Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 3.djvu/205

 10*8. III. MARCH 4, 1905.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

165

CONGREVE'S BIRTHPLACE. A paragraph in The Irish Times of 2 July, 1904, seems worth preserving in the columns of 'X. &, Q.' Whether it settles the question "once for all," it is hard to decide :

" There has long been considerable dispute as to the birthplace of Congreve the dramatist. He had no knowledge of it himself, and couldn't even give the date of his birth. Malone was the first to discover that the little Yorkshire village of Bardsey had the best claim to the title, and a visitor who has inspected the old parish register there says there can be little doubt as to Bardsey being the birthplace of the dramatist. Cougreve's baptism is thus recorded in the register: William, the sonne of Mr. William ) Congreve, of Bardsey Grange, was > 1669 baptized Febru 10th J

This record would also seem to establish the paternity of the dramatist, who has often been described as a son of Richard Congreve, of Con- greve, Staffordshire. Congreve's mother was on a visit to her uncle Sir John Lewis, at Bardsey, when her son was born."

HERBERT B. CLAYTON. 39, Renfrew Road, Lower Kennington Lane.

" UGLY RUSH." Perhaps you will think it worth recording that, on the authority of Sir John Robinson (' Fifty Years of Fleet Street'), it was Henley who first used the expression " an ugly rush."

GREVILLE WALPOLE, M.A., LL.D.

Kensington, W.

QUARTERSTAVES. In an account (Star Ch. Pro., Ph. & M., i. 22) of an affray at Wykington, in South Tawton, Devon, it is complained that one Henry Randall " did bete, wounde, and evell entreate your orator so that he was in dispere of his lyef, and with a staf pnjce iiijd., wyche the said Henry had in his ryght hand, upon the left hand of your Orator did stryke and broke the yonnt and bone of the thirde finger," &c.

This suggests to me the question whether for the regulation perhaps of quarterstaff contests the prices and relative sizes of the staves were fixed by statute. I do not find anything to the point in the ' Liber Albus ' or in the index to 'Statutes of the Realm.' ETHEL LEGA-WEEKES.

THE FITZWILLIAMS. In the last volume of The Ancestor (No. xii. p. Ill) Mr. Oswald Barren makes a serious blunder in describing Aubreye, the wife of Robert, son of Pulk de Lizours, as widoiv of Henry de Lacy, and Robert de Lacy (the last of the old line of De Lacy) as Aubreye's son. She was, of course, Henry's sister, and sister of Ilbert de Lacy, as she is described in the Pipe Roll of 31 Henry I. (p. 8), and Robert was her nephew. A few lines further on Mr. Barren, somewhat

hastily, condemns Thoroton, the historian of Nottinghamshire, to "take his place with discredited pedigree-mongers," because he assigns to Godric, the ancestor of the Fitz- williams, a father named Chetelbert, on the- strength of an entry in the Pipe Rolls (not of King Stephen's reign, as Mr. Barron quotes, but of 31 Henry I.) of a certain Gpdric, son of Chetelbert, a free tenant in Yorkshire. If Mr. Barron will refer to Burton's ' Monas- ticon Eboracense ' (pp. 330, 332), he will_ find mention of a grant by Godric, son of Ketel- bern, to the monks of Byland of iron ore- and fuel in Emley ; the confirmation of this- grant by William, son of Godric ; and a. further grant by William Fitzwilliam, lord of Emley, of lands in Bentley, Denby, and Emley, manors which formed part of th Fitzwilliams' inheritance Emley having de- scended to William Fitzwilliam from hi father, William, son of Godric, whilst Bent- ley, Denby, Sprptborough, and other manors descended to him, through his mother, from, the Lizours. W. FARRER..

Over Kellet.

THE LATE DR. H. H. DRAKE. Your obituary paragraph (ante, p. 140), if taken literally, is not quite accurate. Dr. Drak& was descended from the same family of Drake as Sir Francis the Drakes of Crown- dale, not of Ashe ; but he certainly could nob be descended from Sir Francis Drake, for Prince, in his ' Worthies of Devon ' (of which the first edition was issued in 1701), says of Sir Francis : "This great person left no issue- of his body, though he was once married; but his name and family is preserved by his younger brother's issue, Mr. Thomas Drake's, unto whom he left his estate." Dr. Drake- was not only proud of his family connexion with the renowned Elizabethan seaman, but he was indefatigable in the collection of memoranda concerning the family of Drake ; and his zeal in this direction once allowed him to become the victim of a harmless littl& pleasantry, which is still remembered by some in the Ever Faithful city in the West Country where the joke was perpetrated. But that is another story.

FRED. C. FROST, F.S.I.

Teignmouth.

CONTEMPT FOR THE LAW IN A WILL. Thomas Southam, of Charlecott, co. Warwick, yeoman, baptized 5 March, 1636/7, made his will 12 December, 1684 :

"Being not auntient in years, yet aged in respect of infirmities of body which the Lord hath been, pleased to visit me withall, being messengers of death sent unto me to admonish me to sett my house in order, yet being of perfect mind and good