CHILDREN CALLED IMPS.
(Vol. viii., p. 443.)
"Heere resteth the bodye of the noble Impe, Robert of Duddeley, Baron of Denbigh, sonne of Robert, Earle of Leicester, nephew and heire unto Ambrose, Earle of Warwick, brethren, both sonnes of the mighty Prince John, late Duke of Northumberland, that was cosin and heire to Sir John Grey, Vicount L'Isle, nephew and heire unto the Lady Margaret, Countesse of Shrewsbury, the eldest daughter and coheire of the noble Earle of Warr: Sir Richard Beauchampe here interred; a childe of great parentage, but of farr greater hope and towardnesse, taken from this transitory unto everlasting life in his tender age, at Wanstead in Essex, on Sunday, 19th of July, in the yeare of our Lord God 1584, being the 26th yeare of the happy raine of the most virtuous and godly Princesse, Queene Elizabeth, and in this place layd up among his noble auncestors, in assured hope of the generall resurrection."—Lady's Chapel, St. Mary's Church, Warwick.
H. B.
Warwick.
An inscription on a tomb at Besford, near Pershore, Worcestershire, of the same period as that at Aylesbury (mentioned by Mr. Brooks), contains also the word imp. The tomb at Besford is a most singular one, consisting of two large folding doors fixed against the wall, their panels and the interior being painted over with figures and inscriptions. From the latter, which are of some length, the following extracts will be sufficient to illustrate the subject:
"An impe entombed heere doth lie."
"... elder ... from Christ to straie,
When such an impe foreshewes the waie."
The old poetical word sugared, "Noe sugred word," occurs in the inscription.
The "impe" is supposed to be Richard Harewell, who died in 1576, aged 15 years, to whom a second monument, of alabaster (close by the former), was also erected; a rare circumstance, I should suppose. The Harewells appear to have been a family at the time of the Conquest; the two following lines are a part of one of the inscriptions:
"Of Harewell's blodde ere Conquest made,
Knowne to descende of gentle race."
Nash, in his History of Worcestershire, makes mention of this singular monument, but is anything but correct in giving its inscriptions.
Cuthbert Bede, B. A.
T. W. D. Brooks will find this word used by some modern authors to denote a child. In Moral and Sacred Poetry, selected and arranged by the Rev. T. Willcocks and the Rev. T. Horton (Devonport, W. Byers, 1834), there is at p. 254. a piece by Baillie, addressed "To a Child," the first line of which runs thus:
"Whose imp art thou, with dimpled cheek?"
And in a poem by Rogers, on the following page, the children of a gipsy are called imps.
J. W. N. Keys.
Plymouth.