Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 10.djvu/166

 158

NOTES AND QUERIES.

s. x. AUG. 23, 1902.

.between the great champions Sutton and Figg," and Thackeray in a foot-note indicates the source of his description, " the pleasant poem in the sixth volume of Dodsley's Col- lection " (' Extempore Verses upon a Trial of Skill between the Two Great Masters of Defence, Messieurs Figg and Sutton,' by Dr. Byrom, pp. 286-9 in the edition of 1758). Fogg's life is given in the ' D.N.B.' There is an interesting account of a combat of this .kind bv. \ajiother foreigner, the well-known Zacharias"Conrad von Uffenbach, who visited London in the reign of Queen Anne. I have not my copy of his ' Reisen ' at hand, so I am unable to add fche exact reference.

EDWAKD BENSLY. The University, Adelaide, S. Australia.

HEBREW INCANTATION (9 th S. x. 29, 78). The books used by Faust to conjure with were ;not the Hebrew Psalter and New Testament. In the ' Ballad of Faustua ' (Roxburghe Collection) Faust says :

Then did I shun the Holy Bible book, Nor on God's word would ever after look, But studied accursed Conjuration, Which was the cause of my utter Damnation.

Goethe falls back on Nostradamus, the con- temporary of Faust. Did Michel de Notre- . dame elaborate formulas for raising demons ? I do not think so. In Bonneschky's version of the puppet : play the invocation is dis- tinctly pagan. In the formula used by Marlowe, Faust, after futile invocations, has recourse to Christian ceremonies with success :

"Quod tumeraris ? per Jehovam, Gehennam, et consecratam aquam quam nunc spargo, signumque crucis quod nunc facio, et per vota nostra, ipse nunc surgat nobis dicatus Mephistopbilis ! "

B. D. MOSELEY. Burslem.

I should like to draw attention to Layard's ' Nineveh and Babylon ' (Murray, 1853), p. 509, &c., to the bowls, &c., discovered by him.

R. B. B.

NOTES ON BOOKS, &c.

Life and Letters of Thomas Cromwell. By Roger Bigelow Merriman, A.M.Harv., B.Litt.Oxon. 2 vols. (Oxford, Clarendon Press.) So far as regards the whitewashing of the character of Thomas Cromwell, Earl of Essex, which con- stitutes a T^'~ ^ of his self-imposed task, Mr. Merriman n._ Nof th but moderate success. Rising from the perusal of his interesting and valuable volumes, \ve still regard Cromwell as a "selfish political adventurer, the subservient instrument of

a wicked master, bent only on his own gain." We should be disposed to regard him as the time damnee of Henry VIII., did that truculent and bloodthirsty tyrant need any prompting to evil beyond his own cruel and rapacious nature. His statesmanship Cromwell inherited from Wolsey, and his so-styled patriotism means no more than his care to furnish such excuse for private spoliation as would give a veneer of honesty to proceedings always selfish and generally fraudulent. What excuse is to be found for him is supplied in the character of Court life during the period in which he was in power. To say tflat this was a self-seeking age is little. What age is not self-seeking? The times, how- ever, both at home and abroad, were wanton and corrupt in no ordinary degree, and the three great monarchs of the time Henry, Francis I., and the Emperor Charles were destitute of elementary knowledge of honour or morality, and were engaged in games of bluff, in which the most unscrupulous player was generally the best.

A second effort of our author is happier. He is abundantly able to prove that when the highest theological issues attended on the action of Cromwell, these were but " incidents of his administration, not ends in themselves." To the untrustworthy assertions of Foxe it is due that Cromwell has been regarded as a pillar of the Reformation. His place as a thinker is among the sidelights of the Reformation. The exact nature of his theological convictions is known to no one, himself included, and the words in which he repro- bated or condemned heresy were spoken cynically and according " to the trick."

Nothing is settled concerning the origin of Crom- well, a matter of the least possible significance. Whether the Thomas Smyth and Thomas Cromwell of the records are the same man is still left in dispute, such evidence as Mr. Merriman advances tending towards the disproof of a theory that has met with pretty general acceptance. What is known establishes that Cromwell was a mau of obscure birth and of disorderly youth. The most creditable fact in con- nexion with his early life is his treatment of Frescobaldi, the Florentine merchant, whose claims on his gratitude for past service met with ample recognition. This fact, if such it be, depends upon the testimony of Bandello, the Italian novelist, on the trustworthiness of which some doubt is cast. Cromwell's direct control over English affairs stretches over a decade. Comprising as it does the divorce of Queen Catherine, the murder of Anne Boleyn, the disgrace and death of Wolsey, the execution of Moore and Fisher, the sack of the monasteries, the Pilgrimage of Grace, the rupture between England and Rome, the Catholic reaction, the tentative alliance with Cleves, and the disgrace and decapitation of Cromwell, the period 1530-40 is one of the most eventful in English history. Crom- well's rise to power followed his promise to Henry to make him the richest monarch in Europe. It was maintained until the monarch found that he could, with no diminution of income, do without his minister, and the minister, accustomed to smile after being " beknaved " and " knocked about the pate" by his royal master, ventured on indepen- dent and unsuccessful action. He ought to have known the impatience of contradiction on the part of the king, which one time brought Catherine Parr herself within sight of the block. The story may be read in Foxe.