Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 2.djvu/443

 12 s. ii. NOV. 25, 1916.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

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It is necessary, for the sake of future sreaders, to rectify this mistake. George, 6th Earl of Shrewsbury, as chief mourner, followed in the procession immediately after the corpse, his train being borne by a gentle- man usher. Then followed the Lord Talbot. This was Francis Talbot, the eldest son and heir of George, and Lord Talbot by courtesy. He married in 1563, possibly at a very early -age, Ann Herbert, daughter of William, Earl of Pembroke, and, dying without issue in 1582, was buried at Sheffield. His brother Gilbert, who subsequently succeeded to the title, was born in 1553, and consequently only about 7 years old at the time of the funeral, evidently too young to be present, his name not being mentioned.

CHARLES DRURY

12 Ranmoor Cliffe Road, Sheffield.

'THE MORNING POST' (12 S. ii. 301, 322, 342). May I, as a student of eighteenth- 'century history, add a few notes to the interesting sketch by MR. JOHN COLLINS FRANCIS of the origin and earlier years of The Morning Post? I think that the Rev. Henry Bate (afterwards Sir Henry Bate- Dudley) became editor of the paper some time before 1775, and that he probably held that position from its foundation in 1772. When he was tried for the libel on the Duke of Richmond in 1781, the printer of The Morning Post swore that Bate had been its editor " from its first institution," except for an interval cf two or three months. He was sentenced, as MR. FRANCIS says, to twelve months' imprisonment for the libel, but it is not generally known that he only served a portion of this time. Long before it expired the Duke of Richmond sent Dr. Brocklesby to Bate to say that if he would express in writing his desire to be released, the Duke would place the letter before the King. However, he declined to make any con- ditions, and soon afterwards a messenger -arrived at the prison at three o'clock in the morning with an order for his release. Bate's action on this occasion agrees with the estimate of his character given by John Taylor, that he was " wholly incapable of degrading concession or compromising artifice."

No journalist of his time was more fiercely attacked than Bate, and probably in some respects his record was not unassailable. But the attacks seem to have come in many cases from the editors of rival prints whose -circulation and advertisements had suffered through his enterprise and journalistic skill. Some of the bitterest of these attacks -appeared in The Morning Post soon after he

had severed his connexion with that journal and founded The Morning Herald. Their tone is not surprising in view of the fact that Bate carried with him to the new paper a large proportion of the readers of The Morning Post. A month after the founda- tion of The Morning Herald he claimed that its circulation was already larger than that of The Morning Post had ever been, and offered to prove it at the Stamp Office. Bate brought an action for libel against The Morning Post, whose editor was sentenced to three months' imprisonment and to pay a fine of a hundred pounds.

It is curious that none of the histories of newspapers mentions The New Morning Post, which has sometimes been confused with The Morning Herald. The New Morning Post, to oppose which Bate led the procession down Piccadilly which Walpole observed from his window, was founded in 1776 as a rival to the original journal, but its career was short. At this time The Morning Post was the property of Bate, Mr. Bell, and that voluminous writer the Rev. Dr. Trusler; but in 1779, when Bate's hold on the paper was becoming precarious, the owners are said to have incfudeed,

" Mr. Skinner the auctioneer, Mr. Mitchell the grocer, Mr. Bell the bookseller, Mr. Tattersall the horse-jockey, & Mr. James Hargrave of the Rain- bow Tavern."

The date of Bate's marriage is wrongly given as 1780 in the ' D.N.B.' He was married in 1773, a few weeks after the famous affray at Vauxhall that gained for him the title of " the fighting parson." The Morning Post, in 1777, was the first paper to champion Gainsborough, and most of our knowledge of the great painter's life in London is obtained from Bate's notes written in The Morning Post and The Morning Herald. To Gainsborough, and to Mrs. Gainsborough after her husband's death, Bate was the most faithful of friends. Some aspects of his life may have been unsatis- factory, but in the memoirs of the time in which he is mentioned (such as those of Angelo and Parke) he is referred to always as a kind-hearted and generous man.

WILLIAM T. WHITLEY

57 Gwendwr Road, W.

RESTORATION OF OLD DEEDS AND MANU- SCRIPTS (12 S. ii. 268, 316). Fazakerly, bookbinder, of Manchester, and late of Liverpool, did an excellent piece of work in repairing the Churchwardens' Minutes and Accounts of the parish of Childwall. Much of the MS. was in so brittle a state that it had to be dipped in a bath of size before