Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 9.djvu/389

 s. ix. MAY 17, 1902.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

381

LONDON, SATURDAY, MAY 17, 1902.

CONTENTS. -No. 229.

NOTES : Shelley's Ancestry, 381 St.. Margaret's, West- minster, and Benefactors, 382" Frieze " Rudyerd, 383 Place-name Shields "Mess of pottage" Soldiers' Card- games Book-Titles Changed, 384 Knurr and Spell "Muntjac," 385 Colne School and Weddings Yarrow Unvisited, 386.

QUERIES : Ceiling Inscription Arms of Dutch and Flemish Towns, 386' Discoverie of Witchcraft 'Bos- well's 'Johnson' as a Touchstone of Taste Jack-in-the- Pulpit 'Oliver and Arthur' Shakespearian Manners and Customs Gye Family American Edition of Dickens Building in Gothic Period '"Twas April, on the verge of May "Annunciation Middletons of Derbyshire, 387 Whitridge, Publisher Arthur's Crown ' Parliament of Critioks Watson of Barrasbridge Old Songs Armorial Elizabeth, Lady Morl^y, 388-" Avoid extremes," &c. Tedula, a Bird "The First War "Dove, the Regicide Spiera's Despair, 389.

BEPLIES : Clifford's Inn, 389 Mourning Sunday Black Malibran Garratt, Lord Mayor of London 'Old Friends and New Friends,' 390-White Gloves at Assizes Field- names, South -West Lancashire Lines attributed to Johnson Dickensiana Sibylline Oracles Disappearing Chartists, 391 "All Cooper's ducks with me "Hearts- ease, 392' Carrion Crow ' Barrosa Token, 393 Sheree : Knyvett: Downes St. Clement Danes "Ycleping" the Church, 394 English Contingent in the Last Crusade Royal Persons G. Sandys " Pillage, Stallage, and Toll " " Shimmozzel," 395 Sir Alan de Heyton St. Patrick Pins in Drinking Vessels, 398 The Mitre Ganganelli's Bible Bibliography of the Bicycle Isle of Dogs, 397 Chess Playing, a Legend Arms of Knights W. T. Edwards, 398.

NOTES ON BOOKS : The Supplement to the ' Encyclo- paedia Britannica ' ' Quarterly Review.'

Notices to Correspondents.

SHELLEY'S ANCESTRY. ALTHOUGH no respecter of pedigrees, yet Shelley was proud of his supposed relation- ship to Sir Philip Sidney ; but the connexion must have been spiritual rather than physi- cal, for he was mistaken in his pious belief that the authentic blood of Astrophel flowed in his veins. His grandfather, Sir Bysshe Shelley, had won ("eloped with," Medwin says) two heiresses in succession : the first, Mary Catherine Michell, was the poet's grand- mother ; the second, Elizabeth Jane Sidney Perry, ancestress of Lord de L'Isle and Dudley, was the descendant of Sir Philip's

founger brother, Robert Sidney, Earl of ^icester.

Shelley was, however, the direct descendant of John Shellie, M.P. for Rye in the first quarter of the fifteenth century, by his wife Beatrix, the daughter of the famous Sir John Hawkwood (Acuto). Called by Hallam " the first real general of modern times," Hawk- wood was captain of the White Company, which fought for the Visconti of Milan. Although his bones lie, probably, in his ancestral church at Sible Hedingham, Essex, the counterfeit presentment of the great

captain in his armour as he lived may be seen to-day in Paolo Uccello's fresco, now at the west end of the Duomo of Florence.

Another ancestor of the poet, Edward Shelley, of Worminghurst (late the property of the convent of Sion), grandson of the above John and Beatrix, was one of the four Masters of the Household to Henry VIII., Edward VI., and Queen Mary. He was buried in the chancel of Worminghurst Church, Sussex, in 1554, with his wife Joan Iden. Her father, Paul Iden (" Pawle Yden "), in civilian costume, with Agnes his wife and one daughter, are represented on brasses in the south chancel of Penshurst Church, Kent. The date of Paul's death is given by Haines as 1514.

Readers of Shakespeare will remember the name of Iden. In ' 2 Henry VI.,' Act IV. scene x., Alexander Iden slays the notorious Jack Cade. Hasted, in his ' History of Kent,' says :

" The Idens were a family of great antiquity and good estate about Iden, in the county of Sussex, and Rolveden in this county, and in them it con- tinued down to Alexander Iden, who resided here in the twenty -eighth year of K. Henry VI., the latter half of which year he was Sheriff of this county, being appointed to that office on the death of William Crowmer, Esq., who had been put to death by the rebel Cade and his followers."

And elsewhere he adds :

" Jack Cade, deserted by his followers, concealed himself in the woods near this place [Hothfield], belonging to Ripley Manor, in Westwell, soon after

which he was discovered by Alexander Iden

as some say, in a field belonging to that manor in Westwell parish, but by others in a field of this parish, still named from that circumstance Jack Cade's field."

Holinshed the chronicler records this event as taking place at Hothfield (or Heathfield), Sussex. Iden married the widow of his predecessor miscalled by Shakespeare, fol- lowing Hall, Sir James Cromer the daughter of that Lord Treasurer Say who was also murdered by the rebels. Subsequently appointed Governor of Rochester Castle, Iden was again Sheriff of Kent in 1456-7. Barbara, the eldest daughter of a later William Crowraer (or Cromer), of Tunstall, Kent, became the second wife of Henry Shelley, of Worminghurst (who died in 1623), and thereby direct ancestress of the poet. But it is possible that Shelley's sympathies would have lain rather with the rebel Cade than with his respectable Iden and Crowmer ancestors.

An earlier poet was closely allied to characters even more warlike : Edmund Waller was not only a kinsman of the Parliamentary general Sir William Waller,