Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 8.djvu/186

148 NOTES AND QUERIES, [is s.vm. FEB. 10,1921, Shakspeyr and pronounced it as we do now. The parish-registers are very defective from the departure of Dyos until the arrival of Bretchgirdle. They are then well kept and contain some interesting entries. Among them we may' note the burial of Alderman Harbage of Corn Street, the skinner ( "Francis Furrier " he was sometimes called) on Apr. 17, 1561 ;. the baptism of Joan, daughter of William Smith haberdasher of Henley Street on Apr. 22, the first child of his second wife, Agnes Chit-law (whom he married on May 17, 1560, after the death of his first wife Elizabeth in April, 1559), a child that lived to be an old lady of eighty and one of the last to have known William Shakespeare from his birth ; the baptism of a son of the young Squire Clopton on June 8, Lodovifus fiiius Gulielmi Clopton de Clopton fas John Bretchgirdle records the event) ; the baptism on June 15 of William Shakes- peare's future schoolfellow and comrade, John Sadler, son of John Sadler the miller, and grandson of Roger Sadler the baker ; the marriag? ot Squire Clopton's sister, Rose, with Master John Combe on Aug. 27 ; and the burial of Alderman Robert Perrott's first wife, Alice, on Sept. 13. This John Combe was the second of the name. His father, John Combe the First, was still living in Old Stratford, and had six years to live. John Combe the Second had lost his first wife, Joyce Blount, a few months only before his second marriage. She left him with five little sons, the youngest of whom, Christopher, was buried on May 15, 1561. Bretchgirdle officiated, no doubt, at the burial of this child, and at the wedding of his father and Mistress Rose Clopton on Aug. 27. The wedding must have been a function of importance in the neighbourhood. It had religious as well as social significance. The Cloptons w^ere Catholics. They main- tained a priest in their house. John Combe the First, notwithstanding his association with the late William Lucy, was little of a Protestant. He may have had enough of Protestantism, as very many had, in the reign of King Edward. In Oct. 1564, he was marked clown by a Puritan neighbour as an "adversary of the True Religion." His sons John and William, on the other hand, were of the new faith. To her husband's fortune Mistress Rose added the 200 ma,rks bequeathed to her by her father : and to his four sons she added six more children, four of whom died in infancy. EDGAR I. FRIPP. (To be continued.) " HOGLE GRODELES." At the risk of adding yet another column to Dr. Addison's statistics of the public health might one- enquire what this fashionable malady was ? The last word of it is easily guessed but what is "Hogle " ? Lord Mount Cashell wrote to the Marquess of Ormonde on June 15, 1706, as follows : "....(the loss of a lawsuit) which has given Lady Newburgh one of the fashionable distempers that reigns at Tunbridge Wells for vapory people,, called the Hogle Grodeles." The name is that apparently of the actual complaint and is not a slang description of one. (It will be found in a report of the Historic Manuscripts Commission ; in print.) R. B. Upton. A COACHMAN'S EPITAPH. The following appears on a carved headstone now built in the wall cf Haddiscoe Churchyard, Suffolk.. I do not find it in the various books on epitaphs : WILLIAM 8 ALTER. Yarmouth Stage Coach Man. Died October the 9th, 1776. Aged 59 Years. Here lies Will Salter honest man Deny it Envy if you can True to his business and his trust Always punctual always just His horses coud they speak woud tell They loved their good old master well His up hill work is chiefly done His Stage is ended Race is run One journey is remaining still To climb up Sions holy hill And now his faults are all forgiven Elija like drive up to heaven Take the Reward of all his Pains And leave to other hands the Reins. WILLIAM GILBERT, F.R.X.S. "COUNTS OF THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE/ Mr. Yeatman, in his ' Early Genealogy, deals in a large volume with the 'History of the House of Arundell,' and gives a full translation of the almost unique patent,, which has recently undergone examination at the College of Arms, granting the title of Count of the Holy Roman Empire to the- first Lord Arundell of Wardour. The patent was granted by the Emperor Rudolph on Dec. 14, 1595, and what makes it so specially remarkable is that, contrary to the normal custom, the dignity is made to descend to all the legitimate issue of the original grantee for ever. This is most unusual. Queen Elizabeth, Mr. Yeatman points out, would not recognize the title,, saying that "she did not wish her own