Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 4.djvu/69

 io-s.iv.JcLYi5.i905.] NOTES AND QUERIES. 53 referred to by Madden, nor do Dr. Sirr's words refer to them. That Miss Curran was tenderly dealt with, as Dr. Sirr asserts, cannot be doubted, and that the correspondence was consumed out of compassion to the family is in keeping with the consideration shown by Govern- ment and officials to Curran, which empha- sizes his own meanness and harshness to his daughter. Perhaps I may be permitted to add, con- cerning the Rev. Dr. Sirr, whose name has come forward so prominently, that the most to be gathered from books of reference is to be found in vol. iii. of Mr. Boase's ' Modern Biography,' though, unlike the 'Diet. Nat. Biog.,' no mention is made of his ' Life of Archbishop Usher' (also noticed by Halkett and Laing in 'Dictionary of Anonymous Literature'); and the 'D.N.B.' accepts his 'Life of Archbishop Trench' as the leading authority. There is also with the Fitch MSS. relating to Suffolk at Ipswich an advertise- ment of a prospective work (c. 1845):— " VToxford, | Its Worthies and Memorabilia | em- bracing | The History of the Lords of that Manor, | of the | Patrons and Vicars of St. Peter's Church, &nd | of the Remarkable Proprietors and inhabit- ants | of the Parish. | By the | Rev. Joseph D'Arcy Sirr. D.D. M.B.J.A., &o. | Vicar of Yoxford, Suffolk." The advertisement follows. How far this work progressed I cannot say. Dr. Sirr was not only highly respected, but greatly be- loved (the memorial stone at Mprstead, erected by friends, as the inscription sets out, is some evidence of this). He was in the full possession of all his faculties until his death, and certainly, from his character and painstaking work, he would not have falsified ; besides, he had no motive for doing so. Supplementing MR. PICKFOED'S interesting note, I may say that Major Sirr is generally represented too old, and Cruikshank's illus- tration is fanciful. An illustration in The Spear (14 March, 1900) shows the major an elderly man, whereas he was slightly the junior of Lord Edward. The engraved por- trait entitled 'Henry Charles Sirr, Esq., Town Major of Dublin, <tc.,' from one of two oil paintings (c. 1798), and by "J. llartyn Belt. <k Sculpt.," quite alters the countenance, and is poor. W. Swing's ivory relief, 1818 (9th S. ii. 168), is very good, and likewise a bust (late in life) by Prospero (though not a first-rate artist). The major is also represented in various engravings in Walter Cox's The Irish, Magazine and Monthly Asylum for Neglected Biography. The fol- lowing are perhaps the best: ' The Major trying a Charity Sermon in Mr. La Touche's- Travelling Pulpit' (1810); 'Sale of the Major's- Library,' depicting him (a good likeness) as an auctioneer; ' The Major presiding at the Communion of Saints' (1811): and 'His Holiness making a present of our Irish mitre* while Major Sirr is presenting an address to the King' (1814). I have been given to understand reproductions from photographs of one of the oil portraits and the ivory may appear in ' Ars Quatuor Coronatorum.' I do not think Maxwell's ' Irish Rebellion r is quoted by historians (e.g., Mr. Lecky). Max- well, who was not in a position to know anything about Major Sirr's character, copied Madden, and also Fitzpatrick's' Sham Squire,1" both discredited (as to the character they give) under 'Sirr' in the 'D.N.B.'; but it i* largely due to such books that Major Sirr's reputation in Ireland is what MR. MACDONAGH correctly states it to be. No impartial and serious student of Irish history could be- misled by those books; it is none the less regrettable they have been popularized. The commission of Town Major of the Garrison of Dublin is in the Record Tower Collection, Dublin ('Entry Book of Military Com- missions, 1796-1806,' p. 75). The office was- not a "corporate situation," as Maxwell asserts. Will FRANCESCA kindly give a reference to- the page in Phillips's 'Curran and his Con- temporaries,' 1818, for the mention of Major Sirr's weeping over Sarah Curran's letters ] H. SIRR. RATES IN AID (10th S. iii. 469).—The fol- lowing extract from the Act 43 Eliz. cap. ii. f. 3 will inform EQUITAS who was to judge- when and why it was requisite to make a Rate in Aid :— " And it be also enacted, That if the said Justices of the Peace doe perceiue, that the inhabitants of any Parish are not able to leuie among themselues sufficient summes of money for the purposes afore- said: that then the said two Justices shall and may taxe, rate and assesse, as aforesaid, any other of other Parishes, or out of any Parish within th& Hundred where the said Parish is, to pay such summe ;m>l suinmes of money to the Church- wardens and overseers of the said poor Parish for the said purposes as the said Justices shall think, fit," &c. The rate was in some cases appealed against and quashed on some technical point. JOHN RADCLIFFE. EQUITAS will, I think, find most, if not all, of his queries answered in the Report of the- Poor Law Commission, published in 1834. In the parish of Cholesbury, in Bucks, the value of the land was more than swallowed up in rates, and it was handed over by the-