I caused Elger, the schoolmaster, to provide an oration, which was made unto him at the schoolmaster's door by Keeling, one of the scholars [was this Keeling a son of William Keeling, whose tablet with his epitaph on it is still in Carisbrooke Church?]; then the Mayor with his brethren met him with tender of wine and cakes. Coming near the Castle the company of boys met him and skirmished before him, and alighting, the ordnance saluted him. There came with him only Sir Francis Onslow and Sir Thomas Jarvis, his deputies on the main. On Monday, coming to view Sandham and St. Helens, he and all the gentlemen of the Island dined at my house. On Wednesday morning we had a general muster, and he dined that day at my Lady Worsley's. Thursday he went and saw Freshwater and Yarmouth, having sent provisions to Thorley he dined there. This was all his journeys, and on the 19th from Blackedge [Blackedge, a place not far from West Cowes, near what is now called Egypt], he went out of our Island. Concerning his person he was old, unwieldy, and very sickly; neither fit for the employment or command. Certainly he had been a brave fellow, as now a courtier; he had excellent gifts of nature, but no art; spoke very well, with many good words and compliments; affable and courteous to all; with many large promises to divers in their particulars; as also most especially for the state and public good of the Island in general; of which promises we took hold and made use of, showing him, and by writing giving him a true account of all our wants and defects. Now we are to expect his worth by his willingness (if not ability) and forwardness both for his own honour and our safety.'

In the second year of Charles I he had been created Viscount Killultagh of Killultagh, County Antrim, Ireland, and on June 6, 1627, Viscount Conway of Conway Castle in Carnarvonshire, by which title Oglander always speaks of him. Before paying his official visit to the Isle of Wight, Conway had a good deal to do in settling the domestic squabbles between Charles I and his Queen, Henrietta Maria, arising from the natural partiality of the latter to her French attendants and priests. An amusing account of Conway's negotiations with the French bishop and priests, and the more recalcitrant women-attendants, who howled

and lamented as if they had been going to execution,' may be found in a letter from John Pory to Meade in Ellis's Collection, which is quoted in full in the Pictorial History of England (vol. iii. p. 124): the Queen was so furious. that in her rage she is said to have broken the glass windows with her fist.' When in November 12, 1626, the advowson of Carisbrooke, which at the dissolution of monasteries had reverted to the Crown, was granted by Charles I to Queen's College, Oxford, on the intercession of Henrietta Maria, who as Queen Consort was the special patroness of that College, Conway's name appears as signing the King's answer to the petition of the Queen and of the College in the documents relating to that transaction which are preserved in the muniment room of that College as patron of the benefice of Carisbrooke.

Conway, so Oglander (Memoirs, pp. 160-165) says, 'did many good things for the Island, among these procuring from the Privy Seal that no gentleman of the Island should be made sheriff.' He would have done more had not the Islanders offended him. At the election of 1628 the burgesses of Newport and Yarmouth declined to return the nominees of the Governor (one of them being his son, Sir E. Conway, who had been one of the representatives of Yarmouth in the preceding Parliament of 1625), with which unusual treatment his lordship was so disgusted that he professed himself no friend to the Island in general, or to his lieutenants in particular. The Islanders returned their Governor's dislike of them in full measure. They were offended because he did not live among them, and also accused him of bringing a Scotch regiment into the Island, a charge of which Sir John Oglander fully acquits him. He did not trouble them for any long time, as he died in St. Martin's Lane, London, on January 3, 1630-31, of apoplexy.

The resentment of the Islanders at their Governor's neglect of them was not extinguished by his death. Every man almost in the Island,' says Oglander, 'being glad of his death, as it was a common by-word among many, as having some loss or cross they would sweeten it with saying, "but my Lord Conway is dead." On hearing these ill speeches,'

Oglander adds 'I would tell them Esop's fable of the frogs, wishing that they with them might not wish again for their Log, for as he did us little good, in their opinion, so he did us no hurt; never but once came amongst us, but left all to his lieutenants. He was good enough, if we had been so happy as to have known how to have made use of him.'

In 1629, Conway was made Lord President of the Council, an office which he held till his death. In Wilson's Life and Reign of James I, 1653, he is called a rude, unpolished piece for such an employment.' He was a bungler in the art of flattery. 'When I invited him to my house,' writes Oglander, at his coming into the Island, he astonished my wife and daughters with his compliments, yea, my servants also; for my wife's gentlewoman lost not her share.' His experience with courts had not taught him the truth contained in Dean Swift's maxim, that nothing is so great an instance of ill manners as flattery. If you flatter all the company you please none; if you flatter only one or two you affront the rest.' With all these faults he did not mind telling a good story against himself, as he often told Oglander the story of King James saying that Steenie had given him a secretary who could neither read nor write. He was a very good father and husband, making very much of his wife and children.' By his wife Dorothy, daughter of Sir John Tracey, of Tedington, Gloucestershire, and widow of Edmund Bray, he had three sons and four daughters. He was succeeded by his eldest son, Edward, who died in 1655, and who left his estates and titles to Edward Viscount Conway, who on December 3, 1679, was created Earl of Conway. On February 11, 1651, he married Anne, the daughter of Sir Henry Finch, a very accomplished woman, the friend of Dr. Henry More and of the Quakers, Fox, Penn, and Barclay, with whom she held frequent conferences (see the article in the Dictionary of National Biography, s. v.). He died without issue 1683, having adopted as his heir Popham Seymour, the eldest son of Sir Edward Seymour, who was his cousin, and who assumed in consequence the name of Conway. Lord Macaulay, in his History of England, vol. v. 241, has told in his usual brilliant manner the story of this young man and of his death from a wound received in a duel with an

officer of the Blues of the name of Kirke. His next brother, Francis Seymour, assumed the name and arms of Conway, and was elevated to the peerage of England March 17, 1702-3, by the title of Baron Conway, of Ragley, Warwickshire. Part of his extensive estates being situated in the north of Ireland, he was created a peer of that kingdom by the title of Baron Conway of Killultagh of Antrim. His son Francis was created Viscount Beauchamp and Earl of Hertford. His descendant, the present Marquis of Hertford, holds along Iwith that title those of Earl of Yarmouth and Viscount Beauchamp of Hache in the peerage of Great Britain; Baron Conway of Ragley in the peerage of England; and Baron Conway of Killultagh in the county of Antrim in the peerage of Ireland.

April 6, 1890.

THE CONSECRATION OF YARMOUTH
CHURCH, I. W., MARCH 11, 1626.

A VERY recent writer in Island Notes, Piccadilly, August, 1890, summarily describes Yarmouth, I. W., by a somewhat unintelligible confusion of metaphors-Scrapings of the pot of creation.' The old town on the Yar has for the architect, the antiquary, and the historian, especially if his studies lie in the direction of municipal institutions, certain objects of interest. It was a place of so much importance, that in the thirteenth century it obtained a charter of incorporation from Baldwin de Redvers, the brother of Isabella de Fortibus, the Lady of the Wight. It was reincorporated by King James I in 1610. From the recital of this charter, the substance of which can be read in Worsley (History I. W., pp. 158-162). it appears that at the close of the Hundred Years' War' between France and England, when the conquests of England were lost, her shores insulted, and her commerce swept from the seas, the town of Yarmouth and its church were entirely burned down by the French, 1377. As it

offered a vulnerable point for invasion, Henry VIII erected a small castle, built like the other defences of the coast at that time from the stones of Beaulieu Abbey and other religious houses. Part stands on the old wall of the church, as may be observed,' so Worsley (Hist. I. W. p. 266) says. Worsley further adds that the present church was built at the same time. This statement, in which Worsley has been followed by other writers, has been shown by Canon Venables to be a mistake. The charter granted by James I in 1610 formed the Corporation by the name of the Mayor and Burgesses of Yarmouth. Twelve burgesses were to form the Common Council of the Borough, and out of these the Mayor was to be elected. Their officers were a steward, a common clerk, and a sergeant of mace, appointed by and during the pleasure of the Mayor and burgesses. The first Mayor was Barnaby Leigh, Esq.; the first steward, Thomas Cheke, Esq.

No sooner had the townspeople of Yarmouth obtained a Corporation than their thoughts turned towards building a church. A brief dated 1611 sets out that from the period of the destruction by the French in 1377 'there remained only the ruined chancell of one of the churches which the inhabitants maintained for the exercise of divine service and administration of the sacraments'; and the town being unequal from its own resources to erect a fit and decent church,' the charitable devotion and liberal contribution' of the King's loving subjects throughout the realm is requested 'toward the new building and re-edifying of the said church of Yarmouth.' This year, 1611, is memorable as having witnessed the completion of the new translation of the Bible (our present Authorized Version), the commencement of the plantation or colonization of Ulster and, connected with the latter, the establishment of the order of baronets, the avowed intention of which was to provide a fund for the defence of the English and Scotch settlement in the north of Ireland. These charitable briefs for the rebuilding of churches were at this time, as appears from a letter of remonstrance by Archbishop Bancroft addressed to the bishops (see Cardwell's Documentary Annals, vol. ii. p. 161), not very diligently enforced or liberally responded to in the dioceses. This