Courtney Family.—I throw an apple of discord to your heraldic, genealogical, and antiquarian, readers. Was there originally more than one family of Courtnay, Courtney, Courtenay, Courteney, Courtnaye, Courtenaye, &c. Which is right, and when did the family commence in England, and how branch off? If your readers can give no information, who can?
S. A.
Oxford.
"The Shipwrecked Lovers."—Can you give me any account of the following tragedy, where the scene of it is laid, &c.? It is printed along with some poems, and appears never to have been acted. The name of the piece is The Shipwrecked Lovers, a tragedy in five acts, by James Templeton, Dublin, 12mo., 1801. I regret that I am unable to give any account of the author, but perhaps some of your Irish readers may be able to do this.
Sigma.
Sir John Bingham.—In Burke's Peerage and Baronetage, article "Lucan," it is stated that this gentlemen was high in rank in King James's army at the battle of Aughrim, and turned the fortune of the day in favour of William by deserting, with his whole command, at the crisis of the battle. A late number of the Dublin University Magazine repeats this story on the authority of Mr. Burke, and it would therefore be satisfactory to know where the latter found a statement affecting so much the honour of the family in question, one of the first in my native county. The dates of Sir John's birth and marriage are not given, but the ages of several of his children are known, and from them it follows that, supposing the father of the first Lord Lucan not to have married till the mature age of fifty-five or sixty, he was barely of age at the time of the battle, therefore not likely to have been high in command. My countrymen are too much inclined, like the French, to attribute their disasters to treachery, or to any cause but the equal numbers and courage, and superior discipline, of their adversaries: but they have never done so to less purpose than when they ascribe the loss of that battle to a man who was in all probability not born in 1691, and must in any case have been a mere boy at the time. No peerage that I have met with gives the date of his birth, which would at once settle the question. It seems most unlikely, if such were actually the case, that the family, on attaining the peerage, should have revived the title of the gallant Sarsfield (whose representatives they were), and thus challenged public attention, always on the alert on such points in Ireland, to their alleged dishonour and betrayal of the cause for which he fought and fell.
J. S. Warden.
Proclamation for making Mustard.—Did Queen Elizabeth issue a proclamation for "the right of making mustard?" And if so, what was the language of such proclamation?
An Admirer.
Judges practicing at the Bar.—A curious disquisition has run through "N. & Q." on the relinquishment of their sees by bishops, but I do not see that any of them are shown to have officiated as parish priests after quitting the episcopate.