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 all's opinion, which, however, has little authority, ‘the chair of the House of Commons during the whole course of the eighteenth century was never filled with less dignity or energy than by Sir John Cust’ (Historical and Posthumous Memoirs, 1884, i. 260). Wilkes was very severe on him; his merciless attack upon Cust's speech to the ten Oxford gentlemen who were reprimanded for bribery appeared in the appendix to the ‘North Briton’ (1769). A corrected edition of it is given in Almon's ‘Correspondence of the late John Wilkes’ (1805), iii. 245–62. Lord Brownlow possesses a fine full-length portrait of Cust, by Sir Joshua Reynolds, dated 2 Dec. 1761 (Catalogue of the 3rd Exhibition of National Portraits, 1868, No. 885). It was engraved by James Watson in 1769. There are portraits at Corpus College, Cambridge, and in the speaker's residence. Sir Brownlow Cust, the speaker's only surviving son, was in consequence of his father's services created Baron Brownlow of Belton on 20 May 1776. He was succeeded in turn by his eldest son, who was advanced to the earldom of Brownlow on 27 Nov. 1815. The earl's eldest grandson ultimately became entitled to the great Bridgewater estates, after one of the most remarkable lawsuits of the century (Egerton v. Earl Brownlow, House of Lords' Cases, iv. 1–256). The present earl is a great-grandson of the first Baron Brownlow.



CUTCLIFFE, ROCHETAILLADE, or DE RUPESCISSA, JOHN (fl. 1345), Franciscan, is described by Fuller (Worthies of England, 1662, p. 263) as a native of Gammage (or, as it should be, Dammage) in the parish of Ilfracombe in Devonshire. The manor of Dammage is mentioned as having been long the seat of the family of Cutcliffe (, Magna Britannia, 1822, vi. 290). But beyond the presumption afforded by the name, there is nothing, so far as is known, to show that John de Rupescissa was a Devon man, or even that he was an Englishman at all. The identification and localisation of the friar seem to make their first appearance in Fuller (l. c.), who quotes the name ‘Johannes Rupe-Scissanus or de Rupe scissa [Cutclif]’ from a manuscript of Sir John Northcote; and though it is not clear whether the translation of the Latin name (in brackets) is due to Fuller or his original, the entry in Northcote's collections is evidence that the latter claimed him for his own county. On the other hand, neither in Trithemius nor in any of the ecclesiastical biographers, nor even in Foxe's ‘Acts and Monuments’ (where actually de Rupescissa and Rochetaillade are distinguished as two persons), is there the slightest trace that John de Rupescissa was in any way connected with England. Bale speaks of him in his ‘Acta Romanorum Pontificum,’ p. 331 (Frankfurt, 1567), but does not include him in his ‘Scriptorum Britanniæ Catalogus.’ The only writers after Fuller who make the identification seem to be Prince (Worthies of Devon, 1701, p. 141) and Tanner (Bibl. Brit. 1748, p. 646). As, moreover, Rochetaillade is recognised as the name of a noble Gascon family in the fourteenth century (, notes to Froissart, xi. 452), it will be best to speak of the friar by his French name, and leave the English identification, at least provisionally, on one side.

Rochetaillade was born in the early years of the fourteenth century. Of his education he tells us himself (De consid. quint. essent., p. 11, ed. 1561) that he studied worldly philosophy for above five years at Toulouse, and then entered the Franciscan order. His profession was made in the province of Aquitaine, and at a later time he is found holding official posts in the convents of his order at Rodez and Aurillac (see the title of his ‘Prophetia’ in Fasciculus Rerum expetendarum et fugiendarum, ii. 494, London, 1690; and compare, Vit. Pap. Aven., 1693, i. 942, and the Paris MS. Bibl. Nat. 3598, cited by , notes to Froissart, vi. 494). For five years after his profession he continued his secular education, but then turned exclusively to spiritual things (De Consid. l. c.) He immersed himself in the study of alchemy, on which he has left several treatises, and of prophecy; in his published writings he looks back to St. Hildegard, and the title of one manuscript shows that he was a commentator upon, perhaps an avowed follower of, the famous Abbot Joachim of Flore. He soon became himself known as a prophet; and because in that capacity he made no scruple of speaking evil of dignities, and criticising with unsparing freedom the abuses of the church, he was in 1345 condemned to imprisonment at Figeac by William Farmena, the minister of his province (, l. c.) Four years later he was summoned to Avignon by Clement VI,