146 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



£No. 120. 



but I may here observe, that either must be 

 wrong iu an important matter of fact. Walpole, 

 in a note to his " Fugitive Pieces" (Lord Orford's 

 Works, \o[. i. p. 210-17.)i writes tlius : '■'■Having 

 hy permission of the Lord Chamberlain obtained a 

 copy of the picture at Windsor Castle, called The 

 Countess of Desmond, I discovered that it is not 

 her portrait ; on the back is written in an old hand, 

 ' The Mother of Rembrandt." " He then proceeds 

 to prove the identity of this picture with one given 

 to King Cliarles I. by Sir Robert Car, " My Lord 

 Ankromi" (after Duke of Roxburg), and set down 

 in the Windsor Catalogue as " Portrait of an old 

 woman, with a great scarf on her head, by Rem- 

 brandt." Pennant's note differs from this in an 

 essential particular ; he mentions this picture at 

 Windsor Castle thus : " l^his was a present from 

 Sir Robert Car, Earl of Roxburg, as is signified 

 on the hack ; above it is written with a pen, ' Rem- 

 brandt' (not a word of his mother), which ■must be 

 a mistake, for Rembrandt was not fourteen years 

 of age in 1614, at a time when it is certain (?) that 

 the Countess was not living, and . ... it does ■not 

 appear that he ever visited England." 



The discrepancy of these two accounts is ob- 

 vious — if it " be written in an old hand, ' The 

 Mother of Rembrandt," " on the back of the picture, 

 it seems strange that Pennant should omit the 

 first three words ; if they be not so written, it 

 seems equally strange that Walpole should ven- 

 ture to add them. I presume the picture at Wind- 

 sor is still extant ; and probably some reader of 

 " N. & Q." having access to it, will be so good as 

 to settle the question of accuracy and veracity 

 between two gentlemen, of whom one must be 

 guilty of suppressio veri, or the other of suggestio 

 falsi. 



Horace Walpole, or his editor, must have cor- 

 rected his " Fugitive Pieces" since the " Straw- 

 berry Hill edition," to which J. H. M. refers, was 

 printed ; for in the edition I have consulted, instead 

 of saying " I can make no sense of the word noie" 

 the meaning is correctly given in a foot-note to 

 the inscription ; and the passage given by J. H, M. 

 is altogether omitted from the text. 



I must now proceed in my bold attempt to show 

 that Horace Walpole knew nothing of a matter, 

 into which he made a " minute inquiry. " This may 

 seem presumptuous in a tyro towards one of the 

 old masters of antiquarian lore and research ; but 

 I plead in apology the great advance of the 

 science since Horace Walpole's days, and the 

 greater plenty of materials for forming or correct- 

 ing a judgment. It has been well said, that a single 

 chapter of Mr. Charles Knight's Old England 

 would full furnish and set up an antiquarian of 

 the last century ; and this is true, such and so 

 many are the advantages for obtaining informa- 

 tion, which we modern antiquaries possess over 

 those who are gone before us ; and lastly, to quote 



old Fuller's quaintness, I would say that " a dwarf 

 on a giant's shoulders can S6e farther than he who 

 carries him :" thus do I explain and excuse my 

 attempt to impugn the conclusion of Horace 

 Walpole. 



Walpole's first conjectures applied to a Countess 

 of Desmond, whose tomb is at Sligo in Ireland, 

 and who was widow to that Gerald, the sixteenth 

 earl, ingens rehellibu^ exemplar, who was outlawed, 

 and killed in the wood of Glanagynty, in the 

 county of Kerry, a.d. 1583. Walpole applied to 

 an Irish correspondent for copies of the inscrip- 

 tions on her tomb ; but we need not follow or dis- 

 cuss the supposition of her identity with " the old 

 Countess" further, for he himself abandons it, and 

 writes to his Irish correspondent thus : — " The 

 inscriptions you have sent me have not cleared 

 ojway the difficulties relating to the Countess of 

 Desmond; on the contrary, they make me doubt 

 whether the lady interred at Sligo loas the person 

 reported to have lived to such an immense age." 



Well might he doubt it, for in no one particular 

 could they be identified : e. g. the lady buried at 

 Sligo made her will in 1636, and survived to 1656, 

 — a date long beyond the latest assigned for the 

 demise of " the old Countess." Sir Walter Ra- 

 leigh expressly says, " the old Countess had held 

 her jointure from all the Earls of Desmond 

 since the time of Edward IV.," a description which 

 could not apply to the widow of a person who did 

 not die until 1583, in the reign of Elizabeth. 

 There are many other impossibilities In the case, 

 discussed by Walpole, into which it is unnecessary 

 to follow him. 



Walpole then reverts to the issue of Thomas, 

 the sixth Earl of Desmond, who was compelled to 

 surrender his earldom, a.d. 1418, for making an 

 "inferior marriage;" and conjectures that "the 

 old Count«ss" might have been the wife of a 

 grandson of his born 1452, or thereabouts, who 

 would be, as Walpole states, "a titular earl :" but 

 this absurd supposition is met by the fact of our 

 "old Countess" enjoying a jointure from all the 

 earls de facto in another line ; a provision which 

 the widow of an adverse claimant to the earldoiu 

 could hardly have made good. 



Walpole's last conjecture, following the sug- 

 gestion of Smith's History of Cork, fixes on the 

 widow of Thomas (the twelfth earl, according to 

 the careful pedigree of Sir William Betham, 

 though Smith erroneously calls him the thirteenth 

 earl), and asserts the identity of the " old Coun- 

 tess" with a second wife, called " Catherine Fitz- 

 gerald of Dromana" (the Dacres branch of the 

 Geraldines) : for this assertion Smith, in a foot- 

 note, quotes "the Russel MSS.," and Walpole 

 calls this "the most positive evidence we have." 

 Of the MSS. referred to, I can find no further 

 trace, and this "positive evidence" is weakened 

 by the silence of Lodge's Peerage as to any 



