LONDON, February 12, 1921.

CONTENTS.-No. 148.

NOTES:-Hazebrouck, 121 - Among the Shakespeare
Archives: The Death of Richard Shakespeare, 124-Glass
Painters of York: I. The Chamber Family, 127-St.

Valentine's Day, 128-Prices in the early Nineteenth
Century-Anecdote of Laurence Sterne-Mary Roberts
-Exeter College, Oxford-Curious Jacobite Toast, 129.
QUERIES--Scott's 'Legend of Montrose,' 129-Legisla-
tion against Tobacco-Cottage at Englefield Green-The
"Invalid Office"-Royal British Bank-Robert Gascoigne
John Milton and the Milburns-"Such as we make no
Musick - The Sentry at Pompeii-Identification of

and Walthamstow-Matthew Carter, 130-Hollingworth

Quotation Wanted, 139.

The

NOTES ON BOOKS: Studies in Islamic PoetryThe
Family

Oxfordshire Record Series'
Records Folk-Lore.'
Notices to Correspondents.

Fleetwood

three open towns, of which Hazebrouck was one, and forty-seven villages. The population of the châtellenie in 1698 was 37,969, but of these only so ne 1,300 lived in the town of Cassel itself, which at that time had been reduced to 250 houses. Hazebrouck had suffered less and the population of the parish was then 3,725, and the number of houses 560. These figures are taken from a Mémoire drawn up by M. Hue de Caligny in the year after Ryswick. Under the Spanish domination the region had possessed flourishing manufactures, but M. de Caligny notes the perishing industries of the province. Agriculture, as at the present day, alone was prosperous. This industrial decay, which was one of the results of the religious troubles of the sixteenth, and of the wars of the seventeenth century, was unfortunately not arrested :"l'industrie drapière tombe peu à peu et finit même par disparaître de la plupart des localités sous la domination française."

REPLIES:-The Western Miscellany, 132- Terrestrial Globes-Tella Trelawny-'Mrs. Drake Revived,' 134"The Ashes"-"Rigges" and "Granpoles," 135-Paul Marny-Lady Anne Graham-Morgan Phillips or Phillip Morgan, 136-Pigueuit (Caesar and Danby) -Problem of Hazebrouck, which at the outbreak of Vagrancy in the Eighteenth Century-Spencer Turner-the war had a population of about 13,000, Maundrell's 'Journey from Aleppo to Jerusalem. Easter, is sometimes styled 1097-Nortons in Ireland --William Holder, 137the capital of "la Tarlupins (Turbulines), 138 -Leigh Hunt-Author of Flandre flamingante," or rather of that portion of it which is now French and in which the Flemish language is still commonly spoken. In its fullest extent “la Flandre flamingante comprised the whole of the country between the North Sea and the river Lys, from Aire to Ghent, with the river Aa as its western boundary. The native inhabitants of this region, on both sides of the present frontier, especially the peasants and working-class, still generally use the Flemish tongue, but French is well established in the towns, and the river Lys can no longer be said to mark a language boundary. M. Ardouin-Dumazet, writing little further north, approximately along shortly before the war, placed the border a the line of railway Hazebrouck-Armentières, and drew attention to the curious fact that in one of the streets of Bailleul both lenguages were in use, French on

Notes.

HAZEBROUCK.
I.

HAZEBROUCK, the capital (chef-lieu) of one
of the arrondissements of the Département
du Nord, lies between Dunkerque and
Lille at a distance of 18 kilometers from the
Belgian frontier, and 22 kilometers east of
St. Omer.
The arrondissement to which the

town gives its name comprises the inland
western portion of the old province of
Flandre Maritime, and is co-terminous with
the former châtellenies of Cassel and Bail-
leul. In its full extent under the Old
Régime (from the Peace of Ryswick down
to the Revolution) the province consisted
of the six chatellenies of Bourbourg, Bergues,
Cassel, Bailleul, Furnes, and Ypres, together
with six "territories

and Flemish on the other.

one side

North of

this line of railway French place-names are few in number, while to the south they predominate.

Flemish, and means "the marsh of the The place-name Hazebrouck is entirely hare, a derivation recorded in the sixteenth century by Marchant,* who states that the hare (in Flemish "haze ") “here

which need not here be named. Of the châtellenies that of Cassel * Jac. Marchant, Flemish historian and poet, was the largest, and in it were included 1537-1609.

had its habitat in a spot favourable to the
propagation of its species, for the country
was not only marshy but also covered
with woods and forests." The theory that
Hazebrouck owes its name to a Lord of the
name of Haza, who is supposed to have
founded the church, is now abandoned.
It finds mention, however, in Blaeu's
"Theatrum Urbium Belgicae (1649), in
which the town is thus described :-
:-

des Sciences, des Arts, et des Métiers' (ed. Neufchâtel, 1765), is very short :—

Hazebrouck is a fair and populous municipality in western Flanders, enjoying the rights and privileges, as well as the name, of a town, with a special jurisdiction of its own. It received laws from Philip of Alsace (Count of Flanders), its fairs in June and market on Monday from another Philip, Duke of Burgundy, and its name, according to Gramaye,* from Haza, a former magnate and founder of the church (curialis ecclesia). It stands on a very marshy site, and owes its reputation to linen weaving and cloth making. At one time it attained great wealth by means of the canal cut through the forest of Nieppe to the river Lys. In addition to all its rights as a town, it has a Senate of seven men, and a special law for the regulation of measures and of fairs: it has also a guild of archers and one of rhetoric. The people are divided according to their occupations into trade guilds, and had not the town been afflicted by civil wars, they would have attained a prosperity equal to any. The parish church, which has a splendid tower, is dedicated to St. Eloi. The patronage belongs to the Bishop of Ypres, by right of succession from the see of Thérouanne. A small nunnery and hospital of Grey Sisters of the Third Order of St. Francis was founded here two hundred years ago by two pious sisters. The friars of the Order of St. Augustine were admitted to the town under certain conditions, their house being founded and endowed by the Senate and people. It maintains a school of polite letters, which has received confirmation from the Catholic King, Philip IV." This description dates from a time when Hazebrouck formed part of the Spanish Netherlands, Philip IV. being the reigning sovereign. Accompanying it is a view- Hazebrouck, 1890. 454 pp." plan of the town, which shows the lines of the principal streets exactly as they are to-day, though the space covered by buildings is very much less. The fields then encroached on what is now the centre of the town, and a large garden is shown attached to almost every house. It was nearly thirty years after Blaeu's book appeared that Hazebrouck became definitely French (1678).

'Haesbrouk, petite ville de Flandre, à deux lieues d'Aire. Longit. 20.4, latit. 50.40." At what date the spelling of the name became fixed in its present form I cannot say, but the following variations occur before the beginning of the last century: Hasbruc, Hasbroc, Hasbroec, Hasbroucq, Hasbourg, Haesbroecke, Haesebrouck, Haesebroucq, Hazebrouc, Hazebreuc, Hazebruch, Hazebruec, Hazebruck, and Hazebrouck. The earliest of these is found in a charter of 1122 by which Charles le Bon, Count of Flanders, notifies that Lambert, Provost of Cassel, has given to the church of Oxelaere a certain piece of land situated near to the town of Hasbruc (apud villam Hasbruc).

At this period, says M. Taverne de Tersud (from whom the above is cited) :—— "la ville n'était qu'une agglomeration de quelques habitations bâties au milieu des eaux et des bois. ....Sa situation a été une cause d'empêchement à sa développement."

A century later Hazebrouck seems to have been considered a place of small importance. The reference to the town in the 'Encyclopédie, ou Dictionnaire Raisonné

Jan Bapt. Gramaye, Flemish traveller, poet,

and historian, c. 1580-1635.

M. de Tersud's was the only book on Hazebrouck that I was able to discover during a residence in the town of some months immediately before the evacuation of 1918 and again during the winter of 1918-19. It is true that life was then abnormal and the times not well fitted for the pursuit of the study of local history. But inquiry at the principal stationer and booksellers' shops failed to produce any volume dealing with the history or institutions of the townthèque Communale at St. Omer, however, a guide-book. In the BiblioI found M. de Tersud's volume:

not even

:

"Hazebrouck, depuis son origine jusqu'à nos jours: par Charles Taverne de Tersud. 4to.

Though published in 1890 the book seems to have been written at least three years earlier, as the preface is dated May, 1887. In the thirty years that have elapsed since the appearance of this work some changes have, of course, taken place in Hazebrouck, but generally speaking M. de Tersud's description held good down to the outbreak of the war.

The outstanding events in the history of the town may be summarized as follows:

1213. Philip Augustus, in order to avenge the disasters inflicted on his fleet off the coast of Flanders, ravaged the adjacent country, in the course of which action Hazebrouck and other towns were burned.

The only buildings of antiquarian interest now remaining in Hazebrouck are the parish church of St. Eloi, and the HospiceHôpital (formerly the convent of the Augustines). The rest of the town has been rebuilt at different times, mostly in the nineteenth century, such houses of earlier date as remain being of little or no architectural interest. According to M. de Tersud the church is a rebuilding at the close of the fifteenth century of an older structure which suffered from fire in 1492, the in1644. In October, Hazebrouck, still terior being then wholly destroyed. The Spanish, was invaded by a French army,

which occupied the town for eight days, *For battle of Cassel see inscriptions recorded inflicting loss and ruin on the inhabitants, in ' N. & Q.' 12 S. vi. 225-6: also 12 S. vii. 241.

tower is said to have been completed in! 1512, and is surmounted by a spire of openwork, the total height of which is 278 ft. The building is of red brick with stone dressings, and consists of choir, transepts, aisled nave, and west tower. A smaller spire, which stood originally at the intersection of nave and transepts, was demolished in 1767. Except for the disappear ance of this feature the church is to-day externally pretty much as shewn in Blaeu's view. Internally, however, it underwent a somewhat drastic change in the last century, when plaster ceilings were erected and other

alterations of a like nature made. The structure suffered little or nothing during the bombardment of 1918.

The buildings of the Hospice-Hôpital are also of red-brick. The older wing, which is an excellent example of Flemish Renaissance design, is dated 1616, and the later and smaller wing 1718. The whole was restored in 1868 and again in 1895-6. The convent was suppressed in 1793, and for some years the building was used as a kind of tenement house by all sorts and conditions of people. Considerable damage was done to the interior and it was not till 1800 that the building was cleared, and put to other uses. After the destruction of the old town hall in 1801 the convent was used for municipal purposes till the new town hall was completed (1820), since when it has served as a hospital.

The earlier convent of the Grey Sisters mentioned by Blaeu, founded in the fifteenth century, stood on a site behind the present town hall, now occupied by the Maison d'Arrêt. It was suppressed in the Revolution and the buildings demolished.

In February, 1814, a corps of Saxons and Cossacks staved three days in Hazebrouck, camping in the open air, but appear to have left the town unharmed. After the final overthrow of Napoleon Hazebrouck was occupied for two years (1815-17) by an English dragoon regiment. The name of the regiment is not given by M. de Tersud, but it is gratifying to know that

"les documents qui reposent à la mairie attestet les soldats n'étaient pas tendus et que de part et d'autre on se faisait toutes les concessions possibles pour vivre en bonne intelligence."

ent que les rapports entre les habitants, les officiers

A century later British troops were once more in occupation of Hazebrouck, but under conditions at once more pleasing and more difficult. 1 F. Н. СНЕЕТНАМ. (To be continued.)

AMONG THE SHAKESPEARE

ARCHIVES.

(See ante, pp. 23, 45, 66, 83.)

THE DEATH OF RICHARD SHAKESPEARE.

ATTENTION was drawn to Snitterfield in
Dec., 1559, by the death of Master Thomas
Robins of Northbrooke. His will was signed
on the 7th of that month, and proved in
London on the 23rd by Richard Charnock

on behalf of the executor, Edward Grant. The testator's prayer to the Trinity and bequest of his soul to Jesus Christ, and his instruction that his body should be buried 'without pomp before the choir-door in the parish-church "in the place which I have been accustomed to walk in," point to his being a Protestant. But his son-in-law and heir, Edward Grant, was a Catholic, and the will was witnessed and supervised by that "unlearned and stubborn priest " whom Bishop Sandys soon after deprived, William

Burton. Master Robins was a widower at the time of his death and had lost his

daughter, his only child, wife of Edward Grant. This Edward Grant was son to Master Richard Grant of Briary Lands, and father by Master Robins' daughter of three children, Mary, Thomas and Richard. He had married again, taking for his second wife Anne Somerville, daughter to Master

Robert Somerville of Edstone. She bore him a son, Edward. To the four children of his son-in-law Master Robins made bequests

estate after their father's death was to be

66

-to Mary of 401, a gilt bowl and a ring of gold "which was my wife's wedding-ring, to be delivered when she shall be married or at her father's pleasure," and to the three boys of 6 13s. 4d. apiece. The residue of the bestowed "so that Mary have two kine more besides her own two in my keeping and six pair of flaxen sheets," and Edward all such household stuff whatsoever that I have in Northbrooke, the standing beds, cupboards, tables, forms and joined-stools excepted." To his son-in-law's second wife, whom he calls his "daughter-in-law," Anne Grant née Somerville, he left "my little silver salt which I bought lately at Coventry Fair." We shall hear of the Grants and their connections the Somervilles. Thomas Grant inherited Northbrooke, Edward Grant his mother's property of Kingswood at Rowington. Edward Grant's cousin, John Somerville, born about the time of Master Robins' death, married an Arden of Park