Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 4.djvu/462

 456

NOTES AND QUERIES. 111 s. iv. DEC. 2, 1911.

suggest an adjective to qualify the Grant ? The Granthamites would be amused if any learned man should go among them and presume to talk to them of their Wit-ham, which I take the liberty of thinking may denote the winding, quiet river. Let him ask, too, for Els-ham House at Grantham, and I think he would puzzle a native.

I believe Tattershall is often called Tatters' al ; and that was the way in which men spoke of its namesake, a well-known firm of horse-dealers near Hyde Park Corner.

ST. SWITHIN.

PEERS IMMORTALIZED BY PUBLIC-HOUSES (US. iv. 228, 271,331). There is an error in MR. F. S. SNELL'S reply at p. 332. The owner of the estate of Canons, and the builder of the magnificent house, was James, first Duke of Chandos, not Duke of Buck- ingham and Chandos, who died 1744. The estate and house were sold in 1747 (see ante, p. 261). James, third and last Duke, grandson of the first Duke, died in 1789. At his death all his honours became extinct, excepting the Barony of Kinloss, which devolved on his only daughter and heiress Anna Elizabeth, who in 1796 married the Marquis of Buckingham, afterwards (1822) created Duke of Buckingham and Chandos.

Apparently Canons came into the posses- sion of the first Duke of Chandos by his first marriage (1695) with Mary, daughter, and eventually sole heiress, of Sir Thomas Lake of Canons. See G. E. C.'s (Cokayne's) ' Complete Peerage.'

ROBERT PIERPOINT.

URBAN V.'s FAMILY NAME (US. iv. 204, 256, 316). At the end of his interesting note at the last reference L. M. R, accepts the alleged descent of the Norman lords of Bee Crispin (or Crespin) and the English Fitz- williams from the Grimaldi. This theory seems to have been based en an armorial coincidence, the three families in question all bearing a lozengy shield of silver and gules. But as ex hypothesi the house of Crispin separated from the parent stock, and the Fitzwilliams from the Crispins, before heraldry was invented, the theory seems far-fetched. So far as the Fitz- williams are concerned their alleged descent is certainly fictitious, the first known member of the family being a William fitz Godric who was living more than a century after the Conquest (cp. 11 S. iii. 215-16). Of his father nothing is known beyond his name Godric, but this is so distinctively English that it is almost certain the family

was of English origin. The name Fitz- william means simply " Son of William," and did not become fixed as the family name until more than two centuries after the Conquest the head of the family temp. Edward I. being styled William fitz The mas Ancestor, xii. 114).

The standard-bearer referred to is, no doubt, Turstin fitz Row, who bore the Duke's standard at Hastings in place of Ralf de Toeni ; but although Turstin has been affiliated to the house of Bee Crispin, M. Le Prevost denied that he had any connexion with them (Planche, ' Conqueror and his Companions,' ii. 197) ; and his estates did not descend to the Fitzwilliams, but reverted to the Crown whether by escheat or forfeiture is uncertain (Round, ' Studies in Peerage and Family Histcry,' p. 194).

Even the alleged descent of the Norman Crispins from a Prince of Monaco seems to be in need of proof, as Mr. Oswald Barren remarks that " no one has traced a common ancestry for the seigneurs of Bee Crespin and the Grimalcli " (Ancestor, xii. 112).

G. H. WHITE.

St. Cross, Harleston, Norfolk,

BRADSHAW THE REGICIDE (US. iv. 344). In reply to a statement which had recently appeared in The Illustrated London News to the effect that James Edward Bradshaw of Fair Oak Park was the lineal descendant and representative of the regicide, " B." wrote as follows in the issue of 23 Feb., 1856 :

" Mr. Bradshaw of Fair Oak is descended from the Bradshaws of Darcy Lever, near Bolton-le- Moors, who first became possessed of that estate in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, being no doubt a younger branch of the Bradshaws of Bradshaw Hall, near the same town. The President was also descended from the Bradshaws of Bradshaw, but his ancestors branched off from the parent stock a century before the Darcy Lever family, and seated themselves at Marple Hall in Cheshire. He was the youngest son of Henry Bradshaw of Marple, and, dying without any issue, the wreck of his enormous wealth descended to his nephew, Harry Bradshaw of Marple, who purchased Bradshaw Hall A.D. 1693, when the head of the family died without male issue ; since which time the estates of Marple and Bradshaw have con- tinued in the President's family having de- scended in the female line to the Bradshaw- Isherwoods. It is not only a ' popular belief ' in Lancashire, but a notorious fact, that several branches of this great and wealthy family became extinct in the male line soon after the President's death. The parent stock of the family, which had flourished at Bradshaw since the time of the Conquest for twenty-five generations in un- interrupted male succession, became extinct in 1693. The President's own family became