466
NOTES AND QUERIES. [12 avii. DEC. 11,1020.
THE HERMIT OF HERTFORDSHIRE. This
ian, one Lucas, died in a house now
destroyed at Redcoat's Green, two miles
from Stevenage. He lived in abomination
and desolation as a hermit from the death
of his mother in 1849 until he died in 1 874.
Tn a second-hand oopy of Mr. H. W. "To'npkin's 'Highways arid Byways in Hertfordshire,' recently purchased and for- merly belonging to " Bateman Brown," is the following note written on the margin which may be worth a record :
" Bateman and Susannah Brown found the hermit on the Saturday morning in a fit. We were staying at Mr. Foster's at Wymondly, and had gone to look at him. He was removed in a cart feo another house where he died, I think, on the next day."
PRESCOTT Row.
The Old House, Waddon. Surrey.
WILLIAM AND RALPH SHELDON. In a letter to The Times of Nov. 1, 1920, Mr. A. S. Cope wrote :
" Of early tapestries referred to in The Times
of October 18, which are to be brought into the market for sale, those possessing peculiar English historic interest are specimens of the tapestry Veaving which was started in the middle of the sixteenth century by an enthusiastic gentleman Mr. Sheldon who devoted money, and his mansion at Barcheston, in Warwickshire, to the
. enterprise."
According to the * Encyclopaedia Bri- tannica ' (s.v. " Tapestry ") this was William Sheldon, who also started tapestry works at Weston in Warwickshire. At 12 S. i. 416 Archdeacon Cameron says:
" According to Burke's ' Landed Gentry, 1846, Ralph Sheldon, who married the heiress of the Rudings, had seven sons, of whom William the eldest, d.s.p., and was succeeded by Ralph the sixth son, who married Philippa Heath The Visitation pedigree as well as the Plowden pedigree state that William did not die s.p., bul iiad a daughter Katharine, who married Edmunc Plowden (1517-84) the great lawyer, who was buried in the Temple Church."
Was the founder of the tapestry manu- factories the father-in-law of Edmunc Plowden ? What is known about him ?
Ralph, the sixth son above mentioned would appear to have been the father o another Ralph, who was a great friend o Fathers Edmund Campion (Knox, ' Douay Diaries,' p. 308) and Robert Parsons (Oath. Rec. Soc., vol. ii.). This Ralph who like his ancestors, was of Bevley, Worcester shire, seems to have been the man who built the Manor House at Weston, Warwick shire, to which the family subsequently removed. Born in 1537, he married Anne daughter of Sir Robert Throgmorton, o
Joughton, Warwickshire, and was the
grandfather of Edward Sheldon (1599-1687)
and great-grandfather of Ralph Sheldon
1623-1684), both of whom have bio-
^raphies in the 'D.N.B.' Committed to the
Vlarshalsea in August, 1580, he was removed
.he following Nov. 1, on account of his
health, to the custody of the Dean of West-
minster. He conformed Jan. 3, 1580/1,
but on Dec. 31, 1583, Hugh Hall, the Marian
priest (condemned with Edward Arden),
who saved his life by betraying his bene-
"actors, confessed to having said Mass in his
louse. In 1587 and 1594 he was again in
trouble, in the latter year owing to the
treachery of his nephew, Richard Williams.
He was left out of the commission of the
oeace for Worcestershire about 1587, though
&he Bishop of Worcester commended his
wisdom. The benefit of his recusancy was
granted to one David Drummond, May 4,
1610. He died Mar. 30, 1613. See the
authorities cited Caih. Rec. Soc. xiii. 98,
n. 105. He seems to have been an ancestor
of William Sheldon of Weston, F.S.A., 1769,
who died in 1781 (see 12 S. iii. 35). The
query at 11 S. xii. 9 as to the William
Sheldon, one of the trustees of the Pantheon >
in Oxford Street in 1791, has not yet been
answered. JOHN B. WAINEWRIGHT
THE EMPRESS EUGENIE. As far as I am aware none of the recent obituary notices of the Empress Eugenie drew attention to the fact that her length of life was almost identical with that of Elizabeth Patterson ' Bonaparte, the first wife of Jerome Bona- ' parte, Napoleon's youngest brother. Eliza- beth Patterson was born Feb. 6, 1785, and died Apr. 4, 1879. Her age at death was therefore 94 years and 56 days. Eugenie de Montijo was born May 5, 1826, and died July 11, 1920, aged 94 years and 67 days. F. H. CHEETHAM.
HORROCKS OF TOXTETH PARK. This
family is of interest through Jeremiah Horrocks (or Horrox), the first observer of a transit of Venus. He is supposed, 1 with practical certainty, to have been a younger son of one William Horrocks, a yeoman who settled in Toxteth Park, near Liverpool, about 1600. The depositions cited below state that the estate there came through his wife, and his surname was unusual in the neighbourhood at the time, if not unique. By his will of Mar. 3, 1618/9 he left a fourth part of his lands to his wife Joan ; his son John was to provide for the
