Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 4.djvu/189

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12 s. iv. JULY, 1918.] NOTES AND QUERIES.


183


striking ones from the King's camp. In th Bodleian MS. Rawl. B. 225, f. 56, we hav< a passage in Hearne's handwriting, copiec from a lost section of Anthony Wood's diary :

" 15 July [1643]. Saturday, all common souldiers at Oxford were newe apparrelled : some all in red, coates, breeches, and mounteers ; anc -some all in blue."

What a sight for " corbels in stone " to " look down " upon ! Fighting persons in red from scalp to shin surely never appeared anywhere else on this planet.

An almost exactly contemporaneous in stance is supplied by a Catholic Cavalier William Blundell of Crosby Hall, Lanes In 1642 (at Edgehill ?), when he was two and-twenty, his thigh was broken by a cannon-ball, and he was crippled for life Nine years later he wrote to his sister-in-law Margaret Haggerston :

" You remember what a pretty, straight young thing, all dashing in scarlet, I came to Haggerston when you saw me last ? But now, if you chance to hear a thing come thump-thump up the stairs (like a knocker, God bless us ! at midnight), do not fear ; for all that, the thing is no goblin, but the very party we talk of ! " From an article in The Month, 1878-9, by the Rev. T. E. Gibson, who does not reproduce the spelling of the original.

To ME. BAYLEY'B notes on the Parlia- ment regiments in red, or with red facings, may be appended the fact that the Re- storation unexpectedly favoured red as much as did the Protectorate. In 166S the First or King's Own Regiment of Infantry sported " red coats turned up with light blue", (horrors!); and the Second Regiment, the Lord General Monck's, had red jackets with green facings. The first company of Bodyguards wore vainglorious scarlet jackets faced with blue and laced in gold ; the second company marched in the same chaste attire, minus the gold lace.

  • The Independent Redcoat,' a satirical

song published in ' The Loyal Garland,' 1678, by " S. N., a Lover of Mirth," has no pertinence to its date, as the context dates it clearly from the Commonwealth.

A nice instance, comparatively modern, is Dryden translating the Tenth of Juvenal in 1692, in the free spirit of contemporary adaptation. He de-latiriates his moneyed man sufficiently to make him

Shake at the moonshine shHdow of a rush, And see a Redcoat rise from every bush !

By 1692 the synonymous use of " redcoat " and " soldier " had been established if we take Percy for a witness for nearly a century. L. I. GUINEY.


ROBERT DEVEREUX, EARL OF ESSEX : BURIAL, m WESTMINSTER ABBEY.

" 1646. Oct. 19. Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex, in St. John Baptist's Chapel, in a vault on the right side of the Earl of Exeter's monument."

This entry in the Register (Harleian Society, edited by Col. Chester, p 141) receives an interesting illustration from the catalogue of the collection of pictures bequeathed by William Cartwright to Dulwich College:

" No. 184. The old man that demolished the Earl of Essex in the Abbey of Westminster with a hattich ; in a black frame."

The uncertain word " hattich " may be read as " hatchet " or "hatchment," because it is not clear what was demolished. Dean Stanley wrote (' Historical Memorials of Westminster Abbey,' 8th ed., p. 206, note) :

" In Dulwich Gallery there was long possessed a portrait of the old man who demolished with an axe the monument of the Earl of Essex in Westminster Abbey."

Apparently, the interpolation of the words "the monument of " is not justified; it is opposed to the contemporary account of the funeral and what followed cited by this historian of the Abbey. The hearse was unusually splendid, but in the night (by some " rude vindictive fellows who got into the church," variously suspected to be Cavaliers or Independents) the head of the effigy was broken, the buff coat which Essex had worn at Edgehill was slit, " the scarlet breeches were cut, the white boots slashed, and the sword taken away."

We may therefore infer that the old man whose portrait was preserved at Dulwich demolished the effigy of the Earl of Essex. ALECK ABRAHAMS,

CUMULATIVE STORIES. It may be interesting to some of your readers to know that I have recently come across an allusion to this class of stories of considerably earlier date than any English reference to them bhat I have seen recorded. It appears in

Vindiciae Academiarum, containing some ariefe Animadversions upon Mr. Webster's Book stiled " The Examination of Aca- demies," ' by N. S. (John Wilkins, D.D., afterwards Bishop of Chester) and H. D.

Seth Ward, D.D., afterwards Bishop of Salisbury) : Oxford, printed by Leonard ~ichfield, Printer to the University, for Thomas Robinson, 1C54.

On p. 23 is the following :

" How great a favourer of Sciences Mr. Webster s will appeare in this, that in every chapter his Discourse (If I may be bold to call it so without