To the Gentleman's Magazine Mr. Brooke was a Correspondent, under the signature of J. B.; and the principal authors of his day in genealogy and topography, were indebted to him. He assisted Dr. Nash in the early part of his Worcestershire Collections; Mr. Gough in many of his works, especially in the account of Yorkshire, in the new edition of Camden's "Britannia;" and was the coadjutor of the Rev. Mr. Watson in his Memoirs of the Earls of Warren and Surrey *. He also contributed to Bigland's Gloucestershire, Worsley's Isle of Wight, and King's Castles. He furnished the memoirs of the Nevills to Pegge's "Forme of Cury;" and several of the descriptions in Hearne and Byrne's Views.

Besides a History of Yorkshire, Mr. Brooke also contemplated a new edition of Sandford's Genealogical History +; a Baronage after Dugdale's method; and a History of all Tenants in Capite to accompany Domesday §.

This talented and amiable man had fair prospects of rising to the highest rank in his profession, when, by a melancholy and peculiarly calamitous accident, he was prematurely taken from the scene of his industrious exertions. With Mr. Pingo, York Herald, and fourteen other persons, he

* It is well known that the object of this volume was to prove the legitimate descent of the Warrens of Poynton from an early Earl of Warren. The subject has been recently elucidated and set to rest by the Rev. Joseph Hunter, F.S. A. the historian of South Yorkshire. By the production of an abstract by Dodsworth of the will of the last Earl, that erudite and scientific antiquary has proved the Warrens of Poynton to have actually derived their descent from Edward de Warren, one of the illegitimate sons of that Earl by Maud de Neirford. See the "History of the Deanery of Doncaster," vol. I. p. 110; or the Retrospective Review," Second Series, vol. II. p. 527.

† See hereafter, p. 366. See p. 410. § See pp. 370, 382. || Benjamin Pingo, Esq. the fifth son of Thomas Pingo, an eminent engraver of seals, and assistant engraver of the Mint, was born in the parish of St. Andrew, Holborn, and baptised at that Church, July 8, 1749. Led to the College of Arms by a taste for heraldry, he was appointed Rouge-dragon Pursuivant in 1780, and York Herald in 1786. At the calamitous accident

perished in the fatal catastrophe of the 3d of February 1794, in attempting to get into the pit at the Little Theatre in the Haymarket. It did not appear that he had been thrown down, but was suffocated as he stood, as were several others. His countenance had the appearance of sleep, not death; and even the colour of his cheeks remained. His body was three days after interred in a vault under the Heralds' seat in the Church of St. Bennet, Paul's Wharf, where several of the College which occasioned his death with Mr. Brooke, he was thrown down, and being corpulent, was much disfigured. His remains, attended by the Members of the College, were interred in the Chapel belonging to the Tower of London. He possessed high esteem with his heraldic brethren, to which his merit, as a good and amiable man, justly entitled him; Mr. Brooke's opinion of him will be found hereafter in p. 415. He bequeathed his MSS. to the library of the College; his books were sold with Mr. Brooke's by Leigh and Sotheby in 1794. His father, Mr. Thomas Pingo, is mentioned by Lord Orford, as having engraved a plate of arms in Thoresby's Leeds. He died in December 1776; and his widow, who was Mary, daughter of Benjamin Goldwire, of Romsey in Hampshire, died in Gray's-inn-lane, April 17, 1790, aged 76. The herald's brothers, Lewis and John, were both eminent in their father's profession, as engravers to the Mint, and executed several excellent medals.

The following are two notes of the herald:

1.

"Heralds'-college, Dec. 3, 1791. "Mr. Pingo presents his compliments to Mr. Nichols; and, agreeably to his promise, has sent him a List of the Mayors, &c. of Leicester, which he copied some years ago from a manuscript of the late Mr. Alderman Gamble, of that town. Mr. Pingo would have sent it before, but waited for an opportunity to add a few trifling inscriptions not published, and which are not to be found in Leicestershire Churches, but in other counties, for persons connected with that county."

2.

Heralds'-college, April 2, 1792. "Mr. Pingo presents his compliments to Mr. Nichols, should be much obliged if he can inform him in what parish in Leicestershire the Brentnals are to be found, as he wants to obtain a testimonial of the baptism of Mary Brentnal, the daughter of John Brentnal and Rachael Cockran his wife, who died in March 1765, in Spain, aged 72, but who was born in Leicestershire. Mr. Pingo has inclosed a few inscriptions of Leicestershire families."

have been deposited. His funeral, attended by the Heralds and his own relations, was also accompanied by his Grace the Duke of Norfolk, Earl Marshal of England, the Earl of Leicester, President of the Society of Antiquaries, Sir Joseph Banks, President of the Royal Society, John Topham, Craven Ord, and Edmund Turnor, Esqs. FF.A. and R. SS. Rev. Mr. Brand, Secretary of the Antiquarian Society, John Caley, James Moore, and John Lambert, Esqs. FF.A. S. who voluntarily paid this last tribute of regard to their deceased friend.

The circumstances of Mr. Brooke's death heightened the general regret felt at his loss; and few men have been so much deplored. His elegant and refined manners had obtained him admission to the drawing-rooms of the great; and in every circle his society was courted and esteemed. A monumental tablet was erected over his remains, with the following epitaph by Edmund Lodge, Esq. F.S. A. then Lancaster Herald, and now Norroy King-at-Arms:

Sacred to the Memory of
JOHN-CHARLES BROOKE, Esa.
SOMERSET Herald,

SECRETARY TO THE EARL MARSHAL OF ENGLAND,
AND FELLOW OF THE SOCIETY OF ANTIQUARIES;
descended from the respectable Family of
Brooke, of Dodworth in the County of York,
and a person of unrivalled eminence
in his antient and useful profession.
When we are told that this valuable man,
to a moral and pious disposition,
united a most cheerful and lively humour;
that with a mind to comprehend, a judgment to select,
and a memory to retain,

every sort of useful and agreeable information,
he was blessed with a temper
calm, unassuming, and inoffensive;
that he lived in a strict intimacy
with persons of the highest rank
and of the first literary character,
without the smallest tincture of vanity;
above all, that he enjoyed,
with a happy constitution of body,

an uncommon prosperity in worldly affairs;
let us, instead of envying the possession,
reflect on the awful uncertainty
of these sublunary blessings.
For, alas!

he was in a moment deprived of them,
in the dreadful calamity

which happened at the Theatre in the
Haymarket,

on the third of February 1794.

ARMS. Within a collar of SS, Ermine, on a bend Sable a hawk's lure Or, the line and ring Argent; a crescent in chief for the difference of a second son. Crest, a goat's head erased Sable, horned and bearded Or.

Mr. Brooke, who was a well-regulated economist, had acquired about £.14,000. By his will he appointed his two sisters executrixes and residuary legatees, although his elder brother, an attorney, survived him. He bequeathed his MSS. to the College of Arms, with a legacy of £.100 to arrange, and £.10 to bind them. He left rings to all the members of the College. His books, with those of his fellow-sufferer Mr. Pingo, were sold by Leigh and Sotheby in 1794.

A portrait of Mr. Brooke is honoured with a place in the Gallery at Arundel Castle. A quarto plate by T. Milton from a painting by T. Maynard, is the frontispiece to Noble's "History of the College of Arms."

"SIR,

1. J. C. BROOKE, Esq. to RICHARD GOUGH, Esq. Heralds'-college, Jan. 8, 1776. "I should be much obliged to you to inform me if you know any thing of a Sir Samuel Bickley, a clergyman, who assumed the title of Baronet; and is said to have died at the post-house at Enfield about four years ago *. He is said to have left behind

* The death of this person is thus recorded in the Gentleman's Magazine for 1773: "July 27. At the King's head Inn, Enfield, the Rev. Samuel Bickley, who came thither the Saturday before in great distress. In his pockets were found three manuscript sermons and a petition to the Archbishop of Canterbury, dated February 18, 1773. The prayer of the petition was as follows: 'Your petitioner, therefore, most humbly prays, that, if an audience from your Grace should be deemed too great a

him a Manuscript Survey of Kent, with drawings of the various Churches; which was to be sold at Wagstaff's in Spitalfields in 1773.

"The antient coat on glass you showed me of the cross quartering barry, and on an escutcheon pretence on a chief two mullets, which you say came from Edmonton, belonged to William Hussey, second son of Sir William Hussey, Knt. Lord Chief Justice of England, temp, Edward IV. and younger brother of John Lord Hussey. He married Anne, daughter and heir of Sir John Salvin, Knt. of North Duffield in Yorkshire, who bore, Argent, on a chief Sable two mullets Or, by whom he had a good estate in the East Riding; and from that marriage descended the family of Hussey, of Hareswell and North Duffield (2 D 5, fol. 62, in Coll. Armor.)

"The other arms, of the bend between martlets, and chevron between eagles, impaling unicorns' heads, being a modern affair, I cannot so well decypher. In former times, when the science of heraldry was much attended to, nobody presumed to fix up any arms in churches, houses, &c. but what were allowed by the Earl Marshal, so that any such before the time of Charles I. we are almost certain of finding out in our records; since that time it is more difficult. Staverden bears, Argent, a bend ingrailed between two martlets Gules; but yours, I think, were Sable. Dynge bears, Sable, a chevron between three eagles displayed Argent. As to the coat on the woman's side of the escutcheon, of party per chevron Gules and Sable, three unicorns' heads couped Or, it was granted by Sir Edward Bysshe, Clarencieux, November 30, 1670, to Philip Jemmet, Esq. of London, who fined for Alderman of the said City.

"The other coats, with the dragon holding a sword, I think I explained to you before.

"I beg my compliments to Mrs. Gough; and am, Sir, your most obedient humble servant, J. C. BROOKE, R.C."

favour, you will, at the least, grant him some relief, though it be only a temporary one, in his deplorable necessity and distress; and let your Grace's charity cover the multitude of his sins. There never yet was any one in England doomed to starve; but I am nearly, if not altogether so: denied the sacred function wherein I was educated, driven from the doors of the rich laymen to the clergy for relief, by the clergy denied, so that I may justly take up the speech of the Gospel Prodigal, and say, 'How many hired servants of my father have bread enough, and to spare, while 1 perish with hunger!'"-Respecting this clergyman's right to the title of Baronet, it may be remarked that he had assumed it as long back as 1759, when he was presented to the Vicarage of Bapebild in Kent; and that he may have been nephew and heir to the Rev. Sir Humphrey Bickley, Bart. who died Rector of Attleborough in Norfolk, Sept. 18, 1754, and which Sir Humphrey, being unmarried himself, had a brother Joseph, who had children. See the descent of the Baronetcy to Sir Francis Bickley, father of Sir Humphrey, in Blomefield's Norfolk (edit. 1805) vol. I. p. 520. The surname is one of uncommon occurrence. EDIT.