Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 3.djvu/221

 n s. m. MAR. is, 1911. NOTES AND QUERIES.

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Henry (Rich), 1st Earl of Holland, who was younger son of Robert, Lord Rich (after- wards Earl of Warwick), by Lady Penelope Devereux, daughter of the 1st Earl, all three above named.

The Christian name of Essex appears less frequently among the male sex. Robert (Devereux), 3rd and last Earl of Essex oi that race, married Elizabeth, daughter of Sir William Paulet (a natural son of William, 3rd Marquess of Winchester), which possibly may account for the Essex Pawlet men- tioned ante, p. 92. In the county oi Pembroke, however, it occurs in several instances, e.g., Essex Bowen ; Essex Meyrick of Bush (died 1762) ; Essex Adams, who came up thence to London and was admitted an attorney in 1730, &c. G. E. C.

MANSEL FAMILY (11 S. ii. 269, 6-33; iii. 151). Perhaps I may be permitted to refer to a short sketch which I gave of the cele- brated John Maunsell in, his capacity of Prebendary of Tottenhall in St. Pancras Notes and Queries, p. 173 (originally published in The St. Pancras Guardian for 6 Dec., 1901). John Maunsell was perhaps the greatest pluralist the Church in England has ever known, and, according to Matthew Paris, he died reputed ' ' the richest man in the world." W. F. PRIDEAUX.

THOMAS JAMES THACKERAY (US. iii. 28, 132). This author was related to the great novelist, the latter's grandfather William Makepeace Thackeray being a younger brother of the former's grandfather Thomas Thackeray. T. J. Thackeray was born 5 Sep- tember, 1796, being the eldest son of Thomas Thackeray of Bath by his first wife Frances, daughter of the Rev. Henry Ward of Stevenage, Herts. He was educated at Eton and St. John's Coll., Cambridge, graduating M.B. in 1820. He was captain in the 2nd Somerset Militia, 10 January, 1842, to 11 August, 1855. His four books are entitled ' On Theatrical Emancipation and the Rights of Dramatic Authors,' 1832 ; ' Three Lectures on the Practice of Rifle Firing at Various Distances,' 1853; 'The Soldier's Manual of Rifle Firing at Various Distances,' 1854, 2nd ed. 1858, 3rd ed. 1861; tration of France,' 2 vols., 1856. He also wrote with Charles Shannon * My Wife or my Place,' 1831. The date of his death is not in the long Thackeray pedigree in A. P. Burke's ' Family Records,' 1897, nor is it in Gent. Mag., 1851-68.
 * The Military Organization and Adminis-

FREDERIC BOASE.

BAPTISMAL SCARF : THE FITZWILLIAMS AND WILLIAM THE CONQUEROR (11 S. iii. 165). As the legend of the Fitzwilliam scarf has been introduced into the pages of ' N. & Q.,' it may be well to put on record the following letters.

In The Daily Express of 15 February, Mr. Uniacke wrote :

.... I trust you will allow me to call attention to the recent resuscitation of the romantic but utterly baseless fiction of the " Fitzwilliam scarf," which is said to have been " wound round the arm of William the Conqueror, and when one of his captains, a Fitzwilliam, was laying around him mightily on Hastings beach, the Con- queror whipped the scarf from his arm and gave it to the warrior as a memento of the day."

Now, it has been proved on indisputable evi- dence that the earliest authentic ancestor of the Fitzwilliams was a certain William FitzGodric, who married Albreda de Lisoures about 1170, and is mentioned on the Pipe Roll of that year.

The earlier generations are purely mythical,

and their place, even in the pages of Burke and Lodge, knows them no more.

The following passage from Professor Freeman's celebrated article on ' Pedigrees and Pedigree Makers ' (Contemporary Review, 1877) ought surely to have demolished this absurd fabrica- tion once and for all :

" It is perhaps needless to say that all this is a pure fable ; but one really stands aghast at the utterly shameless nature of the fable. Sir William Fitzwilliam is supposed to be an English Ambassa- dor at the Court of Normandy. The inventor of the fable had so little knowledge as not to see that the Sir, the first William, the Fitz, and the second William, was each of them by itself as much proof as could be needed that a man, of whose name they formed part, could not have been an Englishman of the days of Edward the Con- fessor.... As for the scarf from William's own arm, we need hardly look in the Bayeux tapestry to prove that the Duke, who knew so well how to wield his mace of iron, did not cumber his arm with any frippery of scarves on the day of the great

battle When one is inventing falsehoods

about a family, it is as easy to invent falsehoods to its credit as falsehoods to its dishonour. W T ho- ever invented the pedigree of Earl Fitzwilliam was of another way of thinking. He had the strange fancy of wishing to be descended from a traitor." R. G. FITZGERALD UNIACKE, F.R.S.A.

Upminster.

To this Mr. Fox-Davies replied in The Daily Express of 16 February :

There is too great a disposition at the present day to class as an utter imposture anything for which contemporary proof cannot be produced.

The story of the gift of the scarf at the battle of Hastings is probably rubbish ; there are scores of such inventions, all probably originating in Elizabethan days.

But the dominating point of the tradition is the connection of the scarf with William the Con- queror. From the photographs I have seen of it [ am rather inclined to suggest that the so-called scarf may be really the remains of the armilla or stole worn by King William at his coronation.