Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 1.djvu/314

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NOTES AND QUERIES. [10- S. 1. MARCH 26, 1904.

dying an infant, the second attaining the age of thirty-one. The second Mary Ann married a native of Exeter, by whom she had seven children, six boys and one girl. But there were only five names in the family, there being two duplicate names. The fourth child was named Charles Augustus, and the fifth Francis Adolphus. But before the sixth made his appearance Charles Augustus had died, so when the sixth child was born he was named to succeed Charles Augustus. Again, before the seventh child was born, Francis Adolphus, the fifth child, also died, and at the birth of the seventh he was named to succeed Francis Adolphus, the fifth child. So in this we have the second Francis Adolphus of the same family being a son of the second Mary Ann of the same family.

This second Francis Adolphus is the writer of this note. It would seem as if my parents did not have enough names to "go round." Whether this is a custom in the West Country I have no knowledge. So far as my experience goes I have found no similar example of " duplicate names."

But as to two persons in the same family with similar names living at the same time, I have never heard of it.

FRANCIS ADOLPHUS HOPKINS.

Los Angeles, California, U.S.

[For brothers bearing the same Christian name see 9 th S. i. 446 ; ii. 51, 217, 276, 535 ; iii. 34, 438 ; vi. 174 ; vii. 5. 91 ; and sisters, 2 nd S. v. 307 ; 9 th S. vii. 436.]

"AN AUSTRIAN ARMY" (10 th S. i. 148, 211). I am glad that URLLAD confirms my state- ment about these lines having first appeared in the Trifler, 7 May, 1817 ; and if so, I venture to think it disposes of several of MR. COLE- MAN'S suggestions as to the authorship.

G. C. W.

HISTORICAL GEOGRAPHY OF LONDON (10 th S. i. 208). The Middlesex section of the 'Victoria History' would, one might expect, include such a geographical history and review of the growth of London. As one greatly interested in Middlesex, including London, and being engaged at present in compiling a work on old Middlesex families, I should be glad to assist in such a work as suggested. From a business point of view I hardly think that the undertaking could be profitable if copies were offered at Is. each. FRED. HITCHIN-KEMP.

6, Beechfield Road, Catford, S.E.

GENEALOGY : NEW SOURCES (10 th S. i. 187, 218). It does not seem to be known that the church St. Peter ad Vincula was a Peculiar Jurisdiction for testamentary matters in the

sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The 'Return' of 1830 does not mention it, but ' Old and New London ' gives it as being free from episcopal authority till the time of Edward VI. In the Bodleian Library they have a register of this court covering the years 1586-1614 and 1660-5. An index to the contents of this book is in my posses- sion. Nothing is known of the other records of this court at the Public Record Office. GERALD MARSHALL.

NOTES ON BOOKS, &c. Duchess Sarah : being the Social History of the

Times of Sarah J Minings, Duchess of Marlboroiigh.

By One of her Descendants (Mrs. Arthur Col-

ville). (Longmans & Co.)

ONE of the features of modern literature consists in the biographies of women of rank, " Queens of Tears," "Uncrowned Queens," royal favourites, and others, whose position in history has generally been eclipsed by that of their husbands or pro- tectors. Among uncrowned celebritips of this sex must certainly be counted Sarali Jennings, Duchess of Marlborough, the Mrs. Freeman to the Mrs. Morley of Queen Anne, and the woman possibly of most importance of the pre-Georgian era. So great was the influence she exercised conjointly with her husband, that it is difficult to dissociate her from the history of her epoch. It is only her early life, indeed, when signs of her coming greatness were not easily traced, and the period after the death of her husband and her own loss of influence, which was passed in feuds and lawsuits, that are easily disentangled from historic records and discussions of statecraft.

Tracing as she does her ancestor from her early life to the close, Mrs. Colville begins by placing us- in a world depicted by Anthony Hamilton, and ends by leaving us in one far less interesting, the authorities for which are Fielding, Coxe, Hooke, and Ralph. Her book is avowedly an apologia for the great Duchess, and is undertaken lest some one less reverent and sympathetic should deal with the materials collected. That the work will go far to change the general estimate concerning one of the cleverest, shrewdest, most wrongheaded, intem- perate, and pugnacious of women is not to be anticipated. What is said, however, about her good - heartedness and the qualities to be dis- covered behind her aggressive and, as we hold, vindictive disposition may be read, and must exer- cise such influence as it may. It may at least be maintained that a book for which its author claims no great measure of literary craftsmanship can be perused with sustained interest and pleasure, and has few dull pages. The pictures of life at various epochs are animated, and the portraits of those with whom Sarah Jennings was thrown into asso- ciation are animated and often faithful. Born in 1660, the year of Restoration, Sarah was twelve years of age when she made her first appearance at the least decorous, if not the most dissi- pated Court in Europe, that of St. James's. Her hair, like that of her mother, when both arrived at the Palace, was arranged, we are told, lat on the top of her head in natural curls, slightly