Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 5.djvu/84

 NOTES AND QUERIES. uo th s. v. JAN. 27, 1900.

certificate he is miscalled " Joseph Spencer. In both certificates he is described as M.A., and for that reason I have identified Spence's father with the fellow of St. John's, who was the only graduate of his names in the last decade of the seventeenth century. He vacated the living of Alverstoke in 1714, and I have failed to trace him later. Singer believed that he died in 1721. Can any reader supply the date and place either ot 'his marriage or of his death ?
 * and to Alverstoke on 3 Aug., 1703 In the first

The biographers of Joseph S pence, the .author, say that he was born at Kingsclere, Hants, on 25 April, 1699, a date which agrees with his being in his seventieth year, as stated on the tablet in By fleet chancel, ^Surrey, when he died on 20 August, 1768 not 20 April, as in Mr. Underbill's ' Intro- duction,' p- xxix. Moreover, I am informed that the Kingsclere register records what seems to be his baptism as occurring there on 28 May, 1699. He managed, however, to keep his reputed age down to fourteen longer than most mortals can. At the Winchester College election of 1715, held apparently about 27 August, he gained fifteenth place for a scholarship, and for some reason or other was then entered on the election in- denture as "annorum 14 vicesimo nono die Maii ultimo preterito." For admission as a scholar he had to wait until 22 Sept., 1716, when the next election was close at hand, . and was then put down in the College register as aged fourteen on 29 May, 1 < 16. In the following April he matriculated trom Magdalen Hall, Oxford when, according to Foster's 'Alumni Oxon.,' he passed for six- teenbut he nevertheless remained for three years more at Winchester, becoming head ot the school by the autumn of 1719 and enter- ing as probationary fellow of New College . on 30 April, 1720, " in loco Georgu Bull

Spence, when he died in 1768, seems to have had few living relations. In his will, dated "Sedgefield, August 4th, 1766, 3 ' pro- bate of which (with a codicil) was granted to two of his executors on 18 Feb., 1769, and to the third (EdwardRolle)on5 May,1769(RC.C., Bogg 67), he mentions only two as such, whom he calls " cousins " : a Mrs. Lawman, a widow, whom he provided with a small annuity, and a Joseph Spence Berry, a lad to whom he left a legacy to enable him to be appren- ticed to a good trade. Joseph Spence, how- ever, was apparently not his parents only child ; for the Rector of Kingsclere has kindly informed me that two other sons of Joseph and Mirabella Spence were baptized there,

namely, John (on 24 March, 1699, O.S.) and Richard (on 16 March, 1700, O.S.).

Who was the ** Mrs. Fawkener, an opulent relation," who, according to Singer, took young Spence under her protection ? I suppose that the ' D.X.B / liii. 33G, has made a man of her by a slip. There was a family of this name at Kingsclere in the seventeenth century. (See Berry's 'Hants Genealogies,' p. 297.) Singer says that she died in 1714 ; and notwithstanding Singer's suggestion that "the severity of the school discipline" at Eton was the cause of Spence's removal to Winchester, I am inclined to think that the change in his pecuniary position consequent upon her death was the real cause. At Eton he was probably an ''oppidan." At any rate, his name is not in Mr. R. A. Austen Leigh's ' List of Eton Collegers, 1661-1790.'

H. C.

'A MEDLEY FINALE TO THE GREAT EXHIBITION.'

THE song of which COL. PRIDEA.UX speaks, ante, p. 14, referred to the Exhibition of 1851, and ran as under :

The names of these two warriors, whom here you

may see,

Are Oremansa and Gishe-goshe-gee, And after such a specimen of Jibbeway I am sure you '11 excuse me at once if I say,

O Jibbeway, Jibbeway Indians,

O Jibbeway, Jibbeway O.

You talk about wonders ; just look upon these ; You think them two little industrious fleas ; But just through a microscope look at their mugs, And your two little fleas become horrid humbugs.

Gee ho, Dobbin ; gee ho, Dobbin ; gee ho, Dobbin ;

Gee up and Gee ho.

To see you in clover comes Madame Tussaud ;

Ho ho, ho ho ho ho, ho ho

Your portrait in waxwork she's anxious to show ; The King of the French and Fieschi the traitor, Commissioner Lin and the Great Agitator, Queens, princes, and ministers, all of them go

Ho ho, ho ho ho ho, ho ho To sit for their portraits to Madame Tussaud

Ho ho, ho ho ho. Ching-a-ring-a-ching-ching, Feast of Lanterns,

What a lot of chopsticks, harps, and gongs ! What a lot of Chinese crinkum crankums

Hung among the bells and ding-dongs ! Women with their ten toes tight tucked into

Tidi-iddi shoes one hardly sees ! Where they all came from 's quite a wonder :

China must be broken in pieces.

Yankee doodle came to town on a little pony, This little man of great renown who struts like

little Boney ;

All the wonders here to send Jonathan s a mania ; I wish he'd send the dividend that's due from

Pennsylvania. The song had, as COL. PKIDEAUX says, a