Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 3.djvu/431

 in. MAY e, loos.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

355

conceit must be assigned to a purely con- jectural authorship. JAMES WATSON.

Folkestone-

In K Locker-Larnpson's ' Lyra Elegantia- rum' ("Minerva Library" edition, Ward, Lock & Co., 1891), cclxxxv., ' The White Rose' is "ascribed to James Somerville." The verses, as given there, are :

If this fair rose offend thy sight,

Placed in thy bosom bare, 'Twill blush to n'nd itself less white,

And turn Lancastrian there.

But if thy ruby lip it spy, As kiss it thou mayst deign,

With envy pale 'twill lose its dye, And Yorkist turn again.

P. G. C.

The original version, I think, ran thus :

Say, pretty Tory, where 's the jest Of wearing orange on thy breast, When that same breast, confessing, shows The whiteness of the rebel rose ?

R. B.

I am unable to name the author of this -epigram, but it may be of interest to recall the lines addressed by Lord Chesterfield, when Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, to Miss Ambrose :

Of wearing orange in your breast, While that breast, upheaving, shows The whiteness of the rebel rose?
 * Say, lovely traitor, where 's the jest

LANCE H. HUGHES. '[Reply by SCRGEON-GEXERAL MOIR next week.]

LOCAL GOVERNMENT RECORDS (10 th S. in. 287, 337). Have MR. AND MRS. WEBB seen 'Quarter Sessions from Queen Elizabeth to Queen Anne,' by Mr. A. H. A. Hamilton, published in 1878 ? The book deals chiefly with the county of Devon. If they have not, I shall be pleased to supply them with information, or, as the work is somewhat .scarce, to lend them my copy. A. J. DAVY.

'Torquay.

THEATRE, PARKGATE (10 th S. iii. 289). MR. ALECK ABRAHAMS'S problem admits of easy solution. The playbills in his possession were issued from some temporary playhouse in Parkgate, Cheshire, and were printed in Holy well, on the other side of the River Dee. The Drury Lane mentioned on the bills in the enumeration of places where tickets could be procured was certainly not Drury Lane iu London, and was doubtless a locality in or about Parkgate.

Whatever it may be now, Parkgate during the eighteenth century, and possibly for a score of years later, was a place of consider-

able resort and activity. What Holyhead is now Parkgate was then. Travellers from London to Dublin generally put up at Chester until such time as favouring winds enabled them to embark at Parkgate. Some- times designing innkeepers lured them to the port by false intelligence, and there they had to remain, ill-housed, praying for auspicious gales. Many players, great and small, must have sojourned at Chester and Parkgate in remoter times. When they happened to arrive there in the summer, at a time when the Dublin and London theatres were closed, they may possibly have rested awhile and sought to turn an honest penny by giving performances in the neighbourhood. May I hope that some one with plenty of leisure and abundance of enthusiasm will write a history of the drama in Chester ?

W. J. LAWRENCE.

This was ab Parkgate, near Neston, on the Dee. In Mr. Gallichan's 'Cheshire,' just published in Methuen's " Little Guides," p. 163, it is stated, " There was once a theatre in the town, in which the leading actors of the day played to distinguished audiences."

MR. ALECK ABRAHAMS is a little astray in suggesting that the bills he possesses relate to Nottingham or Knightsbridge. They have reference to a theatre which once existed at Parkgate, near Birkenhead, on the Wirral Promontory of Cheshire. The bills were probably printed at Holywell, in Flintshire, which would be easily accessible from Park- gate across the Dee sands when the tide was low.

The theatre was under the management of Mr. Sam Ryley, a noted actor in the early part of the nineteenth century. He resided in a small house (which I well remember seeing when I was a boy) on the shore at Parkgate. He lived there with his wife, without servants or children. Parkgate was at that time a very fashionable resort, and in the summer months Ryley had a company who gave a series of entertainments at the "Parkgate Theatre" (formerly the herring house), near the present Union Hotel. Ryley and his wife, I believe, lie buried in Neston Churchyard. I have before me the nine volumes of his 4 Itinerant 'a very scarce work. The copy is unique, having been the property of, and containing the autograph of, Albert Smith, the popular novelist and entertainer. The books are a sketchy but readable account of the wanderings of Ryley and his company all over England.

T. CASK HUGHES, M.A., F.S.A.

Lancaster.