Chapter C: M. I

[Richardson suggests the following:--"The French at this day apply
the word _bigot_ to one superstitiously religious; not certainly
from the oath _be-got_, as Menage thinks, but rather from the
A.-S. _bigan_, colere; and hence also _begine_, a religious woman.
(Wachter in v. _Bein-Gott_.)"

Cotgrave says, "Bigot, an old Norman word (signifying as much as
'_de par Dieu_,' or our 'for God's sake') made good French, and
signifying an hypocrite, or one that seemeth much more holy than
he is: also, a scrupulous, or superstitious fellow."

Speight says, "_Begin_, _bigot_, superstitious, hypocrite." Upon
which Thynne remarks, "whiche sence I knowe y't maye somewhat
beare, because y't sauorethe of the dispositione of those _Begins_
or _Beguines_, for that ys the true wrytinge."]

Replies.

AGE OF TREES; TILFORD OAK.

(Vol. iv., p. 401., &c.)

I hope your correspondent L., in his search for ancient trees, will not overlook the Great Oak at Tilford near Farnham, which is worth a visit for its size and beauty, if not for its antiquity. Mr. Brayley, in his _History of Surrey_, vol. v. p. 288., thus speaks of it:--

"In the Charter granted by Henry de Blois about the year 1250, to
the monks of Waverley, he gives them leave to inclose their lands
wherever they please, within these bounds, 'which extend,' says
the record, 'from the Oak of Tilford, which is called the Kynghoc
[a quercu de Tyleford quæ vocatur Kynghoc], by the king's highway
towards Farnham, &c.' ... The Tilford Oak is still standing, and
is known by its ancient appellation of the King's Oak: a name
which it could not have obtained unless it had been of
considerable age and growth at the time of the bishop's grant; and
it may therefore be reasonably supposed to be 800 or 900 years
old. It is a noble tree, and still flourishing apparently without
decay."

I very much doubt the identity of the present tree with the "King's Oak" of Henry de Blois. _First_, Because the present bounds of Waverley do not run within 300 yards of the tree; and the bounds are hardly likely to have been materially changed, inasmuch as the abbey lands are freehold and tithe-free, whereas the surrounding lands are copyhold and titheable. _Secondly_, because the tree itself appears still to be growing and vigorous. Cobbett describes it in his _Rural Rides_, p. 15., 1822, with his usual accuracy of observation:

"Our direct road was right over the heath, through Tilford, to
Farnham: but we veered a little to the left after we came to
Tilford, at which place, on the green, we stopped to look at an
_oak tree_, which, when I was a little boy, was but a very little
tree, comparatively, and which is now, taken altogether, by far
the finest tree that I ever saw in my life. The stem or shaft is
short, that is to say, it is short before you come to the first
limbs; but it is full thirty feet round at about eight or ten feet
from the ground. Out of the stem there come not less than fifteen
or sixteen limbs, many of which are from five to six feet round,
and each of which would in fact be considered a decent stick of
timber. I am not judge enough of timber to say anything about the
quantity in the whole tree; but my son stepped the ground, and, as
nearly as we could judge, the diameter of the extent of the
branches was upwards of ninety feet, which would make a
circumference of about 300 feet. The tree is in full growth at the
moment. There is a little hole in one of the limbs, but with that
exception, not the smallest sign of decay The tree has made great
shoots in all parts of it this last summer, and there are no
appearances of _white_ on the trunks such as are regarded as the
symptoms of full growth. There are many sorts of oak in England:
two very distinct. One with a pale leaf, and one with a dark leaf;
this is of the pale leaf."

Any other references to the age or history of this tree would oblige.

TILFORDIENSIS.

P.S. As your correspondent asked for information as to the _species_ of large oaks, I have inclosed some of the acorn-cups.

ST. PAUL'S QUOTATION OF HEATHEN WRITERS--ST. PAUL AND PLATO.

(Vol. v., p. 175.)

The letter at Vol. v., p. 175. of "N. & Q.," reminds me of a passage in a _Commentary on the Acts of the Apostles_, by the Rev. W. G. Humphry, B.D., which it may not be uninteresting to cite, in connexion with what your correspondent says of St. Paul's practice of quoting the writings of heathen authors.

It will be the ground also of an obvious query as to the source from which the quotation, if such it be, was borrowed by the Apostle.

In commenting upon v. 17. of chap. xiv., οὐρανόθεν, &c., he says:

"Both the language and the rhythm of this passage lead to the
conjecture (which does not appear to have been proposed before)
that it is a fragment from some lyric poem. Possibly the quotation
is not exact, but even without alteration it may be broken into
four lyric measures, thus:

"Οὐρανό|θεν ἡ|μῖν ὑ|ετοὺς
δίδους καὶ καιροὺς | καρποφόρους,
ἐμπι|πλῶν τρο|φῆς καὶ |
εὐφροσύνης | τὰς κα|ρδίας.

"1. Iambic; 2. Dochmaic and Choriamb.; 3. Trochaic; 4. Choriamb.
and Iambic."

Mr. Humphry has some remarks on St. Paul's quotations at v. 28. of chap. xvii.

OXONIENSIS.

Broad Street, Oxford.

Your correspondent MR. GILL (Vol. v., p. 175.) suggests an inquiry as to the probable extent to which St. Paul was acquainted with the writings of Aristotle. His letter reminds me of a similar question of still greater interest, which has often occurred to me, and to which I should like to call your readers' attention, "Whether St. Paul had read Plato?" I think no one who studies the 15th of the First Epistle to the Corinthians--that sublime chapter in which the Apostle sets forth the doctrine of the Resurrection--and who is also familiar with the _Phædo_, can fail to be struck with a remarkable similarity in one portion of the argument. I allude especially to the 36th verse of the chapter, and those immediately following, "That which thou sowest is not quickened except it die," &c. The reasoning, as almost every Christian knows, is based on analogy, and tends to show that, as in the vegetable world life springs from death, the seed dies, but out of it comes the perfect plant; so the dissolution of our present body is only a necessary step to the more glorified and complete development of our nature. In the _Phædo_, sect. 16., Socrates is represented as employing the same argument in defence of his doctrine of the immortality of the soul. In the course of his discussion with Kebes and Simmius on this subject, a consideration of the phenomena of animal and vegetable life leads him to assert the general conclusion, "ἐκ τῶν τεθνεώτων, τὰ ζῶντά τε καὶ οἱ ζῶντες γίγνονται," and he then proceeds to demonstrate the probability that in like manner the soul will not only survive the body, but reach a higher and purer condition after its death. Wetstein, whose abundant classical illustrations of the sacred text are alluded to by your correspondent, refers to little else than verbal parallelisms in his notes on this chapter, and does not quote Plato at all; nor do I remember seeing any edition of the Greek Testament in which the coincidence is pointed out. Perhaps some of your correspondents can elucidate this subject; it is one of great interest, and when pursued in the reverent and religious spirit indicated by MR. GILL, can hardly fail to prove a source of profitable investigation.

JOSHUA G. FITCH.

My edition of the _Platonic Dialogues_ is that of N. Forster of Christchurch, Oxford, dated 1745. In it the section I refer to is numbered 16; but in Stallbaum and some other editors, the arrangement is different, and the passage occurs in section 43.

SIR ALEXANDER CUMMING.

(Vol. v., p. 257.)

I have in my possession a manuscript consisting of copies of various letters, and other memorials of Sir Alexander Cumming. It is of his own period, but whether of his own handwriting I cannot say.

They are clearly the compositions of a person of an unsettled intellect; but we may collect from them the following facts:--His captain's commission was dated May 29, 1703; he was called by his mother, a few days before her death, both Jacob and Israel. This is further explained when he relates that Lady Cumming, his mother, set out from Edinburgh the first of the "Borrowing Days," towards the end of March, 1709.

"The three last days of March are called 'the Borrowing Days' in
Scotland, on account of their being generally attended with very
blustering weather, which inclines people to say that they would
wish to _borrow_ three days from the month of April, in exchange
for those three last days of the month of March. This lady was
seventeen days in her journeys upon the road, and lived ten days
after her arrival in London. She died on the Monday se'nnight in
the morning after she came to London. On the Thursday before her
death she called her son, Captain Cumming, to her bed-side, and
gave him her blessing in the terms of the prophet Isaiah, to which
she referred him, and gave him her own new Bible to read over on
the occasion, and to keep for her sake. But this Bible was lost,
with other baggage, taken by the French towards the end of the
campaign, 1709. Colonel Swinton, this lady's eldest brother, was
shot at the battle of Malplaquet, and died upon the field of
battle."

The lady travelled attended by her daughter Helen Cumming, and her servant Margaret Rae.

But I see we have been wrong in writing the name Cumming with two _m_'s. He writes it invariably _Cuming_. This would appear of little moment, but the change a little diminishes the probability of the writer's favourite notion, that the Hebrew word _Cumi_ is in some way obumbrated in his patronymic _Cuming_.

The passage of the prophet Isaiah which formed the substance of his mother's last benediction is chap. xli. verses 8 and 9, and chap. xliii. verses 2 and 3: "Thou _Israel_ art my servant, _Jacob_ whom I have chosen, the seed of Abraham, my friend," &c. He inclines to think that "the writer of the book called Isaiah was a friend to the British nation, and that the islands of Great Britain and Ireland are those addressed to, in order to renew their strength."

It was on April 23, 1730, O.S., that "by the unanimous consent of the people he was made law-giver, commander, leader, and chief of the Cherokee nation, and witness of the power of God, at a general meeting at Nequisee, in the Cherokee Mountains." He brought with him to England six Cherokee chiefs, and on June 18, in that year, he was allowed to present them to the King in the Royal Chapel at Windsor. This was at the time of the installation of the Duke of Cumberland and the Earls of Chesterfield and Burlington. On June 22nd was the ceremony of laying his crown at the feet of the King, when the Indian chiefs laid also their four scalps and five eagles' tails.

In a few years the scene was changed, and in 1737 we find him confined within the limits of the Fleet Prison; but having a rule of court, on the 8th of November he was at Knightsbridge, where about ten in the morning he opened the Bible for an answer to his prayers, and chanced upon the fifty-first and fifty-second chapters of Isaiah. He feels a call to a mission to the Jews, and contemplates visiting Poland. With that disposition of a mind disordered as his was, to turn everything towards a particular object, he thinks there was some mysterious connexion between the fact that Queen Caroline was seized with the illness which proved fatal, in her library, at ten o'clock on the morning of the 9th of November, the day after his call.

In 1750 he was still in the Fleet Prison, from whence, on May 15, he addressed a letter to Lord Halifax, asserting his right to the Cherokee Mountains, and proposing a scheme for the discharge of eighty millions of the National Debt; the scheme being, that 300,000 families of Jews should be settled in that country for the improvement of the lands, as industrious honest subjects. This letter notices also two facts in the Cuming history: 1. That Sir Alexander's father had been the means of saving the life of King George the Second; and 2. That he, Sir Alexander, had been taken into the secret service of the crown, at Christmas, 1718, at a salary of 300_l._ a-year, which was discontinued at Christmas, 1721.

J. H.

Torrington Square.

GENERAL WOLFE.

(Vols. iv. and v., _passim._)

As everything connected with General Wolfe is entitled to notice, the following names and public positions of his direct or collateral ancestors may not be uninteresting to your readers. I lately furnished you, from Ferrar's _History of Limerick_, a statement of the circumstances under which his great-grandfather, Captain George Woulfe, sought refuge in Yorkshire (I believe) from the proscription of Ireton, after the capitulation, in 1651, of Limerick, when his brother Francis, the superior of the Franciscan friars, not having been equally fortunate in escaping, was executed, with several others, excepted from the general pardon.

The family, of English origin, like the Roches, the Arthurs, Stackpoles, Sextons, Creaghes, Whites, &c., settled in Limerick between the thirteenth and fifteenth centuries, and gradually obtained high civil positions, when their successful commercial pursuits enabled them to acquire landed property in the adjoining county of Clare, where nearly all the above-named English families equally became extensive proprietors. In

1470. Garret Woulfe was one of the city bailiffs, as those
subsequently called sheriffs were then named.

1476. Thomas Woulfe filled the same office, as did in

1520. His son and namesake.

1562. Nicholas Woulfe was bailiff.

1567. John Woulfe ditto.

1578. The same became mayor.

1585. } Patrick Woulfe was bailiff these two years,

1587. } but not in the intervening 1586.

1590. Thomas Woulfe }

1591. Richard Woulfe } were successively bailiffs,

1592. David Woulfe } as in

1605. Was James Woulfe.

From this date till 1613 scarcely a year passed without the dismissal of the chosen Catholic magistrates, and substitution by royal mandate of Protestants. In 1613 George Woulfe, grandfather[7] of the proscribed Captain of the same name as above, then sheriff (the title assumed since 1609), with his colleagues, John Arthur, and the mayor, David Creagh, was deposed for refusing the oaths of supremacy, &c.

[Footnote 7: So I was assured, many years ago, by the late Lord
Chief Baron Wolfe, from whom I also learned that all these
magistrates certainly sprung from the same stem, though how they
should be respectively placed as to constitute a form of
genealogy, I cannot now exactly indicate.]

In 1647 Patrick Woulfe was sheriff; but from 1654, when the city surrendered to Ireton, until June 1656, Limerick was ruled by twelve English aldermen. In 1656 Colonel Henry Ingolsby became mayor, and the regular order of magistracy was subsequently pursued.

I cannot at present trace the genealogy in strict deduction, although I believe it all might be collected from the subsisting papers of the family in the county of Clare; at least from Garret, the first-named bailiff in the preceding list. In my boyhood I saw some pedigree of it in the hands of an antiquary named Stokes, but which it would now be difficult to discover. If the present Sir Frederick A. G. Ouseley, Bart., son of my old schoolfellow, the late Sir George, be in possession of the papers of his grandfather, Captain Ralph Ouseley, I think it likely that some documents relating to General Wolfe's family, in its ancient line, will be found, as I recollect hearing Captain Ouseley, a resident of Limerick, speak of them.

J. R.

Cork.

Replies to Minor Queries.

_Song of "Miss Bailey"_ (Vol. v., p. 248.).--I think I am certain that when I first heard of the song of "Miss Bailey," which was about 1805, it was as having been sung in the farce of _Love laughs at Locksmiths_.

C. B.

_Fern Storms_ (Vol. v., p. 242.).--In Colonel Reid's _Law of Storms_, p. 483. _et seq._, 2nd edition, accounts are given of the violent whirlwind produced by fires. It maybe supposed that in former times they were on a larger scale than at present, and, from the great force described, they might have affected the weather at least, when on the turn already.

C. B.

_The last of the Paleologi_ (Vol v., p. 173.).--All that was known respecting the descendants J. L. C. will find in an article relating to the family in the Transactions of the Society of Antiquaries, _Archæologia_, vol. xviii. pp. 84-104.

G.

"_Whipping Graves_" (Vol v., p. 247.).--CYRUS REDDING will find that the "Ritus Absolvendi jam mortuum" in the _modern Rituale Romanum_ (Mechliniæ, 1848), is performed exactly according to his description.

G. A. T.

Withyham.

_Rev. John Paget_ (Vol. iv., p. 133.; Vol. v., p. 66.).--CRANMORE'S inquiry has not been fully answered, nor am I able to point out the precise degree of relationship between John Paget and the editor of his works, Thomas Paget. The latter became incumbent of Blackley, near Manchester, about the year 1605, having been placed in that chapelry chiefly through the efforts of the Rev. William Bourne, B.D., a native of Staffordshire, who had married a kinswoman of Lord Burleigh, and who was for many years an influential Fellow of the Collegiate Church of Manchester. (See Hollingworth's _Mancuniensis_, pp. 106, 107.) In 1617 Thomas Paget was cited before Morton, Bishop of Chester, for nonconformity; and shortly afterwards he was convened before Bishop Bridgeman on the same ground. He is styled at this time "the good old man" (Brook's _Lives_, vol. ii. p. 293.), although he lived at least forty years afterwards. In the delightful _Autobiography of Henry Newcome, M.A._, the Presbyterian Minister of Manchester, edited for the Chetham Society by the Rev. Canon Parkinson, D.D. (2 vols. 4to. 1852), are several interesting notices of Mr. Thomas Paget. He is mentioned as "old Mr. Pagit, late of Blakeley," in 1658, and seems to have had the rectory of Stockport in 1659, although Richard Baxter spoke of him in 1656 as "old and sickly," and then living at Shrewsbury. He was well known, says the amiable Newcome, "as a man of much frowardness," and able to create "much unquietness;" but Baxter hoped, "not altogether so morose as some report him."

F. R. R.

_Old Scots March, &c._ (Vol. v., p. 235.).--I happen to have the score of one of the tunes inquired after by E. N., namely, _Port Athol_, as given by the late Edward Bunting, in his collection of Irish airs, under the name of the "Hawk of Ballyshannon." It was composed by a famous Irish harper named Rory Dal O'Cahan, the Rory Dal of Sir Walter Scott's _Legend of Montrose_, who visited Scotland in the reign of James VI., and ultimately died there. He was the author of the _Ports_ or tunes called _Port Gordon_, _Port Lennox_, _M'Leods Supper_, _Port Athol_, _Give me your hand_, _The Lame Beggar_, &c. &c. It has often struck me that this last tune is the origin from whence the air called _Jock o' Hazledean_ was drawn. It is almost the same.

FRANCIS CROSSLEY.

_Sir R. Howard's "Conquest of China"_ (Vol. v., p. 225.).--Dryden, in his letters to his sons, writes:

"After my return to town, I intend to alter a play of Sir Robert
Howard's, written long since, and lately put into my hands: 'tis
called _The Conquest of China by the Tartars_. It will cost me six
weeks' study, with the probable benefit of an hundred pounds."

The _Biographia Dramatica_ states that this play was never acted or printed.