Draft:Ralph Sheldon (MP)
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Ralph Sheldon was born in 1537 to the upwardly mobile William Sheldon of Beoley, Worcestershire, and his wife Mary, daughter of William Willington of Barcheston, Warwickshire. Ralph served as MP, JP and one-term sheriff of Worcestershire. He died in the Catholic faith in 1613.
Family
[edit]Ralph Sheldon was born in 1537 to the upwardly mobile William Sheldon of Beoley, Worcestershire, and his wife Mary, daughter of William Willington of Barcheston, Warwickshire, Merchant of the Staple.[1] Ralph served as MP, JP and one-term sheriff of Worcestershire.[2] He owned extensive lands in the county and in Gloucester-, Oxford- and Warwickshire together with salt bullaries at Droitwich and coal diggings in Leicestershire.[3]
Early Years
[edit]Little is known about his childhood until in November 1556 he was enrolled at the Middle Temple, one of the four inns of Court in London, to embark on at least some part of a legal training.[4]
He married Anne daughter of Sir Robert Throckmorton of Coughton Court, Warwickshire on May 23 1557 in the church of St Andrew, Holborn, London.[5]
Public Service
[edit]After Queen Elizabeth's accession in November 1558 both William and Ralph helped Robert Dudley, created earl of Leicester in 1564, to regain the forfeit Dudley lands in Warwickshire, no doubt in the hope of future links to and favours from a rising man already close to the monarch.[6] Ralph's increasing leaning towards the Old Faith eventually cost him Leicester's support.
Ralph served as an MP at least in the first session of the first parliament of the reign (January-Easter 1563), but possibly not in the second (September-Christmas 1566).[7] When his father died at Skilts in December 1570 Ralph organized a funeral procession to Beoley headed by the herald Clarenceux King of Arms, Sir Robert Cooke, who had granted the family the right to a coat of arms.[8] His presence was a mark of respect and an indication of the family's local status in Worcester- and Warwickshire. Ralph inherited estates at Beoley, Skilts and in the hinterland of Evesham, Worcestershire; in Barcheston, Brailes and Long Compton in Warwickshire and extensive holdings up the valley of the Kneebrook stream south of Chipping Campden, Gloucestershire. He also inherited houses at Beoley, Skilts, a building of some sort at Weston in Long Compton together with apartments within the liberty of the former Whitefriars site in London.[9] He was appointed JP in Worcestershire in 1572; he served until 1587 when, like many others in the anxious months spent in fear of Spanish attack, he was removed from the bench on account of his wife's recusancy – her refusal to attend services in a parish church.[10]
Relations with State and Church
[edit]Panicked by the landing in June 1580 of two English Jesuits, Robert Persons and Edmund Campion, sent with papal approval to reassure English Catholics, the Privy Council summoned some fifty men to present themselves in London in mid-August. All were prominent in their counties, most were known or suspected sympathizers of the Old Faith. Amongst them was Ralph Sheldon.[11] The Council's intention was that they 'should be reformed'.[12] After questioning Ralph was immediately detained in the Marshalsea prison on London's south bank, released after two months on a plea of serious illness made by his wife and moved into house arrest with the Dean of Westminster, Gabriel Goodman.[13] Two months later, on January 8th 1581, he stood before the Council and undertook to attend services in his parish church. He also swore allegiance to the Queen.[14] Except for Thomas, Lord Paget, the others remained in custody until May 1581, released only on punitive restrictions.[15]
His loyalty remained true. Ralph avoided entanglement in all the major plots of the 1580s against Queen Elizabeth, those of John Somerville and of Francis Throckmorton in 1583, both relatives, and of Anthony Babington in 1586.[16] He was not questioned in connection with the arrest of the priest Hugh Hall who confessed to having resided in a Sheldon property in the later 1570s.[17] High-handed behaviour in the parish of Tredington, where he held the right to appoint the incumbent (the advowson), led to the only formal charge of recusancy Ralph experienced. The case was heard at Worcester Assizes in September 1587. One of the Judges 'persuaded' an unwilling jury to convict him.[18] Sheldon became liable to pay the fines for recusancy. Payment was recorded for only three years, the sole occasion on which the penalty was imposed.[19] They totalled £780.
Later it was said that the Lord Chancellor, Christopher Hatton, had quashed the charge against him.[20]
In 1594 information about a plot to kill the Queen and put the Earl of Derby on the throne reached the Privy Council, the fourth in the same year. The instigators, soldiers in the English armies in the Low Countries, hoped that Sheldon would act as their financier. Once again he was summoned before the Privy Council for interrogation, questioned at least three times and by several inquisitors as the surviving papers reveal.[21] That he should be the financial backer was dismissed almost immediately; the Council was more interested in his links to Catholics living abroad and with those at home. His house was searched for incriminating books and papers and his servants questioned.[22] When the case was dismissed Sheldon went free. No penalties were imposed; no further entries on the Recusant Rolls support the statement that recusancy fines were imposed.[23]
Another near brush with the law occurred in 1603 when the priest William Watson, architect of the Bye Plot against the new king, James VI, mentioned Sheldon's name in a provisional list of those who would replace the existing minsters. A letter to his nephew Francis Plowden, intercepted by an alarmed local official, again brought Sheldon to the notice of the authorities, without consequences.[24] Ralph had no involvement in the Gunpowder Plot of 1605.
Even against this background Ralph was active in two Worcestershire parliamentary elections at this time. In 1601 the Privy Council warned him against interference.[25] In 1604 he clearly made an attempt to wrong-foot the government's preferred choice.[26]
Declining years
[edit]In his will Sheldon expressed burning resentment of ill treatment by the man from whom he had borrowed heavily over a period of eight years.[27] The circumstances have been untangled by the testimony from documents not previously read recited in the case brought against him and his creditor, Thomas Horde of Cote, Oxfordshire, by Sir Edward Coke, Attorney General, in 1606.[28] Described recently as 'an upmarket money lender',[29] Horde foreclosed suddenly around 1599, leaving Sheldon with a debt Horde reckoned as £24,000, the sum due if the borrower defaulted on a recognizance (bond) but not the sum borrowed.[30] At most Sheldon had received no more than £12,000. On the grounds that Horde was a convicted Catholic and should have paid fines since 1592 Coke claimed the money for the Crown, leaving Sheldon to pay. His lands were temporarily taken into administration by royal officials but were returned when the debt had been cleared, shortly before his death in March 1613.[31]
Ralph was buried at night in the chapel he had added to the north side of Beoley parish church alongside his first wife in the still surviving tomb he had built for her.[32] They had ten children, only one, Edward (1561–1643) male.[33] With one exception, his daughters made good marriages.[34] His own second marriage, in 1604, to the much married Jane de la Warr, most recently Lady Tasburgh, was unsuccessful.[35] He bequeathed a silver basin, the lid engraved with their arms, to each of his surviving sons in law, resolved a number of family disputes and asked those involved in the matter of his debt who had not yet cancelled their bonds to comply with the court order to do so. Bequests were made to loyal members of his household, his secretary Robert Jones and his lawyer, John Bould, and to close friends, Mr Thomas Allen, fellow of Gloucester College, Oxford and Mr Dr Anthony Blencowe, Fellow and sometime Provost of Oriel College. His second wife was to be paid only £100.[36]
Private Life
[edit]Ralph built the fourth largest house in Elizabethan Warwickshire on the hill overlooking the deserted hamlet of Weston in Long Compton; work began in 1586.[37] Henry Beighton's drawing of 1716 shows a three-storey courtyard house; it survived until 1827.[38] One of the panelled reception rooms was decorated with a frieze of portrait heads, seven surviving.[39] His portrait by the Flemish artist Hieronimo Custodis hangs in Warwick Museum,[40] opposite the most complete of the four tapestry maps he commissioned, Warwickshire. In each of the focal counties he had lands, friends and influence.[41] The remaining sections of the other three which showed Worcestershire, Oxfordshire (which stretched as far as London!) and Gloucestershire are now owned by the Bodleian Library, University of Oxford to which he made a donation of £50 towards construction of Sir Thomas Bodley's buildings forming the Old Library Quadrangle.[42]
Contemporary Opinion
[edit]One of the Queen's courtiers, Sir John Harington of Kelston, Somerset, remarked that he had heard it said that Ralph was one of the sufficientest wisest men, fittest to have been made one of the Council but for one matter.[43] It was also recorded, however, that some regarded him as 'an unthrift' who would have lost all his lands in gaming within these two years 'if he had not had faire play played him'.[44] The Worcestershire historian Thomas Habington writing several years after Ralph's death remarked that 'Ralph deserved for his singular parts of mind which flowed from his tongue and pen a pre-eminent dignity'.[45] By those pitted against him in the law courts he was more often described as being 'well friended. He was, however, generous to those in financial need.
Modern Opinion
[edit]Ralph Sheldon divided opinion in his own lifetime as he still does today. His image as a staunch Catholic was formed by the earliest biographical notes of 1915,[46] reinforced by research in the 1960s.[47] Since then the simple division of England's population into two opposing groups of Protestant and Catholic has been reconsidered and dramatically altered by the work of Professor Walsham.[48] Her rediscovery of the Elizabethan term 'Church Papist' describing the lukewarm attender at the parish church introduced the view that co-existence, not necessarily happy, between those whose preference lay with the Old Faith and those willing to hear the new Protestant services of the 'Church of England as by law established' was more widespread than previously understood. Even if Ralph preferred the old rites occasional attendance at his parish church would give him protection against the full force of the law.[49]
Active in the London law courts, visible in his neighbourhood and amongst his family and their friends Ralph was 'no hidden man', as he himself said.[50] Seen outside the context of government records, focussed inevitably on his potential infringements against the State, his private life should not be seen as differing greatly from that of his Protestant neighbour.
Bibliography
[edit]Adams, Simon, 'Because I am of this Countrye and Mynde to plant myself there': the Earl of Leicester and the West Midlands', Midland History, vol. 20 1995, pp. 1-74, reprinted in Adams, Leicester and the Court, Manchester University Press, 2002
Bannerman, John Wainewright, (ed), 'Two Lists of supposed adherents of Mary Queen of Scots, 1574 and 1582', Miscellany viii, Catholic Record Society, 13 (1913), pp. 86-142 at 98-99.
Barnard, E.A.B., Miscellaneous Papers deposited in Birmingham Archives Barnard, E.A.B., The Sheldons, Cambridge, 1936
Bindoff, S. T, (ed.), The History of Parliament: the House of Commons 1509-1558, 3 vols, London 1981
John Bossy, The English Catholic Community, 1570–1850, London, 1975 Bowler, H., and McCann, T.J., (eds), Recusants in the Exchequer Pipe Rolls 1582-1592, Catholic Record Society, vol. 71, 1986
Brown, Nancy Pollard, 'Paperchase : the dissemination of Catholic pamphlets in England', English Manuscript Studies, I (1989), 120-143
Bryson, W. H., (ed), Cases concerning Equity and the Courts of Equity 1550-1660, Selden Society vols 117,118, 2000-02
Burke, Vincent, 'Submissions of Conformity by Elizabethan Recusants in Worcestershire', Worcestershire Recusant, vol. 22 (1973), pp.1-7
Calendar of the Cecil Papers in Hatfield House, 13 vols, HMSO: London, 1883-1976
Calendar of State Papers, Domestic Series, 12 vols 1547-1625, ed R. Lemon and M. A. E. Green, London 1856-72
Dasent, John R., ed., Acts of the Privy Council, 45 vols, London: HMSO, 1890-1964
Daunt, Catherine (2015) Portrait sets in Tudor and Jacobean England. Doctoral thesis (PhD), University of Sussex, 2 vols
Davidson, Alan, 'The Recusancy of Ralph Sheldon', Worcester Recusant 12 December 1968: 1–7
Davidson, Alan, 'The Second Mrs Sheldon', Worcester Recusant, vol. 14 December 1969, pp. 15-21
Donno, E.S., Harington's Metamorphosis of Ajax, London 1962
Dugdale, William, The Antiquities of Warwickshire, 2 volumes, 1730 edition
Edwards, Francis., Plots and Plotters, Dublin, 2002
Edwards, Francis, The succession, bye and main plots of 1601-1603, Four Courts Press Dublin, 2006
Habington, Thomas, A Survey of Worcestershire, ed. John Amphlett, Worcester Historical Society, 2 vols., 1895 & 1899
Harley, J., The World of William Byrd: Musicians, Merchants and Magnates, Ashgate Publishing, Farnham, 2010
Hasler, P. W., Members of the House of Commons 1558-1603, London, HMSO,1981; available on-line, History of Parliament
Hotson, Leslie, I, William Shakespeare, Jonathan Cape, London 1937
Hume, Martin A.S., Treason and Plot; struggles for Catholic supremacy in the last years of Elizabeth, 1901
Jones. Norman, God and the Moneylenders, Oxford, 1989
Macray, W. D., Annals of the Bodleian Library, 2nd edition only, 1890
Martin, Patrick H., Elizabethan Espionage: plotters and spies in the struggle between Catholicism and the Crown, Jefferson, North Carolina, 2016
Neale, J. E., The Elizabethan House of Commons, London 1949
Parry, Glynn, 'Catholicism and Tyranny in Shakespeare's Warwickshire' in (ed) R Malcolm Smuts, The Oxford Handbook of the Age of Shakespeare, Oxford, 2016
Questier, Michael, Conversion, Politics and Religion 1580-1625, Cambridge University Press, 1996
Sturgess, H.A.C., (ed) Register of Admissions to the Honourable Society of the Middle Temple, 3 vols, London 1949
Scott-Warren, Jason, Sir John Harington and the Book as Gift, OUP 2001
Stopes, C.C., Shakespeare's Warwickshire Contemporaries, Shakespeare Head Press, Stratford upon Avon, first edition 1897, second edition now on-line
Strong, Roy, 'Elizabethan Painting: An approach through Inscriptions - II: Hieronimo Custodis', Burlington Magazine, vol 105, March 1963, pp.103-108
Strype, J., Annals of the Reformation, London, 1725-28 edition, 4 vols
Thrush, Andrew, House of Commons, 1604-1629, Benjamin Coate in vol.2, pp. 455-58.
Trimble, W. R., The Catholic laity in Elizabethan England, 1558–1603, Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 1964
Turner, Hilary L., 'Cloaked in conformity?', British Catholic History, volume 34(4) 2019, pp 562-584, available on-line, institutional access.
Turner, Hilary L., The Sheldon Tapestry Maps Belonging to the Bodleian Library The Bodleian Library Record, Vol. 17, No. 5, pp 293-313, April 2002 https://doi.org/10.3828/blr.2002.17.5.293 Turner, Hilary L., 'In Stately View': Ralph Sheldon's Tapestry Map of Gloucestershire' The Bodleian Library Record, Vol. 31, No. 1-2, pp 31-46, April 2018 [51]
Turner, Hilary L., 'Weston Pallace, the Sheldon family's house at Weston in Long Compton, Warwickshire: an attempted reconstruction', Warwickshire History, volume xix, number 2, Winter 2023-24, pp. 69-91
Turner, Hilary L., No Mean Prospect: Ralph Sheldon's Tapestry Maps, Plotwood Press, 2010
Turner, Hilary L., But for One Matter: Ralph Sheldon 1537-1613, available at https://ralphsheldon1537-1613.info
Victoria County History Worcestershire, Beoley parish, volume 4, ed. William Page, 1924 , available on-line
Wainewright, John Bannerman, (ed) 'Two Lists of supposed adherents of Mary Queen of Scots, 1574 and 1582', Miscellany viii, Catholic Record Society, vol. 13 1913, pp. 86-142
Walsham, Church papists: Catholicism, conformity and confessional polemic in early modern England, Woodbridge, 1999
Warriner, Michael, A Prospect of Weston in Warwickshire, Roundwood Press, Kineton, 1978
Wood, Anthony, ed. A Clarke, The Life and Times of Anthony Wood, 7 volumes, Oxford Historical Society, 1892.
References
[edit]- ^ Bindoff, Members of the House of Commons, 1509-1558; available on-line.
- ^ Hasler, Members of the House of Commons 1558-1603, sv Sheldon; this entry contains several inaccuracies; available on-line.
- ^ Birmingham Heritage and Archives (BAH) MS 3061/1/277, 1530; BAH MS 3061/1/206,1529; BAH MS 3061/1/53, Dec 1528, damaged; coal TNA C 1/892/23.
- ^ No documentary evidence supports information that he attended Oxford University or that he was ever a courtier. A single reference testifies to his presence at Louvain in November 1555 in the company of Sir Philip Hoby, CSP Venetian 1555-56, nos. 284, 285, but that he travelled abroad in France and elsewhere sounds an unlikely itinerary for a Protestant in the 1550s and un-necessary for a Catholic. Sturgess, Register of Admissions to the Honourable Society of the Middle Temple, vol. i, p.22, 1556.
- ^ Barnard, The Sheldons, p. 28 gave the date as May 16, quoting a summary of deeds then amongst Coughton Court archives filed in Birmingham Archives and Heritage (BAH), Barnard Miscellany 77/D/1. The original is missing from the Throckmorton archives now kept in Warwick County Record Office (WaCRO), CR 1998. The information is confirmed by The National Archives (TNA) WARD 7/ 13/135.
- ^ Adams, 'Because I am of that Countrye and Mynde to Plante Myself There"; Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester and the West Midlands', Midland History, 20, 1995, 21-74, reprinted in Adams, Leicester and the Court.
- ^ Hasler, Members of the House of Commons 1558-1603.
- ^ A copy of the funeral certificate is at the College of Arms, London, MS Vincent 90, f. 209; Barnard, The Sheldons, p. 17-18.
- ^ Calendar of Patent Rolls 1547-48, p.114; Calendar of Patent Rolls 1558-1560, p. 79; TNA C 66/943, m. 28.
- ^ Strype, Annals of the Reformation, vol. 3(ii),455,item no24; available on-line.
- ^ Acts of the Privy Council ( APC), APC 12 1580-81, pp. 156.
- ^ APC 12 1580-81, p. 166; available on-line.
- ^ APC 12 1580-81, p. 254-55.
- ^ APC 12 1580-81, p. 301-02.
- ^ APC 13 1581-82, p.42, 8 May 1581.
- ^ Mrs C. C. Stopes, Shakespeare's Warwickshire Contemporaries, p. 73; John Bossy, Giordano Bruno and the Embassy Affair, p. 206-08; available on-line.
- ^ Parry, 'Catholicism and Tyranny in Shakespeare's Warwickshire' in Smuts, The Oxford Handbook of the Age of Shakespeare, pp. 121-138.
- ^ Part printed by Davidson, 'The Recusancy of Ralph Sheldon', pp.1-5; originals in Calendar of State Papers Domestic 1581-90, p.449, no. 83; SP 12/206/, f.175, subscription on-line access; Explored in Turner, 'Ralph Sheldon (1537–1613) of Beoley and Weston: cloaked in conformity?', pp. 562–586, available on-line.
- ^ Bowler and McCann, Recusants in the Exchequer Pipe Rolls 1581-1592, p.152. The original documents are TNA E 372/432-5, TNA E 401/1842-46; WaCRO, CR 2632, f. 185.
- ^ Calendar of State Papers Domestic, 1591-1594, p. 545, no. 92; TNA SP 12/249 f.152-154v, esp. f. 152v. Questier, Conversion, Politics and Religion 1580-1625, p.102-05, 108-110.
- ^ Calendar of State Papers Domestic, 1591-94, p. 554, nos. 1, 2, TNA SP 12/250 f.1r-1v, 3r-3v; Calendar of the Cecil Papers in Hatfield House, vol. 4: 618-19; available on-line.
- ^ Hume, Treason and Plot, was the first to investigate this plot; Edwards, Plots and Plotters, pp. 236-252; Alford, The Watchers, pp. 303–09. Turner, 'Cloaked in conformity?', available on-line, institutional access.
- ^ Hasler, House of Commons 1558-1603, Ralph Sheldon. The documents listed in note 20 had not then been examined. Burke, 'Submissions of Conformity', pp.1-7.
- ^ Edwards, The Succession, Bye and Main Plots of 1601–1603; Martin, Elizabethan Espionage, pp.230–32.
- ^ APC vol.32, 1601-04, p.251; 7 October 1601; Neale, The Elizabethan House of Commons, pp. 295-6. His nephew was sheriff and one of the candidates his grandson.
- ^ Thrush, House of Commons, 1604-1629, vol.2, pp. 455-58.
- ^ TNA PROB 11/121/345 online at http://www.oxford-shakespeare.com/Probate/PROB_11-121_ff_221-3.pdf
- ^ Bryson, (ed), Cases concerning Equity and the Courts of Equity 1550-1660, pp. 345-6.
- ^ Nancy Pollard Brown, 'Paperchase', pp. 120-143, 131.
- ^ Jones, God and the Moneylenders, pp.118-144.
- ^ Explored by Turner, But for One Matter: Ralph Sheldon 1537-1613, available at https://ralphsheldon1537-1613.info based on TNA, E 126/1 Easter 4 Jas, 15 May [1606] f. 41. 144 on-line at www.AALT.edu and ends in TNA WARD7/51/91and in CP25/2/386/10JasIMicDoubleCounties; the lands remained in the Sheldon family's possession.
- ^ Victoria County History Worcestershire, vol 4, pp.12-19, Beoley parish; available on-line. His wife Anne was buried in December 1603, Beoley Parish Registers, available on-line.
- ^ The epitaph in Beoley church states that at his death he had 130 descendants, information which suggests a date of composition later than the death of the declared author, his son Edward (1561–1643). In 1613 Ralph might have had thirty-thirty-five descendants.
- ^ Treadway Nash, Collections for a History of Worcestershire, vol I, p. 64. Elizabeth = Sir John Russell of Strensham, Mary = Walter Fowler of St Thomas's Priory, Co Stafford; Muriel = Francis Clare of Caldwell near Kidderminster, Worcs; Jane = John Flower of Whitwell, Rutland; Margaret =d William Standen, later of Arborfield, Berks; Anne = John Peshall of Horseley, Staffs; Katherine = Francis Trentham of Rocester, Staffs; Frances = Anthony Mayney of Linton, Kent; Philippa = John Sulyard of Wetherden, Suffolk..
- ^ Davidson, 'The Second Mrs Sheldon', pp. 15-21; with further details, not catalogued when Davidson wrote, Harley, The World of William Byrd:, p. 207 (Google), citing TNA C 3/291/89 .
- ^ TNA PROB 11/121/345 online at http://www.oxford-shakespeare.com/Probate/PROB_11-121_ff_221-3.pdf
- ^ Turner, 'Weston Pallace:... an attempted reconstruction', pp. 69-91.
- ^ Dugdale, The Antiquities of Warwickshire, 1730 edition, vol. I between pages 582-83; also available on line. Warriner, A Prospect of Weston in Warwickshire, for the later house.
- ^ Daunt, Portrait sets in Tudor and Jacobean England. That of Cardinal Wolsey hangs in the National Portrait Gallery London; kings Henry VI, Henry VII at Eton College, United Kingdom. The most recent find was of king Henry VIII see https://www.warwickshire.gov.uk/news/article/5435/art-historian-identifies-lost-painting-of-king-henry-viii-in-warwickshire-county-council-collection
- ^ Strong, 'Elizabethan Painting', II:', pp.103-108, available on-line.
- ^ Turner, No Mean Prospect: Ralph Sheldon's Tapestry Maps; Turner, 'The Sheldon Tapestry Maps Belonging to the Bodleian Library,' available on-line.
- ^ Macray, Annals of the Bodleian Library, 2nd edition only, 1890, p. 37n.
- ^ Harington, ed., Donno, An Apology for Ajax, 1596 and Donno, Harington's Metamorphosis of Ajax, p. 240.
- ^ Scott-Warren, Sir John Harington and the Book as Gift, p. 91.
- ^ Habington, A Survey of Worcestershire, in vol. 1, p. 70.
- ^ Bannerman, 'Two Lists of supposed adherents of Mary Queen of Scots, 1574 and 1582', p. 98-99. The spy was Skeldoun, steward of Mary Queen of Scots, not Ralph of Beoley.
- ^ Trimble, The Catholic laity in Elizabethan England, 1558–1603, p. 105–06, but ignored by Bossy, The English Catholic Community, 1570–1850; Hasler, Members of the House of Commons 1558-1603, sv Sheldon.
- ^ Walsham, Church Papists, p. 2.; mistakenly confusing Ralph Sheldon of Beoley and Weston with the Norfolk-London merchant family of Shelton, p.51.
- ^ It is worth noting that his daughters married in parish churches, not in secret, Wood, Life and Times, vol, 3, pp. 99-103.
- ^ Hotson, I, William Shakespeare, p. 22, quoting TNA STAC 5/R41/32.
- ^ "The Sheldon Tapestry Map of Gloucestershire". The Bodleian Library Record. 21: 110–111. 2008. doi:10.3828/blr.2008.21.1.110.