Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 2.djvu/225

 s. ii. SEPT. 10, '98.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

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was nothing of the Celt about him." If EVANDER means by this "nothing of the Celtic character," transeat, although I do not agree with him. But that there was very much of the Celt in Mr. Gladstone's race and blood is a simple fact and easily proved. Through his great - grandmother Mary, daughter of Kenneth Mackenzie of Torridon, he was lineally sprung from the first six chieftains of the great house of Kintail, and could trace his unbroken descent, by two lines, from the Bruces, Earls of Carrick, the Earls of Mar, and from King Robert Bruce himself. OSWALD HUNTER BLAIR, O.S.B. Fort Augustus, N.B.

Nationality, as regards Great Britain and Ireland, is settled by the place of birth. As Mr. Gladstone was born in Liverpool, he was an Englishman. To please the Scotch, he claimed to be a Scotchman. The original name of his family was Gledstanes, thoroughly Scotch, in course of time changed to Gladstones, the name Mr. Gladstone's father had when he went to Liverpool, which he got legally shortened to Gladstone. The name is not English except so far as it was changed in England.

THOMAS DRUM.

Dublin.

BROTHERS BEARING THE SAME CHRISTIAN NAME (9 th S. i. 446 ; ii. 51). In addition to the examples already given by your corre- spondents, an interesting illustration from French history may be noted. Barthelemy, Seigneur de Pontis (descended in direct line from Foulquet, who held the lordship of Pontis in Dauphine in 1147, the name itself going back over another hundred years), had two sons by his second wife,l'Honoreeou Honorade de Baschi, daughter of a neighbouring lord- ship. These brothers both bore the name of Louis, the elder of the two being the author of the well-known French work "Memoires du Sieur de Pontis, Qui a servi dans les Armees cinquante-six ans, sous les Rois Henry IV., Louis XIII., et Louis XIV. Con- tenant plusieurs circonstances remarquables des Guerres, de la Cour, et du Gouvernement de ces Princes" (Paris, Desprez, 2 vols., 1676, and numerous other editions).

The veracity and reliability of this work, criticized by Voltaire and others, and well spoken of by Madame de Sevigne and others, have been recently vindicated by a French author, "De la Valeur Historique des Memoires de Pontis (1582-1651). Par J. Roman, Corre- spondant clu Ministere de 1'Instruction Pub- lique. Grenoble, F. Aller, 1895." The author of these interesting memoirs is known as

"Benedict" Louis de Pontis, as he never married. Born in 1578, he led an active military life mostly occupied with attempts to suppress " les Huguenots " and retired to a religious house at Port Royal in v !652, where he died at the age of ninety-two' years. As Gacon wrote :

Fidelle aux Princes de la terre, Pontis, les servant dans le guerre,

Aquiert un renpm glorieux ; Mais enfin rempli d'un Zele II combat sous le Roy des Cieux Pour gaigner la vie Eternelle.

His portrait was painted by the celebrated Philip de Champagne, and engraved by Desroches. His younger brother, also named Louis, became a Protestant and married into the Protestant community at Orpierre in Gapencais (Dauphine). He thus became con- nected with trie Huguenots, the French Protestants whom his brother, the Benedict Louis de Pontis, under Cardinal Richelieu and Louis XIII., was trying to exterminate. For his Protestantism he was cut off by his family, who were good Catholics, and some of his descendants are still found in the neighbourhood of Orpierre. It was not unusual at this epoch and indeed later, as already shown by your correspondents for two brothers or two sisters to bear the same name, the causes for which it would be inter- esting to learn. It is rather singular that the last two De Pontis in the direct line of descent (the lordship since 1780 being merged into that of Les Revillax, now of Caen, Nor- mandy) were a brother and sister who bore practically the same name Frangois and Franchise. They both married, and both died without any offspring. Unlike some recorded instances, brothers bearing the same name cause no difficulty in the genealogy of this family. HENRY W. PONTIS.

Rotherham.

I have always understood that the practice of giving the same name to brothers was with the object of preserving the Christian name to the head of the family, whichever son should succeed to that position. This was the explanation given a few years ago by a London butcher, who solemnly swore in the witness box that he had named every one of his six sons " William." K.

A remarkable instance of this occurs on the brass of Christopher Bridgeman in Thame Church, Oxon. The inscription runs as

follows :

" Pray for ye sowle of Cristofre Bridgeman which decessed 011 holy Rode day nexte before mighelinas in the yere of our lord MV C III on whose soule ihu lave mercy Also pray for ye soulys of Mawde late