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CONTENTS. - No. 12.

MEMORABILIA: -199.

NOTES:-Canning's Mother and the Stage, 201The King's Ships, 204- The Border in Heraldry -Samuel Butler and the Odyssey, 206-MaltbyA speed record coincidence, 207.

QUERIES:-Gold mining in Scotland: Sir Bevis Bulmer-A "set" of horses-Mary Ann Clarke's daughters-West Digges, 207 The Hangman of Wigtown The Bellman of St. Sepulchre's -Credence tables-The Wreck of the RamiliesFamily papers wanted-Society for recording of Norman descents, 208 Bishopp: "Aire Lowmes "-Pike, of Bideford, Devon-Portraits by James Lonsdale - John Saunder, Sussex martyr-Jeremiah Robinson Source wanted,

209.

REPLIES: Ancient Lights, 210-Sancta Wiborada -Buswell Genealogy, 211-Latin riddle: solution sought-Polyglott versions of Gray's Elegy Herald's Visitations Harcourt and Maltby burials at Kirk Merrington, Co. Durham Golden Cowry-Churches of Verona, 213-Alderman Jeffreys The Surname "Haggis "-Parish Registry entry in cipher Williamson, 214 Milkmaids and stoolball-" On holiday "-Henry Haley, moneyer-Residence of Stuarts (Stewarts) in Edinburgh Castle or Holyrood PalaceManor of Barnsbury, Islington-Robert Boyle: MSS. wanted-Authors wanted.

THE LIBRARY: 'The Emperor Romanus

Lecapenus.'

of England. :: ::

Sixpence Weekly.

Specimen Copy free on application to the Publisher,

14, BURLEIGH STREET,
STRAND, W.C.2.

NOTES & QUERIES.

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NOTES AND QUERIES is published every Friday, at 20, High Street, High Wycombe, Bucks (Telephone: Wycombe 306). Subscriptions (L2 2s. a year, U.S.A. $10.23, including postage, two half-yearly indexes and two cloth binding cases, or £1 15s. 4d. a year, U.S.A. $8.61 without binding cases) should be sent to the Manager. The London Office is at 14, Burleigh Street, W.C.2 (Telephone: Temple Bar 7576), where the current issue is on sale. Orders for back numbers, indexes and bound volumes should be sent either to London or to Wycombe; letters for the Editor to the London Office.

Memorabilia.

THE death of Sir Edward Maunde Thompson, which took place on Sept. 14, at the age of eighty-nine, will revive in all workers on manuscripts gratitude for services as wideranging and fundamental as any palæographer ever rendered to scholarship. The record of his work in The Times obituary notice of him (Sept. 16) testifies impressively to what the writer calls the key-note of his character, untiring energy. Co-founder of the Palæographical Society in 1873, he next year, with Mr. Bond, established the date of the Utrecht Psalter. In 1885, in the ninth

letters Lloyd to Bernard Barton-in one of which the writer says:

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I had a very ample testimony from C. Lamb to the character of my last little volume. I will transcribe to you what he says as it is but a note and his manner is so original that I am sure the merest trifle from his pen will well compensate for the absence of anything of mine-" Your lines are not to be understood reading on one leg. They are sinuous, and to be won with wrestling. I do assure you in sincerity that nothing you have done has given me greater satisfaction. Your obscurity, where you are dark, which is seldom, is that of too much meaning, not the painful obscurity which no toil in the reader can dissipate, not the dead vacuum, and floundering place in which imagination finds no footing: it is not the dimness of positive darkness, but of distance, and he that reads, and not discerns must get a better pair of spectacles ." [In allusion to Lamb there is also the following:]"... have you made an acquaintance with Charles Lamb while you were there [London] some time ago: if you have once been introduced to him I think you must always be attached to him: I never knew a person who had once known Lamb, who ever ceased to love. But you must love him ere he will seem worthy of your love."

edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica, THE duel is, for Englishmen, a thing of

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appeared his article on Palæography, which, republished separately, in two or three editions, came at last to be the enlarged and lavishly illustrated Introduction to Greek

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and Latin Palæography of 1912. He retired from Principal Librarianship of the British Museum, where he had been appointed assistant in 1861, in 1909, and

after this began close study of Elizabethan script, which brought him to the conclusion

that the famous pages in the MS. of ‘The Tragedy of Sir Thomas More' are in Shakespeare's autograph. The book in which he set out his reasons, reviewed in our columns at 12 S. iii. 18, is a striking piece of work for a man in his middle seventies.

LOVERS of Lamb may like to have the following passage of a letter of his to Charles Lloyd about a volume of Lloyd's poems. We take it from Messrs. Tregaskis' Catalogue 971-of autographs-which contains a high proportion of valuable items. That with which we are concerned is No. 88, consisting of a series of sixteen autograph

the past, and such as from time to time our contributors take in it is merely part of their general interest in history and old manners. Most people, we fancy, have supposed that, for ordinary persons and in their every day life the duel was equally obsolete in France, but now we learn from the Paris correspondent of the Daily Tele

graph that duels in Paris are still of frequent occurrence on an average four or five,

and these serious, in the month. The authority for this is M. Joseph Renaud.

The favourite duelling ground is the Pare des Princes, and in July there were no fewer than seven duels there, in which either pistols or swords were the chosen weapons. None was fatal. It is interesting to learn

that M. Renaud " is a partisan of the duel

-not because he cares for bloodshed, but because it appears to him to be a swift, clean, and gentlemanly way of settling such differences as those which arise between clubmen, for instance. It does away with the necessity for surliness, embittered correspondence, or costly law-suits. A couple of pistol shots,

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THERE appeared in The Times of Sept. 17

a letter from Sir William Geary, at Oxon Heath, Tonbridge, in which, having sad occasion to complain of the conduct of the public, he tells of his alphabetical avenue. He says: “I have affixed labels on the trees in my alphabetical avenue, a double avenue with 69 trees in each row, beginning with Amelanchier and ending in Zelkova. This alphabetical avenue is, I believe, unique in England or the world and, as it is open to the public, there being a right of footway throughout, it may serve now and in the future as a useful botanical object-lesson. The names are given in popular and botanical nomenclature."

We have so often seen people looking with interest at the labels on the trees at Kew that we find it rather surprising that this useful and pleasant scheme for an extensive and

easy lesson in botany should not be respected

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by the public. But so it is. Sir William continues: The labels are of cast-iron and nailed. Unfortunately they are from time to time torn off by human agency, either by wrenching out the nail or by breaking the iron label. They are not even taken away

as 'souvenirs,' for the broken pieces are often found thrown away."

The letter concludes with a

a

request for

suggestion of label indestructible and irremovable; and failing that, makes appeal to public opinion on the subject. We greatly

hope that he will be successful in both

appeals, but meanwhile the depredators have

involuntarily performed a service, for, by

having occasioned this letter, they have doubtless made many people aware of the existence of this avenue who had not known of it before.

IT appears we learn it from the Paris correspondent of the Daily Telegraph writing to his paper per on Sept. 17-that this year is the centenary of the invention of the accordion-" the poor man's organ," somebody has dubbed it. It is an Austrian named Damian whom the world has to thank for it. An accordion and a drum function in lieu of a jazz orchestra at the little bals

musettes where the Parisian midinettes and their admirers cultivate dancing at the price of 25 c. per dance, with refreshment at 1 fr. per drink. Something pleasant, some people think, ought to be done about this centenary, in spite of its commemorating addition to the world's noise.

Two Hundred Years Ago.

From the Weekly Journal : or the BritishGazetteer. Saturday, September 20, 1729. LONDON. September 20.

A fine Representation of the Emblems of Afia, Africa and America, are doing in Sculpture for the Eaft-India Company, to be placed up in the Director's Room at their new House.

Peter Burrell, Efq; Member of Parliament for Haflemere in Surrey, hath taken a long Leafe of the Market at Bromley, in Kent, of the Bifhop of Rochester and is going to erect a fpacious Market-House for Grain, &c. Toll-free, for a Term of years.

Wednesday M. Chammorel, Secretary for the Affairs of France to this Court, gave a

moft magnificent Entertainment at Count de Broglio's House in Piccadilly, on Account of the Birth of the Dauphin, to the Minifters of State, Foreign Minifters, and other Perfons of Diftinction, to the Number of about 60, who dined at two Tables; the Dinner at

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each Table confifted of two Courses of 17 Difhes each, befides 4 Removes, and very fine Defert of 25 Difhes: At Night there was a Bonfire before the Gate; the Front of the Houfe was illuminated with 60 Flambeaus, and on each Side of the Gate

a

fixed fome Distance

Hogfhead of Wine was from the Ground for the Populace, and fine

Fireworks were played off before the Gate, till

the Company broke up.

Wednesday Morning the Foundation of the House in which the great Toyshop is kept at the End of Suffolk-ftreet, Charing Cross, gave Way in fuch a Manner as greatly alarm'd the Family, who immediately removed the Chief of the Goods, and the Workmen were employ'd all Day (notwithstanding the Rain) in filling up the Sewer, to prevent any ill Confequences; Also the fame Day the Earth fell in, in great Quantities, at the other Part of the Sewer in Pall-Mall, and did confiderable Damage.

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Literary and Historical
Notes.

CANNING'S MOTHER AND THE

STAGE.

(See ante p. 183).

For Friday, 17 Dec., 1784, 'The Young Quaker' was announced-" written by Mr. O'Keefe, whose name alone must be a sufficient recommendation to (sic) the piece "

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with Mr. Hunn as Captain Ambush.
week later Mr. and Mrs. Hunn were again
billed in 'A Bold Stroke for A Husband'
and Macbeth' was announced for the Mon-
day. In the middle of January, 1785, Mr.
Hunn was announced to appear as Harold in
Holcroft's 'The Noble Peasant, or Love and
Glory,' and he and his wife were billed as
Captain Harcourt and Cecilia in 'The Chap-
ter of Accidents,' for Jan. 21. Mrs. Hunn
took her benefit on 21 Feb., the Flying Post
of 17 Feb. announcing:

On Monday February the 21st 1785 will be presented a historical tragedy (written by

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Shakespeare) called "King Lear." King Lear | Hughes, Catherine by Mrs. Hunn. Tickets to by Mr. Jefferson (being his first appearance be had at the usual places and of Mrs. Hunn in that character) and a farce called "Cathe- at Mr. Freeman's, confectioner, opposite rine and Petruchio." Petruchio by Mr. | Castle Street.

Everybody had his benefit in those days. For Mr. Hughes' night on 28 Feb., the play was 'Robin Hood, or Sherwood Forest." Mrs. Hunn appeared as Angelina (disguised as a pilgrim), and again on 11 March, when the play was repeated for the benefit of Master and the two Miss Jeffersons." Mrs. Hunn was billed for 17 March, 1785, as Julia in 'Fatal Falsehood,' and for 28 March as Mandane in 'The Orphan of China.

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Mrs.

Hunn took a benefit at Plymouth on 22 Aug., 1785, and Mr. Hunn on 10 Oct.17 The last announcement in the Exeter Flying Post concerning the Hunns appeared in its issue of 19 Jan., 1786:

By desire of the Right Honourable Lord Viscount Courtenay. Benefit of Mr. and Mrs. Hunn. On Monday 23 January 1786 will be presented a comedy (not acted this season) called "The Clandestine Marriage." Mr. Hunn as Sir John Melville, Mrs. Hunn Fanny. End of the play, an occasional farewell address to the audience by Mrs. Hunn. Tickets of Mr. Hunn at Mr. Rickards, Theatre Lane.

one

as a singularly fault was her

had often described her attractive woman, whose continual talk of her son in London ; 12 and handsome and attractive in old age, chatty, agreeable, fond of going back to remembrances of people she had known, and greatly enjoying a rubber of whist."13

Mrs. Hunn's connection with the stage was the subject of many lampoons on the part of Canning's political enemies, who, in 1827, sought to discredit him by republishing the playbill of his mother's benefit at Drury Lane more than fifty years before, while Lord Grey demanded indignantly whether the actress's son" was to become Prime Minis"Peter Pindar" sneered ter of England. at "Mother Hun and her daughters from the country theatrical barns," and made his Devonshireman in London rhyme of Can

ning: as

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ment appeared in the Flying Post in November, 1786, of a new theatre, with an entirely different company, at Bridge End, St. Thomas. On 10 Oct., 1787, "Mr. Hughes of Birmingham" opened a new theatre in Bedford Circus, which afterwards shared the same fate as its predecessor in Waterbeer Street. Bernard and Hughes opened at Ply

mouth, 21 June, 1790, and Mrs. Hunn appears to have remained under Bernard's management for some time.

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In his 'Retrospections' Bernard, 14 who was present at her first appearance 6 Nov., 1773, at Drury Lane, gives his opinion that she then put forth claims to

the approbation of the critical, "10 and says

that "as an actress the efforts of Mrs. Hunn were more characterised by judgment than genius; but Nature had gifted her in several respects to sustain the matrons."11 The author of the first biography of Canning, Leman Thomas Rede (himself an actor), 14 whose father and Canning's were friends, refers to Mrs. Canning's beauty and the peculiar sweetness of her voice.9 Samuel Clement Hall (1800-1889), 14 who himself remembered hearing Canning in the House of Commons, tells us that his father knew Mrs. Hunn, as she then was, intimately, and

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Now though this curious young man got,
A hundred thousand with Miss Scott,
(Egad! a fortune thumping!)
Behold, a hadn't got the heart
To give his family a peart,

Zo send mun out a mumping.

As a matter of fact, it was not very long after his marriage with Miss Joan Scott, daughter and co-heiress of Maj.-General John Scott, that Canning carried out his desire of taking his mother off the stage and providing for her, and he settled on her and her unmarried daughter the pension to which he became entitled soon afterwards.

In the summer of 1791, when she was leading the tragic business in Bernard's company at Plymouth, he tells us she had with her two little daughters. These were Mary and Anne Hunn; the elder of whom afterwards married Richard Thompson, and who was the recipient of the series of letters from her distinguished half-brother, which published in 'N and Q.' at cliii. 129, 147 (August 20 and 27, 1927), and were the subject of a leader in The Times of August 25, 1927. The following is a list (printed for the first time) of Mrs. Hunn's twelve child

were

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