Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 5.djvu/301

 ii s. v. MAR. so, i9i2.] -NOTES AND QUERIES.

245

monger) salutes with that divine interpretation of his name, viz., ' a clear burning lamp of the mountains of battle ' " [i.e., by writing Harrison's name in Hebrew characters and then translating the result into English. See this anagram in Perfect Occui-rences for 22-30 Dec., 1648]. " As cleare an abuse, as ever poor cuckold endured. Now if you '11 know it, you must know the person. '' This Col. Harrison he talkes of is a butcher's sonne of Newcastle-under-Line in Staffordshire and some few yeares agone an attorneys boye 'in Wood St., the same zelot, who, at the taking of Basing, butchered three men in cold blood, after quarter was given them for their lives, using these words ' Cursed is he that doth the work of the Lord negligently.' He is an insolent, ambitious, fiery foole ; yet a maine promoter of the Levellers doctrine. And here you have the ' cleare burning lamp.' His wife is a daughter to Colonel Harrison (the City Mopus) a zealous sister."

"Elencticus" (then Sir George Wharton) goes on to say that Harrison's wife was, before her marriage to him, delivered of a bastard of which Harrison was not the father, " at Mrs. Blake's house, the matron of Christ Church Hospital." From the numerous allusions to this fact in the satires of the times, this appears to be true ; but Harrison was always said to be the father of the child, earning thereby the nickname of " Noverint Universi " (" Know all men by these presents "), because he had " taken bond " to ensure her marriage to himself. This marriage was the foundation of his fortune. His wife was not, it seems, a relation.

I am writing with only a portion of my notes, but the following extracts are all to the point.

' Paul's Churchyard,' &c., ' Centuria Secunda, 186 ' (by Sir John Berkenhead), inquires :

" Whether Major General Harrison be bound to give no quarter because his father is a butcher ? "

and ' A Paire of Spectacles for the City ' (4 Dec., 1647) remarks :

" Harrison, a poor clerk, now a Parliament man and Colonell of Horse, had his wife by a figure called ' Preoccupatio.' But that 's but veniall with the saints."

The valuable and accurate tract entitled

" The true characters of the Educations In- clinations and several dispositions of all and every one of those barbarous Persons who sat as judges upon the life of our late dread soveraign King Charles I. of ever blessed memory "

(14 Dec., 1660) gives the following account of Harrison :

" Thomas Harrison; Major-Genera 11. The son of a butcher in Staffordshire, servant to Mr. Hulker, an attorney in Clifford's Inn, a man always of a factious spirit and of dangerous principles in religion, which made him acceptable to the beginners of the late war. He was not only a malicious judge against his late Majesty,

but one of those who appointed the place and time of his execution, and was executed by the hand of justice in the sight of the place he ap- pointed " [i.e., on the site of Charing Cross, where Charles I.'s statue now stands].

Richard Smyth, in his ' Obituary ' (ed. Sir H. Ellis. Camden Society), notes under the date of 12 (sic 13) October, 1660 : " Col. Tho. Harrison (once my brother Houlkers clerk) hanged, drawn, and quartered."

J. B. WILLIAMS.

THE BATHEASTON VASE AND THE OLYMPIC GAMES. " A Roman vase," says Horace Walpole in his amusing description of ' Lady Miller's Parnassus Fair every Thursday,'

" dress'd with pink ribbons and myrtles, receives the poetry, which is drawn out every festival six judges of these Olympic Games retire and select the orightest compositions."

Horace Walpole, during his Italian tour*- had obviously heard of the extraordinary revival of the Olympic Games in Rome in his day, and saw that in all probability the Millers had borrowed from this the idea of the poetical competitions held in their villa at Batheaston in connexion with their famous vase. For they had travelled in Italy, where they picked up the Etruscan vase itself, and Lady Miller had published an account of her tour, in which, declared Mr. Walpole, " the poor Arcadian patroness " does not spell one word of French or Italian correctly.

The Arcadian Academy, which dominated Italian literature during the first half of the eighteenth century, claimed to have in- herited the rights of the Arcadians of old to celebrate the Olympic Games ; but the games must be reformed to suit the age, as Cres- cimbeni or Alfisibeo Cario, as he was known among his fellow-shepherds the dignified Guardian of Arcadia, points out in the- volume published in 1721 to celebrate the games held in the six hundred and twenty- fourth Olympiad in honour of Pope Inno*- cent XIII. As of old, they are five in number, but they are to display intellectual exercises only.

First comes the oracle. Four lines are set, which are expounded by the Arcadians in short essays. This corresponds with the chariot race, because the interpreters seek for divine counsel with the help of the Car of Reason, as all men must do if they wish to prosper. Then come the "contests." eclogues written in Latin and Italian in friendly rivalry on a given subject an exercise which was held to correspond with