Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 1.djvu/79

12 S. I.JAN. 22, 1916.

NOTES AND QUERIES.

73 Col. Fullers troop of Dragoons" (as misquoted by Chappell); "a trooper of the Guards"; "Col. Fuller or an officer in Fuller's regiment " (quoted from Brewer's 'Reader's Handbook'); and p. 12 of the current volume, "an officer of Guards."

Seeing that there was, apparently, no Col. Fuller's Regiment in the reign of George I., I am inclined to believe that the unnamed officer, who is said to have written the song, is a myth. The only correspondent in 6 S. xi. who went to the original source of the story about the officer, viz., Nichols, was Cuthbert Bede. Nichols cites no authority; he simply gives something which "said." He adds that the song of 'The Vicar of Bray' "is founded on an historical fact," of which he gives no particulars; he gives no reference.

As to who was the Vicar indicated by the song, I think that the search has been, and always will be, vain. None of the dates of Simon Aleyn, Alleyn, Allen, or Dillin; of Francis Carswell; of Simon Simons, or Simonds; or of Pendleton, fit in with a vicar alleged to have lived temp. Charles II.-George I.

It is, I think, not improbable, as I sug- gested at the first reference, that the song was founded on ' The Turn-Coat ' and ' The Tale of the Cobler and the Vicar of Bray.' The former contains the idea and some of the words ("I. ..got preferment"). The latter is a story, possibly true, possibly un- true, of a Vicar of Bray of very low repute.

I venture to suggest that Col. Fuller's Regiment in the reign of George I., the officer in that regiment, and the Vicar described in the song are all myths.

ROBERT PIERPOINT.

I larnt the song of the Vicar of Bray at Harrow in the seventies, in the days of Butler, Bowen, and Farmer. We boys were then told that the Bray in question was in Ireland, and that the song expressed the difficulties which all Irish clergymen had to solve during that period. The Vicar's adaptability reminds me of some of Canon

Hannay's creations, the Irish view ?

Can any one confirm B. C. S.

HEART - BURIALS : DR. LIVINGSTONE'S HEART (11 S. x. 35, 77, 111, 431, with refer- ences there given). The subject of heart- burials, started by me in your columns, led to a great mass of facts on the subject being recorded. Let me add another in- stance of an interesting character. Mrs.

Livingstone Wilson, only surviving child of .,-. _. _ p ^ -

Dr. David Livingstone, gave a lecture on thus indicated " Sharrington House.

Jan. 4, 1916, at the Parochial Hall, Forest Gate, on the subject of her recent journey to Old Chitambo where her father's heart is buried. At Old Chitambo an old chief called Chitend claimed that it was in his mother's hut that the great explorer died. Then (I quote from The Times of Jan. 5,. 1916)

" the old men declared that they remembered his followers building a stockade round the hut while they embalmed the body hi salt and brandy,, burying the heart under a great tree, at the other side of which old Chitambo, the chief of the village^, who had had a great respect for the explorer, was afterwards buried. The explorer's body, as is well known, [was borne a thousand miles through the forest to be sent to England by his faithful native followers. Jacob Wainwright, the best known of these, had asked the old chief to keep the grass always burned close around the tree at Chitambo, so that it might escape the dangers of forest fires. Afterwards the tree was struck by lightning, and the present memorial, in sloping brick with a cross at the summit the slope being made to prevent elephants brushing their trunks against it was erected in the bush with an avenue cleared in front of it. Here was placed a book on which big-game hunters and explorers who penetrated thus far might note their names ; this book was stolen, however, and Mrs. Wilson, as she said in a recent letter hi The Times, is anxious jhat anyone who has signed it should communi- cate with her."

J. HARRIS STONE. Oxford and Cambridge Club, S.W.

WHITTINGTON'S HOUSE, CRUTCHED FRIARS 11 S. xii. 478). The following very circum- stantial reference to this house occurs in Allen's 'History of London' (1828), iii. 751 :

" At the end of a court on the south side of Hart-street was, until 1801, a magnificent mansion

f the latter part of the reign of Henry the Eighth..

This house,' says Mr. Smith, (' Ancienjb Topo- graphy of London,' p. 44 ) ' was let out in tenements ,o persons of different callings, the greater part

eing occupied by Mr. Smith, a carpenter, who

eld to himself the use of the whole yard, in the north part of which a saw-pit had been sunk.' The exterior of this building was entirely covered with grotesque carvings ; the basement supported pannels in which were shields of arms, all carved in oak. The interior was in a similar style to Sir Paul Pindar's house in Bishopsgate-street. Some persons conceived this to have been the residence of Whittington, but Mr. Smith was assured by the late Dr. Owen, vicar of this parish, that it was formerly the residence of Sir William Sharington, Who lived in St. Olave's parish in the latter part of the reign of Henry the Eighth."

Pennant (' Some Account of London,' 3rd ed., 1793, p. 287) states that it was " built by Sir William Sharrington, a chief officer of the Mint, in the reign of Ed- ward VI." In the margin the paragraph is