Minor Queries.
Courtney Family.—I throw an apple of discord to your heraldic, genealogical, and antiquarian, readers. Was there originally more than one family of Courtnay, Courtney, Courtenay, Courteney, Courtnaye, Courtenaye, &c. Which is right, and when did the family commence in England, and how branch off? If your readers can give no information, who can?
S. A.
Oxford.
"The Shipwrecked Lovers."—Can you give me any account of the following tragedy, where the scene of it is laid, &c.? It is printed along with some poems, and appears never to have been acted. The name of the piece is The Shipwrecked Lovers, a tragedy in five acts, by James Templeton, Dublin, 12mo., 1801. I regret that I am unable to give any account of the author, but perhaps some of your Irish readers may be able to do this.
Sigma.
Sir John Bingham.—In Burke's Peerage and Baronetage, article "Lucan," it is stated that this gentlemen was high in rank in King James's army at the battle of Aughrim, and turned the fortune of the day in favour of William by deserting, with his whole command, at the crisis of the battle. A late number of the Dublin University Magazine repeats this story on the authority of Mr. Burke, and it would therefore be satisfactory to know where the latter found a statement affecting so much the honour of the family in question, one of the first in my native county. The dates of Sir John's birth and marriage are not given, but the ages of several of his children are known, and from them it follows that, supposing the father of the first Lord Lucan not to have married till the mature age of fifty-five or sixty, he was barely of age at the time of the battle, therefore not likely to have been high in command. My countrymen are too much inclined, like the French, to attribute their disasters to treachery, or to any cause but the equal numbers and courage, and superior discipline, of their adversaries: but they have never done so to less purpose than when they ascribe the loss of that battle to a man who was in all probability not born in 1691, and must in any case have been a mere boy at the time. No peerage that I have met with gives the date of his birth, which would at once settle the question. It seems most unlikely, if such were actually the case, that the family, on attaining the peerage, should have revived the title of the gallant Sarsfield (whose representatives they were), and thus challenged public attention, always on the alert on such points in Ireland, to their alleged dishonour and betrayal of the cause for which he fought and fell.
J. S. Warden.
Proclamation for making Mustard.—Did Queen Elizabeth issue a proclamation for "the right of making mustard?" And if so, what was the language of such proclamation?
An Admirer.
Judges practicing at the Bar.—A curious disquisition has run through "N. & Q." on the relinquishment of their sees by bishops, but I do not see that any of them are shown to have officiated as parish priests after quitting the episcopate.
Not that this is the point I wish now to put before you and your readers, but I want information on a somewhat kindred subject.
In Craik's Romance of the Peerage there occurs:
"Percy's leading counsel upon this occasion was Mr. Sergeant (afterwards Sir Francis) Pemberton, who subsequently rose to be first a puisne judge, and then Chief Justice of the King's Bench, was thence transferred to the Chief Justiceship of the Common Pleas, and after all ended his days a practitioner at the bar."—Vol. iv. p. 291. note.
Pemberton, it appears, was dismissed from the Common Pleas in 1683; he was counsel for the seven bishops in 1688, as was also another displaced judge, Sir Creswell Leving, or Levinge, who was superseded in 1686.
Are these the only two instances of judges, qui olim fuere, practising at the bar? If not, are they the latest? And farther, if not the latest, does not etiquette forbid such practice now?
W. T. M.
Hong Kong.
Celebrated Wagers.—I should be glad if any correspondent will point out any remarkable
instances of the above. The ordinary channels for obtaining such information I am of course acquainted with.
C. Clifton Barry.
"Pay me tribute, or else——."—In Mr. Bunn's late work, Old England and New England, I find this note:
"We all remember the haughty message of the ruler of a certain province to the governor of a neighbouring one, 'Pay me tribute, or else——;' and the appropriate reply, 'I owe you none, and if——.'"
Not being of the totality reminiscent, may I beg for enlightenment? The anecdote sounds well, and I am therefore curious to know who the governors and what the provinces?
W. T. M.
Hong Kong.
"A regular Turk."—We often hear of people bad to manage being "regular Turks." When did the phrase originate? Though not a journal for politics, "N. & Q." will no doubt breathe a wish for the present sultan to be, in the approaching warfare, "a regular Turk."
Prestoniensis.
Benjamin Rush.—I found the following in an old paper:
"Edinburgh, June 14, 1768. Yesterday Benjamin Rush, of the city of Philadelphia, A. M., and Gustavus Richard Brown, of Maryland, were admitted to the honour of a degree of Doctors of Physic, in the university of this place, after having undergone the usual examinations, both private and public. The former of whom was also presented some time before with the freedom of this city."
The Benjamin Rush here referred to subsequently became quite eminent as a physician. He took an active part in the struggle between the American colonies and the mother country, and was one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence. One of his sons was the American minister to London a few years since.
Can any of your readers inform me why the freedom of Edinburgh was conferred upon him? In 1768 he could not have been over twenty-five years of age.
Inquirer.
Per Centum Sign.—Will you kindly inform me why the symbol % means per centum: viz. 5 %, 10 %, &c.?
James Mills.
Burial Service Tradition.—About forty years ago, a young man hung himself. When his body was taken to the church for interment, the clergymen refused reading the burial service over him; his friends took him to another parish, and the clergyman of that place refused also; they then removed him to an adjoining one, and the clergyman received him and buried him. The last clergyman said, if any friend of the deceased had cut off his right hand, and laid it outside the coffin, no clergyman then could refuse legally receiving and burying the corpse. Query, is this true?
May I ask your readers for an answer, as it will oblige many friends. The above happened in Derbyshire.
S. Adams, Curate.
Jean Bart's Descent on Newcastle.—I find no notice, either in Sykes's Local Records, or in Richardson's Local Historian's Table-book, of the descent made on Newcastle in 1694 by the celebrated Jean Bart, whom the Dutch nicknamed "De Fransch Duyvel." Somewhere or other I have seen it stated that he returned to France with an immense booty. Perhaps some of your north country correspondents can tell us whether any record of his visit exists in the archives of the corporation of Newcastle or elsewhere?
William Brockie.
Russell Street, South Shields.
Madame de Staël.—In Three Months in Northern Germany, p. 151., 1817, the following, passage occurs among some corrections of the mistakes of Madame de Staël:
"She knew the language imperfectly, read little, and misrepresented the gossip which she heard, either from carelessness or misunderstanding. When she censures Fichte, who she says had received no provocation from Nicolai, for helping Schlegel to write a dull book against him when he was too old to reply, she must have been ignorant of the fact, that Nicolai lived and wrote many years after the publication; and that, whether provoked or not, it is far from dull."
I cannot find any mention of this dispute in Madame de Staël's De l'Allemagne, and shall be glad if any of your readers can direct me to the passage in her works, and also to the joint work of Schlegel and Fichte.
R. A.
Ox. and C. Club.
Honoria, Daughter of Lord Denny.—I should be extremely obliged to any of your correspondents if they could give me the date of the death of Honoria, daughter and heiress of Edward, Lord Denny, who was married to James Hay, afterwards Earl Carlisle, on the 6th of January, 1607. She had issue James, second Earl of Carlisle, who died in 1660. As James Hay, then Baron Hay of Sawley, married his second wife (Lucy, daughter of Henry, Earl of Northumberland) in November 1617, the time of the first Lady Hay's death is fixed between 1607 and 1617.
Augustus Jessopp.
N.B.—"Bis dat qui cito dat."
Rectory, Papworth St. Agnes.
Hospital of John of Jerusalem.—Is there any book or manuscript relating to the proceedings of the Hospital of St. John of Jerusalem in England,
which enters so fully into particulars as to give the names of the members of the society and its officers about the year 1300?
C. F. K.
Heiress of Haddon Hall.—Any one who visits Haddon Hall in Derbyshire, the property of the Duke of Rutland, is shown a doorway, through which the heiress to this baronial mansion eloped with (I think) a Cavendish some centuries ago. I have been informed that in a recent restoration of Bakewell Church, which is near Haddon Hall, the vault which contained the remains of this lady and her family was accidentally broken into, and that the bodies of herself, her husband, and some children, were found decapitated, with their heads under their arms; moreover, that in all the coffins there were dice. My informant had read an authenticated account of this curious circumstance, which was drawn up at the time of the discovery, but he could not refer me to it, and it is very possible that either his memory or mind may have failed as to the exact facts. At any rate they are worth embalming, I think, in the pages of "N. & Q." if any correspondent will kindly supply both "chapter and verse."
Alfred Gatty.
Monteith.—There is a peculiar style of silver bowl, of about the time of Queen Anne, which is called a Monteith. Why is it so designated? and to what particular use was it generally applied?
P.
Vandyking.—In a letter from Secretary Windebanke to the Lord Deputy Wentworth (Strafford Papers, vol. i. p. 161.), P. C. S. S. notices this phrase, "Pardon, I beseech your lordship the over-free censure of your Vandyking." What is the meaning of this term, which P. C. S. S. does not find in any other writing of the period? Had the costume, so usual in the portraits by Vandyke, become proverbial so early as 1633, the date of Windebanke's letter?
P. C. S. S.
Hiel the Bethelite.—What is the meaning of the 34th verse of the 16th chapter of the 1st Book of Kings? In one of Huddlestone's notes to Toland's History of the Druids, he quotes the acts of Hiel the Bethelite, therein mentioned, as an instance of the Druidical Custom of burying a man alive under the foundations of any building which was to be undertaken?
L. M. M. R.
Earl of Glencairn.—Could you or any of your readers inform me of any particulars concerning the Earl of Glencairn, who, with a sister, is said to have fled from Scotland about 1700, or rather later, and to have concealed himself in Devonshire, where his sister married, 1712, one John Lethbridge, and had issue? Was this sister called Grace? Within late years they were spoken of by the very old inhabitants of Okehampton, Devon, and stories of the coroneted clothes, &c. were current.
Lodbrok.
Willow Bark in Ague.—I have seen recently some notices of the use of willow bark in ague. Will some kind correspondent inform me and others interested in the subject, where the information is to be found?
E. C.
"Perturbabantur," &c.—Can any of your readers give the whole of the poem, of which the first two lines are—
"Perturbabantur Constantinopolitani,
Innumerabilibus sollicitudinibus"?
These lines are singularly applicable at the present moment.
I am also desirous of knowing the history of this poem.
P.