English French ([Vol. iii., p. 346.]).—I take the liberty to inform C. W. B., for the justification of my countrymen, as well as of his own, that the Guide to Amsterdam was probably written by a British subject born between the tropics, and will point out, not by way of reprisals, but as a curiosity of the same sort, an example of French-English to be found in a book just published by Whittaker and Co., entitled What's What in 1851? Let any one who understands French try to read the article, p. 69., headed "Qu'êst que, qu'êst que la veritable luxure en se promenant," and if he can guess at the meaning of the writer, no foreign-English I ever met with will ever give him trouble.
G. L. KEPPER.
Amsterdam, May 10. 1851.
Deans, when styled Very Reverend ([Vol. iii., p. 352.]).—I cannot answer this question, but I can supply a trace, if not a clue. I find in a long series of old almanacks that the list of deans is invariably given as the Reverend the dean down to 1803 inclusive. I unluckily have not those for the three next years, but in that for 1807 I find "the very Reverend the dean."
C.
Duchess of Buckingham ([Vol. iii., p. 281.]).—There is one circumstance omitted by P. C. S. S., in his remarks upon the Duchess of Buckingham, which explains why a Phipps, on being called to the peerage, chose the titles of Mulgrave and Normanby.
By her second husband—the Duke of Buckingham and Normanby—she had one son, who succeeded to the title and estates; but, dying unmarried during his mother's lifetime, bequeathed to her all the Mulgrave and Normanby property. Her daughter (by her first marriage with James Annesley, third Earl of Anglesey) was then the wife of Mr. W. Phipps, son of Sir Constantine Phipps, Lord Chancellor of Ireland: to their issue, Constantine Phipps, first Lord Mulgrave, the Duchess left by will these estates; thus founding her grandson's fortune, although she did not live to see him created the first Baron Mulgrave.
The Sheffield Buckingham family, although extinct in the male line, is represented in the female branch by the Sheffield Dicksons; Mrs. Dickson, the widow of Major Dickson, of the Life-Guards, being in direct descent from the Lady Catherine Darnley's husband, by another wife.
A. B.
Redland, April 13.
Swearing by the Peacock ([Vol. iii., p. 70.]).—Swearing in the presence of a peacock, referred to by T. J., from Dr. Lingard's History of England, time of Edward I., is, with the ceremony observed at the Feast of the Peacock, in the thirteenth century, related at full by Mr. Knight in his Old England, pp. 311. and 312.; and the representation of the Feast from the Bran of Robert Braunche, in the choir of St. Margaret's Church at Lynn (a mayor of Lynn), who died October 15, 1364, is given fig. 1088.
BLOWEN.