Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 5.djvu/449

 ii s. V.MAT 11, 1912.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

369

COACHING SONGS.** I am anxious to collect a number of old coaching songs, and should esteem it a favour if you or any of your readers could tell me where I should be likely to find any. I especially want the song in which the following verse appears :

The team trots merrily o'er the road,

The rattling bars have charms ; Eleven and four is our average load,

And we change at " The Coachman's Arms." With spirits gay we mount the box, the tits up to

the traces,

Our elbows squared, our wrists turned down, dash off at awful paces.

I have also found mention of songs called ' The Swell Dragsman ' and ' The Bonny Owl,' which were popular on the "road," but have been unable to discover the words.

(Miss) V. WILSON. 285, Woodstock Road, Oxford.

[See 8 S. ix. 515 ; x. 80, 125.]

" STATIO BENE FID A CABINIS." I have not been able to discover the loctis classicus for this. It occurs in a recent administra- tion report on an Indian harbour. Can some reader help me ? L. L. K.

[An allusion evidently to the

Insula dives opum, Priami dum regna manebant, Nunc tantum sinus et statio male flda carinis.

'^n.,' ii. 23.]

THE LADY MABY GKEY AND THOMAS KEYES. Miss Strickland, in her ' Tudor and Stuart Princesses,' in " Bohn's Historical Library," p. 164, refers to the Sergeant Porter Thomas Keyes as boasting of

"some distant connection with Queen Elizabeth herself, as he was kinsman to the prosperous family of the Knollys, with whom the daughter of Mary Boleyn, Katherine Carey, had married " ;

and again at p. 165 :

" As his kinsman was the queen's cousin, why should her Majesty object to her kinswoman wedding him, who was already allied to her?"

Thomas Keyes was the son of Richard Keyes of East Greenwich by Mildred,, the widow of John Diggs of Barham, Kent, daughter of Sir John Scott of Scott's Hall, Kent, through which family he could claim a common descent with Queen Elizabeth and Lady Mary Grey from the Woodvilles.

In Drake's ' Hundred of Blackheath ' there is a foot-note, p. 188, stating that " the last prioress of Clerkenwell was Isabel, daughter of Richard Sackville by his wife Isabel, daughter of John Diggs of Barham. Richard was brother of John Sackville, M.P. for East Greenwich, who married Anne Boleyne, great-aunt of Queen Elizabeth."

Harris's ' History of Kent ' gives an account of the Sackville family, but although

he has the marriage of Richard Sackville and Isabel Diggs, it is their son John who marries a Margaret Bullen. Which is correct ? R. J. FYNMOBE.

Sandgate.

THE " BLACK BEAR " AT SOUTHWELL. This is a large stone animal black with age in a room over the south-east choir chapel, and is more like an elephant than a bear. It was possibly on the choir gable of the Norman church, as there are similar animals on each of the transept gables ; but I should be glad of any authentic particulars as to the original position, and whether it was ever on the original gable of the thirteenth-, century choir. If so, when was it taken down ? The choir roof has been altered four times, the present one being the fifth level. JOHN A. RANDOLPH.

MUMTAZ MAHAL. Can any of your readers refer me to the source of the story of the favourite wife of the Moghul emperor Shah Jehan, who built the Taj Mahal at Agra ? I want full particulars of her life and the circumstances under which the memorial was erected. RICHARD WILSON.

[See 3 S. viii. 539 ; ix. 70, 150 ; x. 260.]

WOMEN AS CHURCHWARDENS. Although a woman can be called upon to serve as a churchwarden, this is understood to be very unusual. What reasons have been held sufficient for a vicar's appointing a woman as his warden more particularly in any parish where there are competent men parishioners 1 ARMIGER.

' BITE AGAIN AND BITE BIGGER.' I shall be glad to learn where I can find a dialect poem thus entitled. It begins :

As aw hurried through t' tawn t' me wark. JAMES W. WALKER. Chicago.

MESO - GOTHIC. The ' Authors' and Printers' Dictionary,' by F. H. Collins, gives " Meso-Gothic, not Mae-, Mce-." What reason or authority is there for this ? E. H. BROMBY.

University, Melbourne.

THE FIRST COFFEE-HOUSE KEEPER. The first coffee-house in England was started by Henry Jacobs at "The Angel," parish of St. Peter-in-the-East, Oxford. He after- wards removed to Southampton Buildings, Holborn, 1671. When did he die, and who were his descendants ? Dates would be especially valued. P. JACOBS.