymouth; and of these, and these alone, I believe, of all the Puritan settlers in New England, it is true to say that they did not persecute in the name of religion. The Massachusetts Bay settlers and their colony were of later date, and did not amalgamate with those of New Plymouth until 1692. John Alden the first was one of the Fathers, and I need in style), the sale at first was rapid; but Fitzpatrick, in a fit of irrepressible vanity, soon divulged the names of the authors, and, as might have been expected, very few more copies of the book were asked for. Andrew and his chum were somewhat noted wits in Dublin middle-class society. Squibs from their pens appeared from time to time in the papers. My uncle died young-the result, it was said, of fast living. HERBERT B. CLAYTON. 39, Renfrew Road, Lower Kennington Lane. STATUE OF WILLIAM III., HOGHTON, LANCASHIRE (11 S. viii. 328).-This statue. which is of lead, is described and figured in Mr. Lawrence Weaver's English Leadwork' (1909), p. 149. Mr. Weaver attributes it to some competent artist of the calibre of Rysbrack or Roubiliac," but adds: "There is a directness and simplicity about this work which perhaps suggests it was done by an Englishman_rather than by a foreigner." The statue was originally at Walton Hall, another Lancashire seat of the De Hoghton family, and was removed to Hoghton Tower about or shortly after 1834, in which year Walton Hall was pulled down. F. H. C. THROWING A HAT INTO A HOUSE (11 S. viii. 288, 336).-MR. THOS. RATCLIFFE's explanation of this custom does not agree with what I have been led to believe regarding it. In the middle of the last century the custom was not uncommon in Yorkshire and Lancashire. I have always understood that when a man arrived at his home--particularly on pay-day-under the influence of drink, and with little, if any, money, he threw his hat in first as a means of ascertaining whether it was safe for him to follow. G. T. S. Liverpool. 66 ESQUIRE BY CHARTER (11 S. vii. 287). -I regret that I am not able to answer this question, but I suggest that a reply card sent round to the Royal Societies will settle it. I perfectly recollect at one of the exhibitions of the Royal Society of PainterEtchers seeing a notice that the King had authorized or directed (I forget the exact word) that the members should be entitled to the use of "Esquire." I have searched the file of Catalogues of this Society at the Art Library, Victoria and Albert Museum, but was unable to find any copy of this authority. There was an article on Esquire and Gentleman in The Law Times, 9 Nov., RALPH THOMAS. ALMSHOUSES NEAR THE STRAND (11 S. vii. 130, 236, 315, 417; viii. 333).-The identification near the Strand' was possibly intended to be very wide in its application. If it is stretched sufficiently, it can be made to refer to Stafford's Almshouses, Gray's Inn Road, or Edwards's Almshouses, Christ Church, Lambeth. These were of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries respectively. ALECK ABRAHAMS. 1907, p. 26. 66 6 Mr. Vallance was a former Chaplain to the Ironmongers' Company, but the Company have no connexion with the almshouses above named. E. H. NICHOLL. CATHEDRAL BELL STOLEN (11 S. viii. 27, 290). The interesting communication of MR. MINAKATA brought to my mind the fact that we have in Leeds two stolen Japanese lamps. These beautiful objects are now in the grounds of Kirkstall Grange -late home of the Beckett family-now enlarged and converted into the new Training College. The lamps bear inscriptions, and some time ago these were deciphered by a well-known Japanese gentleman who happened to be paying a visit to the city. To his surprise, he discovered that some 200 years ago, during a period of temporary unrest, they had been stolen from a royal tomb in Japan. How they found a restingplace in Leeds is a mystery. I believe an effort was made to trace the history of these highly interesting examples of Japanese art, but without result. A businesslike member of the Leeds Education Committee is reported to have said: "We shall be delighted to restore them to the Japanese Government if they will be so kind in return as to stock our College library for us." That most generous offer is still open, for on my last visit to the College I found the ancient lamps still in position; also, I was amused to find a JOHN W. SCOTT. library without books. Leeds. COLONIAL GOVERNORS (11 S. viii. 329).— A number of eighteenth-century dispatches addressed to early Australian Governors by the Duke of Portland, Lord Sydney, and other Ministers in charge of the colonies, may be seen in the early volumes of the 'Historical Records of New South Wales.' They are couched in very stiff, frigid, and formal phraseology. The complimentary expression "Your Excellency or "Your Honour never occurs. It is always "you" and "your," with the small y. But in other correspondence and documents of the period there are incidental references to "His Governor." This would Excellency the seem to suggest that this style or title was in colloquial use, but not officially sanctioned by the Home authorities. The point raised needs some research among the archives of the Colonial Office. I fancy it will be found that it was not until the rise of the self-governing colonies, and the evolution of a socially superior type of Governor, that "Your Excellency came to be officially recognized in Downing Street. J. F. HOGAN. Royal Colonial Institute, Northumberland Avenue. KNIGHT'S CAP WORN UNDERNEATH HELMET (11 S. viii. 329).—Early in the thirteenth century a knight wore on the head a thick woollen "coif to protect the skin, and over that an iron "pot-de-fer" to take the drag of the "hood" of the hauberk of chain-mail that was drawn over the head. At the time of actual battle he put on, in addition, his " pot-helm." or heaume. of this name is in Leonard's Gazetteer of England and Wales, but it is in Spelman's Villare Anglicum.' I take it that " bury" and "cote" might Besides MSS. there are, belonging to the first half of the thirteenth century, a number of effigies showing the shape of the "pot-be interchanged, and that Whichbury, Wilts, de-fer, and at least four others with the head and face covered by the " heaume." IDA M. ROPER. " CARNWATH HOUSE (11 S. viii. 327).MR. J. ARDAGH's note on the coming demolition of Carnwath House (Lonsdale House) is of decided interest. Mr. Fèret in his 'History of Fulham' gives a number of details. What is more interesting than the episode in the life of Gladstone is the fact that Lintot the second, whose firm published Pope's works, owned the lease of the original house. The Countess of Lonsdale, daughter of John, Earl of Bute, and widow of the first Earl of Lonsdale, died there in 1824. Sir John Shelley lived there from 1842, and died there on 28 March, 1852. W. H. QUARRELL. HISTORY OF Co. Down (11 S. viii. 310).— The only work on this subject that I know of is The Antient and Present State of the County of Down, containing a Chorographical Description, with Natural and Civil History of the same, &c., and a Correct Map,' 1744. Possibly there may be some information of the period mentioned in Hamilton MSS., containing some Account of the Settlement of the....Co. Down,' &c., edited by T. K. Lowry (Belfast, 1867). W. ROBERTS CROW. MAJOR ADAM will find information in History of Down,' by Knox. 1875; History of Down,' by Phillips, 1874; Down and Connor' (O`Laverty), Dublin, 1875; 'Down, Connor, and Dromore' (Bishop Reeves), Dublin, 1847; also embodied in History of Ulster' (MacKnight). 1896; History of Ulster' (Doyle), 1854; and 'Plantation of Ulster' (Hill). WILLIAM MACARTHUR. WHICHCOTE IN WILTS (11 S. viii. 209, 254, 316). On looking at the Map of Wiltshire in Pigot & Co.'s 'British Atlas' I accidentally discovered Whichbury on a part of Wilts poking itself into Hampshire. No mention Cawden Hundred, would be the place inquired for, although possibly in the document in which the name occurred the termination cote" might have been used. 66 ENGLISH REGIMENTS IN CANADA, 1837 (11 S. viii. 331). The most easily available list of Regimental Histories is, I think, to be found in The Subject Index of the London Library,' pp. 927-8. Messrs. Hugh Rees, Ltd., military booksellers, 5, Regent Street, S.W.. might also be able to supply a list of books in print. WM. H. PEET. ROBIN HOOD ROMANCES (11 S. viii. 203. 297, 313).-I thank MR. MCGOVERN for directing my attention to his list of Robin Hood works at 9 S. viii. 263, and also for his new list; but it does not appear to me that he has any real Robin Hood Romances " which I do not possess. For, as I said, I do not require any more books which are only the ballads turned into prose; and such. I believe, is Stories of Robin Hood,' by H. E. Marshall. There are at least two other works which I believe to be of the same kind-by Heaton and Lucy F. Perkins. I have a copy of Hall's Forester's Offering,' but I did not include it in my list as it is W. A. FROST. not a romance. Notes on Books. Ulster Folk-Lore. By Elizabeth Andrews. (Elliot Stock.) 66 THIS useful little book has something to say of human beings who practise shape-shifting, and of giants; but it is chiefly devoted to a description of fairies as they are known in the North of Ireland. These diminutive people are certainly not nature-spirits. They have no kinship with the light-elves of the heathen Norsemen. They house in caverns, or in artificial underground coves built of rough stones without mortar, and roofed with large flat slabs. For many reasons it is to be concluded that, "in traditions of fairies, Danes [far more ancient than the mediæval sea-rovers], and Pechts, the memory is preserved of an early race or races of short stature, but of considerable strength, who built underground dwellings, and had some skill in music and in other arts." They appear to have been spread over the greater part of Europe, and to have finally been "driven southward to the mountains of Switzerland, westward towards the Atlantic, and northward to Lapland, where their descendants may still be found.' It is to be noted that throughout Europe the customs attributed to undersized beings who live beneath the ground in caves, raths, or hollowed mounds are much the same. The elf-queen of Denmark wooing a handsome young knight on her grassy hillock closely resembles her Irish cousins. The little earth-folk of Germany, like the fairies near Somersby, in Lincolnshire, and their kindred in Ireland, bake cakes, and bestow some of them on kindly and helpful human beings. The legend of the woman who was induced to attend on the wife of a fairy-man at the birth of her child is very widely known (a variant has been gleaned in Palestine), but one Ulster version has details which make it of special importance. Several stories of the household, or farm, goblin are also widely current. The domestic sprite of the North who cried Ay, we're flittin'," is to be heard of in Southern Italy and Spain. At the present date well-made dwarfs are not uncommon in Spain. In Württemberg such reversions to an ancient type are said to be sharp of wit and mirthful, but vain, and given to spiteful tricks if offended, a character they share with Congo pygmies and with the fairy-folk of tradition. An amusing point about the Donegal fairies of to-day is the readiness with which they adapt themselves to modern conditions. At Finntown they did not interfere with the railway, as they sometimes enjoyed a ride on the train." Probably, in a few years we shall learn that they make use of aeroplanes. THE most important thing in this month's Cornhill Magazine is the unfinished draft of a poem by Browning, here published for the first time. The MS. is now in the British Museum. It was catalogued for the sale of the Browning MSS. last May as an Auto. Draft of a Poem... apparently intended for Aristophanes' Apology,' but it is as a matter of fact a soliloquy spoken by Eschylus just before his death. It is impossible to read a poem of Browning's without deep interest, and impossible but that out of so many lines some should be memorable, even strikingly beautiful; yet, if the matter rather than the form is considered, it is not difficult to understand why this poem came to be abandoned. It is of the nature of an exercise. A Saxon Diplomatist of the 'Thirties,' by Mr. A. F. Schuster, and 'Schools and Schoolmasters,' by Mr. C. L. Graves, are the two papers we should put first. The former is drawn from the private papers of Baron de Gersdorff, the Saxon Minister in London during the reign of William IV., and for a few years of that of Queen Victoria. It is full of vivid, curious pictures of the persons and life of the time-of which we may mention the contrast between the magnificence displayed and the enter tainments given by the foreign embassies at the Queen's Coronation, and the parsimonious conduct of affairs by the English Court. Not even a banquet was given to the envoys after the Coronation; an equerry on horseback in the courtyard of Buckingham Palace called out to the foreign carriages as they drove up returning from the Abbey, Now you may all go home!" We do not quite perceive why Mr. Schuster should find it refreshing" to read of William IV.'s old-fashioned hatred of the French"; but refreshing is just now rather a hard-worked word. The public school whose ways some thirty years ago Mr. Graves recalls is Marlborough. Dr. Stephen Paget's paper on Lister,' if slight, is pleasantly and sympathetically written; and two other papers worth reading are General Wilson's 'The Son of Waterloo' and Mr. Shelland Bradley's Concerning Tigers.' E. Hallam Moorhouse's New Letters from Admiral Collingwood' gives extracts from letters addressed by Collingwood to Dr. Alexander Carlyle of Inveresk and his wife, which have been deposited in the Public Library of Newcastle. These add little to what is already known of the great admiral, but they confirm that memory of capacity, devotion to his country, fortitude, and tenderness towards his family, which Collingwood has left in history. 66 66 ་ The Fortnightly Review for November is rather remarkable for vigorous political articles on the burning topics of the hour than for literary studies. 'The Archduke Franz Ferdinand's Diary,' by Miss Edith Sellers, is a welcome study of a personality whom it certainly behoves all who have the least interest in international affairs to get to understand as truly as they may. Mr. Edwin Emerson's paper on Victoriano Huerta' is another account of a prominent personality, the true significance of whose appearance needs for the English public some detailed explanation. Huerta, be it remembered, boasts that he is a pure-blooded Aztec. One of the most interesting papers here, despite its disjointedness, is Mr. Victor du Bled's The Diplomatic Spirit in France and Elsewhere.' Mr. T. H. S. Escott has a paper on John Forster A Literary Cham and his Court'a rambling performance, in which nothing stands out clearly. M. Luigi Villari's Italy a Year after the Libyan War goes to show how happily Italy has disappointed those prophets who thought the war an enterprise beyond he resources, whether in wealth or in nation discipline. She has met the charges of the can paign without external aid, and is proceedin with a prudent slowness to the development her newly acquired territory. Mr. H. M. Wa brook's Irish Dramatists and their Count |