Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 12.djvu/315

 ii s. xii. OCT. 16, 1915.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

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vision faded away, and the King, returning to his cabinet, committed the facts to paper.

The document, signed by the King and witnessed by his companions, is said to be still preserved in the Royal Archives. The King's vision is said to have shadowed forth the death of Gustavus III., and the trial ot his assassin Ankarstroem before the assembled States.

The above is only a very rough sketch of the story, which, if true, is certainly the most remarkable one in history. It does not seem to be generally known. It was first to my knowledge published in vol. i. ot Fraser's Magazine, and an abstract .afterwards appeared in 'The World of Anecdote,' by Paxton Hood, in 1880.

If the document signed by the King and duly witnessed is still in existence, the probable explanation is that the King alone saw the vision, but compelled his companions to acknowledge the same. Kingly whims are often humoured- That the King was in a morbid condition of mind on the night of the vision is undoubted, but the story is a most interesting one and well worth reading.

J. H. MURRAY. Edinburgh.

MRS. SAMUEL FOOTE (11 S. xii. 260). I imagine that MR. BLEACKXEY fixes the year 1741 as the date of Foote's supposed marriage to " a gentlewoman of Worcester " from certain circumstances narrated by William Cooke, " Conversation Cooke " as he was familiarly styled, who wrote a volume of memoirs of the life of Samuel Foote in 1805. Foote's mother was a Miss Goodere, daughter of Sir Edmund Goodere, Bart., and she had two brothers, Sir John Dinely Goodere and Samuel Goodere, a captain in the Royal Navy. The latter, when in command of the Ruby lying off Bristol, came on shore, kid- napped his brother, took him on board his ship, and had him strangled in the purser's cabin. This was his revenge on his brother for having disinherited him in favour of his sisters. The foul crime was perpetrated on the night cf 18 Jan., 1741, and the captain and two of his accomplices were tried, and executed at Bristol on the 20th of' the following April. Foote's father was a magistrate at Truro, and Cooke 's story is that the worthy old gentleman, shortly before his death, had sanctioned his son's marriage with a young Worcestershire lady and received them in Cornwall for the honey- moon, where, on their arrival one dreary January night, a serenade was heard outside which no one next morning could account for,

and the moment being carefully noted by Foote, it turned out afterwards to be exactly that of the consummation of the frightful tragedy at Bristol, above mentioned.

This, so far as I know, is the only evidence that Foote ever married, and I doubt if any reliance can be placed on it. Cooke was not considered a very reliable chronicler, and much that he wrote was merely hearsay gossip.

In a very full account of Samuel Foote in the ' Dictionary of National Biography,' written, I fancy, by our old friend Joseph Knight, as it bears his initials, no mention is made of Foote ever having married. He left his property at his death, in 1777, to two illegitimate sons, Francis and George Foote, who survived him. John Forster, moreover, in the chapter of his ' Biographical Essays ' dealing with Foote's life, observes that the story of his marriage

"would seem indeed to rest on no sufficient author rity. No traces of any such settled connexion are discoverable in Foote's career. The two sons that were born to him were not born in wedlock, and when the mature part of his life arrived, and the titled and wealthy crowded to his table, his home had never any recognized mistress."

WlLLOUGHBY MAYCOCK.

SOME AMERICANISMS (11 S. xii. 218). The list given at this reference will be a consola- tion to those who deplore the gradual ex- tinction largely by our system of education of dialect words, since a third of the words culled from Judge Ruppenthal's compilation were current long ago, and illustrate sur- vival, far more interesting than many of the results of American word-coinage.

Brock was the old name for a badger, hence " brockfaced," marked in the face with a streak like a badger.' E.D.D.,' i. 409.

Cogitate. Those who have read ' The Glyptic, an Attempt at a Description of Henry Jones's Museum at Stratford -on -A von,' by John W. Jarvis (1875), or who had the good fortune to listen to Jones's description of his crooked sticks, will recall his amusing use of the word "excogitate" in the sense of " dwell upon," " carefully consider."

Fine-haired and fine in the coat are expressions constantly applied to cattle and horses in calling attention to a well-known indication of good breed- ing.

Go-back land. This is equivalent to the descrip- tion "tumbled down," applied to thousands of acres of land which was allowed to go out of cultivation during the cycle of disastrous seasons that com- menced in 1879.

Hog. Grain sown without previous ploughing of the land would be put in roughly, in a cheap and discreditable way. The word has long been used to describe similar treatment of a hedge, to say nothing of a horse's mane. 'E.D.D.,' iii. 197.