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archaeological SOtoum;
OR,
MUSEUM OF NATIONAL ANTIQUITIES.
EDITED BY
THOMAS WEIGHT, ESQ. M.A. F.S.A. Ac.
CORRESPONDING MEMBER OF THE INSTITUTE OF FRANCE.
THE ILLUSTRATIONS BY F. W. FAIRHOLT, ESQ. F.S.A.
LONDON:
CHAPMAN AND HALL, \U STRAND.
1845.
LONDON:
PRINTED BY GEORGE BARCLAY, CASTLE STREET,
LEICESTER SQUARE.
TO
THE LORD ALBERT DENISON CONYNGHAM,
K.C.H. F.S.A.
PRESIDENT OF THE BRITISH ARCHAEOLOGICAL ASSOCIATION,
rum ^©lp
COMPILED WITH THE HOPE OF MAKING MORE POPULAR A SCIENCE WHICH HIS LORDSHIP
HAS ENCOURAGED NO LESS BY HIS OWN ANTIQUARIAN RESEARCHES
THAN BY HIS ZEALOUS AND ENLIGHTENED PATRONAGE,
IS VERY RESPECTFULLY DEDICATED.
CONTENTS.
MEETING OF THE BRITISH ARCHAEO-
LOGICAL ASSOCIATION AT CAN-
TERBURY . . . Page 1
Objects of the meeting.
Arrangements of the sections, and subjects
treated. — Results.
The town-hall.
Excursion to Breach Downs and Bourne . 6
Opening of Anglo-Saxon barrows.
Articles found in them.
Bourne Park.
Patricksbourne Church.
Dr. Faussett's collection of antiquities.
Excursion to Richborough . . .10
Ash.
Old house at Wingham.
The Roman Rutupiae.
Saxon boundary stones, with Runic inscrip-
tions.
Description of Richborough Castle.
Mr. Rolfe's excavations and discoveries.
Sandwich. — Barfreston .
Visits to the Antiquities of Canterbury . .18
Old street architecture.
The Chequer inn.
Visit of Chaucer's pilgrims.
Canterbury signs.
Description of Chaucer's inn.
The cathedral.
The painted chapel in the crypt.
St. Martin's church.
Arrival of St. Augustine.
Necklace of Merovingian gold coins discovered
in the churchyard.
Monastic buildings of Canterbury.
The Grey Friars.
The Three Archiepiscopal Hospitals . .31
Foundations of Lanfranc and Becket.
Visit of Henry II. to Harbledown.
Anecdotes of the ancient state and usages of
the Hospitals.
Remains of St. Thomas's Hospital.
St. John's Hospital.
Westgate and St. George's gate.
Relics at Harbledown.
Articles in cuir-bouilh.
Bowl with legend of Guy of Warwick.
Harbledown.
The Black Prince's well-
Concluding observations on the Association.
ANCIENT BEDSTEAD . . . Page 43
Account of Turton Tower.
Description of the bedstead.
Rude articles of this description in use among
our forefathers.
Poetical descriptions.
Large bedsteads of the sixteenth century.
Truckle-beds.
OBSOLETE PUNISHMENTS . . .49
The cucking-stool. — Meaning of the word.
Different offences for which it was used, and
modes of application.
Wooden mortar at Sandwich.
Cucking-stools at Sandwich, Cambridge, Ips-
wich, Warwick, Canterbury, Banbury.
Prevalence of this punishment in the seven-
teenth century.
Riding the stang.
OLD MANSION IN HOUNDSDITCH . 57
Conservation of monuments recommended.
Description of the mansion ; its history.
Anecdotes of the progressive enlargement of
the metropolis.
HISTORY OF ART IN THE MIDDLE
AGES 61
Illuminated MSS.
Meaning of the word illumination.
Varieties of works illuminated.
Division' of the subject.
Anglo-Saxon period . . • .62
The Durham Book.
Alfric's Bible.
Noah and his vineyard.
Conventional forms of trees, &c.
Illuminated calendars.
Poetical personifications of rivers, hills, cities,
&c.
Personification of the four elements.
Twelfth, thirteenth, and fourteenth centuries 68
Anglo-Norman illuminations.
New style introduced in the thirteenth cen-
tury.
Legends of Noah and his wife.
Queen Mary's Psalter.
VI
CONTENTS.
Illuminations of the romances.
Burlesques in the margins of manuscripts.
Historical associations of particular manu-
scripts.
Autographs of queen Elizabeth Wydevylle and
her daughter.
Varieties of style.
Ornamental initials.
Anachronisms of the old painters and writers.
The fifteenth century . . . Page 81
The Romance of the Rose : Zeu\i~.
Antiquity of mirrors and of spectacles.
The romance of the Comte d'Artois.
Minute details of the early artists.
Illuminated borders and initials.
Illuminations of scientific treatises : Bartho-
lomew de Glanville.
The death of Guendolena, and legend of Sabren.
Burial scene.
Illuminated breviaries.
ON SYMBOLISM IN ECCLESIASTICAL
ARCHITECTURE . . .91
Grotesques, &c.
St. Bernard and the councils.
BURGH CASTLE, AND THE ECCLESI-
ASTICAL ROUND TOWERS OF SUF-
FOLK AND NORFOLK . . 93
History of Burgh Castle. — Its present state.
Antiquities discovered there.
Arrival of Furseus.
Burgh church and the round towers.
OBSOLETE PUNISHMENTS . . .100
The stocks. — Hudibras.
The Lollard's Tower and the Bishop's Cole-
house.
Different methods of applying the stocks.
The whipping-post.
The pillory. — Its different forms.
Pillory of the fifteenth century, from Froissart.
Pillory at Dublin.
History of the pillory. — De Foe.
It becomes a political instrument, and goes
out of fashion.
Finger-pillory at Ashby-de-la-Zouch.
SKETCHES OF ANCIENT STREET AR-
CHITECTURE . . . .112
The remains of old street architecture rapidly
disappearing.
Ipswich: Mr. Sparrowe's house, the Tan-
kard, &c.
Saffron Walden : the Sun Inn.
Norwich.
Spitalfields : the weavers.
TATINE IN CLIFF CHURCH . .119
Account of Cliff church.
Early monuments.
The patine. — Shakespeare.
Old canon relating to the service
eucharist.
of the
ON THE EARLY USE OF FIRE-ARMS, Page 121
Wheel-lock in the possession of Lord Albert
Conyngham.
Invention of gunpowder.
Cannons of different periods.
The hand-cannon. — Guns.
Mode of firing them ; the lock.
Invention of bomb-shells.
THE ROMANS IN LONDON . . 129
Position and extent of the ancient city ; Lon-
don wall.
Gravel-pit found on the site of the Exchange.
Presumed arrangement of the Roman town,
and situation of the public buildings.
London Bridge.
Roman suburb south of the Thames.
Tessellated pavements.
Roman houses ; frescoes from the walls.
Mr. Roach Smith's museum of the antiquities
of Roman London.
Various articles of household economy.
Roman shoes and sandals.
Bronzes.
Terra-cotta lamps.
Lamp made from an elegant bronze cup.
Earthenware.
Roman potteries in England ; specimens of
pottery made at Durobriva: (Castor in
Northamptonshire) .
British dogs figured on this ware.
Samian ware.
Various subjects represented on the vessels of
Samian ware.
Vase of superior workmanship found in Corn-
hill.
Other examples.
Terra-cottas.
Coins found in London.
SILCHESTER . . . . .150
The ancient Segontiacum ; its history.
Description of the walls.
Baths.
Amphitheatre.
Articles of antiquity found at Silchester.
Votive inscriptions to Hercules and to Julia
Domna.
Onion's Hole.
Silchester Church.
THE BURLESQUE FESTIVALS OF THE
MIDDLE AGES . . . .155
Gradual conversion of the Romans to Christ-
CONTENTS.
Vll
ianity ; many of their popular ceremonies
retained.
Description of the Roman Saturnalia.
Traces of their preservation in the fall of the
empire.
Comparison of the ancient Saturnalia with the
more modern burlesque festivals.
I. The Feast of the Ass . . . Page 158
The ass honoured by the Christians.
Acted a part in festivals at Beauvais, Autun,
Rouen, &c. in France.
The feast of the ass at Sens. — Song of the ass.
II. The Feast of Fools . . . .161
Ceremonies generally observed at this festival.
Particular instances in different towns in
France.
The society of mother-fool at Dijon.
III. The Feast of Innocents . . .164
Observation of this festival at Amiens and
other places.
Money of the fools and innocents.
Pilgrims' signs.
Coin of the pope of fools.
Traces of these feasts in England ; the child-
bishop.
IV. The Fete-Dieu at Aix in Provence . .168
Modern account of this festival.
Herod and his daughter tormented by the
demons. — The queen of Sheba.
V. The Abbot of Misrule . . .169
Traces of this burlesque dignitary in England
and Scotland.
Stubbs' account of his office and attributes.
MONUMENT OF JOANE PRINCESS OF
NORTH WALES . . .171
Present state of this monument.
Early tombs at Silchester.
Monumental slabs with crosses at Bowes in
Yorkshire, and Taplow in Berkshire.
The story of the princess Joane and William
de Braose.
THE FABULOUS NATURAL HISTORY OF
THE MIDDLE AGES . . .174
The bestiaries.
The unicorn and its legends.
Notions relating to the elephant.
The mandrake ; the mode of gathering it, and
its remarkable properties.
The attercop.
The caladrius.
The serre, the whale, and the syren.
Allegorical interpretations.
THE MOAT HOUSE, IGHTHAM, KENT . 187
History of the manor.
Description of the house ; the farm, the
knocker, the court, corridor, kitchen,
chimneys, chapel, &c.
ON THE EARLY USE OF CARRIAGES IN
ENGLAND . . . Page 191
Anglo-Saxon carriage.
The chares of the later Norman period, used
chiefly for ladies.
Descriptions in the earlier poets.
Illuminations : chares of Emergard and of
dame Venus.
Coaches.
Taylor the Water-Poet's satirical observations
on the increasing use of coaches.
THE SAXON BARROWS . . .196
General remarks on barrows.
The barrows of the ancient Scythians.
Scythian barrow opened by the Russians.
Barrows mentioned in Homer.
Homer's description of the mode of interment
in the Grecian heroic age.
Similar description of the mode of burial in
use among the early Saxons, from the
Anglo-Saxon romance of Beowulf.
Barrow near Folkstone.
Contents of the Saxon barrows.
Arms. — Runic inscription on a sword-hilt.
Jewellery, and ornaments of the person.
Household utensils, &c. — Coins.
Barrow in Bourne Park.
MISCELLANEOUS ILLUSTRATIONS OF
MEDIEVAL ANTIQUITIES, FROM
ILLUMINATED MANUSCRIPTS . 211
Domestic scenes : the bedchamber.
The kitchen.
Robert the cook and his wife Helena.
The table : the nef or ship.
Group of boats.
Burlesques : Reynard the Fox.
The woman with her distaff.
Portrait of Richard IIL
Musical instruments.
WINCHESTER AND SOUTHAMPTON . 219
Second congress of the British Archaeological
Association.
Winchester Cathedral.
Hospital of St. Cross.
Opening of barrows.
Story of king Ceadwalla.
Bittern, the Roman Clausen turn.
Netley Abbey.
Antiquities of Southampton.
Romsey, and its abbesses.
LIST OF PLATES.
PAGE
THE ILLUMINATED TITLE, TAKEN FROM A MS. IN THE BRITISH MUSEUM OF THE FIFTEENTH
< I NT IKY.
INTERIOR OF THE TOWN-HALL, CANTERBURY to pace 1
PATRICKSROURNE CHURCH. — OLD HOUSE, WING HAM 9
RICHBOROUGII CASTLE (View and Plan) 14
CHAUCER'S INN, EXTERIOR AND INTERIOR 19
PAINTING FROM ST. JOHN'S CHAPEL, CRYPT (Coloured) 25
ST. JOHN'S HOSPITAL, CANTERBURY.— HARBLEDOWN CnURCH 31
ANCIENT BEDSTEAD IN TURTON TOWER 43
OLD MANSION IN LONDON (Fireplace and Doob) 57
ILLUMINATIONS (Coloured). — NOAH'S VINEYARD — LEGEND OF NOAH AND HIS WIFE . . . G3
ILLUMINATIONS— HENRY II. BANISHING BECKET'S RELATIONS— SCENE FROM THE ROMANCE OF
1. \NCELOT — A PARTY AT CARDS — A ROYAL PARTY AT CHESS .... 71
ILLUMINATIONS.— THE COUNT OF ARTOIS VISITING THE COUNTESS OF BOULOGNE . . .84
ILLUMINATIONS. — CHRISTINE DE PISAN.— PORTION OF A BORDER.— EDWARD AND THE BLACK
PRINCE (CllROMO-LlTnOGRAPHIC) ........... 80
BURGn CASTLE, SUFFOLK.— BURGH CHURCH 93
OLD BOUSE AT SAFFRON WALDEN. — MR. SPARROWE'S HOUSE, IPSWICH 113
ROSEMARY LANE, NORWICH.— WHITES ROW, SPITALFIELDS 116
PATINE IN CLIFF CHURCH, KENT (Coloured) lis
ORNAMENTAL GUN-LOCK IN THE POSSESSION OF LORD ALBERT CONYNGHAM ... 121
ROMAN ANTIQUITIES FOUND IN LONDON : TESSELLATED PAVEMENT, COLUMN, AND SPECIMENS
OF FRESCOES 131
SILCHESTER CHURCH, WITH THE ROMAN WALL.— AMPHITHEATRE AT SILCHESTER . . 150
BURLESQUE COINS, &c. STRUCK BY THE BISHOPS OF FOOLS AND INNOCENTS . . .165
MONUMENT OF JOANE PRINCESS OF WALES 171
MOAT HOUSE, IGHTHAM : PRINCIPAL ENTRANCE, AND BACK VIEW 187
MOAT HOUSE, IGHTHAM : COURT-YARD, AND INTERIOR OF THE CHAPEL .... 189
ANGLO-SAXON ANTIQUITIES, PLATE 1 202
ANGLO-SAXON JEWELS DISCOVERED IN BARROWS IN KENT AND DERBYSHIRE (Coloured) . 205
ANGLO-SAXON ANTIQUITIES, PLATE III. 200
ST. CROSS, NEAR WINCHESTER. — BROOK STREET IN WINCHESTER 222
THE
m©\&/m©\L©©m/&L M^mum
MEETING OF THE BRITISH ARCHAEOLOGICAL ASSOCIATION
AT
CANTERBURY.
DEVIOUS to the establishment of the British Archaeological
Association in the last days of the year 1843, the study of
our national antiquities had been continually increasing in
popularity, and it was evident that some great movement was
necessary. The object of the Association is to unite and con-
centrate the whole antiquarian force of the kingdom, and thus
to increase its efficiency and consequent utility. Railways
and other public works are now daily laying open and destroying
the remains of the earlier inhabitants of our islands, while the monu-
ments of the middle ages are too frequently sacrificed unnecessarily to the
supposed exigence of public convenience ; and it is most desirable that
we should secure some power of directing a more systematic and intelligent
observation to the points which are threatened, which could only be done
by organising extensive means of intercourse between the antiquaries of
different parts of our islands. No measure seemed more calculated to pro-
mote this end than that of holding an annual meeting, choosing successively
for its locality a city or town which will be itself attractive by its archaeolo-
gical monuments and its historical associations.
Canterbury was well selected as the first place of meeting, and, in
spite of the fears and misgivings of many, and the various difficulties
which always attend the commencement of a plan embracing so much
novelty, the success far exceeded the expectations of its most sanguine supporters.
It has been rarely seen that so large a number of persons have passed a week with
B
I11K Altrii.F.Ol.lHllt \l. \ I.IU \l.
such entire satisfaction, or have separated in such general feelings of unanimity
and mutual good-will, as the members of the British Archaeological Association who
met at Canterbury in 1811. The husincss was opened on Monday, the 9th of
September, with a judicious Speech by the zealous and active president of the
meeting, Lord Albert Conyngham ; and during the week which followed, the Town-
hall (which had more frequently been the scene of municipal or political contention)
was occupied almost daily with the peaceful discussion of suhjects in which, for once,
all differences of station and party were softened down before the humanising influence
of science. The assembly of persons of both sexes was numerous, as well in the sec-
tional meetings in the Hall, as in the evening conversaziones in Barnes's Rooms ; many
interesting papers were read and discussed ; drawings and antiquities of various kinds
were exhibited in great abundance ; and on the whole, an impression was made both on
the visitors and the visited, which it will take years to wear off.
The business of the meeting was arranged under four distinct heads, each managed
by its owti sectional committee. The first section, with Mr. W. R. Hamilton for its
president, and the Dean of Hereford and Sir James Annesley as vice-presidents, was
devoted to the primeval antiquities of our island, under which title were included all
monuments (British, Roman, or Saxon) of a date anterior to the conversion of the
Anglo-Saxons to Christianity,, and therefore varying in its limit in different parts of
the island, from the beginning to the middle of the seventh century. This section had
three meetings, on the evenings of Monday and Tuesday, the 9th and 10th of Sep-
tember, and on the afternoon of Friday, the 13th. A number of valuable papers were
read: on barrows in general, by the Rev. John Bathurst Deanc; on barrows near
Bakewell, in Derbyshire, opened by Mr. T. Bateman, jun.; by the Rev. Stephen
Isaacson, on Uomau remains discovered at Dymchurch in 1814; by Mr. John Syden-
ham, on the so-called Kimmeridge coal-money; by the Rev. Beale Post, on the place
of Cresar's landing in Britain ; by Mr. E. Tyrrell Artis, on a recent discovery, near
Castor, in Northamptonshire, of Roman statues, and of a kiln for pottery of the Roman
era, with numerous specimens of native manufacture ; by Mr. Pettigrcw, on a bilingual
inscription discovered by Sir Gardner Wilkinson, on a vase in Egyptian hieroglyphics
and cuneiform characters, which gives an important aid towards the interpretation of
the latter ; by Mr. Birch, on a gold Saxon fibula dug up in Hampshire ; 8zc. In more
immediate connexion with this section, on the Friday evening after the last meeting,
and previous to the opening of an Egyptian mummy in the theatre, Mr. Pettigrcwv read
a very able and interesting paper on the subject of the embalmment of the dead among
the ancient Egyptians, which elicited much applause.
The medieval sec/ion, which included the general antiquities of the long period
MEETING AT CANTERBURY.
extending from the conversion of the Anglo-Saxons to the restoration of learning, had
for its president Archdeacon Burney, and for vice-presidents the Rev. Dr. Spry and Sir
Richard Westmacott. It met on the forenoon of Wednesday, the 11th of September,
and among the papers read were a description of Old Sarum, by Mr. W. H. Hatcher;
an account of a painting on the wall of Lenham Church, communicated by Dr. Spry ;
an essay on ecclesiastical embroidery, by the Rev. C. H. Hartshorne; an account of
frescoes on the walls of East Wickham Church, by Mr. G. Wollaston ; and a disquisition
on the succession of William of Arques, by Mr. Stapleton.
The architectural section, presided over by Professor Willis, with Messrs. Barry and
Blore for vice-presidents, met on Wednesday evening. Its chief attraction was an admir-
able lecture by Professor Willis on Gervase's description of Canterbury Cathedral soon
after its restoration in the latter part of the twelfth century, compared with the present
appearance of that noble edifice. Papers were also read on the chronological progression
of Gothic capitals, by Mr. Repton; on a Norman tomb at Coningsborough, by
Mr. Haigh, of Leeds; on mason's marks observed on the stonework of different
buildings, by Mr. G. Godwin ; &c. ; and Mr. Hartshorne gave a description of the keep
of Dover Castle.
Lord Albert Conyngham presided over the historical section, which met on Friday
morning, the vice-presidents being Mr. Amyot and Dr. Bosworth. The subjects read
before this section were, a dissertation on the character of Richard Boyle, first carl of
Cork, by Mr. Crofton Croker ; a report on the archives of Canterbury, by Mr. T. Wright ;
a series of extracts from a book of accounts of expenses relating to the shipping in the
river Thames in the reign of Henry VIII., by Mr. John Barrow; extracts from the
bursar's accounts of Merton College, Oxford, by Mr. J. H. Parker; curious notes on
the coronation of Henry VI., and on the manuscripts in the library of Canterbury
Cathedral, by Mr. Halliwell ; and an interesting notice relating to a chapel at Reculver,
in Kent, by Miss Halstead.
Independent of the pleasure and instruction they afforded in the course of reading,
these papers and exhibitions, with the discussions arising out of them, led to several
very important results. The exact dates of the commencement of two styles of archi-
tecture, differing considerably from those hitherto received, were now discovered; the
early English having been proved to have begun in 1184, by Professor Willis's com-
parison of the parts of Canterbury Cathedral with the description of them by the monk
Gervase, and the commencement of the decorated style being fixed to as early a date as
1277, by Mr. Parker's extracts from the records of Merton College. In history, by
Mr. Crofton Croker's judicious comparison of documents relating to the first earl of
Cork, the character of a historical person of some celebrity was placed in a light con-
■ I I'lli: \ RCHJEOLOGICAL AHUM.
trarv to that in which it has generally been viewed. In the same section, the paper
on the Canterbury archives was calculated to call public attention to the value of this
important class of national records.
The tendency of the proceedings in the medieval section was to secure a greater
attention than has hitherto been paid to the preservation of the curious paintings now
so frequently discovered under the whitewash of the walls of our older churches, and of
monumental brasses and other relies of the fine arts among our ancestors.
In the primeval section, Mr. Sydenham, in a very excellent paper, established the
fact that articles which had been taken for money, were in reality nothing more than
the waste pieces thrown out of the lathe in the construction of armilhe and other orna-
ments by the Romanised Britons in the district of Purbeck. This discovery, with
that by Mr. Artis, of pottery and statuary executed in Northamptonshire, are valuable
contributions towards the history of native art in our island under the Romans.
The interesting discoveries by Mr. Isaacson are also important in a historical point
of view : they shew that a very extensive portion of the land round Dyinchurch was
inhabited in the time of the Romans, which is a fact rather new and unexpected ; for,
close to the tract where the pottery, tiles, &c. are found, an immense bank is now
required to keep the sea from inundating the levels, and it had been supposed that in
the time of the Romans the whole district was under water. The remains discovered
by .Mr. Isaacson seem to shew the existence in those early times of extensive potteries
m the Dyinchurch marshes. Me has collected a hundred and fifty different kinds of
urns, and the whole surface of the ground, at intervals, for three-quarters of a mile, is
strewed with fragments and with bits of clay partly worked by the hand. It may be
observed, that remains of Roman potteries have also been discovered on the other side
of Kent, near Upchurch. Among other interesting discoveries was that of the remains
of a Roman town and temple near Weymouth, announced by Dr. Buckland.
The advantages which will arise from varying the place of meeting every year, are
manifest ; for it will not only have the effect of encouraging local research and dis-
covery, but, the subjects which fall under the consideration of antiquaries being visible
.and tangible objects, in a great measure incapable of removal, every locality will present
a new series of attractions, and new subjects for observation. A very large proportion
of the interest of the meeting at Canterbury consisted in excursions and visits to the
antiquities in the neighbourhood, and certainly, in this respect, no better place could
have been chosen. The city and the country surrounding it arc full of monuments of
every period of our national annals. Richborough, the Reculvcrs, and Dover, present
some of the most interesting monuments of the Romans that are to be found in this
kingdom. The downs in the more immediate vicinity of Canterbury (the head-quarters
MEETING AT CANTERBURY
of the Kentish Saxons) are covered with Saxon barrows. The Cathedral and the little
church of St. Martin are associated with the name of St. Augustine, to whom, in this
place, we owe the first introduction of Christianity among our forefathers. The whole
city is filled with memorials of the middle ages. Even the Hall in which the meetings
were held offered objects of historical association on every side to the eyes of the
archaeologist. The city archives are deposited in a room in the upper part of the
building. The hall itself, which is internally a handsome old building, bristles with
matchlocks, pikes, and bills, distributed over its walls, part of which are said, tra-
ditionally, to have been seized in the civil war of the seventeenth century, in the house
of a Lady Wootton, who shut her residence at St. Augustine's, in this city, against the
parliamentarian municipal authorities. On the western wall, in the corner, near the north
end, is still suspended the ancient horn which was formerly sounded at the doors of the
common-council-men, to summon them to the meeting of the burghmote. Beneath
the Hall, and almost closed from the light of day, is an object of still greater antiquarian
interest, the relic, perhaps, of the building in which the townsmen held their public
meetings at a period not long subsequent to the Norman conquest. The floor of this
Norman building, which is now only a few feet below the surface of the ground
without, stood once evidently on a level with
the street. A double arched roof, sup-
ported by a row of pillars at each side and
down the centre, still exists, sufficiently
perfect to enable us to judge of its original
appearance. The larger of the two capitals
represented in the margin is one of the cen-
tral supporters ; the other belongs to one of
the corner pillars. These pillars are now
more or less fragmentary, and imbedded in
the more modern wall, the open space between the cen-
tral colonnade being entirely bricked up, as a support for
the building above. The middle pillars in the side walls
have a group of three capitals, supporting the imposts,
which may perhaps have been originally octagonal, but,
if so, the greater part is now concealed in the masonry
of the wall, and the shafts are broken awav, and the
capitals themselves so much injured, that we can only
guess at their original appearance. Until very recently,
these vaults were used as wine-cellars.
THE ARCHjEOLOGICAL ALBUM.
EXCURSION TO HREACH DOWN AND BOURNE.
All the excursions of the archaeologists were interesting in the highest degree.
Their attention was first called to the graves of the early Anglo-Saxon settlers in this
district. The site of Canterbury was occupied by a Roman town, named Dwobemiim,
which was chosen as the metropolis of the followers of Ilengst and llorsa, and from them
received the appellation of Cantwara-buruh (or the town of the Kentish-men), which has
been softened down into its modern name. The high grounds, or downs, to the south,
within a distance of a few miles, in a sweep from the south-west to the south-east of
the city, are covered with groups of barrows, which are proved by their contents to have
been the graves of the Kentish Saxons, from their arrival in this island to the beginning
of the seventh century. They are most numerous over the hills towards the south-
west, which may fairly be termed the Saxon Necropolis of East Kent, and may possibly
have had some reference to a religious establishment at Wodnesborough, or the citadel
or hill of "Woden. The largest of these groups in the immediate vicinity of Canterbury
are found on the hill to the north of Bourne Park (some of them in what is termed
Bourne Paddock), and on the Breach Down, in the parish of Barham, both on the line
of the Dover road, many of which have been opened by Lord Albert Conyngham.
Under his lordship's superintendence, a number of these barrows (both at Breach Down
and in Bourne Paddock) were excavated to within about a foot of the bottom, before the
arrival of the visitors, in order that the deposits might be uncovered in their presence.
It must be observed that the Saxon barrows differ from others in the circumstance that
the body is not placed on the ground, but in a regular grave dug into it, over which is
raised a very low circular mound, which sometimes can now be with difficulty dis-
tinguished from the ground around it. They were, in fact, the prototypes of our
common churchyard graves, except that in the latter the slight mound or barrow is
made to take the form of the grave. However, the Saxon barrows were probably at
first higher and more definitely marked, and perhaps they were adorned with some
outward marks of respect.
The archaeologists assembled at Breach Down, on Tuesday, the 10th of September,
between nine and ten o'clock, conveyances having been engaged at Canterbury for the
occasion by the local committee, and eight barrows were successively opened for their
inspection. The only interruption arose from a heavy shower of rain, which was so far
from clamping the zeal of the visitors, that many, both laches and gentlemen, raised
their umbrellas (if they had any), and stood patiently looking at the operations of the
excavators, whilst others sought a temporary covering in a windmill which stood in the
MKKTING AT CANTERBURY.
middle of the scene. The barrows on this spot had fur-
nished the richest portion of Lord Albert Conyngham's
collection of Anglo-Saxon antiquities ; yet on the present
occasion, those opened were less productive than was
anticipated. All, however, contained human remains, and
in some were found different articles, which appeared to indicate the character of the
person interred in them. Thus, as Dr. Pettigrew remarked at the meeting in the even-
ing, in a grave which contained the skeleton of a child were noticed beads, necklaces, and
toys, evidently the offerings of parental affection, while the grave of the hunter con-
tained his knife, spear, and shield. Indeed, the graves of male adults always contain these
latter articles, accompanied frequently with pails, bowls, urns, and other relics, which
probably, for some reason or other, the deceased had held in particular esteem. In the
graves of females are generally found beads, necklaces, beautiful gems and brooches,
and other ornaments of the person, and sometimes articles connected with, their domestic
occupations. Remains of purses have been found, but only in one case, in a barrow on
the Breach Down, did they contain money.
It is a remarkable circumstance, that in many (perhaps we may say most) of the
Anglo-Saxon barrows, human bones are found carelessly thrown in the mound above
the grave, independent of the deposit in the grave itself. This singular fact can only
be explained by the supposition that they are the remains of slaves sacrificed to the
memory of their masters. Dr. Pettigrew found bones in the mound of one of the
barrows on Breach Down, which he believed could not have been deposited there at a
more remote period than fifty years ago, arid stated reasons for this opinion, which were
far from satisfactorily answered by Dr. Buckland. It appears that the Breach Down
had, at about that distance of time, been frequented by a noted highwayman, who
8
I II I \ aCH 1 Ol(tl. H A 1. VI.IU W.
bore the name of "Black Robin," and who still figures as the sign of an inn in the
adjoining village, and Dr. Pettigrew suggested that these bones might be the remains
of one of his victims, whom he had cunningly interred in one of what were then
generally understood to be the graves of ancient warriors. Dr. Pettigrew also stated
that the condition of the teeth in most of the skulls he had observed in the course of
these excavations, indicated that the food of the people to whom they belonged, was
chiefly peas and beans, and other vegetables.
From Breach Down the party proceeded to Bourne Park (the seat of their president,
Lord Albert Conynghani), where two barrows were excavated, which proved much richer
than those at Breach Down. The nature of the soil on the hill above Bourne seems,
in most instances, to have destroyed the articles deposited in it; but the magnitude
of the graves here would seem to prove that these barrows, the nearest to the metropolis
of the tribe, belonged to people of a higher rank than those at a greater distance. In
one of the barrows now opened in Bourne Paddock,
were found an earthenware urn and a glass cup, the
latter an article of rare occurrence, but both broken to
fragments. These fragments w r ere, how r ever, joined to-
gether, and the urn and cup restored, by the ingenuity
of Mr. T. Bateman, jun., of Bakewcll, in Derbyshire,
and Mr. Clarke, of Saffron Walden, in a manner so
remarkable, as to excite the marked admiration of the
members who met in the primeval section in the evening.
Both were good specimens of Saxon workmanship. In
the urn was found a brass rim, apparently belonging to a leathern bag or purse, from
the colour and condition of the earth around it. It is remarkable that the hill above
Bourne (called, from the neighbouring village, Bridge Hill), where the Saxon barrows
are found, appears to have been previously a Roman cemetery ; for about twelve years
ago, when the new Dover road was cut through it, a number of Romano-British urns
and earthen vessels w r ere discovered, with skeletons and fragments of weapons, at a
greater depth than the Saxon graves. Some of these urns, now r in the possession
of Mr. W. H. Rolfe of Sandwich, w r ere exhibited by that intelligent anticjuary, at the
meeting of the primeval section, on Friday afternoon, September 13.
At Bourne Park, the archaeologists partook of the hospitality of their noble and
learned president, who had prepared a plentiful repast in his fine old mansion. Here
they inspected his lordship's valuable collection of antiquities, Roman, Saxon, Irish,
and medieval. Some of the party visited the neighbouring church of Patrixbourne, or
I'atricksbourne, an interesting Norman structure, remarkable for the beauty of its
LCKSB0UR1TE CRUFU
.
MEETING AT CANTERBURY.
9
ornamental work, which is most profusely exhibited on the south exterior, represented
in our engraving. The principal door on this side, seen beneath the tower, has a
double recess; the ornaments of the first arch being divided into compartments,
containina; various figures in low relief.
At the head of the inner arch, which
is decorated with the ordinary chev-
ron, is a tympanum, with a sculptured
representation of the Saviour seated
within an aureole. Above the door is
an arched recess, adorned with the
chevron moulding;
o
and containing
figure in high relief of the Agnus Dei.
The chancel door is composed also of
double recessed arches, with the chev-
ron ornament. At the east end is a
wheel window, very similar to that at
Barfreston. The two doors on the
Fireplace in the Hall, Bourne Park. other side of the church are of the
same size and character as the chancel door on this side, but vary a little in detail.
In the interior, the chancel is divided from the choir by a large semicircular arch.
The most striking object in the church is a monument erected to the memory of
the late Marquis of Conyngham. The church has been recently repaired, and the
windows are now richly decorated with stained glass brought from the Continent by the
dowager marchioness, to whose taste the adjoining village is indebted for a number of
picturesque Gothic cottages.
On Wednesday afternoon, after the sitting of the medieval section, the archaeologists
visited Dr. Godfrey Faussett's rich museum of Saxon antiquities at Heppington, in the
family mansion-house of the Godfreys and the Faussetts, situated itself within what
appear to be ancient intrenchments, and not far distant from the remains of the Roman
road leading from Canterbury to Lymne. This most magnificent collection was gathered
almost entirely from the Saxon barrows of Kent ; it contains specimens in great
variety of almost every article that could be preserved, from the warrior's weapons to
the needle of the industrious housewife, the toy of the playful child, or the tools of the
workman, with household utensils, ornaments of the person (many of them of great
beauty), coins, &c. It is in collections like this that we see the importance of the labours
of the " barrow-digger," and the value of even the most minute researches of the indus-
c
10
TIIK A IU II .KOl.Oi; U \ I. ALHl'.M.
trioufl antiquary. The ordinary page of history gives us a very indefinite notion of the
manners of our pagan forefathers j we arc accustomed to regard them as half savages,
without refinement, rude in their manners, and skilful only in the use of their weapons.
lint in running our eyes over the museum of Dr. Faussett, the followers of Ilengst
and Horsa seem to rise up before us; the warrior is brought from his grave in his
panoply, and we see beside him his fair consort, here in her domestic costume, occupied
in the cares of her household, and there again in her robes of ceremony, glittering
with gold and jewels of exquisite design and workmanship. All our previous notions
vanish before the mass of evidence before us; w r e see at once the refinements of
Saxon life, even in its primeval stages, and the skill and taste of Saxon workmen.
This fine collection of antiquities, which contains also some interesting Roman
remains, was made in the last century by the Rev. Bryan Faussett (the grandfather of
the present possessor), and increased by the acquisitions of his son. Some of them
have been badly engraved in Douglas's Nenia Britannica. On the present occasion,
Dr. Faussett received his visitors with the greatest politeness, and a room adjoining to
the hall was abundantly stored with refreshments.
EXCURSION TO RICHBOROUGH.
The whole of the day on Thursday, September 12, was devoted by a large party to
a visit to the Roman remains at Richborough, the ancient Rutnpia. They proceeded
through the villages of Ash and Wingham, situated nearly on the line of the Roman
road from Durovernum (Canterbury) to Rutupia. Some years ago a Roman burial-
place was discovered in the immediate vicinity of Ash.
At Wingham, the archaeologists stopped to examine the
^^oQ^vX church, which appeared to be in a lamentable state of
dilapidation, arising from the neglect of a lay impro-
priator, and to admire a fine old house by the roadside,
remarkable for the boldness of its woodwork, and the
elegance of the barge-board of its gable roof. After an
agreeable ride through a rich and beautiful country, the
archaeologists arrived at Richborough soon after mid-day.
Rutupise (called by Ptolemy ' Povrovviai) is interesting
to the antiquary for many reasons, independent of the circumstance of its being one of the
most imposing Roman monuments in our island. The portus Rutupinus was the spot at
which the Romans generally landed in their passage from Gaul to Britain, and was the
MEETING AT CANTERBURY. 11
frequent station of the Roman fleet. Lucan quotes its stormy shore as being almost
proverbial : —
' ' Prima quidem surgens operum structure fefellit
Pompeium : veluti mediae qui tutus in arvis
Sicaniae rabidum nescit latrare Pelorum :
Aut vaga cum Thetys Rutupinaque Mora fervent,
Unda Caledonios fallit turbata Britannos."
Pharsal. lib. vi. 1. 64.
In the latter part of the fourth century, the usurper Maximus is said to have taken
the title of emperor in this place, from whence he passed over with his soldiers into
Gaul. Ausonius calls him the "Rutupine robber/' and congratulates the city of
Aquileia on being the place of that tyrant's final defeat and death: —
" sed magis illud
Eminet, extremo quod te sub tempore legit,
Solveret exacto cui sera piacula lustro
Maximus, armigeri quondam sub nomine lixae.
Felix, quae tanti spectatrix laeta triumpbi,
Punisti Ausonio Rutupinum mavte latronem."
Auson. Clara Urb. vii.
According to Ammianus Marcellinus, when Theodosius, the father of the emperor
of that name, came to Britain to repress the invasions of the Picts, he landed at
Rutupise. It is doubly connected with the name of one of the best poets of the
lower empire, Ausonius, whose uncle, Claudius Contentus, was buried here: —
" Contentum, fellus quern Rutupina tegit.
Magna cui et variae quaesita pecunia sortis,
Haeredis nullo nomine tuta perit.
Raptus enim laetis et adhuc fiorentibus annis,
Trans mare et ignaris fratribus oppetiit."
Ausonii Parent alia, vii.
And Flavius Sanctus, whose wife was the sister of Sabina, the wife of Ausonius, was
for a time commander of the garrison : —
" Militiam nullo qui turbine sedulus egit :
Praside laetatus quo Rutupinus ayer.
lb. xviii.
At a later period, St. Augustine is said to have landed at Rutupisc when he came
to this island to convert the Saxons. Bede is so far from speaking of it as deserted
or in ruins, that his words would lead us to suppose it was still, under the Saxons,
the place of resort to ships sailing from the opposite port of Gessoriacum (now
Boulogne) ; but he tells us that the name had been corrupted by his couutrymen into
Reptacestir, which is doubtlessly connected with the modern name. It was probably
deserted when the port became choked by the accumulating alluvium deposited by the
12
TIIK ARCHiEOLOGIC VI. Alia M.
sea. We have no information as to the manner in which it was occupied during the
Saxon era ; a few Saxon antiquities have been discovered in the neighbourhood, and
two curious Saxon monuments, supposed to
be boundary stones, said to have been found
at Richborough, arc now preserved in the
Museum at Canterbury, to which they were
presented by Mr.Rolfe. They are respectively
two feet and a foot and a half in height, and
one of them bears a llunic inscription, much
defaced, but represented in our cut as nearly
as it could be distinguished by the eye.
The ruins of Richborough occupy the
brow of a bold elevation, which, in the time
of the Romans, formed an island, rising out of the arm of the sea which separated the Isle
of Thanet from the mainland of Kent, and divided from the rest of Thanet by a smaller
channel. The sea is now somewhat more than a mile from the foot of this hill, but the
intervening low grounds are kept by embankment from being overflowed at high tides.
There can be no doubt that the sea once flowed up to the foot of Richborough bill.
Boys, the historian of Sandwich, writing in 1792, tells us, that "in digging, a few
years ago, to lay the foundation of Richborough sluice, the workmen, after penetrating
through what was once the muddy bed of the river that runs close by in a more con-
tracted channel than formerly, came to a regular sandy sea-shore, that had been
suddenly covered with silt, on which lay broken and entire shells, oysters, sea-weeds,
the purse of the thornback, a small shoe with a metal fibula in it, and some small
human bones ; all of them, except the last article, with the same appearance of freshness
as such things have on the shore at this day." More recent excavations in various
parts of this line of coast have laid bare, at a depth of a few feet, in different places, the
ancient beach, covered with large boulders, and here and there strewed with Roman
coins and other articles. Immense quantities of Roman coins were found in digging a
sand-pit at Sandown, near Deal. Rutupire was celebrated under the Romans for
supplying Italy with one of the choicest articles of the table, its oysters being considered
as more delicate than those furnished by any other spot. Juvenal says of a bon vivant
of the imperial days, —
" Circeis nata forent, an
Lucrinum ad saxum, Ruiupinooe edita /undo
Ostrea, callebat primo deprenderc morsu."
A^ e know from Pliny in how r great repute the British oysters were held at Rome. No
oysters arc now found on the Richborough coast; but in digging sluices for draining
MEETING AT CANTERBURY. 13
in the marshes behind Richborough (which were formerly covered by the sea), at a
depth of about six feet, the remains of extensive beds of oysters have been found, which
appear to have been of a diminutive size, and were probably of a very excellent quality.
This, therefore, was the Rutupinum fundum from which Rome was supplied. It may
be added, that from the great quantity of oyster-shells which are every where turned up
in stirring the soil on the Richborough hill, it would appear that the local consumption
was very considerable. Oyster-shells are frequently found among Roman remains in
different parts of our island.
Richborough castle appears to have been the citadel of the town of Rutupise, which
probably lay on the slope of the hill to the north and west, on which sides were the
entrances to the fortress. It appears that, in Camden's time, the ground on the site
of the town still presented marks of the lines of streets ; for, he says of it, " Time
has devoured every trace of it ; and, to teach us that cities are as perishable as men,
it is now a cornfield, where, when the corn is grown up, one may see the traces of the
streets intersecting each other. For, wherever the streets have run, the corn grows
thin, which the common people call St. Austin's Cross." It is the old story, jam seges
uhi Troja fuit. But Time itself has been almost powerless before the mighty mass of
the walls above. In the last century, some workmen found at the foot of the northern
declivity of the hill (supposed to have been occupied by the town) what was con-
jectured to have been part of the masonry of a wharf or landing-place, built of
bricks, which were all taken up and carried away.* On an elevated spot, about four
hundred and sixty yards to the S.W. by S. of the south-west angle of the castle walls,
are the remains of an amphiteatre, now much worn down from its original shape. It
is two hundred and twenty yards in circumference, and completely overlooks the castle,
so that a signal from the latter in case of danger would instantly recal the soldiers who
might be here occupied with the amusements which it was designed to exhibit. Leland
tells us that, in his time, this amphitheatre was known by the name of Lytleborough.
Gough, in his edition of Camden's Britannia, says that, when he wrote, it was
commonly called the South Mount. Leland tells us, that there were found upon
* " A building was discovered some years ago in the materials. Two sorts of bricks were used in this build-
plain at the foot of the bank about forty rods to the
northward of the castle, which had the appearance of a
wharf or landing-place. The surface was a little way
under ground. It was four feet high, of a triangular
form, the sides nearly equal, of about ten feet each, one
of them parallel with the bank and its opposite angle
projecting towards the sea. It was a shell of brick-
work, two bricks thick, filled with earth, the two
projecting sides tied together with a brace of the same
ing ; one was eighteen inches by twelve, and three and a
half inches thick ; the other seventeen inches by eleven
and one and a quarter thick. Mr. Ebenezer Mussel,
of Bethnal Green, London, purchased all the bricks or
tiles, and employed them in paving a court-yard and
part of his house there." — Boys's Collections for a
History of Sandwich, p. 868. It would now probably be
a difficult task to trace the dwelling of Mr. Ebenezer
Mussel.
1 1
TIIK AUCII.EOLOGICAL A LIU M .
Richborough lull "mo antiquitcs of Romayne money then yn any ])lacc els of
England ;" and we know that it lias been from that period to the present day a
plentiful source of antiquarian treasures. Archdeacon Battely, whose Antiquitates
Rutupince was published posthumously in 1711, had gathered together a rich collection,
some of the most interesting of which arc engraved in the plates to that work. They
consisted of coins, patera?, and other vessels of earthenware, bronzes, chains, rings,
bracelets, fibulae, bronze figures, and various articles and utensils of domestic life.
Mr. Hoys, the historian of Sandwich, has also engraved some curious articles which
came into his possession in the course of his researches; and his grandson, Mr. Rolfe,
the worthy inheritor of his antiquarian zeal, has an interesting cabinet of Rutupinc
antiquities. In digging somewhat deeper than usual in the churchyard of St. Clement's,
the highest ground in Sandwich, a Roman urn, with a gold coin, and a cowry shell,
were recently discovered; and Mr. Rolfe is of opinion that the top of the hill on
which Sandwich now stands was a burial-ground of the city of Rutupise.
A pleasant walk of little more than a mile from Sandwich brings us to these
majestic ruins, which have a very imposing effect from whatever side they are viewed ;
but, perhaps, no side exhibits them at first sight to greater advantage than the one which
wc thus approach. Our view is taken from the south-western corner, representing the
exterior of the northern or more perfect wall, with a distant view of Pegwcll Bay and
Ramsgate town and pier. The castle forms a regular parallelogram, placed nearly
(though not exactly) north and south, and east and west. The walls are composed of a
mass of stones of different kinds, embedded in very hard mortar, and faced outside
with regular courses of stones and tiles, the latter being arranged in double
rows from three feet three inches to four feet three inches apart, the first row of
tiles being about five feet from the foot of the wall. These walls are at the bottom
between eleven and twelve feet thick, diminishing slightly towards the top, and are,
where most perfect, about thirty feet high. Yet this immense mass of masonry has no
foundation, the first layer of stones and mortar having been simply laid on the plain
surface of the ground. Among the stones in the walls* arc some pieces of oolite and
travertine which must have been brought over from the Continent ; and the ground
* Mr. W. Francis Ainsworth made, during the visit
of the archaeologists, the following observations on the
materials of the walls of Richborough castle, which he
has kindly communicated to us. "In the N.E. wall,
brides the customary courses of limestone rock and
bricks, there are other courses, more particularly in one
spot at the base of the wall, of travertino or limestone
deposited by a spring or running waters. Also, on the
same side, near some ivy, and half-way up the wall,
masses of petrified Teredo nasalis. Again, at the south-
west side, where the wall is broken down, there is a con-
siderable mass of oolite, more like the Norman stone than
any of our oolites. It would be a curious question to
know whence all these materials, foreign to the locality,
came ; and to ascertain if there are any springs or
rivulets depositing travertino or calcareous tuiTa in this
neighbourhood." The geologist is always a valuable
ally to the antiquary.
>? RICHBOitOITGH. CASTLE-. KENT.
, i
s^m^ — -^hm
#f^ t^'-a
Scale of feet .
1SL
243
PLAN
OF
'iO ROUGH CA
■J-Mr- £
W0&
MEETING AT CANTERBURY. 15
within the area is thickly strewed with pieces of foreign oolite, of different sizes, which
nrast be the remains of buildings that have been destroyed. This foreign oolite forms
a considerable portion of the materials of the cross-shaped building of which we shall
have to speak further on. The walls remain on three sides of the area ; they appear to
have been regularly flanked with square towers, solid at the lower part, with a round
tower at the external corners of the parallelogram. Of the wall on the south side, the
portion extending from d to d in our plan has totally disappeared, and other parts of
the wall are in a very dilapidated condition. The principal entrance was in the middle
of the west wall, but the masonry has been there so much broken away, that its form
cannot be now distinguished. In excavating here, Mr. Boys found a regular pavement
of large hewn stones in the opening of the gateway, which extended inwards nearly
twenty-five feet. Some of these stones were taken up for the use of the neighbouring
cottagers, and one (with the lewis by which it was raised remaining) now forms the
pavement before the door of a cottage near the north-east corner of the castle. The
north-west corner of the wall has also been broken down, and a large mass of the
masonry lies at a little distance from the wall, in the spot where it had stopped in its
fall. The north wall is the most perfect ; about the middle of it is the decuman
gate, the masonry of which is still sharp and entire ; the entrance into the area being
covered by an advance wall, which formed a side-way entrance, as represented in
our plan. It does not seem to be well ascertained that there was a wall on the
east side. Mr. Boys, in his plan, has carried the north wall to the point marked g
in our plan, where he has placed a round tower forming the corner, and continues
the wall on the east side to h, as far as indicated by the fragments remaining. Others
have supposed that the parallelogram was originally complete, but that the east wall and
part of the south wall have fallen by the sinking of the hill. If this, however, were the
case, it is remarkable that there are not traces of any fallen masonry towards the south-east
corner, while, to the north-east, there is a regular line of massy fragments ; and there
does not appear to be any good reason for believing that much of the hill has fallen
away. The present appearances would almost lead us to believe that Boys was right
in the form he had given to the north-east corner, and that the piece of wall there was
merely a defence to the landing-place, which led up the sloping ground by the spot
marked /into the fort, while the bank from /to d was only rather steeper and more
regular than at present. In some parts there appear evident marks of unsuccessful
attempts to demolish the walls. Dr. Buckland pointed out to the archaeologists the
corrosive effects of the common snail, and succeeded in spoiling the riband of a lady's
bonnet in illustration. But the grand destroyer of these time-beaten walls is the ivy, which
formerly overrun them in much greater abundance than at present. A hundred and
16 THE ARCHjEOLOGICAL A.LBTJM.
fifty years ago. Archdeacon Battely pointed out the destructive effects of this intruder;
and \vr believe that the present improved condition of the walls is owing, in a great
measure, to the efforts of Mr. Boys to cut it down. In some places, where the wall is
hollowed or fractured, we perceive the old roots of the ivy penetrating to the very heart
of the masonry, through masses of mortar which the force of man's hand can hardly
break ; and large cracks in the more perfect parts of the walls are to be attributed to
the same agency. Of the north wall there arc about 441 feet standing. It extended
to about .")()() feet; and the length of the wall below the bank, which now lies in
fragments from S. to N. is 190 feet. There arc about 264 feet of the south Avail
standing, originally 358 feet, viz. to the S.E. corner of the castle; where, on the bank,
is a considerable fragment, probably the base of a round tower, such as were standing
at the S.W. and N.W. corners, the basements of which are distinctly traceable. The
west wall was, when perfect, about 160 feet in extent.
Lcland says quaintly of the interior, " Withyn the castel is a lytic parochc chirch of
S. Augustine, and an heremitage. I had anticpiites of the heremite, the which is an
industrius man. Not far fro the heremitage is a cave, wher men have sowt and
digged for treasure. I saw yt by candel withyn, and ther were conys [rabbits]. Yt
was so straite that I had no mynd to crepe far yn. In the north side of the castel ys a
hedde yn the wallc, now sore defaced with wether. They cawle yt queue Bertha heddc.
Nere to that place, hard by the wal, was a pot of Romaync mony fownd." The area is
now entirely cleared of the brambles and brushwood which covered a part of it in
Camden's time, and is ploughed as a corn-field. When covered with corn, and in dry
weather, the outline of the floor of the prctorium is distinctly visible ; in the middle of
which a.ve the foundations of a cross-shaped building, on the character of which many
conjectures have been hazarded. It was perhaps an elevated beacon, or sea-mark ; but we
think it cannot have been a chapel : walls even of a moderate thickness would have left
hardly room for a man to turn himself within, and it does not lay east and west, but
almost north and south. In excavating near the great western entrance (marked c in the
plan), Mr. Boys found great quantities of the exuviae of animals (particularly of those
generally sacrificed to Diana), which seemed to indicate that a temple once stood
near the spot. At a more recent period, large quantities of human bones, thrown into
the earth without order, were found in excavating on the spot marked eeee, and
where the edge of the hill is broken down, nearly opposite this place, the bones are
seen projecting out of the bank. They may be the remains of men slain in some civil
tumult, or sacrificed to the fury of a successful enemy. Fragments of pottery (plain and
ornamental), mixed with pieces of stagVhorn and oyster-shells, have been found in great
abundance in the north-west corner. In the course of his recent excavations at the edge '
MEETING AT CANTERBURY. 17
of the platform of the pretorium, Mr. Rolfe discovered quantities of fragments of marble,
evidently remains of buildings which had formerly occupied the surface of the platform.
The platform, or floor, just alluded to, which, as will be seen by the plan, is not
exactly in the middle of the area, is 144 feet in length by 104 in breadth, and is covered
by the earth to a depth of from three to six feet, the surface of the ground being not
perfectly level. We were informed by Mr. Rolfe that in excavating under the platform,
which is about five feet and a half thick, some gentlemen in 1822, for the first time on
record, discovered an extensive square subterranean building, down the side of the wall
of which they sunk a well or shaft to the depth of about twenty-six feet from the under
part of the platform, in the hope of finding an entrance at the bottom, but meeting
with springs they were compelled to abandon then* operations, without succeeding in
the object of their research, and on the following day the excavations were closed up.
The platform extends beyond the walls of this subterranean building, on the longer
sides twelve, and on the shorter sides ten feet. The extent of the subterranean building
is shewn by the dotted line in the plan, and a section across it (taken about the middle
of the cross) is given in the corner of the plate, in order to convey a more distinct idea
of its form. To discover the nature and purpose of this building was the object of a
series of incessant excavations carried on under the directions of Mr. Rolfe during more
than forty days, from the 5th of September, 1843, to the 25th of October following.
He began at the spot marked a in our plan, at the edge of the platform, and proceeded
under the ledge formed by the excess of the width of the latter over the building below,
and there, only eight feet northward of the above excavations, fell in with one made at
some unknown period, presenting the appearance of a chamber cut in the soil, extending
from the edge of the platform to the substructure twelve feet, and about eight or nine
feet in width. He then worked a gallery under this edge, along the whole of the east
and north sides, and to an extent of eighty-six feet along the western side, in the hopes
of finding some traces of a side entrance into the supposed chamber or chambers within.
This gallery was five feet and a half high, and three feet wide. Meeting, however, with
nothing but a uniform and compact mass of masonry, Mr. Rolfe discontinued the gallery,
and began to break an opening in the masonry at the point marked b in the plan ; but
after, by the most incessant exertions of the workmen employed in this operation, he had
made a hole extending inwards seven yards, without finding any traces of a chamber,
he was obliged by different circumstances to discontinue his undertaking for that season,
with the hope that better success will attend another attempt. As the opening in the
wall was made near the top, it is to be feared that the workmen may have fallen upon
a very thick vault, for it can hardly be supposed that the building beneath is a solid
mass of masonry. Since the walls of the castle are built without any foundation at all,
D
IS TIIK ARCHiEOLOGICAL ALBUM.
we can imagine no necessity for an immense work like this to support the lighter and
more fragile structures raised on the platform above. The most reasonable supposition
appears to be, that it incloses strong subterranean storehouses. During the progress
of these interesting operations, a tent was raised within the castle area, and Mr. Rolfe
received a number of distinguished visitors, among whom were the Duke of Wellington
and a large party of his friends.
All traces of the " lytic paroche chirch" and the hermitage, mentioned by Lcland,
have long disappeared; but at the beginning of his excavations, Mr. llolfe discovered
an old opening and portion of a narrow gallery at the cast side of the platform, which
bore marks of having been formerly occupied by man, and which he thinks was the
cave alluded to by Lcland. Among other articles he discovered in it were some frag-
ments of Roman pottery, with a rough kind of enamel glued on them, which the
" industrious" hermit probably sold as amulets to the ignorant and superstitions, while
he reserved the better " antiquities" for the learned. At the spot marked /, on the
descent of the bank at the north-east corner, we observe a cave of more recent
formation, the entrance to which lies under a mass of fallen masonry ; this w:as some
years ago occupied as a store-room by smugglers, until discovered by the revenue officers.
Alter having explored, with the most excited feelings of curiosity and interest, the
venerable ruins of Richborough, the archaeological visitors proceeded to the residence of
John Godfrey, Esq. at Brook House, in the parish of Ash, where a hospitable enter-
tainment had been prepared for them. Some of them made a short stay at Sandwich,
where they inspected Mr. Rolfe's museum. They then took the way to Barfreston
church, so well known as a fine and almost unaltered example of a Norman ecclesiastical
building, rich in sculptured ornament. It was late in the evening when the party
reached Canterbury on their return.
On the same day a smaller party had proceeded, under the guidance of Lord Albert
Conyngham, to visit the castle and other objects of antiquarian interest at Dover.
On the last day of the meeting, another small party visited the interesting church of
Chartham, and partook of lunch at the house of the rector, the Rev. H. R. Moody.
VISITS TO THE ANTIQUITIES OF CANTERBURY.
Canterbury itself abounds in interesting monuments of the middle ages, which
occupied a considerable share of the attention of the assembled archaeologists. Of the
ancient military works of the city, the chief (and almost only) remains are considerable
portions of the city walls, with the lofty mound, or "Dane John" (as it is now called),
one of the old gates (West Gate), and the dilapidated skeleton of the keep of the castle.
CHAUCER'S FROM THE Y
'
INN
MEETING AT CANTERBURY. 19
The streets of Canterbury still present many interesting specimens of old domestic
architecture, but their chief riches in this class of monuments have perished within the
last half century. We might point out as worthy of attention several houses in North-
gate Street, a good corner house in Palace Street, a house in Burgate Street, with some
interesting wood carving, and the picturesque stack of buildings in St. Dunstan's
Street, near Westgate, formerly known as the Star Inn. The most interesting house
in the town is, however, the famous Chequer Inn, the supposed place of lodging of
Chaucer's motley troop of pilgrims, now subdivided into tenements, and sadly altered
and defaced, but bearing many marks of its ancient character. It forms the corner of
High Street and Mercery Lane.
In the early municipal documents, this inn is sometimes mentioned as being used
on public occasions, and among the extracts read before the historical section it was
stated that in 1546 the prince's players acted in it before the mayor and corporation.
Its proximity to the cathedral naturally made it the resort of such pilgrims as were
able to pay for good lodgings. The description of the arrival of Chaucer's party, given
by the author of the supplement to the " Canterbury Tales," printed by Urry (written
apparently not long after Chaucer's death), is too good a picture of " Canterbury in
the olden time" to be passed over in silence. The writer of this rather unpolished
performance tells us how the pilgrims arrived in Canterbury at " mid-morowe " (in
the middle of the forenoon), and took up their lodgings at the Chequer : —
" They toke their in and loggit them at mydmorowe I trowe
Atte Cheker of the hope, that many a man doth knowe :"
and how, mine host of Southwark having given the necessary orders for their dinner,
they all proceeded to the cathedral to make their offerings at the shrine of St. Thomas.
At the church door they were sprinkled with holy water : —
" Then at chirch dore the curtesy gan to ryse,
Tyl the knyght, of gentilnes that knewe right wele the guyse,
Put forth the prelatis, the parson and his fere.
A monk, that took the spryngill with a manly chere,
And did as the manere is, moilid [ycef\ al their patis,
Everich aftir othir, righte as they were of statis.
The frere feynyd fetously the spryngill for to hold
To spryng oppon the remnaunt, that for his cope he nold
Have laft that occupacioune in that holy plase,
So longid his holy conscience to se the nonnis fase."
We are left to conjecture how far the monk was successful in the object he desired.
The knight and better part of the company went direct to their devotions; but
some of the pilgrims of a less educated class began to wander about the nave of the
20 Till. \l<( II.EOLOGICAL ALBUM.
church, curiously admiring all the objects around them. The miller and his com-
panions entered into a warm discussion concerning the arms in the painted glass
u inflows : —
" The pardoner and the miller and othir lewdc sotes
Sought hem M'lf in the chirch right as lewd gotes,
Pyrid last and pourid high upon the plase,
Counterfetyng gentilmen the armys for to blase,
Diskyvering last the peyntnr, and for the story mournid,
\iiil ared [interpreted] al so right as rammys hornyd.
■ He berith a balstaff,' quod the toon, ' and els a rakid end.'
' Thow failest,' quod the miller, ' thow hast nat wel thy mynd :
It is a spere, yf thow canst se, with a prik to-fore,
To bush adown his enmy and through the shoulder bore.' "
At length the host of Southwark, whose business it was to preserve order among
the company, called them together and reproved them for their negligence; whereupon
they hastened to make their offerings: —
" Then passid they forth boystly goglinp with their hedis,
Knelid adown to-fore the shrine, and hertlich their bedis
They preyd to scint Thomas, in such wyse as they couth ;
And sith the holy relikes eeh man with his mowith
Kissid, as a goodly monk the names told and taught.
And sith to othir places of holynes they raught,
And were in their devocioune tyl service were al doon."
As noon approached, they gathered together and went to their dinner, for it was
tin dinner- hour for all classes at this period. Before they left the church, however,
they bought signs, "as the manner was," in order that they might have something to
shew as a memorial and evidence of the saint they had visited. The miller bought and
pinned on his bosom signs of Canterbury brooches. The distribution of these signs
appears to have led to some confusion: —
" Then, as manere and custom is, signes there they bought ;
For men of contre shuld know whome they had sought.
Eche man set his silver in such thing as they likid.
And in the meen while the miller had y-pikid
His bosom ful of signys of Cauntcrbury bruchis ;
Though the pardoner and he pryvely in hir pouchis
They put them afterwards, that noon of them it wist.
Save the sompner scid somewhat, and seyd to he list,
' Halff part !' quod he, prively rownyng on their ere.
' Husht, pees !' quod the miller, ' seist thow nat the frere,
How he lowrith undir his hood with a doggish eye ?
Hit shuld be a privy thing that he coud nat aspy.' "
This passage affords a curious illustration of one of the superstitious practices of
papal times. Figures and devices of various kinds, stamped in thin sheet lead, most
MEETING AT CANTERBURY.
21
of them having traces of a pin at the back intended to fix them to the garments, have
been frequently found, and antiquaries were very doubtful as to the object for which
they were designed, until Mr. Roach Smith, who exhibited at one of the evening con-
versaziones at Canterbury a number of these leaden brooches, which had been dragged
out of the rivers at Canterbury, London, and Abbeville in France, shewed that they
were nothing more than the signs bought by pilgrims, and worn about their persons,
to shew that they had visited the particular places indicated by the devices they
bore. Mr. Smith quoted a passage of Giraldus Cambrensis, a contemporary (in his
youth) with Becket himself, who describes himself and his companions as coming
from Canterbury to London " with the signs of St. Thomas hung about their
necks,"* which shews how early the custom prevailed in this city. Among the signs
exhibited by Mr. Smith, only one bore a distinct reference to Canterbury; it was a
little round brooch, with a head in the middle, and an inscription stating the latter to
be CAPUT THOME— the head of Thomas.f This sign was found
in the Thames, at London, and had no doubt been
brought thither by some devotee from St. Thomas's
shrine at Canterbury. Our cut represents this relic
the size of the original. Among those found in
the river at Canterbury, where there was probably
an extensive manufactory of such articles, one of the most curious is
that given in the margin, representing St. John the Baptist carrying
the holy lamb.;}. One found in the river at Abbeville represents a
head of St. John the Baptist, and appears to have been borne by
a pilgrim from Amiens, where, among other precious relics, was shewn
the pretended real head of the forerunner of Christ.
To return to our pilgrims, when they had satisfied their feelings of curiosity and
devotion, —
" They set their siynys upon their hedes, and som oppon their capp,
And sith to the dyner-ward they gan for to stapp."
After dinner they determined to go forth " to sport and pley " them, " eche man as
hym list/' until supper time : —
" The knyght arose therwithal, and cast on a fresher gown,
And his sone anothir, to walk in the town ;
And so did all the remnaunt that were of that aray,
That had their chaungis with them, they made them fresh and gay."
* " Episcopus autem videns ipsum intrantem, cujus
notitiam satis habuerat, et socios suos cum signacuUs
I?. Thomae a collo suspensis," &c. — Girald. Camb. De
rebus a se yestis, up. Angl. Sacr. vol. ii. p. 481.
f Now in the possession of Mr. T. Welton, of Upper
Clapton, Middlesex.
X In the collection of Mr. Rolfe.
22 THE ARCH/F.OLOGICAL ALBUM.
The knight took his son to examine the fortifications : —
" The knyght with his meyne went to se the walle
And the wardes of the town, as to a knyght befalle ;
Devising cntentiflich the strengthis al about,
And apointid to his sone the perell and the dout
For shot of arblast and of bowe, and eke for shot of gonne,
Unto the wardis of the town, and how it might be wonne ;
And al defence ther-ajreyn, aftir his intent
He declarid compendiously, and al that evir he ment."
The monk, with the parson and a friar, went to pay a visit to a friend, and caroused
together over his good wines. The ladies remained at home, and visited the garden of
their hostess of the " Cheker" : —
" The wyfe of Bath was so wery she had no wyl to walk,
She toke the priores by the honde, ' Madame, wol ye stalk
Pryvely into the garden to se the herbis growe,
And aftir with our hostis wife in hir parlour rowe ?
I wol gyve yewe the wyne, and ye shul me also,
For tyl we go to soper we have naught ellis to do.'
The priores, as woman taught of gentil blood and hend,
Assentid to hir counsel, and forth gon they wend,
Passyng forth sofftly into the berbery.
For many a herb grewe for sewe and surgery,
And all the aleys fcir and parid, and raylid, and y-makid,
The savige and the isope y-frethid and y-stakid,
And othir beddis by and by fresh y-dight,
For comers to the hooste righte a sportful sight."
The other pilgrims amused themselves in different ways, according to their tastes and
inclinations. The supper ended in mirth and jollity, which lasted " tyl the tyme that
it was well within eve." The more sober of the party went to their beds betimes ; but
others continued to drink and "jangle," until those who were in their beds were angry
at the disturbance, and urged them to go to rest : —
" But yet they preyd them curteysly to rest for to wend ;
And so they did all the rout, they dronk, and made an end,
And eche man droughe to cusky [his couch ?] to slepe and take his rest,
Save the pardoner, that drew apart, and weytid by a cheste,
For to hide hymself tyl the candill wer out."
As soon as the rest of the pilgrims were gone to bed, and the "candill" out, the
pardoner stole out of the room, to pursue a low amour. It is quite evident that the
whole party slept in one room.
The inn now offers externally few features which would be recognised by Chaucer's
pilgrims. The most remarkable part is the row of stone arches on the ground floor, which
now form the windows and door of the corner shop, and which appear to have been a
MEETING AT CANTERBURY.
23
kind of open portico, serving as the grand entrance to the inn. Gostling tells us, that
m his time people remembered more of these arches running along the street, which
had been demolished to make new
fronts to the houses. This pro-
bably is the oldest part of the
building. Beneath it is a cellar,
with a very flat-arched stone roof,
represented in the cut in the mar-
gin. Proceeding through an arched
passage from High Street, we see
from the yard many interesting
remnants of the woodwork of the
old building. In Gostling's time,
a staircase led to a wooden gallery, which ran round the building to the right in the
view in our engraving (which looks from the yard towards the street), and old
men still remember its existence. The large room at the top, which occupied the
whole upper part of the building, until cut up into small rooms and lofts, is supposed
to have been the one which the poet had in his mind as that occupied by his pilgrims,
and it is still called the hall of the hundred beds. We might cite many passages from
old writers, shewing the general prevalence of the custom of lodging a number of
guests indiscriminately in one room filled with beds. One end of the great room of
the Chequer, of which the exterior is seen in our view from the yard, and an interior
view is given below in the same plate, still retains its original appearance, and is
occupied as a cabinet-maker's workshop, but many of its features are concealed by the
tools and lumber of the workmen.
The description of a visit to Canterbury given in the poem quoted above, contrasts
singularly with the modern meeting. There is something grotesque in the idea of the
savants of the nineteenth century carrying back to exhibit there as curiosities the
identical signs which the pilgrims of other days had brought away from this very spot
with such widely different feelings. Our modern pilgrims also separated each day into
parties to view the objects in the town. Some followed the steps of the knight, and
lamented over the small remnants now visible of the walls and wards of which he had
admired the strength and fairness. Some may, like the monk and his companions,
have gone forth to seek old acquaintances, and perhaps quaff the cup of remembrance.
The well-stored garden of the Chequer was no longer there to invite the attention of
the ladies, although, instead of it, the superb nursery-ground of Alderman Masters was
opened to the visitors. But many wandered through the church, and "peered" about
21
Til K AHCIl.l'.OI.Or.K'AL AlHI'M.
as curiously and irreverently ;is the miller and the pardoner. On the day after his
lecture, Professor Willis continued his remarks to a few who relinquished Richborough
and Dover to accompany him over the cathedral. It would take a volume to describe
all the objects there presented to the view. The scene of Meckel's death, the tomb of
the victor of Crecy and Poitiers, and a host of other spots, interesting; by some historical
association, or by their beauty of ornament, attracted successively the attention of the
visitors. Even the fine extensive crypts were on this occasion thrown open to the
members of the Archaeological Association.
One of the most interesting objects in the crypt, or under-croft, is a little painted
semicircular chapel, supposed by Dart to have been dedicated to St. John the
Baptist. It is si-
tuated under St.
Ansel m^s tower,
and was an object
of considerable
attraction to the
members of the
Archaeological As-
sociation. It ap-
pears to have been
walled up at ra-
ther an early pe-
riod, to make a
stronger support
for the superstruc-
ture, and can now
be entered only
through a small
square hole, re-
presented on the
left-hand side of
the accompanying
view of the inte-
rior of this chapel.
To this circum-
stance we owe the preservation of the curious paintings which cover the interior surface
of the walls. The painting in the best state of preservation, of which we have given an
• -
St
• j
;•' '
[■ I -
;-
9
g
I
3
oo
a
CO
oo
3
°2 si
I
« -5
J
MEETING AT CANTERBURY.
25
(Bffiiiaiiiini
exact copy in our plate, is on the north side, and represents the nativity of St. John the
Baptist, as related in the first chapter of the Gospel according to St. Luke. Elizabeth
appears in bed, with the child in her arms, and her answer to the words on the small
label in the man's hand (now defaced), but which were probably, Nomen ejus Zacharias,
" His name is Zacharias," is inscribed on the longer label — Nequaquam, sed vocabitur
Johannes, "Not so, but he shall be called John." On the ris;ht we see Zacharias,
seated, with the mitre of the priesthood on his head, writing the words, Johannes est
nomen ejus, " His name is John." Above is the inscription, —
" ISTE PUER MAGNUS CORAM DOMINO, ET SP1RITU SANCTO REPLEBITCR."
Above this picture there is a second compartment, with another painting, much in-
jured; and beneath them the inscription, legible in Dart's time, Hoc altare dedication
est in honor em sancti Gabrielis archangeli, which intimates that an altar dedicated
to the archangel Gabriel formerly stood there. There was also an altar on the other
side, but the words Hoc altare were all that remained of the corresponding inscription
when Dart wrote. A compartment in the centre of the roof contains a figure of
the Creator, seated in an aureole, with a book
in one hand, on which are still legible the
words Ego sum qui sum. The aureole is sup-
ported by four angels, who occupy the corners
of the vaulting. On the soffit of the arch to
the left of our cut, are paintings of cherubims
with eyes -in their wings and bodies, which
Dart mistook for figures of St. Catherine. The
arch on the opposite side is painted in com-
partments, the lowest representing St. John
the Evangelist writing the Apocalypse, and the
others containing the seven angels, seven can-
dlesticks, and seven churches. At the head of
the arch are painted seven stars in a circle.
Our cut represents the compartment containing
St. John, and one of those of the angels, can-
dlesticks, and churches.
The style of these paintings is that of the
first half of the twelfth century. They so
closely resemble, in design and in colouring,
the illuminations in a manuscript in the British
1 H (81 I) ill 1 «i 111 ll I ffl
26 THE ARCH E0L0GIC LL ALBUM.
.Museum (MS. Cotton. Nero C. IV.), of which a specimen is given in Mr. Shaw's
beautiful work on the " Dresses and Den nations of the Middle Ages," that we might
be led to look upon them as a work of the same artist. Dart supposes this chapel to
occupy the place of a much earlier chapel dedicated to St. John the Baptist, in which
were interred the bodies of Cuthbert, Bregwiri, and others of the Saxon archbishops.
During the last century the vaulted room through which we pass to this painted chapel
was allotted as a place of meeting to a congregation of French Protestant refugees.
At present it is kept locked up, and does not appear to be used for any especial purpose.
It is much to be desired that care should be taken to ensure the preservation of so
precious a monument of early art.
Alter the cathedra], the most interesting ecclesiastical building in Canterbury is
the little church of St. Martin, picturesquely situated on a hill among the fields,
without the walls on the east side of the city. Its site was once occupied by a
Roman building, which was given by Ethelbert, king of Kent, to his Christian queen,
Bertha, as a place of devotion for herself and her Frankish bishop, Luidhard, and was
afterwards given to St. Augustine. The notion that the Roman building had been a
church, is probably incorrect. The present church is comparatively modern, and
perhaps there are no remains of the original walls, but the materials of which they arc
built (stone and Roman bricks) have evidently been taken from some Roman building.
A curious Norman font, preserved in the church, has been at times described very
absurdly as the one in which king Ethelbert was baptised.
No visitor can tread, without feelings of emotion, a spot hallowed by such recol-
lections as crowd about the green hill occupied by this little church ; and we are
carried involuntarily back to the scene so beautifully described by the historian Rede,
when the first missionary and his companions came to this spot from the isle of Thanet.
" In this island," says Bede, " landed the servant of our Lord, Augustine, and his
companions, being, as is reported, nearly forty men. They had, by order of the blessed
pope Gregory, taken interpreters of the nation of the Franks, and sending to Ethelbert,
signified that they were come from Rome, and had brought a joyful message, which
most undoubtedly assured to all that took advantage of it, everlasting joys in heaven,
and a kingdom that would never end, with the living and true God. The king, having
heard this, ordered them to stay in that island where they had landed, and that they
should be furnished with all necessaries, till he should consider what to do with them.
For he had before heard of the Christian religion, having a Christian wife of the royal
family of the Franks, called Bertha ; whom he had received from her parents, upon
condition that she should be permitted to practise her religion with the bishop
Luidhard, who was sent with her to preserve her faith. Some days after, the king
MEETING AT CANTERBURY. 27
Game into the island, and sitting in the open air, ordered Augustine and his companions
to be brought into his presence. For he had taken precaution that they should not
come to him in any house, lest, according to an ancient superstition, if they practised
any magical arts, they might impose upon him, and so get the better of him. But
they came furnished with divine, not with magic virtue, bearing a silver cross for their
banner, and the image of our Lord and Saviour painted on a board ; and singing the
litany, they offered up their prayers to the Lord for the eternal salvation both of them-
selves and of those to whom they were come. When he had sat down, pursuant to the
king's commands, and preached to him and his attendants there present the word of
life, the king answered thus : — ' Your words and promises are very fair, but as they are
new to us, and of uncertain import, I cannot approve of them so far as to forsake that
which I have so long followed with the whole English nation. But because you are
come from far into my kingdom, and, as I conceive, you are desirous to impart to us
those things which you believe to be true, and most beneficial, we will not molest you,
but give you favourable entertainment, and take care to supply you with your necessary
sustenance; nor do we forbid you to preach and gain as many as you can to your
religion/ Accordingly he permitted them to reside in the city of Canterbury, which
was the metropolis of all his dominions, and pursuant to his promise, besides allowing
them sustenance, did not refuse them liberty to preach. It is reported that, as they
drew near to the city, after their manner, with the holy cross and the image of our
sovereign Lord and King, Jesus Christ, they in concert sung this litany : — ' We
beseech thee, Lord, in all thy mercy, that thine anger and wrath be turned away
from this city, and from thy holy house, because we have sinned. Hallelujah/
" As soon as they entered the dwelling-place assigned them, they began to imitate
the course of life practised in the primitive church ; applying themselves to frequent
prayer, watching, and fasting ; preaching the word of life to as many as they could ;
despising all worldly things, as not belonging to them ; receiving only their necessary
food from those they taught; living themselves in all respects conformably to what
they prescribed to others, and being always disposed to suffer any adversity, and even
to die for that truth which they preached. In short, several believed and were baptised,
admiring the simplicity of their innocent life, and the sweetness of their heavenly
doctrine. There was on the east side of the city a church dedicated to the honour of
St. Martin, built whilst the Romans were still in the island, wherein the queen, who,
as has been said before, was a Christian, used to pray. In this they first began to
meet, to sing, to pray, to say mass, to preach, and to baptise, till the king, being
converted to the faith, allowed them to preach openly, and build or repair churches in
all places."
28 THE 1KCHJEOLOGICAL A I. HI \l .
A recent discovery in the churchyard of St. Martin's adds to the interest of the
foregoing narrative. Some workmen, digging near the church, found a number of gold
ornaments, formed of coins of the fifth and six centuries, by the simple addition of a
loop to each, and, in one instance, of a rim. A gold circular ornament, set with pieces
of stone or glass, was also found with them. It appears most probable that these coins
were arranged as a necklace for some lady of distinction, who was interred at this spot
on account of the supposed sanctity of the locality ; and the dates will fairly allow us
to suppose that she may have been one of the attendants on the Prankish queen of
Ethelbert. It was the custom of the Romans to mount their gold coins in frames of
elegant filigree work, to be worn as pendent ornaments. Battely has engraved in his
Antiquitates Rutupina a gold coin of the emperor Magnentius, with a simple loop
attached, as in these found in the precincts of St. Martin's. Three Frankish gold
coins, with similar loops, found in Kent, have been more recently engraved in
Mr. Roach Smith's Collectanea Antigua. In the earlier Saxon times, only the Roman,
Byzantine, and Merovingian gold coins were used in England, the money struck
by the Saxons being only of silver. The coins found at St. Martin's are extremely
curious, apart from their local interest. One is of Justin; another is a rude
imitation of the very common small brass coins of the younger Constantius ; but the
most remarkable among them all is that of Eupardus, a bishop of Autun, who lived
about the middle of the sixth century, concerning whom history is almost silent.
He wears upon the coin the imperial diadem of the lower empire, the costume of the
bust being also copied from the Roman model. The coins of the age which followed
the overthrow of the empire were generally copied from Roman types, the devices on
the originals being frequently so rudely imitated that it is almost impossible to guess
what the figures are intended to represent. The ornaments we have just described are
now in the possession of Mr. Rolfe, who exhibited them at the meeting of the primeval
section on Friday, September 13, when they drew forth some interesting remarks by
Mr. Roach Smith.
The other churches of Canterbury have few attractions for a visitor, being, in
general, devoid of architectural beauty or of historical interest. One of the best, that
of St. Dunstan in the western suburb, is remarkable as containing the family vault of
the Ropers, in which is still preserved the skull of Sir Thomas More, his head having
been brought from London Bridge, and deposited there secretly by his daughter,
Margaret Roper. It is contained in a leaden box, placed in a niche in the wall of the
vault. The site of this church appears to have been one of the burial-places of the
Roman inhabitants of Canterbury. Roman glass vessels and urns were discovered a
few years since in the vicinity, and are now in the possession of Mr. Ralph Royle, who
MEETING AT CANTERBURY. 29
exhibited them at the meeting of the primeval section on Friday, September 13. One
of the earthen vessels found here, presented the unusual form of a hooped barrel.
Remains of the various religious houses for which Canterbury was once remarkable,
are scattered over the different parts of the town. The ruins of the great abbey of
St. Augustine, consisting chiefly of two gateways, were an object of attention to the
archaeologists. These ruins had recently been purchased by A. J. Beresford Hope,
Esq., member of parliament for Maidstone, and, at the time of the Archaeological
Meeting, the workmen were occupied in clearing the finest gateway tower from the
barbarous adjuncts which had turned it and the buildings adjoining into a brewery and
alehouse. The thanks of the archaeological visitors were voted to Mr. Hope for his zeal
in purchasing this ruin, as it is understood, with the sole object of preserving it from
further dilapidation and desecration. There are now little or no remains of the nunnery
of St. Sepulchre, famous at the time of the Reformation as the sisterhood to which
belonged Elizabeth Barton, the " maid of Kent," a weak tool in the hands of a political
party, for which she was sacrificed to the resentment of the remorseless monarch,
Henry VIII. The inventory of the "stuff" or personal effects of this miserable
woman, seized on her attainder and execution, gives us a curious idea of the mode in
which a nun's cell was furnished at this period : it is preserved in the British Museum,
and runs as follows : —
" Stoffe receyvyd the xvj. day of Februare, of dame Elysabeth Barton, by the handes
of the priores of Sayent Sepulcres withowt Canterbury, into the handes of John Antony
of Canterbury, as herafter foloeth.
" ffyrst, a coschyn blade, and one old coschyn.
" ij. carpettes, whereof one ys cut into pecys.
" A old matteres, vij. corsse schettes, a kyverlet and a peyer of blanckettes, with
ij. pyllos, and a bolster.
"ij. platers, iiij. dysches, ij. sausers, and a lyttell basen, wayyng xij"" at iiij' 1
a lb., wych my laydy priores hath, and payed iiij s .
" A whyet corter, wych my lady priores hath, and payed xij' 1 .
" A lyttell old dyaper towell.
" iij pylloberes.
" ij. canstyckes.
" A coet, wyche dame Kateren Wyttsam hath, payed v s .
" A pece of a plancke for a tabyll.
" A lyttell chyst.
" Stoffe wyche remayneth in the nonnere pertaynyng unto dame Elysabeth Berton,
at the request of my lady priores.
:$o
111 i: ARCHAEOLOGICAL Al.lil'M.
" ffyrst, ij. nyew coschyns, gyven unto the churche.
" A old mantell, and a kyrtrll, unto the yongest nonne.
" A Yrysche mantell, a colt-re, with ij. grett chystcs, and ij. stolys, and a can-
styckr, to my lady priores.
•• A kyverletj and a old kyrtell, to dame Alys Colmau, at the requesl of my lady
priores."
41 -
A ■
There are still some remains of the houses of
the three orders of friars, who all established
themselves in Canterbury during- the thirteenth
century. The Grey Friars, or begging friars, who settled here in ]273, had
their conventual buildings in the west part of the town, on the branch of the river
Stour which runs under East Bridge. The remains of these buildings consist of
a house, under which the river runs, as represented in the cut, with the ruined walls
surrounding a court or yard behind the railings here seen on the left-hand side. With
the confused assemblage of buildings of later date, these ruins form a picturesque
group. But, alas ! the instability of human affairs ! The house of the begging
friars is turned into a workhouse for paupers; and the court-yard' in which the
friars were wont to disport themselves, is now used for the fattening of pigs for the
purpose of making brawn, an article for which Canterbury is celebrated. The fair
dame of the latter establishment, in perfect innocence as to the attractions which old
walls might have in the eyes of an archaeologist, supposed that our visit had reference
to the mysteries of her vocation, and very obligingly shewed us into the court in which
the poor quadrupeds were confined singly in small frames, to hinder them from turning
round, lest even that little share of exercise might have the effect of diminishing their
obesity.
ST JOh ' AL, CANTERBURY.
- _ ■
MEETING AT CANTERBURY
31
THE THREE ARCHIEPISCOPAL HOSPITALS.
The last objects of antiquarian interest in Canterbury which we have to mention, are
three early charitable foundations.* About the year 108-1, Archbishop Lanfranc built two
hospitals, one within the town at North Gate, dedicated to St. John ; the other, about a
mile from the town, on the hill of Herebaldown (i.e. Herebald's hill), now called Har-
bledown, in the ancient forest of Blean, dedicated to St. Nicholas. The first of these was
designed for the support of maimed, weak, and sick persons of both sexes ; the foundation
at Harbledown was a lazar-house for lepers, and was for that reason placed, like all similar
institutions in the middle ages, by the side of the highway at a little distance outside the
town. The origin of the third of the hospitals to which we allude, which was designed
to receive poor pilgrims, is very doubtful ; but it appears most probable that it was
founded by Thomas Becket, for it certainly bore the name of St. Thomas's Hospital at
the East Bridge as early as the beginning of the thirteenth century. All these founda-
tions were in course of time enriched by numerous donations of lands and rents. That
of Haibledown stood at the side of the " pilgrims' road" from London. Guernes du
Pont de St. Maxence, an Anglo-Norman poet who wrote a metrical life of Becket
immediately after the primate's death, has preserved an interesting anecdote connected
with this place. When, in 1174, king Henry II. went in pilgrimage to Canterbury to
do penance at Becket's shrine, he stopped at Harbledown, entered the same little
church which is now standing to confess and be absolved, and "for the love of
St. Thomas he gave in grant twenty marks of rent to the poor house." He walked
from hence barefoot to the cathedral. The original deserves to be cited, from the
nearly contemporary manuscript in the British Museum, as a pure specimen of the
language spoken by the educated classes in England in the days of Thomas Becket : —
" Juste Cantorbire uut lepros un hospital,
U mult ad malades de gent plein de mal ;
Pres une liwe i ad del mustier principal,
La u li cors saint gist del mire espirital
Ki maint doleut ad mis en joie e en estal.
" Dune descendi iluec li reis a Herebaldun,
E entra el mustier, e a fet sa orcison,
De trestuz ses mesfez ad requis Deu pardun ;
Pur amur saint Thomas a otrie en dun
Vint marchies de rentes a la povre maison."
The hamlet of Harbledown is situated at the summit of a steep hill, and answers
* A long history of these foundations, with very
copious extracts from charters, compiled by J. Duncombe
and N. Battely, was printed in the Bibliothcca Topo-
graphica Britannica.
32 I 11 1: \K( U.IOI.OCK Al. ALBUM.
remarkably well to the name given by Chaucer to the " litel toun" to which his
pilgrims came, "under the Blee," or Blean forest: —
" Wete ye not wiier stondeth a litel toun,
Which that y-eleped is Bob-up-ancl-iloun,
ruder the Blee, in Canterbury way?"
Cunt. T. 1. 16,950.
It derives some additional interest from the circumstance that the celebrated Erasmus
has left us an account of his passage by it on his way from Canterbury to London,
with Dean Colet (lure named Gratian) and others, on the eve of the Reformation. A
part of the dialogue in one of his Colloquies (the Peregrinatiu rcligionis eryo) is as
follows : —
"Or/. — In the road to London, not far from Canterbury, is a way extremely hollow,
as well as narrow, and also steep, the bank being on each side so craggy that there is
no escaping ; nor can it by any means be avoided. On the left-hand side of the road
is an almshouse of some old men, one of whom runs out as soon as they perceive a
horseman approaching, and after sprinkling him with holy water, offers him the upper
leather of a shoe bound with brass, in which a piece of glass is set like a gem. This is
kissed, and money given him.
" Me. — I had rather have an almshouse of old men on such a road than a troop of
sturdy robbers.
" Og. — As Gratian rode on my left hand, nearer to the almshouse, he was sprinkled
with water, to which he submitted, but when the shoe was held out, he asked what it
meant. And being told it was the shoe of St. Thomas, he was so provoked that,
turning to me, he said, ' What ! would this clown have us kiss the shoes of all good
men ? They may just as well offer their spittle to be kissed, and other disgusting
things.' I took compassion on the old man, and gave him some money by way of
consolation."
We believe that the shoe is still preserved.
St. Thomas's Hospital also stands in the street by which the pilgrims entered the
town, and was intended to harbour such of them as were not sufficiently rich to take up
their lodgings at the Chequer. It had the right of burial for those who died there in
the place in the cathedral churchyard set apart for the interment of pilgrims. It is
provided by the statutes given to this hospital by Archbishop Stratford in 1312, "That
poor pilgrims in good health shall be entertained only for one night ; and poor, sick,
and well pilgrims shall have daily fourpence expended for their sustenance, out of the
revenues and profits of the hospital ; greater regard to be had to sick than to well
pilgrims. That if there should be not a sufficient resort of pilgrims in any one day to
MEETING AT CANTERBURY. 33
require the whole fourpence for their sustenance, what is so spared in one day shall be
laid out freely in another day when the number of pilgrims shall be larger ; so that for
every day of the whole year the entire sum of fourpence be carefully and faithfully
expended. That there shall be twelve beds convenient to lodge the pilgrims in the
said hospital ; and a woman, of honest report, aged above forty years, who shall take
care of the beds, and provide necessaries for the poor pilgrims, and who shall be
maintained out of the revenues of the hospital." From the entries in some of the
earlier registers (of the beginning of the sixteenth century) we find that there was then
expended sixpence a-week for beer bought and given to the poor guests; twenty shil-
lings a-year to the woman attending upon them; 10/. 6s. M. for a chantry priest at
the hospital; and five pounds to a chantry priest at Harbledown; so that the greater
portion of the income was spent in prayers for the poor. At a later period, we find
the payments to the two priests unchanged, while the other payments are somewhat
increased : —
" Item, for wood, ale, and other necessaries for the relief of poor men in arms
(? alms), vj 1 ' j s iiij d .
" Item, to the keeper and his wife to attend about the poor men, besides his
( sallery/ ij' 1 vj' viij d ."
The rents arising from lands in the forest of Blean was chiefly paid in " cocks and
hens ;" and the sum total amounted to a very inconvenient quantity — " Sum total of
the cocks and hens, a hundred and nineteen, and a third part of a hen, and a half of a
hen." Soon after the beginning of the sixteenth century, we find these cocks and hens
compounded for in money, the cock being estimated at twopence halfpenny, and the
hen at threepence.
The old registers and other records of the institutions of the middle ages are inter-
esting for the light they throw on a state of society which has long passed away, and it
is much to be lamented that so few of them have been preserved. The chests of the
three hospitals of which we are speaking are still well stored with ancient charters ;
but most of their books, and even some which were extant in the last century, have
perished. A few extracts from these documents are given in the work cited in a note
on a preceding page. The hospital of St. John and that at Harbledown were designed
to receive persons of both sexes, but from the original foundation it was especially
ordered that the parts of the building occupied by each sex should be so separated from
the other that they could have no intercommunication. The statutes provided very
severe punishments for the different offences which were likely to occur in such
institutions, some of which would have belonged more properly to the courts of public
F
.'} I THE \K< II EOl OGIC \r. ALBUM.
justice, had not the ecclesiastical body claimed exemption from the civil power. Even
as late us the reign of Elizabeth, the statutes given to the hospital of Harbledown by
Archbishop Parker, inflict punishments which would not now be legal. The eleventh of
these statutes is as follows: — "Also we will and ordain, That if any brother shall, by the
testimony of sis of the brethren, or any sister, by the testimony of six of the sisters, be
convict before the prior to be a common drunkard, a quarrcller, a brawler, a scold, or a
blasphemous swearer; every such offender, so convict, shall for the first time sit in the
stocks one day and a night with bread and water ; and offending in that, fault again,
shall the second time be punished in the stocks two days and two nights; and for the
third offence in the same crime, three days and three nights with bread and water
only ; but if, after the third punishment, he or she do eftsoones offend in the like
offence, then to be expulsed and driven out of the house for ever."
The inmates of St. John's Hospital had a great feast every year at Midsummer, and
another at Christmas. The register for the year 1G38 gives the following bill of
expenses for the Midsummer feast of that year: —
" Payd to the woman that helped in the kitchen, vj d .
" Payd to the two turnspcts, viij' 1 .
" Payd for beere at diner, iiij d .
" Payd for beere to make the scrveing men drinke that brought meat to our
feast, ij rt .
" Payd for lxxx. pound of beefc at v s the score, j'\
" Payd for a calfe, xviij s .
" Payd for two lambs, xviij\
" Payd to the cooke for drissing of diner, iiij s .
" Payd for beere for the kitchen, iiij d .
" Payd for putter wee borrowed, vj d .
" Payd for a gallon of sackc, iiij s iiij' 1 .
" Payd for a pottle of claritt and a pottle of white wine, ij s viij d .
" Payd for a bushell and a pecke of meale, v\
" Payd for halfe a barrel of beere, iiij s ij d .
" Payd for three coople of chicken, ij 3 vj d .
" Summa, iij li vj s x d ."
In the register of the same house for the year 1615 we have the following items for
painting coats of arms, which are curious as relating perhaps to some of those which
arc still seen in the hall : —
" Payd unto the payntors for Lanfranckes amies, iij s iiij' 1 .
MEETING AT CANTERBURY. 35
" Item, payd unto Wickel for the dennes amies, planing of the bourd, and making
the verse, viij 1 '.
" Item, payd unto master Drury for his paines in helping us to Lanfranckes
amies, xij d .
At the period of the dissolution of monasteries, the charitable objects of gilds and
hospitals were so mixed up with what were defined by the law as " superstitious uses,"
that their existence became exceedingly precarious. The brethren and sisters of
Lanfranc's hospitals are, even at the present day, ruled by priors and prioresses. We
have seen how much of the revenues of St. Thomas's Hospital went to the performance
of Romish ceremonies, and even its charity was appropriated to pilgrims who now no
longer visited the holy shrine. It is not therefore to be wondered at, if they were soon
drawn from their original purposes. From a visitation of St. Thomas's Hospital made
by directions from Cardinal Pole in 1557, it appears that the funds of that institution
were then expended on " travellers in general :" — " They are bound to receive wayfaring
and hurt men, and to have eight beds for men, and four for women, to remain for a night
or more, if they be not able to depart ; and the master of the hospital is charged with
the burial, and they hade twenty loads of wood yearly allowed, xxvj s for drink/' In
the beginning of Elizabeth's reign, the estates of the hospital were seized, and had
passed into private hands, but they were recovered by Archbishop Parker, who
refounded the hospital for the reception of " poor and maimed soldiers that should
pass forward and backward through Canterbury," in the same manner as the pilgrims
had been formerly received, and for the support of a school. In the seventeenth year
of Elizabeth's reign, the hospital was stated to be in great decay, and, as having ceased
to serve for any useful purposes, the lands were again seized and suffered to pass into
the hands of private individuals ; but, after an obstinate lawsuit, they were restored to
their charitable purposes by Archbishop Whitgift, and they have since continued to be
administered according to the design of Archbishop Parker. Lanfranc's hospitals have
passed through similar vicissitudes.
The hospital of St. Thomas stands in the High Street, near East or King's Bridge,
which it was obliged to keep in repair. A stone arched doorway, generally open,
leads into a vaulted apartment, from the far corner of which a flight of stone steps
takes us to the upper floor. This passage has the appearance of having been broken
through the masonry of the original building. The apartment to which this staircase
conducts us, appears to have been the ancient hall or refectory. The old fireplace has
been turned into a cupboard, and the adjoining chamber has undergone still greater
changes, to convert it into a school-room. A row of columns and arches remain in
36
THE A1UII.EOLOG1CAL ALBUM.
the partition-wall between the refectory and the head of the staircase, which appear to
have been originally an open arcade. This and the vaulted room below appear to be
early specimens of the style of architecture generally denominated Early English, and
may be part of an original structure of the end of the twelfth or the beginning of the
thirteenth century. The buildings of the hospital run over the river on one side of the
bridge.
The hospital of St. John is situated on the west side of Northgate Street, and is
entered by a fine wooden arch, under an interesting house. Eadmer, the disciple of
Lanfranc and the writer of his life, dignities the original building of this house with the
name of a palace (paUitium), and the ancient walls still remaining inclose a considerable
area of ground to the north-west of the present chapel. They are very massive, of
rude early Norman masonry, with round-headed doors
and windows, only slightly ornamented with the common
chevron moulding, coarsely cut. The entrance to the
chapel is a doorway of the same style. This chapel,
which is only a part of the original chapel, has been
much altered and modernised. The most remarkable
object in the interior is a singularly-shaped early font.
In the last century the east window was tilled with rich
painted glass, representing figures of the twelve apostles,
but this has entirely disappeared. The pulpit, and some
other wood-work, are good examples of the ornamental
carving of the Tudor age. Gostling, our venerable and
safe guide to the anticpiities of Canterbury, complains
bitterly of the unnecessary demolition of the old buildings
of this establishment perpetrated about the middle of the last century: — "the bells
having been sold, the steeple and north isle taken down, as were many of the old
houses, and smaller and less convenient ones erected in their room; a stone wall was
also taken away, which sheltered the whole from the cold north-west wind blowing over
the river and the meadow-land, and being pentised over-head, was called by the poor
people their cloisters, under which they used to walk, or sit and converse with each
other on the benches. All this was done by way of improvement, about thirty years
ago." There are still some good specimens of old domestic architecture in the yard,
particularly the picturesque group towards the entrance gateway, represented in our
engraving. The kitchen and hall are situated in a building at the south-west comer of
the yard or court just mentioned, and appear to be of the end of the sixteenth century.
In the kitchen, which is on the ground floor, they shew the ancient spits, from eight to
MEETING AT CANTERBURY. 37
ten feet long. The hall is up stairs, and contains some old furniture, among which the
most remarkable is a carved chest and a large sword. A curious old embroidered
covering for the table is also shewn. The hall itself is ornamented with the arms
of the founders.
On the other side of Northgate Street, immediately opposite the entrance to
St. John's Hospital, is another old gateway, which leads to the ruins of the priory
of St. Gregory, also a foundation of Archbishop Lanfranc, intended for secular canons,
whose duty it was to administer spiritual comfort to the poor of the hospital, and to
officiate at the burial of their dead. These ruins have been converted into private
houses, which are occupied by labouring people.
The road to Harbledown, as we have already observed, leads through the High
Street, and quits the ancient city by Westgate, the only gate of Canterbury now
standing, and one of the finest examples of an old town gateway in England. All
the gates of Canterbury were in good preservation in the last century, but they
have gradually fallen sacrifices to the wants or wishes of the citizens. Burgate,
erected in 1475, remained until 1822. Another gate, that of St. George, formerly
called Newingate (as being the most modern of them all), which was a copy on a
smaller scale of Westgate, was built in 1470, and was pulled down in 1801. It
had been used first as a prison, next as a storehouse for the corporation, and
finally as a reservoir of water for the use of the city. When this gate was condemned
to destruction, a carefully executed model in wood was made, with the object of pre-
serving some memorial of it ; this is now in the possession of Charles Sandys, Esq. of
Canterbury, who has very kindly permitted us to make the sketch of it which we give at
the end of the present article. The chief reason of its demolition appears to have been
the want of materials for the formation of a cattle-market. Westgate was the ancient
entrance to Canterbury from London. It was built in the reign of Richard II., by
Archbishop Sudbury, and has been used as a prison from time immemorial, which is
probably the chief cause of its preservation. Gostling, our guide " about the city of
Canterbury," tells us " this gate is now the city prison, both for debtors and criminals,
with a large and high pitched room over the gateway, and others in the towers. The
way up to ttem is through a grated cage in the gate, level with the street, where the
prisoners, who are not more closely confined, may discourse with passengers, receive
their alms, and warn them (by their distress) to manage their liberty and property to
the best advantage, as well as to thank God for whatever share of those blessings he
has bestowed on them." A note in the third edition of this book (the one we happened
to have in our hands) adds — "This comfort (!) the poor prisoners arc now deprived of,
the cage having been taken down in 1775." The accommodations for the prisoners
38 THE ARCHAEOLOGICAL ALBUM.
have in later times been made more extensive by the erection of new buildings to tbe
north of the gateway. One of Alderman Bunco's extracts from the municipal records
i.i- we learn from another useful and amusing, and a more modern, guide-book, " Felix
Suinmerlev's Handbook for the City of Canterbury") informs us, that in 1191 "a
certain hermit, named Bluebeard, who headed an insurrection, was taken by the mayor
and citizens of Canterbury, and sent to the king at Westminster, and there adjudged to
be hanged and decapitated, and that his head was placed over the Westgate of this city."
This gateway, with its two massive round towers, and its curtain machicolated above, is
a line and perfect specimen of medieval military architecture.
The shortest road to Harbledown is by the foot-path, which turns to the left after
passing the bridge beneath Westgate, and leads over the fields. The site of Harble-
down appears also to have been one of the Roman burial-places of Durovernum, for
fragments of urns and bones were picked out of the side of the bank (where cut through
by the road) by some of the archaeological visitors. We have in fact traced the
burial-places of the Roman inhabitants, without the gates, and along the sides of the
principal roads, of the city, as they arc still found in Italy, about Herculaneum and
Pompeii. We have the cemetery of St. Martin's, on the road to Rutupise (Richborough) ;
that at Bridge Hill, on the road to Dubris (Dover) ; and those at St. Dunstan's and
Harbledown, on the line of road leading towards London. In all these places we find
t races also of Saxon interments, or else we find Christian churchyards. These repeated
instances of the successive occupation of the burial-places around the ancient city by
Romans, and Saxons, and by churches, seemed to shew that there had been a peaceful
succession of inhabitants ; that the Saxon settlers had mixed with the Romano-British
population, and had buried their dead in the same burial-places ; and that, when con-
verted to Christianity, they had formed religious establishments on the spots already
hallowed in their minds. Many other circumstances, noticed by the early historians,
or surmised from the discoveries of modern days, combine in strengthening this
opinion.
The church or chapel of St. Nicholas is a small and plain Norman building, and
is supposed to be the one erected by Lanfranc. Within is a Norman font. This
church stands at the top of the hill, on the south side of the road. The gardens and
houses allotted to the poor people are below. The entrance to the latter is by a
vt tv picturesque old gateway, approached from the road by a flight of steps. The
houses are modern, and offer no feature of interest. The hall is a building of the
seventeenth century, and its most remarkable features arc an old chest, containing the
deeds of the hospitals, and one or two antiquated articles of furniture and kitchen
utensils. They also shew to visitors a few relics of much greater antiquity, presented
MEETING AT CANTERBUHY.
39
in former days by devout pilgrims who have stopped here on their way to the shrine
of St. Thomas. Among these is the curiously ornamented case in cuir-bouiUi, repre-
sented in our cut. The substance formerly known
by this name was a preparation of leather, softened
by boiling or heat so as to receive forms and impres-
sions, and then hardened till it took almost the con-
sistency of iron. It was brought to great perfection
in the middle ages, and was used for a variety of
purposes. Chaucer, describing the armour of " Sire
Thopas," tells us his jambeux, or leg-pieces, were of
this material : —
" His jambeux were of cuirbouly,
His swerdes sheth of ivory,
His helme of latoun bright,
His sadel was of rewel bone,
His bridel as the sonne shone,
Or as the mone light."
Perhaps the invention was brought from the East, for Froissart, who makes frequent
mention of articles made of cuir-bouilli, describes the Saracens as covering their shields
with cuir-bouilli of Cappadocia, which, " if the leather were not too much heated, was
proof against iron" (oil nul fer ne peut prendre n' attacker si le cuir n'est trop echaufe. —
Frois. iv. 19.) It was frequently used for defensive armotxr in all parts of Europe.
In Walter Mapes's romance of Lancelot, written in the latter half of the twelfth cen-
tury, a party of robbers are described as being " armed like clowns, with leather jackets
and with caps of cuir-bouilli (et il estoient arme comme vilain de quiries et de capiaus de
guir-bouli. — MS. Addit. No. 10,293, fol. 160.) An illumination in the MS. gives us
a representation of these caps, which appear to have been in common use among the
lower classes of soldiers, to occupy the place of helmets. Mr. Shaw has engraved, in
his Dresses and Decorations of the Middle Ages, a pen-case of this material, formerly
belonging to King Henry VI. This is also printed in the third number of the
Archceological Journal of the British Archaeological Association, which we hope is in
the hands of all our readers, and therefore we will do no more than refer to Mr. Way's
remarks on the subject in his review of Mr. Shaw's publication. The case at Harble-
down, the lid of which is attached in exactly the same manner as that of King Henry's
pen-case, is in form a very much flattened sphere, the lid having an opening down one
edge; but it is difficult to imagine what article it was intended to contain. It is
probably as old as the fourteenth century.
The most remarkable, among the other antiquities shewn here, is a bowl of maple,
10 THE ARCH 1 ni OC.IC \ I. U.lil'M.
witli a rim of silver gilt, which was, according to Buncombe, "used on their feast-
days." At the bottom, in the inside, is inserted a medallion, with a figure of Guy of
Warwick on horseback, surrounded by trees, a dragon extended under his horse's feet,
and a lion Lying near. It is a curious illustration of one of the most popular romances
of the middle ages. Guy, on his return from Constantinople, is said to have entered a
forest, where he found a dragon and a lion fighting; he stood aloof until he saw the
lion vanquished, and then he attacked and slew the dragon. Around the medallion is
an inscription, which, according to the fac-simile given by Duncombe, is as follows : —
G V DEWARWYC : ADANOVN . NCCIOCCIS : LEDRAGOVN.
This inscription has very much (and rather unnecessarily) puzzled every one who has
written upon it. Some, from ignorance of the phraseology of the language in which
it is written, have read a Danoun, and have interpreted it variously at a place named
Danouu, or with his sword named Danoun, or on his horse named Danoun. The word
which follows this has given still more trouble, and in fact is not intelligible as it
stands here. The first c is described as doubtful, and has no doubt been an E. We
omitted examining the original, but if Buncombe's fac-simile be correct, the N is
probably an error for v, made by the artist who engraved the medallion, and who
mistook the u, in the copy given him to engrave from, for a n. The inscription would
then read, —
Gy de Warwyc ad a noun ;
Veci occis le dragoun.
which would be literally translated by, —
Guy of Warwick is his name ;
See here the dragon slain.
In the original, the middle mark of two dots shews the division of the rhyming couplet,
and the others, according to a very common practice in old manuscripts, mark the
cresura in each line. Every person conversant with ancient manuscripts and inscrip-
tions, is aware how the letters of words are all confused together, three or four words
being often joined in one, while at other times one word is separated into several parts.
This bowl is of considerable antiquity, and merits to be preserved carefully as a work
of art.
The buildings of the hospital stand on the slope of the hill, to the west of
the church. The bank below them is full of springs, and is therefore very wet,
and the grass and herbage pai-ticularly luxuriant. The water at one spot bubbles
out in a well, which is slightly built in, and has received traditionally the name of
T7ie Black Prince's Well. From this place, we have a picturesque view of the
MEETING AT CANTERBURY.
11
buildings of the hospital, rising from a wreath of verdant foliage, with the tower of the
church peering above them. A footpath leads into the highroad which passes through
the hamlet to Canterbury. On our re-
turn over the hill of Harbledown, we see
the city lying below in a fine sweep be-
fore us, with the cathedral towering ma-
jestically over it. This is perhaps the
best general view of Canterbury; it is jjf^
the one which in former days first offered "v~i5L
itself to the eyes of the pious pilgrim as
he approached, on his way from London,
the object of his vows.
The visit of the archaeologists to Can-
terbury closed on Saturday with a general
meeting in the Town-hall, in which votes
of thanks were passed, and a number of
speeches were made, all of them charac-
terised by good sense and moderation.
A general feeling of satisfaction prevailed among the persons who were present.
The president had passed a week of exertions to insure the success of the meeting, —
the local committee, consisting of the leading members of the corporation, had left
nothing undone to insure a good reception in the town, — the ecclesiastical authorities
had come forward most zealously, in laying open the cathedral, and giving every facility
to those visiting it, — the writers of papers and possessors of antiquities had done every
thing in their power to furnish amusement, — and the inhabitants of the town and
neighbourhood had vied with each other in their friendly attentions to their visitors.
In fact, every individual had contributed as far as he could to give pleasure to others,
and there were none who felt otherwise than gratified at the result. Men of kindred
feelings and pursuits were now for the first time brought together, who had previously
been known to each other only by name, and friendships were formed which will long
hence cause the Archaeological Meeting at Canterbury to be remembered with pleasure.
Such should ever be the spirit in which literature and science are cultivated.
The statements made at the closing meeting in the Town-hall gave an encouraging
view of the condition and prospects of the British Archaeological Association, even at
this early period of its existence. It was found that it had stirred up an active spirit
of inquiry throughout the kingdom. Much had already been done for the better
i.
42
TlIK ARCH.-EOLOGICAL ALBUM.
conservation of existing monuments. Many important antiquarian discoveries have
been lost to science during the progress of railways and other great public works;
these, it is hoped, will be watched more attentively in future. Railroads are now on
the eve of being made through many of the districts of our island most interesting to
the historian and antiquary — such as Kent, Herefordshire, Suffolk, &c. — and there
can be little doubt that they will bring to light many curious remains, which will
establish historical facts, while they enrich our local museums. The necessity of
watching the progress of these excavations cannot be too strongly impressed on the
attention of the members of the Association. One of its most useful effects at present
is the bringing into friendly correspondence the local inquirers in distant parts of the
country, the knowledge of whose discoveries has hitherto been too often circumscribed
within narrow limits, which rendered them useless. Mutual communication is the
only way to make available individual exertion. It is impossible to calculate all the
benefits to which the exertions of the Archaeological Association may eventually lead.
It has been raised to the degree of power and usefulness which it has now attained by
the mutual good feeling and the undisturbed unanimity of purpose which has guided
the counsels of the individuals who have founded and hitherto conducted it ; and it is
most sincerely to be hoped that this unanimity may long continue, undisturbed by the
jealousies and dissensions which have too often paralysed the efforts of similar
institutions.
Old St. George's Gate, Canterbury.
See p. 37.
.;
r
13
ANCIENT BEDSTEAD,
IN TURTON TOWER, LANCASHIRE.
Many of our old manorial residences contain articles of ancient furniture, that
have remained as heir-looms in the family, or have been brought together by the taste
of more recent possessors, which merit to be better known, and we hope from time to
time to be able to make our readers acquainted with some of the most beautiful
specimens. We devote a plate in the present instance to some remarkable articles of
this kind in Lancashire.
Turton Tower is situated about four miles from Bolton. " The tower," which is
the oldest part of the building, is square, of stone, and evidently constructed for
defence. It contains a hall, of small dimensions, but richly decorated with wood
carvings. A quaint staircase leads to the upper apartments, of which the largest is the
drawing-room, occupying the entire length and breadth of the building. This fine
room is panelled with oak, and the ceiling is enriched with pendants and other
ornaments.
In the reign of king John the township of Turton was held by Roger Fitz Robert
(de Holland). It subsequently became the property of Henry, "the good duke of
Lancaster," from whom the manor passed into the knightly family of the Orrels ; and
from them it was purchased by Humphrey Chetham, Esq. a manufacturer of fustians,
and founder of the celebrated college and library at Manchester. It continued in the
family of the Chethams until it was conveyed by a coheiress to a gentleman of the
name of Bland, whose sole heiress married Mordecai Green, Esq. in whose family the
estate still remains. That portion of it which contains Turton Tower is in the occupa-
tion of James Kay, Esq. who has expended large sums in furnishing his interesting
residence in a style in accordance with its antique character. Some of these articles of
furniture are represented in our plate, engraved from a sketch, for the communication
of which we are indebted to the kindness of S. C. Hall, Esq. F.S.A. who has recently
given an account of Turton Tower in his work on "The Baronial Halls, &c. of
England." The principal object in the picture, and the one which possesses most
interest, is the beautifully carved bedstead, which, from the date upon the footboard,
appears to have been made in the year 1593. On the cornice above appear the arms
of the earls of Devon, to one of whom it is said to have been presented by a king
of France, so that it is probably of foreign manufacture. The cornice is enriched
with elaborate flower and scroll-work, as well as with syrens, dragons, and fanciful
II rHE A 1<( IDEOLOGICAL ALBUM.
monsters, whose extremities end in interlaced flower-work. The canopy or roof of
the bed is carved in regular compartments, and adorned with pendants. The head
of the bed presents a scries of ornaments of a very varied character, in accordance
with the taste of the age, consisting of a complicated mass of pillars, panels, caryatides,
flowers, birds, and geometrical figures, so completely thrown together for general
effect, that no "rule of art" can be applied to them. The footboard is also rilled with
panels, richly carved; and the posts are remarkable for more than the usual amount
of elegance observed in state beds of this date. They rest on square bases, covered
with carved scroll-work, and hollow within, having doors that open on each side.
The chair near the bed, in our plate, is of the same age and style as the bedstead.
The table, chair, and glass under the window, are probably not older than the reign of
William III. or that of Queen Anne.
The history of furniture is an interesting subject. In carrying our researches back
a few centuries, we are surprised at the few articles which were considered necessary to
furnish the rooms of our forefathers, and those articles were often of the plainest
description. The hall seems to have seldom contained more than a table and a bench,
sometimes with a cupboard or buffet. The table itself appears in many instances to have
been only a board placed on temporary supports. A bed (a mere couch), with (not
always) a chair or seat of some kind, furnished the sleeping-chamber. Harrison, in
the description of England written in Essex during the reign of Elizabeth, and inserted
in Uolinshed's " Chronicles," informs us that "our fathers (yea, and we our selves also)
have lien full oft upon straw pallets, on rough mats, covered onelie with a sheet, under
coverlets made of dagswain,* or hopharlots (I use their owne termes), and a good
round log under their heads insteed of a bolster. If it were so that our fathers, or the
good-man of the house, had, within seven yeares after his mariage, purchased a
mattercs, or flocke bed, and thereto a sacke of chaffe to rest his heade upon, he
thought himselfe to be as well lodged as the lord of the towne, so well were they
contented. Pillowes, said they, were thought meete onelie for women in child-bed.
As for servants, if they had anie sheet above them it was well, for seldome had they
anie under their bodies to keepe them from the pricking straws that ran oft through
the canvas of the pallet, and rased their hardened hides."
This description was of course intended to apply to the middle and lower classes of
society; but we know from various sources that, in the earlier part of the middle
ages, beds could scarcely be called objects of luxury, and that they were certainly not
articles of ornament. The Anglo-Saxon illuminated manuscripts represent persons of
* Daggesweynt was the old term for the material used for the coverlets of beds.
ANCIENT BEDSTEADS.
15
the highest distinction sleeping on rude wooden couches, in a very uncomfortable
position. The Anglo-Normans appear to have been not much better furnished in this
respect ; for in illuminations of manuscripts they are exhibited sleeping on very low
wooden frames, with a mere board to support the pillow. Even kings and nobles
are sometimes represented in beds of this description as late as the fifteenth century.
The first ornament we find represented in the pictures in manuscripts is a canopy,
adorned with richly embroidered drapery, attached to the wall ; under this the head of
the bed was placed. These canopies
are found in English manuscripts
0&Mim^r^\ <\
early in the fourteenth century.
The cut annexed (taken from an
illumination of the fifteenth cen-
tury, in a manuscript of the ro-
mance of the Comte d'Artois, in
the collection of M. Barrois, of
Paris), represents the bed of a
countess, whose husband was lord
over princely domains. Nothing
could be more simple than the
bedstead in this picture. The ca-
nopy is evidently of rich materials, which we learn was the case, from the descriptions
in old writers ; and the bed itself was sometimes of softer materials than the artist
appears here to have intended to represent. Chaucer speaks of a very rich bed —
' ' Of downe of pure dovis white
I wol yeve him a fethir bed,
Rayid with gold, and right wel cled
In fine blacke sattin d'outremere,
And many a pilowe, and every here
Of clothe of Raines to slepe on softe ;
Him thare [need] not to turnin ofte."
Chaucer's Dreme, 1. 250.
The last line would seem to intimate that an easy bed, on which the sleeper
" need not turn oft," was no common thing in the days of Chaucer. In the metrical
romance of " The Squier of Low Degree," which is probably of the fifteenth century,
we have the following description of a very rich bed for a lady of high birth : —
" Your blankettes shal be of fustyane ;
Your shetes shal be of cloths of Rayne ;
Your head-shete shal be of pery pyght,
With dyamondes set and rubys brypht.
I'i Till: \K( II.KOLOGICAL ALBUM.
Whan you arc layd in bed so softc,
A cage of golde shal hungc aloft,
Wythe longe peper fayre burning,
And cloves that be swete smellyng,
Frankinsense and olibanum,
That whan ye slepe the taste may come."
It would appear, from these extracts, that cloth of Raynes (made at Rennes in
Brittany) was the ordinary material among the rich for sheets. The "head-sheet,"
which was pyght, or arrayed, with pearls, and set with diamonds and rubies, was
probably to cover the pillow. The descriptions in the early romances are generally
a little overcharged, and therefore we must take with some allowance the account of
the materials in the following gorgeous description of a lady's bed, extracted from the
curious romance of " Sir Degrcvant," recently published by Mr. Halliwell : —
" Hur bede was off aszure,
With testur and celure,
With a bryght bordure
Compasyd ful clene ;
And all a storyc, as hit was,
Of Ydoyne and Amadas,
Perreye in ylke a plas,
And papageyes of grene.
The scochenus of many knyght
Of gold and Cyprus was i-dyght,
Brode besauntus and bryght,
And trewe-lovus bytwene.
Ther was at hur testere
The kyngus owne banere.
Was nevere bede richere
Of empryce nc qwene !
" Fayre sahctus of sylk
Chalk-whygth as the mylk ;
Quyltus poyned of that ylk,
Touseled they ware.
Coddys of sendall,
Kuoppus of crystal,
That was mad in Westfal
With women of lare.
Hyt was a mervelous thing
To se the rydalus hyng,
With mony a rede gold ryng
That horn up bare ;
The cordes that thei one ran,
The duk Betyse hom wan,
Mayd Medyore hom span
Of inere-maydenus hare."
This description applies to a bed like that in the wood-cut given above. The
testur, or testere, appears to have been the name given to the canopy, its flat roof or
ANCIENT BEDSTEADS.
47
ceiling being the celure; the border of the testere had pictures taken from the romance
of " Idoyne and Amadas," separated with pearls and figures of green parrots. On it
were also figured escutcheons, besaunts, and true-loves. The curtains hung upon gold
rings, which " run on" cords " spun of the hair of mermaids." Most of these terms
occur in a letter of the King of England, dated in 1388, relating to " a bed of gold
cloth," and " a covering [the canopy] with an entire celure and a testere of the same
suit, and three curtains of red tartaine."* It is somewhat more difficult to explain the
"cods" of sendal and knobs of crystal made in Westphalia " by well-taught women."
Many illuminations exhibit the curtains, as here described, suspended by rings to
rods or cords attached generally to the roof of the apartment. In some instances the
couch, or low bed, is placed within a square compartment of the room, inclosed by such
curtains. This seems to have been the first step towards the more modern square
tester-beds. In one of the plates of D'Agincourt's " Histoire de FArt" (Peinture,
pi. 109), taken from a Greek fresco of the twelfth or thirteenth century in a church
at Florence, we have the curtains arranged thus in a square tent in the room, where
the cords are not suspended from the roof, but supported by four corner posts. The
bed is placed within, totally detached from the surrounding posts and curtains. In
one of the later subjects given in the paper on illuminations in the present volume,
taken from a manuscript of the fifteenth century, we have a high bed, with the tester
extending over its whole extent, but still without posts.
The large square post bedsteads, like that in Turton Tower, appear to have come
into fashion in England late in the fifteenth century, and from that time to the
beginning of the seventeenth century they were amongst the most costly articles of
household furniture. In an inventory of furniture belonging to King Henry VIII.
printed in Strutt (vol. iii. p. 68), several beds are mentioned, one of which is described
as — "the posts and heade curiously wroughte, painted, and guilte, having as well
foure bullyeons of timbre gilte, as foure vanes of yron painted." They were often
made of very large dimensions. Hentzner, the German traveller, who visited England
in the reign of Elizabeth, speaks of beds at Windsor Castle which were eleven feet
square, covered with quilts shining with gold and silver. These were the state-beds of
Henry VII., Henry VIII., and Edward VI. But the fashion of large beds seems to
have been on the decline at that period, since the queen's bed, " with curious coverings
and embroidery," is stated to have been not quite so large as the others. The cele-
brated " great bed of Ware," immortalised by Shakespeare, and still in existence,t was
* " Unum tectum de panno aureo . . . unum co-
opertorium cum celura integra et testerio de eadem secta
ac tribus curtinis de rubeo tartarino." — Litter
<) THE ARCHAEOLOGICAL ALBUM.
publicly exposed, Beated upon such an article, during a certain period of time, the
process of ducking being a subsequent addition. Borlase, in his "Natural History of
Cornwall," describes the cucking-stool used in that part of the country as "a scat of
infamy, when' strumpets and scolds, with bare foot and head, were condemned to abide
the derision of those that passed by, for such time as the bailiffs of manors, which had
the privilege of such jurisdiction, did approve." According to the Scottish "Burrow
Lawes," as declared in the "Regiam Majestatem," an ale-wife, "gif she makes evill
ail, contrair to the use and consuetude of the burgh, and is convict therof, shce sail
pay ane unlaw of audit shillingcs, or sal suffer the justice of the burgh, that is, shec
sail be put upon the cock-stule." In 1555 it was enacted by the queen-regent of
Scotland, that itinerant singing-women should be put on the cuck-stoles of every burgh
or town ; and the first " Homily against Contention," part 3, published in 1562, sets
forth that " in all well-ordred cities, common brawlers and scolders be punished with a
notable kind of paine, as to be set on the cucking-stole, pillory, or such like." By the
statute of 3 Hen. VIII. carders and spinners of wool, who were convicted of fraudulent
practices, were to be "sett upon the pillorie or the cukkyng-stole, man or woman, as
the case shall require." The manner in which these passages are worded would lead
us to suppose that the offenders were not ducked ; and in some instances the cucking-
stool appears to have been stationary in a part of the town removed from the water.
It also appears that in earlier times the cucking-stool was a punishment for women for
various offences. At Sandwich, as we learn from Boys' s " History," a punishment
coexisting with the cucking-stool, and, like it, intended to expose the offender to public
disgrace, was that of the "wooden mortar." In 1518, a woman, for speaking abusively
of the mayor of Sandwich, was sentenced to go about the town with the mortar carried
before her. In 1534, two women were banished from Sandwich for immoral behaviour;
it was ordered by the court that, " if they return, one of them is to suffer the pain of
sitting over the f coqueen '-stool, and the other is to be set three days in the stocks,
witli an allowance of only bread and water, and afterwards to be placed in the
'coquecn '-stool and dipped to the chin." There appears to be here a distinction
made, which would shew that the dipping was not the usual punishment of the
cucking-stool. Two other incidents from the annals of Sandwich will explain the
p unishm ent of the mortar. In 15G1, a woman, for scolding, was sentenced to sit in
the stocks, and to bear the mortar round the town ; and in 1G37, a woman, for
speaking abusively of the mayoress, was condemned to carry the wooden mortar
"throughout the town, hanging on the handle of an old broom upon her shoulder,
one going before her tinkling a small bell."
The wooden mortar and the cucking-stool were preserved at Sandwich in the
OBSOLETE PUNISHMENTS.
51
middle of the last century, and are both engraved in one of Boys's plates. The
cucking-stool is a very singular specimen ; a hole through the seat distinctly points to
the original meaning of the word, and on the arms and back were caiwed or painted
figures of men and women scolding. A woman is made to call the man "knave/'
while the man applies to his fair antagonist a still more indecorous term. On the
cross-rib at the back of the chair is the following inscription : —
" ©f members £ £ tonge is foorst or best ;
Sin gll tonge ofte fcoetft. breebe unreste."
Cole, as quoted in Brand's " Popular Antiquities/' has left us a curious account of
the cucking-stools (which he calls ducking-stools) formerly existing at Cambridge, orna-
mented in a similar manner. Writing in 1780, he says, " In my time, when I was a boy,
I remember to have seen a woman ducked for scolding. The chair hung by a pulley
fastened to a beam about the middle of the bridge, in which the woman was confined,
and let down under the water three times, and then taken out. The bridge was then of
timber, before the present stone bridge of one arch was builded. The ducking-stool was
constantly hanging in its place, and on the back panel of it were engraved devils laying
hold of scolds, &c. Some time after a new chair was erected in the place of the old
one, having the same devils carved on it, and well painted and ornamented. When the
new bridge of stone was erected, about 1754, this was taken away, and 1 lately saw the
carved and gilt back of it nailed up by the shop of one Mr. Jackson, a whitesmith. In
October, 1776, I saw in the old town-hall a third ducking-stool, of plain oak, with an
iron bar before it to confine the person in the seat."
None of the cucking-stools preserved to our times,
as far as we know, are ornamented in the manner of
those at Sandwich and Cambridge. The cut in the
margin represents one which is probably still preserved
at Ipswich, and which, when our drawing was made,
was kept in the old Custom-house. It is of rude, solid
construction. A cut in a history of Ipswich printed in
1830 (and reproduced in "The Gentleman's Magazine"
of January 1831) gives a spirited sketch of the manner
in which this chair is supposed to have been used, by
attaching it to a crane which let it down into the
water. Another cucking-stool, recently sold in London,
is engraved in Cruden's "History of Gravesend;" it is a mere square box, in which
the offender was placed, and let down by a cord. An original cucking-stool, of ancient
52 THE ARCHAEOLOGICAL ALBUM.
Mini rude construction, is preserved in the crypt of St. Mary's Church, in Warwick,
with a three-wheeled carriage, on which it is supposed to have been suspended by a
long balancing-pole, and so lowered into the water. In the old accounts of the town
of Gravesend we find charges for wheels for the cucking-stool, and for bringing it into
the market-place.
From the thirteenth to the fourteenth century, scarcely any English town was
without its cucking-stools, and the municipal accounts contain many entries relating to
them. Some of the earliest and most curious notices of this kind are found in the
archives of Canterbury. We have the following entry on this subject in 1520 : —
" Item, paied for a pece of tymbcr for the ladder of the cuckyng-stole, and staves
to the same, xx d .
" Item, for slyttyng of the seid pece of tymber in iij. calves, with the ij. shelle
calves, viij d .
" Item, for a pece of tymber for the fote of the ladder, cont. xij. fote, xv d .
" Item, paied for the plank and stanchons for the stole, iiij d .
" Item, paied for a pynne of yren waying xij. li., and ij. plates waying vij. li., price
li. j' 1 . ob. summa, ij' iiij' 1 .
" Item, paied to Harry Shepard and hys mate, carpenters, for iij. dayes and di. hew-
ing and makyng of the cucking-stole, takyng by the day xij d . summa, iij s vj d .
" Item, paied to Cristofer Wedy for caryage of the scid tymber to the saw-stage,
and from thense to the place where the seid cucking-stole stondeth, etc. iiij d .
" Item, for di. c. of iij. peny nailes, j d ob.
" Item, for a grete spykyn, to ij. staples, and a haspe for the seid stole, iij d .
" Summa, x s v d ob."
This ' stole' seems to have been of large dimensions, and to have been stationary,
and it is not improbable that it stood, not by the river, but in some public place in the
city. In 1547, when this large structure can hardly have been in decay, we have an
entry of charges for making another ; and as the sum is much smaller, although the
value of labour and materials had risen considerably, it is probable that this was a
BmaU portable machine, intended to be carried about the town and to the river for
(lucking.
" Costes for makyng of the Cokyng-stole.
" Item, paid to Dodd, carpenter, for makyng of the cokyng-stole, and sawyng the
tymber, by grete, V s vij''.
" Item, a pairc of cholls, iij 5 iiij d .
' Item, paid for ij. iren pynnes for the same, waying v. li. at ij d ob. the li. xij d ob/'
OBSOLETE PUNISHMENTS.
53
Lysons has given us an extract from the accounts of Kingston-upon-Thatnes, in the
year 1572, relating to the cucking-stool there, which had wheels : —
" The making of the cucking-stool 8s.
Iron-work for the same Ss.
Timber for the same 7s. 6d.
Three brasses for the same, and three wheels, 4s. lOd."
At Banbury, the cucking-stool and the pillory stood near each other, at the lower
part of the market-place, where was also a horse-pool, and there are several entries in
the town accounts of the middle of the sixteenth century relating to them.
In fact, nearly all town accounts during the sixteenth century and the commence-
ment of the seventeenth contain entries relating to these implements of punishment.
The practice of ducking continued through the whole of the seventeenth century, and
the name, now no longer understood in its original form, began to be changed to
ducking-stool. Instances of this punishment being put in practice occur as late as the
middle of the last century. In Brand's " Popular Antiquities" an extract is given
from a London newspaper of the year 1745, stating that " Last week a woman that
keeps the Queen's Head alehouse at Kingston, in Surrey, was ordered by the court to
be ducked for scolding, and was accordingly placed in the chair, and ducked in the
river Thames, under Kingston Bridge, in the presence of two or three thousand
people." The guilty individual appears to have been often carried to the place of
punishment in procession by the mob. Our readers will remember the description of
such a procession in " Hudibras," which makes the subject of one of Hogarth's
illustrations of that poem. After the publication of Hogarth's plate, this procession
was acted on the stage, and appears to have formed the principal attraction of a silly
dramatic entertainment, entitled, " The Wedding : a Tragi-Comi-Pastoral Opera. As
it is acted at the Theatre Royal in Covent Garden. With an Hudibrastick Skimington.
Written by Mr. Hawker."* More than one edition of this opera was printed in 1734,
with a plate slightly altered from Hogarth. It may be added, that one of Rowlandson's
caricatures represents the process of ducking a scold.
The coarse satirical writers of the sixteenth century, to whose envenomed shafts
the female sex was a frequent butt, often allude to the cucking-stool. One or two
* In Brand's " Popular Antiquities," edit, of 1841,
vol. ii. pp. 119, 120, will be found some observations on
the origin of the term, riding u Skimmington. This
satirical procession appears to have prevailed at an
earlier period in Spain, and we have representations of
it in Houfnagle's Views in that country (1593), and in
Colmenar's " Delices de l'Espagne et du Portugal''
(1/07). Although introduced with so much effect in
" Hudibras," it does not appear to have been a custom
of frequent occurrence in our island.
54
Tilt: AKCH.EOLOGICAL ALU I'M.
extracts arc given by Sir Henry Ellis, in his notes to Brand's " Popular Antiquities."
We may add the following. In a rare tract by M. P[arkcr], printed soon after the
year 1G00, under the title of "Harry "White his Humour/' it is observed, — "Item,
having lately read the rare history of patient Grizell, out of it he hath drawne this
philosophical! position, that if all women were of that womans condition, we should
have no imployment for cuckin-stooles." A satirical ballad of the same period, in a
manuscript in private hands, says of an abandoned female, —
" Coach hir no more, but cart hir now,
Provide the cookinge-stvvle,
And if she scold better then I,
Let me be thoughte a foole."
A prose satire, published in 1678, and entitled " Poor Robin's True Character of a
Scold," contains the following passage: — "A burr about the moon is not half so
certain a presage of a tempest at sea, as her brow is of a storm on land. And though
laurel, hawthorn, and seal-skin, are held preservatives against thunder, magick has not
yet been able to nnde any amulet so sovereign as to still her ravings; for, like oyl
pour'd on flames, good words do but make her rage the faster : and when once her flag
of defiance, the tippet, is unfurl' d, she cares not a straw for constable nor cucking-stool."
[As a parallel to this species of legalised punishment, we are indebted to a friend for the following
notice of a similar but unauthorised infliction.]
" Whilst the cucking-stool of our ancestors was held in terrorem, if not over the
head, at any rate as the seat of scolds, on which to undergo immersion, even-handed
Justice so far took the part of the weaker sex as not to allow the stronger to wrong or
oppress them without avenging it. Lawless custom became a Lynch-law in defence of
helpless woman; and when a brutal husband w r as known, according to the Scotch
phrase, hy fa ma clamosa, to beat his wife, the people in town or village of that country
were in the habit of awarding him his punishment, by causing him to Ride the Stang.*
Though not yet very old, I have myself witnessed this disagreeable ceremony, which I
will describe to you as well as I may from the recollection.
" About noon, when labour daily and usually refreshes itself, an uncommon stir
was observable among the lower classes of the town population — something like what
* The popular punishment of riding the stang was
common through Scotland and the north of England,
but its subject was most frequently, not the man who
had beaten his wife, but he who had allowed himself to
be beaten by her. A plate in " The Costume of York-
shire," 4to. published in 1814, gives a representation of
this custom. A considerable number of allusions to it
are collected together in Brand's " Popular Antiquities."
OBSOLETE PUNISHMENTS. 55
precedes the swarming of a beehive. By and by appearances took a more definite
form, and a number of women and children were seen crowding together, shouting and
clamouring, and rattling with sticks and pans, and, in short, raising a most intolerable
din ; in the midst of which, the name of one obnoxious individual was ominously heard.
The characteristics of a Scotch mob are pretty generally known, before and since the
fate of Captain Porteous. They are furious and formidable ; and when once the passions
of a generally calm and prudent race are excited, be it to lower the price of meal, or
to carry any other popular purpose, it requires no small force to resist or modify the
impulse. On the present occasion, rough-looking men began to mix with the screeching
multitude, and soon were visible a stout posse of them, armed with a pitchfork. The
idea that murder was about to be committed thrilled the blood of the uninformed spec-
tators, and their terror increased when they witnessed a fierce assault made on a low
tenement inhabited by the person (a shoemaker) so dreadfully denounced, who had
barely time to lock and barricade himself from the threatened vengeance. In vain.
The windows and doors were smashed and battered in, and a violent tumult took place
in the interior. Within two minutes the culprit was dragged out, pale and trembling,
and supplicating for mercy. But he had shewn little to his wretched partner, who,
with a blackened eye, weeping bitterly, and also begging them to spare her unworthy
spouse, who she was sure would never strike her again, joined her pitiful entreaties to
his. The ministers of public justice were inexorable — his sentence was pronounced,
his doom sealed. The portentous pitchfork was immediately laid horizontally from the
shoulder of one to the shoulder of another of the ablest of the executioners, who thus
stood, front and rear, with the stang (the shaft) between them. Upon this narrow-
backed horse the offender was lifted by others, and held on by supporters on either
side, so that dismounting was completely out of the question ; and there he sat elevated
above the rest, in his most uncomfortable and unenviable wooden saddle. The air rung
with yells of triumph and vituperation.
"Very slight arrangements were necessary, and the procession moved on. The
wife, surrounded by a party of her gossips, was compelled to accompany it ; and it bent
its course toward the river-side. The unmanly fellow who had provoked this fate
shewed by his terrors that he was just one of those cowards who could ill-treat the
creature who had a right to his protection, and had not fortitude to endure an evil
himself. He howled for compassion, appealed by name to his indignant escort, and
prayed and promised ; but they got to the brink of that clear and deep pool which
mirrored the glittering sun above the mill-wear (or cauld, Scottice), and there the
bearers marched boldly in before they tumbled their burthen from his uneasy seat.
Into the water he went over head and ears, and rose again, by no means ' like a giant
5G THE ARCHAEOLOGICAL ALBUM.
refreshed;' and no sooner did he reappear, than a powerful grasp was laid upon him,
and down again he was plunged, and replunged, with unrelenting perseverance. The
screams of his distracted wife fortunately attracted the attention of a magistrate (my
revered father) whose garden shelved to the edge of the stream where this scene was
enacting, and he hastened to interfere. Had he not done so, life might probably have
been lost; for the ruffian was execrated by his fellow-men for his continued abuse of
late a pretty, sweet, and healthful maiden, now a pale-faced, bruised, and sickly matron,
and one, too, of meek and unresisting temper, suffering cruelly without offence. As it
was, the populace listened to the magistrate's voice, for he was much beloved by them ;
and giving the rascal one dash more, allowed him to crawl to the bank of the silver,
now polluted, Tweed. From thence he was hooted the whole way to his home; and so
salutary was the effect of the day's proceedings on the half-drowned rat, that he never
more misbehaved in such a manner as to render himself liable to Ride the Stang.
" W. J."
e
5
o
>
<
2
<
OLD MANSION,
LATELY STANDING IN GRAVEL LANE, HOUNDSDITCH.
The house represented in the cut above, an interesting relic of ancient London,
was demolished in 1844, much to the regret of every lover of national antiquities. It
is to be lamented that a monument of this kind could not have been preserved, and
appropriated to some object of public utility.* The house to which we allude stood on
* There are still in existence a few interesting speci-
mens of the domestic architecture of ancient London,
which will probably in a few years disappear, unless
rescued from the hands of the destroyer for some public
object. Might they not be bought by the government,
or by the city authorities, for museums, or for the meet-
ings of learned societies ? The French government has
on several occasions acted on this suggestion, which is
applicable more especially to provincial towns than to
London, and we are glad to see that a good spirit is
spreading itself through the country. Our attention is
called to this subject by receiving a printed circular from
the vicar (the Rev. Jemson Davies) and some of the
most respectable inhabitants of the parish of St. Nicholas
in Leicester, soliciting subscriptions to defray the ex-
penses necessary for the preservation of the Roman
remains in that town, known by the name of the Old
Jewry Wall (one of the most remarkable Roman monu-
ments in our islands), and the removal of certain build-
ings by which it has been much disfigured and injured.
This application cannot be too strongly recommended to
public attention ; and it must be carried in mind that it
is necessary not only to preserve national antiquities,
but to make them accessible to the eye of the public.
The circular alluded to states that, "in accomplishing
this object, much expense has been incurred, in parti-
cular by the erection of a building appurtenant to the
church, rendered necessary by the removal of the build-
ings which encumbered the wall. Towards defraying
these expenses, they have had recourse to a private sub-
scription ; but as the parish is very small, and its inha-
bitants in general very far from wealthy, the amount
thus raised has been found very inadequate : they there-
fore have ventured to appeal to their fellow-townsmen
and the public for assistance." Many of our readers
will remember that only a few months have passed since
the last relic of any importance of the ancient Roman wall
of the city of Loudon very narrowly escaped destruction.
58 the archjsological album.
one side of Gravel Lane, Iloundsditch. Its exterior presented few features of attraction,
and would not have led us to expect that it contained so much elaborate decoration as
the original artist had bestowed upon it. In front it had a large court-yard, seventy-
two feet square, entered by a richly decorated gateway in Seven-step Alley, which took
its name from the steps leading to this gate. There was another door into Elliston
Street and Gravel Lane.
The- house itself had outwardly a look of great solidity, and consisted of three
stories, the upper row of windows preserving their original form, while those in the
lower stories had been entirely modernised. Between the windows were flat pilasters,
very slightly enriched. The two parlours, on each side of the passage of entrance,
were panelled with oak, which remained in its original sounduess and purity, having
never been disfigured by paint, as is too often seen in churches and old buildings,
where the painter and grainer are employed to colour real oak stalls and carved panels
in imitation of oak. The fireplaces in both parlours were highly enriched with orna-
mental carving. The ceilings were of plaster; in the parlour to the left on entering,
the beams of the compartments of the ceiling only were ornamented, but in the other
the ceiling was more elaborately and curiously decorated, being divided into four
compartments by beams ornamented with scroll-work, each partition filled with a rich
framework of Elizabethan decoration, enclosing four emblematical designs, with Latin
mottoes, in the style of the engravings to the Emblemata of Alciatus and other works of
the same description, which enjoyed great popularity at that time.
The ceiling of the great chamber on the first floor was most elaborate in design,
having in the centre the arms of the builder (Robert Shaw), and at each end those of
the city company (the Vintners), of which he was master; and amid the interlacing
tracery were four emblematical subjects, of a character similar to those in the ceiling of
the parlour, like them also accompanied with Latin mottoes. An engraving of this
ceiling has been published by C. J. Richardson, Esq. F.S.A. The fireplace in this
room was the most beautiful of the series which decorated the mansion, and was an
excellent specimen of the peculiar style of ornamental work of the period. The sides
were composed of coloured marbles, the upper part of carved wood. This fireplace
forms one of the subjects of our plate ; the other being the door which led into the
opposite room on the same floor, remarkable for its quaint but simple elegance. This
room v, as also panelled with oak, and had a fireplace of different design, but equally
elaborate, though not so beautiful. It exhibited, in four rich compartments, the four
seasons : Spring, crowned with flowers, and holding a crook ; Summer, crowned with
fruit, and carrying fruit in a basket, with a sickle and a sheaf of corn ; Autumn had a
wine-cup in her hand, and on her brow a wreath of grapes; while Winter, represented
OLD MANSION. 59
in the form of an old man, was warming his hands at a portable fire, his brows heavily
laden with the fruit and flowers of the past year. It is perhaps right to observe, that
in the fireplace given in our engraving, the fire-dogs, equally with their animated
namesakes, are the work of the artist's imagination. The rooms above these had no
other decoration than a band of flowers along each rafter.
This mansion was built by Robert Shaw of Southwark, alderman of London and
master of the Vintners' Company in the reign of James I., who was subsequently made
a baronet. He appears to have been a descendant of Edward Shaw, goldsmith, mayor
in 1483, who, according to Stowe, left money to rebuild Cripplegate, which was done
in 1491, after his death, and of John Shaw, also a goldsmith, mayor in 1501, of whom
it is related in Dekker's very rare pageant for the mayoralty of the Right Hon. James
Campbell, in 1629, that " in the reigne of Henry VII. Sir John Shaw, goldsmith,
being then lord mayor, caused the aldermen to ride from the Guildhall to the water-
side, when he went to take his oath at Westminster (where before they rode by land
thether), and at his returne to ride againe to the Guildhall, there to dine ; all the
kitchens and other offices there being built by him ; since which time the feast has
there bin kept, for before it was either at Grocers Hall, or the Merchant Taylors."
This family was related to the Shaws of Kent.
The house, soon after it was erected, is said to have been occupied by the famous
Spanish ambassador to the court of James I. count Gondomar, who was the instigator
of the execution of Sir Walter Raleigh. Tradition also says that this mansion (or
one near it) was occupied by a party of Cromwell's soldiers, probably to communicate
with the garrisons in Houndsditch and the Tower.* It then stood on comparatively
open ground; but its site is now surrounded by a labyrinth of courts and alleys
between Houndsditch, Whitechapel, and Petticoat Lane, inhabited by the lowest class
of the population (partly Jews), and where strangers are seldom seen, there being no
large street or direct road through any portion of it.
The notices of this spot (now so densely covered with buildings) by the old his-
torians of London, afford a curious picture of the continual encroachments of the town
upon the surrounding country, which, after a lapse of more than two centuries, is
going on with infinitely increased rapidity around the present metropolis, although at
so great a distance from what was then the site of trees and green fields. The spot of
which we are speaking was called, in the time of Stowe, Hog Lane. " This Hog Lane/'
he says, " stretcheth north toward St. Mary Spitle without Bishopsgate, and within
these forty years [this was written in 1603] had on both sides fair hedge-rows of elm-
* See " The Beauties of England and Wales," London and Middlesex, vol. iii. p. 152.
60 THE ARCH/EOLOGICAL ALBUM.
tiers, with bridges and easy stiles to pass over into the pleasant fields, very commodious
for citizens therein to walk, shoot, and otherwise to recreate and refresh their dull
spirits in the sweet and wholesome air, which is now within a few years made a con-
tinual building throughout of garden-houses and small cottages; and the fields on
either sides be turned into garden-plots, tenter-yards, bowling-alleys, and such like,
from Houndaditch in the west, as far as White Chappell, and further towards the east.
On the south side of the highway from Aldgate were some few tenements, thinly
scattered here and there, with many void spaces between them, up to the Bars; but
now that street is not only fully replenished with buildings outward, and also pestered
with divers alleys, on either side to the Bars, but to White Chappell and beyond."
Strypc, writing-in 1720, says, "Petticoat Lane, formerly called Hog Lane, is near
Whitechapel Bars, and runs northward towards St. Mary's Spittle. In antient times,
on both sides this lane were hedge-rows and elm-trees, with pleasant fields to walk in.
Insomuch that some gentlemen of the court and city built them houses here for air.
There was a house on the west side, a good way in the lane, which, when I was a boy,
was commonly called the Spanish Ambassadors house, who in king James I.'s reign
dwelt here. And he, I think, w f as the famous count Gondomar. And a little way off
this, on the cast side of the w r ay, down a paved alley (now called Stripe's Court,* from
my father, who inhabited here) was a fair large house with a good garden before it,
built and inhabited by Hans Jacobson, a Dutchman, the said king James's jeweller,
wherein I was born."
* This name has since been corrupted into Tripe Yard.
HISTORY OF ART IN THE MIDDLE AGES,
AS EXHIBITED IN ILLUMINATED MANUSCRIPTS.
the present age there is a general taste for medieval art, which shews
itself in an increasing activity of research into all its different depart-
ments. Of these none is more deserving of attention than that of
illuminated manuscripts, because they are not only important as
monuments of art, but they convey to us more information than any
other documents on the manners and customs of our forefathers.
These illuminations are, fortunately, very numerous, although they
are chiefly to be met with in large public collections. They differ
much in style and character, according to the period at which they
were executed, and the skill of the artists. These artists were fre-
quently monks, especially in the earlier times ; but at a later period,
from the thirteenth to the sixteenth century, they formed a separate
profession, and it was then that the art advanced gradually to per-
fection, until it produced the splendid schools of the latter part of
the fifteenth century. The names of several English artists in this
branch of painting have been preserved in the manuscripts which
they adorned, but of the greater number we have no record what-
ever. These artists were termed illuminators (Lat. illuminator es,
Fr. enlumineurs), whence the name given to the paintings executed
by them (Lat. illuminatio, Fr. enluminure). Ordericus Vitalis, who
lived early in the twelfth century, makes use
of this word, and speaks of a monk of his mo-
nastery (in the middle of the eleventh century)
who was pracipuus scriptor et librorum illumi-
nator.* A French document of the end of the
* Ord. Vital. Hist. Eccl. lib. iii. p. 77, ed. Le Prevost.
G2 THE ARCHAEOLOGICAL ALBUM.
fourteenth century speaks of an enhmiineur who was employed in painting the chapel
of the (Ylestins at Paris,* which would seem to shew that the same persons who
executed the illuminations in manuscripts were employed on the paintings on the walls
of churches. Books illustrated with such illuminations, representing the circumstances
narrated in the text, were said to be histories {Hbri historiati). From notes which
occur sometimes in old records, we conclude that these illuminated books were
extremely expensive. The most numerous class of these artistical works are missals
and hooks of hours, which are still found in abundance in all large collections, and
they may often be purchased in curiosity-shops in London, where they are generally
estimated very much above their value. Romances, chronicles, and other works
embellished in this manner, are of much greater rarity and interest, but they are
found in abundance in the great public libraries in England and on the Continent. It
is evident that the illuminators of the middle ages were a numerous class, and that they
found extensive employment.
In our rapid sketch of the history of these illuminations, we may conveniently
arrange the subject in three divisions, taking first the Anglo-Saxon period, embracing
the history of English art from the seventh century to the middle of the eleventh;
secondly, the period extending from the entrance of the Normans to the end of the
fourteenth century; and, third, the fifteenth century, or the period in which the art of
illuminating manuscripts was carried to the highest degree of perfection.
THE ANGLO-SAXON PERIOD.
The Anglo-Saxon illuminators were almost exclusively ecclesiastics, and the books
they ornamented are, with very few exceptions, of a theological character. The finest
specimen of Anglo-Saxon ornamental work, and at the same time the earliest known
example of illuminating executed in this island, is the well-known Durham Book (now
MS. Cotton. Nero D. IV.), painted by a monk of Lindisfarne, towards the close of the
seventh century, the colours of which appear still almost as fresh as when they came
out of his hands. An entirely new impulse seems to have been given to this art by
Athelwold and Dunstan, and the Benedictine monks of their time, subsequent to which
most of our Anglo-Saxon illuminated manuscripts were executed. It w r as noted of
Dunstan that he was a most skilful painter, and a manuscript in the Bodleian Library
at Oxford contains a drawing representing Dunstan worshipping the Saviour, which is
stated to have been the work of his own pencil. It is not discreditable to him as an
* Catalogue des Archives Joursanvault, vol. i. p. 139.
NOAH'S -.RD
HISTORY OF ART IN THE MIDDLE AGES. 63
artist, if compared with other productions of this period. The first picture on our
plates of illuminations, taken from a manuscript of Alfric's Anglo-Saxon version of part
of the Bible (MS. Cotton. Claudius B. IV. fol. 17, v°), executed towards the end of the
tenth century, is a fair specimen of Anglo-Saxon drawing and colouring. It repre-
sents Noah and his family gathering grapes from the vine, and pressing them in the
wine-press. The names of Noah and his two sons, and one of their wives, are written
over the figures of the persons to whom they belonged. The lady, who is here called
Sphiarphara, is probably intended for the wife of Cham, or Ham. In the old
legendary lore prevalent under the Saxons, as we find in the curious "Dialogue
between Saturn and Solomon," printed in Thorpe's " Analecta," Noah's wife was
named Dalila, Cham's Jaitarecta, and Japheth's Catafluvia, or, u according to others,
the three were named Olla, Ollina, and Ollibana." In a similar set of questions of the
fifteenth century (printed in the " Reliquiae Antiquse," i. 230) we find the following
passage: — "What hicht [was named] Noes wyf?" "Dalida; and the wif of Sem,
Cateslinna ; and the wif of Cam, Laterecta ; and the wif of Japheth, Aurca. And
other iij. names, Ollia, Olina, and Olybana." On the lower part of the wine-press are
seen the Anglo-Saxon words, "hser (for car) ^a flode nas na wingeard;" "before the
flood there was no vineyard." The Anglo-Saxons appear to have remembered with no
little gratitude that it was Noah who discovered the use of the vine. In the Anglo-
Saxon dialogue above alluded to, and in another similar tract in the same language,
the answer to the question, "Who first planted vineyards and drank wine?" is, "The
patriarch Noah." Another question is, "Tell me, what tree is the best of all trees?"
To which the reply is, "The vine" (Jrset ys win-treow). The wine-press is the most
curious part of our picture ; for up to a much later period the illuminations represent the
process of pressing out the juice of the grapes as being performed by treading them with
the feet. Noah's wine-press is of a simple construction : a heavy block, like a mill-stone,
turns on a vertical screw, and the patriarch and his son "Cham" appear to be pushing
it round. The colour of the hair of the figures in this manuscript is remarkable.
The early illuminators had no notion of giving correct representations of landscapes
or natural productions. Previous to the fifteenth century, the artists employed certain
conventional forms to represent trees, which varied according to the fashion of the day.
In the Anglo-Saxon manuscripts, a tree was represented most commonly by a parcel
of tracery, like the vines in Noah's vineyard. During the thirteenth and fourteenth
centuries, the most common method of denoting a tree was by a round bundle of
leaves (closely resembling cabbage-leaves), fixed on the top of a straight pole. In
some of the ruder drawings the names of the persons and objects are introduced to
distinguish them, somewhat in the same way as wc are told that in the primeval days
64
THE ARCHAEOLOGICAL ALBUM.
uf Grecian art, the draughtsman was obliged to write the names on the different objects
he wished to represent, as, ovrog 'hcrog' roZro bzvhgov — "This is a horse; this, a tree."
Some of the Saxon drawings, such as those in the manuscript of Crcdmon (engraved in
the twenty-fourth volume of the "Archrcologia"), are barbarously rude. Others, par-
ticularly some of the earlier examples, are spirited and clever. Among these may be
instanced several illustrated manuscripts of the Psychomachia of Prude ntius, some of
them as old as the ninth century, and the illustrations of a calendar of the first half of
the eleventh century. Some of these are engraved in Shaw's " Dresses and Decorations
of the Middle Ages." Another instance of considerable skill, particularly in grouping,
will be found in the illustrations (though rather sketchy and indistinct) of the
Ilarleian MS. No. 603. The illustrations of the calendar represent the occupations
peculiar to each month of the year in Anglo-Saxon times, which are drawn in outline
by the pen. The following is a Saxon reaping scene, taken from the month of August.
The activity of the reapers is well represented. The corn appears at this period not to
have been sheaved in the field, but to have been carried directly away. The warrior
with his spear and horn, to the left, appears to be the guardian of the field, whose duty
it was to watch against sudden attacks on the harvest in those unsettled times.
These illuminated calendars are very numerous during the middle ages, and form a
continued and interesting series of illustrations of manners. The subjects of the
Anglo-Saxon series are, — in January, ploughing with oxen ; February, pruning trees ;
March, digging and sowing; April, feasting; May, shepherds attending their flocks;
June, cutting down timber and carting it ; July, mowing; August, reaping; September,
hunting, and leading the pigs to the woods to feed; October, hawking; November,
bonfires ; December, winnowing. This series of subjects, with a few variations, was
continued to a late period, and even appears in the printed calendars and almanacs of
the sixteenth century, in England, Germany, and the Low Countries. In France, a
new series of designs was invented for the printed calendars : the life of man was divided
HISTORY OF ART IN THE MIDDLE AGES.
65
into twelve ages instead of seven : in January he is an infant, in February he is sent to
school, in March he becomes a hunter, in April a lover, and so on, until he falls into
decrepitude in the month of December.
The Anglo-Saxon calendar of which we have been speaking is found in a manuscript
in the British Museum (MS. Cotton. Julius A. VI.) ; it is evidently copied from a
somewhat older illuminated calendar in the same collection (MS. Cotton. Tiberius
B. V.), executed very much in the same style as the illuminations of Alfric's translation
of parts of the Bible. This is not the only instance in which the illuminations of one
Anglo-Saxon manuscript appear to be copies of those of an older treatise on the same
subject, and we may sometimes trace back to a very ancient original. In fact, some of
the earlier Anglo-Saxon drawings appear to be derived from models brought from Rome,
and certain allusions in the older writers, particularly in the Letters of Boniface, would
lead us to believe that such was the case. The illustrations of Prudentius have a
certain classic style about them which is not found in the biblical manuscripts. A
curious instance of this occurs in the illuminations to the astronomical tracts of Aratus
(translated by Cicero) and Hyginus. In the Harleian MS. No. 617, are preserved a
few leaves of an illustrated manuscript of these works, probably of the seventh century,
apparently executed by a foreign artist, and evidently the prototype of the copies of the
same work in MS. Harl. No. 2506, which seems to be of the beginning of the ninth
century, and of MS. Cotton. Tiberius B. V. of the latter end of the tenth century.
The manuscript first mentioned was probably the original model, brought from Italy
into this country by some of the earlier Anglo-Saxon pilgrims.
At a later period the Anglo-Saxon illuminations have more of the character of
Byzantine art. In some instances they seem
to have preserved those bold poetical personi-
fications, derived from profane antiquity, which
appear in the medieval Greek illuminations.
In the fine illuminated Benedictional of St.
Athelwold (of about the middle of the twelfth
century), from which a series of plates were
engraved for the twenty-fourth volume of the
"Archseologia," we have a large painting of
the baptism of the Saviour, where the river
Jordan is represented emblematically by an
old man with horns, pouring the water of
the river out of an urn, while the end of an oar appears above his left shoulder.
We are necessarily reminded of such classic examples as the following (cited by
GG
THE AKCII.EOLOGICAL ALBUM.
J. II. Langlois, in a very interesting Essai sur la Calligraphic des Manuscrits du Moyen
Aye, from which we have derived some of our observations) : —
And—
" Corniger Hespcridumy?! over * ne child,
oodoog (the dawn). A Greek Bible of the fourteenth century contains, among many
others, a picture of the passage of the Israelites, pursued by the Egyptians, over the
Red Sea, engraved in D'Agincourt' s Histoire de I' Art (Peinture, pi. G2) ; the sea is
personified by a naked woman, plunging Pharaoh with her hand into the water. In
another of D'Agincourt's plates (Peint. pi. 56), taken from an exultet, or pictorial
hymn, executed in the south of Italy, we find the earth represented under the form of
a woman, who gives suck to a quadruped and to a reptile, her lower members being
HISTORY OF ART IN THE MIDDLE AGES.
G7
lost in the ground, covered with plants and trees. Such personifications are less
common in England after the Conquest ; but perhaps few of them can bear comparison
in point of singularity with that represented in our next cut, taken from an illuminated
manuscript of the fifteenth century, in the British Museum (MS. Reg. 15 E. II. fol.
60, r°), of a French translation
of the scientific treatise "On
the Nature of Things," by
Bartholomew de Glanville. The
four elements are here personi-
fied in a very remarkable man-
ner. Earth is an old man,
sluggish and heavy, supporting
himself upon a staff. Water
is a middle-aged person, with
the serious air of a philosopher,
a scroll in his hand. Fire is a
fierce, destructive-looking man,
with a sword by his side, and a
dagger in his hand. Air is
represented by a youth, light
and gay, bearing on his right
hand a bird, and leading a
greyhound by a string with
the other. Each figure has
under his feet the element he
represents. The background
of this picture is a good example of the superior skill in drawing landscapes which
appeared in the fifteenth century.
The Anglo-Saxon illuminated manuscripts are in general much less attractive by
their beauty than those of subsequent periods. The only part in which there is any
freedom of drawing is the drapery. Nothing can be more barbarous than the attempts
to represent naked figures. Trees, as we have already observed, are mere conventional
forms; and buildings have the appearance of wooden toys. Yet they are still
interesting in different points of view; and the illuminations to Alfric's Bible, in
especial, form a treasury of Anglo-Saxon domestic history.
<>S THE ARCHAEOLOGICAL ALBUM.
TWELFTH, THIRTEENTH, AND FOURTEENTH CENTURIES.
We have scarcely any illuminated manuscripts which can be ascribed with certainty
to the latter half of the eleventh century; and during the twelfth century manuscripts
with pictures are not numerous, though ornamental initials, often of elaborate work-
manship and great beauty, are very common. The drawings of the twelfth century are
generally more correct in outline than those of the period which preceded or those of
that which immediately followed. Among the eaidiest and most interesting specimens
are the series of scriptural subjects in the Cottonian MS. Nero C. IV. which have been
already quoted in the present volume as resembling in style and colouring the paintings
of the chapel in the crypt of Canterbury cathedral. If the illuminators of books were
also employed on the paintings on the walls (which a fact cited at the beginning of the
present article would lead us to suspect), the artist to whom we owe this series of
Scripture pictures may have been the author of those in the crypt. At all events, we
may refer to our coloured plate of the latter as a good specimen of the style of the
period. The illuminations of the twelfth century are, however, seldom so highly
coloured, being in most instances mere outlines. The books illuminated during this
period were generally scriptural or legendary subjects; the chief exceptions being the
Bestiaries, or treatises on natural history, which often contain very good specimens of
the skill of the Anglo-Norman artists.
The romances became numerous in the thirteenth century, and with them came a
new style of illuminations, consisting of little square miniatures in frames, the figures
being very highly coloured, generally ill drawn, and placed upon a diapered ground,
without any attempt at landscape, which was not introduced with any effect till the
fifteenth century. This diapered ground gives a very confused appearance to the picture.
There is generally an absurd degree of stiffness about the design ; but, the subjects
being more varied, the illuminations become now more interesting as illustrations of
manners and customs than in the previous century. Some books of this period,
however, contain very clever drawings in outline, or very lightly coloured, such
as the legend of king Offa, in the Cottonian Library (Nero D. I.), with a spirited
series of outline drawings by the hand of the author of the legend, the w r ell-known
historian, Matthew Paris, and a very profusely illustrated manuscript of the beginning
of the fourteenth century, in the Old King's Library in the British Museum (MS.
Reg. 2 B. VII.), popularly known as queen Mary's Psalter, from the circumstance of
its having once belonged to Mary queen of England. A fac-simile in colours of one of
the illuminations of this manuscript is given at the bottom of our first plate of
illuminations. It represents one of those numerous legends which, during the middle
HISTORY OF ART IN THE MIDDLE ACfE^
69
ages, were built upon or added to the text of the Scriptures. According to this
legend (of which we have not been able to find any further account than what is
furnished by the drawing and the inscription in Anglo-Norman underneath*), it
appears that Noah, when occupied in building the ark, kept his occupation secret from
his wife. One day, however, the Evil One appeared to her in the form of a man, and
asked her where her husband was. Her answer was, that she did not know. The
tempter then placed in her hand some grains, and said, " He is gone to betray thee
and all the world : take these grains, and make a potion, and give it him to drink, and
he will tell thee all." The legend adds, " And so she did." The picture, after a
manner which was common down to a much later period, represents three portions of
the story at one view. On the left, the Evil One appears in conversation with Noah's
wife ; in the middle, the lady is receiving her husband with an affectionate greeting ;
and to the right she is giving him the drink, and obtaining from him the avowal of his
secret by her alluring caresses. We are left in the dark as to the sequel of the legend.
In the old popular mysteries, or religious dramas, the wife of Noah appears as the
pattern of scolding wives. In the Towneley Mysteries (published by the Surtees
Society), Noah does not attempt to conceal the news of the flood from his wife, but
she receives the intelligence in a scornful manner. On his arrival he greets his dame
affectionately m—
" NOE.
God specie, dere wife, how fare ye ?
UXOR.
Now, as ever myght I thryfe, the wars [worse] I thee see !
Do telle me belife [immediately] where has thou thus long be ?
To dede [death] may we dryfe or lif for the
For want.
When we swete or swynk, [labour]
Thou dos what thou thynk,
Yet of mete and of drynk
Have we veray skant.
NOE.
Wife, we are hard sted with tydynges new.
UXOR.
Bot thou were worthi be clad in Stafford blew !
For thou art alway adred, be it fals or trew."
She continues to treat his news with derision, until at length Noah's patience is at
an end : —
" We ! hold thi tong, Ram-skyt, or I shalle the stille 1"
Upon which they are made to fight on the stage. Noah then proceeds to his work,
* " Coment le diable viint en forme de homme a. la
femme Noe, e demanda u son mari estoit. E ele disoit
qe ele ne sout ou. ' II est ale pour toi trayr et tote le
mund: preyne ces greynes e fetez un aboycion, e le
donetz a boyre, e il te dirra tote.' E issint fist-ele." —
MS. Reg. 2 B. VII. fol. 6, r».
70 THE ARCHAEOLOGICAL ALBUM.
and when it is done he calls together his family, and urges them to enter the ark
speedily, with their goods. Noah's wife now speaks as scornfully of the ark as she
had before done of the news of the threatened flood, and refuses to enter until she has
spun a while on the hill : —
'• IVOR.
I was never bard ere, as ever myght I the, [thrice]
In sich an oistre as this !
In fayth, I can not fynd
Which is before, which is behynd.
Bot shalle we here be pynd,
Noe, as have thou blis ?
NOE.
Dame, as it is skille [reason] , here must us abide grace ;
Therfore, wife, with pood wille com into this place.
UXOR.
Sir, for Jak nor for Gille wille I turne my face,
Tille I have on this hille spon a space
On my rok.
Welle were he myght get me !
Now wille I downe set me.
Yet reede I [/ advise] no man let [hinder] me,
For drede of a knok."
This leads to another altercation, and the patriarch exclaims bitterly against all evil
wives: —
" Ye men that has wifes, whyles they are yong,
If ye luf youre lifes, chastice thare tong.
Me thynk my hert ryves, both levyr and long, [liver and lungs]
To se sich stryfes wed men emong."
At length she is forced by the flood into the ark, where they fight again, until they are
separated by their children.
In the Chester Plays, which, in their present form, are more modern than the
Towneley scries, Noah's wife is similarly introduced, speaking with derision of the ark ;
and the patriarch is made to complain bitterly of his domestic lot : —
' ' Lorde ! that wemen be crabbed aye 1
And non are meke, I dare well saye ;
That is well seene by me to daye,
In witnesse of you ichone."
In this version of the story, Noah's wife refuses to go into the ark unless she be per-
mitted to take her "gossips" with her; her sons are sent to her in vain, until the
flood begins to rise, and then she stays to drink a parting cup with her gossips : —
" Let us drinkc or [ere] we departe,
For ofte tymes we have done soe ;
For att a draughte thou drinkes a quarte,
And soe will I doe or I goe.
o
S
u
—
fc.
-
I
Z
co
eg
en
CO
a'
§
HISTORY OF ART IN THE MIDDLE AGES. 71
Heare is a pottill full of Malmsine good and stronge ;
Itt will rejoyce bouth hart and tonge ;
Though Noye thinke us never so longe,
Heare we will drinke alike."
The water at length drives her in, and, in reward for the patience with which her
husband has waited for her, she salutes him with a blow.
" JEFFATTE [jAPHET] .
Mother, we praye you all togeither,
For we are heare, youer owne children,
Come into the shippe for feare of the weither,
For his love that you boughte !
NOYES WIFFE.
That will I not, for all youer call,
But I have my gossippes all.
SEM.
In faith, mother, yett you shalle,
Weither thou wylte or not. [He pulls her in.
NOYE.
Welckome, wiffe, into this bote !
NOYES WIFFE.
Have thou that for thy note ! [She strikes him.
NOYE.
Ha, ha ! marye, this is hotte,
It is good for to be still."
The performance of Noah's flood must have been an edifying spectacle ! The readers
of Chaucer will remember his allusion in the following lines : —
" ' Hast thou not herd,' quod Nicholas, ' also,
The sorwe of Noe with his felowship,
Or that he mighte get his wif to ship ?
Him had be lever, I dare wel undertake,
At thilke time, than all his wethers blake,
That she had had a ship hireself alone.'"
The volume from which our picture of Noah and his wife is taken contains a
very considerable number of illustrations. They consist of — 1, a series of scriptural
subjects, in frames, two on each page, with a short explanation underneath, written
in the dialect of the French language then spoken in England; 2, a calendar, with
illuminations at the heads of the pages ; 3, a great multitude of drawings at the foot
of the pages throughout the remainder of the volume. These latter are sometimes
grotesque and playful subjects, at others, illustrations of fables, romances, and saints'
legends, among which occurs a series of subjects from the life of Thomas Becket. We
give an outline copy of one of these on our second plate, as a further specimen of this
interesting manuscript; it represents Henry II. expelling from the island Becket's
relations, after the exile of the primate.*
* In the manuscript this design occupies the foot of fol. 293, v°.
THE AKfll.EOLOi.U \ I. ALlil'.M.
The second subject on our second engraving of illuminations is taken from a fine
manuscript of the French prose romances of the St. Graal and Lancelot, executed in
the year 131G, now in the British Museum (MS. Addit. No. 10,293, fol. 83, r°), and
will serve as an example of the small framed designs which are found in the books of
this class. The subject is of course taken from the text of the romance. Gawain, in
line of his adventures, comes to a pleasant prairie, in the midst of which he discovers a
rich pavilion. Under the pavilion was a couch, on which reposed a beautiful damsel,
her hair spread over her shoulders, and a maid standing by, "combing it with a comb
of ivory set in gold" (?) — (qui la piynoit aj. pigne d'ivoire sor orei). The damsel holds
before her a mirror, which appears by the colour of the original to be of polished
metal. This manuscript also furnishes an example of the practice which had then
come into fashion of drawing burlesque, sometimes satirical, often very gross figures,
in the margins of manuscripts. These are found even in church-service books and
religious treatises. The accompanying figures arc taken from among a number of
others on the margin of the first page of the third volume of the manuscript just
described (MS. Addit. No. 10,294),
and represent a countrywoman in the
act of churning, and a blind beggar and
his dog, with his child on his back.
The good dame is a nice specimen of
costume; she has the -bottom of her
gown neatly pinned up, as a proof of
being a careful and attentive house-
wife. These marginal illustrations arc often the most valuable of all, for the light
they throw on medieval manners.
Another manuscript of the St. Graal and
Lancelot, in the British Museum (MS. Reg.
14? E. III.), of a date not much posterior to
the one last described, will furnish us with
one or two examples of the style of grouping
of these illustrations of the romances. The first
(fol. 9, v°) represents a man preaching from a
very rude portable pulpit, no doubt a usual
custom in the fourteenth century. His con-
gregation are seated on the ground before him.
The preacher is Joseph of Arimathea, one of
the personages of the Gospel history, who became in the middle ages the subject of so
HISTORY OF ART IN THE MIDDLE AGES.
73
many legends ; but the artist appears to have drawn him in the character of a preaching
friar. The second cut (from fol. 11, r°) represents a king with his wise men arguing
with Joseph on the articles of his belief.
The costume of these figures, and more
especially the shoes, seem to prove the manu-
script to be of the reign of Edward III. The
king's chair (or throne) is a good example
of this article of furniture, which appears to
have been strictly reserved for the use of per-
sons of distinction. Even in the houses of
the great, people commonly sat on benches,
which in the halls were often placed against
the wall round the room. We also meet
with moveable benches; and sometimes
they have a high back, like similar articles of furni-
ture which we still find from time to time in old
country public-houses. It appears, by the instances
which are found in illuminated manuscripts, that
benches with backs of this description were used to
place before the fire in winter, while in summer
they were turned with the back to the fireplace, so
as almost to conceal the open space behind. The
third group is taken from a later part of the ma-
nuscript.
The illuminated manuscripts were certainly held
in great estimation by their possessors, whose names are sometimes written in them,
and enable us to trace their history. They are not unfrequently connected, by some
accident or other, with the great historical events of former days. The superb manu-
script from which our dinner-scene, given on an ensuing page, is taken (MS. Reg. 15
E. VI.), a collection of French metrical romances of chivalry, was executed for the
celebrated warrior, John Talbot, first earl of Shrewsbury, who presented it to the no
less celebrated Margaret of Anjou, queen of Henry VI. An illumination on the first
page represents the king and queen seated in a room hung with tapestry bearing the arms
of France and England, in front of which Talbot appears, kneeling and presenting the
book.* The figures are probably portraits. Beneath is a dedication in French verse,
* A good fac-simile of this illumination is given in Shaw's " Dresses and Decorations of the Middle Ages."
L
74
THK AKCH.liOlAHilCAL ALBUM.
stating that the earl presents this book, "in which book is many a fair tale of the
heroes who strove with great labour to acquire honour in France, in England, and in
many other lands -." —
•' Princesse tree excellente,
Cc livre-cy voua presente
De Schrosbery le conte ;
Oiujiiel livre a maint beau conte
Des preux qui par grant labeur
Vouklreut acquerir honueur
En France, en Angleterre,
Et en aultre uiaiute terre."
" lie caused it to be made, as you understand, in order to afford you pastime; and
that, while you are learning to talk English, you may not forget French :" —
" II l'a fait faire, ainsi que entens,
Afin que vous y passez temps ;
Et lorsque parlerez Anglois
Que vous n'oubliez le Francois."
Another illuminated manuscript in the Royal Library in the British Museum
(MS. Reg. 19 D. II.) is an interesting memorial of the French wars of Edward III.
It contains the French paraphrase of the biblical history, commonly known by the
title of "The Bible Historial;" on one of the first leaves a hand of the fourteenth
century has written an entry stating that it was taken with the king of France at the
battle of Poitiers ; and that the " good earl of Salisbury," William Montague, bought
it for a hundred marks, and presented it to his wife Elizabeth, " the good countess,
whom God assoil ! " and she directed her executors to sell it for forty pounds, a very
large sum of money at that time.*
Among confused entries on the fly-leaves at the end of the manuscript of the St.
Graal last described (MS. Reg. 14 E. III.) are two interesting royal autographs,
which shew that it was once in the household of Edward IV. The first is that of
his queen, Elizabeth Wydevylle —
The second is that of their eldest daughter Cecile — "Cecyl the kyngys dowther" —
* "Cest livre fust pris oue le roy de Fraunce a la
bataille de Peyters ; et le boun counte de Saresbirs,
William Montague, la achata pur cent marsz, et le dona
a sa compaitrne Elizabeth, la bone countesse, qe Dieux
assoile ! Et est continus dedeins le Bible enter oue
tixte et glose, le Mestre de histoires et incident, tout en
memes le volyme ; laquele lyvre ladite countesse assigna
a ces executours de le vcndrc pur xl. livers."
HISTORY OF ART IN THE MIDDLE AGES. 75
then a girl, but afterwards married first to John viscount Welles, and, after her first
husband's death, to Sir John Kyme of Lincolnshire —
These are the oldest autographs known of English ladies of so elevated a rank, and
appear to have been hitherto overlooked.
The two subjects at the bottom of our second plate of illuminations are taken from
a large folio manuscript in the British Museum (MS. Addit. 12,228), written between
the years 1330 and 1350, containing the romance in French prose of Meliadus. The
character of the writing seems to prove that this volume was executed in the south of
France. The illuminations are found chiefly at the feet of the pages. The larger of
those given on our plate (taken from fol. 23, r°) represents a royal party engaged at
chess (the favourite game of the middle ages), interrupted by the arrival of a
messenger. The latter is distinguished by his badge attached to his girdle, with the
armorial bearings of his lord. The portion of the picture on which the messenger is
seen exhibits the diapered ground which we have already mentioned as being common
in illuminations of this period. Sometimes the ground, instead of being diapered, is
painted of a uniform colour; and in our first manuscript of the St. Graal (MS. Addit.
No. 10,292-4), as well as in various other books, it is of plain gold.
Our other engraving from the manuscript of Meliadus (fol. 313, v°) represents a
royal party at cards, and is curious as being by many years the earliest picture known
representing this game. It was engraved from this manuscript, then in the possession
of Sir Egerton Brydges, and inserted in Singer's "Researches into the History of
Playing Cards," p. 68. Cards appear to have been of Eastern origin ; and they may
be traced from Italy and the south in their gradual progress towards our clime. They
are mentioned in the French poem of " Renard le Contrefait," believed to have been
composed between the years 1328 and 1341, and therefore contemporary with the
manuscript of the romance of Meliadus ; but we have no allusion to them in English
writers until a much later period.
In this group, which exhibits much less skill in drawing than the party at chess,
the king is distinguished by being seated in a chair, while the rest of the party are
standing, or sitting on benches. But the rudest article of furniture is the table, which
is only to be compared with the furniture of a modern country brevvhouse, or back-
76
THE AK( Il.i:oi.()(ilCAL ALBUM.
kitchen. Numerous examples might be adduced from illuminations of various periods,
in which the tables of the higher classes appear to be of equally rough workmanship.
Sometimes we have a table which evidently consists of a board placed upon two tem-
porary supports, so that the preparations for dinner consisted in literally "spreading
the board." The accompany-
ing wood-cut, from a manu-
script of so late a period as
the fifteenth century (MS.
Vwf Burgh, a little distance to the north of the castle, is interesting, as having
one of those curious hound towers which occur so frequently in this part of the
kingdom.
These round towers are most numerous in Norfolk and Suffolk, but a few also are
found in the adjoining counties of Cambridge and Essex, as well as in Sussex and
Berkshire. Mr. Gage Rokewodc, who communicated a paper on the subject of these
ecclesiastical round towers to the Society of Antiquaries (printed, with numerous plates,
in the twenty-third volume of the " Archa?ologia,") observes that they are not scattered
indiscriminately over the counties in which they occur, but that they arc generally
found in clusters. Many of them are seen bordering on the Roman Ikenild Street,
and some are found along the line of the coast. They are, in some instances, met
with in towns; thus we find three in Norwich, one in Bungay, and one at Lewes in
Sussex. From the circumstance of these towers being found almost entirely within
the limits of the ancient kingdom of East Anglia, they have been frequently ascribed
to the Danes ; but this is certainly an erroneous assumption, as the style of their archi-
tecture shews that they were nearly all built during the Norman period. It has also
been suggested that these towers, always built of flint boulders, owe their form to
the necessity arising from the want of freestone in the districts where they occur
most frequently ; but this does not appear to be satisfactorily proved, and square
towers arc found mixed with them in the same counties. The circumstance of their
appearing in clusters would lead us to suppose that the round tower had been a style
preserved- by the builders (perhaps from father to son) in certain localities. Historical
documents seem to shew that, during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, Norfolk and
Suffolk were districts looked upon as far behind other parts of the island in the march
of improvement and fashion.
As it has just been observed, these towers are almost always built of rough flints.
The flints are generally laid in regular courses, as at Hadiscoe in Norfolk, and at Little
Saxham and Hcringflcet in Suffolk. Sometimes, however, as at Norton in Norfolk,
they are not in courses. In the churches in Norwich, and in some other instances,
the towers have been recased with cut flints. In some instances, the church to which
the tower is attached has the semicircular apsis at the east end, as at Heckingham and
ECCLESIASTICAL ROUND TOWERS.
97
Fritton in Norfolk. The loftiest towers of this description are those of Little Saxham
and Blundeston in Suffolk, each of which is fifty-six feet high. The upper parts of the
towers seem generally to have undergone alterations subsequently to the period at
which they were built, and sometimes they have evidently been raised a story higher :
in some this upper story is octangular, instead of being round like the rest of the
tower. In some instances the diameter of the tower exceeds fourteen feet ; in a few
instances it is not more than eight : the general average, however, is from ten to
twelve. The walls are in general very massive, being, in most cases, from four to
five feet thick. In Sussex they are sometimes not more than two feet and a half
thick.
By much the greater number of these round
towers were evidently built in the twelfth century :
many of them exhibit rather late Norman work.
The towers of Little Saxham in Suffolk, and Great
Leighs in Essex, contain elegant Norman arches;
the latter in the doorway, the former in the upper
story of the tower, which is surrounded by an arcade,
as shewn in our first cut, the windows being placed
under larger arches, which are connected by smaller
ones. The tower of Hadiscoe Thorpe has windows
resembling those of Little Saxham.
Mr. Gage Rokewode considered the tower of Taseburgh church, in Norfolk, to be
by much the most ancient of any of those which he had examined. In its original
condition, the tower was ornamented with a double tier of recessed round arches, with
semicircular-headed loops instead of windows. When the upper part of the tower was
rebuilt, the heads of the second tier of recessed arches were cut off, so that the building-
has at present a very singular appearance. The modern upper story of the tower has
pointed windows. The tower of Hadiscoe Thorpe, in Norfolk, presents a somewhat
similar appearance to that of Taseburgh, though probably more modern ; the second
story is surrounded by a row of shallow buttresses,
resembling pilasters.
The upper story of the tower of Heringneet church,
in Suffolk, represented in our second cut, has windows
consisting of two triangular -headed arches, separated
by a small supporting column, within a round arch, not
unlike those which are supposed to be peculiar to
Anglo-Saxon buildings.
It is somewhat curious that
98
THE ARCHAEOLOGICAL ALBUM.
churches with round towers are found in early Anglo-
Saxon illuminated manuscripts : there is one in an
illustrated Prudentius in the British Museum (MS.
Cotton. Cleopatra, C. VIII. fol. 7). It is not impossible,
after all, that, although such of these towers as now
remain appear to have been erected in the age of
Norman rule, they may have been built after an older
Saxon style, which still lived in the memory of the
native builders of these districts. Another instance of
the triangular-headed window, in this case blunted at
the top, is found in the tower of Hadiscoe in Norfolk,
as shewn in the accompanying woodcut.
The last cut also furnishes an example of the style of the more modern termina-
tions of some of these towers. In a few instances, as at Great Leighs in Essex, and
Piddinghoe in Sussex, the round tower terminates in a spire. We have no means of
ascertaining the original characters of the terminations of these towers, on account of
the modern alterations. In drawings in Anglo-Saxon manuscripts, church-steeples
are sometimes represented with spires and with a weathercock. It may be observed,
that very few instances of church-steeples with spires are said to be found in
Ireland.
Some of the later round towers, built, probably, about the end of the twelfth
century, or beginning of the thirteenth, have windows with arches of the early pointed
style, often mixed with round-headed windows : as at Little Piushmere in Suffolk,
Bartlow in Cambridgeshire, Norton in Norfolk, and West Shefford in Berkshire. In
Norton church, pointed arches are found in the windows in the lower part of the
tower, and semicircular arches at the top. In many instances, however, the pointed
arches appear to be more recent additions to the original building.
Internally these towers have sometimes been divided into stories, and sometimes (par-
ticularly the smaller ones) they were open from the ground to the top. In one instance,
at Thorpe Abbots, in Norfolk, there is a fireplace on the north side of the basement of
the tower, with a flue nine inches square, coeval with the rest of the building, which
runs up the wall, and gives vent to the smoke through a small loophole. From their
massive constructions and from other peculiarities, these towers appear to have been
built as places of refuge and defence in sudden hostile incursions. It will be observed
that, in almost all instances, the windows within reach of the ground are mere loop-
holes, and that the large windows are in the upper story, as in the towers of a Norman
castle. This explains why they are found along the coast and rivers running imme-
ECCLESIASTICAL ROUND TOWERS. 99
diately into the sea, and on the Roman road, which was in early times the chief line of
communication, as these were the situations most exposed to predatory invasions.
The earlier chronicles, and other documents, furnish instances of people seeking shelter
in churches and defending themselves in the steeple ; and the village church appears
always to have been regarded as a place of security for depositing treasures and articles
of value. It has been supposed that the round form, used in these early towers, was
laid aside on account of its inconvenience for the reception of bells.
The round tower of the church of Burgh, in Suffolk, the subject of our plate, is
not distinguished from the others by any very remarkable characteristic of style. It
is a plain building, with simple loop-holes for windows, the heads of the lowest of
these windows being surrounded with an arch of Roman bricks or tiles; taken, no
doubt, from the ruins of Burgh Castle, or from some Roman building dependent upon
it, which has now disajipeared. The upper part of the tower is modern brickwork.
The church is a small building, possessing no very remarkable features ; but in the
interior an interesting Norman font is still preserved.
OBSOLETE PUNISHMENTS.
THE STOCKS AND THE PILLORY.
One of the most common modes of punishment for lighter offences in the middle
ages was by exposing the offender, in a disgraceful posture, to the gaze of the public
during a certain length of time. He was attached by the neck, or by the feet, or by
the hands. In the first instance, the instrument of punishment was a pillory; in the
others, the stocks.
The time is not long past when every parish was furnished with a pair of
stocks, and they still remain in some of our country villages. They generally
contained merely a row of holes for confining the legs, but sometimes they had a
second row of smaller holes for imprisoning the hands. They were generally placed
in the churchyard or market-place, or on the village-green : the persons confined in
them were chiefly drunkards, idlers, turbulent vagrants, &c. In more ancient times
there were stocks in the prisons, particularly in those of private establishments, such as
monastic houses, hospitals, and the like. We have already seen that, by the old laws
of the hospital of St. Nicholas at Harbledown, the inmates of either sex were, for
certain offences, liable to be confined in the stocks for as long a period of time as three
days and three nights.* Sometimes the stocks were placed beside or within the
pound, as was the case with those in which Iludibras and his squire were confined : —
" And 'twas not long before she found
Him and the stout squire in the pound,
Both coupled in enchanted tether
By farther leg behind together."
In an earlier part of the poem these stocks are described in burlesque phraseology : —
" Thus grave and solemn they marched on,
Until quite through the town th' had gone ;
At further end of which there stands
An ancient castle, that commands
* See page 34 of the present volume.
OBSOLETE PUNISHMENTS. 101
Th' adjacent parts : in all the fabric
You shall not see one stone nor a brick ;
But all of wood ; by powerful spell
Of magic made impregnable.
There's neither iron-bar nor gate,
Portcullis, chain, nor bolt, nor grate ;
And yet men durance there abide
In dungeon scarce three inches wide ;
With roof so low, that under it
They never stand, but lie or sit ;
And yet so foul, that whoso is in
Is to the middle leg in prison,
In circle magical confin'd,
With walls of subtle air and wind,
Which none are able to break thorough,
Until they're freed by head of borough."
In Foxe's " Acts and Monuments " we find two or three cuts of interiors of prisons,
with very massive stocks within, having a row of larger holes for the feet, and above
them a row of smaller ones for the hands. One of these prisons was " within the
Lolardes Tower at Paules." We learn the position of this tower from old Stow : —
"At either corner of this west end" [of St. Paul's church], he says, "is, also of
ancient building, a strong tower of stone, made for bell-towers : the one of them, to
wit, next to the palace, is at this present to the use of the same palace ; the other,
towards the south, is called the Lowlardes Tower, and hath been used as the bishop's
prison for such as were detected for opinions in religion contrary to the faith of the
church." Another similar prison, with stocks within, was also in the vicinity of
St. Paul's, and was called " The Bishop's Colehouse." Foxe (p. 1690) gives the per-
sonal narrative of John Philpots, a sufferer for his religious opinions, of which the
following is an extract. The persons who had arrested Philpots are introduced
conversing about him : —
" Cooke. He saith he is a gentleman.
" Story. A gentleman, quoth he ? He is a vile heretike knave : for an heretike is
no gentleman. Let the keeper of Lollardes Tower come in, and have him away.
" The keeper. Here, sir !
" Story. Take this man with you to the Lollards Tower, or els to the Bishops
Colehouse.
*]^ yp- ?j> sp 5jc
" After this, I with four others moe were brought to the keepers house, in Pater-
noster Piowe, where we supped And with that we were brought through Pater-
noster Bow, to my lorde of Londons Colehouse : unto the whiche is joyned a litle
blind house, with a great payre of stocks appoynted both for hand and foot, and there
we found a minister of Essex."
102
THE AllClI.EOLOGICAL ALBUM.
The punishment of the stocks, in these cases, must have been very painful. The
manner in which offenders were confined in them seems to have varied considerably.
In the woodcul accompanying the narrative just quoted, the "minister of Essex " is
Mated, with his right foot and his left hand confined. On a previous page (p. 1G08),
in " the picture describing the strayt handlyug of the close prisoners in Lollardes
Tower/' we have four men in the stocks together, two on one side and two on the
other. Of these, two have all their hands and feet confined; one has his right foot
and left hand only confined ; and the other is held by his two feet. The latter is laid
on his back with some straw under him ; of course, without the possibility of rising
or changing his position. The other three are seated on stools.
The oldest representation of stocks that we have yet met with is engraved by
Strutt (vol. ii. plate 1), from an illumination in a very early manuscript of the
Psalter (apparently of the earlier half of the twelfth century) in the library of
Trinity College, Cambridge. The cut we give in the margin is copied from
Camille Bonnard's work on the Costume
of the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth
centuries (Paris, 1830), who took it from a
miniature in a manuscript of Livy, sup-
posed to have been executed about the year
1380, now in the Ambrosian Library at
Milan. The offender is here confined only
by the right leg, and, although a chair is
placed behind him, it does not appear that
he could possibly sit down. The other
figure is evidently a spectator mocking and
insulting him.
In the year 1472, Sir William Hampton was lord-mayor of London : he appears
to have been a strict reformer of the morals of the citizens, and it is recorded of him,
among various other benefits which he conferred upon the city, that he " caused stocks
to be set in every ward to punish vagabonds." This punishment is frequently alluded
to in the satirical writers of the sixteenth and seventeenth centimes. Thomas Nashe,
in his "Strange Newes " (published in 1592), speaking of one whom he wished to
represent as holding a very low position in the town of Saffron Walden, says of him,
" He hath borne office in Walden above twenty yere since ; hoc est, had the keeping of
the towne stocke, alias the stocks."
Stocks for the hands were placed at a greater elevation, so that the sufferer, with
his legs at liberty, was held in an upright position : the delinquent, in this case, was
OBSOLETE PUNISHMENTS. 103
often subjected to the lash during his confinement, and the machine to which he was
attached received the name of a whipping-post. This is another popular punishment
now entirely obsolete. One stood beside the stocks in which Hudibras was confined,
and is thus described : —
" At th' outward wall, near which there stands
A bastile, built to imprison hands ;
By strange enchantment made to fetter
The lesser parts, and free the greater ;
For though the body may creep through,
The hands in grate are fast enough :
And when a circle 'bout the wrist
Is made by beadle exorcist,
The body feels the spur and switch,
As if 'twere ridden post by witch
At twenty-miles-an-hour pace,
And yet ne'er stirs out of the place.
On top of this there is a spire."
The punishment of the pillory appears to have been in use among the Germanic
tribes from a very early period. In the Anglo-Saxon laws of Wihtraed (of the end
of the seventh century) a punishment is mentioned called Healsfang, a word which
signifies literally a catch-neck, and which is supposed to have been a kind of pillory ;
although, even at that early period, it seems to have been regularly compensated for a
fine. Strutt (vol. i. plate 15) gives a figure, from an Anglo-Saxon MS., representing
a man fixed by the middle in a kind of forked post, the two branches of the fork being
.fastened together over his back ; and he considers this to have been the Saxon pillory,
and supposes that, while in this posture, the offender was flogged. In the early
Byzantine illuminated history of Joshua (mentioned at p. 66 of the present volume) a
number of spies are represented as being hanged by the neck in similar forked posts,
without any cord : so it is, perhaps, only the earlier form of the gallows — the real
furca, or fourche, as it was called in Latin and French.
The shape of the pillory was extremely varied : sometimes it consisted of a mere
pair of stocks, with holes for the head or hands instead of the feet, placed upon an
upright post, at an elevation to allow the offender to stand upright. This was the
form retained longest in modern times : an example of it is given by Strutt (vol. ii.
pi. 1), from a manuscript of the thirteenth century, with two sets of holes for two
persons. Douce, in his " Illustrations of Shakespeare," gives a cut from Foxe's " Acts
and Monuments," in which Robert Ockam, convicted of perjury, is placed in a pillory
of this description, with a paper over his head, on which his name is written. Douce
has given several examples of pillories of different forms. In one, taken from the Orbis
Pictus of Comenius (published in the first half of the seventeenth century), woman is
101
THE ARCHAEOLOGICAL ALBUM.
confined with her back to a post by a ring, which passes round her neck. In another,
taken from the margin of a table of the standards of weights and measures in the time
of Henry VII., preserved in the Exchequer and engraved in the " Vetusta Monumenta"
of the Society of Antiquaries, a forest aller, or regrator, is placed in a pillory consisting
of an upright column, with a slit in the middle, through which the head of the offender
protrudes, which seems to bear some resemblance to the Anglo-Saxon pillory engraved
by Strutt. Douce gives another pillory, from a manuscript of the French Chronicle
of St. Denis, preserved in the British Museum (MS. Reg. 16 G. VI.), of the
fourteenth century; it consists of a round hoop or ring, supported by posts, on a
circular substructure of stone : the hoop is pierced with holes for heads and hands, and
four persons are represented as undergoing the punishment. The same writer has also
given an engraving of an ancient pillory formerly standing in the village of Faulmy, in
Touraine, consisting of two such hoops, the upper one containing the holes for the
heads, and the lower one those for the hands. It is raised, like the former, on a
circular substructure, and is covered by a roof terminating in a spire. The accompanying
woodcut is copied from an
illuminated MS. of Froissart,
of the fifteenth century (pre-
served in the British Mu-
seum, MS. Harl- No. 4379),
and represents the execution
ofAymerigot Mancel, in the
fourteenth century. The lo-
cality is a market-place in
the French capital ; and we
see there a large and curi-
ously formed pillory, on a
rather lofty substructure, co-
vered by a roof, with a spire.
The substructure in this pil-
lory was, probably, as in many
other instances, a small prison,
often called the cage. The
frame within this pillory ap-
pears to revolve on a pivot.
x\ymcrigot Mancel was one
of the leaders of bands in the great companies which devastated France during the
OBSOLETE PUNISHMENTS.
105
English wars in the fourteenth century, and, falling into the hands of his enemies, he
was carried to Paris, and condemned as a traitor. We learn from the text of Froissart
that " he was first carried in a cart to the pillory in the market-place, and turned round
within it several times. The different crimes for which he was to receive death were
then read aloud, after which his head was cut off/' A large pillory of this description
appears to have been of frequent occurrence in towns, where it was formerly in constant
use, and where it was often necessary to " accommodate " several persons at the same
time. In London there was a pillory of this kind on Cornhill, of which we shall have
occasion to speak further on in the present article. Douce informs us that, towards
the end of the last century, there was still re-
maining in the Section des Halles, at Paris, an
old triangular building of stone, with open
Gothic windows, through which appeared an
iron circle, with holes for receiving the necks
and hands of several persons at the same time.
A square building, of a similar character, once
stood in the Cornmarket of Dublin, of which we
give a representation, copied from a drawing in a
manuscript of the beginning of the seventeenth
century, preserved in the Herald's Office, Dublin
Castle. The old books of accounts, of nearly all
our corporate towns, contain items relating to
the building or repairing of the pillory. In those
of Banbury we have the following scattered en-
tries, under the year 1556, when the cage and
pillory belonging to that town appear to have
been moved from the spot where they had pre-
viously stood, and to have been rebuilt near the
town-hall: —
" Item, received of Huge Sly, for olde tymbre of the pyllore, vj d .
" The charge.
" Imprimus, for takynge downe of the pellyry, ij d .
Payde to the carpendar for workenge of the pyllrye and att ower hall for vj . daycs
and nyghtts, vj 3 viij' 1 .
Payd to the massones for taykynge downe 'of the pyllrye and workenge downe of
the particcion of ower halle, ij s ij' 1 .
106 THE ARCHAEOLOGICAL ALBUM.
Pavel for caryuge partt of the cage fro the castell, vj d .
Payd to Northan Jhon for caryge of tymbar of the cage from the castell, vj' 1 .
Payd for v. dayes worke of ij. mencs for to make the kockcstoll, viij s iiij' 1 .
Payd to Jhon Awod for makinge of Barton stapulls and liokes for the kockestoll,
Payd for settynge up of the caggc, to Nycolas Sturgon and Jhon Carpendre,
VJ VUJ .
Payd to Thomas Yoyke for carryge of the tymbre of the cage to the court hall
from the castell, vj d .
Payd for a peace of ashe to Nycolas Sturgon for the kockstoll, vj d .
Payd for makynge the castell walle agayne that was brokon doune in havyng out
the cage, iiij' 1 .
Payd for ij. horsse lokes for the cagge dore, and the stokes, xx d ."
This would appear as if the cage, pillory, cucking-stool, and stocks, had all the
same locality, and were connected with each other ; and accordingly, in a later account-
book of the same town (for 1593), we have combined in one entry of expenses, " Item,
stocks, pillory, cooking-stoole, and tumbrell." *
The punishment by pillory was one of the manorial rights of feudal times, and it
appears, with the stocks, to have been one of the instruments for tyrannising over the
peasantry or servial class of the population. Similar modes of punishment were for-
merly practised against the slaves in America and the West Indian islands. In the
medieval towns the pillory was used chiefly against dishonest traders. A satirical poet
of the reign of Edward II. (in the " Political Songs " published by the Camden Society,
p. 345), complaining of the remissness with which justice was then executed against
offenders of this kind, exclaims : —
" But bi seint Jame of Galice, that many man hath souht !
The pilory and cucking-stol beth i-made for noht."
It appears from the statutes of the church of Anjou, promulgated in 1423 (quoted
in Ducange, v. instalare), that blasphemers and irreligious men were at that period
placed in the pillory. It was in very common use on the continent, and is frequently
mentioned in old documents. From one of these, dated in 1336 (quoted by Ducange
in x . pilorium) , we learn that it was ordered by a council that a pillory should be erected
in cemeteries and holy places (in ccemeteriis et locis sacris). In 1407, as we learn
* See Beesley's " History of Banbury," pp. 224-226, and p. 248.
OBSOLETE PUNISHMENTS. 107
from Monstrelet, during the quarrel between the rival popes, Gregory XII. (Angelo
Corrario) and Benedict XIII. (della Luna), the latter excommunicated the king of
France : — " Master Sausein, and the messenger from Pietro della Luna, who had
brought the letter and bull of excommunication to the king, with mitres on their heads
and having surcoats emblazoned with the arms of Pietro della Luna reversed, were
carried most disgracefully in a dung-cart from the Louvre to the court of the palace ;
and shortly after, near the marble tables, at the end of the steps, were set on a pillory.
They were thus exhibited for a very long time, having labels on their mitres, on which
was written, ' Disloyal traitors to the church and king/ They were then carried
back in the aforesaid cart to the Louvre." Stow, in his " Survey of London,"
gives the following quaint account of the pillory on Cornhill : — "By the west side
of the foresaid prison, then called the Tun, was a fair well of spring water, curbed
round with hard stone; but in the year 1401, the said prison-house, called the Tun,
was made a cistern for sweet water, conveyed by pipes of lead from Tiborne, and
was from thenceforth called the Conduit upon Cornhill. Then was the well planked
over, and a strong prison made of timber, called a cage, with a pair of stocks therein,
set upon it ; and this was for night-walkers. On the top of which cage was placed a
pillory, for the punishment of bakers offending in the assize of bread; for millers
stealing of corn at the mill ; for bawds, scolds, and other offenders. As in the year
1468, the 7th of Edward IV., divers persons being common jurors, such as at assizes
were forsworn for rewards, or favour of parties, were judged to ride from Newgate to
the pillory in Cornhill, with mitres of paper on their heads, there to stand, and from
thence again to Newgate; and this judgment was given by the mayor of London. In
the year 1509, the 1st of Henry VIII., Darby, Smith, and Simson, ringleaders of false
inquests in London, rode about the city with their faces to the horse tails, and papers
on their heads, and were set on the pillory in Cornhill, and after brought again to
Newgate, where they died for very shame, saith Robert Fabian. A ringleader of
inquests, as I take it, is he that, making a gainful occupation thereof, will appear on
Nisi-priuses, or he be warned, or procure himself to be warned, to come on by a tales.
He will also procure himself to be a foreman when he can, and take upon him to over-
rule the rest to his opinion : such a one shall be laboured by plaintiffs and defendants,
not without promise of rewards, and therefore to be suspected of a bad conscience. I
would wish a more careful choice of jurors to be had ; for I have known a man carted,
rung with basons, and banished out of Bishopsgate ward, and afterward in Aldgate
ward admitted to be a constable, a grand juryman, and foreman of the wardmote
inquest : what I know of the like, or worse men, proffered to the like offices, I forbear
to write, but wish to be reformed." " In the year 1510," Stow adds, "Sir Martin
108 THE ARCH.EOLOGICAL ALBUM.
Bowes, mayor, dwelling in Lombard Street, and having his back-gate opening into
Cornehill against the said conduit, minded to have enlarged the cistern thereof with a
west end, like as Robert Drope before had done towards the east: view and measure of
the plot was taken for this work ; but the pillory and cage being removed they found
the ground planched, and the well aforesaid worn out of memory, which well they
revived and restored to use : it is since made a pump. They set the pillory somewhat
west from the well, and so this work ceased."
After the accession of the Stuart dynasty to the English throne the pillory was used
as a punishment for political offences, more especially for the publication of books and
pamphlets that were considered objectionable by the ruling powers. From this period
it obtained greater celebrity, and its history is connected with the names of Prynne,
and Bastwick, and De Foe, and a host of other names which occupy a place, in one
way or other, in the annals of our country. It was now frequently exercised with great
cruelty, and was often accompanied by the amputation or mutilation of the ears of the
offender, who was sometimes attached by the ear instead of the neck. The satirical
writers of the time make frequent allusion to this punishment. Thus, in Hudibras : —
" Each window like a pillory appears,
With heads thrust through, nail'd by the ears."
And again, the same writer speaks of —
" Witches simpling, and on gibbets
Cutting from malefactors snippets,
Or from the pillory tips of ears
Of rebel saints and perjurers."
"We have seen a very curious pack of playing cards, apparently of the reign of
Charles II., now in the possession of Mrs. Fitch of Ipswich, in which every card has a
picture relating to some one of the conspiracies and other events of that period : one of
these pictures — on the knave of clubs — represents " Reddin standing in y e Pillory."
The pillory, in this picture, is of the common simple form, resembling that of Robert
Oekam already described.
"When the pillory became notorious as a political punishment, it was looked upon as
an instrument of martyrdom, and soon lost most of its terrors. De Foe, as a political
partisan who had experienced its effects, published an "Ode to the Pillory" in 1703,
which he apostrophises thus : —
" Hail, hieroglyphic state machine !
Contrived to punish fancy in :
Men that are men in thee can feel no pain,
And all thy insignificance disdain."
OBSOLETE PUNISHMENTS. 109
He describes it as serving political purposes, and punishing party and not crime,
and therefore no longer attended with shame : —
" Thou art the state -trap of the law,
But neither canst keep knaves nor honest men in awe ;
These are too hardened in offence,
And those upheld by innocence."
He goes on to enumerate some of the men who had suffered unjustly : —
" How have thy opening vacances received,
In every age, the criminals of state ?
And how has mankind been deceived,
When they distinguish crimes by fate ?
Tell us, great engine, how to understand,
Or reconcile the justice of the land ; ;
How Bastwick, Pryn, Hunt, Hollingsby, and Pye,
Men of unspotted honesty —
Men that had learning, wit, and sense,
And more than most men have had since,
Could equal title to thee claim
With Oates and Fuller, men of later fame.
Even the learned Selden saw
A prospect of thee through the law :
He had thy lofty pinnacles in view,
But so much honour never was thy due.
Had the great Selden triumph'd on thy stage,
Selden, the honour of his age,
No man could ever shun thee more,
Or grudge to stand where Selden stood before."
The pinnacles have been mentioned more than once in our foregoing descriptions
of pillories. De Foe adds: —
" Thou art no shame to truth and honesty,
Nor is the character of such defaced by thee,
Who suffer by oppressive injury.
Shame, like the exhalations of the sun,
Falls back where first the motion was begun :
And he who for no crime shall on thy brows appear,
Bears less reproach than they who placed him there."
From those who had suffered, the satirist turns to the classes of offenders who
ought to be subjected to this punishment, and he goes on to enumerate the principal
vices of his age, averring that —
" Justice is inverted, when
Those engines of the law,
Instead of pinching vicious men,
Keep honest ones in awe."
110 THE ARCHAEOLOGICAL ALBUM.
Accordingly, we find that the pillory had very little effect in stopping the months
of the crowd of libellous writers who fed upon the vicious manners and taste of the
last century. It was looked upon as little more than a sure means of acquiring
notoriety — a public advertisement. Foote alludes, more than once, to the benefits an
author or publisher derives from this source; and, in his farce of "The Patron," Puff
the publisher advises Dactyl the poet to forsake the Muses and write " a good sousing
satire:" to which the cautious author replies, "Yes, and so get cropped for a libel!"
The publisher indignantly exclaims, " Cropped ! ay, and the luckiest thing that can
happen to you ! Why, I would not give twopence for an author that is afraid of his
cars ! Writing, writing is, as I may say, Mr. Dactyl, a sort of warfare, where none
can be victor that is the least afraid of a scar. Why, zooks, sir ! I never got salt to
my porridge till I mounted at the Royal Exchange : that was the making of me.
Then my name made a noise in the world. Talk of forked hills and of Helicon !
Romantic and fabulous stuff ! The true Castalian stream is a shower of eggs, and a
pillory the poet's Parnassus."
As might be expected in this state of things, in moments of political excitement,
the pillory was sometimes a triumph rather than a punishment. We learn from the
"Gentleman's Magazine" for 1765, that "Mr. Williams, bookseller in Fleet Street,
stood on the pillory in New Palace Yard, Westminster, pursuant to his sentence, for
republishing the ' North Briton/ No. 45, in volumes. The coach that carried him
from the King's Bench prison to the pillory was No. 45. He was received by the
acclamations of a prodigious concourse of people. Opposite to the pillory were erected
four ladders, with cords running from each other, on which were hung a jack-boot, an
axe, and a Scotch bonnet.* The latter, after remaining some time, was burnt, and the
top of the boot chopped off. During his standing, also, a purple purse ornamented
with ribands of an orange colour was produced by a gentleman, who began a collection
in favour of the culprit by putting a guinea into it himself; after which, the purse
being carried round, many contributed, to the amount on the whole, as supposed, of
about two hundred guineas. Mr. Williams, on getting into the pillory and getting
out, was cheered by the spectators : he held a sprig of laurel in his hand all the time."
At a much more recent period, in March 1812, a bookseller of Ave Maria Lane,
named Eaton, an aged man, was convicted of having published the third part of Paine's
" Age of Reason," a work equally repugnant to morality with the writings of Wilkes,
and he was condemned to eighteen months' imprisonment and to be exposed once on
the pillory. He stood in the pillory on the 25th of May, and was received with de-
* All these articles bore allusion to Lord Bute, then minister.
OBSOLETE PUNISHMENTS.
Ill
monstrations of sympathy and respect, the mob taking off their hats and cheering him,
while some individuals offered him wine and refreshments.
In later times, however, the pillory has been chiefly used as a punishment for the
crime of perjury. The mutilation of the offender's ears was no longer practised; but
another practice, hardly less disagreeable, was persisted in to the last — the throwing
of rotten eggs, mud, and other articles, at the offender while in the pillory. When the
culprit had rendered himself or herself (for it was not confined to one sex) particularly
obnoxious, harder substances, and even stones, were used as missiles by the mob ; and
the results were often very painful, and in some instances fatal. This circumstance
caused so degrading and barbarous a punishment to be gradually laid aside, and it is
now many years since it was put in practice, although it was not formally abolished
until the year 1837, by the statute of 1 Vict. c. xxiii. It had previously gone out of
use in France and in Germany. In the latter country the pillory was called a pranyer;
in France it bore the medieval names of carcan and pillori.
The annexed cut represents a finger
pillory, still preserved in the church of
Ashby-de-la-Zouch, in Leicestershire. It is
three feet high, and has, as here shewn, holes
for holding at once four fingers of the hand,
or only two fingers. The diagram under-
neath shews the manner in which the finger
was confined, and it will easily be seen that it
could not be withdrawn until the pillory is
opened. If the offender were held long in this posture, the punishment must have
been extremely painful.
SKETCHES OF ANCIENT STREET ARCHITECTURE.
i
No monuments of past ages arc now disappearing so rapidly before the innovations
of modern improvements, as those masses of picturesque buildings which adorned the
streets of the medieval towns. How many plain monotonous lines of modern brick-
work have, within our own time, usurped the place of the varied outlines of the old
timber-houses, with their peaked gables and their elegant carvings ! The street
architecture of Old England appears never to have equalled in richness that of the
continental cities ; but some of our country towns still furnish occasional examples
which possess no ordinary degree of beauty, which, it is hoped, may be long preserved,
and regarded in their true light — as national monuments. The specimens given in
the plates which illustrate the present article have been chosen as combining, in some
degree, historical associations with architectural features. They will give us an oppor-
tunity of saying a few words about the localities to which they belong.
Few towns are more interesting to the antiquary than Ipswich. Situated in an
advantageous position for carrying on the trade with Flanders, it became from an early
period a rich mercantile emporium ; and some of the most profitable manufactures of
the continent were brought to it, at a subsequent period, by the Protestants who fled
from the bitter religious persecution with which they were visited at home. From its
intercourse with the Low Countries, where a considerable degree of freedom of religious
and political opinion had prevailed during the middle ages, Ipswich, with some of the
other towns on the same coast, was in advance of other parts of the island in these
matters ; and it was distinguished at the time of the reformation for the zeal of the
townsmen in the cause of protestantism, several of whom suffered martyrdom in the
reign of queen Mary. Commerce and manufactures are the certain sources of riches ;
and Ipswich once contained many fine mansions of its wealthy inhabitants, of which
there are still some remains. The two most remarkable buildings of this description
now existing are known by the names of Mr. Sparrowes House and The Tankard.
The former is a remarkably fine specimen of early Elizabethan architecture.
The subject at the foot of our first plate of Street Architecture is a view of the
southern end of St. Lawrence's Lane in Ipswich, with the corner of Mr. Sparrowe's
SATCT ESSEX.
SKETCHES OF ANCIENT STREET ARCHITECTURE. 113
House opposite. The lane in the foreground is formed of old timber-houses, and has
on the left-hand side the church of St. Lawrence, an uninteresting building of the
earlier part of the fifteenth century. Within this church is the vault of the Sparrowe
family, which is entitled, in a brief but singularly quaint inscription over the entrance,
nidus passerum — a nest of sparrows ! This family has been in possession of the old
house of which we are speaking during many generations, it being at present occu-
pied by John Eddowes Sparrowe, Esq., town-clerk of the borough. The Sparrowes
bought it of G. Copping in 1573.
Mr. Sparrowe' s House stands in the Butter Market. From a document mentioned
by Mr. Wodderspodn,* and from the initials G. C. which occur in the interior, with
the date 1567, it appears that this house was built in that year by George Copping,
who is mentioned in the document as occupying it in 1570. According to a tradition
in the family, but which is corroborated by no historical evidence, this house afforded
a shelter to Charles the Second in his wanderings after the disastrous battle of Wor-
cester, before he made his escape to the continent. The story has, perhaps, originated
in the circumstance that portraits of Charles and of one of those individuals who aided
in his escape (Mrs. Lane of Staffordshire) have been preserved in the family ; but it
was believed to have been confirmed in the year 1801 by the accidental discovery of a
secret chamber, which was immediately fixed upon as the place of the monarch's con-
cealment. This room is supposed to have been part of a chapel belonging to an older
building, which was closed up in Elizabeth's reign. It was brought to light by the
falling away of a part of the plaster of the partition, and, when first discovered, " the
floor was strewed with wooden angels and such figures as usually serve to decorate a
catholic oratory." Within this chamber are the arched timbers of a slightly orna-
mented roof.
The appearance of the external front of the house, extending in breadth about
seventy feet, is very striking, from the profusion of ornamental carving with which it
is covered. The windows of the basement story are separated by carved pilasters and
panels, and crowned with strings of pendent fruit. The second story has four bay-
windows in front, and one at the end looking into St. Stephen's Lane, which is seen
opposite St. Lawrence's Lane. Under the front windows are carved panels, repre-
senting respectively emblematical figures of Europe, Asia, Africa, and America, accom-
panied with their several attributes; which have been supposed to intimate that the
trade of Ipswich was carried through the four quarters of the globe. The spaces between
these windows are covered with sculpture, representing animals, fruit, and flowers,
* In a carefully compiled " Guide to Ipswich," pub-
lished in 1S42, and in his " Historic Sites of Suffolk."
A cut of the front of Mr. Sparrowe's House is given in
the former work.
Q
I I I THE AUCIIjEOLOGICAL ALBUM
with wreaths of roses and various other devices. Among the ornaments on the corre-
sponding part of the house looking towards St. Stephen's Lane, is a representation of
Atlas supporting the globe j and below this a group, supposed to represent the first
Eclogue of Virgil — a shepherd, surrounded by his flock, sitting under a spreading
tree (the pattda fagus of the poet); while another shepherd, leading a flock of sheep,
approaches him, with his hat in one hand and his crook in the other. It is suggested
that this pastoral scene was designed in part as an emblem of the extensive wool trade
then carried on in Ipswich. The whole extent of the front and end of the house is
(ion mil by a very wide projecting platform, above which rise from the roof four attic
windows, corresponding with the windows below, with sculptured figures of cupids in
liferent attitudes under their gables. Extensive gardens and other premises were
ormerly attached to the back of the house.
The rooms in the interior of Mr. Sparrowe's House are no less richly ornamented
han the exterior walls. On the first floor a fine room, forty-six feet long by twenty-
one feet wide, extends over the whole front part of the building, and is lighted by the
five bay-windows already mentioned. The ceiling is traversed by heavy beams of oak,
and divided into compartments ornamented with wreaths of fruit, the corners containing
shields bearing the crests of the family. The dining-room is panelled with dark oak,
beautifully carved. The fireplace is ornamented with wreaths of vine and fruits, with
the arms and crest of the Sparrowe family in the centre, and on each side fanciful
designs in wood of a lighter colour than the panels on which they are placed. The
beams of the ceiling, as well as the wainscot and door, are richly carved. This room
measures twenty-two feet by twenty-one. A bed-chamber on the first floor also exhibits
some good specimens of carving, the ceiling being ornamented with fleurs-de-lys and
the family badges of the Sparrowes. Several old portraits of members of the Sparrowe
family and others are contained in this house, most of them connected with tradi-
tions preserved in the family. Among them are original portraits of James I., of his
favourite Villiers duke of Buckingham, of queen Henrietta Maria, and of Charles II.
The Tankard, to which we have alluded above, and which was for some time occu-
pied as a public-house, is chiefly remarkable for a fine wainscotted room on the
ground-floor. This house was the residence of Sir Anthony Wingficld in the reign of
Henry VIII., whose arms are still visible among the ornaments of the ceiling of the
room alluded to, which is twenty-seven feet long, sixteen feet nine inches wide,
and nine feet five inches high. The ceiling, intersected in its length by one large
beam and in its breadth by two smaller transverse ones, is divided into ninety-six
panels, each panel bordered with a band, and alternately emblazoned with a coat of
arms, or occupied by a carved pendent, projecting six inches from the ceiling, and
SKETCHES OF ANCIENT STREET ARCHITECTURE.
115
terminating in a point tipped with a leaf or rose. The oak wainscot of the walls is
beautifully carved in festoons of flowers and various devices, formerly gilt, but now
painted blue and white. Over the fireplace is a remarkable carved bas-relief, which,
like the other ornaments of this apartment, has suffered much from mutilation. The
old tradition of the place made this, very absurdly, to be a representation of the battle
of Bosworth Field; but it has been supposed, with more probability, to represent the
judgment of Paris, carved by some workman who was acquainted with the outline of
the story, but who was not sufficiently well informed to avoid some singular anachron-
isms in costume, &c. This explanation is certainly more in bearing with the taste for
classical subjects which prevailed in the sixteenth century.*
Many other houses in Ipswich contain, externally or internally, fragments of carving
of considerable antiquity and interest ; and there are a number of curious ornamental
corner-posts. On one of these is seen the effigy of queen Elizabeth, with a figure
equipped as Mars, and a cupid. On an inn called the Half-Moon appears a somewhat
grotesque carving of the old fable of the fox preaching to the geese, one of the never-
failing shafts of satire against the monks and the medieval clergy. The town is full of
remains of Tudor and Elizabethan architecture.
The range of buildings represented in the first sketch on the same plate may be
reckoned among the most interesting remains of the old street architecture of Saffron
Walden in Essex, and appear to be of the end of the reign of James I. or beginning
of that of his successor, Charles. Saffron Walden was formerly a town of much more
importance than at present; it received its name from, and owed its prosperity to,
the cultivation of saffron — a plant used extensively as a medicinal ingredient in the
olden time, when it was believed to possess very great healing virtues. A few years ago
this town was full of interesting old timber-houses, but many of them have disappeared,
and others are gradually disappearing, to make way for a more convenient style of
building. But while the houses are improving in internal comforts, the picturesque
character of the streets is entirely destroyed. Over one of the chamber-windows of the
house represented in our plate is the date 1625, with the letters I. W. These initials are
found on other houses in the town known to have belonged to a family of the name of
Wale, once of great respectability in Saffron Walden, but now extinct. On one of the
gables, as shewn in the plate, appears the date 1676 ; when, probably, the house
underwent extensive repairs. It appears to have been used as a public-house from a
period very near approaching to that in which it was built, and as early as 1646 it was
* An engraving, somewhat rudely executed, of this
carving, is given in the sixty-sixth volume of the
" Gentleman's Magazine," drawn, apparently, when it
was less mutilated than at present. A view of the in-
terior of the apartment is given in the "Gentleman's
Magazine" for 1831.
Ufi
THE AHCILEOEOGICAL ALBUM.
the principal inn in the town, and known by the same name which it bears at present
— The Sun. In that year Oliver Cromwell, who was occupied in this district, made it
his head-quarters. The external character of this house differs considerably from the
older Elizabethan buildings. The ornaments are no longer carved in wood, but they
are moulded in plaster-work : they arc more grotesque than elegant. It is impossible,
at the present day, to say what the builder intended to represent by the two armed
figures over the gateway leading into the stable-yard; but they arc of rather gigantic
proportions, and the popular tradition of the place has designated them by the titles of
Gog and Magog.
The first subject on our second plate of Street Architecture is taken from the
ancient city of Norwich. It represents a picturesque group of buildings, apparently
of the seventeenth century, known by the name of Rosemary Lane, and opening
towards the church of St. Mary. This church is remarkable as possessing one of the
curious round towers which have been described in a former article in the present
volume.
Our last sketch of Street Architecture is taken from a district of the metropolis
which has been long known to fame by the name of Spitalfields, and presents a
style, not unpicturesquc in some instances, which is peculiar to this locality. Spital-
fields owes its population, in a great measure, to the horrible persecutions of the
Protestants in France at the period of the revocation of the Edict of Nantes. In early
times this district appears to have been one of the burial-places of Roman London, if
we may judge from the extensive discoveries of Roman sepulchral deposits, discovered
there in the time of the historian Stow.* At the end of the twelfth century, a small
priory and hospital was founded near the spot now occupied by Spital Square. In the
churchyard of this priory (the present Square) was subsequently erected a pulpit cross,
in which the famous Spital Sermons were originally preached. In 1534< the priory
was dissolved, and the site was given to a gentleman of the name of Vaughan. The
sermons, however, continued to be preached in the pulpit; a house was built for the
* " On the east side of this churchyard," says Stow,
" lieth a large field, of old time called Lolesworth, now
Spittle field, which about the year 1576 was broken up
for clay to make brick; in the digging whereof many
earthen pots, called urntv, were found full of ashes and
burnt bones of men, to wit, of the Romans that in-
habited here : for it was the custom of the Romans to
burn their dead, to put their ashes in an urn, and then
bury the same, with certain ceremonies, in some field
appointed for that purpose near unto their city. Every
of these pots had in them, with the ashes of the dead.
one piece of copper money, with the inscription of the
emperor then reigning: some of them were of Claudius,
some of Vespasian, some of Nero, of Anthoninus Pius,
of Trajanus, and others. Besides those urns, many
other pots were there found, made of a white earth, with
long necks and handles, like to our stone jugs : these
were empty, but seemed to be buried full of some liquid
matter long since consumed and soaked through ; for
there were found divers phials and other fashioned
glasses, some most cunningly wrought, such as I have
not seen the like, and some of crystal ; all which had
c
p
c
—
—
5
SKETCHES OF ANCIENT STREET ARCHITECTURE.
117
accommodation of the city authorities who came as auditors, and other houses were
gradually erected around the spot. The pulpit was subsequently destroyed in the
time of the civil wars ; and the sermons were preached at St. Bride's church from the
restoration to the year 1797, and since that time at Christ Church in Newgate Street.
Even in Stow's time, and long after, the whole of the ground to the east, which
was properly called Spital Fields, and which originally bore the name of Lolesworth
Fields, was literally open ground covered with grass; part of it was granted by
Henry VIII. on a lease to the Artillery Company, and was known as the " Old
Artillery Ground " as late as the time of Charles II. It would appear that, at the end
of the sixteenth century, the buildings which occupied the site of the Spital were places
of no very good report. The satirist Nashe, in his tract entitled " Have with you to
Saffron Walden," published in 1596, says, " The third brother (John) had almost
as ill a name as the Spittle in Shorditch." Some remains of the old priory appear
to have been standing so late as the beginning of the last century.
It would appear that, about the middle of the seventeenth century, the district of
Spitalfields was the residence of astrologers and fortune-tellers, and that fairs were
held there. A satirical tract against the almanack-makers was published in 1652,
under the title of " A Faire in Spittle Fields, where all the Knick-knacks of Astrology
arc exposed to open sale." It appears, also, by the map of London at the time of the
great fire of 1666, that the field properly so called was then nearly surrounded by a
boundary of houses. Shortly after this latter period the French Protestants began to
fly from the persecutions which threatened them in their own country, and a large
portion of them being weavers, they brought that manufacture into England, and esta-
blished themselves in great numbers in the Spital field. In 1687, two years after the
breaking out of the great persecution consequent on the repeal of the Edict of Nantes,
there are said to have been between thirteen and fourteen thousand of the refugees in
London alone. Strype, in his additions to Stow, says : — " Spittlcfields and parts ad-
jacent, of later times, became a great harbour for poor Protestant strangers, Walloons
water in them, nothing differing in clearness, taste, or
savour from common spring water, whatsoever it was at
the first. Some of these glasses had oil in them, very
thick and earthy in savour ; some were supposed to
have balm in them, but had lost the virtue. Many of
these pots and glasses were broken in cutting of the
clay, so that few were taken up whole. There were
also found divers dishes and cups of a fine red-coloured
earth, which shewed outwardly such a shining smooth-
ness as if they had been of coral ; those had in the
bottoms Roman letters printed : there were also lamps
of white earth and red, artificially wrought with divers
antiques upon them, some three or four images made of
white earth, about a span long each of them : one, I
remember, was of Pallas ; the rest I have forgotten. I
myself have reserved, among divers of those antiquities
there, one urn, with the ashes and bones, and one pot
of white earth very small, not exceeding the quantity of
a quarter of a wine pint, made in shape of a hare
squatted upon her legs, and between her ears is the
mouth of the pot. There hath also been found in the
same field divers coffins of stone," &c.
1J8 THE ARC IDEOLOGICAL ALBUM.
and Frinch ; who, as in former days, so of late, have been found to become exiles from
their own country for their religion, and for the avoiding cruel persecution. Here
they have found quiet and security, and settled themselves in their several trades and
occupations — weavers especially \ whereby God's blessing is surely not only brought
upon the parish, by receiving poor strangers, but also a great advantage hath accrued
to the whole nation, by the rich manufacture of weaving silks, stuffs, and camlets,
which art they brought along with them." A considerable portion of the present
population is descended from the French emigrant families.
Our sketch represents what must have been some of the original buildings which
received the first Protestant refugees : they form the northern end 6f a street called
White's Row. The houses on the right-hand side form one side of a square mass of
buildings lying between White's Row and another small street, called Dorset Street.
One house in Dorset Street bears the date 1675, which was probably the year when the
whole pile of buildings was erected. They arc of bricks and wood, and differ from
those of the other streets in having fewer of the broad lines of windows in the upper
Btories, which serve to throw light on the work of the weavers. A considerable body
of Jews is now intermixed with the population of this neighbourhood, and the small
and crowded streets have little to invite the visitor, except their historical associations
and the important branch of national industry which has so long flourished there.
FW.FairhoLt.F S A..
.AMCIElfT Pi 'WIS
NT
PATINE
IN CLIFF CHURCH, KENT.
The fine old church of Cliff, at a short distance from Rochester, stands in a bold
situation on the brow of the chalk cliffs which overlook the extensive marshes known
as the Cliff Marshes, and commands a view of the wide estuary of the Thames. The
parish formerly belonged to the priory of Canterbury, and it was on that account
named Bishop's Cliff or Clive. It is situated in the hundred of Hoo, and is sometimes
called Cliff at Hoo. Many antiquaries have supposed it to be the place called by the
Anglo-Saxons Clofesho, or Cleofesho, at which so many councils were held in the
earlier ages of the Anglo-Saxon church.
The church of Cliff is a massive building, in the form of a cross ; its windows were
formerly adorned with a profusion of stained glass, much of which has now dis-
appeared; but there are still many interesting remains in the windows of the chancel.
On one of the walls are some fragments of a painting representing the Day of Judgment.
There are several old monuments in the church, among which is an early coffin-shaped
slab, with the inscription, —
" 3)one la femme 31oI)an IRam gijst pci
IBcu Be sa alme tit mcrct." *j«
There remain also six wooden stalls, which were formerly appropriated to monks of
Christ Church, Canterbury, who visited or resided at their manor of Cliff.
The elegant patine represented in our engraving is preserved with the communion
plate. It is six inches in diameter, of silver gilt, with the following inscription round
the margin, in characters apparently of the latter part of the fourteenth century, or
possibly of the fifteenth : —
" 33cnct({cambs ^pattern ct JFtltbm ctom sptritb sancto."
In the centre a medallion, in bine and green enamel, represents the Father seated
120
THE ARCHAEOLOGICAL ALBUM.
on a throne, with his arms extended, and supporting a cross on which is affixed the
Son. This patinc has, in recent times, been used for collecting money at the offering,
or at the church-door j by which the enamel has been destroyed, leaving only enough
to indicate the colour and material of which it was composed.
.Most of our readers will remember the beautiful passage in Shakespeare: —
" How sweet the moonlight sleeps upon this bank !
Here will we sit, and let the sounds of music
Creep in our cars ; soft stillness and the night
Hecome the touches of sweet harmony.
Sit, Jessica : look how the floor of heaven
Is thick inlaid with patines of bright golds
There's not the smallest orb, which thou behold'st,
But in his motion like an angel sings,
Still quiring to the young-eyed cherubins :
Such harmony is in immortal souls."
Merchant of Venice, act v. sc. 1 .
The patine and the chalice were the two vessels used in Roman Catholic times to
administer the consecrated bread and wine in the holy sacrament, and were always of
gold or of silver gilt, which explains the poet's simile. They were often richly orna-
mented. In the " Provincial " of Lyndwood, a compendium of the Canons and
Constitutions of the Romish Church in England, it is particularly ordered that the
eucharist shall not be consecrated in any other metal except gold or silver; and it
is interdicted to any bishop to consecrate tin.*
* " Precipimus ne consecrctur cukaristia nisi calice
de aturo vel argento ; et ne stanncum calicem aliquis
episcopus ammodo benedicat intcrdicimus." — Lynd-
wood, " Provinciale," lib. iii. tit. 23, De celebratione
missarum. The patine is, of course, included as be-
longing to the chalice.
ON THE EARLY USE OF FIRE-ARMS.
By the kindness of Lord Albert Conyngharn we are enabled to give an engraving
of an early and beautifully ornamented gun-lock, recently purchased by his lordship at
Warwick. It is of the kind called wheel-locks, and was placed temporarily in a socket
or groove, in the stock of the gun, at the moment of firing. There can be little doubt
that it is of Italian workmanship ; and the device of the dragon swallowing a child,
which is repeated in different parts of the ornaments, seems to prove that it was made
for some member of the Italian family of Visconti, of whom this was the badge. The
same device is found on the monument of Bernabo Visconti at Milan, engraved in the
eighteenth volume of the " Archseologia."
The histoiy of the introduction of fire-arms into Europe is a subject by no means
devoid of interest, and, at the same time, one which has been thrown into great con-
fusion by some writers who have blindly followed old prejudices, and by others who
have argued upon passages of writers who were not strictly contemporary with the
events they relate. Historians like Froissart, describing events which happened some
years previously, were (in that age particularly) too apt to apply to them the manners
and usages of the time in which they were writing. A very learned and careful
French antiquary, M. Lacabane, has recently collected together some most important
contemporary documents relating to the early use of gunpowder in France,* of which
we shall make free use in the following observations.
There can be no doubt that the use of gunpowder in Europe was derived from the
Arabs, but it is not so easy to determine the exact source from whence they borrowed
the invention. Even among the Arabs it appears to have been long used as an ex-
plosive agent, before its projectile force was understood. Recent researches seem to
leave little room for doubt that the celebrated Greek fire was a composition closely re-
sembling, if not identical with, gunpowder. M. Reinaud has discovered, among the
manuscripts of the Royal Library at Paris, a treatise in Arabic, written at the end of
* In an essay published in a recent number of that
very interesting and valuable antiquarian periodical, the
" Bibliotheque de l'Ecole des Chartes," the publication
of which has now been successfully continued through
several years : it is supported by the literary contri-
butions of some of the best antiquaries in France.
L22
I'll 1 : Ua its of the area of the ancient city ; but the attempt which has been
made to draw a plan of the ancient streets from these uncertain and indistinct indica-
tions can be viewed as no more than a vain exercise of the ingenuity. Fragments of
large columns lay in the immediate vicinity of the farm-house, and seem to indicate
that there also stood an important public building.
Without the walls, on the north side, arc the remains of an amphitheatre, of con-
siderable extent, but neither so large nor so perfect as the one at Dorchester. The
embankment surrounding the arena is thickly set with trees, which have probably con-
tributed much to its decay. A view of the interior of this amphitheatre is given in
our plate.
Fragments of pottery, tiles, &c., are scattered over the surface of the ground in the
whole area enclosed by the walls; and many articles of various kinds, with a great
number of coins, have been dug up at different times. In the last century, a brass
eagle found here was exhibited before the Society of Antiquaries, and supposed to
belong to a Roman military standard. A gold ring, with an inscription, and an
intaglio representing Venus Urania, was also found at Silchester sonic years ago.
SILCHESTER. 153
Several bronze figures have likewise been dug up at different times. Mr. Barton, the
present occupier of the farm, possesses an interesting collection of Roman antiquities
found in Silchester, consisting of a number of curious and elegant fibulas, two of which
are beautifully ornamented with blue and red enamel, a few stili and other implements,
the weight of a steelyard representing the bust of a man, several weapons, and a large
collection of coins, ranging through the whole period of the Roman occupation of the
island, but those of Severus and his family are by much the most numerous. Two
mutilated stones, bearing very important votive inscriptions, have also been found at
this place. The first, dug up in the year 1732, is a dedication to the Hercules of the
Segontiaci, which proves the identity of Silchester with what the pretended Nennius
calls Caer Segeint. This inscription ran as follows : —
deo • HER
SAEGON
T ■ TAMMON
SAEN • TAMMON
VITALIS
HONO
Which has been read, Deo Herculi Sagontiacorum Titus Tammonius Scenii Tammonii
Vitalis filius ob honorem, i.e. Titus Tammonius, the son of Ssenius Tammonius
Vitalis, dedicated this in honour of the God Hercules of the Ssegontiaci. The other,
found about the year 1741, is dedicated to Julia Domna, the second wife of the emperor
Severus, and the mother of Caracalla and Geta, and, as she died about a.d. 217, it
proves that this city existed long before the time of its pretended founder, Constantius.
Two of the titles here given to the empress, Mater Senatus and Mater Castrorum, are
found on medals.
ivliae • AVG
MATRI • SE
NATVS • ET
CASTROR"
M. SABINVS
VICTOR ' OB
Which may be read, Julia Augusta matri senatus et castrorum M. Sabinus Victorinus
ob honorem posuit, i.e. Marcus Sabinu Victorinus placed this in honour of Julia the
empress, the mother of the senate and of the army.
We have already alluded to one local tradition relating to Silchester; there is
another which deserves notice. The peasantry of the neighbourhood call (or at least
they did so in Camden's time) the Roman coins found here Onion's pennies. In the
eastern wall, some distance to the south of the church, there is a cavern or arch called
popularly Onions Hole, because, according to the legend, a great giant, who dwelt in
ancient times in this city, had made a dwelling in this spot.
x
I5t THE ARCHAEOLOGICAL ALBUM.
The church of Silchester, which appears in our first view, possesses outwardly
few attractions, having Urn altered and partially rebuilt at a period when good
taste was nut predominant. The ancient door, which, with the original portion of
the church, belongs to the style generally termed early English, is ornamented with a
simple dog-tooth moulding. The arches of the chancel spring from ponderous oc-
tagonal pillars, very slightly ornamented, and which appear to have been based upon
the heavy foundation-stones removed from the adjoining walls. The font, placed on
similar stones, is octagonal, and quite plain. The windows contain remains of fine
painted glass, upon one fragment of which may be distinguished the head of a bishop,
behind which appear the towers of a city. It seems to have been a work of the fifteenth
century. The wooden screen of the chancel, apparently executed about the same time,
is richly carved with figures of angels bearing scrolls, interspersed with the pomegranate.
The pulpit is of carved oak, and bears the inscription —
THE GUIFTE OF JAMES HORE, GENT. 1639.
The church contains some memorials of this family. In the south wall is a very
interesting monument to a lady, apparently of the reign of Edward I. or of his suc-
cessor. She lies beneath a low pointed arch, her head supported by angels, and a dog
at her feet. The figure is much mutilated, and, with the whole tomb, has been covered
with whitewash ; but upon the wall at the back of the recess are fragments of a painting
in distemper, representing the lady whose effigy is below, in an attitude of prayer,
borne up by angels. In the churchyard are two monuments of an earlier and still
more interesting character, of which we intend to give an engraving and description in
a subsequent paper. They are in a great state of decay, but deserve a more honourable
resting-place within the walls of the church.
A court fool, from MS. Reg. 15 e. IV. (loth century).
THE BURLESQUE FESTIVALS OF THE MIDDLE AGES.
In the first ages of Christianity, when — a persecuted sect — it trusted to the force of
individual conviction for its converts, these latter, in joining the religion of the Saviour,
gave up at once all their old superstitions and prejudices. But when, in course of time,
it became established as the religion of the state, the mass of the people soon disbe-
lieved in the power of their old gods, and accepted the faith of the emperor. Churches
took the place of temples, and the statues of their idols were thrown down and broken
without much repugnance. But there was a host of old superstitions, customs, and
observances, intimately connected with the old idolatry of the people, which were so
deeply rooted in their habits and social life, that it was not an easy thing to persuade
converts made under such circumstances to consent to their abolition. In fact, the
Christian teachers found an advantage in shewing forbearance in the great religious
revolution in which they were engaged, and they were wise in not shocking by a
too abrupt change the deeply rooted prejudices of so many ages. It was their policy
to substitute gradually Christian festivals in the place of pagan ceremonies ; and thus,
amid the most riotous feasts and processions of the ancient ceremonial, new names and
new objects kept the popular mind fixed to a better faith. In course of time, however,
as the church itself became corrupt and its ministers venal, these popular excesses,
15G
THE ARCH/EOLOGICAL ALBUM.
which had at first been tolerated from necessity, were encouraged by the very persons
whose duty it was to discountenance them; and, during the middle ages, at certain
periods of the year, even the holiest places became the scene of riotous festivals,
which recalled in many of their characteristics the most licentious of the feasts of
antiquity. It is true that these pseudo-Christian ceremonies were condemned by the
better and wiser of the ecclesiastics, and that they were repeatedly proscribed by the
councils of the church ; but these condemnations were either merely formal, or they
were rendered ineffectual by the supineness and backwardness of those who ought to
have put them in force. Too congenial with the general laxity of manners which
characterised the feudal period, these ceremonies increased in force and intensity
during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, until they became so great an object
of public scandal that they could no longer be tolerated. Yet in Catholic countries,
such as France, and Italy, and Spain, they continued to be observed in a suppressed
form until the great dislocation of society produced by the French revolution at
the close of the eighteenth century.
Among the Romans the latter part of the month of December was devoted to the
noisy and licentious festivities of the Saturnalia. In the earliest times of Rome this
festival had been restricted to one day in the middle of the month ; but the period of
celebration was afterwards extended to seven days, and it was followed by a multitude
of other festivals of the same character, called, from the circumstance of their com-
mencing in the Calends of January, the ferice Kalendarum, which were continued during
the month of January,* and were but just closed at the time of the somewhat analogous
festival of the Lupercals in February. t This answers precisely to the period extending
from the festivities of Christmas to the time of the carnival of modern times, of wdiich
the Roman festivities were undoubtedly the prototype. The resemblance between the
old and the modern observances is too strongly marked to be easily mistaken. During
the seven days of the Saturnalia masters were placed on an equality with their slaves,
and all classes and ranks and even sexes were confounded together by disguises and
masks, under cover of which were enacted a thousand different follies and extravagances.
These were precisely the characteristics of the joyous festivals of the middle ages. J
* " Assunt feriae quas indulget magna pars mensis Jano
dicati." — Macrobius, Saturnul. lib. i. c. 2.
f A curious coincidence is perhaps worth pointing
out. It is well known that at the Lupercalia the Luper-
cals ran about the streets in a state of nudity : a similar
practice characterised the Saturnalia. A writer of the
sixteenth century, speaking of the festive practices of
the Franconians at the period of the carnival, says, —
" Atque ne pudor obset, qui se ludicro illi committunt,
facies lams obducunt, sexum et setatem mentientes viri
nudierum vestimenta mulieres virorum induunt. Qui-
dam satyras, aut malos dsemones potius, repraesentare
volentes, minio se aut atramento tingunt, habituque
nefando deturpant : alii nudi disrurrentcs Lupercos agunt,
a quibus ego annuum suum delirandi morem ad nos de-
fluxisse existimo." — Jo. Boemus Auban., Mores, Le-
ges, et Ritus omnium Gentium. 12mo. 1570. P. 277-
% Lucian, Saturnal. p. 608, gives the following sum-
THE BURLESQUE FESTIVALS OF THE MIDDLE AGES.
157
A theological writer who lived in 1182, Beleth, informs us that, in his time, in the
archbishopric of Rheims and in other dioceses in France, at the festival of Christmas
the archbishops and bishops and other high ecclesiastics went to play at various games
with the inferior clergy in the religious houses.* We trace this custom among the
clergy, called by Beleth Decembrian liberty, in other writers. In the Saturnalia a
mock king was elected by lot, who ruled at the festival. The practice of choosing
mock officers, under the names in different places of kings, popes, abbots, &c, was
retained in all the burlesque festivals of the middle ages : in some parts a king is still
chosen on the twelfth night. Public gambling was allowed at the Saturnalia. It is
probable from the extract from Beleth that it was practised even by ecclesiastics at
Christmas in former days, and from this custom we seem to have derived that of
playing at cards at that period of the year. It is not necessary to point out the
libertinism of speech and action which characterised the old as well as the modern
Saturnalia.
These latter were chiefly prevalent in the countries which have derived their
language and customs from the Romans, such as the French, Italians, and Spaniards,
and are not found to have prevailed so generally among the purer Germanic tribes.
The English festival of Christmas is of Saxon origin, and consisted chiefly in eating and
drinking ; the mummery and masquerading, as well as the few burlesque festivals we
shall have to notice as belonging to England in the middle ages, having been apparently
imported from France. On the Continent we may trace the Saturnalian observances
and ceremonies almost without interruption from the Roman era. Tertullian, in his
treatise De Idololatria, accuses the Christians of his time of participating in these pagan
festivals. From the sixth to the twelfth century, and even later, we find the eccle-
siastics and the canons of the church perpetually denouncing the pagan ceremonies
observed at "the Calends of January ;" and the words they use shew us that, during
this long period, the Saturnalia of the ancients were observed with all their extravagance
and licentiousness by the Christians. It will be sufficient to quote an instance or two.
St. Eligius, who died in 659, forbade the exercise of " wicked or ridiculous practices on
mary of the practices at the Saturnalia : — ~2.novha.lov ph,
ohVi ayogouov oioix-nffacSon p.oi n , L ^-i
ROLA.O bi_Li^
THE BURLESQUE FESTIVALS OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 165
Paris in 1837, entitled "Monnaies inconnues des Eveques des Innocens," &c, to
which we are indebted for some of the materials of the present article. At the abbey
of Corbie the expenses of the feast were paid by the prince of the Innocents, as he was
called there (festi Innocentium, cujus confraternitatis eodem anno (1516) eram princeps).
These expenses were so great, that the monk who is here speaking was obliged to sell
a house to pay for them. In 1479 the chapter of Rheims agreed to pay the expenses
of the feast of the bishop of Innocents, only on condition that they should not carry
masks, that trumpets should not be sounded, and that they should not ride on horseback
about the town.
There was a point of resemblance between the medieval and the classic Saturnalia
which, until recently, has escaped observation : in the Roman festivals a sort of money,
supposed to have been of thin copper or lead, was circulated under the name o£ sigilla; and
these sigilla, during the festival, formed an extensive article of commerce. According
to Macrobius, the sale of the sigilla {sigillariorum celebritas) lasted during seven days;
the bishops of the Innocents and of fools had in like manner a sort of money struck in
lead, a great quantity of which has been of late years discovered in France. The author
of the work on this subject just quoted (Monnaies inconnues des Eveques des Innocens, des
Fous) has given engravings of upwards of a hundred specimens, bearing appropriate
types and legends, from which we give a selection in the accompanying plate. Some
of them bear on the reverse crosses of a very elegant design.
The first of these, fig. 1 of our plate, has, on the obverse, a grotesque personage,
wearing a capuchon, and mounted on an ass, with the legend monoie . de levesq
inoct ►£< ; on the reverse, a cross, with the same inscription in Latin, moneta . epi .
INNOCENTVM^.
Fig. 2, found at Amiens, is curious for its early date. On one side is a king, with
his left hand extended over the letters A and and what appears like a musical note ;
with the inscription av : gre : dediev : & : abo'droit, i.e. au gre de Dieu et a bon
droit. On the reverse is the inscription mon . nova . epi . inoc . a . 1499, i.e.
moneta nova episcopi Innocentium anno 1499.
Fig. 3, also found at Amiens, appears to be of a date anterior to the sixteenth
century. On one side a soldier is represented slaying a child, one of the ' Innocents/
with the legend moneta : epi : innocent; on the reverse is a plain cross, with two
mitres and two fleurs-de-lis, and the inscription in French, monoie : dv : vesq. :
des : in.
Fig. 4 is the money of the archbishop of the Innocents of the parish of St. Firmin
at Amiens. On one side appears a bishop in the act of giving his benediction,
moneta . archiepi : sen : firmini ; on the other are two personages, one of
1GG
THE ARCHAEOLOGICAL ALHU.M.
whom is dressed as a fool, with the inscription, NICOLAVS . gavdram . arciiiepvs .
1 520.
Pig. 5 relates to a man of the name of Turpin, who was archbishop of the Innocents
at Amiens (where most of these pieces are found), apparently in the parish of St.
l'liniin. On one side we have a bishop, as before, with the inscription, moneta .
A.RCHIEPI . TVRPIN1 . a" . 1518. On the reverse the inscription, faisons : ces :
gros : par : tovt : covin r, surrounding a rebus (a thing much in vogue in France
in the sixteenth century), consisting of the words po' nos, with three pots of the kind
called marmites, between the letters te and nir, which makes the second line of the
couplet, —
" Faisons ces gros partout courir,
Pour nos marmites entretenir."
A gros was a kind of coin.
Fig. G bears on the obverse two figures of fools, with the inscription, maistre .
IACOB1 . hode . epi . scti . o ►£< , the last letters apparently designating the parish
of St. Germain ; and, on the reverse, the inscription, sit : nomen : dni : bene-
dictvm : 1515.*
Fig. 9 has again a bishop on one side, with the inscription, sire . gvillamme .
gervois. ; on the other three fools dancing, perhaps an allusion to one of the most
essential acts of the feast of fools, with the inscription, prvdence . a . les . bons .
i (insole, i.e. prudence has good counsels.
Fig. 10 has on one side a shield with a chevron, and the inscription, moneta .
nova . ste . moe . . . 1542. On the reverse is a fool, with a bishop on a scaffold,
surrounded by the inscription, anthonnivs . talmar . FR. . . The last letters
are rather indistinct, and should probably be ep.
Fig. 11 has on one side a figure representing St. Jerome, with the inscription,
saint ierome; on the other the inscription, moneta . episcopi . inocek|-<.
Fig. 12 has on the obverse a bishop, with a nimbus and double cross, and the date
1549, surrounded by the inscription, mo . anselmi . catrovllard . arcepi. On the
* It may be observed, en passant, that some of these
burlesque coins bear a striking resemblance to the pil-
L'riin-' ml'ii- described in a former page of the present
volume (p. 21), and of which a more detailed account
will be found in Mr. Roach Smith's "Collectanea Anti-
qna." The pretended head of St. John the Baptist was a
great object of pilgrimage in the cathedral of Amiens.
Two of the signs of this relic, apparently as old as the
thirteenth or fourteenth century, are engraved on our
plate ( 1 1 tr - . 7 and R) ; the first, in which the priest ap-
pears shewing the face of St. John, lias the inscription,
HIC EST SIGNUM : FACIEI BEATI IOHAVNIS BAV-
tiste ; the other represents the face itself, and has
the inscription, sain : ieiian : baddiden : damies.
Figs. 13 and 14 on our plate are similar signs of St.
Eloi of Noion, who was also the object of pilgrimage.
They represent St. Eloi (or Eligius) receiving an offering
of a serpent, or a cierge in the form of one ; in one the
saint is working at his anvil. -The inscription on the
first is SIGILLVM . SANCTI . ELIGII . NOVIOM KNSIS
episcopi ; that on the other, s . be . . ti . ELIGII .
noviomensis . episcopi.
THE BURLESQUE FESTIVALS OF THE MIDDLE AGES.
167
reverse is represented Truth, as a female seated and looking into a mirror, with a figure
of a fool standing and holding some object which looks somewhat like a harp. The
inscription is svper . oia . vincit . Veritas.
Since the publication of the work above-mentioned, Dr. Rigollot has discovered
a considerable number of new types, among which one of the most curious is a
leaden coin of the pope of fools, communicated by this scholar to the " Revue Numisma-
tique" for 1842, p. 55, a representation of which we give in our margin. It is of
the fifteenth or of the earlier part of
the sixteenth century. On one side
is the legend, moneta . nova . adri-
ani . stvltorv . pape, the last e
being in the field of the piece, on
which is represented the pope, with
his double cross and tiara, with a fool
in full costume approaching his bauble
to the pontifical cross, and two persons behind, who form part of his escort. On the
reverse is a " mother-fool," with her bauble, attended by a grotesque person with a
cardinal's hat, with the oft-recurring legend, stvltorv . infinitvs . est . nvmervs.
We have some traces of the feast of Innocents and of that of fools in England, but
they are rare and not very definite. The rex stultorum in the church of Beverley was
prohibited as early as 1391. There was a child-bishop at St. Paul's church in London,
who went in procession with songs, &c. about the city, and visited the houses of the
citizens. These ceremonies are thus described in a royal proclamation issued in
1542 : — " Whereas heretofore dyvers and many superstitious and chyldysh observances
have been used, and yet to this day are observed and kept in many and sundry places
of this realm upon St. Nicholas, St. Catherines, St. Clements, and Holy Innocents,
and such like holydaies ; children be strangelie decked and apparayled to counterfeit
priests, bishops, and women, and so ledde with songs and dances from house to house,
blessing the people, and gathering of money ; and boyes do singe masse, and preache
in the pulpits, with such other unfitinge and inconvenient usages, which tend rather to
derysyon than enie true glorie to God, or honor of his sayntes." Entries relating to
boy-bishops are found in some early church inventories ; and a sculptured figure on a
tomb in Salisbury Cathedral is supposed to represent such a bishop, but this appears
to admit of considerable doubt.
1(58
Till: ARCHAEOLOGICAL ALNUM.
IV. THE FETE-DIEU AT AIX IN TROVENCE.
These festivals appeared in other places under a variety of different forms and
names, which we will not undertake to enumerate. They w r erc often accompanied with
processions, in which different individuals were disguised to represent the persons of
the Old and New Testament. One of the most remarkable of these was the Fetc-Dieu
at Ail in Provence, said to have been established by king Rene of Anjou in the fifteenth
century, which was continued in the last century. In the ceremonies on this occa-
sion there was a strange mixture of profane w r ith sacred personages, and the coarse
ami ludicrous manner in which the latter were represented caused no little scandal to
pious individuals in former days. The ceremonies were under the jurisdiction of a
prince iV Amour, a roi de Bazoche, an abbe de la ville, &c, titles which seem to have
had some allusion to the days of chivalry. The ceremonies consisted in mock -fights,
dances, diableries, processions, &c, which are all described with engravings in a little
volume entitled " Explication des Ceremonies de la Fete-Dieu d'Aix en Provence,"
printed at Aix in 1777. Our first woodcut, taken from one of the plates in this book,
represents Lou grand
jure deu didbles (the
great play of the de-
vils). The two figures
in the middle represent
king Herod and his
daughter, who are fallen
into the power of the
evil demons, armed with
long tormenting -forks,
for their treatment of
John the Baptist. The
different personages are
disguised with masks,
which seem sometimes
to have represented the heads of animals, and which appear in several instances
raised above the face. One holds his mask in his hand. Others, among whom must
be reckoned Herod's daughter, hold their masks in their proper places with their
left hands. According to the description of the play given in the book, " Herod
THE BURLESQUE FESTIVALS OF THE MIDDLE AGES.
169
leaps sometimes to one side, sometimes to the other, shielding himself as well as he can
with his sceptre against the forks ; he finishes his play
by a great leap, and the devils quit him and wait for
fresh orders ! " Another " play " is entitled La reino
Sabo (the queen of Sheba). Her Arabian majesty is
represented on her way to visit Solomon. We cannot
resist the temptation to transfer to our margin the 111^ ^fl^^)^/" 5
figure of the queen of Sheba, as an admirable example
of burlesquing royalty.
V. THE ABBOT OF MISRULE.
The processions and ceremonies which we have just mentioned appear to be the
remains of the Saturnalia of the middle ages in a degraded form. They appear also to
have been preserved in England under the superintendence of an abbot of misrule, or
(as he was termed in Scotland) of unreason, or, as he was often called, the lord of
misrule. Nearly all that we know of the ceremonies performed under the auspices of this
dignitary is found in that oft-quoted passage of the puritan Stubbs, who published his
"Anatomie of Abuses" in 1583. The lord or abbot of misrule was also an office of
frequent occurrence in the households of princes and nobles ; he was little more than a
master of the Christmas revels, private Saturnals which it is not our object to describe
on the present occasion. Stubbs tells us that, — "Firste, all the wilde heades of the
parishe conventyng together, chuse them a graund capitaine (of all mischeef ), whom thei
innoble with the title of my lorde of misserule ; and hym thei croune with great so-
lemnitie, and adopt for their kyng. This kyng anointed chuseth forthe twentie, fourtie,
three score, or a hundred lustie guttes, like to hymself, to waite uppon his lordely
majestie, and to guarde his noble persone. Then every one of these his menne he
investeth with his liveries of greene, yellowe, or some other light wanton colour ; and
as though that were not gaudie enough, thei bedecke themselves with scarffes, ribons,
and laces, hanged all over with golde rynges, precious stones, and other jewelles. This
doen, thei tye about either legge twentie or fourtie belles, with riche hanclekercheefes
in their handes, and sometymes laied acrosse over their shoulders and neckes, borrowed,
for the moste parte, of their pretie mopsies and loovyng Bessies, for bussyng them in
the darcke. Thus all thinges sette in order, then have they their hobbie horses, their
dragons, and other antiques, together with their gaudie pipers and thunderyng drom-
mers, to strike up the devilles daunce withall. Then marchc these heathen companie
170 nil IRCHJEOLOGICAL ALBUM.
towardes the churche and churcheyarde, their pipers pipyng, their drommers thondcryng,
their stumppea dauncyng, their belles jynglyng, their handkerchefes swyngyng about
their headea like madmen, their hoibbie horses and other monsters skirmishyng anion gest
the throng: and in this sortc thci goe to the churche (though the minister bee at
praier or preachyng), dauncyng and swingyng their handkercheefes over their heades
in the ehnrehe, like devilles incarnate, with suche a confused noise that no nianne
can beare his own voice. Then the foolishc people thei looke, thei stare, thei laugh,
thei fleere, and mountc upon formes and pcwes to see these goodly pagcauntcs so-
lemnized in this sorte. Then, after this, aboute the churche thei goe againe and againe,
and so tort he into the churche yarde, where thei have commonly their sommer-haules,
their bowers, arbours, and banquettyng-houses set up, wherein thei feaste, banquet, and
daunce all that dale, and (peradventure) all that night too; and thus these terrestrial
furies spend the Sabbaoth daic. Then, for the further innoblyng of this honorable
lindane (lorde, I should saie), thei have also certaine papers wherein is painted some
babblerie or other of imageric worke, and these thei call my lorde of misrules badges.
These thei give to every one that will give money for them, to maintaine them in this
their heathenrie, dcvilrie ; and who will not shewe hymself buxome to them and give
them money for these the devilles cognizaunces, thei shall bee mocked and flouted at
shamefully — (yea, and many times carried upon a cowlstaffe, and dived over heade and
eares in water, or otherwise most horribly abused). And so assotted are some, that thei
not onely give them money, but also weare their badges and cognizances in their hattes
or cappes openly Another sorte of fantastical fooles bryng to these helhoundes
(the lorde of misrule and his complices), some bread, some good ale, some newe cheese,
some olde cheese, some custardes, some cracknels, some cakes, some flaunes, some
tartes, some creame, some meate, some one thing, some another."
to
to
o
O
MONUMENT OF JOANE PRINCESS OF NORTH WALES,
DAUGHTER OF KING JOHN.
The very elegant slab, of which, by the kindness of the Rev. H. Longueville Jones,
we are enabled to give the accompanying engraving, is now carefully preserved in the
park of Baron Hill, Beaumarais, the residence of Sir E. Bnlkeley, by whom it was saved
from probable destruction. It was originally placed at Llanvaes, in the monastery
founded by Llewelyn ap Jorwerth, prince of AYales, whose consort Joane, a natural
daughter of king John, it commemorates. After the dissolution of the monastery it
was removed, and, at the beginning of the present century, it was lying, face downwards,
in a ditch near Llanvaes, the stone coffin it covered being used as a trough for watering
horses. To this circumstance of inversion its good state of preservation is chiefly to be
attributed. It is six feet long and three inches thick, and lies on a stone coffin of the
same dimensions and about eighteen inches deep. It is composed of a fine hard
gritstone or sandstone, and the carvings on its surface are still sharp and perfect,
though part of one side has been sawn off.
The face of the princess, which was probably intended for a portrait, looks out
somewhat sentimentally from the tracery which surrounds it. This kind of low half-
effigy appears to have been the intro-
ductory step towards the more perfect
sculptured figures which were common
at a somewhat later period. In the
churchyard of Silchester, as mentioned
on a former occasion (p. 154), lie, in
a very neglected state, the two tombs
represented in the accompanying wood-
cut. In one of them the head of a
lady is placed in a cross, in a similar
manner to that on the tomb of the
princess Joane, but it is much de-
faced. On the other we have two busts, apparently those of a man and his wife,
1 72
Till: ARCH I'.oi.OGICAL ALIU'M.
Biirmounting a cross. Neither of these monuments bear any inscription, and there
is not even a tradition to point out the persons in memory of whom they were
placed here ; but they appear to be of the thirteenth century.
Monumental Blabs, ornamented with the cross and no effigy, are common from the
twelfth to at least the beginning of the fifteenth century ; but it is difficult to fix their
exact date, except as far as we can conjecture by the general appearance
of the monument itself. A considerable number of examples are given
in the plates to the first volume of Gough's " Sepulchral Monuments."
Sometimes they have an inscription, but the greater number are without ;
7V it yet m many of them the cross is accompanied by the arms of the
/ \ person whom it commemorates, or with the insignia of his trade. A
sword is not unfrerpiently carved beside the cross. On that given in
our margin, taken from one of Gough's plates, a sword is represented
on one side of the cross, and two bows on the other, with a horn sus-
pended beneath, and what appears to be a plain or defaced coat of arms
at the foot of the cross. This monument is in Bowes church, York-
shire, and is supposed to mark the grave of a member of the family
of Bowes, on which name the two bows form a pun. Its date is
uncertain. In a somewhat similar slab in the church of Kirkby-
in-Ashfield, in the county of Nottingham, a pair of shears
accompanies the cross, perhaps indicating that the person it
commemorates was a clothier. Our next cut, a slab with a
brass, is the tomb of Nicholas de Aumberdme (a fishmonger
of London), in the chancel of Taplow church in Berkshire.
The full-length figure of the deceased is here placed within
the cross, and the trade is indicated by a fish at the foot. An
inscription round the edge makes us acquainted with the name
and trade, but it has no date, though it is supposed to be of
about the reign of Richard II.
The tomb of the princess Joane is a fine example of a class
of monuments that are not common. It was this princess who, according to tradition,
was engaged in a romantic but tragical intrigue with one of her husband's captives, the
youthful "William de Braose, in the year 1229. Wjlliam de Braose was a member of a
powerful English family on the border, and had been taken prisoner and confined in
Llewelyn's castle of Aber. His winning manners gained the confidence of the prince,
and he was admitted to a great degree of familiarity, until at length he was ransomed.
It is said that after he was set at liberty Llewelyn discovered proofs of the infidelity of
MONUMENT OF JOANE PRINCESS OF NORTH WALES. 173
his wife, and resolved to take a ferocious revenge. He invited the unsuspecting lover
to a feast, and there seized him, and immediately caused him to be hanged on a
small eminence in the dell adjacent to the castle. The tradition says that the angry
prince led his wife, who was ignorant of what had taken place, to a window which
commanded a view of the gallows, and there, with a sarcastic smile, asked her how much
she would give to see her paramour. A fragment of what appears to have been a
Welsh ballad, containing the question of the prince and the lady's answer, was obtained
by Pennant from the oral recitation of the peasantry of the neighbourhood, and is thus
by him given in English : —
" ' Lovely princess,' said Llewelyn,
' What will you give to see your Willim ? '
' Wales, and England, and Llewelyn,
I'd freely give to see my Willim.' "
The princess lived eight years after this event, and appears to have regained the
affections of her husband, who erected the monastery of Llanvaes over her grave,
" whose pleasure it was," as Caradoc of Llancarvan expresses it, " to be here buried."
The monastery was consecrated in 1240 by Howel bishop of Bangor ; but, in a few
years afterwards, it was burnt in an insurrection of the Welsh. Edward II., in pity for
the sufferings of the brotherhood, remitted them the taxes they owed him. In the war
with Owen Glyndowr, the friars having shown a disposition to take part with that chief-
tain, Henry IV. plundered their house, killed some of them, and imprisoned the rest ;
but he soon afterwards liberated them and made restitution. After the dissolution
Henry VIII. sold the property, and it came into private hands. In the sequel the
monastic buildings were destroyed, and the tomb of the princess, in memory of whom
they had been erected, was desecrated in the manner above described.
THE FABULOUS NATURAL HISTORY OF THE
MIDDLE AGES.
The history of science in the middle ages contains much that is rational and new,
but it is mixed with strange and extravagant notions. This is peculiarly the case in the
natural sciences, where, beyond the dim outline of positive observation, men's imagina-
tion ran wild, and the natural love of the marvellous gave being to a host of monsters
which have gradually disappeared before the light of modern research. The vague
notions of the ancients relating to the animals of the interior of Asia and Africa, formed
the groundwork of many a strange and romantic medieval fiction, and these latter were
intermixed with monstrous stories of Saracenic origin. From these materials were
compiled a great number of medieval treatises on natural history, which most commonly
passed under the title of Bestiaries. Natural history in the middle ages, especially
subsequent to the eleventh century, was treated with two objects — the cure of diseases,
or the moral doctrines which were supposed to be mystically typified in the qualities and
habits of the different tribes of animated nature. The last was the peculiar object of
the popular Bestiaries, where the description of each animal is followed immediately by
its moralisation, as in iEsop's fables : medicine was the more peculiar object of the
herbals. Bestiaries and herbals are of frequent occurrence in early manuscripts, and
are often accompanied with drawings which picture to us more exactly than the text
the notions of different people in different ages of the animals of far-distant climes.
One of the favourite animals of the medieval naturalists was the unicorn, or, as it
was named by the ancients, the monoceros. Pliny (Hist. Nat. viii. 21) sums up in a few
words the notions of the ancients relating to this animal : it had the body of a horse,
the head of a stag, the feet of an elephant, the tail of a boar, with one black horn two
cubits long in the middle of its forehead. According to the ancients, it was impossible to
take this fierce animal alive. The medieval legends differed in this point : this animal,
the symbol of chivalry, became tame in the presence of a pure virgin. One of the
THE FABULOUS NATURAL HISTORY OF THE MIDDLE AGES.
175
earliest bestiaries, the Anglo-Norman poem of Philip cle Thaun, written in the reign of
Henry I. gives the following account of the mode in which it was caught : —
" Monosceros est beste,
un corn ad en la teste,
Pur ceo ad si a nun,
de buc ad facun ;
Par pucele est prise,
or oez en quel guise.
Quant hem le volt cacer
e prendre e enginner,
Si vent hom al forest
u sis repairs est ;
La met une pucele
liors de sein sa maniele,
E par odurement
monosceros la sent ;
Dune vent a la pucele,
e si baiset sa mamele,
En sun devant se dort,
issi vent a sa mort ;
Li hom survent atant,
ki l'ocit en dormant,
U trestut vif le prent,
si fait puis sun talent."
" Monosceros is an animal
which has one horn on its head,
Therefore it is so named,
it has the form of a goat ;
It is caught by means of a virgin :
now hear in what manner.
When a man intends to hunt it,
and to take and ensnare it,
He goes to the forest
where is its repair ;
There he places a virgin,
with her breast uncovered,
And by its smell
the monosceros perceives her ;
Then it comes to the virgin,
and kisses her breast,
Falls asleep on her lap,
and so comes to its death ;
The man arrives immediately,
and kills it in its sleep,
Or takes it alive,
and does as he likes with it."
If a damsel ventured on this undertaking who was not a pure virgin, she was in
danger of being torn to
pieces. Our woodcut,
representing the capture
of the unicorn io the
manner described above,
is taken from an illumi-
nation in a very good
manuscript of the com-
mon Latin bestiary, of
about the end of the
twelfth century (MS.
Harl. No. 4751, fol. 6,
v .). The horn of the
unicorn was a terrible
weapon, so hard and so
sharp that nothing could
resist it. The wonders
of this horn, as related
170
Till: AIU II.KOLOGICAL AL1HM.
by European and Arabian writers, arc too numerous to repeat. It was supposed to be
an absolute preventive against the effects of poison. When used as the handle of a
knife it would give notice, by a sudden sweating, of the presence of poison in the
meats that were served on the table; and any liquid drunk from a cup made of this
material was a certain cure against the poison when taken. Even in the writings of
the naturalists of the Elizabethan age, the unicorn occupies a prominent place. Al-
though the question of its existence had then begun to be debated, the wonderful virtues
of the horn were still recounted at full.
The great enemy of the unicorn was the elephant. When the former went in search
of its gigantic foe, it is said that it sharpened its horn by rubbing it on a stone, and
then slew the elephant by piercing it in the belly.
The people of the West, in their frequent intercourse with the Saracens, must often
have had opportunities of making themselves well acquainted with the form and habits of
the elephant ; yet even this animal is the subject of many fables. As early as the year
S07, the khalif Haroun al llaschid sent an elephant as a present to Charlemagne, which
was an object of wonder and admiration to the Franks. In 1255 the king of France,
St. Louis, sent an elephant to Henry III. of England, of which there is a drawing by
Matthew Paris in MS. Cotton. Nero D. I., made, according to the statement of that
writer, from nature, yet evidently inaccurate. Another drawing of the same elephant
is found in a manuscript of the time, also in the Cottonian Library (Julius D. VII.), at
the end of the chronicle of John of Wallingford. Both these chronicles give an account
of the elephant and his habits, containing some truth mixed with a good deal of fable.
It is described as ten feet high. The drawings of the elephant in old manuscripts differ
essentially from one another. This ani-
mal is described by medieval naturalists
as having no joints, yet in both the ex-
am pics we give the joints are made very
visible. The first is taken from a MS.
of the fifteenth century (MS. Reg. 15
E. VI.), where it forms one of the illus-
trations of the romance of Alexander,
which is interspersed with descriptions
of the strange animals and monsters of
the East. The elephant is here repre-
sented with hoofs like those of a cow,
and its trunk is made in the form of a
trumpet. The romance of Alexander, just mentioned, contains frequent allusions to
THE FABULOUS NATURAL HISTORY OF THE MIDDLE AGES.
177
elephants and to their use in war among the Easterns, which must have made them
familiar to the innumerable readers of that work. The English version of this romance,
composed in the fourteenth century, pretends that there were forty thousand elephants
in the army of Darius : —
" Fourty thousand, alle astore,
Olifauntes let go to-fore.
Apon everiche olifaunt a castel,
Theryn xii. knyghtis y-armed wel.
They scholle holde the skirmyng,
Ageyns Alisaundre the kyng."
In our next cut (taken from MS. Harl. No. 4751, fol. 8, v°., of the end of the
twelfth century) we have an elephant, with its castle and armed men, engaged in battle.
The bestiaries relate many strange things of the elephant. They say that, though so
large and powerful, and so courageous against larger animals, it is afraid of a mouse;
and they inform us that it is of nature so cold, that it will never seek the company of
A A
17S
THE ARC'H/EOI.OGICAL \11U\I.
the female until, wandering in the direction of Paradise, it meets with the plant called
the mandrake, and eats of it,* and that each female bears but one young one in her
life.
The mandrake (mandragora) was one of the most remarkable objects of medieval
superstition. At the end of the sixteenth century, when the credit of this plant was on
the decline, Gerard, in his Herbal, gives the following description of it : — "The male
mandrake hath great, broad, long, smooth leaves, of a dcepe grcenc colour, flat spred
upon tlic ground, among which come up the flowers of a pale whitish colour, standing
(\iiy one upon a single smal and weak footstalk, of a whitish green colour: in their
places grow round apples of a yellowish colour, smooth, soft, and glittering, of a strong
Bmel, in which are contained Hat and smooth seedes, in fashion of a little kidney like
those of the thorne apple. The roote is long, thick, whitish, divided many times into
two or three parts, resembling the legs of a man, with other parts of his bodie ad-
joining thereto, as it hath beene reported; whereas, in truth, it is no otherwise than in
the rootes of carrots, parsneps, and such like, forked or divided into two or more parts,
. which nature taketh no account of. There have been many ridiculous tales brought up
of this plant, whether of olde wives, or some runnagate surgeons or phisickmongcrs, I
know not (a title bad inough for them) ; but sure some one or moe that sought to make
themselves famous in skillfullnes above others were the first brochcrs of that errour I
spake of. They adde further, that it is never or verie seldome to be found growing
naturally but under a gallows, where the matter that hath fallen from the dead bodie
hath given it the shape of a man, and the matter of a woman the substaunce of a female
plant ; with many other such doltish dreames. They fable further and affirm, that he
who woulde take up a plant thereof must tie a doggc thereunto to pull it up, which will
give a great shrike at the digging up ; otherwise, if a man should do it, he should
certainly die in short space after ; besides many fables of loving matters, too full of scur-
rilitie to set foorth in print, which I forbeare to speake of; all which dreames and olde
wives tales you shall from henceforth cast out of your bookes and memorie, knowing
this that they are all and every part of them false and most untrue. For I myselfe and
my scrvaunts also have digged up, planted, and replanted verie many, and yet never
could cither perceive shape of man or woman, but sometimes one straight roote, some-
* Si autem voluerit facere filios, vadit ad orieinem
prope paradisum, et est ibi arbor qua; vocatur maiidra-
gora, et vadit cum femina sua, quse prius accipit de
arbore, et dat masculo suo, et seducit eum donee man-
dueet, statimque in utero eoncipit. MS. Harl. No.
4751, fol. 8. \°. The English metrical bestiary, printed,
from a manuscript of the thirteenth century in the
British Museum, in the Reliqnia Antiquiv, i. 222,
says : —
" Oc he am so koldc of kinde,
Sat no golsipe is hem minde,
til he neten of a gres,
<5e name is mandragores,
sifcen he bigeton on, &c."
THE FABULOUS NATURAL HISTORY OF THE MIDDLE AGES.
179
times two, and often sixe or seaven braunches comming from the maine great roote,
even as nature list to bcstowe upon it as to other plants. But the idle drones that have
little or nothing to do but to eate and drinke, have bestowed some of their time in
carving the rootes of brionie, forming them to the shape of men and women, which
falsifying practice hath confirmed the errour amongst the simple and unlearned people,
who have taken them, upon their report, to be the true mandrakes."
The extraordinary virtues of the mandrake were celebrated even in the classic ages,
and Pliny (Hist. Nat. xxv. 13) describes the caution with which it was gathered. Those
who are going to dig it up, he says, avoid a contrary wind, and first circumscribe it with
three circles with a sword ; afterwards they dig, looking towards the west. It was said
by some to have been the ingredient used by Circe, —
" whose charm' d cup
Whoever tasted, lost his upright shape,
And downward fell into a grovelling swine."
And hence it was by some named Circeum. Pliny says nothing of the close resemblance
which, in the middle ages, the root of the mandrake was said to bear to the human
form, even to the distinction of the sexes in the male and female plant. The woodcut
in the margin gives two representations
of the mandrake : one from MS. Cot- \\A\llv-
ton. Vitel. C. III. of the tenth century,
where it is illustrative of the Anglo-
Saxon translation of the pseudo-Apu-
leius de herbis ; the other, of the female
plant, from drawings by an Italian ar-
tist, in MS. Addit. No. 5281 (in the
Brit. Mus.), of the earlier part of the
sixteenth century. The Saxon treatise
says of it : — " This plant, which is
called mandragora, is great and large
in appearance, and it is very efficacious. When thou shalt gather it, when thou comest
to it, thou wilt perceive it by its shining by night like a lamp. When thou first seest
its head, bind it quickly with iron, lest it escape thee. Its virtue is so great that when
an impure man comes to it it quickly escapes him. Therefore do thou bind it with
iron, as we said before, and so thou shalt dig around it, so as not to touch it with the
iron j but it would be better to dig the earth with an ivory staff : and when thou seest
its hands and feet, bind them. Then take the other end, and bind it to a dog's neck,
so that the dog be hungry ; afterwards throw meat before the dog, where he cannot
180
THE ARCHAEOLOGICAL ALBUM.
reach it without tearing up the plant. It is said of this plant that it has so great
power, that whatever thing draws it up, that thing will instantly perish." Philip de
Thaun, in his bestiary, adds some particulars to this descriptive account. He says : —
" Horn ki la deit cuillir,
entur la deit fuir,
Suavet belement
qu'il nc l'atuchet ncnt ;
Puis prenge un chen lied,
a li sait atachet,
Ki ben seit afermee,
treis jurs ait junee,
E pain li seit mnstrez,
de luinz seit apelez ;
Li chens a sai trarat,
la racinc rumperat,
E un cri geterat,
li chens mort encharat
Pur le cri qu'il orat ;
tel vertu eel herbe ad,
Que nuls ne la pot oir,
sempres n'estoce murrir.
E se li hom le oait,
enes le pas murreit :
Pur i;eo deit estuper
ses orailes, e guarder
Que il ne oi le cri,
qu'il morge altresi,
Cum li chens ferat
ki le cri en orat."
" The man who is to gather it
must dig round about it,
Must take great care
that he does not touch it ;
Then let him take a dog bound,
let it be tied to it,
Which has been close shut up,
and has fasted three days,
And let it be shewn bread,
and called from afar ;
The dog will draw it to him,
the root will break,
And will send forth a cry,
the dog will fall down dead
At the cry which he will hear ;
such virtue this plant has,
That no one can hear it,
but he must always die.
And if the man heard it,
he would immediately die :
Therefore he must stop
his ears, and take care
That he hear not the cry,
lest he die,
As the dog will do
which shall hear the cry."
This superstitious legend was an article of belief down to a late period, and is
alluded to more than once in Shakespeare. Thus, in the " Second Part of Henry VI."
act iii. scene 2, —
" Would curses kill, as doth the mandrake's groan."
And in " Romeo and Juliet," act iv. sc. 3, —
" And shrieks like mandrakes, torn out of the earth,
That living mortals, hearing them, run mad."
Figures of the male and female mandrake, with its roots representing a clearly
defined human body, are found in nearly all the illustrated herbals from the tenth
century to the sixteenth. It may be sufficient to refer to the Herbarius zii Teiitsck,
printed at Augsburg in 1488 ; the Hortus Sanitatis, printed in 1 491 ; the " Grete Herball,"
printed in England early in the sixteenth century, and the somewhat earlier French
work from which it was compiled. The fabulous accounts of this plant had,
THE FABULOUS NATURAL HISTORY OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 181
however, begun to be controverted at the beginning of the sixteenth centuiy ; and in a
few illustrated books, such as the collection of woodcuts of plants published at Franck-
fort-am-Mayn, in 1536, under the title of Herbarum imagines viva, the mandrake is
represented with a carrot-shaped root, which presents no extraordinary characteristics.
Still, at a much later period, the old legend is frequently referred to, as in Sir William
Davenant's comedy of " The Wits " (Dodsley's " Old Plays," vol. viii. p. 397),—
" He stands as if his legs had taken root,
A very mandrake."
The delusion was long supported by the tricks of people who made artificial man-
drakes, which were carried about and sold " unto ignorant people." Sir Thomas
Browne (" Vulgar Errors," lib. ii. c. 6), speaking of the common belief relating to the
mandrake, says: — "But this is vain and fabulous, which ignorant people and simple
women believe ; for the roots which are carried about by impostors to deceive unfruitful
women, are made of the roots of canes, briony, and other plants ; for in these, yet fresh
and virent, they carve out the figures of men and women, first sticking therein the grains
of barley or millet where they intend the hair should grow ; then bury them in sand,
until the grains shoot forth their roots, which, at the longest, will happen in twenty
days : they afterward clip and trim those tender strings in the fashion of beards and
other hairy integuments. All which, like other impostures once discovered, is easily
effected, and the root of white briony may be practised every spring." In Lupton's
third book of " Notable Things," and in Hill's " Natural and Artificial Conclusions,"
other methods of making artificial mandrakes are described.
The medieval naturalists speak of the mandrake as being a remedy for all diseases
" except death." It was most celebrated for its aphrodisiac virtues, for its supposed
efficacy in removing barrenness, and for its power as a soporific. The juice or decoction
of the root taken as a drink, the apples eaten, or even if only placed under the ear in
bed, were said to produce deep sleep. This quality is frequently alluded to in the old
writers, such as Shakespeare ("Antony and Cleopatra," act i. scene 5) : —
" Cleo — Ha! ha!
Give me to drink mandragore !
Char. — Why, madame ?
Cleo. — That I might sleep out this great gap of time."
And Massinger ("The Unnatural Combat") : —
" Here's music
In this bag shall wake her, though she had drunk opium,
Or eaten mandrakes."
L82 THE ARCHAEOLOGICAL ALBUM.
As a specimen of other still more extraordinary virtues ascribed to this plant, we
may quote a story told by the writer of an English herbal of the fifteenth century, in
MS. Arundel (Brit. Mus.), No. 42, fol. 31, v"., who says : — " Whanne y was yongere,
y knew a man of age passyng 80 yer : opynyon of hym fleyh that wonder he was in
gold, and that a niandragc rote he hadde in shap of man, and that every day he fond a
fayr peny thcrby. This opynyon was rif of hym. Thre yonge men and y, only for the
opynyon, on a nyght hym absent, privyly that non wiste but we, brosten the lok of a
strong litel cheste of his, and mo suche vessels had he noght, and we fonde ryght noght
ther-yn but a clene lyncn clowt, and thcr-yn wondyn an ymage nerhand fot long,
havyng alio lyneamentys and here in alle placis and privy membris and al that verre
man hath, saf flessh, bon, and lif, and a faire peny therby ; more other thyng founde we
non. Wei we assay den and provedyn and foundyn and knewyn that it was a rote :
wcl we sette oure marke on the ageyn another tyme, but myghtwe nevere after sen the
cheste ne no swuchc thyng of that man mor."
The Saxon Herbal in the Cottonian Manuscript to which we have alluded above, is
ii arresting as the earliest treatise of this kind in our language. It is full of drawings
of plants, which, considering the age, are not ill-executed ; and these are intermixed
with drawings of venemous insects and reptiles, against the bites of which the different
plants were believed to be efficacious remedies. The great number of cases of this kind
would seem to shew that in those early times our island abounded more in noxious
insects and reptiles than at present. Among the former our older writers mention not
uni'requcntly the attercop, or spider, as it is generally interpreted. The Saxon Herbal
furnishes us with the figure of an attercop, which we give in the
margin. It can hardly be considered as an attempt to represent
a common spider ; and as our native spiders are not of the
dangerous character under which the attercop is represented, we
cannot help supposing that the latter name belonged to some
species of the insect now unknown. A collection of miracles of
St. \Vinefred, printed by Hearne from a manuscript apparently of the end of the four-
teenth century, tells us how " In the towne of Schrowysbury setan iij e men togedur,
and as they seton talkyng, an attureoppe cum owte of the wowz (walls), and bote hem
by the nekkus alle thre, and thowgh hit grcvyd hem at that tyme but lytulle, sone aftur
hit roncoled and so swalle her throtus and forset her breythe, that ij. of hem weron
deed, and the thrydde was so nygh deed that he made his testament, and made
hym redy in alle wyse, for he hoped nowghte but only dethe." He was, however,
cured by the application of water in which the bones of St. Winefred had been
washed !
THE FABULOUS NATURAL HISTORY OF THE MIDDLE AGES.
183
Our next cut, taken from MS. Egerton (in the British Museum), No. 613, fol. 34, v°.,
represents an imaginary bird,
called by the medieval natu-
turalists the caladrius. Ac-
cording to the Latin bestiary
of the Harleian manuscript
already quoted, the caladrius
was a bird entirely white,
which loved to frequent the
halls of kings and princes.
If it were brought to any one
labouring under a dangerous illness, it would turn its head from the patient in case
there was no hope of recovery ; but if the man were not fated to die, then the bird
" looked him in the face, and, by so doing, took his infirmity upon itself, and flew into
the air towards the sun, and burnt his infirmity and dispersed it ; and so the sick man
would be cured."* The manuscript from which our woodcut is taken contains the
Anglo-Norman metrical bestiary of William the clerk, composed at the beginning of the
thirteenth century, which gives the following account of this bird : —
" Kaladrius est uns oiseals
Sor toz autres curteis e beals,
Altresi blanc com est la neifs.
Mut par est cist oiseals curteis.
Aucone feiz le trove l'em
El pays de Jerusalem.
Quant home est en grant maladie,
Ke l'em desespeire de sa vie,
Done est cist oiseals aportez ;
Se cil deit estre confortez
E repasser de eel malage,
L'oisel li tome le visage,
E tret a sei l'enfermete.
E s'il ne deit aver sante,
L' oiseals se torne autre part,
Ja ne fra vers li regart."
" Caladrius is a bird
Courteous and beautiful above all others,
As white as is the snow.
Very courteous this bird this.
Sometimes one finds it
In the country of Jerusalem.
When a man is in great sickness,
That one despairs of his life,
Then this bird is brought ;
If this man is to be solaced
And to recover from his disease,
The bird turns to him its face,
And draws to itself the infirmity.
And if he is not to recover his health,
The bird turns the other way,
It will not give a look towards him."
Among the monsters of the deep one of the most remarkable was the serra or serre.
It is described as having the head of a lion and the tail of a fish, with wings to fly.
* Et assumit omnem negritudinem hominis intra se,
et volat in aera contra solem, et comburit infirmitatem
ejus, et dispergit earn, et sanetur infirmus.
No. 4751, fol. 40, r°.
-MS. Hail.
IS!
THE A KCH.F.O LOGICAL ALBUM.
When the serre sees a ship, the bestiaries tell us, it rlics up, and as long as it can keep
above water near the ship it holds off the
wind, so that the ship cannot move. When
it can support itself no longer in the air
it dives into the water, and the ship is then
freed from the unnatural calm. Our cut
is taken from MS. Egerton, No. 613, fol.
33, v°.
" The whale," says Philip de Thaun,
" is a very great beast. It lives always
in the sea ; it takes the sand of the sea,
spreads it on its back, raises itself up in
the sea, and lies still on the surface.
The sea-farer sees it, and thinks that it is an island, and lands upon it to prepare his
meal. The whale feels the fire, and the ship, and the people, and will dive and drown
them all if it can." It is
added, as another "nature"
of the whale, that " when
it wants to cat it begins
to gape, and, at the gaping
of its mouth, it sends
forth a smell, so sweet and
so good that the little fish,
who like the smell, will
enter into its mouth, and
then it will kill them and
swallow them." Our cut
is taken from MS. llarl.
No. 4751, fol. 69, v°. It
is further illustrated by
an incident in the curious
legend of St. Brandan.
" And than they sayled
forth, and came soone after
to that lond ; but bycause
of lytell depthe in some
THE FABULOUS NATURAL HISTORY OF THE MIDDLE AGES.
185
place, and in some place were grete roclces ; but at the laste they wente upon an ylonde,
wenynge to them they had ben safe, and made thereon a fyre for to dresse theyr dyner ;
but Saynt Brandon abode styll in the shyppe. And whan the fyre was ryght hote, and
the meet nygh soden, than this ylonde began to move ; vvherof the monks were aferde,
and rledde anone to the shippe, and left the fyre and meet behynde them, and mervayled
sore of the movyng. And Saynt Brandon comforted them, and sayd that it was a grete
fysshe named Jasconye, whiche laboureth nyght and daye to put his tayle in his mouth,
but for gretness he may not." A year afterwards the adventurers return to the same
spot, " and anone they sawe theyr caudron upon the fysshes backe, whiche they had
left there xii. monethes to-fore." This story appears to have come from the East.
Every reader will recollect the similar incident in the history of Sinbad in the "Arabian
Nights."
The syren of the middle ages was a mere copy of the poetical being of the ancients,
and had little in common
with the nixes and mermaids
of northern popular mytho-
logy. The representation of
this creature given in our
margin is taken from one of
the illustrations to a Latin
bestiary in MS. Sloane, No.
3544. According to the le-
gend, when the weather was
stormy the mermaid began her song, the sweetness of which lulled the sailor who heard
it to sleep, and thus he perished in the tempest.
We have given but a few specimens of the fables relating to animals which are
scattered over the bestiaries and other writings of the middle ages, but we have not
space to continue the list. The subject is worthy of attention, not only because it
forms a curious chapter of the history of the developement of knowledge and intelli-
gence, but because, if the strange beasts which are sculptured with so much profusion
among the architectural ornaments of the middle ages have, as some suppose, a symbo-
lical meaning, it is in these bestiaries that we must look for their interpretation, for, as
we have observed at the beginning of this article, in these each animal is made the
subject of a moralisation. Thus the unicorn is said to represent the Saviour, and the
maiden the Virgin Mary ; the male and female elephants signify Adam and Eve ; the
caladrius is -typical of Christ, who took upon himself the sins of those who are to be
saved ; the serre and the whale both represent the devil ; and the syren is symbolica
B B
186 THE ARCHAEOLOGICAL ALBUM.
(it tin richea of this world, which allure men to their destruction. In this manner the
whole range of animal nature was made to be full of spiritual instruction.
The popularity of these wonderful stories had a powerful and injurious influence in
retarding the advancement of science. Fable was more acceptable to the general reader
than truth, and it was long before even scholars themselves could emancipate their
minds from this intellectual thraldom. Even serious and (in general) accurate writers,
like William de Bubruquis, were led astray. The earliest medieval account of such
monsters is contained in a supposititious letter from Alexander the Great, during his
Indian expedition,, to his master Aristotle, which appears to be derived from some
Eastern original, and of which there is an Anglo-Saxon translation. It was from this
circumstance that the fabulous accounts of monsters supposed to have been seen and
overcome by this great hero found their way into the Romance. The belief in them was
in the fourteenth century riveted on people's minds by the no less extraordinary
adventures of Sir John Maundcvile.
m
U
■
.
■■
THE MOAT HOUSE, IGHTHAM, KENT.
The village of Ightham is situated in a secluded part of the county of Kent, in a
deep ravine in the ancient forest or weald, about seven miles from Tonbridge and five
from Sevenoaks. It bears in its external features an air of great antiquity, and contains
some fine half-timbered houses of an exceedingly picturesque character. The church
also is interesting, and contains a sepulchral monument engraved by Stothard in his
" Monumental Effigies of Great Britain," which is believed to commemorate Sir Thomas
Cawne, who resided in the reign of Edward III. at Nulcomb, a manor in the adjoining
parish of Seale. This effigy is placed in the north wall of the chancel, and presents a
rich example of the armour of the time.
But the most interesting object in the parish of Ightham is the ancient manorial
dwelling called the Moat, which is i*epresented in the accompanying plates. As early
as the reign of Henry II. this manor was the property of Ivo de Haut, and it remained
in that family with interruption until the reign of Edward IV., when Richard Haut
joined the duke of Buckingham in an abortive attempt to raise an insurrection in favour
of the exiled earl of Richmond, and his estates were seized by the crown. The Moat
estate was given to Sir Robert Brakenbury, the lieutenant of the Tower, who is cele-
brated in history for his refusal to be the instrument of Richard III. in his designs
against the lives of his infant nephews. Both the new possessor and the old possessor
of the Moat were present at the battle of Bosworth Field on different sides. Braken-
bury was slain ; and one of the first acts of Henry VII., after his accession to the
throne, was to restore Richard Haut to his patrimony. It afterwards passed through
female heirs until it came into the possession of Sir William Selby, who died in 1611.
There are monuments of him and his wife in the church.
The Moat House is perhaps one of the best examples we have now remaining of the
fortified manor-house of feudal times : a large portion of it is probably the work of
some one of the Hauts in the fourteenth century ; but considerable additions and alter-
ations appear to have been made by Richard Haut after his restoration to his family
ISS
THE ARCH/F.OLOGICAL ALBUM.
estates, or by one of his immediate successors. It stands in a woody dell, at some
distance from the village, and is surrounded by hills and elevated ground, from whence
the springs descend and form the moat which surrounds the house, which is singularly
clear and free from impurities. The building forms a square, with an entrance tower in
the middle of the north side, approached by a bridge, as represented in our first plate.
On the south side, which is the most picturesque, and is represented in our second
view, another bridge leads by a smaller gateway to the kitchen, servants' rooms, and
domestic offices. To the north, on the outside of the moat, is the farmyard and stable,
represented in the accompanying cut, — a timber building, probably of the Elizabethan
period, with wood-work of a very picturesque character, and a small bell-turret in the
centre. This encloses a square of some extent opposite the principal gate, which is now
approached by a stone bridge of two circular arches, occupying, in all probability, an
older drawbridge. On the tower over the arched gateway are sculptured the arms of
the old possessors. The principal apartments are on this side of the building.
The bridge leading to the kitchen is of one arch, and of very solid construction, but
probably of the same date as the other. Every feature of this side of the house
bespeaks great antiquity. The gateway has a pointed arch, and the
door is of solid oak, with a spw -knocker (represented in the cut in
the margin), a name derived from its resemblance to that article.
The kitchen has a most primitive appearance, and some parts of it
appear to be at least as old as the reign of Edward III. Many
pointed arches surround the walls, and the windows are divided by
mullions into two lights, which are trefoil-headed. The woodwork of
this side of the house, and of the back of the great hall, is also
ancient, and the stone windows preserve their original features un-
touched by the spirit of modernisation.
THE MOAT HOUSE, IGHTHAM, KENT.
189
The principal gateway leads into a square court, represented in the upper view on
our second plate. The principal apartments, as we have before stated, occupy the side
by which we enter. They are generally small, and are panelled with oak, carved in
what has been termed the " napkin pattern," an ornament which appears to have been
brought from Flanders, and which was very generally adopted in this country in the
reign of Henry VIII. These apartments contain some good fire-places of the Eliza-
bethan era, and a very fine example entirely covers one side of the largest room on this
side of the house. The ground-floor here, as well as throughout the building, is
devoted to staircases, servants' rooms, or domestic
offices. The upper, or state rooms, communicate
by means of the corridor, of which a view is given
in our cut. The windows of this corridor are
ornamented with the arms of the family.
The south side (to the left hand on entering
the court) contains the chapel, which occupies the
upper floor of the entire side, and has towards the
court a bell-turret above a wooden gable. Facing
the principal gate is the great hall, the finest part
of the building and the most ancient. It has in-
ternally a roof of stone, springing from grotesque
corbel-heads. The kitchen and bedrooms occupy
the fourth or east side. The kitchen, which has
been already described, is connected with the hall
by an arched passage. A multitude of passages run in labyrinthine confusion through
the lower part of the building, and access to many of the upper rooms is only effected
by staircases of a most inconvenient form, which can
be accounted for in no other way than by supposing
that one of the chief objects of the builders was to
furnish the means of concealment. One large and im-
portant room is only to be reached by a steep, ladder-
like stair, and a turn through another and smaller room.
The group of red brick chimneys on this side are mas-
sive, and of so peculiar a form that we have deemed
them worthy of a cut.
The chapel, of which we give an interior view on
our second plate, is panelled with oak, and the windows
filled with fine stained glass of the fifteenth or sixteenth
[90 THE ARCHvEOLOOICAL ALBUM.
century, representing whole-length figure* of saints. The roof is painted with the
Tudor colours and badges, among which are the portcullis, rose, castle, and sheaf of
arrows, the two ItkBt being the badges of Catherine of Arragon, the first queen of Henry
VI II. The screen is of elegant carved work of the same date, and the stalls are also
enriched with carved panelling. The pulpit is likewise elaborately ornamented. In
fact, a greater amount of ornament is lavished in this place than in any other part of
the building ; and it is a most interesting example of an unaltered private chapel of the
beginning of the sixteenth century.
The grandeur of the olden time has long departed 'from this ancient dwelling.
" Beards " no longer " wag " merrily in its massive hall, nor is its court now filled, as
in former times, with its crowd of feudal retainers. Some parts of it are neglected,
and allow i-d to run into decay. Yet it is to be hoped that it will be long preserved
un modernised as one of the few genuine relics of old England. Too many of such
monuments have disappeared from the soil previous to the improved antiquarian taste
which is now spreading itself through the land ; and too few have there been who —
" Passing by some monument that stoops
With age, whose ruins plead for a repair,
Pity the fall of such a goodly pile."
ON THE EARLY USE OF CARRIAGES IN ENGLAND.
We can hardly imagine a people in any thing like an advanced state of civilisation
ignorant of the nse of carriages for transporting persons from one place to another ; yet
it is certain that they were of rare occurrence in this country during the middle ages,
and of a very cumbrous and inconvenient form. Strutt has engraved two examples
from an Anglo-Saxon manuscript (MS. Cotton. Claudius B. IV.), in one of which a
Saxon chief is represented riding in a very rude cart mounted on two wheels, and the
other consists of a kind of hammock suspended on four wheels. From this time we
scarcely meet with an allusion to such vehicles until the fourteenth century.
The Norman knights took pride in their horsemanship, and, for many ages, any
other mode of conveyance was looked upon as a disgraceful effeminacy, even among the
ladies, for which sex alone chariots, called, in the English of former days, chares,
were used. In the curious Latin poem by Richard of Maidstone on the reconciliation
between king Richard II. and the citizens of London, the queen, in her ceremonious
entrance with her husband into the capital, is represented as having two carriages with
ladies in her train ; and the writer tells us, rather exultingly, how one of them was
overturned, whereby the persons of the ladies, in their fall, were exposed in a very
unbecoming manner to the gaze of the multitude, which he looks upon as a punishment
for their adopting this article of luxury : —
" Namque sequuntur earn currus duo cum dominabus ;
Rexerat hos Phaeton, unus enim cecidit.
Femina feminea sua dum sic femina nudat,
Vix poterat risum plebs retinere suum.
Casus et iste placet, veniat, rogo, quod mihi signat,
Corruat ut luxus et malus omnis amor."
This would seem to shew that the use of such chariots was then looked upon as a new
or extravagant fashion in our island. On the Continent we find them in apparently
common use at an earlier period. The treatise on the miracles of St. Liudgar, quoted
by Ducange, speaks of a lady and her daughter as going to the church in a chariot
(" In una carra mate?' simul et filia posita . ... ad nostram ccclesiam adductce sunt ").
In 1294, by an ordonnance of Philip le Bel, it was forbidden to the wives of citizens to
192
Till: ARCII.liOLOr.ICAL ALBUM.
use a chariot. A picture of a chariot, as used by ladies in England, is given by Mr.
Gage Rokewode in the Vetusta Monument a, from the Louterel Psalter, executed in
the reign of Edward II. A similar chariot, with a king in it, is found in an illumina-
tion in the manuscript romance of " Meliadus," executed on the Continent about the
middle of the fourteenth century, described in a former article in the present volume
(j). 75). The inedited old English metrical version of the Scripture history, entitled
( ktrsor Miniili, as quoted in Mr. Halliwell's " Dictionary of Archaic and Provincial
Words," describes Joseph as sending a chare to fetch his father into Egypt : —
" Nay, sir, but ye mot to him fare,
He hath sent aftir the his chare;
We shul you make therynne a bed,
Into Egipte ye shul be led."
It appears that these carriages were fitted up with cushions and couches, for which,
chiefly, they were cried down as effeminate and luxurious. They were also gorgeously
adorned with embroidered curtains, &c. In the metrical romance of the " Squier of
Low Degre," the chariot which the king of Hungary promises to his daughter is thus
described : —
" To morow ye shall in huntyng fare ;
And yede, my doughter, yn a chare,
It shal be coverd wyth velvette reede,
And clothes of fine golde al about your heede,
With damaske whyte and asure blewe,
Well dyaperd with lyllyes newe.
Your pomelles shalbe ended with golde,
Your chaynes enameled many a folde.
Your mantell of ryche degre,
Purple palle and armyne fre.
Jennets of Spayne that ben so wyght,
Trapped to the ground with velvet bryght."
In the fifteenth century the chares appear to have been used more generally, and they
are more frequently repre-
sented in illuminated manu-
scripts. Our first cut is
taken from a manuscript of
this century in the British
Museum (MS. Reg. 16 F. III.
fol. 11, r°.), which contains a
chronicle of Flanders writ-
ten in French. It represents
Emergardc, wife of Salvard
lord of Roussillon, travelling in a chare : she is accompanied by a female attendant, and
ON THE EARLY USE OF CARRIAGES IN ENGLAND.
193
her fool is placed in front of the
vehicle, no doubt to beguile the
tediousness of the way with his
jokes. The second cut is taken
from the celebrated Harleian Ma-
nuscript of the " Romance of the
Rose" (MS. Harl. No. 4425, fol.
132, v°.), which has been described
on a former occasion in the pre-
sent volume (p. 81) : it repre-
sents the lady Venus, drawn in
a chare by her doves. The chap-
ter to which it forms an illustration
states, —
" Comment six jeunes colombeaux,
En ung char qui fut riche et beaux,
Mainent Venus en l'ost d'Amours,
Pour lui faire hastif secours.
The chare of Venus is a beautiful structure, with four wheels, and is adorned with
gold and pearls. Six of her most beautiful doves are harnessed to the shaft, instead of
horses.
" Lors fit la mesgnie appeller,
Son char commande a asteller ;
Car ne veult pas marcher les boes.
Beau fut le char, a quatre roes,
D'or et de perles estellez.
En lieu de chevaux attellez
Eust en limon six colombeaux,
Pris en son colombier mult beaux."
» v
This last-mentioned manuscript is believed to have been written and illuminated
in the reign of Henry VII., at which period Skelton, speaking of the representations
of classical personages on the tapestries of the dwellings of the clergy in his time,
says : —
" Nowe all the worlde stares,
How they ryde in goodly chares." — Colin Clout, 1. 963.
The reader is referred for the subsequent history of carriages to a very interesting
paper by Mr. Markland, in the twentieth volume of the " Archaeologia." As
c c
194 i hi: aiu ideologic a l album.
the use of these articles became more general, they underwent improvements, and
appeared in different shapes under the names of chariots or charrettes, waggons,
carocheSj whirlicotes, coaches, &c. In the following passage of the " Faerie Quene,"
Spencer uses the terms charett, irai/on, and coche, as synonymous : —
" Tho up him taking in their tender hands,
They easily unto her eharett beare :
Her teme at her commaundement quiet stands,
Whiles they the corse into her wagon reare,
And strowe with flowers the lamentable beare :
Then all the rest into their coches clim."
It may be observed, that, even up to the end of the sixteenth century, riding in
coaches continued to be looked upon by our forefathers as an effeminate custom, and only
fitted for women. Taylor, the water-poet, published in 1623 a curious satire on coaches
under tin' title of "The World runnes on Wheeles, or Oddes betwixt Carts and
( !< aches," in which he declaims with great vehemence against their then increasing variety.
" Oh," he exclaims, " beware of a coach as you would doc of a tygcr, a w r oolfe, or a
leviathan. I'll assure you it eates more (though it drinkes lesse) then the coachman
and his whole teeme ; it hath a mouth gaping on each side like a monster, with which
they have swallowed all the good housekeeping in England. It lately (like a most
insatiable devouring beast) did eate up of a knight, a neighbour of mine in the county of
N., a wood of above 400 akers as it had beene but a bunch of radish : of another, it
devoured a whole castle, as it had beene a marchpane, scarcely allowing the knight and
his lady halfe a colde shoulder of mutton to their suppers on a Thursday night, out of
which reversion the coachman and the footeman could picke but hungry vailes
There was a knight (an acquaintance of mine) whose whole meanes in the world was
but threescore pounds a-yeare, and above twenty of the same went for his wives coach-
hire." A little further on, speaking of the coach of his day, which preserved much of
the cumbrous character of the old chares, Taylor says : — " It is never unfurnished of a
bed and curtaines, with shop windowes of leather." — " The superfluous use of coaches
hath been the occasions of many vile and odious crimes, as murther, theft, cheating,
hangings, whippings, pillories, stockes, and cages ; for housekeeping never decaied till
coaches came into England, till which time those were accounted the best men who had
most followers and retainers; then land about or neerc London was thought deere
enough at a noble the aker yearely, and a ten-pound house-rent now was scarce twenty
shillings ; but the witchcraft of the coach quickly mounted the price of all things,
except poore mens labour." Our facetious writer tells us in another place that " in
the yeare 1564, one "William Boonen, a Dutchman, brought first the use of coaches
ON THE EARLY USE OF CARRIAGES IN ENGLAND. 195
hither, and the said Boonen was queene Elizabeths coachman ; for indeede a coach was
a strange monster in those dayes, and the sight of them put both horse and man into
amazement. Some said it was a great crab-shell brought out of China, and some
imagined it to be one of the pagan temples in which the canibals adored the devill ;
but at last all those doubts were cleared, and coach-making became a substantiall trade.
.... The cart is an open, transparent engine, that any man may perceive the plaine
honesty of it : there is no part of it, within or without, but it is in the continuall view
of all men. On the contrary, the coach is a close hipocrite, for it hath a cover for any
knavery, and curtaines to vaile or shadow any wickednesse ; besides, like a perpetuall
cheater, it weares two bootes, and no spurres, sometimes having two paire of legges in
one boote, and oftentimes (against nature) most preposterously it makes faire ladies
weare the boote. And, if you note, they are carried backe to backe, like people sur-
prized by pyrates, to be tied in that miserable manner, and throwne over boord into the
sea. Moreover, it makes people imitate sea-crabs, in being drawne side-wayes, as they
are when they sit in the boote of the coach : and it is a dangerous kinde of carriage for
the commonwealth, if it be rightly considered ; for when a man shall be a justice of the
peace, a serjeant, or a counsellour-at-law, what hope is it that all or many of them
should use upright dealing, that have beene so often in their youth, and daily in their
maturer or riper age, drawne aside continually in a coach, some to the right hand, and
some to the left ; for use makes perfectnesse, and often going aside willingly makes men
forget to goe upright naturally."
THE SAXON BARROWS.
The most durable monuments of the primeval ages of society were those erected in
memory of the dead ; and it seems that the farther we go back into the history
of mankind, the deeper we rind man's veneration for his departed brethren. The most
simple, and also the most durable, method of preserving the memory of the departed
\\;is by raising a barrow or mound of earth or stones over his remains; and, accordingly,
we find instances of this mode of interment in almost all countries of the globe. The
mode in which the barrow was constructed differed considerably : the interment was
frequently made in a large chamber, or chambers, built of stone, and over this chamber
the earth was piled up. Sometimes the body was laid in a cist, or square coffin, just
large enough to receive it, over which the mound was raised ; and this kist was either
built on the level of the ground with stones, or was a trench cut below the natural level.
At other times the interment, either a body or an urn containing the bones, appears
to have been simply placed on the level ground and the earth thrown upon it. A very
good paper on barrows in general, was read at the meeting of the British Archaeological
Association at Canterbury, by the Rev. J. Bathurst Deane, who appears to think that
barrows are characteristic only of one of the great branches of the human race, and that
the mere fact of burying in this manner proves the affinity of the different people
among whom it is found. We are not prepared to go so far as this; nor do we think
that Sir Richard Colt Hoarc's theory deserves much attention, who attempted to classify
the barrows according to their particular forms, and who thought that in this manner
he could distinguish even the caste of society to which they belonged. The barrows
are of no historical utility until opened, for it is by their contents only that we can tell
the tribe or rank of those who have so long reposed under them ; and by the comparison
of these contents with those of other barrows, we gain information relating to the
history of periods on which written documents throw no light.
The interest of the barrow in the present day consists, in a great measure, in the
numerous articles of almost every description which the ancients were in the habit of
burying with their dead. Herodotus has left us a remarkable description of the mode
THE SAXON BARROWS. 197
of interment of the dead which prevailed among the ancient Scythians, whose barrows
still cover the plains of southern Siberia, immense cones of earth sometimes between two
and three hundred feet high. The historian tells us that, on the death of one of their
chiefs, they embalmed his corpse and carried it to this district : — " There they lay him
in a sepulchre, upon a bed encompassed on all sides with spears fixed in the ground.
These they cover with timber, and spread a canopy over the whole monument. In the
spaces which remain vacant they placed one of the king's wives, strangled, a cook, a
cupbearer, a groom, a waiter, a messenger, certain horses, and the first fruits of all
things. To these they add cups of gold, for silver and brass are not used among them.
This done, they throw up the earth with great care, and endeavour to raise a mound as
high as they can." Many of these mounds have been opened at different periods, and
abundance of such articles as those here described by the father of history have been
found in them. Mr. Deane described the opening of one of these large barrows from
the second volume of the " Archseologia :" — " After removing a very deep covering of
earth and stones, the workmen came to three vaults, constructed of unhewn stones of
rude workmanship. That wherein the corpse of the khan was deposited was in the
middle, and the largest of the three. In it were laid by the side of the corpse a sword,
spear, bow, quiver, and arrows. In a vault or cave at his feet lay the skeleton of his
horse, with a bridle, saddle, and stirrups. In a vault at his head was laid a female
skeleton, supposed to be the wife of the chief. The body of the male corpse lay reclining
against the head of the vault upon a sheet of pure gold, extending the whole length
from head to foot ; another sheet of gold, of the like dimensions, lay over the body,
which was wrapped in a rich mantle bordered with gold, and studded with rubies and
emeralds. The head was naked, and without any ornament, as were the neck, breast,
and arms. The female corpse lay, in like manner, reclining against the walls of the cave ;
was, in like manner, laid upon a sheet of gold, and covered with another : a golden
chain of many links, set with rubies, went round her neck ; on her arms were bracelets
of gold. The body was covered with a rich robe, but without any border of gold or
jewels. The vestments of both these bodies looked, at the first opening, fair and
complete ; but, upon the touch, crumbled into dust. The four sheets of gold weighed
forty pounds." The richness of these Scythian barrows is extraordinary, and we know
of nothing to equal it in other countries. However, it is only two or three years ago
that a body was found in a barrow in England, with a thin breastplate of pure gold,
which is now preserved in the British Museum.
Homer speaks frequently of the barrows of the heroic age of ancient Greece, and gives us
some curious details relating to the ceremonies at the interment. The poet describes
the supposed tomb of yEpytus, on the summit of Mount Cyllene in Arcadia, in a manner
198 THE A KC IDEOLOGICAL ALBUM.
which drew the following remark from Pausanias: — "I contemplated the tomb of
.Knvtus with peculiar interest, because, in his mention of the Arcadians, Homer takes
notice of it as the monument of that chief. It is a mound of earth, not very large,
surrounded ;it its base by a circle of stones. To Homer, indeed (who had never seen a
barrow more remarkable), it perhaps appeared a very great wonder." Mr. Deane justly
observes that this is an exact picture of the primeval sepulchres of our islands, the circle
of stones being a usual adjunct.
The Homeric heroes were burnt before interment. Thus, in the Iliad, Achilles
causes an immense funeral pile to be reared for the body of his friend Patroclus : —
" They, still abiding, heap'd the pile.
An hundred feet of breadth from side to side
They gave to it, and on the summit placed
With sorrowing hearts the body of the dead.
Many a fat sheep, with many an ox full-hom'd,
They fiay'd before the pile, busy their task
Administring, and Peleus' son the fat
Taking from every victim, overspread
Complete the body with it of his friend
Patroclus, and the flay'd beasts heap'd around.
Then, placing flagons on the pile, replete
With oil and honey, he inclined their mouths
Toward the bier, and slew and added, next,
Deep-groaning and in haste, four martial steeds.
Nine dogs the hero at his table fed,
Of which beheading two, their carcases
He added also. Last, twelve gallant sons
Of noble Trojans slaying (for his heart
Teem'd with great vengeance), he applied the force
Of hungry flames that should devour the whole."
II. xxiii. Cowper's Version.
When the pile was consumed, they quenched the ashes with "dark wine," and then
sorrowfully gathered the " white bones " of the departed hero into a golden vase and a
rich embroidered cloth ; and placed them with honour in the tent, while they traced
the circle of the mound, and "laid the foundations about the pile." They finally placed
the deposit within, and raised the mound of earth.
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