Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 2.djvu/417

 12 s. ii. NOV. is, i9i6.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

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your readers acquainted with this remark- able production, which, notwithstanding its nonsensical character, has a good deal of wit about it as it goes on ? W S.

" PRIVILEGES OF PARLIAMENT." Can any reader teU me what was the origin and meaning of " Members' Privileges," and the date when they were first started and when they ceased, such as the right of franking letters, which appears to have had its rise soon after 1660 ? An old writer says :

" We may notice that though members' privi- leges and immunities were numerous and im- portant, they have frequently been counterbalanced by some little peril. That same touchy jealousy of Anything that looked like an infringement of Parliamentary rights, or a touching of Parlia- mentary dignity, was apt occasionally to turn rather severely on individuals within the House as well as without. A member was once sent to the Tower for 'speaking out of season,' and Sir William Widdrington and Sir Herbert Price were similarly committed merely for bringing in candles when the august assembly did not wish to have them."

I shall be grateful for any information. LEONARD C. PRICE.

RALPH BOHUN : CHRISTOPHER BOONE. (12 S. ii. 321.)

THE special privileges which Founder's kin formerly enjoyed at Winchester College were abolished by an Ordinance, dated June 5, 1857, which the Oxford University Com- missioners framed for the College under powers given by an Act of Parliament of 1854, 17 and 18 Viet. c. 81. I say that, at the outset of this attempt to answer MR. JOHN B. WAINEWRIGHT'S query concerning Ralph Bohun's pedigree, because there is one at least of the College officials who continues to receive applications based upon the idea that the privileges still exist.

When Ralph Bohun became a Founder's Kin Scholar here in 1655, two rules, which lasted until 1857, were already in force :

1. The number of the Scholars of this class who might be at the College at any one time was limited to ten.

2. A candidate who was neither a Fiennes nor a Bolney had to prove his descent from an ancestress who had belonged by birth to one or other of those families. The family of Fiennes descended from the Founder's own sister Agnes, and the family of Bolney from Alice, his father's sister. The Fiennes

pedigree was the subject of a note of mine at 10 S. xii. 123. The Bolney claim was recognized as early as 3 Hen. V. (1415), when Bartholomew, son of John Bolney of Bolney, Sussex, was admitted to the College as " C. F." (Consanguineus Funflatoris). This Bartholomew Bolney became a Bencher of Lincoln's Inn, and there used to be a brass in West Firle Church, Sussex, commemorat- ing him and his wife Eleanor. See Gage's ' Antiquities of Hengrave in Suffolk,' p. 227. Some of his descendants in the male line were of Witheringsett, Suffolk, and others were of Tilehurst, Berks. See Metcalfe's ' Visitations of Suffolk.' p. 10, and ' Visita- tions of Berkshire ' (Harl. Soc., vol. Ivi.) i. 72.

There was a third family, the Wykehams or Wickhams of Swalcliffe, Oxfordshire, who more than once made strenuous efforts to establish their claim to be a root C. F. stock, but they were never able to produce con- vincing evidence in support of their case, which was that our Founder, William of Wykeham, was descended from a cadet of their house.

The College possesses a manuscript book of C. F. pedigrees, now kept in the muniment room. It is the book which the late G. E. Cokayne, the Herald, mentions in his ' Barker of Great Horwood, Bucks, and Newbury, Berks ' (see ' Miscellanea Genea- logica et Heraldica,' 3rd S., vol. iii.). I value a copy which he gave me of the Barker pedigree. The College book was, no doubt, compiled with care, from the best available sources, for practical use whenever a claim to be C. F. needed consideration ; but it is after all only a compilation, written mainly in the earlier part of the eighteenth century, and caution must be exercised in the ac- ceptance of its contents. According to this book, Ralph Bohun, the Scholar of 1655, was C. F. whether he relied on his father's descent or on his mother's.

According to the book (pp. 3, 13, 21), his father Abraham was son of an earlier Ralph Bohun, of Counden (or Coundon), Warwick- shire, and Prudence, daughter of William Howel or Hovel by Prudence, daughter of John Danvers of Culworth, Xorthants ; and the said John Danvers, whose wife wa-* Dorothy, daughter of William Rainsford of Tewe, Oxfordshire, was son of William Danvers of Culworth and Elizabeth, daughter of Richard Fiennes, great-grand- father of the Richard Fiennes who obtained, in 1603, a patent recognizing his right by inheritance to the ancient Barony of Saye and Sele. The foregoing pedigree agrees with that of Bohun or Boun of Coundon, as