Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 10.djvu/393

 .x. NOV. is, 1902.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

385

3 August " the same English volunteer who was formerly hurt on ye head with a stone received a musquett shott in the face." The journal is continued regularly till 9 August, when the daily entries cease for a time, and are replaced by an interpolated "letter to my Lord M. which continus this journall to ye 15 th of August," wherein the writer states that

" this fortnight past I have been very ill not so much of a shott I received as a fevor and fitts of an ague and 20 other evells which attend the air of this coursed place; and I have now a misfortune in my right hand which I doubt will not lett me use a pen for some time."

There is sufficient internal evidence to prove that the letter was drafted on 15 August, after which date the daily entries are again resumed and continued till 2 September, on which day Buda, "the virgin citty," was "deflowred." The wounds, therefore, could not have been so very dangerous. -

L. L. K.

DUDLEY BARD. At another place the ' D.N.B.' states (vol. xlix.) that Dudley Bard, the natural son of Prince Rupert, was killed on 13 June, 1686, at the siege of Breda. This is evidently a misprint for Buda, and the date should be 13 July, on which day, according to our authority, Richards, again,

"Among the English Capt H Rupert, Mr.

Wiseman, Mr. Moore and Capt" Talbott[were] killed." The corresponding entry on the same date in the journal attributed to Vis- count Mountjoy states that " of ye English were kild Cap" Talbot and Mr. Moor with stones, M r Wiseman wee think by a symiter and Rupert by a bullet [and] almost all the rest were wounded " Another con- temporary source, the 'Historical Descrip- tion of the Glorious Conquest of the City of Buda,' originally written in French, subse- quently translated into English and pub- lished in London in 1686, also gives 13 July as the date on which " the son of Prince Robert " (sic) was killed. The evidence as to date and place is therefore conclusive.

L. L. K.

ELIHU YALE'S WrfrE. I have recently come across a paragraph in a letter of the East India Company to their agent at Fort St. George, dated 3 January, 1678/9, which those of your readers in England and America who are interested in Elihu Yale may be glad to know of. In this letter the .directors inform their agent that " Mrs. Ann Elford, mother-in-law to Mr. Joseph Hynmers," has preferred to them a certain request. At this date Joseph Hynmers was alive ; he died 28 May, 1680. Elihu Yale married Catherine,

the widow of Joseph Hynmers, at St. Mary's, Fort St. George, on 4 November, 1680 ; so that there seems to be no room for doubt that his wife was the daughter of Mrs. Ann Elford. In Chester's ' London Marriage Licences ' it is mentioned that a licence was granted in 1647 to Walter Elford, of St. Mary, Alder- manbury, London, merchant, bachelor, aged about thirty-six, to marry Anne Chambers, of the same parish, spinster, aged seventeen, daughter of Richard Chambers, Alderman of London, who consented. It seems more than probable that these were the parents of Catherine, who married (1) Hynraers and [2) Yale. The Christian name of her third son by Joseph Hynmers was Elford.

FRANK PENNY, LL.M.

SHAKESPEARE'S VOCABULARY. It is natural to think that the vocables of our chief dramatist were largely derived from the same authors to whom he owed his plots and facts, but the fraction of his vocabulary discoverable in these sources turns out to be disappointingly small.

I was thus inclined to conclude that he owed the bulk of his verbal riches to no books whatever directly, but to the ear more than to the eye, to folks more than to books. The more I have consulted ' N.E.D.' the more have I been confirmed in my new opinion. For instance, where did he get his longest word 1 That word has been detected by 'N.E.D.' (that is, 2,000 experts) in no book in English before Shakespeare except in 'The Complaynt of Scotland,' printed in 1549. Could Shakespeare have seen this book? It was written by a Scot, printed in Paris a political tract issued for a local purpose "No contemporary writer deigned to notice it or its author " ; its English circulation must have been trivial, and so the vast vocable seems likely to have come vivd voce into the school in the Stratford priory, when that school was established, like others in England, on the model of continental schools, for the word on the Continent can be traced to earlier periods. Who can tell me how early 1

Further study of 'N.E.D.' has satisfied me that many classes of Shakespearian words were either first used by him, or not learnt from books. JAMES D. BUTLER.

Madison, Wis.

[See 9 th ix. 243, 371, 494 ; x. 52, 155, 374.]

"NoT HALF." In its proper use this phrase means " not so much as half." But there are two slang uses of it, in one of which the word "half" is pleonastic, the meaning being so much less than half as to be equivalent to "not at all." This is exemplified in Miss