Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 5.djvu/477

 10* s. v. MAY 19, 1906.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

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arms of her mother, the heiress. These arms thus augmented are transmissible to her descendants. (See Boutell and Woodward, passim.)

With reference to the question asked by G. B. as to when the custom was first established in England of placing the arms of an heiress upon an escutcheon (or inescutcheon) of pretence, MR. WATSON gives the instance cited by Boutell from the shield of Richard Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick, \vho died in 1439. (MR. WATSON does not state to what edition of BoutelPs * Heraldry ' he is referring ; his references are not con- formable to the original 1864 edition.)

May I add other instances occuring in the same century given by Dr. Woodward in his 'Heraldry: British and Foreign' (ed. 1896), vol. ii. p. 109, namely, Richard, Duke of York (d. 1460), father of Edward IV., and Sir John Neville, Lord Montagu (elected KG. c. 1463)? Dr. Woodward goes on to say, however, that it was not till about the beginning of the seventeenth century that this form of marshalling of an heiress became a practice ; he cites Guillim as in the first edition of his 'Display of Heraldry' (1611) giving his sanction to the practice, and states that when Sir George Mackenzie's 'Treatise on Heraldry' appeared in 1680, the usage was only beginning to be heard of as a novelty in Scotland. In this the learned author agrees with Boutell, who at p. 140 of the 1864 edition of his * Heraldry : Historical and Popular,' says that this practice is of comparatively recent usage.

It must be remembered, too, that it is not heraldically proper or correct that the heiress's arms should be borne by her husband on a shield of pretence until after her father's death, and not then if there be issue of the marriage.

Dr. Woodward mentions the fact that in continental armory it has long been the custom for elected sovereigns to place their hereditary arms in an escutcheon en surtout above those of their domains.

Instances of this occur in our own royal arms. Presumably the new royal house of Norway will furnish another instance ; in which case the royal house of Denmark will have supplied two living instances of this, the present King of Greece being the other.

G. B. will gather from what I have written above what my reply to his later questions namely, at what date it would be correct to place the arms of an heiress in pretence upon the shield of her husband, and whether such arms should descend as a quartering to

all her children or only to her eldest son ant! heir would be. J. S. UDAL, F.S.A.

Antigua, W.I.

DR. LETSUM OR LETTSOM (10 th S. v. 14 8-, 191, 210). One of his daughters was married in February, 1804, to John Elliot, of Pimlico- Lodge, and the Stag Brewery, Pimlico, who- had been a Fellow of New College, Oxford, and who, at the time of the marriage, was colonel of the Westminster Volunteer Cavalry. Their son, John Lettsom Elliot, the eldest of fifteen children, was born on 11 December, 1804, and died in the Albany in his ninety- fourth year, on 17 September, 1898. He was for many years the " Father" of the Athenaeum- Club, of which he had been a member from its institution in 1824. The lymph with which Queen Victoria was vaccinated, when a child, was taken from the arm of one of his brothers, as the family was deemed to be amongst the healthiest that could be found. See The Times of 20 September, 1898, p. & Three of the brothers were Capt. George Elliott, of the 5th Madras Cavalry, who died at Bellary, Madras, on 20 May, 1842; Sir Henry Miers Elliot, K.C.B. (see ' D.N.B./ xyii. 258) ; and William Elliot, of the Madras Civil Service, who died in St. George's Road, Belgravia, on 19 March, 1872. H. C.

"I EXPECT TO PASS THROUGH" (10 th S. i.

247, 316, 355, 433). Referring to this phrase, a correspondent of The Literary World (15 March, 1905) states that it is "from the tomb of Edward Courtenay, Earl of Devon." If, as I imagine, the earl referred to is the one who, according to the 'D.N.B.,' was buried at Padua (1556), surely the question can be settled once for all by some reader of 1 N. & Q.' who has been there, or who is there now, or who has friends or correspondents there. I hope the point will be soon cleared up, so far as the tombstone theory is con- cerned. It should be a question of fact.

In the event of the tomb statement not being substantiated, I shall be able to offer a few remarks interesting to those * N. & Q/ readers who are desirous, as I am, of tracing the origin or history of the phrase.

EDWARD LATHAM.

"PLEACHY" (10 th S. v. 327) I have not heard this word in use in South Northampton- shire. Miss Baker gives the two quotations from Clare in her ' Dictionary of North- amptonshire Words and Phrases,' and asks if Jamieson's Pleche, to bleach, can have any connexion with the word. I find in Stern- berg's * Dialect and Folk-lore of Northamp- tonshire,' " Plash, pleach, to trim or lop trees.