Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 3.djvu/389

 s. in. MAY 20,

NOTES AND QUERIES.

383

th s put (perhaps by an error in printing) ha been traced by me with some little dim- cu -,y, through the " Muttrell " or " Mutterell " of lall and Holinshed, to Montreuil in Lin- ga;d's 'History.'

( 'uriously the catastrophe suffered by the hoi.se of Cheney is unnoticed in the Kent Visitations, and corroboration of Rowland an*' Berry failed me until discovered in an old pedigree contained in Harl. MS. 1233, fol 93/40, where the entry is " John Cheney, eldest son, slain at y e siege of Muttrull." His ago could not have been much less than thirty years, for he is mentioned in the will (given by Rowland) made in 1535 by his father-in- law, Lord Abergavenny. It appears that then he was under age, though married ; ami allowing him to have been twenty in 1535, he would have been twenty -nine in 1544, the year of his death.

Sir Thomas Cheney was not left without an heir by the death of his elder son, who was by his first wife Frideswide or Fridwith, jdaughter of Sir Thomas Frowyke, Chief i Justice of the Court of Common Pleas. !By his second wife, Anne Broughton, daughter !and heir of Sir John Broughton, of Todding- jton, Bedfordshire, he had another son, Henry, who succeeded to his father's Kentish estates pnly to dissipate them through his extra- vagance. He had also, however, his mother's [estate at Toddington, to which he trans- ferred himself, and not content with the house he had inherited, he pulled it down jand erected a mansion which seems to have been famous for its magnificence. The cost jof building, and that of twice entertaining JQueen Elizabeth, must have largely contri- jbuted to his impoverishment, and the empty Ifcitle of Lord Cheney conferred on him by his Sovereign in 1572 could have afforded but 'ittle compensation. Dying in 1587 childless, n him ended this branch of the Cheney or pheyne family. His widow, Jane Wentworth, survived until 1614, and on her death the foddington estate devolved on her great- iephew, the fourth Lord Wentworth of Nettlestead, who ultimately became Earl of Cleveland. W. L. RUTTON.

MARY PYPER, A POET OF THE POOR. For ome years I have been interested in the life -nd poetry of Mary Pyper, "a poet of the >oor," and in my ' Literary Byways ' (London, 898) have told at length the story of her
 * areer. I there state that through the exer-

ions of Dr. Charles Rogers, an old contributor
 * o * N. & Q.,' in May, 1885, a handsome cross

was erected over her remains in Greyfriars' Churchyard, Edinburgh, simply bearing her

name " Mary Pyper." Such was the informa- tion I received from a friend whom I induced to inspect the memorial and give me particu- lars of it, and, to my surprise, when I visited the grave in April, 1899, I found on the cross the following inscription, which I presume has been added since its erection : By admiring Friends Erected in memory of Mary Pyper who amidst untoward surroundings

cherished

her gift as a writer of sacred verse. Born 25 May

1795.

She died at

Edinburgh,

25th May, 1870.

Let me go ! The day is breaking, Morning bursts upon the eye ;

Death this mortal frame is shaking, But the soul can never die !

The last four lines are from her poem entitled ' The Christian's View of Death,' which finds a place in several standard works of poetry. Her best-known production is an * Epitaph : a Life,' often incorrectly attributed to German sources. It is as follows :

I came at morn 'twas Spring, and smiled,

The fields with green were clad ; I walked abroad at noon, and lo !

'Twas Summer I was glad. I sate me down 'twas Autumn eve,

And I with sadness wept ; I laid me down at night and then

'Twas Winter and I slept. Among self-taught poets Mary Pyper is entitled to an honourable place.

WILLIAM ANDREWS. Hull Press.

THE LAST OF THE WAR Bow. An interest- ing question in the history of military weapons is as to the time at which military archery ceased in this country. And, curiously enough, simple though it may seem, it has been found extremely puzzling to find the correct answer. In the obviously likely places search is at fault ; even the 'Encyclopaedia Britannica,' in the collection of whose facts an immense amount of labour has no doubt been spent, comes in the last edition to the conclusion that " there is now no means of ascertaining precisely the period at which the bow was relinquished entirely in these kingdoms as a weapon of war." And if in other well-known sources of in- formation the negative is put less positively, so to speak, the fact remains that the true