Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 10.djvu/180

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NOTES AND QUERIES. [9 th s. x. AUG. so, 1002.

LADY ELIZABETH PERCY (9 th S. x. 69). My friend the late Rev. J. W. Kaye, LL.D., for many years rector of Derrybrusk, once mentioned this lady's name to me whilst staying as his guest at Derrybrusk Rectory. We were examining some of the ancient gravestones in the old Derrybrusk church- yard at the time, and, if my memory serves me rightly, Dr. Kaye pointed one out as the supposed mark of the burial-place of the lady in question. If DR. MAXWELL w'ill communicate with Sir Charles King, Bart, (with whom I had some conversation at the time, and who takes a great interest in local antiquities), he will, 1 think, obtain every information. Derrybrusk is only the name of a parish. The rectory and ruins of the old church are situated some five miles from Enniskillen ; there is no village, and the new church is about two miles distant from the

rectory. Bradford.

CHAS. F. FORSHAW, LL.D.

THE IRON DUKE AND THE DUKE OF WEL- LINGTON (9 th S. ix. 466; x. 11, 73, 156). SIR HERBERT MAXWELL is frank ; I will be equally so. If no evidence can be produced to sup- port his theory that the sobriquet conferred on Wellington came to him in a roundabout way some years after his death, neither can I produce direct evidence to support my state- ment most deliberately made that Wel- lington during his lifetime was popularly spoken of as " The Iron Duke." The point is interesting, and to no one more so than to the brilliant author who has written so good a ' Life ' of the great duke. In pursuit of evi- dence I recently consulted an old Berkshire magistrate, now in his ninety-second year, in full possession of an acute memory, who often met the Duke of Wellington out hunt- ing. He assures me that Wellington at that time was popularly known as "The Iron Duke." I also consulted the son of one of the duke's most intimate friends. In his father's house he frequently met Wellington. I give the reply in his own written words :

" I can safely say that never in my young days, nor when I had arrived at maturity, did I hear the name of the Duke of Wellington converted into

Iron I) uke. Of course I have often seen that sobriquet in print probably in Punch, or some fx? n l ^ a ; pei Y T fchou g h t your explanation in

N. & Q. about the battleship Iron Duke was quite satisfactory."

Here, then, is evidence not absolutely con- flicting, and yet not sufficiently precise to establish the point one way or another. The crux of the matter lies in the date when according to SIR HERBERT MAXWELL, an iron steamship was launched in the Mersey,

christened "The Duke of Wellington," and nicknamed for short " The Iron Duke." Until we know that date we cannot proceed much further. Meanwhile, through the courtesy of a friend, I am enabled to give at least two instances of the playful humour of Mr. Punch. In vol. ii. p. 88 (issued in 1842) we find the hero of Waterloo spoken of as " the wrought- iron Duke." In vol. xviii. p. 30 (issued in 1850) Wellington is alluded to as " the iron Duke." These facts would seem to support my con- tention that the duke's appropriate sobriquet was, in a naval sense, prior to the Iron Age. I think it will be founa upon further investi- gation that my original statement was abso- lutely correct. RICHARD EDGCUMBE. Edgbarrow, Crowthorne, Berks.

In 1844 one of the Dublin mail steamers was called "Thelron Duke" (600 tons burthen), and on 10 September of that year she ran into the brig Parana (see Illustrated Lon- don News, 14 September, 1844, p. 163). A quarter of an hour with Lloyd's List would show when the name " Iron Duke :> first ap- peared in the mercantile marine. A loco- motive called "The Iron Duke" was built at the Great Western Railway locomotive works at Swindon in 1847 (see Stretton's ' Develop- ment of the Locomotive,' p 96). Under the word ' Duke ' in the ' Oxford English Dic- tionary' I find a quotation, dated 1850, in which the phrase " Iron Duke," as applied to the Duke of Wellington, occurs. R, B. P.

STAMP COLLECTING AND ITS LITERATURE FORTY YEARS AGO (9 th S. x. 81). No refer- ence is made in this note to the Stamn Collector's Magazine, a publication which enjoyed a considerable circulation from its first issue in February, 1863, till its discon- tinuance in 1874. It was published in London by E. Maryborough & Co. and in Bath by Stafford Smith. The heading of each monthly issue consisted of a facsimile of the Mul- ready envelope, and numerous illustrations of postage stamps and post-marks were used in the text. Its early success was largely due to Dr. J. E. Gray, F.R.S., who wrote much for the magazine, and, if I remember rightly, edited it. I. CHALKLEY GOULD.

Stamp collecting must have been common at Eton in 1860 and 1861, for I can well recollect at Easter, 1862, a late cousin of mine who was then at Mr. Vidal's house show- ing me his very large collection, and starting my own with some duplicates, some of which I still possess. In an old edition of the Boy's Own Book (1865?) stamp collecting is said to have been introduced in 1856, and Messrs.