happened on 8 May, 1902, and destroyed St. Pierre, in the Isle of Martinique, with more than 20,000 inhabitants. Surely the recent San Francisco earthquake and conflagration of 18 April will have left no lighter impression upon the minds of its survivors, and is likely to be depicted vividly in future works of fiction and elegies. X.

REV. SAMUEL MARSDEN, CHAPLAIN OF N.S.W.-Where is a portrait of him to be found? I think in some old magazine about 1808-10, when he was visiting England. I do not refer to the later one of 1833.

Dunedin, N.Z.

T. M. HOCKEN.

KIPLING OBSCURITIES. meaning of the simile in 'Mandalay'And the dawn comes up like thunder? 2. What are "the Five Free Nations" in the poem called 'The Young Queen'? One would be inclined at first sight to say English, Australians, Canadians, South Africans, and New Zealanders; but I have heard it suggested that the reference is to English, Irish, Scotch, Welsh, and Manx!

as containing it is Scott's Antiquary.' It is undoubtedly of Celtic origin, meaning grey.

With regard to "badger," which has superseded it, whereas Prof. Skeat still seems to think that, like the French blaireau, it is connected with corn, which the animal is thought to hoard, Dr. Murray prefers to derive it from badge, owing to a white mark resembling a badge on the creature's forehead. Who shall decide when doctors disagree? Historical principles are the only true sources of etymology; and I would ask whether any further information has turned up recently to throw light upon this subject. W. T. LYNN.

- Can any

CARDINAL WISEMAN'S TOMB. 1. What is the reader of N. & Q.' tell me whether this tomb has ever been engraved? It was designed by the elder Pugin, and is probably the finest monument, from an artistic point of view, in Kensal Green. A temporary building was erected to protect it from the weather when it was first placed over the grave, but it now looks very neglected and uncared for. A number of replicas have been made of it, as it has been much admired; but I have been unable to find an engraving of it amongst the published designs of the elder Pugin. FREDERICK T. HIBGAME.

3. In the same poem what is the ing of "the jealous circlet" prest? jealous"?

mean-
Why

4. What is the meaning of the line,
Mother of many princes-and child of the child
I bore?
DUNSINK.

LADIES' HEAD DRESSES IN THE THEATRE.— In Dr. Doran's Habits and Men,' p. 115 (1855), occurs the following passage :—

"In Paris feathers and head-dress extended so

outrageously, both in a vertical and horizontal direction, that a row of ladies in the pit stalls, or in the front row of the boxes, effectually barred the 'spectacle' from an entire audience in the rear. The fashion was suppressed by a Swiss, who was as well known in the Paris theatres as the celebrated critical trunk-maker once was in our own galleries. The Swiss used to attend, armed with a pair of scissors; and when he found his view obstructed by the head-dresses in front, he made a demonstration of cutting away all the superfluous portions of the head-dresses which interfered with his enjoyment."

Who was this "Swiss"? and who was "the celebrated critical trunk-maker"?

FRANK SCHLOESSER.

15, Grosvenor Road, S. W.

"BROCK":"BADGER."-I think the first of these words for the quadruped in question is quite obsolete in the south of England, though there are several placenames (notably Brockley) taken from the word. The last book quoted in the 'N.E.D.'

KINGS AND QUEENS COMPARED.-There is a familiar saying to the effect that queens rule more successfully than kings, because under a queen the men govern, but under a king the women. St. Simon ascribes this saying to the Duchess of Burgundy; Richardson puts it into the mouth of his Lovelace. Neither of them could have copied from the other, therefore there must have been some earlier original. Who was he? QUERIST.

J. F. VIGANI, Professor of Chemistry at Cambridge University, 1703, married a lady from Newark. Any particulars relating to her, together with her maiden name, will be much valued by

Cambridge.

H. R.

ABBEY OF ST. EVROULT, PAYS D'OUCHE.Is there any list extant of the Procurators in England of this house? I shall be very glad of references to any trustworthy modern work giving particulars of the history of the abbey and the present state of the buildings. H. P. POLLARD.

Bengeo, Hertford.

Beylies.

ROBERT HARLEY, EARL OF OXFORD. (10th S. iv. 206, 317.)

I AM much obliged to MR. A. R. BAYLEY for his reference to 'D.N.B.,' xxxvi. 410. It Richard Stephens, of Eastington, co. Gloucester, Esq., died 1599.

is a matter of surprise to me that the able writer of the interesting biography of Abigail, Lady Masham, should state that "the actual relationship between Robert Harley, first Earl of Oxford, and Abigail Hill has never been discovered."

Thanks to the kindness of another contributor to N. & Q.,'MR. REGINALD STEWART BODDINGTON, who has sent me the pedigree of the Stephens family, taken from the 'Visitation of Gloucestershire. 1682-3,' edited by T. Fitz-Roy Fenwick and Walter C. Metcalfe, I am enabled, with the information already in my hands, to show the relationship which existed between Robert Harley, Earl of Oxford, Abigail, Lady Masham, and Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough, thus :Margaret, daughter of Edward Saintloe, of Knighton, Wilts, Esq.

[* MR. BOSTOCK states that Edward Harley was baptized at Wigmore, 21 Oct., 1624.] R. H. E. H. wrote at 8th S. iii. 328 concerning the father of Abigail Hill, Lady Masham :

"He married Mary, the sister of Richard Jennings, of Sandridge, near St. Albans. I know nothing further about him, except that he was a Turkey merchant of London who became bankrupt. As I have not found his name in the Sandridge registers, I conclude that he lived in London. I should be glad to know (1) in which London parish he lived; (2) dates of birth, death, and marriage of him and his wife; (3) the names of his parents, which I cannot find with certainty from the above references in N. & Q.' [2nd S. iii. 9, 57]."

I do not think these questions have been answered in 'N. & Q.,' nor can I find any account of Abigail Hill's father in the books at my command.

The Fifteenth Report of the Royal Commission on Historical Manuscripts answers in part some of the questions asked. The editor

states:

"To Harley's famed associate in some of his schemes, Mrs. Abigail, afterwards Lady, Masham,

we get the first reference in a letter written in May, 1707, from Lady Pye to Harley's sister, also named Abigail, which concludes as follows:

"This makes me think of a (matrimonial) match yours mentioned, our relation the Dresser with Colonel Masham, whom the Queen hath lately advanced. If the same is young (I) have heard her greatly commended for a sober woman. I believe she is the same Aunt Brom (field) used to talk of, lived with Sir George River's lady when first we went to Greville Street. The great Lady Duchess in that deserves great commendations, that hath taken such care of her relations, who when low are generally overlooked. Is her brother Colonel Hill married, as was reported, to one of the Queen's maids?

The editor remarks:

"This is an interesting little bit of contemporary evidence of Mrs. Masham's near relationship both to the Duchess of Marlborough and to Harley, though it hardly confirms the assertion alleged to made in the introduction to the first volume of have been made by Harley, to which reference is these papers, that he had never heard of the relationship between Mrs. Masham and himself until they met at Court."

Miss Strickland in her life of Queen Anne besides being facsimiled in another wellknown volume of Dickens's correspondence. REED MAKEHAM.

states:

"She [Duchess of Marlborough] wrote to her [Mrs. Masham, formerly Abigail Hill] an angry letter from Woodstock Palace. The superior style of the answer astonished her, and she became convinced that the serving-maid kinswoman had been prompted by her other cousin, the statesman Harley."

The relationship between these historic personages established by the foregoing extracts comes, as suggested by MR. RELTON, through the family of Stephens of Eastington, Gloucestershire, and is shown in the chart pedigree which I have drawn up.

If any of your contributors or readers would answer R. H. E. H.'s first and second questions, and could state to which branch of the large family of the Hills William and his son Francis belonged, many of your readers, with myself, would no doubt be obliged. R. C. BOSTOCK.

[MR. BOSTOCK'S chart pedigree is far too extensive for the pages of 'N. & Q.'; we have consequently forwarded it to MR. RELTON.]

DICKENS ON THE BIBLE (10th S. v. 304, 355). -As I happen to be the custodian, by heredity, of what has been clearly ascertained to be the actually last letter of Charles Dickens, it seems incumbent on me to say that a partial reply to MR. MACRAE's note may be found in a letter of mine, dated 4 April, printed in The Pall Mall Gazette. It may be added that my late father, the addressee of this last letter, was living at Highgate at the date of Dickens's death, and that many of his books were afterwards dispersed. This, to my thinking, sufficiently accounts for the Upper Holloway fairy tale, unless, as I have suggested in that letter, The Daily News and The Daily Chroniclethe journals which, so far as I am aware, were the first to herald this portentous "find" were elaborately hoaxed, on 1-2 April, be it noted. I, as in duty bound, if only for the protection of collectors, at once supplied The Daily News with the facts, within a few hours of the announcement (which has since made pretty well the round of the press, it seems); but the correction has not, to my surprise, yet seen light in its columns. It appears to me that, au contraire, it is the interesting letter to MR. MACRAE which will be new to most Dickensians; and it is odd that that gentleman, while hinting (apparently in error) that his own letter is referred to in Forster's 'Life,' should have overlooked the fact that the letter of 8 June, 1870, appears in extenso in that book,

24, Melfort Road, Norbury, S.W.

MR. MACRAE may like to know that I paid a visit to Mr. Hartley, the bookseller of Junction Road, Holloway, to whom the volume was taken which contained the presumed original letter of Dickens. On making inquiries, Mr. Hartley found that the original letter is at the British Museum. He kindly showed me this copy, which is for sale. WILLIAM WALE.

112, South Hill Park, Hampstead, N.W. The letter referred to by MR. MACRAE was given in extenso on pp. 362-3 of John Camden Hotten's book 'Charles Dickens: the Story of his Life,' the preface of which is dated 29 June, 1870. Mr. Frank T. Marzials quotes a paragraph from the same letter on p. 159 of his 'Life of Charles Dickens' ("Great JOHN T. PAGE. Writers Series ").

Long Itchington, Warwickshire.

WATERLOO VETERAN (10th S. iv. 347, 391, 493).-John Stacey, mentioned at the last reference, was an old soldier in a double sense: he was not at Waterloo, nor was he ninety-six in 1894. His statements have been several times refuted.

In 1896 he turned up at Nottingham Workhouse, and the guardians, accepting his story that he was a Waterloo veteran and aged ninety-nine, ordered him special privileges. A neighbouring gentleman sent a carriage and pair, and had him conveyed to one of his almshouses, where he made every arrangement for the old man's comfort. Meanwhile the clerk to the guardians had been in communication with the War Office, with the result that the man's impudent imposture was exposed. is only necessary to say that he joined the 14th Light Dragoons in 1839, giving his age as nineteen, which would make 1820 the year of his birth. This is quite sufficient to destroy any claim to the title of Waterloo veteran; it is therefore unnecessary to go through the other points in his story, which on investigation were found equally without foundation, E. G. B.

It

LOUIS PHILIPPE'S LANDING IN ENGLAND (10th S. v. 349).-The ex-King's retirement from Paris was attended by numerous interruptions and difficulties, and he did not reach the coast until 2 March, 1848 (the Duc de Nemours reached Folkestone on 27 February). The Brighton and Continental Steam Packet Company sent three vessels across

arms of her mother, the heiress. These arms thus augmented are transmissible to her descendants. (See Boutell and Woodward, passim.)

With reference to the question asked by G. B. as to when the custom was first established in England of placing the arms of an heiress upon an escutcheon (or inescutcheon) of pretence, MR. WATSON gives the instance cited by Boutell from the shield of Richard Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick, who died in 1439. (MR. WATSON does not state to what edition of Boutell's 'Heraldry' he is referring; his references are not conformable to the original 1864 edition.)

May I add other instances occuring in the same century given by Dr. Wood ward in his 'Heraldry: British and Foreign' (ed. 1896). vol. ii. p. 109, namely, Richard, Duke of York (d. 1460), father of Edward IV., and Sir John Neville, Lord Montagu (elected K.G. c. 1463)? Dr. Woodward goes on to say, however, that it was not till about the beginning of the seventeenth century that this form of marshalling of an heiress became a practice; he cites Guillim as in the first edition of his Display of Heraldry' (1611) giving his sanction to the practice, and states that when Sir George Mackenzie's Treatise on Heraldry' appeared in 1680, the usage was only beginning to be heard of as a novelty in Scotland. In this the learned author agrees with Boutell, who at p. 140 of the 1864 edition of his 'Heraldry: Historical and Popular,' says that this practice is of comparatively recent usage.

It must be remembered, too, that it is not heraldically proper or correct that the heiress's arms should be borne by her husband on a shield of pretence until after her father's death, and not then if there be issue of the marriage.

Dr. Woodward mentions the fact that in continental armory it has long been the custom for elected sovereigns to place their hereditary arms in an escutcheon en surtout above those of their domains.

Instances of this occur in our own royal arms. Presumably the new royal house of Norway will furnish another instance; in which case the royal house of Denmark will have supplied two living instances of this, the present King of Greece being the other.

all her children or only to her eldest son and heir-would be. J. S. UDAL, F.S.A. Antigua, W.I.

DR. LETSUM OR LETTSOM (10th S. v. 148, 191, 210).-One of his daughters was married in February, 1804, to John Elliot, of Pimlico Lodge, and the Stag Brewery, Pimlico, who had been a Fellow of New College, Oxford, and who, at the time of the marriage, was colonel of the Westminster Volunteer Cavalry. Their son, John Lettsom Elliot, the eldest of fifteen children, was born on 11 December, 1804, and died in the Albany in his ninetyfourth year, on 17 September, 1898. He was for many years the "Father" of the Athenæum Club, of which he had been a member from its institution in 1824. The lymph with which Queen Victoria was vaccinated, when a child, was taken from the arm of one of his brothers, as the family was deemed to be amongst the healthiest that could be found. See The Times of 20 September, 1898, p. 8. Three of the brothers were Capt. George Elliott, of the 5th Madras Cavalry, who died at Bellary, Madras, on 20 May, 1842 Sir Henry Miers Elliot, K. C.B. (see 'D.N.B., xvii. 258); and William Elliot, of the Madras Civil Service, who died in St. George's Road, H. C. Belgravia, on 19 March, 1872.

"I EXPECT TO PASS THROUGH" (10th S. i. 247, 316, 355, 433).-Referring to this phrase, a correspondent of The Literary World (15 March, 1905) states that it is "from the tomb of Edward Courtenay, Earl of Devon." If, as I imagine, the earl referred to is the one who, according to the 'D.N.B.,' was buried at Padua (1556), surely the question can be settled once for all by some reader of N. & Q.' who has been there, or who is there now, or who has friends or correspondents there. I hope the point will be soon cleared up, so far as the tombstone theory is concerned. It should be a question of fact.

In the event of the tomb statement not being substantiated, I shall be able to offer a few remarks interesting to those 'N. & Q.' readers who are desirous, as I am, of tracing the origin or history of the phrase.

EDWARD LATHAM.

"PLEACHY" (10th S. v. 327)-I have not heard this word in use in South Northamptonshire. Miss Baker gives the two quotations G. B. will gather from what I have written from Clare in her Dictionary of Northabove what my reply to his later questions-amptonshire Words and Phrases,' and asks namely, at what date it would be correct to if Jamieson's Pleche, to bleach, can have any place the arms of an heiress in pretence connexion with the word. I find in Sternupon the shield of her husband, and whether berg's 'Dialect and Folk-lore of Northampsuch arms should descend as a quartering to tonshire,' " Plash, pleach, to trim or lop trees,