74 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



[No. 35. 



Sir George Buc. Now it mtist be remembered 

 that the MS. dedication was written in 1605, and 

 the history after 1660! Surely an interval of 

 fiftij'jioe years must have made some difference in 

 the penmanship of the worthy Master of the Revela. 

 I think we must receive the comparison of hand- 

 writings with considerable caution ; and, nnless 

 gome of your readers can produce " new evidence " 

 in favour of one or other of the claimants, I much 

 fear that your reverend correspondent will have 

 to exclaim with Master Ford in the play, — 



"Buck. I would I could wash myself of the Buck!" 



Edward F. Rimbaclt. 



I am not quite certain that I can satisfactorily 

 answer Mr. Corser's query ; but at least I am 

 able to show that a Sir George Buck, seised in 

 fee of lands in Lincolnshire, did die in or about 

 1623. In the Report Office of the Court of Chan- 

 cery is a Report made to Lord Keeper Williams 

 by Sir Wm. Jones, who had been Lord Chief 

 Justice in Ireland, dated the 10th Nov. 1623, re- 

 specting a suit referred to him by the Lord Keeper, 

 in which Stephen Buck was plaintiff and Robert 

 Such defendant. It this report is contained a 

 copy of the will of Sir George Buck, whom I 

 supposed to be tlie Sir George Buck, the Master 

 of the Revels ; and the will containing a singular 

 clause, disinheriting his brother Robert because 

 he was alleged to be a Jesuit, and it having been 

 supposed that Sir George Buck died intestate, I 

 published an extract from it in my Acta Cancellarice 

 (Benning, 1 847). On further examination of the 

 whole of the document in question, I find it dis- 

 tinctly stated, and of course that statement was 

 made on evidence adduced, that Sir George Buck 

 was seised in fee of certain lands and tenements 

 in Boston and Skydbrooke, both of which places, 

 I need scarcely say, are in Lincolnshire. It is 

 therefore, at least, not improbable that the testator 

 was a native of Lincolnshire. It also appears that 

 the proceedings in Chancer^' were instituted pre- 

 viously to June, 1623; and, inasmuch as Sir 

 George Buck's will is recited in those proceedings, 

 he must have died before they were commenced, 

 and not in September, 1623, as I once supposed. 

 It may, perhaps, aid Mr. Corser's researches to 

 know that the will (which is not to be found at 

 Doctors' Commons) mentions, besides the brothei 

 Robert, a sister, Cecilia Buck, who had a son, 

 Stephen, who had a son, George Buck, whom his 

 great uncle. Sir George, made ultimate heir to his 

 lands in Lincolnshire. Cecil Monro. 



Registrars' Office, Court of Chancery. 



" A FHOG HE WOULD A-WOOING GO." 



Your Sexagenarian who dates from " Shooter's 

 Hill," has not hit the mark when he suggests that 



Anna Bouleyn's marriage with Henry VIII. (in 

 the teeth of the Church) is the hidden mystery of 

 the popular old song, — 



" Sir Frog he would a-wooing go. 

 Whether his mother was willing or no." 



That some courtship in the history of the British 

 monarchy, leaving a deep impression on the public 

 mind, gave rise to this generally diffused ballad, is 

 exceedingly probable ; but the style and wording 

 of the song are evidently of a period much later 

 than the age of Henry VIII. Might not the mad- 

 cap adventure of Prince Charles with Buckingham 

 into Spain, to icoo the Infanta, be its real origin ? 

 "Heigho! for Antony Rowley" is the chorus. Now 

 "Old Rowley" was a pet name for Charles the 

 Second, as any reader of the Waverley Novels 

 must recollect. No event was more likely to be 

 talked about and sung about at the time, the 

 adventurous nature of the trip being peculiarly 

 adapted to the ballad-monger. Francis Mahosy. 



'■'■AFrog he would a-wooing go" (Vol. ii., p. 45.) — 

 Your correspondent T. S. i). is certainly right in 

 his notion that the ballad of " A frog he would 

 a-wooing go " is very old, however fanciful may be 

 his conjecture about its personal or political appli- 

 cation to Henry VIII. and Anne Boleyn. That 

 it could not refer to " the Cavaliers and the 

 Roundheads," another of T. S. D.'s notions, is clear 

 from the fact, that it was entered at Stationers' 

 Hall in November, 1581 ; as appears by the quota- 

 tion made by Mr. Payne Collier, in his second 

 volume of Extracts, printed for the Shakspeare 

 Society last year. It runs thus : — 



" Edward White. Lycensed unto him, &c., theis iiij. 

 ballads followinge, that is to saie, A moste strange 

 wt'ddinge of the I'rogge and the mowse," &c. 



Upon this entry Mr. Collier makes this note : 

 " The ballad can hardly be any other than the still 



well-known comic song ' A Frog he would a-wooing 



go.'" 



It may have been even older than 1581, when 

 Edward White entered it ; for it is possible that it 

 was then only a reprint of an earlier production. 

 I, like Mr. Collier, have heard it sung " in our 

 theatres and streets," and, like T. S. D., always 

 fancied that it was ancient. 



The Hermit of Holtport. 



Roivley Powley. — As generally inclined to the 

 belief that everything is older than anybody 

 knows of, I am rather startled by " Rowley Pow- 

 ley" not being as old as myself. I remember 

 seeing mentioned somewhere, without any refer- 

 ence to this chorus, that rowley potcley is a name 

 for a plump fowl, of which both "gammon and 

 spinach" are posthumous connexions. I cannot 

 help thinking that this may be a clue to some 

 prior occurrence of the chorus, with or without 



