Oct. 25. 1851.] 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



319 



corresponds in use and signification witli the terms 

 rustic and chaw-bacon,\v\nc\\ distinguish the natives 

 of the provinces; the Litter term being exclusively 

 appropriated to agriculturalists. Epithets, appa- 

 rently of similar origin, exist in the seaman's land- 

 lubber, the landsman's jack-tar, the Englishman's 

 froggy, and the Frenchman's ras-bif. 



Londoners themselves appear to have a theo- 

 retical notion that the inhabitants of Belgravia, 

 and other enlightened metropolitan districts, are 

 strictly entitled to the designation cockney, in 

 virtue of their birth and residence within the 

 sound of Bow-bells; but practically limit its appli- 

 cation to those members of the lower, and more 

 ignorant classes of the community, who tradition- 

 ally retain some of the obsolete idioms, and other 

 peculiarities of speech, of our Anglo-Saxon fore- 

 fathers. A LONDONEK. 



SIE EDMUND PiOWDEN OR PLOYDEN. 



(Vol. iv., p. 58.) 



For the information of your correspondent A 

 Transatlantic Reader, I beg to inform him 

 that Sir Edmund Plowdcn or Ployden was 2nd 

 son of Francis Plowden of Plowden, Salop, and 

 Shiplake in Berks : a family whicli can claim its 

 descent from the Saxon kinjis of Enfifland: and 

 by a Saxon charter, granting lands in Salop 

 to the family, that the family had large estates in 

 that remote period. The Saxon derivation of the 

 name (from the Saxon Plcan deen, or kill the 

 Dane) alone shows tliegreat antiquity of the family; 

 and there are few, if any, families in England v/ho 

 have retained their ancestral property so direct in 

 the male line as this family. It is also con- 

 nected with some of the oldest and noljlest families 

 in England — the Howards and Stailbrds are allied 

 to this family by intermarriages. In the reigu of 

 Richard I. Sir Roger de Plow<ien was a crusader ; 

 and for his heroic conduct at the siege of Acre, 

 was knighted, and also permitted by the king to bear 

 on his shield the royal arms, \.\\^tjie.ur de lis, which 

 is retained to this day. In 9 Eduard II., John de 

 Plowden was by parliamentary writ, signed at 

 Clopstow 5th March, called to parliament as one 

 of the lords of the township of Plowden, Salop. 

 Edmund Plowden, the great lawyer in Edw. VI. 

 and Elizabeth's reigns, who was in those times 

 called the oracle of the law, was enrolled among 

 Fuller's Worthies of England, with Camden's 

 Latin verses on him : " Vita; integritati inter 

 homines suae professionis nuUi secundus." 



He was olfered by Elizaljcth, whose autograph 

 letter was until recently in tiie possension of the 

 family, the Lord Ciiancellorship of England, with 

 a peerage, if lie would give up his creed as Catho- 

 lic and turn Protestant; which he declined, pre- 

 ferring to abide by his moral convictions of the 

 truthfulness of what he deemed his faith to worldly 



honour and aggrandisement. Sir Edmund died 

 at Wanstead, county of Southampton, in 1659 ; 

 and in possession of large estates in eleven parishes 

 in England, besides his American province of 

 New Albion. To each of these parishes he leaves 

 by his will of 1655 a sum of money to be paid 

 " eight days after his demise, and directs to be 

 burted in the chapel of the Plowdens at Lydbury, 

 in Salop ; a stone monument, witli an inscription 

 in brass bearing the names of his children, and 

 another with his correct pedigree as drawn out at 

 his house at Wanstead." He appears to have 

 gone to America about the year 1620, and re- 

 inaiued there, in Virginia and New England, till 

 about 1630. "While there, his sister Ann was 

 married to Sir Arthur Lake, son of Sir Thomas 

 Lake, then Secretary of State to James I. ; and 

 through whose influence, we presume, on his re- 

 turn to England he was introduced to the great 

 Lord Strafford, with whom it is believed he pro- 

 ceeded to Ireland ; for in the Heralds' Visitation 

 of Salop, 1632, {vide Sims' H. Vist., Brit. Mus.), he 

 is entered in the Plowden pedigree as being then in 

 Ireland. By the Strafford State Papers it appears 

 that in this year he made petition to Charles I. 

 through Lord Strafford, then Lieut, and Capt.- 

 General of Ireland, lor the colonising of New 

 Albion : — 



" Near the continent of Virginia, sixty leagues N. 

 from James City, without the Bay of Chesapeake, there 

 is a habitable and fruitful island, named Isle Plowden, 

 otherwise Long Isle, with other small isles between 

 30° and 40° of lat., about six leagues from the main, 

 near De la Warre Bay, whereof Your Majesty, nor any 

 of your Progenitors, were ever possessed of any estate, 

 &c. ... to enable the petitioners, tlieir heiis and as- 

 signs, for ever to enjoy the said Isle, and forty leagues 

 square of the adjoining continent, as in the nature of a 

 County Palatine or Body Politick, by the name of 

 New Alliion, to be held of your Majesty's Crown of 

 Ireland, exempt from all ajjpeal to the Governor of 

 Virginia, and with such other additions, privileges, and 

 dignities therein, to be given to Sir Edmund Plow- 

 den, like has been heretofore granted to Sir George 

 Calvert, Knight, late Lord Calvert, in Newfoundland, 

 together with the usual grants and privileges that other 

 Colonies have for governing, &c., and we agree to 

 settle with 500 inhabitants." 



The king's warrant was given at Oatlands 

 24th July, 1632, granting the whole asked for, 

 under the Great Seal of Ireland, signed by John 

 Coke. Between this ]ieriod and 1634, Sir Edmund 

 was engaged in fulfilling the conditions of the 

 warrant by carrying out the colonisation by in- 

 denture?, which were executed and enrolled in 

 Dublin, and St. IVlary's in Maryland in America. 

 In Dublin the parties were Viscount Musherry, 

 100 planters; Lord Monson, 100 planters; Sir 

 Thomas Denby, 100 planters; Captain Clay borne 

 (of American notoriety) 50 ; Captain Balls ; and 

 amounting in all to 540 colonisers, beside others in 



