Reviews. Handbook of the Administrations of Great Britain, 1801-1900. By FRANCIS CULling CarrGOMM, Middle Temple, Barrister-at-Law. Second Edition. 1901. Smith, Elder, and Co., 15 Waterloo Place. THIS very instructive work begins with narrating the union of the Legislatures of Great Britain and Ireland in January 1801, when Mr. Pitt, after having been Prime Minister for seventeen years, pledged himself to bring in the bill for the removal of Catholic disabilities at once. George III. was strongly opposed to it, and Mr. Pitt had to resign; the King's reason gave way at the time, and thus in May 1801 Mr. Addington (afterwards Lord Sidmouth) became Prime Minister, and was in power little over three years. We thus particularize the beginning of the work, because in the present time the union of England with Ireland at the beginning of 1801 seems fraught with no better feeling after a full century than it began with, notwithstanding all the assistance England has during the whole time lavished upon Ireland. From the second administration of Mr. Pitt to his death, when Mr. Canning came into power, carries us over the Peninsular War and Waterloo, and so on to Sir Robert Peel's administration, followed by that of the Bedford influence, until in 1858 Earl Derby came into power, afterwards followed by Mr. Gladstone and Mr. Disraeli, who was made Earl Beaconsfield in 1876. To readers of medium years, up to this period and all through Her late Majesty's reign, the various changes in parties and politics are doubly interesting; and to those younger, whose recollections may only take them after the time when Lord Palmerston and the Earl of Derby were in power, the extension of the franchise, liberty of the press, and the rise of cheap literature coincide with the rise of England in all that appertains to the liberal proclivities of the period. When in 1848 all Europe was so convulsed, it brought no material change in England, which had been troubled at home with the Irish famine in 1846. When in 1851 the Exhibition brought all Europe to England, people were realizing all the blessings of peace, until cruelly dissipated by the war with Russia, to be followed by the Indian Mutiny in 1857. The state of parties under every change is carefully narrated throughout the Work, and although materially shortened, enough is told to restore one's recollection of every principal event in the history of Great Britain, both in our own lifetime and previously. To add to the history of parties even more vividly, the Author has been relieved from narrating any change in the dynasty for the last seventy years, and all at the present time are only brought face to face to the vast alterations it makes through the death of a king or queen, as it affects the changes in all the offices, etc. The Author has adopted throughout the plan of giving the greatest information in the shortest of space, and the consequence is, his work is readable from beginning to end. He is able even to give us in Appendix B. the Majuba Convention of 1881, and in Appendix C. the strength of our forces in South Africa, and the losses up to the end of the century. The work is invaluable to all readers, and ought to be in the hands of every one interested in the history of their own country. Every page is brimful of discussion, if the work is perused with friends, and makes one feel inclined to fight all our battles o'er again with harmony and pleasure. To Members of Parliament the work is invaluable. The Journal of the Ex Libris Society. November and December 1900, and January and February 1901. London: A. and C. Black, Soho Square. THE Double Number for November and December has four different plates designed by H. R. Badeley, delicately drawn, and giving good examples of mantling, two of them having a group of volumes forming a base for the shield. Two others by Mr. C. E. Eldred shew great originality, and four by Miss C. Helard shew equal variety. This Double Number also has fifteen other plates illustrating a Paper on landscape bookplates by J. F. Verster and the Editor, who has to be congratulated on his fine Double Part, The January Part has a frontispiece of bookplate of C'. Lorenz Meyer of Hamburg, being his own portrait; a good photograph would have been better without being called a bookplate. There is the genial address given by Sir James Balfour Paul, Lyon, and as plates there are four landscape examples given, and seven plates for identification, bringing the number up to 451. The February Part has the Title and Index for Vol. X., besides four plates for identification, now up to 455. There are also three plates of John Wilkes, the demagogue of Hogarth's time and Member of Parliament in 1768, and a couple of charming landscape bookplates of John Orr of Edinburgh, 1891, and of Walter Conway Prescott. The Virginia Magazine of History and Biography. No. 3, Vol. VIII. January 1901. Virginia Historical Society, Richmond, U.S.A. THIS Magazine still keeps printing original letters from persons prior to the Revolution, whether loyalists or not, and whose estates were confiscated for regard to the old country. That feeling is fairly exhausted after the experience of a century, and the world happily enters on a better knowledge of its neighbour, so that we find the great British race in a new century consolidated into one vast community, each anxious for itself to spread the good feeling of fellowship around. In a letter to Governor Hutchinson in August 1775 from Harrison Gray, Receiver-General of Massachusetts, the spirit seems strongly loyal, and he remarks that "our army" obtained a complete victory over the "rebels" at Bunker's Hill; and he adds, "Had the Navy given that assistance to the Army that Admiral Montague would have afforded, not a rebel would have escaped." Again, the same writer speaks of "the complete victory over the rebels at Charleston." His son afterwards started for London to procure necessaries, and he hesitates to give an account of the city, "for the continual noise and confusion is such that were I possessed of millions I would reject them for a small pittance in retirement." As for the country, he said that he landed at Graves End, and he would not attempt to describe it," as the Garden of Eden could not excel it." There is an interesting account of Miss Ball, the daughter of Captain Joseph Ball, and who was the mother of George Washington. She lived with her widowed mother and two sisters in a Northumberland home, the property of her mother's third husband, Captain Richard Hewe, a vestryman of St. Stephen's parish and prominent business man, who soon died, leaving his stepdaughters with their mother, who gave her daughter Mary one "young likely negro woman," several rings, a young mare and a good pacing horse, with a plush side-saddle, and most of her linen and apparel. The daughter was eighteen at her mother's death, and her half-brother by her mother's first marriage died about the same time, leaving Mary Ball his land in Stafford, and her father left her "400 acres of land in ye freshes of Rapport river," thus making her rich with an endowment of Virginia real estate before her marriage with George Washington, which came about through her guardian Major Eskridge. There are several interesting papers in this Part, which ends Vol. VIII., and a good Index, Title, etc., complete it. Fenland Notes and Queries. Parts 47, 48, for October 1900 and January 1901. Peterborough : George C. Caster, Market Place. THIS Magazine still has interesting accounts of local buildings and amusements, as well as of phraseology from time to time. A short Paper on Wisbech Castle begins the October Part, which also gives another on Wilsthorpe Church and one on Crowland Rectory. To begin Vol. V. the Editor gives a good account of Church Hall, Maxey, with an illustration of the old parsonage. The article also gives an illustration of the old vicarage house of St. John's, Peterborough, which is now a small inn ! Maxey Registers" were printed by Messrs. Mitchell and Hughes, and the Editor of "Fenland Notes" kindly edited them, but the sale did not meet half the cost of them. Copies can still be had. The January Part has also a further account of Wilsthorpe Church, besides other matter. The Editor issues an ample Index for Vol. IV. Books for Review and Notices of Forthcoming Works should be addressed to the Publishing Office, 140 Wardour Street, London, W. Funeral Certificate.* SIR ROBERT DICER, BARONET, 1667. The Right worshipfull Sr Robert Dicer, Baronett, Departed this mortall life at his house in Hackeney in the County of Midd. on Munday being the 26 day of August 1667, aged 72 years, his body being first privately brought to Leathersellers Hall in Little St Hellens, London, was on Tuesday the 10th day of September following carried from thence in a Hearse to Braughin neare Puckoridge in the County of Hartford, and there interred in the Chancell of the said Parrish Church: his said funerall was decently solemnized according to his degree with Standard Pennons, etc., three Officers of Armes carrying his Hatchments accompanied by divers Knights & Persons of Quality in coaches from the said Leathersellers Hall as farre as Newington. The said defunct married Dorothy daughter of William Styles of Emingston in the County of Suffolke, Gent., by whom hee had issue Robert Dycer his eldest sonne, who hath alsoe married Judith daughter of Richard Gulson of Wigeall in the County of Hartford, Esquire, by whom he hath issue Robert his only sonne. The said defunct had to his second sonne William Dicer, unmarried. Elizabeth eldest daughter to the defunct married Isack Meynell of London, Goldsmith, and Dorothy second daughter to the defunct married Thomas Wood of Littleton in the County of Middlesex, Gent. This Certificate was taken by Henry Dethick, Rouge Croyx, and attested by the said Robert Dycer the 23 day of September 1667. Robert Dycer * Communicated by H. FARNHAM BURKE, Esq., F.S.A., Somerset Herald. VOL. IV., SERIES III, R Pedigree of Riou.* ARMS.-Azure, in base a swan naiant proper, in chief two bars or. Matthew Lebrun1 alias Riou, naturalized as Matthew Riou, 9 Sep. 1698 (10 Will. III.); d. unm. 1727. Will (signed Matthew Riou alias Labrune) dated 16 Sep. 1726 and proved 7 Apr. 1727 by Stephen Riou and John Cros, the nephews. (P.C.C., 97, Farrant.) Dorothy, m. (from Bentinck Street) 5 Feb. 1799; d. 15 Sep. 1855. Colonel Lyde Brown, b. ; Lieut.-Col. 21st Fusiliers; killed, after twenty-three Magdalen, who, with others, died young. Charlotte Riou (only child), Moses George Benson, b. 20 Jan. 1798; d. 11 April m. 11 April 1826; d. 8 | 1871; J.P., D.L., of Lutwyche Hall, co. Salop. June 1875. (See "Landed Gentry.") NOTES. 1 Matthew Riou fled from France in 1687, taking Stephen, then aged 11, with him, and established himself as a merchant at Berne, remaining there till 1698, when he removed to London, bringing a capital of £8000. 2 Jean François Mazeirac m. and had issue, as we find from the Geneva Registers (where the name appears variously as Masera, Maseirac, Mazera, Mazeirat), all baptized at St. Gervais : (1) Sara, b. 1738; (2) Antoine, b. 1739; (3) Magdelaine, b. 1741 ; and (4) Jean Louis, b. 1745. 3 The arms of Baudouin, as found on the monument at Enfield, impaled with those of Riou, were Sable, a bend between eight billets argent. During the interval of a general peace Stephen Riou devoted five years to travelling through most of the countries of Europe, and in 1768 he published "The Grecian Orders of Architecture, delineated and explained from the Antiquities of Athens," in virtue of which in the Obituary of the "Gent. Mag." he is described as an architect. 5 Hermann Berens, born at Amsterdam, son of Hermann and Regina Berens, was naturalized by Act of Parliament in 1732 (No. 68, 5 George II.). 6 Portraits are extant at Lutwyche Hall of Christopher Baudouin, of his wife and three daughters, of Stephen père and Stephen fils, of Magdalen afterwards Mrs. Berens, of Captain Edward Riou, and of Mrs. Dorothy Brown. Howard.* EXTRACTS FROM THE PARISH REGISTER OF COBHAM, SURREY.† 1622 Jan. 11 Henry Howard, buried. 1625 Sep. 11 1629 Jan. 23 Mary dau. of Thomas Howard, bapt. Thomas Howard, buried. . . . . Howard, widow, buried. William Millet & Lettice Howard were married. John son of Richard Howard, husbandman, bapt. Thomas Sawyer, carpenter, & Elizabeth Howard were married. Elizabeth dau. of William Howard, laborer, bapt. * Communicated by WILLIAM BRADBROOK, M.R.C.S. †The Register is in poor condition, is evidently a paper copy, and many years are missing. |