260
NOTES AND QUERIES. [11 s. x. SEPT. -20,
invaluable to the historian, have unfortunat< ly
for the most part disappeared.
\\V are told," says Mr. Penry Lewis, "by S.i.ir, a (M -rnian soldier in the Dutch Com- pany's service, that the Dutch sailors broke Tip the tombstones in the churches and in a monastery outside the Fort of Jaffna, and used the pieces to load their mortal's with, and that these missiles were daily thrown into the town along with the grenades, and proved most destruc- tive, so that the Portuguese were destroyed by the tombs of their progenitors and relativs which they had piously erected to their memory. iJVithin the last quarter of a century, if the statements in the Jornal des Colonws of Septem- ber 27, 1880, be correct, the tombstones of the first Portuguese Primate, who died in 1536, and of the Sinhalese King of Cotta, Don Joao Perera Pandar Dharmapala, who died in 1607, a convert to Christianity, suffered similar destruction at the hands, not of enemies, but of friends, and were broken up, not for munitions of war, but for incorporation in the foundations of the largest and most stately church in the island. The tomb of Don Joao, which had a Portuguese inscription, was in the Dutch Church which occupied the site of the Gordon Gardens, and was removed to Wolvendaal in 1813."
The result of these depredations is that there are now in existence only some sixteen stones bearing Portuguese inscriptions. Among those which have disappeared is that of one of the greatest Portuguese generals and administrators, Philip de Oliveyra, who commanded, not only among his own* countrymen, but among the Tamils, affection as well as respect. He was buried in the chapel within the Fort at Jaffna, which had been dedicated at his instance to " Our Lady of Miracles." The tombstone was probably destroyed when the Dutch repaired the Fort and built a new church, not on the site of the Portuguese chapel, but on the opposite side of the Fort, in 1707. "The memorial at Mannar of the wife of a ' Captain of Mannar ' of the time of the Armada w T as more fortunate. It escaped the Dutch gunners, to serve English officials as a pig-trough and a horse-trough, but now it has found a permanent pedestal in the church within the fort which Don Joao de Mello commanded, and probably within a few yards of the spot where his wife, Donna Maria Lacerda, died."
The oldest Portuguese inscription is that engraved on a rock near the Breakwater, which to Mr. Lewis seems to indicate that some adven- turers or captives of that race must have touched at Colombo in 1501, " though the visit is nowhere else recorded, and the accepted date for the first landing of the Portuguese in Ceylon has hitherto been 1505."
Although the Dutch memorials have escaped wholesale destruction, many have disappeared. At Trincomalee there was to be seen in 1791 the tomb of Jan Willem Schorer, " a member of a noble Dutch family, still to the fore in Holland, and also that of his wife, a Van Citters, but now search is made in vain for them." The tomb- stones of five or six eminent persons which were in 1813 removed from the Fort Dutch Church to Wolvendaal are also lost, as is that of General Hulft, who commanded the Dutch forces at the siege of Colombo in 1656.
The oldest English inscription commemorates .a captain of the Navy, whose ship the Princess
Mary called at Trincomalee in 171*, possibly for |
the purpose of his burial on shore. There an- but
five others of the eighteenth century; among
them is a tall obelisk at Negombo to Lieut.
Hetherington of the 52nd Regiment, who died on
the day the British forces occupied that place,
9 Feb., 1796.
The most conspicuous monument in the Pettah burial-ground is the obelisk thai memprates Major Petrie, the officer who captured Cochin in 1795, when in command of the 77th Regiment, and who also took part with that regiment in the capture of Colombo.
The Church of St. Peter in the Fort, an historic landmark shortly to disappear, contains many memorials. Among those known to be buried within its' walls are William Toltrey, of the Civil Service ; Archdeacon Twisleton, first Archdeacon of Colombo ; Mr. Justice Henry Matthews ; and Capt. Dawson, whose monument dominates the Kadugannawa Pass. There are many memorial tablets to lawyers, including Sir William Rough, who was " perhaps more dis- tinguished as a literary man than as a lawyer," and numbered among his literary associates Coleridge, Wordsworth, and Landor ; and Jo 1m Frederick Stoddart, whose father's sister married. Hazlitt. Sir Hardinge Giffard, who died at sea, is also buried there, but has no monument. There also is the tomb of Admiral Charles Austen, Jane Austen's brother. His body was sent oft in H.M.S. Rattler to be taken to England for burial, but was buried at Trincomalee instead.
The book has a good Index of Names, and, facing the title-page, a picture of the tomb at Kandy of Sir John D'Oyly, of whom a long obituary is given.
The Pedigree Register : September. (G. Sherwoo ',
2s. 6d. net.)
The Pedigree Register, of which Mr. Sherwood is both editor and publisher, has now reached its thirtieth number, and over four hundred pedi^i-eos have been published in its pages. The contents of the present part include the pedigree of Edward Wells, who was Vicar of Croscombe ; particular.? ) relating to the Disney family, also of some Huguenot families ; ' Descents from Mother to Daughter, Crowe to Pendleton ' ; and ' Some | Nonconformist Ministers and Quakers in lt:OJ 3,' bein? a complete co'y of a small bound volume j now in the Record Office. " State Papers Misc., Dom. and Foreign, No. 26," formerly, it is thought, in Sir Joseph Williamson's collection.
A much-appreciated feature of the Register is ' Parentalia,' where " record evidence " is given of proofs of parentage.
to Correspondents.
WE cannot undertake to answer queries privately,
nor can we advise correspondents as to the value
of old books and other objects or as to the means of
disposing of them.
CORRIGENDUM. ' Pedigrees of Knights ' (ante, p. 149). The reference under Sir Thomas Stafford of Grafton should read Collectanea Topo- graphica ct Ge/iedlogica, viii. 271, and not " Blomefield's ' Norfolk,' vii. 505."
FRANCIS H. R ELTON.
