Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 12.djvu/474

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NOTES AND QUERIES. [9 th s. xn. DEC. 12, 1903.

minister replied, "When your lum has reeked as long as ours, ye '11 hae as much soot."

W. S.

MODERN VANDALISM. (See ante, p. 341.) The concluding sentence of MR. S. 0. ADDY'S interesting note on Tideswell and Tideslow reads so like a grim joke that one may be pardoned for suggesting that it may be well if all destroyers of remains of antiquity "find an interment " in a personal sense not in- tended by the writer !

Surely it is time that a strong protest should be raised against the destruction of relics of the remote past. Posterity, more enlightened, will marvel at the worse than carelessness of an age which, boasting archaeological societies throughout the land, permitted the destruction of tumuli of earth or stone for agricultural purposes, or for " road-mending," as in the quoted Derbyshire instance.

Notwithstanding the increase of interest in prehistoric fortresses, burial tumuli, and boundary banks, there was never a time of more need for keen watch, for the rampant worship of s. d. imperils the continued existence of many priceless evidences of our country's past.

We who are associated on the Committee for recording Ancient Defensive Works have some hope that our efforts may, directly or indirectly, lead to the preservation of more of these remains, but it is by the increase of public interest in them that owners and occupiers may learn that they have something of national value in their care.

Beyond the Committee's scope are those other relics such as MR. ADDY mentions ; for these, as for defensive works, probably the best first step towards their preservation will be the furnishing to each County Council of a complete list of the examples within its bounds.

Though the Councils possess no statutory authority to prevent owners from doing aught, the moral suasion they can use would tend to hinder destruction, which is often the result of ignorance of the interest attaching to the threatened object.

I. CHALKLEY GOULD.

GEORGE IV. 's GOLD DINNER SERVICE AT WINDSOR. Truth for December 3rd states in reference to this that

" it is not generally known that the collection o. Crown plate once included a very much more magnificent and valuable gold dinner service, which was made for Henry VII L This service was taken to Holland by William III., to be used at some great ceremonial dinner at The Hague. It was never brought back to England, and is now includec

.n the Dutch Crown plate. Charles II. caused each >iece of the service to be engraved with his Majesty's irms as King of England, Scotland, France, and Ireland. About half a century ago the late King of the Netherlands ordered these arms to be erased, and they were replaced by the Dutch royal arms, the value of the service being, of course, consider- ably reduced by this barbarous proceeding."

N. S. S.

"SEMPER EADEM." The date of this old royal motto, a favourite with Queens Eliza- beth and Anne, has been traced in * N. & Q.,' 1 st S. viii. ix. It seems to be held that it was discontinued on the accession of George I. Nevertheless I have found it on the embossed stamp on the law parchment of a deed dated 1721. W. C. B.

ROUSSEAU'S GRANDFATHER. Mr. Morley, in chap. ii. of his ' Rousseau,' gives the pedi- gree of Jean Jacques as follows : Didier Rousseau

Jean

David

Isaac

Jean Jacques.

He quotes as his authority the well-known life by Musset Pathay. Mr. Morley states :

" His [Rousseau's] ancestors had removed from Paris to the famous city of refuge as far back as

1529 Three generations separated Jean Jacques

from Didier Rousseau, the son of a Paris bookseller, and the first emigrant."

From this we are entitled to infer that Didier Rousseau was born not much later than 1500, and very possibly earlier. Now his grandson David, the grandfather of Jean Jacques, according to a note at p. 36 of * Madame de Warens et J. J. Rousseau,' by M. F. Mugnier (Paris, Calmann-Levy, 1891), died in 1738, at the extreme age of ninety-six. Thus we seem to have the extraordinary fact that a man born about 1500 (and perhaps earlier) had a grandson who died nearly 240 years later.

J. R. F. G.

HENRY, EARL OF STAFFORD, ON HIS FRENCH WIFE. A. legal acquaintance has called my attention to a copy of Lord Stafford's will, dated 2 Feb., 1699, "extracted from the Prerogative Court of Canterbury," and the earl's bequest to his wife is curious enough to deserve publication, unless it is well known :

"I Give to the worst of women, except being a whore, who 'is guilty of all ills, the daughter of Mr. Grammont, a Frenchman, who I have unfor- tunately married, five and forty bras halfe-pence which will by her Bullet to her supper a greater