24
NOTES AND QUERIES, no s. VIL JAN. 12, 1907.
And shall Trelawny die, and shall Trelawny die ?
'Then thirty thousand Cornishmen will know the
reason why,
Is very much older, and is usually associatec with the arrest by James II. of Sir Jonathan Trelawny, Bishop of Bristol, one of " the Seven Bishops," in 1688. As sung at dinners of Cornishmen to-day whether held in or out of the " delectable Duchy " the number is accustomed to be given as twenty thou- sand ; but a curious piece of evidence has come to light which indicates that the idea of thirty thousand Cornishmen (the number adopted by Macaulay) being ready for some political fight or other was prevalent at the period of the Revolution.
In Michaelmas Term of 1693 an informa- tion was exhibited in the Crown Office against Richard Edgecombe for speaking and pub- lishing divers dangerous and seditious words against the Government of William and Mary in the October of that year, he sayin that he would fight for King James am endeavour to restore him, and that thirty thousand men were ready. For this he was bound to appear at the next assizes for Cornwall in 1694, holden at Launceston ; and, being thoroughly frightened, he peti- tioned their Majesties, in February, 1694, for a stay of proceedings. The matter was referred to the Attorney-General for report ; and that law officer had before him not only Edgecombe's original allegation that the prosecution appeared to be malicious, of which there seems no evidence, but a certificate from the accused attesting his loyalty, and alleging that he was greatly distempered by drink at the time. This combination of pleas weighed with the Attorney-General, who recommended the issue of a warrant for a cessat processus (' Domestic State Papers, William and Mary, 1694-5,' pp. 26, 191) ; and thus a trial ^was prevented which must have thrown some light upon the Jacobite movement then seething in Cornwall.
Who was this Richard Edgecombe, how- ever, is not obvious. He could scarcely have been Richard Edgcumbe, of Cotehele, 1st Baron Mount Edgcumbe, and only son of Sir Richard Edgcumbe, of Cotehele and Mount Edgcumbe, one of Charles II.'s Knights of the Bath (made so previously to the coronation in order to attend that ceremony), who had sat for Launceston in the Pensionary Parliament, elected in 1661, and had been returned for Cornwall in March, 1679, October, 1679, and 1681, dying in 1688. This Richard was baptized on 23 April, 1680, and therefore was no more I
than fourteen at the time of the record I
have quoted. But the Edgcumbe family
in the county was a large and popular one,
and among its members may well have been
another Richard to make the alleged vaunt.
DUNHEVED.
[That thirty thousand was the number familiar in 1772 is shown in the article by COL. PKIDEAUX on ' The Trelawny Ballad ' at 10 S. i. 83.]
KING'S ' CLASSICAL AND
FOREIGN QUOTATIONS.'
(See 10 S. ii. 281, 351 ; iii. 447.) UNDER 1558, " Misericordia Domini inter pontem et fontem," Mr. King refers to the 1636 (fifth) edition of Camden's ' Remaines,' where these words are ascribed to St. Augustine. The passage in the first edition (1605) is on p. 55 of ' Certaine Poemes,' &c., printed, with separate pagination, at the end of the book. The quotation, appa- rently, is not to be found in Augustine (see 8 S. viii. 518 ; ix. 258).
Camden presumably made up the ' Re- maines ' from notes which, in some instances, may have been many years old ; but, apart from the question of priority in time, it is worth pointing to the following :
" The mercy of God is never to be despayred of, put still to be expected, even inter pontem ef fontem, jiif/iil/rm ft (jladiuin" ' Diary of John Manningham, 1602-3,' Camden Soc., 1868, p. 9.
This seems to belong to the year 1602, and is among some brief notes of a sermon by a Mr. Phillips.
The interesting thing is that the fuller
'orm of the quotation in the ' Diary ' corre- sponds with that used by Robert Burton
' Anatomy of Melancholy,' near the end of Part I., p. .277 in the first edition, 1621) : " Thus of their goods and bodies we can dispose,
nit what shall become of their soules, God alone
- an tell, his mercy may come inter pontem et fontem,
nter yladium et iugulum."
As to Mr. Phillips the editor of the
Diary ' makes no suggestion, but one may
conjecture that he was Edward Philips,
' certaine Godly and learned " sermons of
horn, delivered in St. Saviour's, Southwark,
were taken down and afterwards published 1605) by Henry Yelverton, the future fudge. See Foster's ' Alumni Oxon.,'
70\. iii. p. 1156 (Edward Philipps), and
Bliss's edition of Wood's ' Athenae Ox- nienses,' vol. i. col. 739 (Edward Philips,
who died, says Wood, " as I guess, in. 1603,
or thereabouts ").
I have looked through the sermons, but
