Notes and Queries, Number 210, November 5, 1853

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Various. Notes and Queries, Number 210, November 5, 1853

Notes

LORD HALIFAX AND MRS. CATHERINE BARTON

DR. PARR ON MILTON

PARTS OF MSS

WILLIAM BLAKE

FOLK LORE

ITALIAN-ENGLISH, GERMAN-ENGLISH, AND THE REFUGEE STYLE

SHAKSPEARE CORRESPONDENCE

Minor Notes

Minor Queries

Minor Queries with Answers

Replies

MEDAL AND RELIC OF MARY QUEEN OF SCOTS

EARLY USE OF TIN.—DERIVATION OF THE NAME OF BRITAIN

PICTORIAL EDITIONS OF THE BOOK OF COMMON PRAYER

YEW-TREES IN CHURCHYARDS

OSBORN FAMILY

INSCRIPTIONS ON BELLS

LADIES' ARMS BORNE IN A LOZENGE

THE MYRTLE BEE

CAPTAIN JOHN DAVIS

PHOTOGRAPHIC CORRESPONDENCE

Replies to Minor Queries

Miscellaneous

Notes on Books, Etc

BOOKS AND ODD VOLUMES WANTED TO PURCHASE

Notices to Correspondents

WESTERN LIFE ASSURANCE AND ANNUITY SOCIETY

CHEAP BOOKS. ON SALE AT. WILLIAMS AND NORGATE'S

PRIVATELY PRINTED BOOKS, SOLD BY. JOHN RUSSELL SMITH

36. SOHO SQUARE, LONDON

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Those who have written on the life of Newton have touched with the utmost reserve upon the connexion which existed between his half-niece Catherine Barton, and his friend Charles Montague, who died Earl of Halifax. They seem as if they were afraid that, by going fairly into the matter, they should find something they would rather not tell. The consequence is, that when a writer at home or abroad, Voltaire or another, hints with a sneer that a pretty niece had more to do with Newton's appointment to the Mint than the theory of gravitation, those who would like to know as much as can be known of the whole truth find nothing in any attainable biography except either total silence or a very awkward and hesitating account of half something.

On looking again into the matter, the juxtaposition of all the circumstances induced in my mind a strong suspicion that Mrs. C. Barton was privately married to Lord Halifax, probably before his elevation to the peerage, and that the marriage was no very great secret among their friends. As yet I can but say that the hypothesis of a private marriage is, to me, the most probable of those among which a choice must be made: farther information may be obtained by publication of the case in "N. & Q.," the most appropriate place of deposit for the provisional result of unfinished inquiries.

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This codicil immediately became the subject of remark, and the terms of it seem to have been understood as they would be now. Flamsteed, writing in July, 1715 (Halifax died in May), says:

I pay no attention to the statement that (Biogr. Brit., Montague, note BB.) Lord Halifax was disappointed in a second marriage. It amounts only to this, that Lord Shaftsbury, having a certain lady in his heart and in his eye, was afraid he had a rival, and described the person talked of in terms which make it pretty certain that Halifax was intended. But it by no means follows that because a certain person is "talked of" for a lady, and a lover put in fear by the rumour, the person is really a rival: and not even a biographer would have shown himself so unfit for a novelist as to have drawn such a conclusion, unless he had been biassed by the wish to show that Halifax was attached to another than Mrs. Barton.

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