The Gentleman's Magazine

MR. URBAN,-In your Minor Correspondence for February in the present year, appears a paragraph, quoted from the Life of the Rev. J. G. Pike, giving an account of Jane Stuart, an illegitimate daughter of James II., who became a Quaker. The story I h frequently heard; but I believe the pace of her burial is wrongly given. My mother, a native of Wisbeach, in Cambridgeshire, has often told me that she has seen the grave of Jane Stuart in the burial-ground belonging to the Quakers of that town; and that the box-plants and grave were carefully preserved by the Friends, who, with some inconsistency, were rather proud of their singular connection with royalty. I fancy the substitution of Derby must have been a mistake for Wisbeach, by one of Mr. Pike's sons. Mr. P., sen., who was a dissenting minister of the General Baptist persuasion, had very probably been preaching at Wisbeach; and, becoming acquainted with a story which would naturally interest his mother, he wrote to her from Wisbeach, and used the word "here" correctly. This I imagine to be the origin of the mistake; for I never heard that James II. had a daughter buried at Derby, or more than one who turned Quaker; and I am satisfied of the correctness of my statement, having heard the story from other Wisbeach people besides my mother. Yours, &c. J. S. S.

MR. URBAN,-There is a " Cole, or Cold Harbour," too, at Rhydlan here,-spelling of the word amounts to nothing-that is the sound given out; the correct etymology of it must be found, and you, Sir, should be the medium. I remember the Cold Harbour, a green croft on the bank of the Clwyd; it is now half covered over with a coal-yard and warehouses, and this (the coal) will serve with the rising generation of the neighbourhood for an etymology. Always, Mr. Urban, spell Rhydlan same as I do, it means ford of the church. On the ford came the bridge Pont Rhydlan. The Clwyd is fordable in two places close by, bearing the names For-ryd-Seaford, and Rhyd-y-ddanddwr, or the ford of the two waters-Clwyd and Elwy. This is original, Sir, and better than the farfetched derivations which we read from Camden upwards, of Rhudd-led, Rhudd free, &c.-rubbish.

Dinorben.

J. S.

MR. URBAN,-Among the Lord Chief Justices whose Lives have been written by Lord Campbell, there is none of Judge Meade, of Essex, in the reign of Elizabeth. Can any of the readers, or any savant of the GENTLEMAN'S MAGAZINE, furnish a brief account of him; of his parentage and descent, armorial bearings, marriage, and death, &c.; indeed, any history of his lordship? It will oblige many more than Derby. OSTRICH.

Our correspondent probably refers to Sir Thomas Meade, who purchased the estate of Wendon Lofts. He was sergeant-at-law in 1567, and one of the judges of the King's Bench in 1578. He married Bridget, daughter of Sir John Brograve, Knight, of Herts, and had issue, Thomas who died young, John, who succeeded him, two other sons and five daughters. His father, Thomas Meade, was the first of the family who settled at Elmdon in Essex; he married Joan Clamp, of Huntingdon, and died in 1585, leaving issue three sons - Thomas, Robert, and Matthew. The estate of Elmdon was in Sir Thomas' possession when he died, in 1617.

Arms. Gu. a chev. erm. between three trefoils slipped ar.

ASSUMPTION OF ARMS.-Are there any laws in existence, unrepealed, which render it unlawful, or subject the ambitious tyro in heraldry to degradation and penalty, for such vanity and presumption? There is no necessity, I believe, for the confirmation of a grant to each descent, or party entitled to the use of a coat, within the original patent. And may not a person related to a grantee, of the same name, assume his coat, to shew his common stock, without going to the expense of 70 or £80 for a fresh grant? H. W. G. R.

If a person can prove undoubted descent from the original grantee, he may assume the arms granted; no fresh confirmation is required.

MR. URBAN,-In my article on Lord Roscommon, in your Magazine for December last, mention is made of a friend of his Lordship who was miraculously saved at the taking of Drogheda. I have since ascertained that this person was Dr. Nicholas Bernard, who was left unmolested by the soldiers on their finding him engaged in prayer. See Lloyd's Memoirs, 701.

THE

GENTLEMAN'S MAGAZINE

AND

HISTORICAL REVIEW.

THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF SYLVANUS URBAN.

CHAPTER I.

MY BIRTH AND PARENTAGE.

With some Notice of my Contemporaries.

FEW will require to be informed who or what I am. The favourite of past generations, I have still a host of friends in the present. Many of these know me thoroughly, and date their affection for me from their earliest recollections; others will recognise me as their occasional associate in the club or reading-room, if not invited to their closet or library; whilst all who have attained to any acquaintance with the fields of general literature must own to somewhat more than a casual knowledge of my name. But as I have long survived my original comrades and competitors, and am by far the senior of my living contemporaries, I think it may not be unacceptable if I now offer to the world some memorials of my past history and experience. To have survived the term of more than a century and a quarter is indeed no common lot; and it cannot be uninteresting to inquire to what causes so extraordinary a fortune may be attributed.

On these Sylvanus Urban hopes to speak with his wonted modesty, whilst it is impossible to regard the fact itself without a conscious pride. Much, no doubt, is due to the happy idea to which he originally owed his birth, to the large room and wholesome atmosphere in which he was first placed to use his limbs and exert his manly vigour; much to the care of his early nurture; and much to the patriotism, the loyalty, and the modera tion that have generally characterized his counsellors and supporters. He has often pleased himself by the fancy that there was something prophetic in the name that was given him. Like a sapling oak, he was planted in the British soil; and, like an oak, his roots still keep a firm hold of that congenial element. Though himself resident, for the most part, within the city walls, his friendships have spread, far and wide, over valley and hill, in every quarter of the country. His visits have been welcomed at the provincial club, at the mansion of the squire, and more especially at the fireside of the parson. Meanwhile the volumes of his past labours have grown on from year to year, until their array is no longer in files, but in battalions; from a goodly grove they have increased into a forest,— a forest that is not to be disregarded in the wide map of English literature. "The ancients," as Ben Jonson tells us in the introduction to his Under

woods, "called that kind of body Sylva, or "Yλŋ, in which there were works of divers nature and matter congested." Thus truly has the GENTLEMAN'S MAGAZINE fulfilled the character of a Sylva, both in the variety and the extent of its productions; and therefore it is that I assert that the name of Sylvanus was bestowed upon me with great propriety.

I have not to weary the reader with any prolonged disquisition upon the antiquity of my family, or the details of my genealogy. Suffice it to say that I was born a "Gentleman,"-a designation which, whilst it has lost in a great measure the distinctive sense which it possessed at the time of my birth, as denoting a particular grade in society, has gained in a higher degree in what may be termed its moral character; for it is observable that all ranks, from an emperor downwards, have now no higher or worthier ambition than to be esteemed perfect gentlemen; and the flatterers of one of our late monarchs thought they could not compliment him more highly than by styling him-how deservedly we will not now question" the first gentleman in Europe." So that, we see, whatever of the spirit of chivalry is kept alive in this nineteenth century, is transferred in imagination from the ancient Knight to the modern Gentleman. Sylvanus Urban is therefore proud that he is now a gentleman of no modern origin a. He has always aimed to behave himself in accordance with his rank, and its true characteristics; and it is to gentlemen and gentlewomen that his labours ever have been, and still are, devoted.

But though I have nothing to tell of remote progenitors, there were certain personages of my own character existing at my birth, and shortly before, of whom the reader may be glad to know somewhat.

One of the most celebrated of these was Isaac Bickerstaff, Esquire, who was ushered into the world towards the end of 1707, by the great Doctor Swift, when he wrote his "Predictions for the Year 1708." He was born to a higher degree than mine; and yet it was his fate to be told that "there is one John Partridge can smell a knave as far as Grub-street, although he lies in the most exalted garret, and calls himself 'squire!" But Mr. Bickerstaff stood his ground for some years, not only in many a skirmish with that redoubted almanac-maker and astrologer, the said John Partridge, but further in the more classic pages of The Tatler, where he was the conjoint personification of Swift and Steele.

But the far-famed Mr. Bickerstaff was deceased before I came into the world. He had been succeeded by Caleb Danvers, of Gray's Inn, Esquire, the author of The Craftsman,-by Sir Isaac Ratcliffe, of Elbow-lane, the

• Those who are curious in this matter will find the question, "Can the Queen create a Gentleman ?" discussed by my ingenious and worthy young kinsman, Notes and Queries.

"It is said that his choice of Isaac Bickerstaff-a name since so well known-was owing to his finding the surname upon a locksmith's sign."-Swift's Works, by Sir Walter Scott, viii. 454.

"It happened very luckily," (writes Steele,) "that a little before I had resolved upon this design, a gentleman had written Predictions, and two or three other pieces, in my name, which rendered it famous through all parts of Europe, and, by an inimitable spirit and humour, raised it to as high a pitch of reputation as it could possibly arrive at. By this good fortune the name of Isaac Bickerstaff gained an audience of all who had any taste of wit."

Again, on Oct. 16, 1727, appeared No. I. of The Tatler revived, by Isaac Bickerstaff, Esquire.

The first number of this work appeared under the title of The Country Journal; or, The Craftsman, Dec. 7, 1726.

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The Gentleman's Magazine, Volume 201