Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 12.djvu/29

 9. s. xii. JULY n, imj NOTES AND QUERIES.

21

LONDON, SATURDAY, JULY 11, 1903.

CONTENTS. No. 289.

NOTES -.Sir F. Gorges, 21 The Borrowing Days, 23 Mr. Lang and Homer, 24 Riddle of the Sphinx" By- W ord "Long Lease Immurement Alive Sunflower Lincoln's Assassin, 25 John Gilpin : Shakespeare in 1790 Coleridge as Translator" Dakmaker," 26 First Folio Facsimile, 27.

QUERIES : Fleetwood Family "Kaimakam " - Wesley Queries " Cyclopaedia " : " Encyclopaedia," 27 Naval Pronunciation Dog and the Due d'Enghien Portable Dwellings Roman Pits Square Cap Railway Literature, 28" Crying down credit " " Accon " Shakespeare's Religion U and V Blythe Infant Saviour at the Breast King, Banker Earliest English Newspaper, 29.

REPLIES : Heath, Engraver, 30 "Cabinet," 31 Miss Gunning Fountain Pens "English take their pleasures sadly " Crakanthorp, 32 " Hook it" Primrose Super- stitionHistorical Rime Fathers of the House of Com- mons, 33 "Travailler pour le Roi de Prusse" Upright Burial, 34 Shakespeare's Seventy-sixth Sonnet, 35 Wesley's Portrait by Romney Hiung-nu or Huns, 36.

NOTES ON BOOKS:-' New English Dictionary 'Dry. den's ' Memorials of Old Northamptonshire 'Reviews and Magazines Booksellers' Catalogues.

Notices to Correspondents.

SIR FERDINANDO GORGES, LORD

PALATINE OF MAINE. SIR FERDINANDO GORGES was one of that remarkable body of men who existed in a period of English history which is worthy of notice not only in itself, covering as it does the reigns of Queen Elizabeth, King James I. , and King Charles I., but for the number of illustrious individuals who assisted in adding more pages to the intellectual and progres- sive records of what is now the British Empire than in any other cycle of years since the Norman Conquest.

The subject of this brief sketch was the friend and companion of such men as Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex, Sir Robert and Sir William Cecil (Lords Salisbury and Burleigh respectively), Sir Walter Raleigh, Sir John Hawkins, and other shining lights that carne and went as meteors across the horizon of British history, but, unlike those celestial wanderers, leaving an imperishable track behind.

Sir Ferdinando Gorges, like the majority of notable men of those days, was both soldier and sailor in one, and blessed with a large amount of Court influence, as most the Gorges family at this time were closely connected with Court life, especially so his

great-uncle (who, however, was only twenty

>dd years his senior), Sir Thomas Gorges,

ogether with his wife, the Marchioness of

Northampton, who were both intimate friends

nd valued courtiers of Queen Elizabeth, and

he builders and owners of Longford Castle,

co. Wilts, the present home of the Earls of

Radnor.

Sir Ferdinando, as lord of the manor of Birdcombe, co. Somerset, by descent, was the second of the two sons of Edward Gorges, squire of Wraxall, co. Somerset (descendant through the female line of a famous Norman family prior to 1066), by his wife Cicely, daughter of William Lygon, of Madresfield, co. Worcester (ancestor of the present Earl Beauchamp). Born in the year 1566, he died at the advanced age of eighty-one on 14 May, L647, and was buried at Long Ashton, near Bristol, the beautiful seat of the Smythe 'amily. At the age of twenty-five he was jnighted at Rouen in 1591, and became a nember of Parliament for Cardigan in 1592.

Sir Ferdinando was married four times. His first wife, by whom he had six children (Capt. Robert Gorges, Col. John Gorges, George Gorges, Capt. Thomas Gorges, and Ellen and Honoria Gorges), was Anne, daughter of Edward Bell, Esq., of Writtle, co. Essex, and of Newland, co. Gloucester. They were married at St. Margaret's Church, Westminster, on 24 February, 1589. (She was buried in St. Sepulchre's, London, 6 August, 1620.) His second wife was Mary, daughter of Sir Thomas Fulford, and widow of Thomas Achim, of Hall, co. Cornwall, Esq. ; she died in 1623. Four years after this lady's decease he married as his third wife, at Ladock, co. Cornwall, 6 December, 1627, Elizabeth, daughter of Tristram Gorges, the widow, twice over, of Edward Courtney, and John Blythe of Ladock. She did not, however, live long, for on 28 September, 1629, he was again married at the family church of Wraxall to his fourth wife, who was Elizabeth, daughter of the Sir Thomas Gorges already mentioned, and widow of Sir Hugh Smythe, Knt., of Long Ashton, near Bristol, the entry in the register of Wraxall Church being as follows : " S r Furdinando Gorg de Kinterberrye (co. Devon), Knight, and Madam Elizabeth Smyth de Long Aiston (co. Somersette), W., 28 Sept., 1629." She survived her husband twelve years, dying in 1659. He had no issue by his last three wives.

We find young Ferdinando Gorges at the age of twenty-one, before his first marriage, as a prisoner in Spain, having been one of the few Englishmen captured by a ship of the Spanish Armada; but it was not long