Pickering, 1833, 8vo., at p. 147, has fallen into a slight mistake by a too hasty reading of the writer to whom he refers as his authority. Having to allude to “A Booke of Prayers, collected out of the Ancient Writers, &c., Printed by J. Daye, 1569, 4to.,” and afterwards in 1578, 1581, 1590, and 1609 [read 1608], he adds, “It is more frequently mentioned under the title of ‘Queen Elizabeth’s Prayer Book,’ a most unsuitable title, when it is recollected how sharply this haughty dame rebuked the Dean of Christchurch for presenting a Common Prayer to her which had been purposely ornamented with cuts by him.” The reference is to Strype, ‘Annals,’ i. 272, or in the Oxford edition of 1824, vol. i. pt. i. p. 408. Strype’s language may easily account for and excuse the error, for he says, “The 5th, being Low-Sunday, Sampson, Dean of Christ-church, Oxon., preached at Paul’s Cross; where he declared the three former Spital sermons in Easter week, as he had done, I think, twice before: being appointed thereunto in regard of his excellent elocution and memory. The aforesaid dean, so often noted before for his frequent preaching before the Queen, preached on the festival of the Circumcision, being new-year’s day at St. Paul’s, whither the Queen resorted. Here a remarkable passage happened,” &c. As Sampson had been named in the previous paragraph, it is not to be wondered at that Mr. Douce took the words “the aforesaid dean” to refer to him. They do, however, refer to Alexander Nowell, Dean of St. Paul’s, as we learn from Strype himself, in his ‘Life of Archbishop Parker,’ i. 193. “By these frequent inculcations of the Archbishop and some of his fellow Bishops, and by their discreet behaviour towards the Queen, she was at length brought off from the fancy of images; and, which is very remarkable, she showed herself not long after very highly disgusted at the very sight of some ornamental pictures set before the Epistles and Gospels in a Book of Common Prayer, which on New Year’s Day, anno 1561/2 Nowel, the Dean of St. Paul’s, had laid before her when she came on that day to hear a sermon, preached by the same Dean, intending to present her the book for a new-year’s gift: which is mentioned at large elsewhere.” Strype’s language in the ‘Annals’ is undoubtedly vague, and likely to mislead at first sight. The whole story is correctly stated by Archdeacon Churton, in his ‘Life of Dean Nowell,’ written, where I am now writing, at Middleton Cheney, and published at Oxford in 1809, see pp. 70–73. Douce was not aware of his mistake, as it is repeated in a long MS. note on the fly-leaf of his copy of the 1590 edition of the ‘Book of Prayers’ now in the Bodleian Library. The dialogue between the Queen and the Dean is (illegible text) reading, but is too long for ‘N. & Q.’ W. E. Buckley.
A Cobbler’s Pedigree.—The following is going the round of the daily papers:—
“A cobbler died recently at Smeeth, in Kent, who differed from the majority of cobblers in one respect. He had a pedigree, and was, as the local paper observes, a ‘man of blood.’ His name was William Kingsmill, and for upwards of a hundred years he and his ancestors carried on the same business; but his family was a very old one in Kent. The deceased, in fact, it is stated on good authority, was a lineal descendant of John Kingsmill, who, in the fourteenth century, was one of the judges of Common Pleas, and who married Joan, daughter of Sir John Gifford. Sir George Kingsmill, a later ancestor, was another judge of Common Pleas, who lived his life in Tudor times, and took for a wife a Lady Hastings. A grandson of this judge, and a progenitor of the defunct cobbler, was Sir Richard Kingsmill, surveyor of the Court of Warde in the year 1600. To him succeeded a son named Sir William, and the son of the latter, named Sir Henry, his successor being another Sir William, who married Anne, a daughter of Sir A. Hazlewood. The eldest daughter of this couple married Heneage, Earl of Winchilsea, and a later descendant of the family was Admiral Kingsmill, who sat in Parliament, and was commander-in-chief of the king’s ships on the coast of Ireland. He was created Admiral of the White and a baronet, and was succeeded by Sir Robert Kingsmill, whose son became colonel and captain commandant of the Battleaxe Guards. So the recently deceased cobbler had good Kingsmill blood in his veins.”
It would be interesting could the defunct cobbler’s descent be authenticated. The Kingsmills were as much identified with Hampshire as with Kent. According to the usually received pedigrees of the family—which are very meagre—Admiral Kingsmill and his ancestors, the knights above named, were descended not from Sir Richard Kingsmill, Surveyor of the Court of Wards, but from the latter’s elder brother, Sir William Kingsmill, of Sidmonton, Hants. W. D. Pink.
The Florin.—This is taken verbatim from the Times of Wednesday, June 15, 1887. Will you insert it in ‘N. & Q.,’ for what it is worth to numismatology?—
“In the interesting historical remarks which recently appeared in the Times on the subject of our coinage no notice was made as to the authorship of the ‘florin’ now in use. During a conversation I had with the late William Dyce, R.A., on the subject of coins—not long before he died—he remarked to me, ‘It seems little known that the “florin” was engraved from a design of mine.’—John R. Clayton.”
It would not be out of place to have recorded here the names of the designers of the Jubilee coins, much maligned, praised, and talked about, now being in course of circulation. There was an article on them in Murray’s Magazine early in its first year of publication (1887). I am astonished this fact of the florin has not before found its corner in ‘N. & Q.’ Herbert Hardy.
Treatment of Royal Portraits.—John Moore, M.D., in his ‘View of Society and Manners in Italy,’ a book which is little read now but which delighted our grandfathers, tells a story of a certain
