Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 3.djvu/429

 ii s. in. JUNE 3, mi.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

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formation in response to my request at the j last reference. I am particularly grateful for the continued generous help accorded by Mr. Harry Hems and Mr. Walter Hayler.

I purpose in my next instalment dealing with memorials to Men of Letters.

JOHN T. PAGE.

Long Itchington, Warwickshire.

Silsoe, Beds. I can now give information from personal inspection concerning the second of Mr. PAGE'S Bedfordshire queries (11 S. ii. 243).

The inscription on the column, or rather obelisk, that stands in Wrest Park, Silsoe, near the main road from Luton to Bedford, is on the side away from the road, and runs as follows :

To the memory of the birth | of George Grey Earl of Harold | Son of Henry and Sophia | Duke & Dutchess of Kent.

It is in Roman capitals throughout. A few particulars about the persons con- cerned are subjoined from G. E. C.'s ' Com- plete Peerage.'

Henry Grey, Earl of Kent, Baron Lucas of Crudwell, was baptized in 1671 at Flitton (in which Silsoe was included as a hamlet up to 1831), and succeeded to the title in 1702. In 1706 he was created Viscount Goderich of co. Hereford, Earl of Harold of co. Bed- ford, and Marquess of Kent, and in 1710 Duke of Kent. He was one of the regents at the time of Queen Anne's death, and filled several other offices of State. In 1740 he was created Marquess Grey, a marquessate which was continued through the female line until it became extinct in 1797. He married firstly, 26 March, 1695, Jemima, dau. and coheir of Thomas, 2nd Baron Crew of Stene, by whom he had four sons and seven daughters ; secondly, 24 March, 1728-9, Sophia, dau. of William Bentinck, 1st Earl of Portland, by his second wife, Jane, dau. of Sir John Temple. One son by the first wife, Anthony Grey, attained maturity, but died in 1723 at the age of 27. The George Grey of the inscription was the fifth and youngest son (the only son by the second wife). He was born on 22 August, 1732, and died in infancy. Henry, Duke of Kent, died on 5 June, 1740, and his widow in June, 1748.

For further information about the family, and about the De Grey mortuary chapel at Flitton, reference may be made to the Victoria County History of Bedford, vol. ii. pp. 326-33. W. R. B. PRIDEAUX.

Flitwick, Beds.

TOTTEL'S ' MISCELLANY,'

SIR ANTONY ST. LEGER, AND JOHN

HARINGTON THE ELDER.

(See ante, pp. 201, 322.)

WHAT year the elder Harington was born, and how long he lived, are facts that are unknown. But we know that he was employed about the Court by Henry VIII. and that he married that monarch's natural daughter Etheldreda, whose mother was a Johanna Dyngley or Dobson, and who brought him as a dowry the monastic for- feitures of Kelston, Batheaston, and Kather- ine in Somerset. The marriage with this lady took place in 1546. She died shortly afterwards, leaving her husband her lands. From his poems we learn that he paid visits to Princess Elizabeth, afterwards Queen Elizabeth, at Hatfield, and that there he met his second wife, she being Isabella Mark- ham, one of Elizabeth's six gentlewomen. His marriage with Isabella Markham took place early in 1554, and shortly afterwards, in the same year, for carrying a letter to Elizabeth, who was then a prisoner in the Tower, he and his wife were likewise confined to the Tower. Sir John's zealous attach- ment to the princess cost him eleven months' imprisonment, and it was during this im- prisonment that the poem I am going to quote was written, as were others which I have already dealt with.

When I first became possessed of a copy of Tottel's ' Miscellany,' several years ago, I was strangely attracted to the book by reading in a comment on one of its poems that whilst confined as Elizabeth's prisoner, in Fotheringay Castle, Mary, Queen of Scots, wrote with a diamond on a window of her prison these lines :

And from the top of all my trust Mishap hath thrown me in the dust. For a long time it was supposed that Queen Mary composed these lines herself, but at last somebody discovered that they were a quotation from the poem in Tottel commencing,

To this my song geve eare, who list, &c.

P. 133.

Now these old songs often appear under various forms, sometimes of one length and sometimes of another, and occasionally they are so much altered as to be difficult to recog- nize. But one would have to make strange alterations in the song immortalized by Mary, Queen of Scots, to deceive me, and therefore, when I saw it in another form in ' Nugse Antique,' I snapped at it at Once.