Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 8.djvu/598

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NOTES AND QUERIES, no s. vm. DEC. 21, 1907.

1900 (9 S. v. 43). Since then I have come across another striking parallel in an extract from the journal written by Lord Jeffrey during his voyage to America in 1813. See ' Life ' by Cockburn, i. 217 :

" Not a sail or any vestige of man since the ship- of-war left xis. Man, indeed, has left, no traces of himself on the watery part of the globe. He has stripped the land of it* wood, and clothed it with corn and with cities ; he has changed its colour, its inhabitants, and all its qualities. Over it he seems, indeed, to have dominion ; but the sea is as wild and unsubdued as on the first day of its creation. No track left of the innumerable voyagers who have

traversed it; no power over its movements

Neither time nor art makes any alteration here." (Italics mine.)

Compare the same thought in Madame de Stae'l, and also in Byron's lines : Ten thousand fleets sweep over thee in vain ; Man marks the earth with ruin his control Stops with the shore ; upon the watery plain The wrecks are all thy deed.

His steps are not upon thy paths, thy fields Are not a spoil for him.

Unchangeable, save to thy wild waves' play, Time writes no wrinkle on thine azure brow : Such as creation's dawn beheld, thou rollest now. The dates exclude any supposition of Jeffrey's indebtedness to Byron ; but as he seems to have been a voluminous French student, he may perhaps have read and remembered the passage in ' Corinne,' pub- lished a few years previously. I need hardly say that Jeffrey occupies a very conspicuous place in Byron's satire ' English Bards and Scotch Reviewers ' (1809).

C. LA WHENCE FORD. Bath.

[Many other contributors thanked for replies.] SIR GEORGE MONOUX (10 S. viii. 10, 90, 133, 214, 434). In regard to the remarks of MR. PIERPOINT at the last reference, I beg to say that my statement that this worthy was never knighted was based upon the (presumably) indisputable evidence of (the registered copy of) his will, of which I gave an abstract when writing formerly. Added to this, there is no mention of " Sir " George in Shaw's ' Knights of England,' as would certainly be the case were he recorded to have received the accolade the only personage of the name figuring in the work being, in fact, one John Meux (Mewse or Monox), who was elevated to knightly rank in 1605.

Of course, it is just possible that our subject attained to the dignity subsequent to the drawing up of the will, no official record of the grant thereof being preserved to be dealt with by Dr. Shaw. As this would,

however, confine the event to a period of less than three years of the close of Monoux's life, long after he had filled the civic chair, I consider my position strong enough to- entitle me to stand to my original statement, notwithstanding the evidence of the M.I. cited.

And if, further, your correspondent is to be understood to suggest that the question of the difference between the respective styles of " Lord Maior " and " Maior " (the form in the will) has anything to do with the reputed knighthood, I submit, with all respect, that it is MR. PIERPOINT who is mistaken, and not

McMURRAY.

" Sir George Monox " is as mythical as Mrs. Harris ; there " never was no sich person." George Monox survived his Mayoralty for nearly thirty years, and until three years before his death remained an Alderman of London, yet neither in his will nor in any of the numerous references to him in the records in Guildhall is he described as a knight, nor is there any contemporary evidence whatever of his having had the distinction conferred on him.

The " Lord Mayoralty," if not as demonstrably mythical as his knighthood, is, to say the least, very doubtful. No definite date can be assigned for the origin of the prefix " Lord," but it is certain that it was not in general and accepted use much, if at all, before 1520 possibly not until several years later. A few years ago there was a correspondence in The Times on the subject, in which Mr. St. John Hope (no mean authority) stated that " down to about 1540 the Chief Magistrate was invariably styled Mayor," and then " after 1540 the use of the term Lord Mayor becomes general." I am not prepared, without a more careful examination of the records than I have yet been able to give them in connexion with this point, to make so definite a pronouncement as Mr. St. John Hope, but I have no hesitation in saying that the designation was not in general use so early as Monox's Mayoralty, though isolated instances of such phrases as " my lord the Mayor " (in letters and petitions) may be found as early as the reign of Edward IV. The attribution of the title " Lord " to such early Mayors as, e.gr., Wai worth and Whittington is an absurd anachronism.

ALFRED B. BEAVEN, M.A.

Greyfriars, Leamington.