292
NOTES AND QUERIES, [n s. ra. APR.L 15, mi.
May I inquire whether any such weapon
for putting old people out of the way is
traditionally known in the British Islands ?
M. G. W. P.
The Breton be-lief that the yew shoots out a root into the mouth of each of the dead is no doubt traceable to the reason for which yews are assumed to have been planted in churchyards, namely, that the tree, being evergreen, and of the longest vitality of any of our evergreens, was a type of immortality.
J. HOLDEN MACMlCHAEL.
A COUSIN OF BOSWELL (US. iii. 189). MB. CALDEB corrects Boswell for saying " the English chapel " at Inverness, instead of " the Episcopalian chapel." But is not Boswell right ? MB. CALDEB has forgotten that Inverness was an English trading colony. The late Sir Henry Macandrew, sometime Provost of Inverness, told me thirty years ago that his father remembered the time when the chief families in the town were English, the leading family being the Cuthberts of Castle Hill. Boswell knew his facts. J. SABGEAUNT.
The word " cousin " is probably used by Boswell in the Scottish sense to embrace a far wider relationship than the meaning warrants. Miss Dallas (i.e., Mrs. Riddoch of Aberdeen, net Inverness) can hardly have been Boswell' s cousin in the strict sense of the word. It is nowhere stated that her mother was an Erskine and sister of Bos- well's mother. The Dallases were an old family belonging to the counties of Elgin and Nairn. An imperfect pedigree of the family will be found in Burke' s ' Landed Gentry ' under the name Dallas-Yorke. Mrs. Riddoch's name does not occur in the list. U.
JUNIUS AND THE DUKE OF BEDFOBD
(US. iii. 227). The information I was in search of is given in ' Cavendish's Debates,' i. 599, n. :
" Junius, in his attack on the Duke [of Bed- ford], tells the world, that one Homphrey, a country attorney, ' horsewhipped his grace, on the course at Lichfield, with equal justice, severity, and perseverance, 1 and that ' Tligby and Lord Trentham werealso cudgelled in a most exemplary manner ' ; intending it to be inferred, that the Duke had been guilty of dishonourable con- duct. The facts of the case are completely in opposition to any such inference. They are, indeed, highly creditable to the Duke and his friends, as men attached to the reigning family. The particulars are related by Smollett. It was in the year 1748, during the national ferment
consequent upon the suppression of the rebellion,
that the sportsmen who were of the Chevalier's
party made a ridiculous display of fervour towards
his pretensions. ' They appeared,' says the
historian, ' in the highland dress, and their zeal
descending to a very extraordinary exhibition of
practical ridicule, they hunted with hounds
clothed in plaid a fox dressed in red uniform.
Even the females at their assembly, and the
gentlemen at the races, affected to wear the
chequered stuff by which the Prince-pretender
and his followers had been distinguished ; and
divers gentlemen on the course were insulted.' The
following is from The Gentleman's Magazine for
that year : * On the 13th of August [1748 1 came
on, before Mr. Justice Burnet, at the Assizes at
Stafford, the trial of the information against
Toll, a dancing-master, and others, for insulting
and striking the Duke of Bedford and other
gentlemen, upon .Whittington Heath at the last
Lichfield horse-races ; when it was proposed by
counsel for the defendants, that the several
rioters in that information, to the number of
thirteen, should submit to be found guilty, if the
counsel for the Crown would consent to withdraw
the information against several other persons con-
cerned in the riot ; which was agreed to, and these
defendants, who were the principal persons con-
cerned in that riot, were convicted by the jury.'
HOBACE BLEACKLEY.
Brougham in his ' Statesmen in the Time of .George III.,' Third Series, vol. i. p. 162, has a vindication of the Duke of Bedford from the aspersions of Junius.
W. S. S.
DUTCHMEN IN PEMBBOKE (11 S iii. 189). Isaac Taylor in ' Words and Places ' (p. 118) says :
" There is, occasionally, in Pembrokeshire, a difficulty in distinguishing between the Norse names and those which are due to the colony of Flemings which was established in this district during the reign of Henry 1. We read in Higden's ' Chronicle, " Flandrenses, temporo Regis Henrici primi....ad occidentalem Wallite partem, apud Haverford sunt translati.' These colonists came from a portion of Flanders which was submerged by an irruption of the Sea in the year 1110."
In a ' Guide to Tenby,' by Mr. and Mrs. S. C. Hall (pp. 8, 9), is the following descrip- tion of the Flemish colony :
" Speaking generally, a line drawn through the centre [of Pembrokeshire], from east to west, would divide the county into two districts. To the north of this line we encounter a people speaking the Welsh language, and having the well-defined features of the Celtic race. On the south there is a sensible difference. The inhabi- tants use the English language alone, whilst their physiognomy, wholly distinct from their neigh- bours of the hill country, proclaims them to be of a different race. These latter are, according to an old historian, ' partly Dutch, partly English, partly Welsh ' ; a colony of Flemings being there planted, of whom a circumstantial account is given by Selden in a note on a passage of Dray ton
