Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 4.djvu/32

 18 NOTES AND QUERIES. n»» s. iv. JULY i, m being affronted at the choice, challenged the elect t" Play for a crown a head out of their own pockets -The challenge was accepted; they played before the Duke, and the elect was beat all to nothing."— Royal Historical MSS. Commission: Carlisle MSS ji. 205. ALFRED F. BOBBINS. JANE SHORE (9th S. iii. 445).—Referring to my note at the above reference, I find it stated in an interesting and readable little book, dealing with the early London bankers and entitled "Somme Olde Curiosities, by a Knighte offe y« Quille," 1890, which, however, cannot be regarded as authoritative, that there is a tradition that "Matthew Shore, the father of the world-famed Jane bhore, earned on, on the very same spot fas the Grasshopper, the old sign of Martin's Banking House, No. 68, in Lombard Street], his business as a goldsmith ; and that the ballad has it:— In Lombard Street I once did dwell, As London yet can witness well, Where many gallants did beholde My beauty in a shop of golde. And further (as the author quotes from Pen- nant), it was in a house (or "shop") on the same site, and then occupied by Messrs Martin, as above, that Sir Thomas'Gresham in the reign of Elizabeth, carried on the like trade of a goldsmith, giving the premises the title of the Grasshopper, which he made his sign as well as his crest." Now, the father of Jane Shore was Thomas Wainstead, a mercer in Cheapside, and it seems to me that the first of the above-quoted statements is intended to apply not to her father, but to her husband, William Shore, who, however, according to my previous com- munication on the subject, appears to have carried on the business of a goldsmith on the site of No. 43, Lombard Street, and not on that of Messrs. Martin's premises at No. 68 in the same street. In any case the latter firm could only have occupied premises which were rebuilt after the Great Fire of 1666, on the site of, and not the actual "shop" of Gresham—the earliest occupants of such re- build Grasshopper" being, apparently, Messrs. Chas. Buncombe &, Rich. Kent named among the "goldsmiths who kept running cashes (t. e., current accounts to be drawn on by customers) in the first' London Directory of 1677. W. I. R. V. PUBLIC SCHOOLS WITH BRANCH ESTABLISH- MENTS (9"> S. iii. 468).-It may reasonably be doubted whether any large English public school has a branch abroad. One big school on the north side of London, established with a view to giving a commercial training, has an arrangement by which boys may be trans- ferred for a time to a place of education on the Continent. The failure to teach modern languages passably in England springs partly from the system on which our public schools are worked. Without real sympathy or an intimate connexion with the so varied world beyond the "silver streak," rigorously closed to alraosteveryinfluencc thatdoesnottend to pro- duce a particular English type, it may be said of them in this respect, as of exclusive people that they shut the gates of heaven on them- selves. In some of the Catholic schools in hngland, however, there may be discerned the germ of better things. The presence of a foreign element upon the staff, and of boys or girls among the pupils, the visits of parents and of birds of passage from the Continent to say nothing of the links, old as the days of Ethelbert, that bind the Church in England with the Church abroad, give to the study of modern tongues a certain actuality, and furnish an incentive and some opportunity for acquiring the most important of the continental languages. As to whether boys should be taught some- thing more useful than the elements of a language in which they are never likely to make great progress, much naturally depends upon the end of education. But if it be to lay wide the foundation of knowledge in days when it is easy to acquire what later on is so much drudgery, so that the pupil may specialize in after life as times and circum- stance demand, then it will not be deemed lost labour to work at the grammar of French or German or Spanish or Italian. Even if the subject shall bo dropped when business life begins and not resumed, yet at least there is the small recommendation that a man will be unable to complain that he was not taught at school, and so felt himself debarred in after years from entering on a course of work to which in youth he had no introduction. T. P. ARMSTRONG. NOTES ON BOOKS, &c. A Great Historic Peerar/e: the Earldom of WUtes. By John Henry Metcalfe. (Chiswick Press.) A CLAIM to the Earldom of Wiltes was laid before Simon Thomas Scrope, of Danby, in York, Esq. After a delay of ten years, which witnessed the deaths of Lords Wensfeydale and Cranworth, an adverse decision was pronounced by Lords Chelms- ord and Redesdale. This caused at the time some surprise and excitement, the latter not having yet intirely subsided. A protest against it was signed by the Duke of Norfolk, the Earls of Gainsborough Abergavenny, Denbigh, Warwick. Granard, Zet-
 * he House of Lords in 1859, the claimant being