16 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



[No. 140. 



a journal in which I have at different times inserted 

 several poetical trifles, as the • Prisoner's Prayer to 

 Sleep ; ' ' Lines on the Lamented Death of Benjamin 

 Galley, Esq.,' and some other little effusions. 



<• I should not, sir, have thought the lines on Sir 

 John Moore's funeral worth owning, had not the false 

 statement of the Chronicle met my eye. I can prove, 

 t)y the most incontestable evidence, the truth of what 

 I have asserted. The first copy of my lines was given 

 by me to my friend and relation Captain Bell, and it 

 is in his possession at present : it agrees perfectly with 

 the copy now in circulation, with this exception, it 

 does not contain the stanzas commencing with ' Few 

 and short,' which I added afterwards at the suggestion 

 of the Rev. Dr. Alderson, of Butterby. 



I am, Sir, yours, &c., 



H. Marshall, M.D. 



South Street, Durham, Nov. 1. 1824." 



COKE AKD COWPEE, HOW PEONOTJNCEI). 



(Vol. v., passim.^ 



Notwithstanding the able treatment these ques- 

 tions have already received, I would venture 

 to suggest that they may yet be discussed sci- 

 eniificatly, if taken in an analogical point of view. 

 Whatever the difference of opinion, or rather usage, 

 that may exist on the correct pronunciation of 

 either name, we can, I think, arrive at no certain 

 result without tracing the foundation on which 

 opinion or usage may rest, and the fixed laws that 

 must inevitably govern their adoption. Heraldry, 

 it seems to me, supplies the basis for those laws, if 

 not the laws themselves ; for by it our modern 

 nomenclature is to a great extent supported, its 

 errors modified or expunged, and anarchy and 

 ruin diverted from sapping the bulwarks of 

 English identity and English pride — the good old 

 names, still rife among us, in many instances the 

 stainless records of ancestral worth. 



By a reference to the coat-armour of the various 

 families of Cooper, Couper, and Cowper, as gathered 

 from the pages of Burke, it will at once be seen 

 that the same bearings are interchangeably used 

 by all of them, with only slight variations, — the re- 

 semblance being sufficiently distinct to mark a 

 common origin. The paternal coat of the en- 

 nobled name of Cowper, I would further remark, 

 bears in some of its features a strong affinity with 

 the arms of the "Coopers' Company" of London. 

 The foregoing remark will also apply so Coke, Cook, 

 and Cooke, — the arms of Coke of Holkhain (the 

 present Earl of Leicester), being borne by several 

 families of Cooke, with one or two differences of 

 tincture ; yet on the testimony of Wotton it would 

 seem that the uniform spelling of the former name 

 has been Coke from before the time of Edw. III. 

 " Sir Thomas Coke, of Munteby, Lord of Dudllng- 

 ton " (a lineal ancestor of the great Sir Edward 

 Coke, and also of the Leicester family), being the 



first on record of that name in the pedigree given 

 by Wotton of the Longford family, now extinct. 

 I concur in the suggestion of Mk. Lawrence 

 (Vol. iv., p. 93.) that " Coke is the old English 

 form of writing Cook, from the Anglo-Saxon Coc," 

 or perhaps from the Norman- French Le Cog (a 

 name still common in the Channel Islands ; where, 

 by the way, Mr. Lower may still find many com- 

 pounds of Le (Vol. v., pp. 509. 592.) in almost 

 pristine purity, such as Le Quesne, Le Bas, Le 

 Febvre, Le Conteur, &c.), the primitive sound 

 of being perhaps short, and since softened into 

 00. Some confirmation of this may be traced in 

 the fact that Burke gives Cock, Cocke, or Koke 

 (alias Coke), as bearing for crest " an ostrich, in 

 the beak a horse-hoe ;" which is also borne by 

 the Earl of Leicester, differenced on a chapeau. 

 That the spelling of both Coke and Cowper was 

 left very much to discretion has been shown by 

 previous correspondents, and is further confirmed 

 by Gwillim and other old writers. The former 

 testifies in his usually quaint style : 



" He beareth parted per pale gu. and az. 3 eaglets 

 displayed argent by the name of Cooke of Norfolk, 

 These were the armes of that great man and eminent 

 lawyer, Sir Edward Cooke (or Coke), Knt., Lord Chief 

 Justice of King's Bench temp. Jac. I. He was the 

 only son of Robert Coke, of Milleham, in the said co." 

 &c, &c. — Vide Kent's Abridgment, p. 772. 



And again (lb. p. 476.) : 



" He beareth azure, a tortoise erect (or) by the 

 name of Cooper (alias Cowper) ' sic ' of Nottingham- 

 shire, Borne by Thomas Cowper, Esq., High Sheriff 

 of that county lOEliz." 



Sir Kichard Baker, the " chronicler," speaks of 

 Sir Edward Cook and Mr. Clement Coke, reversing 

 the names In the index, and using each indiscri- 

 minately throughout the body of his (I am aware) 

 usually inaccurate work ; but being the testi- 

 mony of a cotemporary, I thought it, on that 

 account only, worth noting. 



Glancing at the Peerage list of family names, I 

 cannot forbear the thought that much of the con- 

 fusion and irregularity attendant on the various 

 spellings of one name may have arisen. In some 

 cases at least, from a morbid propensity evinced 

 in the desire to aristocratify (if I may be allowed 

 the term) names of somewhat plebeian origin, so 

 as to render them strictly admissible to patrician 

 circles, — witness Smythe, Taylour, Turnour*, 

 and others ; while many, such as Butler, Carpen- 

 ter, Cooper, Smith, Gardiner, &c., still remain in 

 almost primitive simplicity, and Innocent of specious 

 disguise. 



* I have somewhere seen the plea that this family 

 derive their name from some Norman valiant yclept 

 " De Tour Noir ; " but the resemblance of both name 

 and arms to the commonplace " Turner " is too appa- 

 rent to escape observation. 



