Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 4.djvu/201

 12 S. IV. JULY, 1918.]

NOTES AND QUERIES.

195

Evidently Burt did much work while in Chester, and a good deal might be found out about him there. ' The Cheshire Sheaf is still published as a weekly column in The Chester Courant, and a query sent to the editor, Mr. J. H. E. Bennett, might result in additional information.

The question of the parentage of Burt was raised in 1880 without success, but perhaps this is settled by now.

R. S. B.

A sketch of the life of Albin R. Burt was written by the son of Robert Cabbel Roffe, the engraver, who was Burt's fellow- apprentice with Benjamin Smith. He says :

" Albin R. Burt was quite an original. soon quitted engraving, and became a travelling portrait-painter. He was not much of an artist (indeed, he used himself to say that he did noi profess to be one, but that he was only a ' face painter '), yet he possessed a remarkable talenl for taking an ' inveterate likeness.' He used to go about the country, fixing himself in a town until he had exhausted its patronizing power, anc then moving to another. He must have made a handsome income, for he maintained a large and expensive family in very good style. He painted all sorts of persons from a lord down to a ' boots,' and he was equally at home with them all. He passed much of his time in tlie houses of the great ; and as he was undoubtedly a gentleman, he was fit for any society ; and yet I have seen him myself in a public-house, surrounded by coachmen, guards, &c., all smoking and drinking, painting with all the coolness in the world. Burt's mother, a native of :Wales, knew a barefooted girl who got her living by carrying sand. This bare- footed, sand-carrying girl in process of time became the famous Lady Hamilton. To her credit be it said, she was neither ashamed of her origin nor forgetful of her friends. Burt was a frequent and welcome guest at Sir William Hamilton's seat at Merton in Surrey, where he sat at table with the great Nelson himself. He has told me that Lady Hamilton used to delight in telling her guests about her shoeless, sand- carrying, going-to-service days. She was a good friend to Burt. He engraved a small portrait of Nelson, and prodxiced a great ugly print repre- senting ' Lady Hamilton, as Britfmnia, unveiling the Bust of Nelson,' from a drawing of a cousin of Burt's, named Baxter, and she got him plenty of subscribers."

WILLIAM T. WHITLEY.

TYRANNICIDE (12 S. iv. 133). Tyrants form the subject of several of the later chapters in book viii. of John of Salisbury's ' Policraticus.' The twentieth is headed :

" Quod auctoritate diuinre paginaj licitum et gloriosum est publicos tirannos occidere, si tamen fldelitate non sit tiranno obnoxius interfector aut alias iustitiam aut honestatem non amittat."

He writes here of the children of Israel :

" Licebatque finito tempore dispensationis nece

tirannorum excutere iugum de ccruicibus suis ;

nee quisquam eorum, quorum uirtute penitens et humiliatus populus hberabatur, arguitur, sect iocunda posterorum memoria quasi minister' Domini memoratur."

This is illustrated by the killing of Eglon, King of Moab, by Aoth (Ehud), of Sisera by Jael, of Holofernes by Judith. Two chapters earlier, after dealing with examples from Roman history, he had written :

" Ex quibus facile liquebit quia semper tiranno- licuit adulari, licuit eum decipere et honestam f uit occidere, si tamen aliter coherceri non poterat. Non enim de priuatis tirannis agitur sed de his qui rem publicam premunt."

For tyrants in private life, he adds, are easily curbed by the laws of the State. And special consideration must be shown to priests, even though they play the tyrant. Near the beginning of chap. xx. he men- tions that his opinions on tyrants will be found at greater length in a treatise en- titled ' De Exitu Tirannorum.' This, Mr. C. C. J. Webb points out in his edition of the ' Policraticus,' was never published,, or else all trace of it has been lost.

EDWARD BENSLY.

BOSTON, MASS. : TRI-MOTJNTAIN (12 S. iv. 73). Samuel Adams Drake, in his ' Old Landmarks of Boston,' points out that the settlers at Charles town subsequent to 1626, the year of Blackstone's retirement to Shawmut (or Sweet Water, the Indian name of the neighbouring peninsula)* referred to the place as Trimountain,

" not, says Shaw, on account of the three principal hills subsequently Copp's, Beacon r and Fort but from the three peaks of Beacon Hill, which was then considered quite a high mountain, and is so spoken of by Wood, one of the early writers about Boston " [To the northwest i a high mountain, with three little rising hills on the top of it, wherefore it is called the Tramount (Wood). Hence the later Tremont Street, Tremont Theatre, &c.] ; "the reader will know that Beacon and its two outlying spurs of Cotton (Pemberton) and Mt. Vernon are meant."

" On the 7th of September, 1630 (old style), at court held in Charlestown, it was ordered that Trimountain be called Boston. Many of the lettlers had already taken up their residence there, and ' thither the frame of the governor's house was carried, and people began to build their houses against whiter.' Clinging to the old associations of their native land, the settlers named their new home for old Boston in Lincolnshire, England,, whence a number of members of the company had migrated."

It may thus be inferred that Trimountain, or Tramount, continued to be the colloquial designation of the newly-named town, a modern account of which was contributed to Temple Bar by the present writer in. December, 1896.