Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 4.djvu/353

 ii s. iv. OCT. 28, mi.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

347

The marriage allegations pertaining to the late Commissary Court of Surrey are preserved in a new muniment-room at Southwark Cathedral.

DANIEL HIPWELL.

WE must request correspondents 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.

Sm FRANCIS DRAKE, " UNITS DE CON- SORTIO MEDII TEMPLI." In the catalogue of ' Notable Middle Templars ' by Mr. John Hutchinson, formerly Librarian to the Middle Temple, appears the following memo- randum under the heading Drake, Sir Francis :

" The connexion of this famous admiral with the Inn appears in the following memorandum in the Records : ' Die Jovis quarto die Augusti anno D'ni 1586 annoq. regni D'ne Elizabethe Regine 28Fran- ciscus Drake Miles unus de consortio Medii Templi post navigationem anno preterito susceptam et Omnipotentis Dei beneficio prospere peractam, aceessit tempore prandii in aulam Medii Templi ac recognovit, Joanni Savile armigero tune Lectori, Matheo Dale, Thome Bowyer, Henrico Agmon- desham et Thome Hanham magistris de banco et aliis il'm pra?sentibus, antiquam familiaritatem et amicitiam cum consortiis generosorum Medii Templi praedict., omnibus de consortiis in aula praesentibus, cum magno gaudio et unanimiter, gratulantibus reditum suum foelicem."

Mr. Hutchinson then proceeds to say :

" From this memorandum it would appear that this renowned admiral was a member (censors) of the Middle Temple, and tradition affirms that he was so. There is, however, no record of the ad- mission of any Francis Drake on the register of the Inn."

I myself do not feel certain that the above Latin memorandum proves that Drake was a member of the Middle Temple. " Socie- tas " is the usual word for a " Society " of one of the Inns of Court, " socius " being the usual word for one of its members. Why on this occasion only should " consortium " be used ? for the word is nowhere else found in our records, which begin in the reign of Henry VII. And why is it used in the plural ? I think there must be some difference between " societas " and " con- sortium," and I should be much obliged if any of your readers would throw light on the passage.

I^may mention that when Drake " dropped in" to Hall at luncheon - time, he was actually a member of the Inner Temple, having been specially admitted a " socius "

of that Inn on 28 July, 1582. See Inder- wick's ' Records of the Inner Temple.' Is there a known instance of any one as early as the reign of Elizabeth being a member of both Inns ? MEDIO-TEMPLARIUS

Du BELLAY. Amongst a number of waste leaves, printed proofs, and authors' copy, the refuse of a Paris printing-office of the middle of the sixteenth century, I found two leaves of Latin verse, beginning Ad Hilermum Bellaium Cognomine Langium. Venisti columen mee Camaenae Votis omnibus expetitus usque Venisti, &c.

I should be glad to learn if these have been printed, and if so, in what book.

E. GORDON DUFF. Prince's Park, Liverpool.

REV. SAMUEL GREATHEED. I should be glad of any references to the Rev. Samuel Greatheed, the friend of the poet Cowper. The references in Southey and Hay ley's Lives of Cowper, and in Wright's ' Letters of Cowper,' are known to me. I want details of his parentage, life, and career, and to know whether any of his letters have been pub- lished. L. E. T.

Pemb. Coll., Camb.

Miss HOWARD AND NAPOLEON III. A French correspondent desires information about Miss Howard, an Englishwoman, who was a well-known mistress of Louis Napoleon, afterwards Napoleon III. I shall be obliged if some one can tell me the date and place of her birth, or any other particu- lars concerning her. I am told she was born at Brighton. HORACE BLEACKLEY.

Fox Oak, near Walton-on-Thames.

MARY JONES'S EXECUTION, 1771. Mary Jones was sentenced to death at the Old Bailey on 12 September, 1771, for stealing a few yards of lace from a shop on Ludgate Hill, and executed at Tyburn on 16 October following. She is described as a very beautiful woman of 26, and committed the theft to buy food for her children, being in the greatest poverty owing to her husband having been carried off by a pressgang.

Her sad case seems to have attracted little attention at the time, but became famous a few years later when Sir William Meredith, in a speech in the House of Commons on 13 May, 1777, referred to her execution as a foul murder. The story has often been related in histories of crime, but beyond Meredith's speech and the accounts in the newspapers and magazines I have come across no contemporary references to Mary