Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 11.djvu/349

 10 s. XL APRIL io, 1909.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

the Figure of ambage." I have not traced the author :

' Of the Spring,' p. 428. The tenth of March, when Aries receav'd Dan Phcebus rayes into his horned head.

(No author named.)

CHARLES CRAWFORD. ( To be continued. )

LAUNCESTON CASTLE. MR. HOLDEX MAC- MICHAEL incidentally remarks (10 S. x. 256), in a reference to Launceston Castle as described in E. King's ' Munimenta Antiqua,' 1804, vol. iii. p. 9 et seq. :

" But of this ' castle ' it is only said that one ' of some sort or another did undoubtedly exist long prior to the Norman Conquest.' Why ' undoubtedly ' ? and what sort of castle ?

I should be specially interested if replies could be given to these queries, for over twenty years ago, when writing my 'Laun- ceston, Past and Present,' and analyzing the evidence then available on the origin of the Castle, I wrote :

" It is to the period of the Conquest that most modern inquirers assign the erection of Launceston Castle. If Roman camp or British earthwork or Saxon ' strength ' previously occupied the site, no trace remains ; and what we have with us appears to be Norman and early Norman, for, as evidencing that no time was lost in the matter, Domesday Book, which was completed in 1086, mentions the Castle as existing."

Gwilt, in his ' Encyclopaedia of Architecture' (Papworth's edition, 1876, Book I. chap. iii. sec. 2, p. 175) gives this castle as the first example of military Norman architecture for the period from 1070 to 1270, the castles of Windsor and Carisbrooke, the Tower of London, and other specimens of undoubted Norman design being in the same group ; and Mrs. E. Armitage, in her article on ' The Early Norman Castles of England,' in The English Historical Review (vol. xix. No. 75, p. 435), notes Lauuceston as one of the two Cornish castles mentioned in Domes- day, " and both of them are only on the border of that wild Celtic county ; but while Launceston is inland, Trematon guards an inlet on the south coast." The latter remark, however, misses the point that Launceston guarded what always was, and still remains, the central road from England into Cornwall.

King in these days, of course, may be dismissed, with his theory assigning to Launceston Castle the most remote anti- quity, from the agreement of its design, in his opinion, with that of various of the Phoenician, Syrian, and Median castles,

and especially those of Asia Minor, there being added by him a sustained argument to show that the design was copied from Ecbatana, and that it was originally the treasure-house of Vortigern, who lived there both before and after his advancement to the throne of Britain a theory dealt with in sufficiently satirical fashion in a contemporary review in The Gentleman's Magazine for 1804 (vol. Ixxiv. part 2, p. 933). Apart from theory, however, there is the curious, and probably significant, point that among the municipal muniments of Laun- ceston is a deed of 1332, dealing with a tene- ment within the borough in a street called " Wester Frensh Castel stret " ; and Messrs.. R. and O. B. Peter in their ' Histories of Launceston and Dunheved ' (p. 92) put the as yet unanswered query : " Was the Castle ever called the French Castle in consequence of its having been possessed, or on the as- sumption that it was built, by the Norman- French ? " Those who recall Freeman's description of the hatred felt by the native English for the Norman castles reared in their midst, and dominating their homes,, will be inclined to consider probable an affirmative reply. ALFRED F. ROBBINS.

JOHN Louis, EARL LIGONIER. Two care- less blunders to be found in the memoir of Lord Ligonier (1680-1770) in the 'D.N.B.' may be noted. A simple reference to Col. Chester's 'Westminster Abbey Registers' would have sufficed to show the writer that, though an interesting monument was erected to him there, he was not " buried in Westminster Abbey." He was buiied at Cobham.

There is no portrait of htm in " The French Hospital in Shaftesbury Avenue," an institution which was founded only in 1867. His portrait is in the Hospital for Poor French Protestants and their Des- cendants, now located in the Victoria Park Road. This institution was founded in 1718, and Lord Ligonier was its Governor from 1748 to 1770, the year of his death. The picture, though it may not rank high as a work of art, may, seeing that it was presented by himself, be regarded as an authentic portrait a claim which can only be made in a minor degree on behalf of the celebrated Sir Joshua in the National Gallery, since in that case there fell to the artist, when he painted it in 1760, the difficult task of antedating the features by well-nigh twenty years, to bring his sitter already an octogenarian, into character with his background representing the battle