Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 8.djvu/269

 12 s. viii. MABCH 12, 1921.] NOTES AND QUERIES. he registered a mark for plated wares at the Sheffield Assay Office, a sun, struck in duplicate. (See Act of 1784 by which articles plated with silver made in Sheffield or 100 miles thereof might bear a mark- such not being an Assay Office device for sterling silver.) After his death the manu- factory known as "The Soho Plate Co.," late Matthew Boulton & Co., continued to trade under his name. The business was not dispersed until the year 1848, which will account for the use of the mark at the dates mentioned, viz., 1810 and 1815. The reference to the Soho works being in Sheffield must be an error ; there was no manufactory so described in existence here at that date. F. BRADBURY. Sheffield. MATTHEW CARTER ( 12 S. viii. 130). A full account of what little is known about Matthew Carter will be found in the ' D.N.B.' He is said to have been a gentleman of Kent. His chief title to fame is that he was Quarter- Master-General of the Royalist army under the Ear! of Norwich during the siege of Colchester and was present at the surrender. He published in 1650 " A most true and exact relation of that, as honourable as unfortunate, Expedition of Kent, Essex and Colchester, by M. C. a loyall actor in that Engagement, Anno Dom. 1648. Printed in the yeere 1650." This was reprinted at Col Chester in 1750 and 1789. Copies of al three editions are in the Public Library. GEORGE RICKWORD. Public Library, Colchester. AUTHOR WANTED. (12 S. viii. 52). 2. ' The Old Farm House ; or Alice Morton' Home,' and other Stories was written by Matilda Mary Pollard. It was published in 1872. M. 01: Cosimo I., Duke of Florence. By Cecily Booth (Cambridge University Press, 12. 5s. net.) IN the history of the world there is a blacl gallery filled with monsters of wickedness whos names are a by-word. Italy of the fifteenth am sixteenth centuries is abundantly representec there ; and perhaps lovers of the romantic have no great quarrel with her for having producet their legendary enormities. Yet, undoubtedly in many cases, the grim honour of this kind o fame has been mistakenly bestowed. It reste often on lying of an extravagance too grotesque one would .have supposed, to win credence especially among people who, on occasion, wer apable of it themselves. Among the traduced' nust certainly be placed Cosimo I., Duke of lorence. That he conducted himself, alike in nternal and external policy, by the principles vhich were understood to govern the rulers of the- ixteenth century ; and that these principles illowed cruelty and duplicity which would tow-a-days be accounted discreditable, will not uffice to prove him a ruler of any abnormal/ niquity, still less to justify accusations of mon trous ill-doing in his prviate life. However, t is now some years since historians have been- jusy stripping him of his burden of calumny,, tnd a considered account of him based on a. tudy of the archives and his own correspondence was well worth doing. The importance of Florence under Cosimo we might begin to say the importance of Tuscany -in the troubled European situation of the mid- sixteenth century is not difficult to realize. Yet,- for the character of Cosimo, Florence might- aave been little more than another Milan : a valuable piece on a chess-board where she was lerself not a player. Between the Pope and} France and Spain, the Duke with but slight deflection, solid in his bounden support of the Spaniard extended the borders of his territory, leared his borders of enemies and made Florence. a state. Within the borders of that state his rule was. both stern and just with a patriarchal quality which he being the man he was suited the needs of Florence admirably. His private life, which had been the ma r k for the most outrageous of the calumnies against him, was magnificent, but also amiable. This side of his life is abundantly illustrated by Miss Booth, who, if her characterization of persons remains rather flat and a little confused, conveys a sufficiently detailed and vivid picture of the life led, at il Trebbio, or Poggio a Cavano, or in Florence itself, by the Ducal family. It was a pity to defer the chapter on Cosimo's internal government till the end of the book if, that is, the writer designed her book to be read straight through. The estimate to be formed of him is determined by his government of Florence as much as by anything he did, and the reader should have something of it before his mind as he follows the windings of foreign policy. The account of the latter, and of Cosimo's wars, though plenty of detail is given, rather lacks breadth and grasp, so that both successes and failures pass without being satisfactorily valued. The author's style, too, does her some little injustice. It rambles and drags and becomes occasionally confused ; drops into the mode of conversation without any dramatic propriety, and seldom settles down to straightforward systematic narrative. The diligence and care with which Miss Booth has worked over her sources appear on every page ; but the book would have been yet better than it is and it is a good book on an important and fascinating subject if, on the one hand, the greater outlines of the history had been better seized and dealt with, and Cosimo's relations thereto more firmly set down ; and if, on the other, the structure and diction of the book as a piece of writing had been more narrowly criticized, and brouerht up to a severer standard.