138 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



[No. 251. 



Several of the authors of the volumes, useful 

 and instructive as they are in their general sub- 

 ject, into whose pages the story has found an in- 

 troduction, have, we are fully persuaded, no wish 

 to mislead or merely amuse their readers with a 

 romantic fiction ; and we can suppose that a nar- 

 rative concerning an institution so mysteriously 

 shrouded as that of the Inquisition, might not 

 without some apparent reason, though incauti- 

 ously and without examination, be taken up by 

 them. Still they furnish the advocates of intoler- 

 ance with a ready argument against the reception 

 of what can be authentically proved ; they divert 

 the mind from the apprehension of larger wrongs 

 than those of individual suffering, shocking as they 

 are ; they hold forth a false security, that this 

 evil was destroyed, which is even now weaving its 

 toils anew. That thundercloud still threatens 

 ■which has for three long centuries shaded the best 

 genius of whole nations in religion, in social arts, 

 in practical science ; and they, the brightest peo- 

 ple in Europe. Its influence through successive 

 generations has inflicted a bad instinct upon a 

 race, — the instinct of mistrust between rulers and 

 people, priest and worshipper, man and man — 

 even between the nearest ties of relationship ; and 

 isolating man, prevents co-operation and reliance 

 on one another in spontaneous combinations for 

 mutual benefit. It has destroyed ya?7A in a double 

 sense. That motive or principle, formed of free 

 and willing belief, and complete and spontaneous 

 trust of the whole mind, which when exercised in 

 religion we caMfaithy when applied to the physical 

 sciences has, through confidence and co-operation, 

 formed railways, tunneled rivers, bored through 

 mountains, and despatched our very words and 

 wishes on the wings of lightning. It is one of the 

 lasting and greatest crimes of the Inquisition, 

 that it has destroyed this principle in countries 

 where its power prevailed ; and it may be evi- 

 dent to any one, that this must remain the latest 

 among the Christian commonwealth, to exercise 

 native invention, and to apply it in the triumph 

 of mind over matter for their own and the world's 

 incalculable advantage. B. B. Wiffen. 



MEMOIRS OP GEAMMONT : THE COUNT DE MATTA. 



(Vol. viii., pp. 461. 549. ; Vol. ix., pp. 3. 204. 356. 

 583.) 



"Ce meme Matha etait un garcon d'esprit infiniment 

 nature!, et par-la de la meilleure compagnie du monde." — 

 Jtladume de Caylus. 



Any future edition of these Memoirs will be in- 

 complete without some better notice of the frank 

 and gallant Matta, than that he " is said to have 

 been of the house of Bourdeille, which had the 

 honour to produce Brautome and Montresor." 



The family of Bourdeille is very ancient and 

 honourable. In 1198 a Jean de Matha founded 

 the order for redemption of the captives, and in 

 1212 he was associated with Hugh Count de Ver- 

 mandois in founding the order of the Mathurins. 



The Counts de Mastas, Mathas, Matha, Matta, 

 or Mata, as the name is variously written, of our 

 hero's family were a younger branch of the house 

 of Bourdeille. Brantome was the uncle of Matta's 

 father, and Claude de Bourdeille, Count de Mon- 

 tresor, was also a grand nephew of Brantome. 



The earliest title of the family of Bourdeille 

 was that of Baron," and they claimed to be the 

 first in rank of the four barons of the province of 

 Perigord. The title of Mastas came into the 

 family by ' the marriage of Andre, Viscount de 

 Bourdeille, the eldest brother of Brantome, with 

 Jacquette, the eventual sole heiress of Francis de 

 Montberon, Baron d'Archiac and Mastas. Her 

 brother Rene, who was present at her marriage, 

 was killed shortly afterwards at the battle of 

 Gravelines, in the year 1558. The Viscount de 

 Bourdeille had a suit before the Parliament of 

 Paris, with other relatives of the family of Mont- 

 beron, concerning the distribution of the property, 

 and by an agreement with them he obtained the 

 free burgh of Mastas. 



Our Matta (as we shall write the name through- 

 out) was the fifth of the eight children of Claude 

 de Bourdeille, Baron de Mastas, d'Aumaigne and 

 de Beaulieu, and captain of fifty men at arms of 

 the king's ordinances, who was himself the youngest 

 son of the said Andre, Viscount de Bourdeille, and 

 Jacquette de Montberon. She by her will devised 

 to Claude, her youngest son, the estate and barony 

 of Mastas, in Xaintonge. 



Matta's father was killed at the siege of Royan, 

 in Xaintonge, on May 9, 1622, at the age of forty- 

 eight years. He was first wounded in the arm by 

 a pike, and then slain outright by a cannon-ball. 

 He had married, in April, 1602, Marguerite de 

 Breuil, by whom he had eight children, viz. 1st, 

 Claude de Bourdeille, Count de Mastas, who died 

 young; 2nd, Henry Sicaire, baptized July 24, 

 1610, who was made a captain of a new company 

 in the regiment of Guards in 1635, and was killed 

 the same year at the passage of the bridge of Bari- 

 sur-Seine, at the age of twenty-five years ; 3rd, 

 Francis, styled the Seigneur de St. Amand, Count 

 de Mastas, who was made captain in the Guards 

 in the room of his brother ; he was killed at the 

 combat and rout of Quiers, in Piedmont, in 1639, 

 leading a forlorn hope, and was buried in the 

 church of St. Amand, where his mother, by her 

 will, directed a monument to be erected to his 

 memory; 4th, Barthelemi, baptized on April 18, 

 1613, succeeded his gallant brothers as captain in 

 the Guards, and was killed at the siege of Turin 

 in 1640 ; 5th, our friend himself, of whom here- 

 after ; 6th, Marguerite, one of the maids of honour 



