Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 7.djvu/219

 9 S. VII. MAECH 16, 1901.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

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parishioners complained of the standing of their parish church near the public highway or road leading towards Acton, on account of which it was robbed of books, vestments, images, bells, and other ornaments.

So that at the end of the fourteenth cen- tury, two hundred years and more after the hanging of Longbeard, the highway from St. Giles's to the southern end of the Edg- ware Road was still lonely and deserted, and passengers going westward preferred to steer for St. Mary's, higher up the bourne, and thence by Lisson Green across the Edgware Road to Pad ding ton.

The manor of Lilestone was early granted to the Hospitallers, as is now marked by St. John's Wood, the northern end. The manor house stood, I think, where Queen Charlotte's Lying-in Hospital stands now. The southern part of the manor was evidently almost deserted down to the end of the eigh- teenth century, and the names of the fields which comprised what is now the Portman estate give us the reason. In the small dis- trict bounded on the east by the Tyburn, on the south by. the old road, now Oxford Street, and on the west by the Edgware Road, we find that fields in 1512 bore the following names (L. Larking, ' Hospitallers,' Cam. Soc., 1857) : Great Gibbet Field, Little Gibbet Field, Hawkfield, Tassal Croft, Boys Croft, Furze Croft, Brockstand, and Shepcott Haws. Here then we have a rough, furzy piece of ground, with at least two gibbets, each no doubt bearing its malefactor in irons a place for badger-baiting, a mews for falcons and tiercels, a hut for a shepherd, and a patch of plantation. As they were let on lease by the Lord Prior at 81. a year, these fields in the reign of Henry VIII. belonged to the manor of Lilestone, Lisson, or St. John's Wood. For these and other reasons, some of which are set forth in my 'History of London' (ii. 222, cfec.), I fail to follow MR, RUTTON when he says that the boundary of the parish of Tyburn (or does he mean the manor, or that of Lilestone?) is ill defined on the west, or when he sees good reason to place part of Tyburn west of Edgware Road.

He has also, as I venture most diffidently to suggest, been misled by "a valued con- tributor/' whom he does not name, into sup- posing tlie Veres were ever lords of Tyburn. Robert Yere, fifth Earl of Oxford, died the same year as that of Long beard's judicial murder, at which time he was tenant of the eastern Jiulf of the parish, the Domesday manor oi Tyburn, whose western boundary was formal by the brook. He was not lord of the manor, which he rented from the Lady

Abbess of Barking. He had none of her manorial rights of the gallows ; and as to the lease, he gave it to one of his younger chil- dren, the lady who married William, eldest son of the Earl of Warren and Surrey. The subsequent history of the lease is detailed by Lysons.

I hope MR. RUTTON will pardon these re- marks. His paper is so valuable and so interesting, so suggestive of further inquiry, that I feel bound to offer him the notes gathered many years ago for a different purpose. W. J. LOFTIE.

THE BATTLE OF FONTENOY, 1745 (9 th S. vii. 25, 114). I beg that your correspondent will pardon me for saying that I do not think he has been quite just to me in assuming that I am oblivious of the "famous salute at Fon- tenoy." On the contrary, if MR. MARSHALL had recorded in * N. & Q.' that I purposely omitted all reference to the subject, and for the sole reason that I entertain the belief that there is no foundation in fact for the graceful salutes attributed by Voltaire to Lord Charles Hay and the Count d'Auteroche, it would have been a statement of the simple truth. However, in connexion with the matter I request permission to mention that Mr. John Morley, M.P., in his delightful work entitled 'Voltaire' (London, Chapman & Hall, 1872), states that the author of the 'Histoire de Charles XII.,' 1731, wrote that "history is after all nothing but a parcel of tricks that we play the dead " ; and in support of this theory I may remark that I appreciate Voltaire's story of Lord Charles Hay's exclamation and Count d'Auteroche's reply thereto as a mere fabrication.

With regard to the assertion that Marshal de u Saxe was so ill that he was unable to sit his horse, and gave his orders from a litter," will MR. MARSHALL kindly allow me to direct his attention to ' The History of France,' by M. Guizot, translated from the French by Robert Black, M.A., vol. v. pp. 119-21 (London, Sampson Low &, Co., 1876) 1 It is only right to add that, according to John Cornelius O'Callaghan, the Irish Brigade at Fontenoy consisted of six, and not seven regiments, as stated by MR MARSHALL.

We do indeed, as suggested by your corre- spondent, want a more complete history of the immortal Irish Brigade than the one now in existence. We want a work similar to Gibbon's great history, "so famous," says Mr. John Morley, "for its splendid breadth of conception and industrious elaboration of detail."

In conclusion, I may be permitted to