2«>d S. X. Nov. 24. '60.] 



NOTES AND QUEBIES. 



401 



LONDON, SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 24. 18G0. 



N». 256.— CONTENTS. 



NOTES:— The Beargar's Petition, 401 — Shakspeariana : — 

 Shakspeare Family — Old Ziucke, 402 — Blank Verse, 403 



— Peculiar Names on Monuments, &c. in Jamaica and Bar- 

 badoes, 404. 



Minor Notes : — Southey — "Witty Renderings — The 

 Brougham Peerage — Names of the Wren — Blondin out- 

 done. Two Hundred Years Ago — Chalking the Psalms on 

 a Slate— Officers who served at Trafalgar, 405. 



QUERIES: — Mr. David Culy, 407 — Silver Plate— The 

 Monteth, lb.— The Emperor Charles V., 108 — Mary, Queen 

 of Scots, and Douglas of Lochleven — Flints in the Drift — 

 Armorial Book Stamps — Savoy and Gotha— Chinese Col- 

 lection — Archbishop Juxon — Order for the Burial of the 

 Dead — The Bridge at Montreal — " Dear is that valley," 

 &c. — Napoli — Merchant Adventurers — Manuscript of 

 Archbishop Ussher — " A Shoful " — " Juhan the Apos- 

 •tate" — Knights of Malta, &c., 409. 



QuEEiES vriTH Answers :— Dr. Antipudingaria — Quo- 

 tation — Masquerades — " Genuine Rejected Addresses "— 

 Attour, 412. 



REPLIES : — James I. and the Recusants, 413 — Turnstiles 

 in Holborn, 415 — Charles Dibdin, 76. — Veron's Testa- 

 ment of 1646, 1647 — The Felbrigg Brass — Changes of the 

 Moon — Bastard — Providential Escapes— Herbert Knowles 



— Battle of the Boyne — Early Italian Versions of the 

 Bible — Plaid and Tartan — Remarkable Chinese Pro- 

 phecy: the Poonangs, a Nation with Tails — Estates of 

 Waltham Abbey — Derivation of Artillery — Law and 

 Poison — Charles Martel — Dedications to the Deity — 

 " Stark-naked Lady " — Prideaux and Blake of Barbadoes 



— Gainsborough's Chef-d'CEuvre — Anecdote of Oliver 

 Cromwell — Bartholemew Thomas Duhigg, &c., 416. 



THE BEGGAR'S PETITION. 

 I send you a copy of a document in my posses- 

 sion, not, I think, without interest. It is a peti- 

 tion from the beggars and other poor persons at 

 Winchester, in 1688, to the Queen, against the 

 corporation, and asking for relief. We know how 

 active Charles II. and his brother James II. were 

 against .corporations ; and we know how they con- 

 trived to be stimulated by others when they 

 wished to have anything done. There was, at 

 that time, a strong King's party in Hampshire. 

 Winchester was a stronghold even of the Cathofic 

 party, and King James used to call Bishops- Wal- 

 tham " the green little town," because on his pass- 

 ing through it, it was so dressed with green boughs 

 that scarcely a house was to be seen. Long after 

 Waltham became celebrated for its " Blacks," de- 

 nounced by Act of Parliament. These " Blacks " 

 for a time gave uneasiness to the government : 

 there were, it was believed, more than a thousand 

 of these "lawless resolutes," with shadowy and 

 mysterious leaders. There is no doubt, indeed, 

 that the attack on the Bishop of Winchester's 

 deer-park was led by some persons of rank and 

 property in disguise ; and the Jacobites believed, 

 and so reported to the Pretender, that the Wal- 

 tham Blacks were useful by keeping the country 

 in a state of excitement, and might be relied on 



as friends in case' of an invasion or rebellion. In 

 farther proof of the Jacobite tendencies of the 

 Hampshire gentlemen. Sir William Goring, in 

 1722, informed the Chevalier that before the 

 Layer conspiracy was detected, he had settled 

 with five gentlemen of that county, each of them 

 to raise a regiment of dragoons, all mounted, and 

 well armed at their own expence. Goring may 

 have been, and I think was, over sanguine ; but 

 still his opinion is good evidence of the strength 

 of the party in that county at that time. Stokes 

 Bay had indeed superseded the old Sussex routes, 

 and become the regular channel for the transmis- 

 sion of the Jacobite correspondence, and the pas- 

 sage of the Jacobites. Goring himself escaped that 

 way, and Lord North, it appeared, had embarked 

 there, when he was seized at Yarmouth. 



As to the petition itself, I cannot but suspect 

 from the tone of it, that it was got up to serve a 

 purpose. Luttrell records that in April, 1688, 

 " the mayor and aldermen of Winchester, for re- 

 fusing to comply with the King, are turned out, 

 and commissioners appointed to manage matters 

 there." Was the Petition anticipatory and sug- 

 gestive ? It was, as I learn by official and con- 

 temporary endorsement, the "Petition to the 

 Queen from several beggars at Winchester sent 

 up to her Majesty from thence the 29 March 88." 

 Quick work this ! for, on their own showing, they 

 had been relieved up to the 23 March ; and here 

 is their petition received and enrolled within a 

 week. It appears from the petition, if the alle- 

 gations be true, that the corporation had mispent, 

 embezzled, and appropriated to their own use the 

 charitable estates ; a full moral justification for the 

 immediate " turning out of the mayor and alder- 

 men," which followed in the next month. With 

 these questions and suggestions I leave the petition 

 to tell its own story : — 



" To the Queen's Most Excellent Majesty. 



"The humble petition of several poor people at Win- 

 chester in behalf of themselves and other beggars that 

 for many years till the 23rd March, 1687-8, have been re- 

 lieved out of the estate of the Corporation of Winchester 

 till it was dissolved by the late inrolment of a surrender 

 made unto his late Majesty of glorious memory, his heirs 

 and successors. 



" Sheweth that your petitioners being informed that a 

 subpcena is issued against Mr. Thomas Wavell, the late 

 mayor, and that other subpoenas are also issued out, or to 

 be issued out, against several other persons that did bear 

 offices in the former Corporation of Winton, and who 

 have acted as officers of such a corporation now since 

 the dissolution of it, and that it is believed that their 

 misdemeanours therein as well as by wronging the poor 

 of this city, and such others as ought from time to time 

 to have had share of such part of the city estate as they 

 the said magistrates and their predecessors have mis- 

 spent, embezzled, or kept to themselves contrary to the 

 uses to which such estate was given, though according 

 to the ancient drunken custom of several parishes and 

 corporations, will occasion their being fined, and to pay 

 several sums of money unto his Majesty for their respec- 



