THE LADY ELIZABETH HORNER OR MONTGOMERY.
In some curious manuscript memoirs of the family of Horner of Mells, co. Somerset, written probably about the middle of the last century, I find the following statement:—
"The gentleman at Mells last mentioned, whose name I don't know, had his eldest son George, who succeeded him at Mells. He married the Countess of Montgomery, supposed to be the widow of that earl, who, in tilting with Henry II., King of France caused his death by a splinter of his spear running into the king's eye. But most probably she was the widow of that lord's son, which I conjecture from the distance of the time of that king's death to her death, which must needs be near seventy years, as she lived at Cloford to the year 1628. She must certainly be a considerable heiress, as several estates came with her into the family, and, among others, Postlebury-woods in particular, and, possibly, also the Puddimore estate; as her son, Sir John Horner, was the first of the family that presented a clerk to that living in 1639, viz., William Kemp, who was afterwards one of the suffering clergy. Her jointure was a 500l. a-year, which was very considerable at that time."
Can any of your readers assist in elucidating this story, of which no existing family records afford any corroboration, and which the parochial registers of the neighbourhood appear rather to invalidate in some of its statements? As far as we can gather from such sources, the gentleman alluded to in the extract was not George but Thomas Horner, born 1547, M.P. for Somersetshire 1585, and sheriff 1607, who was buried 1612. He married three times: first, Elizabeth Pollard, who died, as well as her only son John in 1573; secondly, Jane Popham, who died 1591, having had, amongst other issues, Sir John, born about 1580; and thirdly, as it would seem, a person called "The Lady Elizabeth," who had issue Edward, born 1597, and who was buried at Cloford, in 1599. Even allowing for the errors attendant upon a tradition, it is scarcely possible that this "Lady Elizabeth" should have been widow of Count Gabriel de Montgomery,—Elizabeth de la Zouch,—who married her first husband in 1549, and was left a widow in 1574. She might have been widow of one of his sons; though the only two mentioned in the Biographie Universelle, Gabriel and Jacques, left issue, to whom their wives' property would have probably descended.
The whole matter, as far as I have been able to examine it, is a very obscure one, and yet can hardly, I should think, be without some foundation in fact. The title-deeds of Postlebury and Puddimore perhaps would throw light upon it.
C. W. B.
POPE AND FLATMAN.
I possess a small volume entitled Manchester al Mondo; Contemplations of Death and Immortality, by the Earl of Manchester: the 15th edit., 1688. At the end are appended several short but quaint poems on the subject of mortality. One of them is stated to be taken from the "incomparable Poems by the ingenious Mr. Thomas Flatman," and is entitled "A Thought of Death." I have transcribed it side by side with Pope's celebrated ode, "The Dying Christian to his Soul," in which some lines run remarkably parallel. Is it probable Pope borrowed his idea of the fine couplet,
"Hark! they whisper; angels say,
Sister Spirit, come away!"