Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 9.djvu/521

 us. ix. JUNE 27, i9i4.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

515

BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION WANTED (1 S. ix. 370). (8) George Broadbelt, ad mitted 1718, aged 9. Capt. Lawrenc TBrodbelt (or Broadbelt), of the island o Nevis, died there 1658-60. Col. Richard Brodbelt died there in 1755, aged 68. Col Carey Brodbelt was a member of Counci In 1726. Mr. George Brodbelt m. there in 1730 Eliz. Beauchamp.

Other members of this family were in London and Jamaica. V. L. OLIVER.

Sunninghill.

(US. ix. 449.) (6) Samuel Byrom of Lowton was doubt less " Beau Byrom," the wastrel son o John Byrom of Byrom (see Chetham Society vol. xliv. part ii. pp. 12-15) and the last male descendant. There is an account of him in ' Lancashire and Cheshire Antiquarian Notes,' vol. ii. pp. 98-9. In 1729 he pub lished a tract while imprisoned in the Fleet which states that he was at Westminster "School and in the same house as the Duke of Dorset, his benefactor, to whom the tract (on the subject of imprisonment for debt) was dedicated. R. S. B.

A SECOND ENGLISH POPE (US. ix. 469). Benedict 'XIV. (1740-58), "the best and wisest of the two hundred and fifty successors of St. Peter," as an admiring English his- torian once styled him, was one of the Lambertini and a native of Bologna, where his family is said to have been an old one. The fifteenth-century painter Matteo Lam- bertini was also a Bolognese. flf Bene- dict XIV. is the Pope referred to, one would like to know on what evidence the claim of English descent is based.

EDWARD BENSLY.

Prospero Laurentio Lambertini was elected Pope on 17 Aug., 1740, and reigned as Bene- dict XIV. until his death, 2 May, 1758, at the age of 84. He may have been of English descent, but he was, I believe, an Italian by birth and education. F. DE H. L.

In No. 3 of The Ancestor, October, 1902, Mr. Horace Round, in his very enlightening and interesting ' Tale of a Great Forgery,' refers to the delusion that the Lambertini of Italy (Bologna) and the Lambarts, Earls of Cavan, possessed a common ancestor in Baldwin, son of Lambert, Count of Mons and Louvain. According to Lodge, Pope Benedict XIV. claimed " the relationship subsisting between him and Lambert, Earl of Cavan." Mr. Round points out that it is a case of two families living in

different countries, and descended from ancestors bearing the same Christian name, believing themselves to have a common origin.

Mr. Freeman wrote very scathingly on the matter in an article in The Contemporary Review, xxx. 23.

We must give up Benedict XIV. as the second English Pope.

F. P. LEYBURN-YARKER.

20, St. Andrews Street, Cambridge.

[MB. A. R. BAYLEY who mentions the " huge and ugly monument by Pietro Bracci " to this Pope at St. Peter's and MB. JOHN B. WAINE- WBTGHT who mentions the date of his birth, 1675 also thanked for replies.]

' THE COMPLETE COURSE OF GEOGRAPHY ' (11 S. ix. 470). Abbe Gaultier (1746-1818) anticipated Froebel in his idea of instruction through games. The Abbe began to put the idea into practice in 1786, when he opened a class attended by the children of the first families of the French capital. He em- bodied his method in ' Lecons de Grammaire ' (published in 1787), ' Lemons de Geographic par le Moyen du Jeu ' (1788), ' Lecon de Chronologic et d'Histoire ' (1788), and ' Le Jeu Raisonnable et Moral pour les Enfants ' (1791). In 1792 he sought refuge from Revolutionary violence in London, where, inding some of his old pupils settled already, le resumed his classes. It is said that ' son succes chez les Anglais fut tres grand, et sa me'thode recut 1'approbation des universite\s d' Oxford et de Cambridge," >ut I doubt whether the circulation of his works was very extensive. Speaking gener- ally, the more popular a book was in the )ast the easier is it to procure in the present ; >ut I have applied in vain to the most likely second-hand booksellers of London, Paris, and Geneva for a copy of any of the Abbe's works in the original or in English.

There is a fairly full account of Gaultier and his system in Buisson's ' Dictionnaire do Pedagogic.' DAVID SALMON.

Swansea.

ROBERT STEPHENSON (11 S. ix. 470). A certain Robert Stephenson in the first quarter of the sixteenth century was ap- parently acting as local agent in the Grimsby leighbourhood for Sir Thomas Darcy, Lord )arcy. A letter written by Thomas Gryce to myn old frendes and luffers Rob*

tevenson and Richerd [Roch ?]," request - ng them to " levy and gedder his rentes and 'ermes of Grymsby and Beysby," is printed

t length in ''Hist. MSS. Fourteenth Report,' )t. viii. p. 253. In 1622 Gregory Stephenson