Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 4.djvu/113

 ii s. iv. AUG. 5, ion.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

107

WE must request corresp9ndents desiring in- formation on family matters of only private interest to affix their names and addresses to their queries, in order that answers may be sent to them direct.

" THE KING'S TURNSPIT is A MEMBER OF PARLIAMENT." Noting the telling phrase of Edmund Burke (four times repeated) in his great speech on Economical Reform delivered on 11 February, 1780, as to the difficulty of getting reforms carried out " because the turnspit in the King's kitchen was a Member of Parliament," I looked up the origin of this phrase in a speech made on the 16th of April, 1777, by Earl Talbot, then Lord Steward of the Household. Lord Talbot was on that occasion referring to his attempted reform of putting some of the Ptoyal Household on board wages, and said :

"I can better explain my meaning by adverting to a single circumstance, which will show how difficult it is to reform the menial servants of His Majesty's household, when the profits are enjoyed by persons of a certain rank and service employed by another. The fact I allude to is, that one of the turnspits in His Majesty's Kitchen was, and I believe still is, a member of the other House. The poor man who had performed the duty had 5 a year for his trouble."' Parliamentary Register, 1777,' p. 79.

If there, is any summary account in print of the nature and profits of the various sinecure offices in the gift of the Govern- ment of the day in the reign of George III., I shall be obliged by a reference to it.

ERNEST CLARKE. 31, Tavistock Square, W.C.

THE DUKE OF WELLINGTON'S FIRST SCHOOL. Where did " Arthur Wesley " {as the future duke spelt his name till 1798) first go to school ? Sir Herbert Maxwell in his ' Life of Wellington,' vol. i. p. 4 (1900), states that he was sent first, "it is believed, to a private school at Chelsea, whence he went to Eton." The statement accords with that in some other biographies, and also with the ' D.N.B.' But scarce as the records of the Duke's boyhood may be, it is perhaps a question whether something further could not have been ascertained about it and related with interest.

Dean Butler, who for 43 years (1819-62) was Vicar of Trim, co. Meath, mentions in his ' Trim Castle ' (fourth edition, 1861, p. 60) that a house called " Talbot's Castle " in Trim " was the place of the early educa- tion of the Duke of Wellington," and on the

next page he relates the following anecdote of him :

" When he was at school in Trim he must have been a very little boy, for one of his schoolfellows told me that when Crosbie afterwards Sir Edward, of balloon notoriety had climbed to the top of the Yellow Steeple, and had thrown down his will, disposing of his game cocks and other boyish valuables in case he should be killed in coming down, the future Iron Duke began to cry when he found that nothing had been left to him."

The story appears authentic and circum- stantial, and is supported by local tradition, which seems to have always unhesitatingly held that the Duke was first educated at that school. That his eldest brother, the Marquess Wellesley, began his education at a private school in Trim is stated in the ' D.N.B.' He was born in 1760, the Duke in 1769, and it is, perhaps, just possible (though the suggestion is prompted merely by a desire to sift out the truth of the matter) that the story related above should refer to the elder brother, Richard Wesley or Wellesley. Edward Crosbie w.ould seem, at least, to have been nearer the age of Richard than Arthur Wesley, if he made his first balloon ascent on 19 January, 1785, as stated in ' The Encyclopaedia Britannica ' under ' Aeronautics.'

But however that may be, Dean Butler's story and the long-standing local tradition supply good ground for the belief that " A. Wesley," like his eldest brother, began his education at the same private school in Trim. Can any reader of ' N. & Q.' further elucidate this matter ?

R. E. E. CHAMBERS.

CAMPBELL'S * NAPOLEON AND THE ENG- LISH SAILOR.' Most of those who have read Campbell's poems will remember a small one under the above title. The author, I believe, says he got the story from both an English and a French source. But is there any satisfactory evidence of its truth ?

W. T. LYNN.

Blackheath.

CAPT. DENNIS MAHONY : CAPT. STRICK- LAND KINGSTON. Can any of your readers inform me whether the Capt. Mahony who wrote ' On Singhala or Ceylon, and the Doctrines of Buddha from the Books of the Singhalais,' in ' Asiatic Researches,' vol. viii. (1801), was the Capt. Dennis Mahony of the 1st Regiment, Native Infantry, who died on 13 December, 1813, at Broach (East India Register) ?

To what corps did Capt. Strickland Kings- ton, who was Paymaster and Commissary of