Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 11.djvu/13

 9 th S. XI. JAN. 3, 1903 J

NOTES AND QUERIES.

then she swooned away, stricken by terror at her own humility of rank and this great fortune. Nor did she ever, it is said, recover from the great shock received this night ; but often thinking of her own humility, though she was so much nature's lady as to make a fitting, as she made a loving wife, allowed this grief to prey upon her heart, till at last she drooped and died. And so this English story, my sweet Alice, consecrates this old and dusty altar-stone, this mouldering church, this faded, humble cushion. For, excepting that of the Lady Godiva of Coventry, we have in English story none so touching or more sweet.' And so together, with a sort of sweet and solemn silence, they paced round the humble aisle in the warm sunbeams slanting from above, turned to the marriage service in the large old Book of Prayer, trod in the very steps of that sweet yeoman's daughter, went into the old vestry, shadowed and made dull by a mass of sweeping ivy round the mouldering casement, till at last, going out into the churchyard, they sat and rested on a rustic grave, till the serrice hour. What wonder, then, that Alice treasures in her heart this sweet and touching story, made fitly sweet and touching since that time by a great poet in a ballad which will be immortal !

Weeping, weeping late and early,

Walking up and pacing down, Deeply mourn'd the Lord of Burleigh,

Burleigh-house by Stamford-town. And he came to look upon her,

And he look'd at her and said, ' Bring the dress and put it on her,

That she wore when she was wed.' Then her people, softly treading,

Bore to earth her body, drest In the dress that she was wed in,

That her spirit might have rest." These two accounts, being contradictory, open up an interesting question. Miss Mete yard was a most painstaking and carefu; author, and I do not think she would have related the visit to the little country church if it had not actually taken place.

If any Shropshire antiquary could kindly inform your readers if Miss Meteyard correct, and give the name of the village and particulars of the entry in the churcl register, it would be of great interest, anc would corroborate both her story and th poem of the late Lord Tennyson.

Since I wrote the foregoing, there ha. appeared in the December number of Cham bers's Journal an exhaustive account of thi romance, by Mr. Arthur O. Cooke, entitlec 'The Truth about the Cottage - Countess which confirms my opinion as to the validity of the most important item in Miss Mete yard's story, for, according to Mr. Cooke, th marriage took place at Bolas Magna, Shrop shire, on 13 April, 1790, as the church registe testify. He, however, strips the romance o that which made it " so touching and sweet," for it appears the marriage was an illegal one neither was the bridegroom at the time the Lord of Burleigh. As soon as he could

3gally do so, he went through the ceremony gain, this time at St. Mildred's Church, >read Street. CHARLES DRURY.

[Long and interesting articles on the marriage f the Lord of Burleigh, mainly by MR. W. 0. /VOODALL, will be found at 7 th S. xi'i. 221, 281, 309, 57, 501 ; 8 th S. i. 387, 408. Henry Cecil was married t Bolas Magna under the name of John Jones, the fficiating clergyman being the Rev. Cresswell ""ayleur, and the witnesses John Pickers and Sarah A.dams. The bridegroom had, however, at this ime a wife living, from whom, as she had eloped n June, 1789, he was divorced by a private Act of ^arliament in the session ending 10 June, 1791. On his time at St. Mildred, Bread Street.]
 * October, 1791, he again married Sarah Hoggins,

"FORTUNE, INFORTUNE, FORT-UNE." In a reply of mine (9 th S. x. 453) concerning the notto "Fert," I mentioned incidentally the motto " Fortune, Infortune, Fort-Une." Per- mps some account of it may be interesting,

3uoted from the ' Guide-Express de ,1'Eglise e Brou,' par 1'Abbe H. P., 5 me Edition, Bourg, 1899. The motto is that of Marguerite d'Autriche :

" This princess composed this motto or legend, aerhaps at Point-d'Ain after the death of the Due Philibert, and always afterwards retained it, causing it to be written, painted, or sculptured on all her deeds and monuments. What is its meaning? Let us notice first that, everywhere, at Brou and at Malines, it is written in four words, which excludes many fanciful interpretations given by divers authors, as though Marguerite had meant to say by it that her life had been an uninterrupted series of good fortunes and misfortunes, or again that whether she had good fortune or bad fortune, nothing came amiss to her, it was all the same, it was all indifferent to her. These explanations and other similar ones are unknown to the authors contem- porary with Marguerite, who no doubt were well aware of her real meaning. Now they all give us the sense of this enigma by making the word in- fortune the third person indicative of the verb infortuner : La fortune infortune (persecutes, makes unfortunate] fort une femme. Fortune renders one woman very unfortunate.

"Guichenon adopts this version, and says that Marguerite composed her motto ' to show that she had been greatly persecuted by fortune, having been repudiated Eby Charles VIII. and having lost the Prince de Castille and the Due de Savoye, her two husbands.' "Chap. xiv. pp. 83, 84, 85.

Marguerite d'Autriche, Duchess of Savoy, died in 1530. Philibert II. (le Beau), Duke of Savoy, died in 1504. Samuel Guichenon was born in 1607 and died in 1664.

ROBERT PIERPOINT.

AMBROSE ROOKWOOD. In the new edition of Mr. W. Hepworth Dixon's ' Her Majesty's Tower ' (Cassell & Co., 1901), at vol. i. p. 344, it is related how the haughty Catesby induced the wealthy young Suffolk squire Ambrose Rookwood, a great lover and