* * * * *
_Duchess of Buckingham_ (Vol. iii., p. 281.).--There is one circumstance
omitted by P. C. S. S., in his remarks upon the Duchess of Buckingham,
which explains why _a Phipps_, on being called to the peerage, chose the
titles of Mulgrave and Normanby.
By her second husband--the Duke of Buckingham and Normanby--she had one
son, who succeeded to the title and estates; but, dying unmarried during
his mother's lifetime, _bequeathed to her all the Mulgrave and Normanby
property_. Her daughter (by her first marriage with James Annesley,
third Earl of Anglesey) was then the wife of Mr. W. Phipps, son of Sir
Constantine Phipps, Lord Chancellor of Ireland: to their issue,
Constantine Phipps, first Lord Mulgrave, the Duchess _left by will these
estates_; thus founding her grandson's fortune, although she did not
live to see him created the first Baron Mulgrave.
The Sheffield Buckingham family, although extinct in the male line, is
represented in the female branch by the Sheffield Dicksons; Mrs.
Dickson, the widow of Major Dickson, of the Life-Guards, being in direct
descent from the Lady Catherine Darnley's husband, by another wife.
A. B.
Redland, April 13.
* * * * *
_Swearing by the Peacock_ (Vol. iii., p. 70.).--Swearing in the presence
of a peacock, referred to by T. J., from Dr. Lingard's _History of
England_, time of Edward I., is, with the ceremony observed at the Feast
of the Peacock, in the thirteenth century, related at full by Mr. Knight
in his _Old England_, pp. 311. and 312.; and the representation of the
Feast from the Bran of Robert Braunche, in the choir of St. Margaret's
Church at Lynn (a mayor of Lynn), who died October 15, 1364, is given
fig. 1088.