Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 3.djvu/22

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NOTES AND QUERIES. [* s. in. JAN. 7,

Treble, who had set to music a " dialogue " written by Lady Fancyfull, observes :

" I guess the dialogue, madam, is suppos'd to be between your Majesty and your first Minister of State." And the author replies :

" Just : He, as minister, advises me to trouble my head about the welfare of my subjects ; which I, as sovereign, find a very impertinent proposal." Act II. sc. ii.

Eight years later Vanbrugh produced 'The Confederacy,' and in this (Act I. sc. iii.) Brass remarks to Flippanta :

" As first minister of state to the colonel I have an affair to communicate to thee."

ALFRED F. BOBBINS.

SiRE.B. GODFREY (9 th S.ii.367,414). I never heard of any daggers made to commemorate the murder of Sir Edmund Berry Godfrey, but there were two medals struck, one having on the obverse " Godfrey walks vp hil after hee is dead Ergo pares," and a figure of Sir Edmund Berry; below his feet the word "pro." On the reverse, " Dennys walks downe hil carrying his head Sumus." A figure of St. Denis ; below his feet the letters " P. A."; while the other medal has on the obverse " Moriendo restitvit. Rem. E. Godfrey," with the head of Sir Edmund Berry. The reverse has " Eqvo credite. Tevcri "; two men on a horse, and a third walking, holding a sword. MATILDA POLLARD.

Belle Vue, Bengeo.

THE GEORGE WORN BY CHARLES I. (9 th S. ii. 263, 354). I ask permission to revert to the history of this relic, which presents the claim of being the most interesting of any relic of the king, and of having occupied so little space in 'N. & Q.' that from the second volume of the First Series to the second volume of the Ninth it is not mentioned.

It is to be noted that, while the rules of the Order of the Garter forbade the increased enrichment of the collar with stones or other things, they permitted the image to be en- riched at the pleasure of the knight. The George, therefore, was sometimes studded with diamonds, sometimes set about with them in an oval setting, sometimes surrounded by a solid garter, with motto, in the same way as the roses of the collar. This helps to identify the George which, alone among his jewels, the king retained to the last, as we have Herbert's personal testimony to i being " cut in an onyx with great curiosity and set about with 21 fair Diamonds, and the Reverse with the like number." This corre spends with the ornament shown in Van Dyck's equestrian portrait at Hampton Cour

the same, I believe, as those at Windsor, Warwick, and Lamport Hall), in which it ind the same ornament similarly worn by Tames II. in a picture in the National Por- n the picture in the same gallery in which le appears as a boy with his sister. I have not yet seen it on portraits of Charles II., the
 * ests on the hip, at the end of the ribbon. I
 * rait Gallery, and by the Chevalier St. George

eorges that I have noticed worn by him Deing unencircled. It does not appear on the ribbon worn by the Count of Albany in his Dortrait as a boy in the National Portrait ~ allery; the end of the ribbon is out of the picture.

I would withdraw any suggestion of the George at Edinburgh Castle being the one in question, as it is not " set about," and there-
 * ore cannot be the one described by Herbert,
 * hough it may be the one which Charles II.

shown as wearing, and which, as well as
 * he other, James II. may have taken with

lim in his flight, in preference to leaving it aehind him or throwing it, with the Great Seal, into the Thames.

I should be very much interested by an- swers to the questions I was allowed to raise at 9 th S. ii. 263. SPERANS may have prose- uted his researches since writing his note at 1 st S. ii. 135, but I have not seen his pseudonym lately. MR. TAVARE, who seems interested in Stuart relics, might perhaps render some service. There are one or two points on which light could be thrown at once if the right people always read ' N. & Q.' I should like to make its reading compulsory.

There are, however, some points touching the last moments of Charles I. about which absolute certainty is unattainable. Among them the very fact of the king having de- livered his George to Juxon, with the word "Remember," is disputed, and I know no closer evidence in its favour than that of Bulstrode Whitelocke, who may have been a spectator of the scene and who was in a posi- tion to receive information from those on the scaffold, but whose memoirs were not pub- lished till after his death. KILLIGREW.

MINUTES AND SECONDS (9 th S. ii. 509). The ' Diet, of Phrase and Fable ' says, " The six- tieth part of an hour was called by the Romans scrupulwm, and the sixtieth part of a minute scnt/pulum secundum" This is inter- esting in itself, and useful to any one who wishes to translate such modern ideas into Latin ; but the fact that lies behind this statement is hazy, because scrupulum might mean either the twenty-fourth part of an hour, or a minute, or a second. As a guide to horo-