Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 3.djvu/245

 9t*s.m.MA*.25,m:) NOTES AND QUERIES.

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i the English, from which a conjectural Latin ( barter has been framed. Of some of the documents 1 elonging to the Corporation facsimiles are supplied. Charters were also granted by Queen Elizabeth, L ames L, and James II.; the last-named, the t riginal of which was in existence in 1712, was i reserved with other muniments of the Corpora- t on, but has since been lost. Its date is 1687. In c msequence of the deposition of James II. it was ommonly held to be void. During the second quarter of the eighteenth century it was gradually brought into operation. The royal charters of Edward III., Henry IV., Henry VI., and Ed- ward IV. were presented to the Corporation by the Marquess of Bute. After the charters come docu- ments of the utmost importance to the student of local history in the shape of ministers' accounts, otherwise financial statements to the Crown from those appointed to manage estates which, on the d<aath of the lord under certain conditions, had come into the hands of the king. The earliest of these is dated 1263, and is supplied by Humphrey de Bohun, Earl of Hereford, concerning the lands of Richard de Clare, Earl of Gloucester, who left a son four years of age to be during his long minority ward of the Crown. One for the year 1542/3 forms a virtual directory of Cardiff and Roath in the middle of the sixteenth century, giving names of the streets and the principal inhabitants. From this, which was rendered to the king as lord of Glamorgan and Morganwy, it is seen that there were at this time 269 burgage tenements in Cardiff, of which 105 were held by the Church and 75 by lay burgage tenants. These ministers' accounts end in 1550, and are followed by Inquisitiones post mortem. Among these is an inquisition on the death of Henry, second Earl of Pembroke, who received as dower and jointure of his third countess, iMary, daughter of Sir Henry Sydney (sic), the i "Borough, Town, and County of Cardiff'," &c. This is, of course, the famous Mary Herbert, "Sidney's i sister, Pembroke's mother." This highly interest- ling document is, we are told, "in very bad con- 'dition, and in part illegible." Following these come iStar Chamber Proceedings, some of them both curious and romantic. In State Papers, Domestic, is a report from the Glamorganshire justices, in lanswer to a demand for a thirty-ton barque or pinnace, with her crew and provision, for the navy of Charles L, that the only five Cardiff ships which same up to that standard had been captured by Turkish pirates, " to the great impoverishment of Hthe town." ' Church Goods of Llandaff Cathedral,' Records of the Exchequer,' and 'Patent Rolls' bake up a volume of high antiquarian interest, dited by our correspondent Mr. John Hobson 'atthews, archivist to the Corporation. The )lume is issued in a handsome Roxburghe bind ig, with all luxury of type, and with some excel mt engravings. Over how many volumes it will xtend we are unable to say. The present instal- ment brims over with matter of interest to the rchseologist and the student.
 * ivhich has been patiently, carefully, and adequately

ife of Danton. By A. H. Beesly. (Longmans &

Co.)

IR. BEESLY has long been an admirer of Danton le is not the first to attempt the rehabilitation o tris "Titan of the Revolution," as in a pasaagi uoted as a prefatory motto Carlyle calls Danton ut he is at least one of the warmest and mos

ncompromising advocates. Mr. Beesly owns that n repelling accusations such as have been brought igainst Dariton by M. Taine and others, "it is lardly possible not to write as an advocate or to ivoid repetitions of the same kind of disproof"} ind adds, in a curious and characteristic phrase, 'For the accusations themselves have a certain .orrid family likeness, and in dismembering an ctopus there is little scope for variety of stroke." "ow the master spirits of the French Revolution, who let loose forces they were unable to direct or control, are not men to be easily summed up and depicted in language of easy eulogy or flippant
 * ensure. Mr. Beesly, however, writes like an all-

mt-uncompromising partisan and an impassioned advocate. It is not so much in the eulogy he >estows that we have the strong bias as in the nanner in which he deals with all Danton's oppo- lents and with all those who hold views opposed to lis. The contrast between the adjectives employed o characterize Danton and any of his opponents is tot easily credible. We sympathize with the writer when he dwells upon the horrible state of affairs which preceded and brought about the Revolution, and we acquit Mr. Beesly of exaggeration. Who, indeed, could exaggerate the sufferings of the peasantry ? When, however, we learn that " a cur6 entered in ris parish register, ' I certify to all those whom it may concern that all the persons who are named in xception of M. Discrots and his daughter,'" we lave a right to learn \vhp was the cure and what the register. When, again, it is said of the emi- grants that, "had they been able, they would have perpetrated all the Revolution's horrors, un- redeemed by one of the lasting benefits which it conferred on France," more is said than can possibly narrates, on evidence wholly unsatisfactory to sup- port so monstrous an accusation, that he (Louis) '' used to spit and roast live cats." With his own hands he would not attempt often such an occupa- tion. It is, however, with regard to characters who are responsible for the Revolution that Mr. Beesly shows himself most biassed. Lafayette "ludicrously pretends " so and so. " The Girondin Lasource then rose, and in a plausible speech gave his version of the facts." The words of Danton, on the other hand, when they are not " noble," are " memorable." Vergniaud "mouthed" the majority's abhorrence. Mortimer - Ternaux "characteristically garbled" a celebrated passage from a speech of Marat. Roland may "fume," and Madame Roland may "backbite. All who are opposed to Danton do such things or worse. Yet once more Wordsworth's description of one whose
 * his parish register have died of famine with the
 * >e established. Concerning Louis XVI. Mr. Beesly

master-bias leans To home-felt pleasures and to gentle scenes

appears as a motto to the volume. Kindred tastes have not been held to mitigate in any fashion the atrocities of Charles I. A reader of Mr. Beesly's work, while admiring the vigorous attempt to free Danton from all charge of employing to his own ad- vantage public funds or any form of peculation, will not even suspect that he was also accused of gross immorality. Now we hold no brief for the jmtyrfa, the Girondists, Louis XVI., or Marie Antoinette, and none against Danton. We began with pleasure the perusal of Mr. Beesly's book, and were for a while led on by the brightness of the author's style. As we progressed, however, the sense that all was