628 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



[No. 191. 



strange colour (the varieties of which are almost 

 without number in this country of the sun) ; and 

 it has now been extended to every article of wear- 

 ing apparel of an unfashionable or peculiar shape. 

 A negro woman, appearing with a blue umbrella, 

 has been followed by half a dozen black boys with 

 the cry of " Entete parasol ! " and in order to get 

 rid of the annoyance she had to shut the umbrella 

 and continue her way under the broiling sun. But 

 the term is not always used in derision. A few 

 days ago, a young girl of colour, dressed in the 

 extreme of the fashion, was passing along, when 

 some bystanders began to rally her with the word 

 " Entete." The girl, perceiving that she was the 

 object of their notice, turned round, and in an 

 attitude of conscious irreproachableness, retorted 

 with the challenge in Creole French, " Qui entete 

 qa,?" But the smiles with which she was greeted 

 showed her (what she had already partly sus- 

 pected) that their cries of " Entete " were intended 

 rather to compliment her on the style of her dress. 



Henry H. Breen. 

 St. Lucia. 



DESCENDANTS OP JOHN OF GAUNT. 



(VoLvii., p. 41.) 



I am gratified to see that Mr. Hardy's docu- 

 mentary researches have confirmed my conjectures 

 as to the erroneous date assigned for the death of 

 the first husband of Jane Beaufort. Perhaps it 

 may be in his power also to rectify a chronoloirical 

 error, which has crept into the account usually 

 given of the family into which one of her sons 

 married. The Peerages all place the death of the 

 last Lord Fauconberg of the original family in 

 1376, not observing that this date would make 

 his daughter and heiress married to William 

 Nevill, second son of the Earl of Westmoreland 

 and Countess Joane, twenty-five years at the 

 lowest computation ; or, if we take the date which 

 they assign for the death of Lord Ferrers of 

 Wemme, forty years older than her husband, — a 

 difference this, which, although perhaps it might 

 not prove an insuperable impediment to marriage 

 where the lady was a great heiress, would un- 

 doubtedly put a bar on all hopes of issue : whereas 

 it stands on record that they had a family. 



I must take this opportunity of complaining of 

 the manner in which many, if not all these Peer- 

 a"^es, are compiled : copying each others' errors, 

 however obvious, without a word of doubt or an 

 attempt to rectify them ; though Mr. Hardy's 

 communication, above mentioned, shows that the 

 materials for doing so, in many cases, exist if 

 properly sought. Not to mention minor errors, 

 they sometimes crowd into a given time more 

 generations than could have possibly existed, and 

 sometimes make the generations of a length that 



has not been witnessed since the patriarchal ages. 

 As instances of the former may be mentioned, the 

 pedigree of the Ferrerses, Earls of Derby (in 

 which eight successions from father to son are 

 given between 1137 and 1265), and those of the 

 Netterville and Tracy families : and of the latter, 

 the pedigi-ee of the Fitzwarines, which gives only 

 four generations between the Conquest and 1314; 

 and that of the Clanricarde family. It is strange 

 that Mr. Burke, who appears to claim descent from 

 the latter, did not take more pains to rectify a 

 point so nearly concerning him ; instead of making, 

 as lie does in his Peerage, one of t'ne family to 

 have held the title (MacWilliam Lighter) and 

 estates for 105 years ! — an absurdity rendered still 

 more glaring by this long-lived gentleman's father 

 having possessed them fifty-four years before him, 

 and his son for fifty-six years after him. If such 

 can be supposed true, the Countess of Desmond's 

 longevity was not so unusual after all. 



J. S. Warden. 



THE ORDER OF ST. JOHN OF JERUSALEM. 



(Vol. vii., p. 407.) 



May I be allowed to inform your correspondent 

 R. L. P. that he is in error, when supposing that 

 tlie English knights were deprived of their pro- 

 perty by Queen Elizabeth, as it was done by act 

 of parliament in the year 1534, and during the 

 reijjn of Henry VIII. 



For the information sought by your correspon- 

 dent R. L, P., T would refer him to the following 

 extract taken from Sutherland's History of the 

 Knights of Malta, vol. ii. pp. 114, 115. : 



•' To increase the despondency of L'Isle Adam [the 

 Grand Master of the Order of St. John of Jerusalem]^ 

 Henry VIII. of England having come to an open rup- 

 ture with tlie Pope, in consequence of the PontiiF's 

 steady refusal to countenance the divorcement of 

 Catherine of Arragon his tjueen, commenced a fierce 

 and bloody persecution against all persons in his do- 

 minions, who persisted in adhering to the Holy See. 

 In these circumstances, the Knights of St. John, wha 

 held themselves bound to acknowledge the Pope as 

 their superior at whatever hazard, did not long escape 

 his ire. The power of the Order, composed as it was 

 of the chivalry of the nation, while the Prior of London 

 sat in parliament on an equality with the first baron of 

 the realm, for a time deterred him from openly pro- 

 scribing it ; but at length his wrath burst forth in an 

 ungovernable flame. The knights Ingley, Adrian 

 Forrest, Adrian Fortescu, and Marmaduke Bohus^ 

 refusing to amure their faith, perished on the scaffold. 

 Thomas Mytton and Edward Waldegrave died in a 

 dungeon ; and Richard and James Bell, John Noel, 

 and many others, abandoned their country for ever, 

 and sought an asylum at Malta*, completely stripped 



* I have sought in vain among the records of the 

 Order at this island to find any mention made of those 



