Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 11.djvu/86

 66

NOTES AND QUERIES. [io s. XL JAX. -23, im

THIMBLES. In The Stamford Mercury for 26 April, 1861, we are informed that

" to the Dutch the ladies of all nations are indebted for the invention of the thimble. The Dutch achieved this great invention in the year 1690."

Thimbles are probably of prehistoric date, though it would perhaps be unfair to expect a newspaper writer to know this ; but he might have consulted Johnson's dictionary, where he would have found Shakespere quoted under the word in the passage where the bastard Faulconbridge Bays in ' King John ' :

For your own ladies and pale-visag'd maids lake Amazons come tripping after drums, Their thimbles into armed gauntlets change, Their needles to lances, and their gentle heartN To fierce and bloody inclination.

" Thimble " also occurs twice in ' Taming of the Shrew,' Act IV. sc. iii.

EDWARD PEACOCK.

LADY HONOKIA HOWARD. In the life of Sir Robert Howard, the dramatist, in the ' Dictionary of National Biography ' it is stated that " his second wife was probably Lady Honora O'Brien, daughter of the Earl of Thomond, and widow of Sir Francis Inglefield." There is no probability in the matter ; it is a certainty, as is proved by her will, an abstract of which seems worthy of a place in ' N. & Q.' She was evidently on bad terms with Sir Robert, for she desired to be buried close to her former husband, Sir Francis Englefield, in Englefield Church. Berks, directing a plain black marble monument to be erected over their tomb ; she also left 151. to the poor of that parish. She left much valuable jewellery, &c., to Mary, Duchess of Richmond, wife to Col Thomas Howard ; also to her sister the Marquis of Worcester's lady, and to her cousin Penelope Egerton. To her cousin Collen she left some pictures ; to two sisters, not named, 30Z. each to buy a ring ; and to Arthur, Earl of Anglesea, and Sir Gilbert Gerrard, Kt. and Bart., of St. Martin' s-in- the-Fields, whom she describes aa " my

ood friends," 501. each to buy a ring, he left 10Z. towards finishing the parish church at Chelsea. There are numerous valuable legacies to ministers of the Gospel and servants, and sandwiched amongst them is a brief item : "To Sir Robert Howard, one shilling." The joint executors are Col. Randall Egerton and Sir William Turner, Kt.

She must have been on the point of death when she made her will, for it was dated 6 Sept., 1676. and proved on the 12th of

the same month and year (122 Bence). The will also enables us to add to the details concerning her in Howard of Corby's ' Indications of Memorials, &c., of the Howard Family,' 1834, where on p. 69 it is stated that the date of her death and place of inter- ment were not made out. The name in the will is Honoria, not Honora. AYEAHR.

" To RUB " AT CARDS. In ' The Life of Cesar Borgia,' being chap. vii. of ' The Profane State,' which is Book V. of ' The Holy State,' by Thomas Fuller, 1642, p. 386, there appears the following in a passage concerning the failure of Borgia's projects, owing to the death of his father and his own desperate sickness :

" Thus three aces chance often not to rub ; and Politicians think themselves to have stopp'd every small cranny, when they have left a whole doon; open for divine providence to undo all which they have done."

I suppose that " to rub " means " to win a rubber," which is one of the meanings given in Grose's ' Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue.' ROBERT PIERPOESTT.

GREAT BRITAIN : EARLY REFERENCE. Although ' N.E.D.' under ' Britain ' gives an illustrative quotation of " grete Brytayne" from a Wynkyn de Worde "book of c. 1500, the present political meaning of the phrase declaring England to be " the only supreme seat of thempire of greate Briteigne," is first illustrated from N. Bodrugar's ' Epi- tome ' in 1548. But there is a use of a year earlier to be found in the ' Cecil MSS.' (vol. i. p. 50) in the notice of a " Poem on the Ingratitude of the Scots, by John Mardeley, Clerk of the Southwark Mint," dated 6 Sept., 1547, which concludes :

And fre withoute boundage with us to remaigne, As in one hole kingclome called great breataigne.

ALFRED F. ROBBINS.

" SHOE." Probably the difference be- tween the spelling and pronunciation of this word has puzzled most people. It would hardly be a sufficient answer to say that the oe was a modification of the A.-S. seed ; our words " doe," " foe," " roe," " toe," also come from A.-S., but their forms there are da, fdh or /a, rah, and td respectively. The Middle English for " shoe " is shoo, and we have it in the Prologue to ' The Canterbury Tales '

For though a wide we hadde but a shoo, where it is made to rime with o (" in prin- cipio "). However it was pronounced in the time of Chaucer, that spelling agrees well with the modern sound, though " shoe "