Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 3.djvu/501

 n s. IIL JUNE 24, ion.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

495

MB. RHODES has not included under Dublin ' Ancient Records of Dublin ' (being -copies of the Assembly Rolls), 12 vols., 1447-1778, edited by the late Sir John T. Gilbert, and after his death by Lady Gilbert. Vol. i. contains an account of the ancient city charters, with calendars of the contents of the White Book and the Chain Book of the Dublin Corporation. H. F. BEBBY.

Public Record Office, Dublin.

The following may be added :

Cloucester. Rental of all the Houses in Glou- cester, A.D. 1455, from a Roll in the possession of the Corporation of Gloucester. Compiled by Robert Cole. Edited, with a translation, by W. A. Stevenson. 1890. 4to, pp. xvi-148. and facsimile illustrations. Issue restricted to 250 copies.

Bibliographer's Manual of Gloucestershire Literature. By Hyett and Bazeley. 1895-7 3 yols. 8vo. Issue limited to 350 copies This contains a number of municipal entries. JVM. JAGGABD. Avonthwaite, Stratford-on-Avon.

MB. RHODES may not have noted under

Inverness :

Records of Inverness. Vol. I. 1556-86. Edited by William Mackay and Herbert Cameron Boyd for the New Spalding Club. (1910.' Vol. II. (and probably III.) to follow.

P. J. ANDEBSON. Aberdeen University Library.

JUNITJS AND THE HOBSEWHIPPIXG OF

THE DUKE OF BEDFOBD (11 S. iii. 227, 292, 375, 410, 455). My best thanks are due to MB. ALAN STEWABT, by whose aid I seem to have disposed of the fable of the Duke of Bedford attending Lichfield races immediately after his son's death, and being horse- whipped as a punishment.

Now let me state the " family tradition," as given by Lord John Russell (afterwards Earl Russell) in 1846 : " The fact was that the Duke had been assaulted by some Jacobite rioters, in the Jacobite county of Stafford, two years after the rebellion^ Lord Brougham gives the same account in his ' Statesmen of the Reign of George III.'

It should be remembered that the Duke married Lady Gertrude Leveson-Gower, daughter of John, 1st Earl Gower, whose defection from the Jacobite cause Johnson satirized in his Dictionary. The Duke seems to have attended the races in his father-in-law's company, and to have shared with him the attentions of the Jacobite mob ; but this was twenty years before Lorcl Tavistock's death.

GEOBGE W. E. RUSSELL.

The accuracy of statements in ' N. & Q.' is justly valued ; therefore MB. PBYCE HOM- FBAY WILLIAMS has done well to correct (ante, p. 375) the spelling of the name of his ancestor, Mr. Jeston Homfray, the country attorney who assaulted the "little" Duke of Bedford, as Walpole calls him, on Lich- field race - course. Unfortunately, MB. WILLIAMS has not been content with cor- recting literal inaccuracies. Fortified by what he terms " family tradition," he has fastened an odious charge on the Duke's private character.

The Marquis of Tavistock met with his accident on 10 March, 1767, and died on the 24th of the same month. MB. WILLIAMS asserts that the Duke of Bedford was " so regardless of humanity and decency that he went to Lichfield races when his son was lying dead in his house." and that for this violation of " the laws of society " he was, then and there, horsewhipped by Mr. Jeston- Homfray.

The political career of the Duke, who died in 1770, is set out in contemporary history, and his correspondence, edited by Lord John Russell, has been published. His private life is necessarily less known, and state- ments alleged to be founded on domestic incidents are less easy of refutation. But facts contradict MB. WILLIAMS'S "family tradition." That the Duke of Bedford was assaulted is history ; that the cause of the assault was the high-minded motive alleged by MB. WILLIAMS is fiction (see Cavendish's c Debates,' cited ante, p. 292).

The assault really occurred nearly twenty years before the death of the Marquis of Tavistock. The extract from " Junius " is as follows :

Your Grace is every way unfortunate. I will not look back to those ridiculous scenes by which, in your earlier days, you thought it an honour to be distinguished : the recorded stripes, the public infamy, your own sufferings, or Mr. Rigby's forti- tude."

Robert Heron in his edition of Junius, published in 1804, thus annotates this passage :

"Junius is nes-er content to make the objects of his satire odious, unless he can render them at the same time contemptible. Mr. Heston Humphrey, a country attorney, horsewhipped the Duke, with equal justice, severity, and perseverence, on the course at Lichfield ; Rigby and Lord Trentham were also cudgelled in a most exemplary manner. This gave rise to the following story : When the late ing heard that Sir Edward Hawke had given the French a dubbing, His Majesty, who had never eceived that kind of chastisement, was pleased to isk Lord Chesterfield the meaning of the word : Sir,' says Lord Chesterfield, ' the meaning of the