48 NOTES AND QUERIES. [11 s. vi. JULY 20, 1912.
Queries.
We must request correspondents desiring information on family matters of only private interest to affix their names and addresses to their queries, in order that answers may be sent to them direct.
Nevills of Raby: their Ancestor.—There has always been great uncertainty as to the identity of Uchtred, father of Dolfin, the ancestor of the Nevills of Raby and Abergavenny. Mr. J. H. Round leaves the point unsettled. I make the suggestion that in his paper on 'The Origin of the Comyns,' in No. 10 of The Ancestor, he has given a Huctred who is a far more probable ancestor than any of the Uchtreds suggested by Elizabethan heralds. I append the reference, and also a pedigree which suggested the idea:—
"A confirmation by Henry III. in 1262 to John Comyn of Badenoch of certain lands in Tynedale recites that they had been granted to his great-grandfather, Richard Comyn, and Hextilda his wife, daughter of Huctred, son of Waldeve, by King David and Henry his son … The existence of Huctred, son of Waldeve, is duly proved by the Pipe Roll of 1130, which shows that he was at that time a man of position in Northumberland."—Ancestor, No. 10, p. 104, 'The Origin of the Comyns,' by J. H. Round.
Harl. MS. 9822, which contains an Elizabethan pedigree of Nevill of Holt, for sheer brazen invention hard to beat, has this curious point about it, that it calls everybody from Utred downwards Aldive, e.g., Utred Aldive, Dolphyn Aldive, Myldred Aldive. Is this a dim half-forgotten reference to Huctred, son of Waldeve, copied by a careless herald from some old charter? Mr. Round, in 'The Origin of the Nevilles' ('Feudal England,' p. 489), says that Dolfin fitz Uchtred received Staindropshire from the Prior of Durham in 1131 (Feod. Prior. Dun. 56, 140); and if, as he remarks in 'The Origin of the Comyns,' Huctred, son of Waldeve, was a man of position in Northumberland in 1130, may not this be a probable solution of the uncertainty as to who Uchtred, father of Dolfin, really was?
Weather Rime.—
March winds and April showers
Bring forth May flowers.
But a dripping June
Puts all in tune.
Can any of your readers complete the above fragment? Silo.
References Wanted. Can any reader
kindly supply the correct sources of the
following extracts?—
Of such as do offend, make less the sin.
[No. 2 is from Samuel Butler's 'Remains,' ii. 422, according to the 'N.E.D.,' s.v. 'Obstinate.']
Barrow at Gotham.—The ' Victoria History of Nottingham' quotes Bateman's 'Vestiges,' p. 104, for the statement that in a barrow at or near Gotham was found a small bronze pin, in association possibly with an interment, and accompanied by a neatly chipped spearhead of flint. The 'Victoria History' mentions this as furnishing
"an interesting illustration of that overlapping of stone and metal tools or weapons, of which prehistoric archæology affords many examples."
I lack access to Bateman's work, and should be pleased if any correspondent familiar with it would say if the text furnishes any indication that the barrow in question was the existing tumulus, long pointed out as the scene of the legendary "cuckoo-hedging" episode—this being, indeed, the only barrow in the parish or neighbourhood of the Nottinghamshire Gotham. As Bateman, however, was a Derbyshire writer, the possibility has occurred to me that the obscure Derbyshire Gotham, in the parish of Parwich, was referred to. If so, of course the writer in the Notts history was under a misapprehension. Reference to Bateman's text would, no doubt, settle the point.
Small Republics in Europe: Goust: Tavolora.—The current 'Whitaker's Almanack' recognizes only two…Andorra and San Marino.
I believe that the Republic of Morsenet was incorporated with Germany in 1903, Belgium receiving a pecuniary compensation. Particulars of this transaction would be of interest.
Do the Republics of Goust in the Pyrenees (population about 140, territory 600 acres) and Tavolara, an island off Sardinia (population about 60), still exist? If not, when
