Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 9.djvu/301

 ix. APRIL 12, 1902.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

293

Countess of Oomartie bears the same title as her ancestors, the Mackenzies, but she does not hold the same earldom. I think my language clearly showed that I was aware that the peerage was a new creation, and not a revival of the old Scottish dignity.

W. F. PRIDEAUX.

The following extracts from the 'Scottish Clans and their Tartans ' (W. & A. K. John- ston) is interesting, and bears upon the points mentioned by COL. PRIDEAUX and SIR DAVID OSWALD HUNTER-BLAIR :

" Anne (only child of John Hay Mackenzie, of Oomartie and Newhall), Mistress of the Robes to Her Majesty (1870-74), Duchess of Sutherland, became in her own right (1861) Countess of Cro- niartie, Viscountess Tarbet, Baroness MacLeod and Castlehaven."

" Anne, Countess of Cromartie, died in 1888, and was succeeded by her second son, Francis, as Earl of Cromartie, &c. He died in 1893, and his elder daughter Sibell was declared in March, 1895, to hold all her father's titles, and so is Countess of Cromartie."

RONALD DIXON.

46, Marlborough Avenue, Hull.

George Mackenzie, third Earl of Cromartie, joined the rising of 1745, and collected in support of Prince Charles Edward a con- siderable number of his (the Mackenzie) clan, who were with him at the battle of Falkirk, and, after their retreat to the North, he, with his eldest son, Lord Macleod, was surprised and taken prisoner by a party of Lord Sutherland's militia at Dunrobin Castle, 15 April, 1746, the day before the battle of Culloden. He was soon after brought to London, and was, 30 May, 1746, lodged in the Tower. On 28 July, 1746, in company with the Earl of Kilmarnock and Lord Balmerino, he was brought to trial in West- minster Hall before his peers, when he pleaded guilty to the indictment preferred against him of high treason, and on 1 August was sentenced to death, his estates and honours being by the ordinary sentence for high treason forfeited to the Crown ; but whilst his two companions in misfortune were executed on Tower Hill, Monday, 18 August, the Earl of Cromartie was respited, and on 20 August received a conditional pardon He was therefore not executed, and diec peaceably in Poland Street twenty years after, on 28 September, 1766, " on the eve of S. Michael and All Angels," and sixteen yean after his death his estates were restored to his eldest son.

In his speech before the House of Lords a his trial, when asked why sentence shouk not be pronounced against him, the Earl p Cromartie mentions that he had involved in

is misfortunes not only his eldest son, but much-loved wife and a child still unborn, nd this child appears to have been born a rionth or two after the trial, and was his ixth and youngest daughter, Lady Augusta Mackenzie, who was married 6 March, 1770, o Sir William Murray, fifth baronet of Jchtertyre, co. Perth, and died 20 January, 809.

Is it not very possible, not to say probable, hat three or four old ladies, sitting round a ea-table on 4 August, 1823, and telling each >ther dramatic tales about birth-marks, hould have assumed the execution, which tever took place, of a man who was con- iemned to death seventy-seven years before he date of the conversation, in order to leepen the tragic character of their story ? lad there been no execution, their gossip about the mark of an axe and three drops of " lood would have been pointless.

F. DE H. LARPENT.

ARMS (9 th S. ix. 147). The coat of arms is >robably that of the Beecher family, which 3urke's 'General Armory,' p. 66 (edition .878), gives as Beecher (granted 6 October, 1574) : Vaire, ar. and gu., on a canton or a stag's head cabossed vert ; and Beecher 'London Visitation, 1568') as above, except
 * >hat stag's head is sable.

J. H AMBLE Y ROWE, M.B.

Probably Beecher, impaling Brewes or Hankford. See Papworth and Morant, pp. 283, 360-1. G. S. C.

CHESS PLAYING : A LEGEND (9 th S. ix- 248). The passage in which Huxley refers to Nature ana man playing a game of chess is in the essay on ' A Liberal Education,' in the ' Essays on Science and Education ' (the third volume of the * Collected Essays '), and on p. 82 of Macraillan's edition of 1893.

N. R. U.

PINS IN DRINKING VESSELS (9 th S. iv. 287, 358, 484 ; ix. 10, 136, 255). In correcting one mistake about Dr. Milner (p. 256) MR. DIXON appears to have fallen into another in making him " Bishop of Winchester." In the first place, the name of Milner never once appears in the annals of this diocese as having been borne by one of its prelates ; and, secondly, if it did, it could not be that of the individual in question, for the simple reason that he was born a Roman Catholic, and remained so to the last day of his life. He was the author of the well-known ' His- tory of Winchester'; but beyond this, and the fact of his having resided there for some years, he never had anything to do with the