Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 2.djvu/391

 i28.ii.aov.ii, i9i6.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

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I have not had the opportunity of con- sulting the original authorities upon which Luard makes this statement, but I have in my possession a receipt dated Aug. 3, 1667, in Uvedale's handwriting which was given to me by my friend who accompanied me to Enfield, and who obtained it, I understood, from one of the former governors of the Grammar School which purports to be an acknowledgment of the receipt of 101 " due for teaching the school " from the previous Christmas to Midsummer of that year, and in which the signature is unmistak- ably " R. Udall." At that period the inter- changeability of the u and the v was un- doubtedly very common. Perhaps some Cambridge correspondent of ' N. & Q.' would kindly verify Luard's statement as to this. "He was elected a Fellow of Trinity in 1664, tirst as a Divinity and afterwards as a Law Fellow. This latter fellowship he obtained, it is said, in competition with Mr. (afterwards Sir) Isaac Newton, mention of which is made in Hutchins (iii. p. 148), and I have myself referred to it in ' N. & Q.' (11 S. i. 434). He proceeded M.A. in 1666, relin- quishing his fellowship some years later on his marriage with Mary Stephens, grand- daughter of Sir Matthew Hale, L.C.J. of the King's Bench. She was born in 1656, and died in 1740.

Mr. Boulger, in citing from Mr. Leveson- Gower's work as to the different ways of spelling the botanist's name, accepts his solution of " Uvedale " as being the correct one, and states that the record of the name can be traced back to the thirteenth century. For this descent is claimed through the Dorset branch of the Uvedale family, a cadet of the Hants and, still earlier, the Surrey branches ; whilst the original home would appear to have been East Anglia, as the name itself would rather suggest.

Robert Uvedale's grandfather is said to have been Richard Uvedale, a younger brother of Sir William Uvedale of Horton, co. Dorset. This claim appears in the pedigree of the Uvedale family of Horton, contained in the second edition of Hutchins's ' Dorset,' vol. ii. p. 503 (1803), which pedigree, indeed, together with a full account of his family, appears to have been contributed by the Rev. Robert Uvedale, M.A., of Trin. Coll., Camb., and Vicar of Fotherby, co. Lincoln, great-grandson of the botanist, to whom the editors of that edition expressed their acknowledgment.

It has been suggested that Richard Gough, the eminent antiquary, who lived at Enfield, had some part in the compilation of this

pedigree. Inasmuch as he was one of the- editors of that edition, and probably a friend of the family, this is quite possible. The- first edition of Hutchins, in two volumes only (1774), contains no reference to any Uvedale pedigree. This pedigree, repro- duced in the third edition, is, I am afraid,, faulty in many respects ; and I have strong grounds for believing that Richard UVedale,. the alleged grandfather of the botanist, died without issue. This belief is confirmed by the fact that Mr. Leveson-Gower, in his more recent and full account of the pedigree of the- Dorset Uvedales, published some few years ago in Miscellanea Genealogica et Heraldica,, accords no issue to Richard Uvedale's marriage with Joane, daughter of Robert White of Weymouth. If this be so, the Westminster and Enfield UVedales must find some other Dorset scion through which to trace their ancestry. My own idea, formed so far without any real investigation or- research, is that they may represent a branch which was left behind in the south- western migration from East Anglia in the late thirteenth century. For it is there in Lincolnshire and in Suffolk that we find the descendants of the old botanist now themselves, I believe, extinct in the male line continuing until well within the last century, and being the last of them, so far- as I know, to bear the name spelt and pronounced as " Uvedale."

But, be this as it may, it is scarcely a subject that I can pursue further in the- restricted pages of ' N. & Q.,' but is one rather for the freer and wider scope afforded by some Dorset or other genealogical or- antiquarian publication.

It is not clear when Uvedale first came- to Enfield, and in what capacity. Local historians have stated that it was between 1663 and 1665, and that it probably was on his appointment as master of the Grammar- School there. Mr. Boulger suggests that the fact that the advowson of Enfield was in the possession of his college probably directed his attentiontp the place, and that almost on first going*fTiere he took a lease of the Manor House, commonly called Queen Elizabeth's Palace, in order to supplement nis salary as master of the Grammar School.

That he was certainly there at the outbreak. of the Great Plague of London in 1665 is shown by the precautions that he appears to lave taken in order to prevent his scholars ncurring the infection, namely, by pouring' vinegar upon red-hot bricks, and causing hem to inhale the rising vapour by way of a ebrifuge or disinfectant. By this means,.