Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 6.djvu/191

12 S. VI. APRIL 24, 1920:] NOTES AND QUERIES. 'Hark! the Herald Angels Sing') he has this note: "This and the sixteen preceding are from manuscript copies, several of which are also printed as broadsides." It would seem from this note that Sandys did not know the author or source of any of these seventeen carols. If this is so, it is singular that he should not have been aware that Charles Wesley was the author of 'Hark! the Herald Angels Sing.'

B s CONINGSBY OF SALOP (12 S. vi. 64). H s is probably Ricardus. Sir Richard Ooningsby, who belonged to the family of Niend Solers, Salop, and was Gentleman Usher to King James I., is mentioned in Nuns of Ghent ' (Catholic Record Society, vol. xix., at pp. 64-5) :
 * Obituary Notices of the English Benedictine

" Anno 1657 on the 23 of march Our Most venerable Dear Dame Mary Ignatia most happily Departed this life in the 18 year of her profession, and the 80 of her age. . . .Dame Mary Ignatia In Baptism Call'd Margarit, Daughter to Eobert Corham Gentleman in Hampshire and widdow to Sir Richard Coninsby in his life and after his Death, did a world of good Deeds," &c.

" And though she had been in its [i.e., the world's] high esteem, her husband and Sr. Richard Coningsby being a courtiour and in a noble office under King James, and she much feavour'd in a particular manner by him, who said that after her knight's Death he would be her protector ; and so she found it. as long as the said King James liiv'd, having been cause I mean a Chief Instru- ment of Allmighty God to obtain her husband's conversion, at Last suffring much loss of her temporall estate she cast her care on God," &c.

Barbara, wife of Robert Corham of " Heckefeild," occurs among the Hampshire recusants in the Recusant Roll of 1592-3 <Cath. Rec. Soc., vol. xviii., at p. 288).

Sir Richard Coningsby was probably about twenty years older than Francis Beaumont. It is remarkable that the 1623 pedigree (Harl. Soc. Publ., xxviii. 131) mentions only his marriage to a Berkshire Barker. Margaret Corham must have been his second wife. He seems to have had no children. JOHN B. WAINEWBIGHT.

, I would suggest that the signature may be Rieus, the contracted form of Ricardus -or Richard. There was a family of Coningsby of Niend Solers, or Nenne Solers, in Shrop- shire (afterwards of Hereford), whose pedi- gree is given in the Visitation of Shropshire, 1623, published by the Harleian Society in 1889. A Richard Coningsby of this family, though his grandfather had apparently migrated to Hereford, was Gentleman Usher

to James I. His uncle or step-uncle, another Richard, who, however, is described as of Harksteed in Suffolk, had a son Beaumont Coningsby ; it may be his name which appears in the book, and, of course, he may have been called after the poet as there is no other Beaumont in the pedigree to account for him.

H. J. B. CLEMENTS.

SONG : ' THE SPADE ' (12 S. vi. 90). This song, with its refrain beginning : Here's to the spade and the man who can use it A fig for your lord with his soft silken hand

appeared in a song-book issued by the National Agricultural Labourers' Union (Joseph Arch's movement) about 1872. I believe its writer was the late Mr. Howard Evans, author of ' Our Old Nobility,' con- tributor to The Labourers' Chronicle, and afterwards editor of the London Echo. Mr. Evans wrote the majority of the songs in this little book, of which 120,000 copies were circulated. My difficulty is that he says in his 'Radical Fight of Forty Years ' (1909) that it contained " a few songs by other writers." He quotes several of the songs which he wrote for the song-book, but not this one. This may give MB. HARRIS a hint. ROBT. S. PENGELLY.

GORDON : THE MEANING OF THE NAME (12 S. vi. 111). This name has nothing to do with a spear, a spoon, a spade, or any other weapon or implement. It is the name of a village and parish in Berwickshire, and the earliest record of its use as a territorial surname occurs in a charter c. 1171, wherein Richard or Richer de Gordon grants certain lands to the monks of Kelso and to the church of St. Michael "in his town of Gordon."

Sixth or seventh in descent from Richard came Sir Adam de Gordon, who did homage to Edward I. at Elgin on July 28, 1296; but he afterwards joined Robert, King of Scots, either jxist before or just after the battle of Bannockburn in 1314. In 1320 King Robert appointed him ambassador to convey to Pope John XXII. the defiant letter of the Scottish barons. It is believed that it was after his return from that mission that Sir Adam received a grant of the lands of StrathbogieinAberdeenshire,but the writ is not extant, and is known only through being cited in a charter by David II. This is the earliest record of the Gordons as landowners in the north of Scotland, though Sir Adam's presence at Elgin m 129(