Chapter C: W. G

_Samuel Daniel_ (Vol. vi., p. 603.).--The writer will be happy to communicate with I. M. on the subject of the life, &c. of this poet and historian; for which purpose his address is left with the Editor.

E. D.

_La Bruyère_ (Vol. vii., pp. 38. 114.).--There lies before me an elaborate MS. history of the family of Brewer, with a pedigree. The former, which commences with Ralph de Bruera (temp. William I.), has been compiled from papers in the Heralds' Office, Brompton, Dugdale, and the more modern historians, general and local. The last individual mentioned therein is a physician, who bore the name and ancient arms of Brewer, and died in 1618. The pedigree embraces about sixty names, including the alliances, but reaches no further downwards than the sons of Roger Mortimer in the reign of Henry III. These documents do not contribute in any way to answer the inquiry of one of your correspondents as to La Bruyère; and it may be satisfactory to the other to know that there is nothing in them to show any connexion with the name of De la Bruere.

J. D. S.

_Murray, titular Earl of Dunbar_ (Vol. vi., p. 11.).--In correcting Lord Albemarle's mistake respecting "James Murray, _titular_ Earl of Dunbar," your correspondent C. (2.), Portsmouth, seems to have fallen into a similar error, which I hope he will pardon me for pointing out.

The Christian name of _Murray of Broughton_ was not _James_, but _John_; and the ancient Border family to which he belonged was so distinctly connected with that of Stormont (a branch of Tullibardine), that even genealogical tradition was silent. His activity as an agent recommended him to Prince Charles, who employed him as his secretary during the campaign of 1745, to the misfortunes of which he added by fomenting the Prince's distrust of Lord George Murray: and his final treachery to his master and his cause has condemned him to an immortality of infamy. He had nothing in common with "James Earl of Dunbar," save the name which he disgraced and the cause which he betrayed.

James Murray, second son of Lord Stormont, and elder brother of the famous Lord Mansfield, escaped to the court of the exiled Stuarts after 1715. He became governor to the prince; and under the title of Earl of Dunbar, chief minister and secretary to his father. He never returned to Scotland, but died in 1770 at Avignon, at the age of eighty. His honorable fidelity to a ruined cause is admitted even by Junius, when, "willing to wound," he taunts Mansfield with this Jacobite connexion; while the intensity of loathing with which Scotland viewed his infamous namesake is illustrated by the anecdote of old Walter Scott throwing the cup out of the window, lest "lip of him, or his, should come after John Murray of Broughton."

D. B.

Balfour.

_Loggerheads_ (Vol. v., p. 338.).--As I do not find that any correspondent of "N. & Q." on the subject of the sign of "We Three" has mentioned the existence of a similar sign in a small village in Denbighshire, on the border of Flintshire, to which a curious tradition is attached, I am induced to forward the account of it. The last years of Wilson, the landscape painter (who died in 1782), were passed at a house called Clomendu, the dove-cote, situated on a property to which he had succeeded in the little village of Llanoerris, through which the high road from Mold, his burial-place, to Ruthin passes. Wilson was fond of ale, and is {193} traditionally said to have frequented a small inn close by the roadside (on the right hand as you pass through the village from Mold towards the vale of Clwyd), and to have spent many an hour upon the bench under a tree which was lately, and is perhaps still standing opposite. His friend the landlord, wanting a new sign, or more probably a restoration of the old established one, Wilson painted for him the heads of two very merry red-faced men, who are looking hard, with a broad grin, towards the spectator. Long exposure to the wind and weather had, when I saw them, nearly obliterated the original colouring of the heads, and I have heard that some Dick Tinto has of late years restored the rubicund hue to their cheeks: but the words "We Three Loggerheads Be" were quite legible ten years ago. The innkeeper, who sets a very high value on this sign, is, I believe, a son of the man for whom Wilson painted it. It is not attached to a pole, but fastened against the front of the inn: and a few years ago, an idea prevailing that "The Loggerheads" had been painted on the back of an unfinished landscape, an artist offered the innkeeper a sum of money to be allowed to take it down, and ascertain the fact. But it was indignantly refused, with a protest that the sign which Wilson had painted should never be removed from its place, as long as he lived.

CAMBRENSIS.

_Lord Nelson and Walter Burke_ (Vol. vi., p. 576.).--An obituary memoir of Mr. Burke appears in the _Examiner_ for October 1, 1815.

H. G. D.

_Parochial Libraries_ (Vol. vi., pp. 432. 559.).--An ancient parochial library existed some seven or eight and twenty years ago at Gillingham in Dorsetshire. I was for a short period at that time the _locum tenens_ of the then rector of Gillingham; but at this distance of time remember scarcely more than that the books were kept in a small room devoted to the purpose in the rectory house, and were probably above two hundred in number.

COKELY.

_St. Botulph_ (Vol. vii., p. 84.).--The life of St. Botulph, contained in the Harleian MS. No. 3097., is by Fulcard, a monk of Thorney, as appears by the dedication. It is the same as that printed by Capgrave, who omits the dedication. Fulcard wrote the lives of certain other saints buried at Thorney (Torhtred and Tancred). The dedication does not belong exclusively to the life of Botulph, but forms the introduction to all three lives. It was for this reason, I suppose, that Capgrave (or rather John of Tynemouth, from whom he borrowed) omitted it.