354 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



[No. 233. 



and confined for ten years in Owen's prison at 

 Llansaintffraid. He was afterwards released ; and 

 distinguished himself, together with some near 

 relatives, as Pennant relates, at the battle of Agin- 

 court, where he fell, pierced with wounds, while 

 assisting in the rescue of his royal master King 

 Henry. Possibly, Owen Gam may have been a 

 descendant of this half-hero, half-assassin. 



Llewellyn Clifford, again, is a name strongly 

 suggestive of its owner's connexion with Cambria. 

 If A Subscriber has exhausted the resources of 

 the Clifford pedigrees, it were, I suppose, useless 

 to refer him to the ancestry of the defunct Earls 

 of Cumberland ; and especially to that part of it 

 represented by Sir Roger de Clifford, of Clifford, 

 co. Hereford, a famous soldier in the days of 

 Henry III. and Edward I. He accompanied the 

 latter monarch in his inroads into Wales, and fell 

 in battle there, not far from Bangor, circa 1282-3, 

 leaving several children ; one of the younger of 

 whom I conjecture to have been the father of the 

 before-named Llewellyn Clifford. After having 

 subjugated the country, we can easily fancy the 

 conquerors perpetuating the event by naming 

 certain of their posterity after the fallen prince 

 Llewellyn. 



As for Sir William de Roas (or Ros), A Sub- 

 scriber is wrong in supposing his name to have 

 been Ingman ; for although he resided at Ingman- 

 thorpe, co. York, his surname, in common with 

 that of a long line of ancestry and descendants, 

 was De Ros only. He was the grandson of Robert 

 de Ros, the founder of the two castles, Werke and 

 Hamlake, and one of the leaders of the baronial 

 forces in their armed opposition to the tyrant 

 King John. 



Before closing this communication, I would 

 suggest to A Subscriber, and to all others pro- 

 pounding genealogical Queries, the absolute neces- 

 sity of affixing dates to their inquiries in every 

 possible instance ; as nothing is easier than to go 

 astray, sometimes for half-a-dozen generations, in 

 fixing the identity of a solitary individual. 



T. Hughes. 



Chester. 



ROBERT DUDLEY, EARL OP LEICESTER. 



(Vol. ix., pp. 105. 160.) 



That this infamous man did die of poison, is, I 

 believe, the general opinion. The late Dr. Cooke 

 Taylor has the following passage upon the subject, 

 in his Romantic Biography of the Age of Eliza- 

 beth, vol. i. p. 115. : 



" Nearly all the cotemporary writers assert that 

 Leicester fell a victim to poison ; Naunton declares 

 that he, by mistake, swallowed the potion he had pre- 

 pared for another person ; and, as there can be no 

 doubt that the Earl was a poisoner of great eminence 



and success, the story is far from being improbable. 

 The Privy Council must have believed that his death 

 was not natural, for they minutely investigated a report 

 that he had been poisoned by the son of Sir James 

 Crofts, in revenge for the imprisonment of his father. 

 Some suspicious circumstances were elicited during the 

 examination ; but the matter was suddenly dropped, 

 probably because an inquiry into any one of the com- 

 plicated intrigues of Elizabeth's court would have in- 

 volved too many persons of honour and consequence." 



Drummond of Hawthornden, in his Notes of 

 Conversations with Ben Jonson, has the following 

 curious note : 



" The Earl of Leicester gave a bottle of liquor to 

 his lady, which he willed her to use in any faintness; 

 which she, after his returne from Court, not knowing 

 it was poison, gave him, and so he died." 



This is a strong confirmation of the statement 

 given by Sir Robert Naunton. 



In one of the many valuable notes appended by 

 Dr. Bliss to the Athence Oxonienses, is the follow- 

 ing cotemporary narrative, copied from a MS. 

 memoranda on a copy of Leicester's Ghost : 



"The author (of the poem) hath omitted the end of 

 the Earle, the which may thus and truely be supplied. 

 The Countesse Lettice fell in love with Christopher 

 Blunt, gent., of the Earle's horse ; and they had 

 many secret meetings, and much wanton familiarity ; 

 the which being discovered by the Earle, to prevent 

 the pursuit thereof, when Generall of the Low Coun- 

 treys, hee tooke Blunt with him, and theire purposed 

 to have him made away : and for this plot there was a 

 ruffian of Burgundy suborned, who, watching him in 

 one night going to his lodging at the Hage, followed 

 him and struck at his head with a halbert or battle-axe, 

 intending to cleave his head. But the axe glaunced, 

 and withall pared off a great piece of Blunt's skull, 

 which was very dangerous and longe in healinge : but 

 he recovered, and after married the Countesse ; who 

 took this soe ill, as that she, with Blunt, deliberated 

 and resolved to dispatch the Earle. The Earle, not 

 patient of this soe greate wrong of his wife, purposed 

 to carry her to Kenilworth ; and to leave here there untill 

 her death by naturall or by violent means, but rather 

 by the last. The Countesse also having a suspicion, 

 or some secret intelligence of this treachery against 

 her, provided artificiall meanes to prevent the Earle ; 

 which was by a cordiall, the which she had no fit op- 

 portunity to offer him till he came to Cornebury Hall, 

 in Oxfordshire ; where the Earle, after his gluttonous 

 manner, surfeiting with excessive eating and drinking, 

 fell soe ill that he was forced to stay there. Then the 

 deadly cordiall was propounded unto him by the 

 Countesse ; as Mr. William Haynes, sometimes the 

 Earle's page, and then gentlemau of his bed-chamber, 

 told me, who protested hee saw her give that fatal 1 cup 

 to the Earle, which was his last draught, and an end 

 of his plott against the Countesse, and of his journey, 

 and of himselfe ; and soe — Fraudis fraude sua prendi- 

 tur artifex." — Athena Oxon., vol. ii. col. 74, 75. note. 



Edward F. Rimbault. 



