The Press.
London, England, 1857-08-22 00:00:00

" No," says brave Devonshire, " I've fought him as a man,
Since he's dead, I will keep the trophies I have won i •
For he fought me in your armour, while I fought him bare,
And the same you must win back, my liege, if ever yo

them wear."
God bless the Church of England, may it prosper on each

hand, _ _ -
And also every poor man now starving in this land ;
And while I pray success may crown our King upon his
throne,
I'll wish that every poor man may long enjoy his own.

What could that song have referred to, and
on what incidents was it based ? In its present
state the ballad reads to ourselves like one of
the days of James I. ( circa.) Mr. Bell cites
the explanation of Mr. Lyle, and thus com-
ments upon it :

" We have not as yet," says Mr. Lyle, " been able to
trace out the historical incident upon which this ballad
appears to have been founded; yet those curious in such
matters may consult, if they list, Proceedings and Debates
in the House of Commons, for 1621 and 1662,' where they
will find that some stormy debating in these several years
had been agitated in Parliament regarding the corn laws,
which bear pretty close upon the leading features of the
ballad." Does not the ballad, however, belong to a much
earlier period ? The description of the combat, the
presence of heralds, the wearing of armour, &c.,justify the
conjecture. For De la Ware, ought we not to read De
la Mare? and is not Sir Thomas De la Mare the hero?
the De la Mare who in the reign of Edward 111., A.D. 1377,
was Speaker of the House of Commons. All historians
are agreed in representing him as a person using " great
freedom of speech," and which, indeed, he carded to such
an extent as to endanger his personal liberty. As bearing
somewhat upon the subject of the ballad, it may be ob.
served that De la Mare was a great advocate of popular
rights, and particularly protested against the inhabitants
of England being subject to " purveyance," asserting that,
"if the royal revenue was faithfully administered, there
could be n6Vecessity for laying burdens on the people."
In the subsequent reign of Richard IL, De la Mare was a
prominent character, and though history is silent on the
subject, it is not improbable that such a man might, even
in the royal presence, have defended the rights of the poor,
and spoken in extenuation of the agrarian insurrectionary
movements which were then so prevalent and so alarming.
On the hypothesis of De la Mare being the hero, there
are other incidents in the tale which cannot be reconciled
with history, such as the title given to De la Mare, who
certainly was never ennobled ; nor can we ascertain that
he was ever mixed up in any duel; nor does it appear clear
who can be meant by the " Welah Lord, the brave Duke of
Devonshire," that dukedom not having been created till
1694, and no nobleman having derived any title whatever
from Devonshire previously to 1618, when Baron Cavendish,
of Hardwick, was created the first Earl of Devonshire.

Mr. Lyle does not cite any passages from the
debates in 1621 and 1662 to justify his
hypothesis ; and who was the antagonist to
the De la Mare alluded to by Mr. Bell? We
doubt whether at that time the phrase
" Parliament House" was in vogue at all ; and
the last stanza about " the Church of Eng-
land " reads on that hypothesis like an ana-
chronism. Mr. Bell is in error in saying that
there was no title of Devonshire previously to
that of the ennoblement of the Cavendish
family. The famous family of Blount (Lords
Mountjoy) enjoyed it for a short time, as
Charles, eighth Lord Mountjoy (Lord Lieute-
nant of Ireland in the reign of James I.), was
advanced to the title of " Earl of Devonshire"
in 1603, but three years afterwards he died
without legitimate issue.
We surmised, ourselves, that the ballad
might be a sort of apologue on a great Par-
liamentary altercation in the seventeenth
century, or else that some public transaction of
that century was commemorated in it. In
Whittington, in Derbyshire (the Duke of
Devonshire's locality), the farmhouse is still
shown where Henry Booth, Lord Delamere,
met the Earl of Devonshire and the Earl of
Danby, and consulted together in " the
plotting parlour " how to bring over the Prince
of Orange. In Bishop Burnet's " Reign of
King William and Queen Mary" we read,—
" Lord Mordaunt was made Earl of Monmouth,
" and Lord Delamere was made Chancellor of
" the Exchequer." It appears afterwards that
the Earls of Monmouth and Delamere, created
Earl of Warrington, became "great enemies,"
and they seem to have had struggles to obtain
ascendancy with the King. Interpreting the
poem as a sort of squib, we might thus explain
the phrase " Dutch lord " as a partisan of the
Dutch king ; and the allusions to the " Church
of England " would be quite chronological.
But we admit that we have run that trail with-
out success. We also thought it might refer
to the trial for high treason of Lord Delamere
in 1683, but after perusing "The Tryal of
Henry, Baron Delamere, in Westminster-hall,
the 14th day of January, 1683 " (printed for