Minor Queries with Answers.
Sewell Family (Vol. viii., p. 521.).—Your correspondent D. N. states, that "nothing farther is known of the family of Lieut.-Col. Sewell, who died in 1803, than that he had a son Thos. Bailey Heath Sewell, Cornet in 32nd Light Dragoons, and Lieutenant 4th Dragoon Guards." Had he referred to Lodge's Peerage, he would have found that the Honorable Harriet Beresford, fourth daughter of the Most Rev. Wm. Beresford, Lord Archbishop of Tuam, and first Baron Decies, married Jan. 25, 1796, Thos. Henry Bermingham (not Bailey) Daly Sewell, Esq.; and died June 11, 1834, having had three children, viz.:
1. Thomas, formerly Page of Honour to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, circa 1829, afterwards a pensioner of Trin. Coll. Dublin, and subsequently Lieutenant 13th Light Infantry; who died at Landour, Bengal, Aug. 1, 1836.
2. Isabella, who married her cousin Major Marcus Beresford, in October, 1828; and died in 1836.
3. Louisa, married to the Hon. Sir W. E. Leeson, and died in 1849 or 1850.
Will D. N. favour me with the dates of the birth and death of the late unfortunate, and, as I believe, ill-used Lieut.-General John Whitelocke, whom he mentions, with the localities where the birth and death occurred?
G. L. S.
[We have submitted our correspondent's communication to D. N., who has kindly forwarded the following reply:
"My communication (Vol. viii., p. 521.) I was aware was far from a perfect pedigree of the Sewell family, and my object was to give such notices as might form an outline to be filled up by some one more competently informed. Your correspondent G. L. S. has very well supplied the cætera desunt, where my information terminated with the appointment of Cornet Sewell to a Lieutenancy in the 4th (Royal Irish) Dragoon Guards. In the London Gazette 13789, June 23, 1795, he is inserted as 'Mr. Bermingham Daly Henry Sewell' to be a cornet in the 32nd Light Dragoons; and as in filling up commissions much accuracy is always considered very essential, I am disposed to regard those Christian names as correct.
"There was a Rev. George Sewell, Rector of Byfleet, Surrey, Was he a brother of Lieut.-Col. Sewell of the Surrey Light Dragoons?
"Did the Right Hon. Sir Thomas Sewell marry a second wife? For I find, in The Globe of October 9, 1820: 'Died, Saturday, Sept. 16, at Twyford Lodge, Maresfield, Sussex, in her seventy-eighth year, Lady Sewell, widow of the late Right Hon. Sir Thomas Sewell, Master of the Rolls and Privy Councillor, &c.' Now, in Manning's Surrey, vol. iii. p. 201., it is stated that Lieut.-Col. Sewell died in 1803, in his fifty-eighth year, which would render it impossible for him to be the son of the above-named Lady Sewell. In Horsfield's Sussex, 4to., 1835, vol. i. p. 375., I find a William Luther Sewell, Esq., who most probably was connected by the second marriage, residing at the above Twyford Lodge.
"I regret that I cannot reply distinctly to the inquiries of G. L. S. respecting the late Lieut.-General Whitelocke. I have ineffectually searched all the various biographical dictionaries to that of the Rev. H. J. Rose in twelve volumes, 1848, inclusive, without having found one that has taken the least notice of him. I had casually heard, some years since, that he had fixed his residence in Somersetshire, and that he had died there; which I find confirmed by a paragraph in the Annual Register, vol. lxxvi. for 1834 (Chronicle), p. 218., which states that he died 'near Bath,' in February, 1834. With such scanty information on the required points, I would still refer G. L. S. to a work entitled The Georgian Æra, in 4 vols., London, 1832; where he will find, in vol. ii. p 475., a short military memoir of Lieut.-General Whitelocke, which is dispassionately and candidly written, and which accounts very reasonably for the inauspicious result of his military operations. There is one slight error in the account of The Georgian Æra, viz. in the date of the
first appointment of Mr. Whitelocke to a commission in the army, which appears in the London Gazette, No. 11938. of December 26, 1778, and runs thus: '14th Foot, John Whitelocke, Gent., to be Ensign vice Day."—I trust some reader of "N. & Q." will furnish us with the dates of the birth and death of Lieut.-General Whitelocke, specifying when they took place, as desired by G. L. S., with an abridgment of deficient particulars in his history. D. N.">[
Greek Epigram.—In the Bath Chronicle of the 10th of November last, I find the following advertisement:
"The Clergyman of a Town Parish, in which are several crippled persons, at present unable to attend divine worship, will feel very grateful to any gentleman or lady who will give him an old Bath chair for the use of these poor people; two blind men having offered, in this case, charitably to convey their crippled neighbours regularly to the house of God."
Surely this arrangement is not a new idea, and there is, if I mistake not, a Greek epigram that records its success in practice several hundred years ago. Can any of your readers, whose Greek is less faded than mine, refer me to the epigram?
Geo. E. Frere.
[Probably the following epigram is the one floating in the faded memory of our correspondent:
"ΦΙΛΙΠΠΟΥ, οἱ δε ΙΣΙΔΩΡΟΥ.
Πηρὸς ὁ μέν γυίοις, ὁ δ' ἄρ' ὄμμασιν· ἀμφότεροι δὲ
Εἰς αὑτοὺς τὸ τύχης ἐνδεὲς ἠράνισαν,
Τυφλὸς γὰρ λιπόγυιον ἐπωμάδιον βάρος αἴρων,
Ταῖς κείνου φωναῖς ἀτραπὸν ὠρθοβατεῖ,
Πάντα δὲ ταῦτ' ἐδίδαξε πικρὴ πάντολμος ἀνάγκη,
Ἀλλήλοις μερίσαι τούλλιπὲς εἰς ἔλεον."
Anthologia, in usum Scholæ Westmonast.:
Oxon. 1724, p. 58.]
Translations from Æschylus.—Whose translation of the tragedies of Æschylus is that which accompanies Flaxman's compositions from the same? I ought to state that there is merely a line or two under each plate, to explain the subject of each composition, and that my copy is the unreduced size.
H.
Kingston-on-Thames.
[The lines are taken from N. Potter's translation of the Tragedies of Æschylus, 4to., 1777.]
Prince Memnon's Sister.—Who was Prince Memnon's sister, alluded to by Milton in Il Penseroso?
J. W. T.
Dewsbury.
[Dunster has the following note on this line:—"Prince Memnon's sister; that is, an Ethiopian princess, or sable beauty. Memnon, king of Ethiopia, being an auxiliary of the Trojans, was slain by Achilles. (See Virg. Æn. I. 489., 'Nigri Memnonis arma.') It does not, however, appear that Memnon had any sister. Tithonus, according to Hesiod, had by Aurora only two sons, Memnon and Emathion, Theog. 984. This lady is a creation of the poet.">[
"Oh! for a blast," &c.—Who was the author of the couplet—
"Oh! for a blast of that dread horn,
On Fontarabian echoes borne?"
A. J. Dunkin.
[The lines—
"O for the voice of that wild horn,
On Fontarabia's echoes borne,
The dying hero's call,"—
are by Sir Walter Scott, and form part of those which excited the horror of the father of Frank Osbaldiston, when he examined his waste-book in search of Reports outward and inward—Corn Debentures, &c. See Rob Roy, chap. ii. p. 24. ed. 1829.]
Robin Hood's Festival.—Can any of your correspondents refer me to a good account of the festival of Robin Hood, which was so popular with our ancestors, that Bishop Latimer could get no one to come to hear him preach on that day?
In the churchwardens' accounts of St. Helens, Abingdon, published in the first volume of the Archæologia, there is an entry in 1566 of the sum of 18d. paid for "setting up Robin Hood's Bower."
R. W. B.
[The best account of Robin Hood's festival on the first and succeeding days of May is given in Robin Hood: a Collection of all the Ancient Poems, Songs, and Ballads, relative to that celebrated Outlaw; [by Joseph Ritson], among the notes and illustrations in vol. i. pp. xcvii—cx. Consult also A Lytell Geste of Robin Hode, by John Matthew Gutch, vol. i. pp. 60—64.; and George Soane's New Curiosities of Literature, vol. i. pp. 231—236.]
Church in Suffolk.—In restoring a church in Suffolk, apparently of the date of Henry VII., except two Norman doors, the walls were found full of Norman mouldings of about 1100, or not much after. Will you kindly give me a list of the works where I may be likely to find an account of this original church? Davy and Jermyn's Suffolk, in the British Museum, says nothing about it. The two Norman doors are universally admired, and the church is now Norman still throughout. In the reconstruction of about 1100, the two doors do not seem to have been in any way restored or meddled with.
G. L.
[Our correspondent may probably find some account of this church either in Suckling's Antiquities of Suffolk, 4to., 2 vols., Gage's History of Suffolk (Thingoe Hundred), 4to., or in H. Jermyn's Collections for a General History of Suffolk, in the British Museum, Add. MSS. 8168—8196.]