Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 12.djvu/34

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NOTES AND QUERIES. [io s. xn. JULY 10, 1909.

was of the same house ; so were William Russell, fifth Earl and first Duke of Bedford ; Sir Anthony Morgan, the soldier, who, migrating from the neighbouring Hall, was son of a Magdalen Fellow and Principal of Alban Hall ; and Arthur Goodwin, friend and colleague of Hampden, with whom as an undergraduate he contributed Latin verses to the College collection on the death of Henry, Prince of Wales, entitled ' Luctus Posthumus.' Magdalen Hall had grown up under the shadow of the College through the gradual settlement of those who, while free to profit by the instruction of the Grammar Master, were not them- selves members of the founder's Grammar School. In process of time the Grammar Hall had largely usurped the premises of the School, and had become a recognized University institution. The cuckoo's nest Wood calls it a " nest of Precisians "- had thriven marvellously under the pro- tection of the lilies of Magdalen. Dr. John Wilkinson, who as Fellow of Magdalen had been tutor to Prince Henry, during his long tenure of the Principalship (which lasted until the beginning of the war) had made the Hall the chief seminary and stronghold of the Puritans in Oxford. He was after- wards President of the College, and was succeeded at the Hall by his nephew Henry Wilkinson, " Dean Harry," who was also Whyte's Professor of Moral Philosophy. Another Henry Wilkinson, " Long Harry," also of the Hall and Canon of Christ Church, was, like his namesake, one of the Parlia- mentary Visitors to the University and Margaret Professor of Divinity.

Among other alumni of this Hall were Sir Harry Vane the younger (his father was of Brasenose), who, characteristically, dis- covered after a brief sojourn that he could not take the oaths required of him, and left without matriculation ; Sir Matthew Hale, Chief Justice, and in 1659 M.P. for his University ; Sir William Waller, the famous general, nicknamed by his admirers " William the Conqueror " ; Robert Ham- mond, the soldier, who as Governor of the Isle of Wight became the unwilling gaoler of Charles I. at Carisbrooke Castle ; John Lisle, regicide, and one of Cromwell's House of Peers, who was assassinated at Lausanne after the Restoration, leaving his widow Alice to be the victim of a famous judicial murder by Lord Jeffreys ; Edward Leigh, miscellaneous writer, lay theologian, soldier, and member of Parliament ; and Sir Ralph Verney, Bt. son of Sir Edmund Verney, the royal standard-bearer at Edgehill who,

as a moderate Parliamentarian, suffered from the tender mercies of both parties.

The prominent Puritan divines bred at Magdalen Hall include Philip Nye, the Independent ; Henry Hurst, a sometime Magdalen chorister, ejected from St. Mat- thew's, Friday Street, under the Act of Uniformity ; Nathaniel Hardy, who con- formed and became Dean of Rochester ; and Thomas Home, the Presbyterian Head Master of Eton. One of the sons of the last named, William Home an under master at his old school and Fellow of King's became the first Etonian and married Head Master of Harrow. Some years ago Mr. R. Townsend Warner discovered among the Verney Papers a letter of July, 1682, referring to Harrow School under Home, in which the writer stated that the number of boys " was- generaly abought six score ; but in ye town their are maney bording houses."

A. R. BAYLEY. (To be continued.)

THOMAS LOVE PEACOCK'S PLAYS,

THE different editions of T. L. Peacock's works which have appeared since his death in 1866 contain no allusion to his three- unpublished plays, and a diligent search for references to them has produced only one mention of their existence. This is a cursory notice of a few lines contained in Sir Henry Cole's ' Biographical Notes of T. L. Peacock,' of which ten copies were printed about 1875, and privately circulated. This neglect is very strange, since examina- tion shows that they are most interesting and highly characteristic of their author. They are to be found in the Manuscript Department of the British Museum, in. vol. 36.816 this being the second volume- of ' The Literary Remains of Thomas Love Peacock,' which were purchased by the Trustees of the Museum of Mrs. Edith Clarke in 1903. In all three instances they are holographic. The handwriting is easily legible, presenting an agreeable contrast in this respect to most documents from Peacock's pen.

Included in ' The Literary Remains r are also a list of the dramatis personae of a tragedy called ' Otho ' and the opening scene of a play entitled ' Virginia.' Al- though these have, like the others, remained unnoticed and unmentioned, the idea of Peacock being a playwright in addition to a novelist and poet should not come altogether as a surprise, for Mrs. Clarke states in the ' Biographical Notice ' of her