244 



NOTES AND QUEiUES. 



[No. 256. 



They have recently appeared in a periodical as tlie 

 production of an anonymous writer of the day, but 

 as I well recollect seeing them in print many years 

 since, although I cannot call to mind where, I 

 ghall be glad if my curiosity can be gratified and 

 the plagiarism exposed by those whose memory 

 may be better than mine. 



" PHALANTHUS. 



" From Sparta when Plialanthua roved, 

 Doom'd by a God's decree, 

 In distant lands with those he loved 

 A wanderer to be, — 



♦' A wretched, wandering, restless man. 

 Until he should espy, 

 So great Apollo's edict ran, 

 ' Kain from a cloudless sky.' 



" Depress'd by long and anxious thought 

 And wearisome alarms. 

 The solace of his wife he sought, 

 And slumber'd in her arms. 



" Smiling with joy at this relief. 

 She watch'd him as he slept. 

 Till recollection of his grief 

 Came on her, and she wept. 



" But soon with starts and broken sighs 

 The Spartan leader woke, 

 Look'd upwards in her tearful eyes. 

 And thus in rapture spoke : 



" ' Here, here, my JEthra will I rest. 

 No more compell'd to roam. 

 The sunny shower bedews thy breast, 

 And marks it for my home.' " 



Sbnex. 



Motto of the Thompsons of Yorkshire. — Can 

 any of your readers help me to discover the 

 legend explaining the origin of the motto of the 

 Thompsons of Yorkshire ? The family is an old 

 one, althougli the name is common ; it springs 

 from a Lord of Thompson in Norfolk, who esta- 

 blished a chantry there temp. Edward I., which 

 was afterwards, as Thompson College, endowed 

 with the great and small tithes, with other pro- 

 perty, which it held until the dissolution. The 

 motto is " Je veux de bonne guerre ; " the crest 

 an arm in armour embossed quarterly, the gaunt- 

 let ppr. holding the truncheon of a broken spear. 

 The arms were granted about a.d. 1630. This 

 inquiry may, perhaps, lead to other communi- 

 cations respecting mottoes and their origin, which 

 cannot but be interesting. 



One of your Subscribers. 



HutchinsorC s " Commercial Restraints of Ire- 

 land considered.''' — Can you give me any in- 

 formation respecting the following statement ? 

 It appeared in a letter from Sir V. Blake, Bart., 

 M.P., to the editor of The Times, 14th February, 

 1846 ; and has been lately inserted in a book- 

 seller's catalogue : 



"The book [Hutchinson's Commercial Restraints of 

 Ireland considered^ to which I allude was published in 



1779 •, and almost immediately afterwards suppressed and 

 burnt by the common hangman, so that Mr. Flood, in his 

 place in the House of Commons, said he would give 

 1000/. for a copy." 



The author of the work in question was the 

 Right Hon. John Hely Hutchinson, Provost, and 

 also parliamentary represent.ative, of Trinity Col- 

 lege, Dublin ; and the catalogue from which I 

 quote has been issued by Mr. T. Connolly, of that 

 city. The treatise contains much powerful ar- 

 gument, and many strong pictures of the state of 

 the country antecedent to and during the time 

 of which the author writes. Abhba. 



Bowles. — What song is meant in the following 

 passage of Thomas Moore's Diary, date November 

 27, 1827? — 



" Bowles spoke (for the first time I ever heard him ac- 

 knowledge it) of his favourite song ; wrote it when he was 

 about twenty." 



Uneda. 



Minstrel Court of Cheshire. — The following 

 extract is from the Scots Magazine for February, 

 1743, vol. V. p. 102. : 



« Died, Sir John Button of Sherbourn, Gloucestershire. 

 This family has a right to license the minstrels in the 

 county of Chester, for which a court is kept every Mid- 

 summer Day ; when every minstrel summoned pays Ad. 2g. 

 (4J), and every whore that follows her calling 4d. ; and 

 those so licensed are excepted in the old statutes and in 

 the present bill relating to vagrants." 



Do these curious customs yet exist ? G. N. 



[The curious incidents connected Avith this " Minstrel 

 Court" are worthy of notice. It consisted in a right to 

 license all the minstrels and players of Cheshire ; and none 

 were to use minstrelsy within Cheshire or the city of 

 Chester, but by order and licence of the proprietor of the 

 Button estate. The privilege was granted to Eoger Lacy 

 in the twelfth century, for the rescue of Ranulpb, Earl of 

 Chester, when closely besieged bj' the Welsh in his castle 

 of Rhuddlan. " The minstrels," says an old account, 

 " by their music and their songs, so allured and inspirited 

 the multitudes of loose and lawless persons then brought 

 together, that they resolutelj' marched against the Welsh. 

 Hugh de Button,' a gallant youth, who was steward to 

 Lacy, put himself at their head. The Welsh, alarmed at 

 the approach of this rabble, supposing them to be a regular 

 body of armed and disciplined soldiers, instantly raised 

 the siege, and retired with precipitation." For this good 

 service Ranulph granted to the Lacys, by charter, a pecu- 

 liar patronage over men of this sort, who devolved the same 

 again upon Button and his heirs (see Sir P. Leycester's 

 Antiquity of Cheshire, p. 141., where the deed of grant 

 from Lacy to Hugh de Button is given at length). It 

 appears b}' a quo warranto, bi'ought against Lawrence 

 Button, Esq., in 1498, found in the records of Chester, 

 that it was the custom for all minstrels in Chester to meet 

 the Lord of Button on the day of St. John the Baptist, 

 on which occasion they were to present him with four 



[* There was also an edition published in 1780, by 

 T. Longman, in Paternoster Row. — Ed.] 



