Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 3.djvu/502

 496

NOTES AND QUERIES. m s. in. j ra, mi.

word but here comes the Duke of Bedford, who is better able to explain it to Your Majesty than I ; urn.' "

In dealing with the passage and explana- tory note the following points help to fix the date of the occurrence.

Junius wrote in September, 1769. It is incredible that he could allude to an event as having happened in the Duke's " earlier days" if, as MB. WILLIAMS asserts, it had occurred in March, 1767, or only eighteen months before. In October, 1769, Junius does refer to the Duke's supposed insensi- bility at his son's recent death. He instances in proof the Duke's visit to the India House and appearing abroad. It is incredible that he should have missed the stronger point of the visit to Lichfield races and its consequences, if those events had really, as MB. WILLIAMS alleges, occurred in 1767. But the incredibility of MB. WILLIAMS' s statement does not rest only on inferences ; it is established by facts.

That " the late King " was probably George II. is suggested by the slightness of his knowledge of English and his ignorance of the word " drubbing." But as George III. was still reigning when Robert Heron wrote in 1804, it certainly was George II. There- fore the events to which the anecdote refers must have occurred before 1760, or seven years earlier than the date which MB. WILLIAMS assigns to the assault. Lord Trentham succeeded to the title of Earl Gower in 1758. The only Lord Trentham in existence in 1767, if the cudgelling took place in that year, was a child of ten. Sir Thomas Burnet, one of the Judges of the Common Pleas, who tried the assailants, died in 1753, or fourteen years, if MB. WILLIAMS is correct, before the assault which he tried. Finally, the " drubbing " adminis- tered by Sir Edward Hawke to the French was the victory off Rochelle in October, 1747, when the Duke of Bedford was First Lord of the Admiralty, nearly twenty years before the date of the death of the Marquis of Tavistock. That this was the battle to which the anecdote refers is estab- lished by Hawkes' own use of the word in the dispatch in w^hich he announced that success to the Admiralty : "As the enemy's ships were large, they took a great deal of drubbing."

There remains MB. WILLIAMS'S other statement that the Duchess of Bedford left Mr. Homfray some plate in gratitude for his chastisement of her husbands' callous- ness. The will of the Duchess, proved in July, 1794, has been examined at Somer-

set House (see ante, p. 455). It is a short document. There is no mention of Mr. Homfray. There is no bequest of plate. As Mr. Horn! ray's name cannot be found in the ' Law List ' of 1783, it appears probable that he died at least ten years before the Duchess of Bedford, from whom, as MR. WILLIAMS alleges, he inherited a bequest. J. E. LATTON PICKEBING. Inner Temple Library.

SCOTS Music (US. iii. 349). The 'Elegy on the Death of Scots Mtisic ' to some extent explains itself. M'Gibbon, a famoi.s violin-player in his day. had died some time before the poem appeared. It is also true,, no doubt, that old Scottish melodies were beginning to be superseded by foreign airs, Italian trills, German oratorios, and such like. In short, the taste of the Scottish people was undergoing a change for the worse or so the poet thought. The real reason for the poem's appearance, however, may be traced to a deeper source. It is to be interpreted as a national lament over the decay of Scotland's greatness. There were many sad hearts in Scotland in those days. In 1707 the Parliamentary union of England- and Scotland had been accom- plished. At Culloden in 1746 the hopes of the Stuart line of kings were for ever laid low. Scotland, so it seemed, had become a mere province of England. English habits and customs were rolling over the border like a flood, submerging all things Scottish. In these circumstances, Fergusson, in a moment of inspiration, tuned his lyre to a strain of lamentation, and bewailed the decay of his country's glory, of which the decline of Scots music was merely a symp- tom and a warning. W. SCOTT.

'RALPH ROISTEB DOISTEB ' (11 S. iii. 367, 41.3, 454). Udall, it should be remem- bered, found his first patron in Queen Catherine Parr ; and it was at her instance I English of the ' Paraphrase of the New Testament' by Erasmus a work in which he was materially aided by the Princess Mary, afterwards Mary I. As at this time he espoused the Lutheran doctrine, lie dedi- cated his work to Edward VI., and soon afterwards became the recipient of various preferments at the hands of the youthful monarch. Though L T dall took up a resolute attitude in the controversy with Gardiner and the Catholics, on the accession of Mary he succeeded in ingratiating himself both with the Queen and her powerful prelate.
 * that he undertook the translation into