Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 1.djvu/224

 218

NOTES AND QUERIES. 112 s. i. MA*, n, uu,

appeared in The Gentleman's Magazine of May, 1838, shortly after the front was taken down. Further particulars will be found in a paper entitled ' Old Inns and Taverns of Exeter,' by Robert Dymond, published in the 1880 volume of the Transactions of the Devonshire Association.

H. TAPLEY-SOPEB, Exeter City Librarian.

THE MOTHER OF GEORGE FREDERICK COOKE, TRAGEDIAN (12 S. i. 110). Dunlap, in his memoir of G. F. Cooke, states that his mother was a daughter of the Laird of Benton, near Lamberton. After the death of her husband she took her family to reside at Berwick-on-Tweed, and appears to have died there shortly before 1767. The present representative of the family of Renton of Lamberton is R. C. Campbell-Renton, Esq., of Lamberton, who might be able to help MR. BLEACKLEY. Lady Susanna Mont- gomerie, daughter of Alexander, ninth Earl of Eglinton, married John Renton of Lamberton, and died in 1754, leaving issue. The date would fit in with her being Cooke's grandmother, and it might be worth MR. BLEACKLEY'S while to look at Fraser's 1 Memoirs of the Montgomeries,' vol. i. p. 106, to which there is a reference in Sir J. B. Paul's edition of Douglas's ' Peerage.' I am unable to refer to it here.

H. J. B. CLEMENTS. Killadoon, Celbridge.

' The Georgian Era,' vol. iv. 396 (1834), says of Cooke :

" His father died. . . .when his mother removed to Berwick-upon-Tweed, where young Cooke was placed at s'chool. . . .At a fit age he was bound apprentice to a printer at Berwick, but about the month of May. 1771, he threw up his indentures and went to London."

There is no further reference to the mother,

W. B. H.

HERALDRY (12 S. i. 50, 159). Permit me to apologize to Miss E. LEGA-WEEKES and to other readers for having accidentally made a mistake in blazoning the coat referred to. This coat should have been : " Argent, on a fesse sable, between three roses gules, a mullet or." Two correspondents have kindly in- formed me that they believe it to belong to the Newby family and that the mullet is a cadency mark. On being so informed I made another inspection of the picture, and noticed that the mullet is placed high on the fesse, in fact just below the top line.

W, H. CHIPPINDALL, Col. Kirkby Lonsdale.

SIXTEENTH-CENTURY DUTCH PRINT (12 S* i. 49, 98). Fuchs, ' Illustrierte Sittenge- schichte, Renaissance,' gives reproductions of four such prints (two of the sixteenth, two of the seventeenth century), and of a fifth, one in his supplemental volume (pp. 217,, 218, 319, 320 ; sup. 91). The one on p. 217 is dated and signed by Franz Brun, 1560. D. L. GALBREATH. Montreux.

DR. JOHNSON ON FISHING (11 S. xii. 462 ;; 12 S. i. 18, 98, 157). I have an impression that the jibe about which inquiry is being made was due to the humour of Archdeacon Paley ; but I cannot give chapter and verse of any record. The mot may have been for particular, not of general, application.

ST. SWITHIN.

AUTHOR WANTED (12 S. i. 10, 136). Stella, noticing a disagreeable smell in her house one day, was told that they were making matches, when she said she had always understood that these were made in heaven, but this smelt more of hell. This story gives an earlier date to brimstone matches, and so to that of this " homely country poem," than is suggested in answer to C. B.'s query by MR. JANSON.

HAROLD MALET, Col.

Racketts, Hythe, Southampton.

The Mellards and their Descendants. By Aleya Lyell Reade. (Privately printed for the author at the Arden Press.)

ADMIRABLY bound, printed, and arranged, this volume is an excellent example of what can be- done for the history of a family which does not possess the glamour of an ancient and illustrious ancestry and a many -quartered shield.

The pedigree of the Mellards is traced back to- the first half of the eighteenth century. The name is a rare one, and its origin, like that of so many other surnames, is quite uncertain. The founder of the line of which the book treats was^ Joseph Mellard, who, in the year 1743, was married at Stoke-upon-Trent to Elizabeth Baddeley, and lived thereafter in the town of Newcastle-under-Lyme. Whence he came has not been discovered. It has been conjectured that he was a Millard from Derbyshire, or the descendant of a Huguenot refugee. Some details are given of Mrs. Joseph Mellard's forbears an old New- castle stock who were connected with the great potter, Josiah Wedgwood. The history of the Mellards, as well as that of the Bibbys, their descendants, which follows, is put into very" readable form and interspersed with interesting- personal details.

It is rather remarkable that, " in a small family" group where the men displayed no qualities.