Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 3.djvu/400

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NOTES AND QUERIES. tu s. in. MAY 20, mi.

" the triple alliance " it was called, as the union was formed by civil marriage as well as by the Catholic and Protestant rites an Irish lady, Miss Penelope (Grice) Smyth of Ballynatray. She and her sister (who afterwards married " the rich old Lord Dinorben ") lived at Naples with a dilenna, Mrs. ^ Phayre. Sir Richard F. Burton mentions them in the account of his boyhood. He writes :

" Penelope had always distinguished herself at Paris by mounting wild horses in the Bois de Boulogne, which ran away with her and shook her magnificent hair loose. She became a favourite at the Court of Naples, and amused the dull royalties with her wild Irish tricks. It is said that, on one occasion, she came up with a lift instead of the expected vol au vent or pudding. She ended by marrying the Prince of Capua, greatly to the delight of the King, who found an opportunity of getting rid of his brother."

An account of a dinner the Duke of Devon- shire gave in 1840 to the Duke of Sussex and Lady Cecilia Underwood, and the Prince of Capua and the Contessa di Mascoli (as his wife was afterwards called), will be found in Greville's ' Memoirs ' (vol. iv. p. 288). A. FRANCIS STEUART.

Prince Charles, that is, Charles Ferdinand Bourbon, Prince of Capua, was the brother of Ferdinand II., King of Naples and Sicily, better known as King Bomba. Penelope Smyth was the daughter of Grice Smyth, Esq., of Ballynatray, co. Waterford. They were married on 5 April, 1836, in somewhat romantic, circumstances. Having eloped from Naples to England in order to be married according to the rites of the English Church, their marriage was stopped by a caveat entered by the Sicilian envoy to this country in the interest of his master, King Bomba. The arguments for and against the union are briefly summarized in Ward's 'Men of the Reign,' 1885, pp. 157-8. The case was legally decided against the prince and princess. Nothing daunted, however, they caused their banns to be published, and were duly married at St. George's, Hanover Square, no valid reason being alleged to prevent the union. It was the fourth occa- sion on which the prince and princess had married each other. They were married once at Rome, once at Madrid, once at Gretna Greenland last of all in London. In 1862 the Prince of Capua died, leaving his widow with two children, Prince Francesco Fer- dinando Carlo of Capua, and the Princess Vittoria Augusta Penelope. The Princess of Capua survived her husband until 15 De- cember 1882, dying at the royal villa of Martia, near Lucca. SCOTUS.

During the summer of 1879 the Princess Vittoria, daughter of the beautiful Penelope Smyth of Limerick, was living with her relatives, I believe, at a country villa fcur or five miles from the Bagni di Lucca, towards Lucca. The young princess, on the occasion of a special ball which was attended by the officers of one of the cavalry regiments stationed at Lucca, appeared at the Royal Casino, Bagni di Lucca, without any par- ticular stir, and was a gay partaker in the medley of a lively cotillon which closed the entertainment. As usual in this dance, the ladies have the privilege of selecting their partners, by chance or choice. I shared the common lot, and probably owed the favour to my English nationality.

I afterwards heard from an Irish friend the romantic story of Miss Penelope Smyth, the wife of the Bourbon prince.

WILLIAM MERCER.

THE AUTHORIZED VERSION : DATE OF ITS TRANSLATION (11 S. iii. 327). Mr. Scrivener has observed with truth (' Intro- duction to Cambridge Paragraph Bible ' ) that " never was a great enterprise like the production of our Authorized Version carried out with less knowledge handed down to posterity 'of the labourers, their method, and order of working." Hosts of writers have essayed to relate the story of our English Bible, but as a rule the result has been to leave the reader profoundly perplexed with regard to the points to which the REV. W. MUIR calls attention. And yet an explana- tion does not seem to be altogether beyond the range of possibility. In the history of the production of the Authorized Version two distinct periods require to be kept in mind : (1) the period of preparation, extending from 1604 to 1607, and (2) the period of revision or reconstruction or making a new version out of old ones, extending from 1607 to 1610.

As regards the first of these the period of preparation the work done was purely preliminary. Fifty -four scholars were ap- pointed, but only forty-seven of them took part in the work. Their names are given by Fuller, and reprinted by Anderson in his ' Annals of the English Bible.' They were divided into six companies, and to each com- pany a different portion of Scripture was assigned. The duty required of them was not to make a new translation, but merely to select the best of previous existing trans- lations, and such as gave the sense of the original most faithfully. The Bishops' Bible was the groundwork of their labours, but Tindale's, Matthew's, Coverdale's, Whit-