Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 8.djvu/352

 286 NOTES AND QUERIES. [i2s.vm. APRIL 9, 1921. tnade improve merits (over and above the repairs by John Shakespeare) at the Vicar's House which he left for the benefit of future incu-nbents : " I will that all the building I have bestowed cost upon remain as it is for the commodities of the Vicars of Stratford from time to time." To witness bis will he "caused to be called in " Alderman Smith, Adrian Quyny, John Sadler and Robert Salisbury, "with others." The inventory was made "the xxxj th day of June " by Quyny, Sadler, and Robert Bragg, a chandler. The value of the bocks was nearly half the summa totalis (23Z. 2s. Sd.). The very modest amount of furniture appraised suggests that the Vicar's House xjontained a good many articles which were for the use of the occupant for the time Jbeing. Fourpost bedsteads were often ^fixtures. EDGAR I. FRIPP. (To be concluded.) ROBERT WHATLEY. (See ante, pp. 221, 242, 261.) ON Feb. 15, 1744, What ley was yet lodging in Berry Street, divided between hope and fear (Whatley to Hardwicke, Feb. 15, 1744, B.M., Add. MSS. 35,587, folio 229). In June he returned " after near 3 years absence "* (Whatley to Pierre Desmaizeaux, Toft, Bee. 29, 1744, B.M., Add. MSS. 4,289, folio 1) to Toft, a disappointed but not discouraged man. To a correspondent he put a brave face on it : London he does not like, "So it is no disappointment to me I have no Call thither," yet in the same 'breath he explains : " I leave y e Great Man [Hardwicke ?] I saw after I took my leave of You to do as he pleases. I was well received but 1 would enter into no Explanation. But as I write occasionaly 1 Insinuate that without pretending to Obligation, 'One good Turn deserved an other. 'f Vide- 'bimus" (ibidem). Aliter visum est, and Whatley was to remain lonely his wife had by now died (ibidem) and isolated in his remote parish, without a friend with whom to exchange thoughts ("for I live much by mvself, without visiting or partaking of y e Country Diver- sions at all ") (ibidem), his only intellectual diversion his membership of the Gentlemen's Parish, a bad one, never in it (' .Self-Entertain- ments,^ p. 40)." t This obscure reference may carry back to Ahe days of King. Society at Spalding ( J. Nichols, ' Literary Anecdotes ,' ed. 1812-13, vol. vi., pp. 12, 1 19). * In 1746 t he published ' The Christian. A Sermon on the Words of King Agrippa to St. Paul, ' Almost thou per- suadest me to be a Christian.' Most humbly inscribed to the Lord Bishop of Durham.' In 1749, " The Immortal-Mortal ; or, the Age censured for its Neglect of Futurity. A Sermon Preach'd at Castor, August 10, 1748. At the Triennial Visitation of the Bight Reverend the Lord Bishop of Lincoln," dedicated to the new Archbishop of Canter- bury, until 1747 his diocesan of York. That he did "write occasionaly" we may well believe, for the Hardwicke papers pre- serve a letter of Nov. 25, 1747, in which hints for preferment are not wanting (B.M., Add. MSS. 35,589, folio 360). His impor- tunity was at last rewarded in 1750 when through Hardwicke Dr. Hutton, Arch- bishop of York, offered to exchange What- ley's stall of Bilton for that of Fridaythorpe, of double the monetary value, now vacant by the death of Dr. Heneage Dering (B.1VL, Add. MSS. 35,591, folios 81, 83, 85). To this he was instituted on July 24 (Public Record Office,, Exchequer, First Fruits and Tenths Office, Bishops' Certificates of In- stitution, York 37)4 Disillusionment followed : the stall proved less valuable than Whatley had been led to suppose (Whatley to Hardwicke, Toft, Aug. .., 175[0], B.M., Add. MSS. 35,591, folio 95), and thus filled with indignation that he should have been bought off by this substitute for a fat Government prebend (Whatley to Hardwicke, London, Jan. 12, [1751,] B.M., Add. MSS. 35,591, folio 156) the indomitable claimant, now in his six- tieth year, posted to town for a last assault. From his lodgings "at Mrs. Thomas's" in Little Ryder Street, St. James, he laid siege to Hardwicke and Hutton, launched a second edition of ' The Immortal -Mortal ' M.A. (from, no doubt, the records of the Society) while the explanatory note appended to his name is full of mistakes. Of this body Sir Isaac Newton, Dr. Birch and Professor Ward (cf. infra) were also members. t The dedication is dated at Toft, May 10, 1746. By an unfortunate error Le Neve's ' Fasti * (ed. T. D. Hardy, 1854) describes him as " Whartley " (vol. iii., p. 188), thus obscuring the transfer and creating a ghost-entry in the index. The derivation of this mistake may possibly be a similar entry in Bishops' Certificates of Institu- tion. York 40, s.d. 1767 (g.v. infra). The preface is dated Mar. 25, 1751.
 * " A good Incumbent never is out of his
 * He is wrongly here (p. IIP) described as an