Mar. 20. 1852.] 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



279 



inclines people to say that they would wish to borrow 

 three days from the month of April, in exchange for 

 those three last days of the month of March. This 

 lady was seventeen days in her journeys upon the road, 

 and lived ten days after her arrival in London. She 

 died on the Monday se'nnight in the morning after she 

 came to London. On the Thursday before her death 

 she called her son, Captain Gumming, to her bed-side, 

 and gave him her blessing in the terms of the prophet 

 Isaiah, to which she referred him, and gave him her 

 own new Bible to read over on the occasion, and to 

 keep for her sake. But this Bible was lost, with other 

 bajrgage, taken by the French towards the end of the 

 campaign, 1709. Colonel Swinton, this lady's eldest 

 brother, was shot at the battle of Malplaquet, and died 

 upon the field of battle." 



The lady travelled attended by her daughter 

 Helen Gumming, and her servant Margaret Rae. 



But I see we have been wrong in writing the 

 name Gumming with two m's. He writes it invari- 

 ably Cuming. This would appear of little moment, 

 but the change a little diminishes the probability 

 of the writer's favourite notion, that the Hebrew 

 word Cumi is in some way obumbrated in his 

 patronymic Cuming. 



The passage of the prophet Isaiah which formed 

 the substance of his mother's last benediction is 

 chap. xli. verses 8 and 9, and chap, xliii. verses 2 

 and 3 : " Thou Israel art my servant, Jacob whom 

 I have chosen, the seed of Abraham, my friend," 

 &c. He inclines to think that " the writer of the 

 book called Isaiah was a friend to the British 

 nation, and that the islands of Great Britain and 

 Ireland are those addressed to, in order to renew 

 their strength." 



It was on April 23, 1730, O.S., that " by the 

 unanimous consent of the people he was made law- 

 giver, commander, leader, and chief of the Ghero- 

 kee nation, and witness of the power of God, at a 

 general meeting at Nequisee, in the Gherokee 

 Mountains." He brought with him to England six 

 Cherokee chiefs, and on June 18, in that year, he 

 was allowed to present them to the King in the 

 Royal Ghapel at Windsor. This was at the time 

 of the installation of the Duke of Gumberland and 

 the Eai'Is of Ghesterfield and Burlington. On 

 June 22nd was the ceremony of laying his crown at 

 the feet of the King, when the Indian chiefs laid 

 also their four scalps and five eagles' tails. 



In a few years the scene was changed, and in 

 1737 we find him confined within the limits of the 

 Fleet Prison ; but having a rule of court, on the 

 8 th of iN'ovember he was at Knightsbridge, where 

 about ten in the morning he opened the Bible for 

 an answer to liis prayers, and chanced upon the 

 fifty-first and fifty-second chapters of Isaiah. He 

 feels a call to a mission to the Jews, and contem- 

 plates visiting Poland. With that disposition of a 

 mind disordered as his was, to turn everything 

 towards a particular object, he thinks there was 

 some mysterious connexion between the fact that 



Queen Garoline was seized with the illness which 

 proved fatal, in her library, at ten o'clock on the 

 morning of the 9th of November, the day after his 

 call. 



In 1750 he was still in the Fleet Prison, from 

 whence, on May 15, he addressed a letter to Lord 

 Halifax, asserting his right to the Gherokee Moun- 

 tains, and proposing a scheme for the discharge of 

 eighty millions of the National Debt ; the scheme 

 being, that 300,000 families of Jews should be 

 settled in that country for the improvement of the 

 lands, as industrious honest subjects.^ This letter 

 notices also two facts in the Guming history: 



1. That Sir Alexander's father had been the means 

 of saving the life of King George the Second ; and 



2. That"he, Sir Alexander, had been taken into 

 the secret Service of the crown, at Ghristmas, 

 1718, at a salary of 300Z. a-year, which was dis- 

 continued at Ghristmas, 1721. J. H. 



Torrington Square. 



GENERAL WOLFE. 



(Vols. iv. and v., jwssim.^ 



As everything connected with General Wolfe 

 is entitled to notice, the following names and pub- 

 lic positions of his direct or collateral ancestors 

 may not be uninteresting to your readers. I lately 

 furnished you, from Ferrar's History of Limerick, 

 a statement of the circumstances under which his 

 great-grandfather. Captain George Woulfe, sought 

 refuge in Yorkshire (I believe) from the proscrip- 

 tion of Ireton, after the capitulation, in 1651, of 

 Limerick, when his brother Francis, the superior 

 of the Franciscan friars, not having been equally 

 fortunate in escaping, was executed, with several 

 others, excepted from the general pardon. 



The family, of English origin, like the Roch^, 

 the Arthurs, Stackpoles, Sextons, Greaghes, Whites, 

 &c., settled in Limerick between the thirteenth 

 and fifteenth centuries, and gradually obtained 

 high civil positions, when their successful commer- 

 cial pursuits enabled them to acquire landed pro- 

 perty in the adjoining county of Clare, where 

 nearly all the above-named English families equally 

 became extensive proprietors. In 

 1470. Garret Woulfe was one of the city bailifis, 

 as those subsequently called sherifis were 

 then named. 

 1476. Thomas Woulfe filled the same office, as 



did in 

 1520. His son and namesake. 

 1562. Nicholas Woulfe was bailiff. 

 1567. John Woulfe ditto. 



1578. The same became mayor. 

 1585. "I Patrick Woulfe was bailiff these two years, 

 1587. J but not in the intervening 1586. 



