Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 9.djvu/455

 12 s. ix. NOV. 5, i92i.] NOTES AND QUERIES. 373 According to an account sent to Rome by his paymaster, Sebastiano di San Joseppi, who had stayed behind at Lisbon, very early in the battle " a cannon-ball took off his legs." However, one Helia (? Hely or Healey), an old servant of Stucley's (who was captured by the Moors, but managed to escape with the connivance of the alcaid his master, a rich renegade of Ragusa, and arrived at Lisbon April 21, 1579), told Mgr. Fontana that Stucley was wounded by a scimitar, when far from his troops, and also by a harquebus, fired apparently by his Ovvn men, who hated him. ' The Battell of Alcazar,' printed in 1594, and reprinted in 1907, and generally ascribed to George Peele, is a play entirely destitute of authority as history. For example, the Irish bishop who accompanied Stucley to Lisbon, who in reality was Donough Oge O' Gallagher, Bishop of Killala (Sept. 4, 1570), and afterwards (March 23, 1580) Bishop of Down, is referred to as " the reverent lordly bishop of saint Asses," i.e., St. Asaph ; Stucley is said to have arrived there " with seven shippes, two pinnaces, and six thousand men " ; the Pope is alluded to as " Pope Gregorie the seventh " ; and in the account of the battle it is stated that : The left or middle battell of Italians And Germiri horseman Stul^ley doth command ; and that he was slain by two of his Italian captains named lonas and Hercules. JOHN B. WAINEWRIGHT. ASTLEY'S AND SANGER'S CIRCUSES (12 S. ix. 329). Astley's was taken over by Mr. George Sanger in 1873, who retained it for circus performances till it was closed in 1895. George Sanger who called him- self " Lord " Gebrge Sanger as an advertise- ment at the suggestion of Mr. George R. Sims was, it will be recalled, brutally mur- dered in his 85th year at Park Farm, Finch- ley, by one of his employees named Cooper, in November, 1911. The murderer commit- ted suicide on the Great Northern Railway between Highgate and Crouch End before he could be arrested. According to ' Fifty Years of a Londoner's Life,' by H. G. Hibbert, the house known as Astley's vanished before street improvements in 1902. WlLLOUGHBY MAYCOCK. After being burned down on Aug. 16, 1794, and again on Sept. 2, 1803, Astley's Amphi- theatre, re-erected in horse shoe shape, was opened on Easter Monday, 1804. The elder Astley died in 1814 and the younger in 1821, when the premises became Davis' s Amphi- theatre. The original name persisted, how- ever, while the circus was run by successive owners, until Sanger removed there, in 1873, from the Agricultural Hall at Islington. J. PAUL DE CASTRO. Philip Astley, born in 1742, opened a wooden unroofed circus in Lambeth, in what is now the Westminster Bridge Road, in 1770. Subsequently it was roofed and otherwise improved and became known as the Royal Grove Theatre, though not under the royal aegis in any way. The Royal Grove Theatre was burnt to the ground on Aug. 24, 1794, and shortly rebuilt, and in 1798, under royal patronage, was re -opened as Astley's Royal Amphitheatre. On Sept. 2, 1803, as Toone (' Chr. Hist.' ii., p. 514) records : The Amphitheatre belonging to Messrs. Astley took fire in consequence of the negligence of the persons whose duty it was to see the lights care- fully extinguished ; the immense quantity of com- bustible matter for fireworks, &c., caused the flames to rage with astonishing fury, and eventu- ally burnt the whole fabric to the ground, 'together with upwards of 40 other houses. It was rebuilt in 1804. Astley established 19 equestrian theatres, including buildings at Paris and Dublin, and the Olympic Pavilion in Newcastle Street, Strand, which he sold to Robert William Elliston in 1812 for 2,800. This, as the Olympic Theatre, sur- vived until about 22 years ago. Astley died in Paris in 1814, and his son died also in Paris in 1821. The Amphitheatre was still in existence in 1871, when it was leased by John and George Sanger. I do not know when it was demolished. John Sanger, having dissolved partnership with his brother, died Aug. 22, 1889, but his business was taken over by his eldest son John, and afterwards by his second son Lord George. Lord George Sanger' s Circus still goes round the country, though I believe the eponymous hero to be dead, and that it has no per- manent local habitation. There are bio- fraphies of P. Astley, R. W. Elliston, and . Sanger in the ' D.N.B.' JOHN B. WAINE WRIGHT. " Astley's " is the subject of one of the immortal ' Sketches by Boz ' ; there are eight views of it in the Grace Collection (Catalogue, pp. 650-651). It is now extinct ; it was taken over by Sanger in 1873. " Lord " John Sanger is buried in Margate Cemetery.