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NOTES AND QUERIES. [12 s. n. OCT. w, une.

In the early thirteenth century lived one William le Strange, grandson of the founder of the family, third brother of John (II.), who was a clerk in holy-orders and married. In the next generation we have Hamon le Strange the Crusader, a gallant knight, who accompanied Edward I. to the Holy Land, whom we find borrowing money of one " Hagim, son of Master Mosseus the Jew," and who left his bones in the East. But the most interesting fact about him, and one recently dis- covered, is that he married a Queen Isabelle d'Ybelin, that is, Queen of Cyprus. Hamon was brother of John le Strange (I V.), who had a some- what shorter life than his predecessors ; he was drowned with his horse in the Severn. Of Robert, Another brother, who also went on the Crusade, it is related that on the journey home he lost his eal f a serious matter, which led him to appear at the Curia Regis, and have a petition entered in two separate Rolls to the effect that if any docu- ment should be found sealed with that seal " id pro nullo habeatur " which Mr. le Strange com- pares with our modern device of stopping a cheque. This Robert had to wife one Alianora de Whit- church, whose monument existed in High Ercall Church as lately as 1860, and has since disappeared. A yet more famous brother, who with John (V.) his nephew served Edward I. through the strenuous times of the Welsh wars, was Roger le Strange of Little Ercall and Ellesmere. This man was the leader on the Royal side in the skirmish near Builth where Llewelyn was slain, and his brief report to the '.King is given both in facsimile and verbatim in the text. The mention of the facsimile suggests a word about the illustrations : there are 10 plates, all good, the best being those of the five seals, the brass of John, eighth Lord Strange, and his wife, and an Indenture showing the original and counterpart in juxtaposition.

The le Stranges of Blackmere descended from the Robert and Alianora above mentioned. In the fourth generation the male line failed, and Ankaret, Baroness Strange, the heiress of her niece, carried the title and the estates into the family of Talbot of Shrewsbury, with whose extinction in 1616 the "barony lapsed. The Barony of Strange of Knockin the elder branch devolved at the death of John, the 8th Lord, upon his daughter Joan, whose marriage with George Stanley united it to the Earldom of Derby. In 1594, upon the death of the 5th Earl of Derby, it fell into abeyance between his three daughters, William Stanley, his brother, succeeding to the earldom. In 1628 the fact of the abeyance was forgotten, and the eldest son of the 6th Earl was summoned to Parliament as Lord Strange of Knockin ; and this writ, though erro- neous, was held to have created a new barony_ of Strange, with precedency of 1628, which, not with- out vicissitudes of abeyance and reversion, has come down to the present day in the line of the Murrays of Athole, through the marriage with the first Marquess of Athole of the daughter of the famous Charlotte de la Tr^mouille.

It may be true, as Mr. le Strange says, that no member of this family came quite into the forefront either as a statesman or as a military leader ; yet the group of men whose history forms the chief part of this book is a noble and impressive one. They were brave, capable, and, as we have said, unswervingly loyal ; they held their own admirably among their equals ; and their numerous benefac- tions to the Church attest the fullness with which

they shared the mediae%'al readiness to refer this world to the terms of another.

It will be seen that this work has much that is important to offer, both to the social historian and to the genealogist ; nor should it be without great interest to the general reader.

The Burlington Magazine for October contains the first instalment of a discussion of the theory of ' ^Esthetic,' by Mr. Douglas Ainslie. This is mainly an exposition of Benedetto Croce's view that art is " vision " or " intuition," and, in this part of it, the writer does not assert or define any special relation between the artist and rerum natura as being essential. Mr. W. R. Lethaby devotes his second section of ' English Primitives ' to Master William of Westminster, and gives two good photographs of the remarkable we might say the haunting figure of St. Faith painted, with a strange skill and a masterly boldness and delicacy, on the wall above the altar in the Revestry at Westminster Abbey. H.V. S.. contributes a review of the work of the late Henri Joseph Harpignies a sympathetic ap- preciation which will doubtless recall good moments of admiration to those who have learned to love this master's work. Dr. Tancrcd Borenius describes two very interesting North Italian drawings, never before published, from the collection of Sir Edward Poynter : the one, a pen-and-bistre drawing over red chalk, depicting two groups of ecclesiastics, by Carpaccio ; the other, a brush drawing in India ink and white on blue paper of a woman, whose characteristic drapery betrays Mantegna. M. Osvald Sir^n discusses Giuliano, Pietro, and Giovanni da Rimini ; Mr. Lionel Gust and Mr. Archibald Malloch write about portraits by Carlo Doice and S. van Hoogstraaten ; and on minor arts we have ' Spanish Embroideries,' bj Mr. George Saville, and ' The Van Diemen Box,' by Mr. H. Clifford Smith both papers of some importance in their respective subjects.

The, Athenaeum now appearing monthly, arrange- ments have been made whereby advertisements of posts vacant and wanted, which it is desired to publish weekly, may appear in the intervening weeks in ' N. Q.'

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