expos'd to popular Clamour, I thought it a matter of highest importance to me to clear and vindicate myself as to the manner of my Lord Russel's Execution, and the hard usage he is said to have had in the Severing of his Head from his Body.

"As to the several reports that have been rais'd, as it hath been always a common Custom in the World, not only to magnifie and misrepresent the truth, but to forgo things that never were, the falsity of them will appear to judicious Persons as well by the improbability of them as by testimony of those that know the Contrary; As namely that I had been drinking all the foregoing Night and was in Drink when I came upon the Scaffold, when as all my Neighbours can testifie that I went orderlie to Bed that Night and wholly undisguis'd in Drink. That I had 20 Guinnies the Night before. That after the First blow my Lord should say, You Dog did I give you 10 Guinnies to use me so inhumanly? 'Tis true I receav'd 10 Guenies but not till after having dispos'd of his Coat, Hat, and Periwig; I took the boldness to give him a small remembrance of the Civilities customary on the like occasion, as to the report of my striking my Lord into the Shoulder, how false it is I appeal to those that were the nearest Spectatours of the Execution; and for my being committed Prisoner to Newgate, it is so Easie a matter to disprove the truth thereof, that I need not trouble my

self any farther about it.

"But my grand business is to acquit myself and come off as fairly as I can, as to those grievous Obloquies and Invectives that have been thrown upon me for not Severing my Lords Head from his Body at one blow, and indeed had I given my Lord more Blows then one out of design to put him to more then ordinary Pain, as I have been Taxt, I might justly be exclaim'd on as Guilty of grater Inhumanity then can be imputed even to one of my Profession, or had it been occasioned by a Bungling and Supine Negligence, I had been much to blame. But there are circumstances enow to clear me in this particular, and to make it plainly appear that my Lord himself was the real obstruct that he had not a quicker dispatch out of this World; since if I may speak it of a Person of his Quality? He died with more Galantry then Discresion, and did not dispose him for receiving of the fatal Stroke in such a posture as was most suitable, for whereas he should have put his hands before his Breast, or else behind him, he spread them out before him, nor would he be persuaded to give any Signal or pull his Cap over his eyes, which might possibly be the Occasion that discovering the Blow, he somewhat heav'd his Body. Moreover after having receiv'd the Guinnies, and according to my duty ask't his Lordships Pardon, I receav'd some Interruption just as I was taking Aim, and going to give the Blow. Thus have I truely and faithfully expos'd to the Publick all that can be said in this matter, and hope, whatever prejudice the undiscerning Multitude may retain, to have given sufficient satisfaction to all rational judicious Persons."

No. 2627. of the Collection of Proclamations, &c., presented to the Chetham Library, Manchester, by James O. Halliwell, Esq., F.R.S. BIBLIOTHECAR. CHETHAM.

Prince of Orange (2nd S. i. 370.)— "Even that court seems to have had some sense of shame; for the sentence of confiscation and banishment against the Ruart did not state the crime for which it was passed."

The sentence is fully set out in a pamphlet entitled:

In that amusing and really instructive work, John Dunton's Life and Errors, may be found the following paragraph :

"The air of New England was sharper than at London, which, with the temptation of fresh provisions, made me eat like a second Mariot of Gray's Inn."

Upon which Dunton's editor, Mr. J. B. Nichols, has this note:

"Of this celebrated eater no other record, it is probable, now remains." Not so.

In Smith's Obituary, edited for the Camden Society by Sir Henry Ellis, I find the following entry:

"25 Nov. 1653, Old Marriot of Gray's Inn (ye great eater) buried."

Sir Henry Ellis is silent about this Gray's Inn worthy.

Not so Charles Cotton, Walton's associate in The Complete Angler, who, in his Poems on Several Occasions, 1689, has two copies of verses on the Gray's Inn cormorant; one (p. 349.) called "On the Great Eater of Gray's Inn," the other (p. 417.) "On Marriot." From the former we learn that he was spare and thin:

"Approaching famine in thy physnomy." The other has this line:

"Mariot the eater of Gray's Inn is dead." The readers of John Dunton and Charles Cotton will probably make a note of this communication. PETER CUNNINGHAM. Kensington.

THE LASS OF RICHMOND HILL.

In the Memoirs of Mrs. Fitzherbert, by the Hon. Charles Langdale, lately published, there is the following quotation from the above song :

"I'd crowns resign

To call thee mine,

Sweet lass of Richmond Hill!"

And it is stated, upon the authority of the late Lord Stourton, that the song was written to celebrate the charms of the above lady. With all due deference to his lordship's opinion, I consider this to be a mistake, and I beg to enumerate two or three other individual ladies, for whom it has been asserted it was compiled. A Miss Smith, who resided on the Hill near the Terrace, at the period

a

when the song first appeared, had the general reputation of being the person for whom it was designed. The Rev. Thomas Maurice published Richmond Hill, a poem, in which, under the name of Mira, he introduces a Miss Cropp as the Lass of Richmond Hill, who committed suicide for her lover on the 22nd April, 1782; but this has been regarded merely as poetic fiction with regard to the song. Another account we have, in Personal Sketches of his own Times, by Sir Jonah Barrington, vol. ii. pp. 47-52.; in this it is stated Mr. Leonard MacNally wrote the song on Miss Janson, daughter of Mr. Janson, a rich attorney of Bedford Row, Bloomsbury, who had a countryhouse on Richmond Hill. There were great obstacles to his marrying her, but perhaps from making the lady the theme of his poetry, and being also the author of Robin Hood, a comic opera of great merit, he ultimately obtained her hand. But notwithstanding all these authorities, I am inclined to think the song was not intended for any particular person, but written by Mr. Wm. Upton, author of Poems on several Occasions, 8vo., 1788, and A Collection of Songs sung at Vauxhall, and who was the poet of Vauxhall Gardens 1788-1789. I believe it first appeared in the Public Advertiser of Monday, Aug. 3, 1789, where it is stated to be a favourite song sung by Mr. Incledon at Vauxhall, and composed by Mr. Jas. Hook (the father of Theodore). It is said Incledon sang the song in such a fascinating manner, that it led to a superior and permanent engagement at Covent Garden Theatre, as, after the season of 1789, he never again appeared at Vauxhall.

แ

Richmond.

ቀ.

GRENVILLE PAPERS:" GEORGE III.'S LETTER TO LORD TEMPLE, CORRECTION OF.

The sentence, as printed verbatim from the original, is this:

"The seven cabinet councillors named by the Coalition shall kiss hands tomorrow; and then form their arrange. ments; as the former negociation they did not condescend to open to many of their intentions."

The obscurity is in the clause printed in Italics, and the editor, in a foot-note, corrects it thus:

"As (in) the former negociation they did not condescend to open to(o) many of their intentions." It appears to me that this emendation is partly incorrect; I would re-write the sentence thus: scend to open to m(e) any of their intentions." This would reduce the king's mistake to the omission of an in, and the running of me, any, into many; while it is at once more intelligible, and more expressive of that sense of offended dignity at the treatment he experienced at the hands of the Coalition, which pervades every line of the letter.

"As (in) the former negociation, they did not conde

This indignation has, as seems to me, in another sentence led the king into a form of expression which rather oversteps the bounds of correctness; he calls his "besiegers".

"The most unprincipled coalition the annals of this or any other nation can equal."

I may be wrong in my criticism, and should bow to correction, but this sentence seems somewhat to conform (as I humbly submit) to that mode of expressing intensity, in which Sir Boyle Roche, in the Irish parliament on some occasion of national calamity, affirmed that, —

Minor Notes.

racteristic of the firm unaffected character of the man, and of that remarkable power of letterwriting in a pure English unpretending style, which completely refutes the aspersions thrown by adverse or disappointed politicians upon his understanding and education.

In this letter there is, however, one trace of that haste in writing, which the king notoriously had in speaking, and which sometimes made it difficult for those he addressed to follow or understand him. The editor of the Grenville Papers undertakes to correct the obscurity, but has done so, as I think, clumsily, and without effect.

sentenced to death, and suffered in July following. and farewell letter to his wife), being interrogated In his examination (as detailed by him in his last as to certain ballads alleged by his accusers to have been printed at his press, he said they were printed by his servant in his absence. And

doe en woude ick niet gedoogen, dat mense leveren sonde, "Want ick quam t'huys, eer dat sy gelevert waren, ende maarick schichtese in een Noeck, om roosen en stricken op d'andere zijde te drucken, daer men Solders mede bekleet," &c.

"When he came home, and found they were not delivered, he refused to deliver them, and threw them into

a corner, intending to print roses and stripes on the other side, to paper attics with," &c.

Is there any earlier mention of papering rooms than this? JAMES KNOWLES.

Cock-fighting, its Origin. —

"Themistocles, marching against the Persians, beheld two of these determined warriors in the heat of battle, and thereupon pointed out to his Athenian soldiery their indomitable courage. The Athenians were victorious; and Themistocles gave order that an annual cock-fight should be held in commemoration of the encounter they had witnessed. No record, however, of the sport occurs in this country (England) before the year 1191.”. -Freemasons' Q. M., July 1853,

Malta.

W. W.

Epitaph on a Bell-ringer. The following epitaph, from the churchyard of Leeds, Kent, is interesting, as recording, probably, the only instance of the complete changes on eight bells having been rung:

"In memory of James Barham, of this parish, who departed this life Jan. 14, 1818, aged 93 years. Who, from the year 1744 to the year 1804, rung in Kent and elsewhere, 112 peals; not less than 5040 changes in each peal, and called Bobs, &c., for most of the peals. And April the 7th and 8th, 1761, assisted in ringing 40,320 Bob major in 27 hours."

C. W. M.

The New Era: a Prophecy. Adam Czartoryski, once the minister and favourite of Alexander I. of Russia, but later one of the leaders of the Polish Revolution of 1831 (now eighty four years of age!), uttered the following enigmatic words at the last meeting of the Polish Historical Society of Paris, April, 1856:

"It seems to me, at times, as if a curtain had fallen on

that concluded scene (!), of which we were witnesses and partly actors, and that now a new spectacle (Widowisko) will begin, the prologue of which even, has not yet been played off. Thus, resigned but active, let us await the rising of the curtain."

Strangely, the same fine thought was uttered by Walter Scott in his concluding remarks on the French Revolution (Life of Napoleon): "But the hand of fate was on the curtain, about to bring the scene to light." J. LOTSKY, Panslave.

15. Gower Street, London.

Old Notice of "Seven Dials," London. "East of that is a deal of pleasant planting (the author is describing the policies of Sir John Maxwell of Nether Pollock in Renfrewshire), at your first entering there is a cross avenue; one of the avenues of the cross leads east to another cross, from whence six avenues branches off almost like the Seven Dials, London, where seven streets branches off, viz. 1. Great Earl, 2. Little Earl Streets; 3. Great St. Andrew's, 4. Little St. Andrew's Streets; 5. Great White Lion, 6. Little White Lion Streets; 7. and last, Queen Street. The long cross stone which stood in the middle centre was seven (feet) square at the top, and a dial on each square; which stone I saw standing in the

year 1770, but was down in the year 1777." A History of the Shire of Renfrew, part ii. p. 190., by George Crawfurd and William Semple, Paisley, 1782. G. N.

Flambeaux.-The extinguishers for the links carried by the attendants on the chairs of the wealthy diners-out still remain in Grosvenor Square. Probably they were last used for the Dowager-Marchioness of Salisbury, who was buried at Hatfield in 1835. She

"Always went to court in a sedan chair, and at night her carriage was known by the flambeaux of the footmen."- Raikes's Diary, ii. 276.

MACKENZIE WAlcott, M.A.

Queries.

SHAKSPEARE AND BARNFIELD.

Being at present busily engaged in the preparation and printing of my new edition of Shakspeare's Plays and Poems, with a revisal of the text and notes of my former impression of 1843 and 1844, I am very desirous of obtaining all the Barnfield, who has had the honour, as it now apinformation I can procure regarding Richard pears, not of having poems by him imputed to Shakspeare, but of having poems by Shakspeare imputed to him. The general belief, for about the last century, has been, that certain productions in verse, really by Barnfield, and published by him in 1598, had been falsely attributed to our great dramatist; but not long since I wrote a letter to The Athenæum, the effect of which, I apprehend, would be to deprive Barnfield of the pieces in question (inserted in The Passionate Pilgrim, 1599), and to restore them to their actual author, Shakspeare.

The matter now seems to lie in a nutshell: They were printed as Barnfield's in 1598; they were printed as Shakspeare's in 1599; and when Barnfield reprinted his productions in 1605, he excluded those which had been printed in 1599 as evitable, that they were by Shakspeare and not The inference seems to me inShakspeare's. by Barnfield. I formerly thought that Barnfield had, in a manner, reclaimed his property in 1605; but the very reverse is the fact and those poems in The Passionate Pilgrim, which are there assigned to Shakspeare, but which were formerly supposed to be Barnfield's, may now, without much hesitation, be taken from Barnfield and given to Shakspeare. Hence we may perhaps conclude that W. Jaggard, the publisher of The Passionate Pilgrim, was not quite as much of a rogue as was formerly imagined.

It then becomes a question how Shakspeare's poems, in The Passionate Pilgrim of 1599, came to be published as Barnfield's in 1598. Barn