Minor Queries.
"The Village Lawyer."—Can you inform me who is the author of that very popular farce, The Village Lawyer? It was first acted about the year 1787. It has been ascribed to Mr. Macready, the father of Mr. W. C. Macready, the eminent tragedian. The real author, however, is said to have been a dissenting minister in Dublin, and I would be obliged to any of your readers who could give me his name.
Sigma.
Richard Plantagenet, Earl of Cambridge.—In a note in the first volume of Miss Strickland's Lives of the Queens of Scotland, she remarks that Bourchier, Earl of Essex, "was near of kin to the royal family, being grand-nephew to Richard, Duke of York, father of Edward IV., but did not share the blood of the heiress of March, Jane Mortimer." I quote from memory, not having the book at hand; but allowing that Jane for Anne may be a slip of the pen, or a mistake of the press, where did Miss Strickland discover any second marriage of Richard, Earl of Cambridge? All pedigrees of the royal family that I have seen agree in giving him only one wife, and in expressly stating her to be mother to Isabel, Countess of Essex.
J. S. Warden.
Highland Regiment.-Can any of your Gaelic or military correspondents inform me whether it is at present the custom for the officers in the Highland regiments to wear a dirk in addition to the broadsword? Also whether the Highland regiments were ever armed with broadswords, and
whether their drill is different to that of the other troops of the line? I have somewhere heard it said that the 28th (an English regiment) were once armed with swords, whence their name of "The Slashers?" Is this the real origin of the name? and if not, what is? I should also like to know the origin of the custom of wearing undress white shell jackets, which are now worn by the Highlanders?
Arthur.
Ominous Storms.—A remark by a labouring man of this town (Grantham), which is new to me, is to the following effect. In March, and all seasons when the judges are on circuit, and when there are any criminals to be hanged, there are always winds and storms, and roaring tempests. Perhaps there are readers of "N. & Q." who have met with the same idea.
John Hawkins.
Edward Fitzgerald, born 17th January, 1528, son of Gerald, ninth Earl of Kildare, and brother of the celebrated "Silken Thomas," an ancestor of the Duke of Leinster, married Mary, daughter and heiress of Sir John Leigh of Addington, and widow of Sir Thomas Paston (called improperly Sir John). There are contradictory pedigrees of the Leigh family in the Surrey Visitations, e. g. Harl. MSS. 1147. and 5520. Could one of your correspondents oblige me with a correct pedigree of this Mary Leigh; she is sometimes called "Mabel?"
Y. S. M.
Boyle Family.—Allow me to repeat the Query regarding Richard Boyle (Vol. vii., p. 430.). Richard Boyle, appointed Dean of Limerick 5th Feb. 1661, and Bishop of Leighlin and Ferns in 1666, died in 1682. Roger Boyle, the youngest brother of Richard, was born in 1617, and educated in Trinity College, Dublin, of which he became a Fellow. On the breaking out of the rebellion of 1641 he went to England, and having become tutor to Lord Paulet, he continued in that family till the Restoration, when he returned to Ireland, and was presented with the Rectory of Carrigaline, diocese of Cork. He was made Dean of Cork in 1662, and promoted to the Bishopric of Down and Connor 12th Sept. 1667. He was translated to Clogher, 21st September, 1672, and died 26th November, 1687. The sister of these prelates was wife to the Rev. Urban Vigors (Vol. viii., p. 340.). They were near relatives of the great Earl of Cork, and many of their descendants have been buried in his tomb, in St. Patrick's Cathedral, Dublin. I have not seen any reply to my Query about Mr. Vigors. May I ask is there any list of the chaplains of King Charles I.?
Y. S. M.
Inn Signs.—As the subject of inns is being discussed, can any of your readers tell the origin of "The Green Man and Still?" And is there any foundation for a statement, that "the chequers" have been found on Italian wine-shops, and were imported from Egypt, having there been the emblem of Osiris.
S. A.
Oxford.
Demoniacal Descent of the Plantagenets.—In "N. & Q.," Vol. vii., p. 73., I asked for information as to the demoniacal ancestor of Henry II., confessing my own ignorance of the tradition. I received no answer, but was induced to inquire farther by a passage in the article on "A'Becket" in the Quarterly Review, xciii. 349.
"These words goaded the king into one of those paroxysms of fury to which all the earlier Plantagenet princes were subject, and which was believed by them to arise from a mixture of demoniacal blood in their race."
The following is from Thierry, tom. iii. p. 330., Paris, 1830:
"L'on racontait d'une ancienne Comtesse d'Anjou, aieule du père de Henri II., que son mari ayant remarqué avec effroi, qu'elle allait rarement à l'église, et qu'elle en sortait toujours à la sacre de la messe, s'avisa de l'y faire retenir de force par quatre écuyers; mais qu'à l'instant de la consécration, la Comtesse, jettant le manteau par lequel on la tenait, s'était envolée par une fenêtre, et n'avait jamais reparu. Richard de Poictiers, selon un contemporain, avait coutume de rapporter cette aventure, et de dire à ce propos: 'Est-il étonnant que, sortis d'une telle source, nous vivions mal, les uns avec les autres? Ce qui provient du diable doit retourner au diable.'"
Thierry quotes Brompton apud Scriptores Rerum Francorum, tom. xiii. p. 215.:
"Istud Ricardus referre solebat, asserens de tali genere procedentes sese mutuo infestent, tanquam de diabolo venientes, et ad diabolum transeuntes."
I shall be glad of any assistance in tracing the story up or down.
H. B. C.
U. U. Club.
Anglo-Saxon Graves.—The world is continually hearing now of researches in Anglo-Saxon graves. I beg to inquire whether Anglo-Saxon coins or inscriptions have been found in any of these, so as to identify them with the people to whom these interments are ascribed? or upon what other proof or authority these graves are so assigned to the Anglo-Saxons?
H. E.
Robert Brown the Separatist.—Robert Brown the Separatist, from whom his followers were called "Brownists." Whom did he marry, and when? In the Biog. Brit. he is said to have been the son of Anthony Brown of Tolthorp, Rutland, Esq. (though born at Northampton, according to Mr. Collier), and grandson of Francis Brown, whom King Henry VIII., in the eighteenth year of his reign, privileged by charter to wear his
cap in the royal presence. He was nearly allied to the Lord Treasurer Cecil Lord Burleigh, who was his friend and powerful protector. Burleigh's aunt Joan, daughter of David Cyssel of Stamford (grandfather of the Lord Treasurer) by his second wife, married Edmund Brown. She was half-sister of Richard Cyssel of Burleigh, the Lord Treasurer's father. What connexion was there between Edmund Brown and Anthony Brown of Tolthorp?
Fuller (Ch. Hist., b. ix. p. 168.) says, he had a wife with whom he never lived, and a church in which he never preached. His church was in Northamptonshire, and he died in Northampton Gaol in 1630.
From 1589 to 1592 he was master of St. Olave's Grammar School in Southwark.
G. R. Corner.
Eltham.
Commissions issued by Charles I. at Oxford.—In Lord Campbell's Lives of the Chancellors, vol. ii. p. 604., it is stated that a commission was granted to Lord Keeper Littleton to raise a corps of volunteers for the royal service among the members of the legal profession, "and that the docquet of that commission remains among the instruments passed under the great seal of King Charles I. at Oxford." P. C. S. S. is very desirous to know where a list of these instruments can be consulted?
P. C. S. S.