188 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



[2»<i S. VIII. Sept. 3. '59. 



Sir Humphrey May, Chancellor of the Duchy 

 of Lancaster temp. Charles I. — Where did he re- 

 side? Whom did he marry? What issue had 

 he ? Was Bab May his son ? A Mayfly. 



[From the pedigree of May of Sutton-Cheynell, May- 

 field, &c., given in Nichols's Leicestershire, iv. 648., we 

 learn that Sir Humphrey May was the son of Richard 

 May, Esq., of Mayfield in Sussex, citizen and merchant 

 taylor of London. Humphrey was knighted in 1612-13 ; 

 M.P. for the borough of Leicester, 1623 and 1625 ; ob- 

 tained in 1629 the reversion of the Mastership of the Rolls ; 

 but died before it became vacant at Coldrey, Hants, June 



9, 1630. His first wife was , sister of Sir Wm. Uve- 



dale, of Wickham, knight r the second Judith (family 

 name not stated). He had seven daughters, but only 

 Philippa is mentioned, as posthumous, baptized at Isling- 

 ton, Dec. 17, 1630. The parentage of Baptist May has 



not been traced, it having bafHed the researches of John 

 Nichols the Great, as well as those of the noble editor of 

 Pepys. Lord Braybrooke has furnished an interesting 

 note on the May family in Pepys's Diary, ii. 242. edit. 



William Wood. — Mr. Craik, in his History of 

 British Commerce, says that a person of this 

 name, who was afterwards secretary to the Com- 

 missioners of Customs, wrote a Survey of Trade, 

 dedicated to George I. Was this the same Wil- 

 liam Wood as was patentee of the Irish copper 

 coinage ? Where can a copy of the work be seen ? 

 and where can a portrait of Wood the patentee be 

 seen ? Ex Quovis Ligno. 



[The two William Woods were different persons. Wood 

 the patentee, and hero of the Drapier's Letters, died on 

 August 2, 1730. William Wood, secretary to the Board 

 of Customs, died on March 25, 1765, aged eighty-six. 

 There are two editions of his Survey of Trade, 8vo., 1718, 

 1722, in the British Museum. They are both the same 

 edition, except that the latter has aiaew title-page.] 



San Giovanni Gualherto. — In Machiavelli's tale 

 of Belfagor, it is said, of one of the damsels pos- 

 sessed by the demon, " Ne mancarono i parenti di 

 farvi di quelli rimedii che in simili accident! si 

 fanno, ponendole in capo la testa di San Zanobi, 

 ed il mantello di San Giovanni Gualberto." 

 Who was the saint last mentioned, and when is 

 his day ? C. L. 



[St. John Gualbert, Abbot, was born at Florence, and 

 founded the religious order of Vallis Umbrosa, Vallum- 

 brosa, or Vallombreuse — a spot thickly bestrown, ac- 

 cording to Milton, with leaves in autumn. He died, aged 

 seventy-four (some sar eighty-eight), at Passignano, 

 1073 ; his day, Ju>y 12." Particulars of his life will be 

 found in the Encyc. Cathol., art. Gualbert, and in But- 

 ler's Lives of the Saints. Both these authorities refer to 

 an exact life of S. John Gualbert by Blaise Melanisius, 

 with copious notes of Father Cuper the BoUandist. Seve- 

 ral distinct biographies of this saint will also be found in 

 the Acta Sanctorum, July 12, pp. 311 — 458.3 



" Merry Tricks." — I have in my possession an 

 imperfect small quarto play, the remaining title 

 of which is Merry Tricks; but the title-page 



being gone, there is no clue to the author's name 

 or the date of publication, and I cannot find a 

 play under that name either in Baker, or Watt, 

 or Garrick's MS. index to his Collection now in 

 the British Museum. The type is of the latter 

 part of the seventeenth century, or perhaps 

 earlier. 



If any of your readers can give a clue to this 

 comedy, they will oblige R. B. P. 



[The play of which our correspondent has a copy is 

 Ram Alley, or Merrie Tricks, written b3' Lodovick 

 Barrey, who is said to have been a gentleman of Irish 

 birth, but of whom nothing is known be3'ond the fact of 

 his being the author of this play — not even the place or 

 date of his birth or death. This play was first published 

 in 1611, and a second edition appeared in 1636. It is re- 

 printed in Dodsley's Old Plays (Collier's edit. v. p. 361. 

 et seq.^, the two editions having been carefully collated 

 for the purpose of making the text as correct as possible.] 



Cantankerous. — Can any of your readers refer 

 me to any dictionary containing this word, or in- 

 form me in what sense the word is used by any 

 writer ? or whether it has been long used in the 

 English vocabulary? F. S. 



[ Cantankerous is defined as contentious, in the archaic 

 dictionaries of Halliwell and Wright. We think the 

 word is also used in conversation, to signify unmanage- 

 able, self-willed, unruly. In Ogilvie's Supplement it is 

 explained as "vile in the highest degree, contentions, 

 disputatious," and is derived from con and tankerous. We 

 doubt whether the word has often found a place in writers 

 of any authority, or whether it is of very ancient standing 

 in our English vernacular. 



Tankerous is fretful, cross, according to Halliwell, who 

 adds, that " it is sometimes pronounced tanhersome." 

 Whatever the age of tankersome and tankerous, the 

 somewhat similar tanglesome (discontented, obstinate, 

 fretful) appears to be of old English origin : " Tanggyl, 

 or froward, or angry," MS. cited by Halliwell. 



In order to get at the true sense (i. e. the original 

 meaning) of the word cantankerous, the first question, 

 seems to be, what is the simpler form, tankerous.' We 

 believe this latter term to be nautical, and originally 

 French. Tangage is in Fr. the pitching of a ship ; tan- 

 guer, to pitch, and tangueux, applied to the ship itself, 

 one that pitches too much. This, to the crew, is a veiy 

 serious annoyance ; and the term tangueux, applied to 

 any very unmanageable, troublesome individual, may 

 possibly be the origin of our own tankerous. Old " salts " 

 do not always, in deriving words, observe the strict rules 

 of etymological propriety, and we have many nautical 

 terms which are strangely modified from the French. 



De cant is also a French nautical term, meaning set on 

 edge, as a board that is half-raised, and not turned over. 

 Hence our own nautical word " cant," which, according 

 to Falconer, expresses the position of any piece of timber 

 that does not stand square. It then is said to be " on the 

 cant" {de cant). "Mettre une chose de cant" was a thing 

 forbidden to shippers, if the article was one which re- 

 quired to be put flat, and not on its side. We would 

 take the word cantankerous, then, to be wholly nautical : 

 cant-tankerous (cant-tangueux), any individual who is 

 both perverse in character and unruly in conduct. A 

 friend, however, suggests that perhaps cantankerous is, 

 after all, only a vulgar modification of contentious. About 

 our friend's suggestion all we can say is this : To our ele- 

 gant vernacular nothing is impossible. Some persons 

 may prefer deriving tankerous from the old Fr. v. tancer. 



