E. G. R.
Minor Queries with Answers.
Sir John Powell—the judge who tried the seven bishops. Where was he buried? i.e. where is his epitaph (which is given in Heber's Life Of Jeremy Taylor) to be seen?
A. C. R.
[He was buried on September 26, 1696, in the chancel of the church of Langharne, in Carmarthenshire, where there is a tablet to his memory, with a Latin inscription, recording that he was a pupil of Jeremy Taylor. The Judge had a residence in the parish.]
"Reynard the Fox."—There was a book printed in 1706 entitled The secret Memoirs of Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, Prime Minister and Favorite of Queen Elizabeth, written during his Life, and now published from an old Manuscript never printed; by Dr. Drake: printed by Samuel Briscoe, 1706. In his Preface he alludes to the History of Reynard the Fox:
"There is an old English book, written about the time that these memoirs seem to have been, which now passes through the hands of old women and children only, and is taken for a pleasant and delightful tale, but is by wise heads thought to be an enigmatical history of the Earl of Leicester and his family, and which he that compares with these memoirs, will not take to be an idle conjecture, there are so many passages so easily illustrable, by comparing it with these memoirs. The book I mean is the History of Reynard the Fox, in which the author, not daring to write his history plainly, probably for fear of his power, has shadowed his exploits under the feigned adventures and intrigues of brutes, in which not only the violence and rapaciousness, but especially the craft and dissimulation, of the Earl of Leicester is excellently set forth."
I shall feel much obliged to any of your readers who can inform me of the earliest English edition of Reynard the Fox, and whether others besides Dr. Drake have taken the same view of the history.
W. D. Haggard.
Bank of England.