Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 1.djvu/349

 io* s. i. APRIL 9, low.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

285

royal standard was set up by the Earl of Glencairn and General Middleton in the Highlands," he came over into England. The royal standard was set up at Killin on 27 July, 1653, and the office of Comrnander- in-Chief of his Majesty's forces in Scotland was held by Glencairn until the arrival of Middleton at the end of February of the following year. Immediately on his arrival Glencairn was superseded by Sir George Monro. But Scott's inaccuracy in this matter surely reaches its height on the opposite page, where we find Flora Maclvor's poem on the oak tree marking " the grave of Capt. Wogan, killed in 1649 (!)" Yet some have proposed that our youth should be taught history in schools by means of Scott's works.

J. WILLCOCK. Lerwick.

4 THE CREEVEY PAPERS.' On p. 78 of these there is a letter from Mr. Creevey to Dr. Currie, dated July, 1806, and on p. 80 another from the same to the same, dated " 12 July." In the latter case the year is presumably also 1806, since Creevey's account of what took place in the House the previous night is, in a foot- note, buttressed by a quotation from ' Han- sard ' of 11 July, 1806. Now the curious part of the matter is that Dr. Currie (presuming the Dr. Currie of the numerous letters between Creevey and Currie to be one and the same person) died 31 August, 1805. See 'Life of Dr. Currie,' vol. i. 403 (Longmans, 1831). Sir Herbert Maxwell, on p. vi of the Introduc- tion to the ' Papers,' gives a brief account, in a foot-note, of Dr. Currie, and there also the dates are given 1756-1805.

Whilst on this matter I may mention that Sir H. Maxwell says nothingabout T. Creevey's parentage. In Boardman's ' Liverpool Table Talk 100 Years Ago,' published by Henry Young, Liverpool, 1856, which is a running commentary on the names appearing in the first Liverpool Directory, that of 1766, there is the entry, " Capt. William Creevy, School Lane, father of the late T. Creevy, Esq., M.P." Further, in Gomer Williams's ' The Liverpool Privateers ' (London, Wm. Heinemann, 1897), on p. 489, the same information is given. Capt. William Creevey seems to have been very unfortunate. While collecting slaves in Melimba Road, Africa, in March, 1757, he and other slavers were attacked by two French frigates, and their vessels destroyed. In the following year, whilst outward bound in the snow Betty, he was captured again by the French, and the vessel was sunk. In 1759 we find him, in command of the Spy, safely arriving on the African coast, but after that in this oook all is silence. J. H. K.

THOMAS RANDOLPH. Thomas Randolph, poet and dramatist, who is referred to in MR. BAYLEY'S note on Shad well's ' Bury Fair' (ante, p. 221), died, as there stated, within three months of his thirtieth birthday. This event, which was the result of excesses into which his fashionable life had led him, occurred at the house of William Stafford, Esq., of Blatherwyke House, Northampton- shire, and he was buried there among the ancestors of that family, "in an aisle adjoining the church," 17 March, 1634. A monument, still on the church wall, was erected to his memory at the expense of Sir Christopher Hatton, and it bears an inscription composed by Randolph's most intimate friend, Peter Hausted. It is quaint enough, perhaps, for a place in ' N. & Q ,' and runs as follows :

Here aleepe thirteen together in one Tombe And all these great yet quarrel not for room. The Muses and the Graces' tears did meet And graved these letters on ye churlish sheete j

Who, having wept their Fountaines drye Through the conduit of ye eye For their friend who here doth lye, Crept into his grave and died And so the riddle is untyed.

For which this Church proudly the Fates bequeath

Unto her ever honored trust

So much (and that so precious) dust

Hath crowned her temples with an ivy wreath,

Which should have laurel been

But that the grieved plant to see him dead

Took pet and withered.

Fuller says of him :

" The Muses may seem not only to have smiled, but to have been tickled at his nativity and the festivity of his poems of all sorts/'

ALAN STEWART.

7, New Square, Lincoln's Inn.

MARTELLO TOWERS. The following cutting from the column headed ' Books and Authors' in the Mowing Post for 4 March may perhaps be thought worth preservation, though I am not sure that a similar expla- nation has not previously been given in 'N. &Q.':-

" A much-vexed etymological problem, the origin of the name ' Martello Tower/ can now be regarded as finally solved. The curious erections to be seen along the southern coast were known to have been imitated from a Corsican fort, first taken from the French by a member of the Wolseley family in 1793, but recaptured and again held against the British two years later. How the name arose was disputed. Two explanations, ingenious but quite baseless, were propounded. The first derived it from a, designer, one Martel, who has existed solely in the realm of hypothesis. The other took the term to be neither more nor less than the Italian word for ' hammer,' it being supposed that a small instru- ment of the kind was used to strike a bell inside the tower as a warning of approaching pirates.