Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 1.djvu/554

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NOTES AND QUERIES. [io- s. i. JUNE 4, im.

Eliezer Edwards, of Birmingham, who, if I remember rightly, states that Mr. Walsh attributed much of his after success in life to the infirmity of the clergyman that gave him a distinctive instead of a commonplace name.

Here is an instance of duplicate names in a family. My grandfather, William Wilmot Corfield, born 1785 at Penryn, Cornwall (of which place he was several times Mayor), had two sons, both named Richard (Richard No. 1, born 1808, died young ; Richard No. 2, born 1810, died 1885), and two daughters, both named Mary (Mary No. 1, born 1809, died young; Mary No. 2, born 1812, died 1890). There were also other children. I take the names and earlier dates from a family pedigree printed in 1873.

MR. F. A. HOPKINS remarks, "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.'" The instances I have given seem to point to the custom having existed in the West Country, as both Truro and Penryn are in Cornwall.

W. WILMOT CORFIELD.

Calcutta.

COSAS DE ESPANA (10 th S. i. 247, 332). It is improbable that the Columbus memorial in Seville Cathedral was taken from Havana, for the one honouring the remains transferred to Havana from San Domingo, 15 January, 1796, consisted of a small urn in a niche in the chancel wall, together with a laurel- crowned bust on a marble slab. Although Spain removed the ashes reverenced as those of America's discoverer from Havana to Seville immediately after the Spanish-Ameri- can war, or in December, 1898, it was not until 17 November, 1902, that they were deposited in the mausoleum specially made for them in Seville Cathedral, the intervening time doubtless being needed for the artistic work. The recent date of this ceremonial accounts sufficiently for the absence of any mention of the memorial in 'The Story of Seville,' published so soon afterwards, or in the ' Encyclopaedia Britannica."

Most people know that the bodies of Chris- topher and Diego Columbus were removed from Spain to San Domingo in 1536, and that when San Domingo was ceded to the French in 1795, the remains of the dis- coverer, as was supposed, were taken to Havana, and now have been retransferred to Seville.

Many readers of 'N. & Q.' may be also aware that San Domingo claims still to have

these precious relics in her cathedral ; but as others may not have noted this, or do not know upon what ground the claim is based, perhaps a brief summary of the matter will not be amiss here. When the original inter- ment was made in San Domingo Cathedral an adjoining space was left prepared, and a few years later was filled by the body of Diego's son Luis, the Duke of Veragua. More than a hundred years later, when San Domingo was threatened by a British fleet, the then archbishop, fearing desecration of the precious dust, ordered, it is said, that the vaults should be covered with earth so as to be indistinguishable, and gradually their relative position seems to have become matter of tradition. The cinerary chest exhumed in 1795 and taken to Havana lay in the tradi- tional corner assigned to the elder Columbus, with a second vault beside it, believed to be that of Diego ; but some proof discovered in 1877 cast doubt upon this, and when, in 1891, there was found beyond the emptied^ vault a larger one, containing a coffer having suf- ficient marks, as they decipher them, to identify it, it proved beyond question to the San Dominicans that the relics taken to Havana were those of Diego Columbus, and that those of his father are still in their own possession. So in December, 1898, the month when the remains from Havana Cathedral were removed with such pomp to Seville, those left in San Domingo Cathe- dral were reinterred there with equal pomp, and a grand new tomb dedicated to Chris- topher Columbus. M. C. L. New York City.

' THE CHILDREN OF THE CHAPEL ' (10 th S. i. 407). Several years since I came across a very rare collection of pamphlets in New- York entitled ' The Sad Decay of Discipline in our Schools,' bearing the date 1830. It was evidently a reprint of a number of curious tracts and verses referring to corporal punishment in boys' schools. ' The Rodiad,' ' A Schoolmaster's Joy is to Flog,' 'The Sparing of the Rod,' &c.. were among the collection, and at the end of the volume was a small pamphlet entitled ' Some Account of the Stripping and Whipping of the Children of the Chapel.' It purported to give a very realistic account of the treatment of the boys at one of the royal chapels (St. James's, I think), but spelling, kc., had been brought up to date and the whole modernized, possibly by Geo. Colman the Younger, the supposed author of 'The Rodiad,' which was published in 1820. It may be that the title was merely taken from the pamphlet