Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 3.djvu/58

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NOTES AND QUERIES. [9* s. m. JAN. 21, m

contemplating the preparation of his well- earned supper, affords an instance of the employment of the word in the sense of husband :

" 'Why, Dame Ursley why, wife, I say why, dame why, love, you are wanted more than a strop for a dull razor why, dame '

'"I would some one would draw the razor across thy windpipe, thou bawling ass ! ' said the dame to herself, in the first moment of irritation against her clamorous helpmate."

I venture to think, with deference to C. C. B., that Scott, Wordsworth, Tennyson, and many other standard writers have used this word because it is sound English, which " help- meet " certainly is not. Newman may have used it; but the most illustrious writers occasionally trip, and nothing can get over the fact that "helpmeet" is based upon a misconception of Gen. ii. 18, which distinctly places woman, relatively to man, in a position not covered entirely by the signification which we moderns attach to " helpmate." W. F. PRIDEAUX.

45, Pall Mall, S.W.

[DR. SPENCE next week.]

MEEGATE HALL, NEAR NORWICH (9 th S. ii. 522). MR. HITCHIN-KEMP'S remarks on this house and on the family of Kemp are very interesting, but I think he must be wrong about there being a grant of King John of certain lands to the family. No earlier origin for the family has ever been suggested than one Alan Kemp, of Weston, who is said to have married Isabel, daughter and heiress of Philip Hastings, who is said to have given the manor of Gissing to the family in 1324. But even this seems all wrong, and the Kemps are apparently riot entitled to quarter the arms of Hastings at all, though they have done so for many generations ; for they seem to have no descent from that family, but to have acquired the manor c. 1465 by descent from a purchaser from the Hastings family.

This can be proved up to the hilt thus :

Gissing manor was held by the Hastings family till 1353 ('The Book of Aids' of 20 Edward III., 1347, gives Ralph de Hastings as then lord), when it was sold to a Thomas Gardiner, of Gissing, whose daughter Joan, dying s.p. in 1400, left it to her brother-in- law, Sir Robert Buttevileyn, who had married her half-sister.

It remained in the Buttevileyn family till 1465, when William Buttevileyn (who in 1451-2 had been described as " fatuus " in his inquisition post mortem, 30 Henry VI., vol. iv. p. 150, and as being seized of the manors of Gissing and Flordon) died, and the manor

came through his sister and heir Juliana, who is said to have married Robert Duke, of Brampton, as shown on the second generation of the usually accepted pedigree, though the date is utterly wrong, for he did not get Gissing till about 1465, and not 1324. His daughter, Alice Duke, married John Kemp, and so brought Gissing manor for the first time into the Kemp family.

I am unable to trace Isabel Hastings and her father Philip. They are, I fear, two of the many ghosts who stray through so many Elizabethan pedigrees.

The name of Kemp is a very common one in Norfolk, and was borne by all sorts and conditions of people, e.g., William Kempe, in 17 Edward III., was a bondsman (nativus} of John de Shelton in Haveringlond (Anct. Ch. A. 2754). WALTER RYE.

Frognal House, Hampstead, N.W.

PRIME MINISTER (8 th S. x. 357, 438 ; xi. 69, 151, 510 xii. 55, 431 ; 9 th S. ii. 99 ; iii. 15). This form appears to be much older than the synonym "Premier." The following, from Mr. John Morley's 'Walpole' (pp. 161-2), seems to show this clearly :

" The earliest instance in which I have found the head of the government designated as the Premier is in a letter to the Duke of Newcastle from the Duke of Cumberland in 1746, though in Johnson's 'Dictionary,' published nine years later,

' premier' still only figures as an adjective On

the other hand, in a debate so late as 1761, George Grenville declared that Prime Minister is an odious title, and he was sorry that it was now deemed an essential part of the constitution. Lord North is said never to have allowed himself in his own family to be called Prime Minister."

The Duchess of Marlborough spoke of the "Premier Minister," but never of the "Premier." GEORGE MARSHALL.

Sefton Park, Liverpool.

' MORE HINTS ON ETIQUETTE ' (9 th S. ii. 267). MR. HAMILTON will pardon me, I am sure, for saying that I am afraid the data he has placed before us for his ascription of this book to Thackeray cannot be fully accepted as conclusive. In 1837 ' My Book ; or, the Anatomy of Conduct,' was published. The writer, John H. Shelton, had been a woollen- draper in the neighbourhood of Regent Street, W. He had become possessed of the fixed idea that he was destined to be the instructor of mankind in the true art of etiquette. The little volume fell in the way of Thackeray, and he undertook the task of reviewing it for Eraser's Magazine. Thackeray was of the opinion that his work would be more pungent if he wrote in the character of a footman. The review took the- form of a letter