Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 9.djvu/518

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NOTES AND QUERIES. [9* s.ix. JUNE 23,1902.


to the house of Sir John, where there was jousting going on all day. They tell me that after dinner the lady Regina made a present to the bride of a thousand gold ducats in a vase. The Signor Marco gave her a zardino of pearls, worth three hundred ducats, and the Signor Luigi* a gift of pearls of the same value, and in like manner did many of the nobles. So much silver was offered in largesse to the Englishmen, that it is estimated at the value of a thousand ducats. I have heard that Sir John Hawk wood was near Parma on Thursday, and according to what Signor Bernabo Visconti told me, amongst other things, he will soon be starting towards Modena with his English soldiers."

The honeymoon seems to have been passed at Cremona, where Hawkwood was making preparations for war.

Three daughters, Janet, Catherine, and Anna, were born of this marriage ; also a son, John Hawkwood, who succeeded his father in 1394. He came to England, and was knighted by Henry IV. in 1407. This worthy gentleman seems to have led an uneventful life. It is recorded that in 1409 he had property at Padbury in Buckingham- shire, and that he married a certain Margaret, with whom he lived to extreme old age. In 1464 they were living at Sible Hedingham, where they enjoyed the lifehold possession of eighty acres of land. Their daughter Beatrix Hawkwood married John Shelley, Esq., M.P. for Rye, in Sussex, in the reign of Henry VI. From them are descended both branches of the Shelley family. It will be seen that MR. BAYLEY has made a slight error in stating that Beatrix was the daughter of the famous Sir John Hawkwood (Giovanni Acuto). She was his granddaughter.

I am indebted for whatever information I may possess on this subject to that great scholar and distinguished Englishman John Temple Leader, who has written a copious and trustworthy life of my maternal ancestor Hawkwood, the most famous condottiere of the fourteenth century.

RICHARD EDGCUMBB.

Edgbarrow, Crowthorne, Berks.

Supplementary to MR. A. R. BAYLEY'S very interesting note, it may be well to observe that Shelley could well afford to be no re- specter of pedigrees without shocking the believer in the value of a noble descent. For besides his Sidney ancestry he was looked upon and rightly as a descendant of the same stock that produced the Lords Buck- hurst, Cranfield, Bolebroke, and Sackville, the Viscounts Cantelupe and Bolebroke, the


  • Marco and Luigi were two of the legitimate sons

of Bernabo Visconti, Lord of Milan. At that epoch they held Parma as an appanage, in common with their brothers Rodolfo and Carlo ('Life of Sir John Hawkwood,' by John Temple Leader).


Earls of Dorset, Middlesex, Plymouth, and De la Warr, and the Dukes of Dorset. For Henry Shelley, son of Edward Shelley and his second wife, Joan Iden, of Penshurst, married Anne, daughter and heiress of Richard Sack- ville, great-uncle of Thomas, first Earl of Dorset, from whom, in the male or female line, all the above-mentioned peers descended. From Henry Shelley and his wife Anne Sack- ville descended John Shelley, of Fenn Place (died 1739), father of Timothy (died 1770), father of Sir Bysshe (died 1815), father of Sir Timothy, father of the poet.

RONALD DIXON.

MR. BAYLEY remarks that " Hawkwood was captain of the White Company, which fought for the Visconti of Milan "; and " his bones lie, probably, in his ancestral church of Sible Hedingham, Essex." This information anent the burial-place of Sir John Hawkwood is not supported by Susan and Joanna Homer's charming 'Walks in Florence' (Strahan & Co., 1873), from which I quote the following (vol. i. pp. 69, 70) :

"Uccelli's most celebrated work in the Cathedral represents Sir John Hawkwood, or, as he was better known in Italy, Giovanni Aguto, who wan a tailor from Essex in England. He served as an archer in the English wars against France. He wandered into Italy at the head of a lawless band of English lancers and adventurers. Hawkwood received the sobriquet of Falcone del Bosco (Hawk of the Wood) from the rapidity of his movements. After ravishing Tuscany, when commander of the Papal troops, he served the Florentines with equal fidelity, and when in 1394 he died in a villa outside the city, the grateful citizens spared no expense in his obsequies, causing his body to be wrapped in a cloth of gold, and to be laid in state in the Piazza della Signora, whence it was conveyed to the Cathe- dral and buried beneath the choir. The Signory decreed that a splendid monument of marble should be erected to his memory, and assigned dowries to his daughters. The monument, however, was never executed, but his portrait, painted by Paolo Uccelli, in terra-verde, was placed on the facade of the Cathedral. This portrait was originally in fresco, but has since been transferred to canvas, in which operation it sustained much damage."

HENRY GERALD HOPE.

[Hawkwood died at his house called Polverosa, in the suburb of Florence known as San Donate di Torre. His monument in the Duomo was on the north side of the choir.]

"FRIEZE" (9 th S. ix. 383). Kluge (s.v. 'Fries') assumes that the German word Fries (" grobe Art Wollenzeug ") was borrowed from the French word /me, which comes from the Germanic : cf. A.-S./me, "gelockt"; Eng., to friz, frizzle. I know that some etymologists connect with this word " to freeze," i.e., to crinkle up, and the Frisians have been held to = Cincinnati. See also Ducange, under