Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 3.djvu/50

 NOTES AND QUERIES. [ii s. m. JAN. 21, 1911

I believe, Citizens, that this short statemen argues sufficiently in my favour, and proves plainly that I cannot be classed, by the law o: 17 September, 1793, Old Style, under suspected men. I could also support myself in thisi resped by the Report made by the Diplomatic Com mittee to the National Convention, 14 February 1793, at the time of the reunion of the Principality .of Monaco to the French Republic, and claim the justice which this Committee did not fail to render on that occasion to the sentiments that I have always manifested.

But, Citizens, I have without doubt sufficiently proved that I am entitled to profit by the kind intentions of the decree of the 18th of this month, and I implore your justice to grant me speedily the benefit of it, fully convinced that the repre- sentatives of a free and generous people will put .a stop to the detention which I have suffered for nearly a year, and that they will at the same time order the removal of the seals put in my house.

As to the correspondence mentioned above, I can only congratulate myself that from what has been sent to the Committee of General Safety it will be the better able to judge of my true sentiments. As to being one of the enemies of the State, I cannot conceive what has led the Committee of Revolutionary Surveillance, of the Section of the Red Cap, to use these terms ; in truth, I am certain of never having written against the Revolution or the prosperity of the French Republic, and I defy any one to produce the slightest proof to the contrary.

Health and Fraternity.

On the title-page of this Memoir was copied the writing here added :

Reasons for the detention of Citizen Monaco

Grimaldi.

Section of the Red Cap. Committee of Revolutionary Surveillance. The 24 Thermidor, year 2 of the Republic one and indivisible. Arrested as ex-noble, and having a son an emigre. On taking off the seals placed -on his house to extract the papers, they have sent all his correspondence with the enemies of the State, at home and beyond the Republic, to the Committee of General Safety.

Made the day and year above said.

Signed D'Aire President and Tosi Secretary.

The MS. is on 4 pp. 4to, similar paper and watermark to the Examination (11 S. i. 362). The parts in italics are underlined in the original. The year seems to be 1794.

D. J.

EDWAED CHAPLIN. I have only just seen in ' N. & Q.' for 17 December, 1904 (10 S. ii. 488), an inquiry as to Edward Chaplin, admitted to Westminster School in 1786. He was my grandfather, born 7 July, 1771, and died 14 November, 1858. If G. F. R. B. wishes further information, I shall be happy to give it on his writing to me. HOLROYD CHAPLIN.

2, Holland Villas Road, W,

ANNA SEWABD : DATE OF HER BAPTISM. Mr. A L. Reade in his ' Johnsonian Glean- ings ' (p. 34) writes : "It is strange that the date of Anna Se ward's birth never seems to have been correctly stated." He gives the date as 1 December, 1744.

Being her representative, tracing through the first wife of John Hunter, I have taken the trouble (I wish I had done so before publishing a booklet on Anna Seward) to obtain a certificate, signed on 5 May, 1910, by the present Rector of Eyam, which states that " Anne Seward, the daughter of the Rev. Thomas Seward, Rector of Eyam, and Mrs. Elizabeth Seward his wife," was baptized 28 December, 1742.

The Seward family Bible is in the posses- sion of Sir Robert White-Thomson of Ex- bourne, North Devon, who is the representa- tive of Anna Seward through Hunter's second wife, and the statement in it that she was born on the 1st of December, 1744, and baptized on the 28th of the same month, and that her sponsors were her Uncle Norton, her Aunt Martin, and Mrs. Jackson of Burton, must, of course, now be treated as erroneous, so far as it relates to the date of the baptism. STAPLETON MARTIN.

The Firs, Norton, Worcester.

SYBIL, QUEEN or SCOTLAND : HER PARENTAGE. Alexander I., King of Scot- Land, about the time of his accession (1107), married " Sybilla," illegitimate daughter of Henry I., King of England ('D.N.B.'). Sybil's mother is not referred to, but under Henry I. she is said to have been a sister of Waleran, Count of Meulan, the authorities cited being Orderic and Skene's ' Celtic Scotland.' No doubt the sister referred to was Isabel (afterwards wife of Gilbert de Clare, 1st Earl of Pembroke), who was a mistress of Henry I. (Planche, ' Conqueror and his Companions,' i. 216).

It seems rash to suggest that Orderic, a contemporary chronicler, was completely at fault ; but from a consideration of the dates involved it seems to me impossible
 * hat any sister of Count Waleran can have

3een mother to Sybil. Waleran was the Idest son of Robert de Beaumont, Count of Meulan (France), Lord of Pontaudemer and Beaumont (Normandy), and 1st Earl of eicester, by his wife Isabel, daughter of Hugh the Great, Count of Vermandois, younger son of Henry I., King of France ibid, i. 212). When the marriage of Robert and Isabel was projected, it was forbidden n the ground of consanguinity, by Ivo, 3ishop of Chartres, at the beginning of 1096