Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 4.djvu/206

 282 [9'" S. IV. Oct. 7, TO. NOTES AND QUERIES. of Aragon, in acknowledgment of services rendered, took John Russell to the Court of Henry VIII. and founded the family fortune. Mindful of the favour, John Russell, when Earl of Bedford, arranged the match between Philip II. and Queen Mary, whom he gave away at the altar, and died a few mouths after. Francis Russell, who succeeded to the earldom, might have procured the post of page to Philip for his godson, and of such episode Drake would make no mention to Camden* Edmund Tremayne endured the rack, and Francis Russell risked his life to save the Princess Elizabeth, who doubtless knew Drake's history and the family links connecting him personally with herself through Courtenay, Trelawny, and Hawkins (see 'Hist. Hund. of Blackheath,' introduc- tion). From the pedigree of Strode (' Blackheath,' p. xxi) the second generation, a very im- portant one, has been accidentally omitted. Richard Strode married Frances Cromwell, a member of the Protector's family, ana affords assistance in proving that the Reformation and the Commonwealth were the outcome of the rebellion of the nation's conscience against priestly rule stirred by Wickliffe and maintained by Francis Drake and his personal friends (see 'Blackheath'). Tin was accounted a royal metal; the tinners of Devon and Cornwall were chartered to exercise royal rights over the soil. They could raze houses, appropriate watercourses or wells, and destroy cultivation at pleasure. They held parliaments of their own on Crockern Tor, the central point of Dartmoor, where they enacted, 27 September, 1510, that any one who obstructed them by word or deed should be mulcted in a heavy sum. Richard Strode, M.P. for Plympton, himself a tinner, complained in Parliament of the damages done to property by the tinners. On re- turning to Devon he was fined 160/., and for refusing to pay was thrown into a noisome, underground dungeon in Lidford Castle, ana fed on bread and water for three weeks. On regaii ing his liberty he obtained the act for free speech in Parliament. Richard Strode's son was the executor of Sir Francis Drake's will, and Sir Francis Drake, the first baronet, married Joan Strode, his granddaughter. Two of the five members impeached by Charles I., Pym and Strode, were within the Drake would not have permitted his son to accept such office, I reply that Edmund himself accepted service for Catholic pay before he held the living of Upchurch. family circle, but what can be found in' Black- heath ' need not be repeated here. An Athenaeum reviewer recently described Drake as mercenary and greedy for plunder, and I did my best to combat this view of his character, as did the Plymouth press. On the other side I may, at any rate, point out that Drake, although he had greater facilities for accumulating wealth, died poorer than his kinsman Sir John Hawkins. Besides gifts of money—10,000/. at one time— the queen granted him lands in six different counties under letters patent, and he died seized of those only that he had acquired for himself in Devon, with a few acres in Somerset or Dorset. What became of the rest ? The mercenary seaman spent it all in providing the means wanting tor the public service and denied by a niggardly Govern- ment. H. H. Drake. St. George's Avenue, Tufnell Park. NOTES ON THE THIRD VOLUME OF THE ' MUS.E ANULICAN.-E.' It may be of interest to learn that, besides being a baronet, the genial Sir Wilfrid Lawson is also a poet by descent—jxjela nas- citur, nan Jit. One of his ancestors, in the early years of the eighteenth century, was the writer of an ode published in the third volume of the ' Musarum Anglicanarum Ana- lecta' (Oxon., mdccxvii.), to which his name, duly Latinized, is appended : "Wilfridus Lawson, Baronettus, e Coll. Reg." (p. 117). The subject, treated in Horatian measure, is partly mournful and partly joyful. It is on the death of Queen Anne and the accession of King George I. : " In Obitutn Serenissimse Regime Annse, &, Augustissimi Regis Georgii Inaugurationem." On the whole I think the poet performs his task very creditably : " La Heine est morte, vive le Roi !" His loyalty to the throne is unimpeachable. He would have had, so it seems, little sympathy with a certain phase of modern politics (though sup- posed by some to be of ancient date in its origin), which I must not particularize, as I know that matters political and religious are rightly tabooed in these pages ; but he severely condemns the " Jura Celtaruni superba," which words I leave to the inter- pretation of all and sundry. He also de- nounces the Salic laws {Salicas leges) which still obtain in some countries, anu which we shall never adopt until we have forgotten the reigns of Elizaoeth, Anne, and Victoria. A lady on the throne of this " the most flourishing and excellent, most re- nowmed [renowned] and famous Isle of the whole
 * To the objection that the Protestant Edmund