Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 3.djvu/207

 12 S. III. MARCH 17, 1917.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

201

LONDON, SATURDAY, MARCH 11, 1917.

CONTENTS. No. 64.

"VOTES : Autograph Letter of the First Earl of Sheffield, 201 Correspondence of Richard Edwards, 205 -Surrey Place-Names, 208 Thackeray and the original " Song of Hate " ' David Copperfield ' in Welsh, 209.

QUERIES : - J. W. Ebsworth's MSS., 209 Gloves at Wed- dingsPedigrees Wanted Portraits Wanted" Lock " Lazar-house Knifegrinder Phcenician Traders in Britain Reference Wantep. 210 Eglinton Tournament Purple in Heraldry John Moses " Liberty " Carlyle and Newman Co-operative System in Fiction H. C. Pigeon Quaker's Yard, Glamorganshire, 211.

REPLIES : St. Barbara, 211 Music to Song of Christina Rossetti Salamander in Heraldry, 214 From Liverpool to Worcester, 215 "The Call of . . . "Temple Bar: Bibliography Notables born in 1809. 216 English Army List Hyphenates, 217 Fellows of the Society of Antiqu- ariesPortraits in Stained Glass Gunners' Handbooks Bishop, Private Secretary to George III., 218 Victoria Cross: Bibliography St. Burchard Fountains Abbey Accounts Bowtell : Beauclerk Pronunciation of " ea, 819.

UOTES ON BOOKS : ' Hawaiian Legends of Volcanoes ' Slavery in Germanic Society in the Middle Ages ' 'The Burlington.'

Notices to Correspondents.

AN AUTOGRAPH LETTER OF THE FIRST EARL OF SHEFFIELD.

John Baker Holroyd, first Earl of Sheffield, was the friend and executor of Edward Gibbon. The letter in question is to be sold for the benefit of the Bed Cross Society, at Christie's, on Wednesday, April 4, among the autographs, the sale itself beginning on the 22nd inst.

IF the writer of this letter* on Dec. 27, 1793, to Lord Auckland, were living to-day, he would, if we may judge from his record of more than a century ago, be one of the men of the moment, a very different thing from the man (or "the Cynthia") "of the min- ute." For " moment " is momentum, energy, or, in the slang of the present day, "push." The only difficulty for the Prime Minister when forming his Cabinet would have been to decide whether to allot to him Agriculture, Trade, Food Control, or the War Department for Holroyd, first Baron, and then Earl, of Sheffield, had proved him- self qualified to fill and not merely to occupy any one of these high offices.

Of Yorkshire (West Riding) origin, with e foreign education, Holroyd coupled the

Correspondence of William, Lord Auckland ' (1862).
 * Printed on p. 166 of vol. iii. of ' Journal and

backbone of the one source with the brains and culture of the other. Born in 1735, he commanded in 1760 a troop of light horse (Royal Foresters) under Granby in Ger- many. From 1763 he travelled for three years on the Continent, and in 1769 he bought Sheffield Place for 31,000?. from Lord De la Warr. In 1779 he raised, paid for, and coloneled the 22nd or Sussex Light Dragoons. In 1780 elected M.P. for Coventry, he saw the sheriffs of that city confined in Newgate. On June 2, 1780, he threatened the hysterical Lord George Gordon with vengeance if the mob instigated by him invaded the House ; and at the head of a detachment of Northumberland Militia helped to suppress the ensuing riots.*

He was thrice married. By his first wife, Abigail Way, he was the father of the de- lightful Maria Josepha (Lady Stanley) of the correspondence Gibbon's darling ; his second wife was Lady Lucy Pelham ; and his third Lady Anne, daughter of Lord North (2nd Lord Guildford).

Soldiering, military training and strategy, navigation, commerce, agriculture, the relations of England and America, the government of Ireland, Colonial adminis- tration and taxation, the Corn Laws, the Poor Laws (1818), the problem of slavery, the breed of sheep, and the practical revi- val of the wool trade by the conversion of the finest wool from an import into a home production, were some of the subjects upon which Sheffield bestowed his masterly treat- ment for the benefit of his countrymen and the lasting enrichment of their posterity ; besides the Annual Reports of the Lewes Wool Fair, which he founded. This he did in a style, and with a command of the " just word," which, had his ambition lain in that direction, would have entitled him to be considered a master of logic and per- suasive eloquence.

We have only to look at his open coun- tenance, reproduced on p. 203 from the canvas of Sir Joshua Reynolds, to feel that we know the character of the man indepen- dently of the interpretation of his " linea- ments of Gospel (or Blue) books " by the

land Militia, after a forced march of 25 miles, were led by Colonel Holroyd into the thick of the riot at High Hoi born, to break the Western advance of the mob and protect Langdale's Distillery." Mr. Rowland Prothero, in his ' Private Letters of Ed- ward Gibbon,' ii. 381, quotes Wraxall's ' Memoirs ' (i. 351) in a note to Gibbon's letter to his step- mother : " Col. H. was all last night in Holborn
 * Gibbon writes: "On June 7 the Northumber-

among the flames and performed very bold and

able services."