Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 9.djvu/75

 s. ix. JULY 16, i92L] NOTES AND QUERIES. 57 WILD DARRELL : DATE OF TRIAL (12 8. doubted testimony that at this period of his vii. 30, 53, 98). Foss, in his 'Judges of life, besides being given to drinking and England,' 1870, emphatically writes at from a hostel in Southwark with a band of p. 528: " No record has been found of the trial though every search has been made in desperate characters to Shooter's Hill, where the proper repositories. | they stopped travellers and took from them In ' Haunted Houses, &c.,' by Charles G. | not only their money, but any valuable corn- Harper, 1907, p. 32etseq., the author in a long ! modities.". account writes fully upon the subject. We j On p. 228, Lord Campbell quotes Sir give a few sentences : Walter Scott, the last few lines being as fol- settling the historic doubts as to the character the murder. By corrupting the Judge he ard career of the "Wicked Will." Mr. escaped the sentence of the law, but broke his Harper continues : " The one is content to ! neck b F a fal1 from ms horse jin hunting, in a see Darrell painted in the blackest of hues, few months after. A 1 A -rx 1_ _ -I _ T F. C. WHITE. while the other would have us believe him a* much injured man." " It is a tale of a midwife being suddenly summoned one dark 14, Esplanade, Lowestoft. SHAKESPEARIAN^. (12 S. viii. 446). Does of Barston in^ Warwickshire. DIEGO. DANTEIANA (12 S. viii. 462, 517). I am night, blindfolded and led on horseback to : not the word " but " in * 2 Henry IV.' v. iii. a mysterious mansion, where in a stately room 93, mean "except"? In that case the was a masked lady who gave birth to a child, j comma would apparently be correct. The A gentleman who was also present took the 1 meaning " except " is given in the glossary child from the nurse into an adjoining room j of the ' Temple Shakespeare ' edition. " I and threw it upon a blazing fire, and crushed j think he is one of the greatest men in this it with his boot heel until it was entirely con- i realm, except Goodman Puff of Barson," sumed." would seem to be Silence's meaning. In the The name of Sir John Popham (1513 ?- glossary " Barson " is said to be a corruption 1607), Lord Chief Justice of the King's Bench, seems to have been connected with DarrelPs alleged crime. Foss remarks : " Sir John Popham died in possession of j obliged to MR. T. PERCY ARMSTRONG for his Littlecote, in Wiltshire." In connexion courteous comment on my paper at the with this a dark and improbable story is fi rst reference and regret that we join issue related of its having come into the Chief ou ( as i take it) Dante's lack of modesty in Justice's hands as the price of his corruptly j his bidding Lucan and Ovid be silent while allowing one Darrell, the former proprietor, ' he speaks. I must still hold that in so doing to escape on his trial for an atrocious mur- the poet, again to quote Dean Plumtre's der. Foss goes on : " It would be curious verdict, " stoops from his higher level in to' trace the circumstances to which such a the very act of competition." I hope I am tradition owes its origin, &c." numbered amongst " the competent critics And again : " If the petition which Sir w h o would agree that Dante is right in his Francis Bacon in his argument against estimate," for I did not question that ; but Ho His and others for traducing public jus-, I am still unconvinced that " there is tice states was presented to Queen Elizabeth no lapse from humility on the part of a man against Chief Justice Popham, and which w ho knows his own place in the world and after investigation by four Privy Council- j realizes that it is a high one." To know this lors was dismissed as slanderous (' State | alx d even to express the knowledge modest ly Trials,' ii. 1029) could be found it might pos- ; as did Bacon and Milton and Keats sibly turn out this story was the slander, &c." Lord Campbell, in his " Lives of the Chief Justices of England,' (1849) begins his bio- graphy of Popham, vol. i. chap, vi., by confidently recording : " Although at one time in the habit of taking purses on the highway, instead of expiating his offences at Tyburn, he lived to pass sentence of death upon highwaymen, &c." ; and at p. 210 Lord Campbell adds: "It seems to stand on un- is far removed from conceit, but to proclaim it by bidding brother poets take a back seat is, to say the least, an unworthy ex- hibition of that weakness. Keats is not recorded to have told 'Byron or Shelley to stand aside, nor did Tennyson order Brown- ing or Swinburne to cease singing. Even Napoleon did not command Alexander or Caesar to step beneath him, but merely, and indirectly, expressed a belief in his own
 * "No one will ever succeed in satisfactorily lows ' " Darrell was tried at Salisbury for