One well-known detail, not to be found in this account, first appeared in Thompson's edition (1776). This is Marvell senior's last recorded utterance 'Ho for heaven.' Thompson must have got it from oral tradition and it rings authentic. The boatmen's cry would be 'Ho for Barrow,' and it accords with the character of the 'facetious' clergyman that he should have looked at the rough water and said 'Ho for heaven.' The three versions given above agree only in stating that the Rev. Andrew Marvell was drowned and that he was in the company of a lady. But it can be proved that this lady was neither Mrs Skinner of Thornton College nor any daughter of hers. It is surprising that Fuller, who wrote so soon after the event, should be wrong, but it is noteworthy that the statement about Marvell's companion is given in a marginal note and was presumably the result of information received at the last minute. Bridget, the second daughter of Sir Edward Coke, was born in 1596 and married William Skinner (son of Sir Vincent Skinner) of Thornton College, Lincolnshire, who died in 1627. Mrs Skinner did not die, by drowning or otherwise, in 1641, but lived to make a will' on September 26, 1648, which was proved on June 18, 1653, by her youngest son Cyriack3. Further there is no mention in this will of Andrew Marvell. There are small bequests to her eldest son Edward, to her second son William (though he was and is most undutifull to mee his mother') and to two daughters Elizabeth and Theophila.

After the death of her husband Bridget Skinner had a monumental inscription to his memory engraved in Thornton Curtis church, in which she stated that he was the father of three sons and four daughters, all of whom were living except one daughter Anne3. The daughter so far unaccounted for is the eldest, Bridget, who remains the only possible candidate for the honour of having been drowned with Mr Marvell. This honour is actually accorded to her by the author of a Skinner pedigree in Miscellanea Genealogica et Heraldica, new series, vol. 1 (1874), where however the date is given as 1639 and the above-quoted passage from de la Pryme brought in to support it. This writer, following Grosart (1872), explains Madam as the appellation of a young lady of good family. But Canon A. R. Maddison in his pedigree of the same family in Lincolnshire Pedigrees, vol. III, gives the name of Bridget's husband, Alexander Emerson. The will of Alexander Emerson of Laceby was 1 Somerset House, 90 Brent.

2 Cyriack was a posthumous child and was presumably given his name (Kupiakós) as being a gift from the Lord.

3 Born 1621, buried 1623.

In point of fact I doubt whether this is correct with the surname. It was so used with the Christian name, e.g. Madam Silvia in The Two Gentlemen of Verona.

proved on April 18, 1678, by his widow Bridget. She herself must have lived to a hundred, for her will, made in a state of feebleness and waiting for death in 1711, was not proved till April 21, 17201!

No lady of the Skinner family then was drowned with Marvell senior. Mrs Skinner did not leave her property to Marvell junior. It may have been she who enabled him to travel on the Continent, but there is no evidence at all that it was.

Nevertheless some connexion between Marvell and the Skinners did exist. He certainly knew Cyriack in later days. Apart from the reference in Marvell's letter to Milton of June 2, 1654, Cyriack is the 'Mr Skyner' mentioned in Marvell's letters to the Corporation of Hull of March 16 and April 15, 1669, which deal with the businesse of Mr South and Sir R: Cary.' This is proved by the existence among the Hull Corporation papers of a letter from Cyriack to the Mayor of Hull. In this letter, which is dated 'Strand Mar. 23, 1668,' he says that nothing is yet ripe in the business of South and Cary, but he expects that definite proposals will soon be put before Mr Recorder and Mr Marvell.'

It is also just possible that there may be another connexion of a less worldly kind. The Picture of little T. C. in a Prospect of Flowers is one of Marvell's most charming poems, but no plausible suggestion has ever been made about the identity of T. C. Girls' names beginning with T are rare, and I would suggest that Theophila Cornewall may have been the child about whose picture Marvell wrote. Theophila Skinner, mentioned above, was the youngest daughter of William and Bridget Skinner. She married Humphry Cornewall of Berrington, Herefordshire, but seems to have spent some part of her married life at Thornton-perhaps because of the Civil War. For on August 23, 1643, their daughter Theophila was baptised and was buried two days later. A second Theophila was baptised on September 26, 1644, and it is she who may, I think, be Marvell's 'little T. C.' The premature death of the first Theophila would give point and poignancy to the last stanza, which otherwise seems almost gratuitously ill-omened:

Nip in the blossome all our hopes and Thee.

1 The English Emersons by P. H. Emerson, and Appendix pp. xxx, xxxi.

2 Baptised January 3, 1623. Extracts from the register of Thornton Curtis preserved in the Herald's College.

3 Herald's College as above.

Perhaps little T. C.' did die in childhood. The Commonwealth proved a bad time for parish registers, but on September 24, 1673, we find Theophila Cornewall being married at Ludlow. This is certainly the daughter of Humphry and Theophila, whose deaths-in 1688 and 1678 respectively are also entered in the Ludlow register. But, if it is the Theophila baptised in 1644, she must have been just twenty-nine, a most unusually advanced age for a woman to marry at in those days. It looks very much-if my identification is correct-as if the poet's fears were realised, so that it was not the second but a third Theophila who lived to be married in 1673.

APPENDIX.

The writer of the letter given above

(1) was a clergyman,

(2) was in January 1640 the father of a B.A. of St Catharine's, Cambridge, whose seduction to 'Popery' had been attempted by a Fellow of Peterhouse,

(3) announced his intention of bringing the matter of his son up before Parliament.

Further (4) this son had no scholarship or other 'preferment.'

The Short Parliament did not last long enough for anything to be done, but when the Long Parliament met in November 1640 Cousins was brought before it on a variety of charges and on Tuesday November 24 one Norton a Minister being examined about Dr. Cousins, Deposed that certain Fellows of Peter-House indeavoured to seduce his Son to Popery, pretending that Dr. Cousins would make him Fellow; that thereupon he was forced to send for his Son' (Nalson, Impartial Collection of the Great Affairs of State, 1682, p. 568).

On turning to the Cambridge Book of Matriculations and Degrees we find that John Norton, pensioner', matriculated at St Catharine's 1635, proceeded B.A. 1638 and M.A. 1642. Clearly, therefore, this 'Norton a Minister' wrote the letter.

The Cousins affair lasted for some months, but in March 1641 he was able to prove that, far from being an accomplice of Nichols, 'finding Nichols guilty of holding Popish Tenents, he had severely punished him by Recantation and Expulsion from the University' (Nalson, p. 7922). This reference to a recantation further confirms the authorship of the

1 i.e. one who pays all his own expenses, see (4) above.

2 The biographers of Cousins have generally confused young Norton with Nichols. The Peterhouse published register states that Nichols resigned his fellowship on April 1, 1640. The above extract explains this.

letter. Further confirmation is perhaps afforded by the fact that in Persecutio undecima (1648-reprinted 1682), p. 23, Lord Fairfax (i.e. Ferdinando, father of the great Fairfax) is said to have made a motion. in the House of Commons that Cousins had inticed a young Schollar to Popery.' Perhaps Fairfax was one of the Lords of the counsail' to whom Norton thought of complaining.

་

At any rate the mention of Fairfax, combined with the fact that Norton wrote to Marvell at Hull, makes it probable that we shall be able to identify Norton in Yorkshire. This probability is turned into a certainty when we find that John Norton of St Catharine's is described in the register of that College as Eboracensis, of Yorkshire. Another Norton, Samuel, entered the same College three years later, also as a pensioner, and he also is described as Eboracensis1. Obviously this was a younger brother.

Turning to the Yorkshire Archaeological Society's Record Series, vol. LXI, p. 164, we find the following under date July 1643. To the right worshipfull the Committee for the Eastriding of the Countie of Yorke, the humble Peticon of Robert Clapham M.A....Sheweth that Mr. Norton, Parson of Welton, in the East Riding of thee Countie of Yorke, hath absented himselfe from his said cure and ioyned himselfe with his Majesties enemyes and is now at Hull remaineing with the Rebells...' (Mr Clapham goes on to ask for the living of Welton.) This is what we should have expected our Mr Norton to do. Later he returned to Welton and died as Minister there under the Commonwealth. His will, dated June 23, 1656, was proved in 1657. From it we learn that his Christian name was John, and in it he mentions two sons named John and Samuel. This clinches the identification.

H. M. MARGOLIOUTH.

SOUTHAMPTON.

1 I owe this information to the kindness of the present bursar of St Catharine's.
2 Somerset House.

TRAGEDY AT THE COMÉDIE-FRANÇAISE

(1680-1778)1.

READERS of Molière will remember how in his delightful Impromptu de Versailles he imitates the actors of the rival Hôtel de Bourgogne, contrasting their exaggerated declamation with the natural style of his own company. It was a bold attack, for the reputation of the Hôtel de Bourgogne chiefly rested on its interpretation of tragedy, in which it was regarded as decidedly superior to the Palais-Royal. Molière's illustrations are all taken from Corneille's plays, and he gives in turn imitations of Montfleury as Prusias in Nicomède, of Mlle Beauchâteau as Camille in Horace, of Beauchâteau as Don Rodrigue in Le Cid, of Hauteroche as Pompée in Sertorius, and of De Villiers as Iphicrate in Edipe. Floridor, the best actor of the Hôtel, alone is spared2, possibly not merely because he was a favourite with Louis XIV, but because he was not open to the same reproaches as his comrades. Of noble birth and fine appearance, he spoke with a natural diction, and all that was said against him was that his acting was cold. The allusion to Montfleury as 'gros et gras comme quatre,' 'entripaillé (a word apparently invented by Molière for the occasion) comme il faut,' and 'd'une vaste circonférence' was deeply resented by that actor, and he retaliated by presenting a petition to the king, in which he accused Molière of having married the daughter of his former mistress.

Such being Molière's relations with the Hôtel de Bourgogne and its leading actor one may imagine the 'surprise'-to use La Grange's temperate expression-of his company, when they learnt that Racine's play of Alexandre, which had been running at the Palais-Royal for a fort

1 The most recent work on the subject is H. Lyonnet, Dictionnaire des Comédiens français, 2 vols., 1912-13. In it full use has been made of the older work, Galerie des Acteurs du Théâtre-Français, 2 vols., 1810, by P.-D. Lemazurier, Secretary of the ComédieFrançaise. The majority of the articles in the Nouv. Biog. Gén. on the actors of the eighteenth century are by E. D. de Manne, author of Galerie historique des Comédiens français de la troupe de Voltaire, 1865. Much information will be found in Grimm, Correspondance (1753-90), ed. M. Tourneux, 16 vols., 1877-83; in Collé, Journal et Mémoires (1748-72), ed. H. Bonhomme, 3 vols., 1868; and in Bachaumont, Mémoires secrets, 36 vols., 1777-85, of which Vols. 1-v contain his own journal (1762-71), VI-XV the continuation by Mairobert (1771-9), and the rest that by Moufle d'Angerville. There is a useful abridgement of this in Barrière's Bibliothèque des Mémoires, vol. II. Vol. VI of the same collection contains the memoirs of Mlle Clairon, Lekain, and other actors.

2 Molière, however, says, 'Mon Dieu, il n'y en a point qu'on ne put attraper par quelque endroit, si je les avois bien étudiés.'