[4] In his Will (as before) he leaves 'to my aunt Rowthe my owne works.' She was Dorothy, daughter of John Eyre, of Laughton, co. York.
[5] Mr. Hunter cannot have gone about his inquiries at Handsworth with his usual persistence, for he says (as supra), 'I conjecture that he may have been born about 1575, but I do not remember of his baptism in my extracts from the Parish Register of Hansworth, nor indeed any notice of the name of Crashaw,' &c. The Register, as shown above, abounds in the name of Crashaw. For the 'conjecture' of 1575 it is gratifying to be able to substitute the baptism-record in 1572. Later, indeed, Mr. Hunter discovered his mistake. It is not very creditable to the Rev. Dr. Gatty that in his edition of Hunter's 'Hallamshire'—a district which includes Handsworth—he has left the interesting facts laid to his hand unused. Surely it was worth while to claim Crashaw as sprung of Handsworth.
[6] I have very specially to thank Dr. Henry Hunter, of Taunton, the Rector of Handsworth (Rev. John Hand, M.A.), and Mr. Henry Cadman, of Ballifield Hall, for continued help in these local searches and recoveries. Dugdale's 'Visitation of Yorkshire' (under Strafford and Tickhill Wapentake) has other Crashaws.
[7] His Will, as before.
[8] Communicated by W. Aldis Wright, Esq. M.A., as before. The remainder of the note refers to after-matters not necessary to be recorded here.
[9] Communicated to me by Professor Mayor, of Cambridge.
[10] On Alvey, see Brook's Puritans, ii. 85-6.
[11] From the 'Honovr of Vertve' we also learn that Usher had baptised our Richard; another very interesting fact. We give the opening words, after the monumental inscription: 'The Funerall Sermon was made by Doctor Vsher of Ireland, then in England, and now Lord Bishop of Meath, in Ireland. It was her owne earnest request to him, that he would preach at the baptisme of her sonne, as he had eight yeares afore, being then also in England, at the baptisme of her husband's elder sonne. Now because it proued to be both the baptisme of the sonne and buriall of the mother, as she often said it would, he therefore spake out of this text, 1 Sam. iv. 2.' It will be noticed that 'eight years' from 1620 take us back to 1612-13, our Crashaw's birth-year. I add farther this on Mrs. Crashaw: 'Being yong, faire, comely, brought vp as a gentlewoman, in musick, dancing, and like to be of great estate, and therefore much sought after by yong gallants and rich heires, and good joinctures offered, yet she chose a Divine twise her owne age.'
[12] The longest poem is anonymous. It commences with a curious enumeration of popular 'omens' supposed to precede death or misfortune. The lines onward put some of the sweet commonplaces of our Literature very well:
'Her time was short, the longer is her rest;
God takes them soonest whom He loveth best;
For he that's borne to-day and dyes to-morrow
Looseth some dayes of ioy, but yeares of sorrow.'