Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 10.djvu/403

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

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revel in the records, the fee being waived or left to my own inclination.

While on this -subject I may mention that I have been told by Mr. C. E. Chanter (of Broadmead, Barnstaple), who is much in- terested in the matter, that copies of all old Devonshire registers are deposited at Exeter, but are in such dire disorder that a combined effort would be required to arrange and cata- logue them. I quite concur in the opinion that this would be a very useful piece of work. ETHEL LEGA-WEEKES.

" DIVET" (9 th S. x. 327). In connexion with the domestic use of turf, it seems apposite here to mention an old privilege that is rapidly becoming obsolete in the Scottish Lowlands. When thatched houses were com- mon the ridges, and sometimes other parts of the roof, were covered with turf, and dwellers in a given area had the privilege, of " casting divots " for their use on a certain stretch of pasture land. When a common adjoined a village there was no difficulty, but sometimes the inalienable right was exercised over the set portion of a field two or three rniles distant. One case occurs at the moment to the memory. A generation ago a strug- gling villager or two, reverent of ancient ways, exercised the privilege of "shooling the divots " (shovelling the turf) where their forefathers had regularly done so ; but their descendants have allowed the habit to fall into abeyance. Thatched houses are no longer in fashion. THOMAS BAYNE.

69, West Cumberland Street, Glasgow.

The ' Century Diet.' and the ' Encyclopaedic Diet.' state that divet, divot, (fee. (Sc. and North E.), mean a thin, flat piece of turf used for covering cottages, also for fuel. The origin of the word divet is obscure. Jamie- son's 'Scott. Diet.' suggests a connexion with the Lat. defodere = to dig.

HASTINGS SHADDICK.

The Athenaeum, Barnstaple.

LADY WHITMORE (9 th S. x. 268, 318). This lady was the youngest daughter of Sir William Brooke, K.B., M.P. for Rochester, and nephew of Henry Brooke, eighth Lord Cobham, to whose honours he would have succeeded had it not been for the attainder passed in 1604. Frances Brooke was a daughter of his second wife, Penelope, daughter of Sir Moyses Hill, Knt, of Hills- borough, co. Down, M.P. for Antrim. Of her sisters, Hill became the wife of Sir William Boothby, second baronet, of Ashbourne, co. Derby, and died 14 May, 1704, having had ten children, whose descendants represent the old line of Brooke, Lords Cobham, while

Margaret married Sir John Denham, K.B., Survey or -General of his Majesty's Works and author of ' Cooper's Hill.' The story of her unhappy life and death is recorded by Grammont. Frances known in the pages of Grammont as Miss Brooks married first Sir Thomas W'hitmore, K.B., of Build was, co. Salop, second son of Sir Thomas Whit- more, first baronet, of Apley, co. Salop, by his wife Elizabeth, daughter and heiress of Alderman Sir William Acton, Knt. By Sir Thomas, who was buried at St. Paul's, Covent Garden, 21 May, 1682, Frances Brooke had three daughters, of whom the eldest, Eliza- beth, died in infancy ; the second, Frances, married her cousin William, son and heir of William Whitmore, of Balmes in Hackney, 27 November, 1679, she being then but thir- teen and her husband a year older. It appears from the Hackney register that a preliminary marriage had taken place on 25 August, 1675 (Robinson's 'Hackney,' i. 163). In July, 1684, Mr. Whitmore, when returning from Epsom, accidentally shot himself, and nine months afterwards his young widow, who had inherited her mother's beauty, married Sir Richard Myddelton, third baronet, of Chirk Castle, co. Denbigh, and nephew to the husband of another cele- brated beauty of King Charles's Court. Dorothy, the third daughter, married Jona- than Langley, of the Abbey, Shrewsbury, high sheriff of Shropshire 1689, and left no issue. Frances Brooke married for her second husband Matthew Harvey, of Twickenham, co. Middlesex, brother of Sir Eliab Harvey, Knt., of Chigwell, co. Essex (whose wife, Dorothy, was a sister of Lady Whitmore's first husband), and nephew of the great physician. The Twickenham register records the burial of Lady Whitmore on 15 May, 1690, and her husband died on 14 January, 1693. Husband and wife were buried under a massive monument which was originally erected in the north-east corner of the chancel of Twickenham Church, but which was removed during the alterations of 1859 to the top landing of the north staircase. On this tomb were inscribed the following lines by Dryden :

Faire, kind and true ! a treasure each alone, A Wife, a Mistress, and a Freind [we] in one.

Rest in this Tomb, rais'd at thy Husband s cost, Here sadly summing what he had and lost.

Come, Virgins, er'e in equall bands you joine Come first, and Offer at Her sacred bhryne. Pray but for halfe the Virtues of this wife Compound for all the rest w' 1 ' longer life, And wish your Vowes like her's may be return d So lov'd when living and when dead so mourn d.