Replies.
MEANING OF GROOM.
(Vol. v., p. 57.)
Several of the recent articles of the "N. & Q." having had relation to the word groom, I may be allowed to submit to you a most ludicrous misconception of the duties attributed by our continental neighbours to our court-office of "Groom of the Stole," which struck me some years ago. One of the most laborious, and, from his extensive historical knowledge, one of the most competent editors of French memoirs, is M. F. Barrière, whose introductory discourses have been used so frequently by the writers on French subjects in the Quarterly Review, though not always with frank avowal of the obligation. In 1828 he published Les Mémoires du Comte de Brienne, a distinguished public man during the minority and early reign of Louis XIV., and there, at p. 372. of the second volume, referring to Brienne's father's Mémoires, tome i. p. 407. (Amsterdam, 1719, 8vo.), produces the following singular misapprehension of our habits and language. In 1624 the elder of these noblemen, it seems, was deputed by Louis XIII. to adjust the preparatory arrangements of our Charles I.'s marriage with Henrietta Maria, the French monarch's sister, who, it was stipulated, should be attended equally by French and English ladies. Among the former are named the Duchess of Chevreuse, the Maréchale de Thémines (wife of the Marshal), and Madame de Saint-Georges, who had been the princess's governess and lady of honour,—a title unknown, it is said, at the English court, but for which the Duke of Buckingham, the representative of Charles, proposed as an equivalent, that of Groom of the Stool (sic) "qui revient assez bien à ce qu'on appelerait dans notre langue, le gentilhomme, ou la dame de la chaise-percée. Cette charge est très considérable; elle fait jouir de très grands privilèges," &c. A natural expression of surprise follows this portraiture of a high and regular functionary, whose attributes not even majesty could ennoble or strip of indignity. The transposition of the name and duties of Groom of the Stole has caused this most ridiculous blunder—a double one, indeed, for the office does not belong to female majesty, though it may, as of course at present, form part of a royal consort's household. The living editor of De Brienne, who dwells on these "étranges usages de nos voisins d'outremer," tells us, and it is confirmed by De Brienne himself, that this nobleman felt proud and honoured at the familiarity and confidence of Louis XIV., who often conferred with him on state affairs, enthroned "sur sa chaise-percée." The Duchess of Burgundy, mother of Louis XV., it is known, never hesitated to administer to herself a relieving remedy, not to be pronounced by name in English society, in presence of Louis XIV. and his attendant courtiers; so that these violations of decorum, falsely imputed to our court, were of historical truth at Versailles.
J. R. (Cork).
May not groom be the literal English of the French écuyer, and have in the places quoted the same meaning as esquire, which is evidently the Anglicised French?
W. C. TREVELYAN.
Wallington.
BALLAD OF LORD DELAWARE.
(Vol. ii., pp. 104. 158.; Vol. v., p. 243.)
As I have reason to believe that several of your readers are interested in this old ballad, I send you an exact transcript of the oral version contained in Mr. Lyle's (not Lyte's, as incorrectly printed in my former communication) now rare little volume.
Your correspondent C. W. G. thinks that it relates to some transaction much later than 1622; and possibly he may be right. It may be as well, however, to mention that Mr. J. H. Dixon, who inserted the ballad in his Ancient Poems, Ballads, and Songs of the Peasantry of England (Percy Society, No. LXII.), thinks otherwise, and, indeed, claims for it an antiquity as high as the reign of Edward III., A.D. 1377. He suggests that for De la Ware we should read De la Mare, and believes Sir Thomas De la Mare, Speaker of the House of Commons, to have been the hero. Mr. Dixon says:
"All historians are agreed in representing him as a person using 'great freedom of speech,' and which, indeed, he carried to such an extent as to endanger his personal liberty. As bearing somewhat upon the subject of the ballad, it may be observed that De la Mare was a great advocate of popular rights, and particularly protested against the inhabitants of England being subject to 'purveyance;' asserting that 'if the royal revenue was faithfully administered, there could be no necessity for laying burdens on the people.'"
The title of the "Welsh lord, the brave Duke of Devonshire," offers some opposition to Mr. Dixon's hypothesis, as no Duke of Devonshire was created before 1694; but, as Sir Walter Scott observed, upon a friend pointing out an inaccuracy in his "Bonnets of bonnie Dundee," "We cannot always be particular in a ballad." Possibly the name of some other country or place should be substituted for that of "Devonshire." Indeed I remember, some ten years ago, hearing a version of this ballad sung at a village in Staffordshire, where the "minstrel" (for he was a true descendant of the wandering tribe) used Hereford in the place of Devonshire.
There is an old ballad in Deloney's Garland of Good Will, upon the quarrel between the two Dukes of Hereford and Norfolk, in the reign of Richard II. See Hume's Hist. of Eng., chap. xvii., A.D. 1398, for a full account of the transaction. There seems to be some "relationship" between this "combat" and that of the Lord Delaware. At any rate, the following ballad smacks wonderfully (allowing for the march of time, and Mr. Lyle's "smoothing down") of the style of the "ballading silk-weaver," and his cotemporary poetasters.
"LORD DELAWARE.
"In the Parliament House, a great rout has been there,
Betwixt our good King and the Lord Delaware:
Says Lord Delaware to his Majesty full soon,
Will it please you, my Liege, to grant me a boon?
"What's your boon, says the King, now let me understand?
It's, give me all the poor men we've starving in this land;
And without delay, I'll hie me to Lincolnshire,
To sow hemp seed and flax seed, and hang them all there.
"For with hempen cord it's better to stop each poor man's breath,
Than with famine you should see your subjects starve to death.
Up starts a Dutch Lord, who to Delaware did say,
Thou deservest to be stabb'd! then he turned himself away:
"Thou deservest to be stabb'd, and the dogs have thine ears,
For insulting our King in this Parliament of peers;
Up sprang a Welsh Lord, the brave Duke of Devonshire,
In young Delaware's defence, I'll fight this Dutch Lord, my sire.
"For he is in the right, and I'll make it so appear:
Him I dare to single combat, for insulting Delaware.
A stage was soon erected, and to combat they went,
For to kill, or to be kill'd, it was either's full intent.
"But the very first flourish, when the heralds gave command,
The sword of brave Devonshire bent backward on his hand;
In suspense he paused awhile, scann'd his foe before he strake,
Then against the King's armour, his bent sword he brake.
"Then he sprang from the stage, to a soldier in the ring,
Saying, Lend your sword, that to an end this tragedy we bring:
Though he's fighting me in armour, while I am fighting bare,
Even more than this I'd venture, for young Lord Delaware.
"Leaping back on the stage, sword to buckler now resounds,
Till he left the Dutch Lord a-bleeding in his wounds:
This seeing, cries the King to his guards without delay,
Call Devonshire down: take the dead man away!
"No, says brave Devonshire, I've fought him as a man,
Since he's dead, I will keep the trophies I have won;
For he fought me in your armour, while I fought him bare,
And the same you must win back, my Liege, if ever you them wear.
"God bless the Church of England, may it prosper on each hand,
And also every poor man now starving in this land;
And while I pray success may crown our King upon his throne,
I'll wish that every poor man may long enjoy his own."
EDWARD F. RIMBAULT.
FAMILY LIKENESSES.
(Vol. v., p. 260.)
To most persons the discovery by VOKAROS of a family likeness existing between the face on the brass of the Abbess of Elstow, and the portrait of the Marquis of Bristol, after a lapse of three centuries, would probably seem moderately far-fetched; but when this is adduced as "valuable evidence on the disputed point, whether portraits were attempted in sepulchral brasses," a very great demand indeed is made upon our credulity. I have not the means now of referring to the works of Fisher and Rokewode; but I have before me a rubbing of the Elstow brass. Any person tolerably familiar with the subject will at once see that the face of the lady is identical with that which is repeatedly to be found on numerous brass effigies of persons of both sexes at the beginning of the sixteenth century; in fact, it is not very dissimilar to that of the fellow brass of the Abbot at Dorchester, Oxon. If, therefore, we might judge by the likeness, very many brazen-faced gentry of olden time might claim the honour of being ancestors of the noble lord. And so far from its being a disputed point, whether the faces on brasses are attempted likenesses, no one, I think, who has at all studied our monumental brasses, can fail to have come to the conclusion that they were not intended to be portraits. The great proof of this lies in the obvious similarity in the faces of cotemporary figures which have been produced by the same artists, who, probably from their residing in London, and perhaps in a few other places, very rarely had an opportunity of seeing the persons to be commemorated. The instructions forwarded to the engravers would seem to have been confined to the inscription and other details, chiefly the costume, at least if we may judge from the large brasses at Digswell, Herts, and other similar figures. The ready adoption of unaltered palimpsest effigies may also be cited as an additional proof of the likeness being entirely a matter of indifference; and it is not improbable that many brasses were kept ready made, half-length figures of priests for instance; and files of children, all bearing a strong family likeness, may have been engraved, ready to be cut off on the shortest notice, and laid down at so much per foot. The only approach towards a likeness, if it may be termed such, seems to be the distinction between youth and age, and even that was almost wholly neglected in the fifteenth and earlier half of the sixteenth centuries. The foregoing remarks apply chiefly to brasses before the latter end of the sixteenth century; after that period portraits were evidently not unfrequently attempted. Very rare instances, however, before this time, may be found. I may specify the effigy of Nich. Canteys, 1431, Margate, Kent.
Mr. Doyle, in his able painting of Caxton submitting his proof-sheet to Abbot Estney (noticed in "N. & Q." No. 54. p. 398.) has taken the likeness of the Abbot from his brass in Westminster Abbey, which is, I suppose, as good a likeness of the original as any other that can be found; but the members of Queen's College, Oxford, have not been so fortunate. Several years ago, while hunting up a likeness of their founder (Robt. Egglesfield, 1340), they stumbled upon an old brass in the College Chapel, from which a painting and engraving was made purporting to be that of the founder. Recent researches have unfortunately fatally dispelled this illusion, as the effigy in question undoubtedly commemorates Dr. Robt. Langton, who deceased 1518.
H. H.
EARL OF ERROLL.
(Vol. v., p. 297.)
According to Burke's Peerage for 1850, the present Lord Erroll is "the twenty-second High Constable of Scotland; and as such is, by birth, the first subject in Scotland after the blood-royal, having a right to take place of every hereditary honour, which was granted to his lordship's father on the visit of George IV. to North Britain" (in 1822).
In a small treatise, De Jure Prelationis Nobilium Scotiæ, printed by the Bannatyne Club in 1827, from a manuscript in the Advocates' Library, with a preface and numerous additions by Sir Alexander Seton, Lord Pitmedden, I find the following remark, under the head of "Comes de Erroll":—
"The Earle of Erroll claims precedency of all the nobilitie of Scotland nixt to the Chancellour, though of ane ancienter creation than himself, be vertue of his office of Constabulary, of the which that precedency is a priviledge; and to instruct that it is a priviledge, he produces a Report of a Commission that was granted be the King under the Great Seal anno 1631, to take tryall of the priviledges of the Constable; which Report, in the second article thereof, bears that the precedency is due to the Constable next to the Chancellor, but he has never been in possession of it, but only takes place by his antiquity as Earle."
The report here referred to is given in Nisbet's Heraldry, vol. ii. p. 67. In the eighth chapter of Sir George Mackenzie's treatise on "Precedency" (p. 534. of the second volume of his works), your correspondent will find some interesting information regarding the ancient office of High Constable. In the course of his remarks the learned author says:
"Next to these (i.e. the Chancellor, Justice-General, Chamberlain, High Steward, Panetarius, and Buttelarius) are named, in the laws of King Malcolm Canmore (1057-1093), the Constable and Marishal; but now the Constable and Marishal take not place as officers of the Crown, but according to their creation as Earls: the reason thereof I conceive to be, because of old offices did not prefer those who possessed them, but they took place according to their creation; whereas now the Privy Seal precedes all Dukes, and the Secretary takes place before all of his own rank; but the Constable and Marishal, being now the only two officers of the Crown that are heritable in Scotland, continue to possess as they did formerly. But in France, England, and all other places, the Constable and Marishal take place as officers of the Crown; and it seems very strange that these, who ride upon the King's right and left hand when he returns from his Parliaments, and who guard the Parliament itself, and the honours, should have no precedency by their offices; and yet I cannot deny, but that of old other Earls were placed before them; for in the former Charter granted by King Alexander, Malcolm Earl of Fife is placed before them. And I conceive their precedency has not risen of late to the same proportion with others, because, of late, our armies have been commanded by other officers, and so there was little use for the Constable and Marishal."
E. N.