THE COMMANDER OF THE GLOUCESTER.'
[TO THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR."]
Sin,—I send you the enclosed extract from a private letter, thinking that perhaps it may be of interest to your readers :— "Some of our English cousins appreciative of things of this kind may be interested in knowing that the executive officer of the little -corsair—the Gloucester'—has an undoubted descent from Captain -Sir Robert Cross, who commanded the little ship 'Hope' under Admiral Howard, in that great and amazing fight with the 'In- vincible Armada' in 1588,—a fight of which the present naval -encounters are but the touch of completion, after three hundred .years' delay. Captain Cross was knighted by Queen Elizabeth lor his valour. His mortal part lies in a little country churchyard in either Somerset or Dorset, I do not at the present moment remember which. This young lieutenant of the ` Gloucester ' also -comes of the Leighs' or Leghs, of Lyme, and is of the line of that Piers Leigh who recaptured the standard of England at the Battle of Crecy; and King Edward gave him the noble estate of Lyme, in Cheshire. So does history repeat itself,' sometimes."
—I am, Sir, &c., Liatichau Sir. 26, Dresden, Saxony. THEO. HUSE.
[Sir Robert Cross was a Somersetshire man, and is buried in Somersetshire,—in Cannington, near Bridgwater, if we mistake not. He was with Essex at the siege of Cadiz, and -commanded the Bonaventnre' in that action. The descen- dants of his sister live in Somersetshire to this day.—En. Speetator.]
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