[Under this heading we propose to give such Minor Queries as we are able to reply to at once, but which are not of a nature to be answered with advantage in our Notices to Correspondents. We hope by this means to economise our space.]
The Hereditary Earl Marshal.—Miss Martineau, in her History of England, book iii. ch. 8., speaks (in 1829) of
"three Catholic peers, the Duke of Norfolk, Lord Clifford, and Lord Dormer, having obtained entrance at last to the legislative assembly, where their fathers sat and ruled when their faith was the law of the land."
In Lord Campbell's Lives of the Chancellors, there is an anecdote, vol. vii. p. 695., of the Duke of Norfolk falling asleep and snoring in the House of Lords, while Lord Eldon was on the woolsack. Did not the Duke of Norfolk (though Roman Catholic) sit and vote in the House of Lords, either by prescription or special act of parliament, before 1829?
J. H. S.
[The anecdote told by Lord Campbell (but much better by Lord Eldon himself in Twiss's Life of the great Chancellor), does not refer to the late Duke of Norfolk, but to his predecessor Charles (the eleventh duke), who was a Protestant. The late duke never sat in parliament till after the Relief Bill passed. In 1824 a Bill was passed to enable him to exercise the office of Earl Marshal without taking certain oaths, but gave him no seat in the House. We may as well add, that Lord Eldon's joke must have been perpetrated—not on the bringing up of the Bill, when the duke was not in the House—but on the occasion of the Great Snoring Bill being reported (April 2, 1811), when the duke appears to have been present.]
The Beggar's Petition.—I shall feel obliged by your informing me who the author is of the lines—
"Pity the sorrows of a poor old man,
Whose trembling limbs have borne him to your door."
S.