Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 3.djvu/503

 12 S. III. DKC., 1917 J

NOTES AND QUERIES.

'Committee of Privileges in 1914. Mr Watson's article contains much matter no1 to be found in G. E. C.'s edition, vol. iii. {1890). pp. 125-6, -and corrects several long- standing errors. His research has estab- lished, for instance, that Lord Dinham died not in 1509, but in January, 1500/1, and that his wife who survived him was not Elizabeth, Lady Fitz- Walter, but a later wife, Elizabeth, daughter of Robert Wil- loughby, Lord Brook. Lady Fitz-Walter had died at an uncertain date between June, 1483, and August, 1485.

Lord Dinham' s marriages produced no -child who survived him, and his heirs (as found by inquisition) were his sisters, Elizabeth, Lady Fitz-Warene, and Joan, Lady Zouche, and his nephews, Sir Edmund Carewe, of Mohun's Ottery, Devon, and Sir John Arundell, of Lanherne, Cornwall, sons of his sisters Margery and Katherine, who had predeceased him. But there is satisfactory evidence that by his marriage with the Lady Fitz-Walter he had two children, viz., a son George, who died in 1487, and a daughter Philippa, who died in 1485. George was born before July 10, 1470, on which day Lord Dinham executed a deed, in the nature of a will, to provide for his wife and this son, whom he calls " George my son." The deed, which is printed in Howard and Hughes' s 'Arundell Family,' p. 214, upsets completely a sup- position entertained by G. E. C. that George was illegitimate. Mr. Watson does not repeat the supposition : he men- tions the deed, but does not say what became of George. George, like his sister Philippa before him, was buried in the chancel of Lambeth Church, and there was once a brass plate there, which bore their epitaphs and definitely recorded their parentage. The brass has disappeared, but John Aubrey saw it, and copied the epi- taphs, and they were printed in his ' N atural History and Antiquities of Surrey,' vol. v. (1719), p. 233. George's epitaph ran thus :

Hie jacet Georgius nlius Dni. Johan. Dni. Dynham, et Eliz. Dne. Fitzwater Uxoris sue, qui obiit xxviij die Junii A

Dni. MCCCCLXXXVU. Cujus anime propicietnr Dcus.

The epitaph for Philippa, who died on Nov. 16, 1485, was to a like effect. For reprints of the epitaphs or references to them, see also ' Bibliotheca Topographica Britannica,' vol. ii., App. to Hist, ot Lambeth, p. 41 ; Manning and Bray's ' Surrey,' iii. 506 ; Xysons's 'Environs of London,' i. 284.

According to Westcote's ' Devonshire ' (ed. Oliver and P Jones, 1845), p. 494, Lord Dinham had two sons, George and Philip, and four daughters. But it is patent, from the particulars given of these so-called daughters, that they were really Lord Dinham' s four sisters, to whom I have already alluded. As for the so-called son Philip, it seems prudent not to accept him until one has some assurance that he was not in reality the daughter Philippa transformed into a boy by the fairy wand of error.

In Banks' s ' Baronia Anglica Concentrata,' i. 196, one meets not only with George and " Philip " and the " four daughters," but also with a certain Sir Thomas Dinham, who is introduced thus. The Rev. William Syer (whom Banks calls "Tyer") died in 1605, and being Rector ot Radnage, Bucks, was buried there with an epitaph which came to be printed in Langley's ' Hundred of Desborough,' p. 364. The epitaph states that Syer " took to wife Jane, daughter of George Dynham, son of sir Thomas Dynham, kt., son and heir of John, lord Dynham." I have not been able to investigate Mrs. Syer's parentage, but there is evidently one flaw in her pedigree as offered by her husband's epitaph, for Sir Thomas Dinham was certainly not Lord Dinham's heir. He was, presumably, the Sir Thomas Dinham or Denham who before his knighthood was Sheriff of Bucks in 1512, and whose will, dated Sept. 18, 1519, wherein he is described as " now of Aldbur [Aldbury, Herts] and late of Etheropp [Eythorpe] in the count ie of Bucks," was proved by his widow Dame Jane Denham on Feb. 13, 1519/20 (P.C.C., 25 Ayloffe). The will discloses the fact that he had a family of eleven children 'perhaps all or some of them by ah earlier wife), John, George, Thomas, Charles, Elynour, Roger, Edward, Anne, Kateryn, Elizabeth, and Jane. Were Banks and G. E. C. right in ountenancing the supposition that he was Lord Dinham's illegitimate son, or did the unknown author of the Syer epitaph merely make a bad shot at Mrs. Syer's great -grand- tather ?

In Prince's 'Worthies of Devon' (1701), 3'. 234, it is stated that Lord Dinham had by iis marriage with Lady Fitz-Walter " issue Henry, who died without issue"; and this statement is repeated in Collinson's Somerset,' ii. 362, but not quite accurately, as " Fitz-Walter " is there perverted into ' Fitz-Warren." Is anything known of this alleged son Henry, or is " Henry " merely an error for " George " ?