2»dS.v.i2i.,ArRiL24.'58.] NOTES AND QUERIES. 



339 



pointed to the Mastership of Brentwood Grammar 

 School, an ofEce which he resigned, with alacrity, 

 after holding it for a year. It was during a re- 

 sidence at Liverpool, as minister of St. George's, 

 that he gave to the world his translation of a work 

 of the historian whom he calls the " genteel Thu- 

 cydides." When Dean of Chester he became 

 chaplain to Edward, Earl of Derby, and the now 

 Dr. Smith was instituted to the rectory of Hand- 

 ley, Cheshire. Nearly the whole of the re- 

 mainder of his life was spent at the deanery, or at 

 Handley, or at the rectory of West Kirby, for 

 which he resigned Trinity. In Chester he trans- 

 lated Xeuophon's History of the Affairs of Greece; 

 and when he fell into an infirmity which pre- 

 vented him from the active exercise of his office, 

 he pursued his literary occupations for amuse- 

 ment and for duty's sake, and made of his last 

 years the fair evening of a fine day. The Dean, 

 who deceased in 1787, was complete master, not 

 only of the Latin, which he spoke fluently, but of 

 the Greek and Hebrew languages ; and if he be 

 not the " William Smith, A.M." whom Tetltcnas 

 seeks to identify, no one of his day was more 

 capable than he of being the author of the Com- 

 pendium on the Hebrew Bible, the MS. of which is 

 in the hands of your correspondent. J. Doban. 



I cannot find that this work has ever been pub- 

 lished under Smith's name, but subjoined to Jab- 

 lonski's Hebrew Bible, large 12mo., Berlin, 1712, is 

 Leusden's Catalogue of 2294 select verses, containivg 

 all the words occurring in the Old Testament. From 

 this Catalogue William Smith probably took the idea 

 for his Compendium. However, if the Compendium 

 were printed with the Points, &c., and the Personal 

 Affixes and other Serviles in hollow or red letters, 

 and with a few grammatical and explanatory notes, 

 &c., and publish ed at a moderate price, it would 

 be of great assistance, and a valuable acquisition 

 to persons desir ous of learning the Hebrew lan- 

 guage. W. H. W. T. 



Somerset House. 



CROMWELL S GRANDSON. 



(2°«» S. v. 224.) 



Antiquaries should especially beware of trusting 

 to the reports of others. Who w ould have expected 

 that two of your correspondents, so prominent in 

 the archaeological field as Dr. Dokan and Edw. 

 F. RiMBAULT, should be so completely taken in 

 by the extract from the Historical Register given 

 by W. P. H., to the effect that the wife of Richard 

 Cromwell married in 1723 was a daughter of Sir 

 Robert Thornhill ? 



Mr. Rimbault thinks the extract "highly in- 

 teresting, as it corrects the Rev. Mark Noble's 

 statement, that this Richard Cromwell married 



Sarah, daughter of Ebenezer Gatton, a grocer of 

 Southwark ; " the fact all the while being that 

 Mr. Noble was perfectly familiar with the entry 

 in the Historical Register ; which he quotes and 

 comments upon. 



Throughout the whole of Mr. Noble's Protec- 

 torate, there is no one passage in which he was 

 manifestly more at home in his facts than in the 

 account of this marriage, and of the disposition of 

 the property of Sir Robert Thornhill, to whom 

 the bride was niece, not daughter ; for he had it 

 all from his intimate friends, the Miss Cromwells 

 of Hampstead, the issue of the aforesaid marriage. 



When your evidence has in any one respect 

 proved himself a false witness, who will value the 

 rest of his testimony ? It is easy to show that the 

 scribe, sexton, or whoever it was that supplied the 

 account of this marriage to the Historical Register 

 was one of these untrusty persons. I suppose his 

 mental equilibrium was upset by the vehemence 

 with which his goose-quill scratched the words, 

 " the vile usurper, Oliver." At all events he con- 

 trived, in the small compass of a marriage entry, 

 to commit two blunders. First, he says that 

 Richard Cromwell, the bridegroom, was " grand- 

 son to the vile usurper," whereas he was great- 

 grandson : correctly stated by Rimbault, but 

 indorsed with additional errors by Doran. Se- 

 condly, he calls Thornhill a baronet, which he 

 was not. Noble says there was a creation of that 

 title in 1682, in a family then of Barbadoes, but 

 the Sir Robert Thornhill here concerned was only 

 a knight. These are two mistakes: the third 

 was in misnaming the bride. Had he really known 

 anything about her, he would have given her 

 Christian and maiden name, instead of " Miss 

 Thornhill." But, as Sir Robert was no doubt 

 present, perhaps to give her away, the reporter 

 hastily concluded that she was his daughter. 



That she was Sir Robert's niece and coheir, 

 and not his daughter, will be palpable enough 

 to any person who will take the trouble to read 

 the Rev. Mark Noble's copious account of the 

 manner in which the Cromwells came into pos- 

 session of the Cheshunt property — partly as heirs 

 of their mother, Sarah Gatton, and partly through 

 the death of Sir Robert Thornhill's daughters 

 unmarried. There is, in fact, not the shadow of a 

 doubt about it. 



Although the above marriage was performed by 

 Dr. Edmund Gibson, Bishop of London, Dk. 

 DoRAN seems to think that the unusual privilege 

 of allowing its celebration in the Banquetting 

 House at Whitehall is to be accounted for by 

 Walpole, Berkeley, Carteret, or some other minis- 

 ter having procured the favour from George I. 

 Has Dr. Doban's multifarious reading never 

 brought him in contact with the fact that Bishop 

 Gibson had personal reasons for thus honouring a 

 descendant of the Protector Oliver ; that he was 



