Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 3.djvu/240

This page needs to be proofread.

234


NOTES AND QUERIES. [12 S. III. MARCH 24, 1917.


Wiebel's book is not likely to be found easily, your correspondent may prefer to look at D. T. Ansted's ' Ionian Islands in the Year 1863,' London, 1863. Chap. xi. -(pp. 322-7) of this book deals fully with the mills, and explains the phenomenon. There is a " ground plan of the course of the ^current of sea water driving the Argostoli mills " (p. 325). Edward Lear's ' Views in the Seven Ionian Islands ' contains a -pleasant view of the town of Argostoli.

A. L. HUMPHREYS. 187 Piccadilly, W.

AN ENGLISH ABMY LIST OF 1740 : IST FOOT GUARDS (12 S. ii. 163, 229; iii. 11). Hon. Thomas Herbert, captain Feb. 23, 1729/30. He had been elected M.P. for Newport (Cornwall) on Feb. 18, 1726, in succession to his brother-in-law, Sir Nicholas TVIorice, Bart., of Werrington, Devon, the patron of the borough, Morice, according to Narcissus Luttrell (' Diary,' vol. v. p. 400), having married on Tuesday, March 7, 1704, " the lady Katherine Herbert, eldest daughter of the earl of Pembrook." He continued to represent that constituency in the Parliaments of 1727 and 1734, until .his death, unmarried, at his house in Gerrard Street, Soho, on Dec. 25 or 26, 1739, when 'he was succeeded, on Jan. 22, 1740, by his 'brother Nicholas, so named after his maternal uncle, at whose house at Werring- ton he was born. For Thomas Herbert, see " A Collection of the Parliamentary Debates in England from the year MDCLXVIII. To the Present Time, Printed an the Year MDCCXLI." (vol. xviii. p. 68), Tvhere it is shown that he and his brothers (Robert, William, and Arthur) were firm supporters of Walpole, and in the great 'division on the Convention in 1739 voted on the majority of 262 to 235, which retained Walpole in power, though his nephew Sir William Morice of Werrington, who was his -colleague in the representation of Newport, was on the other side ; and that Nicholas carried on the support of Walpole in 1742, the year of the great Prime Minister's fall. \

John Lee, captain April 13, 1736. Having sat for Malmesbury in the Parlia- ment of 1747, he was chosen for Newport (Cornwall) at the general election of 1754, Nicholas Herbert being apparently out of favour with Humphry Morice, second cousin of Herbert's nephew, Sir William (who had died in 1750), though he returned to the House of Comm3ns in April, 1757, at a .t>y-ele3tion for the family borough of


Wilton. While John Lee was sent up for Newport, his brother Sir George Lee, Dean of the Arches, Judge of the Prerogative Court of the Province of Canterbury, and Treasurer of the Household to the Princess of Wales (widow of " Fred " and mother of George III.), who had married in 1742 Humphry Morice's sister, was elected for the contiguous borough of Launceston, of which Newport in reality formed a part, and within the relatively small municipal area of which, indeed, it to-day is. For Newport, at the dissolution of 1754, there was a contest, the first for many, years, John Lee " of Albemarle Street, London," as he was officially designated, standing in the Werrington interest, with Edward Bacon of Erlham, near Norwich, Recorder of that place, and polling 145 and 144 votes f respectively, against Jeffery French and the notorious Richard Rigby, these having respectively 60 and 59 votes. In my ' Launceston, Past and Present ' (p. 261), I wrote :

" The contest was evidently an attempt of John, Duke of Bedford, leader of what was politically known as ' the Bloomsbury gang,' to exercise influence upon Newport, for French and Rigby were at the same dissolution returned for Tavistock, his pocket-borough, and the latter was notoriously his creature,"

it being added in a foot-note :

" There may have been a personal element on the Duke's part in his opposition to John Lee, who is described in the official return for Newport to the next Parliament [that of 1761] as of ' Bisely, county Bedford,' in which shire his Grace had some severe political battles to fight."

Some light on the Duke of Bedford's further concern with the electoral fortunes of the twin Cornish boroughs, with which the brothers Lee were at that time asso- ciated, is to be found in the Newcastle Correspondence (B.M. Add. MSS., 32856 et seq.) summarized in my sketch of Hum- phry Morice in ' D.N.B.,' vol. xxxix. p. 45, giving an account of Bedford's attempt to secure thejreturn of Lord Tylney at a by- election for iifLaunceston on the death of Sir George Lee in 1758. As to John Lee, though re-elected for Newport in March, 1761, at the dissolution caused by the death of George II., he did not live long there- after ; and Morice, as patron, offered the Duke of Newcastle, at the time Lee lay dying in the following September, to place the expected vacancy at the disposal of the Government, being at once rewarded for his alacrity. Lee having passed away, a writ was issued for Newport on Nov. 28, I 1761, " in the room of John Lee, Esquire,