Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 2.djvu/467

 us. vin. DEO. is, MM.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

461

LONDON, SATURDAY, DECEMBER 13, 1'JIJ.

CONTENTS. No. 207.

TJOTES: Hugh Peters, 461 'Memoirs of Sir John Lang- ham,' 463 Uncollected Kipling Items. 464 Montreal Playbill on Satin, 1842 A Little -known Cross-legged Effigy " Tirikkis " Easter Eggs, 465 St. Mary-le-Bow : Petition for Flags Error in ' D.N.B.' : Roden, 466.

QUERIED : "Beau-pere" Groom of the Stole, 466 -H. S. Smith: Projected List of Yorkshire Officers General John and General .1. B. Macpherson Charles Allen, Bristol Bookseller Flow3r-Name South Africa : Union Medal English as spoken in Dublin "The honours tnree "Monument to Capt. G. Farmer Legend of St. Christopher: Painting at Ampthill, 467 Bishop as Boxer" Balloni " " Dilling "Samuel Woodward De Glamorgan Throp's Wife "Freke Friday," 468 Aphra Behn's Comedies Andrea Ferrara: Freemasons' State Sword of Shrewsbury Old London Streets Rooks' Justice " Dunstable lark " Biographical Information Wanted Manderville Manfteld Scottish Date -Letters Polyglot 'Rubaiyat,' 469.

B.EPLIES : Dr. William Quartermain Thomas Burbidge and Other Poets, 470 The Lord of Burleigh and Sarah Hoggins Divination by Twitching Weston Family, Farnborough Picture - Cards James Morgan, 471 Powlett : Smith or Smyth Carlyle Quotation Colour of Liveries " Gas " as Street-Name. 472 Heine : Trans- lation Wanted Tarring -Lacis or Filet-Work-Sir Ross Donelly " Barring - out," 473" Tram - car " " Entente ordiale," 474 Seventeenth - Century School - Books "Firing-glass" Age of Yew Trees "SS," 475 Sumbel : Wells (harles Lamb's "Mrs. S ," 476 Pierre Loti : Easter Island, 477 Words awaiting Explanation, 478.

NOTKS ON BOOKS: 'The First Editions of Dickens' ' Journal of the Gypsy Lore Society. 1

OBITUARY : Ambrose Heal.

.Booksellers' Catalogues.

HUGH PETERS.

'(See 11 S. vi. 221, 263, 301, 463 ; vii. 4, 33, 45, 84, 123, 163; viii. 430.)

I MUST thank A. M. for calling attention to my mistake in the second of the above articles. There is, however, another mistake in it to which I have been for some time intending to call attention, when I had traced the incident to which it refers. The letter of the Rev. J. Davenport was dated 1659, not 1658 (28 Sept.), and is to be found in the Third Series of the Collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society, in the tenth volume, on pp. 25-6. I repeat the extract, as I have now traced the incident to which it refers :

" Mr. Hugh Peters is distracted and under sore horrors of conscience, crying out of himself as damned and confessing haynous actings. He (Davenport's correspondent, Blinman] concludes for the truth hereof * Sit fides penes auctorem.' "

A pamphlet published on 25 Oct., 1659 .(Thomason), and entitled " A new Map of England ; or, Forty six queries. By I. B."

(British Museum press-mark E. 1001 [3]), asks the following questions :

"40. Whether Mr. Peters was not really asleep when he made his dream ; or whether it be his own or no, being it contains so much truth ?

"41. Whether, then, it ought not to be admitted for a proverb, viz. That knaves and mad men do speak truth as well as children and fools V "

As to this " dream," I have not found any manuscript giving an account of it, nor (except Yonge, who says that Peters an- nounced himself to be Anti-Christ) have I been able to find any other references to it ; but there are plenty of references proving that Peters was compelled to retire into the country, and that, as a result, he was popularly supposed to have died raving mad in this year. Secretary of State Sir Edward Nicholas, writing to M. de Marces on 27 Aug./6 Sept., 1659, said that " Hugh Peters, a notorious preacher up of the pre- sent rebellion, died rnad " (' Cal. State Papers, Domestic, 1659-60,' p. 155).

And Richard Symonds in his note-book (Harleian MSS., No. 991) entered on p. 72 the following :

"Hugh Peters became distracted about ye Pro- tector's government turned out & when he heard a Trumpet, he cryed. No, I was ye Trumpet that have done all this buisness.

" He died [these two words are crossed out] July 1659. False, he lived after the report of his death was occasioned by his absence from London to coole his braynes."

These statements are corroborated by the Anabaptist periodical The Weekly Post, No. 15, for 916 Aug., 1659, containing the following veracious 'account of Peters's supposed death, the object of which was to claim him as a Fifth Monarchy man :

" Mr. Hugh Peters, being full of distraction and confusion in his judgment for some certain hours upon his death bed, yet it pleased the Lord a little before he departed this life to work a grsat dis- pensation in him, declaring that he had an earnest desire in his life time to promote the work of Jesus Christ, so he desired the like now at his death, that the good spirit of King Jesus might reign in the hearts of all His people and subjects. Upon uttering of which words, he immediately changed, and saying, ' Lord Jesus receive my spirit,' he gave up the ghost, ending his days at Brickhill in Bed- fordshire."

There are three distinct villages called Brickhill, viz., Great Brickhill, Little Brick- hill, and Bow Brickhill, but all are in Bucks, close to the borders of Beds. Great Brick- hill had been the scene of violent proceedings by Cromwell's " Triers " on behalf of one Matthew Mead, or Meade, of the neighbour- ing town of Leighton Buzzard, who had attempted to force himself into the rector- ship in defiance of the patron, John