LONDON, SATURDAY, MARCH 2, 1878.

CONTENTS.- N° 218.

NOTES:-A Lady Contemporary of Queen Katharine of
Valois, 161-Early Allusions to Shakspeare, 162-Chaucer
The Son of Theodore, King of Corsica, 163-A Welsh Parson
of the Seventeenth Century-"Lozenge," 164-Curiosities of
Cricket-Dante's "Purgatorio," 165-A Medieval Bell-
George III. at Weymouth-The "Cirrus"-Prayer and Creed
-The Order of the Garter an Epicene Order, 166.
QUERIES:-J. Carver-A Washington Letter-"Marquis"

v. "Marquess"-Dove Family-The Reporters' Gallery in the House of Commons-The Royal Crown over a Civilian Crest-University of London-Warton and Johnson-Queen Anne and George II., 167-Norfolk a Big Goose-greenFriesic Legends-A Painting by Guercino da Cento"Charlotte "-Urchenfeld-The Lincoln Missal-Brampton Park, Hunts-William, third Baron of Wormleighton-An Engraving A Banbury Story-The Lord of Burleigh-Invitation Cards, 168-"The Lass of Richmond Hill "-Tom Tompier-Sir Francis Burdett-Authors Wanted, &c., 169. REPLIES:-Personal Proverbs, 169-John Cooke, the Regi

cide-St. Ismael, 172-Common Aryan Words for Agricultural Institutions, 173-" Callis"-The Irish House of Commons-The "Cow and Snuffers"-Pascal, 174-The Anglo-Saxon O-Sutton Mutton-Quakers and Titles, 175Milton Queries-Pope and "The Rehearsal "-" The Palace of Truth"-"The Whole Duty of Man," 176-The Isle of Man-F. Bartolozzi, R. A.-"Cat-Gallas," &c.-"Nine Men's Morrice," 177-Pelham Family: Manor of Pelham, Sussex "Dataler"-The Windsor Sentinel and St. Paul's-The Dia

mond Necklace of Marie Antoinette-St. Paul's SchoolLondon Fogs-"In Ranconten "-Authors Wanted, 178. Notes on Books, &c.

Notes.

A LADY CONTEMPORARY OF QUEEN
KATHARINE OF VALOIS.

The re-interment of the remains of Queen Katharine of Valois recalls to my mind an interesting hour which I spent with a second cousin of her husband's, a lady exactly contemporary with the queen herself, on March 5, 1875, an account of which may not be uninteresting to your readers. While the restoration of the choir of Tewkesbury was being carried on, it was considered by the committee that the opportunity ought to be used for the purpose of gaining further information, if there was any to be gained, respecting the great | families of De Clare and De Spencer, who represented the founder, and whose bodies had been buried there for many generations. Several discoveries were made, and not the least important among them was that of the body of Isabel, greatgranddaughter of Edward III., and second wife of the great Earl of Warwick and Albemarle, who succeeded the Duke of Bedford as Regent of France, and who is commemorated by the wellknown brazen effigy in the Beauchamp Chapel at Warwick.

This lady was the daughter and only child of Thomas Despencer, thirteenth Earl of Gloucester, who was put to death at Bristol six months before her birth, which took place on July 26, 1400, and of Constance, the daughter of Edmund of Langley, fourth son of Edward III. At eleven

years of age she was married to Richard Beauchamp, Earl of Abergavenny and Worcester, and four years afterwards bore him a daughter at Hanley Castle, the Lady Elizabeth Beauchamp, from whom the families of Abergavenny and Despencer are descended. The Earl of Abergavenny was killed at the siege of Meaux, on March 18, 1421, and was buried between the pier of the tower and the first pillar of the arcade on the north side of Tewkesbury choir, a beautiful chantry, which is the original model of the still more beautiful Beauchamp chantry at Warwick, being erected by his widow over his grave.

Two years and a half afterwards, on Nov. 26, 1423, the Lady Isabel was married to her late husband's cousin, who was also named Richard Beauchamp, and was the fifth Earl of Warwick. The British Museum possesses a very beautiful pictorial life of this earl, drawn in sepia by Rous, one of his chaplains, the forty-six quarto-sized drawings illustrating his career from his birth to his burial. His attendance at the marriage of Henry V. gives occasion to a fine drawing of that ceremony, in which it is not too much to suppose we find a contemporary portrait of Katharine of Valois as she appeared on the most interesting day of her life. Lord Warwick died at Rouen Castle on April 30, 1439, and his body was brought home to England by his widow and their son Henry, afterwards Duke of Warwick and King of the Isles of Wight, Guernsey, and Jersey. The sorrowing lady could travel no further than London, and went to be nursed by the loving hands of the sisters minoresses of St. Clare, whose house stood in the Minories, near the Tower. Here Henry VI. went to visit her, and after acceding to some parting request which she made respecting her son and Tewkesbury Abbey, the good king took his leave of her with the words, "May God, whom you worship with an upright heart, grant thee thy heart's desire and fulfil all thy mind."

The Countess of Warwick died on St. John the Evangelist's day, December 27, 1439, and there is a pen-and-ink drawing of her as she lay upon her deathbed, and in the act of delivering her will to the Abbot of Tewkesbury, in a MS. volume in the possession of Sir Charles Isham. On January 13, 1440, she was buried with much state in the choir of Tewkesbury Abbey, an inscription around the top of the Abergavenny chantry stating that her grave was "I. choro i. dextra patris sui," her father's grave being elsewhere recorded as being "under the lamp which burned before the Blessed Sacrament." The will handed to the abbot gave minute directions respecting her monument, which is said to have been a very handsome marble tomb, exquisitely carved." Her orders were "that her statue should be made all nakyd with her hair cast backward, according to the design and modell that one Thomas Parchalion had for

that purpose, and Mary Magdalen laying her hands acrosse, with S. John the Evangelist on the right side, and on the left S. Anthony; and at her feet a Scocheon impaling her arms with those of her late husband,* supported by two Gryphons; but on the side thereof the statues of poor men and women in their poor array, with their beads in their hands" (Dugdale's Warwick., p. 330, ed. 1656, from a copy "ex dono Authoris ").

The monument has entirely disappeared; but, guided by the inscription on the chantry, I searched for the grave on the south side of the choir, a little to the right of the spot under the key-stone of the groining of the easternmost bay. We soon came upon a large stone, the top surface of which had remains of ancient mortar upon it, and which, being on the old level of the floor, was no doubt the base of the monument. On the under side of this stone was inscribed a long cross in shallow lines, together with, here and there, intersecting circles, that looked like sketches of designs for tracery, such as I once found, in a more finished stage, on the under side of stall desks at Over, in Cambridgeshire. Across the upper limb of the cross there was deeply cut, in black-letter of fifteenth century date, the inscription, "Mercy Lord Jhu." Beneath this slab there was a grave of very fine masonry, 7 ft. 0 in. long, 2 ft. 5 in. wide, and 3 ft. deep. At the bottom lay the body of Lady Warwick, wrapped in a close shroud of linen, which had become of a rich brown colour, tinged either by age or by the spices used in embalmment. The left arm and hand protruded through the shroud, and indicated that nothing but bones remained within, at least in that part of the body. The rest of the body was perfectly enclosed in its envelope, but a small opening occurred above the forehead, and through this was seen a mass of auburn hair in its natural condition, but perhaps coloured, like the shroud, by the embalming spices. Around the body lay the fragments of a wooden coffin, which had been covered, on the outside as well as the inside, with a damasked purple silk, of Oriental fabric, such as that which was often used for lining the leather flaps covering episcopal seals. The body measured 5 ft. 8 in., but as the feet lay straight this was more than the natural height of the living person. When these facts had been observed, a tile was placed in the grave with the inscription, "This grave was opened during the restoration of 1875, and, after having been inspected, was reverently closed and restored to its original condition," the inscription being signed by the chairman of the restoration committee and myself. The covering slab was then replaced, and now lies (as do the *Dugdale gives an engraving of the countess kneeling at a prayer-desk, and clad in a mantle with her own and her husband's arms upon it, from the east window of the Lady Chapel, Warwick.

other graves which were discovered) under a thick stratum of concrete, on which the new floor will be laid.

The Earl of Warwick was a friend and companion of both Henry V. and Henry VI., and the latter heaped titles and honours of every kind upon the young Duke of Warwick his son, who died, at the early age of twenty-one, at Hanley Castle, and was buried at Tewkesbury. It is not too much to conjecture that Lady Warwick was also a friend of Queen Katharine, and it is a curious coincidence that, both being born in the same year and dying in the same year, their respective relics should have come to light almost at the same time. J. H. BLUNT.

Beverston Rectory.

"Puer infelix indelibata reliquit

Gaudia, et abrupto flendus amore cadit
Seu ferus e tenebris iterat Styga criminis ultor
Conscia funereo pectora torre movens."

The only guess at these allusions (known to me) is that of Warton in his edition of Milton's Poems (Lond., 1785). He says: "By the youth in the first couplet he perhaps intends Shakespeare's Romeo. In the second either Hamlet or Richard III." This opinion, so far as Romeo and Hamlet are concerned, is also tacitly adopted by Prof. Masson in his Life of Milton, but as characterizations of Shakespeare's dramas it is difficult to see any special appositeness in these pictures. It is at least doubtful how far "indelibata" could be used with propriety in connexion with Juliet, and the turn of the second couplet reminds one of the Spanish Tragedy rather than Hamlet. But do the lines necessarily refer to plays actually performed in London? In the previous lines, dealing with comedy, the allusions are to the plays of Terence, to Ruggle's Ignoramus, and perhaps to Howes's Fraus Honesti, none of which the writer is likely to have seen upon Bankside. It would seem, therefore, that illustrations taken from the ancients, or, at any rate, from modern academical dramas, would accord better with the scholarly idealism which pervades this graceful little poem.

Peter Anthony Motteux, the projector and editor of the Gentleman's Journal, was probably the first Frenchman who was able to appreciate our great poet. His journal has several passages which illustrate the state of popular opinion about Shakespeare. In December, 1692, there is a notice of the Rymer controversy:

"Mr. Rhymer's Book, which the Ingenious expected with so much Impatience, is publish'd, and is call'd