Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 9.djvu/623

 12 s. ix. DEC. 24, i92i.] NOTES AND QUERIES. 513 cruel ? " " I don't believe it was more like his odd war.' it was meant so Johnson, who had the loan of Spence's MS. from, the Duke of Newcastle, when writing his ' Lives of the English Poets,' gives the story in his account of Howe. The poet is there said to have applied to Lord Oxford for some public employment. The story is told with some different details in the Life of Howe included in " the little trifling edition of the poets, printing by the Martins at Edinburgh, and to be sold by Bell in London," to quote Edward Dilly's letter to Boswell, Sept. 20, 1777. EDWAED BENSLY. VICE-ADMIRAL SIR CHRISTOPHER MINGS. (12 S. ix. 461). MR. GEORGE S. FRY'S interesting note on the pedigree of this vice-admiral makes no mention of a possible connexion with that of another contem- porary vice-admiral, a still more intimate acquaintance of Mr. Pepys, Vice-Admiral Sir John Minnes. Far be it from me to incur the strictures of the " scientific " genealogist by imagining that identity of name means identity of stock, but when we find two naval celebrities whose sur- names were phonetically and are sometimes literally the same, who were both men of Kent and were both descended out of Cinque Ports so inter-allied as Sandwich and Romney, I think a family connexion may be at least " looked for." Mr. Fry apparently claims Judith, widow of John Mynge, of New Romney, as one of Sir f;t Inverary Castle, and possibly there may GENTLEMAN USHERS OF THE BLACK ROD- (12 S. ix. 468). Sir Henry Bellenden, son of Lord Bellenden by his wife Mary, Countess of Dalhousie, died before April 16,. 1761, for on that day Horace Walpole writes to George Montagu : You will be pleased with the anacreontic, written by Lord Middlesex, upon Sir Henry Bell- endine : I have not seen anything so antique for ages ; it has all the fire, poetry, and simplicity of 'Horace.' Ye sons of Bacchus, come and join In solemn dirge, while tapers shine Around the grape-embossed shrine Of honest Harry Bellendine. Pour the rich juice of Bordeaux's wine, Mix'd with your falling tear of brine, In full libation o'er the shrine Of honest Harry Bellendine. Your brows let ivy chaplets twine, While you push round the sparkling wine. And let your table be the shrine Of honest Harry Bellendine. No doubt this was very appropriate, as we are told his last illness came on imme- diately after an orgy which he gave " in honour of the house of Drummond." Sir Henry left his house to his nephew. Lord Lome, afterwards fifth Duke of Argyll, who married the beautiful Elizabeth Gunning. His brother, Lord Bellenden, and several others of the family were buried at Westmill, a small village in Hertford- shire. There are many portraits of his sister, the famous beauty, Mary Bellenden r be one of Sir Henry. CONSTANCE RUSSELL. Swallowfield Park, Reading. Sir Septimus Robinson appears to have Christopher Mings's relations by marriage, and makes her sister of Sir Thomas Hamon of Acrise, Kent ; while, according to the pedigree of Sir John (in BoysV Sandwich'), _ w ,^ w iWM, FFO w ^^ his sister Maria married T. Hammonds, I sat twice to Sir Joshua Reynolds, in August, a torm common to the Hamons of Acrise j i 76 l, and again in March, 1764. See Leslie and Hamonds of Nonnmgton, near Sand- wich. It is curious that Pepys makes no reference to any connexion between the two commanders. Sir John was a vain- glorious person, class-conscious of his half- brother's alliance with the Royal Stuarts, and Sir Christopher's boisterous insistence on his shoemaker parentage may have kept them " cold cousins." As to the shoemaker and hoy-master, one could not be a burgess of Sandwich or Romney and Taylor's * Life and Times of Sir Joshua Reynolds,' vol. i., pp. 197, 202, 239. G. F. R. B. CAPTAIN PEREGRINE BERTIE, R.N. (12 S. ix. 330). Born March 13, 1741, third son of Willoughby, third Earl of Abingdon, and of Anna Maria, daughter of Sir John Collins, Kt., who married his lordship at Florence in August, 1727. Mr. Bertie entered the Royal Navy, pro- moted Lieutenant 1761, Commander 1762, without admission to some such craft fraternity, and perhaps Mr. Pepys, like and Post -Captain the same year, when he was other merry men, saw his own jokes quicker appointed to command the frigate Shannon, than other people's, and missed the point Peace took place almost immediately and he of Sir Christopher's jocularity. [entered politics and was Member for West- PERCY HULBURD. | bury, Wilts, 1768-74, and for Oxford City