Page:Notes and Queries - Series 2 - Volume 1.djvu/125

 2d S. NO 6., FEB. 9. r oC.]

NOTES AND QUERIES.

Kendrick, baptized Nov. 21, 1678. Charles, baptized Feb. 27, 1679-80. Philip, baptized Jan. 31, 1681."

We have here notices of fourteen Children, Charles and Philip, Robina and Victoria, being of the number, thus clearly establishing the identity of the family. Further confirmation, however, is at hand, in the subjoined abstract of Mr. Giles Vanbrugh's will, dated Oct. 25, 1683, and pre- served in the Episcopal Registry at Chester :

" Giles Vanbrugh, of the city of Chester, by his will of this date, gave to his wife Elizabeth the whole of his household furniture, &c. (plate excepted), and what was due to her by marriage contract; and directed the whole of his real estate, &c., to be sold by his executor, and the proceeds to be divided into fourteen parts, two of which he gave to his eldest son John, one part to Lucy, one to Anna Mafia, one to Mary, one to Victoria, tad one each to Elizabeth, Robina, Carleton, Giles, Dudley, Kendrick, Charles, and Philip. Appoints his wife sole executrix. Will proved by her July 24, 1689."

The foregoing extracts prove, beyoud doubt, that Sir John Vanbrugh. was the son of Mr. Giles Vanbrugh of Chester, and that he must have been born prior to 1668, although some of his 'bio- graphers give 1672 as the probable date. When and where that event took place has yet to be de- fined ; but in the absence of proof to the contrary, Chester claims him as her son. Here he certainly spent the first years of his life, and was educated, as I believe, at the King's School, then a seminary of the highest repute". At nineteen it appears he was resident in France; at twenty-six (1692)1 find him auditor for the southern division of the Duchy of Lancaster ; and what he afterwards became the world well knows.

Sir John and his father bore different arms, the coat of the latter, " a very worthy gentleman" as he calls him, being thus emblazoned by Randle Holme in his Academy of Armoury, " Argent, a fesse barry of ten, or and azure, a lion issuant, sable."

The John and James of the Court of Requests Petition, must have been cousins of Sir John, and sons, most likely, of the William Vanbrugge referred to in the early part of MR. CUHNING- HAM'S Note.

The Vanbrugh family remained connected with Chester until the end of the last century. Sir' John himself was architect of the old Eaton Hall. The Rev. Robert Vanbrugh was for many years, prior to 1780, Head Master of the King's School, and a minor canon of the cathedral. Mary, relict of the Rev. George Vanbrugh, of Canterbury, was buried in the cathedral in March, 1773, aged eighty-two; and her son George was Rector of Aughton, Lancashire, from 1786 to 1834.

T. HUGHES.

Chester.

HARRIS S WARE.

(2 nd S. i. p. 34.)

The MSS. Collections of Walter Harris, the laborious editor of Sir James Ware's Works con- cerning Ireland, are, or at least ought to be, still preserved in the Dublin Society's Library. I use the qualification, because, having inquired for those MSS. early in the year 1855, I learned with surprise that two of them had been lent out some time in the preceding year. Again, some six months later, when I renewed my inquiry, I re- ceived the same reply : and among the complaints to which so unusual a circumstance gave rise, were those of three persons engaged in various antiquarian and literary researches, who had been alike disappointed in this matter ; one of whom remarked that the volumes might have been tran- scribed in less time. These I do not for the pre- sent name, as they are certain to read " N. & Q.," and are well able to answer for themselves. It is but right to add, that I am informed the volumes have been returned perfectly safe, after being nearly a year absent, in this being much more fortunate than several of the printed books of the same library, which are detained by the borrowers for years, or perhaps not returned at all a de- gree of negligence which cannot be too severely censured.

In the meagre and incorrect Catalogue of the Society's Library, Dublin, 1839, 8vo., at p. 89., we find Harris's Collection thus mentioned : " HARRIS and KING, Collectanea de Rebus Hibernicis, cum indice MS., 20 vols., folio." This being the whole amount of information which the compiler of the catalogue vouchsafed to give. But a satisfactory account had long previously been given by the Rev. John Lanigan, a learned Catholic clergyman, well known to scholars by his admirable Eccle- siastical History of Ireland, in 4 vols. 8vo. ; and who held successively the offices of assistant, and principal librarian of the Dublin Society, which in his time had not yet prefixed the epithet Royal to its title, though it had been incorporated by King George II. in 1749.

In a letter to the late William Shaw Mason, Esq., bearing date Nov. 8, 1810, Dr. Lanigan describes Harris's Collection as consisting of seventeen volumes folio, chiefly in Harris's own writing. The ten first containing copies of va- rious patents, deeds, letters, and other documents relating to the affairs of Ireland, from the reign of Henry II. to that of William III., and having some papers of Queen Anne's time. The eleventh volume being Harris's own catalogue of- the con- tents of the preceding ten, giving the date of every document, but left unfinished by its author, who had only brought it down to A.D. 1633. ' The remaining six volumes, Dr. Lanigan describes as