Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 9.djvu/423

 9* S. IX. MAY 24, 1902.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

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author of the plays he took part in or placed upon the stage, must either have had other sources of information peculiar to himself or must have acquired his all-pervading know- ledge, philological and otherwise, by pure inspiration, or, on the Dogberrian theory, from the light of nature alternatives which a plain man may surely have some hesitation in accepting without being writ down an "ass," or pronounced a "candidate for Bedlam." JOHN HUTCHINSON.

Middle Temple Library.

In chap. iii. of vol. i. of Macaulay's 'His- tory of England ' one of the complex queries under the above heading will find solution if the paragraph 'Scarcity of Books in Country Places' be read. STAPLETON MARTIN.

The Firs, Norton, Worcester.

'MRS. CARNAC,' BY SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS (9 th S. ix. 346). If interest attaches to the subject of Sir Joshua's well-known portrait, the following details may be addea to the note of MR. L. SCHANK in a recent issue. General Carnac was the descendant of an trnigrt belonging to a noble Huguenot family in Brittany, who settled in Ireland after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes. Having served, as stated, with distinction in the army in India, and as Olive's lieutenant at Plassey, General Carnac returned to England, and sat as member of Parliament for Tewkesbury. He married Elizabeth (the subject of the picture), daughter of Thomas Revett, M.P. and High Sheriff of Derbyshire, whose election in opposition to the Devonshire and Chester- field interest caused some stir at the time, as noticed by Horace Walpole in one of his letters, and as described in Mr. Rathbone's ' Correspondence of Lady Jane Coke.' Mr. Revett married, according to the Gentleman's Magazine, "the celebrated Miss Sibley," but inquiry in your columns has not elicited any information as to her claim to celebrity. Mr. Revett was of the branch of the ancient Suffolk family of Stowmarket and Branderton which settled in Derbyshire. On the death of General Carnac without issue, his property passed to his brother-in-law, Mr. J. Rivett, my grandfather, on the condition of his assuming the name of Carnac in addition to his patronymic; so that the Rivett family, although in no way connected with the Carnacs in blood, bear that additional sur- name. According to Collins the picture was sold by Sir Joshua for T3l. 10s. It was, unfortunately, resold by the late Sir J. Rivett-Carnac, Bart., M.P., to Lord Hertford for 1,795. 10s., and is now the property of

the nation as a part of the Wallace bequest. Last year, at Christie's, a mezzotint by Smith of the picture realized the record price of 1,160 guineas, or some sixteen times as much as was originally paid for the portrait itself.

J. H. RIVETT-CARNAC, Col. (Vols.), Aide-de-Camp to the King.

SHERIFFS OF STAFFORDSHIRE (9 th S. ix. 342). A complete list of the sheriffs of Stafford- shire, from the accession of Henry I. to the year 1798, is given in Stebbing Shaw's 4 History of Staffordshire.'

B. D. MOSELEY.

Burslem.

AN HEUSKARIAN RARITY IN THE BODLEIAN LIBRARY (9 th S. viii. 378 ; ix. 111). In reply to MR. R. L. POOLE, I have only to say that I asked Mr. E. W. B. Nicholson whether he did not think the marginal notes, to which I referred, to be written in Mr. Thomas's hand (with which I was well acquainted during the period when he worked at Bask in the Bodleian), and found him inclined to attribute them to him. If MR. POOLE is sure that they were written by a member of the librarian's staff, had that person any right to do so ? Was it not " an ' illegal ' act," to use MR. POOLE'S words 1 I did not charge Mr. Thomas with it before his much-lamented death, because I never saw the notes in question until last autumn. Having occasion to mention them for their critical value, I thought it right also to point out that they were a breach of the rules of the library.

E. S. DODGSON.

Hotel Peninsular, Madrid.

" ENDORSEMENT " : " DORSO - VENTRAUTY " (9 th S. ix. 64, 212, 331). The warrants issued to incumbents by the Ecclesiastical Commis- sioners require the signature of the payee upon the face, and no indorsement is demanded by the bankers. The same is true of railway companies' dividend warrants.

W. C/. .D.

INTRODUCTION OF TROUSERS (9 th S. ix. 268).

If the following extract from the article

entitled 'Clothing Costume,' by William and Robert Chambers, in their * Information for the People,' vol. i. (1857), is correct, the authorities of Trinity College, Cambridge, were somewhat behind the times when in October, 1812, they objected to the wearing of " pantaloons or trousers " :

" The comparatively simple form of dress of the Sans Culottes found many admirers in England, and soon became common among young men ; the change from antique fashions was also greatly helped by the imposition of a tax on the use of hair-