Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 3.djvu/225

. m. MAB. is, m] NOTES AND QUEEIES.

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h r father John Riches being a wealthy merchant,

finally of Amsterdam, and her mother a daughter o- Sir Bernard de Gomme, also of Dutch descent, \\ 10 was Surveyor of the Ordnance to Charles II. S ee married in 1684, when only fifteen years old, W illiam Boevey, of Flaxley Hall, of which, upon his death in 1691, she became mistress. She had tic child by him, her life with him was a prolonged m irtyrdom, and after his death, as has been said, sl.e did not remarry. The large fortune she in- hi rited from her father, and that into which she came after her husband's death, were spent in charity, her friend and almoner being a Mrs. Mary Pope, concerning whom a good deal is heard. Anong other members of the Boevey family of w lorn we hear the most interesting is James Bovey, waose life was included by Aubrey in his ' Lives of Eminent Men,' vol. ii. part i. p. 246. Aubrey says concerning him that " hee speakes the Lowe Dutch, High Dutch, French, Italian, Spanish and Lingua Franco, and Latin besides his owne." To this man, who retired from business at thirty-two, the for- tunes of the family seem to have been largely due. He became, about 1660, a member of the Inner Temple, and his judgment was " taken in most of the great causes of his time on points concerning the Lawe - Merchant," which we take to mean merchant-law. Aubrey gives also a list of thirty- two treatises which Bovey wrote. All of these he had seen, many of them he had read. These works remain, presumably, in MS., but their existence can no longer be traced. Aubrey's advice to the writer to bequeath them to the Royal Society seems not to have been taken. Besides this worthy and the "Perverse Widow" none of the people dealt with have general interest. The work is, however, admirably executed, and the pedigrees are models. These cast a light upon the Clark, Bonn ell, Riches, Butler, Vanacker, Courtice, and other allied families. Our author has received

1 important aid from many of our contributors, i including Lord Aldenham, Mr. G. E. Cokayne, ,Clareneeux King of Arms, and Mr. Moens, vice- i president of the Huguenot Society of London, and 'author of valuable works on the Dutch and Walloon churches. The illustrations include a very spirited 'and beautiful portrait of the " Perverse Widow," with others of Bishop Ken, Bishop Frampton, Dr. George Hickes, &c., with views of Flaxley Abbey and the widow's library. The entire correspondence ibetween Mr. Dilke and Mr. Thomas Kerslake on ithe subject of the " Perverse Widow," which was

onducted in the Athenaeum, is reprinted in an appendix. The work is an admirable contribution o genealogy.

Clive. By Sir Alexander John Arbuthnot, K.C.S.I. (Fisher Unwin.) o the biographies of the " Builders of Greater Britain" has now been added a life of Lord Clive, py Sir Alexander Arbuthnot. Of lives of Clive [here is no paucity. His adventurous career will, lowever, bear retelling, and at the present moment, vhen dreams of conquest are in the air, a further ecord of the man whom all unite in regarding as [he founder of our Indian Empire cannot be other lhan acceptable. By his memoir of Clive con ributed to the ' Dictionary of National Biography, lir Alexander showed his fitness to deal with this. lis own knowledge of Indian subjects is exemplary, nd his judgments have an impartiality which those f some of his predecessors cannot claim. While

indicating Clive from the accusations of baseness which some later biographers have not hesitated clouded, Sir Alexander does not hesitate to paint lis turbulence and to condemn the fictitious treaty with Omichand which sullies a career generally llustrious. With Clive's heroical courage and his i thin but assertive strain of madness which is -esponsible for his sad fate. The passages in his ife that cannot be contemplated with admiration and pleasure are few indeed, and the record of his deeds is as stirring as that of a D' Artagnan. Plassey is, of course, the most stirring memory associated with his name. It is not, however, held to redound to the credit of British arms, seeing that the result could scarcely have been what it was but for the treachery of the Nawab's principal generals. It is otherwise with Arcot, which was the turning-point in Clive's career, and settled the question of English or French ascendency in India. The book is well written throughout and is one of the most accept- able of the series to which it belongs.
 * o bring, and condemning in unmeasured terms
 * he persecution by which his later years were
 * enius for command was combined, it must be held,

Beverley Minster. By Charles Hiatt. (Bell &

Sons.)

SIDE by side with the " Cathedral Series " of Messrs. Bell & Sons, to which we constantly draw atten- tion, the same firm is issuing a supplemental series, distinguishable from the former by nothing except a slightly different shade of colour in the cloth cover. Two volumes of this have now appeared 'St. Martin's Church, Canterbury,' to which we have already directed attention, and ' Beverley Minster.' Situated in what until recently was considered a remote part of the East Riding of Yorkshire, and on no great popular route, Beverley was comparatively unknown to the general traveller. Knowledge of its beauties is now no longer confined to the few, and no lover of ecclesiastical archi- tecture will leave un visited this stately shrine. The record of its history, and the description of its beauties, have been entrusted to Mr. Hiatt, to whom is owing an excellent account of Chester Cathedral, contributed to the " Cathedral Series." His task has been well and lovingly accomplished, and the intending visitor will do well to provide himself with this trustworthy and convenient guide. Little in Beverley, a bleak Northern town, is likely to cause the traveller to linger. The noble sym- metrical beauty of the edifice shows the better, however, through the meanness of surroundings, a meanness more conspicuous even than that of Ely. We cannot, obviously, attempt to deal with the attractions and delights of an edifice unseen in recent years, and must content ourselves with say- ing that the illustrations, obtained in some cases with great difficulty, convey to the reader an excellent idea of its tair and stately proportions.

The Choise of Valentines. By Thomas Nash. Edited

by John S. Farmer. (Privately printed.) So far as modern researches extend, ' The Choise of Valentines' of Nash is now for the first time printed. It is not included in Mr. Grosart's reprint of Nash's works, a collection for which the editor has not received all the praise to which he is entitled. In his MS. notes upon Langbaine's ' English Dramatic Poets,' Oldys says, upon the strength of an assertion of Gabriel Harvey, that Tom Nash certainly wrote and published a pam-