Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 8.djvu/544

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NOTES AND QUERIES. [io s. vm. DEC. 7, 1907.

FERDINANDO FAIRFAX graduated B.A. at Cambridge University from Trinity College in 1697, aged nineteen. I wish to ascertain the date of his death. The ' D.N.B.,' xviii. 130, does not give it. G. F. R. B.

MILLINGTON EATON was admitted to Westminster School in May, 1732, aged thirteen. I should be glad to obtain any information concerning his parentage and career. G. F. R. B.

HAMILTON FAMILY. Can any one tell me the exact connexion between the 3rd Duke of Hamilton and a certain Col. Basil Hamilton (known to be his descendant) and Alice Wallace, " his cousin," whom he married ? W. ROBERTS CROW.

AtrTHORS OF QUOTATIONS WANTED. About forty years ago I read a little poem, and I think the writer was spoken of at the time as " the poet of the people." I should much like to know the name of the author and the publisher of the volume. The first verse ran :

Oh, not with gloomy brow severe,

But clad in smiles of seraph birth, Religion comes to light and cheer, To sweeten and adorn the earth.

MAURICE C. HIME, LL.D.

Can any one tell me if the following is by William Morris ?

What will ye with them, Earthly men, To mate your threescore years and ten ? Toil rather ; suffer and be free Betwixt the green Earth and the Sea.

V. T.

CLERGYMAN WITH BATTLEDORE IN THE PULPIT. Can any reader give the name of the divine, living in the time of the Stuarts or Georges, who, when his congregation were falling asleep, took out a battledore and ball and began to play with them in the pulpit ? LORENZO.

' MEMOIRS OF A YOUNG LADY OF QUALITY.' I should be glad if any of your readers could give me the name of the author of ' The Memoirs of a Young Lady of Quality,' London, R. Baldwin, 1756, 4 vols., 12mo. Neither Halkett and Laing nor Lowndes g ive3 i<>- J. MILES.

" GORDON CASE " AND POPE CLEMENT XI. Dixon in his ' Church of England ' (v. 249) speaks of the Gordon case, in which Clement XI. decided that English orders were invalid. Who was this Gordon ?

J. M. BULLOCH. 118, Pall Mall.

COURVOISIER.

(10 S. viii. 408.)

THIS man was not tried for murder before June, 1840, when he was tried for the murder of Lord William Russell. The story told by Lady Antrim is a strange one, but it could not possibly relate to Courvoisier, for after a man has been convicted of murder his antecedents are always very well known, and it has never been stated anywhere that Courvoisier had been previously tried for murder. He was only twenty-three years of age when he was executed. He was born of decent parents in Switzerland, and came over to England to his uncle, who obtained for him several most respectable situations.

The date of the wonderful occurrence which the fifth Earl of Macclesfield is said to have narrated to his daughter is not given. The vague statement is made that it hap- pened when the Earl was " residing in Lon- don." He was born in 1817, and there is no means of fixing the important date of his residence in London. There can be no doubt that Courvoisier, the Swiss butler and valet, was not the cloaked and booted highwayman who was " tried for highway robbery and murder committed on that night on Hounslow Heath." It is not stated when the man was tried, whero he was tried, or what was the result of the trial. Moreover, I believe that Hounslow Heath was not a place of danger during the man- hood of Courvoisier. There is a good report of the trial of the latter in ' Chronicles of Crime,' by Pelham, vol. ii. p. 563, in which his confessions are set out, and his career in the metropolis is referred to. See also Towns- end's ' Modern State Trials,' vol. i. p. ?44.

There is a matter connected with this case which may be worth preserving in *N. & Q.' In ' The Recollections of John Adolphus ' (the leading counsel for the Crown), by his daughter, Mrs. F-. Henderson, there is at p. ] 55 the following statement :

"After Courvoisier's sentence he was asked, I think by the Urider-Sheriff, how it was possible he could have cut the throat of his unfortunate master without a trace of blood on any of his clothes, and that nothing should have been discovered newly washed? His answer was that he had no clothes on, he committed the crime in a complete state of nudity, and had only to wash himself at the sink on coming down. He wore nothing but those gloves he placed afterwards in the housemaid's box, and which, being blood-stained, caused some suspicion for a time to attach to her."