Can any of your correspondents communicate information respecting a Mr. P. Cunninghame, who was employed in the Heralds' Office in the years 1768-69, and who appears to have left his situation there in order to enter the church? Mr. Cunninghame, from a MS. volume of his letters now before me, had friends and correspondents of the names of Towne, Dehane, Welsh, Cockell, Bawdwen, Wainman, Haggard, Hammond, Neve, Gathorne, Innes, Connor, &c., and relations of his own name resided at Deal. One of his letters is addressed to his cousin, Captain George Cunninghame, General Majoribanks' regiment, in garrison at Tournay, Flanders.
Two gentlemen of the names of Bigland and Heard (probably Sir Isaac Heard, who died a few years since at a very advanced age) were his superiors in the Heralds' Office at the time of his being there. A former possessor of this MS. volume has written in it as follows; and so warm a tribute of praise from a distinguished scholar and late member of this university, has induced me to send you his remarks, and to make the inquiry suggested by them.
"I esteem myself fortunate in having purchased this volume of letters, which I met with in the shop of Mr. Robins, bookseller, at Winchester, in January, 1808. They do credit to the head and the heart of the author. He seems to have been a man whose imagination was lively, and whose mind was capacious, as well as comprehensive. His remarks on different subjects betray reading and reflection. His mental powers, naturally vigorous, he appears to have cultivated and improved by as much reading as his employments and his agitation of mind would allow. I wish that he had committed to this volume some specimens of his poetry, as it would have been more than mechanical, or partaking of common-place, for he writes in a style at once vigorous, lively, and elegant, and gives proofs of a correct taste. He had a manly spirit of independence, a generous principle of benevolence and a prevailing habit of piety. The first of these qualifications did not in him (as it is too frequently apt to do) overleap the bounds of prudence, or the still more binding ties of duty, as is exemplified in the excellent letters to his father, and Mr. Dehane. It is to be hoped that he entered into that profession from which he was so long and so perversely excluded; a profession suited to his genius and inclination, which would open an ample field for his benevolence, and which would receive additional lustre from the example of so much virtue and so much industry exerted in the cause of truth. It is to be hoped that he gained that competence and retirement to which the wishes of the interested reader must follow him, regretting that he knows not more of a man, who, from those amiable dispositions and those eminent talents, pourtrayed in this correspondence, would indeed—
'Allure to brighter worlds, and lead the way.'
R. F."
J. Macray.
Oxford.
WAS SHAKSPEARE DESCENDED FROM A LANDED PROPRIETOR?
Mr. Knight has on two occasions, the latter in his Stratford Shakspeare just published, called attention to what he concludes is an oversight of mine in not drawing any conclusion from a deed in which certain lands are mentioned as "heretofore the inheritance of William Shakspeare, Gent., deceased." These words are supposed by Mr. Knight to imply that the lands in question came to Shakspeare by descent, as heir-at-law of his father. This opinion appeared to me to be somewhat a hasty one: believing that no conclusion whatever is to be drawn from the phrase as there used, and relying on the ordinary definition of inheritance in the old works on law, I did not hesitate, some time since, to declare a conviction that the lands so mentioned were bought by Shakspeare himself. As the question is of some importance in the inquiry respecting the position of the poet's ancestry, perhaps one of your legal readers would kindly decide which of us is in the right. I possess an useful collection of old law-books, but there are few subjects in which error is so easily committed by unprofessional readers. In the present instance, however, if plain words are to be relied upon, it seems certain that the term inheritance was applied, to use Cowell's words, to
"every fee simple or fee taile that a man hath by his purchase." (See The Interpreter, 1637.)
J. O. Halliwell.