164
NOTES AND QUERIES. [ii s. xii. A. 28, IQI&
JOHN WHITFIELD, GENT. (11 S. xii. 120).
Hasted, ' History of Kent,' vol. xi.
p. Ill :
" John Whitfield, gent., who died in 1691, was son ot Henry and Anne, and grandson of John and Catharine Whitfield ; he appears by his will to have been of the law, and of the Society of the Middle Temple ; but he seems to have had no great opinion of his profession, which he debarred both his sons from following .... He married Rebecca, daughter and coheir of Robert Jaques, Esq., of Elmsted, by whom he had a numerous issue, of whom two sons lived to maturity, and three daughters."
Judith Whitfield married William Love- lace of Gray's Inn, and had with others a son Francis Lovelace, born 1656.
Hasted' s rendering of the will has " estritch " can this mean a cup made from an ostrich egg ?
RICH. JOHN FYNMORE.
Sandgate.
BOMBAY GENTLEMEN OF 1792: WIL- LIAMSES or EARLY BOSTON, MASS. (11 S. xii. 94). I think I may venture to claim an English origin for Marjery Williams' s sampler verse. It was quite at home in the shire of the original Boston in my young days, and ran very much as MR. J. G. CUPPLES gives it. Mary Smith of Blankby would say or write :
Mary Smith is my name,
and England is my nation ;
Blankby is my dwelling-place,
and Christ is my salvation.
When I am dead and in my grave and all my bones are rotten,
When this you see remember me, lest I should be forgotten.
I am a little doubtful about the wording of the last line, but am sure of its purport.
ST. SWITHIN.
BURYING FACE DOWNWARDS (11 S. xii. 118). Hone's ' Year - Book,' pp. 408-12, does honour to Michael Parker, who was for many years gravedigger at Malton in York- shire. He died in 1823.
" As he became old he sometimes, under provoca- tion, gave utterance to rough expressions foreign to his kindly disposition. More than once he was heard to say to his wanton persecutors that ' he should have them some day, and he Would certainly bury them with their faces downward.' "
ST. SWITHIN.
- * ROYAL CHAPLAINS (11 S. xii. 119). A
list of chaplains in ordinary and others, in some year of George II. 's reign, may be found, in ' The Present State of Great Britain and Ireland,' which I esteem a very useful book. ST. SWITHIN.
WANSTEAD PARK (11 S. xi. 121).
Pepys's ' Diary ' and his annotators tell us
something of the house at Wanstead, Essex,
and its owners. One of these was Sir Henry
Mildmay, third son of Sir Humphrey Mild-
may, and Master of the Jewel Office under
Charles I. Sir Henry sat as one of the
King's judges, although he did not sign the
death warrant. The estate was confiscated
at the Restoration, and given to Sir Robert
Brooke. In 1667 it was alienated to Sir
Josiah Childe, ancestor of Earl Tylney. It
is now Lord Mornington's in right of his
first wife (Lord Braybrooke's note, abridged,
under 27 Jan., 1661/2).
On Sunday, 14 May, 1665, Pepys took a coach after dinner,
" and to Wanstead, the house where Sir H. Mild- may died [? Sir Humphrey : Sir Henry died at Antwerp], and now Sir Robert Brookes lives, having bought it of the Duke of Yorke, it being, forfeited to him. A fine seat, but an old-fashioned house ; and being not full of people looks deso- lately."
On 19 April, 1667, Pepys has a talk with Mrs. Turner,
" among the rest about Sir W. Pen's being to buy Wansted House of Sir Robert Brookes, but has put him off again .... and I dare be hanged if ever he could mean to buy that great house, that knows not how to furnish one that is not the tenth part so big."
( On the afternoon of 1 May, 1667, Sir William Penn gives our diarist " an account of his design of buying Sir Robert Brooke's fine house at Wansted ; which I so wondered at, and did give him reasons against it, which he allowed of : and told me that he did intend to pull down the house and build a less, and that he should get 1,5007. by the old house, and 1 know not what fooleries. But I will never believe he ever intended to buy it, for my part."
Mr. H. B. Wheatley's note is :
" Pepys's conjecture proved right. The house was not sold till Sir Robert Brooke's death, when his heir alienated it to Sir Josiah Child. Sir Richard Child rebuilt it in 1715, and the Earl of Mornington took it down in 1823."
The statement that the house was not sold till Sir R. Brooke's death seems at variance with Lord Braybrooke's statement that it became Sir Josiah Childe' s in 1667, and with the note on p. xxvii of Mr. Wheat- ley's ' Particulars of the Lite of Samuel Pepys,' where we read :
" Sir Robert Brooke, Lord of the Manor of Wanstead from 1662 to 1667, M.P. for Aldbprough 1660, 1661-69. He retired to France in bad circumstances, and from a letter among the Pepys MSS. it appears that he was drowned in the river at Lyons."
The house and park are memorable for two historical associations of widely differing
