Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 6.djvu/75

 128. VI. MARCH, 1920..] NOTES AND QQERIES.

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and 21. George Stocker and two of his friends, Robert Bellamy and Thomas Heath "were arrested on suspicion of complicity in the plot, for among those executed was one, Jerome Bellamy of London : and indict- ments were also brought against Elizabeth or Katharine Bellamy. Stocker was lodged in the Tower, Feb. 7th, 1587/8, as we are informed in a list endorsed by Lord Burghley, July 2, 1588 (but the R.O. Calendar notes "August, clearly"). The entry runs: " Februa. 1578, George Stocker, prisoner 6 months who hath bin in ffrance these XXtie years and came over to fetch the Earl of Westmorelands daughter." To this Lord Burghley had added a note "to ye M,shlsey" see Oath. Rec. Soc. 2. 282. However, in a list of Priests at Wisbech and prisoners in the Tower (which is un- dated but is earlier than October, 1588), there appears among the latter " George 'Stocker, the old Earl of Northumberland's man, and would have conveyed away his daughter, he came lately from Rome " (see Cath. Rec. Soc., ii. 280). It is there- fore uncertain who the lady was whom Stocker came to fetch. In 1587/8 he admitted (under torture) that Philip Howard, Earl of Arundel, then also a prisoner in the Tower, had " prepared keys for opening of prison doors" (Cath. Rec. Soc., xxi, 208). Stocker has left a touching relation of the sufferings of himself and others (Fr. J. H. Pollen, S.J., 'Acts of the English Martyrs,' p. 300). After their removal to Newgate to await trial, Stocker, Bellamy, and Heath managed to escape from prison and arrived in Edinburgh before Feb. 15, 1588/9 (Cath. Rec. Soc., xxi. 307). By September, 1589, they had succeeded in escaping to Spa.

In Lansdown MS. is a copy of a letter written by George Stocker to his friend Sir Anthony Snowdon, giving a graphic account of the escape of the three from Newgate, " Having the tools of a carpenter brought thither to mend the floor of a room called Justice hall, they did therein cut certain joices, whereby they got down into a cellar which had a door into the street, which they opened and escaped." A letter to Sir Owen Hopton states " that whereas George Stocker presentlie remayning in the ' Towre, being latelie apprehended, not long before came from the enemy out of the Low Countryes, having twice alreadie escaped, foreasmuch as he was known to have been a pensioner of the King of Spain." The torture of George Stocker by the Inquisition is recorded in Scottish Papers. Whilst a

prisoner in the Tower, the prison author- ities, to gain information, mixed with the prisoners two notorious spies, Topcliff, and a man passing under the name of John Snowdon, but whose real name was Cecil : these spies are mentioned an MS. of the Cath. Rec. Soc.

What ultimately became of Stocker and Heath I do not know ; they probably died abroad. Bellamy, however, was sent back to the English prison not long after, having been seized by Duke Casimir, " the great Condottiere of the German Protestants." He eventually procured liberty by money (ibid. 307a).

Can any reader say if the above George Stocker wa? a relation of F. Augustine Stocker, O.S.B., who died in London 1668 ? CHARLES J. S. STOCKER.

8 Cathedral Close, Norwich.

HISTORIC WALTHAMSTOW.

(See 12 S. v. 286.)

IT is to be hoped that Mr. George F. Bos- worth, the local public librarian, the local clergy, and the Walthamstow Antiquarian Society, will be encouraged to continue their careful and scholarly explorations in the past history of the sometime Forest hamlet, for the edification of the immense indust- trial population which has grown up in the north-eastern part of great London during the last two generations.

WALTHAMSTOW AND SAMUEL PEPYS. References to Walthamstow in the famous Diary of Samuel Pepys are numerous, in relation to Sir William Batten ; Sir W. Perm (the father of the founder of Pennsylvania) ; Mr. Radcliff (the vicar who was Samuel Pepys' s schoolfellow) ; the Brownes ; the Jordans ; the Shipmans, &c., showing that the City and the Services had, even early in the seventeenth century, appreciated the advantages which were offered by Waltham- stow' s rural and forestral amenities within an easy amble of Guildhall and the principal marts and exchanges of London town, and similarly convenient for the centre of the shipping and naval interests in the waterside hamlets eastward of the Tower.

WALTHAMSTOW AND DICK TURPIN. Mr. Edwin Freshfield mentions the tradi- tion that the plate of St. Mary's Church was taken and held to ransom by the notorious Whitechapel butcher-boy and highwayman, Dick Turpin; but so far as the Walthamstow Antiquarian Society knows