Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 7.djvu/313

 ii s. vii. Apeil 19, wis.] NOTES AND QUERIES. 305 columns the facts which seem conclusively to settle this vexed question. It is to Mr. Walter Bell, the author of that valuable and exhaustive book ' Fleet Street in Seven Centuries,' that the credit of giving publicity to this discovery is due. When he was searching the records of St. Bride's Church in Fleet Street, his attention was directed by Mr. A. W. Peart, the parish clerk, to an entry in the Register of Christenings which showed that Samuel, the son of John Peapis and his wife Mar- garet, was baptized in St. Bride's on 3 March, 1632/3. The diarist was born on 23 Feb., 1633, and it can scarcely be doubted that the christening which took place eight days later was that of the future Clerk of the Acts. The entry was printed by Mr. Bell in his book, but as he thought it might have escaped the notice of the reviewers, he wisely repeated it, with corroborative details, in an interesting letter which Was printed in The Athenaeum for 11 Jan., 1913. In a letter which appeared in the issue of that journal for 1 Feb. Mr. H. B. Wheatley drew attention to the fact that John Pepys had resided in a house in St. Bride's Church- yard since about the year 1614. He was succeeded in the occupation of this house by his son Thomas, who died there on 15 March, 1663/4, and whose burial in St. Bride's Church three days afterwards was recorded by his brother Samuel in his ' Diary.' John Pepys retired from London to Bramp- ton, near Huntingdon, some years before the Great Fire occurred, and some people have thought that the diarist was born there, but it is now sufficiently clear that he first saw the light in a house in St. Bride's Churchyard which may quite possibly be still in existence. W. F. Prideaux. Two Kentish Memorials : Dickens and Charles I. — 1. When I was in Rochester Cathedral the other day I re- vived my memory of a quaint detail in a Latin inscription which reminded me of Sap- sea's condescension concerning his reveren- tial spouse Ethelinda. If Dickens was suffi- ciently interested or expert in Latin to read a long epitaph, he may have got a hint here. On the wall, near the recumbent figure of Dean Hole, is a tablet with effigy recording the virtues of Richard Head, Baronet, who died 18 Sept., 1689, at 80. Among other details of his career "plu- rima elargitus est, tres duxerat uxores satis elegantes." " He was very munificent, and had married three wives who were suffi- ciently elegant." 2. In Charing Church, just in front of the organ, is a stone let into the floor, the inscription on which reads as follows :— "Here lieth the body of Catherine Dering wife of the ReV EdW Dering Clerk. She was daughter of Will"1 Levet Esq who served king Charts [sic] the first many Years and attended him on y" Scaffold at the time of his Martyrdom. She de- parted this life Dec' 4th 1707 and left noe issue. Here is a claim made on behalf of a servant of Charles at a time when details of the scene at Whitehall must still have been preserved by many contemporaries. Yet Levet is not recognized by history. Gardiner says positively that no one but Juxon was allowed on the scaffold. W. D. Fellowes, ' Historical Sketches of Charles the First,' with prints, mentions the attendant Herbert, who dressed the King's hair in the morning, and a Dr. Hobbs, who was his physician, but no other servant. The traditional account of the execution is so full of detail —largely derived from Juxon himself—that the omission of Levet, if he really was present, seems odd. Perhaps, with a natural desire to make the most of his long service, he had worked up the story of his master's end until he persuaded himself and others of his presence on the scaffold. Friends, even if incredu- lous, Would have been cruel in depriving him of " mentis gratissimus error," a delusion, at any rate, more creditable than that of George IV., who sometimes thought that he had been at Waterloo, and, according to his physician, if he left off liqueurs, would assuredly gain no more victories. Hippoclides. The Robbery on Gadshill (' 1 Henry IV.,' II. ii.).—In a case tried in 19 Elizabeth, Manwood, J., said :— " When I was servant to Sir James Hales, one of the justices of the Common Pleas, one of his servants was robbed at Gadds Hill within the hundred of Gravesend in Kent, and he sued the men of the hundred upon this statute [Statute of Winchester, 13 Ed. I.] and Hams, Serjeant, was of counsel with the inhabitants of Gravesend, and pleaded for them that time out of mind felons had used to rob at Gadds Hill and so prescribed. — Leonard's Reports, Part II., p. 12. P. A. McElwaine. Jane Maxwell's Mother.—The famous Duchess of Gordon's mother, Lady Maxwell, died at Edinburgh 21 April, 1807 (Aberdeen Journal, 13 May, 1807). The Peerages either do not give the'date at all, or give it wrongly, as G, E. C. does (' Baronetage,' iv. 311). J. M. Bulloch.