GENT. MAG. JUNE 1837, Page 589. COURT OF KING EDWARD THE CONFESSOR. (FROM MR DGAR TAYLOR'S CHRONICLE OF MASTER WACK.) GENTLEMAN'S MAGAZINE. JUNE, 1837. BY SYLVANUS URBAN, GENT. CONTENTS. MINOR CORRESPONDENCE-Letter on the Death of Charles II.-Date of Sir T. Families of Ashby and Stewkley. - Historical More's Chancellorship. PAGE Queries ...... 526 ON THE CHURCH COMMISSION 563 JOHNSONIANA 578 Timber Roof of Westminster Hall.-The Works of John Barclay 583 584 Goldsmith's intercourse with Voltaire .. ib. Roman Sepulchral Monuments found near Cirencester (with a Plate) POETRY.-Stanzas translated from the Jocelyn of La Martine.. Stanzas to a Butterfly, by the late Baron Smith..... RETROSPECTIVE REVIEW.-May's History of Parliament REVIEW OF NEW PUBLICATIONS. Journal of the Rev. John Paterson, 601.-Jardine on the Use of Torture in FINE ARTS.-Royal Academy, &c. LITERARY AND SCIENTIFIC INTELLIGENCE. 626, 627 628 New Publications, 631.-Learned Societies, Literary Institutions, &c. .... 632 ANTIQUARIAN RESEARCHES.-Society of Antiquaries, 640.—Stone Coffins found in Cheapside... .... HISTORICAL CHRONICLE.- Proceedings in Parliament, 642.- Foreign 640 650 651 ... 664 CLERGY DECEASED, 665.DEATHs, arranged in Counties. . . . . MINOR CORRESPONDENCE. 4 J. G. N. remarks: "I have seen the original of a letter printed in Ellis's Original Letters, 1st Series, vol. iii. p. 333, relat ing to the death of King Charles the Second, and accession of King James. It is now in the possession of Mr. C. J. Smith, the engraver of Historical and Literary Curiosities,' &c. There are numerous trifling variations in the orthography, but not worth particularizing, The doubtful word in p. 338 is neither men nor money, but is nearly worn out; nor is the word governing (in the same sentence) that which was written. Half the seal remains, displaying this coat, a cross between four fleurs de lis, which, if it should lead to the discovery of the writer, would be satisfactory, as the letter is so important. The address is 'To the Rev. Mr. Francis Roper, fellow of St. John's College, in Cambridge;' and there is a memorandum on the back, What you finde here about Church and State is confirm'd by publiq and private Lett's. Send this back again. T. S.'" J. J. L. is right in stating that Dugdale (in his Chronica Series) mistook, or miscalculated, the year in which Sir Thomas More received the Great Seal; and it is equally true that Dugdale's error has mis. led many subsequent writers. The date stands erroneously, 1530, in the Biographia Britannica; in Chalmers's Biog. Dict.; in Singer's edition of Roper's Life of More, p. 38 n., and in the biography in Lodge's Portraits, Dr. Lewis has even not hesitated to alter the date of some public injunctions issued by Archbishop Warham, which in the body of the document are mentioned to be made the 24th of May 1530, to that of the 24th of May 1531, because, as he says, "amongst the persons present is Sir Thomas More, Knt. great Chancellor of England, and it is known that he was not so till Oct. 25, 1530." (History of the English Translations of the Bible, p. 75, edit. 1818.) Rymer, however, had published in the Foedera, vol. XIV. p. 349, the entry from the Close Rolls relating to the delivery of the Great Seal to More, and placed it correctly in 1529 (Oct. 25). Some recent authors have gone to this, the fountain head, and have consequently avoided the old mistake. Thus, in Hunter's edition of Cresacre More's Life of More (p. 184, n.) the date is correct; so it is also in Sir James Mackintosh's Life of More, p. 60; and in our own article upon the More Chapel, at Chelsea Church, Gent. Mag. O.S. Dec. 1833, p. 482. The information given by J. J. L. is therefore not altogether new, although we are not aware that any one has hitherto directly pointed out the mistake and its origin.-J. J. L. also states that there is a MS. copy of Cresacre More's Life of Sir Thomas in the Middle Temple Library, amongst the Petyt MSS. Div. 9, shelf 6, no. 538, vol. 45. II. G. is desirous of obtaining any information relative to an alliance between the family of Ashby, of Harefield, Middlesex, and that of Stewkley. The latter is supposed to be of the family of William S. citizen of London (probably descended of Devon), one of whose daughters married Robert Cherry of Camberwell. (Collec. Top. et Gen. vol. iii. p. 159.) In a description of the Ashby mansion, given in Gent. Mag. for Sept. 1823, the first four unappropriated quarterings of the shield assigned to Ambrose Dudley Earl of Warwick, 1569 (the armories being sadly jumbled), are evidently those of the Stewkleys of Devonshire, being the coats of Manyford, Cantelupe, &c.; but the Visitations do not afford any evidence of an intermarriage between the families. In contradiction to a printed account of the baronet's family of Ashby in the Baronetage, edit. 1727, it may be stated that there was but one baronet of this family, Sir Francis, who dying in 1623, left a widow, Joane. It is highly probable she was a Stewkley. HISTORICUS remarks: In Birch's historical view of the negotiations between England, France, and Brussels, p. 115, the following passage occurs, in a letter from Sir Robert Cecil and Sir Thomas Wylkes to the Lords of the Council, 23d March, 1598, containing the account of their conference with Henry the Fourth of France: " He heard all this with great attention, and answered me (Cecil) first, that he was glad I was not a Venetian, and that he loved to negotiate with the Earl of Essex, for he did leave circum stances so as he saw we served a wise Prince; rhetoric was for pedants." Can any of your correspondents account for the use of the term Venetian? Does Henry the Fourth vaguely allude to the craftiness of Italian diplomacy, or does he refer to any particular transaction with Venice?-In a letter from the same Cecil, printed in p. 482 of Mrs. Thomson's Life of Sir Walter Raleigh, the Secretary has this passage, in reference to an accusation against Sir John Gilbert for extracting or misappropriating part of the cargo of a carrack captured from the Spaniards: "I assure you, on my faith, I do think him wrong in this; howsoever, in others he may have done like a Devonshire man." What is meant here? ERRATUM. P. 446 a. line 1, for Yufton read Tufton, GENTLEMAN'S MAGAZINE. 1. The Ecclesiastical Commission and the Universities, in a letter to a Friend. by Christ. Wordsworth, D.D. &c. 2d. edit. 1837. 2. A Letter to Archibald Singleton, by Rev. S. Smith. 3d. edit. 1837. 3. Letter of a Conservative on the English Church, by W. S. Landor. 1836. 4. Further Observations on the last Report of the Church Commissioners, &c. by Rev. W. L. Bowles, Canon Res. of Sarum. "LET no one (says Machiavel) who begins an innovation in a state, expect that he shall stop it at his pleasure, or regulate it according to his intention." The experience of the Florentine has been too accurately approved, in the innovations of the Church, consequent on the proceedings of the New Commission. Changes one after another, the most violent, unnecessary, and contradictory, have been proposed. The very constitution of the Church has been altered; patronage has been transferred without reason, and power assumed without just pretence. Where reform was indeed wanted, nothing has been done;* where no one called for it or expected it,-old safeguards have been removed, old institutions destroyed, and old connexions severed. "When the Bishops themselves (says Dr. Wordsworth, p. 44,) help to pull down the Church, it must expect to rise up no more.' This alarming rage for attacking the various parts of our ancient and venerable fabric, and pulling down and remodelling what required a gentle, a soft, and skilful hand only to repair,† and certain other things connected with the situation of the Commissioners themselves, and their official interests; together with a generally consentient feeling of the unbecoming haste and hurry in which such momentous changes are proposed, and the entire exclusion of the body of the Clergy, dignified and parochial, as well as of the general bench of Bishops, from all share in the formation of laws that were deeply to affect themselves; and, lastly, the conviction that great part of the proposed alterations would be prejudicial to, nay destructive of, some of the highest interests of the Church and State, have called forth un "I want (says Cowper in one of his Letters) no reform in the Church, but that the poorer clergy should be better paid." What has been done by the Commission for this its chief purpose? or did the Commission expostulate with the Minister who proposed his plan of drawing from the Church Rate that very fund, and absorbing it all; which, insufficient as it was, was all that was set aside for the increase of the small livings? Did the Commission remonstrate? "The Commissioners have done a great deal too much! like the constitutionmakers in England and France, there is no end to their repeated suggestions." See the last pages of Mr. Benson's pamphlet, pp. 32, 33, for some excellent observations on this part of the subject." I cannot help thinking that the Commissioners have done a great deal too much." S. Smith, p. 5.-What consideration has been paid to what Dr. Wordsworth calls, "the soundness of testamentary bequests, the religion of endowments, the prerogative of charters, the obligation of contracts and statutes, and the awful sanctities and denunciations of solemn dedication."-(p. 6.) The an act of robQuarterly Review openly calls the invasion of the Chapter property, bery." Quære, who are the robbers?-(p. 200.) Again, p. 237," the first proposal is a proposal of robbery." P. 252. “If the spoliation is effected, it must be by an act of force," &c. |