204 



NOTES AND QUERIES. [2"-> s. vi. ui.. s«pt. ii. '58. 



Local Couplets. — " N. & Q." has recorded many 

 local couplets. The following are given by Mr. 

 White in his recently published tour, A Month in 

 Yorkshire : — 



" Penigent, Whernslde, and Ingleborough, 

 Are the three highest hills all England through." 



" Gooid, brade, hotter, and cheese, 

 Is gooid Yorkshire, and gooid Friese." 



" Cleveland in the clay. 

 Carry two shoon, bring one away." 



" Hutton, Rudb}', Entrepen, 

 Far more rogues than honest men." 



" When Rosebuiy Topping wears a cap, 

 Let Cleveland then beware a clap." 



" Coward, a coward of Barney Castel 

 Dare not come out to fight a battel." 



" Druid, Roman, Scandinavia, 

 Stone Raise on Addleboro." 



K. P. D. E. 



Topographical Desideratum. — An alphabetical 

 dictionary of all the rivers, lakes, and mountains in 

 Great Britain and Ireland ; the counties in which 

 the former rise, through which they pass, and 

 where they are lost in the ocean or lakes, their 

 length, &c. Such would form a small and ex- 

 tremely useful volume. 2. 



eaurrfcjf. 



HAD MAET, QUEEN OF SCOTS, A DAUGHTER ? 



It still appears to be an open question with 

 historians whether the lovely and unfortunate 

 Mary really had a daughter by her marriage with 

 Bothwell ? and I should like to see the point no- 

 ticed in the pages of " N. & Q." Believing, as I 

 myself do, in the fact, perhaps I may be allowed 

 to state a few of my grounds for this belief; and 

 before doing so I would remark, that the subject 

 was prominently brought to my notice a short time 

 ago when reading a work, entitled Arthur Blane, 

 by that entertaining writer Grant. In this tale 

 he alludes to the Abbess of the Ursuline convent at 

 Suzanne, in Loraine, in 1635, as " Mary Stuart," 

 called the "Mother of ihe Resurrection," being 

 then an aged nun, well known in France as the 

 daughter of Queen Mary, who had been mysteri- 

 ously kidnapped to France and placed in a con- 

 vent there ; it is also stated that she was " a lady 

 of a noble and magnificent presence." Now these 

 may be all fictions of the novelist's brain, and 

 merely given as incidents to enhance the interest 

 of his tale ; but I should like to be assured upon 

 this head, and whether Mr. Grant really had any 

 evidence of historical value regarding " that mys- 

 terious nun," of whose history, subsequently to 

 her arrival in France, all writers appear to be 

 ignorant. 



Queen Mary's marriage with Bothwell took 

 place on 15 May, 1567 ; in the following month 



she became a prisoner at Lochleven ; and on the 

 18 July, when the lords of the secret council sug- 

 gested to her the disavowal of this marriage, she 

 refused, being unable to consent to bastardise the 

 infant of whom she was then pregnant. Sir Ni- 

 cholas Throckmorton, the English ambassador, in 

 one of his letters to Queen Elizabeth, explicitly 

 mentions that Mary had given this reason for re- 

 fusing to renounce her husband. The passage in 

 his letter is as follows : — 



" I have also persuaded her to conform liorself to re- 

 nounce Bothwell for her husband, and to be contented to 

 suffer a divorce to pass betwixt them ; she hath sent me 

 word that she will in no ways consent to that, but rather 

 die; grounding herself upon this reason, taking herself to 

 be seven ivceks gone 7vith child, by renouncing Bothwell, 

 she would acknowledge herself to be with child of a bas- 

 tard, and to have forfeited her honour, which she will not 

 do to die for it. I have persuaded her, to save her own 

 life and his child, to choose the least hard condition." — 

 Cott. MSS., Caligula, C. i. fol. 18., British Museum, and 

 as printed in Appendix, No. xxxii., Robertson's Hislonj 

 of Scotland. 



Gilbert Stuart, who wrote in 1752, denied this 

 pregnancy ; but Dr. Lingard has stated the fact, 

 as certain, in his History of England ; and Prince 

 Labanoff, in his elaborate and exceedingly accu- 

 rate work, Recueil des Lettres de Marie Sluart, 

 Heine d'Ecosse (Londres, 7 tom., 8vo., 1845), also 

 reprodvices the statement as deserving of credit, 

 and even gives the nunth of February, 1568, as 

 the date of birth, at Lochleven Castle, of Clary's 

 infant daughter. The only contemporary histo- 

 rian, on whose authority the statement is founded, 

 was Michael de Castelnau, Seigneur de la Mau- 

 vissiere, in Touraine, a French diplomatist, who 

 was employed in various important political nego- 

 ciations by Kings Charles IX. and Henry III., 

 and chiefly in embassies to England ; to which 

 court he was accredited no less than five times. 

 On the last occasion, when he resided there for 

 ten years, he wrote his Memoirs, which contain 

 many interesting particulars relative to British 

 history, especially in reference to Queen Mary, 

 whom he had accompanied, after the death of her 

 first husband, Francis II., to Scotland, where he 

 remained for a whole year in 1561-62. His oppor- 

 tunities for obtaining authentic information of the 

 events of the time must have, therefore, been ex- 

 cellent; and after his death, in 1592, his Memoirs 

 were published first in 1 vol. 4to. ; and, after- 

 wards, at Paris, in 1659, in 2 vols, folio. The last 

 edition was edited by Jean le Labourejtr, himself 

 an author, as well as historian of great credit, 

 and the occupant of offices of trust at the French 

 court, having been royal councillor and almoner 

 to King Louis XIV., Prior of Juvignc, and com- 

 mander of the Order of S. Michael, in 1664 ; his 

 death occurred in June, 1675, at the age of fifty- 

 three. 



Laboureur's edition of the Memoirs of Castel- 

 nau contains many additions and emendations to 



