Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 7.djvu/24

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NOTES AND QUERIES. [io s. VIL JAN. 3, 1907:


word of the following passage, which treats of the same subject :

Stop and consider ! Life is but a day ; A fragile dewdrop on its perilous way Prom a tree's summit ; a poor Indian's sleep While his boat hastens to the monstrous steep Of Montmorenci. Why so sad a moan ? Life is the rose's hope while yet unblown, The reading of an ever-changing tale ; The light uplifting of a maiden's veil ; A pigeon tumbling in clear summer air ; A laughing schoolboy without grief or care, Riding the springy branches of an elm.

JOHN T. CUBBY.

A KNIGHTHOOD OF 1603 (10 S. vi. 181, 257, 474). At the last reference "the descend- ants of the knight of 1603 " are alluded to as if existing, which apparently is not the ease. The only recorded offspring of the said Sir German Pole (d. 1634) was a son and successor, German Pole, Esq., who married, 17 Dec., 1650, Anne Newdigate, as stated, but d.s.p. 1683, having settled his estates upon his cousin and heir male Samuel Pole, Esq., from whom descends the present family of Chandos-Pole of Radbourne. Burke's ' Landed Gentry ' shows this, and that the said Samuel Pole (d. 1731) had a daughter Millicent, who married, 1 May, 1711, Francis Newdigate.

MR. STAPLETON, perhaps following the account of Newdigate of Arbury in Burke's

  • L. G./ speaks of " Millicent, daughter of

German Pole, Esq., of Radbourne, co. Derby,"' which contradiction is doubtless an error. Francis Newdigate, son of the aforesaid Francis and Millicent, married his first cousin Elizabeth, daughter of Lieut. - General Edward Pole (third, son of the aforesaid Samuel), and d.s.p. ; his wife was not " daughter of German Pole, Esq.," as stated by MB. STAPLETON.

Though the aforesaid Samuel Pole had a son and successor German Pole (d. 1765), who had an only son German, who d.v.p. unmarried, 1763, and two daughters, Anne and Mary, neither married a Newdigate.

German Pole (d. 1765), of Radbourne, Esq., was. succeeded by his nephew, Col. Edward Sacheverell Pole, brother to Eliza- beth, who had married the younger (afore- said) Francis Newdigate.

R. E. E. CHAMBERS.

Pill House, Bishop's Tawton, Barnstaple.

DOLE CUPBOARDS (10 S. vi. 429). The mediaeval cupboard was literally a cup- boardthat, in fact, which we understand to-day by a "sideboard." Sometimes it let down outwardly from a recess in the wall. Of this sort of cupboard there is said to be


an example in the cells of the Carthusians at Florence, where a door, when opened, allows it to fall down outside the recess and form a table. (See 'The Diet, of Archit.,' vol. ii. p. 174; and Parker's ' Glossary of Terms,' 1850, p. 156.)

The dole cupboard was probably more especially an appurtenance of the monastery, since the dole (pain d'aumosne) in secular life was generally confined to the funerals of the rich, who would not consequently need a cupboard in constant use. At Lambeth thirty poor persons were relieved by an alms called the Dole, which was given three times a week, to ten persons at a time, alternately each person then receiv- ing upwards of two pounds of beef, a pitcher of broth, a half-quartern loaf, and twopence. Besides this dole, there were always, on the days it was given, at least thirty other pitchers, called " By-pitchers," brought by other neighbouring poor, who partook of the remaining broth, and the broken victuals at that time distributed. And so late at least as 1767 at Queen's College, Oxford, provisions were frequently distributed to the poor, at the door of the hall, under the denomination of a dole." (See 'Anglo- Norman Antiquities considered in a Tour through Part of Normandy,' by Dr. Ducarel (? 1767), p. 81.

At the Benedictine abbey of Fecamp the monks were obliged, by the rules of the house, to give daily a large quantity of bread and meat to every poor person who applied for it, except between the first day of August and the first day of September, when the poor were supposed to be employed in the harvest.

The funeral dole of the secular rich was known as the " dead dole," and was neces- sarily of only occasional distribution, a circumstance arguing, but only presumably, that dole cupboards were indispensable only where charity was administered in a fre- quent and regular way. They would thus afford accommodation for provisions such as bread, &c., additional to that of thebuttery. Dole beer, however, to judge from a passage in Ben Jonson's ' Alchemist ' (I. i.), was- kept in the buttery :

I know you were one could keep The butt'ry hatch still lock'd, and save the chip- pings, Sell the dole beer to aqua-vitae men.

J. HOLDEN MACMlCHAEL.

I have no knowledge on the subject, but imagine that dole cupboards would be cup- boards fixed up in churches to hold the bread loaves that were distributed as doles