Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 5.djvu/12

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NOTES AND QUERIES. [i2s.v.jA*.,i9i9.

BRITISH NAVY, 1587-1919. At a moment when every member of the British Empire is, or should be, proud of hia incomparable Navy, it may be well to record, for the historian's future use, the following early reference. It occurs in a rare poetical tract believed to survive in two original exemplars only. The slender volume was issued to mark Queen Elizabeth's thirty years' reign of unexampled prosperity, and just a year before the ** stearnfull " navy had a chance of showing the Spaniards the stuff it was made of, despite miserable supplies of provisions and munitions. I append the extract from Maurice Kyffin's ' Blessednes of Brytaine,' 1587, in its archaic spelling, believing that hitherto it has not seen the light of print in 'N. & Q.':

We may not here omit in silent forte

Her royall ships strong- wrought for stearnfull

warre, Whereof all worldly realm es do raise report

Through raging seas discovering regions farre A scowre-sea navy, all bright & bravely burnisht, Foorth spowting fire ; faire, huge, and fully furnisht.

WM. JAGGABD, Lieut.

PRISONERS OF WAR AND THEIR LETTERS IN 1758. At the present time, when many prisoners of war are returning from Ger- many, the following letter to Lord Barring- ton, Secretary at War (now preserved at the Public Record Office under the heading "War Office, 1/977"), will be read with interest, as showing the difficulties connected with letters from and to English prisoners of war a century and a half ago :

Broad Street buildings Bishopgate 16 October 1768. My Lord

In sending your Lordship the inclosed Letter [missing] as I received it from France give me leave to add a few lines with regard to the many letters I have received from the english prisoners there, too many for their friends in the Country to be franked, or to pay the postage from france, the first packett amounted to 1:9:2

the second to 12 : 6

the situation of prisoners is deserving compassion in every consideration, & therefore these letters were sent to the Commissioners of sick and wounded, & by them directed to the War Office, though neither would pay the charges, many have been forwarded by us to the prisoners in France for which we have paid the postage to flanders and our Correspondent at Paris Monsieur de Monmartel has never brought us any further account, we cannot therefore charge him with those he is so kind to send us. I should be glad therefore to receive your Lordships orders in what manner or to whom the prisoners letters in France ought to be directed in future. If I can be in this^or any other shape assistant to my |

unhappy countrymen I shall as willingly con- tribute to it as to convince your Lordship on all occasions of the sincere regard with which I have the honour to be My Lord

Your Lordships Most obedient & very hum: Servant

THOMAS WALPOLB.

[Endorsed :] Thank Mr. Walpole for his care of Officers Letters & desire he will continue so to do. Whatever charge shall arise shall be pay'd by me on his making up the Ace*, but I am to pay only those expenses without which the Prisoners could not receive their letters.

It is pleasant, even after this lapse of time, to know that the monetary obstacle did not prove insurmountable.

E. H. FAIRBROTHER.

SIR THOMAS BROWNE : TOM BROWN. In the preface to Dr. Greenhill's ' Golden Treasury ' edition of the * Religio Medici ' is a detail which requires, I think, some further explanation. In giving an account, on p. ix, of the way in which translations of the ' Religio Medici ' were received on the Continent, he observes that the book " was by some persons much misunderstood, and gave occasion to great and most undeserved misrepresentation of the author's religious opinions." An instance of this is appended at the foot of the page :

" The following Note (which deserves preserva- tion on account of its monstrous ignorance and absurdity) was copied by the present Editor from one of the copies in the National Library at Paris : ' Th. Brown, un des plus declarez ennemis de toute Religion, et que 1'Univers. d' Oxford avoit autrefois chasse pour ses de- bauches, avant sa mort 6crit Une lettre pleine de sentimens de penitence : elle est imprim^e dans un Recueil postume de ses dialogues.' "

Dr. Greenhill apparently leaves the reader to suppose that this ludicrously false account is the invention of malicious bigotry. What has really happened is that the reported facts of one man's life have been transferred to another of a similar name. It was Thomas Brown (1663-1704) who is said, when an undergraduate at Christ Church, to have been threatened with expulsion by Dean Fell. I have not ex- amined the posthumous ' Collection of all the Dialogues of Mr. Thomas Brown,' 1704, but feel safe in accepting from so sound an ai thority as Mr. A. H. Bullen the statement, in the ' D.N.B.,' that to this edition " was appended a letter (the genuineness of which was attested by Thomas Wotton, curate of St Lawrence Jewry) purporting to have been written by Brown on his death-bod. In this letter Brown, after expressing regret for having written anything that would be likely to have a pernicious influence, protests against being responsible for ' lampoons, trips, London Spies, in which he had no hand."