464
NOTES AND QUERIES. [iis.m. JUNE 17, ion.
Biography,' and LordRosebery's 'Chatham,
his Early Life and Connections,' 1910,
p. 43.
Mr. Fortescue has favoured me with answers to certain questions. The authority for his statement about Pitt's regiment is the register - book of commissions at the Record Office. As to the term " first com- mission " he writes:
" As he was dismissed from the Army while still a cornet in 1736 I do not see how he can have had a second commission, acd I remember no notice of his having changed regiments."
It is clear that he left the Army, i.e., was dismissed, in 1736, not 1735.
In addition to the above-quoted letter from Mr. Fortescue, reference may be made to Lord Rosebery's book, p. 158, where it is stated that Pitt was deprived of his commission in the Army after his speech (29 April, 1736) in the House of Commons about the marriage of the Prince of Wales.
The ' Dictionary of National Biography ' (citing The Quarterly Review, Ixvi. 194) says that the vacancy made by the supersession of Pitt was filled up on 17 May, 1736. It may be gathered from The Gentleman's Magazine of May, 1736, that the vacancy was filled by the Hon. Sambrook Boscawen. It is a curious coincidence that the days of the month not being given the following appointments appear next to each other :
Thos. Swetnam, Esq ; Cornet in y e Blue-G.
Hon. Sambrook Boscawen, Esq; Cornet in his Majesty's own Regiment.
Possibly the confusion about Pitt's regiment arose from the fact that, whereas in 1714 George I. changed the name of the (now) King's Dragoon Guards from the " Queen's Regiment of Horse " to the " King's Own Regiment of Horse," the (now) " Blues " had been called the " Royal Regiment of Horse " or the " King's Regiment." See ' The Regimental Records of the British Army,' by John S. Farmer, 1901, pp. 4-7. Also see this book (pp. 6, 7) and ' Her Majesty's Army,' by Walter Richards, no date (? circa 1898), vol. i. p. 21, for the various names of the King's Dragoon Guards. In neither, however, does the name of "Cobham's Horse" appear. ROBERT PIERPOINT.
" SHEPSTER." We may trust the 'N.E.D.'
to give a good account of this word. I write
this merely to make it clear that the assertion
sometimes made (as by both Halliwell and
Wright) that females were formerly employed
fts sheep-shearers receives no support at
all from the passage in ' Piers Plowman '
to which they refer.
There are, in fact, two substantives of the above form. Shepster (1) is a shepherdess ; see ' E.D.D.' Perhaps it was formed from shep in the sense of " shepherd." I know of no example of this shepster in Middle English, and I doubt its antiquity.
But shepster (2) is a variant of shapster t a female cutter-out (or shaper) of garments ; and this is the word Which appears in ' Piers Plowman,' as duly noted by Stratmann, s.v. scheppen, to shape.
I give the whole account in my ' Notes to P. Plowman.' The point which I want to make here is that it is to Halliwell and Wright, who made the original mistake, that we also owe the correction ; for it is in their edition of Nares's ' Glossary ' that we find the excellent quotations (s.v. shepster) from Withals and Caxton which make the whole story clear. WALTER W. SKEAT.
BUCKROSE : FAIRCROSS. An interesting statement in Prof. Skeat's ' Place-Names of Berkshire,' 1911, is :
"Faircross. One of the hundreds is called Fair- cross hundred; evidently named from a fair or well-made cross." P. 27-
In the East Riding of Yorkshire is a wapentake called Buckrose. The name is now given to the Parliamentary division, and it has lately been before the public as the pseudonym of a novelist.
There is no place named either Faircross or Buckrose. The termination " rose " is modern and misleading. The old form was Buccros, Buccecros, which in modern spel- ling would beBuckcross (Kirkby's 'Inquest,' Surt. Soc., xlix, 71, 314), so that its meaning may be beech-cross. Buckthorpe is a place in the wapentake. In other parts of the county are Wapentakes now named Ewe- cross, Osgoldcross, and Staincross ; but the first was originally Youcross (Kirkby, 278, 362). Can it have been Yew-cross ?
W. C. B.
THE BURNING OF Moscow. The cause of the fire of Moscow has been at intervals discussed in ' N. & Q.' I have lately become acquainted with a work which examines all the evidence with care and impartiality : ' Wer hat Moskau im Jahre 1812 in Brand gesteckt ? ' by Dr. Gautscho Tzenoff (Berlin, 1900). Dr. Tzenoff appears to me to prove- that the fire was not the act of the Russians, but that it was caused by the French in the course of their looting. ALEX. LEEPER.
Trinity College, Melbourne University. [See also 11 S. i. 228, 274,291.1
