Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 10.djvu/404

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NOTES AND QUERIES. or* s. x. NOV. 15, 1902.

I can find no record of a portrait of Lady Whitmore by Zurbaran, though several pic- tures of her are extant. According to that scarce and valuable work the late Mr. G. S. Steinman's 'Althorp Memoirs,' there are replicas of the Hampton' Court portrait by Lely at Chirk Castle and at Narford Hall, the latter of which is erroneously inscribed "Lady Anne Hamilton, Countess or Southesk," under which title it figures in Mrs. Jameson's ' Beauties.' It has been several times en- graved, generally under the wrong designa- tion. There are other portraits in the possession of the Boothby and Myddelton- Biddulph families. I have consulted the references quoted by MR. COLEMAN, but can find nothing in them bearing on the subject of Z.'s query. W. F. PRIDEAUX.

I have to thank G. E. C. for his particulars of Lady Whitmore's portrait at Hampton Court.

On referring, as MR. E. HOME COLEMAN kindly suggested, to 3 rd S. iii. 510, I found a very interesting note as to the character of Walter Whitmore in '2 Henry VI.;' IV. i., "as the executioner of the Duke of Suffolk." MR. W. H. WHITMORE, of Boston, U.S., who then raised the discussion, pointed out that Suffolk, according to the Paston Letters, was killed by " one of the meanest in the ship " ; whilst William Whitmore, Alderman of Lon- don, who purchased Apley, co. Salop, from Shakespeare's enemy Sir Thomas Lucy, of Charlecote, was one of an old Staffordshire family dating from the thirteenth century.

Now on referring to the pedigree of Whit- more of Apley Park in the 'Visitation of Shropshire, 1623 ' (Harleian Society, vol. xxix., 1889), pt. ii. p. 499, I find that Thomas Whit- more, of Madeley, co. Stafford, grandfather of William Whitmore, of London, who married Anne, daughter of William Bond, Alderman of London, and died 8 August, 1593, and was uncle of Elizabeth Whitmore, mother of the first Lord Craven, was declared ignobilis at the Staffordshire Visitation of 1583, and that his great-grandson William, son of the afore- said William, received a grant of arms Or, fretty vert, differenced by a canton or, a cinquefoil azure, from Dethick Garter, on 13 November, 1594. His grandson, Sir George Whitmore (father of the William of Balmes, co. Middlesex, who married Frances, daughter of the Lady Whitmore of Hampton Court), who was Lord Mayor of London 1631, bore the arms Vert, fretty or.

Shakespeare evidently knew of the episode which had occurred with reference to the Whitmore family at th Staffordshire Visi-

tation of 1583, and of the new grant of arms of 1594, when he was busy about his own and could not resist having a dig at one so closely connected with his old enemy Sir Thomas Lucy, whom he was destined to insult in the " Lucies are Louses" jibe. As the Whitmore family purchased Lower Slaughter, in Gloucestershire, about 1590, and Justice Shallow's house was " in Gloucester- shire," this other dig of Shakespeare's is well worth noting.

I do not find in any of the notes to which your correspondents have kindly referred me any notice connecting the Whitmore family with Spain or Italy, so as to explain the Zurbaran portrait. May I hope MR. DODGSON will give us the benefit of his learning ? Z.

ROYAL ARMS, ELIZABETH AND EDWARD VI. (9 th S. v. 436, 502 ; vi. 70). At North Wyke, in South Tawton, Devon, there is on the gatehouse front a stone (? or alabaster) tablet carved with the royal arms of the Tudor period, the dexter supporter being a lion rampant, the head in profile (not " guardant " or " reguardant "), and with some irregularity where either a crown or the crest of the mane has been broken away ; the sinister supporter a dragon, with long muzzle, but damaged so that it looks more like the beak of a griffin, the turned-up wing very clumsily modelled (in fact, the whole thing is very roughly executed), the tail apparently arrow-pointea. Below the arms (encircled with the garter) is the motto "Dieu et mon droit," on either side of the tablet a fluted pilaster, and above the arms two little escutcheons, each bearing an initial, the sinister one distinctly an R, the dexter one very timeworn and defective. This, being taken at first for a round-backed E, was supposed to stand for either Ed- ward VI. or Elizabeth, and accordingly I wrote to 'N. & Q.' in 1900 (9 th S. v. 436) asking how one could distinguish between the coats of these two sovereigns. It has, however, been recently pointed out that the doubtful initial suggests rather the remains of a Gothic H than an E, and I should now like to know whether, if so, it would more probably indicate Henry VII. or Henry VIII. Among the many communications on the subject that appeared in * N. & Q.' in kind response to my former inquiry, some assigned to both these sovereigns the same supporters, lion and dragon ; others made Henry VIII. the first to use them.

Thomas Willemont, who in his work on 'Regal Heraldry' (1821) cites contemporary examples in support of all his statements, says that the arras of Henry VII., as painted