[This phrase, according to Grose, "originated in the days of good Queen Bess. When great chimnies were in fashion, there was at each corner of the hearth, or grate, a small elevated projection, called _hob_, and behind it a seat. In winter-time the beer was placed on the hob to warm; and the cold beer was set on a small table, said to have been called the _nob_: so that the {87} question, Will you have hob or nob? seems only to have meant, Will you have warm or cold beer? _i.e._ beer from the hob, or beer from the nob." But Nares, in his _Glossary_, s.v. _Habbe_ or _Nabbe_, with much greater reason, shows that _hob_ or _nob_, now only used convivially, to ask a person whether he will have a glass of wine or not, is most evidently a corruption of the old _hab-nab_, from the Saxon _habban_, to have, and _nabban_, not to have; in proof of which, as Nares remarks, Shakspeare has used it to mark an alternative of another kind: "And his incensement at this moment is so implacable, that satisfaction can be none but by pangs of death and sepulchre: _hob, nob_ is his word; give't or take't."--_Twelfth Night_, Act III. Sc. 4.] * * * * * Replies. WELLESLEY PEDIGREE. (Vol. vi., pp. 508. 585.) There is an anxiety to obtain further particulars on this interesting subject, and I have searched my Genealogical MSS. Collections for such; the result has extended farther than I could have wished, but, while I am able to furnish _dates_ and _authorities_ for hitherto naked statements, I have inserted two or three links of descent not before laid down. A member of the Somersetshire Wellesleighs is said to have accompanied Henry II. to Ireland. Walleran or Walter de Wellesley, living in Ireland in 1230 (Lynch, _Feud. Dig._), witnessed a grant of certain townlands to the Priory of Christ Church about 1250 (_Registry of Christ Church_); while it is more effectively stated that he then "endowed the Priory of All Saints with 60 a. of land, within the manor of Cruagh, _which then belonged, with other estates, to his family_, and that he gave to the said priory _free common of pasture, of wood and of turbary, over his whole mountain there_." His namesake and son (according to Lynch, _Feud. Dig._), "Walran de Wylesley," was in 1302 required, as one of the "Fideles" of Ireland, by three several letters, to do service in the meditated war in Scotland (_Parl. Writs_, vol. i. p. 363.), and in the following year he was slain (_MS. Book of Obits, T.C.D._). The peerage books merge these two Wallerans in one.