2''<» S. VIII. Dkc. 17. '59.] 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



499 



called London in Miniature, without any author's 

 name, but published in 1755 by C. Corbett in 

 Fleet Street, from which, in the description of 

 Westminster Abbey, I make the following ex- 

 tract : — 



" In a small chapel adjoining to this is a noble monu- 

 ment of brass, on the side of which lie the bodies of Don 

 Pedro Ronquillo, Ambassador from Spain to King Wil- 

 liam II r., and the Count de Briancon, Minister from the 

 Duke of Savoy to Queen Anne, who, having never paid 

 the debts they contracted here, lie in their coffins, un- 

 buried." 



Here is apparently a circumstantial answer to 

 A. A.'s inquiry ; but'nevertheless I am induced to 

 make some observations tending to raise a doubt 

 as to the actual facts stated. I should first observe 

 that De. Rimbault's authority is from a book dated 

 in 1724, in which the death of the Spanish am- 

 bassador is alluded to as a recent event, whereas, 

 if he died in the reign of William III., it must have 

 occurred at least twenty- two years previously. 

 The only way. to account for this is by supposing 

 the publication of 1724 to be a new edition of a 

 book originally published many years before.* I 

 have no knowledge of the book in question, and 

 cannot therefore judge whether this is probable. 



In the further observations which I have to 

 make, I should premise that the coffins were not, 

 as A. A. states, in one of the chapels on the south- 

 east side of the choir, but in the small chapel on 

 the south-east side of Henry VII.'s chapel, which 

 contains the large brass tomb of Lewis Duke of 

 Richmond and Lenox. This tomb so entirely occu- 

 pies the space of this chapel that there was barely 

 room for the two coffins in question to lie on the 

 pavement at the base of two sides of the tomb. 

 They were both of very large size, and both origi- 

 nally covered with crimson velvet, but so much 

 faded, decayed, and soiled, that they bore all the 

 appearance of having been exhumed after many 

 years of actual interment. 



The chapel in question (as well as the corre- 

 sponding opposite one, which contains the tomb 

 of Villiers Duke of Buckingham) is inaccessible 

 otherwise than by scaling the stone screen by 

 which it is enclosed, about four feet in height, and 

 it was only by looking over the screen that the 

 coffins could be seen, as I have often done on my 

 visits to the abbey for a period of a quarter of a 

 century previous to the coffins having been re- 

 moved, and as I presume interred, or, according 

 to my notion, re-interred, and which I believe to 

 have been about the year 1820. On these occa- 

 sions I sometimes ventured to ask the vergers 

 (who always repeated without variation the same 

 story about the ambassadors) what were their 



\_* This work was first published anonymously in 1714, 

 and has been frequently confounded with De Foe's Tour 

 through Great Britain. Vide Gough's British Topog. i. 39., 

 ed. 1780, and " N. & Q." 1«« S. i. 205. — Ed,] 



names, what courts they represented, and when 

 they died ? But I was always put off with a slight 

 bow and a motion of the hand, as much as to say 

 " ask no questions, but follow on with the rest of 

 the company." 



Now, with all its failings and peculiarities, I 

 have always considered Dart's Westmonasterium as 

 the best authority for all that relates to the abbey 

 up to the time of its publication, of which it gives 

 no actual date, but in the title-page it is stated to 

 be " from a Survey taken in the year 1723 ; " and 

 the work must have issued from the press within 

 four years from that time, as it is dedicated to 

 George II. when still Prince of Wales. It must, 

 therefore, be nearly cotemporary with the edition 

 of Macky's Journey through England quoted by 

 Dr. Rimbaclt. Yet Dart takes no notice what- 

 ever of the coffins, or of the story of the ambassa- 

 dors, which, from the minute details he gives of 

 all that was then visible above ground, and his 

 general tendency for gossip, I think it scarcely 

 probable he would have omitted, if they were then 

 existing. And it is to be observed that at least 

 ten years had then elapsed since the death of 

 Queen Anne, in whose reign the most recent of 

 the two occurrences is stated to have taken place. 



Dart gives a minute account of all the inter- 

 ments which had taken place in the vaults of 

 Henry VII.'s chapel down to his time, and it is 

 evident from his accounts that they, were then 

 very much overcrowded. Now if any one would 

 take the pains to ascertain how many farther in- 

 terments took place therein, between the year 

 1723 and till towards the end of the reign of 

 George II., which I have not the leisure or means 

 of doing, but which I have good reason to believe 

 to have included a great > many, I do not think it 

 jyould have been possible to make room for them 

 without displacing some of their preoccupants, and 

 I think it more than probable that this may have 

 been the case. Dart mentions several foreigners 

 who had been thus interred, most probably Dutch 

 noblemen who had died in England in the reign of 

 William III., and who may have been thus ex- 

 truded some forty or fifty years afterwards, hav- 

 ing no family connexions or representatives in 

 England to resist such an act of violation, which 

 may in fact have been intended as only a tem- 

 porary expedient, but being deposited for the 

 nonce in a place where they were not likely to be 

 molested, they were suffered so to remain from 

 year to year ; and these being known to be the 

 coffins of foreigners, of whom little else was known, 

 the story about the unpaid debts might have been 

 a matter of surmise, which by degrees became an 

 established fact. 



I am aware that my theory is in itself in a great 

 measure founded on surmise. If the tradition is 

 really founded on fact, it might, I should think, 

 be set at rest by any one who has the opportu- 



