Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 11.djvu/455

 11 8. XL JUNE 12, 1915.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

445

LONDON, SATURDAY, JUNE 12, 1915.

CONTENTS. No. 285.


 * Identity of Isabel Bigod, 445 Site of the Globe

Theatre, 447 Irish Annals Shakespeare Allusions, 449 Calcutta Statues and Memorials Tennyson and Crabbe Twentieth-Century English, 450.

^QUERIES : "Le Roy ne veult" "Ice Saints "Boucher Family Ghostwick Palmer as Hamlet Flemish Immi- grantsOld Ring Tracy Ferrers of Tamworth Castle, 451 Old Etonians -Lieut. E. Collyer Goats with Cattle Dutch Prayer-Book Miss Barsanti Milner Portraits G. Wallis C. F. Ellerman Repudiation of Public Loan ._ Welch," 452 Hugh Price Hughes Sir James Paget John Parselle, 453 " Alter " in a Latin Epitaph Chesapeake and Shannon Adam Gordon Emperor Charles V. Epigram on Hearne, 454 Refusal of Knight- hoodJudgment of Solomon, 455.

HE PLIES : De Gorges, 455 -Image of AUhallows Crooked Lane:. Lovekin, 456 ' Mirage of Life 'Nonconformist Ministers, 457 St. Chad Retrospective Heraldry, 458 Irish Marching Tunes Alphabet of Stray Notes Electro- Plating and its Discoverers, 459" Scummer "Tubular Bells Nancy Dawson, 460 Duignan Bibliography Authors Wanted Roses a Cause of Colds Macaulay's Lord Bacon,' 461 Hose, 462.

NOTES ON BOOKS: 'The Samson-Saga '' A Guide to the English Language ' ' The Burlington.'

Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century Books on London. ' L'lnterm^diaire.'

THE IDENTITY OF ISABEL BIGOD.

IF one consults those genealogical authorities who have dealt with the pedigree of the Bigods, Earls of Norfolk, one discovers either a great divergence of opinion as to the identity of the lady whose name appears at the head of this communication, or a complete omission of her name.

This want of unanimity might be better understood had Isabel been a member of a family of less importance and social standing than was that of the Bigods, and one may not perhaps be far wrong in assuming that this apparent inability to "place her" in the pedigree correctly may be mainly due to the fact, as in the case of many another family of equal social position, that in the early days compilers of pedigrees confined themselves rather to the public than to the private side of a family when writing up its ancestry, that is to say, they more or less limited their efforts to dealing with those in the direct line of succession instead of compiling a table which would give a complete record of the whole of the issue of each member of the family, whether inHhe

direct line or not. The result is that an unabridged history of the early ancestors of a family, whether the pedigree be com- piled by the Heralds or other authorities, is seldom discovered.

Whatever the cause, the fact remains that Isabel Bigod's parentage is either so recorded as, from the diversity of the statements, to throw doubt upon the reliability thereof, or else she herself is omitted altogether from the pedigree.

For example, we find her described in the claim for the Barony of Slane presented to the House of Lords, 1835 (Banks, ' Baronies in Fee,' i. 221), as "daughter of Boger le Bigod"; as "sister to John Bigot" (Banks, ib., ii. 78) ; as " sister of John Bigod " (' Collections relating to Families of Love tot, Furnival, Verdon, and Talbot,' by Dr. Nathaniel Johnson, 1693-4, Add. MS. 18,446, Brit. Mus.) ; as " daughter of John Bigod " (Banks, ' Dormant and Extinct Baronage,' i. 105) ; and as " daughter of Ralph Bigod " (Burke, ' Extinct Peerage,' ed. 1840, p. 60 ; Carthew, ' History of Hundred of Launditch,' Part I. p. 39 ; Milles, ' Catalogue of Honour,' p. 505) ; whilst Blomefield ('Norfolk,' v. 225), Silas Taylor (' History and Antiquities of Harwich and Dovercourt,' pp. 71, 121), the Bev. George Munford (' Analysis of the Domesday Book of Co. Norfolk,' 1858, p. 22), J. F. Marsh ('Annals of Chepstow Castle, 'p. 268), Harri- son ('History of Yorkshire,' i. 254), Harl. Soc. (vol. xvi. p. 222, ' The Visitation of Yorkshire, 1564'), and the writer of the article in The Gentleman's Magazine, 1827, i. 5SS, on the 'Office of Earl Marshal,' make no reference to Isabel in their respec- tive Bigod pedigrees.

Whilst we have the above assertions as to who Isabel was, there is one writer who tells us who she was not.

Mr. Hamilton Hall, F.S.A., in his most interesting and learned paper read before the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland, 26 Nov., 1912, on 'The Marshal Pedigree' (Journal of the Boyal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland, part i. vol. xliii., March, 1913), says regarding Isabel that the assertion that she was the daughter of Balph Bigod is an impossible one, for

"she was certainly older than either he [Ralph] or his brothers. By the dates of her issue* she was born about, if not actually in, the year 1205 " ; and he adds, speaking of the marriage of Hugh Bigod, third Earl of Norfolk, and Maud Marshall, " Of this marriage no

by Mr. Hamilton Hall.
 * These dates, unfortunately, are not revealed