Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 10.djvu/273

 11 S. X. OCT. 3, 1914.]

NOTES AND QUERIES,

267

his son, Mr. George E. Windeatt, Town Clerk. Now the Town Clerk has been called up on military service, and his father (whilst still Mayor) has been chosen as .Deputy Town Clerk to his son in his absence.

T. CANN HUGHES, M.A., F.S.A. Lancaster.

HISTORY OF ENGLAND WITH RIMING VERSES. (See 11 S. iv. 168, 233, 278, 375, 418, 517; v. 34.) A more elaborate pro- duction than those mentioned at the above references is

" The History of England in Easy Verse, to the Close of the Year 1809. Written for the purpose of being committed to memory by young persons of both sexes, by W. B. Johnson, A.M."

The second edition is (London) 1812, con- sisting of 136 pages and about 1,400 lines, all in riming couplets. As a specimen, the author's account of the Armada may be taken :

Meanwhile the Spanish monarch's mighty boast, Th' invincible Armada, seeks our coast : But Howard, Hawkins, Frobisher, and Drake, With fewer numbers make the Spaniards quake. Defeat and terror the Armada shared, And tempests shattered what the English spared. The ' Biographical Dictionary of Living Authors,' 1816, attributes to the Eev. W. R. Johnson, A.M., Histories of Greece and Rome, a Pantheon, and 'The Grammar of Geography,' all in verse, 1807-12, but gives 410 particulars of the author ; nor does it mention his ' History of England in Easy Verse.' W. B. H.

GILES AND ELIZABETH CALVERT, BOOK- SELLERS. Mr. H. R. Plomer has not noted the dates of the deaths of Giles Calvert and his wife Elizabeth in his ' Dictionary of Printers and Booksellers,' &c. Some details of their wills are important, having regard to the facts given in my articles on the 4 Forged Speeches and Prayers of the Regicides ' (see the first, ninth,' twelfth, and fourteenth articles, US. vii. 301 ; viii. 81, 203, 284).

1. Will of Giles Calvert, citizen and stationer (P.C.C. Juxon 106). Dated 11 Aug., 1663, and proved 28 Aug., 1663. Sole executrix, his wife Elizabeth. After reciting that his wife, according to the custom of London, is entitled to a third of his estate, and his sons, Nathaniel and Giles, to another third, testator bequeaths 101. to his servant Elizabeth Evans, and directs that the residue shall be divided between his wife and two sons in equal shares.

This Elizabeth Evans carried the MSS. of Twyn's seditious tract to him from the

Calverts in 1663. See the original report of Twyn's trial and the postscript (omitted in ' State Trials ' ), as well as the references to Evans in the ' Domestic State Papers.'

According to the ' Calendar of State Papers ' Nathaniel Calvert seems to have died in 1664, probably of the plague. On 18 Feb., 1665/6, his mother, Elizabeth Calvert, took out letters of administration to his estate, describing him as of the parish of St. Gregory, London. He was an apprentice at the time of his death ap- parently to his mother.

2. Will of Elizabeth Calvert (P.C.C. Dycer 12). Dated 19 Oct., 1674. Proved 5 Feb., 1675. Witnesses, Henry Meade, John Forster, Edward Forman, Phyllis Evans (mark). Appoints her cousin, William Ballard of Rochester, gent., her sole executor, and directs that, according to his discretion, her body is "to be decently buried among the baptists." Any " overplus " after pay- ment of her debts and funeral expenses, &c., she bequeaths to her son Giles Calvert, of the City of London, bookseller.

Giles Calvert, jun., was a child at the time of his father's death, and does not appear to have been connected in any way with the circulation of the fraudulent or seditious literature that was his parents' chief stock- in-trade after the Restoration.

J. B. WILLIAMS.

CLERKENWELL TEA-GARDENS. That de- scriptive "poem," 'The Art of Living in London,' " printed for the Author, 1793," provides an interesting reference to a tea- garden not mentioned by the late Mr. Warwick Wroth in his excellent ' London Pleasure Gardens of the Eighteenth Century.'

Or Bagnigge, famous for it's motley crew

Of sprightly damsels pleasurable Jew ;

Or that once celebrated, small retreat,

Where Cromwell* liv'd, tyrannically great ;

Oh 1 sad reverse of sublunary things,

This house, which once contain'd the dread of

kings,

Who made three mighty realms, with awe, obey, Now sells (inglorious change ! ) a dish of tea.

The asterisk directs to a foot-note " Crom- well's Gardens." Pinks ('History of Clerken- well ') discusses the identification of the house in Clerkenwell Close as a residence of the Protector ; and the alternative History, by the Rev. Thomas Cromwell, also men- tions this house, but deprecates the identi- fication. Neither mentions its use as a popular resort.

The reference might apply to Cromwell House and Gardens at Brompton, but for