Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 5.djvu/249

 12 S. V. SEPT., 1919.]

NOTES AND QUERIES.

243

Raisonable (64) in that year, and began the battle off Belleisle, Nov. 20, 1759, where he gained great honour. He commanded the Bellona (74, a new ship just off the stocks at Chatham) ; the Royal Charlotte yacht (of 15,5 tons, 40 men, 8 cannonade and 10 swivel guns, stationed at Deptford), from Aguust, 1761, till he was made rear- admiral of the Blue, Oct. 28, 1770, and of the White four days later ; became vice-admiral of the Blue, "March 31, 1775, then vice- admiral of the Red Squadron of H.M.'s Fleet, was M.P. for Hedon in two Parlia- ments, 1754 to 1768, and a director of Greenwich Hospital, January, 1769, till his death. W. R. WILLIAMS.

[CoL. FYNMORE and MR. ARCHIBALD SPARKE also thanked for replies.]

DEVONIAN PRIESTS EXECUTED IN 1548-9 (12 S. v. 131, 183). Anthony Babington mentioned by your correspondent was not a priest, but a page to Mary Queen of Scots, and there is no evidence to show that he came from Devonshire. Some information concerning him is given in Gillow's ' Biog. Diet. English Catholics ' (vol. i. p. 93), where it is stated that he was " concerned irx a plot to procure the liberation of Mary Queen of Scots and to assassinate Queen Elizabeth." For a long time he lay con- cealed in a house in St. John's Wood until compelled by hunger he fled to Harrow- on-the-Hill, where he was taken. He was executed on Sept, 20, 1586, together with thirteen others (including John Ballard) implicated in the same conspiracy. This, it will be observed, is nearly forty years after the date mentioned by your correspondent (ante, p. 183). As to George Stocker to whom he refers, no mention of him is made in the ' Diet. Nat. Biog.,' but some informa- tion concerning him is given in * Notes of Priests at Wisbech, prisoners in the Tower,' printed in Catholic Records, vol. ii. pp. 280, 282. Thus " George Stocker, the old Earl of Northumberland's man, who would have conveyed his daughter awaye [to save her from arrest ?]. He came lately from Rome " (p. 280). Again, " Feb. 7, 1587. George Stocker prisoner [in the Tower] vj. monthes who hath been in ffrance these xxtie yeares, and came over to fetch the Earle of Westmorland's [sic] daughter " (p. 282). The date of his execution is not given, but evidently from this entry it could not have been so early as 1548-9 as suggested in the headline, and was most probably some time in 1587.

J. E. HARTING. Portmore Lodge, Weybridge.

" ABDOLLA" (12 S. v. 182). Can this be- an error for the Latin word abolla, meaning a cloak, which occurs in the following places at least :

Juv., iii. 115. Facinus majoris abollae, a crime committed by one who wore an ampler cloak, i.e. r a professed (Stoic or Cynic) philosopher.

Juv., iv. 76. Kapta properabat abolla Pegasus (a courtier).

Suet. Vit. Calig., 3o. Ptolemaeus ... convertit hominum oculos fulgore purpurese abollse.

Mart., viii. 48. Nescit cui dederit Tyriam Cris- pinus abollam.

Prudent, adv. Symmachum 1, 557 [Romanorum < senatum conversum ad Christum 12].

[Anicius Olybrius] palmata insignis abolla. The first reference suggests that the garment had some speciality of significance ; the ~ abolla was a large, voluminous, compre- hensive cloak, serving as an all -enveloping garment by day and a blanket by night (Mart., iv. 53). H. K. ST. J. S.

[G. G. L. also thanked for reply.]

AMBASSADOR (12 S. v. 210). This defini- tion is not due to Samuel Johnson, nor may it go to the credit of Izaak Walton. It is a witty translation of a mot of Sir Henry Wotton's, recorded by his biographer, but to which " the judicious hooker" nmkes no- claim. Here is part of a passage relating to- the authorship. When Sir Henry was going as ambassador into Italy, "as he passed through Germany he stayed some days at Augusta, where, having been in his former travels well known by many of the best note for learning and ingeniousness (those that are esteemed the virtuosi of that nation), with whom he, pass- ing an evening in merriment, was requested by Christopher Flecamore to write some sentence m his Albo (a book of white paper which the German gentry carry about with them for that purpose), and Sir Henry Wotton, consenting to that motion, - took occasion, from some accidental discourse of the present company, to give a pleasant definition of an ambassador in these very words :

' Legatus est vir bonus peregr^ missus ad menti- endum reipublicse causa,'

Which Sir Henry Wotton could have been content should have been thus Englished :

abroad for the good of his country.' But the word for lie, being the hinge upon which the conceit was to turn, was not to be expressed in Latin, as would admit (in the hands of an enemy especially) so fair a construction as Sir Henry's thought in English." ' Lives,' Zouch's- edition, pp. 128-9.
 * An ambassador is an honest man sent to lie

With us "to lie" formerly signified " to lodge " or " to stay." ST. SWITH!N.

Izaak Walton in his ' Life of Sir Henry Wotton ' says :

" Sir Henry Wotton. . . .took an occasion, from some accidental discourse of the present companyv - to write a pleasant definition of an Ambassador