Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 8.djvu/285

 ii s. vii. APRIL 12, i9i3.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

281

LONDON, SATURDAY, APRIL 12, 1013.

CONTENTS.-No. 172. S T OTES : The Paternal Ancestors of Alexander Pope, 281 Latin Pronunciation, 283 Link with the Past : Burial of Arthur Hallam First Mention of Jews in Ireland, 284 An English Whaler's Fight with Spaniards Dublin Street-Names Nicolaas van Ruiven, 285 Bibliography of Chartularies Shakespeare : " Comptible "Vanishing London : Proprietary Chapels "Paratout," 286. iUERIES: "Esquire" by Charter Works of Theodore Winthrop Castle Strange, Middlesex Smith : Richard- sonHenry Morris, 1653: C. Lodge, Baptist Minister 41 Four square humours" T. Andrews, Portrait and Miniature Painter, 287 Price of Cereals in 1550 Nelson's Ship the Victory Priory of St. James, Bristol Royal East London Volunteers Reference and Quotation Wanted Huxley on Positivism H. C. Andrewa's The Heathery 'Mementoes of Royal Visits Dr. Joseph Warton and Rev. J. Wooll Hope of Amsterdam Old Charing Cross 'Heraldry' in ' Encyclopeedia Londin- ensis ' " Oxendoles " : " Aughendols " Calendar of State Papers, Ireland : Cope, 288 Cumberland Song- Portrait : Identification Sought French Premiers' Christian Names Date-Letters of Old Plate Picture of General Livesay ' Life of Southey,' 1849 Churchwarden Pipe 289 "Bethlem Gabor" "To banyan" French Fishing Rights Vertical Sundials Lawrance, Surgeons at Bath Castle or Castel Family, 290. IEPLIES : The "Peccavi" Pun, 290 Mithridates and Alexipharmics Dominus Roger Capello, 291 ' Great Historical Picture of the Siege of Acre' Richard Simon : Lambert Simnel Col. Drake Ling Family, 292 "A wyvern part-per-pale addressed," 294 White Horses- Homer and Ulysses Welland Sermon Register English and Danish Ogre-StoriesPigments, 295 Rev. H. De Foe Baker Author Wanted Touchet, 296 " Furdall " Living Latin The Royal George Goldsmith's Tomb Davide Lazzaretti " -plesham " Sir J. Gilbert and London Journal,' 297 Died in his Coffin Wine-Fungus Superstition History of Churches in Situ, 298. fOTES ON BOOKS: 'The Mildmay Family' 'Books that Count '' Deaths of the Kings of England' ' Bur- lington Magazine.' .ooksellers' Catalogues.

THE PATERNAL ANCESTORS OF ALEXANDER POPE.

]VER since the time when Pope was taunted dth the line

Hard as thy heart, and as thy birth obscure, here has been more or less curiosity con- Brning the history of his family a curiosity tfiich certain vague, and sometimes fabu- >us, statements he made on the subject jiled to satisfy. When, however, the poet, i his ' Letter to a Noble Lord,' wrote that is father was a younger brother who came om a " very tolerable family," he was, as ill be seen, guilty of no untruth. No ?rtain information has hitherto been forth- 3ining respecting Pope's grandfather ; and ^en respecting his father details have been it her scanty. It has long been known mt the father, also named Alexander, was,

early in life, converted to Roman Catholicism, was engaged in business in London, lived successively in Broad Street and Lombard Street, and, late in life, retired from London to Binfield, near Windsor Forest. After- Wards it came to light that the poet's mother, Edith, was a second wife, a first wife, named Magdalen, having been buried at St. Bennet- Fink, London, in 1679. The present pur- pose is to tell something about Pope's paternal ancestors for three or four genera- tions. It will be necessary, in the first place, to explain briefly the general line of descent and the nature of the evidence on which it rests. Much of the evidence has been derived from proceedings in Chancery, and it will save repetition to mention here that all the legal suits to which reference will be made were filed in that Court.

The poet's father was certainly living at Binfield as early as 1710, the date when he made his will there, and we may therefore be sure that he Was identical with an Alexander Pope who, in 1715, signed an " answer " at Binfield in a suit concerning lands at Oakley in Buckinghamshire, and who, as stated in the bill of the suit, had been named, in a deed dated 1675, as Alexander Pope of London, merchant. And this merchant Was brother to a William Pope, for William Pope and his brother Alexander, both merchants of London, were plaintiffs in a suit in 1684. Still more valuable, for genealogical purposes, is an entry in the Parish Register of Pangbourne, Berkshire (noted in the article on Pope in the ' D.N.B.'), where the rector, Ambrose Staveley, records, in 1682, the burial of a child who was " son of my brother-in-law Alexander Pope of London, merchant."

With the data that the poet's father was brother to a William Pope and brother-in-law to an Ambrose Staveley, the task of tracing the pedigree further back is greatly simpli- fied. The will of Dorothy Pope, a widow, of Micheldever, Hampshire, dated in 1668, and proved at Winchester in 1669, mentions her four children William, Alexander, and Dorothy Pope, and Mary, the wife of Am- brose Staveley. Dorothy, the testatrix, was thus the poet's grandmother. And she, being of a litigious disposition, had in 1647 appealed to the Court of Chancery concerning the estates of her husband and his father, and from the papers of the suit We learn that her husband Was Alexander Pope, Rector of Thruxton, Hampshire, whose father Was Richard Pope of Andover. Richard was an innkeeper who, at his death in 1633, held a lease of " The Angel "