Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 5.djvu/263

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ii s. v. MAR. ic, 1912.] NOTES AND QUERIES.


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And " Homo proponit et deus disponit " (B, Passiis xx. 34), where the corresponding passage in the C text omits " et." See Prof. Skeat's ed. of ' Piers the Plowman,' King's ' Classical and Foreign Quotations ' under " L'homme propose et Dieu dispose," said Biichmann's ' Gefliigelte Worte.' The last quotes the German " Der Mensch denkt, Gott lenkt," and " Homo cogitat, Deus iudicat," from Alcuin's ' Epistulae.' Ray, ' A Collection of English Proverbs,' 2nd ed., 1678, gives " Man propons, but God dis- pons," as a Scottish proverb.

EDWAKD BENSLY.

YORKSHIRE WHITEHEADS (11 S. v. 149). The place on the borders of Yorks and Lanes inquired for by H. M. as being the probable birthplace of a William Whitehead in 1760 may be Saddleworth.

If H. M. should come across the baptismal entry of another William Whiteh-ad, born 3 Aug., 1761, and another born in 1608, and of a H nry Whitehead born in 1738, I should foe much obliged if he would tell me.

BENJAMIN WHITEHEAD.

2, Brick Court, Temple.

BRANDON, DUKE OF SUFFOLK : BRUNT <11 S. v. 89). There is an account of Charles Brandon unusually, for G. E. C., full in "The Complete Peerage,' vii. 308-10, with information and reference as to his father's antecedents, especially in note (e) on p. 308.

JOHN R. MAGRATH. 'Queen's College, Oxford.

The Brandon family were staunch sup- porters of the Red Rose. Sir William Brandon and Elizabeth Wynfyld, his wife, .were the parents of Sir Thomas and William Brandon. Sir Thomas, the diplomatist, married Anne, daughter of Jolm Fiennes, Lord Dacre, and widow of the Marquess of Berkeley. She died in 1497 without issue, .and Sir Thomas in 1510. William Brandon, Henry VII.'s standard-bearer at.Bosworth Field, was on that account singled out by Richard III., and slain by him in personal encounter. This William, who with his brother Thomas had come with Henry out of Brittany, does not appear to have been a knight, though called Sir William by Hall the chronicler, and thus some confusion has arisen between him and his father, Sir William Brandon, who survived him.

The ' N.E.D.' knows nothing of the valiant Sir John Brunt. Of the substantive " brunt " it says :

" First in fourteenth century. Origin un- known ; generally sought in O.N. bruna, ' to advance with the speed of fire ' ; though such a


formation from that is difficult to explain ety- mologically, and connecting links are wanting. The word may rather be an onomatopoeia of Eng. itself.... It is possible however that some association with burnt (in Sc. brunt), as if the ' chief brunt ' were ' the hottest ' of the fight, has influenced sense 4."

A. R. BAYLEY.

There was some correspondence respecting the Duke at 10 S. v. 9, 74, from which it would appear that Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk, was the son of Sir William Brandon, the standard-bearer of Henry VII., knighted by Henry on landing at Milford Haven, and slain by Richard's own hand at Bos- worth Field. Sir William Brandon married Elizabeth, daughter of Sir Henry Bruyn. His father was also a Sir William Brandon of Wangford, who was knighted on the field of Tewkesbury by Edward IV.

In Fenton's ' Hist. Tour through Pem- brokeshire ' (pp. 142-3) it is stated that the standard-bearer to Henry VII. " in his transit through this country " belonged to a family of the name of Jones ; and accord- ing to Sir Thos. Phillipps's ' Pembrokeshire Pedigrees' (p. 37), his name was William Jones of Treowen, Mon,

Who is the authority for saying that Sir John Brunt gave rise to the phrase " brunt of the battle " ? There is a tradition, men- tioned in the ' Life of Rhys ab Thomas,' by M. E. James (p. 53), and ' Nooks and Corners of Pembrokeshire,' by H. T. Timmins, that Henry VII., on landing at Dale, Milford Haven, exclaimed as he gained the top of the cliff: "This is 1: runt," i.e. steep. A farm in the neighbourhood still bears the name of Brunt Farm. G. H. W.

Agnes Strickland, in ' Tudor and Stuart Princesses,' states that

" Sir ^yilliam Brandon, the grandfather of Charles, according to the ' Paston Papers,' must have been a most profligate savage, being disgraced for his immoral doings by Edward IV. His son became, in consequence, a staunch Lancastrian ; he met his death from the desperate valour of Richard III. as Richmond's standard-bearer, whom the King hewed down when making his last furious charge to retrieve the fortunes of Bosworth Field. Henry VII., grateful to the memory of the man who, by the interposition of his person, had saved his life, took the infant Charles Brandon from the evil example of old Sir William, his grandfather, and brought him up as a royal ward."

In the ' Nine Days' Queen,' by R. Davey, p. 7:-

' Lady Jane Grey's maternal grandfather was, as he wrote himself in the famous quatrain referring to his marriage with the King's sister, descended from ' cloth of frieze.' He was the grandson of a London mercer who had married