50 



NOTES AND QUEKIES. 



[No. 273. 



I have never been able to ascertain whether the 

 Dean was married, or to connect him with the 

 StaflTordshire family. Richard Bill of EoUeston, 

 CO. Stafford, the first I notice in that county, was 

 born about twenty years after the Dean's death. 

 He married Elizabeth, daughter and heiress of 

 Robert Shenton, of Farley, Esq., and died circa 

 1640, leaving issue three sons: 1. John, who inhe- 

 rited Farley ; he left an only daughter and heiress, 

 Elizabeth, who built Farley Hall. 2. Richard, 

 who died without issue. 3. Robert of Stanton, 

 the ancestor of the present family ; he had three 

 sons, of whom Richard, the eldest, repurchased in 

 1699 the Farley estate, which had been sold in 

 1679 by Elizabeth Bill's son and heir. 



In the Manual of Brasses^ published at Oxford 

 in 1848, it is recorded, that on Dean Bill's sepul- 

 chral slab in Westminster Abbey, his coat of arms 

 in brass, now lost, bore — Ermine, two wood-bills 

 sable, with long handles, proper, in saltire ; on a 

 chief azure, a pale or, charged with a rose gules, 

 between two pelicans' heads erased at the neck 

 argent. Burke, in his Armory, gives a similar 

 coat to the Bills of Staffordshire, the only differ- 

 ence being, that the wood-bills are called battle- 

 axes, the pale is argent, and the pelicans are 

 vulning themselves. But he gives to Dean Bill a 

 coat altogether different, viz.. Or, a fret sable 

 within a bordure engrailed azure, on a canton 

 argent, five martlets in saltire sable. The con- 

 struction of the first coat, the rose borne on a pale 

 in the chief, savours of the Westminster arms *, 

 and I should almost infer, from this circumstance, 

 that these bearings were granted to the Dean 

 during the short time he presided over that 

 Chapter. If this suggestion be correct, no doubt 

 a record of the grant, with perhaps some account 

 of his family, is still extant in the College of 

 Arms. A search there, or in the Harleian MS. 

 No. 1546., in the British Museum, which contains 

 the visitation of the county of Hertford, by Robert 

 Cooke, Clarencieux, in the year 1572, might pro- 

 duce a solution to A. R. M.'s Queries : Chauncey's 

 Hertfordshire, or Clutterbuck's, might be con- 

 sulted. Patonce. 



SOUTHET AND VOLTAIRE. 



(Vol. x., p. 282.) 



The French pMlosophes, and Voltaire in par- 

 ticular, have sins enough of their own to answer 

 for, without being made accountable for those 

 which the malice or ignorance of their opponents 

 has attributed to them, and any explanation that 

 should exonerate them from the blasphemy im- 



* This is not an unusual mode of differencing the shield 

 of persons connected with Westminster ; e. g. the arms of 

 Lords Thurlow, Eldon, Wynford, and Langdale. 



plied in their ecrasez Vinfame, would be an act of 

 justice as well as a service to the cause of truth. 



In France, the erroneous interpretation of this 

 phrase is not confined to the illiterate classes, who 

 are obliged to take all such matters upon trust, 

 but is adopted and inculcated by professors of 

 divinity, and others engaged in the education of 

 youth. The wonder seems to be how, with the 

 context so clear and so pointedly expressed, as in 

 the passage quoted by Mb. De Morgan, this un- 

 founded imputation should have received such 

 general assent. As aids towards a solution of 

 this difficulty, I beg leave to offer the following 

 remarks. 



1. In the belief of the majority of Roman Ca- 

 tholics, what Voltaire calls " superstition " is 

 bound up with the essence of " religion." To as- 

 sail the one is to assail the other ; and the man 

 who should hold up either as infdme, is as culpable, 

 in their eyes, as if he applied the term to the 

 Divine Founder of Christianity. 



2. Of all controversialists Voltaire is the mosb 

 unscrupulous. In the passage cited by Mr. Db 

 Morgan, he draws a distinction between " super- 

 stition " and " religion," and talks of his love and 

 respect for the latter. But we all know that this 

 is a mask. His attacks upon religion are not 

 confined to what an enlightened Protestant might 

 deem its " superstition," but extend to the under- 

 mining of its fundamental truths. In this unholy 

 warfare, satire, sarcasm, irony, abuse, are alike 

 unsparingly employed; and as to misrepresent- 

 ation, he never comes across a text of Scripture, 

 the meaning of which he does not distort to serve 

 his purpose. These tricks of distortion are part 

 of his grand scheme for bringing Christianity into 

 contempt ; and those who know with what acerbity 

 and unfairness religious controversies are generally 

 conducted, will not be surprised to find that Vol- 

 taire's opponents have resorted to the same un- 

 justifiable weapons, which he had wielded with so 

 much success against them. 



3. It is clear that at first Voltaire used the ex- 

 pression ecrasez Vinfdme in the restricted sensa 

 of the passage quoted by Mr. De Morgan. But 

 afterwards it became a sort of watchword among 

 his disciples ; and the use of it, in this isolated 

 form, by writers who were known to carry their 

 abhorrence of religion to a fiendish excess, natu- 

 rally led to the supposition that by Vinfdme they 

 wished to designate the author of what they la- 

 boured to represent as a tissue of " infamy." 



There is a slight apparent inaccuracy in one of 

 Mr. De Morgan's remarks, which he will pardon 

 me for adverting to. After quoting Voltaire's 

 words, he adds : " consequently infdme is a femi- 

 nine noun." This has reference to the passage 

 quoted, and so far we understand what is meant ; 

 but, taken in an absolute sense, it might lead to 

 misconception. If infdme were a feminine noun, 



