172 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



t2'id s, X. Sept. 1. '60. 



had no offspring. Mary, his sixth daughter, was 

 first married to Col. Robert Hammond, and hy 

 him she had three daughters, Elizabeth, Mary, and 

 Letlicey who, in 1673, sold the manor of Willen in 

 Bucks to the celebrated Dr. Busby : Col. H. had 

 purchased this manor a few years before, being 

 then of Chertsey, where his uncle, the physician to 

 Charles I., had property. After the colonel's death 

 his widow, Mary Hampden, married Sir John Ho- 

 bart, and from that marriage descends the present 

 inheritor of tlie Hampden and Trevor estates, "and 

 the lineal representative of John Hampden," the 

 present Earl of Buckinghamshire. (Lipscombe's 

 BucTis.) So far Lipscombe ; and if so, then neither 

 of Col. Hammond's daughters can have carried into 

 the family of our querist the blood of Hammond and 

 Hampden ; bearing with it that of Knollys, Carey, 

 and Boleyne, through the marriage of Sir Francis 

 Knollys with Catherine Carey, daughter of William 

 Carey by his wife Lady Mary Boleyne, sister of 

 Queen Anne Boleyne. But if we say that Lipscombe 

 is most likely correct when he names the ladies who 

 sold the manor of Willen, as Elizabeth, Mary, and 

 Lettice, then perhaps we may ascertain that " Simon 

 Ford " in his dedication may be partly right and 

 wrong. He says " the Lady Cecilia Knollys," who 

 may be either the widow of Sir Thomas Knollys, a 

 commander in the Low Countries ; or perhaps she 

 may have been the widow of Sir Henry Knollys, 

 Bart., who died in 1648. The " Lady Lettice Ya- 

 chell" I take to be not the wife, but the mother- 

 in-law of John Hampden, who, according to 

 Coates (p. 210.), died a widow, and was buried as 

 Lady Vachell in St. Mary's church. Beading, on 

 the 29thiMarch, 1666 ; the "Lady Anne Pye " is 

 the wife of Sir Robert Pye, and the daughter of 

 John Hampden : " Mrs. Lettice Hampden " is the 

 widow of our great patriot, and in my opinion the 

 daughter of Sir John Vachell and Letitia Knollys, 

 the widow above mentioned. Now comes our diffi- 

 culty : " Mrs. Elizabeth, Margaret, and Mary Ham- 

 mond, Mrs. Trevor," and' all the rest of the noble 

 families who were in mourning ibr Col. Ham- 

 mond. The only method of solving the matter in 

 my opinion is to say that* Mary, the sixth and 

 youngest daughter of John Hampden, was by his 

 second wife. Miss Letitia Vachell, and not by his 

 first, Miss Simeon ; and I come to this conclusion 

 because being descended from the Hammonds in 

 the female line, I have most carefully searched 

 for the name of Lettice among the Simeon ladies 

 without effect, whereas it is peculiarly a Knollys 

 name, and a favourite one too : being first intro- 

 duced into the family by the marriage of Robert 

 Knollys, temp. Henry VHI., with Lettice, daugliter 

 of Sir Thomas Penyston. A descendant of this lady, 

 Lettice Knollys, was married to William, Lord 

 Paget ; another Lettice to Walter Devereux, Earl 

 of Essex ; and the one in question, Lettice Knollys, 

 was married to Sir John Vachell. After the re- 



storation the family of Hammond altered the 

 spelling of their name; and I believe that the 

 Parker Hamond family of Haling House, Surrey, 

 are the nearest male representatives of Dr. Robert 

 Hammond, so well known for his attention to the 

 unfortunate Charles L, as well as of the Colonel 

 Haramond'above-mentioned. I have an old book 

 by me which has the name of" Wm. Hamon," Bart. 

 aijout 1684, and I traced him to have been buried 

 in St. Mary's, Reading, in 1692 as Wm. Hamond. 



I have appended my address in case your querist 

 may wish for farther information from Senex. 



87. Harrow Road, W. 



THE MEDICINAL VIRTUES OF SPIDERS' WEB. 



(2°'^ S. X. 6. 138.) 



The employment of the Tela araucarum, or 

 spider's web, as an internal medicine in ague and 

 other malarious diseases, has considerable profes- 

 sional testimony in its support. Dr. Chapman, 

 foi'merly one of the medical professors in the 

 university of Philadelphia, an excellent practical 

 physician, deservedly esteemed by the profession 

 in America, in his Elements of Materia Medica 

 and Therapeutics, 4th edition, 2 vols. 8vo,, Phila- 

 delphia, 1825, writes of the spider's web as fol- 

 lows : — 



"It is an old and a very general notion among the 

 vulgar of most countries that the spider's web, or the 

 spider itself, is possessed of the power of curing ague and 

 fever, and is actually emplo3'ed with this view. But 

 with one or two exceptions they were rejected in regular 

 practice, and their curative effect, if admitted at all, was 

 imputed entirely to the strong sensations excited by so 

 disgusting a remedy. At his last visit to this city, some 

 3-ears ago, I Avas informed by Dr. Robert Jackson, of the 

 British armj-, that, having largely experimented with the 

 web, he had much reason to suppose that popular confi- 

 dence in it was v.'ell founded. In intermittents, he said, 

 its powers were indisputably ascertained, and that as an 

 anod3-ne to allay pain or calm irritation it proved vastly 

 superior even to opiates. The web, however, had long 

 been accredited as a reraedj' in these cases. It is noticed 

 in James's and other old dispensatories, and was pre- 

 viousl}' used hy Lind and Gillespie. By one of mj' pupils 

 (Dr. Broughton of South Carolina, who made it the sub- 

 ject of his Inaugural Thesis) in whom I could place re- 

 liance, the subject was, at my request, not long afterwards 

 investigated, and by trial on himself as well as on others, 

 he substantially confirmed the preceding statement. In 

 a late work by Dr. Jackson on fevers, I find a detailed 

 account of his experience with the article 



" The web has been prescribed hy myself and several 

 of ray medical friends, particularly by Dr. Physick and 

 Dr. Dewees, and though different degrees of value are 

 attached to the article, we are well satisfied that the re- 

 presentation of its virtues, to which I have referred, is 

 very little, if at all, exaggerated. In doses of five grains, 

 repeated every fourth or fifth hour, I have cured some ob- 

 stinate intermittents, suspended the paroxysms of hectic, 

 overcome nftorbid vigilance from excessive nervous mo- 

 bility, and quieted irritation of the sj'stem from various 

 causes, and not less as connected with protracted coughs 

 and other chronic pectoral affections. Among those who 



