268 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



[No. 75. 



He was chairman of a committee in 1642 for con- 

 sidering the rates upon iiihiml letters ; anil after- 

 wards (1644) appointed Postmaster, in the execu- 

 tion of which office he first established a weekly 

 conveyance of letters into all parts of the nation. 

 Prior to this, letters were sent by special messen- 

 gers, or postmasters, whose duty it was to supply 

 relays of horses at a certain mileage. {Blachsioiie^ 

 book i. c. 8. s. 3.) 



I am unable to discover when Edmund Pridenux 

 died; but it appears that either he, or one of his 

 descendants, took part in the rising of the Duke 

 of Monmouth in the West of England, upon which 

 occasion the "gre:it estate" was found of great 

 service in providing a bribe for Lord Jeffreys. 

 In the Life of Lord Jeffreys, annexed to the 

 Western Martyrologij ; or. Bloody Assizes (oth 

 ed. 2o6. London, 1705), it is said that " A western 

 gentleman's purchase came to fifteen or sixteen 

 hundred guineas, which my Lord Chancellor had." 

 And Rapin, vol. ii. p. 270., upon the authority of 

 Echard, iii. p. 775., states that in 1685 one Mr. 

 Prideaux, of Ford Abbey, Somerset, gave Jeffreys 

 14000/. [probably misprint for 1400/.] " to save liis 

 life." 



I think it likely that your correspondent may 

 find further information upon the subject of this 

 note, in the Life of Dr. Humphrey Prideaux, Dean 

 of Norwich (born 1648, died 1724), published in 



1748. J. B. COLMAN. 



Eye, March 18. 1851. 



Polwhele was clearly wrong in designating 

 Edmund Prideaux, the Attorney-General, a Cnr- 

 nishnian, as he belonged to the family long seated 

 in Devonshire, and was fourteenth in descent from 

 lliekedon Prideaux, of Orchai ton, in that county, 

 second son of Nicholas, lord of Prideaux, in 

 Cornwall, who died in 1169. 



The four Queries of G. P. P. may be more or 

 less fully answered by reference to Prince's 

 Worthies of Devon, ed. 1810, p. 651.; and an ex- 

 cellent history of the Post-olHce in the Penny 

 Magazine for 1834, p. 33. 



Is it too much to aslc of your correspondent, 

 who writes from Putney under my initials, that he 

 will be so good as to change his signature ? I 

 think that I have strong reasons for the re({uest, 

 but I will only urge that I was first in the field, 

 under the designation which he has adopted.* 



J. D. S. 



* [Would .T. D. S. No 1, and J. D. S. No. 2, add the 

 final letter of tluir respective names, h n s y, or wli;it- 

 ever it may be, the dithciilty may prob;ibly he avoided. 

 We have now so m;iny correspondents that coincidence 

 of signature can scarcely be avoided.] 



LADY JANE OP WESTMOREIiAND. 



(Vol. i., p. 103.; Vol. ii., p. 485.) 



Jane., Countess of Henry Neville, fifth Earl of 

 Westmoreland, was daughter of Sir Roger Cholm- 

 li;y, of Kinthorpe and Roxby, co. York. {Vis. 

 York. Harl. MS. 1 487. fol. 354.) She is often 

 confused with his other wife, Anne Manners, and 

 also with her own sister, Margaret Gascoigne, both 

 in the Neville and Cholinley pedigrees as printed. 

 (Burke's Extinct Baronetage, art. Cholmley, and 

 Extinct Peerage, art. Neville.) But while the 

 Manners pedigree in Collins's Peerage (by Long- 

 mate, vol. i. p. 433.), as cited by Q. D., removes 

 the former difficulty, that of Gascoigne is dis- 

 posed of by the Cholmley pedigree in Harl. MS. 

 above quoted, as well as by that (though otherwise 

 very incorrect) in Charlton's Whitby, book iii. pp. 

 290, 291. 313., and by the Gascoigne pedigree in 

 Whitaker's Richmondshire, vol. i. p. 77. Thus we 

 possess legal and cotemporary evidence who Jank, 

 Countess of Henry, fifth Earl of Westmoreland, 

 really was, without any authentic obstacle or \n\- 

 removoable contradiction to its reception, viz. that 

 she was a Cholmley. 



But I conceive your correspondent's identifi- 

 cation is totally erroneous. It is true he only puts 

 an hypothesis on the subject; but this hypothesis 

 has no solid foundation. In the first place, Henry, 

 fifth Earl of Westmoreland, died in 1549 ; and 

 all authorities seem to agree that his first wife was 

 Anne Manners, and his second Cholmley 's daugh- 

 ter. Thus, if either of his countesses were living 

 in 1585, it must have been the latter, by which 

 means all chance of appropriation is removed from 

 Manners to Cholmley. But I shall now give 

 reasons for cotitending that neither of these ladies 

 was your correspondent's Countess of Westmore- 

 land, by referring him (2ndly) to Longmate's Col- 

 lins s Peerage, vol. i. p. 96., where he will find that 

 J'ine, daughter of Henry Howard, the talented and 

 accomplished Earl of Suri-y, married Charles Ne- 

 ville, sixth Earl of Westmoreland. He has evidently 

 passed her over, through seeing her called Anne in 

 the Neville pedigrees; "Anne" and "Jane" being 

 often mutually misread in old writing, from the 

 ci'oss upon the initial letter of the last name. 



I offer it to your correspondent's consideration, 

 whether his " Jane, Countess of Westmoreland," 

 was not wife of the said Charles Neville, sixth 

 Earl of Westmoreland, who was attainted 18 Eliz. 

 (1575-6). His date is evidently most favourable 

 to this view. It is true the attainder stands in the 

 way ; but if even this affords an obstacle, the next 

 candidate for appropriation would be Jane Cholm- 

 ley. Assuming, however, that your correspondent 

 allows this lady as a candidate for the appropria- 

 tion, her pedigree corroborates the claim. I have 

 found, by hmg and minute observation, that here- 

 ditary talent, &c. usually descends by the mesmeric 



