YALE UNIVERSITY
LIBRARY

OLD ENGLAND:

^irtnrial Mmnm

OF

REGAL, ECCLESIASTICAL, MUNICIPAL, BARONIAL,

AND

POPULAR ANTIQUITIES.

£dL.^ '°'LJ.^ ^^a,Z±

YOLUME I.

LONDON:
SANGSTER AND FLETCHER, PATERNOSTER-ROW.
1854.

ILLUMINATED ENGRAVINGS OF OLD ENGLAND.

*** Some of these Engravings are described at the pages to which they are respectively assigned in the following list. Others
are not so described, although they are placed with reference to the general subject to which they belong Where such
description is not found in the text, we here subjoin a more particular notice of the Engraving. PAGS
1. THE CORONATION CHAIR  ]y
2. PAINTED WINDOW OF SAXON AND NORMAN EARLS OF CHESTER  94
Brereton Hall, in Cheshire, was built in the reign of Elizabeth, by Sir William Brereton ; and it is said that the
queen herself laid the foundation-stone. The founder appears to have liberally used the beautiful art of staining o-lass
in the decoration of his mansion. In many of the windows were the various bearings of the principal Cheshire families
some of which still remain. But the greatest object of curiosity in this mansion, an object, indeed, of historical interest
was the painted window, of which we have given a faithful copy in the illuminated engraving. This window, we know not
for what cause, was some years ago removed to Aston Hall,,in Warwickshire. It has had the advantage of being described
and engraved in Ormond's " History of Cheshire ;" and a most beautiful and elaborate series of coloured fac-similes the size
of the originals, was executed by Mr. William Fowler, and published in 1808. From these our engraving is copied. Two
of the figures represent Leofwine and Leofric, Saxon earls of Mercia. The other figures exhibit the seven Norman earls of
Chester. The first earl, Hugh, surnamed Lupus, came into England with the Conqueror, who gave to him and his heirs
the county of Chester, to hold as freely by him with the sword as he (William) held by the crown. He died in 1103.
Richard, the son of Hugh, was the second earl. He was drowned in returning from Normandy in 1120. Dying without
issue, he was succeeded by his cousin, Randolph de Meschines, the third earl, who died in 1129. The fourth earl
Randolph, surnamed de Gernonijs, took part with the Empress Maud and her son Henry, and he, with Robert Earl of
Gloucester, made King Stephen prisoner at Lincoln in 1141. He died by poison in 1158. Hugh, surnamed Cyveliok
from the place in Wales where he was born, was the fifth earl ; he died in 1180. Randolph, surnamed Blundeville, was
the sixth earl. He was a brave, and what was more unusual for a baron, a learned man, having compiled a treatise on the
Laws of the Realm. He lived in great honour and esteem in the reigns of Henry II., Richard I., John, and Henry III.
He fought in the Holy Land with Cceur-de-Lion, and was the founder of the abbey of Delacroix, in Staffordshire, and of
the Grey Friars at Coventry. He died in 1233, having held the earldom fifty-three years. Although married three times,
he had no issue ; but was succeeded by his nephew John, surnamed Le Scot. Upon his death without issue in the
twenty-second of Henry III., 1238, the King " thought it not good to make a division of the earldom of Chester, it
enjoying such a regal prerogative ; therefore, taking the same into his own hands, he gave unto the sisters of John Scot
other lands, and gave the county palatine of Chester to his eldest son." (Ormerod.) John le Scot was therefore the last
independent Earl of Chester. From that time the eldest sons of the sovereigns of England have been Earls of Chester from
the day of their birth.
In the painted window it will be observed that each figure is placed within an arch. Each arch in the original window
is seventeen inches in height, and about eight in width between the columns. The arches are struck from two centres, and
have a keystone, on which is represented a grotesque head under a basket of fruit. It will of course suggest itself to the
reader that this window, being in all probability executed in the time of Elizabeth, cannot be received as a perfectly faithful
representation even of the costume of these redoubted vice-kings of the county palatine. Upon this point Ormerod has the
following remarks : " The style of the architecture is of the era of Elizabeth, but an erroneous idea prevails as to the high
antiquity of these figures, and as to their having been the identical representations of the earls which formerly graced the
windows of Chester Abbey." To correct this idea the county historian refers to a fude drawing in the Harleian MS. 2151,
which shows the character of that ancient glass. But he adds, " It is, however, not unlikely that the figures may have
been copied from paintings, stained glass, or monkish illuminations, of considerable antiquity ; though the paintings themselves
were most probably executed for the decoration of the newly-erected Hall of Brereton at the close of the sixteenth century."
3. KEEP OF ROCHESTER CASTLE  98
4. COURT-CUPBOARD IN WARWICK CASTLE  103
The furniture of the ancient halls and castles of England was for the most part peculiarly suited to the size and structure
of the apartments in which it was placed. Much of it was of oak, boldly and richly carved, in a manner exceedingly
appropriate to the beautiful Gothic style of the windows, the panelling of the walls, and the decorations of the mantel
pieces and ceilings. The massy sideboard, or court-cupboard, as it is sometimes called, is one of those grand pieces of old
Gothic furniture, of which, besides the one at Warwick Castle represented in our coloured engraving, there are still many
specimens remaining in the old baronial apartments of England.
5. INTERIOR OF THE TEMPLE CHURCH  j  143
6. ENTRANCE TO THE CHAPEL OF EDWARD THE CONFESSOR  283
7. MONUMENT TO SIR FRANCIS VERE  28«
8. HENRY THE SEVENTH'S CHAPEL  29°

IV

ILLUMINATED ENGRAVINGS.

Page 371
). CHANCEL OF THE CHURCH OF STRATFORD-UPON-AVON  ¦
The parish church of Stratford-upon-Avon is a large and handsome structure, of the usual cross-form, with a central
tower surmounted by a spire. The chancel, of which the coloured engraving exhibits a view from the south door, showing
Shakspere's monument on the north wall, is a fine specimen of late perpendicular architecture : the west end of the nave.,
the north porch, the piers, arches, and clerestory, are also perpendicular, but of earlier date ; the tower, transept, and some
parts of the nave, are early English : the ancient arches of the tower have been strengthened by underbuilding them with
others of perpendicular character. Some of the windows have portions of good stained glass. Shakspere was buried on
the north side of the chancel : his monument on the north wall must have been erected previous to 1623, when his works
were first published ; for Leonard Digges, in the verses prefixed to that first edition, thus addresses the departed poet :
Shakespeare, at length thy pious fellows give
The world thy works : thy works by which outlive
Thy tomb thy name must; when that stone is rent,
"¦ And time dissolves thy Stratford monument,
Here we alive shall view thee still. This book,
"When brass and marble fade, shall make thee look
Fresh to all ages.
The sculptor of the monument was Gerard Johnson. It consists of a bust of Shakspere with the body to the waist, under
an ornamented arch between two Corinthian columns which support an entablature, above which are the arms and crest of
Shakspere in bold relief, surmounted by a sculptured skull. Below the figure are the following Latin and English verses ;
Judicio Pylium, genio Socratem, arte Maronem,
Terra tegit, populus moeret, Olympus habet.
Stay, passenger, why goest thou by so fast ?
Read, if thou canst, whom envious death hath placed
Within this monument — Shakspeare, with whom
Quick nature died ; whose name doth deck this tomb
Far more than cost ; sith all that he hath writ
Leaves living art but page to serve his wit.
Obiit Ano. Dni. 1616, setatis 53, die 23 Apr.
Mr. Britton, in 1816, published "Remarks on Shakspeare's Monumental Bust," in which is the following passage : —
" The bust is the size of' life ; it is formed out of a block of soft stone, and was originally painted over in imitation of
nature. The hands and face were of flesh colour, the eyes of a light hazel, and the hair and beard auburn ; the doublet,
or coat, was scarlet, and covered with a loose black gown, or tabard, without sleeves ; the upper part of the cushion was
green, the under half crimson, and the tassels gilt. Such appear to have been the original features of this important, but
neglected or insulted bust. After remaining in this state above one hundred and twenty years, Mr. John Ward, grandfather
to Mrs. Siddons and Mr. Kemble, caused it to be repaired, and the original colours preserved, in 1748, from the profits of
the representation of Othello. This was a generous and apparently judicious act, and therefore very unlike the next
alteration it was subjected to in 1793. In that year Mr. Malone caused the bust to be covered over with one or more coats
of white paint, and thus at once destroyed its original character, and greatly injured the expression of the face."
10. CHANTRY, OR ORATORY OF THE BEAUCHAMP CHAPEL, WARWICK  375
The chantry; or oratory, represented in the illuminated engraving, is a detached building, separated from the chapel by
an open screen. It is a beautiful work of art, and the groined ceiling is especially rich and elegant.
11. METHLEY HALL  383
Methley Hall, or Methley Park, in the West Riding of Yorkshire, seven miles south-east from Leeds, is the seat of
the Saviles, Earls Mexborough, which family have held the manor for several centuries. The original manor-house was
built by Sir Robert Waterton, in the reign of Henry IV. ; but after the manor became the property of the Saviles, the old
house was pulled down, and the present magnificent mansion erected on its site by Sir John Savile, Baron of the Exchequer,
with additions by his son Sir Henry Savile, in a harldsome and uniform style. Of this building only the hall and the back
part of the house remain : the far- famea gallery, with its armorial bearings in painted glass, no longer exists ; it has given
place to the present front part of the mansion, which is of no great magnificence without, but contains some very fine
apartments, one of which, with its beautiful painted ceiling and pendent ornaments, its antique furniture, rich carving, and
lofty mullioned windows, is exhibited in our coloured engraving.

12. MORRIS DANCE 
The coloured engraving which is given as a title to the first volume of " Old England," is the representation of an ancient
window of stained glass, formerly in the house of George Tollett, Esq., of Betley, in Staffordshire, which has been conjectured
by Mr. Douce, from certain peculiarities of costume, to have been executed in the time of Edward IV. The six interior
lozenges, on which we have engraved the title of our work, are vacant in the original. The figures on the other lozenges
represent the performers of a Morris Dance round a May-pole, from which are displayed a St. George's red cross and a
white pennon. Immediately below the May-pole is the character who manages the pasteboard hobby-horse, who, from the
crown which he wears, and the richness of his attire, appears to represent the King of May ; while, from the two daggers
stuck in his cheeks, he may be supposed to have been a juggler and the master of the dance. Beneath the King of May
is Maid Marian, as the Queen of May, with a crown on her head and attired in a style of high fashion, her coif floating
behind, her hair unbound and streaming down her waist, and holding in her hand an emblematic flower. ' Margaret, eldest
daughter of Henry VII., when married to James, King of Scotland, appeared thus, wearing a crown and with her hair
hanging down her back. Of the other characters some are obvious enough, but others are conjectural. The left-hand
figure at the top is the court fool, with his cockscomb cap and his bauble. The first figure to the right is supposed to
represent a Spaniard, and the next a Morisco or Moor, both men of rank, in rich dresses, with the long outer sleeves
hanging loose like ribbons, a fashion once prevalent in England as well as on the Continent. Beneath the Morisco is the
instrumental performer, with his pipe and tabor ; below him the lover or paramour of Maid Marian ; and under him the
friar, in the Franciscan habit. The King of May is the supposed representative of Robin Hood ; the Queen of May of
his favourite Marian ; and the friar of his chaplain, Friar Tuck. Passing by Marian, we have the inferior fool furnished
with his bib ; above him the representative of the clown or peasant ; and next above, the franklin or gentleman The
dreads are curiously appropriate to the characters.

Title.

CONTENTS OF VOLUME I.

THE BRITISH PERIOD

THE ROMAN PERIOD

THE ANGLO-SAXON PERIOD

BOOK I
BEFORE THE CONQUEST.
CHAPTER I.

CHAPTER II.
CHAPTER III.

Pagk 3

26

55

BOOK II.
THE PERIOD FROM THE NORMAN CONQUEST TO THE DEATH OF
KING JOHN. a.d. 1066—1216.

CHAPTER I.

REGAL AND BARONIAL ANTIQUITIES

CHAPTER II.
ECCLESIASTICAL ANTIQUITIES  130
CHAPTER III.
POPULAR ANTIQUITIES  211

BOOK III
THE PERIOD FROM THE ACCESSION OF HENRY III. TO THE END OF THE REIGN OF
RICHARD II. a.d. 1216—1399.

CHAPTER I.

REGAL AND BARONIAL ANTIQUITIES

218

CHAPTER II.

ECCLESIASTICAL ANTIQUITIES

. 255

CHAPTER III.
POPULAR ANTIQUITIES  314

BOOK IV.
THE PERIOD FROM THE ACCESSION OF HENRY IV. TO THE END OF THE REIGN OF
RICHARD III. a.d. 1399—1485.

CHAPTER I.

REGAL AND BARONIAL ANTIQUITIES

335

CHAPTER II.
ECCLESIASTICAL ANTIQUITIES  355

CHAPTER III.

POPULAR ANTIQUITIES

37;

JHFV8

One of the moat picturesque descriptions in the
most picturesque of poets,— that in ' The Faery
Queen ' of the old man who /
" things past could keep in memory,"
shows him sitting in a chamber which " seemed
ruinous and old," hut whose walls were "right
firm and strong." Such are the Antiquities
of a great Nation. They may appear " worm-
eaten and full of canker-holes," but they are
teeming with life, and will he fresh and beauti
ful as long as civilization endures. When the
knightB who looked on the old man of Spenser
had perused his " antique Registers," and had
traced his wondrouB legends up to the time of
the British kings who
" entombed lie at Stonehenge by the heath,"
one of them bursts forth -into this noble apo
strophe :— " Dear Country ! 0 how dearly dear
Ought thy remembrance and perpetual band
Be to thy foster-child, that from thy hand
Did common breath and nouriture receive !
How brutish is it not to understand
How much to her we owe, that all us gave ;
That gave unto us all whatever good we have !"
Such is the just effect upon every generous mind
of the study of the " ancient records " of our
native land. The richest treasures that we have
derived from a long line of ancestors are our
antiquities. They carry us back to dim periods
that have bequeathed to us no written explana
tion of the origin and the uses of their inde
structible monuments. Vast moimds, gigantifi
temples, mystic towers, belong to ages not of bar
barism, but of civilisation different from our
own. These are succeeded by the remains of the
great Roman conquerors of ifte world, who be
stowed upon Britain their reibements and their
learning. Our AnglO'Saxofy&rts and Sciences
have left indelible traces, ^Bfwritten descrip
tions and pictorial representations snatched
from the spoils of time ; and in some architec
tural remains of early piety which have escaped
the ravages of the Dane, Gradually the in
fluences of Christianity are spread over the land ;
and the great connecting links between the past
and the present rise up, in the glorious Ecclesias
tical edifices that we are now at length learning
to look upon with love and admiration— to pre
serve and to restore. But there are also monu
ments scattered through the country of the
antagonist principles of brute force and military
dominion. The Feudal Times have left us their
impressive memorials, in Baronial Castles and
crumbling Fortresses, — in the Weapons and Ar
mour of their haughty Chieftains. These are
succeeded by the venerable Palaces and Mansions
which belonged to the age of early constitutional
Government, when the Law allowed comfort to
be studied in conjunction with security. To
this age belong the monuments of Civic Power,

— the Balls of Guilds and Companies; and, more
important still, the splendid seats of liberal Edu
cation, our Endowed Seliools and Colleges. Amidst
all these instructive though silent chronicles of
the past, in which England is richer than any
other country, have grown up the infinitely-
varied peculiarities of the middle classes, during
five centuries in which they have formed the
strength of the nation ; and these are preserved
in numberless evidences of their raodes of life,
public amd domestic. These things are surely of
the deepest interest even to millions who speak
the language of "old England," scattered
through every quarter of the habitable Globe.
The Antiquities of England are the Antiquities
of North America and of Australia,— of mighty
continents and fertile islands where the de
scendants of the Anglo-Saxon have founded
" new nations." They are of especial interest to
every dweller in the father-land. These " rem
nants of History which have casually escaped
the shipwreck of time" (so Bacon defines Anti
quities) are amongst the best riches of the
freight of knowledge— not merely curiosities, but
of intrinsic value.
We propose to open to all ranks of the peo
ple, at the cheapest rate, a complete view of
the REGAL, ECCLESIASTICAL, BARONIAL,
MUNICIPAL, and POPULAR ANTIQUITIES
OF ENGLAND, by the publication of the larg
est collection of Engravings, with explanatory
letterpress, that has ever been devoted to this
important branch of general information. Our
work is addressed to the People ; but the know
ledge which it seeks to impart will be as scru
pulously accurate as if it were exclusively in
tended for the most critical antiquary. To be
full and correct it is not necessary to be tedious
and pedantic. That knowledge will be pre
sented, for the most part, in a chronological
order; and thus our work will be a Com
panion and a Key to every English Sistory. The
Engravings will embrace the most remarkable • .
of out Buildings from the earliest times— Druid-
ical Remains, Cathedrals, Abbeys, Churches,
Colleges, Castles, Civic Halls, Mansions : Sepul
chral Monuments of our Princes and Nobles:
Portraits of British Worthies, representa
tions of the localities associated with their
names: Ancient Pictures and Illuminations of
Historical Events : the Great Seals and Arms of
the Monarchy : Coins and Medals : Autographs :
and, scattered- amongst these authentic memo
rials of the rulers of the land, and of those who
sat in high places, the fullest Pictorial indica
tions of the Industry, the Arts, the Sports, the
Dresses, and the Daily Life of the People.
The twenty-four Coloured Engravings
which will form a portion of the work will con
sist of Fac Similes of Elaborate Architectural
Drawings, made expressly for this publication,
and forming in themselves a most interesting
series_of Picturesque Antiquities.

mmmm

%* The Border represents the following objects;— at the top, Stonehenge, from the Salisbury Bide: on the left
hand— Roman Pharos, Dover; Keep, Ketiilworth Castle: the Duke's House, Bradford; Boar-hunt; on the right
hand— Pevensey Castle ; Bastion, and Tower of Cathedral, Canterbury ; Caius Gate of Honour, Cambridge : Tomb
of Queen Elizabeth ; at the foot, South Terrace and Round Tower, Windsor Castle.

THE CORONATION CHAIR.

#IK USttgUuilfe

<£

BOOK I.

CHAPTER I.— THE BRITISH PERIOD.

ARUM Plain— the Salisbury Plain
of our own day — an elevated plat
form of chalk, extending as far as
the eye can reach in broad downs
where man would seem to have no
abiding place, presents a series of
objects as interesting in their degree
as the sands where the pyramids and
' sphinxes of ancient Egypt have
stood for countless generations-
This plain would seem to be the
cradle of English civilization. The
works of man in the earliest ages
of the world may be buried beneath the hills or the rivers ; but we
can trace back the labours of those who have tenanted the same soil
as ourselves, to no more remote period than is indicated by the stone
circles, the barrows, the earth-works, of Salisbury Plain and its
immediate neighbourhood.
The great wonder of Salisbury Plain, — the most remarkable mo
nument of antiquity in our island, if we take into account its com
parative preservation as well as its grandeur, — is Stonehenge. It
is situated about seven miles north of Salisbury. It may be most
conveniently approached from the little town of Amesbury. Pass
ing by a noble Roman earth-work called the Camp of Vespasian, as
we ascend out of the valley of the Avon, we gain an uninterrupted
view of the undulating downs which surround us on every side.
The name of Plain conveys an inadequate notion of the character
of this singular district. The platform is not flat, as might be ima
gined ; but ridge after ridge leads the eye onwards to the bolder hills
of the extreme distance, or the last ridge is lost in the low horizon.
The peculiar character of the scene is that of the most complete soli
tude. It is possible that a shepherd boy may be descried watching
' his flocks nibbling the short thymy grass with which the downs aTe
everywhere covered ; but, with the exception of a shed or a hovel,
there is no trace of human dwelling. This peculiarity arises from the
physical character of the district. It is not that man is not here, but
that his abodes are hidden in the little valleys. On each bank of the
Avon to the east of Stonehenge, villages and hamlets are found at
every mile ; and on the small branch of the Wyly to the west there
is a cluster of parishes, each with its church, in whose names, such as
Orcheston Maries, and Shrawston Virgo, we hail the tokens of in
stitutions which left Stonehenge a ruin. We must not hastily con
clude, therefore, that this great monument of antiquity was set up in
an unpeopled region ; and that, whatever might be its uses, it was
visited only by pilgrims from far-off places. But the aspect of
Stonehenge, as we have said, is that of entire solitude. The distant
view is somewhat disappointing to the raised expectation. The hull
of a large ship, motionless on a wide sea, with no, object near by
which to measure its bulk,, appears an insignificant thing : it is a
speck in the vastness by which it is surrounded. Approach that
ship, and the largeness of its parts leads us to estimate the grandeur
of the whole. So is it with Stonehenge. The vast plain occupies
so much of the eye that even a large town set down upon it would
appear a hamlet. But as we approach the pile, the mind gradually
becomes impressed with its real character. It is now the Chorea
Gigantum — the Choir of Giants ; and the tradition that Merlin the
Magician brought the stones from Ireland is felt to be a poetical
homage to the greatness of the work.
Keeping in view the ground plan of Stonehenge in its present
state (Fig. 1), we will ask the reader to follow us while we describe
the appearance of the structure. Great blocks of stone, some of

which are standing and some prostrate, form the somewhat confused
circular mass in the centre of the plan. The outermost shadowed
circle represents an inner ditch, a vallum or bank, and an exterior
ditch, m, n. The height of the bank is 15 feet ; the diameter of the
space enclosed within the bank is 300 feet. - The section I shows
their formation. To the north-east the ditch and bank run off into
an avenue, a section of which is shown at p. At the distance of
about 100 feet from the circular ditch is a large grey stone bent
forward, a, which, in the dim light of the evening, looks like a gi
gantic human being in the attitude of supplication. The direct
course of the avenue is impeded by a stone, b, which has fallen in the
ditch. A similar single stone is found in corresponding monu
ments. In the line of the avenue at the point marked c is a
supposed entrance to the first or outer circle of stones. At the
points d near the ditch are two large cavities in the ground. There
are two stones e, and two o, also near the ditch. It is conjectured by
some, that these formed part of a circle which has been almost to
tally destroyed. The centre of the enclosed space is usually deno
minated the temple. It consists of an outer circle of stones, seventeen
of which remain in their original position ; and thirteen to the north
east, forming an uninterrupted segment of the circle, leave no doubt
as to the form of the edifice. The restored plan of Dr. Stukeley (Fig.
2) shows the original number of stones in this outer circle to have
been thirty ; those shadowed on the plan are still remaining. The up
right stones of the outer circle are 14 feet in height, and upon the
tops of them has been carried throughout a continuous impost, as it
is technically called, of large flat stones of the same width. This
has not been a rude work, as we see in the structures called crom
lechs, where a flat stone covers two or three uprights, without any
nice adjustment : but 'at Stonehenge sufficient remains to show that
the horizontal stones carefully fitted each other, so as to form each
an arc of the circle ; and that they were held firmly in their places
by a deep mortice at each end, fitting upon the tenon of the up
rights. This careful employment of the builder's art constitutes
one.-°£-the remarkable peculiarities of Stonehenge. The blocks
themselves are carefully hewn. It is not necessary to add to our
wonder by adopting the common notion that the neighbouring
country produces no such material. The same fine-grained sand
stone of which the greater number of the masses consists, is found
scattered upon the downs in the neighbourhood of Marlborough and
Avebury. The stones of the second circle are, however, of a dif
ferent character ; and so is what is> called the altar -stone, marked/
on the ground plan. Of the inner circle, enclosing a diameter of
83 feet, which appears to have consisted of much smaller stones
without imposts, but about the same in number as the outer circle,
there are very few stones remaining. There is a single fallen stone
with two mortices g, which has led to the belief that there was some
variation in the plan of the second circle, such as is indicated by the
letter a on the restored plan. Within the second circle were five
distinct erections, each consisting of two very large stones with an
impost, with three smaller stones in advance of each : these have
been called trilithons. That marked h in the ground plan is the
largest stone in the edifice, being 21 feet 6 inches in height. The
two trilithons marked i are nearly perfect. The stones of the trili-
thon k are entire ; but it fell prostrate as recently as 1797. The ex
ternal appearance which the whole work would have if restored, is
shown in the perspective elevation (Fig. 3). The internal arrange
ment is exhibited in the section (Fig. 4). The present appearance
of the ruin from different points of view is shown in Figs. 5 and 6.
The description which we have thus given, brief as it is, may
appear somewhat tedious ; but it is necessary, to understand the
B 2.

Z&&m~*s&*

6 »%» ceo ^ c» ^7

f£*
 365"ft."""|||  Iff'"
11 II
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1.— Ground-Plan of Stonehenge in its present state.
5— Stonehenge.
3.— Stonehenge.— Perspective Elevation restored.
\^ 2nd Circle ^O
I la o
4.-iStonelienge': section 1 to 2 (Restoredfflan, Eg. 2), 105 feet.
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T.-Dmidical Circle at Darah.
2.— Stonehenge.— Eestored Plan.
8.— Druidical Stone in Persia.
SHIP?:

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10.— Astronomical Instmment.

fX.

17.— Sarum Plain.

13.— Two Druids. Bas-relief found at Autun.

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] 5.— Group of Arcl -Druid and Drnids.

12.— Gaulish Drity. Brans.

9.— Druidical Circle of Jersey.

OLD ENGLAND.

general plan and some of the details of every great work of art, of
whatever age, ruinous or entire, before the mind can properly apply
itself to the associations which belong to it. In Stonehenge this
course is more especially necessary ; for however the imagination
may be impressed by the magnitude of those masses of stone which
still remain in their places, by the grandeur even of the fragments
confused or broken in their fall, by the consideration of the vast
labour required to bring such ponderous substances to this desolate
spot, and by surmise of the nature of the mechanical skill by which
they were lifted up and placed in order and proportion, it is not
till the entire plan is fully comprehended that we can properly,
surrender ourselves to the contemplations which belong to this
remarkable scene. It is then, when we can figure to ourselves a
perfect structure, composed of such huge materials symmetrically
arranged, and possessing, therefore, that beauty which is the result
of symmetry, that we can satisfactorily look back through the dim
light of history or tradition to the object for which such a structure
was destined. The belief now appears tolerably settled that Stone^
henge was a temple of the Druids. It differs,' however, from all
ither Druidical remains, in the circumstance that greater mecha
nical art was employed in its construction, especially in the super
incumbent stones of the outer circle and of the trilithons, from
which it is supposed to derive its name : stan being the Saxon for
a stone, and heng to hang or support. From this circumstance it is
maintained that Stonehenge is of the very latest ages of Druidism ;
and that the Druids that wholly belonged to the ante-historic period
followed the example of those who observed the command of the
law : " If thou wilt make me an altar of stone, thou shalt not build
it of hewn stone : for if thou lift up thy tool upon it, thou hast
polluted it." (Exodus, chap, xx.) Regarding Stonehenge as a work
of masonry and architectural proportions, Inigo Jones came to the
conclusion that it was a Roman Temple of the Tuscan order. This
was an architect's dream. Antiquaries, with less of taste and fancy
than Inigo Jones, have had their dreams also about Stonehenge,
almost as wild as the legend of Merlin flying away with the stones
from the Curragh of Kildare. Some attribute its erection to the
Britons after the invasion of the Romans. Some bring it down to
as recent a period as that of the usurping Danes. Others again
carry it back to the early days of the Phoenicians. The first
notice of Stonehenge is found in the writings of Nennius, who lived
in the ninth ceiitury of the Christian era. He says that at the spot
where Stonehenge stands a conference was held between, -Hengist
and Vortigern, at which Hengist treacherously murdered four
hundred and sixty British nobles, and that their mourning sur
vivors erected the temple to commemorate the fatal event. Mr. Da-
vies, a modern writer upon Celtic antiquities, holds that Stonehenge
was the place of this conference between the British and Saxon
princes, on account of its venerable antiquity and peculiar sanctity.
There is a passage in Diodorus Siculus, quoted from Hecateeus, which
describes a round temple in Britain dedicated to Apollo ; and this
Mr. Davies concludes to have been Stonehenge. By another
writer, Dr. Smith, Stonehenge is maintained to have been " the
grand orrery of the Druids," representing, by combinations of its
stones, the ancient solar year, the lunar month, the twelve signs of
the zodiac, and the seven planets. Lastly, Stonehenge has been
pronounced to be a temple of Budha, the Druids being held*to be
a race of emigrated Indian philosophers.
Startling as this last assertion may appear to be, a variety of facts
irresistibly lead to the conclusion that the circles, the stones of
memorial, the cromlechs, and other monuments of the highest an
tiquity in these islands, have a distinct resemblance to other monu
ments of the same character scattered over Asia and Europe, and
even found in the New World, which appear to have had a common
origin. In Great Britain and Ireland, in Jersey and Guernsey, in
France, in Germany, in Denmark and Sweden, such monuments
are found extensively dispersed. " They are found also, though more
rarely, in the Netherlands, Portugal, and Malta; in Gozo and
Phoenicia, But their presence is also unquestionable in Malabar
in India, in Palestine, in Persia. Figures 7 and 8 represent a
Druidical circle, and a single upright stone standing alone near the
circle, which are described by Sir "William Ouseley as seen by
him at Darab, in the province of Fars, in Persia. Our engravings
are copied from those in Sir "William Ouseley's book. "We have
placed them upon the same page with the representations of Stone
henge. If we had obliterated the Oriental figures, a superficial
observation might easily receive them as representations of Stone
henge from another point of view. The circle of stones at Darab
is surrounded by a wide and deep ditch and a high bank of earth ;
there is a central stone, and a single upright stone at some distance
from the main group. The resemblance of the circle at Darab to

"the general arrangement of Stonehenge, and other similar monu >
ments of Europe, led Sir William Ouseley to the natural conclu
sion that a " British Antiquary might be almost authorised to pro
nounce it Druidical, according to the general application of the word
among us." At Darab there is a peculiarity which is not found at
Stonehenge, at least in its existing state. Under several of the
stones there are recesses, or small caverns. In this particular., and
in the general rudeness of its construction, the circle of Darab
resembles the Druidical circle of Jersey (9), although the circle
there is very much smaller, and the stones of very inconsiderable
dimensions, — a copy in miniature of such vast works as those of
Stonehenge and Avebury. This singular monument, which was
found buried under the earth, was removed some fifty years ago by
General Conway, to his seat near Henley, the stones being placed
in his garden according to the original plan.
When we open the great store house not only of divine truth but
of authentic history, we find the clearest record that circles of stone
were set up for sacred and solemn purposes. The stones which
were taken by Joshua out of the bed of the Jordan, and set up in
Gilgal, supply the most remarkable example. The name Gilgal
itself signifies a circle. Gilgal subsequently became a place not only
of sacred observances, but for the more solemn acts of secular
government. It was long a controversy, idle enough as such
controversies generally are, whether Stonehenge was appropriated ,
to religious or to civil purposes. If it is to be regarded as a
Druidical monument, the discussion is altogether needless ; for the
Druids were, at one and the same time, the ministers of religion,
the legislators, the judges, amongst the people. The account which '
Julius Caesar gives of the Druids of Gaul, marked as it is by his
usual clearness and sagacity, may be received without hesitation
as a description of the Druids of Britain : for he says, " the system
of Druidism is thought to have been formed in Britain, and from
thence carried over into Gaul ; and now those who wish to be more
accurately versed in it for the most part go thither (i. e., to Britain)
in order to become acquainted with it." Nothing can be more ex
plicit than his account of the mixed office of the Druids : " They
are the ministers of sacred things ; they have the charge of sacri- -.
fices, both public and private ; they give directions for -the ordi
nances of religious worship (religiones inter pretantur). A great
number of young men resort to them for the purpose of instruction
in their system, and they are held in the highest reverence. For it
is they who determine most disputes, whether of the affairs of the
state or of individuals : and if any crime has been committed, if a
man has been slain, if there is a contest concerning an inheritance
or the boundaries of, their lands, it is the Druids who settle the
matter : they fix rewards and punishments : if any one, whether in
an individual or public capacity, refuses to abide by their sentence,
they forbid him to come to the sacrifices. This punishment is among
them very severe; those on whom this interdict is laid are ac
counted among the unholy and accursed ; all fly from them, and
shun their approach and their conversation, lest they should be in
jured by their very touch ; they are placed out of the pale of the
law, and excluded from all offices of honour." After noticing that
a chief Druid, whose office is for life, presides over the rest, Caesar
mentions a remarkable circumstance which at once accounts for the
selection of such a spot as Sarum Plain, for the erection of a great
national monument, a temple, and a seat of justice : — " These
Druids hold a meeting at a certain time of the year in a consecrated
spot in the country of the Carnutes (people in the neighbourhood
of Chartres), which country is- considered to be in the centre of all
Gaul. Hither assemble' all from every part who have a litigation,
and submit themselves to their determination and sentence." At
Stonehenge, then, we may place the seat of such "an assize. There
were roads leading direct over the plain to the great British towns
of Winchester and Silchester. Across the plain, at a distance not
exceeding twenty miles, was the great temple and Druidical settle
ment of Avebury. The town and hill-fort of Sarum was close at .
hand (23) . Over the dry chalky downs, intersected by a few streams
easily forded, might pilgrims resort from all the surrounding-
country. The seat of justice which was also the seat of the highest
religious solemnity, would necessarily be rendered as magnificent
as a rude art. could accomplish. Stonehenge might be of a later
period than Avebury, with its mighty circles and long avenues of
unhewn pillars; but it might also be of the same period,— the one
distinguished by its vastness, the other by its beauty of proportion.
The justice executed in that judgment-seat was, according to
ancient testimony, bloody and terrible. The religious rites were
debased into the fearful sacrifices of a cruel idolatry. But it is
impossible not to feel that at the bottom of these superstitions there
was a deep reverence for what was high and spiritual : that not only

Chap. I.]

OLD ENGLAND.

were the Druids the instructors of youth, but the preservers and
disseminators of science, the proclaimers of an existence beyond this
finite and material world — idolaters, but nevertheless teaching some
thing nobler than what belongs to the mere senses, in the midst of
their idolatry. We give entire what Caesar says of the religious
system of this remarkable body of men : —
" It is especially the object of the Druids to inculcate this — that
souls do not perish, but after death pass into other bodies ; and they
consider that by this belief more than anything else men may be
led t6 cast away the fear of death, and to become courageous.
They discuss, moreover, many points concerning the heavenly bodies
and their motion, the extent of the universe and the world, the na
ture of things, the influence and ability of the immortal gods ; and
they instruct the youth in these things.
" The whole nation of the Gauls is much addicted to religious
observances, and, on that account, those who are attacked by any of
the more serious diseases, and those who are involved in the dangers
of warfare, either offer human sacrifices or make a vovV that they
will offer them ; and they employ the Druids to officiate at these
sacrifices ; for they consider that the favour of the immortal gods
cannot be conciliated unless the life of one man be offered up for
that of another : they have also sacrifices of the same kind appointed
on behalf of the state. Some have images of enormous size, the
limbs of which they make of wicker-work, and fill with living men,
and setting them on fire, the men are destroyed by the flames.
They consider that the torture of those who have been taken in the
commission of theft or open robbery, or in any crime, is more agree
able, to the immortal gods ; but when there is not a sufficient num
ber of crimimals, they scruple not to inflict this torture on the inno
cent. " The chief deity whom they worship is Mercury ; of him they
have many images, and they consider him to be the inventor of all
arts, their guide in all their journeys, and that he has the greatest
influence in the pursuit of wealth and the affairs of commerce.
Next to him they worship Apollo and Mars, and Jupiter and Mi
nerva ; and nearly resemble other nations in their views respecting
these, as that Apollo wards off diseases, that Minerva communicates
the rudiments of manufactures and manual arts, that Jupiter is the
ruler of the celestials, that Mars is. the god of war. To Mars, when
they have determined to engage in a pitched battle, they commonly
devote whatever spoil they may take in the war. After the contest,
they slay all living creatures that are found among the spoil ; the
other things they gather into one spot. In many states, heaps raised
of these things in consecrated places may be' seen : nor does it often
happen that any one is so unscrupulous as to conceal at home any
part of the spoil, or to take it away when deposited ; a very heavy
punishment with torture is denounced against that crime. ,
" All the Gauls declare that they are descended froni Father Dis
(or Pluto), and this, they say, has been handed down by the Druids :
for this reason, they distinguish all spaces of time not by. the number
of days, but of nights ; they so regulate their birth-days, and the
beginning oikhe months and years, that the days shall come after
the night."*
The precise description which Caesar has thus left us of the re
ligion of the Druids — a religion which, whatever doubts may have
been thrown upon the subject, would appear to have been the pre
vailing religion of ancient Britain, from the material monuments
which are spread through the country, and from the more durable
records of popular superstitions— is different in some particulars
which have been supplied to us by other writers. According to
Caesar, the Druids taught that the soul of man did not perish with
his perishable body, but passed into other bodies. But the language
of other writers, Mela, Diodorus Siculus, and Ammianus Marcel-
linus, would seem to imply that the Druids held the doctrine of the
immortality of the soul as resting upon a nobler principle than that
described by Caesar. They believed, according to the express state
ment of Ammianus Marcellinus, that the future existence of the
spirit was in another world. The substance of their religious system,
according to Diogenes Laertius, was comprised in their three pre
cepts — to worship the gods, to do no evil, and to act with courage.
It is held by some that they had a secret doctrine for the initiated,
whilst their ritual observances were addressed to the grosser senses
of the multitude ; and that this doctrine was the belief in one God.
Their" veneration for groves of oak and for sacred fountains was
an expression of that natural worship which sees the source of all
good in the beautiful forms with which the earth is clothed. The
sanctity of the mistletoe, the watch-fires of spring and summer and
autumn, traces of which observances still remain amongst us, were
* Caesar de Bell. Gall., lib. vi. Our translation is that of the article " Bri-
tanniaj" in the Penny Cyclopaedia.

tributes to the bounty of the All-giver, who alone could make the
growth, the ripening, and the gathering of the fruits of the earth
propitious. The son and the moon regulated their festivals, and
there is little doubt formed part of their outward worship. An as
tronomical instrument found in Ireland (Fig. 10) is held to represent
the moon's orbit and the phases of the planets. They worshipped,
too, according to Caesar, the divinities of Greece and Rome, such
as Mars and Apollo : but Caesar does not give us their native names.
He probably found ascribed to these British gods like attributes
of wisdom and of power as those of Rome, and so gave them
Roman names. Under the church of Notre Dame, at Paris, were
found in the last century two bas-reliefs of Celtic deities, the one
Cernunnos (Fig. 11), the other Hesus (Fig. 12), coresponding to the
Roman Mars. Other writers confirm Caasar's account of their human
sacrifices. This is the most revolting part of the Druidical super
stition. The shuddering with which' those who live under a pure
revelation must regard such fearful corruptions of the principle of
devotion, which in some form or other seems an essential part of
the constitution of the human faculties, produced this description of
Stonehenge from the pen of a laborious and pious antiquary, Mr.
King : — " Although my mind was previously filled with determined
aversion," and a degree of horror, on reflecting upon the abomina
tions of which this spot must have been the scene, and to which it
even gave occasion, in the later periods of Druidism, yet it was im
possible not to be struck, in the still of the evening, whilst the
moon's pale light illumined all, with a reverential awe, at the
solemn appearance produced by the different shades of this immense
group of astonishing masses of rock, artificially placed, impending
over head with threatening aspect, bewildering the mind with the
almost inextricable confusion of their relative situations with respect
to each other, and from their rudeness, as well as from their prodigious
bulk, conveying at one glance all the ideas of stupendous greatness
that could well be assembled together." , And yet the " determined
aversion and degree of horror " thus justly felt, and strongly ex
pressed, might be mitigated by the consideration that in nations
wholly barbarous the slaughter of prisoners of war is indiscriminate,
but that the victim of the sacrifice is the preserver of the mass.
If the victims thus slain on the Druidical altars were culprits sacri
ficed to offended justice, the blood-stained stone of the sacred circle
might find a barbarous parallel in the scaffold and the gibbet of
modern times. Even such fearful rites, if connected with some
thing nobler than the mere vengeance of man upon his fellows, are
an advance in civilization, and they are not wholly inconsistent with
that rude cultivation of our spiritual being which existed under
the glimmerings of natural impulses, before the clear light of heaven
descended upon the earth.
We stand without the bank of Stonehenge, and we look upon the
surrounding plains, a prospect wide as the sea. We walk along the
avenue previously noticed which extends for the third of a mile on
the north-east. It then divides into two branches, the northward
of which leads to what is called the cursus. This is a flat tract of
land, bounded on each side by banks and ditches. It is more than
a mile and five furlongs in length. Antiquaries have not settled
whether it was a more recent Roman work or an appendage to the
Druidical Stonehenge. At either extremity of the cursus are found
what are called barrows. The southern branch of the avenue runs
between two rows of barrows. On every side of Stonehenge we
are surrounded with barrows. Wherever we cast our eyes we see
these grassy mounds lifting up their heads in various forms (Fig.
18). Some are of the shape of bowls, and some of bells ; some are
oval, others nearly triangular ; some present a broad but slight ele
vation of a circular form, surrounded by a bank and a ditch (Figs.
19, 20, 21, and 22). The form of others is so feebly marked that
they can be scarcely traced, except by the shadows which they cast
in the morning and evening sun. This is the great burial-place oi
generations long passed away. ..Spenser tells us, according to the
old legends, that a long line of British kings here lie entombed.
Milton, in his History, relates their story, '< Be it for nothing else
but in favour of our English poets and rhetoricians. The poets had
used these legends before Milton collected them. If the old kings
were here buried, though their very existence be now treated as a
fable, they have wondrous monuments which have literally survived
those of brass and stone. Unquestionably there were distinctions
of rank and of sex amongst those who were here entombed Their
graves have been unmolested by the various spoilers who have ra
wed the land ; and, what is more important to their preservation,
the5 plough has spared them, in these chalky downs which rarely
repay the labours of cultivation. But the antiquary has broken
into them with his spade and his mattock, and he has estab ished their
sepulchral character, and the peculiarities of their sepulture. Sir

! ( i: ;itg

18.— a. Long Barrow. 6. c. Druid Barrows, d. Bell-shaped Ban-ow. e. Conical Barrow. /. Twin Barrow,'

F Old Sarum.

'Of Bronze.

2 | Flint Arrow-Heads.
H Celts.
5. Weapon.
' 6. Pin.
7. Arrow-Heads.
8. Dirk or Knife.
9. Spear-Head.
10. Lance Head.
11. Brass Knife in sheath, set in
stagVhorn handle.
12. Flint Spear-Head.
13. Ivory Tweezers.
14. Ivory Bodkin.
16. Amber Ornament.

16. Necklace of Shells.
17. Beads of Glass.
18. Ivory Ornament.
19. Nippers.
20. Stone for Sling.
21. Stone to sharpen bone.
22. Ring Amulet.
23. Breastplate of Blue Slate.
24. Incense Cup.
25. Ditto.
26. Ditto.
27. Whetstone.
28 to 32. Urns.
33 to 37. DrMring-Cups.

-<^>s;

2o.— General View of Abury— restored.

26.— Abury. Han and Section.

W.

*!#;/

/ !

N.

(¦'¦¦¦¦ ')"
X '%&.

':%.*¦

-v'O

- >s*' y J7
27. -'Abury. Extended Plan.

E.

30.— Oinamenfs and Patterns of the Ancient Britons.

29. -Arch-Druid in his full Judicial Costum?.

-irajf^=?fs=H^L---/«s>

No. 2.

28.— Abury. Bird's-eye view, from the North.

[OLD ENGLAND.]

31.— British Weapons of bronze, in their earliest and improved state.
9

10

OLD ENGLAND.

[Book 1.

Eichard Colt Hoare, who devoted a life to the examination of the
antiquities of Wiltshire, justly says : " We must not consider every
barrow as a mere tumulus, or mound, loosely or fortuitously thrown
up : but must rather view them as works of evident design, and ex
ecuted with the greatest symmetry and precision." These remark
able monuments contain not only the bones and the ashes of the
dead but various articles of utility and ornament, domestic utensils,
weapons of war, decorations of the person, perhaps insignia of
honour (Figs. 13 and 14), the things which contributed to comfort,
to security, and to the graces of life (Fig. 24). Mela says that the
Druidical belief in a future state led the people to bury with the
dead things useful to the living. The contents of these barrows
indicate different stages of the arts. In some there are spear-heads
and arrow-heads of flint arid bone (Fig. 16) ; in others brass and
iron are employed for the same weapons. In some the earthen ves
sels are rudely fashioned, and appear to have been dried in the sun ;
in others they are of regular form, as if produced by the lathe, are
baked and ornamented. But whatever be the difference in the
comparative antiquity of these barrows, it is a remarkable fact that
in those of South Wiltshire, which have nearly all been explored,
nothing whatever has been discovered which could indicate that this
mode of sepulture was practised after the Roman dominion had
commenced in Britain. The coins of the conquerors of the world
are not here to be looked for.
Towards the northern extremity of that extensive range of chalky
downs which, whether called Salisbury Plain or Marlborough Downs,
present the same geological character, we find the seat of one of
the most remarkable monuments of the ancient inhabitants of this
island. About a mile to the north of the great road from Bath to
London is the village of Abury or Avebury. A traveller unac
quainted with the history of this little village, lying in its peaceful
obscurity on the banks of the Kennet, out of the common way of
traffic, might walk through it almost without noticing the vast
blocks of stone which lie scattered at very irregular distances
amongst its ploughed fields, or stand, as if defying time and man,
close by the farmer's homestead. Year after year has their number
been diminished ; so that if we had only now begun to judge of the
whole from its remaining parts, the great temple of Abury might
have appeared to the incredulous eye little more than the imaginative
creation of confiding antiquarianism. Upon the neighbouring downs
there are large blocks of stone lying here and there, and seeming
perhaps as symmetrically arranged as the remains of Abury. The
shepherds call them the Grey Wethers, a name which implies that
they have an affinity to natural objects. Man, indeed, has not
disturbed their rest since they were thrown on these downs like
pebbles cast by the Titans. The land upon which the Grey Wethers
lie is too barren for culture ; but the soil of Ahury rendered the
great Druidical temple an incumbrance upon its fertility. For two
centuries we can trace the course of its destruction. Gibson de
scribes it as " a monument more considerable in itself than known
to the world. For a village of the same name being built within
the circumference of it, and, by the way, out of its stones too, what
by gardens, orchards, enclosures, and the like, the prospect is so
interrupted that it is very hard to discover the form of it." The
good old gossip Aubrey saw the place in 1648, and Charles the
Second desired him to write an account of it in 1663. The King
himself went to see it in that year ; and perhaps we can have no
better evidence than this of the remarkable character of the struc
ture ; for Charles, we imagine, would be as sceptical as Edie
Ochiltree* about the existence of circles, and avenues, and altar-
stones, and cromlechs, whose plan could be indicated only by a few
crumbling sand-stones. Gibson, continuing his very brief notice
of Abury, says, " It is environed by an extraordinary vallum, or
rampire, as great and as high as that at Winchester ; and within it
is a graff (ditch or moat) of a depth and breadth proportionable.
.... The graff hath been surrounded all along the edge of it
with large stones pitched on end, most of which are now taken away ;
but some marks remaining give liberty for a conjecture that they
stood quite round." In Aubrey's time, sixty -three stones, which he
describes, were standing within the entrenched enclosure. Dr.
Stukeley made a minute examination of Abury, from 1720 to 1724,
His work, ' Abury, a Temple of the British Druids,' was published
in 1743. King says, " In Dr. Stukeley's time, when the destruction
of the whole for the purpose of building was going on so rapidly,
still forty-four of the stones of the great outward circle were left,
and many of the pillars of the great avenue : and a great cromlech
was in being, the upper stone of which he himself saw broken and
carried away, the fragments of if alone making no less than twenty
* " Praetorian here, Prcetorian there, I mind the bigging on't" — Scott's
Antiquary.

good cartloads." In 1812, according to Sir Eichard Hoare, only
seventeen of the stones remained within the great enclosure. Their
number has been since still further reduced. The barbarism of the
Turks, who burned the marble monuments of Greece for lime, may
find a parallel in the stone-breakers of Abury, and in many other
stone-breakers and stone-defacers,— the beautifiers as bad as the. de
stroyers, — in our own country, and almost in our own day.
Dr. Stukeley, who brought to the study of these early antiquities
something similar to the genius by which a naturalist can discover
the structure of a fossil animal by the formation of a tooth or a
claw, has given us some very complete plans for the restoration of
Abury; and although he has been sometimes held to be enthusiastic
and credulous, there is such sound foundation for his conjectures in
this particular case, that antiquarians are pretty well agreed to
speak of Abury, as it was, upon his authority. His admiration of
this monument is, as we might expect, somewhat exaggerated.
Aubrey said, " These antiquities are so exceedingly old that no
books do reach them ; I can affirm that I have brought this temple
from utter darkness into a thin mist." But Stukeley endeavours to
bring the original structure of the building into the clear light of
day; and to describe it as perspicuously as if the ground-plans of
the Arch-Druid architect were lying before him. We may smile
at this ; but we must not forget that the elements of such an erec
tion are very simple. No one doubts about the great circular val
lum and ditch which surround the principal work. It was there
when Aubrey wrote ; it remains to this day, however broken and
obscured. The plan (Fig. 26) exhibits this bank e with the ditch/:
immediately within the ditch was a circle of stones, dotted on the
plan. This circle is stated to have been composed of a hundred
stones, many from fifteen to seventeen feet in height, but some
much smaller, and others considerably higher, of vast breadth, in
some cases equal to the height. The distance between each stone
was about twenty-seven feet. The circle of stones was about
thirteen hundred feet in diameter. The inner slope of the bank
measured eighty feet. Its circumference at the top is stated by Sir
Eichard Hoare to be four thousand four hundred and forty-two
feet. The area thus enclosed exceeds twenty-eight acres. Half
way up the bank was a sort of terrace walk of great breadth.
Dimensions such as these at once impress us with notions of vastness
and magnificence. But they approach to sublimity when we imagine
a mighty population standing upon this immense circular terrace, and
looking with awe and reverence upon the religious and judicial rites
that were performed within the area. The Roman amphitheatres
are petty things compared with the enormous circle of Abury.
Looking over the hundred columns, the spectators would see, within,
two other circular temples, marked c and d ; of the more northerly
of these double circles some stones of immense size are still stand
ing. The great central stone of c, more than twenty feet high, was
standing in 1713. In 1720 enough remained decidedly to show
their original formation. The general view (Fig. 25) is a restoration
formed upon the plan (Fig. 26). Upon that plan there are two open
ings through the bank and ditch, a and b. These are connected with
a peculiarity of Abury, such as is found in no other monument, of
those called Celtic, although near Penrith a long avenue of granite
stones formerly existed. At these entrances two lines of upright
stones branched off, each extending for more than a mile. These
avenues are exhibited in the plan (Fig. 27). That running to the
south and south-east d, from the great temple a, terminated at e, in
an elliptical range of upright stones. It consisted, according to
Stukeley, of two hundred stones. The oval thus terminating°this
avenue was placed on a hill called the Hakpen, or Overton Hill
Crossing this is an old British track-way h. Barrows, dotted on
the plan, are scattered all around. The western avenue c, extending
nearly a mile and a half towards Beckhampton, consisted also ot
about two hundred stones, terminating i„ a single stone. It has
been held that these avenues, running in curved lines ar 1
tic of the serpent-worship, one of the most primitive and^idewT
tended superstitions of the human race. Conjoint ,,.-*u *i •
i • al i • p ,i jv*«cu witu this wnr-
ship was the worship of the sun, according to those who hold tit
the whole construction of Abury was emblematic of tl . , .
of primitive Druidism. The high ground to the south of Ah
within the avenues is indicated upon the plan (Fig. 271 tt ^
plan is also marked,/, a most remarkable monument of tl Pt? -tllat
period, Silbury Hill, of which Sir R. Hoare says, « There *
no doubt it was one of the component parts of the grand t ^
Abury, not a sepulchral mound raised over the bones and ash **
king or arch-druid. Its situation, opposite to the temple, and^ ^i*
#in the centre between the two avenues, seems in some decree t ^
rant this supposition." The Roman road k from Bath°to Land""
passes close under Silbury Hill, diverging from the usual straight li°n

Chap. I.]

OLD ENGLAND.

Jl

instead of being cut through this colossal mound. The bird's-eye
view (Fig. 28) exhibits the restoration of Abury and its neigh
bourhood somewhat more clearly. 1 is the circumvallated bank, 2
and 3 the inner temples, 4 the river Kennet, 5 and 6 the avenues,
7 Silbury Hill, 8 a large barrow, 9 a cromlech.
Silbury Hill (Fig. 32) is the largest artificial mound in Europe.
It is not so large as the mound of Alyattes in Asia Minor, which
Herodotus has described and a modern traveller has ridden round.
It is of greater dimensions than the second pyramid of Egypt.
Stukeley is too ardent in the contemplation of this wonder of his
own land when he says, " I have no scruple to affirm it is the most
magnificent mausoleum in the world, without excepting the Egyptian
pyramids." But an artificial hill which covers five acres and
thirty-four perches ; which at the circumference of the base mea
sures two thousand and twenty-seven feet ; whose diameter at top
is one hundred and twenty feet, its sloping height three hundred
and sixteen feet, and its perpendicular height one hundred and
seven feet, is indeed a stupendous monument of human labour, of
which the world can show very few such examples. There can
be no doubt whatever that the hill is entirely artificial. The
great earth-works of a modern railway are the results of labour,
assisted by science and stimulated by capital, employing itself for
profit ; but Silbury Hill in all likelihood was a gigantic effort of
what has been called hero-worship, a labour for no direct or imme
diate utility, but to preserve the memory of some ruler, or lawgiver,
or warrior, or priest. Multitudes lent their aid in the formation ;
and shouted orwept around it, when it had settled down into solidity
under the dews and winds, and its slopes were covered with ever-
springing grass. If it were, a component part of the temple at
Abury, it is still to be regarded, even more than the gathering
together of the stone circles and avenues of that temple, as the
work of great masses of the people labouring for some elevating
and heart-stirring purpose. Their worship might be blind, cruel,
guided by crafty men who governed them by terror or by delusion.
But these enduring monuments show the existence of some great
and powerful impulses which led the people to achieve mighty
things. There was a higher principle at work amongst them, how
ever abused and perverted, than that of individual selfishness. The
social principle was built upon some sort of reverence, whether of
man, or of beings held to preside over the destinies of man.
It requires no antiquarian knowledge to satisfy the observer of
the great remains of Stonehenge and Abury, that they are works
of art, in the strict sense of the word — originating in design, having
proportion of parts, adapted to the institutions of the period to
which they belonged, calculated to affect with awe and wonder the
imagination of the people that assembled around them. But there
are many remarkable groups of immense stones, and single stones,
in various parts of England, which, however artificial they may'
appear, are probably wholly or in part natural productions. Some
of these objects have involved great differences of opinion. For
instance, the Rock of Carnbre, or Karn-bre, near Truro, is held by
Borlase, in his ' Antiquities of Cornwall,' to be strewed all over
with Druidical remains. He says, " In this hill of Karn-bre, we
find rock-basins, circles, stones erect, remains of cromlechs, cairns,
a grove of oaks, a cave, and an inclosure, not of military, but reli
gious, structure ; and these are evidences sufficient of its having
been a place of Druid worship ; of which it may be some confirma
tion, that the town, about half a mile across the brook, which runs
at the bottom of this hill, was anciently called Red-drew, or, more
rightly, Ryd-drew, i.e., the Druid's Ford, or crossing of the brook."
The little castle at the top of the hill is called by Borlase a British
fortress (Fig. 33) ; and in this point some antiquaries are inclined to
agree with him. But they for the most part hold that his notions
of circles, and stones erect, and cromlechs, are altogether visionary ;
and that the remarkable appearances of these rocks are produced
by the unassisted operations of nature. It is certain, however, that
about a century ago an immense number of gold coins were dis
covered on this hill, which bear no traces of Roman art; and
which, having the forms of something like a horse and a wheel
impressed upon them, Borlase thinks allude to the chariot-fighting
of the British, being coined before the invasion of Csesar. Davies
in his ' Mythology and Rites of the British Druids,' considers them
to be Druidical coins ; the supposed horse being a mystical com
bination of a bird, a mare, and a ship, — " a symbol of Ked or
Ceridwen, the Arkite goddess, or Ceres of the Britons." It is
unnecessary for us to pursue these dark and unsatisfactory inquiries.
We mention them to point out how full of doubt and difficulty is
the whole subject of the superstitions of our British ancestors. But
wherever we can find distinct traces of their work, we discover
something far above the conceptions of mere barbarians — great

monuments originating in the direction of some master minds, and
adapted by them to the habits and the feelings of the body of the
people. The Druidical circles, as we have shown, are not con
fined to England or Scotland. On the opposite shores of Brittany
the great remains of Carnac exhibit a structure of far greater
extent even than Abury. "Carnac is infinitely more extensive
than Stonehenge, but of ruder formation; the stones are much
broken, fallen down, and displaced ; they consist of eleven rows of
unwrought pieces of rock or stone, merely set up on end in tiie
earth, without any pieces crossing them at top. These stones are
of great thickness, but not exceeding nine or twelve feet in height ;
there maybe some few fifteen feet. The rows are placed; from
fifteen to eighteen paces from each other, extending- in length (taking
rather a semicircular direction) above half a mile, on unequal
ground, and towards one end upon a hilly site. When the length
of these rows is considered, there must have been nearly three hun
dred stones in each, and there are eleven rows ; this will give you
some idea of the immensity of the work, and the labour such a con
struction required. It is said that there are above four thousand
stones now remaining." (Mrs. Stothard's < Tour in Normandy
and Brittany.') It is easy to understand how the same religion
prevailing in neighbouring countries might produce monuments of
a similar character ; but we find the same in the far east, in lands
separated from ours by pathless deserts and wide seas. So it is
with those remarkable structures, the Round Towers of Ireland ;
which were considered ancient even in the twelfth century. Many
of these towers are still perfect. They are varied in their con
struction, and their height is very different ; but they all agree in
their general external appearance, tapering from the base to a coni
cal cap or roof, which forms the summit. They are almost in
variably found close to an ancient Christian church; which is
accounted for by the fact that the sites of pagan worship were
usually chosen by the early missionaries for rearing a holier struc
ture, which should reclaim the people from their superstitious
reverence, to found that reverence upon the truths which were
purifying the lands of classic paganism. The Round Tower of
Donoughmore (Fig. 35) is one of these singular monuments. " The
only structures that have been anywhere found similar to the Irish
Round Towers are in certain countries of the remote east, and es
pecially in India and Persia. This would seem to indicate a con
nexion between these countries and Ireland, the probability of
which, it has been attempted to show, is corroborated by many
other coincidences of language, of religion, and of customs, as well
as by the voice of tradition, and the light, though faint and scattered,
which is thrown upon the subject by the records of history. The
period of the first civilization of Ireland then would, under this
view, be placed in the same early age of the world which appears
to have witnessed, in those Oriental countries, a highly advanced
condition of the arts and sciences, as well as flourishing institutions
of religious and civil polity, which have also, in a similar manner,
decayed and passed away." (' Pictorial History of England.') The
same reasoning may be applied to the Druidical circles, of which
the resemblances are as striking, in countries far removed from
any knowledge of the customs of aboriginal Britons.
About seven miles south of Bristol is a small parish called Stanton
Drew. The name is held to mean the Stone Town of the Druids.
Stukeley was of opinion that the Druidical monument at this place
was more ancient than Abury. The temple is held to have con
sisted of three circles, a large central circle, and two smaller ones.
Of the larger circle five stones are still remaining; and of the
smaller ones still more. Stanton Drew was described in 1718, by
Dr. Musgrave, and afterwards by Stukeley. The stones had suffered
great dilapidation in their time ; and the process of breaking them
up for roads has since gone forward with uninterrupted diligence.
They are very rude in their forms, as will be seen by reference to
the engraving (Fig. 34). That marked a is singular in its rugged-
ness. The stone b inclines towards the north, and its present posi
tion is supposed to be,its original one : in its general appearance of
bending forward, it is not unlike the single stone in the avenue at
Stonehenge. The stone c differs greatly from the others, in being
square and massive. The largest stone, d, is prostrate ; it is fifteen
feet and a half in length. The engraving represents not the cir
cular arrangement, but remarkable separate stones, of which e is at a
considerable distance from either of the circles. The largest stones
are much inferior in their dimensions to those at Stonehenge and
Abury. The smaller ones lie scattered about at very irregular
distances; and it certainly requires a great deal of antiquarian faith
to find the circles which are traced with such infallible certainty by
early and recent writers. It is very different with Abury and
Stonehenge. The country people have their own traditions about

33.-Carnbrc Cnstle.

b ../

Kjki Sri *te>«
jjfp Sim ,>QXk i [iin|| / ^ -^/s '

a

32.— Silbury Hill, in Wiltshire.

"^>

36.— Kit's Coty House, near Aylesford, Kent.

37. — Kit's Coty House.

8.— Trevetty Stone.

38.— Kit's Coty House.

40.— Cromlech at Plas Kewyc.d, Anglesey.

&'. ?;J>-

ill.^Constantine Tolman, Cornwall.

42._Wayland Smith's Cave.

13

14

OLD ENGLAND.

[Book I.

these remains. They call them " the wedding ;" holding that, as
a bride and bridegroom were proceeding to their espousals, sur
rounded by pipers and dancers, the whole party, for what crime we
are not informed, were suddenly turned into stone. The theories
of the learned are in some matters almost as difficult to be received
as the traditions of the vulgar. King says of the remains of
Stanton Drew, " There are stones cautiously placed nearly on each
side of the meridian, two at the one end for a sort of observer's
index, and two at the other, as if designed for leading sites to direct
the eye to certain points in the heavens, equally distant, a little to
the east and west of the south : and so in like manner, two to the
east, and one on the west side for an index, as if to observe the
rising of certain stars and planets." Superstition, we apprehend,
settles these matters much more easily than science. There were
formerly three huge upright stones near Kennet, not far from
Abury, which Dr. Plot held to be British deities. The country
people had a readier explanation of their use : for they called them
from time immemorial ' the Devil's Coits.' They could be play
things, it might be readily imagined, for no other busy idler. But
the good folks of Somersetshire, by a sort of refinement of such
hackneyed traditions, hold that a great stone near Stanton Drew,
now called ' Hackell's Coit,' and which formerly weighed thirty
tons, was thrown from a hill about a mile off by a mortal champion,
Sir John Hautville. It is remarkable, though perhaps natural, that
there is generally some superstitious notion associated with these
monuments of a dim antiquity. We shall have presently to speak
of the singular erection near Maidstone, called Kit's Coty House.
Near this supposed cromlech are some large stones, scattered about
a ploughed field. A coachman, who was duly impressed with the
claims of Kit's Coty House to notice, told us, as the climax of the
extraordinary things connected with it, that no one had ever been
able to count the stones in that field, so that it was impossible to
say what was their exact number. In the neighbourhood of
Stanton Drew, they have a variation of this belief which does not
go quite so far. They simply hold that it is wicked to attempt to
count the stones.
The remains of Druidical circles are so similar in their character
that a minute description of any other than the most remarkable
would be tedious and uninteresting to the general reader. We
shall content ourselves, therefore, with pointing out those of chief
importance, which may either recompense the visit of the traveller,
or lead the student of British antiquities to more careful inquiries.
Camden, who made an exact survey of Cumberland in 1599,
thus describes a celebrated British monument near Penrith : " At
Little Salkeld there is a circle of stones, seventy-seven in number,
each ten foot high : and before these, at the entrance, is a single
one by itself, fifteen foot high. This the common people call Long
Meg, and the rest her daughters ; and within the circle are two
heaps of stones, under which they say there are dead bodies buried.
And indeed it is probable enough that this has* been a monument
erected in memory of some victory." It is held by later antiquaries
that Camden was in error in considering this to have been a monu
ment of some victory, and that it is an undoubted Druidical circle.
It is not of the grandeur of Stonehenge and Abury, for none of the
stones exceed ten feet in height. There is another circle, of stones
within a mile and a half of Keswick. Near that bleak and dreary
region, between Penrith and Kendal, called Shapfells, was, some
thirty years ago, another remarkable Druidical monument ; but
upon the inclosure of the parish of Shap the stones were blown up
by gunpowder, and were converted into rude fences. At Arbelows,
about five miles from Bakewell, in Derbyshire, is a Druidical circle,
which, according to King, " there is great reason to think, notwith
standing its mutilated appearance in its present ruined state, was
once a regular structure veiy nearly of the same kind with that of
Stonehenge." In Oxfordshire, about three miles north-west of
Chipping Norton, are the remains of a circle of small rude stones,
the highest of which is not more than five feet above the ground.
There appears to be little doubt of this circle belonging to the early
British period ; though Camden and others hold it to be the monu
ment of a Danish victory. The description which Camden gives
of these Rollrich or Rowldrich stones is very curious : " A great
monument of antiquity : a number of vastly large stones placed in
a circular figure, which the country people call Rolle-rich-stones,
and have a common tradition that they were once men and were
turned into stones. They are irregular, and of unequal height,
and by the decays of time are grown ragged and very much im
paired. The highest of them, which lies out of the ring towards the
east, they call The King, because they fancy he should have been
King of England if he could have seen Long Compton, a village
which is wi'hin view at a very few steps farther. Five larger

stones, which on one side of the circle are contiguous to one another,
they pretend were knights or horsemen, and the other common
soldiers." About five miles from Aberdeen in Scotland are the
remains of a circle of large stones and smaller stones. At Stenms
in the Orkney Islands a circle is described where some of the stones
are twenty feet high-
The Druidical circles in their uniformity of character present
the indubitable evidence that they were symbolical of the mysteries
of the prevailing religion of the country. They were essentially
religious edifices. They were probably, at the same time, what the
Icelandic writers call Doom rings, or Circles of Judgment. That
these monuments, in association with religious rites and solemn
decisions, had a deep influence upon the character of our rude
forefathers, we cannot reasonably doubt. ' They were a bold and
warlike race, an imaginative race, not placing the sole end of ex
istence in the consumption of the fruits of the earth, but believing
in spiritual relations and future existences. Degrading as their
superstitions might be, and blind their notions of the. future, their
belief was not a mere formal and conventional pretence ; it was a
principle operating upon their actions. We have the express testi
mony of an ancient poet, to this effect of the old worship of this
land. Lucan, in a noble passage in the first book of the Pharsalia,
addresses the Druids in the well known lines beginning " Et vos
barbaricos." The translation of Rowe is generally quoted : but it
appears to us that the lines are rendered with more strength and
freedom by Kennett, who translated the poetical quotations in
Gibson's edition of Camden's ' Britannia :'
" And you, O Druids, free from noise and arms,
Renew'd your barbarous rites and horrid charms.
What Gods, what powers in happy mansions dwell,
Or only you, or all but you can tell.
To secret shades, and unfrequented groves,
From world and cares your peaceful tribe removes.
You teach that souls, eas'd of their mortal load,
Nor with grim Pluto make their dark abode,
Nor wander in pale troops along the silent Hood,
But on new regions cast resume their reign,
Content to govern eiuLhy. frames again.
Thus death is nothing but the middle line
Betwixt what lives will come, and what have been.
Happy the people by your charms possess'd !
Nor fate, nor fears, disturb their peaceful breast.
On certain dangers unconcern'd they run,
And meet with pleasure what they would not shun j-'
Defy death's slighted power, and bravely scorn
To spare a life that will so soon return."
In reading this remarkable tribute to the national courage of our
remote ancestors, let us not forget that this virtue, like all other
great characteristic virtues of a community, was based upon a prin
ciple, and that the principle, whatever might be its errors, rested
upon the disposition of man to believe and to reverence. Those
who would build the superstructure of national virtue upon what
they hold to be the more solid foundation of self-interest, may, we
conceive, create a restless, turmoiling, turbulent democracy, astute
in all worldly business, eager for all sensual gratifications, exhibit
ing the glitter of wealth plating over vice and misery ; confident
in their superiority ; ignorant of the past, careless of the future ;
but they will raise up no high-minded, generous, self-devotin"-
people ; no people that will distinguish between liberty and anarchy ;
no thoughtful, and therefore firm and just, people ; no people that
will produce any great intellectual work, whether in art or in
literature ; no people that will even leave such monuments behind
them as the Stonehenge and Abury of the blind and benighted
Druids.

The high road from Rochester to Maidstone presents several of
those rich and varied prospects which so often in England compen
sate the traveller for the absence of the grander elements of pic
turesque beauty. Here, indeed, are no mountains shrouded in mist
or tipped with partial sunlight ; but the bold ridges of chalk are
the boundaries of valleys whose fertility displays itself in wood and
pasture, in corn- lands and scattered villages. If we look to the
north, the broad Medway expands like a vast lake, with an amphi
theatre of town and hill-fort, which tell at one and the same time
the history of the different warfare of ancient strength and of
modern science. When we have ascended the highest point of the
ridgej we again see the Medway, an attenuated stream, winding
amidst low banks for many a mile. The hill of chalk is of a sufficient
height to wear an aspect of sterility ; it has some of the bleak fea
tures of a mountain-land. The road lies close under the brow ctf

Chap. I.]

OLD ENGLAND.

15

the hill, with a gentle slope to the village of Aylesford — an histori
cal village. Not far from the point where the Aylesford road
intersects the high road is the remarkable monument called Kit's
Coty House' (Fig. 36). Unlike most monuments of the same high
antiquity, it remains, in all probability, as originally constructed.
It was described two hundred and fifty years ago by the antiquary
Stow, and the description is as nearly exact as any' that we could
write at the present hour; " I have myself, in company with divers
worshipful and learned gentlemen, beheld it in anno 1590, and it
is of four flat stones, one of them standing upright in the middle of
two others, inclosing the edge sides of the first, and the fourth laid
flat across the other three, and is of such height that men may
stand on either side the middle stone in time of storm or tempest,
safe from wind and rain, being defended with the breadth of the
stones, having one at their backs on either side, and the fourth
over their heads." In one point the description of Stow does not
agree with what we find at the present day : " About a coit's cast
from this monument lieth another great stone, much part thereof
in the ground, as fallen down where the same had been affixed."
This stone was half buried in 1773, when Mr. Colebrooke described
the monument ; it is now Wholly covered up. The demand of a
few square feet for the growth of corn, in a country with millions
of acres of waste land, would not permit its preservation. Is this
Kit's Coty House something different from other ancient monu
ments, either in its site or its structure ? Let us see how Camden,
writing at the same period as Stow, describes an erection in Caer-
marthenshire, in the parish of Trelech ; " We find a vast rude
chech, or flat stone somewhat of an oval form, about three yards
in length, five foot over where broadest, and about ten or twelve
inches thick. A gentleman, to satisfy my curiosity, having em
ployed some labourers to search under it, found it, after removing
much stone, to be the covering of such a barbarous monument as
we call Kist-vaen, or Stone-chest ; which was about four foot and
a half in length, and about three foot broad, but somewhat narrower
at the east than west end. It is made up of seven stones, viz.,
the covering stone already mentioned, and two side stones, one at
each end, and one behind each of these, for the better securing or
bolstering of them ; all equally rude, and about the same thickness,
the two last excepted, which are considerably thicker." The
dimensions of Kit's Coty House are thus given in Grose's ' Antiqui
ties :' " Upright stone on the N. or N.W. side, eight feet high,
eight feet broad, two feet thick ; estimated weight, eight tons and a
half. Upright stone on the S. or S.E. side, eight feet high, seven
and a half feet broad, two feet thick ; estimated weight eight tons.
Upright stone between these, very irregular ; medium dimensions,
five feet high, five feet broad, fourteen inches thick ; estimated
weight, about two tons. Upper stone, very irregular, eleven feet
long, eight feet broad, two feet thick ; estimated weight, about ten
tons seven cwt.' Holland, the first translator of Camden's ' Bri
tannia,' gives a description of Kit's Coty House, which includes his
notion, which was also that of Camden, of the original purpose of
this monument. " Catigern, honoured with a stately and solemn
funeral, is thought to have been interred near unto Aylesford,
where under the side of a hill, I saw four huge, rude, hard stones
erected, two for the sides, one transversal in the middest between
them, and the hugest of all, piled and laid over them in manner of
the British monument which is called Stonehenge, but not so arti
ficially with mortice and tenants." The tradition to which Holland
refers is, that a great battle was fought at Aylesford, between the
Britons commanded by Catigern, the brother of Vortimer, and the
Saxon invaders under Hengist and Horsa : in this battle the Saxons
were routed, but Catigern fell. An earlier writer than Holland,
Lambarde, in his ' Perambulations of Kent,' 1570, also describes
this monument in the parish of Aylesford as the tomb of Catigern :
" the Britons nevertheless in the mean space followed their victory
(as I said) and returning from the chace, erected to the memory of
Catigern (as I suppose) that monument of four huge and hard
stones, which are yet standing in this parish, pitched upright in the
ground, covered after the manner of Stonage (that famous sepul
chre of the Britons upon Salisbury Plain) and now termed of the
common people here Citscotehouse." Antiquaries have puzzled
themselves about the name of this Kentish monument. Kit, ac
cording to Grose, is an abbreviation of Catigern, and Coty is Coity,
coit being a name for a large flat stone ; so that Kit's Coty House
is Catigern's House built with coits. Lambarde expressly says,
" now termed of the common people here Citscotehouse." The fa
miliar name has clearly no more to do with the ancient object of
the monument than many other common names applied to edifices
belonging to the same remote period. No one thinks, for example,
that the name of ' Long Meg and her daughters,' of which we have

spoken, can be traced back even to the Saxon period. The theory
of the earlier antiquaries that the monuments which we now gene
rally call Druidical belong to a period of British history after the
Christian era} and commemorate great battles with the Saxons or the
Danes, is set at rest by the existence of similar monuments in distant
parts of the world ; proving pretty satisfactorily that they all had a
common origin in some form of religious worship that was widely
diffused amongst races of men whose civil history is shrouded in
almost utter darkness. Palestine has its houses of coits as well as
England. The following description is from the travels of Cap
tains Irby and Mangles : " On the banks of the Jordan, at the
foot of the mountain, we observed some very singular, interesting,
and certainly very ancient tombs, composed of great rough stones,
resembling what is cailed Kit's Coty House in Kent. They are
built of two long side stones, with one at each end, and a small
door in front, mostly facing the north : this door was of stone. All ,
were of rough stones apparently not hewn, but found in flat frag
ments, many of which are seen about the spot in huge flakes. Over
the whole was laid an immense flat piece, projecting both at the
sides and ends. Wha,t rendered these tombs the more remarkable
was, that the interior was not long enough for a body, being only
five feet. This is occasioned by both the front and back stones
being considerably within the ends of the side ones. There are
about twenty-seven of these tombs, very irregularly situated."
These accomplished travellers call these Oriental monuments tombs,
but their interior dimensions would seem to contradict this notion.
The cause of these narrow dimensions is clearly pointed out ; the
front and back stones are considerably within the ends of the side
ones. Kit's Coty House (Figs. 37, 38) has no stone that we can call
a front stone ; it is open ;. but the back stone has the same peculiarity
as the Palestine monuments ; it is placed considerably within the
side ones. The side stones lean inwards against the back stone ;
whilst the large flat stone at top, finding its own level on the irre
gular surfaces, holds them all firmly together, without the mortice
and tenon which are required by the nicer adjustment of the super
incumbent stone upon two uprights at Stonehenge. It is evident
that the mode of construction thus employed has preserved these
stones in their due places for many centuries. The questibn then
arises, for what purpose was so substantial an edifice erected, hav
ing a common character with many other monuments in this coun
try, and not without a striking resemblance to others in a land with
which the ancient Britons can scarcely be supposed to have held
any intercourse? It is maintained that such buildings, called
cromlechs, were erected for the fearful purpose of human sacrifice.
" For here we find in truth a great stone scaffold raised just high
enough for such a horrid exhibition, and no higher: and just large
enough in all its proportions for the purpose,, and not too large, and
so contrived as to render the whole visible* to the greatest multitude
of people ; whilst it was so framed and put together, though super-
stitiously constructed only of unhewn stones in imitation of purer
and more primeval usages, that no length of time nor any common,
efforts of violence could destroy it or throw it down." This is
King's description of what he believes to have been the terrible use
of Kit's Coty House. The situation of this monument certainly
renders it peculiarly fitted for any imposing solemnity, to be per
formed amidst a great surrounding multitude. But it does appear
to us that a stone scaffold, so constructed, was of all forms the most
unfitted for the sacrifice of a living victim, to be accomplished by
the violence of surrounding priests. Diodorus says of the Druids
of Gaul, " Pouring out a libation upon a man as a victim, they smite
him with a sword upon the breast in the part near the diaphragm,
and on his falling who has been thus smitten, both from the manner
of his falling and from the convulsions of his limbs, and still more
from the manner of the flowing of his blood, they presage what will
come to pass." King accommodates Kit's Coty House to this descrip
tion ; arguing that the top of the flat stone was a fitting place for
these terrible ceremonies. The notion seems somewhat absurd ; the
extreme dimensions of the top stone are not more than eleven feet in
any direction ; a size in itself unsuited enough for such a display of
physical force. But this narrow stone is also shelving ; it is about
nine feet from the ground in front, and seven feet at the back,
having a fall of two feet in eleven feet. King says, " And yet
the declivity is not such as to occasion the least danger of any
slipping or sliding off." The plain reader may possibly ask what
at any rate is to prevent the victim falling off when he receives
the fatal blow ; and wonder how the presage described by Diodorus
is to be collected from the manner of his falling, when he must
infallibly slide down at the instant of his fall. We must in truth
receive the Roman accounts of the sacrificial practices of the
ancient Druids with some suspicion. Civilized communities have

¦ ^^.rZy.*

<&>»«* ¦'%''''' '"' >'¦ "¦
46.— Kilmarth Rocks, as seen frurn the South-east.

¦^L^Cf^m

^dfial

HHiMM^bflB

43.— Harold's.Stones, Trelecb,- Monmouthshire.

litill

SiM

i^^>r?

4'. — The Chcesewririg, as seen from the North-west.

45.— Coronation Chair. Beneath the seat is the ' Stone" of Destiny.'

*..,, ; ,.-, v

44.— TTare Stone, Cornwall.

48.— High Lloyd's Pulpit.

16

5.— Welsh Pigsty

49.— Huts in a Cingalese Village.

50.— Gaulish Huts:-" From the Antonine Column.

51.— Plan and Section of Chun Castla ^

i3.— Plan of Chambers on a Farmlwelve mileB from Ballyhendon.
No. 3.

56.— The Druid Grove.

s

t<

^^pipili

ISO feel.

... - ..

*.._.'. _.".v '::

54.— Ground-plan and Section of the Subterranean Chamber at
Carrighill.
[OLD ENGLAND.]

52. -Plan of Chambers at Ballyhendon."!

17

18

OLD ENGLAND.

[Book I.

a natural tendency to exaggerate the horrors of superstitious
observances amongst remote nations that they call barbarous.
The testimony is too strong to admit of a doubt that human
sacrifice did obtain amongst the ancient Britons ; but it can scarcely
be believed that the practice formed so essential a part of their
worship as to call for the erection of sacrificial altars throughout
the land. Kit's Coty House is by some called a cromlech (or fiat
stone resting upon other stones), by which name is now generally
understood an altar of sacrifice ; but by others it is called a kist-
vaen (or stone-chest), being, as they hold, a sepulchral monument.
The Isle of Anglesey, anciently called Mona, was the great strong
hold of Druidism, whilst the Eomans had still a disturbed possession
of the country. Tacitus, describing an attack upon Mona, says
that the British Druids " held it right to smear their altars with the
blood of their captives, and to consult the will of the gods by the
quivering of human flesh." At Plas Newydd, in the Isle of
Anglesey, are two cromlechs (Fig. 40) ; and it is believed that
these remains confirm the account of Tacitus, and that they were
the altars upon which the victims were sacrificed. Near Liskeard, in
Cornwall, in the parish of St. Clear, is a cromlech called Trevethy
Stone, Trevedi being said to signify in the British language a place
of graves (Fig. 39). In the neighbourhood of Lambourn, in Berk
shire, are many barrows, and amongst them is found the cromlech
called Wayland Smith (Fig. 42). The tradition which Scott has
so admirably used in his ' Kenilworth,' that a supernatural smith here
dwelt, who would shoe a traveller's horse for a " consideration," is
one of the many superstitions that belong to these places of doubtful
origin and use, a remnant of the solemn feelings with which they were
once regarded. In Cornwall there are many cromlechs and kist-vaens
described by Borlase. They are numerous in Wales, and some are
found in Ireland. In the county of Louth there is one which bears the
name of the Killing Stone ; and this is held by King to be a decisive
proof of its original use. But, although we may well believe that
the horrid practice of human sacrifice was incidental to the Druidical
worship, we are not to collect from the Roman writers that it con
stituted the chief part of the Druidical system. It is clear that
there were many high and abstract doctrines taught under that
system ; and that the very temples of the worship were symbolical
of certain principles of belief. Whether the cromlechs or kist-vaens
were used for sacrifice, it has been thought that the stone-chests, at
least, were symbolical of one of the great traditions of mankind
which was widely diffused ; and which therefore exhibited itself in
the outward forms of sacred places amongst divers nations. The
form of an ark or chest is prevalent in all the ancient religions of
the world. A recent writer says, " On careful deliberation, and
considering that the first tabernacles and constructed temples are
to be taken as commentaries on the stone monuments of more ancient
date, we are disposed to find an analogy between the kist-vaen, or
stone-chest, and the ark, or sacred' chest, which we find as the most
holy object in the tabernacle and temple of the Hebrews, as well as
in the. Egyptian and some other heathen temples." (Kitto's ' Pales
tine.') The ark of Noah, the cradle of the post-diluvian races, was
thus symbolized. In this point of view we can understand how the
same form of building shall be found on the banks of the Jordan and
on the banks of the Medway. It is a curious fact that* the Bards,
who were the direct successors of the Druids, and who continued to
preserve some of their mysterious and initiatory rites, after, the
Druidical worship was suppressed by the Romans, have distinct
allusions to the ark, or stone-chest, in which the candidate for
admission to the order underwent a probationary penance. The
famous Welsh bard, Taliesin, gives a remarkable description of this
ceremony, which is thus translated by Davies : " I was first modelled
into the form of a pure man, in the hall of Ceridwen, who subjected
me to penance. Though small within my chest, and modest in my
deportment, I was great. A sanctuary carried me above the surface
of the earth. Whilst I was enclosed within its ribs, the sweet Awen
rendered me complete : and my law, without audible language, was
imparted to me by the old giantess, darkly smiling in her wrath ;
but her claim was not regretted when she set sail." Davies adds,
" Ceridwen was, what Mr. Bryant pronounces Ceres to have been,
the genius of the ark ; and her mystic rites represented the me
morials of the deluge."
There are remains of the more ancient times of Britain whose
uses no antiquarian writers have attempted, by the aid of tradition
or imagination, satisfactorily to explain. They are, to a certain
extent, works of art ; they exhibit evidences of design ; but it would
appear as if the art worked as an adjunct to nature. The object
of the great Druidical monuments, speaking generally, without
reference to their superstitious uses, was to impress the mind with
something like a feeling of the infinite, by the erection of works of

such large proportions that in these after-ages we still feel, that
they are sublime, without paying respect to the associations which
once surrounded them. So it would appear that those who once
governed the popular mind sought to impart a more than natural
grandeur to some grand work of nature, by connecting it with some
effort of ingenuity which was under the direction of their rude science.
Such are the remain's which have been called Tolmen ; a Tolman
being explained to be an immense mass of rock placed aloft on two
subjacent rocks which admit of a free passage between them. Such
is the remarkable remain in the parish of Constantine in Cornwall :
" It is one vast egg-like stone thirty-three feet in length, eighteen
feet in width, and fourteen feet and a half in thickness, placed on
the points of two natural rocks, so that a man may creep under it."
(Fig. 41.) There appears to be little doubt that this is a work of
art, as far as regards-the placing of the huge mass (which is held to
weigh seven hundred and fifty tons), upon the points of its natural
supporters. If the Constantine Tolman be a work of art, it
furnishes a most remarkable example of the skill which the early
inhabitants of England had attained in the application of some
great power, such as the lever, to the aid of man's co-operative
strength. But there are some remains which have the appearance
of works of art, which are, probably, nothing but irregular products
of nature, — masses of stone thrown on a plane surface by some great
convulsion, and wrought into fantastic shapes by agencies of dripping
water and driving wind, which in the course of ages work as effectually
in the chang* of bodies as the chisel and the hammer. Such is
probably the extraordinary pile of granite in Cornwall called the
Cheesewring, a mass of eight stones rising to the height of thirty-,
two-feet, whose name is derived from the form of an ancient cheese-
press (Fig. 47). It is held, however, that some art may have been
employed in clearing the base from circurnjacent stones. Such is
also a remarkable pile upon a lofty range called the Kilmarth Rocks,
which is twenty-eight feet in height, and overhangs more than
twelve feet towards the north (Fig. 46). The group of stones at
Festiniog in Merionethshire, called Hugh Lloyd's pulpit (Fig. 48),
is also a natural production. But there are other remains which
the antiquaries call Logan, or Rocking-stones, in the construction of
which some art appears decidedly to have been exercised. Corn
wall is remarkable for these rocking-stones. Whether they were
the productions of art, or wholly of nature, the ancient writers
seem to have been impressed with a due sense of the wonder which
attached to such curiosities. Pliny tells of a rock near Harpasa
which might be moved with a finger (placed no doubt in a parti
cular position) but would not stir with a thrust of the whole body.
Ptolemy, with an expression in the highest degree poetical, speaks
of the Gygonian rock, which might be stirred with the stalk of an
asphodel, but could not be removed by any force. There is arock-
ing-stone in Pembrokeshire, which is described in Gibson's edition
of Camden's ' Britannia,' from a manuscript account by Mr. Owen :
" This shaking stone may be seen on a sea-cliff within half a mile of
St. David's. It is so vast that I presume it may exceed the draught
of an hundred oxen, and it is altogether rude and unpolished. The
occasion of the name (Y maen sigl, or the Rocking-stone) is for
that being mounted upon divers other stones about a yard in height
it is so equally poised that a man may shake it with one finger so
that five or six men sitting on it shall perceive themselves moved
thereby." There is a stone of thk sort at Golcar Hill, near
Halifax, in Yorkshire, which mainly lost its rocking power through
the labours of some masons, who, wanting to discover the principle
by which so large a weight was made so easily to move, hewed and
hacked at it until they destroyed its equilibrium. In the same
manner the soldiers in the civil wars rendered the rocking-stone of
Pembrokeshire immoveable after Mr.. Owen had described it; but
their object was not quite so laudable as that of the masons who
sought to discover the mystery of the stone of Golcar Hill. The
soldiers upset its equipoise upon the same principle that they broke
painted glass and destroyed monumental brasses ; they held that
it was an encouragement to superstition. In the same way the
soldiers of Cromwell threw down a famous stone called Men-
amber, in the parish of Sithney, in Cornwall, which a little child
might move; and it is recorded that the destruction required ii
mense labour and pains. Some few years ago one of these famo„
rocking-stones, on the coast of Cornwall, was upset by a ship'
crew for a freak of their officers; but the people, who had a just
veneration for their antiquities, insisted upon t„8 rocking-stone
being restored to its place': it was restored ; but the trouble ana
expense were so serious, that the disturbers went away with a due
s#ense of the skill of those who had first poised these mighty
masses, as if to assert the permanency of their art, and to show that
all that is gone before us is not wholly barbarous. It. is a curious

im- us s

Chap. I.]

OLD ENGLAND.

19

fact that the tackle which was used for the restoration of this rock
ing-stone, and which was applied by military engineers, broke under
the weight of the mass which our rude forefathers had set up. The
rocking-stones which are found throughout the country are too nu
merous here to be particularly described. They are in many places
distinctly surrounded by Druidical remains, and have been consi
dered as adjuncts to the system of divination by which the priest
hood maintained their influence over the people.
In various parts of England, in Wales, in Ireland, arid in the
Western Islands of Scotland, there are found large single stones,
firmly fixed in the earth, which have remained in their places from
time immemorial, and which are generally regarded with some sort
of reverence, if not superstition, by the people who live near them.
They are in all likelihood monuments which were erected in
memory of some remarkable event, or of some . eminent person.
They have survived their uses. Written memorials alone shine with
a faint light through the darkness of early ages. The associations
that once made these memorials of stone solemn things no longer
surround them. When Jack Cade struck his sword upon London
Stone, the act was meant to give a solemn assurance to the people
of his rude fidelity. The stone still stands ; and we now look upon
it simply with curiosity, as one of the few remains of Roman Lon
don. Some hold that it had "a more ancient and peculiar desig
nation than that of having been a Roman Milliary, even if it ever
were used for that purpose afterwards. It was fixed deep in the
ground ; and is mentioned so early as the time of iEthelstan, king
of the West Saxons, without any particular reference to its having
been considered as a Roman Milliary stone." (King.) If this
stone, which few indeed of the busy throngs of Cannon-street cast
a look upon, were only a boundary-stone, such stones were held as
sacred things even in the times of the patriarchs : " And Laban
said to Jacob, Behold this heap, and behold this pillar, which I
have cast betwixt me and thee ; this heap be witness, and this pillar
be witness, that I will not pass over this heap to thee, and that
thou shalt not pass over this heap and this pillar unto me, for harm."
(Genesis, c. xxxi., v. 51, 52.) In the parish of Sancred, in Corn
wall, is a remarkable stone called the Hare Stone {hare or hoar
meaning literally border or boundary), with a heap of stones lying
around it (Fig. 44). It is held that these stones' are precisely simi
lar to the heap and the pillar which were collected and set up at
the covenant between Jacob and Laban, recorded in the Scriptures
with such interesting minuteness. It is stated by Rowland, the
author of ' Mona Antiqua,' that wherever there are heaps of stones
of great apparent antiquity, stone pillars are also found near them.
This is probably too strong an assertion ; but the existence of such
memorials, which, King says, " are, like the pyramids of Egypt,
records of the highest antiquity in a dead language," compared
with the clear descriptions of them in the sacred writings, leaves
little doubt of the universality of the principle which led to their
erection. A heap of stones and a, single pillar was not, however, the
only form of these stones of memorial. At Trelech, in Monmouth
shire, are three remarkable stones, one of which is fourteen feet
above the ground, and which evidently formed no part of any
Druidical circle. These are called Harold's Stones (Fig. 43).
Near Boroughbridge, in Yorkshire, are some remarkable stones of
similar character, called the. Devil's Arrows. The magnitude of
these, stones of memorial was probably sometimes regulated by the
importance of the event which they were intended to celebrate ; but
their sacred character in many cases did not depend upon their size,
and their form is sometimes unsuited to the notion that they were
boundary-stones, or even monumental pillars. The celebrated stone
which now forms the seat of the coronation chair of the sovereigns
of England is a flat stone, nearly square. It formerly stood in
Argyleshire, according to Buchanan ; who also says that King Ken
neth, in the ninth century, transferred it to Scone, and enclosed it
in a wooden chair. The monkish tradition was, that it was the
identical stone which formed Jacob's pillow. The more credible
legend of Scotland is, that it was the ancient inauguration-stone of
the kings of Ireland. "This fatal stone was said to have been
brought from Ireland by Fergus, the son of Eric, who led the
Dalriads to the shores of Argyleshire. Its virtues are preserved in
the celebrated leonine verse :—
Ni fallat fatum, Scoti, quocunque locatum
Invenient lapidem, regnaretfenentur ibidem.
Which may be rendered thus : —
Unless the Fates are faithless found,
And Prophet's voice .be.. vain,
Where'er this monument be found
The Scottish race shall reign."

Sir Walter Scott, in his graceful style, gives us this version of his
country's legend. The stone, as the youngest reader of English
history knows, was removed to Westminster from Scone, bv
Edward I. ; and here it remains, as an old antiquarian has described
it, " the ancientest respected monument in the world ; for, although
some others may be more ancient as to duration, yet thus super-
stitiqusly regarded are they not." (Fig. 45.) The antiquity of this
stone is undoubted, however it may be questioned whether it be the
same stone on which the ancient kings of Ireland were inaugurated
on the hill of Tara. This tradition, is a little shaken by the fact
that stone of the same quality is not uncommon in Scotland. The
history of its removal from Scone by Edward I. admits of no doubt.
A record exists of the expenses attending its removal; and this is
the best evidence of the reverence which attached to this rude seat
of the ancient kings of Scotland, who, standing on it in the sight of
assembled thousands, had sworn to reverence the laws, and to do
justice to the people.'"
Of the domestic buildings of the early Britons there are no
remains, if we except some circular stone foundations,* which may
have been those of houses. It is concluded, perhaps somewhat too
hastily, that their houses were little better than the huts of the
rude tribes of Africa or Asia in our own day (Fig. 49). In the
neighbourhood of Llandaff were, in King's time, several modern
pig-sties, of a peculiar construction; and he held that the form of
these was derived from the dwellings of the ancient Britons (Fig.
55). This form certainly agrees with the description which Strabo
gives of the houses of the Gauls, which he says were constructed of
poles and wattled work, of a circular form, and with a lofty taper
ing roof. On the Antonine column we have representations of the
Gauls and the Gaulish houses, but here the roofs are for the most
part with domes (Fig. 50). Strabo further says, "The forests
of the Britons are their cities ; for, when they have enclosed a
very large circuit with felled trees, they "build within it houses
for themselves and hovels for their cattle. These buildings are
very slight, and not designed for long duration." Cffisar says,
" What the Britons call a town is a tract of woody country, sur
rounded by a vallum and a ditch, for the security of themselves and
cattle against the incursions of their enemies." The towns within
woods were thus fortresses ; and here the Druidical worship in the
broad glades, surrounded by mighty oaks, which were their natural
antiquities, was cultivated amidst knots of men, held together -by
common wants as regarded the present life, and • common hopes
with reference to the future (Fig. 56). A single bank and ditch,
agreeing with Cassar's description, is found in several parts of the
island. There is such an entrenchment in the parish of Cellan,
Cardiganshire, called Caer Morus. We shall presently have to
speak of the ramparted camps, undoubtedly British, which are found
on commanding hills, exhibiting a skill in the military art to which
Csesar bore testimony, when he described the capital of Cassivel-
' launus as admirably defended both by nature and art. But we here
insert a description of Chun Castle, in Cornwall, to furnish a proof
that the skill of the ancient Britons in building displayed itself in
more important works than their wattled huts : " It consists of two
circular walls, having a terrace thirty feet wide between (Fig.
51). The walls are built of rough masses of granite of various
sizes, some five or six feet long, fitted together, and piled up without
cement, but presenting a regular and tolerably smooth surface on
the outside. The outer wall was surrounded by a ditch nineteen
feet in width : part of this wall in one place is ten feet high, and
about five feet thick. Borlase is of opinion that the inner wall must
have been at least fifteen feet high ; it is about twelve feet thick.
The only entrance was towards the south-west, and exhibits in its
arrangement a surprising degree of skill and military knowledge for
the time at which it is supposed to have been constructed. It is six
feet wide in the narrowest part, and sixteen in the widest, where the
walls diverge, and are rounded off on either side. There also ap
pear indications of steps, up to the level of the area within the
castle, and the remains of a wall whioh, crossing the terrace from the
outer wail, divided the entrance into two parts at its widest end.
The inner wall of the castle incloses an area measuring one hundred
and seventy-five feet north and south, by one hundred and eighty
feet east and west. The centre is without any indication of build
ings ; but all around, and next to the wall, are the remains of cir
cular inclosures, supposed to have formed the habitable parts of the
* The Coronation Chair, the seat of which rests upon this stone of destiny, is also
represented in the illuminated engraving which accompanies this portion of our
work. It is a fac-simile of a highly finished architectural drawing, and is printed
in oil-colours from twelve separate plates, so united in the printing as to produce a
perfect outline, and to give all the various tints of the original.

I

D 2

Side View.

Foreshortened View, showing the end ,
5 WAncient:BritislfCaiioes*-Found at North Stoke, Sussex

60,— Woaa. (IsaBSiTinctojja.,

61  Gaulish Costume.

62.— Gaulish Costume.

59.— British Pearl Shells. Natural size.
tl. Duck fresh-v.ater Pearl Mussel (Anodon Aiiatinus). b. Swan ditto (Anodon Cygneus).

83.— Gaulish Costume.

20

J.— Group of Ring Coins.

22

OLD ENGLAND.

[Book I.

castle. They are generally about eighteen or twenty feet in dia
meter, but at the northern side there is a larger apartment thirty by
twenty." (' Pictorial History of England.')
That the Britons were agriculturists, using the term in a larger
• sense than applies to the cultivation of small patches of land by
solitary individuals, we may reasonably infer from some remarkable
remains that; are not uncommon in these islands. Tacitus, in his
account of the manners of the Germans, says, " the Germans were
accustomed to dig subterraneous caverns, and then to cover them
with much loose mould, forming a refuge from wintry storms, and
a receptacle for the fruits of the earth : in this manner the rigour
of the frost is softened." Tacitus also says that these caverns are
hiding-places for the people upon the irruption of an enemy. Such
pits were common to the ancient people of the East, and are found
in modern times in other European countries. There is a singular
cavern of this sort at Royston, in Hertfordshire, which was dis
covered in the market-place of that town in 1742. Kent has
several such pits. Hasted, the topographer of that country, describes
many such in the heaths and fields and woods near Crayford. He
says that at the mouth, and thence downward, they are narrow,
like the tunnel or passage of a well ; but at the bottom they are
large and of great compass, so that some of them have several
rooms, one within another, strongly vaulted, and supported with
pillars of chalk. Camden has given a rude representation of two
caverns near Tilbury in Essex, " spacious caverns in a chalky cliff,
built very artificially of stone to the height of ten fathoms, and
somewhat straight at the top. A person who had been down to
view them gave me a description of them." The chambers in the
caverns, which Camden depicts, consist either of a large space,
with semicircular recesses, or of two chambers, each with three
semicircular recesses connected by a passage. The universality
of the practice is shown in the caves which were discovered in
Ireland, in 1829, which are described in the ' Transactions of the
Antiquarian Society of London,' vol. xxiii. (Figs. 52, 53, and 54.)
There can be little doubt of the use of such caves. Diodorus
Siculus expressly says that the Britons laid up their corn in subter
ranean repositories. There are other remarkable remains whose
purposes do not seem quite so clear. These are artificial pits of a
conical form. At the top of the Combe Hills, near Croydon, in
Surrey, is a pit of this sort, minutely described by King. An early
antiquarian, John Leland — who peregrinated England and Wales in
the time of Henry VIII., and whose description's, whenever he
enters into detail, are so curious that we sigh over his usual brevity,
and wish that he were as prolix as the travellers of our own age —
thus describes similar pits near Caernarvon : " There be a great
number of pits made with hand, large like a bowl at the head, and
narrow in the bottom, overgrown in the swart with fine grass, and
be scattered here and there about the quarters where the head of
Kenner river is, that cometh by Caire Kenner. And some of these
will receive a hundred men, some two hundred. They be in the
Black Mountain." (' Itinerary,' vol. viii. folio 107, a.)
Of a later period than that to which we are referring are pro
bably the very singular caves of Hawthornden. Beneath the rock on
which Drummond and Jonson sate, looking out upon the delicious
glen whose exquisite beauties would seem the natural abodes of
peacefulness and innocence, are the hiding-places of remote genera-
•tions. Long galleries and dreary caverns cut in the rock, are
peopled by tradition with the brave and the oppressed hiding from
their enemies. Here we are shown the king's bedchamber ; and
another cave, whose walls are cut into small, recesses of about a
foot square, was the king's drawing-room. He was here surrounded
by ample conveniences for arranging the petty treasures of his
solitude. Setting these traditions aside, we may reasonably conclude
that the caves of Hawthornden were at once hiding-places and store
houses : and it is not carrying our fancies too far to believe that the
shelved cavities of the rock were receptacles for food, in small por
tions — the oatmeal and the pv^lse that were thus preserved from
worms and mildew.
The primitive inhabitants of all sea-girt countries are fishermen.
It is impossible not to believe that the people of Britain, having at
their command the treasures of wide sestuaries and deep rivers, were
fishermen to a large extent. The Britons must always have been a
people who were familiar with the waters. The Severn and the
Wye have still their coracles — little boats so peculiar in their con
struction that we may readily conceive them to belong to a remote
antiquity. Gibson, the translator and best editor of Camden, has
described these boats upon the Severn : " The fishermen in these
parts use a small thing called a coracle, in which one man beinc
seated will row himself with incredible swiftness with one hand,
whilst with the other he manages his net, angle, or other fishing-

tackle. It is of a form almost oval, made of split sally-twigs inter
woven (willow-twigs), round at the bottom, and on that part which
is next the water it is covered with a horse-hide. It is about five
feet in length and three in breadth, and is so light that, coming off
the water, they take them upon their backs and carry them home."
Such, we may conclude, were the fishing-boats of our primitive
ancestors (Fig. 58). Some of the Roman writers might lead us
to believe that the Britons had boats capable of distant navigation ;
but this is doubted by most careful inquirers. But the light boats
which were peculiar to the island were certainly of a construction
well suited to their objects ; for Caesar, in his History of the Civil
War, tells us that he had learnt their use in Britain, and availed
himself of boats of a similar formation in crossing rivers in Spain.
These were probably canoes, hollowed out of a single tree. Such
have been found, from seven to eight feet^Jong, in morasses and in
the beds of rivers, at very distant parts of the country — in Dum
fries and in the marshes of the Medway. In 1834 a boat of this
description was discovered in a creek of the river Arun, in the vil
lage of North Stoke, Sussex (Fig. 57). In draining the Martine
Mere, or Marton lake, in Lancashire, eight canoes, each formed of
a single tree, were found sunk deep in the mud and sand. The
pearl-fishery of Britain must have existed before the Roman
invasion, for Suetonius says that the hope of acquiring pearls was a
main inducement to Caesar to attempt the conquest of the country.
The great conqueror himself, according to Pliny, the naturalist,
dedicated to Venus a breast-plate studded with British pearls, and
suspended it in her temple at Rome. In a later age the pearls of
Caledonia were poetically termed by Ausonius the white shell-
berries. Camden thus describes the pearls of the little river Irt in
Cumberland: " In this brook the shell-fish, eagerly sucking in the
dew, conceive and bring forth pearls, or, to use the poet's words,
shell-berries. These the inhabitants gather up at low water ; and
the jewellers buy them of the poor beople for a trifle, but sell them
at a good price. Of these, and such like, Marbodaeus seems to
speak in that verse, ' Gignit et insigr.es antiqua Britannia baccas.'
(' And Britain's ancient shores great pearls produce.')"

The British pearls were not found in the shells of the oyster, as is
often thought, but in those of a peculiar species of mussel (Fig. 59).
The oysters of Britain, celebrated, by Pliny and Juvenal after the
Roman conquest, contributed, we may reasonably suppose, to the
food of the primitive inhabitants.
The dresses of the inhabitants of Britain before the Roman inva
sion are not, like those of the people of ancient Egypt, and other
countries advanced in the practice of the imitative arts, to be traced
in painting or sculpture. In Roman statues we have the figures of
ancient Gauls, which give us the characteristic dress of the Celtic
nations : the braccae, or close trowsers, the tunic, and the sa°-um or
short cloak (Figs. 61, 62, 63). The dye of the woad was° proba
bly used for this cloth, as it was to colour the skins of the warriors
stripped for battle (Fig. 60). It is difficult to assign an exact
period to their use of cloth in preference to skins. It is equally
difficult to determine the date of those valuable' relics which have
been found in various, places, exhibiting a taste for symmetry and
nice workmanship in the fabrication of their weapons, offensive and
defensive, and the ruder decorations of their persons. Such are the
remains of a golden breast-plate found at Mold, in Flintshire, now
in the British Museum (Fig. 64). Such are the shields (Figs. 65,
66, 67), of one of which (Fig. 67) Sir Samuel Meyrick, its
possessor, says, " It is impossible to contemplate the artistic portions
without feeling convinced that there is a mixture of British orna
ments with such resemblances to the elegant designs on Roman works
as would be produced by a people in a state of less civilization."
Torques, or gold and bronze necklaces composed of flexible bars, were
peculiar to the people of this country. Of all these matters we
shall have further to speak in the next chapter— the Roman Period.
There also we may more properly notice the great variety of British
coins, of which we here present a group (Fig. 68). Ring-monev,
peculiar to the Celtic nations, undoubtedly existed in Ireland previous
to the domination of the Romans in Britain. Although Csesar says
that the ancient Britons had no coined money, there is sufficient.
probability that they had their metal plates for purposes of currency
such being occasionally found in English barrows. The Ring-
money (Fig. 69) has been found in great quantities in Ireland of
bronz( , of silver, and of gold. The rings vary in weight ; but they
are all exact multiples of a standard unit, showing that a uniform
pTinuple regulated their size, and that this was determined by
then use as current coin. The weapons of the ancient Britons
sho.v their acquaintance with the casting of metals. Their axe-

Chap. I]

OLD ENGLAND.

23

heads, called Celts, are composed of ten parts of copper and one of
tin. (Figs. 70 and 71) ; their spear-heads, of six parts of copper and
one of tin. Moulds for spear-heads have been frequently found in
Britain and Ireland (Figs. 72 and 73).
There are no remains of those terrible war-chariots of the Britons
which Caesar describes as striking terror into his legions. King,
who labours very hard to prove that the people who stood up not only
with undaunted courage, but military skill, against the conquerors
of the world, were but painted savages, considers that the British
war-chariot was essentially the same as the little low cart which the
Welsh used in his day for agricultural purposes (Fig. 74). The
painters have endeavoured to realize the accounts of the Roman
writers, with more of poetry, and, we believe, with more of truth
(Fig, 75).
But if the chariots have perished, — if the spears and the axe-
heads are doubtful memorials of the warlike genius of the people, —
not so are the mighty earth-works which still attest that they
defended themselves against their enemies upon a system which
bespeaks their skill as well as their valour. The ramparted hill
of Old Sarum, with terrace upon terrace rising upon its banks and
ditches, and commanding the country for miles around, is held not
merely to have been a Roman station, or a British station after the
Romans, but a fortified place of the people of the country, even in
the time of the great Druidical monuments which are found scattered
over the great plain where this proud hill still stands in its ancient
majesty. The Romad walls, the Saxon towers, the Norman cathe
dral, which have successively crowned this hill, have perished, but
here it remains, with all the peculiar character of a British fortress
still impressed upon it (Fig. 23). Such a fortress is the Hereford
shire beacon (Fig. 76) which forms the summit of one of the highest
of the Malvern hills, and looks down upon that glorious valley of
the Severn which, perhaps more than any other landscape, proclaims
the surpassing fertility of ' Old England.' Such is in all likelihood
the castellated hill near Wooler, in Northumberland, which rises
two thousand feet above the adjacent plain, with its stone walls, and
ditches, and crumbling cairns. It was in these hill-forts that the
Britons so long defied the Roman power ; and one of them (near
the confluence of the Coin and Teme, in Shropshire) is still sig
nalised by the name of one of the bravest of those who fought for
the independence of their country — -Caer-Caradoc, the castle of
Caractacus (Fig. 77). The Catter-thuns of Angus (Forfarshire)
are amongst the most remarkable of the Caledonian strong-holds.
They are thus described by Pennant, in his ' Tour in Scotland :' —
" After riding two miles on black and heathy hills, we ascended
one divided into two summits ; the higher named the White, the
lower the Black Catter-thun, from their different colour. Both are
Caledonian posts ; and the first of most uncommon strength. It is
of an oval form, made of a stupendous dike of loose white stones,
whose convexity, from the base within to that without, is a hundred
and twenty-two feet. On the outside, a hollow, made by the dispo
sition of the stones, surrounds the whole. Round the base is a deep
ditch, and below that, about a hundred yards, are vestiges of another
that went round the hill. The area within the stony mound is flat ;
the greater axis or length of the oval is four hundred and thirty-
six feet ; the transverse diameter, two hundred. Near the east side
is the foundation of a rectangular building ; and on most parts are
the foundations of others small and circular ; all which had once
*heir superstructures, the shelter of the possessors of the post.
There is also a hollow, now almost filled with stones, the well of the
place. The literal translation of the word Catter-thun is Camp-
town." The vitrified forts of Scotland are so mysterious in their
origin and their uses, some holding them to be natural volcanic
productions, others artificial buildings of earth, made solid by the
application of fire, without cement, that we may safely omit them
in this notice of the British period.
In speaking of those ancient works in these islands which were
constructed upon a large scale for the defence of the country and
for the accommodation of the people, it is difficult to define the
precise share of the ancient Britons in their construction, as com
pared with the labours of successive occupants of the country. Old
Sarum, for example, has the characteristics of a work essentially
different from the camps and castles of Roman origin. But the
Romans, too wise a people to be destroyers, would naturally improve
the old defences of the island, and adapt them to their own notions
of inililary science. So, we imagine, it would have been with what
we are accustomed to call the four great Roman Ways. The old
chroniclers record that King Dunwallo (called also Moliuncius or
Mulmutius) "began the four highways of Britain, the which were
finished and perfited of Belinus his son." This is the Mulmutius
whose civilizing deeds are thus described by Spenser ; —

" Then made lie sacred laws, which some men say
Were unto him reveal'd in vision ;
By which he freed the traveller's highway,
The Church's part, and ploughman's portion,
Restraining stealth and strong extortion ;
The gratious Numa of Great Britainy :
For, till his days, the chief dominion
By strength was wielded without policy :
Therefore he first wore crown of gold for dignity."
Camden, who naturally enough has a disposition, from the nature of
his learning, to hold that the civilization of Britain began from the
Roman conquest, laughs to scorn the notion of the great highways
being made before the Romans : — " Some imagine that these ways
were made by one Mulmutius, God knows who, many ages before the
birth of Christ ; but this is so far from finding credit with me, that
I positively affirm they were made from time to time by the Romans.
When Agricola was Lieutenant here, Tacitus tells us, that ' the
people were commanded to carry their corn about, and into the most
distant countries ; not to the nearest camps, but to those that were
far off and out of the way.' And the Britons (as the same author
has it) complained, ' that the Romans put their hands and bodies to the
drudgery of clearing woods and paving fens, with stripes and indig
nities to boot.' And we find in old records, ' In the days of Honorius
and, Arcadius, there were made in Britain certain highways from
sea to sea.' That they were the work of the Romans, Bede himself
tells us : " The Romans lived within that wall (which, as I have
already observed, Severus drew across the island) to the southward ;
as the cities, temples, bridges, and highways made there, do plainly
testify at this day.' " But in these quotations there is nothing to
prove that there were not roads in Britain before the Romans. That
the more ancient roads were not the magnificent works which the
Romans afterwards constructed we may well believe ; but, on the
other hand, it is impossible to imagine that a people accustomed to
military movements were without roads. The local circumstances
also belonging to the great Druidical monuments, such as Stonehenge
and Abury, indicate with sufficient clearness that they were not
solely constructed with reference to the habits of a stationary popu
lation, but that they were centres to which great bodies of the
people resorted at particular seasons of solemnity. We may take,
therefore, the statements of the old chroniclers with regard to the
more ancient and important of the highways as not wholly fabulous.
Robert of Gloucester, in his rude rhyme, has told us as much as is
necessary here to say about them :
> " Faire weyes many on ther ben in Englonde ;
But four most of all ther ben I understonde,
That thurgh an old kynge were made ere this,
As men schal in this, boke aftir here tell I wis.
Fram the South into the North takith Erminge-strete.
Fram the East into the West goeth Ikeneld-strete.
Fram South-est to North-west, that is sum del grete,
Fram Dover into Chestre goth Watlyng-strete.
The ferth of thise is most of alle that tilleth fram Tatcneys.
Fram the South-west to North-est into Englondes ende
Fosse men callith thilkc wey that by mouy town doth wende.
Thise foure weyes on this londe kyng Belin the wise
Made and ordeined hem with gret fraunchise."

We have thus hastily presented a sketch, imperfect in the details,
but not without its impressiveness if regarded as exhibiting the
solemn picture of man struggling to comprehend the Infinite through
clouds and darkness — we have thus attempted to group the memo
rials of ages which preceded the Roman domination in ' Old Eng
land.' We look back upon these earliest recordsof a past state of
society with wonder not unmixed with awe, with shuddering but
not with hatred :
" Yet shall it claim our reverence, that to God,
Ancient of days ! that to the eternalSire
These jealous, ministers of law aspire,
As to the one sole fount whence Wisdom flow'd,
Justice, and Order. Tremblingly escaped,
As if with prescience of the coming storm,,
That intimation when the stars were shaped ;
And still, 'mid yon thick, woods, the primal truth,
Glimmers through many a, superstitious form
That fills the soul with unavailing ruth." WOBDSWOBTH.

JO.— Celt

16.— The-Herefordshire Beacon.

H

I -4

I "I

nm
JmM

¦U)U

12.— Spear-Moul d.

77.— British Camp at Cacr-Caradoc— From Roy's Militaiy Antiqnities

73.— Spear as it would havec
from the Mould.

mm
IS.— British War Chariot, Shield, and Spears.

J 4.— Welsh Agricultural Cart.

24

80.— British and Roman Weapons.

Si. — Capiivu wearing the Torque,

79.- Symbols of Rome.

85. — Ltornan Kagl1.

¦¦scv

iwammm

t$*lf$

YgJt mm
¦JM ' . . ¦

Mil

87.— Country near Dos»r.(

33;-Dev« cues.

83.— Julius Cassar. From a Copper Coin in the British Museum.
No. 4.

— Roman General, Standard-Bearcrs, &c.
[OLD ENGLAND.]

84.— Julius Cxsar.

25

26

OLD ENGLAND.

[Book I.

CHAPTER II.-^-THE ROMAN PERIOD.

HE inland part of Britain,
,says Caesar, "is inhabited by
those who, according to the
existing tradition, were the
aborigines of the island ; the
sea-coast, by those who, for
the sake of plunder or in
order to make war, had cross
ed over from among the
Belgae, and in almost every
case retained the names of
their native states from which
they emigrated to this island,
in which they made war and
settled, and began to till the
land. The population is very
great, and the buildings very numerous, closely resembling those
of the Gauls : the quantity of cattle is considerable 
The island is of a triangular form, one side of the triangle being
opposite Gaul. One of the angles of this side, which is in Cantium
(Kent), to which nearly all vessels from Gaul come, looks toward
the rising sun ; the lower angle looks towards the south  Of
all the natives, those who inhabit Cantium, a district the whole of
which is near the coast, are by far the most civilized, and do not
differ much in their customs from the Gauls." With these more
civilized people Caesar negotiated. They had sent him ambassadors
and hostages to avert the invasion which they apprehended ; but
their submission was fruitless. In the latter part of the summer of
the year 55 B.C. (Halley, the astronomer, has gone far to prove that
the exact day was the 26th of August), a Roman fleet crossed the
Channel, bearing the infantry of two legions, about ten thousand
men. This army was collected at the Portus It.ius ("Witsand), be
tween Calais and Boulogne. Eighty galleys (Fig. 86) bore the
invaders across the narrow seas. As they neared the white cliffs
which frowned upon their enterprise (Figs. 87, 88, 90), Caesar
beheld them covered with armed natives, ready to dispute his land
ing. , The laurelled conqueror (Figs. 83, 84), who, according to
Suetonius, only experienced three reverses during nine years' com
mand in Gaul, would not risk the Roman discipline against the
British courage, on a coast thus girt with natural defences. It is
held that the proper interpretation of his own narrative is, that he
proceeded towards the north ; and it is considered by most autho
rities that the flat beach between Walmer Castle and Sandwich
•was the place of his disembarkation. It was here, then, that the
British and Roman weapons first came into conflict (Fig. 80).
But the captains and the standard-bearers marched not deliberately
to the shore, as they are represented on the Column of Trajan
{Fig. 82). The cavalry and the war-chariots of the active Britons
met the invader on the beach ; and whilst the soldiers hesitated to
leave the ships, the standard-bearer of the tenth legion leaped into
the water, exclaiming, as Caesar has recorded, " Follow me, my
fellow-soldiers, unless you will give up your eagle to the enemy ;
I, at least, will do my duty to the republic and to our general!"
(Fig. 85.) The Romans made good their landing. The symbols
of the great republic were henceforward to become more familiar
to the skin-clothed and painted Britons (Fig. 79) ; but not as yet
were they to be bound with the chain of the captive (Fig. 81). The
galleys in which the cavalry of Caesar were approaching the British
shores were scattered by a storm. This calamity, and his imperfect
acquaintance with the country and with the coast, determined the
invader to winter in Gaul. It is a remarkable fact that Caesar was
ignorant of the height to which the tide rises in these narrow seas.
A heavy spring-tide came, and his transports, which lay at anchor,
were dashed to pieces, and his lighter galleys (Figs. 93, 94, 95),
drawn up on the beach, were swamped with the rising waves. This
second disaster occurred within a few hours of the conclusion of a
peace between the invader and the invaded. That very night, ac
cording to Caesar, it happened to be full moon, when the tides

always rise highest — " a fact at the time wholly unknown to the
Romans." The Britons, with a breach of confidence that may al
most be justified in the case of the irruption of a foreign power into
a peaceful land, broke the treaty. Caesar writes that they were
signally defeated. But the invader hastily repaired his ships ; and
set sail, even without his hostages, for the opposite shores, where his
power was better established.
Caesar, early in the next year, returned to a conflict with the
people whose coast " looks towards the rising sun." He came in a
fleet of eight hundred vessels ; and the natives, either in terror or
in policy, left him to land without opposition. The flat shores of
Kent again received his legions ; and he marched rapidly into the
country, till he met a formidable enemy in those' whom he had
described as " the inland people," who " for the most part do not
sow corn, but live on milk and flesh, and have their clothing of
skins." Caesar himself bears the most unequivocal testimony to the
indomitable courage of this people. The tribes with whom Caesar
came into conflict were, as described by him, the people of Cantium,
inhabitants of Kent ; the Trinobantes, inhabitants of Essex ; the
Cenimagni, inhabitants of Norfolk, Suffolk, and Cambridge ; the
Segontiaci, inhabitants of parts of Hants and Berks ; the Aucalites,
inhabitants of parts of Berks and Wilts ; the Briboci, inhabitants
of parts of Berks and the adjacent counties ; the Cassi, conjectured
to be the inhabitants of Cassio hundred, Herts.* CasKar, after va
rious fortune, carried back his soldiers in the same year to Gaul.
He set sail by night, in fear, he says, of the equinoctial gales. He
left no body of men behind him ; he erected no fortress. It is pro
bable that he took back captives to adorn his triumph. But the
Romans, with all their national pride, did not in a succeeding ao-e
hold Caesar's expedition to be a conquest. Tacitus says that he did
not conquer Britain, but only showed it to the Romans. Horace,
calling upon Augustus to achieve the conquest, speaks of Britain as
" intactus," (untouched) ; and Propertius, in the same spirit, de
scribes her as " invictus," (unconquered). There is, perhaps, there
fore, little of exaggeration in the lines which Shakspere puts into
the mouth of the Queen in ' Cymbeline :'
Remember, Sir, my liege,
The kings your ancestors ; together with *
The natural bravery of your isle, which stands
As Neptune's park; ribbed and paled in
With rocks uuscaleable, and roaring waters;
With sands that will not bear your enemies' boats,
But suck them up to the top-mast. A kind of conquest
Caesar made here ; but made not here his brag
Of came, and saw, and overcame : with shame
(The first that ever touch'd him) he was carried
From off our coast, twice beaten ; and his shipping
(Poor ignorant baubles !) on our terrible seas,
Like egg-shells mov'd upon their surges, crack'd
As easily 'gainst our rocks.
We have thus narrated very briefly the two descents of Caesar
upon Britain ; because, from the nature of his inroad into the
country, no monuments exist or could have existed to attest his
progress. But it is not so with the subsequent periods of Roman
dominion. The great military power of the ancient world may be
here traced by what is left of its arms and its arts. Camden has
well described the durable memorials of the Roman sway : " The
Romans, by planting their colonies here, and reducing the natives
under the rules of civil government— by instructing them in the
liberal arts, and sending them into Gaul to learn the laws of the
Roman empire,— did at last so reform and civilize them by intro
ducing their laws and customs, that for the modes of their dress and
living they were not inferior to the other provinces. The buildino-s
and other works were so very magnificent, that we view the remains
of them to this day with the greatest admiration ; and the common
people will have these Roman fabrics to be the works of giants."
We proceed to a rapid notice of the more important of these monu
ments.

* See Maps of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge.

Chap. II.]

OLD ENGLAND.

27

In that curious record, in old French, of the foundation of the
Castle of Dover, which we find in Dugdale's ' Monasticon,' we are
told that when Arviragus reigned in Britain, he refused to be sub
ject to Rome, and withheld the tribute ; "making the Castle of Dover
strong with ditch and wall against the Romans, if they should come.
The old British hill-forts and cities were not works of regular form,
like the camps and castles of the Romans; and thus the earliest
remains of the labours of man in Dover Castle exhibit a ditch and
a mound of irregular form, a parallelogram with the corners rounded
off, approaching to something like an oval. Yet within this ditch
are the unquestionable fragments of Roman architecture, still stand
ing up against the storms which have beaten against them for
nearly eighteen centuries (Fig. 89). We may well believe, there
fore, that the statement of the chronicler is not wholly fabulous
when he said that a British King strengthened Dover Castle ; and
that the Romans, as in other casesj planted their soldiers in the
strongholds where the Britons had defied them. Be this as it may,
the Roman works of Dover Castle are amongst the most interesting
in the island, remarkable in themselves, suggestive of high and so
lemn remembrances. Toil up the steep hill, tourist, and mount the
tedious steps which place you on the heights where stands this
far-famed castle. Look landward, and you have a prospect of
surpassing beauty, not unmixed with grandeur; look seaward, and
you may descry the cliffs of France, with many a steamboat bringing
in reality those lands together which dim traditions say were once
unsevered by the sea. Look not now upon the Norman keep, for
after a little space we will ask you to return thither ; but wind
round the slight ascent which is still before you, till you are at the
foot of the grassy mound upon which stand the ruined walls which
attest that here the Romans trod. That octagonal building, some
thirty or forty feet high, and which probably mounted to a much
greater height, was a Roman pharos, or lighthouse. Mark the
thickness of its walls, at least ten feet ! see the peculiarity of its
construction, wherever the modern casing, far more perishable than
the original structure, will permit you. The beacon-fires of that
tower have long been burnt out. They were succeeded by bells,
which rung their merry peals when kings and lord-wardens came
here in their cumbrous pageantry. The bells were removed to
Portsmouth, and the old tower was unroofed. Man has taken no
care of it ; man has assisted the elements in its destruction. But
its builders worked not for their own age alone, as the moderns
work. Its foundations are laid in clay, and not upon the chalk.
The thin flat bricks, which are known as Roman tiles, are laid in
even courses, amidst intermediate courses of blocks of hard stalac-
titical concretions which must have been brought by sea from a con
siderable distance. Some of the tiles are of a peculiar construction,
having knobs and ledges as if to bind them fast with the other
materials. In the true Roman buildings the uniformity of the courses,
especially where tiles are used, is most remarkable. Such is the
case in this building : " With alternate courses formed of these and
other Roman tiles, and then of small blocks of the stalactitical
incrustations, was this edifice constructed, from the bottom to the top :
— each course of tiles consisting of two rows ; and each course of
stalactites, of seven rows of blocks, generally about seven inches
deep, and about one foot in length. Five of these alternate courses,
in one part, like so many stages or stories, were discernible a few
years ago very clearly." — (King.) When the poor fisherman of
Rutupiae (Richborough) steered his oyster-laden bark to' Gesoriacum
(Boulogne), the pharos of Dover lent its light to make . his path
across the Channel less perilous and lonely. At Boulogne there was
a corresponding lighthouse of Roman work ; an octagonal tower, with
twelve stages of floors, rising to the height of one hundred and
twonty-five feet. This tower is said to have been the work of Cali
gula. It once stood a bowshot from the sea ; but in the course of
sixteen centuries the cliff was undermined, and it fell in 1644.
The pharos of Dover has had a somewhat longer date, from the
nature of its position. No reverence for the past has assisted to
preserve what remains of one of the most insteresting memorials of
that dominion which had such important influences in the civilization
of England. The mixed race in our country has, in fact, sprung
from these old Romans ; and the poetical antiquary thus carries us
back to the great progenitors of Rome herself: " Whilst," says
Cambden, " I treat of the Roman Empire in Britain (which lasted, as
I said, about four hundred and seventy-six years), it comes into my
mind how many colonies of Romans must have heen transplanted
hither in so long a time ; what numbers of soldiers were continually
sent from Rome, for garrisons ; how many persons were despatched
hither, to negotiate affairs, public or private ; and that these, inter
marrying with the Britons, seated themselves here, and multiplied into
families : for, ' Wherever ' (says Seneca) ' the Roman conquers,

he inhabits.' So that I have ofttimes concluded that the Britons
might derive themselves from the Trojans by these Romans (who
doubtless descended from the Trojans), with greater probability
than either the Arverni, who from Trojan blood styled themselves
brethren to the Romans, or the Mamertini, Hedui, and others, who
upon fabulous grounds grafted themselves into the Trojan stock.
For Rome, that common mother (as one calls her), challenges all
such as citizens —
" Quos domuit, nexuque pjo longinqua revinxit."
(" Whom conquer'd, she in sacred bonds hath tied.")
The old traditions connected with Dover Castle, absurd as they
are, are founded upon the popular disposition to venerate ancient
things. The destruction of ancient things in this country, during
the last three centuries, was consummated when a sceptical, sneering,
unimaginative philosophy was enabled, in its pride of reason, to
despise what was old, and to give us nothing that was beautiful and
venerable in the place of what had perished. Lambarde thus writes :
" The Castle of Dover, say Lydgate and Rosse, was first builded by
Julius Caesar, the Roman emperor, in memory of whom they of the
Castle keep till this day certain vessels of old wine and salt which
they affirm to be the remain of such provision as he brought into
it." The honest topographer adds, with a beautiful simplicity, " As
touching the which if they be natural and not sophisticate, I suppose
them more likely to have been of that store which Hubert de Burgh
laid in there." Now Hubert de Burgh lived three hundred and
fifty years before Lambarde ; and we are inclined to think that even
his vessels of old wine might have stood a fair chance of being
tapped and drunk out during the troublesome times which elapsed
between the reign of John and the reign of Elizabeth. But yet it
were vain of us to despise this confiding spirit of the old writers.
We have gained nothing in literature or in art, perhaps very little
in morals, by calling for absolute proof in all matters of history ;
and by fancying that, if we cannot have a clear microscopic bird's-
eye view of the past, we are to turn from its dimly lighted plains,
and its misty hills losing themselves in the clouds, as if there were
nothing soothing and elevating in their shadowy perspective. There
must be doubt and difficulty and uncertainty in all that belongs to
very remote antiquity : —
" Darkness surrounds us ; seeking, we are lost
On Snowdon's wilds, amid Brigantian coves,
Or where the solitary shepherd roves
Along the Plain of Sarum, by the Ghost
Of Time and Shadows of Tradition crost ;
And where the boatman of the Western Isles
Slackens his course, to mark those holy piles
Which yet survive on bleak Iona's coast. t
Nor these, nor monuments of eldest fame.
Nor Taliesiu's unforgotten lays,
Nor characters of Greek or Roman fame,
To an unquestionable' Source have led ;
Enough — if eyes that sought the Fountain-head
In vain, upon the growing Rill may gaze." Wordsworth.
This is wisdom — a poet's wisdom, which has sprung and ripened in
an uncongenial age. But if we seek the " growing Rill," we shall
not gaze upon it with less pleasure if we have endeavoured, however
imperfectly and erringly, to trace it to " the Fountain-head."
Close by the pharos are the ruins of an ancient church (Fig. 89).
This church, which was in the form of a cross, was unquestionably
constructed of Roman materials, if it was not of Roman work.
The tiles present themselves in the same regular courses as in the
pharos. The latter antiquarians are inclined to the belief that this
church was constructed of the materials of a former Roman building.
It appears exceedingly difficult to reconcile such a belief with the
fact that Roman walls, wherever we find them in this country, are
almost indestructible. The red and yellow tiles at Richborough,
for example, of which we shall have presently to speak, are em
bedded as firmly in the concrete as the layers of flint in a cliff of
chalk. The flints may be removed with much greater ease from
the chalk than the tiles from the concrete. The whole forms a
solid mass which tool can hardly touch. It would have, been no
economy, we believe, of labour or of material tc have pulled down
such a Roman building, to erect another out of its ruins; although T
indeed, the building may have been destoyed, and another building
of new materials may have been put together upon the principles of
Roman construction. Such considerations ought to induce us not
lightly to reject the traditions, which have come down to us through
the old ecclesiastical annalists, of a very early Christian church,
some say the first Christian church, having been erected within the
original Roman, or earlier than Roman, hill-fort in Dover Castle.
Little is left of this interesting ruin of some Christian church : and
E 2

93.— Htoman Galley.

89.— T-.ouhhi Lighthouse, Glmrdh, arid TreneWta Dorer Castle.

96.— Soman Standard Bearer.

97.— Roman Soldiers.

91.— Roman Church in Dover43a6Me.

94.— Roma:'. Galley.

'95.— Roman Galley.

'90.- Dover CJfffs.

28

99.— Richborough. .General .View,. from the East.

1 

101.— Plan of thePUUTorrn arid'Cross," Richborough.
O  ^1-^— 
i

Knp.

40V MJ

l04.->-PIan of Porchester Castle, Hants.

103.— Ruins of the Ancient Church of Reculvcr.

30

OLD ENGLAND.

[Book I.

that little has been defaced by the alterations of successive centuries
(Fig. 91). But here is a religious edifice of Roman workmanship,
or built after the model of Roman workmanship, in the form dear
to the Christian worship, the primitive and lasting symbol of the
Christian faith. It is held by some, and perhaps not unreasonably,
that here stood the Praetorium of the Roman Castle — the elevated
spot for state display and religious ceremonial, the place of com
mand and of sacrifice. It is held, too, that upon such a platform
was erected the Sacellum, the- low buildings where the eagles which
led the Roman soldiers to victory were guarded with reverential
care. Such buildings, it is contended, might grow into Christian
churches. It is difficult to establish or to disprove these theories ;
but the fact is certain that in several of the undoubted Roman
castles, or camps, is a small building of cruciform shape, placed not
far from the centre of the enclosure. At Porchester (Fig.104)
and at Dover these buildings have become churches. The chro
nicler of Dover Castle says (See Appendix, No. 1, to Dugdale's
Account of the Nunnery of St. Martin), " In the year of grace 180,
reigned in Britain Lucius. He became a Christian under Pope
Eleutherius, and served God, and advanced Holy Church as mucli
as he could. Amongst other benefits he made a church in the said
castle where the people of the town might receive the Sacraments."
The chronicler then goes on to tell us of " Arthur the Glorious "
and the hall which he made in Dover Castle ; and then he comes
to the dreary period of the Saxon invasion under Hengist, when
" the Pagan people destroyed the churches throughout the land,
and thrust out the Christians." The remaining part of this history
which pertains to the old church in the castle is told with an im
pressive quaintness : '/ In the year of grace 596, St. Gregory, the
Pope, sent into England his cousin St. Augustine, and many other
monks with him, to preach the Christian faith to the English.
There then reigned in Kent Adelbert (Ethelbert), who, through
the Doctrine of St. Augustine, became a Christian with all his
people ; and all the other people in the land so became through the
teachers which St. Augustine sent to them. This Adelbert had a
son whose name was Adelbold (Eadbald) , who, after the death of his
father, reigned ; and he became a Pagan, and banished the people
of Holy Church out of his kingdom. Then the Archbishop of
Canterbury, Laurence, who was preacher after St. Augustine, fled
with others out of the land. But St. Peter appeared to him, and
commanded that he should go boldly to the king and reprove him
for his misdeeds. He did so, and by the grace of God the king
repented and became devout to God and religious. This Adelbold
ordained twenty -two secular canons in the castle to serve his chapel,
and gave them twenty and two provenders (means of support).
The said canons dwelt in the castle a hundred and five years, and
maintained a great and fine house there, and went in and out of the
castle night and day, according to their will, so that the Serjeants
of the king which guarded the castle could not restrain them."
The canons, it would appear from this record, conducted themselves
somewhat turbulently and irregularly during these hundred and
five years, till they were finally ejected by King Withred, who
removed them to the Church of St. Martin, in the towg of Dover,
which he built for them. A fragment of the ruins of the town
priory is to be seen near the niarket-place in Dover. This ejectment
is held to have happened in the year 696. If the story be correct,
the church within the castle must have been erected previous to the
end of the seventh century. It might have been erected at a much
earlier period when many of the Roman soldiers of Britain were
converts to the Roman faith ; and here, upon that commanding rock
which Matthew Paris called " Clavis et Repagulum totius Regni,"
the very key and barrier of the whole kingdom, might the eagles
have vailed before the emblems of the religion of peace (Figs. 92,
96), and the mailed soldiers have laid down their shields and javelins
(Fig. 97) to mingle in that common worship which made the Roman
and the Barbarian equals.

It was a little before the commencement of a glorious corn-
harvest that we first saw Richborough. Descending from the high
fertile land of the Isle of Thanet, we passed Ebbefleet, the spot in
Pegwell Bay where tradition says Hengist and Horsa landed, to
carry war and rapine into the country. The coast here wears an
aspect of melancholy dreariness. To the east we looked back upon
the bold cliff of Ramsgate ; to the west, upon the noble promontory
of the South Foreland. But all the land space between these two
extremities of the bay is a vast flat, drained in every direction by
broad ditches, amidst which, in propitious seasons, thousands of
sheep find a luxuriant though coarse pasture. At low-water the
sea retires many furlongs from this flat shore ; and then the
fisherlqgr fills .his basket with curious shells, which are here found

in great variety. When the tide has ebbed, a narrow stream may
be traced for a long distance through the sand, which, when the
salt wave has receded, still fills the little channel into which it
empties itself from its inland source. This is the river Stour, whose
main branch, flowing from Ashford by the old Roman Castle of
Chilham, and onward to Canterbury, forms the boundary of the
Isle of Thanet on the south-west ; and making a sudden bend.
southerly to Sandwich, returns again in a notherly direction to
empty itself into its sea-channel in Pegwell Bay. The road crosses
the peninsula which is formed by this doubling of the river. At
about a mile to the west is a gentle hill crowned with a large mass
of low wall. At the distance of two or three miles we distinctly
see that this is some remarkable object. It is not a lofty castle
of the middle ages, such as we sometimes look upon, with tower
and bastion crumbling into picturesque ruin ; but here, on the north
side, is a long line of wall, without a single aperture, devoid alike
of loophole or battlement, and seemingly standing there only to
support the broad masses of ivy which spread over its surface in
singular luxuriance. We take boat at a little ferry-house, at a
place called Saltpans. Leland, when he went to Richborougii three
hundred years ago, found a hermit there ; and he says, " I had an
tiquities of the heremite, the which is an industrious man." So say
we of the ferry-man. He has small copper coins in abundance,
which tell what people have been hereabouts He rows us down the
little river for about three-quarters of a mile, and we are under the
walls of Richborough Castle (Fig. 9lj).' This is indeed a mighty
monument of ages that are gone. Let us examine it with some
what more than common attention.
Ascending the narrow road which passes the cottage built at the
foot of the bank, we reach some masses of wall which lie below the
regular line (Plan 98). Have these fallen from their original posi
tion, or do they form an outwork connected with fragments which
also appear on the lower level of the slope ? This is a question not
very easy to decide from the appearance of the walls themselves.
Another question arises, upon which antiquarian writers have greatly
differed. Was there a fourth wall on the south-eastern side facinsr
the river ? It is believed by some that there was such a wall, and
that, the castle or camp once formed a regular parallelogram. It is
difficult to reconcile this belief with the fact that the sea has been
constantly retiring from Richborough, and that the little river was
undoubtedly once a noble estuary. Bede, who wrote his 'Ecclesi
astical History ' in the beginning of the eighth century, thus describes
the branch of the river which forms the Isle of Thanet, and which
now runs a petty brook from Richborough to Reculver : " On the
east side of Kent is the Isje of Thanet, considerably large ; that is,
containing, according to the English way of reckoning, six hundred
families, divided from the other land by the river Wantsumu, which
is about three furlongs over, and fordable only in two places, for
both ends of it run into the sea." Passing by the fragments of
which we have spoken, we are under the north (strictly north-east)
wall — a wondrous work, calculated to impress us with a conviction
that the people who built it were not the petty labourers of an hour
who were contented with temporary defences and frail resting-places.
The outer works upon the southern cliff of Dover, which were run
up during the war with Napoleon at a prodigious expense are
crumbling and perishing, through the weakness of job and contract,
which could not endure for half a century. And here stand the
walls of Richborough, as they have stood for eighteen hundred years
from twenty to thirty feet high, in some places with foundations five
feet below the earth, eleven or twelve feet thick at the base, with
their outer masonry in many parts as perfect, as at the hour when
their courses of tiles and stones were first laid in beautiful regularity.
The northern wall is five hundred and sixty feet in length. From
the eastern end, for more than two-fifths of its whole length, it pre
sents a surface almost wholly unbroken. It exhibits seven courses of
stone, each course about four feet thick, and the courses separated
each from the other by a double line of red or yellow tiles each
tile being about an inch and a half in thickness. The entrance to
the camp through this north wall is very perfect, of the construc
tion marked in the plan. This was called by the Romans the
Porta Principalis, but in after times the Postern-gate. We pass
through this entrance, and we are at once in the interior of the
Roman Castle. The area within the walls is a field of five acres
covered, when we saw it, with luxuriant beans, whose green pods
were scarcely yet shrivelled by the summer sun. Towards the
centre of the field, a little to the east of the postern-gate was a
large space where the beans grew not. The area within the walls is
much higher in most places than the ground without ; and therefore
the walls present a far more imposing appearance on their outer
side. As we pass along the north wall to its western extremity it

Chap. II.]

OLD ENGLAND.

31

becomes much more broken and dilapidated ; large fragments having
fallen from the top, which now presents a very irregular line. (Fig.
100.) It is considered that at the north-west and south-west angles
there were circular towers. The west wall is very much broken
down ; and it is held that at the opening (Plan 98) was the De
cuman gate (the gate through which ten men could march abreast).
The south wall is considerably dilapidated ; and from the nature of
the ground is at present of much less length than the north wall.
Immense cavities present themselves in this wall, in which the
farmer deposits his ploughs and harrows, and the wandering gipsy
seeks shelter from the driving north-east rain. One of these cavities
in the south wall is forty -two feet long, as we roughly measured it,
and about five feet in height. The wall is in some places com
pletely pierced through ; so that here is a long low arch, with fifteen
or eighteen feet of solid work, ten feet thick, above it, held up
almost entirely by the lateral cohesion. Nothing can be a greater
proof of the extraordinary solidity of the original work. From
some very careful engravings of the external sides of*- the walls
given in King's ' Munimenta Antiqua,' we find that the same cavity
was to be seen in 1775.
Of the early importance of Richborough we have the most deci
sive evidence. Bede, eleven hundred years ago, speaks of it as the
chief thing of the note on the southern coast. Writing of Britain, he
says, " On the south it has the Belgic Gaul ; passing along whose
nearest shore there appears the city called Rutubi Portus, the which
port is now by the English nation corruptly called Reptacester ;
the passage of the sea from Gesoriacum, the nearest shore of the
nation of the Morini, being fifty miles, or, as some write, four hun
dred and fifty furlongs." Camden thus describes the changes in the
name of this celebrated place : " On the south side of the mouth of
Wantsum (which they imagine has changed its channel), and over
against the island was a city, called by Ptolemy Rhutupiae ; by
Tacitus, Portus Trutulensis, for Rhutupensis, if B. Rhenanus's con
jecture hold good ; by Antoninus, Rhitupis Portus ; by Ammianus,
Rhutupiae statio ; by Orosius, the port and city of Rhutubus ; by the
Saxons (according to Bede), Reptacester, and by others Ruptimuth ;
by Alfred of Beverley, Richberge ; and at this day Richborrow :
thus has time sported in varying one and the same name." It is
unnecessary for us here to enter into the question whether Rhutupiae
was Richborough, or Sandwich, or Stonor. The earlier antiquaries,
Leland, Lambarde, Camden, decide, as they well might, that the
great Roman Castle of Richborough was the key of that haven
which Juvenal has celebrated for its oysters (Sat. iv), and Lucan
for its stormy seas (lib. vi.). Our readers, we think, will prefer,
to such a dissertation, that most curious description of the place
which we find in Leland's ' Itinerary ' — a description that has been
strangely neglected by most modern topographers : " Ratesburgh,
otherwise Richeboro, was, or ever the river of Sture did turn his
bottom or old canal, within the Isle of Thanet ; and by likelihood
the main sea came to the very foot of the castle. The main sea is
now off of it a mile, by reason of woze (ooze) that hath there
swollen up. The site of the old town or castle is wonderful fair
upon a hill. The walls, the which remain there yet, be in compass
almost as much as the Tower of London. They have been very
high, thick, strong, and well embattled. The matter of them is
flint, marvellous and long bricks, white and red after the Britons'
fashion. The cement was made of sea-sand and small pebble.
There is a great likelihood that the goodly hill about the castle,
and especially to Sandwich-ward, hath been well inhabited. Corn
groweth on the hill in marvellous plenty ; and in going to plough
there hath, out of mind, found, and now is, more antiquities of
Roman money that in any place else of England. Surely reason
speaketh that this should be Rutupinum. For besides that the name
somewhat toucheth, the very near passage from Clyves, or Cales,
was to Ratesburgh, and now is to Sandwich, the which is about a
mile off; though now Sandwich be not celebrated because of Good
win Sands and the decay of the haven. There is, a good flight
shot off from Ratesburgh, towards Sandwich, a great dike, cast in
a round compass, as it had been for fence of men of war. The
compass of the ground within is not much above an acre, and it is
very hollow by casting up the earth. They call the place there
Lytleborough. Within the castle is a little parish-church of St.
Augustine, and an hermitage. I had antiquities of the hermit,
the which is an industrious man. Not far from the hermitage is
a cave where men have sought and digged for treasure. I saw it by
candle within, and there were conies (rabbits). It was so straight,
that I had no mind to creep far in. In the north side of the Castle
is a head in the wall, now sore defaced with weather. They call it
Queen Bertha Head. Near to that place, hard by the wall, was a
pot of Reman money found."

In the bean-field within the walls of Richborough there was a
space where no beans grew, which we could not approach without
trampling down the thick crop. We knew what was the cause of
that patch of unfertility. We had learnt from the work of Mr.
King, who had derived his information from Mr. Boys, the local
historian of Sandwich, that there was, " at the depth of a few feet,
between the soil and rubbish, a solid regular platform, one hundred
and forty-four feet in length, and a hundred and four feet in breadth,
being a most compact mass of masonry composed of flint stones and
strong coarse mortar." This great platform, " as hard and entire
in every part as a solid rock " is pronounced by King to have been
" the great parade, or Augurale, belonging to the Prsetorium, where
was the Sacellum for the eagles and ensigns, and where the sacrifices
were offered." But upon this platform is placed a second compact
mass of masonry, rising nearly five feet above the lower mass, in the
form of a cross, very narrow in the longer part, which extends from
the south to the#north (or, to speak more correctly, from the south
west to the north-east), but in the shorter transverse of the cross,
which is forty-six feet in length, having a breadth of twenty-two
feet. This cross, according to King, was the site of the Sacellum.
Half a century ago was this platform dug about and under, and
brass and lead, and broken vessels were found, and a curious little
bronze figure of a Roman soldier playing upon the bagpipes (Fig.
102). Again has antiquarian curiosity been set to work, and
labourers are now digging and delving on the edge of the platform,
and breaking their tools against the iron concrete. The workmen
have found a passage along the south and north sides of the platform,
and have penetrated, under the platform, to walls upon which it is
supposed to rest, whose foundations are laid twenty-eight feet lower.
Some fragments of pottery have been found in this last excavation,
and the, explorers expect to break through the walls upon which the
platform rests, and find a chamber. It may be so. Looking at the
greater height of the ground within the walls, compared with the
height without, we are inclined to believe that this platform, which
is five feet in depth, was the open basement of some public building
in the Roman time. To what purpose it was applied in the Christian
period, whether of Rome or Britain, we think there can be no doubt.
The traveller who' looked upon it three centuries ago tells us dis
tinctly, " within the Castle is a little parish-ctmrch of St. Augustine,
and an hermitage.'' When Camden saw the place, nearly a century
after Leland, the little parish-church was gone. He found no
hermitage there, and no hermit to show him antiquities. He says,-
" To teach us that cities die as well as men, it is at this day a corn
field, wherein when the corn is grown up one may observe the
draughts of streets crossing one another, for where they have gone
the corn is thinner. . . . Nothing now remains but some ruinous
walls of a square tower cemented with a sort of sand extremely
binding." He also says that the crossings of the streets are com
monly called St. Augustine's Cross. There is certainly some con
fusion in this description of crossings as one cross. To us it appears
more than probable that the "little parish-church of St. Augustine,"
which Leland saw, had this cross for its foundation, and that when
this church was swept away — when the hermit who dwelt there,
and there pursued his solitary worship, fell upon evil times — the
cross, with a few crumbling walls, proclaimed where the little parish-
church had stood, and that this was then called St. Augustine's
Cross (Fig. 101). The cross is. decidedly of a later age than the
platform ; the masonry is far less regular and compact. Camden,
continuing the history of Richborough after the Romans, says, " This
Rutupiee flourished likewise after the coming in of the Saxons, for
authors tell us it was the palace of Ethelbert, king of Kent, and Bede
honours it with the name of a city." The belief that the palace of
Ethelbert was upon this commanding elevation, so strengthened by
art, full no doubt of remains of Roman magnificence, the key of the
broad river which allowed an ample passage for ships of burthen from
the Channel to the estuary of the Thames, is a rational belief. But
Lambarde says of Richborough, " Whether it were that palace of
King Ethelbert from whence he went to entertain Augustine, he that
shall advisedly read the twenty-fifth chapter of Beda his first book shall
have just cause to doubt ; forasmuch as he showeth manifestly that
the king came from his palace into the Isle of Thanet to Augustine,
and Leland saith that Richborough was then within Thanet, although
that since that time the water has changed its old course and shut
it clean out of the island." This is a refinement in the old
Kentish topographer which will scarcely outweigh the general
fitness of Richborough for the palace of the Saxon king. The
twenty-fifth chapter of Bede is indeed worth reading " advisedly ;"
but not to settle this minute point of local atiquarianism. We
have given Bede's description of the Isle of Thanet, in which island,
he says, "landed the servant of our Lord, Augustine, and his com-

1L» —Walls and.Gate, Pevensey.

108;— Wail^raTensey;:-

LOS.*— General View of the Ruinsiof. Perensey, Castle.

¦US''

109.— Sunnosed.Sa3;on Keep, Pevensey.

106.— Plan of Pevensey Castle.

110.— Sally-port, <^rensey.

111.— Norman Keep, Pevensey.

*¦'--¦< jgjJsB.'

J&

m

m

112.— Interior of Norman Tower, Pevensey.

115. — Rome— a fragment after Piranesi.

114.— Conflict between Romans and Barbarians. From the Arch of Tr.ij.ii-.

11 6.— Roman Victory.

.3¦a M

113.— The Thames at Coway Stakes.

1 19 —Coin of Claudius, representing his British Triumph. From
the British Museum.

mum <m&

m
121.— Coin of Cunobelinus.

No. 5.

I20.-Coin.of Claudius. Actual size. Gold. Weight 122 Grains. In Brit. Mas.
[OLD ENGLAND.]

113.— Claudius.— From a Copper Coin
in the British Museum.

34

OLD ENGLAND.

[Book

panions, being as it is reported near forty men." The king, according
to Bede's narrative, hearing of their arrival, and the nature of their
mission, ordered them to stay in the island, where they should be
furnished with all necessaries. " Some days after, the king came
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, according
to the ancient superstition, lest, if they had any magical arts, they
might at their coming impose upon and get the better of him. But
they came furnished with divine virtue, not with diabolical, bearing
a silver cross for their banner, and the image of our Lord and
Saviour painted on a board, and, singing the litany, offered up
their prayers to the Lord for their own, and the eternal salvation of
those to whom they were come. Having, pursuant to the king's
commands, after sitting down, preached to him and all his attendants
there present the Word of Life ; he answered thus : ' Your words
and promises are very taking, but in regard that they are new and
uncertain, I cannot approve of them, forsaking 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, are desirous
to impart to us those things which you believe to be true, and most
beneficial, we will not molest you, but rather give you favourable
entertainment, and take care to supply you with your necessary
sustenance ; nor do we forbid you by preaching to gain as many as
you can to your religion.' Accordingly he gave them a dwelling-
place in the city of Canterbury, which was the metropolis of all his
dominions, and pursuant to his promise, besides allowing them their
diet, permitted them to preach." This memorable transaction, told
with such touching simplicity a little more than a century after its
occurrence, by the illustrious monk of Jarrow, imparts a far deeper
interest to this locality than its Roman memorials.
John Twyne, a celebrated antiquarian who lived in the sixteenth
century, says, " There be right credible persons yet living that have
often seen not only small boats but vessels of good burden to pass
to and fro upon the Wantsum, where now the water, especially
towards the west, is clean excluded ; and there be apparent marks
that Sarr, where they now go over, was a proper haven." Those
who have traversed the low country which lies between Reculver
and Sandwich — a task not very easily to be accomplished unless the
pedestrian can leap the broad ditches which drain the march — will
readily comprehend how, in the course of eighteen centuries, "the
great estuary may have dwindled into a petty rill. There is nothing
in the nature of the country to prevent one believing that a large
arm of the sea cut off the Isle of Thanet from the mainland of Kent,
and that this channel, in the time of the Romans, formed the readiest
passage from the coast of Gaul to London. The late Mr. John
Rickman has well described the course of communication between
the Continent and Britain : — " The Roman roads in Kent deserve
notice as having been planned with an intention of greater scope
than (within my knowledge) has been ascribed to them. The
nearest and middle harbour of access from Gaul was evidently
Dover; but whenever the wind was unfavourable for a direct
passage, further resource became desirable, and from Lemanis
(Lymne, near Hythe) and Ritupae (Richborough, near »Sandwich)
branch roads were made, joining the Dover road at Canterbury ; so
that a dispatch-boat, by sailing from the windward port, or steering for
the leeward of these three ports, could seldom fail of a ready passage
to or from the Continent ; and especially it is remarkable that the
prevailing south-west wind (with this advantage) permitted a direct
passage from Gessoriacum or Itius (Boulogne or Witsand) to
Ritupae, in effect to London ; the Wantsum channel then and long
after existing within the Isle of Thanet to Regulbium (Reculver)
on the Thames, being that by which early navigation was sheltered
in its access to the British metropolis. Indeed the first paragraph
of the Itinerary of Antoninus gives the reputed distance from
Gessoriacum to Ritupae, as if more important or more in .use than
the shorter passage to Dover." (' Archaeologia,' vol. xxviii.) With
this explanation we cUn comprehend the advantage of the Roman
position at Reculver. Through this broad channel of the Wantsum
the Roman vessels from Boulogne sailed direct into" the Thames
without going round the North Foreland ; and the entrance to the
estuary was defended by the great Castle of Richborough at the one
end, and by the lesser Castle of Reculver at the other. The Roman
remains still existing at Reculver are less interesting than those at
Richborough, chiefly because they are of less magnitude and are more
dilapidated. Very close to the ruins of the ancient church, whose
spires were once held in such reverence that ships entering the Thames
were wont to lower their top-sails as they passed (Fig. 103), is an area,
now partly under the plough and partly a kitchen garden. It is
somewhat elevated above the surrounding fields ; and, descending a

little distance to the west of the ruined church, we are under the
Roman wall, which still stands up on the western and southern
sides with its layers of flat stone and concrete, defying the dripping
rain and the insidious ivy. The castle stood upon a natural rising
ground, beneath which sfill flows the thread-like stream of the river
Stour or Wantsum. Although it was once the key; of the northern
mouth of the great estuary, it did not overhang the sea on the
northern cliff, as the old church ruin now hangs. When the
legions were here encamped, it stood far away from the dashing of
the northern tide, which for many generations has been here
invading the land with an irresistible power. Century after century
has the wave been gnawing at this cliff; and, as successive portions
have fallen, the bare sides have presented human bones, and coins,
and fragments of pottery, and tessellated pavements, which told that
man had been here, with his comforts and luxuries around him, long-
before Ethelbert was laid beneath the floor of the Saxon church,
upon whose ruins the sister spires of the Norman rose, themselves
to be a ruin, now preserved only as a sea-mark. Reculver is a
memorable example of the changes produced in a short period of
three centuries. Leland's description of the place is scarcely credible
to those who have stood beneath these spires, on the very margin
of the sea, and have looked over the low ruined wall of the once
splendid choir, upon the fishing-boats rocking in the tide beneath : —
" Reculver is now scarce half a mile from the shore." In another
place — " Reculver standeth within a quarter of a mile or a little
more from the sea-side. The town at this time is but village-like ;
sometime where as the parish church is now was a faire and a great
abbey, and Brightwald, Archbishop of Canterbury, was of that house.
The old building of the church of the abbey remaineth, having two
goodly spiring steeples. In the entering of the choir is one of the
fairest and the most ancient cross that ever I saw, nine feet, as I
guess, in height ; it standeth like a fair column." Long ago has the
cross perished, with its curiously-wrought carvings and its painted
images ; and so has perished the " very ancient book of the Evan-
geles," which Leland also describes. The Romans have left more
durable traces of their existence at Reculver than the ministers of
religion, who here, for centuries, had sung the daily praises of Him
who delivereth out of their distress those " that go down to the sea
in ships, and occupy their business in great waters." The change
in names of places sometimes tells the story of their material changes.
The Regulbium of the Romans became the Raculfcester of the
Saxons, cester indicating a camp ; that name changes when the
camp has perished, and the great abbey is flourishing, to Raculf-
minster ; the camp and the abbey have both perished, and we have
come back to the Latin Regulbium, in its Anglicized form of
Reculver. Some fiercer destruction even than that which swept away -
the abbey probably fell upon the Roman city. Gibson, speaking of
the coins and jewellery which have been found at various times at
Reculver, says, " These they find here in such great quantities that '
we must needs conclude it to have been a place heretofore of great
extent, and very populous, and that it has one time or other under
went some great devastation, either by war or fire, or both. I think
I may be confident of the latter, there being many patterns found
of metals run together." The antiquities of Regulbium are fully
described in the elegant Latin treatise of Dr. Battely, ' Antiquitates
Rutupinae,' 1711.

After the Romans had established a permanent occupation of
Britain, the defence of the coast was reduced to a system. Wher
ever the Romans conquered, they organized, and by their wise
arrangements became preservers and benefactors. It is generally
supposed that Richborough and Reculver were Roman forts as
early as the time of Claudius, but that other castles- on the coast
were of later date, being for defence against the Saxon pirates of
the third century. At this period there was a high military officer
called Comes Littoris Saxonici per Britanniam, the Count of the
Saxon Shore in Britain. He was the commander of all the castles
and garrisons on the coast of Norfolk, of Essex, of Kent of Sussex
and of Hampshire. These coasts formed the Saxon Shore Sir
Francis Palgrave thinks that the name was derived from the Saxons
having already here made settlements. Others believe that the
Saxon Shore was so called from its being peculiarly exposed to the
ravages of the Saxons, to resist whom the great castles which stood
upon this shore were built or garrisoned. These castles were nine
in number; and, although in one or two particulars there are
differences of opinion as to their sites, the statement of Horslev is
for the most part admitted to be correct.
On the Norfolk coast there were two forts. Branodunum (Bran
caster, about four miles from Burnham Market) overlooked the

Chap. II.]

OLD ENGLAND.

35

marshes. The station is well defined by the remains which are
constantly dug up. Gariannonum (Burgh, in Suffolk, situated at
the junction of the Waveney and the Tare) is a noble ruin. Two
engravings of its walls will be found at page 36 (Figs. 129, 130).
These walls, which are almost fourteen feet high and nine thick,
inclose on three sides an area forming nearly a regular parallelogram,
six hundred and forty-two feet long by four hundred feet broad.
The western boundary is now formed by the river Waveney, it being
supposed, and indeed almost proved by a very ancient map, that the
west side of the station was once defended, by the sea. If there was
ever a west wall, which is much to be doubted, it has now entirely
disappeared. The east wall is almost perfect, as shown in our
engravings. The north and south walls are in great part ruinous.
We transcribe from the ' Penny Cyclopaedia ' a brief description
of these walls, written by an architect who ' visited the place, and
surveyed it with great care : — " The whole area of the inclosure
was about four acres and three-quarters. The walls are of rubble
masonry, faced with alternate courses of bricks and flints : and on
the tops of the towers, which are attached to the walls, are holes
two feet in diameter and two feet deep, supposed to have been
intended for the insertion of temporary watch-towers, probably of
wood. On the east side the four circular towers are fourteen feet
in 'diameter. Two of them are placed at the angles, where the
walls are rounded, and two at equal distances from the angles ; an
opening has been left in the centre of the wall, which is considered
by Mr. King to be the Porta Decumana, but by Mr. Ives the Porta
Prsetoria. The north aud south sides are also defended by towers
of rubble masonry. The foundation, on which the Romans built
these walls was a thick bed of chalk lime, well rammed down, and
the whole covered with a layer of earth and sand, to harden the
mass and exclude the water : this was cbvered with two-inch- oak
. plank placed transversely on the foundation and over this was a
bed of coarse mortar, on which was roughly spread the first layer
of stones. The mortar appears to be composed of lime and coarse
sand, unsifted, mixed with gravel and small pebbles or shingle.
Mr. Ives thinks they used hot grouting, which will account for the
tenacity of the mortar. The bricks at Burgh Castle are of a fine red
colour and a very close texture — they are one foot and a half long,
one foot broad, and one inch and a half thick."
In Essex there was one fort, Othona (Ithanchester, not far from
Maiden), over which the sea now flows.
In Kent there were four castles thus garrisoned and commanded :
Regulbium (Reculver), Ritupae (Richborough), Dubrae (Dover),
and Lemanae (Lymne). The remains of this last of the Kentish
fortresses are now very inconsiderable. Leland, however, thus
describes it : — " Lymme, hill of, or Lyme, was some time a famous
haven, and good for ships, that might come to the foot of the hill.
[The river Limene, or Rother, formerly ran beneath the hill.]
The place is yet called Shipway and Old Haven ; farther, at this
day the Lord of the Five Ports keepeth his principal court a little
by east from Lymme Hill. There remaineth at this day the ruins
of a strong fortress of the Britons hanging on the hill, and coming
down to the very foot. The compass of the fortress seemeth to be
ten acres. The old walls are made of Britons' bricks, very large,
and great flint, set together almost indissolubly with mortars made
of small pebble. The walls be very thick, and in the west end of
the castle appeareth the base of an old tower. About this castle
in time of mind were found antiquities of, money of the Romans.
There went from Lymme to Canterbury a street fair-paved, whereof
of this day it is called Stony Street. It is the straightest that ever
I saw, and toward Canterbury-ward the pavement continually
appeareth for four or five miles." Such is Leland's account, three
centuries ago, of a ruin which since that period ,has more rapidly
perished from the subsidence of the soil upon which it stands.
Lambarde, who wrote half a century after Leland, says of Lymne,
"They affirm that the water forsaking them by little and little,
decay and solitude came at the length upon the place." There is
the gate-house of a later building than the Roman walls- still
remaining, built of large bricks and flints, as the tower of the
neighbouring church is built. These may contain some of the
ancient materials.
Anderida, the sea-fort of Sussex, is held by some to be Hastings,
by others to be East Bourn. It is not our purpose to enter upon
any controversial discussion of such matters ; but it appears to us
that Pevensey, one of the most remarkable castles in our country,
which the Roman, and the Saxon, and the Norman, had one after
the other garrisoned and fortified, — the ruins of each occupier
themselves telling such a tale of "mutability" as one spot has
seldom told,— was as likely to have been the Anderida of the Saxon
shore, as Hastings and East Bourn, between which it is situated.

Be that as it may, we proceed briefly to describe this remarkable
ruin. The village of Pevensey is about equidistant from Bexhill
and East Bourn. The approach to it from either place is as dreary
as can well be imagined, over a vast marsh, with nothing to relieve
the prospect seaward but the ugly Martello towers, which on this
coast are stuck so thick that a second William of Normandy would
scarcely attempt a landing. They now guard the shore, not against
Williams and Napoleons, but against those who invade the land
with scheidam and brandy. Rising gently out of this flat ground
we see the Castle of Pevensey. It is, with very slight differences,
situated exactly as Richborough is situated— a marsh from which the
sea has receded, a cliff of moderate height rising out of the marsh,
a little stream beneath the cliff. Here, as at Richborough, have
the Roman galleys anchored; sheltered by the bold promontory
of Beachy Head from the south-west gales, and secured from the
attacks of pirates by the garrison who guarded those walls. " We
ascend the cliff from the village, and enter the area within the walls
at the opening on the east (Plan 106). The external appearance
of the gate by which we enter is shown in Fig. 107. This is held
to have been the Praetorian Gate. The external architecture of the
gate and of the walls has evidently undergone great alteration since
the Roman period. In some parts we have the herring-bone work
of the Saxon, and the arch of the Norman ; but the Roman has left
his mark indelibly on the whole of these external walls, in the
regular courses of brick which form the bond of the stone and
rubble, which chiefly constitute the mighty mass. The external
towers, which are indicated on the plan, are quite solid ; some of
these have been undermined and have fallen, but others have been
carefully buttressed and otherwise repaired in very modern times
(Fig. 108). Having passed into the area by the east gate, we cross
in the direction of the dotted line to the south-western or Decuman
Gate. This is very perfect, having a tower on each side. Going
without the walls at this point, and scrambling beneath them to the
south, we can well understand how the fort stood proudly above the
low shore when the sea almost washed its walls. The ruin on this
side is highly picturesque, large masses of the original wall having
fallen (Fig. 105). On the north side was a few years since a
fragment of a supposed Saxon keep, held to be an addition to the
original Roman Castrum (Fig. 109). But the most important and
interesting adaptation to another period of the Roman Pevensey is
the Norman keep, the form of which is indicated on the Plan 106,
at the south-east, and which was evidently fitted upon the original
Roman wall so as to, form the coast defence on that side. We
purposely reserve any minute description of this very remarkable
part of the ruin for another period. The ponderous walls of the
Roman dominion are almost merged in the greater interest of the
moated keep of the Norman conquest. It will be sufficient for us
here to present engravings of the Norman works (Figs. 110, 111,
112), reserving their description for another Book. The area
within the Roman walls of Pevensey is seven acres. The irregular
form of the walls would indicate that here was a British stronghold
before the Roman castle.
The one Roman sea-fort of Hampshire, Portus Adurnus (Ports
mouth), offers a striking contrast to the decay and solitude which
prevail, with the exception of Dover, in all the other forts of the
Saxon shore.

In noticing the two descents of Caesar upon Britain (page 26) we
said, " From the nature of his inroad into the country, no monuments
exist, or could have existed, to attest his progress." But there is
a monument, if so it may be called, still existing, which furnishes
evidence of the systematic resistance which was made to his progress.
Bede, writing at the beginning of the eighth century, after describing
with his wonted brevity the battle in which Cassar in his second
invasion put the Britons to flight, says, " Thence he proceeded to
the river Thames, which is said to be fordable only in one place.
An immense multitude of the enemy had posted themselves on the
farthest side of the river, under the conduct of Cassibelan, and
fenced the bank of the river and almost all the ford underwater
with sharp stakes, the remains of which stakes are to be there seen
to this day, and they appear to the beholders to be about the
thickness of a man's thigh, and being cased with lead, remain
immoveable, fixed in the bottom of the river." Camden, writing
nine centuries after Bede, whose account he quotes, fixes this
remarkable ford of the Thames near Oatlands : " For this was the
only place in the Thames formerly fordable, and that too not
without great difficulty, which the Britons themselves in a manner
pointed out to him [Caesar] ; for on the other side of the river a
strong body of the British had planted themselves, and the bank
F 2

36

131. -Wall of Severus, on the Sandstone Quarries, Denton Dean, near Newcastle-upon-Tyne.

133.— Roman Citizen.

132.— Wall of Severus, near Housestead, Northumberland

^iiiil|!|iil|isU'I:

134 —Tomb of a young Roman Physician.

136.— Roman Soldier.

137.— Roman Highway on the Banks of the Tiber.

135.— Koman Image of Victory. 37

38

OLD ENGLAND.

[Book I.

itself was fenced with sharp stakes driven into the ground, and some
of the same sort were fastened under water." Camden here adopts
Caesar's own words : " Ripa autem erat acutis sudibus praafixis
munita, ejusdemque generis sub aqua defixae sudes flumine tege-
bantur" ('De Bell. Gal.' lib. v.). Our fine old topographer is
singularly energetic in fixing the place of Caesar's passage : " It is
impossible I should be mistaken in the place, because here the river
is scarce six foot deep ; and the place at this day, from those stakes,
is called Coway stakes ; to which we may add that Caesar makes the
bounds of Cassivelan, where he fixes this his passage, to be about
eighty miles distant from that sea which washes the east part of
Kent, where he landed : now this ford we speak of is at the same
distance from the sea ; and I am the first, that I know of, who has
mentioned, and settled it in its proper place." It is a rational
belief of the English antiquaries that there was a great British road
from Richborough to Canterbury, and thence to London. Caesar's
formidable enemy, Cassivelaunus, had retreated in strong force to
the north bank of the Thames; and Caesar speaks of the river as
dividing the territories of that chieftain from the maritimfe states.
If we look upon the map of England, we shall see how direct a
march it was from Canterbury to Oatlands near Walton, without
following the course of the river above London. Crossing at this
place, Caesar would march direct, turning to the north, upon the
capital of Cassivelaunus, — Verulam, or Cassiobury. Our engraving
(Fig. 113) represents the peaceful river gliding amidst low wooded
banks, disturbed only by the slow barge as it is dragged along its
stream. At the bend of the river are to this hour these celebrated
stakes. They were minutely described in 1735, in a paper read to
the Society of Antiquaries, by Mr. Samuel Gale : " As to the wood
of these stakes, it proves its own antiquity, being by its long
duration under the water so consolidated as to resemble ebony, and
will admit of a polish, and is not in the least rotted! It is evident
from the exterior grain of the wood that the stakes were the entire
bodies of young oak-trees, there not being the least appearance of
any mark of any tool to be seen upon the whole circumference, and
if we allow in our calculation for the gradual increase of growth
towards its end, where fixed in the bed- of the river, the stakes, I
think, will exactly answer the thickness of a man's thigh, as
described by Bede ; but whether they were covered with lead at the
ends fixed in the bottom of the river, is a particular I could not
learn ; but the last part of Bede's description is certainly just, that
they are immoveable, and remain so to this day." Mr. Gale adds,
that since stating that the stakes were immoveable, one had been
weighed up, entire, between two loaded barges, at the time of a
great flood.
Gibson, the editor of Camden, confirms the strong belief of his
author that at Coway Stakes was the ford of Caesar, by the following
observations : — " Not far from hence upon the Thames is Walton,
in which parish is a great camp of about twelve acres, single work,
and oblong. There is a road lies through it, and it is probable that
Walton takes its name from this remarkable vallum." Mr. Gale,
in his paper in the ' Archaeologia,' mentions " a large Roman encamp
ment up in the country directly southward, about a mile and a half
distant from the ford, and pointing to it." Here he imagines Cassar
himself entrenched. When we consider that the Romans occupied
Britain for more than four centuries, it is extremely hazardous to
attempt to fix an exact date to any of their works. Encampments
such as these are memorials of defence after defence which the
invader threw up against the persevering hostility of the native
tribes, or native defences from which the Britons were driven out.
For ninety-seven years after the second expedition of Caesar, the
country remained at peace with Rome. Augustus (Fig. 117)
threatened an invasion ; but his prudence told him that he could
not enforce the payment of tribute without expensive legions. The
British princes made oblations in the Capitol; and, according to
Strabo, "rendered almost the whole island intimate and familiar to
the Romans." Cunobelinus (Fig. 121), the Cymbeline of Shakspere,
was brought up, according to the chroniclers, at the court of
Augustus. Succeeding emperors left the Britons in the quiet
advancement of their civilization, until Claudius (Fi". 118) was
stirred up to the hazard of an invasion. In the sonorous prose of
Milton—" He, who waited ready with a huge preparation, as if not
safe enough amidst the flower of all his Romans, like a great Eastern
king with armed elephants marches through Gallia. So full of
peril was this enterprise esteemed as not without all this equipage
and stronger terrors than Roman armies, to meet the native and
the naked British valour defending their country." (Fig. 114.)
The genius of Roman victory inscribed the name of Claudius with
the addition of Britannicus (Fig. 1 16). The coins of Claudius still
bear the symbols of his British triumphs (Figs. 119, 120). But

the country was not yet wholly won. Then came the glorious
resistance of Caractacus, which Tacitus has immortalized. Then
came the fierce contests between the Roman invaders and the votaries
of the native religion,- which the same historian has so glowingly
described in his account of the attack of Suetonius upon the island
of Mona : — " On the shore stood a line of very diversified appearance ;
there were armed men in dense array, and women running amid
them like furies, who, in gloomy attire, and with loose hair hanging
down, carried torches before them. Around were Druids, who,
pouring forth curses and lifting up their hands to heaven, struck
terror by the novelty of their appearance into the hearts of the
soldiers, who, as if they had lost the use of their limbs, exposed them
selves motionless to the stroke of the enemy. At last, moved by the -
exhortations of their leader, and stimulating one another to despise
a band of women and frantic priests, they make their onset, over
throw their opponents, and involve them in the flames which they
had themselves kindled. A garrison was afterwards placed among
the vanquished ; and the groves consecrated to their cruel supersti
tions were cut down." Then came the terrible revolt of Boadicea
or Bonduca, — a merciless rising, followed by a bloody revenge.
Beaumont and Fletcher have well dramatized the spirit of this .
heroic woman : —
"Ye powerful Gods of Britain, hear our prayers !
Hear u£, ye great revengers ! and this day
Take pity from our swords, doubt from our valours ;
Double the sad remembrance of our wrongs
In every breast ; the vengeance due to these
Make infinite and endless ! On our pikes
This day pale Terror sit, horrors and ruins
Upon our executions ; claps of thunder
Hang on our armed carts ; and 'fore our troops
Despair and Death ; Shame beyond these attend 'em !
Eise from the dust, ye relics of the dead,
Whose noble deeds our holy Druids sing ;
Oh, rise, ye valiant bones ! let not base earth
Oppress your honours, whilst the pride of Rome
Treads on your stocks, and wipes out all your stories !"
Bonduca.
The Roman dominion in Britain nearly perished in this revolt.
Partial tranquillity was secured, in subsequent years of mildness
and forbearance towards the conquered tribes. Vespasian extended
the conquests; Agricola completed them in South. Britain. His
possessions in Caledonia were, however, speedily lost,, But the
hardy people of the North were driven back in the reign of Anto-,
ninus Pius. Then first appeared on the Roman money the graceful
figure of Britannia calmly resting on her shield (Fig. 122), which
seventeen centuries afterwards has been made familiar to ourselves
in the coined money of our own generation. Let us pause awhile
to view one of the great Roman cities which is held to belong to a
very early period of their dominion in England.

In 1837 a plan was exhibited to the Society of Antiquaries
reduced from a survey made in 1835, by students of the senior
department of the Royal Military College at Sandhurst, of a portion
of the Roman road from London to Bath. The survey commences
close by Staines; at which place, near the pillar which marks the
extent of the jurisdiction of the city of London, the line of road is
held to have crossed the Thames. Below Staines, opposite to
Lalehan, there are the remains of encampments; and these again
^ ^ 5? ™med,ate neiShb<™h°od of the ford at which C«ar
crossed the Thames. All the country here about, then, is full of
associations with .the conquerors of the world; and thus, when the
contemplative man" is throwing his fly or watching his float in
the gentle waters between Staines and Walton, he may here find a
local theme upon which his reveries may fruitfully rest. The more
active pedestrian may follow this Roman road, thus recently nipped
otu, through populous places and wild soli'tudes, into T Z'try
S:i::::t:s but'Se an unUneyed ™£
over the east Ynrl nV?, u ^ The C0UrSe of the road ^ds
Green then tw °f * beautifld tabIe-^ known as Englefield
*Z'^™z:?*e y th^e well"known meatsiu*f inn'
hill clS" bv tt \' ' TrS thC artificial Iake> ««««. the
uui, ciose by the tower called the Belvidpr* T„ to- a -r, ,
the line is for some time lost , but it is , eSL yleT^^
point near the Sunning Hill road, where ^vTqLItities oTi *
pottery and bricks have been d scovered T? ,1 a"
ifcgshot, where, at a place e^SSESll is weS TV"™?*
Sett EST r i>P"°CeedS "^n^CS
ThIV ' T"7 fraSments of Roman pottery were dkcovTZ
The Roman road ascends the plain of E^tLm^l^^-

Chap. II.]

OLD ENGLAND.

39

lateral branch which runs close to well-known places within the
ancient limits of Windsor Forest, called Wickham Bushes and
Caesar's Camp. We remember this vast sandy region before it was
covered with fir plantations ; and in these solitary hills, where the
eye for miles could rest upon nothing but barren heath, we have
listened with the wonder of boyhood to the vague traditions of past
ages, in which the marvels of history are made more marvellous.
Caesar's Camp is thus described by Mr. Handasyd, in a letter to the
Society of Antiquaries, in 1783: — "At the extremity of a long
range of hills is situated a large camp, known by the name of
Caesar's Camp, which is but slightly noticed by Dr. Stukeley, nor is
any particular mention made of it in any account I have hitherto
seen. In it is a hollow, which has a thick layer of coarse gravel
all round it, and seems to have been made to contain rain water.
At not half a mile from the camp stand a vast number of thorn
bushes, some of a very large size (known by the name of Wickham
Bushes), bearing on their ragged branches and large contorted stems
evident marks of extreme age, yet in all probability these are but
the successors of a race long since extinct. The inhabitants of the
neighbourhood have a tradition that here formerly stood a town,
but that Julius Caesar, whom they magnify to a giant (for stories
lose nothing by telling), with his associates laying the country
waste, the poor inhabitants were obliged to fly, and seek an asylum
in the valley beneath." As we proceed along the road approaching
Finchhampstead, we find the object of our search, sometimes easily
traced and sometimes continuously lost, bearing the name of the
Devil's Highway. At length the line crosses the Loddon, at the
northern extremity of Strathfieldsaye (Strathfield being the field of
the Strat, Street, or Road), the estate which a grateful nation
bestowed upon the Duke of Wellington ; through which park it
passes till it terminates at the parish church of Silchester. This
is the line which the students of the Military College surveyed.*
The survey has gone far to establish two disputed points — the
situation of the Roman Pontes, and whether Silchester should be
identified with Vindonum or Calleva. A very able correspondent
of the Society of Antiquaries, Mr. Kempe, thus observes upon the
value of the labours of the students of the Military College : — " The
survey has effected a material correction of Horsley, for it shows
that the station Pontes, which he places at Old Windsor, and for
which so many different places have been assigned by the learned
in Roman topography, must have been where the Roman road
from London crossed the Thames at Staines 
The line of road presents no place for the chief city of the
Attrebates until it arrives at the walls of Silchester. Is this, then,
really the Calleva Attrebatum ? The distance between Pontes and
Calleva, according to the Itinerary [of Antoninus], is twenty-two
miles ; by the Survey, the distance between Staines and Silchester
is twenty-six ; a conformity as near as can be required, for neither
the length of the Roman mile nor the mode of measuring it agreed
precisely with ours." Having led our reader to the eastern
entrance of this ancient city, we will endeavour to describe what he
will find there to reward his pilgrimage. Let us tell him, however,
that he may reach Silchester by an easier route than over the
straight line of the Roman Highway. It is about seven miles
from Basingstoke, and ten from Reading; to either of which
places he may move rapidly from London, by the South Western
or the Great Western Railway.
If we have walked dreamingly along the narrow lanes whose
hedge-rows shut out any distant prospect, we may be under the
eastern walls of Silchester before we are aware that any remarkable
object is in our neighbourhood. We see at length a church, and
we ascend a pretty steep bank to reach the churchyard. The
churchyard wall is something very different from ordinary walls — a
thick mass of mortar and stone, through which a way seems to have
been forced to give room for the little gates that admit us to the
region of grassy graves. A quiet spot is this churchyard ; and we
wonder where the tenants of the sod have come from. There is
one sole farmhouse near the church ; an ancient farmhouse with
gabled roofs that tell of old days of comfort and hospitality. The
church, too, is a building of interest, because of some antiquity ;
and there are in the churchyard two very ancient Christian tomb
stones of chivalrous, times, when the sword, strange contradiction,
was an emblem of the cross. But these are modern things compared
with the remains of which we are in search. We pass through the
churchyard into an open space, where the farmer's ricks tell of the
abundance of recent cultivation. These may call to our mind the
* An account of this survey is very clearly given in the ' United Service
Journal' for January, 1836. Knowing something of the "country, we have
reversed the order of that description, leading our readers from Staines to Sil
chester, instead of from Silchester to- Staines.

story which Camden has told : — " On the ground whereon this city
was built (I speak in Nennius's words) the Emperor Constantius
sowed three grains of corn, that no person inhabiting there might
ever be poor." We look around, and we ask the busy thatchers
of the ricks where are the old walls ; for we can see nothing but
extensive corn-fields, bounded by a somewhat higher bank than
ordinary, — that bank luxuriant with oak, and ash, and springing
underwood. The farm labourers know what we are in search of,
and they ask us if we want to buy any coins — for whenever the
heavy rains fall they find coins — and they have coins, as they have
been told, of Romulus and Remus, and this was a great place a long
while ago. It is a tribute to the greatness of the place that to
whomsoever we spoke of these walls and the area within the walls,
they called it the cily. Here was a city, of one church and one
farmhouse. The people who went to that church lived a mile or
two off in their scattered hamlets. Silence reigned in that city.
The ploughs and spades of successive generations had gone over its
ruins; but its memory still lived in tradition; it was an object to
be venerated. There was something mysterious about this area of
a hundred acres, that rendered it very different to the ploughman's
eye from a common hundred acres. Put the plough as deep as he
would, manure the land with every care of the unfertile spots, the
crop was not like other crops. He knew not that old Leland, three
hundred years ago, had written, " There is one strange thing seen
there, that in certain parts of the ground within the walls the corn
is marvellous fair to the eye, and, ready to show perfecture, it
decayeth." He knew not that a hundred years afterwards another
antiquary had written, " The inhabitants of the place told me it had
been a constant observation amongst them, that though the soil here
is fat and fertile, yet in a sort of baulks that cross one another the
corn never grows so thick as in other parts of the field " (Camden).
He knew from his own experience, and that was enough, that when
the crop came up there were lines and cross lines from one side of
the whole area within the walls to the other side, which seemed to
tell that where the lines ran the corn would not freely grow. The
lines were mapped out about the year 1745. The map is in the
King's Library in the British Museum. The plan which we have
given (Fig. 125) does not much vary from the Museum map, which
is founded on actual survey. There can be no doubt that the
country-people of Camden's time were right with regard to these
" baulks that cross one another." He says, " Along these they
believe the streets of the old city to have run." Camden tells us
further of the country-people, " They very frequently dig up British
[Roman] tiles, and great plenty of Roman coins, which they call
Onion pennies, from one Onion, whom they foolishly fancy to have
been a giant, and an inhabitant of this city." Speaking of the area
within the walls, he says, " By the rubbish and ruins the earth is
grown so high, that I could scarcely thrust myself through a passage
which they call Onion's Hole, though I stooped very low." The
fancy of the foolish people about a giant has been borne out by
matters of which Camden makes no mention. " Nennius ascribes
the foundation of Silchester to Constantius, the son of Constantine
the Great. Whatever improvements he might have made in its
buildings or defences, I cannot but think it had a much earlier
origin : as the chief fastness or forest stronghold of the Segontiaci,
it probably existed at the time of Caesar's expedition into Britain.
The anonymous geographer of Ravenna gives it a name which I
have not yet noticed, Ari-oneon ; this is a pure British compound,
and may be read Ardal- Onion, the region of Einion, or Onion"
(' Archaeologia,' 1837). It is thus here, as in many other cases, that
when learning, despising tradition and common opinion, runs its own
little circle, it returns to the point from which it set out, and being
inclined to break its bounds finds the foolish fancies which it has
despised not always unsafe, and certainly not uninteresting, guides
through a more varied region.
By a broader way than Onion's Hole we will get without the
walls of Silchester. There is a pretty direct line of road through
the farm from east to west, which nearly follows the course of one
of the old streets. Let us descend the broken bank at the point a
(Fig. 125). We are now under the south-western wall. As we
advance in a northerly direction, the walls become more distinctly
associated with the whole character of the scene. Cultivation here
has not'ehanged the aspect which this solitary place has worn for
centuries. We are in a broad glade, sloping down to a ditch or
little rivulet, with a bold bank on the outer side. We are in the
fosse of the city, with an interval of some fifty or sixty feet between
the walls and the vallum. The grass of this glade is of the rankest
luxuriance. The walls, sometimes entirely hidden by bramble and
jVy} — sometimes bare, and exhibiting their peculiar construction, —
sometimes fallen in great masses, forced down by the roots of

144.— Hadrian.
From a Copper (Join iu the British Museum.

143.-OW Walls of Home:

MS: — ^tntonhms Hus.
From a Capper Coin. in. the British. Museum.

139.-Restoralion of the Roman Arch formir.g Newport Gate.LincoIn.

HO.-Roman Arch forming Newport Gale, Lincoln, as it appeared in 1 TS2.

1«.-Remains of a Eoman Hypocaust, or Subterranean Furnace for Heating Balfcs, at Lincoln.

15 tl. -Si
- .5a

fmiim

North.

"'•-Copper Coin of Antoninus Pius, commemorative of his
victories in Britain, from one in the British Museum;

40

^.-Profile of a. Eoman Wall and Tallum.-near *. South Agger Port Gate.
n

142.-Ancient Arch on Eoad leading into Rome.
Wall and Ditch of Sewnis.

Section and Wan of Severos.

Wall and Ditch of Severus.

31
M

148.— fart of a Roman Wall ; the Site of the Ancient Vcrulam, near St. Alton's.

149.— Part oi the Roman Wall of London f x:avj(e3 heh:n.i the Mir.ories.

if'

.•'hi'-l

n;:1^.'. .ihiuuv^Cs

.J— *s**t^wiv/>ii

~%^-:

-^

 "M

150.— London Stone.

181.— Duntocher Bridge.

154 —Bronze Patera. "View 3.

152.— Bronze Patera. "View 1.

163.— Bronze Patera. View 2.

156. — PigiofL^ad, with the Roman Stamp.
No. 6.

155.— Pig of Lead, with the Roman Stamp.
[OLD ENGLAND.]

157.— Pig of Lead, with the Roman Stamp. 41

42

OLD ENGLAND.

[Book i.

mighty trees, which have shared the ruin that they precipitated, —
sometimes with a gnarled oak actually growing out of their tops, —
present such a combination of picturesqueness as no pencil can
reach, because it can only deal with fragments of the great mass.
The desolation of the place is the most impressive thing that ever
smote our minds with a new emotion. We seem alone in the world ;
we are here amidst the wrecks of ages ; tribes, whose names and
localities are matters of controversy, have lived here before the
Romans, for the Romans did not form their cities upon such a plan.
The Romans have come here, and have mixed with the native
people. Inscriptions have been found here : one dedicated to the
Hercules of the Segontiaci, showing that this place was the Caer
Segont of the Britons ; another in honour of Julia Domna, the
second wife of the Emperor Severus. Splendid baths have been
dug up within the walls ; there are the distinct remains of a forum
and a temple. In one spot so much coin has been found, that the
place goes by the name of Silver Hill. The city was the third
of British towns in extent. There is an amphitheatre still existing
on the north-eastern side of the wall, which tells us that here the
amusements of ancient Rome were exhibited to the people. History
records that here the Roman soldiers forced the imperial purple
upon Constantine, the rival of Honorius. The monkish chroniclers
report that in this city was King Arthur inaugurated. And here,
in the nineteenth century, in a country thickly populated, — more
abundant in riches, fuller of energy than at any other period, —
intersected with roads in all directions, — lies this Silchester, which
once had its direct communications with London, with Winchester,
with Old Sarum, the capital doubtless of a great district, — here it
lies, its houses and its temples probably destroyed by man, but its
walls only slowly yielding to that power of vegetable nature which
works as surely for destruction as the fire and sword, and topples
flown in the course of centuries what man has presumed to build
for unlimited duration, neglected, unknown, almost a solitary place
amidst thick woods and bare 'heaths. It is an ingenious theory
which derives the supposed Roman name of this place from the
great characteristic of it which still remains : " The term Galleva,
or Calleva, of the Roman Itineraries, appears to have had the same
source, and was but a softened form of the British Gual Vawr, or
the Great "Wall ; both names had their root perhaps in the Greek
X&Xi'i (silex), whence also the French Caillon (a pebble). Sile-
chester or Silchester is therefore but a Saxonizing, to use the term,
of Silicis Castrum., the Fortress of the Flint or "Wall, by the easy
metonymy which I have shown." (< Archseologia,' 1837.) The
striking characteristic of Silchester is the ruined wall, with the
flourishing trees upon it and around it, and the old trees that have
grown up centuries ago, and are now perishing with it. This is the
poetry of the place, and the old topographers felt it after their
honest fashion. Leland says, " On that wall grow some oaks of ten
cart-load the piece." Camden says, "The walls remain in good
measure entire, only with some few gaps in those places where the
gates have been ; and out of those walls there grow oaks of such a
vast bigness incorporated as it were with the stones, and their roots
and boughs are spread so far around, that they raise admiration
in all who behold them." (Fig. 124.) »
" High towns, fair temples, goodly theatres,
Strong -walls, rich porches, princely palaces,
Large streets, brave houses, sacred sepulchres,
Sure gates, sweet gardens, stately galleries,
Wrought with fair pillars and fine imageries" —
ye are fallen. Fire has consumed you ; earth is heaped upon you ;
the sapling oak has sprung out of the ashes of your breathing
statues and your votive urns, and having flourished for five hundred
years, other saplings have rooted themselves in your ruins for
another five hundred years, and again other saplings are rising 
so to flourish and so to perish. Time, which has destroyed thee,
Silchester, clothes thee with beauty. " Time loves thee :"
" He, gentlest among the thralls
Of Destiny, upon these wounds hath laid
His lenient touches."
Mr. John Rickman, speaking of Silchester, " the third of British
towns in extent," says, " that the Romanized inhabitants of the last-
named town were distinguished by their cultivated taste, is testified
by the amphitheatre outside the walls, one of the few undisputed
relics of that kind in Britain." (' Archoeologia,' vol. xxviii.)
Whether the presence of the inhabitants of Silchester at the brutal
games of the Romans be any proof of their cultivated taste may be
reasonably questioned ; but the existence of the amphitheatre is an
evidence that the Roman customs were here established, and that
the people had become habituated to them. The amphitheatre at

Silchester is situated without the walls, to the north-east. There
can be no doubt about the form and construction of this relic of
antiquity. We stand upon a steep circular bank covered with
trees, and descend by its sloping sides into an area of moderate
dimensions. Some describers of this place tell us that the seats
were ranged in five rows, one above the other. Earlier, and
perhaps more accurate observers, doubt whether seats were at all
used in these turfy amphitheatres. "It is well known that the
Romans originally stood at games, till luxury introduced sitting;
and it is observable, that the Castrensian amphitheatres in general
preserve no signs of subsellia, or seats ; so that the people must
have stood on the grassy declivity. I saw no signs of seats in that
of Carleon, nor in the more perfect one near Dorchester, as Stukeley
has also observed. Nor do I recollect that any such have been disco
vered in any other Castrensian amphitheatre, at least in our island)
where they seem to have been rather numerous." (Mr. Strange, in
'Archseologia,' vol. v.) The very perfect amphitheatre at Dorchester
is much larger than that of Silchester, Stukeley having computed
that it was capable of containing twenty-three thousand people.
The form, however, of both amphitheatres is precisely similar
(Fig. 126). Their construction was different. The bank of the
amphitheatre at Silchester is composed of clay and gravel ; that at
Dorchester of blocks of solid chalk. These were rude structures
compared with the amphitheatres of those provinces of Rome which
had become completely Romanized. Where the vast buildings of
this description were finished with architectural magnificence, the
most luxurious accommodation was provided for all ranks of the
people. Greece and Britain exhibit no remains of these grander
amphitheatres, such as are found at Nismes and at Verona. The
amphitheatre of Pompeii, though of larger dimensions than the
largest in England, Dorchester, appears to have been constructed
upon nearly the same plan as that (Fig. 128). Some bas-reliefs
found at Pompeii indicate the nature of the amusements that once
made the woods of Silchester ring with the bowlings of infuriated
beasts and the shouts of barbarous men (Fig. 127),
The Roman Wall— the Wall of Agricola— the Wall of Hadrian—
the Wall of Severus— the Picts' Wall — the Wall, are various names
by which the remains of a mighty monument of the Romans in
England are called by various writers. William Hutton, the
liveliest and the least pedantic of antiquarians, who at seventy-eight
years of age twice traversed the whole length of the Roman Wall,
denominates it "one of the grandest works of human labour,
performed by the greatest nation upon earth." From a point on
the river Tyne, between Newcastle and North Shields, to Boulness
on the Solvvay Frith, a distance of nearly eighty miles, have the
remains of this wall been distinctly traced. It was the great
artificial boundary of Roman England from sea to sea ; a barrier
raised against the irruptions of the fierce and unconquerable race
of the Caledonians upon the fertile South, which had received the
Roman yoke, and rested in safety under the Roman military pro
tection. The Wall, speaking popularly, consists of three distinct
works, which by some are ascribed to the successive operations of
Agricola, of Hadrian (Figs. 144, 145), and of Severus. The Wall
of Antoninus (Figs. 146, 147), now called Grymes Dyke, was a
more northerly intrenchment, extending from the Clyde to the
Forth ; but this rampart was abandoned during subsequent years of
the Roman occupation, and the boundary between the Solway Frith
and the German Ocean, which we are now describing, was strength
ened and perfected by every exertion of labour and skill. Hutton
may probably have assigned particular portions of the work to
particular periods upon insufficient evidence, but he has described
the works as they appeared forty years ago better than any other
writer, because he described from actual observation. We shall
therefore, adopt his general account of the wall, before proceeding
to notice any remarkable features of this monument ' °
"There were four different works in this grand barrier, performed
by three personages and at different periods. I will measure them
from south to north, describe them distinctly, and appropriate each
L1L JT T;,for' although ever^ Part is dreadf«»y
mutilated, yet by selecting the best of each, we easily form I
whole; from what is, we can nearly tell what was. We must take
our dimensions from the original surface of the <Tound
"Let us suppose a ditch, like that at the foot of a quickset-hed^e
three or four feet deep, and a, wide. A bank rising from i ten
feet high, and thirty wide in the base; this, with the ditch wS
give us a rise of thirteen feet at least. The other side of the bank
sinks into a ditch ten feet deep, and fifteen wide, which gives the
north Slde of this bank a declivity of twenty feet. A small part
of the soil thrown out on the north side of this fifteen-feet ditch,

Chap. II.]

OLD ENGLAND.

43

forms a bank three feet high and six wide, which gives an elevation
from the bottom of the ditch of thirteen feet. Thus our two
ditches and two mounds, sufficient to keep out every rogue but he
who was determined not to be kept out, were the work of Agricola.
" The works of Hadrian invariably join those of Agricola. They
always correspond together, as beautiful parallel lines. Close to
the north side of the little bank I last described, Hadrian sunk a
ditch twenty-four feet wide, and twelve below the surface of the
ground, which, added to Agricola's three-feet bank, forms a declivity
of fifteen feet on the south, and on the north twelve. Then follows
a plain of level ground, twenty-four yards over, and a bank exactly
the same as Agricola's, ten feet high, and thirty in the base ; and
then he finishes, as his predecessor began, with a small ditch of
three or four feet.
" Thus the two works exactly coincide ; and must, when complete,
have been most grand and beautiful. Agricola's works cover about
fifty-two feet, and Hadrian's about eighty-one ; but this will admit
of some variation.
" Severus's works run nearly parallel with the other two ; lie on
the north, never far distant ; but may be said always to keep them
in view, running a course that best suited the judgment of the
maker. The nearest distance is about twenty yards, and greatest
near a mile ; the medium, forty or fifty yards.
" They consist of a stone wall eight feet thick, twelve high, and
four the battlements ; with a ditch to the north, as near as
convenient, thirty-six feet wide and fifteen deep. To the wall
were added, at unequal distances, a number of stations, or cities,
said to be eighteen, which is not perfectly true ; eighty-one castles,
and three hundred and thirty castelets, or turrets, which, I believe,
is true : all joining the wall.
" Exclusive of this wall and ditch, these stations, castles, and
turrets, Severus constituted a variety of roads yet called Roman
roads, twenty-four feet wide, and eighteen inches high in the centre,
which led from turret to turret, from one castle to another; and
still larger and more distant roads from the wall, which led from
one station to another, besides the grand military way before
mentioned, which covered all the works, and no doubt was first
formed by Agricola, improved by Hadrian, and, after lying dormant
fifteen hundred years, was made complete in 1752.
"I saw many of these smaller roads, all overgrown with turf;
and when on the side of a hill, they are supported on the lower side
with edging stones.
"Thus Agricola formed a small ditch, then a bank and ditch,
both large, and then finished with a small bank.
" Hadrian joined to this small bank a large ditch, then a plain, a
large mound, and then finished with a small ditch.
*' Severus followed nearly in the same line, with a wall, a variety
of stations, castles, turrets, a large ditch, and many roads. By much
the most laborious task. This forms the whole works of our three
renowned chiefs."
Eleven hundred years before the persevering Hutton began his
toilsome march along the Roman Wall, Bede had described it as
" still famous and to be seen  eight foot in breadth and
twelve in height, in a straight line from east to west, as is still
visible to the beholders." Bede resided in the neighbourhood of
tie Wall, and he notices it as a familiar object would naturally be
noticed — as incidental to his narrative. The dimensions which he
gives are, however, perfectly accurate, as Gibson has pointed out.
Long before Bede noticed the Wall the Romans had quitted the
country; and this great barrier was insufficient to protect the timid
inhabitants of the South against the attacks of their Northern
invaders, " who, finding that the old confederates were marched
home, and refused to return any more, put on greater boldness than
ever, and possessed themselves of all the North, and the remote
parts of the kingdom to the very Wall. To withstand this invasion
the towers are defended by a lazy garrison, undisciplined, and too
cowardly to engage an enemy, being enfeebled with continual sloth
and idleness. In the meanwhile the naked enemy advance with
their hooked weapons, by which the miserable Britons are pulled
down from the tops of the walls and dashed against the ground."
This is the description of Gildas, our most ancient historian, who
lived in the sixth century. Generations passed away ; new races
grew up on each side of the Wall ; and here, for another long
period of strife, was the great scene of the Border feuds between the
English and the Scotch. It is no wonder that the traces of the Wall
in many places should be almost obliterated ; or that the fair cities
and populous Stations which, under the Roman dominion, existed
along its„line, should have left only fragmentary remains of their
former greatness. And yet these remains are most remarkable.
House-steads, which is about the centre of the work, is held to

have been the eighth station, Borcovicus; and the fragments of
antiquity here discovered have commanded the admiration of all
antiquarian explorers. Gibson, who surveyed a portion of the
Wall in 1708, here saw seven or eight Roman altars which had
been recently dug up, and a great number of statues. Alexander
Gordon, whose ' Itinerarium Septentrionale ' was published in 1726,
describes House-steads, " so named from the marks of old Roman
buildings still appearing on that ground," as " unquestionably the
most remarkable and magnificent Roman station in the whole island
of Britain." He says, amidst his minute descriptions of statues and
altars, " It is hardly credible what a number of august remains of the
Roman grandeur is to be seen here to this day ; seeing in everyplace
where one casts his eye there is some curious Roman antiquity to be
seen, either the marks of streets and temples in ruins, or inscriptions,
broken pillars, statues, and other pieces of sculpture, all scattered
along this ground." When Hutton surveyed the Wall, he found
one solitary house upon the site of the Roman City ; and in this lone
dwelling a Roman altar, complete as in the day the workman left it,
formed the jamb which supported the mantel-piece, " one solid stone
four feet high, two broad, and one thick." The gossiping antiquary
grows rhetorical amidst the remains of Borcovicus :—" It is not easy
to survey these important ruins without a sigh ; a place once of the
greatest activity, but now a solitary desert : instead of the human
voice is heard nothing but the wind." Some -of the statues and
inscriptions found at House-steads and other parts of the Roman Wall
now form a portion of the beautiful collection of Roman antiquities
in the Newcastle Museum (Figs. 133, 134, 135, and 136). Of
these the Roman soldiers and the Victory are rudely engraved
in Gordon's book. The appearance of the Wall at House-steads is
shown in Fig. 132; and this engraving suggests a conviction of the
accuracy of Camden's description of the Wall : — " I have observed
the track of it running up the mountains and down again in a most
surprising manner." The massive character of the works is well
exhibited at the sandstone-quarries at Denton Dean, where the
wall, whose fragment is five feet high, has only three courses of
facing-stones on one side and four on the other. Blocks of
stone of such dimensions must of themselves have formed a quarry
for successive generations to hew at and destroy (Fig. 131).
There is a pretty tradition recorded by Camden, which offers as
good evidence of the Roman civilization as the fragments of their
temples and their statues. The tomb of a young Roman physician
is amongst the antiquities of the Newcastle Museum ; and our old
topographer tells us, " One thing there is which I will not keep
from the reader, because I had it confirmed by persons of very good
credit. There is a general persuasion in the neighbourhood, handed
down by tradition, that the Roman garrisons upon the frontiers set
in these parts abundance of medicinal plants for their own use.
Whereupon the Scotch surgeons come hither a-simpling every year
in the beginning of summer; and having by long experience found
the virtue of these plants, they magnify them very much, and affirm
them to be very sovereign." The general appearance of the Roman
Wall and Vallum is exhibited in Fig. 138. This was delineated by
John Warburton, from a portion of the wall near Halton-Chesters,
in 1722. A little farther beyond this point Hutton was well repaid
for his laborious walk of six hundred miles, by such a satisfactory
view of the great Roman work, that the admiration of the good old
man was raised into an enthusiastic transport, at which the dull
may wonder, and the unimaginative may laugh, but which had its
own reward. With this burst of the happy wayfarer we conclude
our notice of " that famous wall which was the boundary of the
Roman province." " I now travel over a large common, still upon
the Wall, with its trench nearly complete. But what was my
surprise when I beheld, thirty yards on my left, the united works
of Agricola and Hadrian, almost perfect ! I climbed over a stone
wall to examine the wonder ; measured the whole in every direction ;.
surveyed them with surprise, with delight; was fascinated, and
unable to proceed ; forgot I was upon a wild common, a stranger,
and the evening approaching. I had the grandest works under my
eye of the greatest men of the age in which they lived, and of the
most eminent nation then existing ; all which had suffered but little
during the long course of sixteen hundred years. Even hunger
and fatigue were lost in the grandeur before me. « If a man writes
a book upon a turnpike-road, he cannot be expected to move quick ;
but, lost in astonishment, I was not able to move at all."
The Wall of Antoninus, or Grimes Dyke, to which we have
already referred, was carried across the north of Britain, under the
direction of Lollius Urbicus, the legate of Antoninus Pius, about
the year a.d. 140. It is noticed by an ancient Roman writer as
a turf wall ; and although its course may be readily traced, it has,
from the nature of its construction, not left such enduring remains
G 2

-* ^*/i»!«fc- £_ {*%

InrilllP

158.— rian of Roman London.

_'£> M ,,<<•-

VIVIO M&RCI
AN0--1M-H
MaMfflL c!0NJVNX_ j
TmrassffiA.-'Posyi.'

130— Roman Bath, Strand Lane.

165.— Coin and Fragment.

160.— Sepulchral Stone found at Ludgate.

'.; '¦'...'. ' ,
161.— Tessellated Pavement.

162.— Bronze Statues found in the Thames.

163.— Vases, Lamps, &c, found after the Great Fire.

164.— Roman Antic

1 66.— Urns, ^Vases, Kay, Bead, and Fragment of Pottery, found in Lombard Street, 1785.

16V.— Altar of Apollo, and Vases.

1
2 3
4
f5 67 89
1011 1213
14 1516' 1718'19

Bronze Spear-Head.
Bronze Dagger.
Iron Knife.
Bronze Lance-Head. '
Iron Lance-Head. „' '
Celt. I
Bronze Lance-Head.
Bronze Celt.
Ivory Arrow-Head:.*
Iron Boss of a Shield.
Bronze Buckle.
Iron Crook.
Iron Ring.
Plated Iron Stud.
Bronze Pin.
\ Bronze Pins with Ivory Handles.
Bronze Ornaments.

20 Amulet.
21 Gold Box.
23} Gold Ornaments.
24 Amber and Bead Necklace.
25 Gold Breastplate.
26 Patera.
27 Ivory Bracelet.
28 Drinking Cup.
29 Incense Cup.
301
31 ? Drinking Cups.
32' 3^ | Double Drinking Cups.
35136 Kjrns.
37 >
38 Druidical Hook for gathering
the Sacred Mistletoe.

168.— RomanJBritish Weapons, Ornaments, &c.

171.— Metal coating of an ancient Roman-British Shield, found in the bed
of the river Witham, and now in the Meyrick Collection. .

173. — British Coin of Caransius.
From a unique Gold Coin in the British Museum.

172.— Constantine the Great.
From a Gold Coin in the British Museum.

45

46

OLD ENGLAND.

[Book I.

as the Wall of Severus. , The Wall of Antoninus connected a Hne
of Roman forts ; and these were necessarily built of substantial
materials. Duntocher Bridge, on the line of this wall, was long
popularly considered to have been a Roman work ; but it has been
more reasonably conjectured to have been a very ancient work,
constructed out of materials found on the line of the wall (Fig. 148).
The military way in some places runs parallel with Grimes Dyke.
The ditch itself presents in some places a wonderful example of the
Roman boldness in engineering. At apart called Bar Hill, Gordon
describes " the fossa running down in a straight line from the top
of the hill in such a magnificent manner as must surprise the
beholder, great part of it being cut through the solid rock, and is
of such a vast breadth and depth, that when I measured it it was no
less than forty feet broad and thirty-five feet deep." The surprise
of Mr. Gordon was before the age of railways: the time may
perhaps arrive when the deep cuttings and tunnellings through the
solid rock in the nineteenth century shall be compared with the
Roman works of the second century, by new races of men who
travel by other lines or with different mechanism. But, however
obscure may then be the history of our own works, -it is quite
certain that we shall have left our traces upon the earth ; some con
solation, though small, to balance the reflections which are naturally
suggested when we look upon the ruins of populous cities and
mighty defences, and consider how little we know of their origin,
of the people who built them, and of the individual life that was once
busy in these solitary places.

We have described, rapidly and imperfectly, some ancient places
now buried in deep solitude, which were once filled with many
people who pursued the ordinary occupations of human industry,
and who were surrounded with the securities, comforts, and elegan
cies of social life. Great changes have necessarily been produced
in the revolution of two thousand years. Hume, in his ' Essay of the
Populousness of Ancient Nations,' says, " The barbarous condition
of Britain in former times is well known, and the thinness of its
inhabitants may easily be conjectured, both from their barbarity,
and from a circumstance mentioned by Herodian, that all Britain
was marshy, even in Severus's time, after the Romans had been
fully settled in it above a century." In process of time the marshes
were drained ; the population of the hills, as in the case of Old
Sarum, descended into the plains. The advantages of communi
cation located towns upon the banks of rivers, which were restrained
within deep channels by artificial bounds. London thus grew
when the Thames was walled out of the low lands. So probably
York, when the Ouse became tributary to man, instead of being a
pestilent enemy. When the civilizers taught the original inhabit
ants to subdue the powers of nature to their use, the sites of great
towns were fixed, and have remained fixed even to our own day, in
consequence of those natural advantages which have continued
unimpaired during the changes of centuries. The Romans were
the noblest of colonizers. They did not make their own country
rich by the exhaustive process which has been the curse of modern
colonization. They taught the people their own usgful arts, and
they shared the riches which they had been the instruments of
producing. They distributed amongst subdued nations their own
refinements ; and in the cultivation of the higher tastes they found
that security which could never have resulted from the coercion of
brutal ignorance. Tacitus says of Agricola, the great colonizer of
England, "That the Britons, who led a roaming and unsettled
life, and were easily instigated to war, might contract a love of
peace and tranquillity by being accustomed to a more pleasant
way of living, he exhorted and assisted them to build houses,
temples, courts, and market-places. By praising the diligent,
and reproaching the indolent, he excited so great an emulation
amongst the Britons, that after they had erected all those necessary
edifices in their towns, they proceeded to build others merely for
ornament and pleasure, such as porticoes, galleries, baths, banquet-
ing-houses, &c." Many of the still prosperous places- of England,
even at the present day, show us what the Romans generally, if not
especially Agricola, did for the advancement of the arts of life
amongst our remote forefathers. Lincoln is one of these cities
of far-off antiquity — a British, a Roman, a Saxon city. Leland
sayss " I heard say that the lower part of Lincoln town was all
marsh, and won by policy, and inhabited for the commodity of the
water. ... It is easy to be perceived that the town of Lincoln
hath been notably builded at three times. The first building was on
the very top of the hill, the oldest part whereof inhabited in the
Britons' lime was the northest part of the hill, directly without
Newport gate, the ditches whereof yet remain, and great tokens of
the old^own-walls taken out of a ditch by it, for all the top of

Lincoln Hill is quarry-ground. This is now a suburb to Newport
Gate." And there at Lincoln still stands Newport Gate— the
Roman gate,— formed by a plain square pier and a semicircular
arch (Figs. 139, 140). The Roman walls and the Roman arches
of Lincoln are monuments of the same great people that we find at
Rome itself (Figs. 142, 143). At Lincoln too are the remains of
such baths as Agricola taught the Britons to build (Fig. 141).
The Newport Gate of Lincoln, though half filled up by the eleva
tion of the soil, exhibits a central arch sixteen feet wide, with two
lateral arches. Within the area of the Roman walls now stand the
Cathedral and the Castle, monuments equally interesting of other
times and circumstances. At Lincoln, as at all other ancient
places, we can trace the abodes of the living in the receptacles for
the dead. The sarcophagi, the stone coffins, and the funereal urns
here found, tell of the people of different ages and creeds mingled
now in their common dust.
A fragment of Roman wall still proclaims the site of the ancient
Verulam (Fig. 149). Camden says, "The situation of this
place is well known to have been close by the town of St. Albans,
.... Nor hath it yet lost its ancient name, for it is still com
monly called Verulam ; although nothing of that remains besides
ruins of walls, chequered pavements, and Roman coins, which
they now and then dig up." The fame of the Roman Verulam
was merged in the honours of the Christian St. Albans ; and the
bricks of the old city were worked up into the church of the proto-
martyr of England. Bede tells the story of the death of St. Alban,
the first victim in Britain of the persecution of Diocletian, in the
third century, with a graphic power which brings the natural
features of this locality full before our view : " The most reverend
confessor of God ascended the hill with the throng, the which
decently pleasant agreeable place is almost five hundred paces from
the river, embellished with several sorts of flowers, or rather quite
covered with them ; wherein there is no part upright, or steep, nor
anything craggy, but the sides stretching out far about, is levelled
by nature like the sea, which of old it had rendered worthy to be
enriched with the martyr's blood for its beautiful appearance."
" Thus was Alban tried,
England's first martyr, whom no threats could shake:
Self-offered victim, for his friend he died,
And for the faith — nor shall his name forsake
That Hill, whose flowery platform seems to rise
By Nature decked for holiest sacrifice." Wordsworth.
In the time of Aubrey, some half-century later than that of
Camden, there were " to be seen in some few places some remains
of the walls of this city." Speaking of Lord Bacon, Aubrey says,
" Within the bounds of the walls of this old city of Verulam (his
lordship's barony) was Verulam House, about a half milfe from St.
Albans, which his lordship built, the most ingeniously -contrived
little pile that ever I saw." It was here that Bacon, freed,
however dishonourably, from the miserable intrigues of Whitehall,
and the debasing quirks and quibbles of the -Courts, laid the
foundations of his ever-during fame. Aubrey tells us a story which
is characteristic of Bacon's enthusiastic temperament :  " This
magnanimous Lord Chancellor had a great mind to have made it
[Verulam] a city again ; and he had designed it to be builjs with
great uniformity ; but fortune denied it to him, though she proved
kinder to the great Cardinal Richelieu, who lived both to design
and finish that specious town of Richelieu, where he was born,
before an obscure and small village." Fortune not only denied
Bacon to found this city, but even the "ingeniously-contrived little
pile," his gardens, and his banqueting-houses, which he had built
at an enormous cost, were swept away within thirty years after his
death: "One would have thought," says Aubrey, « the most bar
barous nation had made a conquest here." To use the words of
the philosopher of Verulam himself, " It is not good to look too
long upon these turning wheels of Vicissitude, lest we become
giddy." York, the Eboracum of the Romans, was one of the most im
portant of these British cities. Its Roman remains have very
recently been described by a learned resident of this city •— « One
of the angle-towers, and a portion of the wall of Eboracum attached
to it, are to this day remaining in an extraordinary state of pre
servation. In a recent removal of a considerable part of the more
modern wall and rampart, a much larger portion of the Roman
wall, connected with the same angle-tower, but in another direction,
with remains of two wall-towers, and the foundations of one of the
gates of the station, were found buried within the ramparts- and
excavations at various times and in different parts of the present
city have discovered so many indubitable remains of the fortifications

Chap. II]

OLD ENGLAND.

47

of Eboracum, on three of its sides, that the conclusion appears to
be fully warranted that this important station was of a rectangular
form, corresponding very nearly with the plan of a Polybian camp,
occupying a space of about six hundred and fifty yards, by about
five hundred and fifty, enclosed by a wall and a rampant mound
on the inner side of the wall, and a fosse without, with four angle
towers, and a series of minor towers or turrets, and having four
gates or principal entrances, from which proceeded military roads to
the neighbouring stations mentioned in the ' Itinerary' of Antonine.
Indications of extensive suburbs, especially on the south-west and
north-west, exist in the numerous and interesting remains of primeval
monuments, coffins, urns, tombs, baths, temples, and villas, which
from time to time, and especially of late years, have been brought
to light. Numberless tiles, bearing the impress of the sixth and
ninth legions, fragments of Samian ware, inscriptions, and coins
from the age of Julius Csesar to that of Constantine and his family,
concur, with the notice of ancient geographers and historians, to
identify the situation of modern York with that of ancient Ebo
racum." ('Penny Cyclopaedia,' vol. xxvii.)
And well might York have been a mighty fortress, and a city of
palaces and temples ; for here the Roman emperors had their chief
seat when they visited Britain ; here Severus and Constantius
Chlorus died ; here, though the evidence is somewhat doubtful,
Constantine the Great was born.
Bath, a Roman city, connected by great roads with London and
with the south coast, famous for its baths, a city of luxury amongst
the luxurious colonizers, has presented to antiquarian curiosity more
Roman remains than any other station in England. The city is
supposed to be now twenty feet above its ancient level ; and here,
whenever the earth is moved, are turned up altars, tessellated pave
ments, urns, vases, lachrymatories, coins. Portions of a large temple
consisting of a portico with fluted columns and Corinthian capitals,
were discovered in 1790. The remains of the ancient baths have
been distinctly traced. The old walls of the city are held to have
been built upon the original Roman foundations. These walls
have been swept away, and with them the curious relics of the
elder period, which Leland has thus minutely described : — " There
be divers notable antiquities engraved in stone that yet be seen in
the walls of Bath betwixt the south gate and the west gate, and
again betwixt the west gate and the north gate." He then notices
with more than ordinary detail a number of images, antique heads,
tombs with inscriptions, and adds, " I much doubt whether these
antique works were set in the time of the Romans' dominion in
Britain in the walls of Bath as they stand now, or whether they
were gathered of old ruins there, and since set up in the walls, re-
edified in testimony of the antiquity of the town." Camden appears
to have seen precisely the same relics as Leland saw, " fastened on
the inner side of the wall between the north and west gates." These
things were in existence, then, a little more than two hundred years
ago. There have been no irruptions of barbarous people into
the country, to destroy these and other things of value which they
could not understand. We had a high literature when these things
were preserved ; there were learned men amongst us ; and the
writers of imagination had that reverence for antiquity which is one
of the best fruits of a diffused learning. From that period we have
been wont to call ourselves a polite people. We are told that since
that period we have had an Augustan age of letters and of arts.
Yet somehow it has happened that during these last two centuries
there has been a greater destruction of ancient things, and a more
wanton desecration of sacred things, perpetrated by people in
authority, sleek; self-satisfied functionaries, practical men, as they
termed themselves, who despised all poetical associations, and thought
the beautiful incompatible with the useful — there has been more
wanton outrage committed upon the memorials of the past, than all
the invaders and pillagers of our land had committed for ten centuries
before. The destruction has been stopped, simply because the
standard of taste and of feeling has been raised amongst.a few.
It is inconsistent with our plan to attempt any complete detail of
the antiquities of any one period, as they are found in various parts
of the kingdom. To accomplish this, each period would require a
volume, or many volumes. Our purpose is to excite a general spirit
of inquiry, and to gratify that curiosity as far as we are able, by a
few details of what is most remarkable. Let us finish our account
of the Roman cities by a brief notice of Roman London.
A writer whose ability is concurrent with his careful investigation
of every subject which he touches, has well described the circum
stances which led to the choice of London as a Roman city, upon a
site" which the Britons had peopled, in all likelihood, before the
Roman colonization ; —
" The spot on which London is bujlt, or at least that on which the

first buildings were most probably erected, was pointed out by nature
for the site of a city. It was the suspicion of the sagacious Wren,
as we are informed in the ' Parentalia,' that the whole valley
between Camberwell Hill and the hills of Essex must have been
anciently filled by a great frith or ann of the sea, which increased
in width towards the east ; and that this estuary was only in the
course of ages reduced to a river by the vast sand-hills which were
gradually raised on both sides of it by the wind and tide, the effect
being assisted by embankments, which on the Essex side are still
perfectly distinguishable as of artificial origin, and are evidently
works that could only have been constructed by a people of advanced
mechanical skill. Wren himself ascribed these embankments to the
Romans ; and it is stated that a single breach made in them in his
time cost 17,000/. to repair it — from which we may conceive both
how stupendous must have been the labour bestowed on their
original construction, and of what indispensable utility they are
still found to be. In fact, were it not for this ancient barrier, the
broad and fertile meadows stretching along that border of the river
would still be a mere marsh, or a bed of sand overflowed by the
water, though left perhaps dry in many places on the retirement of
the tide  The elevation on which London is built
offered a site at once raised above the water, and at the same time
close upon the navigable portion of it — conditions which did not
meet in any other locality on either side of the river, or estuary,
from the sea upwards. It was the first spot on which a town could
be set down, so as to take advantage of the facilities of communica
tion between the coast and the interior presented by this great
natural highway." (' London,' vol. i. No. IX.)
The walls of London were partly destroyed in the time of Fitz-
Stephen, who lived in the reign of Henry II. He says, " The wall
of the city is high and great, continued with seven gates, which are
made double, and on the north distinguished with turrets, by spaces.
Likewise on the south London hath been enclosed with walls and
towers ; but the large river of Thames, well stored wilh fish, and
in which the tide ebbs and flows, by continuance of time hath
washed, worn away, and cast down those walls." Camden writes :
" Our historians tell us that Constantine the Great, at the request
of Helena, his mother, first walled it [London] about with hewn
stone and British bricks, containing in compass about three miles ;
whereby the city was made a square, but not equilateral, being
longer from west to east, and from south to north narrower. That
part of these walls which runs along by the Thames is quite washed
away by the continual beating of the river; though Fitz-Stephen
(who lived in Henry the Second's time) tells us there were some
pieces of it still to be seen. The rest remains to this day, and that
part toward the north very firm : for having not many years since
[1474] been repaired by one Jocelyn, who was Mayor, it put on, as
it were, a new face and freshness. But that toward the east and
the west, though the Barons repaired it in their wars out of the
demolished houses of the Jews, is all ruinous and going to decay."
The new face and freshness that were put on the north wall by one
Jocelyn the Mayor, have long since perished. A few fragments
above the ground, built-in, plastered over, proclaim to the curious
observer, that he walks in a city that has some claim to antiquity.
It was formerly a doubt with some of those antiquarian writers
who saw no interest in any inquiry except as a question of dispute,
whether the walls of London were of Roman construction. A
careful observer, Dr. Woodward, in the beginning of the last cen
tury, had an opportunity of going below the surface, and the
matter was by him put beyond a doubt. He writes : — " The city
wall being upon this occasion, to make way for these new build
ings, broke up and beat to pieces, from Bishopgate, onwards, S.E.
so far as they extend, an opportunity was given of observing the
fabric and composition of it. From the foundation, which lay
ei^ht feet below the present surface, quite up to the top, which was
in all near ten foot, 'twas compiled alternately of layers of broad
flat bricks and of rag-stone. The bricks lay in double ranges ; and
each brick being about one inch and three-tenths in thickness, the
whole layer, with the mortar interposed, exceeded not three inches.
The layers of stone were not quite two foot thick of our measure.
'Tis probable they were intended for two of the Roman, their rule
bein" somewhat shorter than ours. To this height the workmanship
was after the Roman manner ; and these were the remains of the
ancient wall supposed to be built by Constantine the Great. In
this 'twas very observable that the mortar was, as usually in the
Roman works, so very firm and hard, that the stone itself as easily
broke and gave way as that. 'Twas thus far from the foundation
upwards nine foot in thickness." The removal of old houses in
London is still going on as in Woodward's time ; and more im
portant excavations have been made in our own day, and at the

174.— Atrium of a Roman House.

175.— Rooni.of a Roman House. Restoration from Pompeii.. jj

179.— Roman. TiUa, Bignor.

i73.-Roman Villa, Great Witcombe, Gloucestershirei

18C. — Hv of a Roman House, Restoration from Pompeii.

48

181.— Atrium of a Roman Housb. Restoratton fronvPompeii.

No. 7.

[OLD ENGLAND.]

49

50

OLD ENGLAND.

[Book. I.

very hour in which we are writing. Close by St. Paul's, in the
formation of a deep sewer, the original peat-earth, over which
probably the Thames once flowed before man rested his foot here,
has been dug down to. In such excavations the relics of age after
age have turned up. The Saxon town lies above the Roman ; and
the Norman above the Saxon ; but when the spade and the pickaxe
have broken against some mass solid as the granite rock, then
the labourer knows that he has come to a building such as men
build not now, foundations that seem intended to have lasted for
ever, the Roman work. Woodward described the Wall as he
saw it in Camomile Street in 1707. Mr. Craik, the writer whom
we have recently quoted, has recorded the appearance of the Wall
as he saw it in 1841," laid bare for the works of the Blackwall
Railway. " Beneath a range of houses which have been in part demolished,
in a court entering from the east side of Cooper's Row, nearly
opposite to Milbourne's Almshouses, and behind the south-west
corner of America Square, the workmen, having penetrated to the
natural earth — a hard, dry, sandy gravel — came upon a wall seven
feet and a half thick, running a very little to the-west of north, or
parallel to the line of the Minories ; which, by the resistance it
offered, was at once conjectured to be of Roman masonry. When
we saw it, it had been laid bare on both sides, to the height of about
six on seven feet, and there was an opportunity of examining its con
struction, both on the surface and in the interior. The principal part
of it consisted of five courses of squared stones, regularly laid, with two
layers of flat bricks below them, and two similar layers above— the
latter at least carried all the way through the wall— as represented
in the drawing (Fig. 150). The mortar, which appeared to be
extremely hard, had a few pebbles mixed up with it ; and here and
there were interstices, or air-cells, as if it had not been spread, but
poured in among the stones. The stones were a granulated lime
stone, such as might have been obtained from the chalk-quarries at
Greenhithe or Northfleet. The bricks, which were evidently
Roman, and, as far as the eye could judge, corresponded in size as
well as in shape with those described by Woodward, had as fine a
grain as common pottery, and varied in colour from a bright red to
a palish yellow. A slight circular or oval mark — in some cases
forming a double ring — appeared on one side of each of them, which
had been impressed when the clay was in a soft state." (' London,'
Vol. I. No. ix.)
A peculiarity in the construction of a portion of the ancient wall
of London was discovered during some large excavations for sewer
age, between Lambeth Hill and Queenhithe, in 1841. The wall in
this part measured in breadth from eight to ten feet. Its foundation
was upon piles, upon which was laid a stratum of chalk and stones ;
then a course of ponderous hewn sandstones, held together by the
well-known cement ; and upon this solid structure the wall itself,
composed of layers of rag and flint, between the layers of Roman
tiles. The peculiarity to which we allude was described to the
Antiquarian Society by Mr. Charles Roach Smith ; — " One of the
most remarkable features of this wall is the evidence it affords of
the existence of an anterior building, which from some cause or
other must have been destroyed. Many of the large stones above
mentioned are sculptured and ornamented with mouldings, which
denote their prior use in a frieze or entablature of an edifice, the
magnitude of which may be conceived from the fact of these stones
weighing in many instances upwards of half a ton. Whatever might
have been the nature of this structure, its site, or cause of its over
throw, we have no means of determining." The undoubted work of
fourteen or fifteen centuries ago is something not to be looked upon
without associations of deep and abiding interest ; but wiien we find
connected with such ancient labours more ancient labours, which
have themselves been overthrown by the changes of time or the
vicissitudes of fortune, the mind must fall back upon the repose of
its own ignorance, and be content to know how little it knows.
In the year 1785 a sewer, sixteen feet deep, was made in Lombard
Street. Sewers were not then common in London, and Sir John
Henniker, speaking of this work, says, " A large trench has been
excavated in Lombard Street for the first time since the memory of
man." In making this excavation vast quantities of Roman anti
quities were discovered, which are minutely described and repre
sented in the eighth volume of the ' Archseologia.' Amongst other
curiosities was found a beautiful gold coin of the Emperor Galba.
The coin came into the possession of Sir John Henniker, who thus
relates the circumstances under which it was found : — " The soil is
almost uniformly divided into four strata ; the uppermost, thirteen
feet six inches thick, of factitious earth ; the second, two feet thick
of brick, apparently the ruins of buildings; the third, three inches
thick, of^oor'.-ashes, apparently the remains of a town built of wood,

and destroyed by fire ; the fourth, of Roman pavement, common and
tessellated. On this pavement the coin in question was discovered,
together with several other coins, and many articles of pottery. Below
the pavement the workmen find virgin earth." (' Archaeologia,' vol.
viii.) In 1831 various Roman remains were found in the construc
tion of a sewer in Crooked Lane, and in Eastcheap. There, at a
depth of about seventeen feet, were found the walls of former houses
covered with wood-ashes, and about them were also found many
portions of green molten glass, and of red ware discoloured by the
action of fire. Mr. A. J. Kempe, who communicates these dis
coveries to the Society of Antiquaries, adverts to the wood-ashes
found in Lombard Street in 1785 ; and he adds, " Couple this with
the circumstances I have related, and what stronger evidence can
be produced of the catastrophe in which the dwellings of the Roman
settlers at London were involved in the reign of Nero? The
Roman buildings at the north-east corner of Eastcheap afforded a
curious testimony that such a conflagration had taken place, and
that London had been afterwards rebuilt by the Romans, Worked
into the mortar of the walls were numerous pieces of the fine red
ware, blackened by the action of an intense fire."
The circumstances recorded certainly furnish strong evidence of
a conflagration, and a rebuilding of the city ; but the fact recorded
in 1785, that under the wood-ashes was a coin of Galba, is evidence
against the conflagration having taken place in the time of Nero,
whom Galba succeeded. Mr. Kempe has fallen into the general
belief that, when Londinium was abandoned to the vengeance of
Boadicea, its buildings were destroyed by a general conflagration.
This was in the year a. d. 61. The coin of Galba under the wood-
ashes would seem to infer that the conflagration was at a later date,
in connection with circumstances of which we have no tradition.
The short reign of Galba commenced A. d. 68. But be this as it
may, here, seventeen feet under the present pavement of London,
are the traces of Roman life covered by the ashes of a ruined city,
and other walls built with the fragments of those ruins, and over
these tlie aggregated rubbish of eighteen centuries, of inhabitancy.
The extent of Roman London, of the London founded or civilized,
burnt, rebuilt, extended by the busiest of people, may be traced by
the old walls, by the cemeteries beyond the walls, and by the re
mains of ancient relics of utility and ornament constantly turned
up wherever the soil is dug into to a sufficient depth. Look upon
the plan of this Roman London (Fig. 158). The figures marked
upon the plan show the places where the Romans have been traced.
1. Shows the spot in Fleet Ditch where vases, coins, and imple
ments were found after the Great Fire of 1666. In many other
parts were similar remains found on that occasion (Fig. 163). On
the plan, 2 shows the point where a sepulchral stone was found
at Ludgate, which is now amongst the Arundel Marbles at Oxford
(Fig. 160). In the plan, 3 marks the site of St. Paul's, where
many remains were found by Sir Christopher Wren, in digging
the foundation of the present Cathedra] — the burial-place of " the
colony when Romans and Britons lived and died together " (Fig.
164). At the causeway at Bow Church, marked 4, Roman remains
were found after the Great Fire. At Guildhall, marked 5, tiles and
pottery were found in 1822. In Lothbury, in 1805, digging for
the foundation of an extended portion of the Bank of England,
marked 6, a tessellated pavement was found, which is now in the
British Museum. Other tessellated pavements have been found in
various parts of London, the finest specimens having been discovered
in 1803, in Leadenhall Street, near the portico of the India House
(Fig. 161). The spot in Lombard Street and Birchin Lane,
where, previous to the discoveries in 1785 already mentioned re
mains had been found in 1730 and 1774, is marked 7 on the plan.
Some of these remains are represented in Fig. 166 In 1787
Roman coins and tiles were found at, St. Mary at Hill, close by
the line of the Thames, marked 8. In 1824, near St. Dunstan's
in the East on the same line, marked 9, were pavements and urns
found. In Long Lane, marked 10, a pavement has been found ; also
a tessellated pavement in Crosby Square, marked 11; a pavement
in Old Broad Street, marked 12 ; a tessellated pavement in Crutched
imars, marked 16; a pavement in Northumberland Alley, marked
17. Sepulchral monuments have been found within the City wall
as in Bishopsgate, in 1707, marked 14; and in the Tower in m/
marked 15^ But the great burial-places, especially of the Chris!
tianized Romans, were outside the wall; as at the cemetery
beyond Bishopsgate, discovered in 1725, marked 13; that in Good
mans Fields, marked 19, found in 1787; and that at Spifalfield,
marked 18, discovered as early as 1577. The old London antiquary"!
Mow thus speaks of this discovery : "On the east side of this
churchyard lieth a large field, of old time called Lolesworth, now
Sp.talfield, which about the year 1576 was broken up for clay to

Chap. II.]

OLD ENGLAND.

51

make brick ; hi the digging whereof many earthen pots called
Urnse were found full of ashes, and burnt bones of men, to wit of
the Romans who inhabited here. For it was the custom of the
Romans to burn their dead, to put their ashes in an urn, and then
to bury the same with certain ceremonies, in some field appointed
for that purpose near unto their city  There hath also
been found (in the same field) divers coffins of stone, containing
the bones of men ; these I suppose to be the burials of some special
persons, in time of the Britons or Saxons, after that the Romans
had left to govern here. Moreover there were also found the
skulls and bones of men without coffins, or rather whose coffins
(being of great timber) were consumed. Divers great nails of
iron were there found, such as are used in the wheels of shod cartsi
being each of them as big as a man's finger, and a quarter of a yard
long, the heads two inches over."
The plan thus detailed indicates the general extent of Roman
London. Within these limits every year adds something to the
mass of antiquities that have been turned up, and partially examined
and described, since the days when Stow saw the earthen pots in
Spitalfields. Traces of the old worship have at various times been
found. A very curious altar was discovered fifteen feet below the
level of the street in Foster Lane, Cheapside, in 1830. Attention
has recently been directed to a supposed Roman bath in Strand
Lane, represented in Fig. 159 (See ' London,' Vol. II.). But the
bed of the Thames has been as prolific as the highways that are
trampled upon, in disclosing to its excavators traces of the great
colonizers of England. Works of high art in silver and in bronze
were found in 1825 and 1837, embedded in the soil over which the
river has been rolling for ages. In the southern bank of the Thames
evidences have recently been discovered that parts of South wark
contiguous to the river were occupied by the Romans, as well as
the great city on the opposite bank. Mr. Charles Roach Smith, in
a paper read to the Society of Antiquaries in 1841, says, " The
occurrence of vestiges of permanent occupancy of this locality by
the Romans, "is almost uninterrupted from the river to St. George's
Church in the line of the present High Street." Mr. Smith is
decidedly of opinion that a considerable portion of Southwark
formed an integral part of Londinium, and that the two shores were
connected by a bridge. Mr. Smith holds, " First, that with such a
people as the Romans, and in such a city as Londinium, a bridge
would be indispensable ; and, secondly, that it would naturally be
erected somewhere in the direct line of road into Kent, which I
cannot but think pointed toward the site of Old London Bridge,
both from its central situation, from the general absence of the
foundations of buildings in the approaches on the northern side,
and from discoveries recently made in the Thames on the line of
the old bridge." The bronzes, medallions, and coins found in the
line of the old bridge, which have been dredged up by the ballast-
heavers from their position, and the order in which they occur,
strongly support the opinion of Mr. Smith. The coins comprise
many thousands of a series extending from Julius Caesar to Honorius ;
and Mr. Smith infers "that the bulk of these coins might have
been intentionally deposited, at various periods, at the erection of a
bridge across the river, whether it were built in the time of Ves
pasian, Hadrian, or Pius, or at some subsequent period, and that
they also might have been deposited at such times as the bridge
might require repairs or entire renovation ?"
The shrewd observer and sensible writer whom we have quoted
has a valuable remark upon the peculiar character of the Roman
antiquities of London : — " Though our Londinium cannot rival, in
remains of public buildings, costly statues, and sculptured sarcophagi
and altars, the towns of the mother-country, yet the reflective
antiquary can still find materials to work on, — can point to the
localities of the less obtrusive and imposing, but not less useful,
structures — the habitations of the mercantile and trading population
of this ever-mercantile town. The numerous works of ancient
art which have yet been preserved afford us copious materials
for studying the habits, manners, and customs of the Roman
colonists ; the introduction and state of many of the arts during
their long sojourn in Britain, and their positive or probable influence
on the British inhabitants. This is, in fact, the high aim and scope
of the science of antiquities — to study mankind through their works."
It is in this spirit that we would desire to look at the scattered
antiquities of ' Old England,' to whatever period they may belong.
Whenever man delves into the soil, and turns up a tile or an
earthen pot, a coin or a weapon, an inscription which speaks of
love for the dead, or an altar which proclaims the reverence for the
spiritual^in some form, however mistaken, we have evidences of
antique modes of life, in whose investigation we may enlarge the
narrow bounds of our own every-day life. Those who have

descended into the excavated streets of the buried Pompeii, and
have walked in subterranean ways which were once radiant with
the sunshine, and have entered houses whose paintings and
sculptures are proofs that here were the abodes of comfort and
elegance, where taste displayed itself in forms which cannot perish,
— such have beheld with deep emotion the consequences of a sudden
ruin which in a few hours made the populous city a city of the
dead. But when we pierce through the shell of successive
generations abiding in a great city like London, to bring to light
the fragments of a high state of civilization, crushed and overthrown
by change and spoliation, and forgotten amidst the trample of
successive generations of mankind in the same busy spot, the eye
may not so readily awaken the mind to solemn reflection ; but still
every fragment has its own lesson, which cannot be read-unprofitably.
It is not the exquisite art by which common materials, for common
purposes were moulded by a tasteful people, that can alone command
our admiration. A group of such is exhibited in Fig. 169. That
these are Roman is at once proclaimed by their graceful forms.
But mingled with these are sometimes found articles of inferior
workmanship and less tasteful patterns, which show how the
natives of the Roman .colony had gradually emulated their arts,
and were passing out of that state when the wants of life were
supplied without regard to the elegancies which belong to an
advanced civilization (see Fig. 168). The Romans put the mark
of their cultivated taste as effectually upon the drinking-cups and
the urns of the colonized Britons, compared with the earlier works
of the natives, as the Emperor Hadrian put his stamp upon the pigs
of lead which were cast in the British mines, and which may stil
be seen in our national Museum (Figs. 165, 166, 167). The
bronze patera, or drinking-bowl, found in Wiltshire, marked with
the names of five Roman towns on its margin, was a high work of
Roman-British art (Figs. 152, 153, 154). The metal coating of
an ancient Roman-British shield, found in the bed of the river
Witham, belongs to a lower stage of the same art (Fig. 171). The
British coin of Carausius (Fig. 173), of which a unique example
in gold is in the British Museum, and the coin of Constantine the
Great in the same collection (Fig. 172), each probably came out
of the Roman coin-mould (Fig. 170). After years of contest and
bloodshed, the Roman arts became the arts of Britain ; and when
our Shakspere made Iachimo describe the painting and the statuary of
Imogen's chamber, though the description might be an anachronism
with regard to Cymbeline, it was a just representation of the influence
of Roman taste on the home-life of Britain, when the intercourse of
the countries had become established, and the peaceful colonization
of those whose arts always followed in the wake of their arms, had
introduced those essentially Roman habits, of which we invariably
find the relics when in our ancient cities we come to the subsoil on
which the old Britons trod.

A writer on early antiquities, Mr. King, to whom we have
several times referred, has a notion that the private dwellings of
the Romans, especially in this island, were not remarkable for
comfort or elegance, to say nothing of magnificence ; " In most
instances a Roman Quaestor, or Tribune, sitting here in his toga
on his moveable sella, or wallowing on his triclinium, on one of
those dull, dark, and at best ill-looking works of mosaic, did
not, after all, appear with much more real splendour, as to any
advantages from the refinements of civilized life, than an old Scotch
laird in the Highlands, sitting in his plaid on a joint-stool, or on a
chair of not much better construction, in the corner of his rough,
rude, castle-tower." This is a bold assertion, and one that indicates
that the writer has no very clear perception of what constitutes the
best evidence of the existence of the " refinements of civilized life."
The first dull, dark, ill-looking work of mosaic, which Mr. King
describes, is a tessellated pavement, which he says "shows great
design and masterly execution." The remains of villas discovered
in England have for the most part painted walls, even according to
Mr. King— some proof of refinement, if all other proofs were absent.
But the rooms with the painted walls had no fire-places with chim
neys, and must have been warmed when needful, " merely by hot
air from the adjoining hypocaust." This is a curious example of.
the mutation of ideas in half a century. The Romans in Britain,
according to Mr. King, could have had no comfort or refinement,
because they had no open fires, and warmed their rooms with hot air.
The science of our own day says that the open fire and chimney
are relics of barbarism, and that comfort and refinement demand
the hot air. The remains of a hypocaust at Lincoln (Fig. 141)
alone indicate something beyond the conveniences possessed by the
old Scotch laird sitting on his joint-stool. But, in truth, the bare
inspection of the plan of any one of the Roman villas discovered in
H 2

189.— Anns and Costume of a Saxon Military Chief.

190,-Arms and Costume of an Anglo-Sason King and Annour Bearer.

19 1.— Ringed MaiL Cotton MS. Claud. B. 4.

S^

195,— Anglo-Saxon Mantle, Caps, and Weapons.

193.— Costume of a Soldier. From Cotton MS. Tib. C. 6.

-,<¦* ¦> 4^. . ^-^-.K *-vMf.„ J^3S
191.— Arms and Costume of the Tribes on the Western Shores of the Baltic.

pggstj

192.— Arms and Costume of Danish w«rri»

198.— Kuins of the Monastery of lona, on I-Columb Kill.

208.— Crosses at Sandbacb.

53

54

OLD ENGLAND.

[Book I.

England will show that the colonizers brought here the same
tasteful arrangements of their private dwellings as distinguished
similar remains in the states wholly peopled by Romans. Vitruvius
has given us the general plan of a Roman villa (Fig. 176), which
we copy, that it may be compared with the plans of Roman villas
discovered in England. The most important of these is that at
Woodchester, near Stroud, in Gloucestershire, which was discovered
by Mr. Lysons in 1795 (Fig. 177). The plan of this remarkable
building, which Mr. Lysons has been able distinctly to trace, shows
that there was a large open court, or atrium, marked b ; an inner
court, marked a; and a smaller court in the wing, marked c. Round
these were grouped the various apartments and domestic offices, about
sixty in number. Mr. King seems to think somewhat meanly of
these apartments, as they seldom exceed twenty or twenty-five feet
in length, with a proportionate breadth ; and because " there is no
reason from any remaining traces of any sort or kind to suppose
there was ever a staircase in any part, or so much as one single
room above the ground-floor."
Another Roman villa, of which we have given the plan (Fig.
179), is described by the- same indefatigable antiquary, Mr. Samuel
Lysons, who, in consequence of the accidental discovery of a mosaic
pavement at Bignor, in Sussex, in 1811, was enabled during that
year and the succeeding six years, to trace the plan of a building
of great extent and magnificence, with rich pavements and painted
walls. " Many of the ornaments and general style of the mosaic
work bear a striking resemblance to those of the pavements
discovered at Pompeii, which could not have been of a later date
than the reign of Titus." Sir Humphry Davy in some degree
confirms this opinion in a letter to Mr. Lysons : " I have examined
the colours found on the walls of the Roman house discovered at
Bignor, in Sussex; and I find that they are .similar in chemical
composition to those employed in the baths of Titus at Rome, and
in the houses and public buildings at Pompeii and Herculaneum."
We cannot have better evidence that the same arts of design, and
the same scientific means of ornament, were employed in Britain
as at Pompeii. Accomplished architects have been enabled, from
what remains tolerably entire in that buried city, to form a general
notion of the internal arrangements of a Roman house. We present
such to our readers in the beautiful restorations of Mr. Poynter
(Figs. 174, 175, 180, and 181). The villa discovered at Great
Witcombe, in Gloucestershire, in 1818 (Fig. 178), exhibits the most
complete example of the remains of the Roman baths in this country,
several of the walls still existing, from four to five feet above the
level of the floors, and most of the doorways being preserved.
The influence of the Roman taste and science upon the domestic
architecture of the colonized Britons must no doubt have been
considerable. " The use of mortar, plaster, and cement, of the
various tools and implements for building, the art of making the
flat tiles, and all things connected with masonry and bricklaying, as
known and practised by the Romans, must of course in the progress
of their works, have been communicated to their new subjects ; and
it appears that, by the close of the third century, British builders
had acquired considerable reputation. The panegyrist Eumenius
tells us that when the Emperor Constantius rebuilt the city of
Autun, in Gaul, about the end of the third century, he brought the
workmen chiefly from Britain, which very much abounded with the

best artificers." (' Pictorial History of England,' vol. i.) It would
appear, however, that although there can be no doubt that many
splendid buildings, such as Giraldus Cambrensis describes as having
seen in the twelfth century at Caerleon, were models for the suc
cessors of the Romans, no remains of a very high style of art have
been discovered in Britain. Mr. Rickman says, " I think it is clear
that nothing very good of Roman work ever existed in Britain ; all
the fragments of architecture which have been discovered, whether
large or small, whether the tympanum of a temple, as found at
Bath, or small altars, as found in many places. I believe they were
all deficient either in composition or in execution, or iu both, and
none that I know of have been better, if so good, as the debased
work of the Emperor Diocletian in his palace at Spalatro. With
these debased examples, we cannot expect that the inhabitants of
Britain would (while harassed with continual intestine warfare) im
prove on the models left by the Romans." (' Archaeologia,' vol. xxv.)
It is easy to understand how the Roman architecture of Britain
should not have been in the best taste. When the island was
permanently settled under the Roman dominion, the arts had greatly
declined in Rome itself. In architecture, especially, the introduc
tion of incongruous members, in combination with the general
forms derived from the Greeks, produced a corruption which was
rapidly advancing in the third century, and which continued to
spread till Roman architecture had lost nearly all its original
distinctive characters. The models which the Romans left |in
Britain, to a people harassed with continual invasion and internal
dissension, were no doubt chiefly of this debased character. Of the
buildings erected for the Pagan worship of the Saxons we have no
traces. The r&- establishment of Christianity by the conversion of
the Saxons was rapidly followed by the building of churches. What
was the nature of the material of these churches, whether any of
them still exist, whether portions even may yet be found in our
ecclesiastical buildings, have been fruitful subjects of antiquarian
discussion. There is somewhat of a fashion in such opinions. Iri
the last century, all churches with heavy columns and semicircular
arches were called Saxon. Some twenty years ago it was maintained
that we had no Saxon buildings at all. The present state of opinion
amongst unprejudiced inquirers is, we think, fairly represented, in
the following candid argument of Mr. Rickman : — " On that part
of our architectural history which follows the departure of the
Romans from Britain, and which precedes the Norman Conquest,
there is of course great obscurity ; but while in the days of Dr.
Stukeley, Horace Walpole, &c, there appears to have been much
too easy an admission of Saxon dates on the mere appearance of the
semicircular arch, I think there has been of late perhaps too great
a leaning the other way ; and because we cannot directly prove that
certain edifices are. Saxon, by documentary evidence, we have been
induced, too easily perhaps, to consider that no Saxon buildings did
exist, and have not given ourselves the trouble sufficiently to examine
our earlier Norman works to see if they were not some of them
entitled to be considered as erected before the Conquest." This is
the subject which we shall be called upon to illustrate in our next
chapter ; but in the mean time we refer to some of the details of
later Roman art, which we give at page 49 (Figs. 182—188). It
is to these forms and arrangements that the architecture of the
Anglo-Saxons and Normans is to be traced as to a common source.

Chap. III.]

OLD ENGLAND.

The Standard of the White Horse.

CHAPTER III.— THE ANGLO-SAXON PERIOD.

N axe was to be laid to the
root of that prosperity which
Britain unquestionably enjoyed
under the established dominion
and protection of the Romans.
The military people whom
Caesar led to the conquest of
Gaul were, five hundred years
afterwards, driven back upon
Italy by hordes of fierce in
vaders, who swarmed wherever
] plenty spread its attractions
for wandering poverty. " The
blue-eyed myriads " first came to Britian as allies. The period
when they came was one of remarkable prosperity, according to the
old ecclesiastical chronicler, whose account of this revolution is the
most distinct whjch we possess. Bede says, that "after the "Irish
Rovers " had returned home, and " the Picts " were driven to the
farthest part of the Island, through a vigorous effort of the unaided
Britons, the land " began to abound with such plenty of grain as
had never been known in any age before. With plenty, luxury
increased; and this was immediately attended with all sorts of
crimes." Then followed a plague ; and to repel the apprehended
incursions of the northern tribes, " they all agreed with their king,
Vortigern (Guorteryn), to call over to their aid, from the parts
beyond the sea, the Saxon nation." The standard of the White
Horse floated on the downs of Kent and Sussex ; and the strange
people who bore it from the shores of the Baltic fixed it firmly
in the land, whose institutions they remodelled, whose name was
henceforth changed, whose language was merged in the tongue
which they spake. " Then the nation of the Angles, or Saxons,
being invited by the aforesaid king, arrived in Britain with three
long ships, and had a place assigned them to reside in by the same
king, in the eastern part of the island, as it were to fight for their
country, but in reality to subdue this."
Britain was henceforth the land of the Angles — Engla-land,
Engle-Iand, Engle-lond. Little more than a century after the
settlement in, or conquest of, the country by the three nations of
the Jutes, the Saxons, and the Angles, the supreme monarch, or
Bretwalda,- thus subscribed himself: — " Ego Ethelbertus, Rex
Anglorum." The Angles and the Saxons were distinct nations,
and they subdued and retained distinct portions of the land.
But even the Saxon chiefs of Wessex, when they had extended
their dominions into the kingdom of the Angles, called themselves
kings of Engla-land.. In our own times we are accustomed to use

the term Anglo-Saxons, when we speak of the wars, the institutions,
the literature, and the arts of the people who for five centuries
were the. possessors of this our England, and have left the impress
of their national character, their language, their laws, and their
religion upon the race that still tread the soil which they trod.
The material monuments which are left of these five centuries of
struggles for supremacy within, and against invasion from without,
of Paganism overthrowing the institutions of Christianized Britain
by the sword, and overthrown in its turn by the more lasting power
of a dominant church — of wise government, of noble patriotism,
vainly contending against a new irruption of predatory sea-kings, —
these monuments are few, and of doubtful origin. The Anglo-
Saxons have left their most durable traces in the institutions which
still mingle with the laws under which we live, — in the literature
which has their written language for its best foundation, — in the
useful arts which they cultivated, and which have descended to us
as our inheritance.
The most enduring monuments are the Manuscripts and the Illu
minations produced by the patient labour of their spiritual teachers,
which we may yet open in our public libraries, and look upon with
as deep an interest as upon the fragments of the more perishable
labours of the architect and the sculptor. But of buildings, and
even the ornamented fragments of churches and of palaces, this
period has left us few remains, in comparison with its long duration,
and the unquestionable existence of a high civilization during a
considerable portion of these five centuries. But it is possible that
these remains are not so few as we are taught to think. It has been
the fashion to believe that the invading Dane swept away all these
monuments of piety and of civil order ; that whatever of high anti
quity after the Romans here exists, is of Norman origin. We have
probably yielded somewhat too readily to this modern belief. For
example, Bishop Wilfred, who lived in the seventh century, was a
great builder and restorer of churches, and Richard, Prior of Hexham,
who lived in the twelfth century, describes from his own observation
the church] which Wilfred built at Hexham. According to this
minute description, it was a noble fabric, with deep foundations,
with crypts, and oratories, of great height, divided into three several
stories or tiers, and supported, by polished columns; the capitals of
the columns were decorated with figures carved in stone ; the body
of the church was compassed about with pentices and porticoes.
Such a church we should now call Norman. Within the limits of
a work like ours it is impossible to discuss such matters of contro
versy. We here only enter a protest against the belief that all
churches now existing with some of the characteristics of the church
of Wilfred, must be of the period after the Conquest.

216.— Bcsham Church. From the Bayeux Tapestry.

21 T.-^St. Augustine. Royal MS..

219.— Egfrid, King of Northumberland, and an Ecclesiastical
Synod offering the Bishopric of Heahara to St Cuthbert.
MS. life of Bede, a.d. 1200.

i:s • I 'oi trait of SL Bunstai in full Arckiepiscopal Costume. Cotton MS.

225.— Silver Penny ol'CeoInoth, Archbishop of Canterbury.

22*.— St. Dunstan. Eoyal MS.

,223.— Golden Odes woraby St. Cuthbert, and found on bis
body at the opening orhis Tomb in I8Z7.

221.— Bishop and Priest*

222.— Abbot Elfnoth, and St. Augustine, Archbishop of Canterbury.
Haitian MS.

AT„ Q

[OLD ENGLAND.]

230.— St Cuthbert. From one of the external Canopies of the
Middle Tower of Durham.
57

58

OLD ENGLAND.

[Book I.

When Johnson and Boswell visited lona, or Icolm-kill, the less
imaginative traveller was disappointed : — " I must own that Icolm-
kill did not answer my expectations  There are only some
grave-stones flat on the earth, and we could see no inscriptions.
How far short was this of marble monuments, like those in West
minster Abbey, which I had imagined here !" So writes the matter-
of-fact Boswell. But Johnson, whose mind was filled with the
various knowledge that surrounded the barren island with great and
holy associations, had thoughts which shaped themselves into sen
tences often quoted, but too appropriate to the objects of this work
not to be quoted once more : —
" We were now treading that illustrious island which was once
the luminary of the Caledonian regions, whence savage clans and
roving barbarians derived the benefits of knowledge and the
blessing of religion. To abstract the mind from all local emotion
would be impossible if it were endeavoured, and would be foolish if
it were possible. Whatever withdraws us from the power of our
senses, whatever makes the past, the distant, or the future, pre
dominate over the present, advances us in the dignity of thinking
beings. Far from me, and from my friends, be such frigid philoso
phy as may conduct us indifferent and unmoved over any ground
which has been dignified by wisdom, bravery, or virtue ! That
man is little to be envied whose patriotism would not gain force
upon the plain of Marathon, or whose piety would not grow warmer
among the ruins of lona."
"The ruins of lona" are not the ruins of "Saint Columba's
cell," of that monastery which the old national Saint of Scotland
founded in the midst of wide waters, when he came from the shores
of Ireland to conquer a rude and warlike people by the power of the
Gospel of peace ; to preach with his followers " such works of
charity and piety as they could learn from the prophetical, evange
lical, and apostolical writings ;" and, in addition to this first sacred
duty, to be the depositaries of learning and the diffusers of know
ledge. The walls amidst whose shelter Columba lived, training his
followers by long years of discipline to the fit discharge of their
noble office, have been swept away ; the later erections are crumbling
into nothingness (Figs. 198, 199) ; the burial-place of the Scottish
kings is overgrown with rank weeds, and their tombs lie broken and
defaced amidst, fragments of monumental stones of the less illus
trious dead. Silent and deserted is this "guardian of their bones."
The miserable hovels of a few fishermen contain the scanty population
of an island which was once trodden by crowds of the noble and
the learned. Here the highest in rank once came to bow before
the greater eminence of exalted piety and rare knowledge. To be an
inmate of the celebrated monastery of lona was to gain a reputation
through the civilized world. This was not the residence of lazy
monks, as we are too much accustomed to call all monks, but of
men distinguished for the purity and simplicity of their lives, and
by the energy and disinterestedness of their labours. lona sent forth
her missionaries into every land from which ignorance and idolatry
were to be banished by the workings of Christian love. When the
bark that contained a little band of these self-devoted men went
forth upon the stormy seas that beat around these western isles, to
seek in distant lands the dark seats where Druidism sfill lingered,
or the fiercer worship of Odin lifted its hoarse voice of war and
desolation, then the solemn prayer went up from the sacred choir
for the heavenly guidance of "those who travel by land or sea."
When the body of some great chief was embarked at Corpach, on
the mainland, and the waters were dotted with the boats that crowded
round the funeral bark, then the chants of the monks were heard
far over the sea, like the welcome to some hospitable shore, breathing
hope and holy trust. Such are the materials for the " local emo
tion " which is called forth by " the ruins of lona ;" and such emo
tion, though the actual monuments that are associated with it like
these are shapeless fragments, is to be cherished in many a spot of
similar sanctity, where, casting aside all minor differences of opinion,
we know that the light of truth once shone there amidst surrounding
darkness, and that "one bright particular star" there beamed before
the dawning.
We have already quoted Bede's interesting narrative of the
arrival of Augustine in the Isle of Thanet (p. 34). The same
authentic writer subsequently tells us of the lives of Augustine and
his fellow-missionaries at Canterbury : " There was in the east side
near the city a church dedicated to the honour of St. Martin
formerly built whilst the Romans were still in the island, wherein
the queen (Bertha), who, as has been said before, was a Christian,
used to pray. In this they at first began to meet, to sing, to pray,
to say mass, to preach, and to baptize ; till the king being converted
to the faith, they had leave granted them more freely to preach,
and buj^ or repair churches in all places." On " the east side of

the city" of Canterbury still stands the church of St. Martin. Its
windows belong to various periods of Gothic architecture; its
external walls are patched after the barbarous fashion of modern
repairs ; it is deformed within by wooden boxes to separate the
rich from the poor, and by ugly monumental vanities, miscalled
sculpture; but the old walls are full of Eoman bricks, relics, at
any rate, of the older fabric where Bertha and Augustine " used to
pray " (Fig. 197). Some have maintained that this is the identical
Roman church which Bede describes ; and tradition has been pretty
constant in the belief that it is as old as the second century. Mr.
King has his own theory upon the matter: " Some have supposed it
to have been built by Roman Christians, of the Roman soldiery ^
but if that had been the case, there would surely have been found
in it the regular alternate courses of Roman bricks. Instead of
this, the chancel is found to be built almost entirely of Roman
bricks ; and the other parts with Roman bricks and other materials,
irregularly intermixed. There is therefore the utmost reason to
think that it was built as some imitation only of Roman structures
by the rude Britons, before their workmen became so skilful in
Roman architecture as they were afterwards rendered, when
regularly employed by the Romans." Whether a British, a
Roman, or a Saxon church, here is a church of the highest
antiquity in the island, rendered memorable by its associations with
the narrative of the old ecclesiastical historian. There is a
remarkable font in this church — a stone font with rude carved-work,
resembling a great basin, and standing low on the floor. Such a font
was adapted to the mode of baptism in the primitive times. In such
a church might Augustine and his followers have sung and prayed ;
in such a font might Augustine have baptized. Venerated, then,
be the spot upon which stands the little church of St. Martin.
It is a pleasant spot on a gentle elevation. The lofty towers and
pinnacles of the great Cathedral rise up at a little distance ; the
County Infirmary and the County Prison stand about it. It was
from this little hill, then, that a sound went through the land
which, in a few centuries, called up those glorious edifices which
attest the piety and the magnificence of our forefathers ; which, in
our own days, has raised up institutions for the relief of the sick
and the afflicted poor ; but which has not yet banished those dismal
abodes which frown upon us in every great city, where society
labours, and labours in vain, to correct and eradicate crime by
restraint and punishment. Something is still wanting to make the
teaching which, more than twelve centuries ago, went forth
throughout the land from this church of St. Martin, as effectual as
its innate purity and truth ought to render it. The teaching has
not even to this day penetrated the land. It is heard at stated
seasons in consecrated places; it is spoken about in our parish schools,
whence a scanty knowledge is distributed amongst a rapidly-
increasing youthful population, in a measure little adapted to the
full and effectual banishment of ignorance. Our schools are few ;
our prisons are many. The work which Augustine and his fol
lowers did is still to do ; but it is a work which a state that has spent •
eight hundred millions in warthinks may yet be postponed. The
time may come, if that work be postponed too long, when the teachers '
of Christian knowledge may as vainly strive against the force of the '
antagonist principle, as the .monks of Bangor strove, with prayer
and anthem, " When the heathen trumpets' clang
Eound beleaguer'd Chester rang."
Whilst we are disputing in what way the people shall be. taught,
ignorance is laying aside its ordinary garb of cowardice and
servility, and is putting on its natural properties of insolence and
ferocity. Let us set our hand to the work which is appointed for
us, before it be too late to work to a good end, if to do this work
at all.
Camden describes a place upon the estuary of the Humber which,
although a trivial place in modern days, is dear to every one familiar
with our old ecclesiastical history: "In the Roman times, not far
from its bank upon the little river Foulness (where Wighton a
small town, but well stocked with husbandmen, now stands), there
seems to have formerly stood Delgovitia; as is probable both from
the likeness and the signification of the name. For the British
word Delgwe (or rather Ddelw) signifies the statues or images of
the heathen gods; and in a little village not far off there stood an
idol-temple, which was in very great honour even in the Saxon
times, and, from the heathen gods in it, was then called God-mund-
mgham, and now, in the same sense, Godmanham." This is the
place which witnessed the conversion to Christianity of Edwin, King '
ofNorthumbria. The whole story of this conversion, as told by
±$ede, ,s one of those episodes that we call superstitious, in which
history reflects the confiding faith of popular tradition, which does

Chap. IH.J

OLD ENGLAND.

59

not resign itself to the belief that all worldly events depend solely
upon material influences. But one portion of this story has the
best elements of high poetry in itself, and has therefore gained
little by being versified even by Wordsworth. Edwin held a council
of his wise men, to inquire their opinion of the new doctrine which
was taught by the missionary Paulinus. In this council one thus
addressed him : " The- present life of man, 0 King, seems to me;
in comparison of that time which is unknown to us, like to a spar
row swiftly flying through the room, well warmed with the fire
made in the midst of it, wherein you sit at supper in the winter,
with commanders and ministers, whilst the storms of rain and snow
prevail abroad : the sparrow, I say, flying in at one door, and im
mediately out at another, whilst lie is within is not affected with
the winter storm ; but after a very brief interval of what is to him
fair weather and safety, he immediately vanishes out of your sight,
returning from one winter to another. So this life of man appears
for a moment; but of what went before, or what is to follow,
we are utterly ignorant. If, therefore, this new doctrine contains
something more certain, it seems justly to deserve to be followed.'
Never was a familiar image more beautifully applied ;' never was
there a more striking picture of ancient manners — the storm without,
the fire in the hall within, the king at supper with his great men
around, the open' doors through which the sparrow can flit. To this
poetical counsellor succeeded the chief priest of the idol-worship,
Coifi. He declared for the new faith, and advised that the heathen
altars should be destroyed. " Who," exclaimed the king, " shall first
desecrate their altars and their temples?" The priest answered,
" I ; for who can more properly than myself destroy these things
that I worshipped through ignorance, for an example to all others,
through the wisdom given me by the true God?"
" Prompt transformation works the novel lore.
The Council closed, the priest in full career
Hides forth, an armed man, and hurls a spear
To desecrate the fane which heretofore
He served in folly. " Woden falls, and Thor
Is overturned." Wordsworth.
The altars and images which the priest of Northumbria
overthrew have left no monuments in the land. They were not
built, like the Druidical temples, under the impulses of the great
system of faith which, dark as it was, had its foundations in
spiritual aspirations. The pagan worship which the Saxons brought
to this land was chiefly cultivated under its sensual aspects. The
Valhalla, or heaven of the brave, was a heaven of fighting and
feasting, of full meals of boar's flesh, and large draughts of mead.
Such a future called not for solemn temples, and altars where the
lowly and the weak might kneel in the belief that there was a ,
heaven for them, as well as for the mighty in battle. The idols
frowned, and the people trembled. But tiiis worship has marked
us, even to this hour, with the stamp of its authority. Our Sunday
is still the Saxon Sun's-day ; our Monday the Moon"s-day; our
Tuesday Tuisco's-day ; our Wednesday Woden's-day ; our Thursday
Thor's-day ; our Friday Friga's-day ; our Saturday Seater's-day.
This is one of the many examples of the incidental circumstances
of institutions surviving the institutions themselves — an example of
itself sufficient to show the folly of legislating against established
customs and modes of thought. The French republicans, with
every aid from popular intoxication, could not establish their
calendar for a dozen years. The Pagan Saxons have fixed their
names of the week-days upon Christian England for twelve centuries,
and probably for as long as England shall be a country.
Some of the material monuments of the ages after the departure
of the Romans, and before the Norman conquest, are necessarily
obscure in their origin and objects. It was once the custom to
refer some of the remains which we now call Druidical to the
period when Saxons and Danes were fighting for the possession of
the land — trophies of battle and of victory. There are some
monuments to which this origin is still assigned; and such an
origin has been ascribed to the remarkable stone at Forres, called
Sueno's Pillar (Fig. 207). It is a block of granite twenty-five
feet in height, and nearly four feet in breadth at its base. It is
sculptured iu the most singular manner, with representations of men
and horses in military array and warlike attitudes; some holding
up their shields in exultation, others joining hands in token of
fidelity. There is to be seen also the fight and the massacre of the
prisoners; and the whole is surmounted by something like an
elephant. On the other side of this monument is a large cross>
with figures *of persons in authority in amicable conference. It has
been held that all this represents the expulsion of some Scandinavian

adventurers from Scotland, who had long infested the country
about the promontory of Burghead, and refers also to a subsequent
peace between Malcolm, King of Scotland, and Sueno, King of
Norway. Be this as it may, the cross denotes the monument to
belong to the Christian period, though its objects were anything
but devotional. Not so the crosses at Sandbach, in Cheshire.
These are, no doubt, works of early piety; and they are stated by
Mr. Lysons to belong to a period not long subsequent to the intro
duction of Christianity amongst the Anglo-Saxons (Fig. 208).
If so, we may regard them with no common interest ; for the greater
monuments of that century, after the arrival of. Augustine, when
Christianity was spread throughout the land, are, as far as we
know and are taught to believe, almost utterly perished. Brixworth
Church, in Northamptonshire, whicli has been so subjected to
alteration upon alteration that an engraving would furnish no
notion of its peculiar early features, is considered by some to have
been erected in the time of the Romans. But this very ancient
specimen of ecclesiastical architecture would scarcely be so
interesting, even if its date were clearly proved, as the decided
remains of some church or monastic buildings of the sixth or seventh
centuries — even of some building contemporary with our illustrious
Alfred. There may be such, but antiquarianism is a jealous and
suspicious questioner, and calls for evidence at every step. We
are told by an excellent authority that " an interesting portion of
the Saxon church erected by Paulinus, or Albert, [at York] has
been recently brought to light beneath the choir of the present
cathedral." (Mr. Wellbeloved, in 'Penny Cyclopaedia.') This
church, founded by Edwin soon after his baptism, was undoubtedly
a stone building ; and it marks the progress of the arts in this
century, that in 669 Bishop Wilfred glazed the windows. The
glass for this purpose seems to have been" imported from abroad,
since the famous Benedict Biscop, Abbot of Wearmouth, is recorded
as the first who brought artificers skilled in the art of making
glass into this country from France. ('Pictorial History of
England,' vol. i.)
Wilfred found the church of York in a ruinous state, on taking
possession of the see. He roofed it with lead ; he put glass in the
place of the ancient lattice-work. Time has brought to light
some relics of this church at York, buried beneath the nobler Cathe
dral of a later age. It is probable that the more ancient churches
were as much removed and changed by the spirit of ecclesiastical
improvement as by the course of civil strife. One generation
repaired, amended, swept away, the work of previous generations.
We have seen this process in our own times, when marble columns
have been covered with plaster, and the decorated window with its
gorgeous tracery replaced by a viilanous casement. The Norman
church-builders did not so improve upon the Saxon ; but it is still
to be regretted that even their improvements, and those of the
builders who again remodelled the Norman work, have left us so
little that we can rely upon for a very high antiquity. It would be
something to look upon the church at Ripon which Wilfred built
of polished stone, and adorned with various columns and porticoes ;
or upon that at Hexham, which was proclaimed to have no equal
on this side the Alps. It would be something to find some frag
ment of the paintings which Benedict Biscop brought from Rome
to adorn his churches at Wearmouth and at Yarrow; but they
perished with his library under the ravaging Danes. More than
all, we should desire to look upon some fragment of that church
which the good and learned Aldhelm built at Malmesbury, and
whose consecration he has himself celebrated in Latin verses
of considerable spirit. He was a poet, too, in his vernacular
tongue; and he applied his poetry and his knowledge of music
to higher objects than his own gratification. The great Alfred
himself entered into his note-book the following anecdote of the
enlightened Abbot, which William of Malmesbury relates:—
" Aldhelm had observed with pain that the peasantry were become
negligent in their religious duties, and that no sooner was the
church service ended than they all hastened to their homes and
labours, and could with difficulty be persuaded to attend to the
exhortations of the preacher. He watched the occasion, and sta
tioned himself in the character of a minstrel on the bridge over
which the people had to pass, and soon collected a crowd of hearers
by the beauty of his verse. When he found that he had gained
possession of their attention, he gradually introduced, among the
popular poetry whicli he was reciting to them, words of a more
serious nature, till at length he succeeded in impressing upon their
minds a truer feeling of religious devotion." (Wright's ' Biographia
Britannica Literaria.') Honoured be the memory of the good
Abbot of Malmesbury !
The identical bridge upon which the minstrel stood has long
I 2

MB.— Saxon Erribleros of the Month oTFebrmrry.

Z3T.— Saxon Emblems of the'Month of AprlL

62

OLD ENGLAND.

[Book 1.

ago fallen into the narrow stream ; the church to which the preacher
invited the people by gentle words and sweet sounds has been
supplanted by a nobler church, surrounded by the ruins of a gorgeous
fabric of monastic splendour. We may not believe, say the anti
quaries, that the wonderful porches and the intersecting arches of
Malmesbury are of Saxon origin. But, in spite of the antiquaries,
they must be associated with the "beautiful memory of Aldhelm.
His name is not now spoken in that secluded town ; but the people
there have still their Saxon memories of ancient days. The poor,
who have extensive common-rights, say that they owe them all to
King Athelstan; the humble children who learn to read in an
ancient building called the Hall of St. John, connect their instruc
tion with the memory of some great man of old, who wished that
the poor should be taught and the indigent relieved,— for over the
ancient porch under which they enter is recorded that a worthy
burgher of Malmesbury in 1694 left ten pounds annually to instruct
the poor, in addition to a like donation from King Athelstan ! We
wish that throughout the land there were more such living memorials
of the past, even though they were the mere shadows of tradition.
It is well for the lowly cottagers of Malmesbury that they are in
blissful ignorance that the monument of their Saxon benefactor, in
the restored choir of their Abbey Church, belongs to a later period.
They look upon that recumbent effigy with reverence — they keep
the annual feast of Athelstan with rejoicing. The hero-worship of
Malmesbury is that of Athelstan. It has come down from the days
of Saxon song, when the victories of the grandson of Alfred were

thus celebrated : —

" Here Athelstan, King,
of earth the lord,
the giver of the bracelets of the nobles,
and his brother also,
Edmund the iEtheling,
the Elder, a lasting glory
¦won by slaughter in battle
¦with the edges of swords
at Brunenburgh.
The wall of shields they cleaved,
They hewed the nobles' banners."

But Athelstan left the memory of something better than victories.
He was a lawgiver; and there are traces in his additions to the Code
of Alfred of a public provision for the destitute amongst his subjects.
The traditions of Malmesbury have, we doubt not, a solid founda
tion. He was a scholar, and collected a library for his private use.
Some of these books were preserved at Bath up to the period of the
Reformation ; two of these precious manuscripts are in the Cotton
Collection in the British Museum. The Gospels upon which the
Saxon Kings are held to have taken their Coronation oath is one of
them (see Fac-simile of the 1st Chapter of St. John, Fig. 226).
It is not only at Malmesbury that the memory of Athelstan is to be
venerated. We have already alluded to the change of opinion which is
beginning to take place with regard to the remains of Saxon
architecture existing in this country (p. 54). We do not
profess to discuss controverted points, which would be of slight
interest to the general reader; and we shall therefore find it. the
safer course to describe our earliest cathedrals, and other grand
ecclesiastical structures, under the Norman period. But it is now
pretty generally admitted that many of our humble parish churches
may be safely referred to dates before the conquest; and some of
the characteristic features of these we shall now proceed to notice.
We believe, curious as this question naturally is, and especially
interesting as it must be at the present day, when our ecclesiastical
antiquities are become objects of such wide-spreading interest, that
no systematic attempt to fix the chronology of the earliest church
architecture has yet been made. In 1833 Mr. Thomas Rickman
thus wrote to the Society of Antiquaries : — " I was much impressed
by a conversation I had with an aged and worthy dean, who was
speaking on the subject of Saxon edifices, with a full belief that
they were numerous. He asked me if I had investigated those
churches which existed in places where 'Domesday-Book' states
that a church existed in King Edward's days ; and I was obliged
to confess I had not paid the systematic attention I ought to have
done to this point ; and I now wish to call the attention of the
Society to the propriety of having a list made of such edifices, that
they may be carefully examined." We are not aware that the
Society has answered the call ; but the course suggested by the
aged and worthy dean was evidently a most rational course, and it
is strange that it had been so long neglected. ' Domesday-Book '
records what churches existed in the days of Edward the Confessor ;

-does any church exist in the same place now? if so, what is the
character of that church? To procure answers is not a difficult
labour to set about by a Society ; but it is probable that it will be
accomplished, if at all, by individual exertion. Mr. Rickman has
himself done something considerable towards arriving, at the same
conclusions that a wider investigation would, we believe, fully
establish. In 1834 he addressed to the Society of Antiquaries
< Further Observations on the Ecclesiastical Architecture of France
and England,' in which the characteristics of Saxon remains are
investigated with professional minuteness, with reference to buildings
which the writer considers were erected before the year 1010: —
" As to the masonry, there is a peculiar sort of quoining, which
is used without plaster as well as with, consisting of a long stone
set at the corner, and a short one lying on it, and bounding one
way or both into the wall; when plaster is used, these quoins are
raised to allow for the thickness of the plaster. Another peculiarity
is the use occasionally of very large and heavy blocks of stone in
particular parts of the work, while the rest is mostly of small
stones ; the use of what is called Roman bricks ; and occasionally
of an arch with straight sides to the upper part, instead of curves.
The want of buttresses may be here noticed as being general in
these edifices, an occasional use of portions with mouldings, much
like Roman, and the use in windows of a sort of rude balustre.
The occasional use of a rude round staircase, west of the tower, for
the purpose of access to the upper floors ; and at times the use of.
rude -carvings, much more rude than the generality of Norman
work, and carvings which are clear imitations of Roman work. . .
" From what I have seen, I am inclined to believe that there
are many more churches which contain remains of this character,
but they are very difficult to be certain about, and also likely to be
confounded with common quoins, and common dressings in counties
where stone is not abundant, but where flint, rag, and rough rubble
plastered over, form the great extent of walling.
"In various churches it has happened that a very plain arch
between nave and chancel has been left as the only Norman feature,
while both nave and chancel have been rebuilt at different times,
but each leaving the chancel arch standing. I am disposed to think
that some of these plain chancel arches will, on minute examination,
turn out to be of this Saxon style."
Mr. Rickman then gives a list of " twenty edifices in thirteen
counties, and extending from Whittingham, in Northumberland,
north, to Sompting, on the coast of Sussex, south ; and from Barton
on the Humber, on the coast of Lincolnshire, east, to North Bur-
combe, on the west." He justly observes, " This number of churches,
extending over so large a space of country, and bearing a clear
relation of style to each other, forms a class much too important and
extensive to be referred to any anomaly or accidental deviation."
Since Mr. RicUman's list was published many other churches have
been considered to have the same " clear relation of style," We shall
therefore notice a few only of the more interesting.
The church of Earl's Barton, in Northamptonshire, is a work of
several periods of our Gothic architecture ; but the tower is now
universally admitted to be of Saxon construction (Fig. 209). It
exhibits many of the peculiarities recognised as the characteristics
of this architecture. 1st, We have the " long stone set at the corner,
and a short one lying oh it" — the long and short work, as it is com
monly called (Fig. 201). These early churches and towers some
times exhibit, in later portions, the more regular quoined work in
remarkable contrast (Fig. 200). 2nd, The Tower of Earl's Barton
presents the " sort of rude balustre, such as might be supposed to'
be copied by a very rough workman by remembrance of a Roman
balustre" (Fig. 202). 3rd, It shows the form of the triangular arch,
which, as well as the balustre, are to be seen in Anglo-Saxon
manuscripts. 4th, It exhibits, " projecting a few inches from the
surface of the wall, and running up vertically, narrow ribs, or
square-edged strips of stone, bearing, from their position, a rude
similarity to pilasters." (Bloxam's ' Gothic Ecclesiastical Archi
tecture.') The writer of the valuable manual we have quoted adds,
" The towers of the churches of Earl's Barton and Barnack, North
amptonshire, and one of the churches of Barton-upon-Humber,
Lincolnshire, are so covered with these narrow projecting strips of
stonework, that 'the surface of the wall appears divided into rudely
formed panels." 5th, The west doorway of this tower of Earl's
Barton, as well as the doorway of Barnack, exhibit something like
" a rude imitation of Roman mouldings in the impost and archi
trave." The larger openings, such as doorways, of these early
Churches generally present the semicircular arch ; but the smaller
such as windows, often exhibit the triangular arch (Figs. 203
205). The semicircular arch is, however, found in the windows
of some churches as well as the straight -lined, as at Sompting in

Chap. III.]

OLD ENGLAND.

63

Sussex (Fig. 206). In this church the doorway has a column with
a rude capital, "having much of a Roman character" (Fig. 204).
A doorway remaining of the old palace at Westminster exhibits the
triangular arch (Fig. 212). The windows of the same building
present the circular arch, with the single zigzag moulding
(Fig. 211).
Mr. Rickman has mentioned the plain arch which is sometimes
found between the chancel and nave, which he supposes to be Saxon.
In some churches arches of the same character divide the nave from
the aisles. Such is the case in the ancient church of St. Michael's,
St. Alban's, of the interior of which we give an engraving (Fig.
196). The date of this church is now confidently held to be the
tenth century, receiving the authority of Matthew Paris, who states
that it was erected by the Abbot of St. Alban's in 948.
The church at Bosham, in Sussex, which is associated with the
memory of the unfortunate Harold, is represented in the Bayeux
tapestry, of which we shall hereafter have fully to speak (Fig. 216).
It is now held that the tower of the " church is of that construction
as to leave little doubt of its being the same that existed when the
church was entered by Harold."
It would be tedious were we to enter into any more minute
description of the Anglo-Saxon ecclesiastical remains. The subject,
however, is still imperfectly investigated : and the reader will be
startled by the opposite opinions that he will encounter if his in
quiries conduct him to the more elaborate works which touch upon
this theme. It is singular that, admitting some works to be Saxon,
the proof which exists in the general resemblance of other works is
not held to be satisfactory, without it is corroborated by actual date.
Mr. Britton, for example, to whom every student of our national
antiquities is under deep obligation, especially for having rescued
their delineation from tasteless artists, to present them to our own
age with every advantage of accurate drawing and exquisite en
graving, thus describes the portion of Edward the Confessor's work
at Westminster which is held to be of the later Saxon age; but he
admits, with the greatest reluctance, the possibility of the existence
of other Saxon works, entire, whicli earlier antiquaries called Saxon.
('Architectural Antiquities,' vol. v.) The engraving, Fig. 210,
illustrates Mr. Britton's description : —
" There are considerable remains of one building yet standing,
j>4hough now principally confined to vaults and cellaring, which may
' be justly attributed to the Saxon era, since there can be no doubt
that they once formed a part of the monastic edifices of Westminster
Abbey, probably the church, which was rebuilt by Edward the
Confessor in the latter years of his life. These remains compose
the east side of the dark and principal cloisters, and range from the
college dormitory on the south to the Chapter-house on the north.
The most curious part is the vaulted chamber, opening from the
principal cloister, in which the standards for the trial of the Pix
are kept, under the keys of the Chancellor of the Exchequer and
other officers of the Crown. The vaulting is supported by plain
groins and semicircular arches, which rest on a massive central
column, having an abacus moulding, and a square impost capital,
irregularly fluted. In their original state, these remains, which are
now subdivided by several cross walls, forming store-cellars, &c,
appear to have composed only one apartment, about one hundred
and ten feet in length and thirty feet in breadth, the semicircular
arches of which were partly sustained by a middle row of eight
short and massive columns, with square capitals diversified by a
difference in the sculptured ornaments. These ancient vestiges now
form the basement story of the College School, and of a part of the
Dean and Chapter's Library."
One of the most curious representations of an Anglo-Saxon
Church is found in a miniature accompanying a Pontifical in the
Public Library at Rouen, which gives the Order for the Dedication
and consecration of Churches. (See Fig. 215, where the engraving
is accurately stated to be from the Cotton MS.) This miniature,
which is in black outline, represents the ceremony of dedication.
The bishop, not wearing the mitre, but bearing his pastoral staff, is
in the act of knocking at the door of the church with this symbol
of his authority. The upper group, behind the bishop, represents
priests and monks; the lower group exhibits the laity, who were
accustomed to assemble on such occasions with solemn rejoicing.
The barrels are supposed to contain the water which was to be
blessed and used in the dedication. The form of the church, and
the accessories of its architecture, are very curious. The perspec
tive is altogether false, so that we see two sides of the building
at the same time ; and the proportionate size of the parts is quite
• disregarded, so that the door reaches almost to the roof. But the
form of the towers, the cock on the steeple, the ornamental iron-work
of the door, show how few essential changes have been produced in

eight hundred or a thousand years. Some ascribe the date of this
manuscript to the eighth century, and others to the close of the
tenth century. The figures .of the bishop and priest (Fig. 221)
are from the same curious relic of Anglo-Saxon art ; for all agree
that this Pontifical is of English origin. In the ' Archaeologia,'
vol. xxv., is a very interesting description of this manuscript, in a
letter from John Gage, Esq. The writer, in his introductory
remarks, gives some particulars of the ancient practice of the dedi
cation of churches : —
" Gregory the Great, in his instructions to St. Augustine, bade
him not destroy the Pagan temples, but the idols within them;
directing the precinct to be purified with holy water, altars to be
raised, and sacred relics deposited ; and because the English were
accustomed to indulge in feasts to their gods, the prudent Pontiff
ordained the day of dedication, or the day of the nativity of the
Saint in whose honour the Church should be dedicated, a festival,
when the people might have an opportunity of assembling, as before,
in green bowers round their favourite edifice, and enjoy something
of former festivity. This was the origin of our country wakes,
rush-bearings, and church ales." When Archbishop Wilfred had
built his church at Ripon, the dedication was attended by Egfrid,
King of Northumbria, with his brother iElwin, and the great men
of his kingdom. The church was dedicated, the altar consecrated,
the people came and received communion ; and then the Archbishop
enumerated the lands with which the church was endowed. After
the ceremony the King feasted the people for three days. The
dedication of the church at Winchelcumbe was marked by an event
which showed that the Christian morality did not evaporate in ritual
observances. Kenulf, King of Mercia, with Bishops and Ealdor-
men, was present, and he brought with him Eadbert, the captive
King of Kent. " At the conclusion of the ceremony, Kenulf led
his captive to the altar, and as an act of clemency granted him his
freedom." This was a more acceptable offering than his distribu
tion of gold and silver to piiests and people. The dedication of the
conventional church at Ramsey is described by the Monk of Ramsey,
who gives some curious details of the architectural construction of
a former church. In 969 a church had been founded by the Eal-
dorman Aylwin, which is recorded to have been " raised on a solid
foundation, driven in by the battering-ram, and to have had two
towers above the roof; the lesser was in front, at the west end; the
greater, at the intersection of the four parts of the building, rested
on four columns, connected together by arches carried from one to
the other. In consequence, however, of a settlement in the centre
tower, which threatened ruin to the rest of the building, it became
necessary, shortly after the church was finished, to take down the
whole and rebuild it." The dedication of this church was accom
panied by a solemn recital of its charter of privileges. " Then,
placing his right hand on a copy of the Gospels, Aylwin swore to
defend the rights and privileges, as well of Ramsey, as of other
neighbouring churches which were named."
But the narrative of the circumstances attending the original
foundation of this church, as related by Mr. Sharon Turner from
the ' History of the Monk of Ramsey,' are singularly instructive as
to the impulses which led the great and the humble equally to
contribute to the establishment of monastic institutions. They
were told that the piety of the men who had renounced the world
brought blessings on the country ; they were urged to found such
institutions, and to labour in their erection. Thus was the Eal-
dorman, who founded the church of Ramsey, instructed by Bishop
Oswald ; and to the spiritual exhortation the powerful man was not
indifferent. " The Ealdorman replied, that he had some hereditary land
surrounded with marshes, and remote from human ' intercourse.
It was near a forest of various sorts of trees, which had several
open spots of good turf, and others of fine grass for pasture. No
buildings had been upon it but some sheds for his herds, who had
manured the soil. They went together to view it. They found
that the waters made it an island. It was so lonely, and yet had
so many conveniences for subsistence and secluded devotion, that
the bishop decided it to be an advisable station. Artificers were
collected. The neighbourhood joined in the labour. Twelve
monks came from another cloister to form the new fraternity.
Their cells and a chapel were soon raised. In the next winter
they provided the iron and timber, and utensils, that were wanted
for a handsome church. In the spring, amid the fenny soil, a firm
foundation was laid. The workmen laboured as much fcr devotion
as for profit. Some brought the stones ; others made the cement ;
others applied the wheel machinery that raised the stones on high ;
and in a reasonable time the sacred edifice with two towers appeared,
on what had been before a desolate waste." Wordsworth has made

2«.--Saxun Emblems oi the Month of May.

213.— Trombones, or Flutes. From the Cotton
MS. Cleopatra.

247.— Dinner Party. Cotton MS.

249.— Drinking from Cows' Horns. Cotton MS.

2 16.— Saxon Emblems of the Month of June.

64

W IP

f(^Q^%^)

254.— Saxon Emblems of tbe month of July.

255.<— Threshing and Winnowing Corn.

I

258.— Saiion Emblems of the month of August.;

N«. 9.

[OLD ENGLAND.]

65

66

OLD ENGLAND.

[Book

this description the foundation of one of his fine ' Ecclesiastical
Sketches :' — " By such examples moved to unbaught pains,
The people worfc like congregated bees ;
Eager to build the quiet fortresses
Where Piety, as they believe, obtains
From Heaven a general blessing ; timely rains,
Or needful sunshine ; prosperous enterprise,
And peace and equity."
Monarchs vied with the people in what they deemed a work ac
ceptable to heaven. Westminster Abbey was built by Edward the
Confessor, by setting aside the tenth of his revenue for this holy
purpose. " The devout and pious king has dedicated that place to
God, both for its neighbourhood to the famous and wealthy city,
and for its pleasant situation among fruitful grounds and green
fields, and for the nearness of the principal river of England, which
from all parts of the world conveys whatever is necessary to the
adjoining city." Camden quotes this from a contemporary histo
rian, and adds, " Be pleased also to take the form and figure of this
building out of an old manuscript : The chief aisle of the church is
roofed with lofty arches of square work, the joints answering one
another ; but on both sides it is enclosed with a double arch of
stones firmly cemented and knit together. Moreover, the cross of
the church, made to encompass the middle choir of the singers, and
by its double supporter on each side to bear up the lofty top of the
middle tower, first rises singly with a low and strong arch, then
mounts higher with several winding stairs artificially contrived, and
last of all with a single wall reaches to the wooden roof, which is
well covered with lead."
The illuminated manuscripts of the Anglo-Saxon period (and
there are many not inferior in value and interest to the Pon
tifical which we have recently pointed out) furnish the most authen
tic materials for a knowledge of the antiquities of our early Church.
It is a subject of which we cannot here attempt to give any con
nected view. Our notices must be essentially fragmentary. As
works of art we shall have more fully to describe some of the Illumi
nations which are found in our public and private libraries. In
connection with our church history, it is scarcely necessary for us
to do more than point attention to the spirited representation of
St. Augustine (Fig. 217) ; to the same founder of Christianity
amongst the Anglo-Saxons (Fig. 222); to the portrait of St.
Dunstan (Fig. 218) ; and the kneeling figure of the same energetic
enthusiast (Fig. 224). The group representing St. Cuthbert and
King Egfrid (Fig. 219) belongs to the Norman period of art.

The picture history of the manners and customs of a remote pe
riod is perhaps more interesting and instructive, is certainly more
to be relied on, than any written description. It is difficult for a
writer not to present the forms and hues of passing things as they
are seen through the glass of his own imagination. But the drafts
man, especially in a rude stage of art, is in a great degree a faithful
copyist of what he sees before him. The paintings and sculptures
of Egypt furnish the best commentary upon many portions of the
Scripture record. The coloured walls of the ruined houses of
Pompeii exhibit the domestic life of the Roman people with much
greater distinctness than the incidental notices of their poets and
historians. This is especially the case as regards the illuminations
which embellish many Anglo-Saxon manuscripts. Some of these
were not intended by the draftsmen of those days to convey any
notion of how the various ranks around them were performing the
ordinary occupations of life: they were chiefly for the purpose
of representing, historically as it were, events and personages with
which the people were familiarised by their spiritual instructors.
But, knowing nothing of those refinements of art which demand
accuracy of costume, and caring nothing for what we call anachro
nisms, the limners of the Anglo-Saxon chronicles and paraphrases
painted the Magi in the habits of their own kings, riding on horses
with the equipment of the time (Fig. 283); they put their
own harp into the hands of the Royal Psalmist (Fig. 284) ; and
they exhibited their own methods of interment when they delineated
the raising of Lazarus (Fig. 289). There are some, but few,
Anglo-Saxon pictures of a different character. They are intended
to represent the industrious occupations, the sports, and the enter
tainments of their own nation. A series of such pictures is found in
a Saxon Calender, supposed by Mr. Strutt to be written at the com
mencement of the eleventh century, and which is preserved in the
Cotton Library at the British Museum (Tiberius, B. 5). The
Calendar is written partly in Latin, and partly in Saxon! The
pictures represent the characteristic employments of each Month of
the year. The series of engravings of the months, which occupy a

part of this and of the previous sheet of our work, are principally
founded, with corrections of the drawing, upon the illustrations of
the old Calendar. We probably cannot adopt a more convenient
mode of briefly describing the occupations of our -Anglo-Saxon
ancestors, than by following the order which these pictorial anti
quities suggest to us, January.
The central portion of the engraving (Fig. 227) represents the
ploughman at his labour. Four oxen are employed in the team
and they are guided by a man in front, who bears a long staff. The
sower follows immediately behind the ploughman. Fig. 238,
which is a literal copy from another manuscript, presents, at once,
the operations of ploughing, sowing, mowing, measuring corn into
sacks, and the harvest supper. Fig. 256 is a rude representation,
from the Bayeux tapestry, of the wheel-plough. Fig. 257, from
the same authority, shows us the sower following the harrow— a
more accurate, representation than that of the sower following the
plough. We thus see that the opening of the year was the time
in which the ground was broken up, and the seed committed to the
bounty of heaven, We cannot with any propriety assume that the
seed was literally sown in the coldest month, although it is possible
that the winter began earlier than it now does. December was
emphatically called Winter-monat, winter-month. The Anglo-
Saxon name of January was equally expressive of its fierce and
gloomy attributes ; its long nights, when men and cattle were
sheltering from the snow-storm and the frost, but the hungry wolf
was prowling around the homestead. Verstegan says, " The montli
which we now call January, they called Wolf-monat, to wit, wolf.
month, because people are wont always in that month to be in more
danger to be devoured of wolves than in any season else of the
year; for that, through the extremity of cold and snow, these
ravenous beasts could not find of other beasts sufficient to feed
upon." We must consider, therefore, that the Saxon emblems for
January are rather indicative of the opening of the year than of
the first month of the year. There are preserved in the Cotton
Library some very curious dialogues composed by Alfric of
Canterbury, who lived in the latter part of the tenth century,
which were for the instruction of the Anglo-Saxon youth in the
Latin language, upon the principle of interlinear translation ; and
in these the ploughman says, " I labour much. I go out at day
break, urging the oxen to the field, and I yoke them to the plough.
It is not yet so stark winter that I dare keep close at home, for
fear of my lord," (Turner's ' Anglo-Saxons.' ) We thus see that
the ploughing is done after the harvest, before the winter sets in.
The ploughman continues, " But the oxen being yoked, and the
shear and coulter fastened on, I ought to plough every day one
entire field or more. I have a boy to threaten the oxen with a
goad [the long staff represented in the engraving], who is now
hoarse through cold and bawling. I ought also to fill the bins of the
oxen with hay, and water them, and carry out their soil." The
daily task of the ploughman indicates an advanced state of hus
bandry. The land was divided into fields ; we know from Saxon
grants that they had hedges and ditches. He was as careful, too,
to carry upon the land the ordure of the oxen, as if he had studied
a modern 'Muck-Manual.' He knew the value of such labour,
and set about it probably in a more Scientific manner than many of
those who till the same land nine hundred years after him. Mr.
Sharon Turner has given a brief and sensible account of the Anglo-
Saxon husbandry, from which the following is an extract. : 
" When the Anglo-Saxons invaded England, they came into a
country which had been under the Roman power for about four
hundred years, and where agriculture, after its more complete
subjection by Agricola, had been so much encouraged, that it had
become one of the western granaries of the empire. The Briton*
therefore, of the fifth century may be considered to have pursued
the best system of husbandry then in use, and their lands to have
been extensively cultivated with all those exterior circumstances
which mark established proprietorship and improvement : as small
farms; inclosed fields; regular divisions into meadow, arable,
pasture, and wood ; fixed boundaries ; planted hedges ; artificial
dykes and ditches ; selected spots for vineyards, gardens, and
orchards; connecting roads and paths; scattered villages, and
larger towns ; with appropriated names for everv spot and object
that marked the limits of each property, or the course of each way
All these appear in the earliest Saxon charters, and before the
^ combating invaders had time or ability to make them, if they had
not found them in the island. Into such a country the An-lo-
baxon adventurers came, and by these facilities to rural civilization
soon, became an agricultural people. The natives, whom .'they

Chap. III.]

OLD ENGLAND.

67

despised, conquered, and enslaved, became their educators and
servants in the new arts, which they had to learn, of grazing and
tillage ; and the previous cultivation practised by the Romanised
Britons will best account for the numerous divisions, and accurate
and precise descriptions of land which occur in almost all the Saxon
charters. No modern conveyance could more accurately distinguish
or describe the boundaries of the premises which it conveyed."
(' History of the Anglo-Saxons,' Vol. III., Appendix, No. 2.)
The side emblems of January (Fig. 227) are from manuscripts
whicli incidentally give appropriate pictures of the seasons. The
man bearing fuel and the two-headed Janus belong the one to
literal and the other to learned art. It is difficult to understand
how we retained the names of the week-days from Saxon paganism,
and adopted the classical names of the months.
February.
" They called February Sprout -kele, by kele meaning the kele-
wort, which we now call the cole-wort, the great pot-wort in time
long past that our ancestors used ; and the broth made therewith
was thereof also called kele. For before we borrowed from the
French the name of potage, and the name of herb, the one in our
own language was called kele, and the other wort ; and as the
kele-wort, or potage herb, was the chief winter wort for the sus
tenance of the husbandman, so was it the first herb that in this
month began to yield out wholesome young sprouts, and consequently
gave thereunto the name of Sprout-kele." So writes old Verstegan ;
and, perhaps, if we had weighed earlier what he thus affirms, we
might have better understood Shakspere when he sings of the wintery
time, " While greasy Joan doth kele the pot."
The Saxon pictures of February show us the chilly man warming
his hands at the blazing fire ; and the labourers more healthily
employed in the woods and orchards, pruning their fruit-trees and
lopping their timber (Fig. 228). Spenser has mingled these em
blems in his description of January, in the ' Faery Queen ;' but he
carries on the pruning process into February : —
" Then came old January, wrapped well
In many weeds to keep the cold away ;
Yet did lie quake and quiver like to quell,
And blow his nails to warm them^if he may ;
For they were mimb'd with holding all the day
An hatchet keen, with which he felled wood
And from the trees did lop the needless spray."
March.
The picture in the Saxon Calendar (Fig. 236) now gives us dis
tinctly the seed-time. But the tools of the labourers are the spade
and the pickaxe. We are looking upon the garden operations of our
industrious forefathers. They called this month " Lenet-monat,"
length-month (from the lengthening of the days) ; " and this month
being by our ancestors so called when they received Christianity,
and consequently therewith the ancient Christian custom of fasting,
they called this chief season of fasting the fast of Lenet, because of
the Lcnet-monat, wherein the most parts of the time of this fasting
always fell."
The great season of abstinence from flesh, and the regular recur
rence through the year of days of fasting, rendered a provision
for the supply of fish to the population a matter of deep concern to
their ecclesiastical instructors. In the times when the Pagan Saxons
were newly converted to Christianity, the missionaries were the
great civilizers, and taught the people how to avail themselves of
the abundant supply of food which the sea offered to the skilful and
the enterprising. Bede tells us that Wilfred so taught the people
of Sussex. " The bishop, when he came into the province, and found
so great misery of famine, taught them to get their food by fishing.
Their sea and rivers abounded in fish, and yet the people had no
skill to take them, except only eels. The bishop's men having
gathered eel-nets everywhere, cast them into the sea, and by the
help of God took three hundred fishes of several sorts, the which
being divided into three parts, they gave a hundred to the poor, a
hundred to those of whom they had the nets, and kept a hundred
for their own use." The Anglo-Saxons had oxen and sheep ; but
their chief reliance for flesh meat, especially through the winter
season, was upon the swine, which, although private property, fed by
thousands in the vast woods with which the country abounded. Our
word Bacon is " of the beechen-tree, anciently called bucon and
whereas swine's flesh is now called by the name of bacon, it grew
only at the first unto such as were fatted with bucon or beech mast."
As abundant as the swine were the eels that flourished in their
ponds and ditches. The consumption of this species of fish appears

from many incidental circumstances to have been very great. Rents
were paid in eels, boundaries of lands were defined by eel-dykes
and the monasteries required a regular supply of eels from their
tenants and dependents. We find, however, that the people had a
variety of fish, if they could afford to purchase of the industrious
labourers in the deep. In the ' Dialogues of Alfric,' which we have
already quoted from Mr. Turner, there is the following colloquy
with a fisherman : " What gettest thou by thine art ? — Big loaves,
clothing, and money. How do you take them ? — I ascend my ship,
and cast my net into the river ; I also throw in a hook, a bait,
and a rod. Suppose the fishes are unclean ? — I throw the unclean
out, and take the clean for food. Where do you sell your fish ? —
In the city. Who buys them ? — The citizens ; I cannot take so
many as I can sell. AV^hat fishes do you take ? — Eels, haddocks,
minnies, and eel-pouts, skate and lampreys, and whatever swims in
the river. Why do you not fish in the sea, ? — Sometimes I do ; but
rarely, because a great ship is necessary there. What do you take
in the sea?— Herrings and salmons, porpoises, sturgeons, oysters
and crabs, muscles, winckles, cockles, flounders, plaice, lobsters
and such like. Can you take a Whale ? — No, it is dangerous to take
a whale ; it is safer for me to go to the river with my ship than to
go with many ships to hunt whales. Why ? — Because it is more
pleasant for me to take fish which I can kill with one blow ; yet
many take whales without danger, and then they get a great price ;
but I dare not from the fearfuluess of my mind." We thus see
that three centuries after Wilfred had taught the people of Sussex
to obtain something more from the waters than the rank eels in
their mud-ponds, the produce of the country's fishery had become
an article of regular exchange. The citizens bought of the fisher
man as much fish as he could sell ; the fisherman obtained big loaves
and clothing from the citizens. The enterprise which belongs to
the national character did not rest satisfied with the herrings and
salmons of the sea. Though the little fisherman crept along his
shore, there were others who went with many ships to hunt whales.
We cannot have a more decisive indication of the general improve
ment which had followed in the wake of Christianity, even during a
period of constant warfare with predatory invaders.
April.
The illumination of the Saxon Calendar for this month represents
three persons elevated on a sort of throne, each with drinking-cups
in their hands, and surrounded with attendants upon their festivities
(Figs. 237, 267). Strutt, in his description of this drawing, says,
" Now, taking leave of the laborious husbandman, we see the noble
man regaling with his friends, and passing this pleasant month in
banquetings and music." But he assigns no cause for the appro
priateness of this jollity to the particular season. Is not this pic
ture an emblem of the gladness with which the great festival of
Easter was held after the self-denials of Lent ? April was called
by the Anglo-Saxons " by the name of Oster-monat ; some think,
of a goddess called Goster, whereof I see no great reason, for if it
took appellation of such a goddess (a supposed causer of the easterly
winds), it seemeth to have been somewhat by some miswritten, and
should rightly be Oster and not Goster. The winds indeed, by
ancient observation, were found in this month most commonly to
blow from the east, and east in the Teutonic is Ost, and Ost-eud,
which rightly in English is East-end, hath that name for the
eastern situation thereof, as to the ships it appeareth which through
the narrow seas do come from the west. So as our name of the
feast of Easter may be as much to say as the feast of Oster, being
yet at this present in Saxony called Ostern, which cometh of
Oster-monat, their and our old name of April." Those who are
banqueting on the dais in the illumination, have each cups in their
hands ; the man sitting at their feet is filling a horn from a
tankard ; the young man on the right is drinking from a horn.
There is a clear distinction between the rank of the persons assem
bled at this festivity ; and the difference of the vessels which they
are using for their potations might imply that the horns were filled
with the old Saxon ale or mead, and the cups with the more luxu
rious wine. In Alfric's Colloquy a lad is asked what he drank ;
and he answers, " Ale if I have it, or water if I have not." He
is further asked why he does not drink wine, and he replies, " I am
not so rich that I can buy me wine, and wine is not the drink of
children or the weak-minded, but of the elders and the wise." But
if we may reason from analogy, the drinking-horn had a greater im
portance attached to it than the drinking-cup. Inheritances of land
were transferred by the transfer of a horn ; estates were held in
fee by a horn. The horn of Ulphus (Fig. 292) is a remarkable
curiosity still preserved in the Sacristy of the Cathedral at York.

3.— Saxon Emblems of the month of September,

/i^fl. ^ £l

T/rV^

205.— Dinner : The Company pledging each other. (Cotton MS.)

264.— Saxon Emblems of the month of October.
68
ssgflips'

27*.— Saxon Emblems of the month of December.

FQ

70

OLD ENGLAND.

[Book

Ulphus was a Danish nobleman of the time of Canute, who, as
Camden informs us, " By reason of the difference which was like to
rise between his sons about the sharing of Sis lands and lordships
after his death, resolved to make thein all alike ; and thereupon
coming to York with that horn wherewith he was used to drink,
filled it with wine, and kneeling devoutly before the altar of God
and St Peter, prince of the apostles, drank the wine, and by that
ceremony enfeoffed this church with all his lands and revenues."
During the Civil Wars the horn of Ulphus came into the possession
of Lord Fairfax, after being sold to a goldsmith ; and it was subse
quently restored to the church by the Fairfax family in 1675. The
Busey family in Berkshire hold their possessions by a horn given to
their ancestors by King Canute (Fig. 290). So Camden informs us ;
though the inscription upon the horn which records the fact (Fig.
291) is held by Camden's editor, Bishop Gibson, to be of a much
more recent date. Nearly all the Saxon representations of convi
vial meetings — and these are sufficiently numerous to furnish pretty
clear evidence of the hospitality of that age — exhibit the guests for
the most part drinking from horns (Fig. 249). Whether the wine
or mead were drunk from horn or cup, the early custom of pledging
appears to have been universal (Fig. 265). According to the old
chroniclers, it was the first wine-pledge that delivered over Britain
to the power of the Saxons, when the beautiful Rowena sat down in
the banqueting-hall by the side of Vortigern, and betrayed him by
her wine-cup, and her Waes Heal (Be of health). Robert of Glo-
cester has recorded this first wassail in his rough rhyme, which has
been thus paraphrased :
" ' Health, my Lord King,' the sweet Rowena said ;
* Health,' cried the Chieftain to the Saxon maid ;
Then gaily rose, and, 'mid the concourse wide,
Kissed her hale lips, and placed her by his side.
At the soft scene such gentle thoughts abound,
That healths and kisses 'mongst the guests went round :
From this the social custom took its rise ;
We still retain and still must keep the prize."
Selden, who gives the story in his Notes to Drayton, conjectures of
the wassail of the English that it was "an unusual ceremony among
the Saxons before Hengist, as a note of health-wishing (and so per
haps you. might make it wish-heil), which was expressed among
other nations in
tresses and friends."

that form of drinking to the health of their mis-

May.
Spenser has clothed his May with all the attributes of poetry : —
" Then came fair May, the fairest maid on ground,
Deck'd all with dainties of her season's pride,
And throwing flowers out of her lap around :
Upon two Brethren's shoulders she did ride,
The Twins of Leda ; which on either side
Supported her like to their sovereign Queen :
Lord ! how all creatures laugh'd when her they spied,
And leap'd and dane'd as they had ravish'd been,
And Cupid self about her fluttered all in green."
The Saxon name of the month has a pastoral charm' about it
which is as delightful as the gorgeous imagery of the great poet.
" The pleasant month of May they termed by the name of Tri-
milki, because in that month they began to milk their kine three
times in the day." The illumination of the Calendar carries us into
the pleasant fields, where the sheep are nibbling the thymy grass,
and the old shepherd, seated upon a bank, is looking upon the lamb
which the labourer bears in his arms. The shepherd describes his
duty in the Colloquy of Alfric : " In the first part of the morning
I drive my sheep to their pasture, and stand over them in heat and
in cold with dogs? lest the wolves destroy them. I lead them back to
their folds and milk them twice a day, and I move their folds, and
make cheese and butter ; and I am faithful to my lord." The gar
ments of the Anglo-Saxons, both male and female, were linen as
well as woollen ; but we can easily judge that in a country whose
population was surrounded by vast forests and dreary marshes, wool,
the warmer material of clothing, would be of the first importance.
The fleece whicli the shepherd brought home in the pleasant summer
season was duly spun throughout the winter, by the females of
every family, whatever might be their rank. King Edward the
Elder commanded that his daughters should be instructed in the use
of the distaff. Alfred, in his will, called the female part of his family
the spindle side. At this day, true to their ancient usefulness (the form
of which, we hope not the substance, has passed away), unmarried
ladies are called spinsters. But. the Anglo-Saxon ladies attained a
high degree of skill in the ornamental work belonging to clothing

The Norman historians record their excellence with the needle,
and their skill in embroidery. Minute descriptions of dress are not
amongst the most amusing of reading, although they are highly
valuable to the systematic chronicler of manners. It may be suffi
cient for us to point attention, first to the cloaks, the plain and em
broidered tunics, and the shoes of the males (Fig. 285, and inciden
tally in other Figures). These were the loose and flowing garments
of the superior classes, a costume certainly of great beauty. The
close tunic of the labourers (Fig. 255) is distinguished by the same
fitness for the rank and occupation of the wearers.^ The practice
of bandaging or cross-gartering the hose is indicated in many Anglo-
Saxon drawings (Figs. 284, 288), Secondly, the ladies wore a long
and ample garment with loose sleeves (the gunna, whence our
gown), over a closer-fitting one, which had tight sleeves reaching
to the wrist ; over these a mantle was worn by the superior classes,
and a sort of hood or veil upon the head (Figs. 286, 287). Those
who desire further information upon the subject of the Anglo-Saxon
costume may consult Mr. Planche's valuable little work upon ' British
Costume,' or the ' Pictorial History of England,',Book II., Chap.
VI. June.
The emblem which we have given for this month (Fig. 246) is
assigned to July in the Saxon Calender; but Mr. Strutt is of
opinion that the illuminator transposed the emblems of June and
July, as there would be no leisure for felling trees during the
harvest time, which is represented in the original as taking place
in June and in August. The field operations of August are pro
perly a continuation of those of July, according to Mr. Strutt.
But it is not improbable that the hay harvest was meant to be re
presented by one illumination, and the grain harvest by the other.
June was called by a name which describes the pasturing of cattle
in the fields not destined for winter fodder. These were the
meadows, which were too wet and rank for the purposes of hay.
The blythe business of hay-making was upon the uplands. Verste-
gan says : " Unto June they gave the name of Weyd-monat, be
cause their beasts did then weyd in the meadows, that is to say, go
to feed there, and thereof a meadow is also in the Teutonic called
a weyd, and of weyd we yet retain our word wade, which we under
stand of going through watery places, such as meadows are wont to
be." The felling of trees in the height of summer, when the sap was
up, was certainly not for purposes of timber. It was necessary to pro
vide a large supply of fuel for winter use. In grants of land sufficient
wood for burning was constantly permitted to be cut ; and every
estate had its appropriate quantity of wood set out for fuel and for
building. July.
This was the Heu-monat or Hey-monat, the Hay-month. The
July of Spenser bears the scythe and the sickle : — .
"Behind his back a scythe, and by his side
Under his belt he bore a sickle circling wide."
These instruments were probably indifferently used in the har
vests of the Anglo-Saxons, as they still are in many of our English
counties (Figs. 254, 258). August.
This was especially the harvest-month. "August they call
Arn-monat, more rightly Barn-monat, intending thereby the then
filling of their barns with corn." The arable portion of an estate
was probably comparatively small. The population of the towns
was supplied with corn from the lands in their immediate vicinity.
There was no general system of exchange prevailing throughout
the country. In the small farms enough corn was grown for do
mestic use; and when it failed, as it often did, before the succeed
ing harvest, the cole-wort and the green pulse were the welcome
substitutes. Wheaten bread was not in universal use. The youn<r
monks of the Abbey of St. Edmund ate the cheaper barley bread!
Thetaker, in Alfric's Colloquy, answers to the question of " What
use is your art? we can live long without you : "— » You may live
through some space without my art, but not long nor so well • for
without my craft every table would seem empty, and without bread
all meat would become nauseous. I strengthen the heart of man,
and little ones could not do without me." In the representation
of a dinner party (Fig. 247), some food is placed on the table ; but
the kneeling servants offer the roasted meat on spits, from which
the guests cut slices into their trenchers. We smile at these
pnm.tive manners, but they were a refinement upon those of the
heroes of Homer, who were their own cooks.

Chap. III.]

OLD ENGLAND.

71

" Patroclus did his dear friend's will : and he that did desire
To cheer the lords (come faint from fight) set on a blazing fire
A great brass pot, and into it a chine of mutton put,
And fat goat's flesh ; Automedon held, while he pieces cut
To roast and boil, right cunningly : then of a well fed swine,
A huge fat shoulder he cuts out, and spits it wondrous fine :
His good friend made a goodly fire ; of which the force once past,
He laid the spit low, near the coals, to make it brown at last":
Then sprinkled it with sacred salt, and took it from the racks :
This roasted and on dresser set, his friend Patroclus takes
Bread in fair baskets ; which set on, Achilles brought the meat,
-\nd to divinest Ithacus took his opposed seat
Upon the bench : then did he will his friend to sacrifice ;
Who cast sweet incense in the fire, to all the Deities.
Thus fell they to their ready food."
Chapman's Translation of the Iliad, Book ix.
An illumination amongst the Iiarleian Manuscripts exhibits to
us an interesting part of the economy of a lord's house in the Saxon
times. In the foreground are collected some poor people, aged
men, women, and children, who are storing in their vessels, or
humbly waiting to receive, the provisions whicli the lord and the
lady are distributing at their hall door. It was from this highest
of the occupations of the rich and powerful, the succour of the
needy, that the early antiquaries derived our titles of Lord and
Lady. The modern etymologists deny the correctness of this
derivation, and maintain that the names are simply derived from a
Saxon verb which means to raise up, to exalt. Home Tooke, in
his ' Diversions of Purley,' maintains this opinion ; and our recent
dictionary-makers adopt it. Nevertheless, we shall transcribe old
Verstegan's ingenious notion of the origin of the terms, which has
something higher and better in it than mere word-splitting :^ " I
find that our ancestors used for Lord the name of Laford, which (as
it should seem) for some aspiration in the pronouncing, they wrote
Hlaford, and Hlafurd. Afterward it grew to be written Loverd,
and by receiving like abridgement as other of our ancient appellations
have done, it is in one syllable become Lord. To deliver therefore
the true etymology, the reader shall understand, that albeit we
have our name of bread from Breod, as our ancestors were wont to
call it, yet used they also, and that most commonly, to call bread
by the name of Hlaf, from whence we now only retain the name of
the form or fashion wherein bread is usually made, calling it a loaf,
whereas loaf, coming of Hlaf or Laf, is rightly also bread itself,
and was not of our ancestors taken for the form only, as now we
use it. Now was it usual in long foregoing ages, that such as
were endued with great wealth and means above others, were
chiefly renowned (especially in these northern regions) for their
house-keeping and good hospitality ; that is, for being able, and
using to feed and sustain many men, and therefore were they par
ticularly honoured with the name and title of Hlaford, which is as
much to say,. as an afforder of Laf, that is, a bread-giver, intending
(as it seemeth) by bread, the sustenance of man, that being the
substance of our food the most agreeable to nature, and that which
in our daily prayers we especially desire at the hands of God.
The name and title of Lady was anciently written HIeafdian, or
Leafdian, from whence it came to be Lafdy, and lastly Lady. I
have showed here last before how Hlaf or Laf was sometime our
name of bread, as also the reason why our noble and principal men
came to be honoured in the name of Laford, which now is Lord,
and even the like in correspondence of reason must appear in this
name of Leafdian, the feminine of Laford ; the first syllable whereof
being anciently written Hleaf, and not Hlaf, must not therefore
alienate it from the like nature and sense, for that only seemeth
to have been the feminine sound, and we see that of Leafdian we
have not retained Leady, but Lady. Well then both Hlaf and
Hleaf, we must here understand to signify one thing, which is
bread ; Dian is as much to say as serve ; and so is Leafdian a bread-
server. Whereby it appeareth that as the Laford did allow food
and sustenance, so the Leafdian did see it served and disposed to
the guests. And our ancient and yet continued custom that our
ladies and gentlewomen do use to carve and serve their guests at the
table, which in other countries is altogether strange and unusual,
doth for proof hereof well accord and correspond with this our
ancient and honourable feminine appellation."
September.
The illumination of the Saxon Calendar for this month exhibits
the chace of the wild boar in the woods, where he fattened on
acorns and beech-masts. The Saxon name of the month was
Gcrst-monat, or Barley-month ; the month either of the barley
harvest or the barley beer making. But the pictorial representa
tion of September shows us the bold hunting with dog and boar-
spear. The old British breed of strong hounds, excellent for

hunting and war, which Strabo describes as exported to other
countries, was probably not extinct. Even the most populous
places were surrounded with thick woods, where the boar, the wolf,
and the bear lurked, or came forth to attack the unhappy way
farer. London was bounded by a great forest. Fitz-Stephen
says, writing in the reign of Henry the Second—" On the north side
are fields for pasture and open meadows very pleasant, among
which the river waters do flow, and the wheels of the mills are
turned about with a delightful noise. Very near lieth a large
forest, in which are woody groves of wild beasts in the coverts,
whereof do lurk bucks and does, wild boars and bulls." All ranks
of the Anglo-Saxons delighted in the chace. The young nobles were
trained to hunting after their school-days of Latin, as we are told
in Asser's ' Life of Alfred/ Harold Harefoot, the king, was so
called from his swiftness in the foot-chace. The beating the woods
for the boar, as represented in Fig. 231, was a service of danger,
and therefore fitted for the training of a warlike people.
October.
This was the Wyn-monat, the Wine month of the Anglo-Saxons.
Spenser's personification of the month is an image of "Old Eng
land :" — "Then came October full of merry glee;
For yet his noule was totty of the must,
While he was treading in the wine-fat's sea,
And of the joyous oil, whose gentle gust
Made him so frolic and so full of lust."
The illumination of the Saxon Calendar (Fig. 264) shows us the
falconer with his hawk on fist, ready to let her down the wind at
the heron or the wild duck. Other illuminations of this early
period exhibit the grape-picker and the grape-presser. The wine
press of the time will appear in a subsequent page. Much has been
written upon the ancient culture of the vine in England. Bede
says, " The island excels for grain and trees, and is fit for feeding
of beasts of burden and cattle. It also produces vines in some
places." The later chroniclers, who knew the fact, quote Bede
without disputing his assertion. Winchester, according to some of
the earlier antiquaries, derived its name from Vintonia, the city of
the vine ; but this is very questionable. The Bishop of Rochester
had a vineyard at Hailing ; and one one of the bishops, as Lambarde
tells us, sent to Edward II. " a present of his drinks, and withal both
wine and grapes of his own growth in his vineyard at Hailing,
which is now a good plain meadow." The same authority says,
" History hath mention that there was about that time [the Norman
invasion] great store of vines at Santlac [Battle]." He has a
parallel instance of the early culture of the vine : — " The like
whereof I have read to have been at Windsor, insomuch as tithe of
them hath been there yielded in great plenty ; which giveth me to
think that wine hath been made long since within the realm,
although in our memory it be accounted a great dainty to hear of."
Lambarde then particularly describes the tithe of the Windsor vine
yard, as " of wine pressed out of grapes that grew in the little park
there, to the Abbot of Waltham ; and that accompts have been
made of the charges of planting the vines that grew in the said
park, as also of making the wines, whereof some parts were spent in
the household, and some sold for the king's profit." This is an
approach to a wine-manufacture upon a large scale. There ean be
little doubt that many of the great monasteries in the South of
England had their vineyards, and made the wine for the use of their
fraternities. They might not carry the manufacture so far as to
sell any wine for their profit ; but the vineyard and the wine-press
saved them the cost of foreign wines, for their labour was of little
account. The religious houses founded in the Anglo-Saxon period
had probably, in many cases, their vineyards as well as their
orchards. There is an express record of a vineyard at Saint Ed-
mundsbury ; Martin, Abbot of Peterborough, is recorded in the
Saxon Chronicle to have planted a vineyard ; William Thorn, the-
monastic chronicler, writes that in his abbey of Nordhome the
vineyard was "ad commodum et magnum honorem" — a profitable
aud celebrated vineyard. Vineyards are repeatedly mentioned in
Domesday-Book. William of Malmesbury thus notices vineyards
in his description of the abundance of the County of Gloucester :—
" No county in England has so many or so good vineyards as this,
either for fertility or sweetness of the grape. The vine has in it no-
unpleasant tartness or eagerness [sourness, from aigre], and is little
inferior to the French in sweetness." Camden, in quoting this
passage adds, " We are not to wonder that so many places in this.
country from their vines are called vineyards, because they afforded
plenty of wine ; and that they yield none now is rather to be im
puted to the sloth of the inhabitants than the indisposition of the

290. — The Pusey Horn.

29 1 .-^Facsimile of the Inscription on the Pusey Horn,

- **£ -<k>-

3.— Royal Costume, and the Harness and Equipment of Horses. (Cotton MS.)

284. — The Harp, accompanied by other Instruments.
(Cotton MS.)

wmm
MWm

fcQn- ' . --M

285.— Saxon Cloaks, Plain and Embroidered Tunics, and Shoes. (Cotton MS.)

2 SG — Costume of a Female, exhibiting
the under and upper sleeved Tunic,
the Mantle and Hood. (Harleian
MS.)

287.— -Anglo-Saxon Females. The standing figure is
Etheldrytlia, a Princess of East Angiia, from the
Benedictional of St. Ethelwold.

283. — Civil Costume of Uie Anglo-Saxons.
72 m

»B9.-The Coffin and Grave-clothes. From a Picture ofthe Raising of Lasarus, in Cotton

MS. Nero, C. 4.

2S5.— Smithy ; a Harper in the othercompartment. (From Cotton MS.)
No. 10.

Pillars of Hercules.
W.
290.— Anglo-Saxon Map of the Tenth Century.

[OLD ENGLAND."

73

74

OLD ENGLAND.

[Book I.

climate." This question of the ancient growth of the vine in
England was the subject of a regular antiquarian passage-at-arms
in 1771, when the Honourable Daines Barrington entered the lists
to overthrow all the chroniclers and antiquaries, from 'William of
Malmesbury to Samuel Pegge, and to prove that the English grapes
were currants — that the vineyards of Domesday-book and other
ancient records were nothing but gardens — that the climate of
England would never have permitted the ripening of grapes for
wine. The throng of partisans to this battle-field was prodigious.
The Antiquarian Society inscribed the paper pellets shot on this
occasion as " The "Vineyard Controversy."
We have no hesitation in believing that those who put faith in
the truth of the ancient records were right ; — that vineyards were
plentiful in England, and that wine was made from the English
grapes. It was not a change in the climate, not the sloth of the
people, that rendered the vineyards less and less profitable in every
age, and finally produced their complete extinction. The wine of
France was largely imported into England soon after the Norman
Conquest. It is distinctly recorded that a passion for French wines
was a characteristic of the court and the nobility in the reign of
Henry III. The monks continued to cultivate their vines, — as in
the sunny vale of Beaulieu, where the abbey, which King John
founded, had its famous vineyard ; but the great supply of wine,
even to the diligent monks, was from the shores of France, where
the vine could be cultivated upon the commercial principle. Had
the English under the Plantagenets persevered in the home cul
tivation of the vine for the purpose of wine-making, whilst the
claret of a better vine-country, that could be brought in a few hours
across the narrow sea, was excluded from our ports, the capital of
England would have been fruitlessly wasted in struggles against
natural disadvantages, and the people of England would have been
for the most part deprived of the use and enjoyment of a superior
drink to their native beer. The English vineyards were gradually
changed into plain meadows, as Lambarde has said, or into fertile
corn-fields. Commercially the vine could not be cultivated in
England, whilst the produce of the sunny hills of France was
more acessible to London and Winchester than the corn which
grew in the nearest inland county. The brethren of a monastery,
whose labour was a recreation, might continue to prune their vines
and press their grapes, as their Saxon ancestors had done before
them ; but for the people generally, wine would have been a luxury
unattainable, had not the porls of Sandwich and Southampton
been freely open to the cheap and excellent wine of the French
provinces. This is the course of every great revolution in the
mode of supplying the necessities, or even the luxuries, of a people
amongst whom the principle of exchange has been established.
The home growth for a while supplies the home consumption.
A cheaper and better supply is partially obtained through ex
change and easy communication— from another parish, another
county, another province, and finally from another country. Then
the home growth lingers and declines ; capital is diverted into other
channels, where it can be more profitably employed. Governments
then begin to strive against the natural commercial laws, by the
establishment of restrictive or prohibitory duties. A smuggle goes
on, perhaps prolonged for centuries, between the restrictions and
the principle of exchange. The result is certain. The law of
exchange is a law of progress ; the rule of restriction is a rule of
retrogression. The law of exchange goes on to render the com
munications of mankind, even of those who are separated by mighty
oceans, as easy as the ancient communications of those who were
only separated by a river or a mountain. The rule of restriction,
generation after generation, and year after year, narrows its circle]
which was first a wide one, and held a confiding people within its
fold ; but, as it approaches to the end, comes to contain only a class,
then a few of the more prejudiced of a class, and lastly, those who
openly admit that the rule is for their exclusive benefit. The
meadows and the corn-fields of England have profitably succeeded
her unprofitable vineyards; and the meadows and the corn-fields
will flourish because the same law of exchange that drove out the
vineyards will render the home exchange of corn and meat more
profitable, generally, to producer and consumer than the foreign
exchange. England is essentially a corn-growing and a mutton-
growing country ; and we have no fear that her fields will have
failing crops, or her downs not be white with flocks, if the law of
exchange should free itself from every restriction. England was
not a wine-growing country, and therefore her vineyards perished
before the same natural laws that will give the best, because the
most steady, encouragement to her bread-growing and beer-growing
capacity.

November.
This was the Wint-monat, the wind-month, of the Anglo-Saxons,
Its emblems were the blazing hearth and the swine-killing (Fig.
273). The great slaughter-time was come,— the days of fresh
meat were passing away. The beeves, and the sheep, and the hogs,
whose store of green feed was now exhausted, were doomed to the
salting, tubs. The Martinmas beef, — the beef salted at the feast
of St. Martin— is still known in the northern parts of the island ;
and the proverb which we adopted from Spain "His Martinmas
will come, as it does to every hog," speaks of a destiny as inevitable
as the fate of the acorn-fed swine at the salting season.
Mr. Strutt, in his explanation of the illumination of the Saxon
Calendar, says, " This month returns us again to the labourers, who
are here heating and preparing their utensils." He then refers us
to another drawing of a blacksmith. The Saxon illumination is
very rude. In the centre of the composition there is a blazing fire
upon the floor ; a group on the right are warming their hands ;
whilst one man on the left is bearing a bundle of fuel, and another
doing something at the fire with a rough pair of tongs. "We
believe that our artist has translated the illumination correctly, in
considering this the fire of the domestic hearth, which the labourers
are supplying with fresh billets. But as the subject is interpreted
by Mr. Strutt, it refers to the craft of the smith, the most
important occupation of early times ; and we may therefore not
improperly say a few words upon this great handicraftsman, who
has transmitted us so many inheritors of his name even in our own
day. Verstegan says, " Touching such as have their surnames of
occupations, as Smith, Taylor, Turner, and such others, it is not
to be doubted but their ancestors have first gotten them by using
such trades ; and the children of such parents being content to take
them upon them, their after-coming posterity could hardly avoid
them, and so in time cometh it rightly to be said, —
' From whence came Smith, all be he knight or squire,
But from the smith that Ibrgcth at the fire.' "
But the author of an ingenious little book, lately published, on
" English Surnames," Mr. Lower, points out that the term was
originally applied to all smiters in general. The Anglo-Saxon
Smith was the name of any one that struck with a hammer,— a
carpenter, as well as a worker in iron. They had specific names for
the ironsmith, the goldsmith, the coppersmith ; and the numerous
race of the Smiths are the representatives of the great body
of artificers amongst our Saxon ancestors. The ironsmith is
represented labouring at his forge in Fig. 294, and in Fig. 295,
where, in another compartment of the drawing, we have the figure
of a harper. The monks themselves were smiths ; and St. Dunstan,
the ablest man of his age, was a worker in iron. The ironsmith
could produce any tool by his art, from a ploughshare to a needle.
The smith in Alfric's Colloquy says " Whence the share to the
ploughman, or the goad, but for my art ? Whence to the fisherman
an angle, or to the shoewright an awl, or to the sempstress a needle,
but for my art ?" No wonder then that the art was honoured and
cultivated. The antiquaries have raised a question whether the
Anglo-Saxon horses were shod ; and they appear to have decided
in the negative, because the great districts for the breed of horses
were fenny districts, where the horses might travel ' without shoes
(See ' Archseologia,' vol. ill.)- The crotchets of the learned are
certainly unfathomable. Mr. Pegge, the writer to whom we
allude, says, « Here in England one has reason to think they be<mn
to shoe soon after the Norman Conquest. "William the Conqueror
gave to Simon St. Liz, a noble Norman, the town of Northampton,
and the whole hundred of Falkley, then valued at forty pound per
annum, to provide shoes for his horses." If the shoes were not
wanted, by reason of the nature of the soil in Anglo-Saxon times,
the myadmg Normans might have equally dispensed with them,
and William might have saved his manor for some better suit and
service. Montfaucon tells us, that when the tomb of Childeric, the
father of Cloyis, who was buried with his horse in the fifth century,
was opened in 1653, an iron horse-shoe was found within it. If
connbTrW?, J8™ ^ 'mn horse-sh<*s> we may reasonably
conclude that the horses of Alfred and Athelstane, of Edgar and
Harold, were equally provided by their native sm ths. T re is
little doubt that the mines of England were well worked in the
baxon times. « Wore was obtained in several counties, and the e
were furnaces smeltln„. ^ ^ rf Ghmj£^
particular are alluded to by Giraldus Cambrensis as produc 1 an
abundance of this valuable metal; and there is every reion for
supposing that these mines were wrought by the S,™V V
t* u ™« pr„b.Mybc„ by ,„J, „£,£¦£ •££

Chap. III.]

OLD ENGLAND.

75

The lead-mines of Derbyshire, which had been worked by the
Romans, furnished the Anglo-Saxons with a supply of ore (Fig.
296) ; but the most important use of this metal in the Anglo-Saxon
period, that of covering the roofs of churches, was not introduced
before the close of the seventh century." ( ' Pictorial History of
England,' Book II. Chap. VI.) It is not impossible that something
more than mere manual labour was applied to the operations of
lifting ore from the mines, and freeing them from water, the great
obstacle to successful working. In the Cotton Manuscripts we
have a representation of the Anglo-Saxon mode of raisin"- water
from a well with a loaded lever (Fig. 297). At the present day
we see precisely the same operation carried on by the market-
gardeners of Isleworth and Twickenham. A people that have
advanced so far in the mechanical arts as thus to apply the lever as
a labour-saving principle, are in the direct course for reaching many
of the higher combinations of machinery. The Anglo-Saxons were
exporters of manufactured goods in gold and silver ; and after nine
hundred years we are not much farther advanced in our commercial
economy than the merchant in Alfric's Colloquy, who says, " I
send my ship with my merchandise (Fig. 298), and sail over the
sea-like places, and sell my things, and buy dear things, which are
not produced in this land  Will you sell your things here
its you bought them there ? — I will not, because what would my
labour benefit me ? I will sell them here dearer than I bought
them there, that I may get some profit to feed me, my wife, and
children." The geographical knowledge of the Anglo-Saxons was,
no doubt, imperfect enough ; but it was sufficient to enable them to
cany on commercial operations with distant lands. The Anglo-
Saxon map (Fig. 299) is taken from a manuscript of the tenth
century, in the Cottonian Library. It was published in the
' Penny Magazine,' No. 340, from which we extract the following
remarks upon it : — " The defects of the map are most apparent in
the disproportionate size and inaccurate position of places. The
island to the left of Ireland is probably meant for one of the Western
Islands of Scotland ; but it is by far too large, and is very
incorrectly placed. The same remark will apply to the islands in
the Mediterranean. The form given to the Black Sea appears just
such as would be consequent upon loose information derived from
mariners. However, in the absence of scientific surveys of any
coast, and considering the little intercourse which took place
between distant countries, the Anglo-Saxon map represents as
accurate an outline as perhaps ought to be expected."
December.
The emblem of the Saxon Calendar is that of the threshing
season (Fig. 274). The flail has a reverend antiquity amongst us ;
the round sieve slowly does the work of winnowing; the farmer
stands by with his notched stick, to mark how many baskets of the
winnowed corn are borne to his granary. Other emblems show us
the woodman bearing his fuel homewards, to make his hearth
cheerful in the Winter-monat, winter-month ; or the jolly yeoman
lifting his drinking-horn during the festivities of the Heligh-monat,
holy month, for December was called by both these names. Then
was the round table filled with jocund guests (Fig. 275). Then
were the harp and the pipe heard in the merry halls; and the
dancers were as happy amidst the smoke of their wood-fires, as if
their jewels had shone in the clear blaze of a hundred wax-lights
(Figs. 248, 266).

The Anglo-Saxon illuminations in the preceding pages, which
are fac-similes, or nearly so, of drawings accompanying the original
manuscripts in our public libraries, will not have impressed those
unfamiliar with the subject with any very high notion of the state
of art in this island eight or nine hundred years ago. It must be
remembered that these specimens are selected, not as examples of
the then state of art, but as materials for the history of manners
and of costume. The false perspective, the slovenly delineations of
the extremities, and the general distortion of the human figure, will
at once be apparent. But there was nevertheless a school of art, if
so it may be called, existing in England and Ireland, which has
left some very remarkable proofs of excellence, and indeed of
originality, in a humble walk of pictorial labour. The illuminated
letters of the Anglo-Saxon manuscripts are wholly different from
those of any continental school ; and they display a gracefulness of
ornament, and a power of invention, which may be profitably studied
in these our own times when ornamental design in connection with
manufactures is escaping from the monotonous barbarism which has
so long marked us in such matters as a tasteless and unimaginative
people. "The chief features of this species of illumination are

described by Sir F. Madden to be — extreme intricacy of pattern,
interlacings of knots in a diagonal or square form, sometimes
interwoven with animals, and terminating in heads of serpents or
birds. Though we cannot distinctly trace the progress of this art,
we may conclude that it continued in a flourishing and improving
state in the interval from the eighth to the tenth and eleventh
centuries, which were so prolific in Anglo-Saxon works of
calligraphy and illumination, that, perhaps, says a competent
authority, speaking of this period, our public libraries and the
collections abroad contain more specimens executed in this country
than any other can produce during the same space of time."
( ' Pictorial History of England,' Book II. Chap. V.) We give three
examples, out of the great variety which exists in this branch of art.
The illuminated letter P is of the eighth century (Fig. 301), at
which period the illumination of books formed a delightful occupation
to the more skilful in the monastic establishments, and was even
thought aproper employment by the highest dignitaries of the Church.
There is a splendid example known as the ' Durham Book,' which
was the work of Eadfrid, Bishop of Lindisfarne, who died in 721.
Dunstan himself, at a subsequent period, varied the course of his
austerities and his ambition by employing his hand in the illumination
of manuscripts. The ornament (Fig. 300) and the letter Q (Fig.
302) are of the tenth century.
But, although the examples are not very numerous, we have
proof that the taste thus cultivated in the cloisters of the Anglo-
Saxons was occasionally capable of efforts which would not have
been unworthy of that period and that country to which we assign
the revival of the arts. We are too much accustomed to think that
there was no art in Europe, and very little learning, during what
we are pleased to call the dark ages. But in the centuries so
designated there were, in our own country, divines, historians,
poets, whose acquirements might be an object of honourable rivalry
to many of those who are accustomed to sneer at their scientific
ignorance and their devotional credulity. At the time when Italian
art was in the most debased condition, there was a monk in England
(and there may have been many more such whose labours have
perished) who, in all the higher qualities of design, might have
rivalled the great painters who are held, three centuries later, to
have been almost the creators of modern art. In the most successful
labours of the Anglo-Saxon cloister there was probably little worldly
fame ; of rivalry there was less. The artist, in the brief intervals
of his studies and his devotions, laboured at some work of several
years, which was to him a glory and a consolation. He was
worthily employed, and happily because his pencil embodied the
images which were ever present to his contemplation. He did not
labour for wealth amidst struggling competitors. Dante says of the
first great Italian artists : — " Cimabue thought
To lord it over painting's field ; and now
The cry is Giotto's, and his name eclips'd.
Thus hath one Guido from the other snatch'd
The letler'd prize : and lie, perhaps, is born,
Who shall drive either from their nest. The noise
Of worldly fame is but a blast of wind,
That blows from diverse points, and shifts its name,
Shifting the point it blows from."
There is an Anglo-Saxon collection of drawings in existence,
undoubtedly produced in the tenth century, whose excellence is
such that the artist might have pretended "to lord it over
painting's field" even amongst the Cimabues and Giottos. His
name is supposed to have been Godemann; but even that is
doubtful. To him, whoever he was, might now be addressed the
subsequent lines of Dante : — " Shalt thou more
Live in the mouths of mankind, if thy flesh
Part shrivell'd from thee, than if thou hadst died
Before the coral and the pap were left :
Or e'er some thousand years have past ? "
But he has vindicated the general claims of his countrymen to
take their rank, in times which men falsely call barbarous, amidst
those who have worthily elevated the grosser conceptions of man
kind into the ideal, showing that art had a wider and a purer sphere
than the mere imitation of natural objects. The Benedictional of
St. Ethelwold, an illuminated manuscript of the tenth century, in
the library of the Duke of Devonshire, is the work to which we
allude. It is fully described by Mr. Gage, in the twenty-fourth
volume of the ' Archaeologia ;' and the Antiquarian Society, greatly
to their honour, caused to be beautifully engraved in their Trans
actions thirty plates of the miniatures with which this remarkable
L 2

300. — Anglo-Saxon. Ornament.
<From MS. of the Tenth Century.)

301.— Anglo-Saxon Illuminated Letter. (From MS. oftlie Eighth Century.)

3(13.— From St. AStholwoM's Bcr.oiliclionnl. Illumination V.

304.— From St. jEthelwold'sBcnedictional. Illumination VII.

306. — Ancient Church, Greensted.

3QS.— St. Mary's Chapel at Kingston.

31 1.— King Edgar. (From Cotton MS.)

313.— Seal of Alfrio, Earl of Mercia.

308.— Portrait of King Alfred. (Drawn from Coins aud Busts.)

310.— Saxon Lantern. (Engraved in Strutt's
Chronicle of England.)

312. — Canute and his Queen. (From the Register of Hyde Abbey.)

1;J

314  From Cotton MS.

309.— Alfred's "Jewel.'

7S

OLD ENGLAND.

[Book I.

work is adorned. This manuscript was the ancient Benedictional
of the See of Winchester ; and it is stated at the commencement of
the work, that " A prelate whom the Lord had caused to be head of
the Church of "Winchester, the great iEthelwold, commanded a
certain monk subject to him to write the present book ; he ordered
also to be made in it many arches elegantly decorated and filled up
with various ornamental pictures, expressed in divers beautiful
colours and gold." At the end of this introduction, or dedication,
the writer subscribes his name Godemann. This monk of St.
Swithin's subsequently became Abbot of Thorney. Mr. Gage says,
" Although it is likely that this superb volume, filled with beau
tiful miniatures, and ornaments of the richest design, was finished
before Godemann had the government of the Abbey of Thorney,
we are sure of one thing, that it was executed in this country be
tween the years 963, when Ethelwold received the episcopal mitre,
and 984, when he died. . . . That Godemann was the illuminator
of the manuscript, as well as the writer of it, I see no reason to
doubt. Illumination was part of the art of calligraphy ; and ge
nerally speaking, the miniature painting and the writing in the
early manuscripts are to be presumed the work of the same hand."
To furnish a general idea, though certainly an insufficient one, of
the remarkable merit of the miniatures of this book, we present
copies of the fifth and the seventh plates, as engraved in the ' ArcfiEEo-
logia.' Fig. 303 is the second of two miniatures entitled ' Chorus
"Virginum.' Fig. 304 is the second of four miniatures, each con
taining a group of three Apostles. It is fortunately unnecessary
-that we should attempt ourselves any critical remarks on the rare
merits of this early work of Anglo-Saxon art ; for in the paper in
the ' Archseologia ' is inserted a communication from the late Mr.
Ottley, whose familiar acquaintance with the works of the early
masters, both in painting and engraving, and the general correct
ness of Ids judgment, have established for him a high reputation.
We extract from his letter a passage which points out not only the
beauties, but defects of this work, and of Anglo-Saxon art in gene
ral ; and further notices the superiority of the best productions of
this our early school, both in colour and drawing, to the works of
its European contemporaries : —
" In the thirteenth century, as every one knows, the art of paint
ing and sculpture in Italy received new life at the hands of
Kiccola Pisano, Giunta, Cimabue, and Giotto ; from which time
they steadily progressed, till the happy era of Giulius the Second
and Leo the Tenth. But for some centuries preceding the thir
teenth I have sometimes seen reason to conjecture that the arts
were in a more flourishing state in various countries distant from
Italy than there ; to say nothing of Greece, from which, it is pro
bable, the inhabitants of those countries, like the Italians them
selves, directly or indirectly, and perhaps at distant periods,
originally derived instruction in those matters. That the art of
miniature painting, especially, was better known and more suc
cessfully practised in France in the thirteenth century, and probably
long before, than in Italy, has always appeared to me clear, from
the well-known passage in the eleventh canto of Dante's ' Purga-
torio,' where the poet thus addresses Oderigi d'Agubbio, a minia
ture painter, said to have been the friend of Cimabue : —
'Oh dissi lui non se' til Oderisi,
L'onor d'Agubbio, e l'onor di uuell'arte
Che alluminar e chiamata a Parisi?'
(' Art thou not Oderigi ? art not thou
Agubbio's glory, glory of that art
Which they of Paris call the limner's skill !')
" But to return to St. Ethelwold's manuscript. The next thin"-
I would mention is the justness of the general proportions of the
figures, especially those larger standing figures of Confessors
female Saints, and Apostles, which occupy the first seven paoes of
the book. The two groups, entitled Chorus Virginum, are parti
cularly admirable in this respect, as well as for the easy graceful
ness oftlie attitudes of sonWof them, and the cast of the draperies-
so that, had the faces more beauty and variety of expression and
were the hands less like one another in their positions, and better
drawn, little would remain to be desired. This deficiency of beauty
in the heads, amounting, I fear I must admit, to positive ugliness
appears to have been in a great measure occasioned by the difficulty
which the artist encountered in his attempts to finish them with
body-colours ; as may be seen by comparing these heads with those
drawn only in outline in the last miniature in the book ; if, indeed
tiie colouring was not in great part performed by a different person
from him who drew the outlines ; and, I would add, that the fault
is more apparent, throughout the volume, in the large than in the
smaller figures. Indeed, the little angels, holding scrolls, or sacred

volumes, especially the two last, have so much gracefulness and
animation, are so beautifully draped, and so well adapted m their
attitudes to the spaces they occupy, that I hardly know how to
praise them sufficiently.
" Wherever the naked parts of the figure are shown, there we
have most evidence of the incompetence of the artist ; and conse
quently the figures of the Apostles, whose feet and ankles appear
uncovered, are less agreeable than those of the above female Saint.
But, as you are aware, this unskilfulness in the art of drawing the
naked parts of the human figure is not the fault of the painter, but
of the period ; and indeed, it was not until three centuries after the
date of this manuscript, that any notable advancement was made in
this difficult part of the art.
" The draperies of the figures throughout the volume, with scarce
any exception, are well cast ; though the smaller folds are often
too strongly marked in proportion to the larger ones ; which, with
the want of any decided masses of light and shadow distinguishing
those sides of objects which are turned towards the light from such
as are not so, prevents their producing the agreeable effect which
they otherwise would do ; but this, again, is more the fault of the
time than of the artist. The colouring throughout these Illumi
nations is rich, without being gaudy. It is possible that in the
tenth century some of the gay colours, in the use of which the
miniature painters of more modern times indulged so freely, were
but little known. If I am wrong in this supposition, we must
accord to the illuminator of this manuscript the praise of having
possessed a more chastened taste than many of his successors."
It would be absurd to pretend that the work attributed to Gode
mann is an average specimen of Anglo-Saxon art. The illumina
tions, for example, are very superior to those of the sacred poem
known as Casdmon's Metrical Paraphrase of Scripture History,
preserved in the Bodleian Library at Oxford. In these the human
figure is badly drawn ; and there is perhaps more of invention in
the initial letters than in the larger compositions. The poem itself
is a most remarkable production of the early Anglo-Saxon times.
The account which Bede gives of one Csedmon, the supposed author
of this poem, is a most curious one : — " There was in this Abbess's
Monastery [Abbess Hilda] a certain brother^ particularly remark
able for the grace of God, who was wont to make pious and religious
verses, so that whatever was interpreted to him out of Holy Writ,
he soon after put the same into poetical expressions of much sweetness
and compunction, in his own, that is the English, language. By
his verses the minds of many were often excited to despise the
world, and to aspire to the heavenly life. Others after him attempted
in the English nation to compose religious poems, but none could
ever compare with him ; for he did not learn the art of poetisino- of
men, but through the divine assistance ; for which reason he never
could compose any trivial or vain poem, but only those that relate
to religion suited his religious tongue ; for having lived in a secular
habit, till well advanced in years, he had never learnt anything of
versifying; for which reason being sometimes at entertainments,
when it was agreed, for the more mirth, that all present should sine-
in their turns, when he saw the instrument come towards him he
rose up from table, and returned home. Having done so at a certain
time, and going out of the house where the entertainment was, to
the stable, the care of horses falling to him that night, and com
posing himself there to rest at the proper time, a person appeared
to him in his sleep, and saluting hiin by his name, said, Casdmon,
sing some song to me. He answered, I cannot sing ; for that was
the reason why I left the entertainment, and retired to this place,
because I could not sing. The other who talked to him replied'
However, you shall sing. What shall I sing ? rejoined he. Sing
the beginning of creatures, said the other. Hereupon, he presently
began to sing verses to the praise of God, which he had never
heard." The ode which Caedmon composed under this inspiration is pre
served in Anglo-Saxon, in King Alfred's translation of Bede's
Ecclesiastical History : and the following is an English translation
from Alfred's version : —
" Now must we praise
The guardian of heaven's kingdom,
The Creator's might,
Aud his mind's thought ;
Glorious Father of men !
As of every wonder lie,
Lord Eternal,
Formed the beginning.
He first framed
. For the children of earth
The heaven as a roof;
Holy Creator!

Chap. III.

OLD ENGLAND.

Then mid-earth.
The Guardian of mankind,
The eternal Lord,
Afterwards produced
The earth for men,
Lord Almighty '."
The Metrical Paraphrase to which we have alluded is ascribed by
some to a second Csedmon ; but the best philological antiquaries
are not agreed upon this matter. As to its extraordinary merits
there is no difference of opinion. Sir Francis Palgrave says, " The
obscurity attending the origin of the Csedmonian poems will perhaps
increase the interest excited by them. Whoever may have been
their author, their remote antiquity is unquestionable. In poetical
imagery and feeling, they excel all the other early remains of the
North." One of the remarkable circumstances belonging: to these
poems, whether written by the cow-herd of Whitby, or some later
monk, is that we here find a bold prototype of the fallen angels of
' Paradise Lost.' Mr. Conybeare says that the resemblance to Mil
ton is so remarkable in that portion of the poem which relates to the
Fall of Man, that " much of this portion might be almost literally
translated by a cento of lines from that great poet." The resemblance
is certainly most extraordinary, as we may judge from a brief passage
or two. Every one is familiar with the noble lines in the first book
of ' Paradise Lost ' — " Him the Almighty Power
Hurl'd headlong flaming from tli' ethereal sky,
With hideous ruin and combustion, down
To bottomless perdition, there to dwell
In adamantine chains and penal fire,
Who durst defy the Omnipotent to arms.
Nine times the space which measures day and night
To mortal men, he witli his horrid crew
Lay vanquish'd, rolling in tiie fiery gulf,
Confounded though immortal."
The Anglo-Saxon Paraphrase of Csedmon was brinted at Amsterdam
in 1655. Can there be a question that Milton had read the passage
which Mr. Thorpe thus translated? —
" Then was the Mighty angry,
The highest Ruler of heaven
Hurled him from the lofty seat ;
Hate had he gained at his Lord,
His favour lie had lost.
Incensed with him was the Good in his mind.
Therefore he must seek the gulf
Of hard hell- torment,
For that he had warr'd with heaven's Ruler.
He rejected him then from his favour,
And cast him into hell,
Into the deep parts,
When be became a devil :
The fiend witli all bis comiades
Fell then from heaven above,
Through as long as three nights and days,
The angels from heaven into hell.*'

from corruption by the study of its great Anglo-Saxon elements.
All the value of its composite character may be preserved, with a
due regard to its original structure. So may we best keep our
English with all its honourable characteristics, so well described by
Camden : — " Whereas our tongue is mixed, it is no disgrace. The-
Italian is pleasant, but without sinews, as a still fleeting water.
The French delicate, but even nice as a woman, scarce daring to
open her lips, for fear of marring her countenance. The Spanish
majestical, but fulsome, running too much on the o, and terrible
like the devil in a play. The Dutch manlike, but withal very
harsh, as one ready at every word to pick a quarrel. Now we, in
borrowing from them, give the strength of consonants to the Italian ;
the full sound of words to the French ; the variety of terminations
to the Spanish ; and the mollifying of more vowels to the Dutch ;
and so, like bees, we gather the honey of their good properties, and
leave the dregs to themselves. And when thus substaritialness
combineth with delightfulness, fulness with fineness, seemlines-s
with portliness, and currentness with staidness, how can the language
which consisteth of all these, sound other than full of all sweetness ?"
(' Remains.')

*.

Who can doubt that when the music of that speech of Satan
beginning " Is this the region, this the soil, the clime
That we must change for heaven ?"
swelled upon Milton's exquisite ear, the first note was struck by the
rough harmony of Caedmon ? —
" This narrow place is most unlike
That other that we ere knew
High in heaven's kingdom.''
It would be quite beside our purpose to attempt any notice, how
ever brief, of the Anglo-Saxon literature in general. Those who are
desirous of popular information on this most interesting subject many
be abundantly gratified in Mr. Sharon Turner's ' History of the Anglo-
Saxons,' in Mr. Conybeare's ' Illustrations of Saxon Poetry,' and
especially in Mr. Wright's admirable volume of ' Literary Biography'
of 'the Anglo-Saxon period.' The study of the Anglo-Saxon
language and literature is reviving in our times ; and we have little
doubt that the effect will be, in conjunction with that love of our
elder poets which is a healthful sign of an improving taste, to infuse
something of the simple strength of our ancient tongue into the
dilutions and platitudes of the multitudes amongst us " who write
with ease." Truly does old Verstegan say, " Our ancient English
Saxons' language is to be accounted the Teutonic tongue, and albeit
we have in latter ages mixed it with many borrowed words, espe
cially out of the Latin and French, yet reinaineth the Teutonic
unto this day the ground of our speech, for no other offspring hath
our language originally had than that." The noble language — ' ' the
tongue that Shakspere spake" — which is our inheritance, may be saved

The coins of a country are amongst the most valuable and in
teresting of its material monuments. " The study of coins is not
to be considered as the province of the antiquary alone. Coins are
among the most certain evidences of history." (' Penny Cyclo
paedia.') In our engravings, we have presented a series of coins,
from the earliest Anglo-Saxon period to the time of Edward the
Confessor. They begin at page CO, Fig. 232 ; and continue in
every page to page 69, Fig. 282. To enter into a minute descrip
tion of these coins would be tedious to most readers, and not
satisfactory, with our limited space, to the numismatic student.
We shall therefore dismiss this branch of Old England's antiquities
with a few passing remarks suggested by some of this series.
The little silver coin, Fig. 233, is called a sceatta. This is a
literal Anglo-Saxon word whicli means money ; and when, in Anglo-
Saxon familiar speech, the entertainer at a tavern is called upon to
pay the shot, the coin of Victoria does the same office as the sceut
of the early kings of Kent.
" As the fund of our pleasure, let each pay his shot,"
says Ben Jonson. The penny is next in antiquity to the sceaf-
The silver coins of the princes of the Heptarchy are for the most
part pennies. There is an extensive series of such coins of the
kings of Mercia. The halfpenny and the farthing are the ancient
names of the division of the penny ; they are both mentioned in.
the Saxon Gospels. The coins of oflii, king of Mercia (Fig. 234),
are remarkable for the beauty of their execution, far exceeding in
correctness of drawiug and sharpness of impression those of his
predecessors or successors. " At the beginning of the ninth cen
tury Ecgbeorht or Egbert ascended the throne of the West Saxon
kingdom ; and in the course of his long reign, brought under his
dominion nearly the whole of the Heptarchic states ; he is there
fore commonly considered as the first sole monarch of England,
notwithstanding those states were not completely united in one
sovereignty until the reign of Edgar. On his coins, he is usually
styled Ecgbeorht Rex, and sometimes the word Saxonum is added
in a monogram, within the inner circle of the obverse : some of his
coins have a rude representation of his head, and some are without
it From Egbert's time, with very few exceptions, the series oi
English pennies is complete ; indeed, for many hundred years the
penny was the chief coin in circulation." (' Penny Cyclopaedia )
The silver pennies of Alfred bear a considerable price ; and this
circumstance may be attributed in some degree to the desire whicli
individuals in all subsequent ages would feel, to possess some me
morial of a man who, for four hundred years after his death, wa*
still cherished in the songs and stories of the Anglo-Saxon popula
tion, mixed as they were with Norman blood, as the Shepherd of
the people, the Darling of England (Figs. 268 272). A rehc
supposed more strictly to pertain to the memory of ALred, * now
in the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford. It is an ornament of gold
which was found in the Isle of Athelney, the_ scene of Alfreds
retreat during the days of his country's oppression The inscrip
tion round tie figure, holding flowers, means , < Al red had me
wrousrht" (Fi-. 309). The Saxon lantern, which Strutt has eu-
Jrave'd in his°< Chronicle of England' (Fig. 310), is also asso
ciated with the memory of Alfred, in that story which Asser hi*
biographer, tells of him, that he invented a case of hern and v,ood
for his wax candle, by the burning of which he marked the pro
cess of time. The genuineness of Asser's Biography has been
Recently questioned; but there is little doubt that its facts were

315.— Great Seal of Edward the Confessor.

319.— Harold's Interview

with King Edward on his return from Normandy. (Bayeux Tapestry.)

316.— Great Se.d of Edward the Confessor.

8^.

31 8  Harold taking leave of Edward on his departure for Normandy.
(Uayeux Tapestry.)

322.— 'Hie Crown offered to Harold by the People.— (Bayenx Taposlry.)

ILiilll^^

E TblC: ^gfiSDeFVNCWVSl esT

323.— Covonaiior. of HaroU. (Bayenx Tapestry.)

317.— The Sickness and Death of Edward the Confessor. (Bayeux Tapestry.)

80

329.— Normans conveying Arms and Provisions for the Invading Fleet. (Bayeux Tapestry.)

331 .—The Military Habits of the Anglo-Saxons.

-Anglo-Saxon Weapons,

324.— Harold coining to anchor on the Coast of Normandy. (Bayeux Tapestry.)
V

&^£;~-~rJ</

32S. — A Ship of the fleet of Duke "Wlliam transporting Troops for the Invasion of England.
(Bayeux Tapestry.)

lc3 --WM-- .. in I

W: f)

327.-William $pmS orders for the Invasion. (Bayeux Tapestry.)
No. 11.

326.— Harold's Oath to William. (Bayeux Tapestry.)

[OLD ENGLAND.]

81

82

OLD ENGLAND.

[Book I.

founded upon an older narrative. The portrait of Alfred (Fig.
308) is copied from that in Spelman's ' Life :' but the materials
out of which it is composed are probably not much to be relied
upon. There is a very remarkable object in Berkshire, not a great dis
tance from "Wantage, the birth-place of Alfred, which has been
considered a memorial of the bravery and patriotism which lie dis
played even before he came to the throne. In the reign of Ethelred
the First, the brother of Alfred, the Danes, who had invaded Berk
shire, were routed with great slaughter in a battle known as that of
-ffiscesdun (Ash-tree Hill) ; and it was contended by Dr. Wise, a
learned antiquary of the last century, that the ridge of chalk hills
extending from Wantage into Wiltshire was the scene of this battle,
and that the White Horse which is cut out on the slope of the
chalk is a memorial of this great victory. The White Horse, which
gives its name to the hill, and to the fertile valley beneath, is a most
singular object. It is a rude figure, three hundred and seventy -four
feet in length, formed by removing the turf, and laying bare the
chalk, on the north-west face of this hill, just above a lofty and
steep declivity, which is visible from the surrounding country.
When the afternoon sun shines upon this side of the ridge, the
White Horse may be seen from a great distance — as far, it is said,
as fifteen miles. Lysons mentions that there was a tradition that
lands in the neighbourhood were formerly held by the tenure of'
cleaning the White Horse, by cutting away the springing turf. An
annual festival was once held at this ancient ceremonial labour,
called by the people Scouring the Horse. But as the regard for
ancient memorials was dying out within the last century, and the
peasants of Berkshire were ground down to a worse than serf-like con
dition of dependence on the poor-rates, the old festival was given
up, the White Horse was left to be overgrown and obliterated,
and even the memory of Alfred lived no longer amongst his Saxon
descendants in these lonely valleys, who had grown up in ignorance
and pauperism, because the humanities which had associated their
forefathers with their superiors in rank were unwisely severed.
The age of festivals, whether of religion or patriotism, is gone. We
ought to mention that some antiquaries differ from Dr. Wise, and
believe the White Horse to be of earlier origin than the age of
Alfred. There can be no question, however, that it is a work of
very high antiquity.
The civil government of the Anglo-Saxons, whether under the
Heptarchy, or after the kings of Wessex had obtained that ascen
dency which constituted the united monarchy of all England, is
associated with very few existing monuments beyond those of its
medallic history. There was an ancient chapel at Kingston existing
about half a century ago, in which kings Edrid, Edward the Mar
tyr, and Ethelred are stated to have been crowned. That chapel
is now destroyed (Fig. 305). An engraving was made of it whilst
the tradition was concurrent with the existence of the old building.
Kingston was unquestionably the crowning place of the Saxon
kings. There is a remarkable little church existing at Greensted, a
village about a mile from Ongar, in Essex. It was described about
a century ago in the ' Vetusta Monumenta ' of the Society of
Antiquaries ; and attention has recently been called to it by a
correspondent of the ' Penny Magazine.' " In one of the early
incursions of the Danes into England (a.d. 870), Edmund, King
of East Anglia, was taken prisoner by them, and, refusing to
abjure the Christian religion, put to a cruel death. He was a
favourite of the people, but especially of the priests; and came
naturally, therefore, to be spoken of as a martyr, and his remains
to be held in estimation as those of a saint. In the reign of
Ethelred the Unready, the Danes, emboldened by the cowardice or
feeble policy of the king, who only sought to buy them off from
day to day, and made tyrannous by the diminished opposition every
where offered to them, ravaged the country in all directions, until
at length, in the year 1010, ' that dismal period,' as Mr. Sharon
Turner calls it, ' their triumph was completed in the surrender of
sixteen counties of England and the payment of forty-eight thou
sand pounds.' In this year the bones of St. Edmund were removed
from Ailwin to London, to prevent their falling into the hands of
the Danes. They appear to have remained in London about three
years, when they were carried back to Bedriceworth (Bury St. Ed
mund's). A MS. cited by Dugdale in the ' Monasticon,' and
entitled ' Jtegistrum Camobii S. Edmundi,' informs us that on its
return to Bury, ' his body was lodged (hospitabatur) at Aungre,
where a wooden chapel remains as a memorial to this day.' It is
this same ' wooden chapel ' which is supposed to form the nave of
Greensted Church. The inhabitants of the village have always had*
a tradition that the corpse of a king rested ijp. it, and the appear
ance of the building vouches for its great antiquity " (Fig. 306).

The Witenagemot, or the great council of the nation — prelates,
ealdormen, and thanes or governors of boroughs, with the crowned
king presiding, is represented in one of the Cotton manuscripts in
the British Museum (Fig. 307). We have an example of the
.almost regal dignity of the greater noblemen, in the remarkable seal
of Alfric Earl of Mercia, who lived towards the end of the tenth
century. The earl not only bears the sword of authority, but wears
a diadem (Fig. 313). There are representations of particular
monarchs in Anglo-Saxon manuscripts, which are perhaps more
valuable as examples of costume than as individual portraits. Such
is that of King Edgar (Fig. 311), and of Canute and his queen
(Fig. 312).
The seal which we have mentioned (or rather, the brass matrix of
the seal) of Alfric, Earl of Mercia, which was found by a labourer
in cutting away a bank near Winchester in 1832, is one of several
proofs which have set at rest a long-disputed question as to the use
of seals among the Anglo-Saxons. The legal antiquaries of the
seventeenth century, such as Selden and Coke, speak without any
hesitation of charters with seals granted by the Saxon kings. Mr.
Astle, a very competent authority, asserted in 1791, that our Saxon
ancestors did not use seals of wax appended to their deeds (' Archse
ologia,' vol. x.). He acknowledged, however, that if such a seal
could be found of a date before the time of the Confessor, the
argument against their use, derived from the fact that the word
Sigillum did not always mean seal, would be set at rest. The
opinion of Astle was founded upon that of earlier antiquaries. The
late Mr. Douce, in some remarks upon two wax impressions of the
seal of the Abbey of Wilton, which he believes to be the original
Anglo-Saxon seal, notices these objections : " If Dr. Hiekes and
the other objectors could have expected successfully to demonstrate
that the Saxons used no seals, it was necessary for them to annihi
late not only the numerous early seals of the German emperors and
French Kings, but even the gems and other sigillatory implements
of the ancients. It would, indeed, have been a remarkable circum
stance, that during a period wherein many of the European
monarchs were continuing the immemorial practice of affixing seals to
public instruments, the Saxon sovereigns of England, who were not
inferior in knowledge and civilization to their contemporaries, and
who borrowed many of their customs from Italy and France, should
have entirely suspended a practice so well known and established.
It is much less extraordinary that a very small number of Saxon
seals should be remaining, than that, all circumstances considered,
they should not have been frequently used. All that the objectors
have been able to prove is, that a great many Saxon instruments
were destitute of seals ; that some were forged with seals in Nor
man times ; and that the words ' Signum' and ' Sigillum^ftre often
.used to express the mere signature of a cross, which^Hfertheless
was the representative of a seal." In 1821, the seal ofTEthelwald
Bishop of Dunwich, was found about a hundred yards from the site
of the Monastery of Eye. That remarkable seal is now in the
British Museum ; and Mr. .Hudson Gurney, who transmitted an
account of it to the Society of Antiquaries, says, " On the whole I
conceive there can remain no doubt but that this was the genuine
seal of Ethelwald, Bishop of Dunwich, about the middle of the
ninth century, and that it sets at rest the question hitherto in dis
pute touching the use of seals among the Anglo-Saxons."
These few remarks may not improperly introduce to our readers
the first of an uninterrupted series of monuments belonging to our
monarchical government— the great seals of England. °The seal of
King Edward the Confessor is represented in Figs. 315 and 316.
On one side, according to the description of this seal by Sir Henry
Ellis, the king, " is represented sitting on a, throne bearing on his
head a sort of mitre, in his right hand he holds a sceptre finishing
in a cross, and in his left a globe. On the other side he is also
represented with the same sort of head-dress, sitting. In his rio-ht a
sceptre finishing with a dove.. On his left a sword, the hilt pressed
toward his bosom. On each side is the same legend— Sigillum
Eadwardi Anglorum Basilei. This seal of King Edward
is mentioned several times in the 'Domesday Survey'"
(< Archseologia,' vol. xviii.). The seal of William the Conqueror
which belongs to the next book, is little superior in workmanship to"
that of the Confessor; and the sitting figures of each have consider
able resemblance (Fig. 342). The impression of the seal of the
Conqueror is preserved in the Hotel Soubise at Paris bein"
appended to a charter by which the king granted some 'land in
England to the abbey of St. Denis, in France. This seal establishes
the fact that grants of lands immediately after the Conquest were
guaranteed by the affixing of a waxen seal; and although this
might not be invariably the case, it goes far to throw a doubt upon
the authenticity of the old rhyming grant said to be made by '"

Chap. III.]

OLD ENGLAND.

William to the ancient family of the Hoptons, which Stow and
other early antiquaries have believed to be authentic. Stow gives
it iu his ' Annals,' upon " the testimony of an old chronicle in the
library at Richniont," omitting three introductory lines, upon the
authority of which in the sixteenth century a legal claim was
actually set up to the estate of the lords of Hopton : —
" To the lieirs male of the Hopton lawfully begotten : 
From me and from mine, to thee and to thine,
While the water runs, and the sun doth shine ;
For lack of heirs, to the king again.
I, William, king, the third year of my reign
Give to thee, Norman Huntere, ,
To me that art both lefe and dear,
The Hop and Hoptown,
And all the bounds up and down,
Under the earth to hell,
Above the earth to heaven,
From me and from mine,
To thee and to thine,
As good and as fair
As ever they mine were.
To witness that this is sooth,
I bite the white wax with my tooth,
Before Jugg, Maud, and Margery,
Aud my third son Henry,
For one bow aud one broad arrow,
When I come to hunt upon Yarrow."
We give the above, with some slight corrections, from Blount's
' Ancient Tenures.'

83

The most extraordinary memorial of that eventful period of tran
sition, which saw the descendants of the old Saxon conquerors of
Britain swept from their power and their possessions, and their
places usurped by a swarm of adventurers from the shores of Nor
mandy, is a work not of stone or brass, not of writing and illumi
nation more durable than stone or brass, but a roll of needlework,
which records the principal events which preceded and accompanied
the Conquest, with a minuteness and fidelity which leave no rea
sonable doubt of its being a contemporary production. This is the
celebrated Bayeux Tapestry. When Napoleon contemplated the
invasion of England in 1803, he caused this invaluable record to be
removed from Bayeux, and to be exhibited in the National Museum
at Paris ; and then the French players, always ready to seize upon
a popular subject, produced a little drama in which they exhibited
Matilda, the wife of the Conqueror, sitting in her lonely tower in
Normandy whilst her husband was fighting in England, and thus
recording, with the aid of her needlewomen, the mighty acts of her
hero, portrayed to the life in this immortal worsted-work. But
there is a more affecting theory of the accomplishment of this la
bour than that told in the French vaudeville. The women of Eng
land were celebrated all over Europe for their work in embroidery ;
and when the husband of Matilda ascended the throne of England,
it is reasonably concluded that the skilful daughters of the land
were retained around the person of the queen. They were thus
employed to celebrate their own calamities., But there was nothing
in this tapestry whicli told a tale of degradation. There is no
delineation of cowardly flight or abject submission. The colours
of the threads might have been dimmed with the tears of the workers,
but they would not have had the deep pain of believing that their
homes were not gallantly defended. In this great invasion and con
quest, as an old historian has poetically said, " was tried by the
great assise of God's judgment in battle the right of power between
the English and Norman nations— a battle the most memorable of
all others ; and, howsoever miserably lost, yet most nobly fought
on the part of England." There was nothing in this tapestry to
encourage another invasion eight centuries later. In one of the
compartments of the tapestry were represented men gazing at a
meteor or comet, which was held to presage the defeat of the Saxon
Harold. A meteor had appeared in the south of France, at the
time of the exhibition of the tapestry in 1803; and the mountebank
Napoleon proclaimed that the circumstances were identical. The
tapestry, having served its purpose of popular delusion, was returned
to its original obscurity. It had previously been known to Lancelot
and Montfaucon, French antiquaries; and Dr. Ducarel, in 1767,
printed a description of it, in which he stated that it was annually
hung up round the nave of the church of Bayeux on St. John's day.
During the last thirty years this ancient work has been fully
described, and its date and origin discussed. Above all, the Society
of Antiquaries have rendered a most valuable service to the world,
by causing a complete set Of coloured fac-simile drawings to be
made by an accomplished artist, Mr. Charles Stothard, which have

since been published in the ' Vetusta Monumenta.' The more
remarkable scenes of the seventy-two compartments of the tapestry
are engraved in our pages : and we may fitly close our account of
the antiquities of the Anglo-Saxon period with a brief notice of
this most interesting historical record.
In the Hotel of the Prefecture at Bayeux is now preserved this
famous tapestry. In 1814, so little was known of it in the town
where it had remained for so many centuries, that Mr. Hudson
Gurney was coming away without discovering it, not being aware
that it went by the name 'of the " Toile de St. Jean." It was
coiled round a windlass ; and drawing it out at leisure over a table,
he found that it consisted of " a very long piece of brownish linen
cloth, worked with woollen thread of different colours, which are
as bright and distinct, and the letters of the superscriptions as legible,
as if of yesterday." The roll is twenty inches broad, and two
hundred and fourteen feet in length. Mr. Gurney has some sen
sible remarks upon the internal evidence of the work being
contemporaneous with the Conquest. In the buildings portrayed
there is not the trace of a pointed arch ; there is not an indication
of armorial bearings, properly so called, which would certainly
have been given to the fighting knights had the needlework
belonged to 'a later age; and the Norman banner is invaribly
Argent, a cross Or in a border Azure, and not the latter in
vention of the Norman leopards. Mr. Gurney adds, " It may be
remarked, that the whole is worked with a strong outline ; that the
clearness and relief are given to it by the variety of the colours."
The likenesses of individuals are preserved throughout. The
Saxons invariably wear moustaches ; and William, from his erect
•figure and manner, could be recognised were there no superscriptions.
Mr. Charles Stothard, who made the drawings of the tapestry
which have been engraved by the Society of Antiquities, com
municates some interesting particulars in a letter written in 1819.
He adds to Mr. Gurney's account of its character as a work of art,
that " there is no attempt at light and shade, or perspective, the
want of which is substituted by the use of different coloured worsteds.
We observe this in the off-legs of the horses, which are distinguished
alone from the near-legs by being of different colours. The horses,
the hair, and mustachios, as well as the eyes and features of the
characters, are depicted with all the various colours of green, blue,
red, &c, according to the taste or caprice of the artist. This may
be easily accounted for, when we consider how "few colours com
posed their materials."
The first of the seventy-two compartments into which the roll of
needlework is divided, is inscribed " Edwardus Ilex" (Fig. 318).
We omit the inscriptions which occur in each compartment, except
in two instances. The crowned king, seated on a chair of state,
with a sceptre, is giving audience to two persons in attendance ;
and this is held to represent Harold departing for Normandy. The
second shows Harold, aud his attendants with hounds, on a journey.
He bears the hawk on his hand, the distinguishing mark of nobility.
The inscription purports that the figures represent Harold, Duke of
the English, and his soldiers, journeying to Bosham (Fig. 320).
The third is inscribed " Ecclesia," and exhibits a Saxon church,
with two bending figures about to enter. This we have given in
another place, as' an architectural illustration (Fig. 216). The
fourth compartment represents Harold embarking ; and the fifth
shows him on his voyage. We give the sixth (Fig. 324), which is
his coming to anchor previous to disembarking on the coast of
Normandy. The seventh and eighth compartments exhibit the
seizure of Harold by the Count of Ponthieu. The ninth (Fig.
325) shows Harold remonstrating with Guy, the Count, upon his
unjust seizure.
We pass over the compartments from ten to twenty-five, inclu
sive, which exhibit various circumstances connected with the sojourn
of Harold at the court of William. Mr. Stothard has justly ob
served, " That whoever designed this historical record was intimately
acquainted with whatever was passing on the Norman side, is
evidently proved by that minute attention to familiar and local
circumstances evinced in introducing, solely in the Norman party,
characters certainly not essential to the great events connected witli
the story of the work." The twenty-sixth compartment (Fig. 326)
represents Harold swearing fidelity to William, with each hand on
a shrine of relics. All the historians appear to be agreed that
Harold did take an oath to William to support his claims to the
crown of England, whatever might have been the circumstances
under which that oath was extorted from him. The twenty-seventh
compartment exhibits Harold's return to England ; and the twenty-
eighth shows him on his journey after landing. For the con
venience of referring to those parts of the tapestry which are
connected with King Edward the Confessor, we have grouped them
Mi!

336.— Duke William addressing his Soldiers at the Field of Hastings. (Bayeux Tapestry.)

334. — Orders given for the erection of a fortified Camp at Hastings.
(Bayeux Tapestry.)

i.— Battle of Hastings. (Bayeux Tapestry.)

84

839.-Death of Harold. (Bayeux Tapertry.)

348.— The Abhev of St. Etienne fStenhenl, Caen

347.— Statue of William the Conqueror. Placed against one of the external Pillars of St. Stephen, Caen.

85

OLD ENGLAND.

[Book I.

in one page (80), not following their order in the tapestry. The
twenty-ninth compartment (Fig. 319) has an inscription purport
ing that Harold comes to Edward the King. The thirtieth shows
the funeral procession of the deceased Edward to Westminster
Abbey, a hand out of heaven pointing to that building as a
monument of his piety (Fig. 321). The inscription says, "Here
the body of Edward the King is borne to the church of St. Peter
the Apostle." The thirty-first and thirty-second compartments
exhibit the sickness and death of the Confessor (Fig. 317). The
thirty -third shows the crown offered to Harold (Fig. 322). The
thirty-fourth presents us Harold on the throne, with Stigant the
Archbishop (Fig. 323). Then comes the compartment represent
ing the comet already mentioned ; and that is followed by one
showing William giving orders for the building of ships for the
invasion of England (Fig. 327). We have then compart
ments, in which men are cutting down trees, building ships,
dragging along vessels, and bearing arms and armour. The forty-
third has an inscription, " Here they draw a car with wine and
arms " (Fig. 329). After a compartment with William on horse
back, we have the fleet on its voyage. The inscription to this
recounts that he passes the sea with a great fleet, and comes to
Pevensey. Three other compartments show the disembarkation of
horses, the hasty march of cavalry, and the seizure and slaughter of
animals for the hungry invaders. The forty-ninth compartment
bears the inscription " This is Wadard." Who this personage on
horseback, thus honoured, could be, was a great puzzle, till the
name was found in Domesday-Eook as a holder of land in six
English counties, under Odo, Bishop of Bayeux, the Conqueror's
half-brother. This is one of the circumstances exhibiting the
minute knowledge of the designers of this needlework. The
fiftieth and fifty-first compartments present us the cooking and
the feasting of the Norman army (Fig. 335). We have then the
dining of the chiefs ; the Duke about to dine, whilst Odo blesses

the food ; and the Duke sitting under a canopy. The fifty-fifth
shows him holding a banner, and giving orders for the construction
of a camp at Hastings (Fig. 334).
Six other compartments show us the burning of a house with
firebrands, the march out of Hastings, the advance to the battle,
and the anxious questioning by William of his spies and scouts as
to the approach of the army of Harold. The sixty-third presents a
messenger announcing to Harold that the army of William is near
at hand. The sixty-fourth bears the inscription, that Duke William
addresses his soldiers that they should prepare themselves boldly
and skilfully for the battle. We have then six compartments, each
exhibiting some scene of the terrible conflict (Figs. 337, 338). The
seventy-first shows the death of Harold (Fig. 339). The tapestry
abruptly ends with the figures of flying soldiers.
We have probably been somewhat too minute in the description
of this remarkable performance. If any apology be necessary, it
may be best offered in the words of Mr. Amyot, in his ' Defence of
the Early Antiquity of the Bayeux Tapestry,' which is almost
conclusive as to the fact of its being executed under the direction
of Matilda, the wife of the Conqueror (' Archaaologia,' vol. xix).
" If the Bayeux Tapestry be not history of the first class, it is
perhaps something better. It exhibits genuine traits, elsewhere
sought in vain, of the costume and manners of that age which, of all
others, if we except the period of the Eeformation, ought to be the
most interesting to us ; that age which gave us a new race of
monarchs, bringing with them new landholders, new laws, and
almost a new language. As in the magic pages of Froissart, we
here behold our ancestors of each race in most of the occupations
of life — in courts and camps — in pastime and in battle — at feasts,
and on the bed of sickness. These are characteristics which of
themselves would call forth a lively interest ; but their value is
greatly enhanced by their connection with one of the most important
events in history, the main subject of the whole design."

END OF BOOK L

CHAPTER I.— REGAL AND BARONIAL ANTIQUITIES.

n magno navigio make
transivit, et venit ad
Pevensje.
Such is the inscription to
the forty-fifth compartment
of the Bayeux Tapestry — in
a great ship he passes the
sea, and comes to Pevensey,
The Bay of Pevensey is not
now as it was on the 28th of
September, a.d. 1066, when
this great ship sailed into it,
and a bold man, one whose
stern will and powerful mind
was to change the destiny of
England, leaped upon the
strand, and, filling upon his face, a great cry went forth that it was
an evil omen ; — but the omen was turned into a sign of gladness
when he exclaimed, with his characteristic oath, " I have taken
seisin of this land with both my hands." The shores of the bay are
now a dreary marsh, guarded by dungeon-looking towers, which
were built to defend us from such another seisin (Fig. 349). ' The
sea once covered this marsh, and the Norman army came a mile or
so nearer to the chalk hills, beyond which they knew there was a
land of tempting fertility. It must have been somewhat near the
old Roman castle that the disembarkation took place, whose inci
dents are exhibited in the Bayeux Tapestry. Here were the
horses removed from the ships : here each horseman mounted his
own, and galloped about to look upon a land in which he saw no
enemy ; here were the oxen and the swine of the Saxon farmer
slaughtered by those for whom they were fatted not ; here was the
cooking, and the dining, and the rude pomp of the confident Duke,
who knew that his great foe was engaged in a distant conflict. The
charaGter of William of Normandy was so remarkable, and indeed was
such an element of success in his daring attempt upon the English
crown, that what is personally associated with him, even though
it be found not in our own island, belongs to the antiquities of
England. He was a stark man, as the Saxon chronicler describes
him from personal knowledge, a man of unbending will and ruthless
determination, but of too lofty a character to be needlessly cruel or
wantonly destructive. Of his pre-eminent abilities there can be no
question. Connected with such a man, then, his purposes and his

success, the remains of his old Palace at Lillebonne (Fig. 345),
which may be readily visited by those who traverse the Seine in its
steam-boats, is an object of especial interest to an Englishman.
For here was the great Council held for the invasion of England,
and the attempt was determined against by the people collectively,
but the wily chief separately won the assent of their leaders, and the
collective voice was raised in vain. More intimately associated
with the memory of the Conqueror is the Church of St. Etienne at
Caen (Fig. 348), which he founded ; and where, deserted by his
family and his dependants, the dead body of the sovereign before
whom all men had trembled was hurried to the grave, amidst fearful
omens and the denunciations of one whom he had persecuted. The
mutilated statue of William may be seen on the exterior of the same
church (Fig. 347). In England we have one monument, connected
in the same distinct manner with his personal character, whilst it
is at the same time a memorial of his great triumph and the revolu
tion which was its result — we mean Battle Abbey. When Harold
heard — " That due Wyllam to Hastynges was ycome/'
he gallantly set forward to meet him — but with an unequal force. He
knew the strength of his enemy, but he did not quail before it.
The chroniclers say that Harold's spies reported that there were
more priests in William's camp than fighting men in that of
Harold ; and they add that the Saxon knew better than the spies
that the supposed priests were good men-at-arms. Mr. Stothard,
in his ' Account of the Bayeux Tapestry,' points out, with refer
ence to the figures of the Normans, that " not only are their upper
lips shaven, but nearly the whole of their heads, excepting a portion
of hair left in front." He adds, " It is a curious circumstance in
favour of the great antiquity of the Tapestry, that time has, I believe,
handed down to us no other representation of this most singular
fashion, and it appears to throw a new light on a fact which has
perhaps been misunderstood: the report made by Harold's spies
that the Normans were an army of priests is well known. I should
conjecture, from what appears in the Tapestry, that their resemblance
to priests did not so much arise from the upper lip being shaven, as
from the circumstance of the complete tonsure of the back part of
the head." Marching out from their entrenched camp at Hastings
(Fi°\ 350), the Normans, all shaven and shorn, encountered the
moustached Saxons on the 14th of October. The Tapestry repre
sents the Saxons, fighting on foot, with javelin and battle-axe.
bearing their shields with the old British characteristic of a boss in

357.~Coni,borough Castle.

iivp^fco^emf.

3G3. — Specimen of Domesday-Book.

362.— Walrasgate Btobican,' York.

35 !)¦. — Richmond , Yorkshire.

fc£$jjLfe

360.— Eichmond Castte, from the river Swale.

36!.— The Keen of Richmond Castle.

No. 12.

[OLD ENGLAND.]

89

GO

OLD ENGLAND.

[Book. II.

the centre, the Normans are on horseback, with their long
shields and their pennoned lances. It is not for us to describe the
terrible conflict. " The English," says William of Malmesbury,
" rendered all they owed to their country." Harold and his two
brothers fell at the foot of their standard which they had planted
on the little hill of Senlac, and on this spot, whose name was sub
sequently changed to Bataille, was built Battle Abbey (Fig. 351).
It was not the pride of the Conqueror alone that raised up this
once magnificent monument. The stern man, the hot and pas
sionate man, the man who took what he could get by right and
unright, " was mild to good men who loved God." And so he
built Battle Abbey.
Robert of Gloucester has thus described, in his quaint verse, the
foundation of Battle Abbey : —
" King William bithougt him alsoe of that
Folke that was forlorne,
And slayn also thorurg him
In the baiaile bifonie.
And ther as the bataile was,
An abbey he lete rere
Of Seint Martin, for the soules
That there slayn were.
And the monks wel ynoug
Feffed without fayle,
X'hat is called in Englonde
Abbey of Bataile."
Brown Willis tells us that in the fine old parish-church of Battle
was formerly hung up a table containing certain verses, of which
the following remained : —
" This place of war is Battle called, because in battle here
Quite conquered and overthrown the English nation were.
This slaughter happened to them upon St. Ceelict's day,*
The year whereof ...... this number doth array."
The politic Conqueror did wisely thus to change the associations,
if it were possible, which belonged to this fatal spot. He could not
obliterate the remembrance of the " day of bitterness," the " day of
death," the " day stained with the blood of the brave " (Matthew
of Westminster). Even the red soil of Senlac was held, with
patriotic superstition, to exude real and fresh blood after a small
shower, " as if intended for a testimony that the voice of so much
Christian blood here shed does still cry from the earth to the Lord "
(Gulielmus Neubrigensis). This Abbey of Bataille is unquestion
ably a place to be trod with reverent contemplation by every
Englishman who has heard of the great event that here took place,
and has traced its greater consequences. He is of the mixed blood
«f the conquerors and the conquered. It has been written of him
and his compatriots —
" Pride in their port, defiance iu their eye,
I see the lords of human kind pass by."
His national character is founded upon the union of the Saxon de
termination and the Norman energy. As he treads the red soil of
Senlac, if his reformed faith had not taught him otherwise he would
breathe a petition for all the souls, Saxon and Norman, " that there
slain were." The Frenchman, whose imagination has been stirred
by Thierry's picturesque and philosophical history of the Norman
Conquest, will tread this ground with no national prejudices ; for
th« roll of Battle Abbey will show him that those inscribed as
the followers of the Conqueror had Saxon as well as Norman names,
and that some of the most illustrious of the names have long been
the common property of England and of France. But the intelli
gent curiosity of the visitor to the little town of Battle will be
somewhat checked, when he finds that the gates of the Abbey are
rigidly closed against him except for a few hours of one day in the
week. " The Abbey and grounds can be only seen on Monday,"
tr»ly says the Hastings Guide. Be it so. There is not much lost
by the traveller who comes here on one of the other five days of the
week. The sight of this place is a mortifying one. The remains
of the fine cloisters have been turned into a dining-room, and, to
tise the words of the ' Guide-Book,' " Part of the site of the church
is now a parterre which in summer exhibits a fine collection of Flora's
greatest beauties." This was the very church whose high altar was
described by the old writers to have stood on the spot where the body
of Harold was found, covered with honourable wounds in the defence
of. his tattered standard. " Flora's greatest beauties !" " Few per
sons," adds the ' Guide-Book,' " have the pleasure of admission." We
do not envy the few. If they can look upon this desecration of a spot
so singularly venerable without a burning blush for some foregone
barbarism, they must be made of different stuff from the brave who
here fought to the death because they had a country which not only
afforded them food and shelter, but the memory of great men and
? St. Calixtus, October the 14th.

heroic deeds, which was to them an inheritance to be prized and
defended. The desecration of Battle Abbey of course began at the general
pillage under Henry the Eighth. The Lord Cromwell's Commis
sioners write to him that they have " cast their book " for the dis
patch of the monks and household. They think that very small
money can be made of the vestry, but they reckon the plunder of
the church plate to amount to four hundred marks. Within three
months after the surrender of the Abbey it was granted to Sir
Anthony Browne ; and he at once set about pulling down the church,
the bell-tower, the sacristy, and the chapter-house. The spoiler
became Viscount Montacute ; and in this family Battle Abbey
continued, till it was sold, in 1719, to Sir Thomas Webster. It
has been held, and no doubt truly, that many of the great names
that figure on the roll of Battle Abbey were those of veiy subordi
nate people in the army of the Conqueror ; and it is possible that
the descendants of some of those who roasted for the great Duke the
newly slaughtered sheep on the strand at Pevensey may now look
with contempt upon a patent of nobility not older than the days of the
Stuarts. But, with all this, it is somewhat remarkable that Battle
Abbey, with its aristocratic associations, should have fallen into
the hands of a lineal descendant of the master-cook to Queen
Elizabeth. Sir Thomas was an enterprising bustling man, who
was singularly lucky in South Sea Stock, and had the merit of
encouraging the agricultural improvements of Jethro Tull. For
the succeeding century of Sir Whistlers and Sir Godfreys, the work
of demolition and change has regularly gone forward. The view
(Fig. 351) exhibits Battle Abbey as it was about the time that it
went out of the Montacute family. Brown Willis who wrote a
little after the same period, thus describes it in his day : — " Though
this abbey be demolished, yet the magnificence of it appears by the
ruins of the cloisters, &c, and by the largeness of the hall, kitchen,
and gate-house, of which the last is entirely preserved. It is a
noble pile,, and in it are held sessions and other meetings, for this
peculiar jurisdiction, which hath still great privileges belonging to
it. What the hall was, when in its glory, may be guessed by its
dimensions, its length above fifty of my paces ; part of it is now
used as a hay-barn; it was leaded, part of the lead yet remains,
and the rest is tiled. As to the kitchen, it was so large as to contain
five fire-places, and it was arched at top ; but the extent of the
whole abbey may be better measured by the compass of it, it being
computed at no less than a mile about. In this church the Conqueror
offered up his sword and royal robe, which he wore on the day of his
coronation. The monks kept these till the suppression, and used
to show them as great curiosities, and worthy the sight of their best
friends, and all persons of distinction that happened to come thither :
nor were they less careful about preserving a table of the Norman
gentry which came into England with the Conqueror."
Horace Walpole has given us a notion of the condition of Battle
Abbey, and the taste which presided over it, a century ago. He
visited it in 1752, and thus writes to Mr. Bentley : « Battle Abbey
stands at the end of the town, exactly as Warwick castle does of
Warwick ; but the house of Webster have taken due care that it
should not resemble it in anything else. A vast building which
they call the old refectory, but which I believe was the original
church, is now barn, coach-house, &c. The situation is noble,
above the level of abbeys : what does remain of gateways and towerl
is beautiful, particularly the flat side of a cloister, which is now the
front of the mansion-house. A Miss of the family has clothed a
fragment of a portico with cockle-shells !"
A general view of Battle Abbey in its present state may be best
obtained by passing the old wall, and continuing on the Hasting
road for about half a mile. A little valley will then have beer,
crossed ; and from the eminence on the south-east the modern build
ing with its feeble imitations of antiquity, and its few antiquarian
realities, is offered pretty distinctly to the pedestrian's eye. What
is perhaps better than such a view, he may, from this spot, survev
this remarkable battle-field, and understand its general charactei".
rhe nghts of property cannot shut him out from this satisfaction.
I he ancient gateway to the abbey, which stands boldly up in the
pnncpal street in the town of Battle, is of much more recent architec-
ure than the ong'uial abbey. Some hold it to be of the time of Edward
he Third ; but the editor of the last edition of < Dugdale's Monas-
ticon considers it to be that of Henry the Sixth (R. 338}
In the group (Fig. 840) we have given the seal ofBattle Abbey
in the lower compartment on the right. The group also contains
portraits of the Conqueror and of Harold, views of Pevensey and of
Hastings and a vignette of a Norman and Saxon soldier The
seal of Battle Abbey still remains in the Augmentation Office
attached to the deed of surrender in the time of Henry the Eichth

Chap. I]

OLD ENGLAND.

91

The side which our engraving represents exhibits a church, having
an ornamented gateway and tower, with four turrets. This, there
can be little doubt, represents the church which Sir Anthony
Browne destroyed, as churches were destroyed in tliose days, by
stripping the roof of its lead, and converting the timber into building-
material or fire-wood.* Time was left to do -the rest in part; and
as the columns and arches crumbled into ruin, the owners of the
property mended their roads with the rich carvings, and turned the
altar-tombs into paving-stones — until at last the prettiest of flower-
gardens was laid out upon the sacred ground, and the rose and the
pansy flourished in the earth which had been first enriched by the
blood of the slaughtered Saxons, and grew richer and richer with
the bones of buried monks, generation after generation. Truly
this is a fitting place for " a fine collection of Flora's greatest
beauties." We may be held to speak harshly of such matters ; but,
as this is the first time we have been called upon so to speak, it may
be well that we say a few words as to the course we shall hold it
our duty to pursue in all cases where the historical antiquities of
our country, and especially where its ecclesiastical antiquities, are
swept away upon the principle, just, no doubt, in the main, of doing
what we will with our own. The right of private property has no
other foundation whatever than the public good. If it could be
demonstrated that the public good does not consist with the right
of private property, the basis upon which it rests is irrevocably
destroyed, and the superstructure falls. But it cannot be so
demonstrated. The principle upon which the possessors of Battle
Abbey, and a hundred other similar properties in this kingdom,
retain their possessions, is a sure one, because it is the same
principle that confirms to the humblest in the ' land the absolute
control over the first guinea which he deposits in a Savings' Batik.
It would be no greater atrocity, perhaps not so great a one, to
reclaim for the Church in the nineteenth century the lands and
lordships of the Abbey of Battle, than it was for Henry the Eighth
to despoil the Abbey of Battle of those lands and lordships in the
sixteenth century. The possessions were wrung from their legal
proprietors under the pretext of a voluntary surrender, " with the
gibbet at their door." The same process might be repeated under
some such pretext of public good. The Church might be again
plundered ; the possessions of the nobility might be again confiscated ;
but it would only end in property changing hands. York and
Canterbury would have new grantees, and a new Battle Abbey
would have a new Sir Anthony Browne. But, looking at all the
circumstances under which domains and endowments which are
national, at least in their historical memories, have been for the
most part originally granted, and are in some instances still
• possessed, we maintain not only that it is contrary to the spirit of
the age, and opposed to the public good, that a continual process of
demolition and desecration should go forward, but we hold that,
under all just restrictions, the people have a distinct right to
cultivate the spirit of nationality, of taste for the beautiful, of
reverence for what is old and sacred, by a liberal admission to every
fabric which is distinctly associated, in what remains of it, with the
history of their country, and the arts and manners of their fore
fathers. It was once contemplated to form an association to
prevent the continual destruction of our architectural antiquities.
The association has not been formed. But, formed or not, it is no
less the duty of those who address the public upon such matters to
direct opinion into a right direction ; and thus to control those who,
in the pride of possession, disregard opinion. It is the continued
assertion of this opinion which has at length thrown open the doors
of our cathedrals, not so widely as they ought to be opened, but
still wide enough to admit those who can pay a little for the sight
of noble and inspiriting objects, which ought to be as patent as
the blue sky and green trees. It is the assertion of this opinion
whicli has stopped, in some degree, the new white-washing of the
fine carved-work of our churches, and the blocking up of their
windows and their arches by cumbrous monuments of the pride of
the wealthy. But there is yet much to be done. The squire of
the parish must have his high pew lowered ; and the vicar must
learn to dispense with the dignity of his churchwarden's seat
blocking up the arch of his chancel. The funds of all cathedrals
' must income measure be applied, as they are now in many cases,
to the proper restoration of the beauty and grandeur of their tombs
and chantries ; and not to the destruction of all harmony and
proportion, under the guidance of rash ignorance, as formerly at
Salisbury. Sacred places which have been made hiding-holes for
rubbish, like the Crypt at Canterbury, must be opened to the light.
The guardians of our ecclesiastical edifices must, above all, be
taught that the house of God was meant to be a house of beauty;
* Horace Walpole was clearly in error iii taking the hall, or refectory, for the church.

and that their vile applications of mere utility, their tasteless stalls,
their white paint, and their yellow plaster, for the purposes of
hiding the glowing colours and the ricli imagery of those who knew
better than they what belonged to the devotional feeling, will no
longer be endured as the badges of a pure and reformed religion ;
for that religion is not the cold and unimaginative tiling which the
puritanism of two centuries has endeavoured to degrade it into.
We shall do our best not only to direct public attention to the
antiquities of our country, and incidentally to the history of our
country in a large sense, but we shall take care, as far as in us lies-
disclaiming the slightest intention of giving offence to individuals—
to contend for a liberal throwing open of those antiquities to the
well conducted of the community, whatever be their social position ;
and to remonstrate against ail wanton and ignorant destruction of
those remains which wise governments and just individuals ought to
have upheld, but which to our shame have in many cases been as
recklessly destroyed as if the annals of our country had perished;
and we of Old England were a young democracy, rejoicing in our
contempt for those feelings which belong as much to the honour
and wisdom as to the poetry of civilized life.

There is an opinion, which probably may have been too hastily
taken up, that previous to the invasion of William of Normandy
there were few or no castles or towers of defence in England ; and
that to this circumstance may be attributed the eventual success
which followed his daring inroad. This opinion has had the sup
port of many eminent antiquaries, amongst others of Sir William
Du"-dale. It is scarcely necessary for us to discuss this point ; and
therfore, when we come presently to speak of Conisborough Castle,
we shall touch very slightly upon the belief of some that it was a
Saxon work. That the Conqueror erected castles, and impelled his
barons to their erection in every part of the kingdom, there can be
no doubt. His energy was so great iu this mode of defence and
protection, that an old Latin chronicler says that he wearied all
England with their erection. The general plan of a Norman
castle is exhibited in Fig. 346. The keep or dungeon (the tall
central building) is numbered 1 ; the chapel 2 ; the stable 3 ; the
inner bailey 4 ; the outer bailey 5 ; the barbacan 6 ; the mount for
the execution of justice 7 ; the soldiers' lodgings 8. The following
clear and accurate description, by an eminent architect, in the
' Pictorial History of England,' will assist the reader's notion of a
Norman castle as conveyed by this ancient plan : — " The Anglo-
Norman castle occupied a considerable space of ground, sometimes
several acres, and usually consisted of three principal divisions— the
outer or lower Ballium (Anglice Bailey) or court, the inner or upper
court and the keep. The outer circumference of the whole was
defended by a lofty and solid perpendicular wall strengthened at
intervals by towers, and surrounded by a ditch or moat. Flights of
steps led to the top of this rampart, which was protected by a para
pet, embattled and pierced in different directions by loop-holes or
chinks, and oeillets, through which missiles might be discharged
without exposing the men. The ramparts of Rockingham Castle,
according to Leland, were embattled on both sides, ' so that^ if the
area were won, the castle keepers might defend the walls.' The
entrance through the outer wall into the lower court was defended
by the barbacan, which in some cases was a regular outwork, cover-
ino- the approach to the bridge across the ditch ; but the few bar
bicans whicli remain consist only of a gateway in advance of the
main gate, with which it was connected by a narrow open passage
commanded by the ramparts on both sides. Such a work remained
until lately attached to several of the gates of York, and still
remains, though of a later date, at Warwick Castle [Fig. 362
exhibits the construction of a barbacan in that of Walmgate Bar,
York]. The entrance archway, besides the massive gates, was
crossed by the portcullis, which could be instantaneously dropped
upon any emergency, and the crown of the arch was pierced with
holes, through which melted lead and pitch, and heavy missiles,
could be cast upon the assailants below. A second rampart, similar
to the first, separated the lower from the upper court, in which were
placed the habitable buildings, including the keep the relative posi
tion of which varied with the nature of the site. It was generally
elevated upon a high artificial mound, and sometimes enclosed by
outworks of its own. The keep bore the same relation to the rest
of the castle that the citadel bears to a fortified town. It was the
last retreat of the garrison, and contained the apartments of the
baron or commandant. In form the Anglo-Norman keeps are
varied, and not always regular; but in those of the larger size rect
angular pla^s are the most common, and of the smaller class many
are5 circular The solidity of their construction is so great, that we
find them retaining at least their outward form in the midst of the
IN 2

Msttk

mmw

366.^p*rigTiettc from the Poem of the lied King.

3G4.— Great Seal of William Rufus.

70.— Stone in New Forest, maikinp the site oftlie Oak-tree against which the Arrow of Sir Walter]
TyrreL is said to have glanbed.

1» m
3G5.-Silvcr Penny of William II. (Brit. Mils.)

%p^.i^^fesf«fe^. C

IS

269. — Yew-tree in Hayes Churchyard.

3G3.— Royal Party hunting Rabbits. (Royal MS. 2 D vii.)

.^SSr^BTlSBJr^— r-— :jl-

37 : . — Tomb of Rufus.

3T3.— Winchester.

371.— Entrance of Rodiester Castle.

-Rochester Castle : the Keep, with its Entrance Tower.

373.— Interior of the Remains of the Upper Story of Rcchesler Castle.

376.— -Rochester Castle :— Plan.

;;".— The. Tower, freni the Thames.

93

94

OLD ENGLAND.

[Book II.

most dilapidated ruin. Time and violence appear to have assaulted
them in vain, and even the love of change has respected them
through successive generations."
Conisborough Castle, which is pronounced by Mr. King to be of
the earliest Saxon times " before the conversion of that people to
Christianity," is held by later antiquaries in its extent and arrange
ment to be a fair representation of the Norman keeps of the smaller
class. It is situated in the West Eiding of Yorkshire, in the
wapentake of Stafforth, and, standing on a steep knowl, commands
a splendid view of the winding course of the river Don. It was
formerly entered by a drawbridge over a deep fosse. Leland speaks
of " the castle standing on a rocket of stone, and ditched. The
walls of it have been strong and full of towers." By the walls the
old topographer means those which surround the keep, which
Pennant in his time described as " seemingly circular, and having
the remains of four small rounders." The keep, of which a good
part is still entire, is a most remarkable building. It was originally
four stories high, and is of a circular form, being about twenty-two
feet diameter inside. The walls are fifteen feet thick, and they are
flanked by six projecting turrets, or square buttresses, running from
the top to the bottom, and expanding at the base. The external
appearance of the keep does nqt at first give the impression of its
really circular form (Fig. 357). The ground floor or base is
described by Pennant as a noisome dungeon of vast depth, at the
bottom of which is a draw-well. Fig. 354 exhibits the form of the
second story; the steps are numbered 1, the entrance 2, the stairs
to the third story 3, the opening to the vaulted story or dungeon
below 4. Fig. 355 shows the third story ; the stairs from the
second floor are numbered 5, the window 6, a closet which shows
that our forefathers possessed conveniences which have been thought
a modern invention 8, stairs to the fourth story 9 ; the chimney is
numbered 7, and in this and the floor above it is remarkable that
the construction of a chimney was not only perfectly well known,
but that the form of the opening projecting over the hearth ex
hibited a degree of elegance which might recommend itself to the
tasteless fire-place builders of eight centuries later (Fig. 1 353).
The fourth story is indicated in Fig. 356 ; a small but well deco
rated hexagon room, undoubtedly used as a chapel, formed out of
the thickness of the wall and the turret, is numbered 10, the stairs
from the third floor 11, the window 12, the chimney 13, the stairs
to the platform 14. From this platform there are entrances to
six small rooms formed in the six turrets which rise above the
parapet. Such were the conveniences of one of the smaller keeps,
possessing only a store-room or dungeon, a sort of hall of entrance,
two living rooms, and a chapel, with six pigeon-holes where the
retainers slept or cooked their food. Of the larger keeps we shall
have particularly to speak when we come to notice the more com
plete establishment of the feudal system under the immediate suc
cessors of the Conqueror. At present we shall content ourselves
with a brief description of the Castle of Richmond in Yorkshire,
the grant of whose site to its first possessor is distinctly associated
with William the Conqueror.
The charter by which the king bestowed the lands of the brave
and unfortunate Saxon Earl Edwin upon one of his own followers
is thus given by Camden :— " I William, surnamed Bastard, King
of England, do give and grant to thee, my nephew, Alan Earl
Bretagne, and to thy heirs for ever, all the villages and lands which
of late belonged to Earl Edwin, in Yorkshire, witli the knight's
fees and other liberties and customs, as freely and honourably as
the same Edwin held them. Dated from our siege before York."
Here then, on this noble hill, nearly encompassed by the river
Swale, amidst a landscape of wild beauty, almost of stern grandeur
stands this Castle of Riche-mount, and some of the streets in the
little town at its feet have still their Norman names. Alan of
Bretagne quickly set to work to defend the broad lands which his
kinsman had bestowed upon him, by gathering round him a powerful
band safe from attack on this fortressed hill. The castle has been a
ruin for three centuries. Even in Leland's time it was " mere.
ruin." But yet the great keep, whose walls are ninety-nine feet in
height, and eleven in thickness, still defies the wind and the frost
as it once set at nought the battering-ram and the scaling-ladder
<Fig. 361). Turrets rise above these walls from the four corners.
The keep consisted originally of three stories. The roofs of the
two upper stories have now fallen in. There are the ruins of two
smaller towers to the south-east and south-west angles of the walls
(Fig. 360). The view on the town side is given in Fio\ 359.
The grant of lands by the Conqueror to Alan the Breton is
represented in a very curious illumination in the register of the
Honour of Richmond (Fig. 352). The prolonged resistance made
to the power of the Norman invaders in the north brought pillage

and slaughter upon the inliabitants of the towns, and confiscation
of their lands upon the native chiefs. Villages and manors
were given away by scores in every district, to some fortunate
follower of the stranger king. It is in Domesday Book, the most
extraordinary record of the feudal times, that we can trace the
course of the spoliation of the original proprietors of the soil,
and the waste and depopulation that had preceded any condition
approaching to a tranquil settlement of the country. This book, of
which a specimen is given in Fig. 363, is unquestionably the most
remarkable monument of the Norman Conquest. No other country
possesses so complete a record of the state of society nearly eight
centuries ago, as this presents in its registration of the lands of
England. By special permission it may be seen in the Chapter
house at Westminster. It was formerly kept in the Exchequer
under three different locks and keys. The book familiarly so called
really consists of two volumes — one a large folio, the other a quarto,
the material of each being vellum. The date of the survey, as
indicated in one of these volumes, is 1086. Northumberland,
Cumberland, Westmoreland, and Durham were not included as
counties in the survey, though parts of Westmoreland and Cumber
land are taken. There never was a record which more strikingly
exhibited the consequences of invasion and forcible seizure *of
property. The value of all the estates was to be triply estimated ;
as that value stood in the time of Edward the Confessor, at the time
of its bestowal by the king, and at the formation of the survey. It
was found that twenty years after the Conquest the rental of the
kingdom was one-fourth less than in the time of the Confessor; and
the return was made upon oath. The Saxon chronicler looks upon
the Domesday Book as one of the many evidences of the Conqueror's
grasping disposition ; for he tells us that not a hide or yard of land,
not an ox, cow, or hog, was omitted in the census. Later historians
have cried up the survey as a monument of the Conqueror's genius
for administration. Thierry holds it only to be the result of his
special position as chief of the conquering army. This sensible
historian has shown, in his notice of Domesday Book, how complete
was the spoliation of the Saxon proprietors within twenty years — so
complete that the Norman robbers actually record their quarrels
with each other for what they call 'their inheritance. Describing
the document generally, he says, " The king's name was placed at
the head, with a list of his domains and revenues in the county ;
then followed the names of the chief and inferior proprietors, in tlie
order of their military ranks and their territorial wealth. The
Saxons who, by special favour, had been spared in the great spolia
tion, were found only in the lowest schedule : for the small number
of that race who still continued to be free proprietors, or tenanth-
in-chief of the king, as the conquerors expressed it, were such only
for slender domains. They were inscribed at the end of each chapter
under the names of thanes oftlie king, or by some other designation
of domestic service in the royal household. The rest of the names
of an Anglo-Saxon form, that are scattered here and there through
the roll, belong to farmers holding by a precarious title a few frac
tions, larger or smaller, of the domains of the Norman earls, barons
knights, serjeants, and bowmen."
The Saxon annalist quaintly writes of the first William, " so much
he loved the high deer as if he had been their father ; he made
laws that whosoever should slay hart or hind, him man should blind."
The depopulation and misery occasioned by the formation of the New
Forest have been perhaps somewhat over-stated. A forest undoubtedly
existed in this district in the Saxon times; the Conqueror enlarged
its circuit and gave it a fresh name. But even William of Jumieges
chaplain to the Conqueror, admits the devastation, in his "notice of
the deaths of William Rufus and his brother Richard in this Forest ¦—
" There were many who held that, the two sons of William the kin-
perished by the judgment of God in these woods, since for the
extension of the forest he had destroyed many towns and churches
within its circuit." It is this circumstantial statement and popular
til I • ^"Sp,red Mr" WiIliam Stewart Rose's sP«ted little poem

of the Red King

" Now fast beside the -pathway stood
A ruinM village, shagg'd with wood,
A melancholy place ;
The ruthless Conqueror cast down
(Wo worth the deed) that little town
To lengthen out his chace.
Amongst the fragments of the church,
A raven there had found a perch, 
Shellicker'd with her wing;
She stirr'd not, she, for voice or shout,
She moved not for that revel rout
But croak'd upon ihe king."

PAINTED WINDOW.
TWO SAXON EARLS OF MERCIA, AND SEVEN NORMAN EARLS OF CHESTER.

c

UIIA?

I.]

OLD ENGLAND.

95

But Mr. Rose does not rest the machinery of his ballad upon
tradition alone, or the assertions of prejudiced chroniclers. Ad
verting to the disbelief of Voltaire in the early history of the New
Forest, he points out, in his notes .to the poem, what Voltaire did
not. know, that ' Domesday-Book ' establishes the fact that many
thousand acres were afforested after the time of Edward the
Confessor. The testimony which Mr. Rose himself supplied from
his local knowledge is exceedingly curious. "The idea that no
vestiges of ancient buildings yet exist in the New Forest, is utterly
unfounded, though the fact is certainly little known, and almost
confined to the small circle of keepers and ancient inhabitants. In
many spots, though no ruins are visible above ground, either the
enceinte of erections is to be traced, by the elevation of the earth,
or fragments of building-materials have been discovered on turning
up the suiface. The names also of those places would almost, if
other evidence were wanting, substantiate the general fact, and
even the nature of each individual edifice  The total rasure
of buildings, and the scanty remains of materials under the surface,
appear at first a singular circumstance. But it is to be observed,
that the mansions, and even the churches of the Anglo-Saxons,
were built of the slightest materials, frequently of wood ; and that
<.f all countries a forest is the least favourable to the preservation
of ruins. As they arc the property of the crown, neither the pride
nor interest of individuals is concerned in their preservation 
This absence of remains of ruins above the surface need not,
therefore, lead us to despair of further discoveries, and these are,
perhaps, yet designated by the names of places. May we not
consider the termination of ham and ton, yet annexed to some
woodlands, as evidence of the former existence of hamlets and
towns?" The historical truth, as it appears to us, may be collected
from these interesting notices of Mr. Rose's local researches. The
remains of buildings are few, and scattered over a considerable
district. The names which still exist afford th,.e best indication that
the abodes of men were formally more numerous. The truth lies
between the sceptism of Voltaire as to any depopulation having
taken place, and. the poetical exaggeration of Pope, in his' Windsor
Forest :'— " The fields are ravished from industrious swains,
From men their cities, and from gods their fanes:
The levelled towns with weeds lie covered o'er ;
The hollow winds through naked temples roar."
The fact is, that from the very nature of the soil no large population
could have been here supported in days of imperfect agriculture.
The lower lands are for the most part marshy ; the higher ridges
are sterile sand. Gilpin has sensibly pointed this out in his book
on ' Forest Scenery :' — " How could William have spread such
depopulation in a country which, from the nature of it, must have
been from the first very thinly inhabited ? The ancient Ytenewas
undoubtedly a woody tract long before the times of William.
Voltaire's idea, therefore, of planting a forest is absurd, and is
founded on a total ignorance of the country. He took his ideas
merely from a French forest, which is artificially planted, and laid
out in vistas and alleys. It is probable that William rather opened
his chaces by cutting down wood, than that he had occasion to plant
more. Besides, though the internal strata of the soil of New Forest
are admirably adapted to produce timber, yet the surface of it is in
general poor, and could never have admitted, even if the times had
allowed, any high degree of cultivation." But, whatever view we
take of this historical question, the scenery of the New Forest is
indissolubly associated with the memory of the two first Norman
hunter-kings. There is probably no place in England which in its
general aspect appears for centuries to have undergone so little
change. The very people are unchanged. After walking in a
summer afternoon for several miles amongst thick glades, guided
only by the course of the declining sun,
" Over hill, over dale,
Thorough bush, thorough briar,"
we came, in the low ground between Beaulieu and Denny Lodge,
upon two peasants gathering a miserable crop of rowan. To our
questions as to the proper path, they gave a grin, which expressed
as much cunning as idiotcy, and pointed to a course which led us
directly to the edge of a bog. They were low of stature, and
coarse in feature. The collar of the Saxon slave was not upon
their necks, but they were the descendants of the slave, through a
lono- line who had been here toiling in hopeless ignorance for seven
centuries. Their mental chains have never been loosened. A mile
or two farther we encountered a tall and erect man, in a peculiar
costume,* half peasant, half liuntsman. He had the frank manners

of one of nature's gentlemen, and insisted upon going with us a part
of the way which we sought to Lyndhurst. His family, too, had
been settled here, time out of mind. He was the descendant of the
Norman huntsman, who had been trusted and encouraged, whilst
the Saxon churl was feared and oppressed. There is a lesson still to
be taught by the condition of the two races in the primitive wilds
of the New Forest.
But we are digressing from our proper theme. In these thick
coverts we find not many trees, and especially oaks, of that enor
mous size which indicates the growth of centuries. The forest has
been neglected. Trees of every variety, with uaderwood in pro
portion, have oppressed each the other's luxuriance. Now and then
a vigorous tree has shot up above its neighbours ; but the general
aspect is that of continuous wood, of very slow and stunted growth,
with occasional ranges of low wet land almost wholly, devoid of
wood. There are many spots, undoubtedly, of what we call pic
turesque beauty ; but the primitive solitariness of the place is its
great charm. We are speaking, of course, of those parts whicli
must be visited by a pedestrian ; for the high roads necessarily lead
through the most cultivated lands, passing through a few villages
which have nothing of the air of belonging to so wild and primitive
a region. Lyndhurst, the prettiest of towns, is the capital of the
Forest. Here its courts, with their peculiar jurisdiction, are held
in a hall of no great antiquity ; but in that hall hangs the stirrup
which tradition, from time immemorial, asserts was attached to the
saddle from which William Rums fell, when struck by the glancing
arrow of Walter Tyrell. There is a circumstance even more re
markably associated with tradition, to be found in the little village
of Minestead. It is recorded that the man who picked up the body
of the Red king was named Purkess ; that he was a charcoal-burner ;
and that he conveyed the body to Winchester in the cart which he
employed in his trade. Over the door of a little shop in that village
we saw the name of Purkess in 1843 — a veritable relic of the old
times. Mr. Rose has recorded the fact in prose and verse, of the
charcoal-burner's descendants still living in this spot, and still pos
sessing one horse and cart, and no more : —
" A Minestead churl, whose wonted trade
Was burning charcoal in the glade,
Outstretch'd amid the gorse
The monarch found ; and in his wain
He raised, and to St. Swithin's fane
Convey'd the bleeding corse.
And si ill, so runs our forest creed,
Flourish the pious woodman's seed
Even in the selfsame spot :
One horse and cart their little store,
Like their forefather's, neither more
Nor less the children's lot.
And still, in merry Lyndhurst hall,
Red William's stirrup decks the wall ;
Who lists, the sight may see ;
And a fair stone, in green Malwood,
Informs the traveller where stood
The memorable tree."
The " fair stone," which was erected by Lord Delaware in 1745, is
now put into an iron case, of supreme ugliness; and we are informed
as follows :  " This stone having been much mutilated, and the
inscriptions on each of its three sides defaced, this more durable me
morial, with the original inscriptions, was erected in the year 1841,
by William Sturges Bourne, Warden." Another century will see
whether this boast of durability will be of any account. In the
time of Leland, there was a chapel built upon the spot. It would
be a wise act of the Crown, to whom this land belongs, to found a
school here— a better way of continuing a record than Lord Dela
ware's stone, or Mr. Sturges Bourne's iron. The history of their
country, its constitution, its privileges— the duties and the rights of
Englishmen— things which are not taught to the children of our
labouring millions— might worthily commence to be taught on the
spot where the Norman tyrant fell, leaving successors who one by
one came to acknowledge that the people were something not to be
despised or neglected. The following is the inscription on the ori
ginal stone, which is represented at Fig. 370 :—
« Here stood the oak-tree on which an arrow, shot by Sir Walter Tyrrel, at a stag
-lanced, and struck King William II., surnamed Rufus, on the breast; of
which stroke he instantly died, on the second of August, 1100.
"Kin- William II., surnamed Rufus, being slain, as before related, was laid in
a"cart belonging to one Purkess, and drawn from hence to Winchester, and bu
ried in the cathedral church of that city.
« That the spot where an event so memorable had happened might not hereafter be
unknown, this stone was set up by John Lord Delaware, who had seen the tree
growing in this place, anno 174J."

jftfti

379.— Carlisle Castle.

38(1.— tiurlisl"?.

381 . — St. Mary's Cllapel, Hastings, and Ruins of Castle on the ClilT.

Wl ^' •¦.'¦'. ¦¦ • ;

362.— Alnwick Castle.

95

3S3.-Rock of Bambcrough, with the Castle in its ,»™™t •>„».,

-Matilda, Queen of Henry I. From a Statue in the We
doorway of Rochester Cathedral.

388.— Muscled Armour.— Seal of Milo Fitz-Walter, Constable
of England under Henry I.

384.— Great Seal of Henry I.

^sSfe

390  Cardiff Castle, as it appeared in 1775.

387. — Silver Penny of Henry I. From specimen in Brit.-Mus.

i ft

386.-*-Monk Bar, Yorlu

-Kuins of Reading Abbey, the Burial-place of Henry I., as they appeared in 1721.

No. 13.

[OLD ENGLAND.]

97

98

OLD ENGLAND.

[Book II.

In the Cathedral Church of Winchester, which Dr. Milner terms
the "ancient mausoleum of royalty " (Fig. 372), is the tomb of
William Rufus. " It consists of English grey marble, being of
form that is dos d'dne; and is raised about two feet above the
ground " (Fig. 371). The tomb of the Red King was violated
during the parliamentary war in the time of Charles I., and there
was found within it " the dust of the king, some pieces of cloth
embroidered with gold, a large gold ring, and a small silver chalice."
The bones had been. enshrined in the time of King Stephen. What
remained of these earthy fragments in the sixteenth century had
become mixed with the bones of Canute and his queen, and of
bishops of good and evil repute. Bishop Fox caused them all to
be deposited in one of the mouldering chests which in this Cathedral
^attract the gaze of the stranger, and carry him, if he be of a con
templative turn, into some such speculations as those of Hamlet,
-when he traced the noble dust of Alexander till he found it stopping
-a bunghole. There are few prospects in England more remarkable, and, in a
-certain degree, more magnificent, than that which is presented on the
approach to Rochester from the road to London. The highest
point on the road from Milton is Gadshill, of " men-in-buckram "
notoriety. Here the road begins gradually to descend to the valley
of the Medway ; sometimes, indeed, rising again over little eminences,
which in the hop season are more beautifully clothed than are " the
vine-covered hills and gay regions of France," but still descending,
and sometimes precipitously, to a valley whose depth we cannot see,
but which we perceive from the opposite hills has a range of several
miles. At . a turn of the road we catch a glimpse of the narrow
Medway on the south ; then to the north we see a broader stream
where large dark masses, " our wooden walls;" seem to sleep on the
sparkling water. At last a town presents itself right before us to
the east, with . a paltry tower which they tell us is that of the
Cathedral. Close by that tower rises up a gigantic square building,
whose enormous proportions proclaim that it is no modern archi
tectural toy. This is the great keep of Rochester Castle, called
Gundulph's Tower (Fig. 375), and there it has stood for eight
centuries, defying siege after siege, resisting even what is more
difficult to resist than fire or storm, the cupidity of modern possessors.
Rochester Castle is, like the hills around it, indestructible by man
in the regular course of his operations. It might be blown up, as
the chalk hill at Folkestone was recently shaken to its base ; but
when the ordinary workman has assailed it with his shovel and
mattock, his iron breaks upon the flinty concrete ; there is nothing
more to be got out of it by avarice, — so e'en let it endure. And
worthy is this old tower to endure. A man may sit alone in the
gallery which runs round the tower, and, looking either within the
walls or without the walls, have profitable meditations. He need
not go back to the days of Julius Csesar for the origin of this castle,
as some have written, nor even to those of Egbert, King of Kent,
who " gave certain lands within the walls of Rochester Castle to
Eardulf, then Bishop of that see." It is sufficient to believe with
old Lambarde, " that Odo (the bastard brother to King William
the Conqueror), which was at the first Bishop of Bayeux in Nor
mandy, and then afterward advanced to the office of the Chief
Justice of England, and to the honour of the Earldom of Kent, was
either the first author or the best benefactor to that which now
standeth in sight." Odo rebelled against William II., and was
driven from his stronghold and from the realm. The history of the
Castle from his time becomes more distinct : — " After this the
Castle was much amended by Gundulphus, the Bishop : who (in
consideration of a manor given to his see by King William Rufus)
bestowed threescore pounds in building that great tower which yet
standeth. And from that time this Castle continued (as I judge)
in the possession of the Prince, until King Henry the First, by the
advice of his barons, granted to William, the Archbishop of Canter
bury, and -his successors, the custody, and office of Constable over
the same, with free liberty to build a tower for himself, in any part
thereof, at his pleasure. By means of which cost done upon it at
that time, the castle at Rochester was much in the eye of such as
were the authors of troubles following within the realm, so that from
time to time it had a part (almost) in every tragedy." Lambarde,
who writes this, tells us truly that in the time of the Conqueror
" many castles were raised to keep the people in awe." Such kindly
strongholds of oppression were like the " pleasant vices " of common
men ; they became " instruments to scourge " their makers. Thus
Odo held Rochester Castle against Rufus. The barons successfully
maintained it against John. Simon de Montfort carried his vic
torious arms against its walls, which were defended by the Constable
of Henry III. These were some of the tragedies in which Rochester

Castle had a part. But the remains of this building show that its
occupiers were not wholly engrossed'by feuds and by fighting. The
splendid columns, the sculptured arches, of its chief apartments
proclaim that it was the abode of rude magnificence ; and that high
festivals, with luxurious feastings, might be well celebrated within
these massive walls (Fig. 373). This tower, each side of which at
the base is seventy feet long, whilst its height is one hundred and
twelve feet, has attached to its east angle a smaller tower (probably
for domestics), between seventy and eighty feet in height. A parti
tion wall runs up the middle of the larger tower ; and the height was
divided into four stories. The joists and flooring-boards have been
torn from the walls, but we see the holes where the timbers were in
serted, and spacious fireplaces still remain. Every floor was served
with water by a well, which was carried up through the central parti
tion. This division of the central tower allowed .magnificent dimen
sions to the rooms, which were forty-six feet in length by twenty-one
in breadth. The height of those in the third story is thirty-two feet ;
and here are those splendid columns, with their ornamented arches,
which show us that the builders of these gloomy fortresses had notions
of princely magnificence, and a feeling for the beauty of art, which
might have done something towards softening the fierceness of their
warrior lives, and have taught them to wear their weeds of peace
with dignity and grace. Thomas Warton has described, in the true
spirit of romantic poetry, such a scene as might often have lighted
up the dark walls of Rochester Castle : —
"Stately the feast, and high the cheer:
Girt with many an armed peer,
And canopied with golden pall,
Amid Cilgarran's castle hall,
Sublime in formidable state,
And warlike splendour, Henry sate,
Prepar'd to stain the briny Hood
Of Shannon's lakes with rebel blood.
Illumining the vaulted roof,
A thousand torches flam'd aloof:
From massy cups with golden gleam,
Sparkled the red metheglin's stream :
To grace the gorgeous festival,
Along the lofty window'd hall
The storied tapestry was hung :
With minstrelsy the rafters rung
Of harps, that witli rellected light
From the proud gallery glitter'd bright."
Fenced around with barbacan and bastion on the land side, and
girded by high walls towards the river (Fig. 376), the legal and
baronial occupiers of Rochester Castle sat in safety, whether dis
pensing their rude justice to trembling serfs, or quaffing the red wine
amidst their knightly retainers. Even Simon de Montfort, a man
of wondrous energy, could make little impression upon these strong
walls. But the invention of gunpowder changed the course of
human affairs. The monk who compounded sulphur, saltpetre,
and charcoal, in their just proportions, made Rochester Castle what
it is now. The last repairs which it received were in the reign of
Edward VI. ; and in that of James I. it was granted by the Crown
to Sir Anthony Welldone. His descendant Walker Welldone,
Esq., was but an instrument in the hands of mutability to work
faster than time. He, good man, " sold the timbers of it to one
Gimmit, and the stone stairs, and other squared and wrought stone
of the windows and arches, to different masons in London ; he would
likewise have sold the whole materials of the Castle to a paviour,
but on an essay made on the east side, near the postern leading to
Bully Hill, the effects of which are seen in a large chasm, the mortar
was found so hard, that the expense of separating the stones amounted
to more than their value, by which this noble pile escaped a total
demolition." (Grose.) The property finally passed into the hands
of Mr. Child, the celebrated banker ; and it now belono-s to the
Earl of Jersey, who married the heiress of that house.
The stone bridge at Rochester, over which we still cross the
Medway, is a very ancient structure, as old as the time of Edward
III. A great captain of that age, Sir Robert Knolles, who, " meaning
some way to make himself as well beloved of his countrymen at
home as he had been every way dreaded and feared of strangers
abroad, by great policy mastered. the river of Medway, and of his
own charge made over it the goodly work which now standeth."
This is Lambarde's account of the matter. But the old Kentish
topographer has raked up two ancient documents whicli show us how
great public works were constructed in times when men had first
begun to see the necessity of co-operating for public good. The elder
wooden bridge, which Simon de Montfort fired, and which was
wholly destroyed twenty years after by masses of ice floating down
the rapid river, was built and maintained at the cost of " divers
persons, parcels of lands, and townships, who were of duty bound to

ROCHESTER CASTLE.-INTERIOR.

Chap. I.]

OLD ENGLAND.

99

bring stuff and bestow both cost and labour in laying it." One of
the documents which Lambarde prints is the ' Textus de Ecclesia
Roffensi,' which was written in Anglo-Saxon and Latin. It is
worth extracting an entry or two, to show how this curious division
of labour worked in ancient times. Such a mode of repairing a
bridge may provoke a smile ; but up to this hour do we retain the
same principle of repairing our roads, in the ridiculous statute labour
of parishes and individuals. " This is the bridge work at Rochester.
Here be named the lands for the which men shall work. First the
bishop of the city taketh on that end to work the land pier, and three
yards to plank, and three plates to lay, that is from Borstall, and
from Cuckstane, and from Frensbury and Stoke. Then the second
pier belongeth to Gillingham and to Chetham, and one yard to
plank, and three plates to lay." And so runs on the record ; meting
out their work to bishop and archbishop and king, with the aid of
lands and townships. These progenitors of ours were not altogether
so ignorant of the great principles of political economy as we may
have learnt to believe- They knew that common conveniences were
to be -paid for at the common cost; and that the bridge which
brought the men of Rochester and the men of Stroud into intimate
connexion was for the benefit not of them alone, but' of the
authorities which represented the State and the Church and the
population of the whole district ; and therefore the State and the
Church, and the neighbouring men of Kent, were called upon to
maintain the bridge. In these our improved times the burden of
public works is sometimes put upon the wrong shoulders.
Gundulphus the bishop, the builder or the restorer, we know not
which, of the great keep at Rochester, was the architect of the most
remarkable building of the Tower of London. Stow tells us, " I
find in a fair register-book of the acts of the Bishops of Rochester,
set-down by Edmund of Hadenham, that William I., surnamed
the Conqueror, builded the Tower of London, to wit, the great white
and square tower there, about the year of Christ 1078, appointing
Gundulph, then Bishop of Rochester, to be principal surveyor and
overseer of that work, who was for that time lodged in the house of
Edmere, a burgess of London." Speaking of this passage of Stow,
the editor of ' London ' says, " We see the busy Bishop (it was he
who built the great keep at Rochester) coming daily from his
lodgings at the honest burgess's to erect something stronger and
mightier than the fortresses of the Saxons. What he found in ruins,
and what he made ruinous, who can tell ? There might have been
walls and bulwarks thrown down by the ebbing and flowing of the
tide. There might have been, dilapidated or entire, some citadel
more ancient than the defences of the people the Normans conquered,
belonging to the age when the great lords of the world left every
where some marks upon the earth's surface of their pride and their
power. That Gundulph did not create this fortress is tolerably
clear. What he built, and what he destroyed, must still, to a certain
extent, be a matter of conjecture." And this is precisely the case
with the great tower at Rochester. The keep at Rochester and the
White Tower at London have a remarkable resemblance in their
external appearances (Fig. 377). But we have no absolute certainty
that either was the work of the skilful Bishop, who, with that
practical mastery of science and art which so honourably dis
tinguished many of the ecclesiastics of his age, was set by his
sovereign at both places to some great business of construction or
repair. We must be content to leave the matter in the keeping of
those who can pronounce authoritatively where records and traditions
fail, taking honest Lambarde for our guide, who says, " Seeing that
by the injury of the ages between the monuments of the first
beginning of this place and of innumerable such, other be not come
to our hands, I had rather in such cases use honest silence than rash
speech." The ruined walls of the Castle of Hastings, and the remains of the
pretty chapel within those walls, are familiar objects to the visitors of
the most beautiful of our watering-places. The situation of this Castle
is singularly noble. It was here, according to Eadmer, that almost all
the bishops and nobles of England were assembled in the year 1090,
to pay personal .homage to King William II. before his departure
for Normandy. Grose has given a pretty accurate description of
this castle, which we abridge with slight alteration. What remains
of the castle approaches nearest in shape to two sides of an oblique
spherical triangle, having the points rounded off. The base, or
south side next the sea, completing the triangle, is formed by a
perpendicular craggy cliff about four hundred feet in length, upon
which are no vestiges of walls or other fortification. The east side
is made by a plain wall measuring near three hundred feet, without
tower or defence of any kind. The adjoining side, which faces the
north-west, is about four hundred feet long. The area included is
about an acre and one-fifth. The walls, nowhere entire, are about

eight feet thick. The gateway, now demolished, was on the north
side, near the northernmost angle. Not far from it, to the west, are
the remains of a small tower enclosing a circular flight of stairs ;
and still farther westward, a sally-port and the ruins of another
tower. On the east side, at the distance of about one hundred feet,
ran a ditch, one hundred feet in breadth at the top, and sixty feet
deep ; but both the ditch, and the interval between it and the wall,
seem to have gradually narrowed as they approached the gafe,
under which they terminated. On the north-west side there was
another ditch of the same breadth, commencing at the cliff opposite
to the westernmost angle, and bearing away almost due north, leaving
a level intermediate space, which, opposite to the sally-port, was
one hundred and eighty feet in breadth (Fig: 381).
The Castle of Carlisle was founded by William Rufus. He
was the restorer of the city, after it had remained for two centuries
in ruins through the Danish ravages. The Red King was a real
benefactor to the people at this northern extremity of his kingdom.
He first placed here a colony of Flemings, an industrious and skilful
race, and then encouraged an immigration of husbandmen from the
south, to instruct the poor and ignorant inhabitants in the arts of
agriculture. We must not consider that these Norman kings were
all tyrants. The historical interest of Carlisle belongs to a later
period, and we shall return to it. So does the Castle of Alnwick
(Fig. 382). But we here introduce the noble seat of the Percies,
for it was a place of strength soon after the Norman Conquest. In
the reign of Rufus it was besieged by Malcolm the Third, of Scot
land, who here lost his life, as did his son Prince Edward. Before
the Norman Conquest the. castle and barony of Alnwick belonged
to Gilbert Tyson, who was slain fighting against the invader, by
the side of his Saxon king. The Conqueror gave the granddaughter
of Gilbert in marriage to Ivo de Vescy, one of his Norman fol
lowers ; and the Lords de Vescy enjoyed the fair possessions down
to the time of Edward I. The Castle of Bambo rough, in North
umberland, carries us back into a remoter antiquity. It was
the palace, according to the monkish historians, of the kings of
Northumberland, and built by king Ida, who began his reign about
559. Roger Hoveden, who wrote in 1 192, describes it, under the
name of Bebba, as " a very strong city." Rufus blockaded the
castle in 1085, when it was in the possession of Robert de Mowbray,
earl of Northumberland. The keep of Bamborough is very similar
in its appearance to the keeps of the Tower of London, of Roches
ter, and of Dover. It is built of remarkably small stones ; the
walls are eleven feet thick on one side, and nine feet on three sides.
This castle, situated upon an almost perpendicular rock, close to
the sea, which rises about one hundred and fifty feet above low
water mark, had originally no interior appliances of luxury or even
of comfort. Grose says, " Here were no chimneys. The only
fire-place in it was a grate in the middle of a large room, supposed
to have been the guard-room, where some stones in the middle of
the floor are burned red. The floor was all of stone, supported by
arches. This room had a window in it, near the top, three feet
square, possibly intended to let out the smoke: all the other rooms
were lighted only by slits or chinks in the wall, six inches broad,
except in the gables of the roof, each of which had a window one
foot broad." One of the most remarkable objects in this ancient
castle is a draw-well, which was discovered about seventy years
ago, upon clearing out the sand and rubbish of a vaulted cellar or
dungeon. It is a hundred and forty-five feet deep, and is cut
through the solid basaltic rock into the sandstone below. When
we look at the history of this castle, from the time when it was
assaulted by Penda, the Pagan king of the Mercians, its plunder
by the Danes, its siege by Rufus, its assault by the Yorkists in
1463, and so onward through seven centuries of civil strife, it is
consoling, to reflect upon the uses to which this stronghold is now
applied. It was bought with the property attached to it by Nathaniel
Lord Crewe, bishop of Durham, and bequeathed by him to chari
table purposes in 1720. The old fortress has now been completely
repaired. Its gloomy rooms, through whose loop-holes the sun
could scarcely penetrate, have been converted into schools. Boys
are here daily taught, and twenty poor girls are lodged, clothed,
and educated till fit for service. The towers, whence the warder
once looked out in constant watchfulness against an enemy's ap
proach, are now changed into signal stations, to warn the sailor
against that dangerous cluster of rocks called the Fern Islands ;
and signals are also arranged for announcing when a vessel is in
distress to the fishermen of Holy Island. Life-boats are here
kept, and shelter is offered for any reasonable period to such as may
be shipwrecked on this dreary coast. The estates- thus devoted to
purposes of charity now yield a magnificent income of more than
eisrht thousand a year. Not only are the poor taught, but the sick
6 02

-392—Stephen. Eolargedfrom a unique Silver Coin in the
Collection of Sir Henry Ellis.

391.— Great Seal of Stephen.

-Silver Penny of Stephen. From
Specimen in Brit. Mus.

393.— Arms of Stephen.

397.

.-Orford Castle, as it appeared iu the Fifteenth Century.

399.— Norwich Castlo.

401 — Tegulatert Armour.
Seal of Richard, Constable of Chester in the time of Stephen.

03.— Standard.

400.— Winchester.

402.— Geoffrey Plautageuet. (Le Bel.) Kerrick's Collect. 6723.

102

OLD ENGLAND.

[Book II.

are relieved in this hospitable fortress. In the infirmary, to which
part of the building is applied, the wants of a thousand persons are
annually administered to. ¦ Much is still left out of these large funds ;
and the residue is devoted to the augmentation of small benefices,
to the building and enlarging of churches, to the foundation and
support of schools, and to exhibitions for young men going to the
Universities. When William Rufus besieged this rock of Bam-
borough, Robert de Mowbray had a steward within the walls, who
would have defended it to the death, had not the king brought out
the earl his master, who was a prisoner, with a threat that his eyes
should be put out unless the castle surrendered. This was a faithful
steward. Lord Crewe had an equally faithful steward, after a dif
ferent fashion, in Dr. Sharpe, Archdeacon of Northumberland, who
devised the various means of best applying this noble bequest, and
resided on this stormy rock to see that those means were properly
administered.

In the fine west doorway of Rochester Cathedral is a statue
which is held to represent Matilda, queen of Henry I. (Fig. 385).
The marriage of the son of the Norman Conqueror with the niece
of Edgar Atheling was a politic measure, which revived the old
Saxon feeling in the conquered and oppressed, and made them
think that days of equality were in store for them, even under the
new race. Matilda the Good was worthy to be a descendant of
Alfred. She probably would have been more happy in the cloister
to which she had fled for safety during the terrors of the Norman
licentiousness, than with her ambitious, daring, profligate, but accom
plished husband. Her influence over him did something, no doubt,
for ameliorating the condition of her native land. She was a civilizer :
she built bridges ; she cultivated music. But the promise which
Henry had made when he seized the crown, that the old Saxon laws
should be restored, was wholly broken as soon as he had fairly
grasped the sword of authority. The collection entitled 'The
Laws of King Henry I.' is a " compilation of ancient Saxon laws
by some private person, and not a publication by authority of the
state." The writer of this adds, " The general clamour in England
for the Saxon laws of the Confessor, under the three Norman
kings, makes it probable that this • compilation was made by some
private person at the time when the restoration of these laws was
called for by, and repeatedly promised to, the nation." (' Ancient
Laws and Institutes of England,' published by the Record Com
mission.) These laws of Edward the Confessor were founded
upon older laws, that go back through the times of Canute, and
Ethelred, and Edgar, and Ethelstan, and Alfred, prescribing many
things which are difficult to understand in our present state of
society, but upholding a spirit of justice in mercy which later ages
have, it is to be feared, not so diligently maintained. The laws of
king Ethelred, for example, might furnish a text to be written up
in every police court : " And ever, as any one shall be more
powerful here in the eyes of the world, or through dignities higher
in degree, so shall he the more deeply make ' bot ' (amends, com
pensation) for sins, and pay for every misdeed the more dearly ;
because the strong and the weak are not alike, and cannot raise a
like burthen." Again, here is a noble motto for a judgment seat :
"Let every deed be carefully distinguished, and doom ever be
guided justly according to the deed, and be modified according to
its degree, before God and before the world ; and let mercy be
shown for dread of God, and kindness be willingly shown, and those
be somewhat protected who need it ; because we all need that our
Lord oft and frequently grant his mercy to us." This was the
spirit of Christianity filling lawgivers with right principles ;
although some of the institutions of society, such as slavery, were
a violation of those principles. For all free men the old Saxon
laws were just in their objects, and impartial in their administration.
It is easy to understand how they could not exist in connexion
with the capricious despotism of the first Norman kings, and the
turbulence of their grasping retainers. Fortunate was it for the
country when a prince arose of such decided character as Henry I. ;
for he crushed the lesser oppressors, whose evil doings were more con
stant and universal. It mattered little to the welfare of the country
that his unhappy brother Robert was shut up for years in Caudiff
Castle, if the king visited his own purveyors with terrible punish
ments when they ground the people by unjust exactions. In Cardiff
Castle (Fig. 390) a dark vaulted room beneath the level of the ground
is shown as the place where Robert of Normandy was confined by his
brother for twenty-six years. The tradition rests upon no historical
foundation whatever, nor, indeed, upon any probability. The gallant
but heedless prince, according to William of Malmesbury and other
chroniclers, was indeed a prisoner in Cardiff Castle, but surrounded
with luxury ami magnificence, and provided with minstrels and jesters

to make his life pass away as a gay dream. Matthew Paris tells a
curious story, which appears very characteristic of the proud and tri
fling mind of him whom Beauclerk had jostled out of a throne. " It
happened on a feast day, that king Henry trying on a scarlet robe,
the hood of which being too strait, in essaying to put it on he
tore one of the stitches, whereupon he desired one of his attendants
to carry it to his brother, whose head was smaller ; it always
having been his custom whenever he had a new robe to send one
cut off from the same cloth to his brother with a polite message.
This garment being delivered to Robert, in putting it on he felt
the fraction where the stitch had been broken, and through the
negligence of the tailor not mended. On asking how that place
came torn, he was told that it was done by his brother, and the
whole story was related to him ; whereupon, falling into a violent
passion, he thus exclaimed : ' Alas ! alas ! I have lived too long !
Behold my younger brother, a lazy clerk, who has supplanted me
in my kingdom, imprisoned and blinded me ! I who have been
famous in arms ! And now, not content with these injuries, he ¦¦
insults me as if I were a beggar, sending me his cast off clothes as
for an alms !' From that time he refused to take any nourishment,
and, miserably weeping and lamenting, starved himself to death;
He was buried in Gloucester Cathedral, where his image, as big
as the life, carved in Irish oak and painted, is yet shown." Death
levelled these distinctions in the same year. If Robert died of
mortification about a cast off robe, Henry perished more ignobly
of a full meal of lampreys. Robert's effigy of heart of oak was
carefully repaired by a stranger two centuries ago. The monument
of Henry, in Reading Abbey; which he founded, perished long
since, and scarcely a stone is now left standing of this princely
building, to tell the tale of his pious munificence (Fig. 389).
The successor of Henry Beauclerk was also an usurper. The
rival pretensions of Stephen of Blois and the Empress Matilda filled
the land with bloodshed and terror for nineteen years. From the
north to the south, from the Barbacans of York (Fig. 386) to the
Palaces of Winchester (Fig. 400), the country was harried by kino-
and baron, by empress and knight. A single burst of patriotism
carried the English to fight with one accord at Northallerton, under.
the car-borne standard of Stephen (Fig. 403). But during the
greater part of this period almost every baron's castle had to sustain
a siege on one side or the other ; and, what was worse, the lands
around these strongholds were uniformly wasted by the rapacious
garrison, or their plundering assailants. Stephen had given to the
nobles the fatal power of fortifying their castles ; and it is affirmed
that towards the latter end of his reign these " nests of devils and
dens of thieves," as Matthew Paris styles them, amounted to the
number of eleven hundred and fifteen. A contemporary annalist of
the deeds of King Stephen thus describes the miseries of the people
during this desolating contest :— » Many abandoned their country •
others, forsaking their houses, built wretched huts in churchyards',
hoping for protection from the sacredness of the place. Whole
families, after sustaining life as long as they could by eating herbs
roots, dogs, and horses, perished at last with hunger; and you
might see many pleasant villages without one inhabitant of either
sex." There is scarcely a castle of the period that is not associated
with some memory of this war of ambition. The Saxon Chronicler
says, " In this king's time all was dissension, and evil, and rapine
The great men soon rose against him. They had sworn oaths, but
maintained no truth. They built castles which they held out against
him. It was thus that Hugh Bigod,' who had sworn that Henrv
had appointed Stephen his successor, was the first to hold out against
the king in the Castle of Nokwich, which his ancestor had built. *
Norwich was a regular fortress, with a wall and ditch, an outer a
middle and an inner court, and a keep. The bridge over one'of
the ditches and the keep still remain. The keep had long since
gone through the customary process of being turned into a jail, and
the jai being removed it is now gutted and roofless. This keep is
a parallelogram, a hundred and ten feet in length by about ninety-
three in breadth. The walls are in some places thirteen feet thick
and the tower ,s seventy feet in height. It was not sufficient for
the people in authority in the last century to tear this fine historical
monument to pieces, by their fittings up and their pollings down
but they have stuck on their county gaol at one end-a miserable
modern thing called Gothic-paltry in its dimensions, and incon
gruous in us style (Figs. 398, 399). The same process has been
resorted to at Oxfoud Castle. It was built by Robert de Oilies a
Nornian who came over with the Conqueror. Not even the romance
connected with its history could save Oxford Castle from desecration
It was a little county prison a century ago, and it is a great county
prison in our own day. It is something, indeed, to see the strong
holds of lawless oppressors becoming monuments of the power of the

Chap. I.]

OLD ENGLAND.

103

Law. We shall speak of more of these presently. But, nevertheless,
in a seat of learning, in a place consecrated to ancient recollections,
we would gladly have had other associations than chains and gibbets,
with the venerable walls from which Matilda escaped through be
leaguering hosts in a night of frost and snow, and, crossing the
frozen Thames, wandered in darkness for many a mile, till she
reached a place of safety. Holinshed tells the story with the sim
plicity of the elder chroniclers : — " It was a very hard winter that
year ; the Thames and other rivers thereabouts were frozen, so that
both man and horse might safely pass over upon the ice : the fields
were also covered with a thick and deep snow. Hereupon, taking
occasion, she clad herself and all her company in white apparel, that
afar off they might not be discerned from the snow ; and so, by
negligence of the watch, that kept ward but slenderly, by reason of
the exceeding cold weather, she and her partakers secretly in the
night issued out of the town, and, passing over ¦the Thames, came to
Wallingford, where she was received into the castle by those that
had the same in keeping to her use : of whom Brian, the son to the
Earl of Gloucester, was the chief." The "gaping chinks and
aged countenance " of Rougemont Castle at Exeter (Fig. 395)
are something more in character with the old times than the feeble
patchwork of antiquarianism, the parapets and pepper-boxes of our
modern castle prisons, pertly bristling up by the sides of these old
donjons. The personal history of Henry II., one of the greatest kings that
ever sat upon the English throne, belongs more strikingly to the
ecclesiastical than to the civil annals of those times. The story of
his wonderful contest with Becket may be best referred to in con
nexion with the scene of Becket's martyrdom. That story was
everywhere made familiar to the people by legend and painting (Fig.
411). The romance of Henry's personal history, in connexion
with Rosamond Clifford, was long associated with the old towers of
Woodstock. These are no more ; but what they were is shown in
Figs. 413, 414.

It is a rare consolation for the lover of his country's monuments,
to turn from castles made into prisons, and abbeys into stables, to
such a glorious relic of ' Old England ' as Warwick Castle. Who
can forget the first sight of that beautiful pile, little touched by
time, not vulgarized by ignorance ? (Fig. 417). As he enters the
portal through which Gaveston was led to execution, and the
king-maker marched in and out to uphold a Yorkist or a Lancastrian
pretender to the crown, he feels that he is treading upon ground
almost hallowed by its associations (Fig. 415). Caesar's Tower —
that is but a name ! Guy's Tower — that belongs to poetry, and is
therefore a reality ! (Fig. 416). Old Dugdale treated Guy and
his legend as a true thing : " Of his particular adventures, lest what
I say should be suspected for fabulous, I will only instance that
combat betwixt him and the Danish champion, Colebrand, whom
some (to magnify our noble Guy the more) report to have been a
giant. The story whereof, however it may be thought fictitious
by some, forasmuch as there be those that make a question whether
there was ever really such a man, or, if so, whether all be not a dream
which is reported of him, in regard that the monks have sounded
out his praises so hyperboliqally ; yet those that are more consi
derate will neither doubt the one nor the "other, inasmuch as it
hath been so usual with our ancient historians, for the encourage
ment of after-ages unto bold attempts, to set forth the exploits of
worthy men with the highest encomiums imaginable : and therefore,
-should we for that cause be so conceited as to explode it, all history
of those times might as well be vilified." We shall have to return
to the fair castle of Warwick : so we leave it, at present, under the
influence of Guy and his legends (Fig. 418).
In glancing generally over the subject of the present state of the
ancient Castles of England, a striking commentary is afforded to us
upon the progress that England has made since they studded the
land over with their stately but terrible walls, and gateways, and
towers. Look, for instance (to refer only to structures not already
mentioned), at Farnham Castle, in Surrey (Fig. 426), built by
Henry of Blois, brother of King Stephen, and forming, no doubt, one
of the eleven hundred castles said to have been erected in the reign
of that monarch. Eleven hundred castles built in sixteen years !
What a scene of violence and strife does not the bare mention of
such a fact open to the imagination ! It is to that scene Farnham
Castle essentially belongs ; and if we .now gaze upon it, as it is,
most strange in all respects appears the contrast between the pre
sent and the past associations. The lofty keep stands in a garden,
forming a picturesque and noble ornamental ruin in the palatial
grounds of the Bishops of Winchester, but that is its only value

to the present possessors ; it looks down upon the principal street
of the place, which probably first grew up into importance under
its protection, but it is only now to behold a population exhibiting
in a thousand ways their enjoyment of the services of an infinitely
more powerful defender — the Law. In numerous other cases our
castles have become direct adjuncts to the very power that has thus
superseded them. York, Lancaster, and Lincoln Castles are now
mere gaols for the confinement, or courts for the trial of prisoners ;
and that amazing piece of workmanship which attests to this day
the strength of the first of these structures,CLiFFORD's Tower (Fig.
423), attributed to the Conqueror, whilst the mount on which it
stands is supposed to have been raised by Roman hands, now frowns
in unregarded magnificence over the throng of judges, barristers,
and witnesses, of debtors and criminals, who pass to and fro through
the modern gateway at its feet. Then, again, Newark Castle (Fig.
425), erected by Bishop Alexander, the well-known castle-building
prelate, who seems indeed to have thought he had a mission that
way, and who certainly exhibited no lack of zeal in fulfilling it :
Newark (i. e. New- Work, hence the name of the town), a rare ex
ample for the time of any departure from the principle of consi
dering a castle merely as a stronghold, rather than as a place of
residence also ; Newark, with its high historical and military repu
tation, twice unsuccessfully besieged by the Parliamentarians during
the Civil War, and only delivered up, not taken, at last in conse
quence of Charles's own directions when he had given himself up
to the Scots, — under what circumstances do we behold the ruins of
this structure ? Why, as if in mockery of that rejJ"tation, wooden
bowls now roll noiselessly but harmlessly about the c'ose-shaveit
green, in one part of the castle area, where cannon-balls once
came thick and fast, dealing destruction and death on all sides ;
whilst in another, peaceful men and women now congregate in the
" commodious market." Pontefract or Pomfret Castle (Fig.
429), of still higher historical interest, exhibits a change and a
moral no less remarkable. The rocky foundation upon which the
castle was raised, at an enormous expenditure of time, money, and '
labour, is now a quarry of filtering-stones, which are, we are told,
in great request all over the kingdom ; the place, for the mainte
nance of which the neighbourhood has been so often of yore laid
under contribution, now in some measure repays those old exac
tions, from the liquorice-grounds and market-gardens that occupy
its site. The liquorice-grounds, we may observe by the way, form
quite a distinctive feature of the country immediately surrounding
Pontefract, that quietest, and cleanest, and widest-streeted of pro
vincial towns, which, within some fourteen miles of the manufac
turing Babel, Leeds, is so little like Leeds, that one might fire a
.cannon-ball down its main street at noon-day with but very small
danger of mischief. We must dwell a little on the history of
Pomfret Castle. Royal favour is generally attended with substan
tial tokens of its existence ; but of all English sovereigns who have
had at once the will and the power to distinguish their friends in
this way, commend us to the Conqueror. The builder of Pomfret
Castle was Ilbert de Lacy, who received from William one hundred
and fifty manors in the west of Yorkshire, ten in Nottinghamshire,
and four in Lincolnshire. Pontefract was among the first, though
not it seems previously known by that name, which is said to have
been conferred on it by De Lacy from its resemblance to a place
in Normandy, where he was born : a pleasant touch of sentiment
in connexion with one of those formidable mailed barons who
struck down at once England's king and liberties on the fatal field
of Hastings. The area enclosed by the castle-walls was about
seven acres, the walls being defended by the same number of towers.
It had of course its deep moat, barbacan, and drawbridge, and its
great gateways of entrance. Leland says of the main structure,
" Of the Castle of Pontefract, of some called Snorre Castle, it con-
taineth eight round towers, of the which the dungeon cast into six
roundelles, three big and three small, is very fair." We should be
sorry to wish that the excellent antiquarian had had an opportunity
of a closer acquaintance with the " fair " dungeon, but assuredly
if he had, he would have chosen a somewhat different epithet, in
spite of its external beauty. The dungeons of Pontefract Castle
have excited no less fearful interest from their intrinsic character,
than from the prisoners who have wept or raved in them to the
senseless walls. In the early part of the fourteenth century, Thomas,
Earl of Lancaster, uncle of Edward II., married Alice, daughter of
Henry de Lacy, and thus became the lord of Pontefract. Among
the barons then opposed to the weak and disgraceful government
of Edward II. the Earl of Lancaster was conspicuous ; but in one
of those reverses of fortune which his party experienced, he, with
many other nobles and knights, fell into the hands of the royalists,
was brought by them to his own Castle of Pontefract, then in their

403.— Great Seal of Henry II.

40S.— Silver Penny of Henry II. From a
specimen in Brit. Mus.

409.— Arms of Henry II.

410.— Planta genista.

413.— Woodstock.

406. — Henry II. Drawn from the Tomb at Fontevratid,

411.— The Martyrdom of Thomas a Becker. From an ancient Paiutiiijr in the
Chapel of the Holy Cross, Stratford.

414 — Woodstock, as it appeared before 1714.

104

412— Eleanor, Queen of Henry II,
From the Tomb at Fontevraud.

407— Effigy ofHenry II.
From the Tomb at Fontevraud.

ELIZABETHAN SIDEBOARD OR COURT CUPBOARD
IN WARWICK CASTLE.

415.— Entrance to Warwick Castle.

416.— Warwick Castle ; Guy's Tower.-

41S.-Ancient Statue of Guy, at Guy* Cliff.

¦'¦-¦mmMTm-

aiBntlM

I

i^'-' ' 'ii'ii'Vijifi

420.— Interior of a Boom in Warkworth Castle.

«T*-J«Wrwick-aa»lM; from the Island.

419.— Warkworth Castle.'

421.— Ludlow Castte.-

105

No. 14.

[OLD ENGLAND.]

106

OLD ENGLAND.

[Book II.

possession, and there, without even a hearing, beheaded, whilst the
other barons were hung. As the owner of the castle and the
broad lands sweeping so far away on all sides around it lay helpless
in his own dungeons, in the brief interval that elapsed between his
capture and horrible death, what thoughts may not, we might almost
say must not, have crowded into the brain of the unhappy noble
man ! Taught, perhaps, when too late, the wisdom of humanity and
love, we may imagine him giving utterance to some such thoughts
as those expressed by the poet : —
" And this place our forefathers made for man !
This is the process of our love and wisdom
To each poor brother who offends against us —
Most innocent, perhaps — and what if guilty ?
Is this the only cure ?"
Or as he reflected with unutterable anguish on the beauty of the
scene without — that scene on which he had so often gazed with heed
less eyes, but that, now that he was to behold it but once more,
seemed to his imagination bathed in loveliness and romance — could
he fail to arrive in some degree at the poet's conclusion ?
" With other ministrations, thou, O Nature,
Healest thy wandering and distempered child ;
Thou pourest on him thy soft influences,
Thy sunny hues, fair forms, and breathing sweets,
Thy melodies of woods, and winds, and waters.
Till he relent, and can no more endure
To be a jarring and a dissonant thing
Amid this general dance and minstrelsy ;
But, bursting into tears, wins back his way,
His angry spirit healed and harmonized
By the benignant touch of love and beauty."
Alas, that the truths here so exquisitely conveyed should be still
inregarded ! The dungeons of a former day have changed their
name, and improved in their superficial characteristics, it is true ;
but only to fit them for still more extensive application. When
" such pure and natural outlets" of a man's nature are
" shrivelled up
By ignorance and parching poverty,
and His energies roll back upon his heart,
And stagnate and corrupt, till, changed to poison,
They break out on him, like a loathsome plague-spot,
we still call in our pampered mountebanks ;
And theirs is their best cure! Uncomforted
And friendless solitude, groaning and tears."
But the dungeons of Pontefract Castle whisper of a still more fearful
story than the Earl of Lancaster's. As we walk about among the
ruins, and investicate the process of decay, since Gough, the
editor of Camden, describes in the last century the remains of the
keep as consisting only of the " lower story, with horrible dungeons
and winding staircases ;" we look with especial interest for the
" narrow damp chamber formed in the thickness of the wall,
with two small windows next the court," where tradition says the
fate of Eichard II. was consummated, either by direct violence as
the popular story has it, through the agency of Sir Piers Exton
and his band of assassins, some of whom perished in the struggle
or by starvation, as other writers have related the matter. In the
short reign of the third Eichard, another batch of eminent men
underwent the sharp agony of the axe at Pontefract Castle, namely,
"Woodville, Eivers, Grey, Vaughan, and Hawse. The edifice was
finally dismantled and the materials sold, after the civil war, during
which it had resisted the parliamentary forces with extraordinary
bravery and determination, even subsequent to the death of
Charles I.
This said civil war was to our old castles generally, what the
Eeformation was to our grand and beautiful ecclesiastical remains ;
with this difference, that thp injuries in the one case were necessarily
of a much severer character than in the other. Hence we find in
looking back to the history of a large portion of our castles, that
they were comparatively in good preservation up to the sixteenth
century, and in ruin beyond that time. Goodrich Castle, Here
fordshire (Fig. 482), was one of these, the owners of which could
boast that the structure dated from a period anterior to the Con
quest ; and during the civil war it was defended with a courage
worthy of its reputation. It is recorded of Goodrich Castle that
it held out longer than any other English fortress for the king,
witli the single exception of Pendennis Castle, in Cornwall. If one
could grieve at a matter that necessarily involves so many points
for congratulation, we might lament to see how few and compara
tively unimportant are the remains of such a castle, interesting to
us for its age, and still more by the memory of one at least of its
early inhabitants, the brave Talbot of history, and of Shakspere's

Henry the Sixth (First Part). It appears from the records of
Goodrich Castle, that when a great man in the middle ages erected
a fortress, it was not always the expensive affair we are accustomed
to consider it. Goodrich, in the fourteenth century, came into the
possession of Elizabeth, daughter of John Lord Comyn, of
Badenagh, in Scotland. The notorious Hugh le Despencer and
his son, it appears, had taken a particular fancy for portions of this
lady's property, and the way they set about the accomplishment
of their desires speaks volumes as to the state of society at the
period. The lady Elizabeth was suddenly seized, carried into
another part of the country, confined for upwards of a year, and
finally compelled, from " fear of death," as it is stated in a manu
script cited by Dugdale in his ' Baronage,' to cede to the son her
castle of Goodrich, and to the father her manor of Painswick.
Certainly, as with these feudal oppressors even-handed justice did
often commend the poisoned chalice to their own lips, there is
something more than accident in such remarkable conjunctions as
the fate of the Earl of Lancaster before mentioned and the character
of the dungeons in his castle — in the wrongs done to this lady and
the character of the dungeons still traceable among the ruins of
her castle. The keep, of Saxon, or very early Norman architecture,
originally consisted of three small rooms, one above another ¦ at
the bottom was a dungeon, which had not even a single loop-hole
for light or air, but was connected by a narrow passage with
another and smaller dungeon, situated beneath the platform of the
entrance-steps of the exterior, which had a very small opening for
the admission of air ; and thus alone was life preserved even for a
time in the inner dungeon. It is a relief to escape from such dreadful
recollections of our old castles, to the gay and brilliant scenes that
occasionally made them the centres of enjoyment to assembled
thousands, when, for instance, the tournament brought from all parts
of the country the young and old, rich and poor, the knightly and
the would-be knightly, to see lances broken or to break them to
conqueror to be conquered. There were occasions, too, when the ex
citing and brilliant sports of the tournament were enhanced by pecu
liar circumstances, calculated in the highest degree to attract, not only
the chivalry of Old England, but of Europe, into the lists. One of the
most grandly situated of castles is that of Peverii, of the Peak
(Fig. 424), built by a natural son of the Conqueror, whose name it
bears. This was some centuries afterwards in the possession of
William Peverii, a valiant knight, who had two daughters, one of
whom, Mellet, having privily resolved to marry none but a knight
who should distinguish himself for his warlike prowess, her father
sympathizing with her feelings, determined to invite the noble
youth of England generally to compete for such a prize in a grand
tournament. The castle of Whittington, in the county of Salop
was also to reward the victor by way of a fitting dowry for the
bride. We may judge of the hosts who would assemble at such an
invitation ; and even royal blood was among them, in the person of
the Scottish King's son. Worthy of the day, no doubt, were the
feats performed. Among the combatants, one knight with a silver
shield and a peacock for his crest speedily distinguished himself
The best and bravest in vain endeavoured to arrest his successful
career. The Scottish prince was overthrown ; so was a baron 0
Burgoyne. Their conqueror was adjudged the prize. GuarinedP
Meez a branch of the house of Lorraine, and an ancestor ofth
pt« TZ Peak W°°ed a"d W°" ^ Engli8h brid6' at Aril's
There are two castles that belong to the present nprin^ •
as that their erection chiefly took p'lacf in H2 7r
brook, in the Isle of Wight, and Kenilworth : Int^Z^'
the most essential points of their subsequent history r for t W
periods, we sha I confine our present notices to the e ec ion
Carisbhook (Fig. 427) stands at a short distance from the tot Hi
Newport, and near the central point of the islo nf „k;„i. I
days of the Saxons and of the lie, J^f.^^
to a comparatively recent period, it has been the chie°f defence
The keep and the great artificial mound on which it stan arP
supposed to have been erected so early as the sixth centut \Z
centuries later, the Norman possessor, Fitz-Osborne, delirinl n
enlarge his fortress, built additional works, covering 3 thf
square space of about an acre and a half, with rounded ang s tZ
whole surrounded by a fosse or ditch. All lands in th! ' , '
then held of the castle, or in other words of tie b WMe
Carisbrook ; and on the condition of serving and defe dint° Tl H
times from enemies. Of this early buildingfwhich stU fo a f
the nucleus of the very extensive" and mt^^t*™'* °"Iy
ultimately was raised on the spot, the chief femaTn, , ? Wh'Ch
side of the castle, forming an ^Jtg^Z^ **"*
rounded comers; and the keep, on *^7£iJ^£j

Chap. I.

OLD ENGLAND.

107

of seventy-two steps. The lowest story only is preserved. In the
centre of the keep there is a well 300 feet deep, telling, by its very
formation under such difficult circumstances, the importance of
its existence. Kenilworth (Fig. 430) seems to have derived its
name and its earliest casjle from the fortress mentioned by
Dugdale as standing, even in the Saxon times, upon a place called
Horn, or Holme Hill, and which, it is supposed, was built by one
of the Saxon kings of Mercia, named Kenulph, and his son Kenelm.
Worth, in the Saxon, means mansion or dwelling-place; conse
quently the formation of the word Kenilworth is tolerably clear.
But other writers consider this date as much to modern : to carry
back the history of Kenilworth only to a Saxon king is not sufficient ;
we must go to the Britons at once, and their great sovereign of
romance, and perhaps reality — Arthur,
" That here, with royal court, abode did make."
Whatever the beginning of this castle, its end seems certain enough :
Dugdale says it was demolished in the wars between King Edmund
and Canute the Dane. About a century later, or in the reign of
Henry the First, the present castle was commenced by Geoffrey de
Clinton, who is stated " to have been of very mean parentage, and
merely raised from the dust by the favour of the said King Henry,
from whose hands he received large possessions and no small honour,
beinn- made both Lord Chamberlain and Treasurer to the said King,
and afterwards Justice of England : which great advancements do
aro-ue that he was a man of extraordinary parts. It seems he took
much delight in this place, in respect of the spacious woods and
that large and pleasant lake (through which divers petty streams do
pass) lying amongst them ; for it was he that first built that great
and strong castle here, whicli was the glory of all these parts, and
for many respects may be ranked in a third place at the least with
the most stately castles in England." Dugdale (' Baronage') here
refers no doubt to the strength, size, and architectural character of
the castle ; but if its historical importance be considered, or, above
all, if we weigh the associations which a single writer of our own
a"-e has bound up with its decaying walls, we must assign to it a
rank that knows no superior : we must consider the " glory of these
parts " might now without exaggeration be more accurately described
as the glory of tlje civilized world.
With a group of border castles— Norham, Warkworth, and New
castle — we shall conclude for the present our notice of such structures.
No mention is made in Domesday-Book of the county of Northum
berland, in which these three castles are situated, for the reason pro
bably that the Conqueror could not even pretend to have taken pos
session of it. And there was then little temptation to induce him to
achieve its conquest. Nothing can be conceived more truly anarchic
than the state of the country in and around Northumberland at the
time. The chief employment of the inhabitants was plundering
the Scots on the other side of the Tweed— their chief ambition was
to avoid being plundered in return. But the Scots seem generally
to have had the best of it; who, not content with taking goods,
began to take the owners also, and make domestic slaves of them.
It Is said that about or soon after the period of the Conquest, there
was scarcely a single house in Scotland that was without one or
more of these English unfortunates. To check such terrible inroads,
castles now began to spring up in every part ; to these the inhabit
ants generally of a district flocked on any alarm of danger ; and
for centuries such a state of things continued unchanged. A highly
interesting picture of domestic border life, and which is at the same
time unquestionably trustworthy, has been preserved in the writings
of Pope Pius II., who, before his elevation to the pontificate, visited
various countries in an official capacity — amongst the rest Scotland,
to which he was sent as private legate about the middle of the
fifteenth century. "The Border Land" naturally attracted his
curiosity, and he determined to risk the danger of a personal visit.
He thus describes the result. His family name, it may be mentioned,
was ^Eneas Sylvius Piccolomini.
" There is a river (the Tweed) which, spreading itself from a
high mountain, parts the two kingdoms, ^neas having crossed
this in a boat, and arriving about sunset at a large village, went
to the house of a peasant, and there supped with the priest of the
place and his host. The table was plentifully spread with large
quantities of pulse, poultry, and geese, but neither wine nor bread
was to be found there ; and all the people of the town, both men and
women, flocked about him as to some new sight ; and as we gaze at
nesroes or Indians, so did they stare at iEneas, asking the priest
where he came from, what he came about, and whether he was a
Christian. ^Eneas, understanding the difficulties he must expect on
this jourpey, had taken care to provide himself at a certain monas
tery with some loaves, and a measure of red wine, at sight of which

they were seized with greater astonishment, having never seen wine
or white bread. The supper lasting till the second hour of the night,
the priest and host, with all the men and children, made the best of
their way off, and left iEneas. They said they were going to a
tower a great way off, for fear of the Scots, who when the tide was
out would come over the river and plunder ;' nor could they, with all
his entreaties, by any means be prevailed on to take -IEneas with
them nor any of the women, though many of them were young and
handsome ; for they think them in no danger from an enemy, not
considering violence offered to women as any harm. iEneas there
fore remained alone with them, with two servants and a guide, and a
hundred women, who made a circle round the fire, and sat the rest of
the night without sleeping, dressing hemp and chatting with the
interpreter. Night was now far advanced when a great noise was
heard by the barking of the dogs and screaming of the geese : all
the women made the best of their way off, the guide getting away
with the rest, and there was as much confusion as if the enemy
was at hand. .iEneas thought it more prudent to wait the event in
his bed-room (which happened to be a stable), apprehending if he
went out he might mistake his way, and be robbed by the first he
met. And soon after the women came back with the interpreter,
and reported there was no danger ; for it was a party of friends, and
not of enemies, that were come." (Camden's translation.) Just such
a castle of defence for a population, rather than a residence for their
lord, we may suppose Norhajvi (Fig. 428) to have been, built by the
Bishops of Durham, about the beginning of the twelfth century ; the
gloomy ruins which still overhang the Tweed exhibiting no traces
of exterior ornament, its walls reduced to a mere shell, its outworks
demolished, and a part of the very hill on which it was raised washed
away by the river. The keep alone exists in a state to remind us
of the original strength and importance of the fortress, when it was so
frequently the scene of contest between the people of the two countries.
On the accession of Stephen we find David of Scotland belieging and
capturing Norham, for Maud, Stephen's rival; a little later the
process was repeated by and for the same parties ; and then Norham is
said to have been demolished. In the reign of John, however, we
find it in existence, stronger than ever, and successfully resisting the
utmost efforts of the Scots, then in alliance with the revolted English
Barons. The next time the defenders were less brave, or less
fortunate ; in the reign of Edward III. the Scots once more ob
tained possession of Norham. But we need not follow its history
further ; so by way of contrast to the scene as represented in our
engraving, let us transcribe a glimpse of Norham Castle under more
favourable circumstances : —
" Day set on Norham's castle steep,
And Tweed's fair river, broad aud deep,
And Cheviot's mountains lone ;
The battled towers, the dragon keep,
The loop-hole grates, where captives weep,
The flanking walls, that round it sweep,
In yellow lustre shoue.
¦ The warriors on the turrets high,
Moving athwart the evening sky,
Seem'd forms of giant height ;
Their armour, as it caught the rays,
Flash'd back again the western blaze
In lines of dazzling light.'' Marmion.
The ruins of Warkworth (Figs. 419, 420), in their generally
elegant and picturesque outline, present a strong contrast to those
of Norham. Eesidence for the lord as well as protection for his
vassals has evidently been studied here. The situation in itself is
wonderfully fine. It stands on an eminence above the river
Coquet, a little beyond the southern extremity of the town of
Warkworth, and commands on all sides views of the greatest
beauty and variety. In one direction you have the sea outspread
before you, with the Fern Islands scattered over its surface ; whilst
along the shore-line the eye passes to the Castles of Dunstan-
borough and Bamborough at the extremity ; in another you dwell
with pleasure on the richly cultivated valley that extends up to
Alnwick Castle; then again, in a third, there are the beautiful
banks of the Coquet river, dear to salmon-fishers and lovers of
native precious stones, many of which are found among its sands ;
and lastly, in a fourth, you gaze upon an extensive plain inclining
seawards, and which is as remarkable for the fertility of its soil,
and the amount of its agricultural products, as for the air of
peaceful happiness that overspreads the whole— pasture, arable, and
woodlands, villages, hamlets, and churches. Such was the site, and
the structure was scarcely less magnificent. The outer walls,
which are in many parts entire, enclosed a space of about five acres,
P2

42'J. —Pomfret Castle.

«o.-.Ker.iIwmt„ Castle in leso.-^rcm, theTVesco- Painting .",' »,

cwnh»m' Padox.

^Sa^WV« Malifggr ^1 BEg

426.-i»nins of Farnham- Castle.

-427.— The Keep, Carisbrook*' Castle.

r^«V> ;gj;

,J«B;i

•ins —Unins nf Norham Castle.

431. —Castle of Newcastle-upon-Tyne.

109

110

OLD ENGLAND.

[Book II.

were about thirty -five feet high, and encircled by a moat. The gate
way, of which little is preserved, was a noble building, with numerous
apartments for the officers of the castle ; and the keep, which was
of great size, and octagonal, had its eight apartments with stone
vaulted roofs on the ground floor, for the protection, it is said, of
cattle brought in from the neighbourhood during any incursion of
the Scots ; also its great Baronial Hall, nearly forty feet long by
twenty-four wide, and twenty high ; all of which, though deprived of
their roofs, floors, and windows, remain, through the excellence of the
masonry, in admirable preservation. Cupidity alone, indeed, has
been here at work to destroy. In Leland's time the castle was " well
maintained," but in the early part of the seventeenth century the
buildings of the outer court with some others were stripped of their
lead and otherwise dismantled ; and in 1672 the noble keep itself
was unroofed. Warkworth has for several centuries been in pos
session of the Percy family. One can hardly mention these names
together without also noticing the neighbouring hermitage, which
Bishop Percy has made memorable by his poem of the ' Hermit of
Warkworth.' This is situated in the perpendicular rocks which
form the north bank of the Coquet, about a mile above the town,
and consists of " two apartments hewn out of the rock, with a
lower and outward apartment of masonry, built up against the side
of the rock, which rises about twenty feet high ; the principal apart
ment, or chapel, is about eighteen feet long, seven and a half wide,
and seven and a half high, adorned with pilasters, from which spring
the groins of the roof: at the east end is an altar with a niche be
hind it for a crucifix ; and near the altar is a cavity containing a ceno
taph, with a recumbent female figure having the hands raised in the
attitude of prayer. In the inner apartment are another altar and a
niche for a couch. From this inner apartment was a door leading
to an open gallery or cloister. Steps led up from the hermitage
to the hermit's garden at the top of the bank." (Penny Cyclopaedia.)
Who was the inhabitant of this strange home, and why he inhabited
it, are questions that after all we must leave the poets and romance
writers to solve, and they could not be in better hands. It has been
supposed that one of the Bertram family, who had murdered his
brother, was the tenant of the hermitage, desiring in solitude by
unceasing repentance to expiate his crime ; but all we know is that
the Percy family maintained from some unknown period a chantry
priest here.
As the present fortress of Newcastle (Fig. 431) was erected
by Robert de Curthose, the eldest of the Conqueror's sons, on his
return from an expedition into Scotland, we may judge of the
general antiquity of the place by the name then given, the New-
Castle. There can be no doubt, indeed, that the spot had been a
Roman station, and very little but that in those early days it had
been of some importance. After the introduction of Christianity
the place became known by the name of Monk Chester, from the
number of monastic institutions it contained. On the erection of
the fortress, the town took the same name, New- Castle. The
tower of this Norman structure remains essentially complete, and
forms one of the most striking specimens in existence of the rude
but grand-looking and (for the time) almost impregnable Norman
stronghold. The first point of attraction to a visitor's %yes on
entering Newcastle is that huge gloomy pile ; it is also the last on
which he turns his lingering glance on his departure. It stands
upon a raised platform near the river, majestically isolated in its
own " garth" or yard, to which we ascend by a steep flight of steps,
spanned near the top by a strong postern with a circular Norman
arch, reminding us of the difficulties that formerly attended such
ascent, when the approval of the inhabitants of the castle had not
been previously gained. Ci ossing the garth to the east side, the
one shown in the engraving (Fig. 431), we perceive the extraordi
nary character of the entrance, which, commencing at the comer on
the left hand, and gradually rising, runs through the pile that
seems to have been built against the keep rather than forming
an integral part of it up to a considerable height, where the real
entrance into the keep (originally most richly decorated) is to be
found. Through this entrance we pass into one of the most re
markable of halls ; it is of immense breadth, length, and height,
dimly lighted through the various slit holes, hung here and there
with rusty armour, and inhabited by an old pensioner and his
family, whose little domestic conveniences when the eye does light
upon them (for generally speaking they are lost in the magnitude of
the place) have a peculiarly quaint effect. The recesses in various
parts formed out of the solid thickness of the wall give us the best
idea of its strength ; one of these, possibly intended for the min
strels who sung the mighty deeds of the Norman chivalry to men
yearning to emulate their fame, is alone of the size of a small and
not very small apartment. But let us descend by the winding

staircase to the chapel beneath ; recalling as we go a few recollec
tions on the general subject of chapels in castles.
In the plan of an ancient castle (Fig. 346) it will be seen that
the chapel forms a component part of the whole ; and in turning
from the plan to the descriptions of our castles generally, we find
in almost every case a similar provision made for the performance
of religious duties. It may seem either a melancholy or a consola
tory consideration, according to the point of view from which we
look, to perceive that in the age to which our present pages refer,
when the mailed nobles made might right, declared their pleasure
and called it law, that then religion, as far as regarded sincere, zea
lous, and most unquestioning faith, and an indefatigable observance
of all its forms and ceremonies, formed also a most conspicuous
feature of the same men. To pray for mercy one hour, and be most
merciless the next ; to glorify the Giver of all good, as the most fitting
preparation for the dispensation of all evil ; to enshrine their hopos
of salvation on the altar of Christ, the divine messenger of love,
whilst they pressed forward to the mortal end of all through a con
tinuous life of rapine, violence, and strife ; — these were the almost
unvarying characteristics of the early Norman lords, the builders
of the old castles, where the keep and the chapel yet stand in many
places side by side in most significant juxtaposition ; the material
embodiment of the two principles thus strangely brought together
working to the most opposite conclusions, but with the utmost appa
rent harmony of intention. The great castle-builder provided his
walls and his courts, his keep and his dungeons ; but a chapel was
no less indispensable alike to his station and his actual wants. Be
leaguered or free, he must be able at all times to hear the daily
mass, or, more grateful still to lordly ears, the pious orison offered
up for his own and his family's welfare ; he must be able to fly to
the chapel for succour when the ¦' thick-coming fancies " of super
stition press upon his imagination and appal him by their mysterious
influence, or when defeat or danger threatens ; there, too, in the
hour of triumph must he be found, his own voice minglin"- with
the chant of the priests; at births, baptisms, marriages, and deaths
the sacred doors must ever be at hand ; the child fast growino- up
towards man's estate, who has spent his entire life within the castle
walls, looks forward. to the chapel as the scene that shall usher him
into a world of glory — already he feels the touch of the o-olden
spurs, the sway of the lofty plumes, the thrill of the fair hands
that gird on his maiden sword ; already with alternating hopes and
fears, he anticipates his solitary midnight vigil within the chapel
walls. And truly such a night in such a place as this, to which we
have descended, below the keep of Newcastle, was calculated to try
the tone of the firmest nerves ; for though beautiful, exceedingly
beautiful it is in all that respects the architectural style to which
it belongs, and of which it is a rare example, there are here no
lofty pointed windows, with their storied panes, to admit the full
broad stream of radiant splendour, or to give the idea of airiness or
elegance to the structure. All is massive, great, and impressively
solemn (Fig. 432). J
The Chapel in the Tower of London (Fig. 433), equally perfect
with that of Newcastle, and probably equally ancient, presents in
its aspect as remarkable a contrast to that structure as a work erected
in the same age, country, and style could have well given us. Here
we have aisles divided from the nave by gigantic but noble-looking
pillars, being divested of the low stunted character often apparent
in Norman ecclesiastical edifices ; and their effect is enharfced in no
slight degree by the arches in the story above. The chapel is now
used as a Record Office. We need only briefly mention the other
ecclesiastical building of the Tower, the Chapel of St. Peter, stand-
ing in the area that surrounds the White Tower, and which must
be of very early date, since we find that in the reign of Henry III
it was existing in a state of great splendour, with stalls for the kin-
and queen, two chancels, a fine cross, beautiful sculpture, paintings"
and stained glass. But at whatever period erected, the view (IV
434) shows us that material alterations of the original buildino- have
probably taken place, though no doubt the pews, the flat roof and
the Tudor monuments are themselves sufficient, in so small a place
to conceal or to injure the naturally antique expression. But there
are peculiar associations connected with these walls that make all
others tedious in the comparison as a " twice-told tale " In our
previous remarks we have glanced at the general uses of the cha
pels m our old castles ; this one of the Tower has been devoted to
a more momentous service than any there enumerated ; hither from
time to time, have come a strangely assorted company, led t>v th» ¦
most terrible of "-^-- ^  —-•-  - - - J yUBi

guides, the executioner, through the most awful
of paths, a sudden and violent death ; in a word, beneath the uu
suggestive-looking pavement, which seems to mock one's earnest
gaze, and along which one walks with a reverential dread of dis

Chap I.]

OLD ENGLAND.

Ill

turbing the ashes of those who lie below, were buried the innocent
Anne Boleyn and her brother, and the guilty Catherine Howard
and her associate, Lady Rochford ; the venerable Lady Salisbury,
and Cromwell, Henry VIII.'s minister; the two Seymours, the
Admiral and the Protector of the reign of Edward VI., and the
Duke of Norfolk, and the Earl of Essex, of the reign of Elizabeth ;
Charles II.'s son, the Duke of Monmouth, and the Earls of Balmerino
and Kilmarnock, with their ignoble coadjutor, Lord Lovat ; above
all, here were buried Bishop Fisher, and his illustrious friend More.
One would suppose, on looking over such a list of names, that the
scaffold, while assuming the mission of Death, was emulous to strike
with all Death's impartiality, and sweep away just and unjust guilty
and innocent, with equal imperturbability. It was a short road from
the opening to this death-in-life at the Traitor's Gate (Fig. 435),
and thence through the gaping jaws of the Bloody Tower (Fig. 436),
to the final resting-place of St. Peter's Chapel.

History and ballad, the chronicler and the troubadour, and more
effectually than either, the novelist of the North, have made Richard
Coeur de Lion one of the favourite heroes of England (Fig. 437).
Without the wisdom of his great father, he was the representative of
the courage, the fortitude, and the gallantry of the Plantagenets —
of the mixed blood of the Saxon and Norman races. We follow
the fortunes of the royal crusader over many a battle field, in which
gallantry was .always sure of its guerdon from his knightly sword
(Fig. 442). We can almost believe in the old metrical romance,
which tells us how
" The awless lion could not wage the fight,
Nor keep his princely heart from Richard's hand.'*
(Fig. 444.) The touching friendship of his minstrel, Blondel, tells
us that the lion-hearted king had something even nobler in his nature
than his indomitable courage and his physical strength. " One day
he (Blondel) sat directly before a window of the castle where King
Richard was kept prisoner, and began to sing a song in French,
which King Richard and Blondel had sometime composed together.
When King Richard heard the song, he knew it was Blondel that
sung it ; and when Blondel paused at half of the song, the King
began the other half, and completed it." His was a premature
death. But generous as he was, he would have been a dangerous
keeper of the rights of England. Of his brother John, the mean
and treacherous John, a modern writer finely says : " The strong
hands of the two first Plantagenets, Henry II. and Richard Coeur
de Lion, his father and brother were in the dust, and the iron
sceptre which they had wielded lay rusting among the heavy
armour which an imbecile and coward could not wear " (Pictorial
History of England, vol. i.). The heart of Richard, by his own
direction, was carried to his faithful city of Rouen for interment,
and his body was buried at the feet of his father at Fontevraud ;
this statue which was placed upon his tomb in that ancient
monastry is still remaining. It is of painted stone, and this is the
principal authority for the portrait of Richard (Fig. 438). Here
also is an effigy of his Queen Berengaria (Fig. 440). The faithful
city of Rouen did not well keep its faith to the lion-hearted. A
splended tomb was erected over the heart of the king, and it was
surrounded by a silver balustrade ; but within half a century the
faithful city melted the silver. In the year 1733 the chapter of the
Cathedral, to effect some alteration in their church, pulled down
the monuments of Richard and his brother, and of the great Duke
of Bedford, and they laid down three plain slabs instead, in the
pavement of the high altar. In 1838 some searches under this pave
ment were made by the prefect of the department, and amongst the
rubbish was found a fine but mutilated statue of Richard (Fig. 439),
and a leaden box containing a smaller box, which held all that re
mained of the lion-heart — something that had " the appearance of a
"eddish-coloured leaf, dry and bent round at the ends." — " To this
complexion we must come at last."
The name of King John has two leading associations — Magna
Charta and his murdered nephew. The great dramatic poet of
England has so associated the fortunes of Constance and Arthur
with the troubles, the fears, and the death-struggles of their faith
less kinsman, that we look upon these events through the poetical
medium as a natural series of cause and consequence. " The death
of Arthur and the events which marked the last days of John were
separated in their causes and effect by time only, over which the poet
leaps." But the political history of John may be read in the most
durable of antiquities — the Records of the kingdom. And the
people may read the most remarkable of these records whenever they
please to look upon it. Magna Charta, the great charter of Eng
land, entire as at the hour in which it was written, is preserved, not

for reference on doubtful questions of right, not to be proclaimed
at market-crosses or to be read in churches, as in the time of Ed
ward I., but for the gratification of a just curiosity and an honest
national pride. The humblest in the land may look upon that
document day by day, in the British Museum, which more than six
hundred years ago declared that " no freeman shall be arrested or
imprisoned, or dispossessed of his tenement, or outlawed, or exiled,
or in any manner proceeded against, unless by the legal judgment
of his peers, or by the law of the land." This is the foundation of
statute upon statute, and of what is as stringent as statute, the
common law, through which for six hundred years we have been
struggling to breathe the breath of freedom — and we have not
struggled in vain. The Great Charter is in Latin, written in a
beautiful hand, of which we give a specimen in Fig. 458.
Runnemede — or Runingmede, as the Charter has it — was, ac
cording to Matthew of Westminster, a place where treaties con
cerning the peace of the kingdom had been often made. The name
distinctly signifies a place of council. Hune-med is an Anglo-
Saxon compound, meaning the Council-Meadow. We can never
forget that Council-Meadow, for it entered into our first visions of
Liberty : — " Fair Runnemede ! oft hath my lingering eye
Paus'd on thy tufted green and cultur'd hill ;
And there my busy soul would drink her fill
Of lofty dreams, which on thy bosom lie.
Dear plain ! never my feet have pass'd thee by,
At sprightly morn, high noon, or evening still,
But thou hast fashion'd all my pliant will
To soul-ennobling thoughts of liberty.
Thou dost not need a perishable stone
Of sculptur'd story ; — records ever young
Proclaim the gladdening triumph thou hast known : —
The soil, the passing stream, hath still a tongue;
And every wind breathes out an eloquent tone,
That Freedom's self might wake, thy fields among."
These are commonplace rhymes — schoolboy verses ; but we are
not ashamed of havingAwritten them. Runnemede was our Mara
thon. Very beautiful is that narrow slip of meadow on the edge of
the Thames, with gentle hills bounding it for a mile or so. It is a
valley of fertility. Is this a fitting place to be the cradle of English
freedom ? Ought we not, to make our associations harmonious, to
have something bolder and sterner than this quiet mead, and that
still water with its island cottage ? (Fig. 455.). Poetry tells us that
" rockey ramparts " are
" The rough abodes of want and liberty." — GiiiV.
But the liberty of England was nurtured in her prosperity. The
Great Charter, which says, " No freeman, or merchant, or villain
shall be unreasonably fined for a small offence — the first shall not
be deprived of his tenement, the second of his merchandise, the
third of his implements of husbandry "—exhibited a state far more
advanced than that of the " want and liberty," of the poet, where
the iron race of the mountain cliffs
" Insult the plenty of the vales below.''
Runnemede is a fitting place for the cradle of English liberty.
Denham, who from his Cooper's Hill looked down upon the Thames,
wandering past this mead to become " the world's exchange," some
what tamely speaks of the plain at his feet : —
" Here was that Charter seal'd, wherein the crown
All marks of arbitrary power lays down ;
Tyrant and slave, those names of hate and fear,
The happier style of king and subject bear ;
Happy when both to the same centre move,
When kings give liberty, and subjects love.''
Our liberty was not so won. It was wrested from kings, and not
given by them ; and the love we bestow upon those who are the
central point of our liberty is the homage of reason to security.
That security has made the Thames " the world's exchange;" that
security has raised up the great city which lies like a mist, below
Cooper's Hill ; that security has caused the towers of Windsor,
which we see from the same hill, to rise up in new splendour, in
stead of crumbling into ruin like many a stronghold of feudal
oppression. Our prosperity is the child of our free institutions ;
and the child has gone forward strengthening and succouring the
parent Yet the iron men who won this charter of liberties dreamt
not of the day when a greater power than their own, the power of
the merchants and the villians, would rise up to keep what , they had
sworn to win upon the altar of St. Edmundsbury (Fig. 463). 'The
Fitz-Walter, and De Roos, and De Clare, and De Percy, and De
Mandeville, and De Vescy, andDe Mowbray, and De Montacute,
and De Beauchamp-these great progenitors of our English nobi
lity-compelled the despot to put his seal to the Charter of Runne-

433;'— Interior of the Ctiapel in the White Tower.

433. — Chapel in Newcastle Castle.

435.— The Traitor's Gate.

436.— Gateway of the Bloody Tower.

112

437.— Great Seal of Richard I.

440.— Berengaria, Queen of Richard I.
From the Tomb at Fontevrault.

439.— Efflgy of Richard 1.— From the
Statue found at Rouen.

438.— Richard I.— From his Tomb at Fontevrault.

441.— The Norman Crusader.

443. — Avantailes.
0, Helmet of Richard I.
6, Baldwin, Count of Flanders, 119

442*— Knighting on the Field of Battle.

t e

[OLD ENGLAND.]

444.— Richard »pd the Lien.

113

114

OLD ENGLAND.

[Book II

mede (Fig. 459). But another order of men, whom they of the
pointed shield and the mascled armour would have despised as slaves,
have kept, and will keep, God willing, what they won on the 15th
of June, in the year of grace 1215. The thing has rooted into our
English earth like the Ankerwyke Yew on the opposite bank of the
Thames, which is still vigorous, though held to be older than the
great day of Runnemede (Fig. 457).
Magna Charta is a record. Bishop Nicolson says, " Our stores
of public records are justly reckoned to excel in age, beauty, cor
rectness-, and authority, whatever the choicest archives abroad can
boast of the like sort." Miles, nay, hundreds of miles, of parchment
are preserved in our public offices, which incidentally exhibit the
progress of the nation in its institutions and its habits, and decide
many an historical fact which would otherwise be matter of con
troversy or of speculation. Nothing can more truly manifest the
value of these documents than the fact that the actual place in
which this said King John was, on almost every day, from the first
year of his reign to the last, has been traced by a diligent examina
tion of the Patent Rolls in the Tower of London. Mr. Hardy has
appended to his curious Introduction to these Rolls, published by
authority of the Record Commission, the ' Itinerary of King John.'
A most restless being does he appear to have been, flying about in
cumbrous carriages (Fig. 461) to all parts of England; sailing to
Normandy (Fig. 460) ; now holding his state in his Falace at
Westminster, now at Windsor (Fig. 464) ; and never at ease till
he was laid in his tomb at Worcester (Fig. 465). We extract an
instructive passage from Mr. Hardy's Introduction : —
" Rapin, Hume, Henry, and those English historians who have
followed Matthew Paris, state that, as soon King John had
sealed the Great Charter, he became sullen, dejected, and reserved,
and shunning the society of his nobles and courtiers, retired, with a
few of his attendants, to the Isle of Wight, as if desirious of hiding his
shame and confusion, where he conversed only with fishermen and
sailors, diverting himself with walking on the sea-shore with his
domestics ; that, in his retreat, he formed plans for the recovery of
the prerogatives which he had lately relinquished ; and meditated,
at the same time, the most fatal vengeance against his enemies ;
that he sent his emissaries abroad to collect an army of mercenaries
and Brabacons, and dispatched messengers to Rome, for the purpose
of securing the protection of the papal see ; aud that, whilst his
agents were employed in executing their several commissions, he
himself remained in the Isle of Wight, awaiting the arrival of the
foreign soldiers.
" That these statements are partially if not wholly unfounded will
appear by the attestations to the royal letters during the period in
question. "Previously to the sealing of Magna Charta, namely, from the
1st to the 3rd of June, 1215, the King was at Windsor, from which
place he can be traced, by his attestations, to Odiham, and thence
to Winchester, where he remained till the 8th. From Winchester
he went to Merton ; he was again at Odiham on the 9th, whence
he returned to Windsor, and continued there till the 15th : on that
day he met the barons at Runnemede by appointment, and there
sealed the great charter of English liberty. The King then returned
to Windsor, and remained there until the 18th of June, from which
time until the 23rd he was every day both at Windsor and Runne
mede, and did not finally leave Windsor and its vicinity before
the 26th of the same month ; John then proceeded through Odiham
to Winchester, and continued in that city till the end of June. The
first four days of July he passed at Marlborough from which place
he went to Devizes, Bradenstoke, and Calne ; reached Cirencester
on the 7th, and returned to Marlborough on the following day.
He afterwards went Ludgershall, and through Clarendon into
Dorsetshire, as far as Corfe Castle, but returned to Clarendon
on the 15th of July, from which place he proceeded, through New
bury and Abingdon, to Woodstock, and thence to Oxford, where
he arrived on the 17th of that month ; and in a letter dated on the
15th of July, between Newbury and Abingdon, the King mentions
the impossibility of his reaching Oxford by the 16th, according to
his appointment with the barons."
The publications of the Record Commissioners are enriched by
the researches of some of our most eminent living antiquarians, who
have brought to their task a fund of historical knowledge, and a
sagacity in showing the connection between • these dust-covered
records and the history of our constitution, which have imparted a
precision to historical writing unknown to the last age. No man
has laboured more assiduously in this field than Sir Francis Palgrave ;
and he has especially shown that a true antiquary is not a mere
scavenger of the baser things of time, but one whose talent and
knowledge can discover the use and the connection of ancient things,

which are not really worn out, and which are only held to be worth
less by the ignorant and the unimaginative. Sir Francis Palgrave is
the Keeper of the Records in the Treasury of the Exchequer, and
his publication of the ancient Kalendars and Inventories of that
Treasury contains a body of documents of the greatest value, intro
duced by an account of this great depository of the Crown Records,
which is full of interest and instruction. " The custom of depositing
records and muniments amongst the treasures of the state is
grounded upon such obvious reasons, that it prevailed almost
universally amongst ancient nations ; nor, indeed, is it entirely
discontinued at the present day. The earliest, and in all respects
the most remarkable, testimony concerning this practice is found in
the Holy Scriptures : — ' Now, therefore, if it seem good to the
King, let there be search made in the King's Treasure-house, whicli
is there at Babylon, whether it be so, that a decree was made of
Cyrus the King to build this house of God at Jerusalem.' ' Then
Darius the King made a decree, and search was made in the House
of the Rolls, where the treasures were laid up in Babylon.' " The
high antiquity of this custom imparts even a new value to our own
Treasure Chambers. Those who feel an interest in the subject may
consult a brief but valuable article under the head ' Records ' in the
' Penny Cyclopaedia.' From Sir Francis Palgrave's Introduction to
the Ancient Kalendar's we extract one or two amusing passages
descriptive of some of the figures in p. 121 : —
" The plans anciently adopted for the arrangement and preserva
tion of the instruments had many peculiarities. Presses, such as are
now employed, do not seem to have been in use. Chests bound with
iron ; — forcers or coffers, secured in the same manner ; — pouches or
bags of canvass or leather (Fig. 468) ; skippets, or small boxes
turned on the lathe (Fig. 469) ; — tills or drawers; — and hanapers
or hampers of ' twyggys ' (Fig. 470) ; — are all enumerated as the
places of stowage or deposit. To these reference was made, some
times by letters, sometimes by inscriptions, sometimes by tickets or
labels, and sometimes by ' signs ;' that is to say, by rude sketches,
drawings, or paintings, which had generally some reference to the
subject matter of the documents (Fig. 467).
" Thus the sign of the instruments relating to Arragon is a lancer
on a jennet ; — Wales, a Briton in the costume of his country, one
foot shod and the other bare ; — Ireland, an Irisher, clad in a very
singular hood and cape ;— Scotland, a Lochaber axe ; — Yarmouth,
three united herrings ; — the rolls of the Justices of the Forest, an
oak sapling ;— the obligations entered into by the riien of Chester, for
their due obedience to Edward, Earl of Chester, a gallows, indicating
the fate which might be threatened in case of rebellion, or which
the officers of the Treasury thought they had already well deserved ;
— Royal marriages, a hand in hand ; — the indentures relating to the
subsidy upon woollen cloths, a pair of shears ; — instruments relating
to the lands of the Earl of Gloucester in Wales, a castle surrounded
by a banner charged with the Clare arms ;— and the like, of which
various examples will be found by inspection of the calendars and
memoranda.* "Two ancient boxes painted with shields of arms, part of the old
furniture, are yet in existence, together with several curious chests,
coffers, and skippets of various sorts and sizes, all sufficiently curious
and uncouth, together with various specimens of the hanapers \i oven
of ' twyggys,' as described in the text.
" One of these hanapers was discovered under rather remarkable
circumstances. On the 1 5th of Feb., in the third year of the reign of
Richard II., Thomas Orgrave, clerk, delivers into the Treasury, to be
there safely kept, certain muniments relating to the lands and tene
ments in Berkhampstead, formerly belonging to William, the son and
heir of John Hunt, and which the King had purchased of Dyonisia,
the widow of William de Sutton, and which are stated to be placed
m a certain hanaper or hamper within a chest over the receipt.
Upon a recent inspection of a bag of deeds relating to the county
of Berks, I found that it contained the hanaper so described, with a
* " Therolls of the Justices of the Forest were marked by the sapling oak (No. 1).
Papal bulls, by the triple crown. Four canvass pouches holding rolls and tallies
irZZT^^T^ ^^ °f W<*tmi»^were maid by thechur h
(3) Toe head m a cowl (4) marked an indenture respecting the jewels found in
DUb,r xheeB re; Minores iu Salop- The scaira w> *¦ "^ °f ^ "
sword (Jl^ Zl ST footshoda"dth" °*<* We, with the lance and
sword 6), marked the wooden ' coffin ' holding the acquittance of receipts from
Llewelln,, Pnnce of Wales. Three herrings (7), the ¦ forcer • of leather bound 12
-ron contaunng documents relating to Yarmouth, &c. The lancer (8), document,
elating to Arragon The united hands (9), the marriage between Ho"
of Wales, and Ph.lippa, daughter of Henry IV. The irallev HOI tl,» ™ •
of merchants of the three galley, of Venice. The ban^i £ " X^
kmgs John and Henry. The charter or cyrograph (12), treaties and truce's betw^
En, and and Scotland. The hooded monk (13), advowson, of Irish chu che "
and the castle with a banner of the Clare arms (14), records rehrin V* '
sessions of the Earl of Gloucester in Wale,."-^, ^ CylopJdt) ^

Chap. I.]

OLD ENGLAND.

115

label exactly conformable to the entry in the memoranda, crumbling
and decaying, but tied up, and in a state which evidently showed
that it had never been opened since the time of its first deposit in
the Treasury ; and within the hanaper were all the several deeds,
with their seals in the highest state of preservation."
Connected with the subject of the ancient records of the crown
may be mentioned the tallies of the Exchequer, which were actually
in use from the very earliest times till the year 1834. These pri
mitive records of account have been thus described : " The tallies
used in the Exchequer (one is shown in Fig. 471) answered the
purpose of receipts as well as simple records of matters of account.
They consisted of squared rods of hazel or other wood, upon one
side of which was marked, by notches, the sum for which the tally
was an acknowledgment; one kind of notch standing for 1000/.,
another for \00l., another for 201,., and others for 20*., Is., &c.
On two other sides of the tally, opposite to each other, the amount
of the sum, the name of the payer, and the date of the transaction,
were written by an officer called the writer of the tallies ; and after
this was done, the stick was cleft longitudinally in such a manner
that each piece retained one of the written sides, and one-half of
every notch cut in the tally. One piece was then delivered to the
person who had paid in the money, for which it was a receipt or
acquittance, while the other was preserved in the Exchequer."
The Saxon Reeve-pole, used in the Isle of Portland down to a very
recent period by the collector of the king's rents, shows the sum
which each person has to pay to the king as lord of the manor
(Fig. 473). The Clog Almanac, which was common in Stafford
shire in the seventeenth century, was in the same way a record
of the future, cut on the sides of a square stick, such as exhibited in
Fig. 472.

The same combination against the power of the Crown which
produced the great charter of our liberties, relieved the people
from many regal oppressions by a charter of the forests. We can
not look upon an old forest without thinking of the days when men
who had been accustomed to the free range of their green woods
were mulcted or maimed for transgressing the ordinances of their
new hunter-kings. Our poet Cowper put his imagination in the
track of following out the customs of the Norman age in his frag
ment upon Yardley Oak, which was supposed to have existed before
the Normans : —
" Thou wast a bauble once ; a cup and ball,
Which babes might play with ; and the thievish jay,
Seeking her food, with ease might have purloin'd
The auburn nut that held thee, swallowing down
Thy yet close-folded latitude of boughs
And all thine embryo vastness at a gulp.
But fate thy growth decreed ; autumnal rains
Beneath thy parent tree mellow'd the soil
Design'd thy cradle ; and a skipping deer,
With pointed boof dibbling the glebe, prepared
The soft receptacle, in which, secure,
Thy rudiments should sleep the winter through."
But the poet's purpose failed
quities of the earliest period
Paul's, the Great Western Railway will place us in an hour (having
an additional walk of about two miles) in the heart of one of the most
secluded districts in England. We know nothing of forest scenery
equal to Burnham Beeches (Fig. 476). There are no spots approach
ing to it in wild grandeur to be found in Windsor Forest ; Sherwood,
we have been told, has trees as ancient, but few so entirely un-

the place derives its name. It is not easy to make scenes such as
these interesting in description. The great charm of this spot may
be readily conceived, when it is known that its characteristic is an
entire absence of human care. The property has been carefully
preserved in its ancient state, and the axe of the woodman for many
a day has not been heard within its precincts. The sheep wander
through the tender grass as if they were the rightful lords of the
domain. We asked a solitary old man, who was sitting on a stump,
whether there was any account who planted this ancient wood:
' Planted !' he replied, ' it was never planted : those trees are as
old as the world ! ' However sceptical we might be as to the poor
man's chronology, we were sure that history or tradition could tell
little about their planting." We visited this place in 1841, and
this slight notice of it already published may as well be transferred
to these pages. But England has a store of popular associations
with her old oaks and yews in the vast collection of Robin Hood
Ballads. If there be one district of England over which more than over
any other Romance seems to have asserted an unquestionable su
premacy — " This is mine henceforth, for ever !" — and over which she
has drawn her veil of strange enchantments, making the fairest
objects appear fairer through that noble medium, and giving beauty
even to deformity itself, it is surely Sherwood Forest. If there be
one man of England' whose story above the stories of all other men
has entered deeply into the popular heart, or stirred powerfully the
popular imagination, there can be no doubt but it is the bold yeoman-
forester Robin Hood. Who, in youth, ever read unmoved the ballads
in which that story is chiefly related, absurd and untrue as un
doubtedly many of them are ? Who now can behold even a partial
reflex of the lives of these joyous inhabitants of the green woods,
such, for instance, as ' As You Like It ' affords, without a sigh at
the contrast presented to our own safer, more peaceable, but
altogether unromantic pursuits ? It is well, perhaps, that there is
now no banished duke " in the Forest of Arden, and so many merry
men with him," living there " like the old Robin Hood of England :"
for there would be still " young gentlemen " too glad to " flock to
him every day, and fleet the time carelessly, as they did in the
golden world." But, perhaps, the most decisive proof of the in
herent interest of the lives of the Forest outlaws, is not that such
interest should simply still exist so many centuries after their death,
but that it should exist under the heavy load of mistakes and
absurdities that have so long surrounded and weighed it down :—
all honour to those whose unerring perceptions and stedfast faith
have kept that interest alive ! The philosopher has once more con
descended to learn from the people whom he should teach. What
they would not "willingly let die" under so many circumstances
adverse to preservation, he now, in our time, discovers is fit to live,
and forthwith satisfactorily proves what millions never doubted,
that Robin Hood was worthy of his reputation— that he was no thief,
or robber, no matter how these epithets might be qualified in Cam
den's phrase of the " gentlest of thieves," or Major's of the " most
humane and prince of all robbers." Altogether the treatment during
late centuries of the story of Sherwood Forest has been at once
curious and instructive. The people wisely taking for granted the

England is full of such natural anti- ..,.„,.
< Within five and twenty miles of St. essentials of that story as handed down to them from generat on o
generation, and which described Robin Hood as their benefactor in
an age when heaven knows benefactors to them were few enough,
and which at the same time invested him with all the attributes on
which a people delight to dwell, as mirroring, in short, all their own
best qualities— hatred of oppression, courage, hospitality, generous
love, and deep piety ; taking all this, we repeat, for granted, they
have not since troubled themselves to ask why they continued to
look upon his memory with such affectionate respect. On the other
hand our historians, who were too philosophic (so called) to regard
such 'feelings as in themselves of any particular importance, if they
did not even think them decisive against the man who was their
obiect never condescended to inquire as to his true character, but were
content to take their views of him on trust from some such epigram
matic sounding sentences of the older writers as we have already
tonscribed. And what is the result when they are sudden y
ded with inquiry by an eminent foreigner, Thierry, putting forth
r^^flSTapinton of the political importance of Rob n
Hood"--hy, that without referring to a single new or comparative y
i„Lce4bledocument,awriter in the Westminster Review for March,
840 io whom every lover of Robin Hood owes grateful acknow
ledgments), has shown that there can be no reasonable doubt what-
" " ' ' ¦ . , ._.-:„. „„a „ot the freebooter, whom his country-
Of this more presently.

touched in modern times. When at the village of Burnham, which
is about a mile and a half from the Railway-station at Maidenhead,
the beeches may be reached by several roads, each very beautiful
in its seclusion. We ascend a hill, and find a sort of table-land
forming a rude common with a few scattered houses. Gradually
the common grows less open. We see large masses of wood in
clumps, and now and then a gigantic tree close by the road. The
trunks of these scattered trees are of amazing size. They are for
the most part pollards ; but not having been lopped for very many
years, they have thrown out mighty arms, which give us a notion
of some deformed son of Anak, noble as well as fearful in his gro
tesque proportions. As we advance the wood thickens; and as
the road leads us into a deep dell, we are at length completely
embosomed in a leafy wilderness. This dell is a most romantic
spot : it extends for some quarter of a mile between overhanging
banks covered with the graceful forms of the ash and the birch ;
while the contorted beeches show their fantastic roots and unwieldy
trunks upon the edge of the glen, in singular contrast. If we walk
up thia. valley, we may emerge into the plain of beeches, from which

ever that it is the patriot, and not the freebooter, ¦

, , , en have so long delighted to honour,
The Verity of the old forest laws of England has become a by
word, and no

wonder when we know that with the Conqueror a

418.— King John.
116

449.— Queen Elinor,

450.— William Longespee, Earl of Salialu

ibroke.

457. — The Ankerwyke Yew.

455.— Magna Charta Island.

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456.— Specimen of Magna Charta, engraved from one oftlie original Copiesin the British Museum. The passages area poition of the
Preamble, the Forty-sixth Clause, and the Attestation.

456,—Uunnemetle.

117

118

OLD ENGLAND.

[Book I]

sovereign's paternal care for his subjects was understood to apply
to red deer, not to Saxon men ; and that accordingly, of the two,
the lives of the former alone were esteemed of any particular value.
But it was not the severity merely that was, after the Conquest,
introduced (whether into the spirit or into the letter of the forest
laws is immaterial), but also the vast extent of fresh land then
afforested, and to which such laws were for the first time applied,
that gave rise to so much opposition and hatred between the
Norman conquerors and the Saxon forest inhabitants ; and that in
particular parts of England infused such continuous vigour into
the struggle commenced at the invasion, long after that struggle
had ceased elsewhere. The Conqueror is said to have possessed
in this country no less than sixty-eight forests, and these even were
not enough ; so the afforesting process went on reign after reign,
till the awful shadow of Magna Charta began to pass more and
more frequently before royal eyes, producing first a check, and
then a retreat : dis-afforesting then began, and the forest laws
gradually underwent a mitigating process. But this was the work
of the nobility of England, and occupied the said nobility a long
time first to determine upon, and then to carry out : the people in
the interim could not afford to wait, but took the matter to a
certain extent into their own hands ; free bands roved the woods,
laughing at the king's laws, and killing and eating his deer, and
living a life of perfect immunity from punishment, partly through
bravery and address, and still more through the impenetrable cha
racter of the woods that covered a large portion of the whole
country from the Trent to the Tyne. Among the more famous
of the early leaders of such men were Adam Bell, Clym of the
Clough , and William of Cloudesley (Fig. 479), the heroes of many
a northern ballad. But as time passed on, and Normans and
Saxons gradually amalgamated, and forgot their feuds of race in the
necessity for resisting the oppressions of class, such a life would
cease to be honourable ; liberty would become licence — resistance
to government rebellion. Assuredly the memory of Robin Hood
would not have been treasured as it was by our forefathers, if,
whilst the country was gradually progressing onwards to peace,
order, and justice, he had merely distinguished himself by the ex
ercise of excellent qualities for a very mischievous purpose; What
was it, then, that justified such a man in establishing an independent
government in the woods, after so much had been done towards the
establishment of a more regular authority, and after the people
generally of England had patiently submitted, and began in earnest
to seek an amelioration of their condition in a legal and peace
able way ? It was, in a word, the overthrow of the national party
of united Englishmen at the battle of Evesham in 1265, when
Simon de Montfort and a host of other leaders of the people fell ;
when the cause that had experienced so many vicissitudes, and
which had assumed so many different aspects at different times, was
apparently lost for ever ; and when the kingly power, unrestrained
by charters— since there were no longer armed bands to enforce
them — rioted in the degradation and ruin of all who had been
opposed to it. In a parliament called almost immediately after this
event, which sat at Winchester, and consisted of course entirely of
* nobles and knights who had been on the victors' side, the estates
of all who had adhered to the late Earl of Leicester (Montfort)
were confiscated at one fell swoop. It is important to mark what
then took place. " Such measures," writes Dr. Lingard, whose
sympathies are all on the royal side, " were not calculated to restore
the public tranquility. The sufferers, prompted by revenge, or
compelled by want, had again recourse to the sword : the moun
tains, forests, and morasses furnished them with places of retreat ;
and the flames of predatory warfare were kindled in most parts of
the kingdom. To reduce these partial, but successive insurrections,
occupied Prince Edward [himself one of the popular party till he
found popular restrictions were to be applied to his reign as well as
his father's] the better part of two years. He first compelled Simon
de Montfort [son of the late earl] and his associates, who had
sought an asylum in the Isle of Axholm, to submit to the award
which should be given by himself and the King of the Romans.
He next led his forces against the men of the Cinque Ports, who had
long been distinguished by their attachment to Leicester, and who
since his fall had by their piracies interrupted the commerce of the
narrow seas, and made prizes of all ships belonging to the king's sub
jects. The capture of Winchelsea, which was carried by storm, taught
them to respect the authority of the sovereign, and their power by
sea made the prince desirous to recal them to their duty and attach
them to the crown. They swore fealty to Henry ; and in return
obtained a full pardon, and the confirmation of their privileges.
From the Cinque Ports Edward proceeded to Hampshire, which,
with Berkshire and Surrey, was ravaged by numerous banditti,

under the command of Adam Gordan, the most athletic man of th
age. They were surprised in a wood near Alton. The princ
engaged in single combat with their leader, wounded and unhorse
him ; and then, in regard of his valour, granted him his pardon
Still the garrison of Kenilworth [the Montfort family seat] con
tinued to brave the royal power, and even added contumely to thei
disobedience. To subdue these obstinate rebels, it was necessary t<
summon the chivalry of the kingdom : but the strength of the plaa
defied all the efforts of the assailants ; and the obstinacy of Hastings
the governor, refused for six months every offer which was made tc
him in the name of his sovereign." At length it became necessary
to offer something like terms of accommodation ; there was danger
in such long and successful resistance. So it was declared that
estates might be redeemed at certain rates of payment, the highest
being applied to the brave Kenilworth garrison, who were to pay
seven years' value. They submitted at last. Others still held out,
hoping perhaps to see a new national organization, and at all events
determined to refuse submission so long as they could. Such were
the men who maintained their independence for nearly two years in
the Isle of Ely ; above all, such were the men who maintained their
independence for a lifetime in the forest of Sherwood and the adja
cent woodlands. Fordun, the Scottish historian, who travelled in
England in the fourteenth century diligently collecting materials for
his great work, which forms to this day our only authority for the
facts of Scottish history through a considerable period, states, im
mediately after his notice of the battle of Evesham, and its conse
quences to all who had been connected, on the losing side, with the
general stream of events to which that battle belongs, " Then from
among the dispossessed and the banished arose that most famous cut
throat Robert Hood and Little John." If any one rises from the
perusal of the mighty events of the reign of Henry the Third with
the conviction that Simon de Montfort, to whom in all probability
England owes its borough representation, was a rebel instead of a
martyr, as the people called him, and that the words so freely used
by Dr.' Lingard, of pirates, banditti, and rebels, were properly applied
to Simon de Montfort's followers, then also they may accept Fordun's
opinion that Robin Hood was a cut-throat— but not else; they will
otherwise, like ourselves, accept his fact only, which is one of the
highest importance, and beyond dispute as to its correctness, how
ever strangely neglected even by brother historians. Fordun's work
was continued and completed by his pupil, Bower, Abbot of St.
Colomb, who under the year 1266, noticing the further progress of
the events that followed the battle of Evesham, says, " In this year
were obstinate hostilities carried on between the dispossessed barons
of England and the royalists, amongst whom Roger Mortimer occu
pied the Marches of Wales, and John Duguil the Isle of Ely.
Robert Hood now lived an outlaw among the woodland copses and
thickets." It is hardly necessary after this to add that the one, and
there is but one undoubtedly, ancient ballad relating to Robin Hood
the ' Lytell Geste,' furnishes an additional corroboration of the most
satisfactory character; it relates, as its title-page informs us to
" Kynge Edwarde and Robyn Hode and Lytell Johan." We may
here observe that this ballad, one of the very finest in the language
which for beauty and dramatic power is worthy of Chaucer him
self, about whose time it was probably written, has shared Robin
Hood's own fate: that is, enjoyed a great deal of ^discriminating
and, therefore, worthless popularity. It has simply been looked on
as one of the Robin Hood ballads, whilst in fact it stands out as much
from all the others by its merits as by its antiquity, and its internal
evidence of being written by one who understood that on which he
wrote: which is much more than can be said for the ballad doers of
later centuries, when Friar Tuck and Maid Marian first crept into
the foresters company, when the gallant yeoman was created without
ceremony Earl of Hunt.ngdon, and his own period put back a century
in order that he and the Lion Heart might hob and nob it together
Here, then, we see the origin of Robin Hood's forest career -we see'
him-the yeoman-doing what the few leaders of the peo'ple, the
kmghtsand barons whom Evesham had spared, everywhere did also,
restating oppression ; the difference being that they fought as soldiers
with a Deter soldier, Prince Edward, and failed ; and that he fought
as a forester in the woods he had probably been familiar with from
boyhood, and succeeded. Without exaggerating his political i7
portance, it is not too much to say that but for Edward's wisdomTn
conceding substantially, when he became king, what he had she"
much blood to resist whilst prince, that little handful of fr,
Sherwood Forest might have become the nucleus of a new organi
zation, destined once more to shake the isle to its very centre

so
eemen in

Edward prevented this result ; but, nevertheless, they found their

mission.

They enabled their leader to become " the rer. - .
and the hero of a cause far older and deeper even ZZZvlZl

Chap. I.]

OLD ENGLAND.

119

De Montfort had so nobly fallen ; we mean the permanent protest
of the industrious classes of England against the galling injustice
and insulting immorality of that framework of English society, and
that fabric of ecclesiastical as well as civil authority, wbich the iron
arm of the Conquest had established. Under a system of general
oppression — based avowedly on the right of the strongest — the suf
fering classes beheld, in a personage like Robert Hood, a sort of
particular Providence, which scattered a few grains of equity amid
all that monstrous mass of wrong. And when in his defensive
conflicts, the well-aimed missile entered the breast of some one of
their petty tyrants, though regarded by the ruling powers as an
arrow of malignant fate, it was hailed by the wrung and goaded
people as a shaft of protecting or avenging Heaven. The service
of such a chieftain, too, afforded a sure and tempting refuge for
every Anglo-Saxon serf who, strong in heart and in muscle, and
stung by intolerable insult, had flown in the face of his Norman owner
or his owner's bailiff— for every villain who, in defending the decen
cies of his hearth, might have brained some brutal collector of the
pall-tax — for every rustic sportsman who had incurred death or
mutilation, the ferocious penalties of the Anglo-Norman forest laws,
by ' taking, killing, and eating deer ' " (Westminster Review).
The forest of Sherwood, which formerly extended for thirty
miles northward from Nottingham, skirting the great north road
on both sides, was anciently divided into Thorney Wood and High
Forest ; and in one of these alone, the first and smallest, there were
comprised nineteen towns and villages, Nottingham included.
But this extensive sylvan district formed but a part of Robin
Hood's domains. Sherwood was but one of a scarcely interrupted
series of forests through which the outlaws roved at pleasure,
when change was desired, either for its own sake, or in order to
decline the too pressing attentions of the " Sheriff," as they called
the royal governor of Nottingham Castle and of the two counties,
Notts and Derby, who had supplanted the old elective officer — the
people's sheriff. Hence we trace their haunts to this day so far in
one direction as "Robin Hood's Chair," Wyn Hill, and his
"Stride" (Fig. 486) in Derbyshire; thence to "Robin Hood's
Bay," on the coast of Yorkshire, in another, with places between
innumerable. But the " woody and famous forest of Barnsdale,''
in Yorkshire, and Sherwood, appear to have been their principal
places of resort ; and what would not one give for a glimpse of the
scene as it then was, with these its famous actors moving about
among it ! There is little or nothing remaining in a sufficiently
wild state to tell us truly of the ancient royal forest of Sherwood.
The clearing process has been carried on extensively during the
last century and a half. Prior to that period the forest was full of
ancient trees — the road from Mansfield to Nottingham presented
one unbroken succession of green woods. The principal parts now
' existing are the woods of Birkland and Bilhagh, where oaks of the
. most giant growth and of the most remote antiquity are still to be
found : oaks against which Robin Hood himself may have leaned,
and which even then may have counted their age by centuries.
Such are the oaks in Welbeck Park (Fig. 480). Many of these
ancient trees are hollow through nearly the whole of their trunks,
but their tops and lateral branches sti'll put forth the tender green
foliage regularly as the springs come round. Side by side with
the monarch oak we find the delicate silver-coated stems and
pendent branches of the lady of the woods ; and beautiful is the
contrast and the harmony. But everything wears a comparatively
cultivated aspect. We miss the prodigal luxuriance of a natural
forest, where every stage upward, from the sapling to the mightiest
growth, may be traced. We miss the picturesque accidents of
nature always to be found in such places — the ash key, for instance,
of which Gilpin speaks (Forest Scenery), rooting in a decayed
part of some old tree, germinating, sending down its roots, and
lifting up its branches till at last it rends its supporter and nourisher
to pieces, and appears itself standing in its place, stately and
beautiful as that once appeared. Above all we miss the rich and
tangled undergrowth ; the climbing honeysuckle, the white and
black briony, and the clematis ; the prickly holly and the golden
furze, the heaths, the thistles, and the foxgloves with their purple
bells ; the bilberries, which for centuries were wont to be an
extraordinarily great profit and pleasure to the poor people who
gathered them (Thornton) ; the elders and willows of many a little
marshy nook ; all which, no doubt, once flourished in profusion
wherever they could find room to grow between the thickly set
trees, of which Camden says, referring to Sherwood, that their
"entangled branches were so twisted together, that they hardly
left room for a person to pass." It need excite little surprise that
the outlaws could defend themselves from all inroads upon such a
home. T>he same writer adds, that in his time the woods were

much thinner, but still bred an infinite number of deer and sta«s
with lofty antlers. When Robin Hood hunted here, there would
be also the roe, the fox, the marten, the hare, the coney, as well as
the partridge, the quail, the rail, the pheasant, the woodcock,
the mallard, and the heron, to furnish sport or food. Even the
wolf himself may have been occasionally found in Sherwood, down
to the thirteenth century ; in the manor of Mansfield Woodhouse a
parcel of land called Wolf huntland was held so late as Henry the
Sixth's time by the service of winding a horn to frighten away the
wolves in the forest of Sherwood. We must add to this rude
and imperfect sketch of the scene made for ever memorable
by Robin Hood's presence and achievements, that in another point
it would seem to have "been expressly marked out by nature for
such romantic fame. Caverns are found in extraordinary numbers
through the forest. Those near Nottingham are supposed to have
given name both to the town and county ; the Saxon word Sno-
dengaham being interpreted to mean the Home of Caverns. There
are similar excavations in the face of a cliff near the Lene, west of
Nottingham Castle. Above all, there is a cave traditionally con
nected with the great archer himself. This is a curious hollow
rock in the side of a hill near Newstead, known as Robin Hood's
Stable, but more likely from its aspect to have been his chapel. It
contains several passages and doorways cut in the Gothic style, out
of the solid rock ; and there are peculiar little hollows in the wall,
which might have been intended for holy water. Robin Hood's
devotion is attested in a thousand ways by tradition, ballad, and
sober history. Thus the ' Lytell Geste' observes : —
A good maner than had Rohyn
In londe where that he were,
Every daye or he would dyne,
Three messes wolde be here.
Fordun's illustration of Robin Hood's piety is an exceedingly
interesting anecdote, and one that assuredly would not have found
its way into his work unless from his full conviction of its truth.
" Once upon a time, in Barnsdale, where he was avoiding the wrath
of the King and the rage of the Prince, while engaged in very
devoutly hearing mass, as he was wont to do, nor would he interrupt
the service for any occasion — one day, I say, while so at mass, it
happened that a certain Viscount [the sheriff or governor, no doubt,
before mentioned], and other officers of the King, who had often
before molested him, were seeking after him in that most retired
woodland spot wherein he was thus occupied. Those of his men
who first discovered this pursuit, came and entreated him to fly with
all speed ; but this, from reverence for the consecrated host, which
he was then most devoutly adoring, he absolutely refused to do.
While the rest of his people were trembling for fear of death, Robert
alone, confiding in Him whom he fearlessly worshipped, with the
very few whom he had then beside him, encountered his enemies,
overcame them with ease, was enriched by their spoils and ransom,
and was thus induced to' hold ministers of the church and masses in
greater veneration than ever, as mindful of the common saying, .
" ' God hears the man that often hears the mass.' "
The life in the forest must indeed have been steeped in joyous
excitement. No doubt it had its disadvantages. Winter flaws in
such a scene would not be pleasant. Agues might be apt occasion
ally to make their appearance. One feels something of a shivering
sensation as we wonder,

- When they did hear

The rain and wind beat dark December, how
In that their pinching cave they could discourse
The freezing hours away.
Yet even the rigours of the season might give new zest to the
general enjoyment of forest life ; we may imagine one of the band
singing in some such words as those of Amiens : —
Under the greenwood tree
Who loves to lie with me,
And tune his merry note
Unto the sweet bird's throat,
Come hither, come hither, come hither :
Here shall he see
No enemy
But winter and rough weather.
And that very thought would ensure sucn enemies, when they did
come, a genial and manly reception. But reverse the picture, and
what a world of sunshine, and green leaves, and flickering lights
and shadows breaks in upon us— excitement in the chace, whether
they followed the deer (Figs. 485 and 487), or were themselves
followed by the sheriff, through bush and brake, over bog and
quagmire— of enjoyment in their shooting and wrestling matches

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472.— Clog Almanac.

No.

16,

[OLD ENGLAND.]

121

122

OLD ENGLAND.

[Book IJ.

(Fig. 484), in their sword-fights (Fig. 483), and sword-dances
(Fig. 489) ; in their visits to all the rustic wakes and feasts of the
neighbourhood, where they would be received as the most welcome
of guests. The variety of the life in the forest must have been
endless. Now the outlaws would be visited by the wandering
minstrels, coming thither to amuse them with old ballads, and to
gather a rich harvest of materials for new ones, that should be lis
tened to with the deepest interest and delight all England through,
not only while the authors recited them, but for centuries after the
very names of such authors were forgotten. The legitimate poet-
minstrel would be followed by the humbler gleeman, forming one
of a band of revellers (Fig. 490), in which would be comprised a
taborer. a bagpiper, and dancers or tumblers, and who, tempted by
the well-known liberality of the foresters, would penetrate the thick
wood to find them. And great would be the applause at their
humerous dances and accompanying songs, at their balancings and
tumblings ; wonderful, almost too wonderful to be produced without
the aid of evil spirits, would seem their sleight-of-hand tricks. At
another time there would be suddenly heard echoing through the
forest glades the sounds of strange bugles from strange hunters.
Their rich apparel shows them to be of no ordinary rank. How dare
they then intrude upon the forest king? Nay, there is not any
danger. Are there not lady-hunters (Fig. 481) among the company?
and what says the ballad, the truth of which every one attests ? —
Jtobyn loved one dere lady,
For doute of dedely synne ;
Wolde he never do company liarme
That any women was ymie.
So their husbands, brothers, sons, and fathers hunt freely through
Sherwood in 'their company, safe from the sudden arrow, aye, though
even the hated sheriff himself be among them. But there were
occasions when the forest would present a much more extraordinary
scene than any we have yet referred to. For scores of miles around,
what preparations are there not made when the words " Robin Hood's
Fair " spread from mouth to mouth, and the time and place of it
being held become known ! Thither would resort all the yeomen
and yeomen's wives of the district, each one hoping to get a " Robin
Hood's pennyworth," as the well-understood phrase went, in some
courtepy or hood, in handkerchiefs telling their goodness by
their weight, in hats, boots or shoes, the spoil of some recent cam
paign, and bespeaking their general excellence from the known
quality of their recent owners. Thither would resort the emissaries
of more than one priory and respectable monastry, to look after
some richly-illuminated Missal or MS. that they had heard were
among the good things of the fair, or to execute the High Cellarer's
commission to purchase any rare spices that might be offered.
Knightly messengers too would not be wanting, coming thither to
look after choice weapons, or trinkets, or weighty chains of gold :
perhaps even the very men who had been despoiled, and whose
treasures had contributed so largely to the " fair,'' would be send
ing to it, to purchase silently back some favourite token at a trifling
price, hopeless of regaining it by any other mode. Of course the
Jews would flock to Sherwood on such occasions from aryy and all
distances. And as the fair proceeded, if any quarrels took place
between the buyers and sellers, a Jew would be sure to be concerned.
Even whilst he laughed in his heart at the absurd price he was to
give for the rich satin vest, or the piece of cloth of gold of such
rare beauty that the forester was measuring with his long bow,
generally of his own height, for a yard, and even then skipping
two or three inches between each admeasurement, the Jew would
be sure to be haggling to lower the price or to be increasing the
quantity ; till reminded that he was not dealing with the most patient
as well as with the most liberal of men, by a different application
of the tough yew. Then the adventures of the forest! — indigenous
and luxuriant as its bilberries ; how they give a seasoning, as it
were, to the general conjunction of life in the forest, and prevented
the possibility of its ever being felt as " weary, stale, flat, and un
profitable !" Were recruits wanted ? — there was a pretty opening
for adventure in seeking them. They must be men of mark or
likelihood who can alone be enlisted into brave Robin's band, and
severe accordingly were the tests applied. In order to prove their
courage, for instance, it seems, from the later ballads, it was quite
indispensable that they should have the best of it with some veteran
forester, either in shooting with the bow, or playfully breaking a
crown with the quarter-staff, or even by occasionally beating their
antagonists when contending with inadequate weapons.
Robin Hood himself should appear from these authorities to have
been almost as famous for his defeats, as other heroes for their
victories. We suspect that what little portion of truth there is in

the tradition thus incorporated into the ballads, may be explained
by imagining a little ruse on his part in these recruiting expedi
tions. When he met with some gallant dare-devil whom he de
sired to include among his troops, what better method could he
devise than to appear to be beaten by him after a downright good
struggle ? He to beat Robin Hood ! It was certainly the most
exquisite and irresistible of compliments. The promise of a sergeant
in later days to make the gaping rustic commander-in-chief was
nothing to it. But suppose we now look at two or three of the
more interesting adventures which are recorded <n the ' Lytell
Geste ' as having actually taken place, and which, be it observed
may possibly be as true, bating a little here and there for the
poetical luxuriance of the author, as if Fordun had related them :
ballads in the early ages were histories. In one part of this poem
we find a story of the most interesting character, and told witli
extraordinary spirit, discrimination of cliaracter, and dramatic effect.
Whilst Little John, Scathelock (the Scarlet of a later time), and
Much the Miller's son, were one day watching in the forest, they
beheld a knight riding along : —
All dreari then was his semblaunte,
And lytell was his pride ;
Hys one fote in the sterope strode,
The other waved besyde.
Hys hode hangynge over hys eyen two,
He rode in symple aray ;
A soryer man than he was one
Rode never in somers day.
The outlaws courteously accost and surprise him with the informa
tion that their master has been waiting for him, fasting three hours ;
Robin Hood, it appears, having an objection to sit down to dinner
till he can satisfy himself he has earned it, by finding- strangers to
sit down with him— and pay the bill. Having "washed," they
dine: — Brede and wyne they had ynough,
And nombles [entrails] of the deer ;
Swannes and fesauntes they had full "¦ood
And foules of the revere :
There fayled never so lytell a byrde
That ever was bred on brere.
After dinner the Knight thanks his host for his entertainment, but
Robin hints that thanks are not enough. The Knight replies that he
has nothing in his coffers that he can for shame offer— that, in short
his whole stock consists of ten shillings. Upon this Robin bids
Little John examine the coffers to see if the statement be true (a
favourite mode with Robin of judging of the character of his
visitors), and informs the Knight at the same time that if he really
have no more, more he will lend him.
" What tydynge, Johan V— sayed Robyn :
'• Syr, theKnyght is trewe enough."
The great outlaw is now evidently interested ; and, with minted
delicacy and frankness, inquires as to the cause of the Knio-ht's°low
estate, fearing that it implies some wrong doing on his part It
comes out at last that his son has killed a " Knyght of Lancastshy re "
in the tournament, and that, to defend him » in his right " he has
sold all his own goods, and pledged his lands unto the Abbot of St
Mary's, York ; the day is now nearly arrived, and he is not merelv
unable to redeem them before too late, but well nigh penniless into
the bargain. 1 e need hardly solicit attention to the mingled pathos
and beauty of what follows : — ° ^
" What is the somme ?" sayd Robvn •
" Troutlie then tell thou me." "
" Syr," be sayd, " foure hondred pounde,
The Abbot tolde it to me."
" Now, and thou lese thy londe," sayd Robin
"Whatshallfallof the'- '
"Haslely 1 wyll me buske," sayde the Knyeht
"Over the salt see; *S '
" And se where Cryst was quycke and deed
On the mount of Calvare.
Farewell, frende, and have good day,
It may noo better be—."
Tears fell out of his eyen two,
» He wolde have gone his waye 
" Farewell, frendes, and have good day ¦
I ne have more to pay,"

Chap. I.]

OLD ENGLAND.

123

'•Where be thy friendes1?" sayde Robyn.
" Syr, never one wyll me know ;
Whyle I was ryche enow at home,
Grete bost then wolde they blowe.
" And now they renne awaye fro me,
As bestes on a rowe ;
They take no more heed of me
Then they me never sawe."
For ruthe then wepte Lytell Johan,
Scathelocke and Much in fere [in company] ¦
" Fyll of the best wyne," sayd Robyn,
" For here is a symple chere."
Before many hours the Knight was pursuing his way with a full
pocket and a full heart to redeem his lands. We must follow him
to York. The day of payment has arrived. The chief officers of
the Abbey are in a state of high excitement, on account of the value
of the estates that will be theirs at nightfall if the Knight comes
not with the redemption money. The Abbot cannot repress his
anticipations : — " But he come this ylke day,
Dysheryte shall he be."
The Prior endeavours to befriend the absent Knight, but is answered
impatiently — " Thou art euer in my berde," sayde the Abbot,
"By God and Saynt Richarde."'
And then bursts in a " fat-headed monk," the High Cellarer, with
the exulting exclamation —
" He is dede or hanged," sayd the monke,
" By God that bought me dere ;
And we shall have to spemle in this place
Foure hondred pounde by yere."
To make all sure, the Abbot has managed to have the assist
ance of the High Justicer of England on the occasion by the usual
mode of persuasion, a bribe ; and is just beginning to receive his
congratulations when the Knight arrives at the gate. But he
appears in " symple wedes," and the alarm raised by his appearance
soon subsides as he speaks : —
" Do gladly, Syr Abbot," sayd the Knyght ;
" T am come to holde my day."
The fyrst word the Abbot spoke, —
" Hast thou brought my pay ? "
"Not one peny," sayde the Knyght,
" By God that maked me."
" Thou art a shrewed dettour," sayd the Abbot ;
" Syr Justyce, drynhe to me."
The Knight tries to move his pity, but in vain ; and .after some
further passages between him and the Abbot, conceived and ex
pressed in the finest dramatic spirit, the truth comes out in answer
to a proposition from the Justice that the Abbot shall give two
hundred pounds more to keep the land in peace ; the Knight then
suddenly astounds the whole party by producing the four hundred
pounds. "Have here thy golde, Syr Abbot," sayd the Knyght,
" Which that thou lentest me ;
Haddest thou ben curteys at my comynge,
Rewarde sholdest thou have be."
The Abbot sat styll, and ete no more
For all his ryall [royal] chere ;
He cast his hede on his sholder,
And fast began to stare.
" Take [give] me my golde agayne," sayd. the Abbot,
"Syr Justyce, that I toke the."
" Not a peny," sayd the Justyce,
" By God that dyed on a tree."
A twelvemonth afterwards, and on the very day that the Knight
has fixed for repaying Robin Hood, a magnificent procession of
ecclesiastics and ecclesiastical retainers is passsing through the
forest ; and being stopped by the outlaws, who should be at the
head of the whole but our friend the fat-headed monk, the High
Cellarer of St. Mary, York. Now Robin Hood's security, the only
one that he would take from the Knight, had been that of the
Virgin— what more natural than that he should think the High
Cellarer of the Virgin's own house at York had come to pay him his
four hundred pounds ! It is in vain the holy man denies that he

has come for any such purpose. At last, driven to his shifts, he
ventures a lie when the actual state of his coffers is inquired into.
His return, in official language, is twenty marks. Robin is very
reasonable, and says, if there really be no more, not a penny of it
will be meddled with. Lytell Johan spred bis mantell downe
As lie had done before,
And lie tolde out of the monkes male
Eyght hundreth pounde and more.
No wonder that Robin exclaims —
Monk, what told I thee ?
Our Lady is the trewest woman
That ever yet founde I me.
All this is told with a more exquisite humour than our own
partial extracts can do justice to. Anon a second, and to archer
eyes still more attractive pageant, appears. It is the good and
grateful Knight at the head of a hundred men clothed in white and
red, and bearing as a present to the foresters a hundred bows of a
quality to delight even such connoisseurs in the weapon, with a
hundred sheaves of arrows, with heads burnished full bright, every
arrow an ell long, y-dight with peacock plumes, and y-nocked
with silver. The Knight had been detained on his way ; the
sun was down ; the hour of payment had passed when he arrived
at the trysting-tree. His excuse was soon made to the generous
outlaw. He had stayed to help a poor yeoman who was suffering
oppression. The debt was forgiven ; the monks had paid it doubly.
The ballads of Robin Hood which, century after century, followed
the 'Lytell Geste' are, at any rale, evidences of the deep hold
which this story of wild adventure, and of the justice of the strong
hand, long retained upon the popular mind. We have already men
tioned how unequal these later productions are to that ancient ballad
which professes to tell the doings of ' Kynge Edwarde and Robyn
Hodeand Lytell Johan.' Many of these ballads were reprinted by
a scrupulous antiquary, Ritson ; and most of them are to be found
in some collection with which the lovers of early poetry are familiar.
A very neat abridgment of some of the more striking of these
stories was published in ' The Penny Magazine,' in a series of papers
written by the late Mr. Allan Cunningham. To these sources we
may refer our readers. But as the ballad poetry of a country is
amongst the most curious of its records — as the ballads of ' Old
England,' even though they may have been written in the reign of
Elizabeth, or even later, reflect the traditions of the people, and in
many cases are founded upon more ancient compositions that have
perished, — we shall, in each period into which our work is divided,
present one or two ballads entire, without any very exact regard to
the date of their publication, provided they bear upon the events
and manners of the age of which we are treating.
The first ballad which we select for this purpose is from a collec
tion printed in 1607, called ' Strange Histories, or Songes and
Sonets, of Kings, Princes, Dukes, Lordes, Ladyes, Knights, and
Gentlemen ; very pleasant either to be read or songe, and a most
excellent warning for all estates.' Of this curious book there are
only two original copies known to be in existence ; but it has been
recently reprinted by the Percy Society. The principal author of
these poems is held to have been Thomas Deloney, who acquired
great popularity by his books for the people in the end of the six
teenth century, and is spoken of by a contemporary as " the ballad-
ino- silk-weaver." The subject of the ballad which we now print
is an interesting event connected with the Norman conquest. We
modernize the orthography, for there is no advantage in retaining
the antique modes of spelling when they have no reference to the
date of a production, or to the peculiarities of its metre. The
'Lytell Geste' could not be thus modernized with the same pro
priety.
STRANGE HISTORIES.
The Valiant Courage and Policy of the Kcntishnen with Long Tails, whereby
they kept their Ancient Laws and Customs, which William the Conqueror
sought to take from them.
When as the Duke of Normandy,
With glistering spear and shield,
Had entered into fair England,
And foil'd his foes in field,
On Christmas Day in solemn sort.
Then was he crowned here
By Alhert, Archbishop of York,
With many a noble Peer.

f V

478.— Robin Hood and the Tanner.— Quarter-5tilT.

^S.SLY.ic,
475.- Yew-tree at Fountain's Abbey, Ripon, Yorkshire.

124

481.— .Ladies hunting Deer. (Royal MS. S B. vii.)

482 — Cross-Bow shooting at small Birds. (Royal MS. 2 B. vii.)

479 — William of Cloudeslie and Itis Family in Englewood Forest.

483.— Sword-fight. (Royal MS. 20 E. 6.)

484— Wrestling. (Koyal MP. 2 B. vii.)

Duke's Walking-stick.

480.— Oaks in Welbeck Park.

The Seven Sisters. 125

326

OLD ENGLAND.

[Book II.

Which being done, he changed quite
The custom of this land,
Aud punish'd such as daily sought
His statutes to withstand :
And many cities he subdued,
Fair London with the rest ;
But Kent did still withstand his force,
Which did his laws detest.

To Dover then he took his way
The Castle down to fling,
Which Arviragus builded there,
The noble Briton King.
Which when the brave Archbishop bold
Of Canterbury knew,
The Abbot of St. Austin's elte,
With all their gallant crew.

They set themselves in armour bright
These mischiefs to prevent,
With all the yeomen brave and bold
That were in fruitful Kent.
At Canterbury they did meet
Upon a certain day,
With sword and spear, with bill and bow,
And stopp'd the Conqueror's way.

" Let us not live like bondmen poor
To Frenchmen in their pride,
But keep our ancient liberty,
What chance soe'er betide ;
And rather die in bloody field,
In manlike courage press'd,
Than to endure the servile yoke
Whicli we so much detest"

Thus did the Kentish commons cry
Unto their leaders still,
And so march'd forth in warlike sort,
And stand on Swanscombe Hill ;
Where in the woods they hid themselves
Under the shady green,
Thereby to get them vantage good
Of all their foes unseen.
And for the Conqueror's coming there
They privily laid wait,
And thereby suddenly appall'd
His lofty high conceit :
For when they spied his approach,
In place as they did stand,
Then marched they to hem him iu,
Each one a bough in hand.
So that unto the Conqueror's sight,
Amazed as he stood,
They seemed to be a walking grove,
Or else a moving wood.
The shape of men he could not see,
The boughs did hide them so ;
And now his heart for fear did quake
To see a forest go.
Before, behind, and on each side,
As he did cast his eye,
He spied these woods with sober pace
Approach to him full nigh.
But when the Kentishmen had thus
Enclos'd the Conqueror round,
Most suddenly they drew their swords,
And threw the boughs to ground.
Their banners they displayed in sight,
Their trumpets sound a charge ;
Their rattling drums strike up alarm,
Their troops stretch out at large
The Conqueror with all his train
Were hereat sore aghast,
And most in peril when he thought
All peril had been past.
Unto the Kentishmen he sent
The cause to understand,
For what intent and for what cause
They took this war in baud?
To whom they made this short reply :
" For liberty we fight,
And to enjoy King Edward's laws,
The which we hold our right."

" Then,'' said the dreadful Conqueror,
" You shall have what you will,
Your ancient customs and your law,
So that you will be still ;
And each thing else that you will crave
With reason at my hand,
So you will but acknowledge me
Chief king of fair England."
The Kentishmen agreed hereon,
And laid their arms aside,
And by this means King Edward's laws
Iu Kent doth still abide :
And in no place in England else
Those customs do remain,
Which they by manly policy
Did of Duke William gaiu.

In the possession of Dr. Percy, the accomplished editor of
' Eeliques of Ancient English Poetry,' was an ancient ballad entitled
' King John and the Bishop of Canterbury.' The following version
of this ballad, in which are some lines found in the more ancient
copy, is supposed to have been written or adapted in the time of
James I. : —

KING JOHN AND THE ABBOT OF CANTERBURY.

An ancient story I '11 tell you anon,
Of a notable prince that was called King John ;
And he ruled England with main and with might —
For he did great wrong, and maintained little right.
And I '11 tell you a story — a story so merry —
Concerning the Abbot of Canterbury :
How for his housekeeping, and high renown,
They rode post for him to fair London town.
An hundred men the King did hear say,
The Abbot kept in his house every day ;
And fifty gold chains, without any doubt,
In velvet coats waited the Abbot about.
How now ! Father Abbot, I hear it of thee,
Thou keepest a far better house than me :
And for thy housekeeping, and high renown,
1 fear thou work'st treason against my crown.
My Liege, quoth the Abbot, I would it were known,
I never spend nothing but what is my own :
And I trust your Grace will do me no deere,
For spending my own true-gotten gear.
Yes, yes, — quoth he, — Abbot, thy fault it is high,
And now for the same thou needest must die ;
For except thou canst answer me questions three,
Thy head shall be smitten from thy body.
And first, — quo' the King, — when I 'm in this stead,
With my crown of gold so fair on my head,
Among all my liegemen so noble of birth,
Thou must tell me, to one penny, what I am worth.
Secondly, tell me, without any doubt,
How soon I may ride the whole world about ;
And at the third question thou must not shrink,
But tell me here truly, what I do think.
O, these are hard questions for my shallow wit,
Nor I cannot answer your Grace as yet ;
But if you will give me but three weeks' space,
I'll do my endeavour to answer your Grace.
Now three weeks' space to thee I will give,
And that is the longest time thou hast to live ;
For if thou dost not answer my questions three,
Thy lands and thy livings are forfeit to me.
Away rode the Abbot, all sad at that word,
And he rode to Cambridge aud Oxenford ;
But never a Doctor there was so wise,
That could, with his learning, an answer devise.
Then home rode the Abbot, of comfort so cold,
And he met bis shepherd a-going to fold ;
How now ! my Lord Abbot, you are welcome home
What news do you bring us from good King John?

Chap. I.]

OLD ENGLAND.

127

Sad news, sad news, shepherd, I must give, 
That I have but three days more to live :
For if I do not answer him questions three,
My head will be smitten from my body.
The first is, to tell him, there in that stead,
With his crown of gold so fair on his head,
Among all his liegemen so noble of birth,
To within one penny of what he is worth.
The second, to tell him, without any doubt,
How soon he may ride this whole world about ;
Aud at the third question I must not shrink,
But tell him there truly what he does think.
Now cheer up, Sir Abbot — did you never hear yet,
That a fool he may learn a wise man wit?
Lend me horse, and serving-men, and your apparel,
And I '11 ride to Loudon, to answer your quarrel.
Nay, frown not, if it hath been told unto me,
I am like your Lordship as ever may be ;
And if you will but lend me your gown,
There is none shall know us at fair London town.
Now horses and serving-men thou shalt have,
With sumptuous array, most gallant and brave,; —
With crosier and mitre, aud rochet and cope, —
Fit to appear 'fore our father the Pope.
Now welcome, Sir Abbot, the King he did say,
'T is well thou 'rt come back to keep thy di.y :
For, and if thou canst answer my questions three
Thy life and thy living both saved shall be.
And first, when thou seest me here in this stead,
With my crown of gold so fair on my head,

Among all my liegemen so noble of birth,
Tell me, to one penny, what I am worth.
For thirty pence Our Saviour was sold
Among the false Jews, as I have been told,
And twenty-nine is the worth of thee,
For I think thou art one penny worser than he.
The King he laughed, and swore by St. Bittel,
I did not think I had been worth so little :
Now, secondly, tell me, without any doubt,
How soon I may ride this whole world about.
You must rise with the sun, and ride with the same,
Until the next morning he riseth again,
And then your Grace need not make any doubt
But in twenty-four hours you will ride it about.
The King he laughed, and swore by St. Jone,
I did not think it could be gone so soon :
Now from the third question thou must not shrink,
But tell me here truly what I do think.
Yea, that shall I do and make your Grace merry —
You think I'm the Abbot of Canterbury ;
But I 'm his poor shepherd, as plain you may see,
That am come to beg pardon for him and for me.
The King he laughed, and swore by the mass,
I will make thee Lord Abbot this day in his place :
Now stay, my liege, be not in such speed,
For alack ! I can neither write nor read.
Four nobles a week, then, I will give thee,
For this merry jest thou has shown unto me ;
And tell the old Abbot when thou comest home,
Thou has brought him a pardon from good King John.

488,-The Parli.,n,ent Oak in Clip,to„e Park

«7-"«'msw,et,Uedidki„atack,,

t9i>— A Carthusian.

492.T-A Benedictine.

49>3."£Qs!8rcian.

494.— Roger, Bishop of Sarum, 1193.
Salisbury Cathedral.

495.— Andrew, Abbot of Peter
borough, 1199. — Peterborough
Cathedral.

497.— Costume of an English Mitied Abbot.

498.— Costume of an English Abbess.

496.— One of the early Abbots of West.
minster.— Cloisters, Westminster.

490,—Vision of Henry I. ; an ancient drawing, showing tile Costume of the Clergy.

500.— Odo, Bishop of Bayeux, pronouncing a
Pastoral Blessing.

Kfc 17.

[OLD/ EHGLAND.]

129

130

OLD ENGLAND.

[Book II.

CHAPTER II.— ECCLESIASTICAL ANTIQUITIES.

HE first century of the Nor
man rule in England has left
behind it more durable monu
ments of the earnest devotion
of the mixed races of the
country than any subsequent
period of our history. The
ecclesiastical distribution of
England was scarcely altered
from the time of Henry I. to
that of Henry VIII. The
Conqueror found the arch
bishoprics of Canterbury and
York established, as well as
the following bishoprics: — Durham, London, Winchester, Ro
chester, Chichester, Salisbury, Exeter, "VVells, Worcester, Hereford,
Coventry, Lincoln, Thetford. Norwich became the see of the
Bishop of Thetford in 1088. The see of Ely was founded in 1 109,
and that of Carlisle in 1133. The governing power of the church
thus remained for four centuries, till Henry VIII., in 1541,
founded the sees of Bristol, Gloucester, Oxford, Peterborough, and
Chester, portions of the older dioceses being taken to form the see
of each new bishop. The Rev. Joseph Hunter, in his excellent
' Introduction to the Valor Ecclesiasticus of King Henry VIII.,'
vsays, "It is indeed a just subject of wonder that in the first century
after the Conquest so many thousand of parish churches should
have been erected, as if by simultaneous effort, in every part, of
the land, while at the same time spacious and magnificent edifices
were arising in every diocese to be the seats of the bishops and
archbishops, or the scenes of the perpetual services of the inhabitants
of the cloister. Saxon piety had done much, perhaps more than
we can collect from the pages of Domesday : but it is rather to the
Normans than to the Saxons that we are to attribute the great mul
titude of parish churches existing at so remote an era ; and a truly
wise and benevolent exertion of Christian piety the erection of
them must be regarded." To describe, with anything like minute
ness of detail, any large proportion of these ecclesiastical antiquities,
would carry us far beyond the proper object of this work ; but) we
shall endeavour in this chapter, and in those of subsequent periods,
to present to, our readers some of the more remarkable of these
interesting objects, whether we regard their beauty and magnifi
cence, or the circumstances connected with their foundation and
history. Our series of cathedrals will, however, be complete.
Mr. Hunter, speaking of the historical uses of the ' Valor Eccle
siasticus' (which has been printed in six large folio volumes, under
the direction of the Record Commissioners), says, that in this
record " We at once see not only the ancient extent and amount of
that provision which was made by the piety of the English nation
for the spiritual edification of the people by the erection of churches
and chapels for the decent performance of the simple and touching
ordinances of the Christian religion, but how large a proportion
had been saved from private appropriation of the produce of the
soil, and how much had subsequently been given to form a public
fund, accessible to all, out of which might be supported an order of
cultivated and more enlightened men dispersed through society,
and by means of which blessings incalculable might be spread
amongst the whole community. If there were spots or extrava
gancies, yet on the whole it is a pleasing as well as a splendid
spectacle, especially if we look with minute observation into any
portion of the Record, and compare it with a map which shows the
distribution of population in those times over the island, and then
observe how religion had pursued man even to his remotest abodes,
and was present among the most rugged dwellers in the hills and
wilderness of the land, softening and humanizing their hearts.
 But the Record does not stop here. It presents us with
a view of those more gorgeous establishments where the service of
the Most High was conducted in the magnificent structures which
still exist ^pon^t us, with a great array of priest, and all the

pomp of which acts of devotion admit ; and of the abbeys and other
monasteries, now but ruined edifices, where resided the sons and
daughters of an austerer piety, and where the services were scarcely
ever suspended."
Who can turn over such a record as this, or dwell upon the
minuter descriptions of our county histories, without feeling there
was a spirit at work in tliose ages which is now comparatively cold
and lifeless ? Who can lift up his eyes to the pinnacles and towers,
or stand beneath the vaulted roof of any one of the noble cathedrals
and minsters that were chiefly raised up during this early period —
who can rest, even for a brief hour, amidst the solitude of some
ruined abbey, as affecting in its decay as it was imposing in its
splendour — who even can look upon the ponderous columns, the
quaint carvings not without their symbolical meanings, the solidity
which proclaims that those who thus built knew that the principle
through which they built must endure — who can look upon such
things without feeling that there was something higher and purer
working in the general mind of the people than that which has pro
duced the hideous painted and whitewashed parallelograms that we
.have raised up and called churches in these our days ? We shall
not get better things by the mere copying of the antique models by
line and compass. When the spirit which created our early eccle
siastical architecture has once more penetrated into the hearts of
the people ; when it shall be held, even upon principles of utility,
that man's cravings after the eternal and the infinite are to be as
much provided and cared for as his demands for food and raiment ;
then the tendencies of society will not be wholly exhibited in the
perfection of mechanical contrivance, in rapidity of communication,
in never-ceasing excitements to toil without enjoyment. When the
double nature of man is understood and cared for, we may again
raise up monuments of piety which those who come five hundred
years after us will preserve in a better spirit than we have kept up
many of those monuments winch were left to us by those who did
not build solely for their own little day.
In entering upon the large subject of our ecclesiastical antiquities,
we have found it almost impossible to attempt any systematic
division. Our architecture from the period of the Conquest is
generally divided into Anglo-Norman, Early English, Decorative,
and Perpendicular. We shall endeavour, as far as we can, to make
our chronological arrangement suit these broad distinctions. But
as there is scarcely an important building remaining that does not
exhibit more than one of these characteristics, and as we cannot
return again and again to the same building, we must be content to
classify them according to their main characteristics. For example,
Canterbury, and Lincoln, and Durham have portions of the earlier
styles still remaining in them, and these naturally find a place in the
present Book ; but our engravings and descriptions must necessarily
include the other styles with which these edifices abound. A little
familiarity with the general principles of ecclesiastical architecture
will soon enable the reader to mark what belongs to one period and
what to another; and, without going into professional technicalities,
we shall incidentally endeavour to assist those who really desire to
study the subject. Looking in the same way, not to the date of
the foundation, but to the main characteristics of the existing edifice,
we shall be enabled to disperse our ecclesiastical materials through
some of the subsequent periods into which our little work is divided
not attempting great precision, but something like chronological'
order. For example, we know that the present Westminster Abbey
was not built till the time of Henry the Third, and we therefore
postpone our notice of Westminster Abbey, although it was founded
by Edward the Confessor, to the period which succeeds the reign of
John. Other buildings, such as Salisbury Cathedral, St. George's
Chapel at Windsor, and King's College Chapel at Cambridge, being
the work of one age, and probably of one architect, do not involve
the same chronological difficulties that a cathedral presents which
has been raised up by the munificence of bishop after bishop the
choir being the work of one age, the nave of another, the transepts
of another, each age endeavouring at some higher perfection. If we

Chap. II.]

OLD ENGLAND.

131

are sometimes betrayed into anachronisms, those who have studied
this large subject scientifically will, we trust, yield us their excuse.
The noblest ecclesiastical edifices which still remain to us, as well
as the ruins which are spread throughout the land, were connected
with the establishments of those who lived under the monastic rule.
This will be incidentally seen, whether we describe a cathedral, with
all its present establishment of bishop, dean, and chapter, or a ruined
abbey, whose ivy-covered columns lie broken on the floor, where
worshippers have knelt, generation after generation, dreaming not
that in a few centuries the bat and the owl would usurp their places.
We shall proceed at once to one of the most ancient and splendid
of these forsaken places — Glastonbury. We shall not here enter
upon any minute description of the engravings numbered 491 to
511, which precede the view of that celebrated abbey. Those
engravings represent the costume of the monastic orders of that
early period, as well as some specimens of the more ancient fonts and
other matters connected with the offices of the church. We shall
have to refer to these more particularly as we proceed.

Glastonbury is one of those few remaining towns in England
which seem to preserve, in spite of decay and innovation, a kind of
grateful evidence of the people and the institutions from whence
their former importance was derived. No one can pass through its
streets without having strongly impressed upon his mind the
recollections of the famous monastery of Glastonbury, or without
seeing how magnificent an establishment must have been planted
here, when the very roots, centuries after its destruction, still arrest
the attention at every step by their magnitude and apparently almost
indestructible character. We have hardly left behind us the marshy
flats that surround and nearly insulate the town (whence the old
British name of the Glassy Island), and ascended the eminence upon
which it stands, before we perceive that almost every other building
has been either constructed, in modern times, out of stone, quarried
from some architectural ruins, or is in itself a direct remain of the
foundation from whence the plunder has been derived ; in other
words, some dependency of the monastery. The George Inn is not
only one of these, but preserves its old character ; it was, from the
earliest times, a house of accommodation for the pilgrims and others
visiting Glastonbury. As we advance we arrive at a quadrangle
formed by four of the streets, and from which others pass off; in that
quadrangle stand the chief remains' of what was once the most magni
ficent monastic structure perhaps in the three countries. They consist
of some fragments of the church, and of two other structures tolerably
entire, the kitchen, and the chapel of St. Joseph (Fig. 512). The
style of the church belongs to the transition period of the twelfth
century, and is of a pure and simple character. The kitchen is a
very curious example of domestic architecture, of comparatively
recent date ; the following story is told of its origin* — Henry VIII.
one day said to the abbot, who had offended him, but professedly
iii reproof of the sensual indulgences which he appeared to believe
disgraced the monastery, that he would burn the kitchen ; upon
which the abbot haughtily replied that he would build such a
kitchen that not all the wood in the royal forest should be suf
ficient to carry the threat into execution ; forthwith he built the
existing structure. The chapel is a truly remarkable place on
many accounts. It presents essentially the same architectural cha
racteristics as the church, but is much more highly enriched. It
stands at the west end of the church, with which it communicates
by an ante-chapel, the whole measuring in length not less than one
hundred and ten feet, by twenty-five feet in breadth. But interest
ing as the chapel and all the other monastic remains stretching so
far around (some sixty acres in all were included within the esta
blishment) must be to every one, it cannot be these alone, or aught
that we may infer from them, that gives to Glastonbury its absorb
ing interest. Strip the locality of every tradition in which real
facts have but assumed the harmonious coverings of the imagina
tion, or in which pure fictions have but still made everlasting a fact
of their own, that such and such things were believed at some re
mote time, and are therefore scarcely less worthy of record,— strip
Glastonbury of all these, and enough remains behind to render it
impossible that it can ever be looked upon without the deepest feel
ings of gratitude and reverence. Before we look at the soberer
facts, suppose we let Tradition lead us at her own "sweet will,"
whithersoever she pleases. We are, then, moving onwards towards
a small eminence, about half a mile to the north-west, noticing on
our way the numerous apple-trees scattered about, with their swell
ing pink buds suggesting the loveliness of the coming bloom ; these
trees, Tradition tells us, gave to the isle one of its old and most
poetical names, Avalon, from the Saxon Avale, an apple. But we

have reached the eminence in question, and are looking about us
with keen curiosity, to learn, if we can, from the very aspect of the
place, the origin of its curious designation — Weary-all-Hill. Here,
Tradition informs us, was the spot where the first bringer of glad
tidings to the. British heathen, Joseph of Arimathea, sent by Philip
the apostle of Gaul on that high mission, rested on his inland way
from the seashore where he had landed, and, striking his staff into
the ground, determined to found in the vicinity the first British
temple for the Christian worship. Hence the name existing to this
day of Weary-all-Hill, and hence that peculiar species of thorn,
which, springing from St. Joseph's budding staff, tells to a poetical
belief the story of its origin, and the period of the year when Joseph
arrived, in its winter or very early spring flowers (Fig. 514). The
spot itself was no doubt thought too small to rear such a structure
upon as was desirable, and therefore the little band of missionaries
moved half a mile farther, and there commenced their labours in
founding a Christian edifice for the native worshippers, who speedily
flocked around them. In that early building St. Joseph himself,
continues our authority, Tradition, was buried on his decease ; and
when, in the lapse of ages, the new faith had become prosperous
and magnificent in all its outward appliances, and a new church
was erected more in harmony with the tastes, skill, and wants of the
age, the site of that primeval building, and the place of Joseph's
burial, were still reverentially preserved by the erection over them
of a chapel dedicated to the saint's memory. And this is the chapel
of St. Joseph, within whose walls we may still wander and commune
with our own thoughts, on the importance of the truths which from
hence gradually extended their all-pervading influence through the
length and breadth of the land. But are these traditions true ? —
We answer, that in their essence, we have no doubt they are strictly
so. Weary-all-Hill may never have been trodden by Joseph of
Arimathea's steps ; the staff certainly never budded into the goodly
hawthorns that so long were the glory of the neighbourhood ; but
in the subsequent history of Glastonbury, we find ample corrobora
tive evidence to show that there was some especial distinction enjoyed
by the monastery, and that that distinction was the fact so poetically
enshrined in the popular heart, of its having been the place where
the sublime story of the Cross, and its immeasurable consequences,
were first taught among us. Thus, in the most ancient charters
of the monastery, we find the very significant designation assigned
t0 it — " The fountain and origin of all religion in the realm of
Britain ;" thus, we find, through the earliest Saxon periods, one
continued stream of illustrious persons, showering upon it wealth,
privileges, honours, during life ; .and confiding their bodies to its
care after death. What was it that brought the great Apostle of
Ireland, after his successful labours, to Glastonbury, a little before
the middle of the fifth century ; when as yet no monastery existed,
and the few religious who performed the service of the church,
burrowed, like so many wild beasts, in dens, caves, and wretched
huts? What could bring such a man, in all the height of his
spiritual success, to such a place ? What, but the sympathy that his
own exertions in Ireland naturally caused him to feel, in an extra
ordinary degree, for the place where similar exertions had been
previously made in England ? Here St. Patrick is said to have spent
all the latter years of his life, and to have raised Glastonbury into a
regular community. A century later exhibits another retirement
to Glastonbury, which also, probably, marks the peculiar attraction
that the circumstances we have described had given to it. About
the year 530, David Archbishop of Menevia, with seven of his suf
fragans, came to Glastonbury, and enlarged the buildings by the
erection of the chapel of the Holy Virgin, on the altar of which he
deposited a sapphire of inestimable value. In 708, all previous
exertions to increase the comfort, size, and beauty of the conventual
edifice were thrown into the shade by those of Ina, King of Wes-
sex, who rebuilt the whole from the very foundation. At that
period, the alleged origin of Glastonbury seems to have been fully
believed ; it was on the chapel of St. Joseph that the monarch
lavished his utmost care and wealth, garnishing it all over with
gold and silver, filling it with a profusion of the most costly ves
sels and ornaments. Still growing in magnificence, scarcely a
century and a quarter had elapsed, before new works were com
menced, which, when finished, made Glastonbury the " pride of
England, and the glory of Christendom." A striking evidence of
its Dre-eminence is given in the statement that it then furnished
superiors to all the religious houses in the kingdom. But when we
know who was the abbot of Glastonbury at the period, we may
cease to be surprised — it was Dunstan, a man whose connection
with it .has added even to Glastonbury's reputation. Born almost
within its precincts, .his mind saturated with all its strange and
beautiful legends, he formed a pesronal attachment to the monas-
S 2

501.— Font in Sharnboum Church,
Norfolk.

502.— West Side of Bridekirk Font.

503.— East Side of BridekiiKFont. i

504.— Font in Berkeley Church.'

509.-Marriage of the Father and Mother of Becket. (From the Tloyal MS. 2 B. vii.)

8.— Baptism.ufit.he Mother of Becket. (Erom the Boyal MS..2 B. TiiO

H

hiMftdsWsXlZi

RBI

HIS ¦¦¦! -

•#10.

.-Burial of a deceased Monk in the Interior of a Convent. {FMa>-m ancient drawing inihe Harleian MSS.)

511.— Stone "Coffins.— Ixworth Abhey, Suffolk

505.— Font in Iffiey Church.

506.— Font in Neswick Church.

507.— Group of Norman-English Fonts.

132

513.— Cup found in the Kuins of Glastonbury Abbey.

f 512.— Buins of Glastonbury Abbsy, as they appeared in 1785.

514:— The Glastonbury Thorn.

516.— St. Botolph's Priory, Colchester;

133

134

OLD ENGLAND.

[Book II.

tery, long before ambition could have led him to connect its ad
vancement with his own ; in early life he received the tonsure
within its walls ; and when, returning for a time, disgusted with the
world, or at least that portion of it, Athelstan's court, with which he
was best acquainted, he buried himself in privacy, it was in or near
the Abbey of Glastonbury that he built himself a cell or hermitage
with an oratory, and divided his time between devotion, and the
manual service of the abbey, in the construction of crosses, vials,
censers, and vestments. It is hardly necessary to state that here
too he held that meeting with the Evil One, which has redounded
so greatly to his fame. Those who like to study the hidden mean
ings that no doubt generally do exist in the most marvellous nar
rations that have been handed down from a remote time, may find a
clue to this one, in the statement of the ' Golden Legend,' printed
by Caxton, that the Devil came in the form of a handsome woman.
From the period of the abbacy of Dunstan dates the establishment
of the Benedictine monks in England, who were brought from Italy
by him, and subsequently introduced into his own monastery, in
spite of the clamour raised against them, in consequence of their
severe discipline, which put to shame the loose and almost licen
tious habits of the secular clergy. He lost his abbacy, however,
for a time, in consequence, and was banished during the reign of
Edwy ; but returned during that of his successor, Edgar, over
whose mind it is well known he obtained the most absolute control.
It was probably through this intimacy that Edgar was induced to
erect a palace within two miles of Glastonbury, at a most romantic
situation, still known as Edgarley; and of which structure some
interesting vestiges remain, — a pelican and two wolves' heads, at
tached to a modefn house ; the last symbol referring to Edgar's
tax upon the Welsh people for the extirpation of wolves. The
king was buried at Glastonbury, and, we may be sure, in the most
sumptuous manner, for the monks owed much to him. What with
the privileges conferred by him, and what with those previously
possessed, Glastonbury was raised to the highest pitch of monastic
splendour. Over that little kingdom, the Isle of Avalon, the abbots
were virtual sovereigns ; neither king nor bishop might enter with
out their permission. They governed themselves in the same inde
pendent mode : the monks elected their own superior. And, although
some reverses were subsequently experienced, as immediately after
the Conquest, for instance, the foundation continued down to its very
destruction at the Reformation, in such magnificence, that the poor
of the whole country round were twice a week relieved at its gates,
and when the last abbot, Whytyng, rode forth, he was accustomed
to move amidst a train of some sixscore persons. That same abbot
died on the scaffold, a victim to the brutal monarch who then dis
graced the throne ; and a revenue exceeding 3500£. a-year fell into
Henry's rapacious hands.
Such is a mere sketch of the history of the important abbey of
Glastonbury ; but there is yet one point connected with it, that, in
the absence of all other interesting associations, would invest the
precincts of Glastonbury with a thousand fascinations. Here King
Arthur was buried! Arthur, that hero, whose most romantic
history appears so dimly to our eyes through the mists of above
thirteen centuries, that we can hardly distinguish the boundaries
between the true and false. There can be no doubt, however, of
that part of his history which relates to Glastonbury. He died, it is
understood, at the battle of Camlan in Cornwall, in 542, and was
conveyed by sea to Glastonbury, there buried, and, in process of
time, the spot was altogether forgotten and lost. The way in which
it was discovered harmonizes with the rest of Arthur's story. When
Henry the Second was passing through Wales on his way to Ireland,
in 1172, he delighted the Welsh with his politic compliments upon
their services in his Irish expeditions. They, full of enthusiasm,
wished him all the prosperity that had attended their favourite King
Arthur, whose exploits were sung to him as he dined, by one of the
native bards. In the song mention was made of the place of Arthur's
burial, between two pyramids in the churchyard at Glastonbury.
On Henry's return to England, he told the abbot of the monastery
what he had heard ; and a search was instituted. Of this very inte
resting event there was fortunately eye-witness one of our chroni
clers, Giraldus Cambrensis. Seven feet below the surface of a huge
broad stone was found, with a small thin plate of lead in the form
of a corpse, and bearing, in rude letters and barbarous style, the
Latin inscription : " Hie jaeet Sepultus Iuclytus Rex Arturius in
Insula Avalonia." Nine feet deeper, they found the object of their
search, in the trunk of a tree ; the remains of Arthur himself were
displayed to their eyes, and by his side lay those of his wife
Guinever. The bones of the king were of extraordinary size ; the
shinbone^astened against the foot of a very tall man, reached three
fingers' breadth above his knee. The skull was covered with wounds ;

ten distinct fractures were counted ; one of great size, apparently
the effect of the fatal blow. The queen's body was strangely whole
and perfect ; the hair neatly platted, and of the colour of burnished
gold ; but when touched, it fell suddenly to dust, reminding one of
the similar scene described in Mrs. Gray's work on ' Efruria,' where
the party beheld for a moment, on opening a tomb, one of the ancient
kings of that mysterious people, raised and garbed in lifelike and
sovereign state, and in which, on the exposure to the fresh air, there
was perceptible a kind of misty frost. The next moment all was
lost, in the dust of the ground upon which they gazed with so much
astonishment. This discovery appears to have excited so deep and
permanent an interest, that Edward the First could not be con
tented without seeing the remains himself; so he came hither with
his beloved Queen Eleanor ; and the ceremony of exhumation was
very solemnly performed. The skulls were then set up in the
Treasury, to remain there ; the rest of the bodies were returned to
their places of deposit, Edward inclosing an inscription recording
the' circumstances. The stately monument erected over Arthur
and Guinever was destroyed at the Reformation, and with it, dis
appeared all traces of the contents.
We conclude with the following spirited lines from Drayton : —
" 0 three-times famous isle, where is that place that might
Be with thyself compar'd for glory and delight,
Whilst Glastonbury stood ? exalted to that pride
Whose monastery seem'd all other to deride :
Oh ! who thy ruin sees whom wonder doth not fill
With our great fathers' pomp, devotion, and their skill?
Thou more than mortal power (this judgment rightly weigh'd)
Then present to assist, at that foundation laid,
On whom, for this sad waste, should justice lay the crime ?
Is there a power in fate, or doth it yield to time ?
Or was their error such, that thou could'st not protect
Those buildings which thy hand did with their zeal erect ?
To whom didst thou commit that monument to keep,
That suffereth with the dead their memory to sleep ?
When not great Arthur's tomb, nor holy Joseph's grave,
From sacrilege had power their sacred bones to save ;
He who that God in man to his sepulchre brought,
Or lie which for the faith twelve famous battles fought.
What ! did so many kings do honour to that place,
For avarice at last so vilely to deface ?
For reverence to that seat which had ascribed been,
Trees yet in winter bloom and bear their summer's green."

Of another monastic establishment of the period in review, St.
Botolph's, Colchester, we need not enter into any lengthened
notice (Fig. 516). It was founded in the reign of Henry the First,
as a Priory of Augustine Canons, by a monk of the name of
Ernulph ; dissolved, of course, at the Reformation ; and the chief
buildings reduced to a premature ruin in the civil war, when the
great siege of Colchester took place. Parts of the church form
the chief remains. The west front has been originally a very
magnificent though very early work ; the double series of intersect
ing arches that form the second and third stages of the facade, and
extend over the elaborately rich Norman gateway, are especially
interesting ; as it is from such examples of the pointed arches thus
accidentally obtained by the intersections of round ones that the
essential principle of the Gothic has been supposed to have been
derived. Some of the lofty circular arches of the walls forming
the body of the church also exist in a tolerable state of preservation.
The length of the church was one hundred and eight feet, the
breadth across the nave and aisles about forty-four. The exceeding
hardness of much of the materials used in the construction of this
building renders it probable that they had been taken from the
wrecks of Roman buildings at Colchester.
The Priory of Lewes, in Sussex, of which there are only a few
walls remaining (Fig. 515), was founded in 1077, by William, Earl
of Warenne, who came into England with the Conqueror. The
founder has left a remarkable document in his charter to the abbey,
wherein he describes the circumstance which led him to this act of
piety. He and his wife were travelling in Burgundy, and finding
they could not in safety proceed to Rome, on account of the war
which was then carrying on between the Pope and the Emperor,
took up their abode in the great monastery of St. Peter at Cluni.
The hospitality with which they were treated, the sanctity and
charity of the establishment, determined the Earl to offer the new
religious house which he founded at Lewes to a select number of
the monks of that fraternity. After some difficulties his request was '
complied with, and the Cluniacs took possession of this branch of
their house. The anxiety of the earl liberally to endow this house,
and his determination "as God increased his substance to increase
that of the monks," finds a remarkable contrast four hundred and

Chap. II.]

OLD ENGLAND.

135

fifty years afterwards. After the dissolution of the religious houses
John Portmari writes to Lord Cromwell of his surprising efforts in
pulling down the church; and having recounted how he had
destroyed this chapel, and plucked down that altar, he adds, " that
your Lordship may know with how many men we have done this,
we brought from London seventeen persons, three carpenters, two
smiths, two plumbers, and one that keepeth the furnace. These
are men exercised much better than the men we find here in the
country," And yet they left enough " to point a moral."

Tradition and romance have been busily at work respecting the
origin and locality of the earliest building dedicated to St. Paul as
the chief metropolitan church. It has been supposed to have been
founded by the Apostle Paul himself; while there is really some
reason to presume that the site, possibly the actual building, had
been at first dedicated to the heathen worship of Diana. Ox heads,
sacred to that goddess, were discovered in digging on the south
side of St. Paul's in 1316; at other times the teeth of boars and
other beasts, and a piece of buck's horn, with fragments of vessels,
that might have been used in the pagan sacrifices, have been found.
The idea itself is of antique date. Flete, the.monk of Westminster,
referring to the partial return to heathenism in the fifth century,
when the Saxons and Angles, as yet unconverted to Christianity,
overran the country, observes, " Then were restored the old abo
minations wherever the Britons were expelled their places. London
worships Diana, and the suburbs of Thorney [the site of West
minster] offer incense to Apollo." To leave speculations, and
turn to facts. The see of London was in existence as early as the
latter part of the second century ; though it is not until the sixth
that we find any actual reference to a church. But at that period
a very interesting incident occurred in the church, which Bede
dramatically relates: — When Sebert, the founder of Westminster
Abbey, and the joint founder (according to Bede) with Ethelbert,
King of Kent, of St. Paul's, died, he "left his three sons, who were
yet pagans, heirs of his temporal kingdom. Immediately on their
father's decease they began openly to practise idolatry (though
whilst he lived they had somewhat refrained), and also gave free
licence to their subjects to worship idols. At a certain time these
princes, seeing the Bishop [of London, Mellitus] administering the
sacrament to the people in the church, after the celebration of mass,
and being puffed up with rude and barbarous folly, spake, as the
common report is, thus unto him : — ' Why dost thou not give us,
also, some of that white bread which thou didst give unto our
father Saba [Sebert], and which thou dost not yet cease to give to
the people in the church ? ' He answered, ' If. ye will be washed
in that wholesome font whereas your father was, ye may likewise
eat of this blessed bread whereof he was a partaker; but if ye
contemn the lavatory of life, ye can in nowise taste the bread of
life.' ' We will not/ they rejoined, ' enter into this font of water,
for we know we have no need to do so ; but we will eat of that
bread nevertheless.' And when they had been often and earnestly
warned by the bishop that it could not be, and that no man could
partake of this most holy oblation without purification, and cleans
ing- by baptism, they at length, in the height of their rage, said
to him, ' Well, if thou wilt not comply with us in the small matter
that we ask, thou shalt no longer abide in our province and do
minions;' and straightway they expelled him, commanding that
he and all his company should quit the realm." Thus once more
Christianity was banished from London. It was, however, but for
a short time. The worship that the great Apostle of the Gentiles
preached soon again appeared in the church dedicated to his name ;
and powerful men vied with each other in raising the edifice to the
highest rank of ecclesiastical foundations. Kerired, king of the
Mercians, one of these early benefactors, ordained that it should be
as free in all things as he himself desired to be in the Day of Judg
ment. The feeling thus evidenced continued, or rather gained in
strength. When the Conqueror came over, some of its possessions
were seized by his reckless followers ; on the very day of his coro
nation, however, their master, having previously caused everything
,to be restored, granted a charter securing its property for ever, and
expressing the giver's benedictions upon all who should augment
the revenues, and his curses on all who should diminish them. The
church of Ethelbert was burnt in the Conqueror's reign, and a new
one commenced by Bishop Maurice. That completed, in little more
than a century, — when it appeared " so stately and beautiful, that
it was worthily numbered among the most famous buildings," — a
great portion of the labours were recommenced in order to give
St. Paul's the advantage of the strikingly beautiful Gothic style that
had been introduced in the interim, and carried to a high pitch of

perfection. In 1221 a new steeple was finished ; and in 1240 a new
choir. Not the least noticeable feature of these new works is the
mode in which the money was raised — namely, by letters from the
bishops addressed to the clergy and others under their jurisdiction,
granting indulgences for a certain number of days to all those who,
having penance to perform, or being penitent, should assist in the
rebuilding of St. Paul's. The subterranean church, St. Faith, was
begun in 1256 (Fig. 517). And thus at last was completed the
structure that remained down to the great fire of London, when
Old St. Paul's was included in the widespread ruin that overtook
.the metropolis.
And in many respects that Old St. Paul's was an extraordinary
and deeply interesting pile. Its dimensions were truly enormous.
The space occupied by the building exceeded three acres and a half.
The entire height of the tower and spire was 524 feet (Fig. 522).
For nearly 700 feet did nave and choir and presbytery extend-in one
continuous and most beautiful architectural vista ; unbroken save by
the low screen dividing the nave from the choir. , The breadth and
height were commensurate ; the former measuring. 130 feet, the
latter, in the nave, 102 feet. Over all this immense range of wall,
floor, and roof, with supporting lines of pillars, sculpture and paint
ing and gilding had lavished their stores ; and their effects were
still further enhanced by the gorgeously rich and solemn hues that
streamed upon them from the stained windows. At every step was
passed some beautiful altar with the tall taper burning before it, or
some chantry, whence issued the musical voices of the priests, as
they offered up prayers for the departed founders, or some magnifi
cent shrine, where all the ordinary arts of adornment had been in
sufficient to satisfy the desire to reverence properly the memory of
its saint, and which therefore sparkled with the precious metals, and
still more precious gems — silver and gold, rubies, emeralds, and
pearls. Pictures were there too, on every column or spare corner
of the walls, with their stories culled from the most deeply-treasured
and venerated pages of the Sacred Scriptures ; the chief of these was
the great picture of St. Paul, which stood beside the high altar in a
beautiful " tabernacle" of wood. Then there were the monuments ;
a little world in themselves of all that was rare and quaint, splendid
or beautiful, in monumental sculpture and architecture ; and which
yet when gazed upon, hardly arrested the careful attention of the
beholder to their own attractions, but rather preoccupied his mind
at the first sight of them by remembrances of the men to whose
memory they had been erected Here lay two monarchs — Sebba,
King of the East Saxons,, converted by Erkenwold, Bishop of
London, and son of King Ofla ; and Ethelred the Unready, whose
reign might be appropriately designated by a more disgraceful
epithet. Here lay also Edward Atheling, or the Outlaw, Ethelred's
grandson, one of the popular heroes of English romantic history,
who lost the kingdom by his father's (Edmund Ironside's) agree
ment with Canute, to divide the kingdom whilst both lived, and the
survivor to inherit the whole, and who was waiting about the Court
of Edward the Confessor in the hope of regaining that kingdom,
when he died, poisoned, it was suspected, by his rival Harold. Here
also lay Saint Erkenwold, the canonized bishop of the see, and
in such glorious state as has been accorded. to the remains of few
even of the mightiest potentates of earth. Among all the marvels
of artistical wealth that filled almost to overflowing the interior -of
Old St. Paul's, the shrine of St. Erkenwold stood pre-eminent. It
consisted of a lofty pyramidical structure, in the most exquisitely
decorated Pointed style ; with an altar-table in front, covered with
jewels and articles of gold and silver. Among the former was the
famous sapphire stone, given by Richard de Preston, citizen and
grocer of London, for the cure of infirmities in the eyes of all those
who, thus afflicted, might resort thither. To the mental as well as
to the bodily vision this shrine was the grand feature of the cathe
dral ; for the commemoration of the saint's burial was regularly
observed with the highest and most magnificent of church cere
monials. Then, in solemn procession, the bishop, arrayed in robes of
the most dazzling splendour, accompanied by the dean and other dis
tinguished officers, and followed by the greater part of the parochial
clergy of the diocese, passed through the cathedral to the shrine,
where solemn masses were sung, and the indulgences granted to all
who visited the saint's burial-place, and to those who there offered
oblations, recited. Then might have been beheld a touching and beau
tiful scene; rich and poor pressing forward with their gifts— costly
in the one case ; a mere mite, like the poor widow's, in the other.
But there were yet mightier spirits among the buried dead of Old
St. Paul's. Passing over Sir John Beauchamp, son of the renowned
Guy, Earl of Warwick, Henry de.Lacy, Earl of Lincoln, one of
Edward the First's ablest military officers, and the accomplished
Sir Simon Burley, executed during the reign of Richard II., we

'V

JI\U

'. 'V

MllK'

5: - — ^ ^-5 ^~

517— St. Faith's;

522— Old St. Paul's, before the Destruction of the Steeple.

will f ifc#^i!
"ill I lilwil ll!

518— Paul's Walk.

520.— Paul's, Cross.

Sgl^Eart Window, from the Choir, St. Paul's.
«

519— Old St. Paul's, Cathedral— South View.

136

•iik'N

JIIV » ¦ li

917— The Western Entrance, Interior, St Bartholomew's Church.

•*tw«ot '  r"1  \ . 
585.— The Crypt, St. Bartholomew's Church.

529.— Entrance to Bartholomew Close, from SmithSeld.

¦ n

¦^&^^^^f;'

 ]_-L.. _?
530— Prior Bolton'si Rebus.

5S23,— South SidajofSt.f Bartholomew's .Church.]

[528— Prior Eahere's Tomb.

586— The Choir, St. Bartholomew's Church.

1 rt

[OLD ENGLAND.]

137

138

OLD ENGLAND.

[Book II.

find that John of Gaunt, " time-honoured Lancaster," was interred
in Old St. Paul's beneath a magnificent monument, where athwart
the slender octagonal pillars appeared with a very picturesque effect
his tilting-spear, and where the mighty duke himself lay in effigy
beneath a canopy of the most elaborate fretwork. Beside him re
clined Blanche, the duke's first wife, whom Chaucer has made im
mortal by his grateful verse. In the cathedral was witnessed on
one occasion an important scene, with which John of Gaunt was
most honourably connected. Wickliffe was cited here to answer
before the great prelates of the realm the charge of heresy and inno
vation. He appeared, but with such a train as seldom falls to the
early history of church reform to speak of; it will be sufficient to
say, John of Gaunt was at their head. The meeting broke up
in confusion. In later times Linacre, the eminent physician, and
founder of the College of Physicians, Sir Christopher Hatton, Sir
Francis Walsingham, Elizabeth's secretary, and Sir Nicholas, father
of Lord Bacon, her keeper of the seals, were all interred in St.
Paul's ; as were Dean Colet, the founder of St. Paul's School, and
the poet Donne, whose effigy yet exists in the present cathedral,
disgracefully thrown into a dark corner in the vaults below.
There were many features of Old St. Paul's which, if they did not
add to, or even harmonise in our notions with, the religious charac
ter of the edifice, certainly added wonderfully to its attractions in the
eyes of our more enjoying and less scrupulous forefathers. Thus, did
civil war threaten — the martial population of London flocked to
the church to witness the presentation of the banner of St. Paul to
Robert Fitzwalter, the hereditary Castellan of the city, who came
on horseback, and armed, to the great west door, where he was met
by the mayor and aldermen, also armed ; and, when he had dis
mounted and saluted them, handed to them the banner, " gules," with
the image of St. Paul in gold, saying they gave it to him as their
bannerer of fee, to bear and govern to the honour and profit of the
city. After that, they gave the baron a horse of great value, and
twenty pounds in money. Then was a marshal chosen to guide the
host of armed citizens, who were presently to be called together en
masse by the startling sound of the great bell. Was amusement
sought — there were the regular Saturnalias of the Boy-Bishops, and
the plays, for which Old St. Paul's enjoyed such repute. The boys
of the church seem to have been originally the chief performers,
and obtained so much mastery over the art as to perform frequently
before the kings of England. Their preparations were expensive, but
were evidently more than paid for by the auditors ; for in the reign
of Richard II. they petitioned that certain ignorant and inexpe
rienced persons might be prohibited from representing the History
of the Old Testament, to the great prejudice of the clergy of the
cathedral. Were great public events passing — had one monarch
been pushed from the throne by another or by death — St. Paul's was
almost sure to furnish, in one shape or another, palpable evidences of
the matter that was in all men's thoughts. Thus when Louis of
France came to London in 1216, the English barons present swore
fealty to him in St. Paul's ; thus, when success now elated the heart
of a Henry VI., now of his adversary Edward IV., each came to St.
Paul's, to take as it were solemn and public possession of the king
dom ; thus, when the body of a Richard II., or of a Philip Sydney,
had to be displayed before the eyes of a startled or of a mourning
nation, to St. Paul's was it brought — the king to be less ho
noured in his remains than the humblest of knights, the knight to
be more honoured than any but the very best of kings. Were
there business to attend to, when all these other sources of interest
were unheeded or for the time in abeyance, — then to St. Paul's
Walk must the citizens of London have had frequent occasion to go.
There were lawyers feed, horses and benefices sold, and set payments
made. A strange scene, and a strange company, in consequence,
did the cathedral present through the day ! "At one time," writes
an eye-witness, " in one and the same rank, yea, foot by foot, and
elbow by elbow, shall you see walking, the knight, the gull, the
gallant, the upstart, the gentleman, the clown, the captain, the
appel-squire, the lawyer, the usurer, the citizen, the bankrout, the
scholar, the beggar, the doctor, the idiot, the ruffian, the cheater,
the puritan, the cut-throat, the high men, the low men, the true
man, and the thief; of all trades and professions some; of all coun
tries some. Thus while Devotion kneels at her prayers, doth Pro
fanation walk under her nose" (Dekker's ' Dead Term'). (Fig.
518.) The undoing of Old St. Paul's forms scarcely a less interesting
history than the doing. The Bell Tower was the stake of Henry
VIII., when he played at dice with Sir Miles Partridge ; the knight
won, and the Bell Tower was lost to St. Paul's : it«soon disappeared.
In the reigns of Edward VI. and Elizabeth, the greater part of the
sculpture a^| rich brasses of the interior were destroyed by Puritan

hands ; whilst the former reign was also marked by the wholesale
plunder of the very walls of the outworks of the structure, the
chapel and cloisters of Pardon Church Haugh, where the ' Dance
of Death' was painted, Shyrington's Chapel, and the Charnel House
and Chapel, with their many goodly monuments, in order (such was
the base fact) to get the materials, the mere stone and timber, for
the new palace in the Strand, Somerset House. Then followed the
destruction of the steeple by fire in 1561. Next the civil war,
with its injuries. That over, and the State, after the brief inter
regnum of the Commonwealth, restored to its old ways, came the
great fire, and put an end to all that remained of the cathedral, as
well as to the many degradations the fine old edifice had experienced.
Among these injuries, not the least were the beautifying and restoring
processes of Inigo Jones, whose portico might elsewhere have added
even to his well-deserved fame, but at St. Paul's only evidenced
the mistake the great architect had made, when he fancied he under
stood the Gothic (Fig. 519).

There are probably few of our readers who, as they have gazed
on those architectural wonders of the middle ages, our cathedrals
and larger ecclesiastical structures, and thought of the endless diffi
culties, mechanical and otherwise, surmounted in their construction,
but have felt a strong desire to look back to the periods of their
erection, and to note all the variety of interesting circumstances that
must have marked such events. What, for instance, could be at once
more gratifying'and instructive than to be able to familiarize ourselves
with the motives and characters of the chief founders, with the feel
ings and thoughts of the people among and for whom the structures
in question were reared ? If our readers will now follow us into the
history of St. Bartholomew Priory, Smithfield, we think we can
venture to promise them some such glimpse of those fine old builders
at work ; and that too founded upon the best of authorities — an in
mate of the priory, who wrote so soon after its foundation, that
persons were still alive who had witnessed the whole proceedings.
We shall borrow occasionally the language as well as the facts of the
good monk's history, which has been printed in the ' Monasticon,'
and in Malcolm's ' London.' In the reign of Henry the First there
was a man named Rahere, sprung and born from low lineage, and
who when he attained the flower of youth began to haunt the house
holds of noblemen' and the palaces of princes ; where, under every
elbow of them he spread their cushions, with japes and flatterings
delectably anointing their eyes, by this manner to draw to him their
friendships. Such was the youthful life of Rahere. But with years
came wisdom and repentance. He would go to Rome, and there
seek remission of his sins. He did so. At the feet of the shrine of
the Apostles Peter and Paul he poured out his lamentations ; but,
to his inexpressible pain, God, he thought, refused to hear him. He
fell sick. And then he shed out as water his heart in the sight of
God ; the fountains of his nature to the very depths were broken up ;
he wept bitter tears. At last dawned a new life upon the penitent
man. He vowed if God would grant him health to return to his
own country, he would make an hospital in recreation of poor men,
and minister to their necessities to the best of his power. With re
turning health to the mind not unnaturally came back health to the
body. And now more and more grew upon him the love of the
great work he had determined to perform. Visions, as he believed
were vouchsafed to him for his guidance. . On a certain night he
saw one full of dread and sweetness. He fancied himself to be borne
up on high by a certain winged beast, and when from his great ele
vation he sought to look down, he beheld a horrible pit, deeper than
any man might attain to see the bottom of, opening, as it seemed,
to receive him. He trembled, and great cries proceeded from his
mouth. Then to his comfort there appeared a certain man, havino-
all the majesty of a king, of great beauty, and imperial authority
and his eye fastened upon Rahere. " 0 man," said he, " what and
how much service shouldst thou give to him that in so great a
peril hath brought help to thee?" Rahere answered, " Whatever
might be of heart and of right, diligently should I give in recom
pense to my deliverer." Then said the celestial visitant, " I am
Bartholomew, the apostle of Jesus Christ, that come to succour
thee in thine anguish, and to open to thee the sweet mysteries of
heaven. Know me truly, by the will and commandment of the
Holy Trinity and the common favour of the celestial court and
council, to have chosen a place in the suburbs of London at Smith-
field, where in my name thou shalt form a church." Rahere with
a jbyful heart returned to London, where he presently obtained the
concurrence of the king to carry out his views. The choice of the
place was, according to the monkish historian, who believed but
what all believed, no less a matter of special arrangement by Heaven.

Chap. II.]

OLD ENGLAND.

139

King Edward the Confessor had previously had the very spot pointed
out to him when he was bodily sleeping, but his heart to God wak
ing ; nay more, three men of Greece who had come to London had
gone to the place to worship God, and there prophesied wonderfu
things relating to the future temple that was to be erected on it. In
other points, the locality was anything but a favoured one. Truly,
says the historian, the place before his cleansing pretended to no
hope of goodness. Right unclean it was ; and as a marsh dungy
and fenny, with water at most times abounding ; whilst the only dry
portion was occupied by the gallows for the execution of criminals.
Work and place determined on, Rahere had now to begin to build ;
and strange^ indeed were the modes adopted by him to obtain the
gift of the requisite materials, bring together the hosts of unpaid
workmen, or to find funds for such additional materials and labour as
might be necessary. He made and feigned himself unwise, it is said,
and outwardly pretended the cheer of an idiot, and began a little
while to hide the secretness of his soul. And the more secretly he
wrought the more wisely he did his work. Truly, in playing unwise
he drew to him the fellowship of children and servants, assembling
himself as one of them ; and with their use and help, stones, and
other things profitable to the building, lightly he gathered together.
Thus did he address himself to one class of persons, those who
would look upon his apparent mental peculiarities as a kind of
supernatural proof of his enjoying the especial care of the Deity.
Another class he influenced by his passionate eloquence in the
churches ; where he addressed audiences with the most remarkable
effect, now stirring them so to gladness that all the people applauded
him, now moving them to sorrow by his searching and kindly exposure
of their sins, so that nought but singing and weeping were heard on
all sides. A third mode of obtaining help was by the direct one of
personal solicitation at the houses of the inhabitants of the neigh
bourhood, in the course of which, St. Bartholomew often, it appears,
redeemed his promise to Rahere of assistance. Alfun, a coadjutor of
Rahere's, the builder of old St. Giles, Cripplegate, went one day to
a widow, to see what she could give them for the use of the church
and the hospital of St. Bartholomew. She told him she had but seven
measures of meal, which were absolutely necessary for the supply of
her family. She, however, at last gave one measure. After Alfun
had departed with her contribution, she casually looked over the re
maining measures, when she thought she counted seven measures still »
she counted again, and there were eight ; again, there were nine. How
long this very profitable system of arithmetic lasted, our good monk
does not state. And thus at last was St. Bartholomew's Priory raised,
clerks brought together to live ir it, a piece of adjoining ground con
secrated as a place of sepulchre, privileges showered upon it by the
hands of royalty, and the whole stamped, as was thought, with the
emphatic approval of Heaven by the miraculous cures that were then
wrought in the establishment. Yes, the work was finished, and
Rahere made the first prior. No wonder that the people, as we are
informed, were greatly astonished both at the work and the founder ;
or that St. Bartholomew's was esteemed to belong more to the super
natural than the natural. No wonder that as to Rahere it should
be asked, in the words of the monkish chronicler, " Whose heart
lightly should take or admit such a man not product of gentle blood)
not greatly endowed with literature, or of divine lineage" not
withstanding his nominally low origin ? Rahere fulfilled the duties
of prior in the beloved house of his own raising, for about twenty
years, when the clay house of this world he forsook, and the
house everlasting entered.
Of this very building, or rather series of buildings erected by
Rahere himself, there remains in a fine state of preservation an im
portant portion, the choir of the conventual church used as th
present parish church (Fig. 526). There can be no doubt that we
have there the original walls, pillars, and arches of the twelfth cen
tury ; the massive, grand, and simple style of the whole tells truly
through the date of their erection. This choir, therefore, forms one
of the most interesting and valuable pieces of antique ecclesiastical
architecture now existing in England. Among its more remarkable
features may be mentioned the continuous aisle that runs round the
choir, and opening into it between the flat and circular arch-piers ;
the elegant horseshoe-like arches of the chancel at the end of the
choir; and the grand arches at the opposite extremity, shown in our
engraving, on which formerly rose a stately tower corresponding in
beauty and grandeur to all the other portions of the pile. The tomb
of Rahere is also in the choir, but it is of somewhat later date than
the priory. Nothing so exquisitely beautiful in sculpture as that
work, with its recumbent effigy, and attending monks and angels, its
fretted canopies and niches and finials, had yet burst upon old Eng
land when Rahere died (Fig. 528). The very perfect state in which
it now appears is owing to Prior Bolton, who restored it in the

sixteenth century, as well as other parts of the structure ; a labour
of which he was evidently very proud,^for wherever his handiwork
may be traced, there too you need not look long for his handwriting
— hisjsignature as it were — a Bolt in tun (Fig. 530). This prior was
an elegant and accomplished man ; if even he were not much more.
The beautiful oriel window in the second story of the choir which
encloses the prior's pew or seat, nearly facing Rahere's monument,
as if that the prior might the better look down on the last resting-
place of the illustrious founder, was added by Bolton, and has
been supposed, for reasons into which we cannot here enter, to be
from his own designs. Another part of the ancient structure is to
be found in the old vestry-room, whicli was formerly an oratory, de
dicated to the Virgin. Among the burials in the church the most
important perhaps was that of Roger Walden, Bishop of London,
who rose from a comparatively humble position to the highest offices
of the State ; he was successively Dean of York, Treasurer of Calais5
Royal Secretary and Royal Treasurer, and, lastly, Primate of
England, on the occasion of the banishment of Archbishop Arundel
by Richard the Second. That ecclesiastic, however, returned
with Bolingbroke, to his country and office, and Walden became
at once a mere private person. Arundel, it is pleasant to relate,
behaved nobly to the unfortunate prelate, making him Bishop
of London. He died, however, shortly after. Fuller compares
him to one so jaw-fallen with over-long fasting that lie cannot
eat meat when brought unto him. Sir Walter Mildmay, founder
of Emanuel College, Cambridge, and Dr. Francis Anthony, the dis
coverer and user of a medicine drawn from gold (aurum potabile
he called it), also lie here buried. There are other monuments not
unworthy of notice, though at St. Bartholomew's, as now at most
other churches, the major portion refer to those who were, like
" Captain John Millett, mariner, 1600," j
Desirous hither to resort
Because this parish was their port ;
but who have not, like him, told us this in so amusing a manner
Of the other parts of the priory, there remain the entrance gateway
(Fig. 529), portions of the cloisters, and of the connected domestic
buildings ; above all, the refectory, or grand hall, still stands to a
great extent entire, though so metamorphosed that its very existence
has hardly been known to more than a few. It is now occupied by
a tobacco-manufactory and divided into stories ; but there can be
no doubt that any one who shall attentively examine the place will
come to the same conclusion as ourselves, that the whole has formed
one grand apartment, extending from the ground to the present roof,
and that the latter has been originally of open woodwork. It may
help to give some general idea of the magnificent scale of the priory,
to state that this hall must have measured forty feet high, thirty
broad, and one hundred and twenty in length. Another illustration
of the same point is furnished by the plan, which shows the pile in
its original state (Fig. 524).* If we look at the part marked 0, the
present parish church, and the old choir, and see how small a
proportion it bears to the entire structure, we have a striking view
of the former splendour and present degradation of St. Bartholo
mew's. The site of the other buildings there marked are now
occupied by the most incongruous assemblage of filthy stables and
yards, low public-houses, mouldering tenements, with here and there
residences of a better character ; and in few or none of these can we
enter without meeting with corners of immense walls projecting
suddenly out, vaulted roofs, boarded-up pillars, and similar evidences
of the ruin upon which all these appurtenances of the modern in
habitants have been established. The only other feature that it is
necessary to mention is the crypt, which extends below the refec
tory and is one of the most remarkable places of the kind, even in
London, so rich in crypts (Fig. 525). - It runs the whole length of
the refectory, and is divided by pillars into a central part and two
aisles. Popular fancy has not even been satisfied with these suffi-
« EXPLANATION OF REFERENCES IN THE PLAN (Fig. 524).

A. The Eastern Cloister, the only one of which
there are any remains.
B. The North Cloister, parallel with the
Nave.
C. The South Cloister.
D The West Cloister. The Square thus en
closed by the Cloisters measures about a
hundred feet each way.
E. The North Aisle of the Nave.
F. The South Aisle, to which the existing
Gateway in front of SmithBeld was the
original entrance.
G. The Nave, no part of which or of the
Aisles now remains. ... , ,,„
H. St. Bartholomew's Chapel, destroyed by
Fire about 1830. ¦
I. Middlesex Passage, leading from Great to
Little Bartholomew Close. .
J. The Dining Hall or Refectory of the Priory,
with the Crypt beneath.
K. Situation of the Great Tower, which was

supported on four arches, that still re
main. , .
L. The Northern Aisle or the Lnoir.
M. The Southern Aisle of the Choir.
N. The Eastern Aisle of the Choir.
O The present Parish Church, forming the
Choir of the old Priory Church.
P. The Prior's House, with the Dormitory and
Infirmary above.
Q Site of the Prior's Offices, Stables, Wood-
Yard, &c.
R. The Old Vestry.
S. The Chapter-House, with an entrance Gate-
wav from
T. The'South Transept.
U. The North Transept.
V. The present entrance into the Church.
On the top of the plan is Little Bartholomew
Close, on the left Cloth Fair, at the
bottom Smithfield, and on the nght
Great Bartholomew Close.
T2

[135.— Interior of the Round, Temple Church,

140

539.— Round Church, Cambridge. Interior.

541.— St. John's Hospital.— From Hollar.

§1

540.— Round Church, Cambridge.

544.— Knight Templar.

.549,-St, John's Gate, Clerkenwell, 1641. jjj'j

538.— The Temple Church, from the Senth.

141

142

OLD ENGLAND.

[Book II.

ciently noticeable facts as to the subterranean regions of St. Bar
tholomew's, but has stretched the crypt all the way to Islington,
where the prior had his country residence and pleasance or garden
of Canonbury ; and where the mansion and garden house of Prior
Bolton are still preserved, close by the famous Tower of Canonbury.
The tower of course formed a part of the Canonbury estate, which
evidently derives its name from the. canons of the priory.

Among those extraordinary institutions which from time to time
spring up in the world, rise to great ~ prosperity, and in that state
exist for centuries together, exercising the most important influence
over the affairs of men, and then at last, either through the process
of gradual decay or the operations of a more sudden agency, dis
appear altogether, and leave behind them, as the only traces of their
existence, a few mouldering edifices for the antiquary to mourn over
or to restore — among such institutions, conspicuous before all
others, stand those of the famous Christian warriors, as they loved
to designate themselves, the Knights of St. John's and of the
Temple. And never was there a more deeply interesting history
given to the world than is embodied in the records that tell us of
the growth of these Orders, of the picturesque amalgamation of the
most opposite qualities of human nature required as the indispensable
preliminary of membership, of the active bravery and passive for
titude with which the objects of the Institutions were pursued, of
the curiously intense hatred that existed between the two great
Orders, and of their fate, so sudden, terrible, and, in some respects,
sublime in the one case, so protracted and comparatively undignified
and commonplace in the other. In these pages we can only touch,
and that briefly, upon the salient points of such a history. St.
John's may be called the oldest of the two Orders, since it dates
back to the erection of the Hospital of St. John at Jerusalem, soon
after the middle of the eleventh century, when it was founded for
the accommodation of Christian pilgrims, in connection with the
church of Santa Maria de Latina, built by the Christians of com-
merical Italy, with the consent of the Mohammedan governors of
the Holy Land. But it was then no fighting community : to relieve
the hungry, weary, houseless, and sick, of their own faith, whom
piety had brought to that far-off land, was their especial vocation.
But the kindly offices of the good monks were not limited by the
boundaries of creed ; the " Infidel " Arab or Turk was also welcome
whenever necessity brought him to their doors ; a state of things
that contrast powerfully and humiliatingly with the state that was
to supersede it.
The influences that transformed the peaceful monks of St. John's
into the most turbulent of soldiers did not spring out of common
occurrences. The wars of the Crusades broke out, the Saracens
were driven from Jerusalem, and Godfrey of Bouillon elected its
first Christian sovereign ; but the Hospital of St. John remained
essentially the same, more prosperous, but not more martial. It
should seem, even, that the ambition that alone agitated the members
at the time was that of enhancing the legitimate merits of their
position, by becoming still more charitable in their charity, still
more humble in their humility, still more self-denying in their
religious discipline, for in 1120 the Serjiens or Servientes of the
hospital formed themselves for such purposes into a separate
monastic body under the direct protection of the Church of Rome.
But about the same time a little band of knights, nine in number,
began to distinguish themselves by their zeal and courage in the
performance of a duty self-imposed, but of the most dangerous and
important character. They had devoted themselves, life and fortune,
to the defence of the ' high roads leading to Jerusalem, where the
Christian pilgrims were continually harassed and injured by the
warlike onslaught of the Mussulmen and the predatory attacks of
robbers. " Poor fellow-soldiers of Jesus Christ " they called them
selves ; and poor enough indeed they were, since their chief, Hugh
de Payens, was constrained to ride with another knight on the
same horse: a memorable incident, which the Order, with noble
pride, commemorated in their seal. Such services spoke eloquently
to every one. Golden opinions were speedily won. The poor
knights soon became rich knights. The little body began speedily
to grow into a large one. As a special honour they were lodged
by the church, on the site of the great Hebrew Temple, and the
fame of the " Knighthood of the Temple of Solomon " began to
spread through Christian Europe. Amid the general excitement
of the Holy Wars this junction of the priest and soldier seemed but
a most happy embodiment of the prevailing passions, duties, and
wants of the age (Fig. 544). Thus, when Hugh de Payens himself
set out on a tour with four of the brethren, in order to promulgate
more distinctl^Jhe objects of the Society, and to seek assistance,

great was the interest and excitement that prevailed wherever they
came. They arrived in England in 1128, and were received with the
deepest respect by Henry the First and his court. The result of
these travels was, that when the four brethren returned to Jerusalem
they brought with them in company three hundred of the best and
bravest of European chivalry. The new Society was evidently
moving the Christian world ; what wonder that the monks of St.
John felt themselves at last moved too— in the same direction.
Within a few years after De Payens' return, and during the spiritual
rule of Raymond du Puy, they took up the lance, and rushed forth
into the field in rivalry of the brotherhood of the Temple. And
between the warlike merit of the two, the knights who had become
monks, and the monks who had become knights, it would evidently
be impossible to decide ; both were the flower of the Christian
armies, and the especial dread of the Saracen. The military annals
of no country or time exhibit deeds that can surpass, few even that can
rival, the prodigies of valour continually performed by these warrior
monks. But with wealth, corruption, as usual, flowed in. When
one Order (the Templars) possessed nine thousand manors, and the
other nineteen thousand, in the fairest provinces of Christendom, it
would be too much to expect that humility would long continue to
characterize either. The first evidence of the evil spirit that was at
work in their hearts was exhibited in their mutual quarrels, which
at last grew to such a height that they actually turned their arms
against each other; and even on one occasion, in 1259, fought a
pitched battle, in which the Knights Hospitallers were the conquerors,
and scarcely left a Templar alive to carry to his brethren the in
telligence of their discomfiture. This was an odd way to exhibit
the beauties of the faith they were shedding so much blood and ex
pending so much treasure to establish among the Saracens, and
scarcely calculated to convince the infidel even of the military
necessity of acknowledging or giving way to it. The fact is that
the decline of the Christian power in the Holy Land may be traced,
in a great measure, to these miserable jealousies : it may be doubted
whether the two Orders did not, on the whole, retard rather than
promote the cause they espoused. But let us now look at their position
in this country. The first houses of both were established in London,
and nearly about the same time, the Priory of St. John at Clerken
well in 1100, by Jordan Briset, an English Baron, and his wife ; and
the Old Temple, in Holborn (where Southampton Buildings now
exist), founded during the visit of Hugh de Payens, twenty-eight
years later. As the Templars, however, increased in numbers and
wealth, they purchased the site of the present Temple in Fleet
Street, and erected their beautiful church and other corresponding
buildings on a scale of great splendour. Both this church and the
church of St. John, Clerkenwell, were consecrated by Heraclius,
Patriarch of Jerusalem, whom events of no ordinary nature brought
to this country ; events which threatened to involve something like
the entire destruction of the Christians and their cause in the Holy
Land, if immediate succour was not granted by some most potent
authority. With Heraclius came the Masters of the two Orders ;
and the hopes of the trio, it appears, were centred on the King of
England, who had, on receiving absolution for the murder of
Becket, promised not only to maintain two hundred Templars at
his own expense, but also to proceed to Palestine himself at the
head of a vast army. At first all looked very encouraging. Henry
met them at Reading, wept as he listened to their sad narration of
the reverses experienced in Palestine, and, in answer to their prayers
for support, promised to bring the matter before parliament imme
diately on its meeting. In that assembly, however, the barons
urged upon him that he was bound by his coronation oath to stay
at home and fulfil his kingly duties, but offered to raise funds to
defray the expense of a levy of troops, expressing at the same time
their opinion that English nobles and others might, if they wished,
freely depart for Palestine to join the Christian warriors. Henry with
apparent reluctance agreed; and "lastly, the king gave answer
and said that he might not leave his land without keeping, nor yet
leave it to the prey and robbery of Frenchmen. But he would
give largely of his own to such as would take upon them that
voyage. With this answer the Patriarch was discontented, and
said, < We seek a man, and not money ; well near every Christian
region sendeth unto us money, but no land sendeth to us a prince
Therefore we ask a prince that needeth money, and not money that
needeth a prince.' But the king laid for him such excuses, that the
Patriarch departed from him discontented and comfortless • whereof
the king being advertised, intending somewhat to recomfort him
with pleasant words, followed him unto the seaside. But the more
the king thought to satisfy him with his fair speech, the more the
Patriarch was discontented, insomuch that, at the last, he said unto
Hlthert0 thou hast reigned gloriously, but hereafter thou

him,

Chap. II.]

OLD ENGLAND.

143

shalt be forsaken of Him whom thou at this time forsakest. Think
on Him, what he hath given to thee, and what thou hast yielded to
Him again ; how first thou wert false to the King of France, and
after slew that holy man, Thomas of Canterbury ; and lastly thou
forsakest the protection of Christian faith.' The king was moved
with these words, and said unto the Patriarch, ' Though all the
men of my land were one body, and spake with one mouth, they
durst not speak to me such words.' ' No wonder,' said the Pa
triarch, ' for they love thine, and not thee ; that is to mean, they
love thy goods temporal, and fear thee for loss of promotion ; but
they love not thy soul.' And when he had so said he offered his
head to the king, saying, ' Do by me right as thou didst by that
blessed man, Thomas of Canterbury ; for I had liever to be slain
of thee than of the Saracens, for thou art worse than anv Saracen.'
But the king kept his patience, and said, ' I may not wend out of
my land, for my own sons will arise against me when I was absent.'
' No wonder,' said the Patriarch, ' for of the devil they come, and
to the devil they shall go ;' and so departed from the king in great
ire." (Fabyan.) Two years later, Saladin had put an end to the
Christian kingdom at Jerusalem, generously dismissing to their
homes his many distinguished prisoners, among whom was Heraclius,
and granting to the Christians generally of Europe the possession
of the sepulchre of Christ. His liberality experienced no suitable
return. A third Crusade was set on foot, the one in which Coeur-
de-Lion was engaged, to fail like the previous ones, to be again
followed by others, with the same result. In 1291 Acre was
besieged by the Sultan of Egypt, and taken, after a most terrible
conflict, in which the two Orders were nearly exterminated : that
event in effect may be said to mark the final defeat of the Crusaders
in their long-cherished object of the conquest of the Holy Land.
The Knights of St. John, however, for about two centuries after
this, found ample employment of a kind after their own heart ;
they obtained possession of the island of Rhodes, from whence they
kept up continual war, — of a very piratical character, though, be it
observed, — against the Turks ; but in 1522 Solyman the Fourth, or
the Magnificent, after a tremendous siege, in which he is said to
have lost upwards of 100,0.00 men, completely overpowered the
defenders, although they fought with a courage that won his re
spect, and induced him to consent at last that the Grand-master,
L'Isle Adam, and his surviving companions, might depart freely
whithersover they chose. He visited his illustrious captive on
entering the city, and was heard to remark as he left him, " It is
not without pain that I force this Christian, at his time of life, to
leave his dwelling." The Emperor Charles the Fifth then bestowed
on them the island of Malta, which they fortified with works that
render it to this day almost impiegnable, but where, after success
fully resisting a most formidable attack from the Turkish troops of
Solyman, they gradually fell into a mode of life very different from
that which had previously characterized them, and which was
suddenly brought to a very ignominious conclusion by the appear
ance of Napoleon, leading his Egyptian expedition, in 1798, ^.nd
by his landing without opposition, through the mingled treachery
and cowardice of the knights ; who, however, received their reward :
the Order itself was then virtually abolished. It is not unworthy
of notice, as evidence of the amazing strength of the place, as well
as of the feeling of the French officers at so disgraceful a surrender,
that one of them, Caffarelli, said to Napoleon, as they examined the
works, " It is well, General, that some one was within to open the
gate for us. We should have had some difficulty in entering had
the place been altogether empty." A Grand-master and a handful
of knights, it seems, do still exist at Ferrara, and possess a scanty
remnant of the once magnificent revenue. The Templars experienced
a more tragical, but also infinitely more honourable termination of
their career, and one that redeemed a thousand faults and vices.
Within twenty years after their conduct and misfortunes at the
siege of Acre had entitled them to the sympathy of their Christian
brethren throughout the world, they were suddenly charged in
France with the commission of a multitude of crimes, religious and
social ; and to convince them that they were guilty, whether they
knew it or not, tortures of the most frightful description were un
sparingly applied to make them confess. One who did confess,
when he was brought before the commissary of police to be ex
amined, at once revoked his confession, saying, " They held me so
long before a fierce fire, that the flesh was burnt off my heels ; two
pieces of bone came away, which I present to you." Such were
the execrable cruelties perpetrated on the unhappy Templars in
France, where they were also sent to the scaffold in troops, and
thus at last the Order was made tractable in that country. In
England there was greater decency at least observed. If the
torture was applied at all, it was but sparingly, and the confession

obtained was at last reduced to so very innocent an affair, that no
man would have been justified in sacrificing life and limb in resist
ance ; sp the Templars wisely gave way. All matters thus pre
pared, the Pope in 1312 formally abolished the Order; and then
the world saw the truth of what it had before suspected, namely,
that all these atrocious proceedings were but to clear the way for
a general scramble for the enormous property of the Order, in which
the chief actors were of course the sovereigns of France and
England and the Pontiff. They had tried to persuade themselves
or their subjects that the rival Order of St. John's was to have the
possessions in question, and they were nominally confirmed to it :
but about a twentieth of the whole was all that the Knights Hos
pitallers ever obtained.
Of the two churches consecrated by Heraclius in London, that
of the Temple alone remains. St. John's was burnt, with all the
surrounding buildings of the priory, by the followers of Wat Tyler in
the fourteenth century, when the conflagration continued for no less
than seven days. The Temple had been previously injured by them
on account of its being considered to belong to the obnoxious Hos
pitallers. We see from Hollar's view of the priory in the seven
teenth century (Fig. 541), that previous to the dissolution by Henry
the Eighth it had recovered much of its ancient magnificence.
But in the reign of Edward the Sixth the " church, for the most
part," says Stow, " to wit, the body and side aisles, with the great
bell-tower (a most curious piece of workmanship, graven, gilt and
enamelled, to the great beautifying of the city, and passing all
other that I have seen), was undermined and blown up with gun
powder ; the stone whereof was employed in building of the Lord
Protector's house in the Strand." The remains of the choir form
at present a portion of the parochial church of Clerkenwell. But
there is another relic of the priory, the gateway (Fig. 542), which
Johnson " beheld with reverence," and which his successors can hardly
look on without a kindred sentiment, were it on his account alone ;
for here it was that Johnson came to Cave, the publisher of the
' Gentleman's Magazine,' to seek and obtain employment, being at
the time poor, friendless, and unknown ; nay so very poor, that he
sat behind the screen to eat his dinner, instead of :at the printer's
table, in order to conceal his shabby coat. The principal part of
the gateway now forms the Jerusalem Tavern. The groined roof
of the gate has been restored of late years. But we now turn to a
remain of the rival metropolitan house of the Templars, which is
of a very much more important character.
No one probably ever beheld the exterior of the Temple Church
(Fig. 538), for the first time, without finding his curiosity at least ex
cited to know the meaning of its peculiar form, that round — half for
tress, half chapter-house like — structure, with such a beautiful oblong
Gothic church body attached to it at one side. That the second
was added to the first at a later period is sufficiently evident ; but
we are puzzled by the " Round " as it is called, till we begin to re
member who were its founders : the men whose lives were spent in
the Holy Land, in a continual alternation of fighting and devotion ;
whose houses there were one day a place of worship, the next of
attack and defence. Such, no doubt, were the origin of the Round
churches of England, of which we possess but three others.
The restoration of these fine old works of our forefathers promises
to become a marked feature of the present time, and if so, there will
be one especial labour of the kind, truly a labour of love to those
who have been concerned in it, that will stand out from all the rest,
as the grand exemplar of the true spirit that should animate restorers.
When the Benchers of the Temple began their noble, task, they found
nearly all that was left of the original building, walls only excepted,
in a state of decay, and everything that was not original, without any
exception, worthless. Thus the _elaborately-beautiful sculpture of
the low Norman doorway, which leads from the quaint porch (Fig.
534) into the interior of the Round, was in a great measure lost ;
now we see it again in all its pristine splendour. The airy clustered
columns of Purbeck marble, which, standing in a wide circle, support
with their uplifted, uniting, and arching arms the roof of the Round
(Fig. 535), were no longer trustworthy ; so they had to be removed
entirely, and new ones, at an immense expense, provided ; and the
ancient quarry at Purbeck, from which so much marble must have
been drawn in the middle ages for the erection of our cathedrals, was
again opened on the occasion. Everything through the whole church
was covered with coating upon coating of whitewash ; consequently,
all traces were lost of the gilding and colour that had been everywhere
expended with a lavish hand, and which now again relieve the
walls, in the forms of pious inscriptions in antique letters, which
o-low in the roofs of the Round and of the Chancel, and which gra
dually increase into a perfect blaze of splendour towards and around
the altar (Fig. 532). The beautiful junction of the two parts of the

547.— The Lady Chapel, St. Mary Ovaries.

-l-~ J.JACKSUN. :'"*
550.— The Choir, St. Mary Overies.

545. — General View of St. Mary Oreries, from the South.

549.— Templar, St. Mary Oreries,

,— Gower's Monument.

546.-Noiman Aich, St. Mary Overies,

144

INTERIOR OF THE TEMPLE CHURCH.

'7 *Y
563.— Finials, Canterbury.

i6J.— Crocket?*, Canterbury.

556.— Archiepheopal Chair, Canterbury.

557.— Capital, Crypt, Canterbury.

' 558.— Base, Crypt, Canterbury.

56fc— CapiM"„CanterbB^

651. — The Nave of;Clanferbury Ca.thudraln

' WHammmim

69. — Capital, Crypt, Canterbury.

560.— Base; S.E. Transept, Canterbury.

561.— Capital, S.E. Transept, Canterbury.

555. — Font, Canterbury.

54.-Canterbury Cathedral, before the Tower was Rebuilt.

146

OLD ENGLAND.

[Book II.

entire structure was then concealed by a barbarous screen of the age
of Charles the Second, that extended right across between them, and
over which was placed the organ ; now, once more, the eye ranges
along without interruption from the entrance door up to the very altar
(Fig. 531), through one of the most beautiful of vistas, and the organ
has been removed into a chamber constructed expressly outside the
central window of the chancel, on the north side; the window itself,
by slight but judicious alterations, forming a beautiful open screen
through which the chamber communicates with the church. Then
again, the monuments of all kinds but the beautiful, which were
formerly let into the very body of the pillars or placed in other
equally incongruous positions, have been removed into the triforium
or gallery of the Round ; warm, rich-looking tiles have replaced
the wooden pavement ; gorgeous stained-glass windows again diffuse
their magnificent hues upon every object around, and tell in their
" panes " the story of Him who died that all might live. In a word,
the Temple church now presents, in most respects, an almost per
fect example? on a small scale, of what the grand ecclesiastical
structures of the thirteenth century were generally ; that is, a con
summate and most magical union of all the arts, architecture, paint
ing, sculpture, and music, calculated at once to take man from the
world, that they might guide him to heaven. With one individual
feature of the Temple, we must now conclude our notice of it. On
the floor of the Round lie the sculptured effigies of men who belonged
to the period of Old England which we have at present under re
view, and which, as being undoubted originals, are among the most
interesting pieces of sculpture we possess (Figs. 536, 537). They have
lately been rettored with remarkable success by Mr. Richardson —
having become seriously decayed — and now present to us, each in his
habit as he lived — Geoffrey de Magnaville, that bold and bad baron
of the time of Stephen, who, dying excommunicate, was for a time
hung up on a tree in the Temple Garden here — the great Protector,
Pembroke, who by his wisdom assuaged the tlivisions among his
countrymen after the death' of John — the Protector's sons William
and Gilbert, the former sheathing his sword ; he had fought, and
well, but his race was done ; the latter drawing it in the service,
as he intended, of God, in Palestine, when death stopped the jour
ney — and among others De Roos, one of the barons to whom the
bloodless field of Runnemede has given undying reputation ; the
exquisitely beautiful effigy, with the head uncovered, and the curl
ing locks flowing about it, represent that nobleman. These pieces
of sculpture were originally, like all the others in the Temple,
painted and gilded. We cannot here avoid drawing attention to
the head of a seraph, discovered on the wall between the Round and
the oblong part of the church during the restoration. The expres
sion is truly seraphic. Traces of colour are even now perceptible ;
the cheeks and lips have once borne the natural hues of life, the
pupil of the eye has been painted blue, the hair gilded. In other
heads, also original, the eyes were found to be of glass. How all
this reminds one of the customs that prevailed among the Greeks,'
where some of the most beautiful works the world had ever seen, or
would ever see, were thought to be enhanced by means like those we
have described.
The very magnificent, character of the restoration of the Temple
Church, London, has been attended with one undesirable effect — it
has drawn away our attention from other labours of a similar and
only less important character. Such, for instance, is the restoration
of the Round Church of Cambridge, the oldest of the structures
erected in England in the extraordinary circular form (Figs. 539 and
540). And what gives still higher interest to this building is the fact
alleged that it was consecrated in the year 1101, or several years be
fore the institution of the Order of Knight Templars; so that it can
hardly be attributed to them. In a paper recently read before the
Camden Society, the church is supposed to have been founded by
some one interested in the recovery of the Holy Sepulchre at Jeru
salem, — hence the imitation of the form of that building, and the
name ; and that the object in view was to make provision for constant
prayers for the success of the Crusaders. We learn from the same
pages some other interesting matters. The parish has been tradition
ally known as the Jewry, which designation it is supposed was given
to it in consequence of the model of the most sacred of Jewish struc
tures being placed in it. The stained glass votive window, with a
saintly figure, which attracts the eyes of visitors to the restored
church, it appears preserves the memory of Bede's legendary resi
dence in the vicinity. Of the restoration of this important structure
it is hardly possible to speak too highly. The entire funds, with the
exception of some £1,600 still required, have been raised by volun
tary subs^-iption, and expended by a little band of ardent and
reverential lovers of all that is antique, grand, or 'beautiful in

our eccle.-iastical architecture. The Camden Society especially
stands conspicuous in the good work, which has been carried on, we
are sorry to learn, through "repeated interruptions and obstruc
tions," and which has— a common case— proved a much more
elaborate and costly task than was anticipated. The substan
tial reparation of the decayed fabric was the object the committee set
before themselves ; and, much as these words include, it seems that
they have found it necessary to add the enlargement of one aisle,
the entire erection of another, a new bell-turret, "breaking up
the unsightly uniformity of the rest of the building," the entire fit
ting of the church with open seats and other necessary furniture in
carved oak, and, lastly, the beautiful east window. They have thus
involved themselves in debt to the amount before stated, but we do
not think they will have relied in vain on the public sympathy and
assistance. The stately solemn-looking fabric, so eloquent of those
mighty primeval artists, those architectural giants of our early his
tory, who "dreamt not of a. perishable home" when they dedicated
their skill and cunning to the service of the Almighty, appears
again fresh as it were from their very hands. The restoration was
completed and the church given up to the parish authorities on the
last day of the year 1843, when a statement was made to the world,
concerning which great is yet the clamour in local and theological
publications. It was discovered that the restorers had erected a
stone altar, instead of a wooden one, and that they had placed a
credence— a stone shelf or table— for the display of the elements of
the Sacrament. We leave the facts for our readers to weep over,
or smile at, as they may see occasion.
Of another of the establishments of the Templars, the Preceptory
at Swingfield, situated about eight miles from Dover, and in which
John is said to have resigned his crown to the Pope's Legate, but
little now remains, and that- is used as a farmhouse, while the foun
dations may be traced in various parts of the homestead. The
eastern part, whicli was the most ancient (the Preceptory was
founded before 1190), exhibits three lancet-shaped windows, above
which are the same number of circular ones, and was probably the
chapel (Fig. 543).
A few years ago, when the approaches to the new London Bridge
were in preparation, an agreement was proposed, and all but con
cluded, that a space of some sixty feet should be granted for the
better display of an old church on the Southwark side, and, that a
certain chapel belonging'to the latter should be at the same time
swept away. The church in question, in short, was to be made as
neat and snug as possible, as a fitting preliminary to the new display
that it was to be permitted to make. There were persons, however,
who by no means approved of the scheme. They said that the
Chapel of our Ladye (Fig. 547), which was sought to be destroyed,
was one of the most beautiful and antique structures of the kind in
England. There were some, even, who held that the fact, that the
honoured ashes of good Bishop Andrews lay in it (Bishop Andrews,
whose death drew from Milton, no bishop-lover generally, a most pas
sionate elegy) ought .to make the place sacred. All this no doubt
seemed very nonsensical to the framers of the plan in question, who
quietly appealed to the parishioners of St. Saviour's, and obtained the
sanction of a large majority to the destruction of the Ladye Chapel.
But the persons before mentioned were exceedingly obstinate. They
would not be quiet. The Press then took up the matter, and strove
might and main to forward the views of these malcontents. At
another meeting of the parishioners, the " destructives," to borrow
a political phrase, found their majority had dwindled down to three;
and what was infinitely worse, on a poll being damanded, they were
left in a minority of between two and three hundred — the beautiful
Ladye Chapel and Bishop Andrews' grave were safe. The work
men not long after entered, but it was to restore, not to destroy.
Many, no doubt, owe their first personal acquaintance with, if not
their first knowledge of, the Church, of St. Mary Overies to the
circumstances here narrated, and have been at once surprised, and
delighted to, find so noble and interesting a structure (as beautiful
and almost as large as a cathedral) in such a place— the Borough.
And when they have been thus led to inquire into the history oftlie
building, their pleasure has been as unexpectedly enhanced. The
story of its origin is a tale of romance ; poetical associations of no
ordinary character attach to its subsequent annals ; holy martyrs
have passed from the dread tribunal sitting within its walls to the
fiery agony of the stake at Smithfield. Sto w's account of the origin
of St. Mary Overies, derived from Linsted, its last prior, is as fol
lows :— " This church, or some other in place thereof, was of old
time, long before the Conquest, a House of Sisters, founded by a
maiden named Mary. Unto the which house and sisters she left (as
was left her by her parents) the oversight and profits of a crots

Chap. II.]

OLD ENGLAND.

147

ferry over the Thames, there kept before that any bridge was builded.
This House of Sisters was afterwards, by Swithin, a noble lady,
converted into a College of Priests, who, in place of the ferry, builded
a bridge of timber." Something like corroborative evidence of the
truth of this story was accidentally discovered a few years ago : —
" When digging for a family vault in the centre of the choir of the
church, near the altar, it was found necessary to cut through a very
ancient foundation wall, which never could have formed any part of
the present edifice : the edifice exactly corresponds with that of the
House of Sisters " described by Stow as near the east part of the
present St. Mary Overies, " above the choir," and where he says
Mary was buried.
In a wooden box, in the choir, now lies a remarkably fine effigy,
of wood, of a Crusader : who he was it is impossible to tell with
any certainty, but we venture to think it represents one of the two
distinguished persons to whom St. Mary Overies was next largely
indebted after the humble ferryman's daughter, and the proud lady,
Swithin: tliose two are, " William Pont de l'Arche and William
Dauncy, Knights, Normans," who, in the year 1106, refounded the
establishments, on a more magnificent scale, for canons regular
(Fig. 546). This Pont de l'Arche was probably the same as the
royal treasurer of that name in the beginning of the reign of Rufus.
And as carrying still further the records of the connection between
St. Mary Overies and the ferry first, and afterwards the bridge, it ap
pears from a passage in Maitland (vol. i. p. 44, ed. 1756), that Wil
liam Pont de l'Arche, whom we have just seen as the founder of the
first, was also connected with the last. If we are right in presuming
the Templar to be one of these " Knights, Normans," there can be no
doubt too that originally there was also the effigy of the other (Fig.
549) : the destructive fires that have from time to time injured the
structure explains its absence. There are two curious low-arched
niches on the north aisle of the choir ; were not these the resting-
places of the founders of the priory ? We venture to think so, and
have placed the Templar in one of them. Aldgod, we may observe,
was the first prior of St. Mary Overies. By the fourteenth century,
the buildings had become dilapidated ; a poet, Gower, restored them ;
or at least contributed the principal portion of the funds. Gower was
married in St. Mary Overies in 1397 : and there was at one time a
monument to his wife's memory, as well as to his own ; the last alone
now survives (Fig. 548). This is an exquisitely beautiful work,
which has been most admirably restored to all its pristine splendour,
and where the quaint rhyming inscriptions in Norman French appear
in gay colours, and the effigy of the poet appears radiant in colour
and gilding. His head rests on three gilded volumes of his writings ;
one of them is the ' Confessio Amantis,' his principal and only pub
lished work, the origin of which he thus relates : —
In Themse [Thames] when it was flowende,
As I by boat came rowend,
So as Fortune her time set
My liege lord perchance I met ;
And so befel as I came nigh
Out of my boat, when he me sigh [saw],
He bad me to come into his barge,
And when I was with him at large
Amonges other thinges he said,
He hath this charge upon me laid,
And bade me do my business.
That to his high worthiness
Some newe thing I should book.
King Richard the Second's wishes were fulfilled in the ' Confessio
Amantis.' On the pillar seen in our engraving of Gower's monument ap
pears a cardinal's hat, with arms beneath. They refer directly, no
doubt, to the beneficence of a very remarkable man, Cardinal Beau
fort, Bishop of Winchester, and who in that capacity resided in the
adjoining palace, but indirectly to still more interesting matters, in
which the busy cardinal had the principal share. Who has not
read, and treasured up ever in the memory after, the history of the
poet king, James of Scotland, he who, taken a prisoner whilst yet a
boy, was kept for many long years in captivity, but educated in the
mean time in a truly princely manner ; he who, as he has informed
us in his own sweet verse, whilst looking out upon the garden which
lay before his window, in Windsor Castle, beheld
 .  walking under the tower,
Full secretly new coming her to plain,
The fairest and the freshest younge flower
That ever he saw, methought, before that hour,
and who from that time was no longer heart-whole ; he who in all
probability was only allowed to free himself from one kind of bond
age in order to enter into another, but then that was his marriage
with the lady in question, Jane Beaufort, the cardinal's niece ;— who

but has been charmed by this romance of reality ? It is something
then to be able to add, for the honour of St. Mary Overies, that it
was within its walls that the ceremony took place. We may add to
the foregoing poetical reminiscences, two or three brief, but preg
nant sentences, all derived from the same authority, the parish re
gisters. Under the year 1607 we read, " Edmond Shakspere, player,
in the church ;" and that sums up the known history of one of the
great dramatist's brothers. The date 1625 records, " Mr. John
Fletcher, a man, in the church ;" of whose personal history we
know little more. Aubrey thus relates his death: " In the great
plague of 1625, a knight of Norfolk or Suffolk invited him into the
country: he stayed but to make himself a suit of clothes, and while
it was making, fell sick and died ; this I heard from the taylor,
who is now a very old man and clerk of St. Mary Overy." Lastly
comes the most striking entry of all in connection with the year
1640: " Philip Mas'singer, a stranger." Let us leave the passage,
without comment, in all its awful brevity.
The priory was dissolved in 1539, when Linsted, the prior, was
pensioned off with 1001. a year. The annual revenue was then valued
at 624Z. 6s. 6d
During Wyatt's insurrection in 1554, the insurrectionary troops
were posted in Southwark, and the Lieutenant of the Tower bent his
ordnance against the foot of the bridge to hinder the passage, and also
against the towers of St. Olave's and St. Maiy Overies churches.
One year afterwards still deadlier weapons were directed against the
faith to which St. Mary's belonged, and by its own friends, though
in the hope of benefiting it ; then was clearly seen the reality of the
dangers Wyatt had apprehended, and strove, but unsuccessfully, to
avert, in the sittings of a commission in the church, for the trial of
those diabolical offenders who dared to have an opinion of their
own. Among them first came John Rogers, a prebendary of St.
Paul's, who, when questioned by the judge, Bishop Gardiner, asked,
" Did you not yourself, for twenty years, pray against the Pope?"
" I was forced by cruelty," was the reply. " And will you use the
like cruelty to us?" rejoined Rogers. Of course he went to the
stake, Bonner refusing him permission to speak to his wife. Bishop
Hooper, who was also tried on the same day, was dismissed to the
like fate. John Bradford, another of the victims of the St. Mary
Overies commission, writing, somewhat about this time, of the death
of Hooper, says, " This day, I think, or to-morrow at the utter
most, hearty Hooper, sincere Saunders, and trusty Taylor, end their
course, and receive their crown. The next am I, which hourly
look for the porter to open mo the gates after them, to enter into the
desired rest."
The plan of St. Mary Overies is that of a cross, the principal
part of which is formed by the Lady Chapel, choir and nave ex
tending from east to west nearly 300 feet ; and crossed by the
transept near the centre, where rises the majestic tower, 150 feet
high. The Anglo-Norman choir (Fig. 550) and transept still remain,
and present a fine specimen of the transition state between the com
paratively rude and massive structures of the eleventh century, and
the more elegant and stately productions of the thirteenth. This
portion of the church is now unused ; and the pews have consequently
been removed. The nave was found a few years ago in so ruinous
a state, that it became necessary either to restore it, for which suffi
cient funds could not be obtained, or build on the site of it a less
expensive structure to be used as the parish church, and which
should, in some degree at least, harmonize in style with the rest
of the pile. The new nave has been rebuilt ; but not with such
success as to prevent our deep regret for the loss of the old one.
Our engraving (Fig. 545) exhibits the church as it was before the
rebuilding in question took place. The part nearest the eye shows
the old nave. Many objects of interest are to be found in the inte
rior, in addition to those already incidentally mentioned ; the screen,
for instance, a most elaborate and beautiful piece of sculpture, pre
sumed, to have been erected by Bishop Fox, as the pelican, his
favourite device, is seen in the cornice. It consists of four stories
of niches for statues, divided by spaces, from which project half-
length figures of angels. Right up the centre, from the bottom to
the top, extend three larger niches, one above another, in the place
of the four smaller ones that are found in every other part of the
screen ; these give harmony, completeness, and grandeur to the
whole. Ornament in profusion extends over every part. It will
be seen that the screen forms one mass of the richest sculpture ; and
this, too, is a work of restoration of our own times. The monu
mental sculpture of St. Mary Overies is particularly curious and
interesting, much of it being painted, with the effigies resembling
the natural tints of life both in countenance and costume ; much of
it also referring to interesting personages ; and accompanied in some
cases by inscriptions which provoke a smile by their quaintness, or
U2

143

266 - Cathedral Precinct Gateway.

"ofa.— Ruins of the Priory of Lindisfarn.

573.— Abbey Gateway, Bristol. Ancient Window restored.

671.— St. Augustine's Gate, Canterbury.

1-19

150

OLD ENGLAND.

[Book. II.

a sigh by their mournful beauty. Two specimens must suffice to
conclude our present notice. On the tomb of a grocer, formerly
in the Ladye Chapel, was inscribed,
Weep not for him, since he is gone before
To heaven, where grocers there are many more.
On the very large magnificent piece of monumental sculpture
which encloses the remains of Richard Humble, alderman of London,
his two wives, and his children, we read the following lines, forming
part of a poem attributed to Francis Quarles :—
Like to the damask rose you see,
Or like the blossom on the tree ;
Or like the dainty flower of May,
Or like the morning of the day ;
Or like the sun or like the shade,
Or like the gourd which Jonas had.
Even so is the man, whose thread is spun,
Drawn out, and cut, and so is done.
The rose withers, the blossom blasteth,
The flower fades, the morning hasteth ;
The sun sets, the shadow flies,
The gourd consumes, and Man he dies.

If Glastonbury may be assumed to have been the spot where the
faith of Christ was first expounded to our heathen forefathers, it is
certain that it was at Canterbury that it first exhibited all the
marks of success, and gave promise of becoming in no very distant
period the general religion of the country. There were first heard
the teachings of St. Augustine, who may almost be esteemed the
real founder of Christianity among us, so great were his achieve
ments in comparison with all that had been done before ; — and
there are yet existing two buildings, or parts of buildings, the walls
of which may have often echoed with the earnest and lofty elo
quence of the illustrious apostle. 'One of these is St. Martin's
Church, already noticed (vol. i. p. 58) : he who would visit the
remains of the other, which dispute priority even with St. Martin's
itself, must inquire for the crypt or undercroft of Canterbury
Cathedral. It is a place that would repay anyone for a careful and
protracted examination, if the guardians of the sacred edifice had
not chosen to shut it up for some twenty years, and to make it a
hiding-place for lumber and rubbish. Let the indignation of Eng
land cairjwith a [loud voice that this crypt'shall cease to be dese
crated. Nothing more eminently characteristic of the times of
its erection perhaps exists in the island. The walls are without
ornament, and in that respect contrast strongly with the pillars,
upon which the Saxon architect has expended all his fancy.
When Ethelbert gave Augustine and his companions leave to settle
in the capital of his kingdom, Canterbury, we know, from Bede,
that there was a small church existing in the city, which had been
previously used for Christian worship, and which must have been then
of some age, for Augustine found it necessary to repair and enlarge
it. That was the church which, it is supposed, Augustine raised
to the rank it has ever since maintained of the first English
cathedral, and that is the church of which these rude unorna-
mented walls of the crypt probably yet form an existing me
morial. For although it was made little better than a ruin by the
Danes in 938, and again, after reparation by Odo, brought to a
similar state by the same people in 1011 ; though Canute's ex
tensive restorations were also followed by scarcely less extensive
injuries after his decease, and during the early days of the Con
quest ; and though, lastly, during the Conqueror's reign, Lanfranc
rebuilt the whole almost from the foundation, we still percei,ve,
during all these repairs and restorations, something like evidence of
parts of the walls and ibundations having been left untouched ; no
doubt in consequence of their exceedingly massive and inde
structible character. These walls, in short, if we read their history
aright, speak to us, in all their simplicity, of a time approaching
within a century or two of the life of the Saviour himself, to whom
they have been so long dedicated, and of builders whose handiwork
can hardly be mistaken for the labour of any other people in what
ever part of the world found — the Romans, who are supposed to
have built it for the use of their Christian soldiers.
Turning from the plain walls to the curiously-decorated pillars,
we evidently pass over several centuries of architectural history.
A strange mixture of the simple and the rude with the elaborate
and the fantastical do these pillars present, not only in their super
ficial ornaments, but in their very form ; some are wreathed or
twisted, some round, and no two, either of the shafts or of the
capitals, are alike (Figs 557, 558, and 559). A distinguishing
feature of Norman architecture, visible even in its latest and most
beautifuj^etages, namely, breadth and strength, rather than height
and stateliness, is here most strikingly developed. The circum

ference of the shafts is about four feet, and the entire height of
plinth, shaft, and capital is only six feet and a half ; from these pillars
rise arches of corresponding span, supporting the roof at the altitude
of fourteen feet; the quaint and stunted, yet massive aspect of the
place, may from this brief description be readily imagined, lo
determine the date of the later portions with any precision is im
possible ; but there is little question that they belong to a period
anterior to the Conquest.
A building thus surrounded by the holiest and most' endearing
associations was, of course, a continual object of improvement ;
scarcely one of its prelates but seems to have done something m
the way of rebuilding or enlarging ; a fact strikingly attested by
the variety of styles the cathedral now exhibits, even to the least
architecturally instructed eyes. Thus while Lanfranc, the Nor
man, who succeeded Stigand, the Saxon archbishop, in the see, is
understood to have left the whole essentially finished, we find
Anselm and others of his successors not the less busily at work,
pulling down here, and adding there ; and such labours of love were
not confined to the archbishops, for it seems that Conrad, a prior of
the adjoining monastery, was allowed to participate in them ; who
accordingly improved the choir so greatly that the part was for
some time afterwards known by his name. But a new and more
solemn interest was to invest those walls, than even that derived
from their early history. In the second half of the twelfth century,
Thomas-a-Becket was the archbishop, and a troubled period did
this prelacy become both for the see and England generally. The
struggle for supremacy between the royal and the ecclesiastical
powers was then at its height ; and for a time the former appeared
to have triumphed. The' beginning of the year 1170 found Becket
the resolute asserter of all the rights and privileges of the church,
in his seventh year of exile ; but unshaken, uncomprising as ever.
At last, in July of the same year, the king, Henry the Second,
fearing Becket would obtain from the Pope the power of excommu

nicating the whole kingdom, agreed to a reconciliation, and the two
potentates met on the Continent ; the king holding Becket's stirrup
as he mounted his horse. The archbishop now prepared for his
return. But many warnings of danger reached him. Among
others, was one to the effect that Ranulf de.Broc, the possessor of
a castle within six miles of Canterbury, who had sworn that he
would not let the archbishop eat a single loaf of bread in England,
was lying in wait, with a body of soldiers, between Canterbury and
Dover. The determined spirit of Becket was revealed in his reply.
Having remarked that seven years of absence were long enough for
both shepherd and flock, he declared he would not stop though he
was sure to be cut to pieces as soon as he landed on the opposite coast.
But if he had powerful enemies among the nobles and chief ecclesi
astics, he had the great body of the people for his friends. As he
was about to embark, an English vessel arrived ; and the sailors were
asked as to the feelings of the English towards the archbishop ;
they replied that he would be received with transports of joy. He
landed at Sandwich on the 1st of December, and he was not disap
pointed in the welcome he had anticipated from his poorer coun
trymen. But he had already insured his destruction, by an act of
extraordinary presumption or courage, for it may be called either ;
he had sent before him letters of excommunication, which he had
obtained from the Pope, against his old enemies the Archbishop of
York, and the Bishops of London and Salisbury. These almost
immediately set out for Normandy, to the king, from whom they
implored redress. " There is a man," said they, " who sets England
on fire ; he marches with troops of horses and armed foot, prowling
round the'fortresses, and trying to get himself received within them."
This was indeed adding fuel to the fire that already burnt in the king'g
breast : " How !" cried he, in a frenzy, " a fellow that hath eaten
my bread, — a beggar that first came to my court on a lame horse,
dares to insult his king and the royal family, and tread upon the
whole kingdom, and not one of the cowards I nourish at my
table — not one will deliver me from this turbulent priest !" These
memorable words fell upon ears already inclined perhaps by private
hatred to listen to them with delight ; such were Reginald Fitzurse,
William Tracy, Hugh de Morville, and Richard Brito, knights,
barons, and servants of the king's household ; who, leaving the
king to determine in council that he would seize Becket and proceed
against him in due form of law for high treason, quietly set out for
England to take the matter into their own hands. Whilst Becket
was marching about in a strange kind of state, with a host of poor
people armed with old targets and rusty lances for his defenders,
the conspirators were gradually drawing towards him by different
routes. On Christmas-day the archbishop was preaching in the
cathedral, with more than his accustomed fervour, his text being
" I come to die among you ;" and one cannot but look with a cer-

Chap. II.]

OLD ENGLAND.

151

tain amount of admiration and sympathy on the man, notwithstand
ing the undoubted violence and ambition of the prelate, when we
see him performing all the last and most questionable acts of eccle
siastical power, excommunication of personal enemies, with the
•clearest anticipation of what might be the personal consequences.
On that day, he told the congregation that one of the archbishops had
been a martyr, and that they would probably soon see another ; and
forthwith blazed out the indomitable spirit as fiercely and as bril
liantly as ever. " Before I depart home, I will avenge some of the
wrongs my church has suffered during the last seven years ;" and im
mediately he fulminated sentence of excommunication against Ranulf
and Robert de Broc, and Nigellus, rector of Harrow. Three-days
after, the knights met at the castle, of that very Ranulf de Broc ;
and finally determined upon their plans. The next morning
they entered Canterbury with a large body of troops, whom they
stationed at different quarters in order to quell any attempt of the
inhabitants to defend the doomed man. They then proceeded to
the monastery of St. Augustine (Fig. 570) with twelve attendants,
and from thence to the palace, v> here they found the archbishop.
It was then about two o'clock. They seated themselves on the floor,
in silence, and gazed upon him. There was awful meaning in that
glance ; a no less awful apprehension of it, in the look with which
it was returned. For the murderers to do what they had deter
mined upon, against such a man, and at such a period, was, if
possible, more terrible than for the victim to suffer at their hands.
At last Reginald Fitzurse spoke : " We come," said he, " that
you may absolve the bishops whom you have excommunicated ;
re-establish the bishops whom you have suspended ; and answer for
yonr own offences against the king." Becket, understanding they
came, from Henry, answered boldly and warmly, yet not without
symptoms of a desire to give reasonable satisfaction. He said he
could not absolve the archbishop of York, whose heinous case must
be reserved for the Pope's judgment, but that he would withdraw
the censures from the two other bishops, if they would swear to
submit to the papal decision. They then questioned him upon the
grand point — supremacy : " Do you hold your archbishopric of
the king or the Pope?" "I owe the .spiritual rights to God
and the Pope, and the temporal rights to the king." After some
altercation, in the course of which Becket reminded three of
them of the time when they were his liege men, and haughtily
said, that it was not for such as they to threaten him in his own
house, the knights departed, significantly observing they would
do more than threaten. Whether the hesitation, here apparent,
arose from a desire to try to avoid extremities, or from want of mental
courage to perform the terrible act meditated, may be questioned ;
both influences probably weighed upon their minds. By and bye
they returned to the palace, and, finding the gates shut, endeavoured
to force an entrance. Presently Robert de Broc showed them an
easier path through a window. The persons around Becket had
been previously urging him to take refuge in the church, thinking
his assailants would be deterred from violating a place so doubly
sacred — by express privileges, and by its intimate connection with
the growth of Christianity in the country ; but he resisted until the
voices of the monks, as they sang the vespers in the choir, struck
upon his ears, when he said he would go, as duty then called him.
Calmly he set forth, his cross-bearer preceding him with the
crucifix raised on high, not the slightest trepidation visible in his
features or his movements ; and when the servants would have
closed the doors of the cathedral, he forbade them ; the house of
God was not to be barricadoed like a castle. He was just entering
the choir when Reginald Fitzurse and his companions appeared at
the other end of the church, the former waving his sword and crying
aloud, '' Follow me, loyal servants of the king." The assassins were
armed from head to foot. Even then Becket .might have escaped,
in the gloom of evening, to the intricate underground parts of the
cathedral; but he was deaf to all persuasions of the kind, and
i advanced to meet the knights. All his company then fled, except
one, the faithful cross-bearer, Edward Grynie. " Where is the
traitor?" was then called out; but as Becket in his unshaken pre
sence of mind was silent to such an appeal, Reginald Fitzurse added',
" Where is the archbishop ? " " Here am I," was the reply ; " an
archbishop, but no traitor, ready to suffer in my Saviour's name."
Tracy then pulled him by the sleeve, exclaiming, " Come hither ;
thou art a prisoner! " but Becket perceiving their object, which
was to get him without the church, resisted so violently as to
make Tracy stagger forward. Even then hesitating and uncertain,
hardly knowing what they said, and unable to determine what
' they would do, they advised Becket to flee iu one breath,
to accompany them in another. It is probable, indeed, that
Becket might have successfully and safely resisted all their

demands, had he condescended to put on for one hour the garb he
ought never to have put off — gentleness ; but his bearing and language
could hardly have been more haughty and contemptuous than now,
when he saw himself utterly defenceless and encompassed by deadly
enemies. Speaking to Fitzurse, he reminded him he had clone him
many pleasures, and asked him why he came with armed men into
his church. The answer was a demand to absolve the bishops ;
to which Becket not only gave a decided refusal, but insulted
Fitzurse by the use of a foul term that one would hardly have
looked for in the vocabulary of an archbishop. " Then die," ex
claimed Fitzurse, striking at his head with his weapon ; but the
devoted cross-bearer interfered ; when his arm was nearly cut
through, and Becket slightly injured. Still anxious to avoid the con
summation of a deed that necessarily appeared so tremendous in
their eyes, one of them was heard even then to utter the warning
voice, " Fly, or thou diest." The archbishop, however, clasped his
hands, bowed his head, and, with the blood running down his face, ex
claimed, " To God, to St. Mary, to the holy patrons of this church,
and to St. Denis, I commend my soul, and the church's cause.'' He
was then struck down by a second blow, and a third completed the
tragedy. One of the murderers placed his foot on the dead pre
late's neck, and cried " Thus perishes a traitor." The party then
retired, and after dwelling for a time at Knaresborough, and finding
they were shunned by person* of all classes and conditions, spent
their last days in penitence in Jerusalem : when they died, this
inscription was written upon their tomb — " Here lie the wretches
who murdered St. Thomas of Canterbury." The spot where this
bloody act was performed is still pointed out in the northern wing
of the western transept, and that part of the cathedral is in con
sequence emphatically called Martyrdom ; the martyr being the
designation by which Becket was immediately and universally
spoken of. The excitement caused by the event has had few parallels
in English history. For a twelvemonth Divine service was sus
pended ; the unnatural silence reigning throughout the vast pile
during that time, making the scene of bloodshed all the more im
pressive to the eyes of the devout, who began to pour thither from
all parts of the world in a constantly-increasing stream. Canterbury
then became a kind of second Holy City, where the guilty sought
remission of their sins— the diseased, health— -pilgrims, the blessings
that awaited the performance of duly-fulfilled vows. Henry him
self, moved by a death so sudden and so dreadful, and so directly
following upon his own hasty words, did penance in the most abject
manner before Becket's tomb; and two years later gave up all
that he had so long struggled for by repealing the famous con
stitutions of Clarendon, which had subjected both church and clergy
to the civil authority.
It was a noticeable coincidence that only four years after the death
of Becket the cathedral was all but destroyed by fire ; a calamity
that at such a time would hardly appear like a calamity, from the
opportunity it afforded of developing in a practical shape the
passion that filled the universal heart of England to do something
memorable in honour of the illustrious martyr. To say that funds
poured in from all parts and in all shapes, gives but little notion
of the enthusiasm of the contributors to the restoration of the edifice.
The feelings evidenced by foreigners show forcibly what must have
been those" of our own countrymen. In 1179, says Mr. Batteley,
in his additions to Somner's ' Antiquities of Canterbury,' " Louis
VII., King of France, landed at Dover, where our king expected
his arrival. On the 23rd of August these two kings came to
Canterbury, with a great train of nobility of both nations, and
were received by the archbishop and his corn-provincials, the prior,
and convent, with great honour and unspeakable joy. The obla
tions of gold and silver made by the French were incredible. The
king [Louis] came in manner and habit of a pilgrim, and was con
ducted to the tomb of St. Thomas in solemn procession, where. he
offered his cup of gold, and a royal precious stone, with a yearly
rental of one hundred muids [hogsheads] of wine for ever to the
convent." The task of rebuilding even a Canterbury • Cathedral
would be found but comparatively light under such circumstances ;
so the good work proceeded rapidly towards completion, until the
fabric appeared of which the chief parts remain to the present time.
It is not, therefore, in its associations merely that the cathedral
reminds us at every step we take in it of the turbulent and ambi
tious,' but able and brave priest,— it may really be almost esteemed
his monument; for admiration of his self-sacrifice, veneration of Aw
piety, and yearning to do him honour, were the moving powers
that raised anew the lofty roof, and extended the long-drawn aisles
and nave and choir. The direct testimonies of the people's affec
tion were still more remarkable. Among the earliest additions
made after the fire to the former plan was the circular east end,

479.— Early English CapitaVChaptei*House,
Lincoln.

y<V»

m

?/' 10

mm Hi 'ill
H 1
1 1
P j

i jijv

n

57Si — Normrfn Capitals, Tower, Lincoln.

a"4, — Lincoln Cathedral,

L:

£80;— Early English Turret,
Lincoln,

IIP" I

111 i 1b  '
IIP
MffliSSa«fl ,i : EMM

»»1 .— Gal:le Cross, Lincoln.

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583,— Bradtet, Chaptfer^House, Lincoln.

576. — Lincoln Cathedral.

582.— Gable Cross, Lincoln.

5§5. — Bos-, Nave, Lincoln*,

.M8

584.— Bracket, Lincoln.

5" 7.— Interior of Lincoln Cathedral.

sfe? Li:1 jSm

586. — North-west View of Durham Cathedral.

588.— Duiham Cathedral.

590.— Stone Chair in the Chapter-House, Durham.

59i. — Arcade, Chapter-House, Durham.

587. — Durham.

589.— Durham Cathedral.

no. 20.

[OLD ENGLAND.]

153

154

OLD ENGLAND.

[Book. II.

including the chapel of the Holy Trinity, and another called Becket's
Crown (Fig.'567) ; the last so designated, according to some autho
rities, from the circumstance of the chapels having been erected
during the prelacy of Becket, whilst others attribute it to the form
of the roof: there may have been, however, a much more poetical
origin ; Becket's crown was possibly intended to be significant of the
crown of martyrdom here won by the slaughtered prelate* It was in
that chapel of the Holy Trinity that the shrine, famous the wide world
over, was erected, and which speedily became so rich as to be without
rival, we should imagine, in Europe. It was " builded," says Stow,
" about a man's height, all of stone, then upwards of timber plain,
within which was a chest of iron, containing the bones of Thomas
Becket, skull and all, with the wound of his death, and the piece cut
out of his skull laid in the same wound. The timber-work of this
shrine on the outside was covered with plates of gold, damasked with
gold wire, which ground of gold was again covered with jewels of
gold, as rings, ten or twelve cramped with gold wire into the said
ground of gold, many of these rings having stones in them, brooches,
images, angels, precious stones, and great pearls." The contents
of the shrine were in accordance with the outward display. Eras
mus, who obtained a glimpse of the treasures a little before the
Eeformation, says that under a coffin of wood, inclosing another
of gold, which was drawn up by ropes and pulleys, he beheld
an amount of riches the value of which he could not estimate.
Gold was the meanest thing visible; the whole place glittered with
the rarest and most precious gems, which were generally of extra
ordinary size, and some larger than the egg of a goose. "When
Henry VIII. seized upon the whole, two great chests were
filled, each requiring six or seven men to move it. In strict
keeping with the character of the brutal despot was his war with
the dead, as well as with the living, when he ordered the remains
of Becket to be burned, and the ashes scattered to the winds. The
shrine, then, has disappeared, with all its contents, but a more
touching memorial than either remains behind — the hollowed pave
ment — worn away by countless ¦ knees of worshippers from every
Christian land.
As our ecclesiastical builders seem to have had not the smallest
notion of " finality " in their labours — but when a building was
even fairly finished, in the ordinary sense of the term, were
sure to find some part requiring re-erection in a new style — we
find Canterbury for centuries after Becket's death still in pro
gress: the Eeformation found the workmen still busy. There is
something in all this truly grand, harmonizing with and ex
plaining the mighty ends obtained; reason and feeling alike
whisper — Thus alone are cathedrals built. Yet how deep and per
vading the influence of art must have been upon the minds of all
who were connected with such structures. Centuries pass, archi
tect after architect dies off, and is succeeded by others, yet still tne
work grows in beauty, and above all in the loftiest, but under the
circumstances apparently the most difficult kind of beauty — expres
sion ; each man evidently understands his predecessor so thoroughly,
that he can depart from his modes of working — his style, secure
still of achieving his principles. Look at Canterbury. How many
changes of architectural taste are not there visible ; how many dif
ferent periods bf architectural history may not be there traced : yet
is the effect anywhere discordant ? — Oh, he were indeed presump
tuous who should say so ! Is it not rather in the highest degree
grand and impressive, conveying at once to the mind that sense of
sublime repose which belongs only to works of essential unity ? "We
need not subjoin any detailed architectural descriptions. The cathe
dral is pleasantly situated in an extensive court, surrounded by
gardens, cemetery, the deanery and prebendal houses, and what
remains of the archiepiscopal palace, and of other buildings con
nected with the cathedral, among which may be mentioned the
staircase (Fig. 569). The precinct gate(Fig. 566) forms the prin
cipal entrance to this court. As to the cathedral, the double tran
septs may be mentioned as the most noticeable feature of the plan,
which represents, as usual, a cross. The choir is of extraordinary
length, nearly two hundred feet, and the great tower is generally
esteemed one of the chastest and most beautiful specimens we pos
sess of Pointed architecture. Its height is two hundred and thirty-
five feet. The entire length of the building measures five hundred
and fourteen feet. One of the two western towers has been re
cently restored. The cathedral is exceedingly rich in objects of
general interest to the visitor, and may be readily conceived when
we consider what a history must be that of Canterbury, how many
eminent men have been buried within its walls, what splendid ex
amples of monumental and other sculpture exist there even yet,
faint tokens of the wealth art once lavished upon its walls and
niches and jjrindows. But among the crowd of interesting objects

there are two which peculiarly attract notice: a sarcophagus of
grey marble, richly adorned, and bearing the effigy of a warrior, in
copper gilt— that is the monument of the Black Prince, wonderfully
fresh and perfect ; and an ancient chair in the chapel of the Holy
Trinity, formed also of grey marble, in pieces, which is used for the
enthronization of the archbishops of the see, and which, sayeth
tradition, was the ancient regal seat of the Saxon kings of Kent,
who may have given it to the cathedral as an emblem of their pious
submission to Him who was then first declared unto them— the
King of Kings (Fig. 567).

If St. Augustine's Monastery possessed no other claim to atten
tion than that of having been the burial-place of the great English
Apostle of Christianity, it were amply sufficient to induce the
visitor to the glorious cathedral to pass on from thence to a space
beyond the walls, along the northern side of the Dover road, and
there muse over the powers that are from time to time given into
the hands of a single man to influence to countless generations the
thoughts, feelings, manners, customs— in a word, the spiritual and
temporal existence of a great people. Yes ! it was here that, after
successes that can fall to the lot of few, even of the greatest men,
Augustine reposed in 604 : he found England essentially a heathen
country; he left it, if not essentially a Christian one,'still so far
advanced to a knowledge of the mighty truths of the Gospel, as to
render it all but certain that their final supremacy was a mere
question of time. The monastery was founded by him on ground
granted by Ethelbert, and dedicated to St. Peter and St. Paul. It
was Dunstan who, some centuries later, with honourable reverence
for Augustine'* memory, rededicated the establishment to those
Apostles and to St. Augustine. Not long after that time Augus
tine's body was removed into the cathedral. We fear the pious
monks of the monastery must have felt their stock of charity
severely tried on the occasion, if we may judge from their known
sentiments towards their brethren of Christ Church, who were thus
honoured at their expense.
There are some curious passages in what we may call the mutual
history of the two establishments. As they both sprang from one
source, Augustine, and were of course founded with the same views,
they looked on each other, as usual, with' feelings that must charm
the hearts of those who think it rather creditable than otherwise
to be " good haters." Their disputes began early ; " neither,"
says Lambarde, " do I find that ev&r they agreed after, but were
evermore at continual brawling between themselves, either suing
before the king or appealing to the Pope, and that for matters of
more stomach [pride] than importance; as, for example, whether
the Abbot of St. Augustine's should be consecrated or blessed in
his own church or in the other's ; whether he ought to ring his bells
at service before the other had rung theirs ; whether he and his
tenants owed suit to the bishop's court, and such like." At the
dissolution Henry VIII. took a fancy to the monastery, and made it
one of his own palaces. Queen Mary subsequently granted it to
Cardinal Pole ; but on her death it again reverted to the crown ;
and Elizabeth on one occasion, in 1573, kept her court in it. Sub
sequently Lord Wotton became the possessor, whose widow enter
tained Charles II. whilst on his way to take possession of the
throne ; the note then given to the building may have caused it
to be known as Lady "Wotton's Palace, which designation is still
in use.
We may gather from these facts that the monastery in its days
of prosperity must have been an unusually, magnificent structure ;
and, great as have been the injuries since experienced, both in the
shape of actual destruction and in the disgraceful treatment of
what little was still permitted to exist, no one can look upon the
architectural character or extent of the pile, as evidenced in the
remains, without being impressed with the same conviction (Fig.
570). The space covered by the different buildings extended to
sixteen acres. Of these the gateway (Fig. 571), a superb piece of
architecture, is preserved essentially entire.

A monastery at Bristol, dedicated also to St. Augustine, may be
here fitly noticed. This was built by Eobert Fitzharding, the
founder of the present Berkeley, family, and a prepositor, or chief
magistrate, of the city during the stormy reign of Stephen. The
establishment afterwards attained to such a pitch of wealth and
splendour, that when Henry VIIL, in placing his destructive hands
upon the religious houses of England generally, was moved in
some way to spare this, he was able to create a bishop's see out of
the abbey : lands the abbey church was consequently elevated to

Chap. II.]

OLD ENGLAND.

155

the rank it now holds, of a cathedral. As an example of the sum
mary way in which the king's creatures were accustomed to deal
with such beautiful and revered structures, it is not unworthy of
notice that a part of the church was already demolished, before the
arrangement we have mentioned was formally completed. The
transept, the eastern part of the nave, and the choir of the original
church, are the parts that were saved, and their stately character
leaves us grateful for the possession of so much. There is also a
tower at the western end of the building, of considerable size
and height, and richly decorated. The beautifully arched roof
is always looked upon with admiration. The painted windows
are also ancient, and therefore interesting. Among the monu
ments are those to the Eliza of Sterne and to the wife of the
poet Mason. But perhaps a still more valuable portion of the
abbey than any we Have mentioned is to be found in the gateway
(Fig. 573), which has been attributed to an earlier period — the
arms of the Confessor are sculptured upon its front, — and which
is universally esteemed one of the finest Norman gateways in
England. It is to be observed, in examining the engraving, that the rising
of the ground in the course of so many centuries has materially
injured the effect of the proportion of the arch to the rest of the
edifice ; and that the window seen there is not what we now see in
the gateway itself, but_ what we ought to be able to see there ;
comparatively modern sashes having replaced the antique bay
window.

The first view of Lincoln Cathedral obtained by the approaching
traveller is something to remember for a lifetime. One of the
most beautiful of English structures is certainly at the same time
one of the most nobly situated. As we advance towards it from
the south by the London road, we suddenly arrive at the brow of a
steep hill, leading down into a fertile valley extending far away to
the right and to the left, and through the centre of which the river
Witham glides along, whilst immediately opposite rises a corre
sponding eminence to that on which we stand, at about the distance
of a mile or so. In that valley, and stretching up that hill to and
over its top, lies outspread before us like a panorama the beautiful
city of Lincoln ; and crowning the whole stands the glorious cathe
dral, its entire length, four hundred and seventy feet, fully displayed,
with its two western towers rising at the left'extremity, and the grand
main tower, truly worthy of its name, lifting itself proudly up from
the centre to the height of some two hundred and sixty-seven feet.
Such is the first view obtained of Lincoln Cathedral ; such the impres
sions excited by it : and a nearer inspection enhances even the warmest
admiration. The architect finds in it the history of his art during
two centuries, and those two of more importance (we refer to England
only) than all other periods put together, written in styles that make
those of words appear tame indeed to his eyes. The sculptor in Lin
coln Cathedral looks around him with astonishment at the loftiness of
design, as well as consummate beauty of execution, which much
of the works that pertain to his own province exhibit. The
antiquary finds the blood quickening in his veins as he thinks of
the rich storehouse of material that here awaits him, and On which
he may exercise, if he pleases, his industry, talents, and zeal for
years together ; no fear that he will exhaust them. But we are
now before the western front, a perfectly unique and stupendous
work ; simple even to a fault, perhaps, in the generally level character
of so large a surface, but still sublime in expression, most richly
elaborate in ornament, and in the highest degree interesting from
the manner in which it tells us, as we look upon it, how it was
gradually completed in different eras. There, above all, we per
ceive in the central portion, including that series of recesses with
semicircular arches rising to so many different heights, — the original
Norman front of Eemigius, the founder of the earliest structure ;
the pointed window and arch of the central recess alone excepted,
which have been substituted for the ancient round ones (Fig. 576).
The date of the erection is the reign of the Conqueror, with whom
Eemigius came over from Normandy. _ He appears to have been a
most enterprising, able, and benevolent man. William of Malms-
bury says of him, " that being in person far below the common pro
portion of men, his mind exerted itself to excel and shine.'7 To
show the labourers the spirit that, actuated him in rearing the
mighty pile, he is said to have carried stones and mortar upon his
own shoulders. Of his benevolence it may be sufficient to observe —
and the fact is interesting as affording a glimpse of the domestic
customs that in some degree ameliorated the frightful misery
wrought by the Conquest — he fed daily, during three months of
each year, one thousand poor persons ; and clothed the blind and

the lame among their number, in addition. Such was the Bishop
of Dorchester, who, having removed the see to Lincoln, then one of
the most important places in the kingdom, founded the see of Lin
coln, and the cathedral, with the adjoining bishop's palace, and
other buildings for the residence of the ecclesiastical officers. Un
fortunately one pleasure was denied him, that he must have looked
forward to with no ordinary emotions ; he died the very day before
the grand opening of the minster ; to which — warned of his approach
ing dissolution — he had invited all the most distinguished prelates of
the realm to assist in the solemn act of consecration. One of these,
the Bishop of Hereford, curiously enough, had excused himself from
attending the ceremony, on the ground that he had learnt, by astro
logy, that the church would not be dedicated in the time of Ee
migius. Of this early fabric the ceutral portion of the west front
is all that now remains ; as to the remainder, it has been supposed,
by an authbrity competent to offer an opinion, that it did not ma
terially differ from the present structure in arrangement or size ;
except that it ended eastwards about sixty feet within the present
termination, and that the eastern front formed a semicircular tribune ;
therefore very unlike the present one, of which it may be said, that
if any one desires to see an example of the Gothic, so perfectly
beautiful that it is impossible to conceive any more exquisite com
bination of architectural forms and architectural decorations, let him
look upon that eastern front of Lincoln Cathedral.
The building of the cathedral occupied somewhat more than two
centuries ; but this did not, as we have partly seen, arise from the
circumstance that it was unfinished for so long a time, but that
accidents, among them a fire and an earthquake, did great damage
to the pile at different periods ; another circumstance that no doubt
delayed the final completion of the structure was the desire to improve
it from time to time as the new and admired Gothic continued to
develop fresh beauties and excellencies. , Among the bishops to
whom, after Eemigius, the cathedral was largely indebted, we may
mention Hugh de Grenoble, to whom we owe much of the present
fabric, erected by him between 1186 and 1200, no doubt in conse
quence of the earthquake 6f 1 185. The east or upper transept, with
the chapel attached to it, the choir, chapter-house, and east side
of the western transept, with parts of the additions to Eemigius's
west front, are all attributed to Bishop Hugh. Even in this collec
tion of examples of the architecture of but fourteen years, the
progression of the art is clearly visible ; beautiful as is the choir,
for instance, a pure unmixed specimen of early Gothic, it is far
surpassed by the chapter-house' — with its most airy and elegant of
interiors — where, in the centre of the lofty octagonal building, rises
a stately pillar formed of a group of slender pillars, and which, at a
certain height, branch off in all directions, still rising, over the roof.
This bishop, as his name implies, was a native of Grenoble ; and
so distinguished for his austere piety, that when he died, in 1200,
and was brought to Lincoln for interment, the Kings of England
and Scotland, who were then holding a conference in the city, went
to meet his body at the gates, and bore it on their shoulders to the
cathedral close, whence it was carried to the choir by a multitude
of the most distinguished personages of the realm, and finally
buried at the east end of the cathedral. Such a man was of
course sure to be canonized by the Eoman Catholic Church — that
ceremony took place in 1220; and sixty-two years later his
remains were taken up and deposited in a shrine of pure gold in the
presbytery. The enormous value of this memorial may be conceived
from a statement of its dimensions— eight feet by four. The shrine
was plundered at the dissolution of the monasteries, as well as the
cathedral generally. The inventory of jewels, of articles of gold
and silver, and of costly vestments taken from Lincoln, fills several
folio pages of the great edition of the ' Monasticon.' The nave,
unequalled, it is supposed, in the world for its combined magnitude
and beauty of proportion, and the curious Galilee porch, so richly
decorated, are among the next additions : the use of the last-named
work has been thus explained by Dr. Milner (< Treatise on the
Ecclesiastical Architecture of the Middle Ages') :— " There were
formerly such porches at the western extremity of all large churches.
In these public penitents were stationed, dead bodies were some
times deposited, previously to their interment, and females were
allowed to see the monks of the convent who were their relatives.
We may gather from a passage in Gervase, that upon a woman's
applying for leave to see a monk, her relation, she was answered in
the words of Scripture, ' He goeth before you into Galilee, there
you shall see him.' Hence the term Galilee. It is well known that
at Durham Cathedral women were not even allowed to attend
Divine service except in the Galilee." To a greater man than any
we have yet mentioned, Grosteste, we are indebted for the lower
portion of the main tower. What powerful kings strove in vain
X2

595. — Capital, Galilee, Darliam.

.596.— Ornamental Shaft, Door of
North Cloisters, Durham.

592. — Nave of Durham Cathedral

097.— Ornamental Shift, Door of North
Cloisters, Durham.

598. — Norman Moulding,
Durham.

600.— Norman Moulding,
Durham. _

599.— Norman Moulding,
Durham.

bOALB OF frEET.

601. — Norman Moulding,
Durham.

156

158

OLD ENGLAND.

[Book II.

to do, was accomplished by Bishop Grosteste ; he opposed success
fully the papal power in its very palmiest days. The Pope and he,
it appears, did not agree about various matters, and no wonder,
since he was accustomed to talk about the inordinate ambition of the
pontificate, and to speak disrespectfully of some of its convenient,
but not very just, customs — for instance, that of appointing Italian
priests to offices in the English church. So Grosteste went to
Rome, to see if he could not come to a better understanding with
his spiritual superior. His ill success was made apparent on his
return, by his publication of a letter in which he animadverted in no
very measured terms upon the gross perversions of the papal power,
and instituted a most unflattering comparison between the living and
past possessors of the chair of St. Peter. The wrath of the Pope
may be imagihed : " What ! " he exclaimed, "shall this old dotard,
whose sovereign is my vassal, lay down rules for me? ,By St.
Peter, I'll make such an example of him as shall astonish the
world." He accordingly excommunicated Grosteste ; who astonished
him, whatever he might have done the world, in return, by pro
ceeding quietly with his episcopal duties, making every one speak
of him with reverence for his wisdom and piety, and dying at last,
eighteen years afterwards, not a jot the worse in any respect for the
Pope's thunders and excommunications. The only other portion
of the structure that we need particularize is the east end, including
the presbytery, or space beyond the choir, and the eastern front, of
which we have spoken with so much admiration : all this appears to
have been built in the latter half of the thirteenth century ; and
formed a suitable termination to so grand a work, surpassing, as it
did, all that had been previously erected. In these — the earlier parts
—a very gradual progression of improvement in the style forms the
chief characteristic ; but in the presbytery and east front, while
with- consummate art we see all the essentials of the former
preserved, a striking air of novelty is superadded, and the whole
becomes markedly richer, airier, more delicate and stately, without
any diminution of grandeur or strength. The buttresses almost
cease to look like buttresses, so profusely are they decorated with
crockets, creepers, and fjnials, with clustered columns at the angles,
and with brackets and canopies for statues on the faces. The
windows now cease to be mere single lights, they are divided into
several compartments by mullions ; they begin to revel in all the
luxuriant variety pf geometrical tracery. From the highest to the
lowest details, a very "shower of ;beauty " seems to have suddenly
fallen over all; and Time has in most parts dealt so.gently with
them, that the very freshness of that early period seems to be still
preserved. There are, of course, many matters of interest connected with the
erection of the cathedral, which we may have not even referred to
and many others of. its general history, or of its individual feafures^
upon which our space either forbids us to comment at all, or but
slightly. The bishop's porch, at the eastern corner of the southern
side of the building, was originally one of the most sumptuous and
admirable specimens of mingled architecture and sculpture that
even Old England itself could furnish ; and, mutilated as the porch
now is, more than traces of its superb beauty yet remain. The
principal part is the alto-relievo above the doorway, representing
the Last Judgment in a style of the loftiest design, that fills one
like the beautiful statue of Eleanor in Westminster Abbey, with
astonishment and perplexity : how could such works have been
executed in England in the thirteenth or fourteenth century ? The
various chapels and monumental remains of Lincoln are in thein-
selves a wide field for study and observation ; but we can only here
remark, that among the latter are those of Bishop Eemigius, Ca
therine Swynford, wife of John of Gaunt, and sister of Chaucer's
wife, and the remains of a monument, covering the stone coffin of
little St. Hugh, a boy alleged to have been crucified by the Jews
in derision of the Saviour— a charge absurd enough in all but
its consequences; these are painful even to relate. In 1255 one
hundred and two Jews were taken from Lincoln to the Tower; and
eventually twenty-three were executed in London, and eighteen at
Lincoln. The explanation, frightful as is the wickedness it involves,
if true, seems to be partially given in the existing record of a com
mission to Simon de Passeliere and William de Leighton, to seize
for the king's use the houses belonging to the Jews who were hanged
at Lincoln. Knowing what atrocities were perpetrated, avowedly
to make their victims, the Jews, submit to spoliation, there is but
httle difficulty in believing, however reluctantly, that the spoilers
were glad to avail themselves of any conceivable means of directing
against that unhappy people the greatest possible amount of popular
odium. A painted statue of the boy formerly existed here. b<=arin<r
marks tfrerucifixion in the hands and feet, and blood issuing from a
wound in the side. The story has been commemorated in the ballad

of ' Sir Hugh, or the Jew's Daughter ; ' and in the ' Canterbury
Tales,' where Chaucer, in the Prioress's Tale, alludes to
O yoimge Hugh of Lincoln slain also;
With cursed Jewess, as it is notable,
For it n'is but a little while ago : &c.
Great Tom of Lincoln must have a passing word. The old bell,
having been accidentally broken in 1827, has been since recast, with
the additional mefal of the four lady bells that also hung in the
great tower ; and it now deserves more than its former reputation.
Its size and weight are enormous. The height exceeds six feet ; the
greatest breadth is six feet ten inches and a half; the weight is five
tons eight hundredweight. As to tone and volume of sound, the
imagination can conceive nothing more grandly, musically solemn.

The records of the foundation of many of our earliest monastic
houses, as well as of the faith to the cultivation and dissemination
of which they were devoted, exhibit, as we have already partly
seen, ample store of miracles on the part of the teachers, responded
to by a most unbounded credulity on the part of those who were
taught. But all the wonders of all the other religious establish
ments of England put together, hardly equal those which Durham
was once accustomed to boast of, and which were received with
implicit credence; for any important event in its early history" to
have happened in a simply natural manner seems to have been the
exception : the supernatural was the mode — and the rule. Our
readers must not, therefore, be surprised to find that an intrinsically
serious and solemn subject has, in the' lapse of ages, and through
the growth of an intelligent scepticism as to these continual aberra
tions from all the ordinary laws of nature, become surrounded with
many amusing and ludicrous associations. Fortunately the com
mencement of the history of Durham, which is also the commence
ment of the history of the introduction of Christianity into that
part of the island, has not been impaired by such derogatory in
fluences. Ethelfrith, King of Northumberland, at his death left a
widow and seven sons, who were obliged to fly into Scotland, to
escape the hands 'of the usurper Edwin, the boys' uncle. Donald
IV. then reigned in Scotland, and being a convert to Chris
tianity, instilled its principles into the minds of the ' youthful
exiles. The eldest son ultimately obtained a portion of his in
heritance, after the usurper's death, but relapsed into heathenism,
and was murdered by Cadwallon, King of Cumberland, who over
ran the whole country. It was to do battle with this monarch that
Oswald, a second son, then set out from Scotland, and placed him
self at; the head of the miserable Northumbrians. The utmost
force he could collect, however, was so small in comparison .with
that commanded by Cadwallon, that but for his reliance on the Power
so recently made known to him, he must have resigned the contest
for his kingdom in despair. Undismayed, he prepared for the bloody
fight, and causing a cross to be brought to him in front of the armv,
he held it with his own hands in an upright posture, whilst his
attendants, animated by his enthusiasm into a similar conviction
that they were to be aided by more than mortal influences, heaped
up the earth around, and made it fast. , Then addressing the men,
he said :— " Let us fall down on our knees, and beseech the
Almighty, the living and true God, to defend us against, this proud
and cruel enemy;" and they obeyed him. After devotions, he led
on his little band toward the enemy, the whole actuated by a
spirit that was irresistible ; a complete victory was obtained. Full
of gratitude, Oswald sent to Scotland for some holy man, who might
assist in the conversion of the inhabitants of his newly-gained
dominions, and one was sent whose austere manners proved so° little
to the taste of the Northumbrians, that Oswald was fain to send
him back. He was replaced by Aidan, who seems to have been all
that was desired, and who, having successfully looked for the most
suitable spot, at last fixed upon the island of Lindisfakne, where
he established a monastery and a bishopric. Of the sanctity' of the
lives of these primitive Christians of Northumbria we have a kind
of testimony in the name subsequently given to the place— Holy .
Island. But a more direct and interesting evidence is to be found
in Bede's charming picture of the lives of the monks during the
period that the Scottish bishops continued to fill the office of abbot.
One could almost fancy Chaucer must have had it in view when'
at a later period, he drew his inimitable portrait of the " poure
parson." "Their frugality and simplicity of life, and parsimony
appeared in the place of their residence, in which there was nothing
superfluous, or unnecessary for the humblest life. In the church
only magnificence was permitted. Their possessions consisted chiefly
in cattle, for money was only retained till fit opportunity offered
to distribute it to the poor. Places of entertainment and reception

Chap. II.]

OLD ENGLAND.

159

were unnecessary, for the religious were visited solely for their
doctrines and the holy offices of the church. When the king
came thither, he was attended only by five or six persons, and had
no other object in view than to partake of the rites of religion,
departing immediately after the service ; if perchance they took
refreshment, it was of the common fare of the monks. The
attention of those pastors was confined to spiritual matters only ;
temporary affairs were deemed derogatory to the holy appointment ;
and thence proceeded the profound veneration which was paid by
all ranks of people to the religious habit. When any ecclesiastic
went from the monastery, it was to preach the word of salvation,
and lie was everywhere received with joy, as a messenger of the
divinity ; on the road the passengers bowed the head to receive
the holy benediction and sign of the cross, with pious reverence
treasurin"- up the good man's precepts as documents of the most
salutary import. The churches were crowded witli a decent
audience ; and when a monk was seen entering a village in his
travels, the inhabitants flocked about him, entreating admonition
and prayers. On their visitation, donations and riches were not
their pursuit ; and when any religious society received an augment
ation to the revenues of the house, as an offering of Christianity
by the donor, they accepted it as an additional store with which
they were intrusted for the benefit of the poor." The humble
fishermen of Galilee might have recognised kindred spirits in these
monks of Lindisfarne.
That most terrible of scourges that was perhaps ever inflicted
upon an unfortunate people, a neighbouring nation of pirates,
ultimately caused (in connection with another matter, to which we
shall refer presently) the removal of the bishopric from Lindis
farne. Again and again the merciless and insatiable Dane burst
down upon the island, so Holy to all but him, and destroyed and
slaughtered what he could not carry away or make captive ; and at
last the monks in despair ceased for a time their exertions to make
the place retain its original importance. After the Conquest, how.
ever, a new priory was erected, holding the position of a cell only
to the former bishopric. The remains of that edifice (shown in
Fig. 572) are singularly beautiful in their ruin. Scott has described
the whole as forming : —
A solemn, huge, and dark red pile,
Placed on the margain of the Isle ;
and which, it is to be feared, will be lost to the next generation,
notwithstanding tha care that is said to have been of late years
bestowed on them : the material is a soft red freestone, which wastes
rapidly under the action of the elements. About one hundred yards
distant from the mainland, with which Lindisfarne itself is con
nected at low water, and facing the priory, there stands, on a low
detached piece of rock, the foundations of a building upon which
most persons look with even deeper interest than on those stately
neighbouring ruins. In some parts the walls yet rise a foot or two
above the ground ; these walls and foundations belonged to a small
chapel, dedicated to the saint who was the immediate cause of the
removal of the bishopric — St. Cuthbert, himself one of the early
prelates. His remains were buried at Lindisfarne. But, having
taken up the body about the year 875, and conveyed it away from
Lindisfarne, to avoid the attacks of the Danes, the Bishop Eandulf
and the Abbot Eadred, and all the monastic household, were kept
marching to and fro, now alarmed by rumours that the Danes were
coming this way, and the monks consequently going that ; then again
stopped by fresh intelligence,- and compelled to diverge into new
tracks. No wonder that the good bishop at last felt heartily tired
of these incessant and somewhat unseemly manoeuvres, and resolved
to put an end to them by going over to Ireland. Accordingly
the party, which included a great number of the more zealous and
attached Christian people, proceeded to the mouth of the Derwent,
and took ship; but they had scarcely got out to sea, before a
violent storm arose, and drove the vessel back to the spot from
whence they had departed. To minds accustomed to look upon all
such events as bearing some spiritual meaning, it was considered
certain that God thus signified his will that they should not quit
England. Food now grew scarce, and the people, driven away by
hunger, gradually disappeared, until there were left only the
bishop, the abbot, and seven other persons to take care of the
saintly corpse. In the midst of their distress, one of the number,
Hunred, had a vision which greatly comforted the wanderers ;
they were told, through him, by a celestial voice, to repair to the
sea, where they would find a book of the Gospels they had lost out
of the shjp during the storm, and whicli appears to have been
greatly valued, for it was adorned with gold and precious stones.
The message. then continued, that they they would next find a bridle

hanging on a tree, which was to be placed on a horse that would
come to them, and the horse was to be attached to a car that they
would also meet with, and thus the body might be carried with
greater ease and comfort. Everything happened as foretold ; and
again the party moved on, following the horse wherever it led.
We must not forget to mention, as a very interesting evidence in
favour of the truth of all the more natural parts of the story, that
at the time of Symeon of Dunelmensis, the ancient historian of the
see, from whom this part of our narration is derived, the book was
still preserved in the library at Durham, and it is supposed that one
of the most valued treasures of the British Museum is this ancient
copy of the Gospels. When our travellers had thus spent seven
years in incessant motion, Halfdane, the great Danish leader, was
seized with a loathsome disorder, which made his presence so
unendurable to his fellow-men, that he suddenly went out to sea
with three ships, and there perished. And thus, peace at last
blessed the troubled ecclesiastics of Lindisfarne. They went first
to the monastery of Cree, where they were " lovingly entertained,"
and where they stayed for some months. The country at that time
was in a terrible state of anarchy ; and it is to the credit of the
monks that they set to work to reduce the whole into order. It
was now the abbot's turn to have a vision ; in which St. Cuthbert
appeared to him, and enjoined Eadred to repair to the Danish
camp, and there inquire for a youth called Guthred, the son of
Hardecnut, who had been sold into slavery ; him he was to redeem,
and proclaim king. It was a bold manoeuvre, for if it succeeded,
Guthred must be ungrateful indeed not to remember who placed
him on the throne. , It did succeed ; the slave became a monarch ;
botli Danes and Northumbrians, wearied with their perpetual
contests and the misery thence produced, acknowledging him at Os-
wiesdune. And now was seen the ecclesiastical importance of that
lucky vision of the abbot's ; the see was formally translated from Lin
disfarne to Cunecasestre (Chester -le -Street), and the Bishop Eandulf
made the first prelate there ; whilst the whole of the land between
the Wear and the Tyne was bestowed by Guthred on St. Cuth
bert, or, in other words, on the Bishop of Durham, and thus became
the foundation of their palatine jurisdiction.
A new alarm, about 995, caused by Sweyn's appearance in Eng
land, set the bishop, and all his clergy and religious, once more
on their travels with St. Cuthbert's body. Another miraculous
intervention is held to have taken place, and the wandering party
were directed to Durham. The spot at that time was strong by
nature, but uninhabited, and not easily made habitable — it was so
thickly wooded. In the midst was a small plain, which the hus
bandman had reclaimed ; that was the only evidence of civilization
the place presented. But there were willing hearts and hands
ready to flock thither from all parts, and help these memorable
guardians of the most memorable of saints to set up a house and a
temple in the wilderness. From the river Coquet to the Tees they
came in " multitudes." The trees were grubbed up, and there soon
appeared, in the place of the little oratory of wattles first and tem.
porarily put up, dwellings for all the people who had come with the
ecclesiastics, and then a church of stone, a more honourable resting-
place for the saint than the wattled building, but also intended to
be but temporary ; for Aldun, the bishop, of course desired to rear
a structure worthy of the saint's reputation. There seems little
doubt here, also, but that we have followed the details of a true
history, the more marvellous portion alone excepted ; and a very
striking idea they give us of the foundation of one of the most
interesting cities of the kingdom. The see was again formally,
and for the last time, translated-, and hence the BisTiopric of
Durham. There is a tradition relating to one of the removals
of the body, thus commemorated by Scott, in his ' Marmion :' —
In his stone coffin forth he rides,
A ponderous bark for river tides ;
Yet light as gossamer it glides
Downward to Tillmouth cell;
and, strange to say, the tradition may be true. Not only did the
coffin exist till within the last few years, perhaps does so still, but
was so constructed that statical experiments have proved it to
be capable of floating with a weight equal to that of a human
body. It was finely shaped, ten feet long, and three and a half iu
diameter. The history of the bishops of Durham forms too large a subject
even to be glanced at in our pages ; so we shall merely give one
passage from it, of a noticeable character, and then conclude with a
short account of the building around which all these historical
recollections, as it were, concentrate themselves — the cathedral.
Durino- the frightful period of the Conquest, which fell with more
than its ordinary severity on the northern counties, — William, for

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604.— Waltham Abbey, ftom the North-west.

' 608.— Transept, St. Albans.

606.— Abbey of St. Albans.

600.— Waltliam Abbev.

607.— Nave, St. Albans.

160

617.— Flint Masonry, St. Ethel-
belt's Gate House, Norwich.

618.— Flint Masonry, St. Ethel-
bert's Gate House, Norwich.

610.— Norwich.

mw r. T^TkTi-fT A TVTTl "1

161

162

OLD ENGLAND.-

[Book II.

instance, at one time wasted the whole country from York to
Durham with fire and sword — the Saxon Bishop Egelwin died a
prisoner in the Isle of Ely, of a broken heart, and Walcher, a
Norman, was appointed his successor. That ecclesiastic was by no
means content to be an ecclesiastic only, no matter what the rank ;
he purchased the earldom of Northumberland, and thus joined in
his own person, for the first time in the see, the spiritual and civil
jurisdiction. His success was not at all calculated to encourage
imitation. When the people saw the office they had been accus
tomed to venerate connected with the infliction of legal severities,
they began to murmur against the man who had so lowered it, and
they did not long confine themselves to murmuring only. On the
14th of May, 1080, Walcher was holding a public assembly at
Gateshead in exercise of his obnoxious civil authority ; and although
large numbers of the people were congregated, there appeared
nothing in their appearance and demeanour to excite particular
¦alarm. But suddenly there arose the cry of " Short rede,, good
rede ; slay ye the bishop," which had been the watchword chosen,
and at once the people drew arms from beneath their garments and
rushed upon the bishop's party, while others set fire to the church.
Walcher, seeing escape hopeless, determined to die with dignity, so,
veiling his face with his robe, he advanced towards the assailants,
one of whom instantly killed him with a lance. Of the succeeding
early bishops of the see may be named Ralf Flambard, Hugh de
Pudsey, and Anthony Bek, whose life gives one an extraordinary
idea of the power occasionally obtained by the more eminent
churchmen of the middle ages ; he was at once Bishop of Durham,
Patriarch of Jerusalem, Governor of the Isle of Man, and, as a
military chieftain, able to send his thirty-two banners to the battle
-of Falkirk. Among the later bishops was Tunstall, of whom, on
*"his return to England, Erasmus touchingly wrote : — " I seem now
-scarce to live, Tunstall being torn from me; I know not where I
,- shall fly to."
Durham, like Lincoln, enjoys the inestimable architectural ad
vantage of a truly noble site. The city, being nearly surrounded
by the river Weir, forms a kind of peninsula, the centre of which
rises to a considerable height, with the cathedral at the summit,
surrounded at its base by buildings and hanging gardens which
descend to. the river, and are there continued as it were in the
delightful walks of the " Banks," which skirt the water on both
sides. The situation of the cathedral and the other ecclesiastical
buildings far surpasses any pictures we have ever seen of it — truly
'"beautiful and grand it is ! You make your way up to the eminence
-on which stands the cathedra], through steep and narrow lanes,
"which bring you into a fine open space, with the cathedral on the
^south of the square. The palace, or castle (now occupied as the
fjniversity of Durham), forms another side. You descend to an
ancient bridge, and are now under these grand monuments of
ancient magnificence. A beautiful walk leads along their base
overhanging the river at a considerable height. You cross a noble
bridge of modern construction, and find a similar walk on the oppo
site bank. You have now, following the windings of the river,
passed from the west to the south side of the cathedral, and in
continuation of it are most picturesque groups of houses rising one
above another on the steep bank, embosomed in trees. The wind
ing course of the river brings you now to the east end, and still
you have the same grand view of this lordly place. Well might
the old bishops feel that theirs was a princely rule, as they gave
laws from such a throne.
The cathedral was begun in the reign of Eufus, by Bishop
William de Carilepho, and in part or entirely completed by the next
bishop, Kalf Flambard. The structure then erected we possess
in an all but perfect state. The eastern extremity, where the
Nine Altars (see plan, Fig. 593) now stand, was probably in the
Norman building semicircular ; the nave (Fig. 592) and the choir
were open to the timber roof, instead of being vaulted as at present ;
partial alterations, improvements, and some important additions
have also been made; but essentially we have the true Norman
building before us, when we gaze upon the noble semicircular
arches, and the tall, massive, and in some instances curiously
decorated pillars of Durham Cathedral. We may observe by the
way that some of these pillars are twenty-three feet in circumference.
The Galilee Chapel (Fig. 603), the uses of which are explained in
our account of Lincoln Cathedral, was the first addition to the
original structure : this was built by Hugh de Pudsey, in the latter
half of the twelfth century ; and we perceive in it the first of that*
series of architectural stages, from the Norman to the finished
Gothic, which give to Durham, as to some of our other cathedrals,
so muft artistical value.
The lightness and elegance of the pillars, though in every other

respect genuine Norman, strike one at a glance. The great
tower, the most important of all the additions, was finished by
Richard Hotoun, who became prior in 1290; and who had also
the honour of completing the chapel of the Nine Altars. The
great western window was the work of Prior John Fossour, about
1350, and the altar-screen,, erected at the expense of John, Lord
Neville, was finished in 1380 by Prior Berrington. It is painful to
have to record that such a building should ever have been allowed
to be touched by incompetent and tasteless hands ; need we say that
they belong to the last century ? which, with its predecessor, enjoys
an eminence of a peculiar kind, — they were, in all thht concerns archi
tectural art, the worst periods of English modern history. Durham,
at the time to which we refer, underwent a thorough repair, and we
suppose, in the ideas of the repairers, beautifying — " Heaven save the
mark ! " — and the result is in many parts but too evident. The
Galilee was also repaired by Cardinal Langley at the commence
ment of the fifteenth " century, in the exquisitely florid-Gothic of
the time. The dimensions of the cathedral are four hundred and
eleven feet in length, eighty in breadth, and the main tower two
hundred and twelve in height. The interior, as usual, presents many
objects of high interest — -as the sumptuous bishop's throne (Fig.
602), the stone chair (Fig. 590), and above all, the common tomb
of St. Cuthbert and of the Venerable Bede, the author of the
valuable Ecclesiastical History to which we are indebted for many
of the most interesting facts relating to the establishment of
Christianity and Christian houses and temples in England.

[Waltham Abbey and Saint Albans form a page of cuts imme
diately following Durham. We postpone their description till we
have completed our notices of the earlier cathedrals.]

A curious story is told in explanation of the origin of Norwich
Cathedbal. During the reign of William Eufus, Herbert de
Lozingia, an eminent ecclesiastic, attracted towards himself a
degree of unpleasant attention from his spiritual superiors, which
ended in his being cited to appear before the Pope at Rome, to
answer for simoniacal practices, among which in particular was
alleged against him his purchase of the see of Thetford. The
punishment was at once characteristic and sensible, and involving
what we call poetical justice : he was commanded to build various
churches and monasteries at his own expense; and thus Lozin<ria
found enforced upon him a very arduous undertaking for the good of
the church, when he had been intending to pursue what he conceived
to be more peculiarly his own good. Among the buildings so erected,
it seems, were the earliest cathedral of Norwich, and the monastery,
both commenced in 1094. Many of our important cities and foun
dations are accustomed to boast of the public spirit and liberalitv of
their founders or early promoters ; the city of Norwich, it will be
seen, may date much of its prosperity to qualities of a very opposite
kind. Lozingia, however, appears to have been a shrewd — perhaps,
after the shame of the exposure, a repentant — man, and to have
performed the penance imposed upon him in so creditable a spirit
that he was ultimately allowed to transfer the bishopric of whicli:
he had been deprived, Thetford, to Norwich, and was there con
secrated the first bishop in the cathedral of his own erection. Of
this structure it has been supposed by some that we possess no
remains, on account of the presumed general destruction of the pile
in the extraordinary events that mark the history of Norwich in
connection with the year 1272. It appears that, from a very early
period after the establishment of the monastery, quarrels had broken
out between the monks and the citizens, the former asserting their
entire independence within their own precincts, the latter maintain
ing that the charter granted by Henry I. in 1122 gave them right
over every part of the city without exception. There was a fair
then held at certain times on a piece of ground called Tombland,
which lay directly before the gates of the monastery : this spot
formed a very bone of contention between the two parties, and at
last the bad feelings excited broke out in sudden violence and blood
shed. The monks or their retainers, it matters little which, fell
upon the citizens, and killed several. The people of Norwich were
exasperated in the highest degree. An inquest was held upon
the bodies of the dead, a verdict of murder returned against those
who had killed them, and a warrant issued for their apprehension
The monks—who seemed to have felt themselves quite safe
through the whole proceedings— now thought it necessary to resort
to more decided warfare ; so having let loose the spiritual artillery
at their command, in the shape of a sweeping excommunication of
the entire body of citizens, they then took more ordinary weapons
into their hands, and amused themselves by picking off a passing
citizen every now and then, by a well-directed shot. If this was

Chap. II.]

OLD ENGLAND.

163

their reading of their religious duties, it was only in strict keeping
that they should prefer the holiest day for the more important
deeds. On the Sunday before St. Lawrence's-day, tired of this
desultory warfare, the monastic belligerents sallied forth from their
high-walled monastery, with a " great «oise, and all that day and
night went in a raging manner about the city," killing here and
there a merchant or other inhabitant, and plundering here and
there a house. They finished by breaking open a tavern kept by
one Hugjh de Bromholm, where they drank all the wine they could,
and left the rest to run to waste from the open taps, and* then these
good and faithful servants returned to their admiring prior. The
citizens appear to have remained more patient than one might
expect under their provocations, till this last and worst of all. But
then the magistrates assembled, word was sent to the king of what
had takeu place, in order that he might give them redress, and in
the mean time a general assemblage of the people was called for the
next morning, to arrange measures of defence. They met — an
army in numbers, though unfortunately not in discipline. Be'fore
the chief 'persons of influence could instil into their minds the in
dispensable qualities of order, patience, and firmness, they were
borne away by some uncontrollable impulse of anger towards the
i monastery, where they flung themselves tumultuously against the
gates, and endeavoured to force an entrance. The prior resisted
for a while the raging storm of assailants, but at last they burnt
down the great gates of the close, with the church of St. Albert
that stood near, and theu swept on, with redoubled energy and
determination, to fire the chief conventual buildings. The almonry
was speedily in flames, then the church doors, then the great tower.
Many of the people ascended the neighbouring steeple of St.
George's, and from thence, by means of slings, threw fiery missiles
into the great belfry, beyond the choir of the cathedral, and thus in
a short time the whole building was enveloped in flames. Besides the
injury done to the building, the monastery lost all its gold and silver
ornaments, its costly vestments, holy vessels, and library of books ; for
what the fire spared, was carried off by the incendiaries. Most of the
monks fled, but the sub-dean, and some of the clerks and laymen, were
killed, where they were met with, in the cloisters and in the precincts ;
others were hurried into the city, to share the same bloody fate ;
and some were imprisoned. The prior fled to Yarmouth, but it
was in order that he might return with fresh strength, and take
full vengeance for the sufferings his own disgraceful conduct had
brought upon the monastery. He entered Norwich with sword
and trumpet in hand — what a picture of the priest militant ! — and fell
upon the people in their own way, with fire and sword ; and having
satiated himself, withdrew, to wait, and consider, like the men of
Norwich, now that all was over between themselves, what would
not both have to answer for to a third party, the government of
the country — in other words, the king. Even-handed justice was
undoubtedly to be dreaded by both ; but that was just the sort of
justice that was seldom dispensed when church and laity stood as
the disputants on either side of the judgment-seat. Henry's first
proceeding was enough to show the citizens what they might expect.
He summoned a meeting of the hierarchy, at Eye in Suffolk ; and
the result was, that an interdict was laid upon the town generally ;
all persons directly concerned in the riots were excommunicated ;
thirty-four persons were drawn through the streets by horses, and
dashed to pieces ; others were hanged, drawn, and quartered, and
afterwards burnt ; and a woman who was recognised as having set
fire to the gates, was burnt alive. And, as on all such occasions
in the middle ages, there must be a something forthcoming for
the royal treasury, why, twelve of the men of Norwich, no doubt
the very richest that could be in any way implicated, were mulcted
of their possessions. Such was the punishment of the people ;
what was the sentence against their opponents and oppressors, who
had so recklessly provoked their fury ? The prior's conduct was
evidently too bad to be altogether looked over, so he was sent to
prison for a short time, and whilst there resigned his priory. And
that Was all. The church did not even suffer in its revenues.
Before the interdict was taken off, the citizens were compelled to
pay three thousand marks towards the re-edifying of the cathedral,
and one hundred pounds in money, for a pix, or cup of gold, weigh
ing ten pounds.
It is strange and lamentable that, after this tragical event, no
wise and statesman-like measures were carried into effect to prevent
their recurrence for the future ; and although the scenes of. 1272
were never repeated, the cause of all the jealousy and ill-feeling
remained in active operation down to the time of Cardinal Wolsey,
when the city formally resigned all jurisdiction within the priory
walls; and the priory all power without them. That was just
before the Reformation, which settled the matter in its own sum

mary fashion, by quietly doing away with the monastery altogether.
It had been supposed, we repeat, that the church built by Lozingia
was entirely destroyed in this fire, and that the present must have
been erected in its place. But it is astonishing how any one who
had even looked at the cathedral could allow himself for a moment
to doubt that the original edifice is still preserved to us. The
wood-work, decorations, &c, must certainly have been destroyed,
and the structure, generally, seriously injured ; but not so seriously
as to involve anything like a rebuilding of the whole, for a more
characteristically Norman edifice does not exist in the country
than the present cathedral of Norwich ; and it would be absurd
to suppose that such a style would have been adopted at the close
of the thirteenth century, when Pointed architecture was giving
us some of its most exquisite examples of the perfection to which
it had attained. The very plan of Norwich is as unmistakably-
Norman as the buildings erected on it, — transept without aisles or
pillars, choir extending beneath the tower in the centre of the
structure, into the very nave itself, circular eastern extremity, form
ing within a chancel with side aisles running round it, and circular
chapels. It is, in a word, the very decided Norman character of Nor-
"wich that makes it, notwithstanding its smaller size and comparatively
undecorated aspect, its decayed surface, and cramped position, one of
the most interesting of our cathedrals. The length of the whole
building is four hundred and eleven feet ; and the tower, one of the
finest specimens of decorated Norman extant, rises with its spire,
which is of later date, to the great height of three hundred and
thirteen feet. One single ancient statue-tomb of an enriched cha
racter, and one such only, is to be found in the church — Bishop
GoldwelFs, shown in Fig. 620. The plain aspect of the cathedral
may, no doubt, be in a great degree attributed to the injuries done
in the time of the civil war. Bishop Hall, the satirist, who suf
fered from both parties, not being apparently partisan enough for
either, has given us an interesting account of what took place.
In his ' Hard Measure,' he says, " It is tragical to relate the
furious sacrilege committed under the authority of Linsey, Tofts
the Sheriff, and Greenwood ; what clattering of glasses, what beat
ing down of walls, what tearing down of monuments, what pulling
down of seats, and wresting out of irons and brass from the windows,
and graves ! — what defacing of arms, what demolishing of curious
stone-work that had not any representation in the world," but of the
cost of the founder and the skill of the mason ! what piping on
the destroyed organ-pipes ! Vestments, both copes- and surplices,
together with the leaden cover, which had been newly cut down
from over the greenyard pulpit, and the singing-books and service-
books, were carried to the fire in the public market-place ; a lewd
wretch walking before the train in his cope, trailing in the dirt
with a service-book in his hand, imitating in an impious scorn the
tone, and usurping the words of the Liturgy. The ordnance being-
discharged on the guild-day, the cathedral was filled with mus
keteers, drinking and tobaccOning as freely as if it had turned
alehouse." An interesting appendage of the monastery remains on the south
side of the cathedral, — a cloister, also of later date than the original
buildings, forming a large quadrangle with a handsome door
way and lavatories. But the most striking feature of the locality
is the Erpingham gateway, a truly superb work. Few but
will remember the name of the founder as that of the gallant
knio-ht of Henry V.'s- army, who, whilst commanding the ar
chers at Agincourt, had the honour of giving the signal for the
first momentous forward movement, which he did- by throwing
his truncheon high into the air, and exclaiming " Now strike !"
.And they did strike, and with such effect that the French never
'through the conflict recovered from the blow thus given by the
bowmen of England under their grey-headed leader at the very-
outset. Considering how great a favourite Sir Thomas was with
the victor of Agincourt, and the treatment that Lord Cobham
receiving during the same reign for his religious heresy, it is a
curious and noticeable circumstance in Sir Thomas's history to find
that he too at one time had been dallying with the proscribed Lollard
principles, and had exerted himself to promote their diffusion. But
Henry Spencer, the "warlike Bishop of Norwich," then ruled
over the diocese, who would fain have pursued as short a way with
-the followers of Wickliffe as he did with those of Wat Tyler. In
that most famous of English insurrections, the bishop, unlike many
of the more powerful nobles, who shut themselves up in their strong
castles, went forth with his retainers to meet the revolters in the
field, where he speedily overthrew them ; then, having sentenced
them in crowds to the scaffold, he laid aside the warrior and judge,
and became the ministering priest to his own victims, and exerted
busily to save their souls as to destroy their bodies.
i Y 2

himself as

¦fiKllf!ii<W/i#«!!i»,l>J 629.— Non4ft Arcade, Norwich
164

¦Nonrum Capital, I'ast End of
Gallery, Norwich. 4

631.— Arcade, Norwich.

634. -Capital and Base, Worcester.

635. — Tudor Hadges, Shrine of Prince Arthur, Worcester.

636.— Capital and Base, Chiptar II rise, Worcester.

C32.— Worcester, General View.

637.— Effigy of King John,
Worcester.

633.— King John's Tomb, Worcester.

638.— Effigy of Lady Hareoort,
Worcester.

165

166

OLD ENGLAND.

[Book II.

When such a man declared that if he found any Lollards in his
diocese, he would make them hop headless, or fry a faggot, to use
his own suitable mode of expressing his benignant sentiments,
there was no possibility of mistake as to the matter. Lollardism
might be safe enough, but it was assuredly a dangerous time and
place for the Lollards. Sir Thomas Erpingham seems to have felt
this, and to have, desisted in time, when he found that not all his
popularity deterred the bishop from throwing him into prison : so
he agreed, as the price of his release, to erect a gatehouse at the
entrance of the precinct, over against the west end of the cathedral,
and renounce all heresies for the future. Hence the erection of
the gateway shown in our engraving (Fig. 609).
The matter altogether was deemed of such importance, that
Henry IV. took steps publicly to reconcile the knight and the
bishop, first by declaring in parliament that the proceedings had
been good, and that they had. originated in great zeal, and then
by directing them to shake hands and kiss each other in token
of friendship, which they did. The reconciliation, unlike such
forced ones generally, turned out real, for Sir Thomas became as
willing, as he had already been an unwilling, benefactor to the
cathedral ; and one of the bequests of his will was a provision of
three hundred marks to the prior and convent of Norwich, to found
a chantry for a monk to sing daily mass for him and his family
before the altar of the holy cross in the cathedral. It has been
supposed, from the circumstance that his wife, who died four years
after Sir Thomas's imprisonment, made no mention in her will of
saints, as was usual, that it was her influence which had led the
knight towards Lollardism, rather than any powerful inherent con
victions of his own. If so, it ought to be no imputation on his
moral courage that he declined making a martyr of himself. One
should be very sure what one does think, when stakes and bonfires
begin to argue. The interest attached to this gateway, as well as
its remarkable beauty, induce us to dwell for a few seconds on its
details. Mr. Britton, in his work on Norwich Cathedral, thus
speaks of it : — " Amongst the great variety of subjects and designs
in the ecclesiastical architecture of England, the Erpingham gate
way may be regarded as original and unique; and considering the
state of society when it was first raised, and the situation chosen,
we are doubly surprised, first at the richness and decoration of
the exterior face, and secondly, in beholding it so perfect and
unmutilated after a lapse of four centuries. The archivolt mould
ings, spandrils, and two demi-octangular buttresses, are covered
with a profusion of ornamental sculptures, among which are thirty
small statues of men and women, various shields of arms, trees,
birds, pedestals and canopies ; most of these are very perfect, and
some of the figures are rather elegant. The shields are charged
w'ith the arms of Erpingham, Walton, and Clopton, the two latter
being the names of two wives of Sir Thomas Erpingham. In the
spandrils are shields containing emblems of the Crucifixion, the
Trinity, the Passion, &c, while each buttress is crowned with a
sitting statue, one said to represent a secular, and the other a
regular priest, &c." The first of these priests has a book in his
hand, from which he appears to be teaching the youth standing at
his side. The regular priest has also his book, but appears to be
making no use of it, and turns his eyes idly upon the passengers
who may go through the gate. Bloomfield, the historian of the
county, thinks this was subtilly designed by Sir Thomas " to signify
that the secular clergy not only laboured themselves in the world,
but diligently taught the growing youth, to the benefit of the world';
when the idle regular, who by his books also pretended to learning,'
did neither instruct any nor inform himself, by which he covertly
lashed those that obliged him to their penance, and praised those that
had given him instruction in the way of truth." Sir Thomas himself
kneels in effigy in the pediment of the gateway, a remarkable
instance to after-times of the power exerted by the clergy of his
own day.
In simplicity, we may say plainness of decoration, the exterior
of Worcester Cathedral presents a striking contrast to that of
Exeter, which we shall presently notice. The outlines of the form
are light and beautiful, and the large size gives them grandeur ; but
those objects achieved, the architects, unlike the architects of our ca
thedrals generally, seem to have rested content, and to have shunned
altogether that elaborate richness of decoration which so generally
characterizes these works, and which show so happily the unwearied
desires of all concerned to be constantly doing something to render
art more worthy of its sublime objects. They were surely the least
conceited of men, those old ecclesiastical builders : it is a fine lesson
they have bequeathed to the world, and usable in a thousand ways.
The nobl«t temples ever raised by human hands were raised by

them ; works that, to all eyes but their own, not only in their own
time, but to all time, present and future, appeared, and must appear
essentially perfect, demanding but one thought and sentiment,— yet
compounded of a host of thoughts and sentiments, — admiration, to
them, on the contrary, appeared to be but so many centres of study
and improvement. Art was long; and life was short, they saw ;
and they were content, therefore, to labour, each in his allotted space,
in the raising of great works for others, and thought nothing of
making great names for themselves. It is curious to see at how
early a period a kind of antagonist feeling, a desire to check rather
than to participate in such enthusiasm, exhibited itself at Worcester-
We may premise that the see of Worcester was founded so early as
the seventh century, by Ethelred, King of Mercia, and probably a
church then existed in the city, on the site of the present building.
In 969 the endowments of the cathedral were removed to the
church of St. Mary's convent, which then assumed the rank pre
viously attached to St, Peter's, but the latter building, or rather its
site, obtained, a few years later, the restoration of its privileges ;
St. Oswald having, however, first built a new church in the burial-
ground. This was burnt by the followers of Hardicanute in 1041,
and replaced by an entirely new edifice, erected by Bishop Wulstan.
As the workmen were pulling down the remains of the spoiled
church, the prelate was noticed weeping. One of his attendants
told him he ought rather to rejoice, since he was preparing an
edifice of greater splendour, and more suitable to the enlarged
number of his monks. He replied, " I think far otherwise ; we
poor wretches destroy the works of our forefathers, only to get
praises to ourselves ; that happy age of holy men knew not how to
build stately churches, but under any roof they offered up them-.
selves living temples unto God, and by their example incited those
under their care to do the same ; but we, on the contrary, neglecting
the cure of souls, labour to heap up stones." One might fancy that
the-feeling thus evidenced remained in force at Worcester through
all succeeding alterations and reparations, and more particularly
those consequent on the extensive damage done in the fires of 1113
and 1202, when both city and cathedral were burnt : and that the
plain exterior that we behold to this day at Worcester is in itself
but an evidence of it. The works carried on after the fire of 1202 '
were so important, that the structure was newly consecrated ; and
it is that building which forms our cathedral. The plan of Wor
cester is on a very grand scale. It represents a double cross, the
extreme length of which is five hundred and fourteen feet, with a
noble tower,rising from the intersection of the nave, choir, and western
transept, to the height of two hundred feet. This tower is the most
embellished of all the exterior portions. The interior is remarkably
light and airy. It is rich in both ancient and modern monuments ;
among the latter, there being several by our modern sculptors, as
Eoubiliac and the younger Bacon ; and among the former, those of
Sir John Beauchamp of Holt, beheaded on Tower Hill in the reign
of Henry V., and of his lady, both striking" examples of early
costume ; also of Lady Harcourt (Fig. 638), Judge Littleton, Prince
Arthur (the Son of Henry VII.), and King John. The Prince lies
buned m a beautiful chapel of highly ornamented open work the
decorations of which are representative of the union of the white and
red roses of York and Lancaster. The tomb of John (Fig 6331
the great object of interest and inquiry with all visitors, stands in
he middle of the choir. Before the year 1797 it has been supposed
that the remains of the king had been interred in the Lady Chanel
but as an opportunity then offered during some alterations, of deterl
mining the point, an investigation took place of no ordinary interest
The effigy on the top (Fig. 637) was first removed, wit/the Ine
slab on which it rested ; the interior was thus laid open, where two
brick paction walls were discovered, raised no doubt for the more
effectual support of the superincumbent mass. After clearing away
a quantity of rubbish, and removing one end and a pannel ft each
side, a stone coffin was found between the brick walls ; and when
that was opened the remains of the monarch were visible, much
decayed, and with some of the smaller bones no longer seen, but
the whole presenting an almost exact counterpart of the eWv
Ivl IT f '"I t0mb- The °* di*™ -re tie
gbf» on the hands, and the covering on the head, which consisted
hnH T 2," f Sy' ^ °f the Cdebrated monk's cowl on the
body, placed there before burial, as a passport through the regions
of purgatory. A feeling of the same kind actuated the fierce and '
bold but superstitious king, when he desired that his resting-place in
and SVt°UWlCthUrC\Sh0Uldffibe. b6tWeen the b°dieS ofStg Oswald
and St. Wulstan, whose effigies, in small, also grace his tomb •
the evil spirits, he fancied, would not venture into such company'
even to seize him. The hood appeared to have fitted the head
exactly, and to have been tied or buckled under the chin by straps

Chap. II.]

OLD ENGLAND.

167

parts of which remained. The body had been wrapped in an em
broidered robe, reaching from the neck to the feet, made, it was
supposed, of crimson damask, but the cuff, greatly decayed, alone
remained. Fragments of the sword and of the scabbard were also
found. On the legs there had been some kind of ornamental
covering tied round the ankles, and extending over the feet, where
the toes were visible through its decayed parts. The exposure of
the relics of kingly mortality caused their speedy destruction, the
whole mouldering to dust. On ascending the steps of the altar,
visitors are shown another object of curiosity — the stone covering
the body of William Duke of Hamilton, who fell in the memorable
battle of Worcester, in 1651. In the tower is a fine peal of eight
bells, each bearing a different inscription. On the last we read : —
I, sweetly tolling, men do call
To taste a meat that feeds the soul.

The changes which the names of places have undergone are
often strikingly illustrative of the vast extent of time over which
the annals of such places extend ; Exeter forms a remarkable
case in point. In the Caer-Isc of the Britons, signifying the
town on the water, we are carried back to the very beginning
of all, when the founders in that, as in so many other instances,
took as their name for the new place some characteristic circum
stance of position. Then in the Isca of the Romans, a Latinized
version of the same thing, we are reminded of the dominion of the
conquerors of the world. Another change shows us the Eoman
empire in Great Britain at an end, though the memory of that
dominion is preserved in the Saxon Exancestre, that is to say, the
Castle on the Ex: from this we pass finally -into the great stream
of modern history, as we begin to meet with the comparatively
modern appellation of Exeter. The ecclesiastical antiquity of the
city is no less noticeable ; another name ascribed to Exeter —
Monketon — seems to show that even in the Saxon times it had
become distinguished for the number of these religious ascetics
who resided in it. This very remoteness of origin may be the
cause why we have been left uncertain of the precise time when
the earliest building on the site of the cathedral was begun. All
we know on the subject is, that soon after the junction of the sees
of Devon and Cornwall, the seat of the united bishopric was
removed to Exeter, and Leofric, the bishop, installed with great
pomp into the cathedral, in the presence of the Confessor and his
queen, both of whom took a prominent share in the ceremony. In
1050, then, the date of this event, there was a cathedral standing
in Exeter, but whether recently erected or no is unknown. After
the Conquest we find Warlewast, one of the followers of William,
busily at work altering and enlarging during the early part of the
twelfth century. Happily for him, he did not live to see his
labours rendered of no avail by the mischief done to the cathedral
during the time Exeter was besieged by Stephen in 1136, and
which rendered it necessary for his successor, Chichester, to com
mence a reparation on the most extenisve scale. He seems to have
been the very man for the time and the task imposed upon him.
A remarkable proof of his zeal, and which was probably exercised
in favour of the rebuilding of the cathedral, is given in the state
ment that he was accustomed to go abroad very frequently in
pilgrimage, sometimes to Rome, and sometimes to other places,
" and ever would bring with him some one relic or other."
(Bishop Godwin.) During the lifetime of Chichester and the
three succeeding prelates, the cathedral works were steadily carried
on ; the last of them, Bishop Marshall, whose sculptured effigy is
seen in Fig. 647, having the honour of completing the whole
before his death in 1206. Whether the large sums of money that
had been constantly, a!nd for so long a time, pouring into the
Exchequer had begotten something like a love of wealth for other
than church purposes in the minds of the chief officers, we shall not
venture to decide, but a few years after the religious world was
greatly scandalised at some discoveries made at Exeter. Richard
Blondly, a recently-deceased bishop, "a man of mild spirit, but
very stout against such as in his time did offer any injury to the
church," had, it appeared, waxed weaker as he grew older, and
allowed his chancellor, registrar, official, and keeper of the seal,
with other of the household, to obtain conveyances from him of
various estates, advowsons, &c, that then were in his disposition ;
and for their own private and general benefit. The business was
transacted with great secrecy and skill ; but the next bishop dis
covered the whole, and in place of their enjoying the nice little
pickings provided, all the great officers of Exeter Cathedral found
themifelves soon after excommunicated, and doing public penance
in their own building openly, upon Palm Sunday, as the 'indis

pensable preliminary to their readmission into the Christian body.
Before long, however, the masons were again thicky clustering
about the cathedral walls and foundations ; and bringing the
structure to the plan and the state in which a considerable portion
of it remains to this day. Peter Quivil was the bishop who thus
signalized himself by commencing the great undertaking of bring
ing the old-fashioned cathedral into better harmony with the
architectural knowledge and tastes of the thirteenth century. He
may be, indeed, almost called the author of the present cathedral,
for what portions of it were untouched by him, and executed after
wards, were built in pursuance of his designs. How extensive
these were, may be shown by simply stating that the renovation in
the new style, begun by him between 1281 and 1291, and which
was ended by Bishop Brentingham, about a century later, extended
to every part of the structure, the towers alone excepted. Bishops
Stapledon and Grandisson, during this period, particularly dis
tinguished themselves by their architectural labours. Godwin
furnishes us with some interesting particulars of the installation of
a bishop in the early ages, in his notice of Stapledon's induction to
the see. At- the east gate he alighted from his horse, and went on
foot to the cathedral ; black cloth having been previously laid
along the streets for him to walk upon. Two gentlemen of
" great worship," one on each side, accompanied him, and Sir Hugh
Courtney, of the great family of that name, who claimed to be
steward of the feast, went before. At Broad-gate he was received
by the chapter and choir, all richly apparelled, and singing the Te
Deum ; and thus they led him to the church. After the service
and the usual ceremonies, all parties adjourned to the Bishop's
Palace, where a feast, such as the middle ages alone could furnish,
was provided. " It is incredible," Godwin remarks, " how many
oxen, tuns of ale and wine, are said to have been usually spent
at this kind of solemnity." Stapledon's feast would, no doubt, be
more than usually magnificent and expensive ; for, whatever his
faults, something like princely liberality seems to have been one
of his characteristic merits.
Exeter College, Oxford, was founded by him, and originally
called by his name : Hart Hall, in the same university, also derives
its origin from Bishop Stapledon. Unfortunately for him, lie was a
busy statesman, as well as a zealous prelate. Having held posts of
high honour under Edward II., he was found among the adherents
of that unhappy prince when, towards the close of the reign, his
queen, son, brothers, and cousin inarched at the head of an army
against him. Edward was in London, and appealed to the citizens,
but they gave him so decisive a rebuff, that he fled precipitately,
leaving the Bishop of Exeter, Stapledon, as governor. He had
scarcely reached the outskirts when the people rose, and, putting aside
all opposition, obtained possession of the bishop, and- of his brother
Sir Richard Stapledon, and executed them both in Cheapside, on
the 15th of October, 1 326. In the north aisle of the cathedral are
two splendid monuments facing each other ; they are those of the
two brothers. The choir is the principal portion that we .owe to
Bishop Stapledon. The gorgeous west front, with its almost inter
minable series, in double tier, of sculptured kings, prophets, apostles,
prelates, and distinguished persons, forming one of the richest
architectural facades in Europe, is understood to have been raised
by Bishop Grandisson, who " sequestering himself from all idle
persons," is said to have " kept no more about him than were ab
solutely necessary, in order to compass the charge of such mighty
works ; likewise, assembling his whole clergy, he persuaded them to
bequeath all their goods, &c, to the building of the mother-church
of the diocese." After this last circumstance, one need not wonder
that he should also be able to prevail " on sundry temporal men to
give of their store."
The building, whose gradual formation we have thus traced, now
consists of "a nave, seventy-six feet wide and one hundred and
seventy-five feet long, with corresponding aisles at the sides ; two
short transepts formed in a peculiar way, namely by two towers, of
unmistakable Norman original, and therefore, to an antiquary, the
most interesting parts of the cathedral ; a choir of the same breadth
as the nave, and one hundred and twenty-eight feet long ; to these
—the principal features of the place— must be added, ten chapels,
of which the Lady, or St. Mary's Chapel, at the eastern end, is the
most important, and the chapter-house. It is hardly necessary to
say the interior is in many respects surpassingly noble and beautiful.
The delicate and numberless pillars, clustering together into so many
solid groups for the support of the nave and choir, always a
beautiful illustration of a beautiful thought, the power resulting
from union, seem to particularly arrest our attention in Exeter
Cathedral. The choir and nave are divided by a screen of the
most exquisite character. The chapter-house is, as usual, very

641.— Bracket, Exeter.

643— Section of Shaft,
Exeter.

IP sin

PKt"'i 'SB
HppAR

l
™ 8^ll!liilMi!liiil:!i

639.— West Front of Exeter.Cathedral.

!.— Bracket, Exeter.

644.— Section of Shaft,
Exeter.

645 .—Bracket, Exeter.

646. — Bracket, Exeter.

647.— Efflgy of Bishop Marshall, Exeter.
168 •

640.— Exeter Cathedral.

648.— Effigy of Bishop Bartholomew, Exeter.

«9— St. Augustine. From the Door of the Chapter-House,

650.— West Front of Rochester Cathedral.

660.— Emblematic Figure ofthe Mosaic Dispensation.
From the Door ofthe Chapter-House, Rochester.
169

170

OLD ENGLAND.

[Book II.

beautiful ; its roof is of oak. The windows of the cathedral
generally are very large, and some of them strikingly handsome,
with their stained glass. Among the lesser objects of attraction
the cathedral presents, may be mentioned the organ, which is
probably the largest in Europe, the Haarlem only excepted, and
without any exception the finest in tone ; the • clock in the north
tower, which exhibits all the moon's phases, as well as the ordinary
time of the day ; the great bell, said to weigh twelve thousand five
hundred pounds ; the episcopal throne, an almost unique example of
carved wood-work, forming, as it does, a magnificent pyramid
fifty-two feet high, built up of arches, pillars, niches, pannels,
crockets, and foliated ornaments ; and lastly, the Minstrels' Gallery,
near the middle of the choir, supported by thirteen pillars, with a
niche between each two, containing a statue of a musician playing
on some instrument. The monastery, we may notice in conclusion,
belonged to the Benedictine Order.

Lambarde, the old Kentish topographer, has a curious passage in
his 'Perambulation,' on the subject of the comparative insignifi-
•cance of the diocese of Rochester. " The learned in astronomy,"
he says, " be of th,e opinion that if Jupiter, Mercury, or any other
•planet, approach within certain degrees of the sun, and be burned
(as they term it) under his beams, that then it hath in manner no
influence at all,' but yieldeth wholly to the sun that overshineth it ;
and some men, beholding the nearness of these two bishoprics,
Canterbury and Rochester, and comparing the bright glory, pomp,
and. primacy of the one, with the contrary altogether in the other,
have fancied Rochester so overshadowed and obscured, that they
reckon it no see or bishopric of- itself, but only a place of a mere
suffragan, and chaplain to Canterbury. But he that shall either
advisedly weigh the first institution of them both, or but indiffer
ently consider the estate of either, shall easily find that Rochester
hath not only a lawful and canonical cathedral see of itself, but
that the same was also more honestly won and obtained than even
that of Canterbury was." Worthy Master Lambarde's enthusiasm
here probably carries him a little too far ; however the history of
Rochester shows decidedly enough that its claims to respect and
attention are little if at all inferior to the claims of its more poten
tial neighbour, great as those are. Both were founded under the
auspices of the same royal convert from paganism to Christianity,
Ethelbert ; and if Canterbury had an Augustine for its first spi
ritual superior, Rochester had for its first bishop one of Augustine's
companions, Justus ; whilst, therefore, it was natural enough that
the former should rise to the very summit of ecclesiastical wealth
and power, it was really extraordinary that the latter should as
steadily decline till it became what it remains, — the smallest,
poorest, and least influential of English sees. The particular
causes of this declension appear to have been the wars between the
different states of the Heptarchy, then the incursions of the Danes,
which left the church in such a state at the time of the Conquest
that divine worship was entirely neglected in it, and the four or
five secular canons, who then remained nominally attached to it,
found it necessary to eke out their means of subsistence by the
alms of the benevolent. The Conqueror, however, still found
something to pillage and confer upon his relative, Bishop Odo ; and
the see seemed about to perish altogether, when Lanfranc, the
Archbishop of Canterbury, endeavoured to check the downward
progress of Rochester by the appointment of a monk of the Abbey
of Bee, for the avowed purpose of achieving a restoration of the
old estates and prosperity; and though he died shortly after, his
successor was Gundulph, of whom Lambarde says : " He never
rested from building and begging, tricking and garnishing, until
he had erected his idol building to the wealth, beauty, and estima
tion of a popish priory." He too was chosen by Lanfranc from the
Abbey of Bee, and a tradition recorded by William of Malmesbury
gives us an interesting glimpse of the two friends before the con
quest of England was dreamt of, and before, therefore, either had
any idea of the future power that would be reposed in their hands.
The historian says that Lanfranc foretold Gundulph's advance
ment by a trial of the Sortes Evangelicce, that is to say, opening
the book of the Gospels at haphazard, and taking the first text on
which the eye rests as the prophetic one. Gundulph, like William
of Wykeham, was one of those ecclesiastics who shed a glory upon
the middle ages, by their happy union of comprehensive intellects
to devise, and firm purposes to carry out, measures of high importance
to the general weal. Whilst he did almost everything for Rochester,
recovering, with the assistance of Lanfranc, its former possessions
obtaining the grant of new ones, building a castle, and rebuilding
the cathedral, he signalized himself in other quarters by the
foundation of a nunnery (at West Mailing) and by the erection of

the famous White Tower,. < the nucleus around which all the
assemblages of buildings now known as the Tower of London has
gradually grown up. Among his other doings at Rochester, he
removed the secular canons, and replaced 'them by Benedictine
monks; and he obtained for the monastery, from Henry" I., the
privilege of coining. And that was not the only royal favour
conferred upon it, and commemorated in the statues of the king
and queen in the magnificent doorway ofthe cathedral. Gundulph,
who appears to have been confessor, to the queen, Matilda, obtained,
through her means, many gifts and privileges from her husband.
The cathedral was in the main completed during the lifetime of
Gundulph, who died in March 1107-8, and was buried in his episcopal
vestments with great splendour before the altar of the • crucifix
placed at the entrance of the choir ; but the whole does not appear
to have been considered finished till 1130, when, on the day of
Ascension, a solemn and magnificent dedication of the pile to St.
Andrew took place in the presence of King Henry, assisted by all
the chief prelates of the country. The cathedral was originally
" dedicated to St. Andrew as a token of respect to the monastery of
St. Andrew at Rome, from which Augustine and his brethren were
sent to convert the Anglo-Saxons ; and after the church was ¦
rebuilt, Lanfranc did not change the name of its tutelary saint,
as he did in his own cathedral, the primate having such confidence
in this apostle, that he never transmitted by Gundulph any principal
donation without entreating the bishop to chant the Lord's prayer
once for him at the altar of St. Andrew." [' Denne's Memoirs of
the Cath. Church of Rochester.'] The festival of St. Andrew
was of course kept with great splendour in the monastery ; and
Gundulph, to enhance the proceedings of the day, made special
provision for it, by appointing that there should be reserved out of
the estates that he had caused to be settled upon the establishment,
what was called a Xenium, from a Greek word, signifying a
present given in token of hospitality. Gundulph's Xenium seems
to have been a very handsome affair, consisting of sixteen hogs,
cured for bacon, thirty geese, three hundred fowls, one thousand
lampreys, one thousand eggs, four salmon, and sixty bundles of
furze, with a large quantity of oats, &c, the whole apparently
intended for the entertainment in the bishop's palace of the poor,
and strangers generally; for Gundulph expressly says, "If it
should happen, contrary to my wishes, that I, or any of my succes
sors, shall be absent from the feast, then, in God's name arid my
own, I order that the whole Xenium be carried to the hall of St.
Andrew, and there, at the discretion of the prior and brethren of
the church, be distributed to the strangers and poor, in honour of
the festival." The fate of this Xenium forms but one of the many
illustrations that the history of our country unhappily furnishes of
the fate of the unprotected poor ; this provision for a festal day,
which must have lightened so many weary spirits by its enjoyments,
if it did not even relieve many empty stomachs by its store of food'
was ultimately treated as a matter that merely concerned the
bishops and the monastery; and hotly enough they disputed it,
till the former consented to receive a composition in money in lieu
of the provisions in kind ; of course we should now look in vain in
Rochester for any " open house," ecclesiastical or otherwise, whether
on St. Andrew's or on any other day. Of Gundulph's works in
the cathedral, the nave forms the principal existing remain, many
of the other portions having been seriously injured by the destruc
tive fires that have taken place in Rochester. On the north side of
the choir, between the two, transepts, there is 'also a low square •
tower now in ruins, and known as Gundulph's.the walls of which
are six feet thick. It has been doubted, however, whether this was
really erected by the architect in question. Parts of the cathedral .
are recorded as having been built by persons designated simply as
monks, rich men, no doubt, who had retired to the cloister of St
Andrew sick of the vanities and turmoil of active life, and there
expended their possessions in the adornment of the house of God
Richard of Eastgate, and Thomas of Mepeham, were the monks
who restored and rebuilt the north side of the west transept, after
he great fire of 1179 ; Richard of Waledene the monk, who/about
the commencement of the thirteenth century, completed what they
had begun by the erection of the south rid*. How the upper
tamsept and choir came to be re-erected in the reigns of John and
tlenry 111., forms a curious story, and one strikingly illustrative
baker6 T\ ^" * ^ W°lent' and ^ ^adesmat
baker, named Wilham, set out with his servant to perform a oil
primage to Jerusalem. On the road to Canterbury, a little beyond
Rochester, the servant murdered his master, an^ fled with" the
property, which had tempted him to the commission of the crime.
The corpse was found and taken back to Rochester, where a fate
awaited tt that the unfortunate William had certainly never antic !

Chap. II.]

OLD ENGLAND.

171

pated. The monks were probably at the time very anxious to enhance
the reputation of their monastery and church in any way they could,
and particularly by rebuilding the parts of the latter that had been
damaged in the fires, and were therefore quite prepared to appre
ciate any remarkable circumstance that might happen in connection
with their establishment. And such it seems now occurred when
the body of William the baker was placed in the cathedral.
Miracles — of what nature is not recorded — were wrought at his
tomb, the repute of which, spreading far and wide, brought hosts
of devotees to Rochester, whose offerings filled the treasury, and
gave the monks the necessary funds for the erection of the parts of
the-, cathedral we have mentioned, or, in other words, the whole of
the cathedral eastward of the west transept. In 1254 the Pope
.canonized the murdered traveller, and granted indulgences to all
who should visit and make offerings to his shrine, — circumstances
that naturally gave a new impetus to the popularity of the tomb
and cathedral. The northern part of the east transept, known as
St. William's Chapel, preserves to this day the remembrance of
these events. The tomb itself has disappeared, though the spot
¦where it stood is marked by a slab in the centre of a square, formed
of curiously-figured mosaics. Pilgrims reached the chapel by a
small dark aisle, which, after passing between the choir and
Gundulph's tower, opens into the former. Midway in the aisle is
a flight of steps, worn down to something very like an inclined
plane by the innumerable feet that have trodden them.. The
destruction of the tomb probably took place at the Reformation,
when the church generally received considerable damage. During
the Civil War the fabric was still more seriously injured by the
soldiers of the parliament. These are said to have converted one
portion of the cathedral into a carpenter's shop, and another into a
tippling-house. From such unpleasant reminiscences it is doubly
gratifying to pass to the consideration of the recent 'doings at
Rochester, where the Dean and Chapter have shown that they are
fully conscious of the valuable nature of the trust reposed in their
hands, and determined to exhibit that consciousness practically.
In 1825 a central tower was erected at the intersection of the
principal transept, whilst within the last [three or four years the
interior has undergone a comprehensive repair, including many
important restorations 'of the old details of the structure, such as
windows and arches, long filled up, but now once more diffusing a
sense of lightness and gracefulness around. The north transept, or
St. William's Chapel, has in consequence again, become what it
originally was, one of the most interesting and beautiful specimens
of early English architecture that England anywhere possesses.
The other parts of the cathedral eastward are less decorated,
and all those westward, including the nave and west front, are in
the main Norman. Of course the perpendicular window in that
front (Fig. 650) is the introduction of a much later time. The
exceeding richness of the gateway beneath, when the stone was as
yet undecayed, and the sculpture exhibited the faithful impress of
the artist's hand, is evident at a glance even in the present state.
The Chapter House, now in ruins, also exhibits some remarkably
fine sculpture, among which may be mentioned the statue of Augus
tine in the doorway. The dimensions of the cathedral are small
when compared with those of cathedrals generally. The entire
length is three hundred and six feet, breadth of the nave and side
aisles sixty-six feet, breadth of the west front eighty-one feet.
There are numerous monuments and chapels ; and beneath the
choir, and extending its whole length, is a crypt. Among the
many eminent bishops of the see may be mentioned Walter de
Merton, the founder of the college known by his name at Oxford ;
the venerable Fisher, the friend .and fellow-sufferer of Sir Thomas
More, beheaded by the brutal despot Henry VIII. ; and the
literary trio, Sprat, the poet, Atterbury, the eloquent divine and
delightful correspondent of Pope, Pearce, the critic and commen
tator. The fair of Ex.t, commencing on the 29th of October, used to
exhibit a picturesque kind of memorial of the saint to whom the
day had been originally dedicated, and from whom the Isle has
derived, in a great measure, its importance ; we refer to the ribbons
of various colours then offered for sale — no ordinary merchandise,
for they had touched the shrine of St. Etheldreda, more popularly
known as- St. Audrey, and were thence called St. Audrey's ribbons.
But this, like so many of our other interesting customs, has shared
the fate of the views and sentiments that first gave them birth, and
disappeared, and we must now look to the dusty records of our local
antiquaries for any tokens of remembrance of the pious lady to
whom we owe the foundation of the great religious establishment
on the Isle, and therefore remotely of the cathedral itself, which

was connected with it. Yet the history of Etheldreda was one
calculated to live in the popular recollection. She was the daughter
of Anna, King of East Anglia, who gave her the Isle of Ely as
a part of her dowry on her marriage with Tonbert, a nobleman of
the same kingdom. After Tonbert's death she married Egfrid,
King of Northumberland; but from a very early period all her
affections and desires seem to have been placed on a monastic life —
we are informed she lived with both husbands in a state of virginity
— and so she finally obtained the unwilling consent of the king to
her retirement to the cloister, and took the veil at Coldingham.
Egfrid, however, who was passionately attached to her, withdrew
this permission, and brought her home. Determined to fulfil what
she conceived to be her mission, she again left him, secretly, and fled
to the Isle of Ely, where she began the erection of the monastery,
assisted by her brother, then King of the East Angles. Egfrid,
still persevering in his endeavours to compel her to live with him,
was (so the monastic writers tell us) warned to desist, by a miracle.
As he pursued her with a body of knights, the rock on which she
happened at the time to be standing, accompanied by her maidens,
was suddenly surrounded by water. After that Etheldreda was
allowed to pursue her own way in peace. And then the new
monastery was finished, dedicated to the Virgin Mary, and the
foundress appointed its first abbess. Bede has given us a striking
view of her domestic life in this high office. It appears she never
wore any linen, but only woollen garments, ate only once a day,
except during sickness, or on occasionsof great festivals, and never,
except when her ill-health rendered indulgence -necessary, returned
to bed after matins, which were held in the church at midnight,
but made it her custom to continue there at prayers till daybreak.
The fame of all this sanctity and ^discipline gained many and dis
tinguished converts. Persons of the noblest family, matrons of the
highest rank, we are told, devoted themselves to religion under her
guidance ; even some of royal state joined her, resigning all the
comforts and luxuries to which they had been accustomed, for the
hard fare and severe monotony of a monastic life ; such were
Etheldreda's own relatives — Sexburga, her sister, Queen of Kent ;
Ermenilda, Sexburga's daughter ; and Wurburga, the daughter of
Ermenilda, who succeeded each in turn to the abbacy. Etheldreda
died, as she had foretold, of a contagious disorder, and was buried,
as she had directed, in a wooden coffin, in the common cemetery of
the nuns. The chief events of her life, as here narrated, and others
to which we have not thought it necessary to refer, are shown
in a series of sculptures which decorate some of the pillars in the
cathedral. In 870 the abbey thus erected was pillaged and destroyed by the
Danes, and all its revenues seized for the use of the crown. But
King Edgar, in 970, regranted the whole to Ethelvvold, Bishop of
Winchester, who rebuilt the monastery, and placed a number of
monks in it. It was no doubt after this complete restoration that
the bishop invited Ethelred, brother of the reigning monarch,
Edward the Martyr, to visit Ely, who came with his mother and
some of the nobility, and went in solemn procession to the shrine of
St. Etheldreda; where the young prince, whose heart seems to
have been filled with veneration for the memory of the virgin-wife,
promised to become her devoted servant. This was the prince for
whom that mother, then present, afterwards murdered her elder
born Edward ; Ethelred then ascended the throne, and subsequently
evidenced in various ways that he had not forgotten his visit to
Ely. As to his mother, Elfrida, the annals of Ely tell of another
murder committed by her, only less atrocious than that which has
made her memory for ever infamous. Desiring to get rid of Abbot
Brithnoth, she is said to have resorted to her usual mode of solving
such difficulties— a violent death — and which was thus accomplished.
Her servants having heated sharp-pointed irons in the fire, thrust
them into the abbot's body beneath the arm-pits; Elfrida con
sidering, probably, that with a little management, as to the display
and care of the corpse, she would thus be able to avoid discovery.
Andj, if such was her hope, she was gratified ; for the cause of
Brithnoth's death appears to have remained unknown till remorse-
for the murder of her son made Elfrida herself confess this murder
too. The next event in the history of the monastery is connected with
one of those struggles against the Normans, that have peculiarly
attracted the popular attention. It was in the Isle of Ely that
Hereward, "England's darling," as his countrymen affectionately and
admiringly called him, held out for a considerable period against
all the forces of the Conqueror, causing him a great amount of loss,
anxietv, and undissembled rage and mortification; and it was in
the famous monastery of the Isle that the patriots appear to have
found at first their warmest religious supporters. And although
Z2

663.— Athelstane, Ely.

665.— Bracket, Ely.

667— Capital, Ely.

664.— Alwin, Ely.

"Sao'— Niche, St. Mary's
Chapel, Ely.

¦661.— Ely Cathedral, North-West.

«6S— "Early English
tEapital, Ely.

669— Shrine of St. Etheldreda, Ely.

670— .Vesica Piscis, Ely.

463— 0!ly Cathedral.

172

673— Head of Waynflete, Winch ester.

675— Font, Winchester.

674.— Effigy of Wykeham, Winchester.

676.— Pinnacle, Bishop Fox's
Chantry, Winchester.

876.— Norman.Capital, .Win-
, Chester.

1677.—; Pinnacle, Altar Screen,
Winchester.

671— North-West View ofthe Cathedral.-at Winchester.

'678.— rTTorman Capital, Crypt,
"Winchester.

680.— Finial, Winchester.

6~~.— Winchester.

681— Finial, Lady Chapel,
Winchester.

173

174

OLD ENGLAND.

[Book II.

there were some recreant few of the monks who, having made a
profession of fasting up to a certain point, were so utterly averse to
going beyond it, that when provisions grew scarce, they treache
rously showed the Normans a way into the Isle, and thus caused
Hereward to be at last driven from it ; yet the history of William's
conduct towards the abbey seems to show that the monks generally
had, been actuated by nobler principles, and had really given all
possible aid to the brave Hereward ; on the reduction of the Isle,
the furniture and precious jewels of the monastery were seized, and
its lands were divided among the Norman chieftains. The firmness
of a Norman ecclesiastic alone prevented the ruin that thus seemed
to threaten the establishment. Theodwin having been named
abbot by William, refused to enter upon the duties of his abbacy
till all the property of the monastery had been restored to it ; and
so the restoration was made.
A pleasant evidence of the amiable character of the monks of
Ely is furnished by an incident that is supposed to have occurred
during the time that Theodwin's friend, Godfrey, held the office of
Procurator, there having been a temporary vacancy of the abbacy
after Theodwin's death. The story also gives a curious illustration
of the uses to which our kings were sometimes accustomed to turn
the religious establishments of England. Certain knights and
gentlemen, who are understood to have belonged for the most part
to the best families of the country, and who were officers in the
king's army, were sent down by the king to be quartered for a
time in the monastery, until he could better provide for them, or
until he needed their services. The monks received them well,
admitted them to dine with themselves in the common hall or
refectory, and at last grew so much attached to them, that when
they were called away to go into Normandy, to repress the insurrec
tion of Robert, the king's son, the monks conducted them a portion
of the way with solemn procession and singing, and only parted with
them at Hadenham, after mutual expressions of deep regret and
respect. We need only add to the foregoing historical notices, that
Ely was raised into a bishopric by the King, Henry I., in 1107,
who thus expected to decrease the political importance of the Isle,
by dividing the ecclesiastical lands and authority ; and that after
the dissolution of monasteries, Henry VIII. raised the church to
the rank of a cathedral — dedicated to the Undivided Trinity.
A glance at our engraving (Fig. 661) will show that this building
is at once noble and remarkable. The elegant lantern-like character
of the towers in particular arrests our attention, and we are further
surprised to find that the shorter of the two occupies the position
generally assigned to the main tower, namely, the centre of the
structure, whilst the larger forms a portion of the western front.
The interior of the octagon tower presents a no less interesting
peculiarity of rich architectural effect. In looking at the date of
the different parts of the cathedral, we are naturally curious to
know first if there be any remains of Etheldreda's work, and we are
answered in the affirmative, and referred to the various antique
specimens of masonry now enclosed within, or forming parts of the
walls of the neighbouring prebendal houses. Of the cathedral
itself, the oldest portion is the transept, which appears to be of the
style prevalent in the early part of the twelfth century, and was
therefore, in all likelihood, built when the erection of the bishopric
gave a new dignity to the church, and demanded, as may have been
thought, a more magnificent structure. The transept, therefore, is
Norman, with circular arches and heavy pillars ; and the nave
whicli was erected in the same century, does not materially differ
from it. Between 1174 and 1189, however, the great western
tower was erected by Bishop Rydel, and afforded a noble example
of the mighty architectural changes which a single century had
brought forth ; elegance aud beauty were fast growing upon the
solid foundation that had been laid for them. Before the close of
the same century the Galilee Chapel was built. The presbytery,
now used as the choir, was the work of half a century later, when
pointed architecture had attained a state of essential perfection ; if
we contrast the choir of Ely with the choirs of other cathedrals
more distinguished for their exquisite architecture, we find that it
is mere elaborateness of decoration that makes the difference. And
it is no slight merit in the builders of our cathedrals that they
knew how to go on elaborating without losing in the process all the
more valuable qualities of their productions : it is something to be
able to jay, after looking at the exquisite purity of the choir of
Ely, that the octagon tower is the most beautiful part ofthe whole
building, simply because it is the latest.
The height of this tower is one hundred and seventy feet. The
dimensions- of the other parts of the cathedral are, the west tower
two hundred and seventy feet, transept one hundred and ninety
feet, entire^ength five^hundred and thirty-five feet. The monu

ments present some superb specimens of sculpture — such are the
tombs of Bishops Alcott and West,— arid some memorials of still
higher interest than art can give, though not altogether disconnected
with art; we allude more particularly to the tomb > of Tiptoft, the
ill-fated Earl of Worcester, the patron of Caxton, and a man of such
universal accomplishments that, when he was executed at Tower
Hill, in 1470, it was said, " The axe then did at one blow cut off
more learning than was left in the heads of all the surviving
nobility." According to certain authorities, more amusing than trustworthy,
there was reigning over Britain in the second century, and some
twelve and a half centuries after Brute, the descendant of the far-
famed iEneas of Troy, ruled in the island, one Lucius, who became
a convert to Christianity, and erected a church at Winchester,
on the site previously occupied by the chief Pagan temple of the
country. Whether the story be true or false, it gives us a striking
idea of the antiquity of the cathedral, whose origin is thus carried
back to the period where fact and fable mingle inextricably to
gether. The first record of a strictly historical nature, respecting
Winchester, seems to be in connection with the seventh century,
when the Saxon kings and people of Wessex generally relinquished
idolatry ; Kinegils, a descendant of that very Cerdic who is said
to have destroyed Lucius's structure, setting the example in 635,
and began the erection of a new cathedral, of great size and
magnificence, which was completed by his successor Kenewalch.
The first bishop was St. Birinus, who had been sent over to Eng
land by Pope Honorius, and to whom the merit of Kinegils's con
version is attributed.
In this brief statement we may perceive ground to satisfy us that
Winchester must have been a place of no ordinary importance,
and the direct history of the city tells us that backwards from the
reign of Richard the First, through English, Norman, Saxon, and
it is supposed even British times, Winchester was really the capital
of the island. Of its origin, it were almost idle to speak. " It
may possibly have existed;" says a writer in the ' Penny Magazine,'
" as a village in the woods for a thousand years before the Christian
era." The Danes, who, as we have seen, figure so conspicuously
and so destructively in the annals of a great proportion of the
oldest churches and monasteries of the country, reduced the build
ing once more to a ruin, in 871, to be re-edified, as is supposed, by
him whose very name became more terrible to the Danes than
their own had been to the afflicted people of England— Alfred.
But the earliest portions of the present pile are those which were
erected towards the close of the tenth century, by Bishop Ethel wold,
who, finding the cathedral greatly dilapidated, rebuilt it from the
foundation. Some of the most substantial walls and pillars of the
existing pile are the presumed remains of St. Ethelwold's labours.
With the following century came the Conquest, and a Norman
ecclesiastic, Walkelyn, to rule over the see, and introduce his own
country's superior knowledge of, and taste for, architecture. His
advent was delayed, however, in an unexpected and extraordinary
manner. When the Conqueror died, there was but one Saxon
bishop to be found in broad England, — Wulstan, bishop of Win
chester ; a man whose only learning was the best of all learning,
that which taught him to live a life of spotless purity, humility, and
unremitting usefulness. He was required to resign his episcopal
staff, by a synod, sitting in Westminster Abbey, on the ground
that he was ignorant of the French language. Wulstan rose, on
the demand being made, grasped his crozier firmly in his hand
and thus spoke: "I am aware, my Lord Archbishop, that I am
neither worthy of this dignity, nor equal to its duties: this I
knew when the clergy elected, when the prelates compelled, when
my master called me to fill it. By the authority of the Holy See
he laid this burden upon me, and with this staff he commanded me
to receive the rank of a bishop. You now demand of me the pas
toral staff, which you did not present, and the office which you did
not bestow. Aware of my insufficiency, and obedient "to this
holy synod, I now resign them ; not, however, to you, but to him
by whose authority I received them." Advancing then to the
tomb of Edward the Confessor, he thus apostrophised the deceased
sovereign : « Master, thou knowest how reluctantly I assumed this
charge at thy instigation. It was thy command that, more than
the wish of the people, the voice of the prelates, and the desire of
the nobles, compelled me. Now we have a new king, a new
primate, and new enactments. Thee they accuse of "error, in
having so commanded, and me of presumption, 'because I obeyed
Formerly, indeed, thou mightest err, because thou wert mortal •
but now thou art with God, and canst err no longer. Not to them'
therefore, who recall what they did not give, and who may deceive

Chap. II.]

OLD ENGLAND.

175

and be deceived, but to thee who gave them, and art now raised
above all error, I resign my staff, and surrender my flock." And
so saying, he laid the crozier upon the tomb, and took his place
among the monks, as one of their own rank. But lo, a miracle !
or what was alleged to be one — the staff became so firmly embedded
in the stone, that it could not be removed ; an evident token that
it was the pleasure of Heaven, that Wulstan should not be deprived
of his bishopric : the synod left him therefore in its possession in
peace. At his death, Walkelyn, a Norman, was appointed by
the king, and it was in his case, as in many others, of prelates
appointed by the Conqueror, if they could not satisfy the people of
their right, they certainly did convince them of their fitness.
Walkelyn built the present tower, part of the present nave and
transepts, and altogether made the cathedra] so essentially a new
work, that it was re-dedicated by him to the Apostles Peter and
Paul and the Saint Swithin. Succeeding prelates continued to add
and to decorate till Wykeham came, and crowned the whole with the
magnificent west front, truly his front, as the statue in the pediment
seems fittingly to assert, for he was the architect, as well as in a
general sense the builder. The character of this distinguished
man illustrates so strongly what we conceive must have been the
character, in a lesser degree, of many of J the prelates to whom we
owe our cathedrals, that we should have been glad to have dwelt
on it, did our space permit, at more length. As it is, we can only
observe, by way of showing the marvellous versatility, as well as
lofty excellence in particular pursuits, which men, in those early
ages, often exhibited, unconscious of the practical refutation they
were giving to the absurd " philosophy " of later ones, that William
of Wykeham, as a man of the world, raised himself, by address and
ability, from a very humble position in life, that left him dependent
on strangers for his education, to a position which gave him an
opportunity of commanding the most lofty ; that William of Wyke
ham, as a priest, was so distinguished in his holy calling, that he was
raised by successive steps from the mere clerk to the all-potential
bishop ; that William of Wykeham, as a statesman, after a similar
series of ascending stages, became Lord High Chancellor, and that,
too, at a time, the latter part of the reign of Edward the Third
and the reign of Richard the Second, when the national affairs
were in the most perturbed state ; that William of Wykeham, a,
wholesale restorer and reformer of existing religious founda
tions, was scarcely less famous as an establisher of new ones in
honour, and for the promotion of learning, witness to the last
feature those two noble colleges of Winchester and Oxford that
were founded by him ; that, lastly, William of Wykeham, as an
artist, was without rival in his own time, and hardly surpassed
in any other ; to the man who began his career in this department of
his multifarious history, as a clerk of the works to the king, we
owe not merely the grand western front of Winchester Cathedral,
but such works as England's one palace, among the several so called,
Windsor, which assumed, under Wykeham, for the first time, the
extent and general arrangement that still prevail through the
castle. i
Since the bishopric of this noble specimen of all-sided humanity,
to borrow Goethe's characteristic mode of expression, the chief
builder at Winchester has been Bishop Fox, whose statue, under
a canopy, terminates his improvements on the east. But the good
work has been continued with admirable spirit and taste in our own
days. Not less than forty thousand pounds have been recently
expended in restoration, and what in one instance was still more
needed, alteration ; we allude to the beautiful choir-screen, that now
stands where stood Inigo Jones's elegant, but ridiculously inhar
monious, piece of composite handiwork.
Figures of arithmetic sometimes describe better than figures
of speech, and we are not sure but that will be the case, as respects
the general external aspect of Winchester Cathedral. Whilst the
entire length of the structure reaches to five hundred and forty-five
feet, the main tower rises only to the height of one hundred and
thirty-eight feet; the outspread but. stunted expression of the pile
may therefore be seen at once. The tower, indeed, rises but twenty-
six feet above the roof; the explanation, therefore, is evident — the
work remains unfinished. Apart from the west front, however,
Winchester is, in many respects, a truly magnificent structure.
The view that opens upon the spectator, as he enters by the western
door, is one of almost unequalled splendour ; he looks through one
continuous vista of pillars, arches, and roof, extending to the eastern
extremity, where the eye finally rests upon the superb eastern
window, that casts its " dim religious light " into the choir. The
pillars4 and arches of the nave are among the most interesting
parts of the cathedral ; within' the clustered columns, that give so
light an aspect to those enormous masses of masonry, are hidden

the very Saxon pillars of Ethelwold's structure; within those
pointed arches above them, yet remain Ethelwold's semicircular
ones ; the skilful architect having thus adapted both pillars and
arches to the style required, rather than pull them down unneces
sarily. The cathedral is rich in monuments : William Rufus lies
here, in the choir, in a tomb of plain grey stone. In six mortuary
chests, carved in wood, painted and gilt, are buried the remains of
Saxon Kings, Kinegils probably among them, and of other dis
tinguished persons, transferred by Bishop Fox from the decayed
coffins in which they had been buried. But in an artistical sense,
the monumental glory of the cathedral consists in the chantries
or oratories of the Bishops Edyngton, Wykeham, Beaufort,
Waynflete, and Fox: the last four are among the most superb
specimens we possess of these generally beautiful works. One of
West's best pictures, the Raising of Lazarus, forms the cathedral
altar-piece.

The magnificence of Cardinal Wolsey has become a by-word,
and, as often happens in such cases, has by that very proof of its
original fitness almost ceased to be of any practical value ; in other
words, the term now rises habitually to the mind whenever the
subject is before it, in place of, rather than as concentrating and
explaining the circumstances and thoughts which originally gave
currency to it. But if any one desires to revive the idea of that
magnificence in all its primitive freshness of meaning, he need only
visit Oxford. Near the southern entrance of the city, with its
picturesque series of bridges across the Isis, or Thames, he will
find a pile of buildings at first attracting his attention by its general
architectural splendour, then by its extraordinary extent, the plan
including a cathedral, two great quadrangles, and two courts ; lastly
by the individual interest attached to almost every separate feature,
and more especially the cathedral, the superb west front, the
stately hall, and the entrance tower, in which hangs one of the
most famous of English bells, Great Tom of Oxford. That pile of
building forms Christ Church College and Cathedral, the former
being the establishment that Wolsey founded in grateful acknow
ledgment of the benefits he had derived from the university, and in
redemption of the promise which he had consequently made at an
early period of his prosperity, to bestow some lasting mark of his
esteem upon the place. And splendid as is the edifice, important
as are its uses, the one and the other represent but imperfectly the
gigantic plan of its founder, which was and is an unprecedented
instance of princely beneficence in a country of wealthy men and
prodigal benefactors. The best architects of the age were collected
together to erect the buildings ; and the society for whose accommo
dation they were to be reared was to consist of one hundred and
sixty persons, chiefly engaged in the study of sciences, divinity,
canon and civil law, arts, physic, and literature. But the sunshine
of royal favour in which the great Cardinal basked became suddenly
eclipsed by newer favourites ; he fell even more suddenly and
signally than he had risen. The crowned despot, however, for once
seems to have been moved in a good cause ; and either Wolsey's
pathetic consignation of his cherished project to the royal care, or
the entreaties of the university, caused him to save Christ Church
and become its patron. Some years later he translated the see of
Oseney, formed by himself out of the monastery of that name, to
Oxford, and Christ Church became the cathedral. At the same
time the principal estates were granted to the chapter, on condition
of their maintaining three public professors of Divinity, Hebrew,
and Greek ; one hundred students in theology, arts, and philosophy,
eight chaplains, and a suitable choir. We have thought it neces
sary to give this short notice of the origin of the junction of the
college with the cathedral, which would otherwise have seemed
unaccountable to those ignorant of their history ; and, having done
that, proceed to notice the structure that more peculiarly belongs
to our present section.
Wolsey founded his college upon a site not only time-honoured,
but made sacred by its early connection with the growth of Chris
tianity in England, and, to some eyes at least, by one of those
pious legends with which church history is so rife ; it was on the
site of the monastery of St. Frideswida, the church of which yet
remained, that he began to build.
We need hardly speak of the antiquity of Oxford itself, since
there are learned men who talk of literature having flourished there
ever since certain " excellent philosophers with the Trojans coming
out of Greece, under the command of Brute, entered and settled in
Britain." Whatever truth there may be in this, it seems to be
undoubted by any one that it was a place of importance in the
British times. But the first event that may be called historical,
and that had any great influence over its future fortunes, was one

665.— Pinnacle, Oxford;

2.— Shrine of St.Frideswida, Oxford.

¦¦Hi^

683-— Christ Church».Oxford.

6B6— Corbel Shaft, Oxford.

688. — Poppy-head, Oxford.

687.— Poppy-head, Oxford.

' 689.— 'Boss, Oxford.

684— Arcade, Tower, Oxford.

690— Norman Capital, Oxford.

176

owscht

692^-Burv St. Edmunds.

691.— Bury St. Edmunds.

693.— Bury St. Edmunds.— 1743.

094.— Atibeg Gateway, Bury St. Edmonds.
no. 23.

' 696.— Parliament in Abbey of Bury.
[OLD ENGLAND.]

698.— Saxon Tower, Bury.

177

178

OLD ENGLAND.

[Book II.

of which the Cathedral of Christ Church is to this day the palpable
embodiment. In 727 Didan, the sub-regulus, or Earl of Oxford,
founded a monastery, then dedicated to the Holy Trinity, and in
which Didan and his wife were interred. Their daughter, Frideswida,
devoted herself to a religious life, and was appointed to the govern
ment of her parents' foundation; when an event occurred that
incalculably enhanced the popularity of the monastery, and ended
in her canonization and the rededication of the monastery to her.
Algar, Earl of Leicester, fell in love with her, and allowed his
passion so far to exceed all the limits that prudence, as well as
religious principle, marked out, as to endeavour to force her, sacred
to the service of God as she was by her own choice and the
monastic laws, into a marriage. She then concealed herself in a
wood at Benson, near Oxford ; and the Earl, unable to discover her
abode, threatened to fire the city if she was not delivered up to
him. " Such tyranny and presumption," observes Leland, " could
not escape divine vengeance ; he was struck blind ! Hence arose
such a dread to the Kings of Britain, that none of his successors
dared enter Oxford for some time after."
Frideswida died in 740, and was probably buried in a chapel on
the south side of the church, for there stood her shrine, until the
great fire of Oxford in 1002 (that occurred during the simultaneous
massacre of the Danes by Ethelred's order), when it was nearly
destroyed, and for a time neglected. But in 1180 the shrine was
removed to its present situation, in the dormitory, to the north ofthe
choir ; and the worn steps leading to the little oratory, erected at
the back of the shrine, show how numerous have been the devotees
who have there visited it. In course of time, a new shrine was
desired for so popular a saint, which was accordingly erected in
1289, and which remained until the Reformation, when it is said
to have been destroyed ; but was more probably simply defaced.
And even then the relics of the body of St. Frideswida were pre
served by some ardent Catholics, and restored subsequently to the
church. In the reigu of Queen Mary, the remains of the wife
of Peter Martyr, the Reformer, were taken up from their resting
place in the Cathedral, and formally condemned to be buried
beneath a dunghill ; when Elizabeth came to the throne, they were
restored with all marked honours ; and to prevent any further dis
turbance in case of a restoration of the older religionists to power,
the very singular step was taken of mixing the mouldering relics
of the wife of the Protestant reformer with those of the
canonized nun and abbess Frideswida. Whether the mingled
ashes now lie in the grave of Martyr's wife, or beneath the large
altar tomb that is supposed to be St. Frideswida's, and is called by
her name, is now unknown. In Fig. 682 this monument is
shown ; the one to the extreme right,, with three stages of decorated
architectural work, the lowest being of stone, the other two of
wood. Beyond, and next to it, is the very rich monument of , Lady
Elizabeth Montacute, with her effigy, in the costume of the day,
the dress enamelled in gold and colours all over. The third and
last monument of the same range is the tomb of Guimond, the
first prior ; for St. Frideswida's monastery for nuns was subse
quently changed into a house of secular canons, and Tthen again
into one for regular canons of the order of St. Austin ; and thus it
remained till Wolsey obtained an order for its dissolution from the
Pope, prior to the change he meditated.
There is no reason to suppose that any portions of the pile erected
by the parents of Frideswida are preserved in the present Cathe
dral. At the same time, the architectural character of the oldest
portions of the church — early Norman or Saxon — has induced
some antiquaries to refer its date to the very beginning of the
eleventh century; but the more received opinion is that which
attributes the erection to the twelfth century. Much, however,
has been added since, as the Chapter House, which, with a [highly-
enriched Norman doorway, exhibits generally a valuable example
of the early English style ; the tower of similar architecture (the
present spire was added by Wolsey) ; and the cloisters, which are
in the beautiful perpendicular style. Some of the most striking
parts of the interior belong to the same period as the cloisters.
The roof of the nave is especially deserving of attention, for its
curiously beautiful groining, and for the pendants which stud it
over. The size of Christ Church is certainly remarkable, but in the
opposite 3ense to that in which such words are usually applied to
such structures : it is, indeed, one of the most petite] of cathedrals.
Its entire length but little exceeds one hundred and fifty feet, and
the entire breadth is but fifty-four feet ; the transept measures one
hundred and two feet, from end to end ; the roof is about forty feet
high ; the. steeple, one hundred and forty-six.

observed with unwonted enthusiasm, " the sun hath not shone on
a town more delightfully situated ; " and we may almost add tnat the
sun doth not now shine on a town, in the whole, more worthy of its
natural beauty of position, or of the name which it is said to have
borne in the Roman times-the Villa Faustina, or the » happy town.
This has partly arisen from the circumstance that a great portion ot
the nlacewas burnt down in 1806, and has been rebuilt in a handsome
the feelings and taste of

manner; but still more must be owing to
the inhabitants. The river, which, as may be seen in our engrav
ings (Figs. 691, 692), gives so charming an appearance to Bury St.
Edmunds from whatever direction viewed, is the Larke ; and it
contributes no less to the internal than the external aspect, to the
comfort than the prosperity of the place. Here we see its waters
washing the lower part of .the very pretty botanical garden ; there
bearing along the numerous barges laden with coals and other com
modities which they have received about a mile below the 

where the Larke ceases to be navigable to larger vessels.

town, The

entrance to that garden is through the « abbey gate," almost, the
only relic of a monastery which, in architectural extent and mag
nificence, wealth, privileges, and power, surpassed every other in
Great Britain, Glastonbury alone excepted ; and the early history
of which almost ranks even with that foundation in interest.
In the ninth century the place belonged to Beodric, and was
hence called his worthe or cortis, that is to say, his villa or mansion,
and was by that nobleman bequeathed to Edmund, the King and
Martyr. How the last-named title was obtained it is our business
here briefly to relate, for in the martyrdom of King Edmund we
look for the origin of much of the prosperity of Bury, and of the
historical interest which now invests its monastic remains. Min
gling, as usual, truth and fable, the story runs thus :— Edmund, the
brother and predecessor of the great Alfred, succeeding to the
throne of East Anglia, was crowned at Bury, on the Christmas-
day of 856, being at the time only fifteen years old. In 870 he
was taken prisoner by the Danes, and, as he was a Christian as well
as an enemy, tortured to death. The Danes first scourged him,
then bound him to a tree, and pierced his body all over with
arrows ; lastly they cut off his head, which they threw into a neigh
bouring wood. On the departure of these terrible visitors, the
subjects of the murdered king sought his remains, that they might
inter them with all the honour and reverence due alike to his
position and his character. The body was found still attached to
the fatal tree ; this they buried in a wooden chapel at Hagilsdun,
now Hoxne. For a time, all their endeavours to] discover the head
were ineffectual ; but when forty days had elapsed, it was found
between the fore-paws of a wolf, which, strange to say, yielded it
up quietly, and, stranger still, unmutilated, and then retired into
the forest. No wonder that Lydgate the poet, who was a monk of

Bury, observes, " An unkouth thyng, and

Lelana, writing of Bury St. Edmunds, some three centuries ago,

ageyn nature.''
The greatest marvel was yet behind. The head was taken to
Hagilsdun, placed against the body in its natural position, ,when it
united so closely with the latter, which was not at all decomposed,
that the separation could hardly be traced. The corpse was sub
sequently removed to Bury, which hence obtained the name of
Bury St. Edmunds. Events of this nature were calculated to call
forth in the highest degree the pious enthusiasm of the people ;
and which found, as usual, its development in a magnificent house
for religious men, whose lives should be devoted to the honour of
the king, martyr, and saint, and of the God in whose service he
had so worthily lived and died. Six priests first itaet, and formed
the nucleus. Benefactors of every class, from the highest to the
lowest, assisted in the good work ; among the earliest of these
may be named king Athelstane, and Edmund, son of Edward the
Elder. But the time was inauspicious in many respects for rapid
or safe progress. The Danes still threatened ; and, on one occasion
(just before Swein destroyed Bury, in the beginning of the eleventh
century), Ailwin, guardian of the body of St. Edmund, conveyed
it to London. In the metropolis a new perplexity arose : the
Bishop of London, having obtained possession of the treasured
remains, by a process that might almost be called a kind of felony,
refused to give it up when Ailwin was prepared to return ; the
guardian, however, was immovably true to his trust, and so, after
much altercation, it was again safely deposited in Bury. Peace
at last blessed the land, and Ailwin began in earnest the erection
of a place that should be esteemed suitable to the memory of him
whose mausoleum it was in effect to be. In 1020 he ejected all
. the secular clergy, and filled their places with Benedictine monks
obtained their exemption from all episcopal authority, and, these
preliminaries settled, began the erection of a beautiful church of
wood. Two other churches were subsequently raised of the same
material. But in 1065 Abbot Baldwyn laid the foundation of

Chap. II.]

OLD ENGLAND.

179

a fourth, of stone, and on the most magnificent scale. It was
above five hundred feet long : the transept extended two hundred and
twelve feet; the western front was two hundred and forty feet
broad ; no less than twelve chapels were attached in different
parts: twelve years were spent in the erection. Of this grand
structure there remain but portions of the west front : the chief
are, a tower converted into a stable, and three arches, forming
originally the entrances into the three aisles of the church, which
the utilitarianism of the age has converted, no doubt with con
siderable self-congratulation at the ingenuity of the idea, into very
snug and comfortable dwelling-houses. Notwithstanding all that
we know of the influences that have been in operation during the
last three centuries to injure or degrade those noble architectural
monuments of our forefathers, it strikes one every now and then
with a sense of surprise to see how extensive these injuries have
been, involving, indeed, in many cases, the almost absolute destruc
tion of piles that, before such influences began to operate, were in
the most perfect and apparently indestructible state. When Leland
looked upon Bury in the sixteenth century, and said the sun
had not shone upon a more delightfully situated town, he added
also, nor on " a monastery more illustrious, whether we consider
its wealth, its extent, or its incomparable magnificence. You might
indeed say that the monastery itself is a town ; so many gates
are there, so many towers, and a church than which none can be
more magnificent ; and subservient to which are three others, also
splendidly adorned with admirable workmanship, and standing in one
aud the same churchyard." That was but little more than three centu
ries a°-o ; yet of all these buildings, which, if even left uncared for to
the uninterrupted processes of natural decay, would have exhibited
as vet but mere superficial injury, what have we now left? Two
of the three smaller churches, a tower and a few arches of the great
one, a gateway and part of the walls of the monastery, and another
o-ateuay, or tower, which formed the entrance into the churchyard,
opposite the western front of the monastic church : and that is, in
effect, all. It is, indeed, difficult to believe in the truth of Leland's
description, and the description of other writers, who speak in
minuter detail of the four grand gates to the abbey, the lofty em
battled walls extending so far around, and enclosing, besides the
four churches and the necessary monastic buildings of residence,
a palace and garden for the abbot, chapter-house, infirmaries,
churchyard and several chapels, — till we begin patiently to explore
the traces yet to be found on the spot, and to remember the size
and importance of that community which had here for so many
centuries its abode. The household of St. Edmundsbury included
some eighly monks, sixteen chaplains, and one hundred and eleven
servants. The importance of the monastery is shown in its power
and privileges. The abbot sat in parliament as a baron of the
realm, and in his chapter-house and hall as something more.
No sovereign, indeed, could be much more absolute. He appointed
the parochial clergy of Bury — all civil and criminal causes
arising within the place were tried within his court — the life and
death of offenders were in his hand. The monastery coined its own
money, and the monarch's into the bargain, when it suited him to
obtain its assistance: Edward I. and Edward II. both had mints
here. It permitted no divided allegiance in the locality, whether
of a spiritual or a temporal nature, and had a very summary mode
of setting at rest any question of the kind that might arise. In the
thirteenth century, some Franciscan friars came to Bury, and built
a handsome monastery; but the monks having by that time, we
presume, settled in their own minds that they did not like friars,
went and pulled down their building, and drove its tenants forth
from the town. Redress appears to have been quite out of the
question. Another evidence of the importance of the monastery
may be drawn from our knowledge of its wealth. At the disso
lution, the commissioners of the king said they had taken from it
in gold and silver five thousand marks, a rich cross with emeralds,
and also divers stones of great value, but still left behind ample
store of plate of silver for the service of the church, abbot, and
convent. As to its revenues, a writer in 1727 said, they would have
been equal at that time to the enormous sum of two hundred thou
sand pounds yearly.
We have already noticed the remains of the monastic church.
The abbey gate (Fig. 694) was erected in 1327, and is, therefore,
above five centuries old, yet; notwithstanding its age, and the entire
destruction of its roof, remains surprisingly perfect. As a specimen
of Gothic architecture it is at once majestic and superb; the
height being no less than sixty-two feet, and the fronts, more par
ticularly .that on the western or exterior side, being decorated in
the most gorgeously splendid style. Among the beautiful deco
rations ofthe interior of the gateway is much carved-work, including,

in one part, the arms of the Confessor. But the tower leading
into the churchyard (Fig. 695) is, considering its remoter antiquity,
as well as its extraordinary magnificence, the most interesting of
all the remains of this great religious establishment. It rises to
the height of eighty feet, is simple and massive in form, but most
elaborately beautiful in decoration — and pure unadulterated Saxon.
It is, in a word, one of the finest things of the kind in existence.
No records carry us back to the date of its erection. The sculp
ture upon it is exceedingly .curious and valuable as the product of
so early a time. Near the base on the western side are two bas-
reliefs ; in one of which Adam and Eve, entwined by the serpent,
typify man in his fallen state; whilst in the other, the Deity
is seen sitting in triumph in a circle of cherubim, as representative
of man's spiritual restoration. In the interior of the arch are
some grotesque figures. The stone of which the edifice is built is
remarkable for the number of small shells it contains. Through
this gateway we pass to the churchyard, where, as we wander
along an avenue of stately and fragrant lime-trees, we perceive, in
different parts, the two churches of St. James and St. Mary, and
the Shire-hall, erected on the site of the third and destroyed church
of St. Margaret ; various portions of the abbey ruins ; Clopton's
Hospital, a modern work of beneficence ; and the mausoleum, once the
chapel of the charnel, where Lydgate is understood to have resided,
and where possibly the greater part of his multifarious writings
were composed. His case furnishes a valuable and instructive
example of one of the uses of our monasteries — that of nurturing
men of learning and literary ability. Lydgate was at once a tra
veller, a schoolmaster, a philologist, a rhetorician, a geometrician,
an astronomer, a theologist, a disputant, a poet ; and it is hardly
too much to say, that he was all this chiefly because he was also a
monk. How many such men may not these institutions have
contained, but who did not, like Lydgate, seek for fame beyond the
confines of their own monastery ! Such encouragement as the
Abbot of St. Edmundsbury gave to Lydgate was, in all proba
bility, the rule rather than the exception, in such establishments
generally. The pride in the reputation thus reflected upon their
house, and the eternal craving for some kind of mental occupation
and excitement, which no discipline could entirely eradicate, must
have made many a superior encourage such studies, even when he
had in himself no particular tendency towards them; but how
much more when he had ! — and the frequency of the qualification
"learning" recorded in accounts of election to monastic govern
ment shows that this must have been a matter of common
occurrence. We need not then be surprised to see Lydgate
allowed to master so many departments of knowledge, or to open a
school in the monastery at Bury for teaching some of them, as he
did, to the sons of the nobility of his day. Another and equally
pleasant instance of the estimation in which he was held is com
memorated by a most splendidly illuminated MS. now in the
British Museum, forming a life of St. Edmund, and which he pre
sented to Henry VI. when he visited the monastery in 1440:
a pension of 11 13*. 4rf. was the monarch's answering gift; a most
princely one, according to the then value of money. Both
the smaller churches that we have mentioned as existing are
strikingly handsome. St. Mary's has three aisles, divided by two
rows of very elegant columns ; and the roof of the middle aisle,
sixty feet high, is beautifully carved. The roof" of the chancel
presents an additional feature, carved gilt work on a blue ground,
supposed to have been brought from Caen in Normandy. In this
church lies Mary Tudor, third daughter of Henry VII., and wife,
first, of Louis XII. of France, and afterwards of the Duke of
Suffolk : there also, in the middle of the chancel, rests the last
Abbot of Bury, John Reeves.
Many events of historical importance are recorded in connection
with the monastery. During the wars between Henry II. and his
son the forces of the former marched out of Bury with the sacred
standard of 'St. Edmund, to a spot in the neighbourhood where the
enemy was met with, and a battle fought, which ended in favour of
the 1-ino- • to the standard, of course, was attributed the honour of
the victory. This incident probably suggested to Richard I. the
idea of bringing to Bury the rich standard of Isaac, King of
Cyprus which he had taken whilst on his way to Acre and the
Holv Land But the most important of all such events were
those connected with the baronial struggle for the great Charter
John arrived from France in October, 1214, full of rage and
mortification at the defeat his forces had recently experienced at a
place between Lisle and Tournay, and determined to repay himself
for his sufferings and losses at the hands ofthe enemy by increased
exactions from his own subjects. FitzPeter, the Justiciary, a man
whom John feared, had died during his absence. He laughed
2 A 2

697— Bermondsey— Remains of the Eastern Gate-honse of the Abbey.

703— Walsingham. Abbey.

-^/. Ard.,r,

698— Bermondsey.-^&isting Bemains of the Conventual Buildings.
180

699-Bermondsey-Kemain8oftheAbbey:>olnadtiwlBginladeimmeaiiiteJy

before their demolition.

707. — Pershore.

708 — Cross near Pershore.

704.— Priory Church, Hexhim. East End.

sM 4

fimffil

—Tewkesbury.

181

182

OLD ENGLAND.

[Book II.

as the news was imparted to him : " It is well," said he ; " in
hell he may again shake hands with Hubert our late primate, for
surely he will find him there. By God's teeth, now, for the first time,
I am King and Lord of England." But the barons were prepared.
A league had been already formed with Langton, the Cardinal, and
they now agreed to meet : " The time is favourable," they said :
" the feast of St. Edmund approaches ; amidst the multitudes that.
resort to his shrine, we may assemble without suspicion." On the
day in question, the 20th of November, they met, and resolved to
demand their rights from the king, in his very court, on the coming
Christmas-day. It was a hazardous undertaking, and one from
which weak minds might easily be induced to draw back, to which
faithless hearts might be as readily instigated to turn traitors; so the
solemn sanction of the church was as it were invoked to deter both
the one class and the other, if any such there were. The barons
advancing in the order of their seniority, one by one, laid their
hands on the high altar, and swore that if the king refused the rights
they demanded, they would withdraw their fealty, and make war
upon him, until he should yield. We need not follow their pro
ceedings further, they are too well known ; but the virtual con
clusion of the memorable meeting at Bury was the still more
memorable one on the plains of Runnymede. Several parliaments
have been held in the monastery ; the most noticeable is the one
that sat in 1447 for the not very estimable or dignified purpose of
promoting the object which Margaret, the Queen of Henry VI., and
her favourite Suffolk, had so much at heart, namely, the destruction
of the good Duke Humphrey of Gloucester. Of course that object
was for a time concealed, and Gloucester, in consequence, went
unsuspiciously to his fate. On the 11th of February, or the very
day after the opening of the parliament, he was arrested on a charge
of high treason. In less than three weeks from that time he was found
dead in his bed ; and although no marks of violence were visible when
the body was publicly exhibited to the people of Bury St. Edmunds,
the impression was universal that he had been murdered. The
weak young king, who had consented to all but the last foul pro
ceeding, " thus "—to use, with mere verbal alteration, the words
Shakspere has put into the mouth of Gloucester, in the Second
Part of Henry VI.—

¦ King Henry threw away his crutch

Before his legs were firm to bear his body :
Thus was the shepherd beaten from his side,
When wolves were gnarling who should gnaw him first.
But for Gloucester's sudden death, we might have known nothing of
the wars of the Roses.

So completely has every important vestige of the once famous
Abbey of Bermondsey (see Fig. 698) been swept away, that one
may pass a hundred times through the streets and lanes that now
cover the site, without even a suspicion that any such establishment
had ever existed there. A few decaying squalid-looking tenements
in the corner of an out-of-the-way court (Fig. 697), a small
portion of a gatehouse, with half the rusty hinge still inserted in
the stone, scattered masses of wall about the present churchyard,
and a few names of streets and squares, as the Long Walk, and
the Grange Walk, are the sole relics of the monastery which in
its days of splendour was esteemed of so much importance, that
great councils of state were frequently held in it. Of the church
which unquestionably was a large and handsome, probably a very
magnificent structure, there is not even a trace^to be found, unless
we may make an exception in favour of a very curious and ancient
salver of silver, now used in St. Mary's Church for the collection
of alms, and which possibly formed a part of the abbey treasure.
The salver presents a view of the gate of a castle or town, with
two figures, a knight kneeling before a lady, while she places a
helmet on his head. The costume of the knight appears to be of
the date of Edward II. This church of St. Mary, we may observe
¦ was built on the site of a smaller one, erected by the monks at a
very early period, and, it is supposed, for the use of their tenants
and servants. With so little, then, existing at present to stimulate
our curiosity as to the past, it will be hardly advisable to dwell at
any length upon the subject, though far from an uninteresting one.
The founder of Bermondsey was a citizen of London, Aylwin
Child, who, in his admiration of the new order of Cluniacs that had
just been introduced into England, obtained four monks from one of
the foreign monasteries to establish a house of Cluniacs at Ber
mondsey. The Benedictine rule or 'discipline was, one would
imagine, strict enough for any body of men, however pious: not so
thought some of the members of the order themselves ; and from

their thoughts and desires gradually arose the order we have
referred to. Bermondsey, like the other houses of Cluniacs in
England, was considered an alien priory, that is to say, was under
subjection to the great Abbey of Cluny in Burgundy, and shared
therefore in the fate that befel all such alien houses in the fourteenth
century — sequestration. But Richard II. not only restored it to
life and activity, but raised it to the rank of an abbey ; among his
motives for this gracious and important favour, a present of two
hundred marks, we presume, ought to be enumerated. At the
dissolution Bermondsey was valued at 548/. 2s. 5§d. ; and it
is remarkable enough that King Henry seems to have really
got nothing in this instance by the dissolution; through his
unusual liberality, the monks were all pensioned off with sums
varying from five pounds six shillings and eightpence to ten
pounds yearly, while the abbot's share must have swept away
nearly all the rest, amounting, as it did, to 336/. 6s. 8d. King
Henry certainly was never .more shrewdly managed than by the
last Abbot of Bermondsey.
Among the historical recollections of the abbey may be
mentioned the residence and death in it of Katherine, who had
for her first husband Henry V., and for her second, Owen
Tudor, the founder of the Tudor dynasty. Two days before
her death, her son by the conqueror of Agincourt, Henry VI.,
sent to her, in token of his affectionate remembrance, a tablet
of gold, weighing thirteen ounces, and set with sapphires and
pearls. The chief interest, however, that we now feel in the
Abbey of Bermondsey arises from the enforced residence of
Elizabeth Woodville, whose eventful life finds few parallels in
female history. At first the wife of a simple English knight ; then,
after his death in the wars of the Roses, a wretched widow, pleading
at the feet of Edward IV. for the reversal of the attainder that
threatened to sweep away the home and estates of herself and
children ; then the queen of that king, and married by him for the
very unpolitical reason that he had fallen passionately in love with
her ; then again a widow struggling to keep her royal offspring
from the murderous grasp of their usurping uncle the Duke of
Gloucester, — and who, after their murder in the Tower, became
Richard III. ; then once more lifted into apparent prosperity by
the union of the rival Roses in the persons of her daughter and
Henry VII. ; and then, lastly, a prisoner at Bermondsey durino-
the very reign of that daughter, and at the instance of that
daughter's husband. And there she died, the queen of one king, the
mother of the wife of another ; and so poor, that in her will, which
is touchingly pathetic, we find her leaving her blessing to her child
as the only thing it was in her power to bequeath to her. " I have
no worldly goods to do the queen's grace, my dearest daughter, a
pleasure with, neither to reward any of my children according to
my heart and mind." Henry's reason for this harshness appears to
have been a belief that she had been instrumental in raising a new
Yorkist insurrection in Ireland in 1486, under the leadership of the
pretended Earl of Warwick, but really Lambert Simnel, the son of
a joiner. He had reason to know she did scheme ; for, savs Bacon,
" in her withdrawing chamber had the fortunate conspiracy for the
king against King Richard III. been hatched, which the king knew
and remembered perhaps but too well." After the death of his
wife, Henry established a yearly anniversary at Bermondsey, when
prayers were to be offered for his own prosperity, and for his wife's
his children's, and other relatives' souls; but not a word as to the
soul of his wife's mother, the beautiful, intriguing, possibly unprin
cipled, but certainly most unfortunate, Elizabeth Woodville.
Having now noticed in our pages, and at what may be considered
sufficient length, some ofthe more important ofthe English monas
teries, we shall, as a general principle, treat the remainder in
groups; passing over most ofthe subjects in each with a brief or
at least a very partial account, but dwelling, as we may see occasion,
on the others. If many highly-important establishments may be
thus cursorily dismissed, many also will receive a fair share of
attention; whilst, by not attempting what is impracticable in the
present mstance,-to preserve the individual interest of all we may
hope to convey a more satisfactory impression as to those 'we select
from the multitude. In our first group we include Byland and
Fountains Abbeys in Yorkshire, Walsingham Priory in Norfolk
Tewkesbury Abbey in Gloucestershire, and Hexham Priorv in
Northumberland. With such subjects it is indeed difficult to
make a choice ; but on the whole we may consider Fountains Abbev
as the best fitted for lengthened notice. Y
Among the monastic remains we have had, or may yet have
occasion to notice, there are of course some few that enjoy a marked

Chap. II.]

OLD ENGLAND.

183

pre-eminence, either for their history, the beauty of their archi
tectural relics, or the advantages of their local position : they are
antiquities that every one feels interested in, that many have person
ally seen. Fountains Abbey is of this class. Its very name is sug
gestive of a world of pleasant associations, green ruins with many
a legend or story hanging about them, picturesque and attractive
as themselves ; quiet woods, and delightfully unquiet waters ; nooks
and corners among rocks or by water-banks, or beneath great over
arching trees ; a place, in fine, for deep emotion and elevated
thought, — where one seems to stand between the Past and the
Future, unaffected by all the disturbing influences of the Present ;
and to look on all things with a sense of newly-aroused powers of
apprehension of the truth or falsehood that is in them, — of newly-
awakened desire to draw from these chewings of the cud of sweet
and bitter fancy tiie most wholesome nutriment for the every-day
business of life, towards which we at last must again, however
reluctantly, address ourselves. It is. no wonder that Fountains
Abbey should have obtained so high or extensive a reputation.
All the peculiar advantages above enumerated, as tending to give
such relics of " Old England " their fame, are combined in this.
It is situated in a beautiful and romantic valley, through which
runs the Skell, and in the vicinity of Studley park and pleasure-
grounds, the last forming one of the horticultural notabilities of
England, a continuous garden of some three hundred acres laid out
in the most charming style. For the beauty of the architecture of
Fountains Abbey we need only refer to the view (Fig. 702),
where the remarkable state of preservation in which the pile
generally exists, as well as some indications of the elegance of the
prevailing style, will be apparent. On the whole the Abbey ruins
form the most perfect specimen that the country possesses of what
may perhaps be called the most perfect architectural time, — the age
of Henry III. and of Westminster Abbey. All the walls of both
church and monastery yet stand, though roofless and with dilapi
dated windows. The majestic tower, from its unusual position at
the north end of the transept, still rises upward in serene grandeur.
We may walk through the nave and admire the arch of its once
glorious eastern window ; from thence wander into the " ruined
choir " and listen to hymns of praise, albeit the choristers are of
a tinier race than of yore. The Chapter House yet tells us of the
abbots who sat there in due course of spiritual government, and
some of whose tombs now lie beneath our feet, with half-illegible
inscriptions ; we can still perceive, over the Chapter House, where
the library was situated in which the monks read, and the adjoining
scriptorium wherein they wrote. It is as long a walk as ever to pace
from end to end of the cloisters, and almost as picturesque, with those
curious arches over head formed by the mazy intersections of the
groinings of the roof; the kitchen is ready at any moment to glow
with " unwonted fires," and renew those old hospitalities of which
its two immense fireplaces give one such an expansive idea ; the
very garden of the monastery still smells sweet and looks fair with
quivering leaves and " flowres fresh qf hue."
Whilst such the position and such the remains of Fountains
Abbey, both at the same time borrow from their past history
higher and deeper interest than the picturesque hands of nature or
of time could bestow. The monastic orders generally, perhaps
universally, had their origin in the desire of some one man, or
some few men, to check prevailing evils in the lives or views of the
people, or of their spiritual teachers, or to carry on still further
reformations or improvements already begun. It is easy to imagine
that much heart-burning and strife must have frequently resulted
from such endeavours ; which set brother against brother, divided
the once peaceful monastery against itself, which annoyed the idle,
or supine, or the licentious, by placing monitors eternally at their
elbow. In connection with the records of Fountains Abbey we
find a curious and ample account of the growth of such a division :
"The fame of the sanctity of the Cistercian monks at Rieval
[Rievaulx], the first of that order in Yorkshire, having extended to
the Benedictine monastery of St. Mary at York, several of the
monks there, finding too great a relaxation in the observance of the
rules, were desirous of withdrawing themselves to follow the stricter
rules observed by the monks of Rieval. But Galfrid, their abbot,
opposed their removal, as being a reflection on his government of
the abbey : whereupon, in a.d. 1132, the 33rd of Henry I., Richard,
the Prior, went to Thurstan, Archbishop of York, to desire that
he woul,d visit the abbey and regulate what was amiss therein, and
assist them in their design of withdrawing themselves. The day of
visitation being come, the archbishop, attended by many grave
and discreet clergy, canons, and other religious men, went to St.
Mary's Abbey, whither the abbot had convoked several learned
men, and a multitude of monks from different parts of England,

that by their aid he might oppose the archbishop, if requisite, and
correct the insolence of those brethren that wanted to leave the
abbey. On the 6th of October, a.d. 1132, the archbishop arrived
at the monastery, when the abbot, with a multitude of monks
opposed his entrance into the chapter with such a number of per
sons as attended him ; whereupon an uproar ensued : and the arch
bishop, after interdicting the church and monks, returned;
and the prior, sub-prior, and eleven monks withdrew them
selves, and were joined by Robert, a monk of Whitby, who went
along with them, and were maintained at the archbishop's expense,
in his own house, for eleven weeks and five days. . . . The abbot
did not cease by messages to persuade the withdrawn monks
to return to their monastery, while they at the bishop's house
spent most of their time in fisting and prayer. However, two of
them were prevailed on to quit the rest, and go back ; and yet one
of the two repenting, soon returned to those who were for a more
strict way of life." It is to these monks of St. Mary's that Foun
tains Abbey owes its origin ; they were its founders, and very
interesting were the circumstances of the foundation, as related by
the same writer, Burton [' Monast. Eboracen.']. " At Christmas,
the archbishop, being at Ripon, assigned to the monks some land
in the patrimony of St. Peter, about three miles west of that place,
for the erecting of a monastery. The spot of ground had never
been inhabited, unless by wild beasts, being overgrown with wood
and brambles, lying between two steep hills and rocks, covered
with wood on all sides, more proper for a retreat of wild beasts
than the human species. . . . Richard, the Prior of St. Mary's at
York, was chosen abbot by the monks, being the first of this
monastery of Fountains, with whom they withdrew into this
uncouth desert, without any house to shelter them in that winter
season, or provisions to subsist on; but entirely depending on
Divine Providence. There stood a large elm in the midst of the
vale, on which they put some thatch or straw, and under that they
lay, eat, and prayed, the bishop for a time supplying them] with
bread, and the rivulet (the Skell) with drink. Part of the day
some spent in making wattles to erect a little oratory, whilst others
cleared some ground to make a little garden." A clump of yew-
trees, it appears, however, offered a better shelter, and to these
they removed, and there remained during the erection of the
monastery. Some of these trees, we believe, still remain, and are
of such extraordinary size and so close together, as to corroborate
the statement of the uses to which they were put above seven centuries
ago. The monks adopted the Cistercian rule, and placed them
selves in direct communication with the famous founder of it, St.
Bernard, who sent them a monk from his own monastery of Clair-
vaux, to instruct them alike in spiritual and temporal affairs.
Some cottages were now built, and ten other persons joined them.
Terriblte, and all but intolerable, as were the difficulties these men
endured, their enthusiasm seems to have never slackened for a
moment; they were even liberal in their severest destitution. At a
time when they were obliged to feed on the leaves of trees, and herbs
boiled with a little salt, a stranger came and begged for a morsel
of bread : two loaves and a half were all that the community pos
sessed ; and one was, given to the applicant, the abbot saying,
" God would provide for them." Almost immediately after, two
men came from the neighbouring castle of Knaresborough with
a present of a cartload of fine bread from Eustace Fitz-John, its
lord. Left, however, entirely to the assistance of the Archbishop
of York, they were, at the end of two years, about to retire to the
Continent, on the invitation of St. Bernard, when prosperity at last
dawned upon them; Hugh, Dean of York, falling sick, caused
himself to be taken to Fountains, and settled all his immense
wealth upon the community. From that time the monks steadily
progressed until their establishment became one of the most dis
tinguished in the kingdom. Its territorial wealth seems almost
incredible. From the foot of Pinnigant to the boundaries of St.
Wilfred, a distance exceeding thirty miles, extended without
interruption its broad lands. There is a circumstance in the later
history of the abbey, which, taken in connection with those already
narrated as to its earlier, forms a striking commentary on the causes
of the rise and fall of all such institutions. William Thirske, the
last but one of all the long line of abbots, was expelled for stealing
from his own abbey, and afterwards hanged at Tyburn !
Byland Abbey (Fig. 701) needs but few words. It was founded
in 1177 by Roger de Mowbray, the nobleman whose estates were
sequestrated by Henry I. for disloyalty, and then given to another
nobleman also of Norman extraction, who took the Mowbray name,
and founded the great family of the Mowbrays, Dukes of Norfolk
and Earls of Nottingham. The exquisite form of the lancet win
dows vet remaining in a part of the ruins, shows that Byland has

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714.— Devil's Bridge, South Wales. Built 1187,

715.— Well of St. Keyne, Cornwall.

n0. 24.

716— Warkworth -Hermitage.
[OLD ENGLAND.]

185

186

OLD ENGLAND.

[Book II.

been a beautiful and stately pile. The memory of our " Lady
of Walsingham " demands longer pause before the beautiful ruins
of the priory at that place. It is difficult to account for the repu
tation obtained by this monastery. In 1061 a lady, the widow
of Richoldis de Favarches, erected a small chapel in honour of
the Virgin Mary, in imitation of the Sancta Casa at Nazareth ; and
to this chapel the lady's son added a priory for Augustine canons,
and built a church. In these facts there does not appear to be
anything at all unusual or remarkable ; not the less, however,
did the shrine of our Lady, erected in the chapel, become the most
popular place of resort, without exception, that Old England
contained. Even Thomas a Becket's shrine at Canterbury seems
to have been hardly so much visited. Foreigners came hither
from all parts of the world, guided, as they fancied, by the light of
the milky way, which the monks of Walsingham persuaded the
people — so Erasmus says — was a miraculous indication of the
way to their monastery. Many kings and queens were among
the pilgrims : above all, let us not forget to mention, for the sake
of the strange contrast the incident presents to the subsequent
acts of the same man, Henry the Eighth came hither in the. second
year of his reign, and walked barefoot from the village of Basham.
Not many years after, the image of our Lady was burnt at Chelsea,
to the horror of the Roman Catholic world ; and who should direct
the act, but that same quondam worshipper and royal pilgrim to
Walsingham, King Henry ! Prior to the dissolution of the monas
tery, Erasmus visited it. The chapel, he says, then rebuilding
was distinct from the church, and contained a smaller chapel of
wood, with a little narrow door on each side, where strano-ers were
admitted to perform their devotions, and deposit their offerings ;
this was lighted up with wax torches, and that the glitter of
gold, silver, and jewels would lead you to suppose it to be the seat of
the gods. A Saxon arch, forming part of the original chapel, still
exists ; and there also remain extensive portions of the church and
monastery, among which may be especially mentioned, on account of
its exceeding beauty, the lofty arch, sixty feet high, which formed
the east end of the church, and the two wells called the Wishing
Wells, from which whoever drank of the waters obtained, under
certain restrictions, whatever they might wish for : at least so many
a devotee was told and believed. Most of the convent ruins are now
included in the beautiful pleasure-grounds of a modern residence
known as Walsingham Abbey. (Fig. 703.)
Tewkesbury Church, as it is called, but which for size,
plan, and magnificence may rank among our cathedrals, was,
before the dissolution of monasteries, the church of the Abbey
of Tewkesbury, originally founded in the Saxon times by two
brothers, Dodo and Odo, who both died in 725. During the
reign of the Confessor, an incident occurred ¦ which led to the
temporary ruin of the foundation, and which is too remarkable to
be passed without notice. . Bithric, Earl of Gloucester, was sent into
Normandy, on an embassy, and whilst there, Matilda, daughter of
Baldwin, Earl of Flanders, fell so passionately in love with him
as to forget the delicacy of her sex and make her feelings known
to him who had called them forth. Whether the earl disliked the
Norman lady, or was already in love .with an English on«, we know
not, but he at all events so discouraged the advances made that the
love, as is not unfrequent in such cases, changed to hate, and left
but one desire in Matilda's heart, that of vengeance. The earl no
doubt laughed at threats from such a quarter, and returned to
England, where most probably the circumstance was altogether
forgotten. But by and bye news came that Matilda had married
Duke William of Normandy. Time passed again, and rumours of
invasion at the hands of this Duke William filled all England ;
and truly the duke came at last, and England was conquered.
Then too came the time that Matilda had never, it seems, ceased to
look forward to. She personally solicited the Conqueror to place
Bithric at her disposal, and having obtained possession of his person,
threw him into prison at Winchester, and there he died. Many of
his estates were at the same time seized by Matilda, among them the
town and abbey of Tewkesbury. By William Rufus, however, the
church and monastery were regranted to Robert Fitz Hamon who
rebuilt the whole about 1 102. " It cannot be easily reported," says
William of Malmesbury, " how highly he exalted this monastery,
wherein the beauty of the buildings ravished the eyes, and the charity
of the monks allured the hearts of such folk as used to come thither."
Among the interesting features of the interior of this church may be
particularized the monuments of the nobles and others slain in the
fatal battle of Tewkesbury. (Figs. 705, 706.)
Hexham Church (Fig. 704) was also the church of a
famous monastery, and, like Tewkesbury, owes its preservation, in
much of its ancient magnificence, to the fact of its being used

after the Reformation, as a place of worship for the town and
parish. The plan is cathedral-like, including nave, choir, and
transepts, though the nave, having been burnt by the Scots in the
time of Edward the First, has never been rebuilt. The architec
ture generally is of the twelfth century, but there are both later
and earlier portions ; some of the last indeed being supposed to be
remains of a structure that formed one of the marvels of Saxon
England, the church erected by Wilfrid, Archbishop of York, in
the latter part of the seventh century. It has been thus glowingly
described by one who assisted to restore it from the ruin into which
it had fallen. , Wilfrid " began the edifice by making crypts, and
subterraneous oratories, and winding passages through all parts of
its foundations. The pillars that supported the walls were finely
polished, square, and of various other shapes, and the three galleries
were of immense height and length. These, and the capitals of
their columns, and the bow of the sanctuary, he decorated with
histories and images, carved in relief on the stone, and with pictures
coloured with great taste. The body of the church was surrounded
with wings and porticos, to which winding staircases were contrived
with the most astonishing art. These staircases also led to long
walking galleries, and various winding passages so contrived that
a very great multitude of people might be within them, unperceived
by any person on the ground-floor of the church. Oratories, too,
as sacred as they were beautiful, were made in all parts of it, and
in which were altars of the Virgin, of St. Michael, St. John the
Baptist, and all the Apostles, Confessors, and Virgins. Certain
towers and blockhouses remain unto this day specimens of the
inimitable excellence of the architecture of this structure. The
relics, the religious persons, the ministers, the great library, the
vestments, and utensils of the church, were too numerous and mag
nificent for the poverty of our language to describe. The atrium
of the cathedral was girt with a stone wall of great thickness and
strength, and a stone aqueduct conveyed a stream of water through
the town to all the offices. The magnitude of this place is apparent
from the extent of its ruins. It excelled, in the excellence of its
architecture, all the buildings in England ; and in truth, there was
nothing like it, at that time, to be found on this side the Alps."
[Richard, Prior of Hexham.] It can hardly be supposed there
were English architects to design, or English workmen to execute,
such a building in the seventh century : both classes were brought
from Rome.

In dealing with a second group, we may commence with the
venerable and picturesque ruins of the monastery of Easby,
which are near the village of that name, about a mile and a half
from Richmond, and on the rocky and well-wooded banks >of the
Swale. Rould, Constable of Richmond Castle, was the founder,
about the year 1152. Its inhabitants were members of the then
recently-introduced order of Premonstratensian Canons, who lived
according to the rule of St. Austin. Their dress was entirely
white — a white cassock, with a white rochet over it, a long white
cloak, and a white cap ; and a picturesque addition, to one of the
most picturesque of houses and scenes, these white canons must
have formed. Our cut (Fig. 711) shows the more important of
the existing remains, which are well described in Dr. Whitaker's
' Yorkshire '.' —
" By the landscape painter and the man of taste the ruins of this
house, combined with the scene around them, have never been con
templated without delight. But admiration and rapture are very
unobserving qualities ; and it has never hitherto been attended to,
that this house, though its several parts are elaborate and ornamen
tal, has been planned with a neglect of symmetry and proportion
which might have become an architect of Laputa. Of the refectory,
a noble room nearly one hundred feet long, with a groined apart
ment below, every angle is either greater or less than a right ancle.
Of the cloister-court, contrary to every other example, there have
been only two entire sides, each of which has an obtuse angle
From these again the entire outline of the church reels to the west,
and though the chapter-house is a rectangle, the vestry is a tra
pezium.* Once more : of the terminations of the north and south
aisles eastward, one has extended several yards beyond the other ;
the choir also is elongated, put of all proportion. The abbot's
lodgings, instead of occupying their usual situation, to the south
east of the choir, and of being connected with the east end of >he
cloister-court, are here most injudiciously placed to the north of
the church, and therefore deprived, by the great elevation of the
latter, of warmth and sunshine. The abbot's private entrance into
the church was by a doorway, yet remaining, into the north aisle of
the nave. To compensate, however, for the darkness of his lodg-
* Trapezium, a figure where the four sides are neither equal nor parallel.

Chap. II.]

OLD ENGLAND.

187

jngs, he had a pleasant garden, open to the morning sun, with a
beautiful solarium,* highly adorned with Gothic groinings at the
north-east angle.
" But to atone for all these deformities in architecture, many of
the decorations of [this house are extremely elegant. Among these
the first place is due to the great window of the refectory, of which
the beauties, are better described by the pencil than the pen. This,
with the groined vault beneath, appears to be of the reign of Henry
III. North-west from this are several fine apartments, contempo
rary, as appears, with^ the foundation ; but the whole line of wall,
having been placed on the shelving bank of the Swale, has long
been gradually detaching itself from the adjoining parts, and
threatens in no long period to destroy one of the best features of
the place. On the best side of the imperfect cloister-court is a
circular doorway, which displays the fantastic taste of Norman
enrichments in perfection. A cluster of round columns, with
variously-adorned capitals, is surmounted by a double moulded
arch, embossed with cats' heads hanging out their tongues, which
are curled at the extremities. Above all is an elegant moulding of
foliage. Not far beneath is a large picturesque tree (perhaps
truly) distinguished by the name of the abbot's elm. The abbey
gateway, still in perfect repair, is the latest part of the whole fabric,
and probably about the era of Edward III."

On a bold bluff rock, looking out upon the German Ocean, stand
the ruins of the Priory of Tynemouth. We pass into the con
secrated ground, which is still used as a burial-place, through a
barrack, the buildings of which have been partly erected out of the
materials of the priory. When we are within the priory inclo-
sure we see artillery pointed seaward and landward, — sentinels
pacing their constant walk, and in the midst the old grey ruin,
looking almost reproachfully upon these odd associations. There is
one living within constant view of this ruin — a writer who has won
an enduring reputation — to whom the solitude of a sick-room has
brought as many soothing and holy aspirations as to the most
pure and spiritual of the recluses, who, century after century,
looked out from this rock upon a raging sea, and thought of a
world where all was peace. The scene which is now presented by
the view from Tynemouth is thus described by the writer to whom
we allude, in 'Life in the Sick-room.' What a contrast to the
scene upon which the old monks were wont to look ! (Fig. 710.)
" Between my window and the sea is a green down, as green as
any field in Ireland, and on the hearer half of this down hay
making goes forward in its season. It slopes down to a hollow,
where the prior of old preserved his fish, there being sluices
formerly at either end, the one opening upon the river, and
the other upon the little haven below the priory, whose ruins still
crown the rock. From the prior's fishpond, the green down
slopes upwards again to a ridge ; and on the slope are cows graz
ing all summer, and half way into the winter. Over the ridge?
I survey the harbour and all its traffic, the view extending from
the lighthouses far to the right, to a horizon of sea to the left.
Beyond the harbour lies another county, with, first, its sandy
beach, where there are frequent wrecks — too interesting to an
invalid — and a fine stretch of rocky shore to the left ; and above
the rocks, a spreading heath, where I watch troops of boys flying
their kites ; lovers and friends taking their breezy walk on Sun
days ; the sportsman with his gun and dog ; and the washerwomen
converging from the farmhouses on Saturday evenings, to carry
their loads in company, to the village on the yet farther height. I
see them, now talking in a cluster, as they walk each with her
white burden on her head, and now in file, as they pass through the
narrow lane ; and finally they part off on the village green, each
to some neighbouring house of the gentry. Behind the village
and the heath stretches the railroad ; and I watch the train
triumphantly careering along the level road, and puffing forth its
steam above hedges and groups of trees, and then labouring and
panting up the ascent, till it is lost between two heights, which at
last bound my view. But on these heights are more objects ; a
windmill, now in motion and now at rest; a limekiln, in a
picturesque rocky field ; an ancient church tower, barely visible
in the morning, but conspicuous when the setting sun shines upon
it ; a colliery with its lofty wagon-way, and the self-moving wagons
running hither and thither, as if in pure wilfulness."
The original choice of the situation for the priory appears to
have been dictated by that benevolence which was characteristic of
* Solarium, as the name implies, signifies a place exposed to the sun, and was
applied originally to places on the tops of houses, where the Romans used to take
air and exercise. In the present instance it means simply a garden or summer-
house.

the early religious foundations. Tynemouth Priory was a beacon
to the sailor, and when he looked upon its towers he thought of the
Virgin and Saint Oswin, who were to shield him from the dangers
of the great waters. That the situation at the mouth of a river
and on an elevated site, early recommended the place as suitable
both for military defence and religious purposes, is evident from
the fact that Robert de Mowbray, about the year 1090, fled
hither, and defended himself within its walls against William Rufus
(against whom he had conspired) ; but, after a time, finding that
he could hold out no longer, he sought " sanctuary" at the altar
of the church, from which, however, he was taken by force, and,
after suffering a tedious imprisonment, was put to death. The
monastery at one time enjoyed considerable wealth. It possessed
twenty-seven manors in Northumberland, with their royalties }
besides other valuable lands and tenements. At the dissolution, in
1539, there was a prior, with fifteen prebendaries and three novices.
The annual revenues of the priory were then estimated (separate
from the Abbey of St. Albans, on which it depended) at 3972.
10*. 5d. by Dugdale, and at 511 J. As. Id. by Speed. The prior, on
the surrender of the monastery, received a pension of 80Z. per
annum. The site and most of the lands were granted in the 5th of
Edward VI. to John Dudley, Earl of Northumberland ; but by his
attainder in the next year it reverted to the Crown, in which it
remained till the 10th of Elizabeth. During the reign of Elizabeth,
the place was occupied as a fortress. Camden says, " It is now
called Tinemouth Castle, and glories in a stately and strong castle."
The following description of the remains is from a small work
published at North Shields in 1806. There is very slight altera
tion at the present time, for the ruins are now carefully preserved.
" The approach to the priory is from the west, by a gateway
tower of a square form, having a circular exploratory turret on
each corner ; from this gateway, on each hand, a strong double wall
has been extended to the rocks on the sea-shore, which from their
great height have been esteemed in former times inaccessible. The
gate, with its walls, was fortified by a deep outward ditch, over
which there was a drawbridge, defended by moles on each side.
The tower comprehends an outward and interior gateway, the out
ward gateway having two gates, at the distance of about six feet
from each other, the inner of which is defended by a portcullis and
an open gallery ; the interior gateway is, in like manner,
strengthened by a double gate. The space between the gateways,
being a square of about six paces, is open above to allow those on
the top of the tower and battlements to annoy assailants who had
gained the first gate.
" On passing the gateway, the scene is strikingly noble and
venerable ; the whole enclosed area may contain about six acres ;
the walls seem as well calculated for defence as the gateway tower ;
the view is crowded with august ruins ; many fine arches of the
priory are standing. The most beautiful part of these remains is
the eastern limb of the church, of elegant workmanship. The
ruins are so disunited, that it would be very difficult to determine
to what particular office each belongs. The ruins which present
themselves in front, on entering the gateway, appear to be the
remains of the cloister, access to which was afforded by a gateway
of circular arches, comprehending several members inclining inwards,.
and arising from pilasters. After passing this gate, in the area
many modern tombs appear, the ground being still used for sepul
ture. The west gate entering into the abbey is still entire, of the
same architecture as that, leading to the cloister. The ground,
from the cloister to the south wall, is almost covered with founda
tions, which, it is presumed, are the remains of the priory. Two
walls of the church are standing : the end wall to the east contains-
three long windows ; the centre window, the loftiest, is near twenty
feet high, richly ornamented with mouldings. Beneath the centre
window at the east end is a doorway of excellent workmanship,.
conducting to a small but elegant apartment, which is supposed to
have contained the shrine and tomb of St. Oswin." (Fig. 709.)

Pershore, a name derived, it is said, from the great number
of pear-trees in the vicinity, is delightfully situated on the northern
bank of the Avon. The origin of the town is probably to be dated
from the foundation of the abbey here in the seventh century,
by Oswald, one of the nephews of Ethelbert, King of Mercia. The
patrons of the establishment seem to have had some difficulty in
making up their minds as to what particular religious community
should be permanently settled in it, for at one time we find secular
clerks at Pershore, then monks, then seculars (females) again,
and lastly, from 984, Benedictine monks. Legend has been
busy concerning the early history of Pershore. One Duke
Delfere usurped the possessions, and in consequence — so it was
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782,  Doorway of Barfieston Church. Kent.

712.— Christchnrch, Hampshire.

724— Iffley.

189

190

OLD ENGLAND.

[Book II.

generally believed — died eaten up by vermin. Oddo, another
Mercian duke, to whom the estates had passed, was so moved
by Delfere's miserable fate, that he not only restored the lands,
but made a vow of celibacy, in order that no son of his should ever
be guilty of the sacrilege of endeavouring to obtain repossession.
There remain of the abbey some vestiges of the monastic build
ings, a part of the entrance gateway, and considerable portions of
the church, as .in the tower, the southern part ofthe transept, and
a chapel, all included in the existing church of the Holy Cross.
(Fig. 707.) Near the gateway ; we have mentioned stood the
small chapel of St. Edburga, to whom the abbey was dedicated.
This lady was a daughter of Edward the Elder, and distinguished
herself even in her childhood by her scholastic and pious tastes.
Her father one day placed before her a New Testament and several
other books on one side, and some fine clothes and rich jewels on
the other, and desired her to choose. The princess at once took
the books. The king, thinking, no doubt, he was bound to obey
what he esteemed such decisive tokens of her proper position in life,
immediately placed her in a nunnery at Winchester, where she
died, and where her bones were preserved for ages after, as invalu
able relics.
No one need be surprised at the magnificence ofthe ancient priory
of Christ Church, Hampshire (Fig. 712), as that magnificence is
attested to the present day by the church, when the circumstances
related of the erection are considered. The first establishment of
the house is lost in the darkness of antiquity, but in the twelfth
century we find Ralph Flambard, that turbulent and oppressive,
but able and zealous prelate, busily engaged rebuilding the whole,
and obtaining the necessary funds by seizing the revenues of the
canons, allowing each of them merely a sufficiency for his sub
sistence. We may imagine the confusion, the dismay, the uproar,
though, unfortunately, no Sydney Smith was then among the
oppressed to record their feelings and sentiments as on a somewhat
similar occasion in our own time. The Dean, Godric, resisted the
bishop with all possible energy, but was, in consequence, degraded
from his office, and obliged to' seek refuge on the Continent ; and
though he was ultimately allowed to return, it was only in a spirit
of due obedience to his superior. Flambard, having removed all
opposition, levelled the old buildings to the ground, and raised the
new ones, of which considerable portions exist to this day : these
are to be found in the nave, the south-western aisle, and the
northern transept. But let it not be supposed that Flambard
obtained all the honours of this mighty work. According to a
legend told by the monkish writers, he had supernatural assistance.
Whenever the workmen were engaged in their labours, there -was
observed one workman of whom no one could tell from whence he
came, or what he was, except that he exhibited a most extraordinary
indefatigability in the business of raising the monastery, and an
equally extraordinary liberality in declining to be paid anything
for what he had done : at the times of refreshment, and of settle
ment of wages, he was ever absent. And so the work progressed,
until near completion. One day a large beam was raised to a
particular place, and found, unfortunately, to be too sltort. The
interrupted and embarrassed workmen were unable to remedy the
defect, and retired to their dwellings for the day. The next
morning, when they returned to the church, there was the beam
in its right position, longer even than was required. The strange
workman immediately occurred to every one's thoughts ; and the
general conclusion was, that the Saviour himself had been the
supernatural assistant. The dedication of the pile to Christ was
in later ages attributed to this circumstance, and hence comes
the name of Christ Church. Nay, if there are any persons very
anxious about the legend, we believe they may yet find some
who will show them in the church what they hold to be the
very miraculous beam itself. It is probable that Christ Church
was originally founded in the earliest days of Christianity in
England, on the site of a heathen temple, the usual mode in
which the shrewd missionaries of Rome at once attested the triumph
of the new over the old religion, and reconciled the people to the
change, by adopting their habitual places of worship. In the course
of the last century there was discovered, in the priory foundations
a cavity about two feet square, that had been covered with a stone
cemented into the adjoining pavement, and which contained a large
quantity of bones of birds, — herons, bitterns, cocks and hens.
Warner, a local antiquarian writer, observes that, among the
Romans, '' many different species of birds were held in high vene
ration, and carefully preserved for the purposes of sacrifice and
augural divination. Adopting the numerous absurdities of Egyptian
and Grq^an worship, their tolerating conquerors had affixed a
sacredness to the cock, the hawk, the heron, the chicken, and other

birds ; the bones of which, after their decease, were not unfrequently
deposited within the walls ofthe temple ofthe deity to whom they
were considered as peculiarly appropriated." Portions of the priory
yet remain, and a visitor to the neighbourhood occasionally hears of
the Convent Garden, now a meadow, of Paradise, the appropriately-
named place of recreation for the scholars of Christ Church school,
and forming also a relic of the priory, — of vestiges of fishponds
and stews. But the church is the only important part of the priory
now existing, which, apart from its architectural characteristics,
exhibits many interesting features. Including St. Mary's Chapel at
the eastern end, and the tower at the western, the church extends
to the distance of three hundred and eleven feet. The parts of
the building which may be separately distinguished are the Norman
remains already noticed, the porch or principal entrance, and the
tower, with the great window nearly thirty feet high. On the under
sides of the benches of the stalls are a series of satirical and ¦ gro
tesque carvings, representing, there can be little doubt, the monkish
opinions of the friars. In one is seen a fox with a cock for his
clerk, preaching to a set of geese, who are greedily imbibing the
doctrines he puts forth. In a second the people are typified by a
zany, who, while his back is turned upon his dish of porridge, is
saved the trouble of eating it by a rat. A third exhibits a baboon
with a cowl on his head, reposing on a pillow, and exhibiting a
swollen paunch. From what we know of the origin of the friars,
who sprung up to reform the state of idleness and sensuality into
which the monks and clergy generally had fallen, one would think
the last of these pieces of carved satire must have told much more
strongly against its authors than its objects. Another very curious
carving is the altar-piece, which Warner supposes to be coeval
with Bishop Flambard. If so, it is one of the most extraordinary
things of the kind existing in England. The carving represents
the genealogy of Christ, by a tree springing from the loins of Jesse.
On each side is a niche, one containing a statue of David, the other
Solomon. Above these sit the Virgin with the child Jesus, and
Joseph, and surrounded by the Magi. Projecting heads of an ox,
and an ass, remind us of the manger and of the flight to Egypt.
Still higher are shepherds with their sheep, the former looking up
toward a group of angels, over whom, at the apex of the carving,
God extends his protecting arms. Exclusive of all these figures,
which are mostly mutilated, there are niches which contained nine
others, and there are a host of small figures of saints, thirty-two in
number, also in niches, and each bearing his particular emblem or
distinguishing mark. The ' chief individual memories of Christ
Church are connected with the noble family of the Montacutes
Earls of Salisbury. By them was the noble tower at the west end
erected in the fifteenth century;, by {hem were the two small
Chantries in the north transept raised ; [by them was the beautiful,
but mutilated chapel — to the north of the altar — left to excite the
admiration of visitors to the church by its beauty, to stir at the
same time their deepest sympathies and warmest indignation as it
reminded them of the noble and most unhappy lady whose fate that
mutilation may be said to commemorate. The chapel was erected
by Margaret, Countess of Salisbury, for her own resting place
when in due course of nature she should have need of it. But the
venerable mother of the eloquent Cardinal Pole, the man who had
refused to minister to the depraved appetites of Henry, and sub
sequently held him up to the scorn and abhorence of the European
world, was not likely to die a peaceful death in England during that
monarch's lifetime. In 1538 the chief relatives of the Cardinal,
namely, Lord Montacute and Sir Geoffrey Pole, his brothers,
and the Countess, his mother, were suddenly arrested with the
Marquis of Exeter and others, on a vague charge of aiding the
Cardinal, as the King's enemy ; and Geoffrey, the youngest, having
pleaded guilty and made a confession involving the remainder on
a promise that he should be pardoned for so doing, the two noble
men were beheaded on Tower Hill. A month afterwards, on the
ground of some alleged discoveries made through the wreck of a
French vessel on our shores, fresh arrests took place ; and parlia
ment was instructed to pass bills of attainder against the livino-
mourners of the recent victims of the scaffold, —namely, theCountes's
of Salisbury, her grandson, the child of Lord Montacute, and the
widow ofthe Marquis of Exeter, and with them were associated two
knights. The Countess was then seventy years of age, but behaved
not the less with so much firmness and presence of mind on her ex
amination before the Earl of Southampton and the Bishop of EIv
that these personages wrote to their employer, Cromwell, saving
she was more like a strong and constant man than a woman, and
hat she denied everything laid to her charge; and that it seemed
to them either that her sons had not made her « privy or participate
of the bottom and pit of their stomach, or that she must be the

Chap. II.]

OLD ENGLAND.

191

most arrant traitress that ever lived." Some of the Countess's
servants were examined, and, no doubt, tampered with; still no
sufficient material for a criminal trial was to be obtained. What
next? Dismissal to their homes, no doubt, under almost any other
English monarch : not so under the rule of the cruel Henry ; so a
bill for their attainder, without the form of a trial, was obtained
from the parliament, which should be considered scarcely less
infamous than the king, to allow itself, as it did, to be the constant
agent of his personal malignity. The two knights were exe
cuted ; the Marchioness of Exeter was pardoned some months later ;
and what became of the boy does not appear : but as to the Countess,
two years after the high nobility and commons of England had
authorized the murders sought at their hands, and when men's minds
thought the affair had reached its bloody conclusion at last, the
people of England were horrified, those at least whom the never-
ceasing wholesale state executions had not entirely brutalized, to
hear that the aged Countess had been dragged to the scaffold
after all, on the ground of some new provocation given by her son,
Cardinal Pole, and that one of the most frightful scenes in English
history had taken place on the occasion of the poor lady's death.
When told to lay her head on the block, she answered, " No ! my
head never committed treason ; if you will have it, you must take
it as you can." The executioner strove to detain her, but she ran
swiftly round the scaffold, tossing her head from side to side, while
the monsters struck her with their axes, until at last, with her grey
hair all dabbled in blood, she was held forcibly to the block, and
an end put to her misery. There is, as we have already partly inti
mated, an appendant to this awful picture to be found in the history
of Christ Church. It might have been supposed that even Henry
would be glad to let such events pass as soon as possible into
oblivion ; but his satellites knew him better ; so when the com
missioners were at work at the time of the Reformation, they
took care to tell him, in relation to their visit to Christ Church —
" In the church we found a chapel and monument made of Caen
stone, prepared by the late mother of Reginald Pole for her burial,
which we have caused to be defaced, and all the arms and badges
clearly to be delete [erased]."
On one-side of the tower, at the west end of St. John's Church,
Chester, may be seen the figures of a man and a hind ; in that
rude pictorial representation we have a record of the origin of the
foundation of St. John's, between eleven and twelve centuries a°-o ;
when King Ethelred was admonished in a vision that he should
erect the sacred pile on a spot where he would see a milk-white
hind. When entire, this building was worthy of its kingly founder,
having been at once large and magnificent. But one limb after
another of the edifice has disappeared,, until now there remains little
more than the nave of a Building that once had its transepts, and
choir, and chapels, on the true cathedral scale. And that nave,
with its mighty pillars and arches, seems sadly shorn of its dignity
by the alterations and fittings up, including wooden galleries, that
have taken place to render the church suitable to our modern notions
of the accommodation required for a congregation. (Fig. 713.)
There are two interesting traditions connected with St. John's.
When, according to the monkish- writers, Edgar took the famous
water excursion of his in a barge on the Dee, rowed by eight
kings, it was to the church of St. John that he, taking his station
at the helm, personally directed their course, and then returned to
his palace. If this story be but of doubtful authenticity, we fear
our other will be still less entitled to credence. Giraldus Cambrensis,
in reference to the brave but unfortunate Harold, slain at Hastings,
says that he " had many wounds and lost his left eye with the stroke
of an arrow, and was overcome, and escaped to the county of
Chester, and lived there holily, as men troweth, an anchorite's life
in Saint James's cell, fast by St. John's Church, and made a good
end, as it was known by his last confession." The believers in the
existence of Harold at Chester, long after he was supposed to have
been killed at Hastings, have been accustomed to show, by way of
supporting their views, a small antique-looking building over
hanging a high cliff on the south of the churchyard, and known as
the Anchorage. Two bodies, deposited in coffin-shaped cavities, have
beeto found in the rock close by — no doubt the bodies of those who
have tenanted the Anchorage. But if we would follow the remains
to their undoubted resting-place, we must visit Waltham Abbey.

Waltham Abbey, or Holy Cross, is situated on the eastern
bank of the river Lea, at the distance of twelve miles and a half
from London ; the latter name is derived from a holy cross, asserted
to have been brought hither by miraculous means during the reign
of Canute. Tovi, standard-bearer to Canute, founded here a
religious house for two priests, to whose charge the sacred relic was

committed. After the death of Athelstan, the son and successor of
Tovi, the estate, it appears, reverted to the crown. The lordship
was then given by the monarch (Edward the Confessor) to Harold,
on condition that he should build a college, and furnish it with all
necessaries, relics, dresses, and ornaments, in memory of Edward
and his spouse Eclitha. Harold in consequence rebuilt the church,
increased the number of priests to twelve, one of whom was the
governor, under the title of dean, gave it ample endowments, and,
so far as the time permitted, made it an excellent school of learning.
No less than seventeen manors were granted on this occasion by
Harold, and confirmed to the establishment by the charter granted
by Edward. Previous to the fatal battle of Hastings, Harold here
offered up his vows ; and he afterwards was brought here for inter
ment with his two brothers, by their unhappy mother Githa, who
with great difficulty obtained Harold's remains from the Conqueror.
The canons on Harold's favourite foundation also experienced
William's resentment. It is said that he despoiled them of all their
moveable wealth; their lands, however, he left nearly entire.
Waltham continued a college until 1177, when it was dissolved on
the alleged account of the debauchery of the members, by Henry
II., and an abbey for regular canons founded in its stead, whose
number, according to Farmer, in his ' History of Waltham Abbey,'
amounted to twenty-four. The Conqueror's charter was confirmed,
as were also various subsequent additional grants, and two new
manors were granted.
In 1 191 Waltham was made a mitred abbey. Richard I. gave to
the abbey the whole manor of Waltham, with great woods and park
called Harold's Park, and other lands, as well as the market of
Waltham. Henry III. frequently resided here, and, as a mark of
his favour, granted the abbey a fair, to be held annually for seven
days. During this reign the church was again solemnly dedicated
in the presence of the king and many of the principal nobles. The
body of Edward I. was brought here in 1307, with great pomp,
where it remained for no less than fifteen weeks, during which time
six religious men were chosen weekly from the neighbouring monas
teries to attend it night and day. The abbey was surrendered to
Henry VIII. at the dissolution, on the 23rd of March, in the thirty-
first year of his reign, by Robert Fuller, the last abbot, who had
previously made a vain effort to avert the impending ruin by pre
senting the king with the magnificent seat of Copt Hall. The net
annual income at this period was 900/. 4*. 3c?.
The only remains of the monastery are, a portion of the con
ventual church, which now forms the parish church, an entrance
gateway and bridge across an arm of the Lea, some vaulted arches
forming a kind of dark passage of two divisions, and some broken
walls. The church must have been a magnificent specimen of
Norman architecture, if it were only from its great size. An idea
of the extent may be conveyed by stating that the site of Harold's .
tomb, which stood either in the east end of the choir or in a chapel
beyond, is no less than one hundred and twenty feet distant from
the termination of the present edifice. The original church con
sisted of nave, transept, choir, and chapels. There was also a large
tower rising from the intersection of the -transept, containing "five
great tunable bells." Part of this tower having fallen, the re
mainder was undermined and blown up, the choir, tower, transept,
and east chapel at once demolished. The nave and some adjacent
chapels alone remained ; the nave, as before stated, with its side
aisles, forms the body ofthe present church. (Figs. 604, 605.) This is
about ninety feet in length, and in breadth, including the side aisles,
forty-eight feet ; it is in the Norman style, with round massive
piers dividing the nave from the aisles, semicircular arch, and zig
zag enrichments. One of these piers on each side is decorated with
spiral and another with very bold and rude zigzag indentations,
which, it is supposed, were formerly filled up with brass or other
metal. Above the first range of arches, supported on the piers we
have mentioned, are two other tiers of arches : those of the second
tier corresponding in width with those of the first, but being lower
in height ; the arches of the third tier are three to each arch of the
lower tiers, with a window pierced in the middle one. The roof is
modern and plain. At the west end of the church is a heavy
square embattled tower, eighty-six feet high, bearing date 1558.
From the south side of the church projects the Lady-chapel, now
used as a vestry and school-room, under which is a fine arched
crypt, "the fairest," says Fuller, who was the incumbent from
1648 to 1658, " I ever saw." Another little chapel, at the south
east end, is now a repository for rubbish. These chapels have
some beautiful portions in the decorated English style. The win
dows in the south aisle have been but little altered. There is a
fine wooden screen, bearing the arms of Philip and Mary, and a
font, which appears to be very ancient. Near the screen there was

725.— Romsey Abbey.

JIBS

730.— Norman Window. — Caston
Church, Northamptonshire.

j i |

726.— The Abbey Church, Romsey, Hampshire.

L„,„

111 ,:MM^

_M1I

731. — Norman Window. — St. Cross.

727— Doorway, .Romsey Abbey.Hants.

- -

-^s. --„--? -

*JS— St. Cross, near Winchester.

729— St.. Cross.

192

PIli'M

r nn

ia

s

732.^Interior of HolyrpodVGhapel.

735. — St; Peter's, Northampton*

733.— G*for& Cathedrals

no. 25.

[OLD1 ENGLAND.]

736— Sanctuary, Westminster— From a sketch by Dr. Stukeley, before itadestrnction in 1775-
193

194

OLD ENGLAND.

[Book II.

formerly a painting on glass of Harold ; this was destroyed by the
Puritans during the reign of Charles I. Farmer observes that the
church " is observed by all artists, and the most curious, to stand
the exactest east and west of any other in Great Britain." The
abbey refectory is reported to have stood eastward of the church,
and the stables on the spot now known as the Abbey Farm. The
gateway we have mentioned is in a much later style of architecture
than the church. Two stone coffins have been found at different
periods, each of which was at first thought to be Harold's, but
there appears to have been no proof of the correctness of the
supposition. Near the abbey mills is a wide space of ground called the
Bramblings, but formerly known by the name of Rome-land ; owing,
it is supposed, to the rents having been- appropriated to the see of
Eome. On this spot Henry VIII. had a small pleasure-house,
which he occasionally occupied in his visits to Waltham. One
of these visits led to an important event— the introduction of
Crammer to Henry, and his consequent elevation to influence and
authority. If history were altogether silent on the subject of Verulam, and
we knew nothing of the slaughter of its countless thousands of
Eoman inhabitants by the Britons under Boadicea, and of other
scarcely less important events, that show the place to have been
one of the most ancient and distinguished of British and Ronjan
towns, a walk through the neighbourhood- of its more modern
representative, St. Albans, even at the present day, would tell us
our footsteps were among the memorials of a mighty people, that
we looked upon the site of what must have once been a great and
¦magnificent place. There is no mistaking the character of these
Jiuge fragments of wall, or of these gigantic embankments, not
¦unaptly denominated the Verulam Hills, or of the extent of the
place both walls and embankments formerly enclosed. Nay, even
the very Abbey Church of St. Albans, stamped as it is with an
expression of the extremest antiquity in its general style of archi
tecture, tells of something infinitely more ancient, in the hetero
geneous materials of which it is built,— tiles, bricks, flints,
the debris of Eoman Verulam. But if we avail ourselves of the
assistance of history, our wonder and admiration are indefinitely
enhanced. Before London as yet was, Verulam existed, not only
as an important city, but as the seat of a line of princes, the
Cassii. After their overthrow, and the complete establishment
of the dominion of the masters of the world, Verulam was one
Of- the few places that rejoiced in the honour and advantages
attending the elevation to the rank of a municipium or free city.
Its wealth, as well as its large population, at the time of the British
outburst under Boadicea, is evident from the allusion to it made
by Tacitus, who seems to intimate that its riches formed an addi
tional inducement with the Britons to attack it, and from the
number of persons— seventy thousand — who are said to have fallen
in Verulam, London, and some other less important places. It
may be easily supposed that St. Albans must be a rich mine for
the antiquary to delve in, though its choicest treasures have probably
been already gathered. " Were I to relate," says Camden, " what
common report affirms of the many Roman coins, statues of gold
and silver, vessels, marble pillars, cornices, and wonderful monu
ments of ancient art dug up here, I should scarcely be believed."
One of the most important discoveries was made some nine centuries
ago, during the time of Abbot Eadmer, who having employed men
to ransack the ruins, they " tore up the foundations of a great
place in the midst of the ancient city ; and while they were won
dering at the remains of such large buildings, they found in the
hollow repository of one wall, as in a small press, among some
lesser books and rolls, an unknown volume of one book, which was
not mutilated by its long continuance there ; and of which neither
the letters nor the dialect, from their antiquity, were known to any
person who could then be found : but the inscriptions and titles
in it shone resplendent in letters of gold. The boards of oak,
the strings of silk, in great measure retained their original strength
and beauty. When inquiry had been industriously made very far
and wide concerning the notices in this book, at last they found
one priest, aged and decrepit, a man of great erudition, TJnwon by
name, who, knowing the dialect and letters of different languages,
read the writing of the before-mentioned book, distinctly and
openly. In the same manner he read without hesitation, and he
explained without difficulty, notices in other books that were found
in the same room and within the same press ; for the letters were
such as used to be written when Verulam was inhabited, and the
dialect was that of the ancient Britons then used by them. There
were son* things in the other books, written in Latin, but these

were not curious ; and in the first book, the greater one, of which
I have made mention before, he found written ' The History of
Saint Alban, the proto-martyr of the English,' which the church
at this very day recites and reads ; to which that excellent scholar
Bede lends his testimony, differing in nothing from it. That book
in which the ' History of St. Alban ' was contained, was reposited
with the greatest regard ,in the treasury of the abbey ; and exactly
as the aforesaid presbyter read the book written in. the ancient
dialect of England or Britain, with which he was well acquainted,
Abbot Eadmer caused it to be faithfully and carefully set down
by some of the wiser brethren of the convent, and' then more fully
taught in the public preachings. But when the history was thus
made known, as I have said, to several, by being written in Latin,
what is wonderful to tell, the primitive and original work fell away
in round pieces, and was soon reduced irrecoverably to dust."
(Whitaker's ' Ancient Cathedral of Cornwall.') As may be sup
posed, the name, St. Albans, is derived from the saint, whose
history was thus strangely discovered. Alban or Albanus was a
Roman citizen of Verulam, who, during the dreadful persecution
instituted by Dioclesian against the Christians, gave shelter to one
of their ministers or priests, named Amphilabus, who had fled to
Verulam from Wales. His retreat was unfortunately discovered
and the judge of the city sent soldiers to arrest him ; when Albanus
who had received some private intimation of their approach, sent
away his guest in safety, and then putting on his habit, presented
himself to the soldiers as the man of whom they were in search.
By them he was conveyed to the judge ; where, throwing off his
cloak, and revealing himself, he proceeded to defend the act of
heroism he had performed by one still more heroic, — a bold and
unequivocal declaration of his belief in the doctrines of the Cross.
Great was the excitement and indignation. At first he was scourged
with the utmost severity, in the hope of inducing him to recant ;
but seeing all efforts ineffectual, he was taken the same day to a
neighbouring hill, and there beheaded. Two miracles are related
as having occurred at his death. The ^bridge over the river was
so narrow that the multitudes who crowded to see the execution
were unable to pass, until Albanus prayed that the waters might be
divided and afford a safe passage. This was done ; and the execu
tioner, in consequence, refused to perform his office, and was
himself condemned to death on account of his scruples. The
other miracle has been thus recorded by a poetical writer, of the
time of James I., in an inscription which was placed below a painted
window in the abbey, representing the martyrdom : —
" This image of our frailty, painted glass,
Shows where the life and death of Alban was.
A Knight beheads the martyr, but so soon,
His eyes dropt out to see what he had done ;
And leaving their own head, seem'd with a tear
To wail the other head laid mangled there :
Because, before, his eyes no tears would shed,
His eyes themselves like tears fall from his head.
Oh, bloody fact, that whilst St. Alban dies,
The murderer himself weeps out his eyes."
After the execution, the people of St. Albans had the story of
Albanus's disgrace, as they esteemed it, engraved upon marble and
inserted in the city walls. Even then, however, . no doubt St.
Albans was secretly divided against itself; and men were heard
still whispering to each other in solitary corners in something like
the words of the scientific martyr of a later time—" It moves •" for
both Bede and Gildas state that but a very few years later a
church was founded, in honour of Alban, on the very spot where he
had suffered. And then, too, the public record of his disgrace
disappeared from the walls, to give place to the triumphant memo
rials of the new religion. And in high veneration did the place,
afterwards known as St. Albans, remain from that time Ward
though it was not till the eighth century that it enjoyed the
honours usually accorded to all such sacred spots, of having a
house of religious persons established on it. Offa, thegreat Mercian
king, being then in much trouble of mind as to various incidents of
his career, and more particularly as to the murder of Ethelbert
sovereign of the East Angles, determined to set all right by
founding a monastery. Then came the question as to the where
about. After a while, being at Bath, as Matthew Pari-, the
historian of the abbey, tells us, in the rest and silence of night he
seemed to be accosted by an angel, who instructed him to raise
from the earth the ashes of the body of the first British martyr
Alban, and place them in a suitably-ornamented shrine To Hum'
bert, Archbishop of Lichfield, and TJnwona, Bishop of Leicester
his special counsellors, did Offa communicate the particulars of this
vision j when the whole three set out to search for the relics As

Chap. II.]

OLD ENGLAND.

195

they approached Verulam, the king saw a light, as of a torch, shining
over the town, and, as a harbinger of success, gladly was it
welcomed. " When the king, the clergy, and the people," con
tinues the historian, " were assembled, they entered on the search
with prayer, fasting, and alms, and struck the earth everywhere
with intent to hit the spot of burial ; but the search had not been
continued long when a light from heaven was vouchsafed to assist
the discovery, and a ray of fire stood over the place, like the star
that conducted the Magi to find the Holy Jesus at Bethlehem.
The ground was opened, and, in the presence of Offa, the body of
Alban was found." It was then taken in solemn procession to the
church before mentioned, which had' been erected on the very spot
where Alban had been beheaded, and there deposited in a shrine
enriched with plates of gold and silver. Offa himself placed a
circle of gold, inscribed with Alban's name and title, round the
skull. And then was commenced the erection of the monastery
around the church ; a matter deemed of such vast importance, that
Offa made a preliminary visit to Rome to procure the requisite powers
and privileges, obtained at no less a cost than the making perpetual
the payment of Peter-pence by the English nation (a custom
that did last for several centuries), but which previously had been
granted by Ina merely for the maintenance of a Saxon college at
Eome. On his return to England, a great assembly was held at
Verulam, of the nobles and prelates, when it was resolved that the
monastery should not only be on a large scale, sufficient, indeed,
for the accommodation of one hundred monks, but so amply
endowed as to be able to exercise the rites of hospitality to the
many travellers who passed through the neighbourhood along the
Watling Street in their journeys between London and the North ;
a gratifying trait of the feelings, as well as an interesting glimpse of
the manners of Saxon England. The monks were all carefully
selected from the houses most distinguished for their regularity of
discipline. The first stone was, of course, laid by Offa, who
laboured at the undertaking with a zeal and perseverance that were,
considering his position and the many duties it imposed, really
extraordinary ; and although the buildings were mostly erected in
the course of the first four or five years, death found him still
busily engaged in his labour of love and piety, rather than of
remorse, in which it first originated. A touching story is told
concerning his burial. From some unexplained cause, Willegod,
the first abbot, seems to have thought it his duty to refuse per
mission to inter the remains of Offa in the monastery : two months
after Offa's death, Willegod himself died, partly through the grief
he is said to have felt on account of that refusal. In the history
of the subsequent abbots of St. Albans we might find ample
materials for an interesting volume ; we can, therefore, only attempt
to select here and there a passage. During the lifetime of the
eleventh abbot, JElfric, some alarm was felt lest, in the ravages of
the Danes, the remains of St. Alban might fall into their unre-
specting hands ; and in consequence the monks came to a determi
nation which does great credit to their shrewdness, and which led
to an incident strikingly illustrative, in various points, of the
monkish character. A wooden chest was brought, into which
were put the saint's relics, and the costly shrine, in which, we
presume, they had been placed by Offa ; to these were added some
of the most valuable effects of the monastery. The chest, with its
precious contents, was then let into a secret cavity in the wall of
the church, and securely closed up. A few of the monks only were
admitted into the abbot's confidence. This -completed one part of
the arrangement. Another and very rich-looking chest was now
obtained, and the bones of a common monk placed therein with
great show of respect. This, with some of the ornaments of the
church, and an old ragged cloak, which it was insinuated was
the very cloak that Amphilabus had worn, and in which Alban
went disguised before the judge, were sent to the monks of Ely to
take care of, who received them with undissembled joy. After the
alarm had subsided, iElfric demands his chest and other deposits ;
but the monks are determined to take such care of them, as never
pgain to let them leave their own walls. JElfric implores — but
they care not ; JElfric threatens, and at last they are somewhat
frightened ; a schism takes place in the monastery, some insisting
upon the return of the martyr's remains, some insisting upon their
detention : at last, however, there is a sudden unanimity ; they will
return the chest, but first open the bottom very subtilly, and
replace the relics by others. No sooner, however, does JElfric
examine the chest on its return, than he sees the. imposition, and,
forgetting his own deception in his indignation at the deception of
his brethren of Ely, exposes the whole affair, to the sorrow of
many a pious spirit, the mirth of many a merry one, and the never-
ending annoyance and mortifi ation of the poor monks of the Isle.

If the monastic character, but too often it is to be feared, was
justly chargeable with these little deceptions, it had many excellent
qualities by way of counterpoise. The records of the abbey of St.
Albans exhibit various instances of noble devotion to the public
good. Thus the predecessor of JElMc, Leofric, son of the Earl of
Kent, and afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury, during the preva
lence of a grievous famine, first expended for the relief of the
people the treasures that had been set apart for the erection of a new
church, and then sold the very materials, the slabs of stones, the
columns, and the timber that had been dug up for the same purpose
from the inexhaustible quarry of the ruins of Verulam. To these also
he added the gold and silver vessels that belonged to the church and
to his own table. His wise liberality caused much dissension among
the monks, but he had his reward in his own inward satisfaction,
and in the gratitude of his fellow-men generally, some of whom,
the most exalted in rank, warmly supported him. Another abbot,
the successor of iElfric, Leofstan, confessor to the Confessor, cut
down the thick groves and woods that covered the Watling Street,
and which had become the haunts of wolves, wild boars, stags, and
wild bulls (these were among the inhabitants of Old England), as
well as of a still more terrible class of ravagers, the human robbers
and outlaws who made plunder their trade. And yet a third abbot
must be mentioned, Frederic, descended from Saxon royal blood,
and with the true current still pouring through his veins. It was
his misfortune to be Abbot of St. Albans at the period of the
Conquest. William, after the battle of Hastings, had gradually
made way to London ; but finding his entrance resisted, roamed
about the country for some time, doing all the mischief he could,
thereby intimating, we presume, to the people, the advantage of
quickly coming to a better understanding with such a reckless and
potent enemy. On his return towards London,his road lay through
St. Albans. As he approached that place, the passage was found
to be stopped by masses of great trees that had been felled and
drawn across the road. The Abbot of St. Albans was sent for to
explain these demonstrations, who, in answer to the king's ques
tions, frankly and , fearlessly said, "I have done the duty apper
taining to my birth and calling ; and if others of my rank and
profession had performed the like, as they well could and ought,
it had not been in thy power to penetrate into the land so far."
Not long after, the same Frederic was at the head of a confederacy,
determined, if possible, to compel William to reign like a Saxon
prince, that is, according to the ancient laws and customs, or to
place England's darling, Edgar Atheling, in his room. William
submitted for a time, and, in a great council at Berkhampstead,
swore, upon all the relics of the church of St. Albans, that he
would keep the laws in question, the oath being administered by
Abbot Frederic. In the end, however, the Conqueror grew too
strong to be coerced into any measures, however nationally excellent
or desirable, and he does not seem to have cared much about oath-
breaking, unless indeed it was when he had exacted the oath, — the
unhappy Harold, for instance,- found that no light matter — and so
William became more oppressive than ever. St. Albans, as might
have been anticipated, suffered especially from his vengeance ; he
seized all its lands that lay between Bamet and London-stone, and
was with difficulty prevented from utterly ruining the monastery.
As it was, the blow was enough for Frederic, who died of grief in
the monastery of Ely, whither he had been compelled to fly.
We have before had occasion to notice the many able and zealous
men whom William introduced into our bishoprics, and abbatial
offices, in the place of the Saxon dignitaries, whom he displaced or
killed off: St. Albans forms no exception to this general rule.
Paul, said by some to be the king's own son, was made abbot, who
signalized his rule by a rebuilding of the entire abbey, church
included, from the enormous masses of materials that had been
previouly collected from the Eoman city. The " young monks "
of the abbey possessed a less gratifying recollection of him. To
these " young monks," says Matthew Paris, " who, according to
their custom, lived upon pasties of fresh meat, he prevented all
inordinate eating," by first stinting them in quantity, and then in
substituting kar-pie, or herring-pie, made of " herrings and sheets
of cakes." One would have supposed there was no need of stinting
the use of that dish. The new church was consecrated by the
succeeding abbot, Albany, in '1115, when a goodly company were
present, including Henry I. and Queen Maud, with a crowd of
prelates and nobles, all of whom were for eleven days entertained
by the abbey at its own cost. The spiritual connection of St.
Cuthbert with the abbey began in this abbot's time, who is said
to have enjoyed " a wonderful cure of a withered arm" through
the saint's intercession. From the period of the erection of the new
chuich, the abbey gradually began to recover its lost prosperity,
2 C 2

743. 744.
 m EST"

779.—-Specirnen of Lombardic Archilectu

_ . . .. _ . ~ .. ..

Norman Capitals.
737. Jumieges. 738, Sanson-stir Rille. 739. St. Peter,*s, Northampton. 740. Steetly, Derbyshire. 741 and 747. St. John's, Chester.
742, 743, and 746. Rochester Cathedral. 744. Canterbury. 745. St. Georges de Bocherville. 748. Oxford.

•749 to 756. Shafts of Columns.

" Norman Arclutectural Decorations.
757 to 765. Arch -Mouldings. 766 to 7*2. Striugsiiad Imposts.
775 to 778, Ornaments on Flat Surfaces.

780.— Specimens of Lombardic Architecture.

1

ifflB, 77.4. Cornices.

¦MMW BiiiiiiLi

Sgffij

781,-Norman Intersecting Arches, Lincoln.

196

788.— The Husbandmen. Vision of Honry II.

783.— Costume oftlie time of John.

785.-^Flshins»with a-Seine Net.

784.— Horse beating a Tabor.

T8G. — Horse beating a Tabor.

787.— Bob-Apple.

' 790.-. Costume of Norman-English Ladies in 1 2fch Century.

788. — Horse-baiting.

791. — Bird-catching by Clap-net.

789,— Water Tournament.

793.— Playing Bears.

"lUt- Ancient Quintain j now standing at Ofibam,Xent.

W.-43owHng.

197

198

OLD ENGLAND.

[Book II.

and to rise to even greater splendour. Abbot Gorham's rule marks
perhaps the most important era of this progress. He procured
«xemption for the abbey from all ecclesiastical jurisdiction other
than that of the Pope, a favour obtained through the personal
recollections of the latter — Adrian, the Englishman, who then
filled the chair of St. Peter, and who had been born at Abbot's
_ Xangley. To this was added a grant of precedence ; " as St.
Alban was distinctly known to be the first martyr of the English
nation, so the abbot of his monastery should at all times, among
other abbots of the English nation, in degree of dignity be reputed
first and principal." Many disputes and heart-burnings arose
through these privileges ; the Bishops of Lincoln were discontented
to be deprived of their usual jurisdiction ; the Abbots of Westminster,
of what they seem to have considered their proper seat, the one of
highest honour and dignity in parliament. In the second point the
Abbots of St. Albans were ultimately defeated through the supine-
ness of one of their number, who was contented to be foremost in
learning ; but in the first they were perfectly successful, the Bishops
of London giving up all opposition, after a very marked interference
by royalty, during the abbacy of Gaurine. The king happened at
the time to be a visitor to the 'abbey, and thus addressed the
astonished prelate: "By the eyes of God, I was present at the
agreement. "What is it, my lord of Lincoln, that you would
attempt? Do you think these things were done in secret? I,
myself, and the most chosen men of the realm, were present ; and
what was then done is ratified by writings the most incontestable,
and confirmed by the testimony of the nobles. The determination
stands good ; and whoever sets himself to combat this abbot and
monastery, combats me. What seek you ? — to touch the pupil of
mine eye?" "By no means, your majesty," we can fancy the
astounded prelate replying in a troubled and tremulous voice, and
retiring back into perpetual silence on the subject thenceforth.
Literature and the arts appear to have ever found a welcome
reception at St. Albans. The most eloquent of the monastic his
torians, Matthew of Paris, was a monk here, as was also Roger
de Wendover, from whom the former transcribed a portion of his
history; and William Eishanger, who continued the narration
from the point where Matthew ceased. Then again, we read of
several scribes and copyists being constantly employed in the
monastery in the twelfth century, by Abbot Symond, and of a house
having been built expressly for copyists in the fourteenth century.
But the most interesting event of a literary nature, connected with
the abbey, was the introduction of printing, almost immediately
after its first introduction into England by Caxton. The earliest
book known to be issued by the great English printer, from an
English office, is dated 1474 ; the first book printed at St. Albans
is of the date 1480, in which year no less than three publications ap
peared. The most remarkable of the St. Albans productions was the
curious ' Gentleman's Recreation,' printed here in 1486, and which
consists of three treatises, having for their subjects hawking,
hunting and fishing, and coat armour ; and the principal author
or compiler of which was a lady of rank and the head of a religious
house, the nunnery of Sopwell, a subordinate establishment to the
abbey. It is an interesting fact that two abbeys, those of West
minster and St. Albans, should have been the first English printing-
offices ; that the new art, one of the first consequences of which
was the Reformation and the dissolution of monasteries, should
have had monks for its earliest patrons. The arts have fared no
less worthily than literature at the hands of the abbots of St.
Albans, from the earliest times. Paul, the first Norman abbot,
adorned the space behind the high altar of the church with " stately
painting." The shrine, made in 1 129. by Abbot Gorham, for the
relics of St. Alban, had for its artificer Anketill, who had been
Mint-master to the King of Denmark, and who, during the con
struction of the superb work intrusted to him, appears to have
grown so much attached to the abbey, that he would not afterwards
leave it, but took the cowl, and became a member. When the
great repair and improvements of the church took place during the
rule of Abbot Trumpington, in the thirteenth century, and when,
among other beautiful works, St. Cuthbert's Screen was raised,
we find, extraordinary as the fact seems and worthy of 'all admira
tion, that the chief architects and sculptors were the abbey's own
members, namely, its Treasurer, Richard of Thydenhanger ; its
Keeper of the Seal, Matthew of Cambridge ; its Sacrist, Walter de
Colchester ; as to the last of whom, Matthew Paris says he was at
once excellent in painting, sculpture, and carving. Looking at
these and the many similar instances already pointed out, and which
are probably but so many indications of the multitude of facts of
the same kind that have been left unrecorded, it seems hardly
possible td%>verrate the beneficial influence which these religious

establishments of Old England must have had upon the national
mind, humanizing, harmonizing, and ennobling it in a thousand ways,
apart from any religious merits, and in spite of their many and
notorious religious abuses.
All that is necessary to give a reader who has not seen St.
Albans a faint glimpse of what it is (and those who (have seen it
do not need our aid), may be briefly told. With a preliminary
reference, therefore, to the engraving (Fig. 606), we may state that
its amazing size, the great variety of architectural styles, comprising,
we verily believe, every one ever known in England from the days
of the Saxons down to the fifteenth century, including (he entire
rise, prosperity, and fall of the Gothic, and the strange medley of
the materials used in the construction, these are the' characteristics
that first strike every beholder. The building is in the form of a
cross, extending from east to west about six hundred feet, and from
north to south, alpng the transepts, more than two hundred feet.
A square tower of three stages or stories, with a spire, rises at the
intersection. In the interior, the famous screen of St. Cuthbert
divides the choir from the nave (Fig. 607) ; whilst the altar or
Wallingford's screen is placed, as its name implies, over the altar,
separating the choir from the presbytery : this is one of the most
beautiful pieces of stone-work in the country, of the age of Edward
IV. Although finished in the time of Abbot Wallingford, it was
planned and commenced by Abbot Whethamsted, as his arms upon
the screen yet show. Whethamsted was one of the worthies of St.
Albans, a most liberal, able, and indefatigable man. During his rule
the wars of the Roses were at the height, and we need only mention
the names of the two great battles of St. Albans, in one of which
Henry VI. was defeated and made prisoner, and in the other was
successful, in order to intimate that the Abbot of St. Albans must
have had a troubled time of it. This monument is one of the most
remarkable in the church ; where also, among many other monu
ments, may be particularly mentioned those of Abbot Ramryge
and of Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, whose fate we have already
alluded to in our pages. St. Alban himself lies in the presbytery,
where a stone in the middle of the pavement bears the inscription :
" S. Albanus Verolamensis, Anglorum Proto-Martyr, xvii Junij,
ccxcvn:" a date that does not exactly agree with the period
referred to by the story, ' The Emperor Dioclesian's persecution of
the Christians,' which took place in 303.
On the 3rd of February, 1832, a part of the wall of the upper
battlement on the south-west side of the abbey fell upon the roof
below, in two masses, at an interval of five minutes between the
fall of each fragment. The concussion was so great that the inha
bitants of the neighbouring houses described it as resembling the
loudest thunder ; and the detached masses of the wall came down
with such force that a large portion of the roof, consisting of lead
and heavy timber, was driven into the aisle below. Besides the
damage thus occasioned, the abbey generally has been a good deal
out of repair for several years. The nave lias been restored ; but
there is still a great deal to be done, which cannot be attempted by
local subscription. This is a national work, and a grant from
Parliament might be far better employed on such a superb structure
— having no revenues of its own — than on many a trumpery edifice
—a Buckingham Palace, for example, or a National Gallery— of
our own day.

Though no monastery at any period, the church and hospital of
St. Cross present to this day so much the semblance of a monastery,
in the general style of its buildings and their juxtaposition with
the noble church, and in the dress of the members, whom on our
visits we see wandering about in the precincts, each in his black
cloak, and with a large silver cross on his breast, that with a little
exercise of the imagination one may easily fancy the old Catholic
times revived, and half anticipate, as we pace silently and
thoughtfully along towards the sacred edifice, that we shall hear
the masses sung for the souls of some great departed,— Henry de
Blois, perhaps, King Stephen's brother, who first founded the
establishment, or Cardinal Beaufort, who refounded it, and with
much greater magnificence. But the place is, in truth, a monument
simply of the charity of our forefathers, and we need not look in
any part of England for one more worthy of them. The hospital
was originally founded for thirteen poor men ; these were to reside
within its walls, and receive a daily allowance of three and a
quarter pounds of bread, a gallon and a half of beer, besides mortrel,
an^ancient and no doubt very good kind of egg-flip, and besides a'
quantity of wastel bread, or dainty cakes. Then there was fish in
Lent for dinner, flesh at other times, and an excellent supper
always provided. But the building here on our left as we enter
the first quadrangle, and called Hundred Men's Hall, reminds us

Chap. II'.]

OLD ENGLAND.

199

that we have not mentioned the whole provision made by the
warlike but charitable bishop for the poor. One hundred of the
most indigent inhabitants of Winchester were provided with a
dinner in that hall every day, and as their respective allowances
were more than even the sharpest-set appetites required, they were
permitted to take the remainder home with them ; it was, in short,
a dinner for their families as well as themselves. To both these
classes were added the religious and other officials, who comprised
a master, steward, four chaplains, thirteen clerks, and seven
choristers, all educated in the hospital. This, to our notions,
should seem pretty well for one charitable establishment; but
Bishop Blois' successor thought he could do better, and so added
another hundred poor men to the daily dinner in the halls. Lastly,
having sunk through corruptions, — its revenues having been plun
dered and wasted, — Cardinal Beaufort thought it only dealing in
a liberal spirit with the hospital, after William of Wykeham
had enforced restitution of the old estates, to do something to raise
them still higher in amount than they had ever been, and make
the most hospitable of institutions still more hospitable. So thirty-
five members were at once added to the thirteen for whom a
permanent home and maintenance had been provided ; and two
priests and three nuns to the religious body, the last to wait upon
the sick in the infirmary. And to what has all this dwindled?
Here are stately buildings ; walks, grass-plots, and flower-borders,
all in the trimmest order ; lodges for the brethren, each having his
three rooms, and some hundred a-year to spend in them, in the
most comfortable manner, for he may follow a trade or profession
in the College, may have his wife and family with him there if he
pleases ; but how many brethren are there of the forty-eight that were
here maintained ? Why, some eleven or twelve. Beaufort wished his
charity to be called the "Aims House of Noble Poverty ;" and it
has generally been supposed he meant thereby to aid reduced gentle
men in their lowest estate ; the modern and practical reading has
been, that the Noble Poverty intended to be benefited was that parti
cular state of pecuniary difficulty which is only evidenced in a non-
capability of maintaining faithful old servants at its own expense,
and which, therefore, kindly hands them over to the care and
expense of the hospital. Let it not also be overlooked that any
one who knocks at the porter's gate before the day is " too far spent,"
may receive a horn of ale and a slice of bread ; few, except
pleasure-seeking tourists, do come for such a purpose, but we must
own, now that the extensive process of feeding two hundred poor
men of Winchester daily has been quietly got rid of, it is as well
not to mind these bread and ale casualties, which form the only
existing vestige of the custom, particularly as they are generally
well paid for in gratuities. Of course, in these remarks we refer
to no particular persons or time ; there is no saying when or how
the change was consummated ; it has been in process for cen
turies ; but it does stir one's indignation to see the property of
the poor, wherever we look, thus silently filched from them. It is
but a simple matter of arithmetic to estimate what must have been
the value now of endowments that four centuries ago supported
entirely forty-eight families, and partially two hundred more. The
church, we may add, yet remains in many respects as Blois himself
left it. It is of the cathedral form, with a huge massive Norman
tower at the intersection of the transept by the nave and chancel
or choir. (Figs. 728, 729, 731.) The very antiquity, of course,
gives interest to the structure ; but it possesses features of a higher
kind in its architectural characters, which have been deemed of such
importance, that Dr. Milner thought the Gothic was actually
discovered from the accidental effect produced by some peculiar
intersections of circular arches in the chapel or church of St. Cross.

Romsey Church, the chief remain of Romsey Abbey, is generally
supposed to have been built by the kings Edward the Elder and
Edgar; but the regularity of the plan, no less than the finished
character of the workmanship of the building, have induced high
authorities, Mr. Britton for instance, to attribute the erection to
the latter part of the eleventh or beginning of the twelfth century
¦ — the very period that the records of the abbey have made so full
of interest, in connection with its internal affairs. Royally founded
—Romsey seems also, through a succession of abbesses, to have
been long royally governed. But it is not that circumstance simply
that has invested the fine old church and the neighbouring ruins
with an attraction even more potent than that of their architecture.
We have more than once had occasion to mention the good queen
Maud or Matilda, the wife of Henry I. ; it was from Romsey
Abbey the king took her to become his bride, and under very
important circumstances. She had been educated here from her
childhood, under the care of the Abbess Christina, her relative, and

cousin to the Confessor, who had evidently cherished in Maud alofty
spirit, well becoming- the daughter of the king of Scotland, and a
descendant on the mother's side of the great Alfred. As she grew
up, many suitors appeared, among them Alan, Earl of Richmond,
who died before he could obtain an answer from the king, Rufus ;
and William de Garenne, Earl of Surrey, who does appear to have
obtained an answer and a refusal. When Rufus died, and Henry
came to the throne, a new, and what most women would have
thought a dazzling, prospect opened upon Maud ; the young king
himself appeared as her suitor. But the recollections of the bloody
field of Hastings, on whicli had been destroyed the nationality of
her country, pressed stronger upon her mind than the personal
advantage which might accrue to herself from marrying the
son of the Conqueror ; so she desired to be permitted to decline
the match. But the country and the people she so loved were
even more interested than Maud in the success of the proposal.
She was told she might restore the ancient honour of England, and
be a pledge of reconciliation and friendship between the two races ;
whilst otherwise their enmity woiild be everlasting. Maud could
not resist that argument, and at last reluctantly consented. But
now a new difficulty arose. Many among the Normans, who
were not at all desirous of seeing an end put to the state of things
that had given them so much power, asserted that Maud was posi
tively a nun ; that she had been seen wearing the veil, which made
her for ever the spouse of Christ. Maud's explanation is one of those
very interesting passages of ancient history whicli give us a true and
most melancholy picture of the state of the people during the first
few years after the Conquest. Having denied that she had ever
taken the veil, she said, " I must confess that I have sometimes
appeared veiled, but listen to the cause : in my first youth, when I
was living under her care, my aunt, to save me, as she said, from
the lust of the Normans, who attacked all females, was accustomed
to throw a piece of black stuff over my head, and when I refused
to cover myself with it she treated me very roughly. In her
presence I wore that covering, but as soon as she was out
of sight I threw it on the ground, and trampled it under my
feet in childish anger." The chief ecclesiastics of England in
solemn council determined, in effect, that this explanation was
sufficient, by declaring Maud free. The marriage accordingly
took place, and threw a momentary gleam of sunshine over the
hearts of the miserable Saxon people. The history of another
abbess suggests less gratifying materials for reflection. It is
an old story, — that of human passions stifled, and therefore
burning but with greater intensity, within the walls of the cloister,
Whither the unhappy man or woman has retired in the hope of
obtaining a peace denied them in the world — that peace which
passeth all understanding. But old though this story be, it is ever
full of instruction, ever sure of sympathy, when we are permitted
to throw the veil aside, and see the true being who is hidden
beneath. Such cases are necessarily rare, indeed almost confined to
those most awful of events in the histories of our monasteries,
when, bursting through all the restraints it had voluntarily imposed
upon itself, but which force subsequently maintained, the heart of
the unhappy recluse has demanded, at any hazard, its restoration
to the general heart of humanity, to share again in all the cares
and distresses and exacting demands of the world, but also in all
the pleasurable enjoyments which are for ever welling up at our
feet, even at the most unexpected times, and in the most unanti
cipated places, when we pursue with steady purpose the path that
duty has marked out for us. If it be true that without occasional
solitude the best of us may pass through life in ignorance of that
which, of all other things, it most concerns us to know — ourselves,
it is no less true, that without a participation in all the healthful
activities of life, we shall most probably learn nothing either of •
ourselves or of others : in a word, we may vegetate, but can hardly
be skid to live. In the records of Romsey we have a glimpse of
one of those terrible struggles between human affections and mental
aspirations— between the continual beatings of the heart against its
cage for liberty, and the chill repressive bonds of custom, aided by
the fearful whisperings of the conscience, " This thing that thou
desirest, it were wickedness to do." The termination of the struggle,
however, was less tragical thanjsuch terminations have too often
been, probably from the fact that the culprit was at once an abbess
and a princess. Mary was the youngest and, at the time of her
entering the abbey, only surviving daughter of King Stephen ; a
circumstance that, taken in connection with her subsequent history,
renders it probable there was some extraordinary reason for her
assuming the veil. From a simple nun, she was raised to the rank
of abbess, on the first vacancy perhaps, but it soon became evident
that her affections did not that way tend ; the religious world of

795. — Ship-building.

797.— Corn-sacks and Store-basket.

796i— Coiner at Work. From the Capital of
a pillar at St. Georges de Bocherville,
Normandy.

798.— Chairs. Ancient Chessmen. (Brit, Mus.)

890.*— Ancient Chessmen. (Brit. Mur>

799.— Candlestick.

804. — Sarcophagus. Said to be Archbishop Theobald's,
Canterbury.

200

805.— Ornamental, Lettertof the-lSta Century.

807.— London Bridge, Southwark side.

810.— Fireplace, Boothby Pagnel Manor-House.

811. — Elevationjrf a Norman House. (Bayeux Tapestry.)

808.— London Bridge, 1209.

812.— Jew's House at Lincoln.

mm

111

in&i

i

11 1 I '.^H

813.— Fire-bell Gate (and Curfew), Barking,

No. 26.

[OLD ENGLAND.]

201

202

OLD ENGLAND.

[Book II.

England was suddenly surprised and horrified to hear that the
abbess of Romsey had been secretly conveyed to Flanders, and
there married to Matthew, son of the earl of that country. To
compel her return to the monastery under such circumstances, much
less to punish the offender for leaving it, was out of the question ;
but if the lovers could not be prevented from living together, as
they continued to do for no less than ten years, they could be
harassed by the incessant interferences and alarmed by the extreme
denunciations of the spiritual powers ; and these at last seem to
have made their union unendurable. So after the long period
mentioned, during which two children had been born, the unfor*
tunate abbess was fain to seek a reconciliation with the Church, by
consenting to a divorce, and then returning to her monastery.
God help her ! There needs no record to tell us that she must
have had a weary time of it for the remainder of her life. The
church is pleasantly as well as commandingly situated, with the green
and quiet-looking churchyard of Romsey on this side (Fig. 726),
and a pretty little garden on that ; here a paved court, once the
court of the abbey — there the Sessions Hall, on the site of the
monastic buildings, in which the abbess and her nuns and the father
confessors once resided. The oldest and most interesting parts of the
structure are the chancel, transepts, and eastern part of the nave,
which are all of the richest as well as purest Norman style (Figs.
725, 727) ; the other or western portion was Gothic. In the inte
rior are some memorials of the lady abbesses, and an inscription)
charming for its simplicity, " Here lies Sir William Petty ;" re
ferring, it is hardly necessary to 'say, to the well-known and estim
able ancestor of the Marquis of Lansdowne. From the top of the
towers a delightful view is obtained of the surrounding country ;
though, until of late years, visitors who ascended to the spot were
generally drawn thither to examine Nature on a more limited scale,
or, in other words, to admire an apple-tree that had grown upon
a small quantity of mould, and there flourished, and put forth its
flowers and fruit, regularly as the seasons came, for two or more
centuries, and only died at last of sheer old age.
Among the churches of Oxford valuable for their antiquity,
the most remarkable is St. Peter's in the East, one of
the many relics about which the learned disagree as to their
Saxon or Norman origin. It is not certainly known when or
by whom it was founded, but it is generally attributed to St.
Grimbald, who intended his remains to lie in the crypt (Fig. 718) ;
but the good saint, being nettled by some disputes between him and
his scholars, indignantly removed his monumental preparations
to Winchester. The crypt designed for that honour remains
the most remarkable part of St. Peter's. It has a vaulted roof,
and low massive pillars in four ranges, and looks altogether
like a subterranean cathedral on a small scale. In the churchyard
lies the antiquary Hearne. Aspatria is a long straggling village
in Allerdale, below Derwent. The church is dedicated to St.
Kentigern, and of rich Norman style. (Fig. 721.) A gio-antic
skeleton was found in a chest in the neighbourhood ; on its left side
lay a broadsword, five feet in length ; on the right a dirk, a foot
and a half in length, the handle studded with silver* Other dis
coveries have been also made. Barfreston Church is a highly-
prized remain of architectural antiquity, seated in a remote and
barren part of Kent, on open downs. (Fig. 723.) At the Domesday
Survey it formed a part of the vast estates of the Bishop of Bayeux.
Subsequently it was attached to the castle at Dover. Its dimensions
are unusually narrow, suited to the scanty population of the district.
The most interesting part of the structure is the south or principal
portal, which, in every point of view, is elaborate and sumptuous,
with some extraordinary allegorical sculpture. (Fig. 727.)

Castle Acre Priory, in Norfolk, another invaluable relic
of the Early Normans, forms a direct contrast to Barfreston in
magnitude, grandeur, and wealth. It was founded in or before
1085, by the first Earl Warren and Surrey, whose favourite resi
dence, of all the one hundred and forty lordships that he received
from his father-in-law the Conqueror, was at the castle here. The
•French monks ."of Cluni were first introduced into England by this
Earl, at the time when foreign priests were overrunning the land,
until " neither governor, bishop, nor abbot remained therein of the
English nation." At first, Castle Acre Priory was a mere cell to the
Cluniac Abbey of Lewes in Sussex, and the rapidity of its growth
to an establishment of the first class is rather a remarkable instance
of the liberal piety of the stern warriors of old-time. The first,
second, and third Earls Warren,— then their successors of the
Plantagenet blood, the earls of Warren and Surrey— and lastly, the
Fitzalals, Earls of Arundel and Surrey, successively extended the

endowments, until in 1283 we find the prior in possession of "four
hundred and sixty acres of arable land, twenty of pasture, ten of
meadow, five water-mills, and fishing liberty ' in pure alms,' besides
other lands held by thirty-six tenants, a court baron, two folds,
two free boars, and two bulls," while subordinate to Castle Acre
were four cells, an hospital, and a priory. A lofty stone wall
enclosed this stately establishment, which occupied twenty-nine
acres. The arrangement of the interior can be distinctly ascertained ;
and this is a peculiarity that lends much interest to Castle Acre, of
which we shall avail ourselves to give some definite notion of the
place in its palmy days, as an illustration of the sort of life led in the
larger monasteries of the middle ages, and the accommodations they
provided. There were four principal divisions ; — the Church, the
Cloister, the Prior's Lodge, and the detached offices. A great part
of the beautiful west front of the church remains, picturesquely
broken. (Fig. 720.) Each side the great entrance was a tower ;
there was also a central tower, of which the only remain is a tall
irregular mass of rocky flint masonry. The pious brethren celebrated
two solemn masses daily in the church. A small chapel was attached
to each transept, for the use perhaps of the lordly patrons.
The Almonry and Sacristy adjoined the north transept, walled
from it, and three points seem to have been especially consulted
— convenient nearness to the church, remoteness from the more
private parts of the monastery, and easy access to the public
entrance. The Almonry was for the entertainment of poor mendi
cants, against whom its doors were never closed. The Cloister, was
a square of above one hundred feet, separated by a wall from the
cemetery. Fancy can readily conjure up the silent, solemn figures
of the black monks pacing these dim arched walks with breviary
in hand, meditating, or muttering their Latin prayers ; or gliding
one by one into the Chapter House that stood east of the cloister —
some, perhaps, with the not very agreeable expectation of reproof,
or even severe punishment, for some point of discipline neglected,
or serious fault committed— and there entering each into his separate
cell ; and as we can trace eighteen cells on either side, we perceive
thirty-six to be the number of inhabitants of the house. The
prior and sub-prior occupied distinct stalls at the upper, end.
Here, as we have intimated, public confession of faults was made
and correction administered; for the Cluniac (which was the
principal) branch of the Benedictines was exceedingly strict in all
discipline. Here the prior consulted with the brethren on the
affairs of the abbey, and ^here the young monks studied singing,..
being not 'only required to sing in the choir, but also to chant
psalms during their work. Between the refectory and kitchen was
a yard or garden for the admission of servants and lay brethren
and which formed their place of correction. The meals in the'
refectory were restricted to one daily, except at certain periods,
when two were allowed, and nothing could be eaten on any
pretext after evening service. The strictest silence was preserved,
signs being substituted for speech. The staple food was bread and
wine, and the remnants were immediately distributed to the poor in
the almonry. The meal ended, the monks retired into the locutory
or parlour, where conversation was allowed. In the dormitory every
monk had his bed and his chest in a separate cell, opening into
a common passage running through the centre. The scriptorium,
for writing, copying, and illuminating manuscripts, and the library!
adjoined the parlour ; and in the same portion of the establishment
were the hall and chambers for the novices, generally mere boys
sent hither for education. '
It was to the foreign religious orders introduced into England, that
we owe whatever intellectual improvement was imported at the Con-
quest, and none were more useful in that respect 'than the order of
monks domiciled at Castle Acre. They were highly esteemed as
learned and holy instructors. The pupils were kept apart from
the monks, except in the refectory and parlour. The prior's lod<re
is now a farm: a ladder long ago displaced -a flight of stone step.
leading up to the prior's door, by which he was enabled to receive
guests of quality, or visitors on business, independent of the Convent
A stone basin for holy water under an arch we believe still remains
outside the door, where those performed their ablutions who sought
his venerable presence. Two richly-storied windows lighted the
fathers dining-room, which still retains the name, one an oriel of
nine panels, on the glass of which was painted the arms of the
pnory of the Earls Warren and Arundel, of Mowbray, Duke of
Norfolk, and of England and France. The prior's chapel adjoined
and the officiating priest and servants entered it by means of a
narrow passage behind the prior's bedroom, in order to avoid
passing through his private apartments. He was always a foreigner
appointed by the houses of Cluni in France, so long astheyexeSed
jurisdiction over the English houses of their order, and £ fro™

Chap. II.]

OLD ENGLAND.

203

them heavy tribute. In another of the prior's rooms was the
broken portraiture, on the glass of the window, of one of the
Earls of Arundel, in armour, with a broadsword, and on his
surcoat his arms and the remnant of a legend, " My trust ys." —
The porter's lodge is a very good specimen of the flint masonry
of Henry VII., and it is a curious circumstance that all the

charms for many an antiquary than works of infinitely greater
beauty, in its allegorical character and in its astronomic insignia.

arches, buttresses, and window-frames are of a very hard red
brick, burned in the several shapes required. The detached offices
consisted of an infirmary for the sick, gatehouse, stables for the
monastery and for strangers, malthouse, brewhouse, millhouse,
&c. There was also a little detached chapel, placed with kind and
prudent thoughtfulness where two highways meet, in order to incite
the passing traveller to pray, and at the same time to intercept the
casual offerings which might otherwise have been carried to some
altar in the parish church farther on.
At the Reformation, Thomas Mailing, prior of Castle Acre, and
ten of his monks, surrendered the whole to his highness Henry
VIII., on account of " certain causes, them their souls and con
sciences especially moving." The ruins have suffered as much from
wanton and mercenary injuries, as from time and storms : almost
every house and cottage . in the village contiguous contains some
undisguised evidence of the plunder of the priory. Still, the ruins
are unusually ample and various. Wherever buildings have stood,
walls or foundations remain, and prominences of the grass-grown
soil mark the proportions and dimensions.
A finer situation for a monastic retreat could hardly be conceived,
than that in which Rievaulx Abbey has been placed. (Fig. 719.)
Probably, as a father's sorrow for his only child — a son, killed by a
fall from his horse — was the occasion of the foundation of this abbey,
so the choice of a site was influenced by the same feeling, which
prompted Sir Walter L'Espee, the founder, to seek relief in the gentle
influences of this beautiful scenery, where, in 1131, he allotted a
" solitary place in Blakemore " to some Cistercian monks, sent by
St. Bernard, abbot of Carival, a most devout man, into England.
This "solitary place" was surrounded by steep hills covered with ma
jestic woods. The angles of three valleys were near, with each a
rivulet running through them, that passing by where the abbey was
built, and being called Rie, the vale of this religious house was called
Rieval, and the house the Abbey of Rieval or Rievaulx. William, one
ofthe monks sent by St. Bernard, a man "of great virtue and excel
lent memory," began the building ofthe abbey, which was endowed
by Sir Walter L'Espee, who, since the loss of his son, caring no
longer for wealth, devoted the greater part of his possessions to
advance that blessed religion in which he found all his solace. The
ruins themselves are noble, and prove the abbey to have been of
great extent; but it is the fascinating scenery and the touching
circumstances of its foundation that lend the greatest charm to
Rievaulx Abbey.
There is little to be said of St. Peter's of Northampton ; it
is peculiarly one of those beautiful and antique architectural works
that must be seen to be. appreciated. Anything more curious in
most of its details seldom offers. (Fig. 735.) Its situation near
the castle leads to the supposition that it owed it3 rise to one of
the first Norman lords of Northampton, probably within fifty years
after the Conquest. It was the privilege of this church, that a person
"accused of any crime, and intending to clear himself by ca
nonical purgation, should do it here, and in no other place of the
town, having first performed his vigils and prayers in the said
church the evening before."
Stewkxey Church is another of the fine old churches the
era of whose erection is unknown. (Fig. 734.) Dr. Stukely mentions
it as " the oldest and most entire he ever saw, undoubtedly before the
Conquest, in the plain ancient manner," &c. But the enthusiastic
doctor was never at a loss for a bold decision, whatever he might
be as to proofs on which to found it. The shape is a parallelogram,
ninety feet by twenty-four. Half the length is allotted to the nave,
and one-fourth to the chancel, whicli is vaulted, with stone. In the
remaining space, two round arches support a square tower, whose
upper part is surrounded with thirty-two small intersecting circular
arches attached to the wall. The windows are small ; the mould
ings are decorated with zigzag sculpture. It stands in the large
villao-e of Stewkley, in Buckinghamshire. It is not unworthy of
notice that Iffley Church, on the banks of the river Isis, about a
mile and a half from Oxford, bears a marked resemblance to the
church just mentioned, and belonged to or enjoyed the protection
of the same monastery as that with which Stewkley was connected,
 the Priory of Kenilworth. It will be a sufficient testimony of
its antiquity to say it is known to have been in existence before
1 1 89. (Fig. 724.) The old tower has a commanding aspect, and the
sculpture on the western doorway, rude though it be, possesses greater

If the old abbey ruins of Dryburgh, and the many interesting
spots in the neighbourhood for miles around, were places especially
dear to Scott, how much more must they now be to us, since he
has invested them with all the sweet, and lofty, and solemn recol
lections connected with his own life, and death, and burial among
them ! Not a pile of old grey wall, not a crag, or wimpling burn,
but has its own peculiar association with the great poet. In one
part we behold

 those crags, that mountain tower,
Which charm'd his fancy's wakening hour,
where, in the poet's childhood,

¦ was poetic impulse given

By the green hill and clear blue heaven, '
and where he sat whilst the old shepherd knitted stockings, and
discoursed most eloquent music, to Scott's ears, of tales and ballads
of the border, which lay all about them, so that the shepherd could
point out the very scenes of which he spake ; " and thus," as
Washington Irving observes, "before Scott could walk, he was
made familiar with the scenes of his future stories ; they were all
seen as through a magic medium, and took that tinge of romance
which they ever after retained in his imagination. From the
height of Sandy Knowe he may be said to have had the first look
out upon the promised land of his future glory." Then in another
part, not far distant, we have Abbotsford itself, that romance in
stone and lime ; whilst about midway between these scenes of his
earliest and latest days lies Dryburgh, secluded among trees, with
the broken gables rising upwards from among and above them.
(Fig. 717.) And it is impossible to overlook the singularly appro
priate and harmonious conclusion to the poet's life, which his burial
here suggests. The ripple of the favourite river that soothed his
dying ear murmurs by his grave ; the " misty magnificence " of his
own native and beloved skies hangs eternally over him; its bleak
winds whistle and howl through the picturesque Gothic ruins which.
form his last earthly dwelling-place ; sounds that he ever delighted
to revel in, objects that of all others he looked on with the most
unfading interest and reverence. Years before his death, he had
looked forward to Dryburgh as his place of burial, though the
idea was not always suggested to him in a very agreeable manner.
Dryburgh, originally a house of Premonstratensian canons, founded
in the reign of David I., came in 1786, by purchase, into the hands
of the Earl of Buchan, who was proud of the sepulchral relics it
contained of Scott's ancestors, and accustomed to boast of the
honour he should one day have of adding the minstrel, himself to
the number— an allusion not at all relished by the object of it.
And if ever there was a nation of mourners, it was when that day at
last came. "The court-yard and all the precincts of Abbotsford,"
says Mr. Lockhart, Scott's son-in-law and biographer, "were crowded
with uncovered spectators as the procession was arranged ; and as it
advanced through Dornick and Melrose, and the adjacent villages,
the whole population appeared at their doors in like manner, almost
all in black. The train of carriages extended, I understand, over
more than a mile, the yeomanry followed in great numbers on
horseback, and it was late in the day ere we reached Dryburgh.
Some accident, it was observed, had caused the hearse to halt for
several minutes on the summit of the hill at Bemerside, exactly
where a prospect of remarkable richness opens, and where Sir
Walter had always been accustomed to rein up his horse. The
day was dark and lowering, and the wind high. The wide en
closure at the Abbey of Dryburgh was thronged with old and
young ; and when the coffin was taken from the hearse, and again
laid on the shoulders of the afflicted serving-men, one deep sob
burst from a thousand lips. Mr. Archdeacon Williams read the
Burial Service of the Church of England ; and thus, about half-past
five o'clock in the evening of Wednesday, the 26th September, 1832,
the remains of Sir Walter Scott were laid by the side of his wife
in the sepulchre of his ancestors, 'In sure and certain hope of
the resurrection to eternal life, through our Lord Jesus Christ,
who shall change our vile body that it may be like unto his glorious
body, according to the mighty working whereby he is able to subdue
all things to himself.' "
By a not unnatural transition we pass from Dryburgh, so
connected with Scott's personal and poetical, history, to Holyrood
and the Canongate in Edinburgh, which he has rendered scarcely
less interesting memorials of himself, by making the neighbourhood
2 D «

814.-Henry III.-From his Tomb in Westminster Abbey.

815.— Great Seal of Henry IU.

818,-Ruins of Kenilworth in the 17th Century.

816.— Penny of Henry III.

817.— Penny of Edward L

81!0.-Edward I.-From a Statue in the Choir of York Minster.

821.— Edward I.

204

'

'"^SSfipSCfs

-—¦:>c:

822.— View of Kenilworth Castle from the Gate-House.

823.— Great Hall, Kenilworth.

205

206

OLD ENGLAND.

[Book IL

the locality of some of the most stirring and admirable scenes of his
prose fictions. "This is the path to Heaven," saith the motto
attached to the armorial bearings of the Canongate : alas ! too
many have found that if it was so, it was in anything but the sense
originally intended by the words : it is to be hoped they did find
Heaven, but it was Death that, lurking in the palace, opened the door.
We have not here, however, to deal with the palace of Holyrood,
but the ancient abbey of the same name, founded by David I., and
under circumstances truly miraculous, if we may believe Hector
Borece, whose account we here abridge and modernize. David,
who was crowned king of Scotland at Scone, in 1124, came to
visit the Castle of Edinburgh three or four years after. At this
time there was about the castle a great forest full of harts and
hinds. " Now was the Rood-day coming, called the Exaltation of
the Cross, and, because the same was a high solemn day, the king
passed to his contemplation. After the masses were done with vast
solemnity and reverence, appeared before him many young and
insolent barons of Scotland, right desirous to have some pleasure
and solace by chace of hounds in the said forest. At this time was
with the king a man of singular and devout life, named Alkwine,
canon of the order of St. Augustine, who was long time confessor
afore to King David in England, the time that he was Earl of
Huntingdon and Northumberland." Alkwine used many arguments
to dissuade the king from going to the hunt. ." Nevertheless,
his dissuasion little availed, for the king was finally so provoked,
by inopportune solicitation of his barons, that he passed, notwith
standing the solemnity of the day, to his hounds." As the king
was coming through the vale that lay to the east from the castle,
subsequently named the Canongate, the stag passed through the
wood with such din of bugles and horses, and ^braying of dogs,
that " all the beasts were raised from their dens. Now was the
king coming to the foot of the crag, and all his nobles severed, here
and there, from him, at their game and solace, when suddenly
appeared to his sight the fairest hart that ever was seen before with
living creature." There seems to have been something awful and
mysterious about the appearance and movements of this hart, which
frightened King David's horse past control, and it ran away over
mire and moss, followed by the strange hart, " so fast that he threw
both the king and his. horse to the ground. Then the king cast
back his hands between the horns of this hart, to have saved him
from the stroke thereof," when a miraculous Holy Cross slid into
the king's hands, and remained, while the hart fled away with great
violence. This occurred " in the same place where now springs the
Rood Well." The hunters, affrighted by the accident, gathered
about the king from all parts of the wood, to comfort him, and fell
on their knees, devoutly adoring the holy cross, which was not a
common, but a heavenly piece of workmanship, "for there is no
man can show of what matter it is of, metal or tree." Soon after
the king returned to ' his castle, and, in the' night following, he was
admonished, by a vision in his sleep, to build an abbey of canons
regular in the same place where he had been saved by the cross.
Alkwine, his confessor, by no means " suspended his good mind,''
and the king sent his trusty servants to France and Flanders, who
<' brought right crafty masons to build this abbey," dedicated " in
the honour of this holy cross." The cross remained for more than
two centuries in the monastery ; but when David II., son of Robert
Bruce, set out on his expedition against the English, he took the
cross with him ; and when he was taken prisoner at the battle of
Neville's Cross, the cross shared the monarch's fate. It subsequently
became an appendage of Durham Cathedral. The abbey to which
the cross had belonged received still more direct injury at the hands
of the English in later times. When the Earl of Hertford (afterwards
Protector Somerset) was in Scotland in 1544, he gratified his fana
ticism by the ruin of the stately abbey, leaving nothing of all its
numerous and beautiful buildings but the body of the church which
became the parish church. This was subsequently made the Chapel
Royal : and royally and elegantly it appears to have been fitted up,
with its organ, and its stalls for the Knights of the Thistle ; but
the Presbyterians, scandalized not only at the organ, but at the mass
that was performed in the chapel during the reign of the second
James, once more destroyed it, at the Revolution. During the excite
ment the very graves were stripped of their contents ; among the rest
Darnley's remains were exposed and his skull purloined. His thigh
bones were of such gigantic size as to confirm the truth of the
statements as to his stature, seven feet.
Of the monument in the belfry of Richard, Lord Belhaven, who
died in 1639, Burnet relates the following anecdote in his < History '
of his own Time :'— Charles I., in the third year of his reign, sent the
Earl of Nithsdale into Scotland with a power to take the surrender
of all f^urch lands, and to assure those who readily surrendered

that the king would take it kindly and use them well, but that he
would proceed with all rigour against those who would not submit
their rights to his disposal. " Upon his coming down," continues
Burnet, "those who were most concerned in such grants met at
Edinburgh, and agreed that when they were called together, if no
other argument did prevail to make the Earl of Nithsdale desist,
they would fall upon him and all his party in the old Scottish
manner and knock them on the head. Primrose told me one of
these lords, Belhaven, of the house of Douglas, who was blind, bid
them set him by one of the party, and he would made sure of one.
So he was set next to the Earl of Dumfries : he was all the while
holding him fast ; and when the other asked him what he meant by
that, he said, ever since the blindness was come on him he was in
such fear of falling, that he could not help holding fast to those
who were next to him. He had all the while a poignard in his
other hand, with which he had certainly stabbed Dumfries if any
disorder had happened." Of the once magnificent abbey there
now only remains the exquisitely-beautiful architectural relic shown
in Fig. 732 ; those clustered columns and arches, and windows
and walls, are now the only memorial of that wealthy and potential
community, whom King David made the owners of so many
priories, and churches, and lands, the enjoyers of privileges of
market and borough, the lords of courts of regality, the dispensers
of those curious modes of determining guilt or innocence — trial by
duel, or by the fire and water ordeal. These ruins alone survive
to remind us of the greater ruin of which they form the symbol.

One of the most important events recorded in our annals in con
nection with the privilege of Sanctuary, furnishes us incidentally
with a very striking view of the nature of that privilege, and of
the classes of the people who chiefly used or abused it ; we refer to
the residence of the queen of Edward IV., and her younger
son, the Duke of York, in the Sanctuary of Westminster, of which
the building shown in page 193 (Fig. 736) formed at once the
church below and the place of residence for the sanctuary people
above. This remained till 1775, and was then, with, great labour
aud difficulty, on account of the strength of the walls, demolished.
Edward died in 1483, and shortly after, the queen received intel
ligence, a little before midnight, in the palace at Westminster, that
her eldest son, now Edward V., was in the hands of his uncle
Gloucester, and that although he was treated with all seemino-
reverence, his and her nearest relations and friends had been
arrested and sent no man knew whither. In great alarm, the queen
suddenly removed to the place where, in a time of former difficulty,
when her husband was a fugitive on the seas, she had obtained
shelter, and where her eldest son had been born— the neighbouring
Sanctuary. The Lord Chancellor (the Archbishop of York)
received, by a secret messenger the same night, similar information
from Lord Hastings, with, the assurance that " all should be well."
" Be it as well as it will," observed the startled Chancellor, " it will
never be as well as it hath been;" and therewith he called. his
armed retainers about him, and then taking the Great Seal, hurried
with kindly promptitude to the queen. It was a woful picture
—that which he beheld on reaching Westminster, the unhappy
mother sitting alow on the rushes, all desolate, and dismayed
whilst around her crowds of servants were hurrying into the
Sanctuary with chests and packages trussed on their backs that
they had brought from the palace, and in their haste breaking
down the wall in one part to make a nearer way. Lord Hastings'
message fell even more coldly on the queen's ear than on the
archbishops « Ah! woe worth him," said she, « he is one of them
that laboureth to destroy me and my blood." Having delivered the
seal, with a warm protestation of his own fidelity, the archbishop
departed to his home ; but the first glance ofthe river at daybreak
seems to have cooled his generous enthusiasm. As he looked from
his chamber window he beheld the Thames full of the Duke of
Gloucester s servants, watching that no man should go to sanctuary
nor any leave it unexamined. He began to think he had been
somewhat rash, and so sent for the Seal back. He had done
enough, however, to make him; a marked man. At the next
meeting of the Privy Council, he was sharply reproved, and the
Seal taken from him and given to the Bishop of Lincoln And
now arose the question, what was to be done concerning the' queen
and her younger son, the Duke. Gloucester, of course, saw from
the first that to attain the crown both the princes must be destroyed .
one was in his hands, but the other in the most impregnate of
strongholds, the Sanctuary. When the council met to riSL ?,.•
matter, Gloucester .opened the proceedings in To &e of t ^
innocence, complaining of the queen's malice against the couSors
of her son, in thus exposing them to the obloquy of the peopl

Chap. II.]

OLD ENGLAND.

207

who would think they were not to be trusted with the guardianship
of the king's brother. Then he referred to the lonely position of
the king, who, naturally unsatisfied with the company of ancient
persons, needed the familiar conversation of those of his own age ;
and then came the pertinent question,— with whom, rather than his
own brother? The speaker continued by observing " that some
times without little things greater cannot stand ; " and in the end
advised that a man of credit with all parties should be sent to the
queen to remonstrate with her, and if that failed, then to take the
child by force, when he should be so well cherished, that all the
world should vindicate them and reproach her. The Archbishop
of York undertook the office of mediator, but spoke strongly and
solemnly against the proposed breach of sanctuary, which, he said,
had been so long kept, and which had been more than five hundred
years before hallowed, at night, by St. Peter in his own person,
and accompanied in spirit by great multitudes of angels ; and as a
proof, the archbishop referred to the Apostle's cope then preserved
in the abbey. ''And never," observed the archbishop, was there " so
undevout a king as durst violate that sacred place, or so holy a
bishop as durst presume to consecrate it. God forbid that any man
should, for anything earthly, enterprise to break- the immunity of
that sacred Sanctuary, that hath been the safeguard of many a good
man's life, and I trust, with God's grace, we shall not need it. But
for what need soever, I would not we should do it. . . . There shall
be of my endeavour no lack, if the mother's heart and womanish
fear be not the let." The Duke of Buckingham's speech was fiery
and bold, to suit Gloucester. Catching up the prelate's words, he
exclaimed "Womanish fear! nay — womanish frowardness ! for I
dare well take it upon my soul, she well knoweth there is no need of
any fear for her son or for herself. For, as for her, there is no man
that will be at war with a woman. Would God some of the men
of her kin were women too ; and then should all be soon in rest.
Howbeit there is none of her kin the less loved for that they be of
her kin, but for their own evil deserving. And nevertheless, if
we love neither her nor her kin, yet there were no cause to think
that we should hate the king's noble brother, to whose grace we
ourselves be of kin ; whose honour, if she as much desired as our
dishonour, and as much regard took to his wealth as to her own
will, she would be as loth to suffer him from the king as any of us
be. For if she have wit (we would God she had as good will as she
hath shrewd wit), she reckoneth herself no wiser than she thinketh
some that be here, of whose faithful mind she nothing doubteth, but
verily believeth and knoweth that they would be as sorry of his
harm as herself, and yet would have him from her if she bide there."
After some further remarks, the duke favoured the council
with his views on the subject of sanctuaries generally, and the
passage is one of high interest and value in an historical sense.
" And yet will I break no sanctuary ; therefore, verily, since the
privileges of that place and other like have been of long continued,
I am not he that will go about to break them ; and, in good faith,
if they were now to begin, I would not be he that should be about
to make them. Yet will I not say nay, but that it is a deed of
pity, that such men as the sea or their evil debtors have brought in
poverty, should have some place of liberty to keep their bodies out
of the danger of their cruel creditors ; and also if the crown happen
(as it hath done) to come in question, while either part taketh other
as traitors, I like well there be some ^laee of refuge for both. But
as for thieves, of which these places be full, and which never fall
from the craft after they once fall thereunto, it is a pity the Sanc
tuary should screen them, and much more man-quellers, whom God
bade to take from the altar and kill them, if their murder were wil
ful ; and where it is otherwise, there need we not the sanctuaries
that God appointed in the old law. For if either necessity, his
own defence, or misfortune draweth him to that deed, a pardon
serveth, which either the law granteth of course, or the king of pity
may. Then look we now how few Sanctuary men there be whom
any favourable necessity compel to go thither ; and then see, on the
other side, what a sort there be commonly therein of them whom
wilful unthriftiness have brought to nought. What rabble of
thieves, murderers, and malicious heinous traitors, and that in two
places especially ; the one the. elbow of the city [that of West
minster] and the other [St. Martin's-le-Grand] in the very bowels.
I dare well avow it, weigh the good that they do with the hurt that
cometh of them, and ye shall find it much better to lack both than
to; have both; and this I say, although they were not abused as
they now be, and so long have been, that I fear me ever they will
be, while men be afraid to set their hands to amend them; as
though God and St. Peter were the patrons of ungracious living.
Now unthrifts riot and run in debt upon the boldness of these
places ; yea, and rich men run thither with poor men's goods, there

they build, there they spend, and bid their creditors go whistle.
Men's wives run thither with their husbands' plate, and say they
dare not abide with their husbands for beating. Thieves bring
thither their stolen goods, and live thereon riotously ; there they
devise new robberies, and nightly they steal out, they rob and rive,
kill, and come in again, as though those places give them not only
a safeguard for the harm they have done, but a licence also to do
more." A remarkable conversation here ensued, in which it was
agreed on all sides that the goods of a Sanctuary man should be
delivered up for the benefit of creditors, as well as stolen goods
to the owner; and that Sanctuary should only preserve to the
debtor his personal liberty in order to get his living ; a striking
practical anticipation of the wise and benevolent measure at this
very moment before Parliament. Circuitously as the wily, speaker
advanced towards his mark, he was all the while advancing:
having thus prepared the minds of his listeners to listen to reason
able limitations of the privileges of sanctuary, he observed in the
concluding part, " If nobody may be taken out of Sanctuary that
saith he will bide there, then if a child will take Sanctuary because
he feareth to go to school, his master must let it alone; and as
simple as the sample is, yet is there less reason in our case than in
that ; for therein, though it be a childish fear, yet is there at the
leastwise some fear, and herein is there none at all. And verily I
have often heard of Sanctuary men, but I never heard erst of Sanc
tuary children.'' The effect of the speech was tolerably decisive ;
the Lord Cardinal went to see if he could obtain the child by fair
means, though there seems to be no doubt but that, if he failed, the
council generally were satisfied of the propriety of taking him by
foul ones. The result is but too well known — the child was given
up to his uncle, to perish with his brother in the Tower.

The warriors and feudal chiefs of the olden times have left
stirring names behind them ; we trace their exploits with breathless
interest in many a chronicle and many a legend ; their memories
are a spell : but what has become of the names and the memories
of the less noisy workers through the middle ages, the builders of
our glorious Gothic cathedrals, the collectors of our libraries, the
good Samaritans of the poor, the disseminators of morality and
devotion, the healers ofthe sick, and the benefactors of the common
people in a hundred common ways, that are so unobtrusive, they
are apt to escape us altogether ? Where, for instance, is the
record of the monk who first conceived the bold design of throwing
a bridge over the deep chasm of the mountain torrent Mynach?
If the utility of a design be the best test of its excellence, and the
difficulties that must be overcome the most signal evidences of
the architect's skill, few men have been better entitled to remem
brance : but history, busy with the doings of the illustrious great,
— which, Heaven knows, have been but too often little enough —
had no time to waste on such matters or on such men. And we
fear tradition can hardly be received as a satisfactory authority in
the present case, since it assigns the enemy of souls as the author
of the bridge. (Fig. 714.) The year 1187 has been supposed to be
the date of the work, but all is conjecture ; the only thing we can
with tolerable safety state is, that we must look for its munificent
and able builders in the Cistercian Abbey which has left its ruins
in the neighbourhood. As a general rule, it should seem that in
these early times bridges and roads for the general convenience
were works about which few troubled themselves : the people had
not been used to such luxuries, for one thing, and then the works
involved much labour and little present fame, so they would have
been left undone, but that, as usual, the monks, the civilizers,
stepped in and did them themselves. The chasm in question was
impassable until the bridge was built, which remained, for nearly six
hundred years, the only means of communication between the
opposite sides. About the middle of the last century there were
discovered some symptoms of weakness and decay, when the county
(Cardigan) built another bridge over it, leaving the original
structure an honourable memorial of the skill and practical
benevolence of Old England, and a picturesque addition to this
most delightfully picturesque of scenes. An interesting description
of the falls, and of the romantic scenery around, appeared in the
'Penny Magazine' for 1834, to which we may refer our readers.
The ruins of the Cistercian Abbey are still to be seen near Hafod,
a place of high reputation for its beauty, and where Johnes, the
translator of Froissart, so long resided. Two difficult paths lead
down from each end of the bridge to the rocky sides of the chasm,
but the direct descent is lower down, nearly under the comfortable
inn called the Hafod Arms. From the back windows of this house
we look upon the great falls of the Rhydal, situated at the head

824.— Queen Eleanor.— From her Tomb in Westminster Abbey.

¦

f&fe

-tfjf

827. — Caernarvon Castle.

826.— Charing Cross.

825.— Waltham Cross.

208

t

o s
O

831.— Pembroke Castle.

too

829.— Conway Castle.

832.— Harlech Castle.

830.— Beaumaris Castle.

210

OLD ENGLAND.

[Book II.

of a rocky glen ; and we hear, but cannot see, the four falls of the
Mynach.

A poet,* we regret to say no longer living to enjoy the honours
of a reputation as universal as it was well earned, tells, in humorous
verse, the story that has made the well of St. Keyne (Fig. 715)
popular for many an age among all classes of the people, and which
still invests its waters with a certain air of romance, finely harmo
nizing with their picturesque appearance and position in a little
green nook some two miles and a half south of Liskeard.
A well there is in the west conntrie,
And a clearer one never was seen ;
There is not a wife in the west countrie
But has heard of the well of St. Keyne.
An oak and an elm tree stand beside,
And behind does an ash tree grow,
And a willow from the bank above
Droops to the -water below.
A traveller came to the well of St. Keyne,
And pleasant it -was to his eye,
For from cockcrow he had been travelling,
And there was not a cloud in the sky.
He drank of the waters so cool and clear,
For thirsty and hot was he,
And he sat him down on the grassy bank
Under the willow tree.
There came a man from the neighbouring town
At the well to fill his pail,
By the wellside he rested it down
And bade the stranger hail.
"Now art thou a bachelor, Stranger? " quoth he,
" Or if thou hast a wife,
» The happiest draught thou hast drank this day
That ever thou didst in thy life.
" Or has your good woman, if one you have,
In Cornwall ever been ?
For, and if she had, I'll venture my life
She has drank of the well of St. Keyne."
* Eobert Southey.

" I left a good woman who never was here,"
The stranger he made replyj;
" But that my draught should be better for that,
I pray thee answer me why ?"
"St. Keyne," quoth the countryman, "many a time
Drank of this crystal well;
And before the angel summon'd her
She laid on its waters a spell.
"If the husband of this gifted well
Shall drink before his wife,
A happy man henceforth is he,
For he shall be master for life.
"But if the wife should drink of it first,
Alas for the husband then — "
The traveller stoop'd to the well of St. Keyne
And drank of its waters again.
"You drank ofthe waters, I warrant, betimes,"
He to the countryman said;
But the countryman smiled as the stranger spoke,
And sheepishly shook his head.
" I hastened as soon as the wedding was o'er,
And left my good wife in the porch ;
But, faith ! she had been wiser than I,
For she took a bottle to church."
The pious lady who gave these miraculous virtues to the well,
and consequently her name, St. Keyne, appears to have been a
virgin of the royal British blood ; her father was Braganus, Prince
of Brecknockshire. About the year 490 she came to Mount St.
Michael, Cornwall, on a pilgrimage, and there remained so long
that her nephew, Cadoc, went to fetch her. The people, however,
had grown no less attached to tier than she to them, and refused
her permission to depart, until, as the poet informs us, an angel
summoned her, and of course all parties were bound to obey the
mandate. The well of St. Keyne was then endowed with its
marvellous properties, in memory of her, and perhaps by way of
suggesting a piece of excellent domestic philosophy, — namely, that
in the married state to live happily together there must be an ac
knowledged supremacy ; but whether that attaches to the man or
woman, as superior wit and mental characteristics may determine,
St. Keyne does not seem to have thought very material, and we are
very much disposed to be of the same opinion.

Chap. III.]

OLD ENGLAND.

211

CHAPTER III— POPULAR ANTIQUITIES.

HE domestic features of the Anglo-
Norman Period cannot be better com
menced, perhaps, than by a glance at
the most important, our shipping,
which then first began to emerge from
obscurity. The Saxons had nearly lost
the naval arts which King Alfred had
taken such pains to advance. The pre
parations for the Norman Invasion,
that employed workmen of all classes
in building (Fig. 795) and equipping
ships, lasted, we are told, "from early
spring all through the summer months ;" and when completed, the
Normans, Flemings, Frenchmen, and Britaignes, who composed
William's host, were conveyed to the English shores in about three
thousand vessels, of which six or seven hundred were of considerable
size, and the rest small craft or boats. We have an interesting
description of the duke's own bark, which led the van, and " sailed
faster than all the rest." It had been presented for the occasion by
his wife Matilda, an instance of her affectionate zeal in a cause thought
just and holy by great numbers, and sanctified by the Pope, whose
consecrated banner floated from the vessel's top, with a cross upon it,
as a rallying-point for all the religous as well as martial enthusiasm
of his forces. Matilda's bark shone conspicuous by day for its splendid
decorations, and in the darkness of the night for the brilliant light
that burned at the mast-head. It was painted with the three lions
of Normandy, its vanes were gilded, its sails of different bright
colours, its figure-head — a child sculptured with a drawn bow, the
arrow ready to fly against the hosfile land. The duke's first care>
after disembarking his troops, was to erect defences for the protec
tion of his ships. But this armament was, as it were, got up for
the occasion, and must have, in a great measure, disappeared with
it, — the merchants no doubt requiring and obtaining the return of
their vessels to the more legitimate demands of commerce. William
did not live to possess a navy of his own, though he often felt the
want of it, and took especial pains to obtain one. Among the
wisest of his regulations for the defence of the kingdom, that he had
mastered by his resistless energy, was the establishment of the
Cinque Ports. Other towns on the coast were also bound to supply
ships, and, on emergency, he and his successors scrupled, not to
seize the whole in the merchant service. The son of the Conqueror
showed glimpses of the spirit that should animate a sovereign
desiring naval success. On the occasion of news suddenly reach
ing him of an outbreak in Normandy, he hurried from the chace
in the New Forest, and, deaf to the cautious remonstrances of
his nobles, galloped to the nearest port, and embarked in the first
vessel he found, although it was blowing a gale of wind, and the
sailors entreated him to have patience till the storm should abate.
" Weigh anchor, hoist sail, and begone ! " cried Rufus, with all his
great father's scorn of danger ; " did you ever hear of a king that
was drowned?" The sailors made no answer, put to sea, and
landed their royal passenger at Barfleur on the following day.
Most of the old historians are of opinion, that the drowning of the
nephew of Rufus, Prince William, was a judgment for the pre
sumption of the uncle. Barfleur, where Rufus had landed, was the
ill-omened place of Prince William's embarkation, with his French
bride, his sister and brother, and a host of gay young nobles. The
melancholy shipwreck is well known ; but we recur to it for a brief
mention of the ill-fated ship and its captain, as characteristic of the
manners and sea-life of the period. When all was ready for a
short and pleasant expedition to England, which was to include the
king, with his numerous retinue, Thomas FitzStephen, a mariner
of some repute, presented himself to the king, and, tendering a
golden mark, said, "Stephen, son of Evrard, my father, served
yours all his life by sea, and he it was who steered the ship in
which your father sailed for the conquest of England. Sire kino-,
I beg you to grant me the same office in fief: I have a vessel called
the Blanche-Nef, well equipped, and manned with fifty skilful

mariners." The king could not accept FitzStephen's offer for
himself, as he had selected his own vessel, but gave his permission
that the " White Ship " and its gallant captain should take charge
of the prince and his retinue, amounting, with the crew, to about
three hundred persons. The captain had a sailor's pride in the
speed of his craft and the qualities of his crew, and though hours
passed away before he left the shore, he promised to overtake every
ship that had sailed before him. There was feasting and dancing
and drinking on deck at the prince's expense, and the men " drank
out their wits and reason " before the White Ship started from her
moorings, which was not till night. But what cared those joyous
young hearts beating with love, and happiness, and pride, with
the bright moonlight above them, the wind fair and gentle, and
FitzStephen, proud of his charge, at the helm, while every sail
was set, and the sturdy mariners plied the oar with the utmost
vigour, cheered on by the boyish princes and their companions ?
The rest is well known. The fate of the fine-spirited captain is
worthy of the deepest pity. . Swimming among the dying and the
dead, he approached two drowning sufferers, and anxiously said —
" The king's son, where is he ? " " He is gone," was the reply ;
" neither he, nor his brother, nor his sister, nor any of his company,
has appeared above water." " Woe to me ! " cried FitzStephen,
and then plunged to the bottom. The honour of his art, so deeply
concerned in the high trust that had been reposed in him, was more
to him in that appalling moment than his own life. The loss of a
depraved and heartless prince like William, who gave the worst
possible promise for a future king, was of much less real conse
quence than that of a mariner like FitzStephen.
Henry II. paid great attention to maritime affairs. When he-
embarked for the conquest of Ireland, he had four hundred vessels
with him ; some that would be considered even now of large size,
and one of the " chiefest and newest " capable of carrying four
hundred persons. Some time before his death he began expressly
to build vessels for the voyage to Palestine ; and when his son,
Richard I., succeeded, he found these preparations so far advanced,
that he was soon able to launch or equip fifty galleys of three tiers
of oars, and many other armed galleys, inferior iu size to them, but
superior fo those generally in use. He had also selected transports
from the shipping of all his ports ; " and there is not much danger
in assuming," observes Southey, " that, in size and strength of
ships, this was ]the most formidable naval armament that had as
yet appeared in modern Europe." Indeed, an English royal navy
had begun at last decidedly to grow. Cceur-de-Lion drew up a
singular scale of punishments for keeping order among his crews
and forces : a murderer was to be lashed to the dead body of his
victim, and thrown overboard ; or if in port or on shore, buried
alive with it. For lesser injuries the offender was to lose his hand,
or if there was no bloodshed, suffer so many times ducking over
head and ears. Bad language was fined; theft" punished by
tarring and feathering, of which species of punishment this is the
earliest instance on record. When we next read of this custom in
connection with the outposts of civilization in the United States,
it will be only just to remember where it originated. A severer
punishment for theft, perhaps when the, crime was of an aggra
vated kind, was to leave the offender on the first land the ship
reached, and abandon him to his fate. Richard's fleet sailed from
Dartmouth, and being all constructed both to row and to sail, they
must have. made a gallant show, glittering in every part with the
Crusaders' arms, and covered with an endless variety of banners
painted on silk. The general form of the galley, of course, must
have varied a little through a period of a hundred and forty years.
At first it seems to have been long, low, and slender, with two tiers
of oars, and a spar or beam of wood, fortified with iron, projecting
from the head, for piercing the sides of the enemy. The poop and
prows are seen to be very high in Richard's fleet. He had some
galleys, shorter and lighter than the rest, for throwing Greek fire,
then a favourite mode of destruction both on land and sea. No
English or, we may add, European fleet, had ever accomplished so
2 E 2

834<-Conway Castle.

833.— Huins of Uoslin Castle.

836.— Ruins of Kildiommie Castle.

835.-Ruins of Koslin Castle and Chapel.

838.— Bock of Dumbarton.

3T._Dunfermline Abbey, Fife ; the Burial-place of Bruce.

212

841. — Prudhoe Castle, Northumberland.

213

214

OLD ENGLAND.

[Book II.

long and difficult a navigation as that attempted by Richard. But
the mariners had good faith in St. Nicholas, the guardian of dis
tressed seamen, and it has been said that the beatified Becket also
had received special directions to watch over these crusading barks.
The first dawning of a stupendous power like that of the present
British navy must inspire deep interest, therefore we have particu
larly dwelt on such glimpses of its progress as the period affords. In
the reign of John we find his forces embarked in five hundred
vessels, and opposed to a French fleet of three times their number,
at Damme, then the port of Bruges. This • was a memorable
encounter, as not only did the French then put forth their first great
fleet, but the engagement was the first of all those sanguinary
encounters which have since taken place between the two nations.
And a melancholy beginning it was for the French. Their navy
was annihilated. This victory transported the English with joy,
and, of course, was proportionably felt with bitterness by their
neighbours. Indeed, the enmity between the two nations scarcely
slumbered or slept afterwards. It is said that John, in consequence,
had the presumption to claim for England the sovereignty of the
seas, and to declare that all who would not strike to the British flag
were lawful spoil ; — a pretty feature in the man who made the king
dom, as far as he could, a mere fief of Rome.
Next in importance to the shipping come the building arts of the
Normans. Many of their extraordinary castles have been already
described in this work ; they sprang up all over the kingdom to
defend the Norman lords in their new territories. The religious
edifices- which they produced in unexampled profusion, taste, and
splendour, lie also beyond our present purpose. But to their house
and street architecture, embellishment, and decoration, we must
devote a short space. The Norman style of building was a sudden
expansion and gradual refinement ofthe Saxon, and a branch ofthe
Romanesque. Its chief recognisable points are the round-headed arch,
generally with ornaments of a plain but decided character ; windows
narrow and few, simple vaulting, massive arch-piers, few battlements
and niches, and no pinnacles. It was, in the main, a stern and un-
elaborated style, for the evident reason that it had to be adapted
to a society living in a state of civil warfare. But it was
admirably adapted to this end : its_ perfect fitness to repel every
engine of war then known is evident at a glance ; and their
construction was so perfect and massive, that they could only be
destroyed by extreme violence or many centuries of neglect. It
has been observed as rather singular, that among all the imitations,
often paltry enough, of modern architects, they should have so
seldom attempted the Norman, which contains much that, if duly
weighed by some bold inventive genius, might open new paths.
Contracted space was an unpleasant feature in Norman residences.
Such were the smaller class of country-houses, those numerous
dwellings, for instance, built in form of towers — peel-houses, as they
were called in the border country between England and Scotland.
Sometimes several hundred persons would be kennelled, rather
than lodged, in one of these dark and narrow dens. The principal
room solely accommodated the lord, who, after banqueting with an
uncivilized crowd of martial retainers, and spending the evening
listening to the lay of the minstrel, viewing the dancers and jug
glers, and laughing at the buffooneries that were practised for his
amusement, repaired to his rug bed in the same place, spread on
straw on the floor, or on a bench. If a lady shared the rule of the
tower, she had also one apartment, for all purposes ; and as for the
inferior members of the family, including servants and retainers,
often a very great number, they spread themselves every night over
the lower rooms on a quantity of straw. Such was Anglo-Norman
life, with one extensive class. As skilful architects, the Norman
builders of course adapted their buildings to the positions they
occupied. The peel-houses lay much exposed, hence everything
was sacrificed to security, and the light of day could scarcely
penetrate the thick and solid walls, through the narrow slits that
served for windows. But the dwellings of the nobility and wealthy
classes that were more sheltered — as for instance under the protec
tion of some larger fortress, or congregated in a town — were rather
lighter, less contracted, and more decorated. Specimens of this
sort remain in good preservation at Lincoln, which might be desig
nated a Norman city, for it is full of Norman remains, and was at
the Norman period a most wealthy, strong, and magnificent place.
That remarkable building the Jew's House (Fig. 812) presents a
good example of enriched street-architecture of the period. The
prevalent custom was to build domestic residences with timber,
many remains of which, in immense beams intersecting each other,
and of great durability, were within these few years visible in many
places in the same ancient city. But the Jew's House, and a few
others «i^where, are of stone. There is another Norman house

in Lincoln deserving especial mention, a mansion, vulgarly desig
nated John of Gaunt's Stables, but it should rather be called his
Palace, of which there seems little doubt it formed an important
feature. In our day the very numerous rooms in this valuable
relic have been turned into repositories for soot, but we can
trace the whole arrangement of the interior. Fronting the street
we have a round archway that immediately arrests attention, a very
fine one of that period. The upper story is gone, which contained
the chief apartments ; the lower is only lighted with loopholes, as
usual. We pass under the archway, and, in its sullen shade, dun
geon-like portals appear on each side. But the archway admits us
to a quadrangle, or square court, round the sides of which are
hidden, as it were, the stables, a sort of long, low, vaulted, and
pillared hall, and the various offices — all of a gloomy, confined
character — that belonged to such an establishment. It has been
thought that the idea embodied in such specimens of Norman do
mestic architecture might be adapted and improved in some of our
palaces — that of concealing all the miscellaneous rooms around
enclosed court-yards, and placing the principal apartments connect
edly on one grand story over the ground-floor ; and thus the custom
originally prompted by danger, might now be modified to promote
that simple dignity and harmonious splendour which are so sadly
deficient in many of our public buildings. Another feature of
Norman residences was the moveable staircase on the outside of the
Norman house (Fig. 811), whose utility, in case of a hostile attack,
is obvious. The upper apartments generally had no communica
tion with the lower. Of the Palatial style of the period, William
Rufus's Hall at Westminster survives — a splendid monument — and
will be noticed more particularly hereafter. The great halls gene
rally were divided into three aisles of two rows of pillars. Pre
vious to the Conquest, the Normans were distinguished by a taste
for magnificent buildings, and however the necessities of defence
restrained that taste, it broke forth at every possible opportunity.
One antique sketch of this time (Fig. 809) shows the whole process
of the erection of the important edifices that arose during the more
tranquil part of the Anglo-Norman Period. There is the lordly
principal, stating probably the dimensions, and giving the architect
his own views of the outline and character of the building, while
the latter listens, and explains his work, and artificers of different
grades are busy at the various executive processes. The number
of builders and artificers employed was greater than at any former
period, and their skill was much superior. Invention was natu
rally stimulated under such circumstances. William of Sens, em
ployed as an architect by Lanfranc, Archbishop of Canterbury,
constructed a machine for loading and unloading vessels, and for
conveying weights by land. One of the most important works of
the period, London Bridge (Fig. 808), first constructed of timber,
and afterwards of stone, the production of an ecclesiastical archi
tect, will be treated of at length in another place. The gateway
to the buildings placed on the bridge (Fig. 807) exhibited a hideous
spectacle of blackened and ghastly human heads bristling on spear
points, a scene expressive of the worst spirit of war, and strangely
at .variance with the harmonizing influence of industry and the arts
which the Normans cultivated. London at this period possessed
neither grandeur nor conveniences, taken on the whole ; the com
mon people lived in very poor dwellings, intersected by narrow
miry lanes, the whole enclosed by walls. The manor-house of
the period presented in many respects a great contrast to one of the
present day. Although chimneys, when introduced, resembled the
modern (Fig. 810), the coarse habits which existed side by side
with magnificent taste and talent, induced the preference of a hearth
in the midst of the hall, whence the smoke of wood and turf (for
coals were seldom used) ascended to blacken the roof. Fashion
partially banished the tapestry from the best rooms, and painted
wainscoting was preferred. Ornamental carved furniture (such as
the chairs, Fig. 798) enriched the stern and sombre interior of this
feudal home. The fabrication of armour gave a lively impulse to
the metallic arts, for which the lord had workshops on his estate, and
many beautiful articles were produced for church and household
display. Candlesticks (Fig. 799) were furnished with a spike at top,
on which the candle was stuck, sockets being of later contrivance.
The coins of this period are of great rarity. Royal mints con
tinued in the chi«f towns and on the principal estates ; and in the
reign of Stephen every castle was said to have its mint. There was
but one coin, the silver penny (at least no other has come down to
^us), and the penny was broken into halves and quarters, to form half
pence and farthings. In Fig. 796 we see an Anglo-Norman coiner
at work. The dress and implements of many of the rural labourers
employed on the different manors, often on the lands held by the
monks, who were the greatest improvers of agriculture and gar-

Chap. III.]

OLD ENGLAND.

215

dening, may be understood by a reference to our engravings, which
are copied from manuscripts of that time. We have there the ordi
nary labourers of the soil (Fig. 782), reapers and gleaners (Fig. 801),
thrashers (Fig. 806), millers (Fig. 797, 802) ; and besides these,
there were shepherds, neatherds, goatherds, cowherds, swineherds,
and keepers of bees. The fisheries (Fig. 785) were productive. In
Kent, Sussex, Norfolk, and Suffolk were herring fisheries. Sandwich
yielded annually forty thousand herrings to the monks of Christ
Church, Canterbury ; and in Cheshire and Devonshire there were
salmon fisheries. In Cheshire, one fishery paid one thousand salmon
annually as rent. The rent of marsh or fen land was generally
paid in eels.
Our great woollen manufacture is to be dated from this period.
The art of weaving cloth we owe to the Flemings. In 1197 laws
were laid down regulating the fabrication and sail of cloth. Linen
was also manufactured. The ¦ guilds or incorporated trades date
their origin from this period. The weavers, fullers, and bakers, were
the earliest ; other trades followed : but the next period is the chief
one when these important and peaceful associations were formed.
Thus far, their object seemed mutual succour, but it was extended
afterwards. Ladies of rank employed themselves in embroidering
tunics and veils and girdles for themselves, robes and banners
for their knightly husbands and sons, gorgeous vestments for their
favourite clergy, storied tapestry for their chosen church. The
native English at the Conquest were said to be a rude and illiterate
people, but William and his successors loved and favoured learn
ing, which had its chief source with the Arabs that had conquered
Spain. This was the golden age of Universities. But attainment
rested with the clergy. The common people we do not wonder to
find untaught, for that has been generally their fate everywhere, but
the nobility were scarcely better. There were two great classes
equally proud and eminent, dividing between them the mastery of
the rest. These were the men of the sword, and the men of the
pen — in other words, the soldiers and the monks. Scholastic
loaic stood first in the rank of studies, and lorded it over all other.
Abstruse learning was indeed followed with such intense zeal as
to be fatal to polite literature. Poetry was cast out contemp
tuously to glee-singers and troubadours ; and though rather more
respect was paid to music, it was only such as was suited to the
choir. The most elegant art practised in the monasteries was the
emblazoning of initial letters (Fig. 805) in manuscript books. The
scribe usually left blanks for these letters, which were afterwards
filled up by artists, who exercised a rich invention in the pattern, and
executed them with the aid of gold and silver. As the twelfth
century advanced, these manuscript books were often made of pro
digious size. The sports of the Norman lords were chiefly hunt
ing and hawking ; the English were forbade to use dogs or hawks,
and had to resort to gins, snares, and nets (Fig. 791), when they
durst follow these sports at 'all. It was some time before the

Conqueror or his successors permitted the tournament, which might
have been dangerous before the two nations became amalgamated ;
but the noble students of chivalry practised military sports, of
which the principal was the quintain, in which the young man
tilted with his lance at a shield or Saracen elevated on a pole or
spear, past which he rode at full career.
This exercise was imitated by the young men who were not
blessed with noble birth ; a sand-bag being iu that case substituted
for a shield or a Saracen, and a quarter-staff for a lance (Fig. 792).
To this was added the water-quintain and the water-tournament
(Fig. 789), rendered more exciting by the chance of immersion in
the river in case of a failing blow. Such pastimes strengthened the
muscles and the nerves, and inured a warlike race to take delight in
overcoming difficulty, encountering peril, and enduring pain. But
if these promoted the courage and agility required in war, others,
even for children's enjoyment, stimulated a horrid love of cruelty
and bloodshed. Excellent schoolmasters they must have been,
whose pupils were in the regular habit of bringing a fighting-cock
on the Tuesday of Shrovetide to school, which was turned into a pit
for their amusement. And a suitable preparative this was for
such manly sports as that of horse-baiting (Fig. 788). There
might be less inhumanity, perhaps (though the process of teaching
was barbarous enough, no doubt), in the curious feats animals
were taught to perform, as that of bear-playing (Fig. 793), and
horses beating a war point on a tabor (Figs. 784, 786). But,
happily, we have traces that the Norman-English delighted some
times in sports more innocent : we can fancy them sitting absorbed
in the intellectual game of chess (Figs. 798, 800), or enjoying the
fresh air, the green grass, the summer sun on the bowling-green
(Fig. 794), or bursting with obstreperous laughter by the rustic
fireside at the game of bob-apple (Fig. 787). The general time of
retiring to rest was at sunset in summer, and eight or nine in winter,
when the couvre feu, cover-fire, or curfew-bell, was rung. The
Conqueror, though he did not (as supposed) originate this custom,
no doubt employed it as a means of repressing the spirit of the
English. In some remote places the curfew still " tolls the knell
of parting day," and from towers to which, like that of Barking
(Fig. 813), it has lent its name. The dead among the common
people were buried without coffins. The Conqueror. was thus laid
in a shallow grave lined with masonry. When stone coffins were
used by the wealthy classes, they were let into the ground no lower
than their depth. Gradually they came to be placed entirely
above the ground, and then the sides were sculptured. The tomb
in the engraving is of this kind (Fig. 804). The costume of the
Normans of both sexes was chiefly Oriental, borrowed from the
Crusades of this period (Figs. 783, 791).' The most remarkable
exception was the singular knotted sleeve of the ladies, as, shown in
Fig: 791.

END OF BOOK II.

216*

845.— Field of the Battle of Chevy Chase. (Bird.)

846.— Stirling.

'*m

IP m

[OLD ENGLAND.]

217

CHAPTER L— REGAL AND BARONIAL ANTIQUITIES.

HE circumstances attending the coro
nation of Henry III. (Figs. 814, 815)
in his boyhood, might have taught him
in his mature years a very different
mode of rule from that he adopted, and
which led to events almost without
parallel for importance in our history :
the establishment of something like an
equal system of justice, and the rise of
the Commons of England, are but two
of the great events of the period of
which we are now" about to treat ;
both, strange but cheering to say,
brought about by the endeavours of Henry III. and Lis minis
ters to govern unjustly and arbitrarily, but both, alas ! purchased
at the sacrifice of much of the best and purest blood of the nation,
in all ranks of society. When John died, his son Henry was but
in his tenth year.. And what a state of confusion surrounded the
helpless boy — Louis the French Dauphin in the land with an army
of French troops, and supported by the chief English barons, who
had invited him over as their last refuge against John's tyranny.
But a great and good man was then living — Pembroke, soon after
wards declared the Protector ; who, collecting together at Glouces
ter the different branches of the royal family, as well as a host of
the principal men of both political parties, suddenly appeared among
them, and placing the young Henry, with all due honour and cere
mony, before the assembled prelates and nobles, said " Albeit the
father of this prince, whom here you see before you, for his evil
demeanours hath worthily undergone our persecution, yet this
young child, as he is in years tender, so is he pure and innocent
from those of his father's doings," and so called upon them to ap
point him their king and governor, and drive the French from the
land. The assembly received the speech with cordial greeting, and
the coronation ceremony was immediately hurried on. The crown
had been lost in the Wash, so a plain circlet of gold was used.
Pembroke was appointed the royal guardian, and the governor of
the kingdom. That appointment saved Henry his throne, and the
people of England their nationality. Pembroke, who fully appre
ciated the motives of the disappointed barons, caused the Magna
Charta J^be revised and confirmed, with the view of satisfying them,
and his character testified to all men that the act was done in good

faith. The result was soon perceptible in the breaking up of the
moral strength of the dangerous and unnatural confederacy. Then
came the battle, or " Fair," Of Lincoln, in 1217, in which the French
and English allies were completely overthrown ; and when Pem
broke, hurrying from the ancient city with its bloody streets the
same evening to Stow, was able to assure the trembling boy-king
for the first time that he was really lord of England. Pembroke
dealt firmly but generously with the allies, and before long Louis
had returned to La belle France, and the barons of England were
once more united in support of their own monarch. Englishmen
could again look on one another without rage or humiliation, again
feel what the poet has so nobly expressed : —
This England never did, nor never shall,
Lie at the proud foot of a conqueror,
But when it first did help to wound itself.
Now these her princes are come home again.
Come the three coiners of the world in arms
And we shall shock them : Nought shall make us rue,
If England to itself do rest but true.
Here was matter for reflection for the longest life ; a storehouse
of facts from whence King Henry might have drawn without diffi
culty the practical philosophy of restraining his many expensive,
and despotic, and nationally-degrading inclinations. Unfortunately,
he, like so many of his royal brethren, had learnt nothing by mis
fortune. That his father failed and suffered in his contest with the
people,, seemed only a reason why the son should risk similar
results. The period of Henry's marriage with Eleanor, daughter
of the Count of Provence, seems to mark with tolerable accuracy
the period of the commencement of the struggle between him and
his subjects. His minister, the Poictevin Bishop, Des Roches, had
given him a double course of practical instruction as to how he
should rule, although the people and the barons so little appreci
ated their share in the example, that they compelled Henry, in
1234, to dismiss him, with a whole host of his countrymen, not
only from power, but from the island. Henry comforted himself
on his marriage by taking Gascons and Provencals into his favour,
since they would not let him have Poictevins ; and upon them he
lavished all possible wealth and honours. The barons remonstrated,
and the king, wanting money, promised to behave better. When
he next asked for funds, he was told of broken promises, and an oath
was exacted. That broken too, the barons became more and more

Chap. I.]

OLD ENGLAND.

219

annoying and disrespectful ; charged Henry with extravagance, and
at last said in the most unmistakable English, they would trust
him no longer, and therefore, if he wanted them to give him money,
he must allow them to add to the gift a few public officers of their
choice, such as the Chief Justiciary, Chancellor, and so on. The
king thought he would much rather stretch his prerogative a little
over those especially subject to it, in matters of fine, benevolence,
and purveyance ; rob the Jews ; and beg from everybody else ; and
admirably he did all these things. Even this hardly sufficed, so
in 1248 he again met his barons in parliament, to see what they
would do for him, but soon left them in disgust ; they would pro
vide nothing but lectures upon his past conduct, and advice as to his
future ; except, indeed, on their own conditions. Some new ma
noeuvres were then tried, which really do great honour to Henry's
ingenuity, whatever they may prove as to his baseness and cupidity.
The Holy Land had long been a fruitful theme, so a new expedition
was talked of, and' money obtained from the pious. Then the king
began to " invite himself sometimes to this man, and sometimes to
that, but nowhere contenting himself with his diet and hospitage,
unless both he, his queen, and son Edward, yea, and chief favou
rites in court, were presented with great and costly gifts, which
they took not as of courtesy, but as of due." (Speed.) Of course
under such circumstances Henry could retrench his own household,
which he did with a free hand. There was no harm, too, in selling
the crown plate and jewels, when fresh ones were so attainable.
" But who will buy them ? " said he to his advisers. " The citizens
of London," was the matter-of-course reply. Indeed, appears to have
thought the king to himself, I must look after these wealthy Lon
doners; and he did so in good earnest. Among his other freaks, lie
established a new fair at Westminster, to last for fifteen days, during
the whole of which time he shut up all the citizens's shops : we need
not add that he made a very profitable fair of it for himself. That
there were men in England who neither could nor would endure such
government was to be expected ; but one's admiration is especially
warmed to find there were English women who could tell the king
plain truths in plain words. The young widowed Countess of Arundel
having failed to obtain what she alleged to be hers in equity, thus ad
dressed him before his court : " 0, my lord king, why do you turn
away from justice ? We cannot now obtain that which is right in
your court. You are placed as a mean between God aud us, but you
neither govern us nor yourself, neither dread you to vex the church
diversely, as is not only felt in present, but hath been heretofore.
Moreover, you doubt not manifoldly to afflict the nobles of the
kingdom." Henry listened with a scornful and angry look, and
then cried out in a loud voice, " O, my lady countess, what ? have
the lords of England, because you have tongue at will, made a
^charter, and hired you to be their orator and advocate ? " But the
lady had as much wit and presence of mind as courage, and
answered, " Not so, my lord ; for they have made to me no charter.
But that charter which your father made, and yourself confirmed,
swearing to keep the same inviolably and constantly, and often
extorting money upon the promise that the liberties therein con
tained should be faithfully observed, you have not kept, but,
without regard to conscience or honour, broken. Therefore are
you found to be a manifest violator of your faith and oath. For
where are the liberties of England, so often fairly engrossed in
writing? so often granted? so often bought? I, therefore, though
a woman, and all the natural loyal people ofthe land, appeal against
you to the tribunal of the fearful judge," &c. The king was over
awed, but of course remained unchanged ; and the lady, as Matthew
Paris tells us, lost her charges, hopes, and travail. When women
thus speak, men must begin to act. A confederacy was soon
formed, and the barons " determined to come strong to Oxford at
Saint Barnabas-day." According to their agreement they appeared
in an imposing body before the king, " exquisitely armed and
appointed, that so the king and his aliens should be enforced, if they
would not willingly assent." Of course their demand was the old
demand— the Charter ; but there was a new and very important
addendum, that the country should be ruled, according to its pro
visions, by twenty-four men, to be then and there chosen by the
assembly. There was no help for it. William de Valence, indeed,
blustered and refused to give up any castle which had been given
to him, when he was quietly told the barons would certainly have
either his castle or his head. The Poictevins then present, seeing
things look so serious, made no more scruple about what they
should do, but decamped as fast as they could from Oxford, nor
rested till the Channel was between them and the Britons. The
leader of the confederated barons was the king's brother-in-law,
Simon de Montfort, a Frenchman by the father's side, but in every
other respect one of [the truest of Englishmen. Before events had

shown Henry the lofty and commanding spirit that his oppressions
had raised, he had a kind of prescience of the fact, which is some
what remarkable. Being one day, in the month of June, in his barge
on the Thames, there came on so heavy a storm of rain, thunder, and
lightning, that Henry impatiently caused himself to be set down at
the nearest mansion, which happened to be Durham House, where
the Earl of Leicester then was. De Montfort came forth to meet
him, and seeing the king's alarm, observed, " Sir, why are you
afraid ? the tempest is now past." Henry, looking at the speaker
with a troubled and lowering aspect, replied, " I fear thunder and
lightning above measure ; but, by the head of God, I do more fear
thee than all the thunder and lightning of the world." The quiet
dignity of the earl's reply was admirable:— " My liege, it is inju
rious and incredible that you should stand in fear of rne, who have
always been loyal both to you and your realm, whereas you ought
to fear your enemies, such as destroy the realm and abuse you with
bad counsels.'' The war, towards which all things had been long
tending, at last broke out. In 1264 there met at Lewes two great
armies, the one headed by the king, and his son Prince Edward,
who had till recently supported the barons, the other by De Mont
fort, whose soldiers were directed to wear white crosses on their
breasts and backs, to show they fought for justice. The result was
a complete triumph for the popular party; the king was taken
prisoner in the battle, and the prince yielded himself also to cap
tivity the day after, as a hostage of peace. De Montfort's power
was now supreme over England, and though there appears not the
smallest proof that he ilkused it, some among his brother nobles
grew jealous, especially the Earl of Gloucester. By his con
trivance Prince Edward escaped ; whose address and energy
speedily raised once more a powerful royalist, army. Seldom
has a general been placed in a more difficult position. His
own father was in De Montfort's hands— the feeling of the
more enlightened of the people, those resident in the chief towns,
were in favour of the " traitors" (a designation easily applied when
no other as serviceable can be) — above all, the bravest of England's
chivalry were the men who had to be overthrown. Through all
Edward's subsequent career, so brilliant in a military sense, there
is no event that does more credit to his skill than the strategy by
which he succeeded in placing himself between two bodies of the
enemy, preventing them from joining each other, or simultaneously
attacking him ; and then confronting the chief adversary thus shorn
of a considerable portion of his strength. There appeared, it
seems, In that black night before this sad and dismal day
Two apparitions strange, as dread heaven would bewray
The horrors to ensue: Oh most amazing sight!
Two armies in the air discerned were to fight,
Which came so near to earth, that in the morn they found
The prints of horses' feet remaining on the ground ;
Which came but as a show, the time to entertain,
Till the angry armies joined to act the bloody scene.
Such, according to the Warwickshire poet Drayton, and the old
chroniclers, were the dire portents by which the great battle of
Evesham was preceded. The scene of this sanguinary encounter
has been thus described in ' William Shakspere : a Biography,' from
personal observation : —
" About two miles and a half from Evesham is an elevated point
near the village of Twyford, where the Alcester Road is crossed by
another track. The Avon is not more than a mile distant on either
hand, for, flowing from Oflenham to Evesham (Fig. 819), a distance
of about three miles, it encircles that town, returning in nearly a
parallel direction, about the same distance, to Charlbury. The
great road, therefore, passing Alcester to Evesham, continues, after
it passes Twyford, through a narrow tongue of land bounded by
the Avon, having considerable variety of elevation. Immediately
below Twyford is a hollow now called Battlewell, crossing which
the road ascends to the elevated platform of Greenhill." It has
been remarked by a careful observer that the Battlewell could not
have been in the scene of action, though so near it. It is now a
mere puddle at the bottom of an orchard. The declivity there was
on the right wing of Prince Edward's army, and the troops may
have used the well for filling their canteens previous to the action,
tut no part of the fight could have actually occurred on that spot,
unless we suppose that Edward's van.and centre had both given way,
and they had fallen back on their reserve. But we have nothing to
bear this out. Edward, early in the day on the 4th of August,
1265 appeared on the heights above Evesham ; and it seems most
probable that he was never driven from that vantage-ground so far
as the hollow of Battlewell. And now, having seen the place of
this great strife of armies, we will glance at these armies themselves
2F2

851 .—Edward II. From the Tomb at Gloucester.

852.— Great Seal of Edward II.

853.— Berkeley Castle.

854 — Blacklow Hill, near Guy's Cliff.

855.— Queen Philippa. From the Tomb in Westminster Abbey.

220

857,-Edward III. From the Tomb in Westminster Abbey.

856.— Efflgy of Edward II.
Gloucester Cathedral.

865.— Edward HI. and the Countess of Salisbury.

221

222

OLD ENGLAND.

[Book III.

on the morning of the eventful day. The young soldier at the head
of the royalists, recently escaped from the custody of the veteran
whom he is now to oppose, was the prince, burning to revenge his
defeat and captivity, and to release his father the king. The great
object of his manoeuvres was to prevent a junction of the forces
under Simon de Montfort and his eldest son. In order to effect
this it was necessary to keep the old earl on the right bank of the
Severn, with which view he destroyed all the bridges and boats on
the river, and secured the fords. But the earl himself was not to
be out-manoeuvred by his clever young adversary — he managed to
cross, and encamped at first near Worcester, hoping hourly that his
son would join him. But Simon the younger, though he does not
appear to have been deficient in 'patriotism or courage, was no
match for a genius in war like Edward. He was surprised near
Kenilworth by night, lost his horses and his treasure, and most of
his knights, and was compelled to take refuge, almost naked, in the
castle there, which was the principal residence of the De Montfort
family. This, though as yet he knew it not, was a deathblow to
the earl, who, still hoping and expecting with impatience to meet
his son, marched on to Evesham. There he waited, but waited in
vain. The day before the fatal 4th, no shadow of the truth clouding
the confidence he felt in his son, he had solemn masses performed
in the Abbey Church, and expressed himself well assured that his
son would join him presently, and that Heaven would uphold his
cause against a perjured prince. " The next morning he sent his
barber Nicholas to the top of the abbey tower to look for the succour
that was coming over the hills from Kenilworth. The barber came
down with eager gladness, for he saw, a few miles off, the banner of
young Simon de Montfort in advance of a mighty host. And again
the earl sent the barber to the top of the abbey tower, when the man
hastily descended in fear and horror, for the banner of young De
Montfort was nowhere to be seen, but, coming nearer and nearer;
were seen the standards of Prince Edward, and of Mortimer, and of
Gloucester." ('William Shakspere.')
The devotion of the leaders of the popular party to the cause
they had espoused, and to each other, now received a noble and
touching proof. " While escape was still possible, a generous
rivalry led each leader to persuade others to adopt that mode of
safety which he rejected for himself. Hugh le Despenser and
Ealph Basset, when urged to fly, refused to survive De Montfort,
and the great leader himself, when his son Henry affectionately
offered to bear the brunt of the battle alone, while his father should
preserve his life by flight, steadily answered, " Far from me be the
thought of such a course, my dear son ! I have grown old in war,
and my life hastens to an end ; the noble parentage of my blood
has been always notoriously eminent in this one point, never to fly or
wish to fly from battle. Nay, my son, do you rather retire from the
fearful contest, lest you perish in the flower of your youth ; you are
now about to succeed (so may God grant) to me, and our illustrious
race, in the glories of war.' " (' The Barons' War,' by W. H.
Blaauw, Esq., M.A., 1844.)
The danger attending the junction of such powerful personages,
the grief and disappointment at the evident discomfiture "of his son
— fifteen of whose standards were presently raised in exulting
mockery in front of the Boyalist forces on the Evesham heights, and
apprehension for that son's fate, must have altogether sorely tried
the earl, who had the further bitterness of reflecting that Gloucester
and his powerful father had been with him at the head of the
barons, and had deserted him merely out of jealousy of his superior
popularity. His greatest friend and counsellor was now armed to
crush him. Under all these painful feelings, and seeing not only
on the heights before him, but also on either side and in his rear,
the heads of columns gradually blocking up every road, he exclaimed
at once in despair and admiration, " They have learned from me the
art of war." And then, instantly comprehending all that must
follow, he is said to have exclaimed, according to one writer, " God
have our souls all, our days are all done ;" and according to another
writer, " Our souls God have, for our bodies be theirs." But, as we
have seen, had retreat been allowed him, he was not the man to avail
himself of it. Having marshalled his men in the best mariner, he
spent a short time in prayer, and took the sacrament, as was his
wont, before going into battle. Having failed in an attempt to
force the road to Kenilworth, he marched out of Evesham at noon
to meet the prince on the summit of the hill, having in the midst of
his troops the old King Henry, his prisoner, encased in armour
which concealed his features, and mounted on a war-horse. As
the battle grew more and more desperate, the earl made his last
stand in a solid circle on the summit of the hill, and several times
repulsed^he charges of his foes, whose numbers, as compared with
his own, were overwhelming. Gradually the royalists closed

around him, attacking at all points. There was but little room, so
the slaughter was confined to a small space, and it is fearful to
picture to one's self the slow but sure progress of the work of
death during that long summer afternoon and evening. Every
man, valiant as a lion, resolved neither to give nor take quarter.
In one of the charges the imbecile Henry was dismounted and in
danger of being slain ; but he cried out, " Hold your hand ! I am
Harry of Winchester," which reaching the ears of the prince, he
fought his way to his rescue, and succeeded in carrying him out of
the melee. At length the barons' forces, wearied by the nature of
the ground, which compelled them to be the assailants, and worn
out by the determined resistance of the royalists, wavered in their
attacks. At the going down of the sun, which they were never
more to see setting in that western sky, Leicester himself, with
his son Henry, and a handful of friends and retainers, were
struggling on foot against a host of foes, who were animated by the
exhilarating consciousness that the victory was theirs. And now
the scene began to close, the earl's horse was killed under him, but
De Montfort rose unhurt from the fall, and fought bravely on foot.
Hope, however, there was none. It is said, that feeling for the brave
youth who fought by his side, his son Henry, and for the few
bravest and best of his friends that were left of all his followers, he
stooped his great heart to ask the royalists if they gave quarter.
" We have no quarter for traitors," was the merciless answer, on
which the doomed veteran again exclaimed, "God have mercy
upon our souls, our bodies must perish !" and rushed amid his foes
with resolute despair. But Mr. Blaauw describes him as answering
to those who summoned him to surrender, "Never will I sur
render to dogs and perjurers, but to God alone." At last he
saw his gallant son Henry fall, his noble adherents were then
cut to pieces, and, finally, the veteran chief himself dropped, his
sword still in his hand. The prophecy was verified which
had been uttered twelve years before by the dying lips of the
far-seeing Bishop of Lincoln, Robert Grosteste, whose views
of the national abuses were as strong as De Montfort's, and
who was one of the most popular reforming spirits of that
age, though at his death matters were not so desperate as they
grew afterwards. " Oh, my dear son !" cried the venerable old
man, laying his hands on the head of De Montfort's son Henry,
" you and your father will die on one day, and by the same kind of
death, but in the cause of truth and justice." This contemporaneous
testimony to the worth of the cause which De Montfort upheld to
the last gasp is worth something, for all writers concur in praising
Grosteste's clear and vigorous discernment and high rectitude. He
was the last man to apply the words truth and justice to treasonable
or selfish cabals.
The remnant of the defeated army was pursued to Offenham, a
mile and a half from Evesham, where the slaughter was very great,
the bridge having been, probably, cut away by the Prince's troops
to prevent their retreat. The reservoir now called Battlewell is
supposed to have been so choked with dead bodies, as to have re
mained long useless to the neighbouring peasantry, but this seems
questionable. The bloody contest lasted from two in the afternoon
till nine at night. No prisoners were taken : of one hundred and
eighty barons and knights of De Montfort's party, there was not one
knowingly left alive ; although some ten or twelve of the knights,
who were afterwards found to breathe when the dead were examined,
were permitted to live if they could. A more savage, inhuman
carnage never disgraced England ; or one that inflicted more widely-
diffused and permanent sentiments of distress and horror. These
sentiments have found undying record in a ballad written at the
time in the Anglo-Norman French, which has been thus translated
by Mr. George Ellis : —

In song my grief shall find relief;
Sad is my verse and rude ;
I sing in tears our gentle peers
Who fell for England's good.
Our peace they sought, for us they fought,
For us they dared to die ;
And where they sleep, a mangled heap,
Their wounds for vengeance cry.
On Evesham's plain is Montfort slain,
Well skill'd he was to guide ;
Where streams his gore shall all deplore :
Fair England's flower and pride.

Ere Tuesday's sun its course had run
Our noblest chiefs had bled :
While rush'd to fight each gallant knight,
Their dastard vassals fled;

Chap. I.]

OLD ENGLAND.

223

Still undismay'd, with trenchant blade
Theyhew'd their desperate way:
Not strength or skill to Edward's will,
But numbers give the day.
On Evesham's plain, &c.
Yet by the blow that laid thee low,
Brave earl, one palm is given ;
Not less at thine than Becket's shrine
Shall rise our vows to Heaven !
Our church and laws, your common cause :
'Twas his the church to save ;
Our rights restored, thou, generous lord,
Shalt triumph in thy grave.
On Evesham's plain, &c.
Despenser true, the'good Sir Hugh,
Our justice and our friend,
Borne down with wrong, amidst the throng
Has met his wretched end.
Sir Henry's fate need I relate,
Or Leicester's gallant son,
Or many a score of barons more,
By Gloucester's hate undone ?
On Evesham's plain, &c.
Each righteous lord, -who brav'd the sword,
And for our safety died,
With conscience pure shall aye endure
The martyr'd saint beside.
That martyr'd saint was never faint
To ease the poor man's care :
With gracious will he shall fulfil
Our just and earnest prayer.
On Evesham's plain, &c.
On Montfort's breast a haircloth vest
His pious soul proclaim'd :
With ruflian hand the ruthless band
That sacred emblem stain'd :
And to assuage their impious rage,
His lifeless corse defaced,
Whose powerful arm long saved from harm
The realm his virtues graced.
On Evesham's plain, &c.
Now all draw near, companions dear,
To Jesus let us pray
That Montfort's heir his grace may share,
And learn to Heaven the way.
No priest I name ; none, none I blame,
Nor aught of ill surmise :
Yet for the love of Christ above
I pray, be churchmen wise.
On Evesham's plain, &c.
No good, I ween, of late is seen
By earl or baron done ;
Nor knight or squire to fame aspire,
Or dare disgrace to shun.
Faith, truth, are fled, and in their stead
Do vice and meanness rule ;
E'en on the throne may soon be shown
A flatterer or a fool. On Evesham's plain, &c.
Brave martyr'd chief! no more our grief
For thee or thine shall flow ;
Among the blest in Heaven ye rest
From all your toils below.
But for the few, the gallant crew,
Who here in bonds remain,*
Christ condescend their woes to end,
And break the tyrant's chain.
On Evesham's plain, &c.
It was a striking evidence ofthe indestructibility of the principles
for which De Montfort had fought and perished, that even in the
hour of full success the king did not dare to revoke the Great
Charter ; and when he and a parliament held at Winchester passed
severe sentences against the family and adherents of De Montfort,
he provoked a new resistance, which occupied Prince Edward two
years to put down. Kenilworth Castle especially (Figs. 81 8, 822, 823)
resisted all efforts of the besiegers ; and at last it became' necessary
to offer reasonable terms. The " Dictum de Kenilworth " was conse
quently enacted, and gradually all parties submitted. And thus ended
the last armed struggle in England for Magna Charta ; which, extra-
, * The few knights above mentioned who were found still alive among the
bodies of the slain.

ordinary as it may seem, became now for the first time an instru
ment of the highest practical value ; in other words, the people*
while appearing to lose everything by the overthrow of Evesham,
in reality gained all they had so long struggled for; and their
benefactor was the very man who had been their ruthless scourge,
King (before Prince) Edward. Henry died on the 15th of
November, 1272, and was buried in the beautiful Abbey of
Westminster, a portion of which he had recently erected, and as
Edward was then in the Holy Land, the Earl of Gloucester and
other barons present put their bare hands upon the corpse, and
swore fealty to the absent prince. In 1274 Edward returned
to England and was crowned. (Figs. 821, 828.) And now,
recalling for a moment the recollection of the power of the in
surgents even after the battle of Evesham, and the comparatively
favourable terms they were able to obtain, we shall understand the
impelling motives to that course of legislation and government
which Edward thought proper to pursue. We shall see that he had
taken home to himself the lesson that had been thrown away upon
his father; and was inclined to hazard no more experiments in
favour of bad government. The corrupt administration of justice
had been perhaps of all others the evil the people most suffered
from under the Norman dynasty, and had most desired to get rid of
by the Charter. Here is one evidence that their object was at last
achieved : — In 1290 Edward caused some of the chief officers of
justice to be dismissed from their offices, and fined, after a complete
and disgraceful exposure in parliament : the chief justice himself,
Sir Thomas Weyland, was among them. All the other officers who
were innocent or less guilty were at the same time compelled to
swear that from thenceforth they would take no pension, fee, or gift
of any man, except only a breakfast or the like present. This was
indeed fulfilling Magna Charta. It was this for which in a great
measure the barons had appeared in irresistible combination at
Eunnymede, had conquered at Lewes, had been slaughtered at
Evesham. The old trick of state policy, but which unfortunately
is, in a practical sense, as new and common as ever, was once more
successfully practised, — if reformation could no longer be delayed,
the reformers might be, and were, got rid of: and thus did the go
vernment satisfy its pride — it no longer at least appeared to be
coerced — whilst it could at the same time claim with some show of
propriety the people's gratitude for the good it vouchsafed to them.
Edward proceeded with the good work he began ; though not
always without a little gentle pressure being exercised upon him.
Thus in 1298, finding dissatisfaction growing, and that among the
dissatisfied were such men as Humphry de Bohun, Earl of Hereford
and Essex, and Boger Bigod, Earl of Norfolk and Marshal of
England, he, among ether concessions, again agreed to confirm the
Great Charter, and the Charter of Forests, and also that there
should be no subsidy nor taxation levied upon the people without
the consent of the prelates, peers, and people. And how were the
people, it may be asked, to give their consent ? The answer to that
question involves the most important event that ever occurred in
English history,— the rise of the system of borough representation,
for which there is every reason to suppose we are indebted to the
great man whom most historians have noticed but to misunderstand
and calumniate, Simon de Montfort. It was between the two battles
of Lewes and Evesham that that nobleman, in calling a parliament,
issued the earliest known writs requiring each sheriff of a county
to return, together with two knights of the shire, two citizens for
each city, and two burgesses for each borough within its limits. In
this matter, too, what does King Edward, in his 23rd year, but
permanently confirm his antagonist's far-seeing and comprehensive
act so that when he consented that no taxation should be levied
without the consent of the people, he used no specious words,
there were the people sitting in parliament to give or refuse
funds. As an evidence of the gigantic character of this inno
vation, we may notice the number of members respectively sent
to the' House during Edward's reign— seventy-six shire represent
atives, and two hundred and forty-six city and town repre
sentatives. Two other illustrations of Edward's conduct as a
legislator in carrying out the principles for the maintenance of
which he had slaughtered the advocates (we ought not ever to for
get that), will not be out of place. In 1305 he sent out an extra
ordinary commission all over the country to inquire concerning
malefactors, of whatever rank, and to administer severe punishments
on the spot. There was no longer any trifling with corruption :
the kin"- was terribly in earnest. If to all that we have said we
now add Sir Matthew Hale's remark by way of summing up, we
shall at once do justice to Edward and to those who impelled him
into the career, which, when in, he so nobly pursued. Sir Mat
thew says that more was done in the first thirteen years of his

Ufc-fit. George at Dijon.
No. 29.

[OLD ENGLAND.]

226

OLD ENGLAND.

[Book III.

reign to settle and establish the distributive justice of the kingdom,
than in all the next four centuries. Let us pass to another, less
important, but even more interesting, phase of Edward's life — let us
look at him in his domestic relations. It is recorded of him that
when he received (in Calabria) intelligence of his father's death,
and at a period not long after the Joss of an infant son, he was so
moved that some surprise was expressed that he should grieve more
for the loss of his old father than for his own offspring. " The loss
of my child," observed Edward, " is a loss which I may hope to
repair ; but the death of a father is a loss irreparable." The senti
ment was at once touching and beautiful, and reveals the same
spirit that afterwards bequeathed so sweet a recollection to the world
in his conduct as a husband.
If it be true, as one of our poets remarks, that (we quote from
memory) " It is the heart which glorifies this life,"
then was there a glory shining about that of the king of Castile's
.daughter, Edward's wife Eleanor (Fig. 824), who with lips, as an
old writer quaintly observes, "anointed with the virtue of lovely
affection," drew the poison from the wound which her husband had
received at Acre, in Palestine, from Azazim, a Saracen, of the mur
derous sect of Assassini : hence our word " assassin." Eleanor gained
an immortal memory by this extraordinary example of conjugal
affection ; but that she did it not for fame, but love, is touchingly
evident in the feelings of grief, admiration, and gratitude with which
Edward cherished her memory after her death in 1291. She was
married to him at Bures in Spain, crowned with him the day of his
coronatipn, lived his wife " in lovely participation of all his troubles
and long voyages" thirty -six years, and died either at Grantham,
or at Hardeby, near Grantham in Lincolnshire, as Edward was
on his way to Scotland, when he first began to insinuate himself
into the affairs of that kingdom. But Edward's passion for
ruling and oppressing the Scots succumbed now to a holier feel
ing. His journey was stopped, he gave all his thoughts to his
faithful and devoted partner's remains, which were embalmed, and
the internal parts laid in Lincoln Cathedral, the body itself being
conveyed to Westminster. A long and melancholy journey the
mourning king made with it to the chapel of King Edward the
Confessor ; and the nation, to whom Eleanor had been a " loving
mother," sincerely sympathized in his grief. The mournful pro
cession rested in its progress at Lincoln, Stamford, Dunstable, St.
Albans, and Charing, then a village, and some other places, about
fifteen in all, at every one of which, when the beloved and noble-
hearted woman had passed from mortal view, Edward, to perpetuate
the memory of her virtues and his love, erected a beautiful Gothic
building in the form denominated a cross. (A view of the
Charing Cross is given in Fig. 826.) Of all these, three only
now remain; namely, at Geddington, Northampton, and Wal
tham — of which the last and most beautiful would probably by
this time have been also lost, but for the good taste and liberality of
the neighbouring gentry and others, who caused it to be restored. Its
graceful form and elegant style may be best understood from the
engraving (Fig. 825). No one can look upon it without lamenting
the loss of so many of its fellows, not only for their beauty, but
for the sake of the events they so beautifully record. If, however,
pinnacles and battlements and fretwork fail, there is no danger
that the heroic self-sacrifice, the holy love and sorrow, which these
crosses commemorate, will ever be forgotten. Would we could
linger upon such recollections of the great Edward ! for when we
leave them, it is to look upon the darker side of the monarch's cha
racter, as shown in his Welsh and Scottish wars.
Edward had not so completely established his military fame in
the Crusades as to be content to settle down to peace. It was not
enough that in Palestine and Italy and France he had lifted the
national honour of England — as honour was then understood — from
the depths to which it had sunk under his father's rule ; it was not
enough that all the talk among the delighted people was of Edward
and his adventures ; — he had a great scheme at heart, in comparison
with which all he had yet done were trifles. He saw that before
England could mount very high in the scale of nations, the whole
of the island of Britain must be essentially one undivided power
instead of three. Leaving foreign conquest, therefore, to his suc
cessors, he fixed his powerful will on the accomplishment of this
unity. The princes of Wales and Scotland were bound by some in
definable species of feudal vassalage to the English crown, and this
he took for the foundation of his advances. A world of misery en
sued to the brave people fighting for their independence; we cannot
have too^nuch sympathy for them ;— nor, on the other hand, too
high an appreciation of the essential idea which lay beneath all

Edward's barbarities, if we consider the value of that unity now,
when England, Scotland, and Wales are so happily and indissolubly
bound together by the only fitting ties, common sympathies and
common interests.
It is recorded that one day as Henry II. rode through
some part of Wales, attended by a splendid retinue of his-
English chivalry, he looked with a contemptuous eye on the
Welsh gentlemen riding on their rough ponies, and on the 'poorer
sort, who were clad in sheep's or goats' skins. A mountaineer ap
proached the great king, and said, with a noble pride, " Thou seest
this poor people — but, such as they are, thou never shalt subdue
them ; — that is reserved alone for God in his wrath." The moun
taineers were, therefore, not likely to yield their mountain fastnesses
an easy conquest. For some time a fierce struggle had been going
on against certain great barons of England, who had erected regular
chains of fortresses in South Wales ; but at the critical moment when
the fate of the whole country was at stake, the native princes and
clans fell at variance amongst themselves. Bees ap-Meredith,
Prince of South Wales, and David, brother of the ruler of the
northern principality, Llewellyn, joined Edward with their vassals
to fight against Llewellyn. Edward had been long intriguing
with Llewellyn's subjects, corrupting the chiefs by bribes and
promises, and encouraging the prince's enemies ; and then, on
pretence of Llewellyn's not obeying a summons, as a great
vassal of the English crown,, to his coronation and parliament
at Westminster, though he denied him a safe conduct thither,
had seized as a prisoner Elinor de Montfort, daughter of the
great earl who fell at Evesham, the], contracted bride of Llewellyn,
as she was on her voyage from France to Wales, with Emeric, her
young brother. The fiery Welsh prince bitterly complained of
these insults done to him in a time of peace, and retaliated by falling
on the English on his borders, and demanded hostages, and the
liberation of Elinor de Montfort before he would go to court. But
Edward did not want him there now. He had procured from his
parliament and the Pope sentences of forfeiture and excommunica
tion against the prince, and at midsummer he crossed the Dee with
a fine army, took the castles of Flint and Rhuddlan, drove the
prince to the mountains, and there girded him in by land and sea,
so that no supplies could reach him. Llewellyn defied cold and
hunger and distress for several months, but at last was reduced to
accept the hard conditions offered him at Ehuddlan Castle; — that
he should pay a fine of fifty thousand pounds, cede his principality
as far as the river Conway, and do homage, deliver hostages, and
pay annual tribute for the isle of Anglesey, which poor remnant
of his possessions was to revert to the English crown if Llewellyn
died without male issue. The fine being practically impossible in
so poor a country, Edward afterwards remitted it, and Llewellyn
was appeased for a time by receiving the hand of his bride in the
presence of Edward and Queen Eleanor, and Alexander of Scotland.
No heirs arose from this alliance, which circumstance working
upon the mind of David, Llewellyn's brother, who had married an
English earl's daughter, and some children rising around him, he
cursed his own folly, which, besides bringing ruin on his country, had
deprived them and himself of the succession of the principality.
The bards and peers prophesied that' the ancient race should re
cover their supremacy, and that the Prince of Wales should be
crowned king in London. Alas ! this prophecy was to be differently
realized from what they expected. On the night of Palm Sunday,
March 22, 1282, David surprised and took the strong castle of
Hawardine, belonging to Eoger Clifford— "a right worthy and
famous knight," according to the English ; a " cruel tyrant," accord
ing to the Welsh— and the lord, who was caught in his bed, was
wounded and carried off prisoner. A general insurrection extended
itself from the Snowdon heights throughout the whole of Wales,
but the chief seat was the mountainous tract called Snowdon
(the Saxon translation of the Welsh Creigie V Eira, the Crags
of the Eagles), which included all the highlands of Caernar
vonshire and Merionethshire, as far east as the river Conway.
Never did people make a more gallant stand for independence
than the natives of these "crags;" and it would have been
impossible to dislodge them, had not their scientific enemy cut
down their woods, and opened roads in previously inaccessible
places by means of his "thousand" pioneers; and after driving
them into the very remotest and wildest fastnesses among the
rocks, employed Basques from the Pyrenees, whose method
rf>f fighting, and whose general habits and manners, differed
little from those of the Welsh people, to hunt them down like
bloodhounds. One after another, their entrenched positions were
forced, but never without the greatest difficulty and loss. David,
whose unnatural treason had been a great cause of the ruin of the

Chap. I.]

OLD ENGLAND.

227

country, now joined Llewellyn, evidently with the strongest purpose
to redeem his honour ; and a fierce but most unequal struggle ensued,
in which Edward was twice defeated, and on the last of these oc
casions obliged to fly for protection to one of his castles. The
other mischance thus occurred. It appears that Llewellyn having
no ships to oppose to Edward's fleet, the English easily enclosed the
coast, and were enabled to take the island of Anglesey. On St.
Leonard's day, while Edward was at Aberconway with some Gascon
lords and Basques, his soldiers laid down a bridge of boats across
the Menai Strait (where the Suspension Bridge now is), and in
their impatience to encounter the Welsh on the mainland, crossed
before it was finished, and waded through the water when the tide
was out. They landed, and busied themselves in reconnoitring
some entrenchments of the Welsh, until the tide rolled in, and
made deep water between them and the unfinished bridge of boats.
The armed Welsh people, who had been watching them stealthily,
then rushed down upon them, and drove them into the sea, where,
loaded with armour, many sank, and, between the waves and the
sword, there perished thirteen knights, seventeen esquires, and
several hundred foot-soldiers. But what signified a few reverses to
Edward ? Reinforcements continually crossed the Dee, or came up
from the coast, and as a crushing blow, he caused an army to march
on the rear of the Welsh through South Wales. False friends, it
seems most likely, advised Prince Llewellyn to leave the war in
his own principality to the command of his brother David, and
advance to meet the new invaders. At Bualth, in the valley of the
Wye, the forces of the prince appear to have been suddenly and
treacherously withdrawn from him, so that he was left with only a
few followers, just as the savage Earl of Mortimer appeared with
a body of English on the other side the river, and surprised him
before he had time to put on his armour. The prince fell, mur
dered, as it has been said, rather than slain in battle. His head was
sent to the Tower of London, where it was exhibited crowned with
willow, in mockery of the Bardic prophecy. And then came a
repetition of the policy that we have already commented upon ; the
Welsh prince got rid of — why, Edward could not do too much for
the Welsh people. So he proceeded to institute a series of wise
regulations to render them submissive, civilized, and contented,
whilst he flattered their well-known pride by adroitly leading
them to indulge the delusive hope that his infant son, born
among them in. Caernarvon Castle (Fig. 827), should have the
separate government of their country. He strongly fortified
the castle just named, as well as Conway Castle (Figs. 829
and 834) and many others, — Beaumaris Castle (Fig. 830) was
built later in the reign ; — and, to finish his conquest, divided
the lands at the foot of Snowdon among his great barons, who
gave them- to others in fief, when the territory soon became
studded over with towers and strongholds for defence, and many
a savage feud occurred afterwards between these petty feudal
tyrants and the natives. The last of the old princely line, David,
held out resolutely six months longer, and then perished, like his
brother, by treachery. He and his wife and children were car
ried in chains to the Castle of Rhuddlan, and condemned, by a par
liament at Shrewsbury, first, to be dragged by a horse to the place
of execution, because he was a traitor to the king, who had made him
a knight ; secondly, there to be hanged, because he had murdered
several knights in Hawardine Castle; thirdly, to have his hands
burned, because he had done the deed on Palm Sunday ; fourthly,
to be quartered, and have his limbs hung up in different places, be
cause he had conspired the king's death — an atrocious sentence,
but fulfilled to the letter. Some years later, the patriots of the
border fairly drove the English over the marshes ; and it cost
Edward months of personal hardships and dangers, during a severe
winter among the Crags of the Eagles, before his policy and arms
united could bring their last champion, Madoc, to surrender. The
sacred summits of Snowdon were again invaded, the country wasted
with fire and sword, the principal Welsh chiefs consigned to dun
geons for life, and the bards, who had contributed so greatly to keep
alive the patriotic flame in the people's hearts, massacred — so at least
tradition and poetry relate. How finely Gray pictures one of these
inspired seers pouring out his vengeful predictions of misery to
Edward's line, must be fresh in every one's recollection ; yet the
passage will bear repetition : —
Knin seize thee, ruthless king !
Confusion on thy banners wait '
Though fann'd by Conquest's crimson wing,
They mock the air with idle state.
Helm, nor hauberk's twisted mail,
Nor e'en thy virtues, Tyrant, shall avail
To save thy secret soul from nightly fears,
From Cambria's curse, from Cambria's tears !

Such were the sounds that o'er the crested pride
Of the first Edward scatter'd wild dismay,
As down the steep of Snowdon's shaggy side
He wound with toilsome march his long array,
» * * *
On a rock whose haughty brow
Frowns o'er old Conway's foaming flood,
Robed in the sable garb of woe,
With haggard eyes, the poet stood
(Loose his beard and hoary hair
Streamed, like a meteor, to the troubled air),
And with a master's hand and prophet's fire
Struck the deep sorrows of his lyre.
The one half of his great design accomplished, Edward, after
four years' rest from war, addressed himself, with equally stern, far-
seeing, and unprincipled policy, to the other. He took his ground,
as with Prince Llewellyn, on the homage question. During his
father's reign (in the year 1251) this point was mooted, when the
young king of Scots, Alexander III., did homage to Henry for his
English possessions, and homage was demanded of him also for the
kingdom of Scotland. Alexander's reply was singularly intelligent,
spirited, and firm, for a boy of eleven years of age : — " He had
been invited to York to marry the Princess of England, not to treat
of affairs of state ; and he could not take a step so important with
out the knowledge and approbation of his parliament." This noble
boy two years before had sat at Scone on the " sacred stone of des
tiny," which stood before the cross at the eastern end of the church ;
and while there, after the bishop of St. Andrews had knighted
and crowned him, a grey-headed Highland bard, stepping forth
from the crowd, addressed to him a long genealogical recitation in
the Gaelic tongue, beginning, " Hail, Alexander, King of Albiop,
son of Alexander, son of William, son of David," &c, and thus
carried up the royal pedigree through all its generations to the
legendary Gothelus, who married Scota, the daughter of Pharaoh,
and who was therefore the contemporary of Moses. Alexander
honoured his lengthy lineage. The daughter of Pharaoh might
have been proud of her descendant ; for his was the rare praise of
making his subjects happy, at least so far as kings can make men
so. He was universally beloved ; and under his pious and judicious
rule, the Scots enjoyed twenty years of quiet, within and without ;
wealth, arts, and social life progressed ; and the designs of Edward
on the Scottish independence had no room to expand. But in 1286,
as Alexander was riding on a dark night between Kinghorn and
Burnt Island, on the northern shore of the Frith of Forth, his horse,
on which he had galloped forward from his attendants, stumbled
with him over a high cliff, at a place now known as King's Wood
End, and he was killed on the spot. This fatal event extinguished
for a long period the prosperity of Scotland. Three promising
children of Alexander had died before him. One had left a daugh
ter, Margaret, who was now scarce four years old, under the charge
of her father Eric, king of Norway. Margaret had been distinctly
appointed by her grandfather, in 1284, to succeed him on the throne
of Scotland, failing other issue ; but this settlement was new, and
distasteful to warlike men, who would scarcely submit to a manly
sovereign, much less to a feeble girl; but the difficulty and danger
of the question, who was to succeed, if she did not, as well as respect
to the niece of Alexander, might have kept the majority of the
chiefs on her side, had she not fallen sick and died, as she was on
her passage to England, where she was to have stayed until good
order was re-established in Scotland. Edward and the estates of
Scotland were both desirous to have married her to Edward's eldest
son, which would have united the sceptres of England and Scotland
pacifically and effectually, and so accomplished Edward's design
without any of the miseries that followed the early death of the
" maid of Norway." A fierce controversy commenced who should
succeed to the throne, thus left vacant by the extinction of the line
of William the Lion ; which, though it had included ten related
households, had been entirely swept away in a single century. The
descendants of the brother of William the Lion, David, Earl of
Huntingdon, were now the nearest heirs— John Baliol and Robert
Bruce. In hopes, it seems, that Edward would act as a just umpire
for the conflicting estates of Scotland in this weighty business, they
met him at Norham, on the English side the Tweed, in May, 1291 ;
when those who had not been previously prepared for the divulging
of Edward's mind, were stricken aghast to find that, preparatory to
proceeding with the conference, he must be recognised as Lord Pa
ramount of Scotland, and fealty must be sworn to him. ,There was
a dead silence— broken by one voice venturing to say that while
the throne was vacant, no answer could be given. "By holy
Edward! whose crown I wear," the king sternly exclaimed, "I
2G2

[878-.— Ordeal Combat or Duel. (Royal1 MS. 14 E. Hi 1 Jljl I 'i'i "!

877. — Monument of Edward the Black Prince, in Canterbury Cathedral.

879.— Knight* Combating. (Eoyal MS. 14 E.iii.) lljli

_\

880.— Knights Jousting.. (Eoyal MS. 14 E. iii.)

882. — Cross-bow and Quarrel.

8 il —St. Mary's Hall, .Coventry : Court Front.

I.— Ships of the time of Eichard II. (Harl. MS. 1319.)

884.— Tomb of Edward III.

228

893.— Banishment of BoHngbroke and Norfolk by Richard II.

894. — Richard II. and Gower.

229

230

OLD ENGLAND.

[Book III.

will vindicate my ju9t rights, or perish in the attempt." The chiefs
craved time, and obtained it with difficulty. The king provided
for opposition by issuing writs to his northern military tenants to
assemble at Norham the day after that of the second conference,
with "horses, arms, and all their powers." And there was no
mincing the matter in any respect ; Edward's chancellor, speaking
in his name, clearly stated that he meant not to relinquish his right
of property in the kingdom of Scotland hereafter. Robert Bruce,
Lord of Annandale (grandfather of the great Bruce), the proper
heir of Scotland, was the first at the next meeting, at Holywell
Hough, opposite Norham, to surrender Scotland's independence.
Being peremptorily asked whether he acknowledged Edward as
Lord Paramount of Scotland, and was willing to ask and receive
judgment from him in that character, Bruce definitely, expressly,
publicly, and openly declared his assent. Seven other competitors
for the crown, at that time, and an eighth, -with John Baliol, the
next day, followed this odious and unpopular example. The rival
princes having thus for selfish ends at once disgraced and ruined
their country, a great deal of hypocritical pretence of deliberation
by Edward on their claims took place, with the aid of a large body
of commissioners, forty being chosen by Bruce, forty by Baliol, and
twenty-four by the king, who, however, reserved the privilege of
adding as many more as he pleased. The commission sat at Nor
ham and Berwick, during many months, which the king employed
in procuring a solemn surrender of the kingdom of Scotland by the
regents into his own hands, and of all the castles of Scotland by their
holders in trust ; and it is surprising to note the confidence with
which his word seems to have been taken that he would make full
restitution in two months from the date of" his award in the cause
of the succession. One Scotsman alone acted, says Lord.Hailes,
" with integrity and spirit on this trial of national integrity and
spirit,"— Gilbert de Umfraville, Earl of Angus, who refused to
deliver the castles of Dundee and Forfar, without an obligation to
indemnify him from Edward and all the competitors. The next
degradation was the swearing of fealty, performed voluntarily by
Bruce and his son, by Baliol, and many chiefs, but by only one
churchman, it is said. To make all ranks sign the rolls of homage
as his vassals, from bishops and earls, down even to the burgesses,
Edward made a progress through Scotland, and sent out his officers
to receive the oaths, and whosoever refused were torn from their
homes and imprisoned. The oppressor at length resumed his seat
as umpire for the Scottish crown in the great hall of the Castle at
Berwick, where at one meeting he declared " that Bruce should
take nothing in the competition with Baliol," and at another, " that
John Baliol should have seisin of the kingdom of Scotland," but that
this judgment "should not impair his (Edward's) claim to the
property of Scotland." Baliol was crowned at Scone, and a very
tractable vassal he proved in all respects ; he suffered with exem
plary patience all Edward's rough usage, such as compelling him
to appear in the English courts to answer as a defendant all sorts
of causes, brought by his own subjects, until the indignities were
pushed a little too far even for him, and on being compelled to
appear as usual in an English parliament in 1293, to' answer an
appeal concerning lands in Fife, instead of making his defence in
due form, he said, " I am King of Scotland. To the complaint of
the appellant, or to aught else respecting my kingdom, I dare not
make answer without the advice of my people." " What means
this ? " cried the tyrant. " You are my liege man ; you have done
homage to me ; you are here in consequence of my summons."
Baliol, remaining steady to what he had said, was adjudged guilty
of contempt of court and open disobedience. The appellant had
damages granted him, and the three principal towns and. castles of
Scotland, with their royal jurisdiction, were said to be forfeited to
Edward. Baliol and Scotland had by this time a tolerable ex
perience of what vassalage to Edward meant; so, in hope of
relief, they turned to France, who was then at war with Edward,
and were soon doomed to feel in consequence the vengeance of
their English master. In the siege of the town of Berwick, he
himself, mounted on his horse Bayard, was the first who leaped
over the dike. The carnage that followed is one among the many
ineffaceable blots on the memory of this great but unrelenting man ;
infancy, womanhood, old age, all were butchered that came within
reach of the victors' swords. Thirty Flemings, posted in a building
called the Red House, which the resident merchants of their nation
held by the tenure of defending it at all times against the English,
stood out gallantly, and refused to surrender ; the building was
then fired, and every man perished in the flames. Baliol, soon after
this frightful scene, sent to Edward a bold ecclesiastic, the Abbot
of Abe^othock (or Arbroath) to deliver this solemn renunciation of
his allegiance and fealty. " What a piece of madness in the foolish

traitor !" exclaimed Edward : " since he will not come to us, we
will go to him."
The castle of Dunbar (Fig. 842) had been given up to the
Scots by the Countess of March, whose husband was at the time
serving Edward, and a fresh contest for it took place between the
English, under Earl Warenne, and Baliol's army, in which ten
thousand Scots perished. In about two months, Roxburgh, Dun-
barton, Jedburgh, Edinburgh, Stirling, and all the other important
fortresses were in Edward's hands, and the conquest was complete.
Baliol again crouched at Edward's feet, and, in the churchyard of
Strathkathro, in Angus, stood, it is said, with a white rod in his
hand, to detail his offences against his liege lord, committed through
false counsel and his own simplicity, and concluding by resigning
his kingdom and people to the English king. After this disgraceful
exhibition, Edward exercised his usual wisdom, in settling the
government of the conquered country on prudent, moderate, and
popular principles. But the Scots could not be reconciled to a foreign
yoke. Wallace arose, the second son of the Knight of Ellerslie,
endowned with strength, stature, courage, decision, military genius,
the talent for command, a stirring though rude eloquence, an enthu
siastic patriotism, and a fierce and unextinguishable hatred of the
English dominion. He first appeared as a kind of petty chief,
lurking in woods and wilds, with a small band of outlaws, infesting
the English quarters. Sir William Douglas, who had commanded
the castle of Berwick during the siege, was the first person of note
who joined this outlaw chief, with his vassals, attracted by the
reputation of his successful exploits. By a bold and brilliant attack
they took Scone, and overran the neighbouring country. Other
chiefs crowded to their banners, among them — most welcome of
all — the young Bruce, grandson of Baliol's competitor, and even
tually the restorer ofthe Scottish monarchy.
But when the greatest effort was to be made by the associated
warriors, against Surrey, Percy, and Clifford, and their immense
army, it was discovered that Wallace was a plebeian ! It was im
possible — quite impossible — that the proud blood of Scotland could
submit to the guidance of a plebeian. So the hero was deserted
by all but one noble-hearted as well as noble-blooded man, Sir
Andrew Moray of Bothwell. The followers of the nobles, how
ever, having none of their masters' objections, rallied in great
numbers round Wallace, who soon found that the people generally
of his native county were ready to devote their lives to the cause
under his direction. And so they marched and countermarched —
increasing in numbers at every step— and taking castle after castle,
until they appeared forty thousand strong, in addition to sqme one
hundred and eighty horse, before Stirling itself (Figs. 843, 846, 849),
that almost impregnable stronghold, the possession of which both
English and Scotch alike considered indispensable to success. It
must have been in the main a rude and tumultuous host, though
courage, enthusiasm, and numbers made ample amends for what was
lacked in discipline. To oppose the Scotch appeared an English
army of fifty thousand infantry and a thousand horse. Negotiation
was spoken of to Wallace: " Return," he said, to those who came
to him, " and tell your masters that we come not here to treat, but
to assert our rights, and to set Scotland free. Let them advance;
they will find us prepared."
The prudent commander of the English saw that to accept this
defiance would involve his men in certain destruction ; for while he
had been marching on Stirling, Wallace, leaving the siege of the
castle of Dundee to the citizens, had hurried his whole force to the
banks of the Forth, and partially concealed them in the best posi
tion behind the neighbouring high grounds, before the English
came up. Surrey remained a night without making any movement,
but gave way at last to the forward zeal of his men, and the angry
remonstrances of Cressingham, the Treasurer, who protested
"against the waste of the king's money, in keeping up an army if
it was not to fight." This Cressingham had been Governor of
Scotland for Edward, and made himself peculiarly odious to the
Scottish people by imitating, on a limited scale, the oppressions of
his royal master. Not many hours after, his blood was mingling
with the waters of the Forth, and so intense was the hatred his
cruelties had excited, that his skin was preserved by the Scots in
small pieces, " not as relics, but for spite," and Wallace himself is
said to have had a sword-belt made of it— such were the unchris
tian feelings of revenge cherished even by the best men of that
age. The morning of the 11th of September, 1297, dawned on a
-fearful scene at the Bridge of the Forth, a narrow wooden
structure, that Surrey's host could not have crossed in many hours,
had they been totally unmolested ; how great then was the folly of
the experiment with a powerful and skilful foe on the other side!
Half the rash and eager English had hardly reached the Stirling

Chap. I.]

OLD ENGLAND.

231

bank — they had not had time to form — when down rushed the
Scots from the heights, possessed themselves of the extremity of the
bridge, and fell on that portion of the divided army which was thus
placed in their power. Thrown into confusion, the English perished
by thousands, as they advanced upon the Scottish swords, or were
forced backward into the river, which presented a sickening sight,
crimsoned with gore, and choked with human bodies. Only one
of all that had crossed escaped, Sir Marmaduke Twenge, who
spurred his horse back through the force that guarded the bridge,
and cut his way to the opposite side. Surrey, seeing this man
acquit himself so boldly, charged him, with delightful naivete, to
occupy Stirling Castle with what troops he might be able to collect
of the fragments of the army, since the whole had not been able con
veniently to manage it, and then mounted his horse and never stopped
till he reached Berwick. The loss of the Scots at Stirling Bridge
is mentioned as trifling — it was great to Wallace, for the only man
of note that fell was his most faithful friend, Sir Andrew Moray.
This, the most important of a rapid and continuous series of
triumphs, at once restored Wallace to the favour and countenance
of the Scottish nobility, and the king of England, while engaged in
Flanders, received the astounding tidings that this new man of the
people — this leader of a little band of outlaws, this plebeian without
family, influence, or wealth, supported by merit alone, had wrenched
from the English every fortress in Scotland, from one end of the
kingdom to the other. Edinburgh Castle (Fig. 840) was one of
the first that surrendered. A letter has been recently discovered
written to the authorities of Liibeck and Hamburg by Wallace at
this period, informing them that their merchants should now have free
access to all parts of the kingdom of Scotland, seeing that the said
kingdom, by the favour of God, had been recovered by war from
the power of the English, There was something almost super
human in this sudden clearance, for though Edward's absence
might have rendered it rather more easy, the spirit of Edward was
largely infused into the English warriors who supported his conquest,
and they had their own peculiar interests in the conquered country
to nerve them, independent of national and military feelings of
glory. Wallace's friend, the young Sir Andrew Moray, son of
the veteran who fell at Stirling, we now find sharing with him
the chief command of the Scottish army, in an invasion of
England. They stayed in Cumberland some time, and wasted
the country as far south as the walls of Newcastle. A famine in
Scotland, most probably attributable to the devastation made by
the English, seems to have chiefly impelled Wallace to push his
triumphs thus far. He was now at the very pinnacle of power.
At the Forest Kirk, in Selkirkshire, he received the supreme rule
of the kingdom, under the title of " Guardian of Scotland;" and
this with the consent and approbation of the nobility. Though
thus himself virtually king, Wallace acted in the name of John
Baliol, " King John," who lived as unlike a king as could be desired
by any party, at his own demesne of Bailleul in Normandy, whither
he had been allowed to go on the [.king of England's releasing him
from confinement at the intercession of the Pope. His holiness was
less successful in the letters he granted the Scots 'to Edward, to
induce him to desist in his endeavours against Scottish independence.
Edward swore a terrible oath " that he would not desist," and to
the Scots' threats he replied, with a disdainful smile, "Have you
done homage to me (as to the chief lord of the kingdom of
Scotland), and now suppose that I can be terrified with swelling
lies, as if, like one that had no power to compel, I would, let the
rio-ht which I have over you to slip out of my hands ? Let me
hear no more of this ; for if I do, I swear by the Lord I will
consume all Scotland from sea to sea." The Scots replied as
boldly, "They would shed their blood for defence of justice and
their ^country's liberty." Arms again could alone decide the
question. Edward caused his military tenants to assemble at
York, oil the Feast of Pentecost, and he led them in person to
Roxburgh, and along the eastern coast of Scotland. His march
lay through a country made desolate and deserted as he approached ;
his army found no provisions to subsist on, no spoil to animate their
spirits, no enemy to wreak their vengeance upon for his inhospi-
tality ; and of their own ships, with the supplies, which had been
sent forward to the Frith of Forth, they could hear no news.
Hunger and disappointment were not the only difficulties Edward
had to encounter. At Templeliston, between Linlithgow and
Edinburgh, where he stopped to wait for his fleet, he was told that
thousands of his soldiers, Welshmen, rankling under the remem
brance of their own country's wrongs, were on the point of going
over to the Scots, with whom, we are sure, they must have sym
pathised deeply. "I care not," said Edward loftily; "let my
enemies go to my enemies: I trust that in one day I shall chastise

them all." The famished army were about to retreat to Edinburgh,
when the Earls Dunbar and Angus came privately at daybreak to
the quarters of the soldier-bishop of Durham, with information that
a Scottish army was near in the wood of Falkirk. When Edward
heard of it, he cried in a rapture, " Thanks be to God, who hitherto
hath delivered me from every danger : they shall not need to follow
me.; I will forthwith go and meet them." The army that night
was lying in the fields ; the king himself on the ground, his horse
standing beside him. A terrible shout from the Scottish army is
said to have startled the animal, as his royal master was putting
his foot in the stirrup; it threw him to the earth, and, striking
with the hinder heels, broke two of his ribs. In the confusion
occasioned by the accident, a cry arose that the king was killed or
seriously wounded, and the calamity was attributed to treachery.
But Edward speedily restored confidence, by mounting the same
horse which had injured him, and, regardless of the pain he suffered,
marshalling his host, and giving orders to march on the foe. They
passed Linlithgow, and then the advanced-guard of the enemy was
seen on the ridge of a hill in front. Soon after the whole Scottish
army was descried, forming, on a stony field, at the side of a small
eminence in the neighbourhood of Falkirk. To explain the ex
ecrable desertion which Wallace experienced in the disastrous
battle that ensued — the whole of his horse galloping away during
the heat of the action, without striking a blow — we must refer to
the envy and aristocratic pride of the Scottish nobility, who
Fordun relates, were in the habit of saying, " We will not have
this man to rule over us." The archers and lancers on foot were
only moved from the position in which Wallace planted them by
repeated charges of Edward's cavalry, and through their being left
unsupported ; but the treachery or cowardice of the horsemen was
fatal, they were borne down, and fifteen thousand perished ;_ the rest
fled with Wallace to Stirling. The English shortly came after hin^
but found him gone, and the town burned. After this defeat,
Wallace gave up all such authority as the Commonwealth of
Scotland had formerly granted unto him for the preservation of
their freedoms ; and the great rivals, Bruce and Comyn, and the
Bishop of St. Andrews, shared the supreme rule. It is painful to
trace the hero's subsequent career. Ingratitude drove him back to
the wild life from which his resplendent talents and virtues had
raised him. He was again a wandering guerilla-sort of chief,
harassing the English on their marches, and in their camps and
castles. Meanwhile it fared ill with his distracted country. The
battle of Roslin (the Castle of Roslin is shown in our engravings,
Figs. 833 and 835), won by Comyn and Bruce and the combined
nobility, was speedily followed by the reappearance of Edward,
who swept through Scotland almost unobstructed, marking every
step by devastation and blood. One after another the places of
strength quietly opened their gates to him. Brechin Castle is a
memorable exception. Its commander, Sir John Maule, whilst
the English were battering the walls, stood in defiance on the
ramparts, coolly and contemptuously wiping off with a towel the
dust and rubbish that fell on him. He was struck by a missile.
As he was expiring, his men inquired if they might now surrender
the castle, but he reproached them for cowards. The castle was
given up the next day. Oaths of fealty were once more taken to
Edward, who, at the close of this new conquest, wintered at Dun
fermline. All that now remained in arms for Scotland, except the
friends of Wallace, gathered at Stirling, under Comyn ; but Edward
and ,his cavalry routed these without difficulty, except such as took
refuse in the castle. The spirit of the nobility of Scotland now
completely yielded. Edward granted a general capitulation for all
who had been in arms for Scotland, by which Comyn and many
chiefs of rank, stigmatized as traitors, were suffered to live at freedom,
and retain their estates, subject only to fines at the king's pleasure.
It was the glorious distinction of William Wallace that his name
stood entirely alone as excluded from the capitulation, though he
was told that he might, if he pleased, " render himself up to the
will and mercy of Edward." What that will and mercy was, he
had too soon to experience. At a parliament held at St. Andrews,
he and Fraser, and the garrison of Stirling, being summoned, and
not appearing, they were outlawed. Fraser eventually surrendered,
but Wallace and the garrison held out. The rhyming chronicler
Longtoft informs us (though the fact is perhaps to be doubted)
that Wallace was hidden in the forest of Dunfermline, whence he
sent some of his'' friends to Edward with a proposal to yield himself
if his life and heritage were assured to him by a sealed writing of
the king's. But Edward, "full grim" cursing Wallace and all
his traitorous supporters, made the most decisive of replies by
settin°- a price of three hundred marks upon his head. Wallace is
then said to have " in mores and mareis with robberie him fedis,"

895.— Westminster Hall, with the ancient surrounding Buildings restored.

896.— Parliament assembled for the Deposition of Eichard II.

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897.— The Savoy.

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8.— Meeting of Eichard II. and Bolingbroke

>.— Pontefrast Castle, temp. Charles IT.

908,-Eichard II. and Bolinsbroke arrived at London. ' -

232

905.-Funeral of Richard II. (Illumination in Froissirt.)

234

OLD ENGLAND.

[Book III.

that is, fed himself by robbery in moors and marshes, by which we
may understand, that he continued to prey on the English whenever
he could find an opportunity.
The garrison of Stirling now occupied Edward's attention. The
castle was one, and the chief, of the four principal fortresses of the
kingdom of Scotland (by the articles of the Union these four are
still kept up), and, on account of its strength and its commanding
the passage of the Forth, was highly important to both parties.
Our views of the castle (Fig. 843, 846, 849) as seen from different
parts, towering above the steep and precipitous slopes of the hill
on which it is built, will enable the reader who is a stranger to
this stronghold of the early Scottish kings and Scottish indepen
dence to comprehend the very serious difficulties to which Edward I.
in his old age addressed himself, with the fire and daring of a
youth who had his spurs to win. Not even the circumstance of
his being struck by the stones and javelins from the castle, not
even the arrow that lodged in his armour, could deter him from
conspicuously exposing himself, as he directed in person every
contrivance for battering down the walls and sending winged death
among the brave defenders.
Sir John Oliphant, the commander, being required to surrender,
requested time to go to France to the exiled Sir John Soulis, from
whom he had his trust : " Am I to wait for his orders ? " cried the
old king; " Defend the castle, if you will." And defended it was,
to the very last extremity, by a garrison of no more than a hundred
and forty soldiers, during three months, against a mighty English
force, and all Edward's military tactics. For the first month, so
little impression was made by the thirteen tremendous battering-
engines, the best in the kingdom, and the darts, armed with brass,
cast from the springals, that the business must have grown tedious,
for we find Edward writing to his sheriffs of London, Lincoln, and
York, to buy up all the bows, quarrels, and other engines of war
that were to be found in their districts, and to the Constable of the
Tower to send a supply from the stores at his command. In our
engravings (Fig. 882) the form of the cross-bow and quarrel may
be seen, and in Figs. 868 to 870 is illustrated the whole process
of battering the walls as carried on in the period under review.
Slow, but sure, after that the work of destruction went on, till the
strong fortress lay in ruins. Imagination shrinks to conceive the
horrors experienced during these two last months by the stubborn
garrison, and the thirteen noble ladies who shared 'the sufferings
and dangers of their husbands, fathers, and brothers. And what
a [moment must that have been when the cry went forth amongst
them, that the food which they had been anxiously eking out
day after day was gone ! Little wonder that, weak and worn as
the strongest must have been, by the time Edward's troops had
them at their mercy, that the twenty-five noble gentlemen who
were among the garrison, had not spirit left to reject the only
chance' of life, but suffered themselves to be led forth in mournful
procession to the feet of the conqueror, who was never either
more magnanimous or more cruel than his stern purposes required.
Excepting two ecclesiastics, all were stripped to their shirts and
undergarments, and all knelt with trembling and tears, "acknow
ledging their guilt, and casting themselves on his mercy. Edward
did not consider it quite necessary to destroy those who could be
compelled to this degrading submission ; they were permitted to
breathe, — but in dungeons. A harsher doom was reserved for the
unconquerable Wallace — the last hope of despairing Scotland.
Among the prisoners there appears to have been one Ralph
de Haliburton, who, tempted, it is said, by Edward's offers of liberty
and reward, undertook to manage, in some way that is not clear to
us, to betray the hero to the English. And he accomplished his
undertaking : Wallace was conveyed as a prisoner to Dunbarton
Castle, then held by " the false Menteith."
The gigantic rock of Dunbarton (Fig. 838), at the junction of
the rivers Leven and Clyde, retains unchanged the gloomy grandeur
that darkened around the hero as he was led up the guarded steep
(Fig. 389), and the memory of his imprisonment by the English
throws around it a romantic and imperishable interest, that receives
some addition from the fact of his two-handed sword being reve
rently preserved within the walls of the fortress. The name of
Menteith has since that age been coupled with many a malediction,
as that of a false Scot, by whom Wallace was betrayed. But it
appears Menteith was only false to Wallace in so far as he was
false to Scotland. Dunbarton he held for Edward, and his un
popularity arose from his disgraceful task of receiving and con
fining the great champion of his nation, and sending him to
England to suffer all that the malice and fears of his foes could
suggest. Wallace was led in triumph through London, " all
men and women wondering upon him." With what feelings could

these curious wonderers have gazed on that tall majestic form5
which had borne the brunt of so many battles, which we
are sure had known no pampering in the forests, moors, and
marshes, and which was glorious with a martyr's devotion to
as holy a cause as ever soldier fought for ? Were there no tears
shed among the women of those eager crowds when they thought
of his murdered wife, of his father and his brother, and his dearest
friends, slain in the same cause for which he had now to pour out
his own blood ? Did no thinking minds there find the conclusion
flash upon them that their king had taken a wrong path to reach
his great designs? Perhaps . lurking in the multitude was some
true Scot, who, as his heart melted with grief, secretly cursed the
proud factions who had been the cause of Wallace's overthrow :
nay, we can imagine some repentant noble with bitter regrets
exclaiming in the depths of his soul as the hero disappeared, strongly
guarded, into the house of William Delect in Fenchurch Street,
there to lodge until his trial the next day in Westminster Hall —
We are selfish men ;
Oh ! raise us up, return to us again ; .
And give us manners, virtue, freedom, power.
Thy soul was like a star, and dwelt apart ;
Thou hadst a voice whose sound was like the sea :
Pure as the naked heavens, — majestic,, free. Wordsworth.
Next day he is exhibited on horseback, passing from Fenchurch
Street to Westminster; John Seagrave, and Geoffrey, knights, the
mayor, sheriffs, and aldermen of London, and many others, both on
horseback and on foot, accompanying him. In the great hall at
Westminster he is placed on the south bench, and submits to the
paltry mockery of a crown of laurel, because it had been com
monly reported that he had said he ought to wear a crown in that
hall. Yet never were laurels worn with truer glory. Never does
prisoner appear to have behaved to his unscrupulous judges with
a more quiet, serene dignity. When Sir Peter Malorie, the
king's justice, impeached him of treason, he replied, '-' He was
never traitor to the king of England ; but for other things whereof
he was accused, he confessed them." And certainly Wallace never
had acknowledged fealty to the English king, therefore could be
no traitor to him. This fact is his great distinction above all the
other Scottish patriots. His neck had never submitted to the
degrading yoke. He was as true to the'Scottish independence as if it
had never been assailed. And as Edward must have despaired of ever
bending such a man to his rule, and was never sure while Wallace
lived that he would have any rule left to be submitted to, the
patriot's death, to his eyes, was inevitable. Accordingly, on the
23rd of August, 1305, the hero of Scotland was executed in the
same manner as the last Prince of Wales, being dragged at the
tails of horses to the common place of execution, the Elms in West
Smithfield, hanged on a high gallows, and, while he yet breathed,
his bowels were taken out and burnt before his face. The head
was then cut off and set up on a pole on London Bridge, his right
arm was sent for exhibition to Newcastle, his left to Berwick, the
right foot and limb to Perth, the left to Aberdeen. The English
king thus concluded an infamous act in the most infamous manner.
Obeying the dictates of state policy (that phrase so fruitful in all
ages of national crime and misery), Edward was determined to have
Scotland at any cost : then how else, but by such exhibitions, was
he to deter others from imitating Wallace's example? But the
" politician " that, as Hamlet says, " would circumvent God," lives
often to find he has only circumvented himself: so was it now with
our great king. Only six months after Wallace's death appeared
Bruce in arms, and asserting his own right to the throne.
Edward had everything to undertake anew for the subjugation of
Scotland. That Bruce should be the leader of the new movement
was a fact that personally enhanced to Edward the irritating sense
ot his formidable claims. He had forgiven his coquetting, as it
were, with his struggling countrymen, and permitted him°'at his
father's death, to take unmolested possession of all the family
estates; he even held him in such favour, probably from the
remembrances of his friendship with Brace's father, who had
fought by his side in the Holy Land, that he was accustomed to
receive his opinions on Scottish matters with marked respect.
Edward evidently concluded that Bruce had finally renounced all
views on the throne of his native country ; and great, no, doubt, was
the shock when he was undeceived. Intelligence suddenly reached
him that Bruce and the influential Bishop of St. Andrews had
bound themselves to support each other against all persons what
soever, and neither to undertake any business of importance
without the other. A third party was made acquainted with that

Chap. I.]

OLD ENGLAND.

235

significant treaty — Comyn, who, through Baliol, might be considered
to have a claim to the throne. To him Bruce said, " Support my
title to the crown, and I will give you all my lands ; or bestow on
me your lands, and I will support your claim." Comyn resigned
his own title ; an agreement was written and sealed, and oaths of
faithfulness and secrecy were pledged to each other. Comyn,
regretting probably his decision, violated his oath to Bruce, and
divulged what had passed to Edward. The king one evening,
thrown off his guard by having drunk more wine than usual, told
some lords who were with him of Bruce's treasonable schemes, and
his own resolution to take vengeance on the offender. The Earl of
Gloucester, Bruce's relation, desirous to save him without compro
mising himself, despatched to him a pair of spurs and a piece of
money. Bruce, who was in London, set out immediately for
Scotland, having, it is said, his horse's shoes reversed, that he might
not be traced in the snow. He went straight to his castle of
Lochmaben ; and on the way the treachery of Comyn was made
more clear to him by some letters that he intercepted, which a
messenger was bearing from Comyn to Ed ward,. urging Bruce's
imprisonment or death. The bearer of these Bruce slew on the
spot, and then sought Comyn at Dumfries. Their meeting took
place in the convent of the Minorites, a place whose selection was
dictated, apparently, by the conscious fears of Comyn. After a
violent scene, in which Bruce reproached Comyn for his detestable
breach of faith, Bruce stabbed his rival with his dagger, as they
stood together by the high altar. Leaving the sanctuary in haste,
he called " to horse," and his attendants, Alexander Lindsay and
Roger Kirkpatrick, observing him pale and extremely agitated,
inquired what had happened. " I doubt I have slain Comyn," said
he. "You doubt?" exclaimed Kirkpatrick ; "I'se mak sicker"
(I'll make sure) ; and he darted into the church and finished the
murder, killing Sir Robert Comyn also, who, hearing the scuffle,
ran in to the defence of his nephew. The judges, sitting in a hall
of the castle, hearing a confused alarm, barricaded the doors.
But the followers whom Bruce had suddenly collected threatening
to force an entrance by fire, they surrendered. Bruce had but
few with him at first, and these mostly young ; but the news of
the revolt spread like wildfire, and his force increased, so that
many of the English officers fled before him : but it does not seem
that he was able to collect any considerable army for some time.
On the 27th of March, 1306, Bruce was twice crowned at Scone,
sitting under a banner wrought with the arms of Baliol, which the
Bishop of Glasgow had kept concealed in his treasury. The regal
coronet was first set on the young king's head by the Bishop of
St. Andrews ; but the Countess of Buchan, whose brother, Duncan,
Earl of Fife, inherited an ancient privilege of crowning the Scottish
kings, while he was absent from his domain assisting the English,
hurried, "with all his great horse," to Scone, and with her own
hands exercised her family right, by placing the symbolic circlet a
second time on the brow of Robert Bruce. This anecdote will serve
to illustrate the enthusiasm which was excited throughout Scotland
for Bruce, who had at last stepped into his" proper place, though he
had not reached it by quite as straight a path as we, looking coolly
upon that past time of difficulty and temptation, might desire.
Edward, now in his last sickness, prepared, nevertheless, to go
out against Bruce in person, though aware that his death was near.
At the knighting of his son, the Prince of Wales, he gave a
magnificent feast, when two swans, covered with nets of gold, being
set on the table by the minstrels, the aged monarch rose, and
solemnly vowed to God arid to the swans that he would take
vengeance for Comyn's murder, and punish the Scottish rebels ;
then turning to his son, and addressing the splendid assembly,
which included a great number of noble youths who had been
knighted by the prince, he conjured them after his death not to
inter his body until his successor should have performed this vow.
The new-made knights, with the prince at their head, departed
next morning for the borders, the infirm king following slowly in
a litter. For some time Bruce's reign promised to be but a
short and unhappy one. He passed from misfortune to misfortune ;
he lost nearly all his followers ; his brothers were one after the
other sent to the gallows ; his wife, and other female relatives,
made prisoners and taken into England ; Nigel, the most accom
plished and beloved of his five brothers, had been taken while
gallantly, but unsuccessfully, defending Bruce's queen and daughter
in his castle of Kildrummie (Fig. 836). He began to be even
pursued by bloodhounds, as though he were a mere wild beast.
His adventures during this period read like a passage in a romance.
At last his never-failing courage and address met their reward.
Friends and adherents again flocked to his banner; he reduced
various districts to his authority, and at last routed the English

guardian of the kingdom, Pembroke, in a pitched battle. King
Edward from his sickbed had directed all the recent operations
that had thus unsuccessfully ended at last : there was nothing for
him, but he must go on himself, dying as he was. So he went
into the cathedral of Carlisle and offered up his litter, and then
mounting his horse, the well-known voice was once more heard
directing the march onwards to the border. The effort was too
much for him. At Burgh on the Sands he was compelled to stop
for the night, and there, the next morning, he died, immovable in
purpose as ever ; expending his last breath, according to Froissart,
in making his son swear that he would boil his body in a cauldron,
bury the flesh, and keep the bones to be carried at the head of an
army against the Scots every time they should rebel.

It was little anticipated by the nation that the new king would
so soon disobey the command of his dying father, by recalling
Gaveston, who, for " abusing the tender years of the prince with
wicked vanities," had been banished on two different occasions,
especially as he thus incurred that father's solemn curse. But so it
was ; and to make matters worse, some of the most eminent men in
the realm were persecuted because they had had the courage and
public spirit to treat the prince's favourite as he deserved. Walter
de Langton, Treasurer of England, was imprisoned, and had his
goods confiscated, because, in the late king's days, he had dared to
reprove the prince and complain of Piers Gaveston. The very dif
ferent conduct of a later monarch, Henry V., towards the judge who
had committed him, whilst Prince Henry, to prison, forms a striking
contrast. This Gaveston, for some service rendered by his father,
had been brought up with the young Edward, and thus was the
friendship established between them, that led to such disastrous
consequences to both, and to so much disgrace to the nation at
large. Gaveston " had," says an old historian, "a sharp wit in a
comely shape, and briefly was such an one as we use to call very
fine." (Speed.) He possessed also great courage and skill in arms,
as he had proved in the Scottish war, and in the tournaments, where
he had overthrown the most distinguished of our baronial chivalry.
On the other hand, he was luxurious to the last degree, proud as
regards himself, insolent to others, and oppressive and capricious to
those in any way subjected to his control. He was fond of nick
names. Thomas, Prince of Lancaster, the king's cousin, was
"a great hog," and a "stage-player ;" the Earl of Pembroke,
was " Joseph the Jew ;" Guy, Earl of Warwick, the " black
dog of Ardenne." These were dangerous men to jest with in this
fashion ; even if there had been nothing in the favourite's public
conduct to lay hold of. But while they thus saw themselves
treated with contempt, they also saw all the great enterprises
neglected, upon which they, as devoted followers of Edward I.,
had set their hearts, more especially the Scotch wars. They saw
the king's court given up to sensuality and riot. They knew also
that the riches of the kingdom were being converted to Gaveston's
private use ; that Edward, besides conferring on him the Earldom
of Cornwall, a dignity hitherto reserved for princes of the blood,
and marrying him to his sister's daughter, gave him the funds col
lected for the Scottish war, and for the Crusades, as well as his
ancestor's jewels and treasures, even to the crown worn by his
father, which the barons not unnaturally looked upon as a symbol
of the result that Edward possibly dreamed of, the declaration of
Piers Gaveston as his successor.
The young queen added her voice to the general complaint.
Through Gaveston, the king had been drawn on to injure her in
ihe highest respects. Her appeal to her father, the French king,
was followed by the Gascon knight's third banishment, in June,
1309, which, however, was merely to Ireland, and as governor. But
he would not take warning ; in October he returned, in defiance of
a known decree, " that if at any time afterwards he were taken in
England, he should suffer death." An angel from heaven could
not have been more welcomed by Edward, who evidently would
rather lose crown, kingdom, queen, and all, than Piers Gaveston.
The lords, with the " great hog," Thomas, Earl of Lancaster, at
their head, looking upon the return with very different eyes, met,
and agreed to send respectfully to Edward, to desire that Gaveston
should be delivered into their hands, or driven out of England.
The king vacillated, knowing peace must be kept with the lords,
yet unwilling to sacrifice his own foolish or worse than foolish
desires. At last, losing patience, the lords took arms. Gaveston
endeavoured to defend himself in Scarborough Castle (of which
the crumbling ruins only now remain, Fig. 919), while the
king went to York to seek an army for his relief. But before any
force could be collected for such a purpose, Piers Gaveston, on the
19th of May, 1312, capitulated to the Earls Pembroke and Percy*
2H2

907. — Restoration of St. Stephen's Chapel.

238

OLD ENGLAND.

[Book III.

who pledged their faith, it is said, that he should be kept unharmed
in the castle of Wallingford. At Dedington, a village between
Oxford and Warwick, the Earl of Pembroke, who escorted him,
left him for a night under the pretext of visiting the Countess of
Pembroke, who was in the neighbourhood. ' Gaveston seems to have
remained full of confidence, as usual, until he was roused from
his sleep by the startling order to " dress speedily." He obeyed,
descended to the courtyard, and found himself in the presence of
the "black dog of Ardenne." He must have repented then his
wretched wit, for he knew the stern Warwick had sworn a terrible
vow that he would make the minion feel " the black dog's teeth."
A deeper darkness than that of the night must then have over
shadowed the wretched Gaveston. No help was at hand. Amid
the triumphant shouts of the large armed force that attended
Warwick, he was set on a mule, and hurried thirty miles through
the night to Warwick Castle (Figs. 415, 416, 417, and 917),
where his entrance was announced by a crash of martial music.
He stood trembling and dismayed before the dais, whereon sate
in terrible array his self-constituted judges, the chief barons.
During their hurried consultation, a proposal was made, or a
hint offered, that no blood should be shed: but a voice rung
through the hall— "You have caught the fox; if you let him
go, you will have to hunt him again." Let Gaveston's deserts
be what they might, the faith pledged at the capitulation at Scar
borough ought to have been adhered to; but it was otherwise
determined by the barons. He had been taken once more on
English ground, and he must die. As Gaveston had been insolent
in his prosperity, so now he lost all manly spirit under the fear of
-death. The " old hog" was now a " gentle lord," and the unhappy
man kneeled and prayed to him and the. rest for mercy — but found
none. 'There is a little knoll about two miles from the castle, on the
¦ edge of the road that leads from Warwick to Coventry, and on it yet
exists a stone bearing the following ancient inscription : " P. Gave
ston, Earl of Cornwall, beheaded here, 1312." Within the present
century, the cross shown in Fig. 851 has been erected by the pos
sessor of the adjoining mansion, Guy's Cliff. The news of this
¦event threw the king into an agony of tears, and he resolutely
refused to declare Gaveston a traitor. While he lamented, and
•pined for revenge, the national councils were distracted, the national
-.spirit and power declined. He now determined to renew the war
in Scotland, which he had dropped almost immediately after his
father's death. But the posture of affairs demanded the skill and
indomitable energy of the first Edward; and as these qualities
were as notoriously absent in his son, it was not difficult to
foresee what must be the conclusion. Bruce had by this time
so completely established his authority as king in Scotland, as to
be able to make an inroad into the dominions of the English
monarch, in order to take vengeance for the sufferings that the
English governors had inflicted upon his country. Edward would
have concluded a truce— as a preliminary, possibly, to peace ; but
Bruce, confident in his strength, declined. War then was inevitable.
The final struggle took place at Bannock burn, for the defence of
the castle of Stirling, the last of the castles held by the English,
and where Edward concentrated all his forces for its defence. His
defeat was as signal as it was in every way humiliating. His
army, which greatly outnumbered that of the enemy, was cut to
pieces ; the slain, at the lowest computation, comprised one hundred
and fifty-four lords and knights, seven hundred gentlemen, and ten
thousand common soldiers : whilst the Scotch reckoned the entire
loss at no less than fifty thousand persons. The king himself was
pursued for sixty miles. By this battle Bruce achieved the final
independence of the Scottish nation, and the permanent settlement
of bis own family on the throne, which he had so well and hardly
earned. He lived to see peace concluded between the two nations
by the recognition of that independence in an English parliament,
and died in 1329, after some two years of pious solitude in a castle
at Cardross, on the northern shore of the Frith of Clyde, and was
buried in the magnificent abbey church of Dunfermline, founded
by King Malcolm Canmore, and, after the celebrated lona, the
common burial-place of the kings of Scotland. About twenty-six
years ago the skeleton |pf the royal warrior was disinterred, and
found to measure above six feet : a cast was at the same time taken
of the skull ; a pleasant bonne-bouche for our phrenologists. The
highly-picturesque ruins ofthe abbey are shown in Fig. 837.
Under these distressing circumstances, what was poor King
Edward to do? where to find consolation? He found out at last
what he would do— he would have another favourite. It is true
that the kingdom was already miserable enough, without the addition
of new feffls about new court minions. A striking evidence
of the disorganized state of England at the time is brought

to our recollection by the view of Leeds Castle (Fig, 927),
where the queen, whilst travelling in Kent, was actually denied
shelter, and part of her escort killed. But it was the fate of the
king to sink deeper into disgrace at every fresh step taken in his
career ; so he had his favourite, peculiarly inauspicious as the times
were. Unhappy king ! he was to pay dearly for these indulgences.
The young Despenser, a dependant of the Earl of Lancaster, was the
object of royal favour. Upon him Edward bestowed in marriage
another daughter of his sister the Countess of Gloucester, and large
possessions. Again the barons appeared in arms, and the favourite,
with his father, was banished. Then they were recalled by Edward,
and for a time the barons were foiled at their own weapons.
The Earl of Lancaster fell into the hands of the royal party, and
was beheaded, as we have already had occasion to notice, in the
Castle at Pomfret. Many others of the leaders on the same side
also perished ; and altogether the triumph , of ' the Despensers
seemed complete. But now arose a new element of danger to
Edward, in the person of his own queen, who, being sent by him
to France to endeavour to treat with her brother, Charles IV.,
concerning the British territories in France, which he was fast
taking possession of, instead of fulfilling her mission, at once gave
vent to the feeling's of disgust and hatred which her husband's
conduct had excited in her mind, and plunged into the very midst
of the party of English malcontents that she found at the French
court, driven from their own country by the enmity of the favourite.
By a trick, she and her chief confederate, Mortimer, got possession
ofthe person ofthe young Prince Edward, afterwards Edward III.,
who was then affianced to Philippa (Fig. 855), daughter of the Earl
of Hainault, on condition that that nobleman should aid the confede
ration with troops and money. Thus prepared, she threw off the
mask, and set sail for England with a force of three thousand men.
On her disembarkation at Orwell, in Suffolk, all the chief men iu
the kingdom joined her, including even Edward's own brother, the
Earl of Kent. The king thus saw at once combined against him his
wife, his son, his brother, his cousins, and all the might of England.
Round the banner of Edward of Caernarvon there rallied not one
man. He had to fly out of London, with none but the two De
spensers, the Chancellor, and a few of their servants. It did not
help his cause a jot offering a thousand pounds for Mortimer's
head. Edward ceased now to be spoken of seriously as a king.
The elder Despenser, whose capital offence was grasping at the
honours and estates of others, first fell, his own garrison rising in
mutiny against him in the castle of Bristol, and giving him up to
his enemies, who exhausted a truly fiendish barbarity in the
execution of this old man of ninety years. The favourite next
suffered from the vengeance of the confederates, having been
given up by the country-people, and he too was sent to the gallows ;
though not before the helpless and hopeless monarch, who had been
now tossing on the tempestuous seas, now hiding among the Welsh
mountains, had come forth and surrendered to his cousin, the brother
of the Earl of Lancaster, whom he had put to death at Pontefract.
Not a sword was drawn nor a bow bent for the wretched king in
any part of his dominions. ,
In the presence-chamber of Kenilworth Castle, soon after, a
deputation, that may be said to have been sent by the whole nation,
stood before Edward of Caernarvon, who came forth from an inner
room, "gowned in black;" when, understanding their errand, it
" struck such a dullness into him, that he] fell to the earth, lying
stretched forth in a deadly swoon." When recovered, " he broke
forth .into sighs and tears," and was addressed in these words : — •
" I, William Trussel, in the name of all men, of the land of England,
and of all the parliament — procuraotr, resign to thee, Edward, the
homage that was made to thee, sometime, and from this time
forward now following / defy thee, and prive thee of all royal
power ; and I shall never be attendant to thee, as for king, after.
this time." (Speed.)
The Steward of the Household then broke his white wand of
office, and declared that all persons were freed from Edward's
service. This ceremony, usually performed at a king's death
completed the process of dethronement. We should be [glad to be
spared mention of the barbarous doings which followed. Edward
it seems, was too tenderly treated by Lancaster ; so a keeper was
found, Maltravers, a man whose natural ferocity had been sharpened
by the cruel wrongs he had suffered at the hands of Edward and his
favourites. The poor prisoner was made to travel about by night a
good deal, and to go from castle to castle, in order that his residence
might not be certainly known. Lord Berkeley, of Berkeley Castle
was the last who gave him anything like humane treatment, but
falling sick, he was detained away, and then Edward, on one dark
night in September, was given over to the tender mercies of " two

Chap. I.]

OLD ENGLAND.

239

hell-hounds, that were capable of more villanous despite than
becomes either knights or the lewdest varlets in the world," Thomas
Gurney and William Ogle. What passed within the walls of
Berkeley Castle (Fig. 853) may be but too truly guessed from the
horrible screams and shrieks of anguish that were heard without,
even so far as the town, " So that many, being awakened therewith
from their sleep, as they themselves confessed, prayed heartily to
God to receive his soul, for they understood by those cries what the
matter meant." The body was publicly exposed with a pretence of
innocence, as showing no outward marks of violence ; but the horribly
distorted countenance confirmed to the eye what the shrieks had told
to the ear, — Edward II. had been murdered ; some, at least, of his
enemies by this very act showing themselves worse even than the
monarch they had destroyed. Altogether it would be hardly
possible to find any other period of our history so full of individual
wickedness, and national misery and degradation, or one so un
relieved by any of the gentler or nobler influences. The personal
appearance of the weak and wretched man to whom these sad con
clusions must be mainly attributed, is shown in the engravings
(Figs. 851, 856), and on his great seal (Fig. 852).
Though the reign of Edward III. (see the portrait and insignia,
Figs. 857 and 861), one of the most brilliant in English history,
nominally commenced from the period of the death of his miserable
father, it was not till the young monarch had delivered himself
from the bondage of his father's murderers, who were no other
than his mother and her favourite, Mortimer, that he was able to
show himself as he was, and to make England what he thought
England ought to be. In his eighteenth year Edward became a
father, his queen Philippa then giving him a memorable son, the
Black Prince of future history ; and Edward thought it high time
to take into his own hands the power which Mortimer exercised
over the destinies of the country. But that nobleman was known
to be as unscrupulous in maintaining as he had been from the first
in possessing himself of power : the Earl of Kent, Edward's uncle,
had already been sent to the gallows, on one of the most extra
ordinary charges perhaps ever recorded in our criminal annals, that
he had designed to raise a dead man to the throne, his murdered
brother Edward II., whom he had been led to think was still
alive. Caution was then of high importance, or Edward III.
might have shared the fate of his two distinguished relatives.
Parliament about the time met at Nottingham, and Edward, his
mother, and Mortimer, were all lodged in the castle. Edward's
chief confidant in the enterprise meditated was Lord Montacute,
who was seen one morning by some of Mortimer's people riding
away into the country after a secret conference with Edward. The
favourite took the alarm, and that very day charged the young
king in council with confederating against him and the queen-
mother. Edward denied the charge, but Mortimer was incredulous.
Nottingham Castle was no place to be suddenly taken by assault,
however skilfully or powerfully made ; and Isabella, to prevent
treachery, was accustomed to have the keys brought nightly to her
bedside. So Mortimer appears to have felt safe. But that very
night, Lord Montacute returned in the darkness with a strong
party, the governor of the castle having privily agreed to open to
them a secret subterranean passage which led into the castle, from
a spot covered with brushwood and rubbish, on the outside of the
base of the castle hill. These cavities in the earth, we may
observe in passing, form a distinctive feature of Nottingham and
the neighbourhood, and are supposed to have given name to the
city and the shire — Snocenga-ham, the Saxon word, meaning "the
home of caverns." The engraving (Fig. 922) shows some of these
caves, which are supposed to communicate with the castle. At
midnight the party entered the cavern : at the foot of the main
tower they were joined by Edward, and they all passed noiselessly
on to a hall adjoining the queen-mother's chamber. Here they
paused, hearing voices, — they were those of the Bishop of Lincoln
and others sitting with Mortimer in council, to prevent probably
the very tragedy now about to be consummated. Suddenly the
door was burst open, and two knights killed who sought to defend it.
Isabella in an instant was among the armed crowd, imploring her
" sweet son " to spare the " gentle Mortimer ; " and he was spared
for the moment, but taken out of the castle in safe custody. The
next day Edward publicly proclaimed himself virtual as well as
nominal king,, and soon after Mortimer was hung at the " Elms,"
and the guilty queen-mother shut up for. life in her manor-house at
Risings, where, however, Edward paid her regular and respectful
visits^ And now Edward was free to begin the course that he had
so long yearned for.
There are few of our readers who will need to be told that the four

teenth century was the golden age of chivalry in Europe ; the period
when all the conflicting qualities conjoined in that one word were
carried to their extremest stages of development ; or that Edward
and his son the Black Prince were among the most perfect individual
examples of what, according to the loftiest practical standard, the
true knight should be, namely, pious but intolerant, romantic in
love and licentious, brave and cruel in war, the gentlest of the
gentle in peace ; selfish and unprincipled in the pursuit of his own
interests, yet occasionally capable of the most graceful and generous
devotion to the feelings of those whom he had most deeply injured ;
and, lastly, ever a hero in the fulfilment of the especial duties
enjoined by the knightly creed,— as in the redressing of wrongs,
when he was not the wronger ; the interposing his own body in
battle to guard his liege lord from danger, when he did not happen
to be fighting against him ; the spreading the knowledge of the
doctrines of peace by war, even though it were to make them
detestable in the eyes of the learners, as they saw what they
wrongly, but naturally, conceived to be their legitimate fruits in
the conduct of the expounders. Whilst such the time, it was
certainly an extraordinary coincidence that it should have such an
historian as Froissart (Fig. 866), in whose pages the events that
so thickly crowd them borrow a new lustre, and obtain a new
interest, one, indeed, possibly more permanent than any of their
own. It may be questioned whether there would now have been
any popular recollection of a large portion of the doings of chivalry
in the fourteenth century for their own sake ; but Froissart recorded
them, and there was no longer any question upon the matter. One-
could half wish, indeed, that the native deformity of warfare had
not been veiled in such seductive colours. In the ensuing notice-
of the reign of Edward, we shall no longer follow the narrative
form that we have thought advisable in connection with his more
immediate predecessors, but select from different portions of his
career a few of the leading incidents, as illustrative of the peculiarly
chivalrous character of this sovereign and his age ; and in so doing
we shall, of course, generally follow the delightful records of the
historian just named. And first we will look to Edward's life for
an example of the chivalric love of the period, and whicli forms the
subject of our engraving (Fig. 865).
During the early part of the reign the kings of Scotland and
England were constantly at war, and on one occasion the former,
David, laid siege to the castle of Wark, belonging to the Earl of
Salisbury, then a prisoner in Paris, but which was so bravely
defended by his countess, that David could make no impression on
it. At last, understanding that some of the garrison had succeeded
in getting out and passing his army in safety, and were then on
their way to seek succour from King Edward, who was at York, he
raised tlie siege,. after another unsuccessful assault, and departed.
He had scarcely gone, when Edward appeared before the
castle, he and his men sore travelled in consequence of the haste
they had made, and no less " sore displeased '! that the enemy had
not waited to fight them. The rest we must give in Froissart's.
own inimitable style: — "And as soon as the king was unarmed, he
tdok a ten or twelve knights with him, and went to the, castle to
salute the Countess of Salisbury, and to see the manner of the-
assaults of the Scots, and the defences that were made against them.
As soon as the lady knew of the king's coming, she set open the
gates, and came out so richly beseen, that every man marvelled of'
her beauty, and the gracious words and countenance she made..
When she came to the king, she kneeled down to the earth, thanking
him of his succours, and so led him into the castle to make him
cheer and honour, as she that could right do it. Every man
regarded her marvellously ; the king himself could not withhold
his regarding of her, for he thought that he never saw before so
noble nor so fair a lady: he was stricken therewith to the heart
with a sparkle of fine love that endured long after ; he thought no
lady in the world so worthily to be beloved as she. Thus they
entered into the castle hand in hand ; the lady led him first into
the hall, and after into the chamber nobly apparelled. The king
regarded so the lady that she was abashed. At last he went to a
window to rest him, and so fell in a great study. The lady went
about to make cheer to the lords and knights that were there, and
commanded to dress the hall for dinner. When she had all desired
and commanded, then she came to the king with a merry cheerj who
was in a great study, and she said, ' Dear sir, who do ye study so
for ? Your grace not displeased, it appertaineth not to you so to
do ; rather ye should make good cheer and be joyful, seeing ye
have chased away your enemies, who durst not abide you: let
other men study for the remnant.' Then the king said, ' Ah,
dear lady, know for truth that since I entered into the castle there
is a study come to my mind, so that I cannot cheer, but muse ; nor

; *B£k\ "SI4 (f^s

914. — Strand Gate, Winehelsea.

917.— Guy's T6wer, Warwick Castle.

240

'91 Si— Southampton Gate : North Front,

No

31.

[OLD ENGLAND.]

241

2/t 9

OLD ENGLAND.

[Book III.

I," cannot tell what shall fall thereof: put it out of my heart I
cannot ! ' ' Ah, sir !' quoth the lady, ' ye ought always to make good
cheer, to comfort therewith your people. God hath aided you so
in your business, and hath given you so great graces, that ye be
the most doubted [feared] and honoured prince in all Christendom ;
and if the king of Scots have done you any despite or damage, ye
may well amend it when it shall please you, as ye have done
diverse times or [ere] this. Sir, leave your musing, and come into
the hall, if it please you; your dinner is all ready.' 'Ah, fair
lady,' quoth the king, ' other things lieth at my heart, that ye know
not of: but surely the sweet behaving, the perfect wisdom, the
good grace, nobleness, and excellent beauty that I see in you, hath
so surprised my heart, that I cannot but love you, and without your
love I am but dead.' Then the lady said, 'Ah! right noble
prince, for God's sake mock nor tempt me not. I cannot believe
that it is true that ye say, nor that so noble a prince as ye be would
think to dishonour me and my lord my husband, who is so valiant
a, knight, and hath done your grace so good service, and as yet
lieth in prison for your quarrel. Certainly, Sir, ye should in this
case have but a small praise, and nothing the better thereby. I
had never as yet such a thought in my heart, nor, I trust in God,
never shall have, for no man living : if I had any such intention,
your grace ought not only to blame me, but also to punish my
body, yea, and by true justice to be dismembered.' Herewith the
lady departed from the king, and went into the hall to haste the
dinner. Then she returned again to the king, and brought some
of his knights with her, and said, ' Sir, if it please you to come into
the hall, your knights abideth for you to wash ; ye have been too
long fasting.' Then the king went into the hall and washed, and
sat down among his lords, and the lady also. The king ate but
little ; he sat still musing, and as he durst he cast his eyes upon
the lady. Of his sadness his knights had marvel, for he was not
accustomed so to be ; some thought it was because the Scots were
escaped from him. All that day the king tarried there, and wist
not what to do: sometimes he imagined that honour and truth
defended him to let his heart in such a case to dishonour such a
lady, and so true a knight as her husband was, who had always
well and truly served him : on the other part, love so constrained
him, that the power thereof surmounted honour and truth. Thus
the king debated in himself all that day and all that night ; in the
morning he arose and dislodged all his host, and drew after the
Scots to chase them out of his realm. Then he took leave of the
lady, saying, ' My dear lady, to God I commend you till I return
again, requiring you to advise you otherwise than you have said to
me.' ' Noble prince,' quoth the lady, ' God, the father glorious,
be your conduct, and put you out of all villain thoughts. Sir, I
am, and ever shall be, ready to do you pure service, to your honour
and to mine.' Therewith the king departed all abashed." It
speaks much for Edward's disposition that a few days after he made
the release of the Earl of Salisbury the subject of an express item
in a treaty with the French king, and was shortly "at London,
making cheer to the Earl of Salisbury, who was now come out of
prison." But Edward had not quite resolved to forget the enchan
tress. He gave a splendid feast in the city of London, to bring
her once more within the sphere of his influence. She came, sore
against her will, for she thought well enough wherefore it was;
but she durst not discover the matter to her husband ; she thought
she would deal so as to bring the king from his opinion. .... All
ladies and damsels were freshly beseen, according to their degrees,
except Alice, Countess of Salisbury, for she went as simply as she
might, to the intent that the king should not set his regard on her,
for she was fully determined to do no manner of thing that should
turn to her dishonour nor to her husband's." We cannot think
-she would have looked less lovely in Edward's eyes for the sim
plicity of her attire; but let us hope the high feelings that prompted
its adoption gave a better tone to his own. It was this same model
of conjugal fidelity of whom the well-known anecdote of the Garter
is told, that gave rise to that illustrious order of Knights Com
panions, to which monarchs are in our own time proud to belong.
" Evil be to him that evil thinks," said the king, to rebuke the
smiles of his courtiers, when the fair countess accidentally dropped
her garter. Wo can well appreciate his feelings, in determining
to make that trivial incident the foundation of a lasting memorial
of his admiration for a creature as far above most of her sex for
the grace and purity of her soul, as for the exquisite beauty of her
form. Edward possessed an excitable temperament, which is some
excuse for his jurors. He was imaginative, and we can hardly
ourselves cscapeTeing misled a little by the golden mist of romance
in which mo>t of his actions were enveloped. We have seen him

in love ; let us now watch him at his sports at his great castle of
Windsor. We see him there fired with the idea of rendering
England the centre of the world of honourable arms, himself the
foremost man of that world, and carrying on a fantastic rivalry of
knightly pageants with Philip of Valois, king of France. The
proud Order just referred to (which some literal-minded sages
profess to doubt he founded) was placed under the patronage of a
name which only the wildest enthusiasm could have made holy.
St. George of Cappadocia, primate of Egypt in the fourth century,
had been put to death by the pagans of Alexandria ; ample was the
provocation given; but, nevertheless, he had suffered from the
detestable pagatis, and that was enough, with a little legendary
colouring, to make a martyr of him. Our early Crusaders had
read of him in their calendars and martyrologies, and they found
him installed among the Eastern Christians under the winning
appellation of St. George the Victorious — a characteristic which
the sculptor of St. George at Dijon (Fig. 875) had evidently
in view. These circumstances, and their gratitude for the assist
ance they imagined the beatified St. George had rendered them at
the siege of Antioch, led to their .adopting him as patron of soldiers.
His saintship under Edward III. rose to a higher place, as patron
of chivalry, and tutelar saint of England. A chapel in -his honour
was built or enlarged by Edward at Windsor, and although the
present edifice is of later date, we cannot anywhere have a livelier
idea of the impressive and imaginative splendours of knighthood
than in this exquisite fabric, where the banners and escutcheons of
the Knights Companions glitter above their carved stalls, within
which we trace the armorial bearings of each knight of the Order
from the time we are treating of. Another of Edward's fanciful
acts was to build a round chamber at Windsor, two hundred feet in
diameter, and call it the Round Table, for the accommodation of
a brotherhood of knights, established during a splendid tournament,
in the eighteenth year of his reign. For the original idea of this
we must look to the popular romances of chivalry, in which King
Arthur and the Knights of his Round Table shone conspicuous.
Their pageants, Froissart tells us, were held at Windsor in the
sixth century ; and the public mind, grown as fanciful as that of
the king, no doubt, enjoyed amazingly the actual revival of King
Arthur's institution before their eyes, with all possible splendour,
on the very spot tradition associated with its original glories.
But Philip of Valois would have a Round Table too, and even the
imposing assemblies of the Knights of the Garter were in danger
of being thrown into the shade by the attractive pageants of his
brother king on the other side the Channel. It was about 1350
that Edward began the erection of the great castellated works
which were to form the vast, regal castle. In 1356 Edward made
one of his chaplains, William of Wykeham, chief architect, on a
salary of a shilling a day. Imagination had left political wisdom
so far in the rear, that the pattern of "true manhood, courteous*
ness, and gentleness," saw no error in impressing artificers to make
his castle, whether they liked his wages or not, and took no hint
from their frequently stealing away to other employments that offered
better ; nor could he find any better remedy than a prison for the
deserters, and penalties for those who employed them. The castle
was finished about 1374, and was in extent and general arrangement
the same as we now see it. (Fig. 859.) But so much had notions
of interior convenience changed by the last century, that a sepa
rate building had to be made for the royal family of George III.
The noble pile underwent so much tasteless disguising, that at
length there was " neither character nor grandeur to recommend it
to the eye ;" so an inventive writer signing Mela Britannicus, when
a restoration of the old chivalric castle was under discussion in
1824, proposed to erase the whole pile, make one level of the site,
and erect in the centre " a compact Grecian edifice of moderate
extent." This advice was declined by parliament, who granted three
hundred thousand pounds to reinstate the castle, " as far as it con
sistently could be, in what was, or what might be supposed to have
been, its original character." This object has not been very rigidly
carried out, but the appearance of antiquity on the whole is obtained ;
and with all its faults, this castle1 is the only royal residence of any
grandeur that we can boast. Here, then, at stately Windsor
(Figs. 858, 859), the most dazzling spectacles of chivalry took
place ; here were not the " feasts of reason," but of fancy, that
glow through our young dreams in such delightful hues. We
listen jidth beating hearts to the king's heralds, clad in wondrous
blazonry, proclaiming far and wide the coming tourney, — we follow
with curious interest the successive arrivals of knights of heroic
name from all parts of Christendom, who have Edward's letters
of safe-conduct to pass and repass the realm, — we gaze with mar
vellous awe on their armies of retainers, their gleaming banners

Chap. I.]

OLD ENGLAND.

243

and lances, and shining mail ; and, amongst that part of the dazzling
congregation within the lists in Windsor Park, who
" Assume the port
Of stately valour,"
our kindling eyes watch for the towering white ostrich plumes that
distinguish our royal Edward, and that youthful prince of finest
promise in the coal-black armour by his side. Well, the grand
passage of arms (Fig. 860) is over. There may have been blood
shed ; but the true knight slays and dies with equal coolness, for,
like Othello, nought does he in hate, but. all in honour. Alas !
poor imagination; such are its weak delusions. Hark! the min
strels' merry music summons to the banquet, where imagination is
still the presiding deity. What a scene of gorgeous enjoyment !
We have seen something like its form revived in modern days, —
but the spirit cannot be revived ; that has altogether evaporated,
like the breath of its perfumes. The spirit of chivalry is dead.
The impressive magnificence of the hall, the mixture of the war
like, the superb, and the picturesque in costume, the joy-inspiring
wines of France and Spain, and Syria and Greece, the lays of
Froissart, that lent to the scenes the charms of poetry and song (the
poet is often forgotten in the historian), these and such-like circum
stances were mere accessaries to the peculiar enjoyments that arose
out of the honours paid to the warriors for renown and ladies' love —
the throbbing hopes of the young aspirants of chivalry, and the
thrilling interest of the ladies in the perilous encounters, whose
recollection and anticipation gave the chief zest to .these happy hours
of secure festivity.
From the chivalnc preliminaries of and preparations for war, turn
we now to war itself. We shall not, of course, enter into the oft-
told story of the English claims upon the French throne, the armed
assertion of which led to the memorable siege of Calais, and
the battles of Cressy and Poictiers in the present reign. It will
be sufficient to state, that war exemplifies most strikingly the
inconsistencies of chivalry before alluded to. Whilst begun in
injustice, and most ruthlessly carried on, seldom at the same time
has a war exhibited so many touching and graceful examples of
individual nobility of mind and kindliness of heart upon the part
of its originators. The battle of Cressy occurred during the retreat
of the English towards Ponthieu, followed by the French King
Philip, at the head of an immense army, who were flushed with the
hope of an easy conquest, and only alarmed lest their prey should
escape. They were destined to learn better what the English were.
When Edward had found a place to his mind, he quickly prepared
for the fight that he saw must take place. The night before
Saturday, the 6th of August, 1346, Edward, says Froissart, "made
a supper to all his chief lords of his host, and made them good
cheer. And when they were all departed to take their rest, then
the king entered into his oratory, and kneeled down before the
altar, praying God devoutly that if he fought the next day, that he
might achieve a journey to his honour. Then about midnight he
laid him down to rest, and in the morning he rose betimes and
heard mass, and the prince, his son, with him, and the most part
of the company, were confessed and houseled. And after the mass
said, he commanded every man to be armed, and to draw to the
field, to the same place before appointed. Then the king caused a
park to be made by the wood side, behind his host, and there was
set all carts and carriages, and within the park were all their
horses, for every man was afoot ; and into this park there was but
one entry." We need hardly say the prince here mentioned was
him whose deeds made the very colour of his annour among men
a kind of symbol of all that was heroically brave and chivalrous ;
that it was the Black Prince, who in the battle of Cressy was to
give the promise of the future conqueror of Poictiers. Edward
arranged the English in three battalions, and then leaping " on a
hobby with a white rod in his hand, one of his martials on the one
hand, and the other on the other hand, he rode from rank to rank,
desiring every man to take heed that day to his right and honour :
he spoke it so sweetly, and with so good countenance and merry
cheer, that all such as were discomfited took courage in the seeing
and hearing of him. And when he had thus visited all his battles
[battalions] it was then nine of the day : then he caused every man
to eat and drink a little, and so they did at their leisure; and
afterwards they ordered again their battles. Then every man lay
down on the earth, and by him his salet and bow, to be the
more fresher when, their enemies should come." They were thus
found by the French, who came on with cries of 'Down with
them,' ' Let us slay them ;' but as the English objected in their
own peculiar way to both processes, the battle quickly commenced.
- The Genoese cross-bow men (see our engraving, Fig. 872) were
first ordered to advance, which they did unwillingly, as being

utterly fatigued with their march. However, they went with great
cries, which the Englishmen taking no notice of, they shot fiercely
with their cross-bows. Then the English archers stepped forth one
pass [pace], and let fly their arrows so wholly, and so thick, that it
seemed snow." The Genoese were presently 'discomfited by the
storm, and thrown into confusion: "Slay the rascals," then called
out the sage king of the French, and the French men-at-arms ran
in and killed a great number of them, while of course the English
men "shot wherever they saw the thickest press." The slaughter
under such circumstances was terrible. As the fight thickened,
the blind king of Bohemia called upon his people to lead him for
ward so that he might strike one stroke with his sword. They did
so, and " to the intent that they might not lose him in the press,
they tied all the reins of their bridles each to other, and set the
king before to accomplish his desire, and so they went on their
enemies." The whole party were found after the battle still united,
but — in death. The king's crest appears to have been an eagle's
pinion, from which the man by whose hands he fell plucked three
feathers : the very mention of the words " the Prince of Wales's
feathers " will tell us who he was, and remind us of the mode in
which the event of the blind hero's death has been made memorable.
But this was not the only incident of the day in which the Black
Prince's courage had been recorded. His " battalion at one period
was very hard pressed ; and they with the prince sent a messenger
to the king, who sat on a little windmill hill ;" then the knight
said to the king, " ' Sir, the Earl of Warwick, and the Earl of Ox
ford, Sir Reynold Cobham, and others, such as be about the prince,
your son, are fiercely fought withal, and are sore handled, where
fore they desire you, that you and your battle will come and aid
them ; for if the Frenchmen increase, as they doubt they will, your
son and they shall have much ado.' Then the king said, ' Is my
son dead, or hurt, or on the earth felled ? ' ' No, Sir,' quoth the
knight, ' but he is hardly matched, wherefore he hath need of your
aid.' ' Well,' said the king, ' return to him and to them that sent
you hither, and say to them, that they send no more to me for an
adventure that falleth, as long as my son is alive ; and also say to
them that they suffer him this day to win his spurs, for, if God be
pleased, I will this journey be his, and the honour thereof, and to
them that be about him.' " No wonder these words "greatly en
couraged the prince and his party, and made them only repine that
they had sent to him at all. The battle was at last won, and the
French, when they were able to estimate the amount of their loss,
found the appalling result to be — the death of the king of Bohemia,
the Duke of Lorraine, the Earl of Alencon, the Count of Flanders,
and eight other counts, two archbishops, seven lesser nobles, twelve
hundred knights, and about thirty thousand of the soldiery. The
miserable French monarch, Philip, was one of the latest to quit the
field. As to the feelings of the prince and his father on meeting
when all was over (see Mr. Harvey's design, Fig. 873), life could
have hardly promised to have in store for either any other pleasure
so exquisite as was then felt on that bloody but glorious field of
Cressy; by the father, to have such a son — by the son, to have
exhibited himself before such a father.
The siege of Calais was begun only five days later, and if the
English anticipated an easy success, they were soon to find their
error. Our military annals furnish few cases of more determined
and noble resistance than that maintained for so many months by the
burghers of Calais under the command of John de Vienne, a com
mander worthy of the commanded : it would be impossible to award
him higher praise. Famine attacked them even more fiercely than
Edward, and still they resisted ; and it was only when, after almost
incredible fortitude, they saw their last hope dashed to the ground,
at the very moment they anticipated relief, — it was only when
Philip came towards Calais, and then, not liking the aspect of the
English defence, turned and went back again, that they allowed
themselves to think of submission. But Philip's cruel desertion
was a deathblow. They sent to Edward; who, however, would
listen to no terms but unconditional submission. The noble Sir
Walter Manny, however, spoke for them ; and, at last, mercy was
promised to all but six of the chief burgesses, who were to come to
him bareheaded, barefooted, with ropes about their necks, and the
keys of the town and castle in their hands. Let those who would
see what is true — as compared with what is but, after all, factitious —
glory, look at the conduct of the burghers of Calais, and contrast
it with the conduct of the best of the European chivalry. The
people of Calais were summoned by the market-bell into the market
place, and there the conditions of mercy were made known. " Then
all the people began to weep, and make much sorrow, that there
was not so hard a heart, if they had seen them, but that would have
had great pity of them : the captain [John de Vienne] himself
wept piteously. At last a most rich burgess of all the town,
2 12

-I!;i\mutl's Castle.

024.— Ruins ofthe Savoy Palace, 1T11.

920.— Arundel Castle.

023.— Bodiam Castle, Susses.

92" ~&<h Cas'le.

244

-Ilefehworth Castle.

31.— Chapter-house, Salisbury.

932.— Salisbury.

245

246

OLD ENGLAND.

[Book III.

called Eustace de Saint Pierre, rose up and said openly, ' Sirs, great
and small, great mischief it should be, to suffer to die such people
as be in this town, either by famine or otherwise, when there is a
means to save them. I think he or they should have great merit of
our Lord God, that might keep them from such mischief. As for
my part, I have so good trust in our Lord God, that if I die in the
quarrel to save the residue, that God would pardon me ; wherefore,
to save them I will be the first to put my life in jeopardy.' When
he had thus said, every man worshipped him, and divers kneeled
down at his feet, with sore weeping, and sore sighs. Then another
honest burgess rose and said, ' I will keep company with my gossip
Eustace ;' he was called Jehan d'Aire. Then rose up Jacques de
Wisant, who was rich in goods and heritage ; he said also that he
would hold company with his two cousins likewise ; so did Peter
of Wisant, his brother: and then rose two others; they said they
would do the same. Then they went and apparelled them as the
rking desired. Then the captain went with them to the gate; there
-was great lamentation made of men, women, and children at their
departing. Then the gate was opened, and he issued out with the
six burgesses, and closed the gate again ; so they were between
the gate and the barriers." Then they were handed to Sir Walter
Manny, with an earnest injunction on the part of John de Vienne,
that he would interfere to save them; an injunction, however, that
Sir Walter needed not. When they were presented to the king,
"they kneeled down and held up their hands, and said, 'Gentle
king, behold here we six, who were burgesses of Calais, and great
merchants ; we have brought the keys of the town and of the castle,
and we submit ourselves clearly unto your will and pleasure, to save
the residue of the people of Calais, who have suffered great pain.
Sir, we beseech your grace to have mercy and pity on us, through
your high nobles.' Then all the earls and barons and others that
were there wept for pity. The king looked felly on them, for
greatly he hated the people of Calais, for the great damage and
displeasures they had done him on the sea before. Then he com
manded their heads to be stricken off. Then every man required
the king for mercy, but he would hear no man in that behalf.
Then Sir Walter of Manny said, 'Ah, noble king, for God's sake
refrain your courage; ye have the name of sovereign noblesse;
therefore, now do not a thing that should blemish your renown,
nor to give cause to some to speak of you villanously ; every man
will say it is a great cruelty to put to death such honest persons,
who by their own wills put themselves into your grace, to save
their company.' Then the king wryed away from him, and com
manded to send for the hangman, and said, ' They of Calais had
caused many of my men to be slain, wherefore 'these shall die in
likewise.' Then the queen, being great with child, kneeled down
(see Fig. 867), and sore weeping, said, 'Ah, gentle Sir, sith I
passed the sea in great peril, I have desired nothing of you ; there
fore, now I humbly require you, in the honour of the Son of the
Virgin Mary, and for the love of me, that ye will take mercy of
these six burgesses.' The king beheld the queen, and stood still in
a study a space, and then said, ' Ah, dame, I would ye had been as
now in some other place ; ye make such request to me that I cannot
deny you, wherefore I give them to you, to do your pleasure with
them.' Then the queen caused them to be brought into her cham
ber, and made the halters to be taken from their necks, and caused
them to be new clothed, and gave them their dinner at their leisure,
and then she gave each of them six nobles, and made them to be
brought out of the host in safeguard, and set at their liberty."
Froissart, unhappily, was deceived as to their being freed. Edward,
if he could not make up his mind altogether to resist the entreaties
of his friends not to do a deed which would have made him infamous
for ever, was at the last ungracious enough to keep them prisoners :
in the records of the Tower of London we read of the entrance of
John de Vienne and the six burgesses.
The battle of Poictiers (Fig. 876) was fought and won by the
Black Prince alone, and under circumstances of disproportion in
the number of troops engaged on each side, quite as remarkable as
those of Cressy, while the results were still more signal. Among
the prisoners after the conflict was the French King John, son of
Philip of Valois. His capture is one of the most interesting as
well as most important incidents of the battle. Undeterred by their
frightful losses at Cressy, so directly brought on by their mismanage
ment and conceit, the French directed their vast army at Poictiers
with the same want of skill and prudence, and in consequence soon
found the battle going as terribly against them. And as, when the
mischief was done, Philip of Valois had distinguished himself by his
personal courage in the former battle, so did his son now imitate his
example in%iis, fighting on foot, battle-axe in hand ; as though doing
the duty of a man-at-arms could retrieve the consequences of the

neglect of duty as a commander. By his side was a boy of sixteen,
who, whilst his elder brethren fled, exhibited a heroism as remark
able, considering his age, as anything in the history of the great
English prince, whom the boy of sixteen stood in arms with his
countrymen to oppose. Keeping his eyes constantly on his father,
and neglecting all thoughts of himself, he cried out, as he saw any
blow about to be struck at the king, " Father, guard yourself on
the right; guard yourself on the left," &c. John was twice
wounded, and once beaten to the ground, but he rose again, reply
ing with fresh blows to every fresh requisition to surrender. A
young French knight attached to the English army at last forced his
way towards him " by strength of his body and arms ;" in the hope
of moving him : " Sir, yield you," he said as he drew near. " The
king beheld the knight, and said, ' To whom shall I yield me? Where
is my cousin the Prince of Wales ? If I might see him, I would
speak to him.' DenisTanswered and said, ' Sir, he is not here ; but
yield you to me, and I shall bring you to him.' ' Who be you ? '
quoth the king. ' Sir, I am Denis of Morbeeqne, a knight of Artois ;
but I serve the king of England, because I am banished the realm
of France, and I have forfeited all I had there.' Then the king
gave him his right gauntlet, saying, ' I yield me to you.' " It was
with great difficulty, however, and not till especial assistance had
been rendered, that John was brought in safety to the English
quarters, the whole of the knights and others around struggling
each to make him his particular conquest. The conduct of the
Prince of Wales that night at supper towards his captive guest,
and which was but the commencement of an unbroken series of
kindly and graceful attentions, is well known. John was brought to
England, and received with chivalrous courtesy by King Edward ;
then, afte,r the lapse of two or three years, allowed to return to
France, to see if the French people would consent to Edward's
terms, which were, that on full and entire sovereignty being yielded
to him over Guienne, Poictiers, and Ponthieu, he would] renounce
all other claims to France. The terms, however, being declined by
John's subjects, he most honourably returned to his captivity, and
died in the palace which had been assigned as his residence, the
Savoy (Figs. 897, 924), the chief metropolitan residence of Edward's
fourth son, the famous John of Gaunt. And what was the end of
these brilliant displays of skill and courage ? of all this outpouring
of human blood ? of all the cities, and towns, and villages of beau
tiful France burnt and wasted and pillaged? Why, that at the
close of Edward's reign matters remained just as they were at the
commencement : we were as far off as ever from the attainment of
our object.
The Black Prince in the later period of his life appears to have
been necessitated through illness to become something more of the
citizen than must have altogether suited his taste. Coventry (Figs.
874 and 881) became, his favourite place of residence; a^circum-
stance the visitor will find recorded in the remarkable St. Mary's
Hall, that richest and in every way completest of specimens of
English architecture in the fifteenth centmy. Its foundation was
connected with the growth of the guilds of Coventry, whichj first
established in the reign of Edward III., rapidly rose into prosperity,
and required a suitable place to meet in. In the reign of Henry
VI. nothing less than this St. Mary's Hall (Fig. 881) would content
the taste and wealth of Coventry, and an honourable memorial,
truly, it is of the founders. A tapestry in it, constructed in 1450,
measures thirty feet by ten, contains eighty figures, and is a fine
specimen of the artistical as well as of the mechanical skill of the
time. The verses referring to the Black Prince, which we find in
the Hall, tell us that
Edward, the flower of chivalry, whilom the Black Prince night,
Who prisoner took the French King John, in claim of Grandame's right;
And slew the King of Beame in field, — whereby the ostrich pen
He won and wore on crest here first ; which posie bore Ich Dim.
Amid these martial feats of arms, wherein he had no peer,
His bounty eke to shew, this seat he chose, and loved full dear ;
The former state he got confirmed, and freedom did increase,
A president of knighthood rave, as well for war as peace.
The prince died in 1376, in his forty-sixth year. The beautiful
monument in Canterbury Cathedral (Fig. 877) marks his last rest
ing place. Just twelve months after, his father followed him • too
late, unfortunately for his fame, for he turned driveller in his old
age, and died without a single friend by his side ; the very lady,
Alice Perrers, whom he had so favoured, deserting him when there
was nothing more to be gained by his smiles or lost by his frowns.
He of course rests in the " Chapel of the King," the Choir of West
minster Abbey, and beneath the monument shown in our engraving
(Fig. 884). An admirable summary of the domestic chafacter of
this reign has been given by Sir James Mackintosh :— " During a

Chap. I.]

OLD ENGLAND.

247

reign of fifty years, Edward III. issued writs of summons, which
are extant to this day, to assemble seventy parliaments or great
councils. He thus engaged the pride and passions of the par
liament and the people so deeply in support of his projects of
aggrandisement, that they became his zealous and enthusiastic fol
lowers. His ambition was caught by the nation, and men of the
humblest station became proud of his brilliant victories. To form
and keep up this state of public temper was the mainspring of his
domestic administration, and satisfactorily explains the internal
tranquillity of England during the forty years of his effective reign.
It was the natural consequence of so long and watchful a pursuit of
popularity, that most grievances were redressed as soon as felt, that
parliamentary authority Avas yearly strengthened by exercise, and
that the minds of the turbulent barons were exclusively turned
towards a share of their sovereign's glory. Quiet at home was
partly the fruit of fame abroad." The great national assemblies
were not fixed at Westminster before the latter part of this reign.
We have a lively picture of their previous roving habits in the
' Westminster Beview :' — " The constitution of King, Lords, and
Commons was accustomed to scamper, as fast as the state of the
roads would admit, all over the kingdom, from Berwick-upon-
Tweed to the Land's End. Within one year it would hold its
parliamentary sittings at Carlisle and Westminster, in the following
year at Exeter and Norwich, or at Lincoln and Worcester 
Not only were the early parliaments holden in different towns, but
they frequently moved from place to place daily during the session."
Our imperious senators and their insolent retainers often scattered
the opposite of blessings among the common people, whom they
honoured with the charge of entertaining them, and the country
generally had cause to bs gratified with the settlement at West
minster. The supreme judicial courts had' been fixed here some
time, and so have remained to this day. One of the good things
secured in Magna Charta was an article to the effect that the court
for finally deciding actions between man and man, the court of
Common Pleas, should be settled in one place, instead of following
the king's court hither and thither, by which many of the poorer
orders were cut off from redress, because they could not afford time
nor money for journeys. The courts of Exchequer and Chancery,
and of King's Bench, so called from the monarch sitting on a bench
raised above the seats of the judges, as well as the courts just men
tioned, still sit in the venerable hall of the old palace of West
minster, as they have done more than five hundred years, though
the palace itself was deserted by the court for Whitehall in the
time of Henry VJJI., in consequence of a fire that nearly consumed
the ancient pile. Westminster Hall as it now stands (Figs. 895,
903) was rebuilt in the reign we are about to enter upon, in 1398.
We cannot discover at what period the Hall was deserted by the
peers for the "Old House of Lords," which adjoined the Painted
Chamber on the south. The House of Lords recently destroyed
was formed in 1800 out of the old Court of Bequests, which had
formed, it is believed, the banqueting-hall of the old palace before
Eufus built the grand hall used for parliaments. The Painted
Chamber (Fig. 901) was used by Edward III. for holding a par
liament in 1364. Why this apartment was so named was not as
certained until the beginning of this century, when the old tapestry
being removed, paintings were disclosed containing a multitude of
large figures, and representing battles. In the manuscript itinerary
of Simon Simeon and Hugo the Illuminator, dated 1322, we find a
remarkable mention of these ancient relics : — ¦" To the same monas
tery (Westminster Abbey) is almost immediately joined that most
famous palace of the king, in which is the well-known chamber
on whose walls all the history of the wars of the whole Bible are
exquisitely painted, with most complete and perfect inscriptions in
French, to the great admiration of the beholders, and with the
greatest regal magnificence."
A noticeable feature of Edward's reign was the separation of the
Commons from the Lords in 1377, on the ground that they could
not have a president of their own while the two assemblies sat
together. Their meetings were not characterised by refinement,
whatever honesty of purpose they may have had to boast. " Debates
were carried on more by the eloquence of the fist than the tongue,"
and private broils seemed to occupy them quite as much as the duty
to which the early Commons professed to confine themselves, that
of studying the welfare, complaining of the grievances, and supply-
in"' the defects of the places they came to represent.
The want of eclat and glitter about them was, however, one
cause why they were so disrespectfully regarded »by the higher
powers, for scenes quite as much at variance with the calmness of
deliberative wisdom ^ere frequently occurring among the Lords,
as well as among the Commons, We have an amusing anecdote

of the abbot of Westminster and the Commons, while the latter sat
in the chapter-house of the abbey, their first distinct place of meet
ing. On one occasion the Commons, forgetting the solemn purposes
of their assembling, became so riotous, and created so great a tur
moil, that the abbot waxed indignant at the profanation, and collect
ing a sufficiently strong party, turned the whole legislative wisdom
out of his house, and swore lustily that the place " should not again
be defiled with a like rabble." Nevertheless, the Commons continued
in the chapter-house until the time of Edward VI., when St. Ste
phen's chapel was adapted for their use. The engraving of this
chapel restored (Fig. 907) is designed to illustrate its supposed
appearance prior to Edward VI. It was then a unique and superb
little fabric, rebuilt by Edward III., about the time when he com
menced the castle of Windsor. The adaptations to the Commons'
use, made from time to time, completely hid its beauties. At the
beginning of this century, the admission of the new Irish members
rendered enlargement necessary; when, on the removal of the
wainscoting, it was discovered that the old walls and roof had
been entirely covered with painting, gilding, and rich ornamental
work, in the very best style of the arts in the fourteenth century.
As to the architecture, we need only refer to the engraving of the
restoration already mentioned, and the engraving of the appearance
of the chapel after the fire of the houses (Fig. 906), when, as was
observed at the time, it was really wonderful to see the sharpness
and beautiful finish of the mouldings, the crockets, the embossed
ornaments, and other running workmanship in stone, notwithstand
ing the violence which the chapel had suffered from ancient de
stroyers and modern improvers, and notwithstanding that it had
come out of the fiery furnace of so fierce a conflagration.
The reign of Richard of Bourdeaux, son of the Black Prince,
begins in sunshine and splendour :

' Fair laughs the morn, and soft the zephyr blows,
While, proudly riding o'er the azure realm,
In gallant trim the gilded vessel goes,
Youth on the prow, and pleasure at the helm ;
Regardless of the sweeping whirlwind's spray,
That, hush'd in grim repose, expects his evening prey."

The portrait in royal robes (Fig. 886) brings before the mind
the enthusiastic rejoicings that welcome the beautiful boy as he i9
brought from the Tower to be crowned at Westminster. There
are around him a devoted multitude of nobles, knights, and esquires,
that dazzle his eye with their costly adornments. The streets they
pass through on their gorgeously-caparisoned coursers, are hung
with floating draperies, the windows are full of gazers. The air
resounds with rapturous shouts, "God bless the royal boy ! Long
live King Richard!" In Cheapside golden angels bend to him
from the towers of mimic castles, presenting crowns ; and at other
places he is met by beautiful virgins of his own age and stature,
robed in white, who blow leaves and flowers of gold in his face, and,
as he approaches nearer, they fill gold cups from the conduits flow
ing with wine, and hand to him. High and low delight to honour
him for his father's sake. His plastic imagination is of course
nlost highly wrought upon by the magnificent pageants, and by the-
unbounded adulation that he witnesses on all sides. They bewilder
his reason, and make him fancy himself a God, long before he has.
learned to be a man.
Do we find nothing in the picture given us by Froissart of hifr
prime (Fig. 889) that looks like a consequence of the injudicious
treatment he received in boyhood? " There was none so great in
England that dared speak against anything that the king did. He-
had a council suitable to his fancies, who exhorted him to do what
he list : he kept in his wages ten thousand archers, who watched
over him day and night." Do we wonder to find that he is buried
in selfish luxury ; that he only regards the misery of his people to
add to it ; or that he resorts to craft, injustice, and cruelty to pro
tect his " precious crown" ^from those of his peers whom he calls
his foes, because they have dared to whisper caution to the foolish
dreamer? There is one pleasant side, certainly, to this part of his life.
Like his illustrious grandfather, Richard was a poetically-minded
man, and loved and promoted the arts. The engraving (Fig. 82-1 )
gives us a glimpse of him as a literary patron, while it interests ns
also as a glimpse of the manners of the times. The king's luxurious
barge and the lowly boat of the poet Gower have met on the busy
Thames. The king invites the poet into the barge, and there,
calmly sailing, converses at large with him, while the fresh breeze
plays in the silk-embroidered awning. This was the occasion when

935.— Capital.

—Canopy.

950. -West Front of York Minster.

941.— Boss.

947. — Decorated
Foliage.

936.— Capital.

938.— Bracket.

940  Ease.

U  u

948.— Decorated
Foliage.

949.— Coped Tomb.

i:J,lIiI|i!]'1

944.— Boss.

951.— York, from the Ancient Ramparts.

' 946.— Finial.

955.— Capital, Chapter-House.

956.— Sculpture over West Door.

957.— Bracket.

958.— Capital, Crypt.

961.— Pendant, Chapter-House.

962.— Sculpture over West Door.

663.— Bracket-

964.— Capital Crypt.

952.— Interior of the Choir of York Minster.

953.— York. General View.

954.— Choir. York.

250

OLD ENGLAND.

f Book III.

Gower received command to pen a new book, which proved to be
the ' Confessio Amantis.'
We are loth to turn from gentle scenes like this; scenes for
which Richard was as peculiarly fitted as he was altogether unfit for
the stern duties of the governor of a kingdom convulsed by storms
of no ordinary kind. The important event shown in Fig. 893
occurred on the 16th of September, 1398. King Richard is there
seen banishing Mowbray, Duke of Norfolk, Earl Marshal of
England, and his own cousin, Henry of Derby, afterwards called
Bolingbroke. Henry was the only son of the eldest of the two
princes that survived of Edward III.'s seven sons : these two were
John of Gaunt (Fig. 887), Duke of Lancaster, and Edmund of
Langley (Fig. 885), Duke of York. It appears that, shortly before,
Bolingbroke, riding between Swindon and London, was overtaken
by Mowbray, who said to him, " We are about to be ruined."
" For what ? " asked Bolingbroke. " For the affair of Radcot
Bridge," answered Mowbray. " How can that be, after his pardon
and declaration in Parliament?" " He will annul that pardon,"
said Mowbray ; " and our fate will be like that of others before us."
And then he spoke of Richard's well-known duplicity -and faithless
ness, positively asserting that the king and his minions were at that
very time planning to destroy other peers as well as themselves.
" If such be the case, we can never trust them," observed Hereford.
" So it is," said Mowbray ; " and though they may not be able to
do it now, they will contrive to destroy us in our houses ten years
hence." This conversation reached the king, and Bolingbroke
declared it true in open parliament. Norfolk, having surrendered
on proclamation, denied the story flatly, and accepted Hereford's
gage of defiance. A court of chivalry was held, lists were set up
at Coventry for a trial by combat, in accordance with the custom
of the times (Figs. 878, 879). "Now I shall have peace from
henceforward," said Richard to himself; but could he have looked
into the future, how different would have been his exclamation !
The combatants were ready, their lances in rest, their beavers
closed, the trumpets had sounded, Bolingbroke had started six or
seven paces forward, when the heralds cried, " Ho ! ho ! the king
has thrown his warder down." Their spears are taken from them,
and two long hours of suspense conclude with an unequal and arbi-
tijdHbentence. Norfolk dies in his exile broken-hearted, but Boling
broke has a younger and more buoyant spirit, and he is sustained by
the ardent sympathies of hosts of friends, who feel his wrongs their
own. His humble and courteous manners —
" Off goes his bonnet to ah oyster-wench,"
says the poet — have won for him the love of all classes, and the proofs
he has given of a cool, sagacious intellect and high energies lead
them to look on him as the star of their hopes, which will one day
shine brightly forth, although a cloud is now upon it.
Passing over ten months, the engraving of ships of the time of
Richard II. (Fig. 883) brings us, with a trifling exercise of
imagination, to an event little dreamed of by the deluded Richard —
the return of Henry, now in his own person Duke of Lancaster,
his father having died during his exile. He has stolen from France
with a few friends and servants, taking advantage of Richard's
absence from his kingdom to quell some tumults in the south of
Ireland. He hovers about the coast at first, as if doubtful of a
welcome ; but his wrongs are fresh in the minds of his countrymen,
especially that most inhuman one, Richard's seizure of his inheritance
on his father's death, in one fell swoop, — gold, lands, and honours,
even to the household furniture. Thousands of swords are ready to
leap from their scabbards to compel the tyrant to make him restitu
tion. With their aid he will have his dukedom, and dwell again in
his native air, or find a speedy grave. With this resolution Henry
lands in Ravenspur in Yorkshire, on the 4th of July, 1399, un
furls the standard of revolt, and finds, in a wonderfully short space
of time, that he may not only be duke but — king.
Can a few months have so completely changed the relative
positions of the injurer and the injured, as we find in the first
meeting of Richard and Bolingbroke, at Flint Castle (Fig. 898) ?
Alas, poor king ! Bolingbroke has scattered all his splendour and
power like a dream. The chief castles and towns, includin"- London
itself, have flung wide their gates to the banished man. All  all
is Bolingbroke's. And around the fortress to which he has been
entrapped by Northumberland are countless thousands of armed
men, and these, too, are Bolingbroke's. In gentle words must
the proud monarcli speak to his "Fair cousin of Lancaster;"
a welcome most foreign to his heart must he offer, standing before
him with uncovered head. Henry is sincere enough in his part of
the greeting, and every word stings like a serpent. "My lord, I
am come somewhat before my time, but I will tell you the reason.

Your people complain that you have ruled them harshly for
twenty-two years, but, if it please God, I will help you to rule them
better." What could Richard say to this unsolicited offer of assist
ance ? " Fair cousin, if it pleaseth you it pleaseth me." The
interview involves feelings too intense to be sustained long. No
more is said between them ; but, with a loud and stern voice,
Bolingbroke commands the king's horses to be brought forth.
The next of the three pictures we have copied (Figs. 896, 898, 900)
from the interesting and remarkably beautiful series of illuminations
in a metrical history of Richard's expedition to Ireland, and of
the events immediately ensuing, written by a " Frenchman of mark '
in his suite, shows us Richard's humiliating entry into London
in the train of his cousin, serving as a sort of foil to set off his
greatness. Passing by the immaterial circumstance, that the illu
mination represents the personages on foot, apparently because
about to enter the Tower (Fig. 900), Shakspere's matchless descrip
tion of the sad spectacle will be a better explanation than any
words of ours : — " The duke, great Bolingbroke,
Mounted upon a hot and fiery steed,
Which his aspiring rider seemed to know ;
With slow, but stately pace, kept on his course,
While all tongues cried — God save thee, Bolingbroke !
You would have thought the very windows spake,
So many greedy looks of young and old
Through casements darted their devouring eyes
Upon his visage ; and that all the walls
With painted imag'ry, had said at once —
Jesu preserve thee ! welcome, Bolingbroke !
Whilst he, from one side to the other turning,
Bare-headed, lower than his proud steed's neck,
Bespake them thus : I thank you, countrymen ; —
And thus still doing, thus he passed along.
As in a theatre, the eyes of men,
After a well-grac'd actor leaves the stage,
Are idly bent on him that enters next,
Thinking his prattle to be tedious :
Even so, or with much more contempt, men's eyes
Did scowl on Richard : no man cried, God save him ;
No joyful tongue gave him his welcome home ;
But dust was thrown upon his sacred head,
Which with such gentle sorrow he shook off —
His face still combating with tears and smiles,
The badges of his grief and patience —
That had not God, for some strong purpose, steeled
The hearts of men, they must perforce have melted,
And barbarism itself have pitied him."
Of course no time was lost in formally deposing the helpless
king, an event that forms the subject of the next engraving (Fig.
896), where we see the nobles met for that purpose in the very
hall of Westminster that Richard had rebuilt, and which remains to
this day a magnificent memorial of his artistical tastes. Near the
vacant throne sits Bolingbroke, while the resignation of Richard, —
extorted by the fear of death, but said to have been made with a
merry countenance, — is read and accepted by the parliament ; then,
shouts of joy from the concourse of people without, make sweet
music in the duke's ears. He rises, amid a hush of expectation ;
and there has been nothing in his surprising conquest to prevent us
from giving him credit for feelings at this solemn moment more
elevated and pure than those of mere selfish ambition. He delibe
rately approaches the throne, stops close to it, solemnly crosses
himself, and makes his claim in these words: — "In the name
of God the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, I, Henry of Lan-.
caster, challenge this realm of England, because I am descended
by right line of blood from the good lord King Henry III., and
through that right, that God of his grace hath sent me, with help
of my kin, and of my friends, to recover it ; the which realm was
in point to be undone, for default of government, and undoing of
the good laws." The claim being responded to most joyfully and
heartily, he kneels in prayer on the steps of the throne, and then
mounts them, and takes his seat. Henry IV. is King of England.
For the last scene of all, that ends this strange eventful history,
we turn to Pontefract Castle (Fig. 899), whither Richard, on the
recommendation of the House of Peers, has been privately conveyed ;
and it is not without a shudder we quote Gray's fine lines, indicat
ing the fate that it is but too probable here closed the career of the
royal captive, within five months of his deposition : —
" Fill high the sparkling bowl, '
The rich repast prepare,
; Eeft of a crown, he yet may share the feast;
Close by the regal chair,
Fell thirst and famine scowl
A baleful smile upon their baffled guest."
We can hardly believe that Henry would sanction so detestable

Chap. I.]

OLD ENGLAND.

251

a cruelty, for it appears that he was not without personal regard for
his royal relative, and had refused to take his life when the Commons
petitioned him to do so. The Percies, before the battle of Shrews
bury, distinctly charged Henry with having caused Richard to
perish from hunger, thirst, and cold, after fifteen days and nights
of sufferings unheard of among Christians ; but their grounds for
that dreadful charge do not appear, and the variety of rumours as
to the mode of Richard's death, and the very fact of his having died
at all being doubted by many people for a number of years, make
the imputation against Henry a very doubtful one. In the beginning
of March, 1400, Richard's body — or what was asserted to be such
— was brought out of Pontefract Castle (Fig. 899), in funeral
procession, and conveyed to London, to the new king, who paid to
it all possible respect, and interred it with great state in West
minster Abbey.
There are many highly picturesque castellated remains of this
period scattered over England, which we have been unable to intro
duce in our sketches of regal history ; we shall therefore briefly
review them in connection with the baronial.
In the reign of Henry III., Prince Edward, fighting for his
father against the barons, took Tunbridge Castle (Fig. 918) from
Gilbert Rufus, Earl of Clare, Gloster, and Hertford. The first of
this family who comes under our notice is the founder of Tunbridge
Castle and town, Richard Fitz-Gilbert, a follower ofthe Conqueror.
Tunbridge was long a place of consequence, and its walls have
echoed to the clangour of many a martial and many a festive scene,
under the Badlesmeres and Cobhams, as well as the more legitimate
owners. Chepstow Castle (Fig. 908), on the beautiful Wye, rose
into existence at the same time, and descended from the same
family to the possession of the Plantagenets, Herberts, and Somer
sets. And 'a noble ruin Chepstow forms, and finely harmonizes
with one of the finest of scenes ; nestling in foliage above the ro
mantic cliff whose shadow slumbers on the stream. The Fitzwalters,
a branch of the same family, possessed Old Baynard's Castle,
London, founded by Baynard, one of the Conqueror's bold adhe
rents, on the Thames, conspicuous among the martial residences
of Old London until its destruction by fire in 1428. The Fitz
walters claimed to be Chatellans and chief standard-bearers of
London. In 1214, Robert Fitzwalter held a conspicuous post of
honour as general of " the army of God and the Holy Church ;"
by which the great charter, on which our national liberties were
founded, was extorted from John. His daughter, " the fair maid of
Essex," had attracted the notice of the licentious king, whose base
passions led to his demolition of her father's castle, one of the
causes which induced the citizens of London to think it time to arm
for the protection of their households, as well as for national
liberty. Gilbert Strongbow, son of Gilbert de Clare, was made
Earl of Pembroke by King Stephen. Pembroke Castle (Fig. 838)
was given to the family of De Valence by Henry III. We find
Aymer de Valence, Earl of Pembroke, one of Edward I.'s most
efficient generals against the Scottish king, Robert Bruce. The
situation of the fortress is the extremity of a' rocky promontory ; its
style, Norman mixed with early Gothic. The Norman family of
Umfranville received from William the Conqueror the ancient
Northumbrian castle of Prudhoe, deriving its appellation from the
proud eminence it occupied, and keeping guard over a dangerous
border district inhabited by a fierce and unsettled people. Many of
the TJmfranvilles seem to have distinguished themselves in opposing
the incursions of the Scotch. Odonel in U74 gallantly defended
Prudhoe against the Scottish King William. He had the character
of an oppressive lord to his poorer neighbours. Gilbert, who died
in 1245, is called by Matthew Paris " a famous baron, the flower
and keeper of the northern parts." But they were not always
on the side of England. Three Umfranvilles were Earls of Angus.
It was one of them who so honourably distinguished himself as a
Scotchman, by his integrity and spirit when Scotland succumbed the
first time to the encroachments of the English on its independence.
The last Umfranville of any note was Vice- Admiral of England in
1410 ; Robin Mend-Market he was facetiously styled, after bringing
from a Scotch war large spoils of cloth and corn : he died at Bonjie in
Anjou. The Tailboys, and then the Percies, have since succeeded to
the possession of Prudhoe. Having alluded to the wars in Scotland
and the border, we may next refer to the great Scottish family of
Douglas, whose history blends itself with that of the majestic relic
of Tantallon Castle, East Lothian (engraved in Fig. 850), until all
traces of both are lost in the uncertain haze of the far past. The
surges of the German Ocean beat in vain against that rock, which
stands out among them as if proud of its burden, though it is but
a ruin j and the stormy blasts are weary with trying to overthrow

that range of solid wall, which has defied alike wars and the elements
through unnumbered centuries, and still lifts its shattered front
and mournful-looking tower to tell of the Douglas and his deeds.
The might of the family was bound up in that of the castle, and its
overthrow, according to the old Scottish proverb, was [read] as im
possible a thing as " To ding down Tantallon and make a bridge to
the Bass" (a celebrated rock, two miles distant from Tantallon, out
at sea). Among the many famous Douglases, one was the firm sup"
porter of Bruce in his worst adversities, and the commander of the
centre of the Scottish van at Bannockburn; who died fighting with
the Saracens as he was bearing the heart of his royal master to the
Holy Land. He is called " the good Sir James," but that his good
ness was after the fashion of other heroes of that age, and did not
exclude ferocity and cruelty, we have a notable instance in the tra
dition ofthe Douglas border, still current in the vicinity of Dougla8
Castle, and mentioned by Scott in ' Castle Dangerous.' After
recovering his castle from the English, Douglas mercilessly slew
all his prisoners, and burned them on a heap of malt, corn, and
wine-casks, and all else that he could find in the castle that he was
not able to carry away. The rivalry of this great border family with
the Percies, also Borderers, led to the remarkable contest called, in
song, the Battle of Chevy Chase, fought on the 15th of August,
1388 (Fig. 845). Percy vowed he would take his pleasure in the
border woods three days, and slay the Douglas deer. Earl Douglas
heard of the rash vaunt : " Tell him," said he, " he will find one
day more than enough." Percy's aim was the armed encounter
thus promised. We see him at Chevy Chase with his greyhounds
and fifteen hundred chosen archers. After taking his sport at the
Douglas' expense, gazing on a hundred dead fallow-deer and harts,
tasting wine and venison cooked under the greenwood tree, and
saying the Douglas had not kept his word, when
Lo, yonder doth Earl Douglas come,
His men in armour bright,
Full twenty hundred Scottish spears
All marching in our sight,
All men of pleasant Tiviot-dale,
Fast by the river Tweed.
"O cease your sport," Earl Percy said,
" And take your bows with speed." $
Soon after this The battle closed on every side,
No slackness there was found,
And many a gallant gentleman
Lay gasping on the ground.
The mail-clad leaders combated hand to hand, until the blood
dropped from them like rain. " Yield thee, Percy," cried Douglas.
" I shall freely pay thy ransom, and thy advancement shall be high
with our Scottish king."
" No, Douglas," quoth Earl Percy then,
" Thy proffer I do scorn ;
I would not yield to any Scot
That ever yet was born."
Almost immediately he dropped, struck to the heart by an arrow.
" Fight on, my merry men," cried he with his dying breath. Percy
took his hand : " Earl Douglas, I would give all my lands to save
thee." These were his last words. He was slain; and with these true
essences of chivalry, fell the flower of Border Knighthood, Scotch and
English, and squires and grooms, as ardent to fight and as fearless to
die as their renowned masters. There does not seem to have been a
spark of hate or malice in a fight one of the most desperate and
sanguinary ever recorded ; it was only to decide which name — Percy
or Douglas— should blaze the brightest in the rolls of chivalry, and
to add another jewel to one or other of the glittering wreaths ¦ of
martial victories that bound the brows of the rival nations. The
result pleased the pride and touched the best feelings of both houses—
both nations ; and all the more, because, though the Scots had the
best at the last, the struggle was in fact pretty equally balanced,
for they had the superiority of numbers. The same intense and
wide-spread love of war displayed at Chevy Chase animated other
neighbours of England beside the Scotch, and prompted all to be
forward, like Percy, at aggression, in order to stimulate to arms.
Hence the fortifications whose remains meet our view in every old
English town, and more especially those exposed to attacks from
the sea, such as the Strand Gate, Winchelsea (Fig. 914), for which
town Edward I. designed great things, as one of the Cinque Ports ;
but the sea proved stronger than the monarch, and as Old Winchel
sea had quietly submitted to be submerged, so Edward's Winchelsea
yielded gradually to sand and water; amidst which it has long resigned
all flattering dreams of importance, aud dwindled to little better
6 2K2

966.— Capital.

971.— Dripstone Termination.

•fhDgli,,.

i

972.— Western Doorway.

973.— Dripstone Termination.

967.— Base, No

968.— Capital, Chapter-House.

969.— Base, Chapter-House.

977.— Bracket, Chapter-House.
252

9G5.— tichfield. General View.

973,-Finial.

970.— Bracket.

974'.— -From tbe Door, Chapter-House.

975.— Western Doorway.

976.— Dripstone Termination.

980— Crotchet.

979.— Capital.

« rain
981.— Bracket, Chapter-House.

983.— Interior of Wells Cathedral.

98?.— West Front ofthe Cathedral of Wells.

985.— Capital, Wells.

989.— Bo3S.

987.— Bracket.

984.— West Front of Bath Abbey-Church.

254

OLD ENGLAND.

[Book III.

than a village, though the villagers now and then may be excused
for dwelling on those days when two or four hundred ships, ac
cording to some doubtfnl records, rode at ease in the harbour.
The invasions of the French caused Southampton to be fortified
under Edward III. and Richard II. The two valiant lions on the
large and fine gate (Fig. 91 8) anciently adorned a bridge which
crossed a ditch before the gate, but ditch and gate are among the
things that were. Athlone (Fig. 848), a town on what was almost
the only high road from Dublin to the wild retreats of the
Connaught province, from which independence was not finally
wrested before 1590, was in consequence carefully fortified to
interrupt fugitives, and serve as a guard over that dangerous
district. Dunluce Castle (Fig. 847) is one of many ruins along the
extensive coast of Antrim, in the province of Ulster, whose histo
ries are almost wholly wrapped in oblivion. A powerful chief, under
the Earl of Ulster, seems to have held it about the time of Edward
Bruce's ambitious attempts at sovereignty in Ireland, when he was
actually made King of Ulster. The Despensers, ruined by the
fatal fondness of their weak king Edward II., possessed Caerphilly
Castle, a place of very remote antiquity, whose ruins, situate in a
deep valley, are among the most extensive and grand that Britain
can boast. The Leaning Tower (Fig. 909) is but a fragment, held
together entirely by the strength of the cement, being eleven and a
half feet out of the perpendicular ; — a singular appearance, ex
plained by the tradition that the tower was blown up when the
Despensers were besieged by the barons. The Welsh proverb, " It
is gone to Caerphilly," signifying a direction something the reverse
of good, does not speak much for the character of the lords of this
place in the old days. To the family of our first religious martyr
among the English nobility, Lord Cobham, Cowling Castle, in
Kent, is to be ascribed. The bold and handsome gateway (where
the groove of the portcullis is still distinct), and the ivy-clad tower,
seen in Fig. 911, add picturesque n ess to the tranquil farm, with its
orchard and garden, that now occupy the demesne ; they are nearly
all that are left standing of John de Cobham's massive square
edifice, raised in the reign of Eichard II., with its moat and
flanking towers, and on a part of which the following inscription
was set up : — Knoweth that beth, and shall be
That I am mad in help of the contre,
For knowing of which thyng
This is chartre and wytuessing.
Arundel Castle (Fig. 926) has for many centuries enjoyed a
privilege given to no other residence in the kingdom, that of
conveying the title of Earl to its possessor without creation.
From the Albinis and Fitzalans it passed by marriage to the
Howards under Elizabeth. Some venerable walls of the ancient
castle have been preserved, and the keep is converted to a singular
use, it is a cage for owls, sent from North America to the possessor
of the modern magnificent residence. Two Fitzalans perished by
the axe : Edmund, at Hereford, for arming against Edward II. and
the Despensers ; and Richard Fitzalan, in King Richard 11.'^ actual
presence, according to Froissart, for conspiring against him here,
with many others of the high nobility. The people of England
mourned for this last earl as a martyr, for he was one of the few
nobles who stood out for tlieir liberties. Arundel's death was one
of the last and most odious of Richard's multiplied tyrannies. It is
said the shade ofthe injured earl, covered with blood, and reproach
ing him for his injustice, often " revisited the glimpses of the
moon " in Richard's dreams. Not many months after, the earl's
brother, Thomas, Archbishop of Canterbury, banished in the same
cause, set the crown of Richard on Bolingbroke's head. Of course
the Arundels found favour with the new king. We find the earl's
second son, John Fitzalan, had leave from him to embattle his
manor-house at Betchworth (Fig. 928) : the present old mansion
stands on the castle site. The Lancasters finish our sketch of
the barons of the fourteenth century. A few fragments on a breezy

eminence are all that is left of their once regal Castle of Tutbury
(Fig. 912). Here the second earl and his men made his memo
rable escape over the river Dove, while Edward II.'s troops were
forcing their entrance at the gates. A vast sum of money, that he
had been long amassing for the civil war, was secured in a chest
intrusted to Leicester, and lost amid the hurry of that dismal night.
Not till 1831 was the treasure discovered. The reader will find an
account of this interesting event in No. 166 ofthe ' Penny Magazine.'
Fig. 913 represents the singular manner in which the coins were
found imbedded in the hardened soil, to which they almost seemed to
have grown. The famous John of Gaunt held the earldom of
Derby, of which Castleton Castle (Fig. 910), built by Peverii of the
Peak, a natural son of the Conqueror, formed a part. This place
has been already spoken of in a previous part of our work. Gaunt
possessed also the Honor of Hertford, and at Hertford Castle (Fig.
916) he and the rest ofthe chivalric family of Edward III. paid many
generous attentions to the French King John, their guestand prisoner.
The London palace of Gaunt, the Savoy (Figs. 897, 924), was John's
assigned residence. Here, we are told, every effort was made to
make him forget that he was a captive, but this was impossible ;
when he was entreated to lay aside his melancholy, and derive con
solation from cheerful thoughts, John smiled mournfully, and
answered in the words of the sweet Psalmist of Israel, " How shall
we sing in a strange land?" The dukedom' of Lancaster, as held
by Gaunt, was a sort of petty kingdom, of which the town of
Lancaster (Fig. 844) was the capital. This prince was extremely
unpopular with the English Commons, who, under Wat Tyler,
burned his palace of the Savoy, and would have taken his life could
they have found him. To show that plunder was not their object,
they proclaimed death to all who should take or secrete anything
found in the palace. But among the destruction of so much plate,
gold, and jewels, it was hardly wonderful one man's integrity should
fail him. The theft of a silver cup did not pass unobserved, and
the stern rebels, to vindicate the purity of their motives, flung the
culprit with the cup into the flames, or, as some chroniclers say,
into the Thames, saying, " We be zealous of truth and justice, and
not thieves or robbers." In the last century the Savoy (Fig. 924)
served in part " as lodgings for private people, for barracks, and. a
scandalous infectious prison for the soldiery and for transports."
But all this has ceased some time. In the great insurrection just
mentioned, perished, on Tower Hill, Simon de Sudbury, son of
Nicholas Tibald, gentleman, of Sudbury, in Suffolk. He was eighteen
years Bishop of London, and, on being elevated to the Archbishopric
of Canterbury, rebuilt the walls and west gate (Fig. 921). In
Stow's Annals we have an appalling account of his death : — " Being
compassed about with many thousands, and seeing swords about his
head drawn in excessive number, threatening to him death, he said
unto them thus : ' What is it, dear brethren, you purpose to do ?
What is mine offence committed against you, for which ye will kill
me ? You were best to take heed, that if I be killed, who am your
pastor, there come not on you the indignation of the just Revenger,
or at the least, for such a fact, all England be put under interdic
tion.' He could unneath pronounce these words before they cried
out with a horrible noise, that they neither feared the interdiction
nor the Pope to be above them. The Archbishop, seeing death at
hand, spake with comfortable words, as he was an eloquent man,
and wise beyond all wise men of the realm ; lastly, after forgiveness
granted to the executioner that should behead him, he kneeling
down offered his neck to him that should strike it off; being stricken
in the neck, but not deadly, he, putting his hand to his neck, said
thus: < Aha ! it is the hand of God.' He had not removed his band
from the place where the pain was, but that being suddenly stricken,
his finger ends being cut off, and part ofthe arteries, he fell down ;
but yet he died not, till, being mangled with eight strokes in the
neck and in the head, he fulfilled a most worthy martyrdom." His
body lay unburied till the next afternoon, and then his head was set
up on London Bridge.

Chap. II.]

OLD ENGLAND.

255

CHAPTER II.— ECCLESIASTICAL ANTIQUITIES.

UR cathedrals will now again demand
attention, and in resuming the series
of the preceding period, we shall com
mence with that of Salisbury, the re
cords of which are unusually full and
particular. The bishopric of Salis
bury was created by the union of
the sees of Wilton and Sherbourne,
which was done by order of Lanfranc,
Archbishop of Canterbury, in 1075.
The seat of the bishop was fixed at
Old Sarum (of which we have already spoken, p. 6), and there a
cathedral was built. Old Sarum, however, was a fortified town,
and the priests and the soldiers soon began to quarrel, and though
for awhile by the authority of their superiors kept in check, during
the troublous times of Richard I. their enmity broke out into open
contest. In the ' Chronicles' of Holinshed we have a piquant
account of the matter. " In the time of the civil wars," he tells
us, "the soldiers of the castle and canons of Old Sarum fell at
odds, insomuch that after often brawls they fell at last to sad blows.
It happened therefore, in a Rogation week, that, the clergy going
in a solemn procession, a controversy fell between them about
certain walks and limits, which the one side claimed and the other
denied. Such also was the hot entertainment on each part, that at
last the castellans, espying their time, got between the clergy
and the town, and so coiled them as they returned homeward, that
they feared any more to gang about their bounds for the year."
This occurred whilst Herbert Poore (or Pauper) was bishop ; and he,
anxious to avoid a recurrence of such uncomely doings, and being,
notwithstanding his name, a wealthy man, petitioned the king to be
permitted to remove his see to a more convenient place. To this
Richard readily assented ; but the removal did not take place, the
bishop prudently recalculating the expenses attending such a step,
and determining, on second thoughts, that they were beyond his
ability to bear.
Herbert died in 1217, and was succeeded by his brother Richard
Poore, a man of lofty purpose and resolute character. His first
care was to carry out the object his brother had failed to accom
plish. Determined not to submit to military control, and to
remove the scandal of the continued strife between the canons and
castellans, he took such measures as soon caused all difficulties to
melt as snow. He applied first to Gualo, the Legate of the Pope,
then in England, and having obtained letters from him in support
of his application, he despatched special messengers to Rome to
obtain the sanction of the Pontiff to the removal of the cathedral
and its officers. His holiness, Pope Honorius, having first made
due inquiries into the propriety of such removal, acceded to it, and
issued his Bull accordingly.
So far all was well, but all was not done yet. Our bishop had
resolved on raising no common structure, and no ordinary sum was
needed for the purpose. His first step was to call a chapter, and
having explained his intentions, he induced each canon and vicar —
himself setting the example — to bind himself to appropriate one-
fourth of his income, for seven years successively, towards defraying
the expenses of the new structure. A contract or obligation was
accordingly drawn up in regular form — for the bishop evidently
knew his men — and signed and sealed by each in due order on " the
day of Saints Processus and Martinianus," 1218. The next thing
±0 be done was to fix on an eligible site ; and here the bishop was,
it is said, miraculously aided. He had long pondered where it
should be, when, as he lay on his bed one night thinking of the
matter, the Virgin appeared to him in a vision and told him to
build it in Merry-field. Where this field was, however, he was not
told, and none of his canons knew. But it happened that as he
passed by some soldiers who were trying their bows, he overheard
one of them wager that he could shoot his bolt into Merry-field.
"And where may that be?" said our delighted prelate. Of course
he was speedily informed, and in Merry-field he fixed his mark ;

erecting immediately a temporary wooden chapel there. He now
set about collecting money in all quarters, with a tact and success
that could hardly be surpassed in our own day. He sent preachers
and deputations everywhere, to collect from the religious part of the
community, as we do now ; and though he had not fancy-fairs or
bazaars in which to sell pretty toys, he issued what found then
more ready purchasers — pardons and indulgences for all who should
contribute to the good work. And he found plenteous help. The
king, Henry III., as we shall see, granted a charter, the nobles
sent rich gifts, and the poor gave of their poverty— many of them
giving also their labour freely.
All being thus ready, Richard proceeded to commence his
cathedral. He has left us a record of every step of his progress ;
having commanded his Dean, William de Wanda, to draw up a
chronicle thereof. The ceremony of laying the foundation was a
gorgeous one. The young king, and all the principal nobility and
clergy of the realm, were invited, and everything that could add
dignity or splendour to the solemnity was provided. . Henry, indeed,
was absent, being engaged negotiating a treaty with the Welsh at
Shrewsbury ; but there was a large assemblage of lords and pre
lates, and a huge multitude of people collected in Merrifield on the
day of St. Vitalis the Martyr (April 28), 1220, to witness and aid
in commencing a structure that they hoped should be not unworthy
of Him whose presence filleth the earth. The bishop, first having
performed divine service in the wooden building he had raised, —
reverently put off his shoes, and, accompanied by all the clergy
chanting the Litany, proceeded in procession to the place of foun
dation. He then, consecrated the ground, solemnly dedicating it
for ever to the service of the Holiest. He next turned to the people,
and addressed them in a suitable sermon. Then taking in his hands
the necessary instruments, he proceeded to lay the first stone for Pope
Honorius, the second for the Archbishop of Canterbury, and the
third for himself; William Longspge, Earl of Salisbury, who was
present, then laid the fourth stone, and his wife, Elai de Yitri,
Countess of Salisbury, laid the fifth. Certain noblemen added each
a stone after her ; and then the several officers of the cathedral did
the same. The people shouting and weeping for joy, and all " con
tributing thereto their alms with a ready mind, according to the
ability which God had given them." We have followed the account
given by De Wanda, but there is a difference in that of Bishop
Godwin, according to which Pandulph, the Pope's Legate, laid the
fl-ve stones; the first for the Pope, the second for the king, the
third for the Earl of Salisbury, the fourth for the countess, and
the fifth for the bishop.
The bishop and his canons appear to have left Old Sarum soon
after the foundation of the new cathedral was laid ; and the people
of the old town left with them. Indeed, there was little to bind
them to the old place, for the wealthier sort had suffered like
inconveniences and oppression from the military with the canons,
and the poorer, says Harrison, feared to lose their " bellie-cheere
(for they were woont to have banketing at everie station, a thing
commonly practised by the religious of old, wherewith to link in
the commons unto them, whom any man may lead whether he will
by the bellie ; or, as Latimer said, with beefe, bread, and beere").
Richard, careful to provide for the people, or for the importance of
his office, procured from the king a charter creating New Sarum a
cathedral city, with all the privileges and immunities for the
citizens that they possessed in the old city, and that belonged to
other cathedral towns. Holinshed has thus recorded this removal
in his 'Chronicle,' a.d. 1221, vol. ii. p. 202, ed. 1587:—
"This year the priests or canons that inhabited within the
king's castle of Old Salisbury removed with the bishop's see unto
New Salisbury, which by the king was made a city. The bishop
Richard procured this removing through the king's help, who was
very willing thereunto, as it seemed by his charters largely granted
in that behalf."
One who had proceeded thus far so vigorously in his work was
not likely to stop short now everything was advancing so favour-

995.— Recesses, Peterborough.

;. Ancient West Window of Hereford Cathedral.
999. Modern ditto.

1003.— Hereford Cathedral.

1006. — Chichester. Carving on the Flo
.of the Presbytery. The inscription is,
" Ici gist le couer Maud de."

1004, 1005,— Rosettes on the Tomb of Bishop de la Wich,

1003.— Chichester Cathedral.

1007.— Carlisle Cathedral.

OQ

[OLD ENGLAND.]

257

258

OLD ENGLAND.

[Book III.

ably. We find him, accordingly, issuing decrees which made those
canons who failed to contribute as they had agreed, liable to have
their corn seized from their prebendal acres, and sold for the amount
due. He set in motion also every contrivance his active mind could
devise to hasten oh the works, and so successfully, that in about
five years the church was deemed sufficiently forward for the per
formance of divine service. His dean, De Wanda, he now joyfully
directed to cite all the canons to be present on Michaelmas Day,
1225, when the cathedral would be solemnly opened. The noble
heart of Richard Poore doubtless glowed with devout thankful
ness, and perhaps something of honest pride, when he struck the
first stone of the building ; but how much more intensely must, it
now have beaten as he saw the pile, in all its beauty and complete
ness of proportions, stand thus far finished ! We may be sure that
it was with lofty feelings he gazed on this
Glorious work of fine intelligence,
and remembered that it was his work.
The solemnity at the opening of the cathedral was not less
splendid than that at its foundation. The service commenced on
the vigil of Michaelmas by the bishop, in the presence of the
Archbishops of Canterbury and of Dublin, consecrating three altars
in the cathedral : one, situated in the east, to the Trinity and All
Saints, for the continual performance of mass to the Blessed Virgin,
who had showed him so great favours ; another, in the north, to St.
Peter ; and the third, in the south, to St. Stephen, the proto-martyr,
and the rest of the martyrs. On the following day, Otto, the Pope's
Nuncio, the archbishops already named, many bishops, a large array
of the nobility and magnates of the land, and a great multitude of
people being assembled, Richard preached to them a sermon, and
then advancing into the church, whither as many as could followed,
he there solemnly celebrated divine service. On the Thursday
following, the youthful monarch, attended by the famous Hubert de
Burgh, his grand justiciary, went to the cathedral. The mass of
the glorious Virgin was there heard by the king, who then offered
at the altar ten marks of silver and one piece of silk ; and granted
to the church the privilege of a yearly fair of eight days' con
tinuance. The justiciary then made a vow that he would give a
golden Text (or Bible for the use of the altar) with precious stones,
and the relics of divers saints, in honour of the B.V.M., and for
the service of her church. Again, we are told, on the day of the
Holy Innocents 'the sovereign and his justiciary visited Salisbury
Cathedral and heard mass there. On this occasion "the king
offered one gold ring with a precious stone, called a ruby, one
piece of silk, and one gold cup the weight of ten gold marks.
When the mass was concluded, he told the dean that he would
have the stone which he had offered, and the gold of the ring,
applied to adorn the Text which the justiciary had given ; but as to
the cup he gave no particular directions. The justiciary caused
the Text which he had before given to be brought, and offered it
with great devotion on the altar. They then all repaired to the
bishop's house, 'where they were honourably entertained." To
complete all, we learn that "in the year 1226, on the Feast of
Trinity, which was then on the 18th of the calends of July, the
bodies of three bishops were translated from the castle of Sarum to
the new fabric, viz., the body of the blessed Osmund, the body of
Bishop Roger, and the body of Bishop Joceline."
We have dwelt at some length on the proceedings connected
with the foundation and opening of Salisbury Cathedral, because it
is not often that we can so minutely follow them in contemporary
narrative as in this instance, and because it is interesting to be able
to trace a series of ceremonies, no doubt much like tliose on similar
occasions, of which we have no authentic accounts. Our sketch is
however, but a slight and hasty one, compared with the elaborate
picture from which we have drawn it. Our notice of the further
progress of the building to its completion may be much more brief.
Although thus opened for divine service, the building was not
finished : Richard was in 1229 translated to the wealthier see of Dur
ham, and the works which he had carried forward so zealously appear
to have proceeded much more slowly under his successor, for at his
death in 1246 the church was still unfinished. It was, however
continued by the next bishop, William de York, and completed by
Giles de Bridport in 1258. On the 28th of September in that
year it was accordingly "fully dedicated," in the presence of
Boniface, Archbishop of Canterbury, and a large assemblage of
prelates, peers, and people. Thus, then, the church was com
pleted in thirty-eight years, at an expense of 40,000 marks, or
26,666/. 13a. M. sterling. But although the church was completed
at that time, the upper part of the tower and the spire, with part of
the chapter-h6me, were not erected till a somewhat later period-

They were supposed to have been added by De Wyville, Bishop of
Salisbury, to whom there is in existence a grant by Edward III.
of " all the stone walls of the former cathedral church of Old
Sarum, and the houses which lately belonged to the bishop and
canons of the said church, within our castle of Old Sarum, to have
and to hold, as our gift for the improvement of the church of New
Sarum, and the close thereunto belonging:."
The cathedral whose erection we have thus somewhat closely
followed stands pre-eminent among ^English ecclesiastical edifices
for the symmetry of its proportions, the harmonious adjustment of
its various parts, the elaborate richness of its members, and the
grandeur of the whole. (Pig. 932.) A building of more chaste
splendour, or more nearly approaching perfection, is scarcely within
reach of the imagination. Fortunately, too, it is situated in an open
space where the full effect of its stately dimensions may be readily
seen. The north-west view (Fig. 929) exhibits it to great advantage ;
but to be fully appreciated it must be seen under every combination
of light and shadow, and from every point of view. When illumi
nated by the splendour of a summer moon its appearance is remark
ably solemn. The broad masses of shadow, the strange streaming
light that flickers over the Gothic tracery, the lofty spire assuming
then a loftier and more unearthly aspect, and the deep quiet around,
impress the mind with a feeling almost of awe. Then would the
tones of the midnight mass be felt as only accordant with the grave
sentiments that have been aroused. But at whatever time it be
seen, the visitor will be ready to exclaim with the poet —
They dreamt not of a perishable home
"Who thus could build.
Lest it should be thought that we too highly praise our cathedral,
we will quote the opinion of one concerning it who seldom errs in
warmth of expression, and whose judgment will be readily acknow
ledged. Rickman says, " This edifice has the advantage of being
built in one style, the Early English, and from an uniform and well-
arranged plan. ... On the whole this cathedral presents an ob
ject for study hardly equalled by any in the kingdom ; the purity
of its style, and the various modes of adapting that style to the
purposes required, deserve the most attentive consideration." But
we must give a somewhat more particular account of the building.
It consists " internally of a nave, with two lateral aisles ; a large
transept, with an eastern aisle branching off from the tower ; a
smaller transept with an aisle east of the former ; a choir with lateral
aisles ; a space east of the choir, and a Lady-chapel at the east end.
On the north side of the church is a large porch, with a room over
it ; and rising from the intersection of the transept with. the nave is
a lofty tower and' spire. South of the church is a square cloister,
with a library over half of the eastern side ; a chapter-house ; a
consistory court ; and an octangular apartment called the muniment-
room." The preceding extract is from Britton's ' History of Salis
bury Cathedral,' from which work we also take the following prin
cipal dimensions. Extreme length 474 feet; interior 450 feet.
Widths. West front externally, 112 feet, and 217 more to the
southern extremity of the cloister wall ; great transept externally,
230 feet ; interior of nave 34 feet, and with aisles 78 feet ; great
transept, N. to S. 206 feet; width of ditto with aisle, 57: small
transept N. to S. 145 feet ; width 44 feet : width of choir and aisles,
78 feet; of Lady-chapel, 37 feet. The heights of the vaulting of
the nave, choir, aud transepts, 81 feet ; of the aisles and Lady-chapel
40 : externally, parapet 87 feet ; point of roof 115 feet ; parapet of
tower 207 feet ; and summit of spire 404 feet. The cloister forms
a square of 181 feet within the walls, and is 18 feet wide between
the side walls and windows; the height of the vaulting is 18 feet.
The chapter-house is 58 feet in diameter, internally, and 52 feet
high to the vaulting.
We have spoken of the general effect of the edifice; in looking
at its parts we may remark, that while the west front has been
objected to as having an air of stiffness— of which, however, we took
no account when before it— the eastern end has been uniformly
admired for its lightness and grace, and for the elegance of its
arrangement. The whole of the exterior is singularly beautiful.
The windows— of which there is a popular saying that they are as
many as there are days in the year— are handsome specimens of
the Early English or Pointed style ; and the north porch is rich and
picturesque. But the most striking feature is the spire. The
architect is said to have been desirous to carry his spire higher than
any other in England ; and he did so. It is much taller than any
in this country, though not so high as those of Strasburgh and
Mechlin. It rises from a tower constructed, at least the two upper
stones, as we have said, at a more recent period than the body of
the church. He must have been a daring man who determined on

Chap. II.]

OLD ENGLAND.

259

such a work ! but he was a wise one too : he knew that it was not
enough to dare greatly. He set 'about his work in the same spirit
as he had conceived it. He laid down 387 feet of new foundation,
strengthened the tower internally and externally by flying buttresses,
and, as Price informs us, added to it 116 additional supports,
exclusive of bands of iron. But with all his care it was seen, soon
after the capstone was laid, that a slight settlement had taken place
on the west side : this, however, has never increased. From the
same authority we learn that its declination is as follows : — At the
top of the parapet of the tower, the wall declines 9 inches to the S.
and 3| to the W., whilst at the capstone of the spire the declen
sion is 24$ in. to the S. and 16i to the W. Britton does not
think the spire beautiful ; but we take leave to differ from him.
The chapter-house (Fig. 931) is an interesting building. Inter
nally it is very beautiful and highly enriched ; there are some
finely-carved capitals and some sculpture above the arches ; over
the capitals is a series of seven curious bracket-heads, one of them
appearing to be a representation of the Trinity ; beneath the arches
there were formerly circular paintings ; it is lighted by eight win
dows of remarkably beautiful form, and once filled with stained
glass ; the floor is formed of glazed tiles, and no doubt the whole
was originally highly embellished. A plinth and stone seat is car
ried round the interior wall, and this is elevated at one end of the
room a step higher than elsewhere, and divided into seven com
partments, which were originally intended for the bishop and his
dignitaries ; whilst the other niches, of which there are thirty, were
intended for the canons ; and one seat on each side the door was
for the chancellor and treasurer. The cloister occupies a square
area on the south side of the nave, and extends from the transept to
the west end. It is separated from the church by an open space
called the Plumbery, and consists of a continued arcade, with a wall
on one side and a series of openings on the other. The interior
of the cathedral is less ornate than that of some others ; it is marked
by simplicity and harmony of proportions, and is light and elegant
in appearance. The effect is much injured by the organ, which,
with its ungainly screen (a modern excrescence), effectually breaks
the vista of lofty arches. The choir (Fig. 930) is grand and
imposing. The nave, which is lofty and narrow, has ten arches on
each side, supported by clustered columns ; over these are two other
series, the upper division, called the clerestory, having a succession
of glazed windows of three lights each. The Lady-chapel is a
beautiful room with a vaulted ceiling supported by slender pillars
of Purbeck marble. In the north transept is a curious lavatory _
There are a great many fine monuments, especially those of Bishops
Bridport and Metford, and the elaborate chantry-chapel to Bishop
Audley : there are other ancient monuments interesting for their
costumes ; with many modern ones by Rysbrach, Bacon, Flaxman,
and Chantrey, with one to Sir Colt Hoare, Historian of Wiltshire,
by Joseph — which, though not remarkable in any other respect, is
said to be an admirable likeness. But there is one monument of
quite a unique character — to a chorister,' or boy-bishop. (Fig. 1026.)
It was discovered in the prelacy of Bishop Duppa, under the seats
near the pulpit, and is now placed in the nave. The Rev. J. Gre-
gorie, a prebend of Salisbury at the time, wrote a dissertation on the
subject of boy-bishops, from which it appears that it was the custom of
the choristers to elect on the day of St. Nicholas one of their num
ber to be bishop ; and he was not only clothed in episcopal robes and
put on a mitre, and carried a crozier, but performed all the func
tions of a bishop, from the day of his election, the 6th of December,
till the 28th, being Innocents' day. The details he gives are very
curious, but we have not space for them here ; we merely add that
this is supposed to be a monument raised to one who died during
the possession of his brief authority. The organ-screen, as we
mentioned, is modern ; it was erected by Mr. Wyatt : the organ
is the gift of George III. There are several stained windows,
some modern ; one is from a design by Sir Joshua Reynolds, another
from one by Mortimer.
We have very little to add to the history of the cathedral. The
Commonwealth soldiers were quartered in it, and, as in most other
of our ecclesiastical edifices, committed great devastation. Seth
Ward, who had expended twenty-five thousand pounds on the repa
ration of Exeter Cathedral, on his translation to the see of Salisbury
immediately set about repairing its cathedral and palace at his own
expense, and employed Sir Christopher Wren to survey the edifice.
More recently it has been repaired under the direction of Mr.
Wyatt, some of whose alterations are in very questionable taste.
Among the eminent men who have held the bishopric we may name
Cardinal Campeggio, the papal Legate, so well known for his con
nection with the trial of Catherine of Arragon. When Wolsey was
disgraced, Campeggio was dispossessed of his see by the angry

monarch ; Jewell, the Reformer ; Duppa, the friend of Charles I. ;
Gilbert Burnet, whose amusing ' History of his Own Times ' affords
so much curious information respecting an important period in the
history of our country ; Hoadly, and Sherlock.

The origin of the see of York belongs to the earliest successful
introduction of Christianity into our island. Among the forty
companions of Augustine was one
' of shoulders curved and stature tall,
Black hair, and vivid eye, and meagre cheek,
His prominent feature like an eagle's beak ;
A man whose aspect doth at once appal
And strike with reverence.
This monk, whom our ecclesiastical poet, closely following the
prose of his venerable predecessor, thus describes in sonorous verse,
was named Paulinus. As soon as his great leader had gained firm
footing among the men of Kent, having succeeded in converting
the king and his court, with a large number of the people, Paulinus,
being full of zeal for the propagation of the faith, resolved to
attempt the conversion of Edwin, the Saxon king of Northumbria,
and Bretwalda, or leader of the Britons, who held his court at
Eboracum, the York of these recent times. The fervour of
Paulinus soon wrought on the heart of that monarch ; but though
he yielded a mental assent, he resolved to call a meeting of .his
councillors to deliberately consider the matter, before he openly
declared himself a convert. The proceedings of the Council, which
terminated in a resolution to adopt the Christian religion, are fully
related by Bede, whose account of the breaking-up of the Council
is worth quoting — the translation is Wordsworth's : — " Who, ex
claimed the king, when the Council was ended, shall first desecrate
the altars and the temples ? I, answered the Chief Priest, for who
more fit than myself, through the wisdom which the true God hath
given me, to destroy, for the good example of others, what in fool
ishness I worshipped ? Immediately, casting away vain superstition,
he besought the king to grant him, what the laws did not allow to
a priest, arms and a courser ; which mounting, and furnished with
a sword and a lance, he proceeded to destroy the idols. The crowd
seeing [this, thought him mad — he, however, halted not ; but, ap
proaching, he profaned the temple, casting against it the lance
which he had held in his hand, and, exulting in acknowledgment of
the worship of the true God, he ordered his companions to pull
down the ktemple with all its enclosures." Edwin was baptized,
with his two sons, Coiffa the priest, and the chief of his nobles, in a
little wooden oratory that had been hastily constructed. But soon
the monarch, anxious to erect a building more suitable to His}
worship whom he now served, and stimulated, as some say, by the
persuasions of Paulinus, laid the foundation of a noble church of
stone, enclosing in it the wooded oratory in which he had been
baptized — on the site of this building stands the present magnificent.
York Minster. Paulinus, after awhile, received from Rome th&
title of Archbishop of York, and with it the pallium, that vestment
which, after being consecrated by the sovereign pontiff, and applied
to the tomb of St. Peter, is sent only to metropolitan bishops i
Augustine had before received it as Archbishop of Canterbury.
Edwin was slain before the edifice he had commenced was brought
to a conclusion ; it was finished by his successor Oswald. Those
were troublous times, and Paulinus was compelled to fly into Kent,
where lie died. York was now left for thirty years without a bishop
 Christianity was repressed, and the church fell into ruins. St.
Wilfred, towards the close of the seventh century, restored it, but it
was finally destroyed by fire in the year 741. About thirty years
afterwards a new church, and, as is plain from contemporary me
morials, a far more splended one, was begun and completed by the
Archbishop Albert. This edifice met with a similar fate to the
one it had replaced, being destroyed in a conflagration that consumed
a great part of the city, in the early part of the reign of William
the Conqueror. A small portion of the crypt of this Saxon church,
comprising also, as is thought, a part of the structure raised by
Edwin, has been recently discovered beneath the choir of the present
Minster, in the course of the excavations rendered necessary by
the fire in 1829. Archbishop Thomas, who was appointed to the
see in 1070, rebuilt the church from its foundation ; but — with a
singular infelicity of fortune— it was again destroyed by fire in the
year 1137- It now lay for some time in ashes, although that Arch
bishop Thurston intended to rebuild it is clear from an Indulgence
(always the prime instrument in such matters) issued by Joceline,
Bishop of Salisbury, which states that " Whereas the Metropolitan
Church of York was consumed by a new fire and almost subverted,
destroyed, and miserably spoyled of its ornaments," he released all
such as bountifully contributed towards its re-edification from forty
2L2

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Iffl2.— St. Asaph's. '

iat3. — Landaff.

1014. -St. Davids.

1010.— Bangor.

260

to

1015. — Westminster Abbey. North Aisle, looking West,

101 (.—Shrine of Henry V., in Westminster Abbey.

262

OLD ENGLAND.

[Book III"

days of penance enjoined. But it was reserved for Archbishop
Roger, the study opponent of Thomas-i-Becket, to effect its resto
ration. Soon after Walter Grey succeeded to the archbishopric,
he commenced the present south transept, about the year 1 200 or
1225. This is the oldest part of the existing edifice ; from this
time we are able to trace its gradual progress. The north transept
is also believed to have been commenced by Walter Grey, but it
was completed, in the year 1260, by John le Romaine, treasurer of
the church. His son, John le Romaine, who had been appointed
Archbishop of York, laid the foundation ofthe nave in 1291, but
he did not live to complete it. Archbishop Melton carried on the
work with vigour, issuing indulgences to all who would aid, and,
what required more self-denial, subscribing seven hundred pounds
of his own money for the purpose. Other assistance was not
lacking. The Lords Vavasour and Percy of Bolton contributed,
the one stone from his quarries, and the other wood from his
grounds ; money was sent by some, and others gave their labour.
It was not, however, till about the year 1360 that the nave was
finished by Archbishop Thoresby. This prelate was one of the
most munificent contributors towards the erection of York Minster.
Besides completing the nave, he removed the choir which Arch
bishop Roger had built, and laid the first stone of the present choir
on the 29th of July, 1361, though it was many years before it was
finished. Archbishop Thoresby contributed of his own money one
thousand two hundred and sixty-seven pounds — a very large sum in
those days — besides the materials of his mansion at Shireburn,
towards building the choir. He was largely assisted by Pope
Innocent VI., who " granted indulgences of two years and two
quarters" to all who assisted in its erection. Urban V. also
granted an indulgence of one year (1366), and Urban VL gave to
the Dean and Chapter the revenues of the church of Misterton for
ten years for the same purpose. The central tower was probably
erected by John Skirraw, a prebendary of York, about the time of
the completion of the choir : the towers at the west end of the
cathedral were . erected by John de Bermingham, about the year
1402 ; his name, with the figure of a bear, was to be seen cut in bold
relief in the west face of the south tower till its destruction in the
last fire. The chapter-house, the finest building of its kind in
existence, is believed to have been commenced near the close of the
thirteenth century, and finished about fifty years afterwards.
The building whose gradual rise we have thus traced, although
wanting, of course, the uniformity of one constructed from a well-
arranged plan, is a magnificent, almost a sublime structure. Even
its irregularity is rather seen in the details than in the whole ; its
form being nearly regular, though its parts are somewhat discordant
in style. It is not fortunate in its situation, which is low and
confined, yet its mass and the grand scale on which every part is
constructed, render it an imposing object from whatever point it is
viewed. It is perhaps best seen as a whole from the Ramparts
(Fig. 951), although with the disadvantage of looking down upon
it— always the worst way of looking at an architectural object.
The West front (Fig. 950) is very grand ; the immensity of the
structure here appears very striking.* The several parts, too, are
singularly beautiful. The window is pronounced by an excellent
judge to be " an unrivalled specimen of the leafy tracery that
marks the style of the middle of the fourteenth century." The
lofty towers arising from the western aisles are uniform and very
graceful; they are terminated by pinnacles and supported by
huttresses, in every part highly enriched. Almost the whole of
this front is adorned with a profusion of sculpture and tracery.
Over the door is the figure of Archbishop Melton, with, on one side,
a statue of Lord Percy (mentioned above) holding a piece of un
hewn wood in his hand, and on the other a corresponding statue of
Lord Vavasour holding in his hand a rough block of stone, to
typify their benefactions to the church. The door is the only part
that will perhaps bear an objection at this end, and it certainly
appears too small as compared with the largeness of the other parts.
The south transept is a noble piece of workmanship. Attached to
it is a fine porch, over the entrance of which there used to be a
clock of the time of Henry VII., with wooden figures to strike the
hours, similar to those that formerly stood at St. Dunstan's Church
in Fleet Street, but they were removed with the clock some years
back. The central tower is a very noticeable feature, and is very
fine, but appears hardly high enough compared with those at the
western end, being only one hundred and ninety-eight feet high,
while they are two hundred and one feet to the top of the pinnacles
— it has been supposed that, it was intended to be crowned by a
lofty spire. The interior of the edifice, from the vastness of its
%.
* The entire length of the church externally is five hundred and nineteen feet,
the width of the west front above one hundred feet.

dimensions, and the internal length, is four hundred and eighty-three
feet, the simplicity of its lines and the subdued splendour of the
whole, produces a powerful impression on the mind, lessened some
what, it may be, by the recent appearance of so large a part of it
the roof of the nave and choir having been unfortunately destroyed
by the fires that occurred within our own memory. The cathedral
consists internally of a nave, choir, and Lady-chapel, each with its
two aisles ; north and south transepts, with two aisles, and a lantern
in the centre ; and a chapter-room, with a vestibule on the north
side. The choir is shown in Figs. 952 and 954. The transepts
at the north and south extremities are very dissimilar to each
other. The elevation of that on the north side presents five
tall and very beautiful windows, commonly known as " the five
sisters ;" above these are five other lancet windows of varied
heights. The south transept is neither so regular nor so
finished as' the other, though rather richer in the details.. The nave is
remarkably beautiful, and the aisles are unequalled for grandeur in
this kingdom ; they are as lofty as those at Westminster, but not so
narrow. The east window has an effect of surprising splendour as
it is seen from the interior. Drake, in his ' Eboracum,' says, " It
may justly be called the wonder of the world both for masonry and
glazing. It is very nearly the breadth and height of the middle
choir." By the scale affixed to his engraving of it, it is about <
seventy-eight feet high and thirty feet wide. It is divided into
compartments, each containing the representation of an historical
event ; in all about two hundred subjects are represented. " It was
begun to be glazed at the expense of the Dean and Chapter, anno
1405, who then contracted with John Thornton of Coventry,
glazier, to execute it. He was to receive for his own work four
shillings a week, and to finish the whole in three years. The in
denture further witnesses that he should have one hundred shillings
sterling, every of the three years, and if he did his work truly and
perfectly he was to receive ten pounds more for his care therein."
(' Ebor.,' 517.) There is a singularly elaborate and very interesting
screen that must just be noticed. It contains statues of the Kings
of England from William I. to Henry V., and also that of James I.,
which was placed in a vacant niche when he visited the Minster.
The chapter-house — which, as the Yorkists are accustomed to
boast, is among houses what the rose is among flowers* — is a noble
room of an octagonal form, its angular diameter being sixty feet,
and height of the central base from the floor sixty-two feet. The
roof is unsupported by any pillar. " Seven arched windows fill as
many of its sides ; the other is solid, with tracery on the walls to
answer the pattern on the windows. The whole circumference*
below the windows, except at the entrance, is occupied by fifty-four
canopied stalls of stone, for the canons who composed the chapter."
The canopies of these stalls afford early specimens of that beautiful
tabernacle-work, as we are accustomed to call it, which soon after-,
wards was more elaborately ornamented. The columns of the stalls
are of Petworth marble ; the lines of their canopies are not very
complex, but the sculpture is executed with great skill and spirit."
(Britton's York Cathedral.) The roof, which is simple and elegant,
is of wood, and was not long since adorned with paintings and
gilding. Over the door is a row of thirteen niches, formerly, it is
thought, filled with statues of the Saviour and his Apostles.
The monuments are numerous, but not so fine as in some other
cathedrals, while there is at least an equal number of absurd ones.
Drake observed this more than a century back. " For instance, in
our own church," he says, " who can bear to read a long dull en
comium on a child of six years old, where the author, some trencher
scholar to the family no doubt, shamefully dresses it up in the garb
and gravity of threescore ? Or refrain from laughter if you can,
when you are told by an old doating doctor of divinity, that his
wife, who he says died of her twenty-fourth child, stood death
like a soldier, and looked as lovely in her coffin as a youno-
blooming vigrin !" Some of the ancient monuments are, however
very beautiful. The most important is that of Archbishop Walter
Grey, who built the south transept, in which it is placed. It is a
splendid relic of the thirteenth century. It consists of two tiers of
trefoil arches, supported by eight [slender columns, with capitals of
luxuriant foliage, sustaining a canopy divided into eight niches,
with angular pediments and elaborate finials. On a flat tomb under
the canopy is an effigy of the archbishop in his pontifical robes.
There is also a fine monument of Archbishop Bowet of the early
,part of the reign of Henry VI. ; and others to Archbishops Rother-
ham, Savage, &c. A very beautiful recumbent statue of the youth
ful Prince William de Hatfield, the second son of Edward III.
should not be overlooked. It is engraved in C. Stothard's < Monu-
* Ut rosa flos florum,
Sic est domus ista domorum.

Chap. II.]

OLD ENGLAND.

263

mental Effigies,' as are also some others that are curious for their
costumes. Many of the old monuments were defaced by the
soldiers of Cromwell ; and of those that were left, some were much
broken and others entirely destroyed in the late fires. Among the
remarkable things contained in the cathedral— for, like Westminster,
York can boast of its antiquities and its " curiosities "—is an ancient
chair, in which it is said several Saxon kings were crowned ; it is
now used by the archbishops, at ordinations and other solemnities.
There is also a large ivory horn, which is mentioned by Camden,
who has the following citation from "an ancient author," respecting
the donation of which it serves as a token : — Ulphus, the son of
Toraldus, governed in the western part of Deira, and by reason of
a difference like to happen betwixt his eldest son and his youngest,
about his lordships when he was dead, he presently took the course
to make them equal. Without delay he went to York, and taking
the horn wherein he was wont to drink, he filled it with wine, and
kneeling upon his knees before the altar, he bestowed upon God
and the blessed St. Peter all his lands." By this horn the chapter
holds estates of great value a little east of York, which are still
" de Terra Ulphi." Another " curiosity " is a wooden head
found in the tomb of Archbishop Rotherham when a new pave
ment was laid down. This prelate died of the plague, and it is
supposed "that he was immediately and unceremoniously interred,
and that an image was afterwards solemnly buried in the church in
the insignia of the deceased prelate." Before the Reformation the
cathedral possessed several indubitable relics, two or three of which
we may name as a sample of the ware then most valued. There
were some bones of St. Peter ; two thorns from the crown of our
Saviour; a tooth of St. Apolloniaj part of the brains of St-
Stephen ; and not least perhaps were the relics of three Archbishops
of York, namely, some hair of St. William, a cloth stained with
the blood of Scroop, and an arm of St. Wilfrid, enclosed in an urn
of silver. In our notice of Salisbury Cathedral we have spoken of
boy-bishops ; among the jewels formerly existing here, of which
Dugdale gives a list, was " a small mitre set with stones for the
bishop of the boys, or, as he was anciently called, the barne bishop,
also a pastoral staff and ring for the same."
There are few prelates of celebrity who have held the see besides
those we have already named. The St. William above mentioned
was a nephew of King Stephen, and was in high repute during his
life for his holiness ; after his death many miracles were said to be
worked by his remains, and about one hundred and fifty years after
wards he was canonized by Pope Nicholas ; on this occasion his
bones were taken up and reinterred with great solemnity in the nave,
in presence of King Edward I., his queen, eleven bishops, and a
large number of other important personages. A splendid shrine
was erected over his remains, but it was destroyed at the Reforma
tion. When the new pavement was laid down, his tomb was
opened : this occurred in May, 1732, and Drake, the Historian of
York, was present. At a depth of about a yard a stone coffin was
discovered, and inside it a leaden box, in which were the bones of
the saint in tolerable preservation, — he appeared to have been about
five feet six inches in height — which is perhaps worth noticing, as it
is not often there is an opportunity of taking the height of a real
saint. The bones were carefully replaced. Another archbishop —
by no means a saint— was Geoffrey, son of Henry II. by Fair
Rosamond. He had held the see of Lincoln previously to that of
York, but was compelled to give it up by the Pope, as he performed
none of its duties, choosing rather to accompany his father in his
wars against the Scots. He was the favourite son of Henry, whose
last request was that Richard would appoint him to the Arch
bishopric of York. This Richard did, but made him pay exorbi
tantly for the office. The rest of his life was spent in quarrels,
first with William de Longchamps, the Chancellor, then with John
and the Pope, and to the' end of his life with his own canons — he
remained a bishop militant to the last. Shakspere's " Scroop, Arch
bishop of. York," will be remembered for the part he took against
Henry IV., and for his tragical fate. Cardinal Wolsey also held
the see, but he never visited his diocese.
The earlier churches, as we have seen, were successively destroyed
by fire ; the present Minster has twice narrowly escaped a similar
fate. The first time was on the 2nd of February, 1829. It was
the work of a maniac, Jonathan Martin, who had concealed
himself in the Minster the preceding day, Sunday, after prayers.
His own account of his proceedings displays no little of that shrewd
ness so often observed in such persons. He hid himself, he said, in
the belfry till the clock struck half-past one, singing hymns ; he
then got down into the body of the church ; when he " got to the
great door of the prayer-place," he said, "I found it locked. I
then fastened the cord on one side (he had cut one of the bell-ropes

to assist him), and got to the top of the door, and let myself down
in the inside. The first thing I did was that of getting all the
books that I could, and cushions that were necessary, piled them
up in two heaps, and set one pile on fire at the archbishop's throne,
and the other at the right hand side of the organ ; but before I set
it on fire, I scrambled up the pulpit side, and cut off the gold lace
all round the pulpit, with my razor, and after that I cut off all the
silk velvet I could get. When half-past two o'clock struck, I
lighted my fires ; that at the archbishop's throne burnt very fast,
but the other burnt very slowly. I stayed half an hour in the
place watching it. At three o'clock I started out on my journey."
He was soon apprehended and tried, but acquitted on the ground of
insanity. He was of course sent to a lunatic asylum, where he
died, in October, 1838. Some fanatic notions seem to have been
floating in his bewildered brain ; his own statement of his reason of
committing ^the act is as follows : — "I set fire to the Minster in
consequence of two remarkable dreams. I dreamt that one stood
by me, with a bow and a sheaf of arrows, and he shot one through
the Minster door. I said I wanted to try to shoot, and he presented
me the bow. I took an arrow from the sheaf and shot, but the
arrow hit the flags and I lost it. I also dreamt that a large thick
cloud c*ne down over the Minster, and extended to my lodgings ;
from these things I thought that I was to set fire to the Minster."
By this fire the whole of the roof of the choir, two hundred and
twenty-two feet long, was destroyed, with the woodwork on each
side ; and the walls above the arches of the choir were so much
damaged that it was found necessary to rebuild them ; the organ
was burnt, and the altar-screen so much injured as to render a
new one necessary ; the communion plate too was melted. No
time was lost in repairing the parts injured ; the restorations were
scarcely completed when another fire occurred, hardly less destructive
in its results. A workman, who had been employed to repair the
clock, with most culpable negligence left his candle burning when
he quitted his work. This was on the evening of May 20, 1840,
and by nine o'clock the south tower, in which he had been employed,
was discovered to be in flames. By twelve o'clock the south tower
was destroyed, and the whole of the roof of the nave had fallen in.
The progress of the flames was checked by the great tower, but the
amount of damage sustained was very great — in an antiquarian view
irreparable. Mr. Smirke, who had so successfully restored the
choir, has since been employed in reconstructing the south tower
and the nave. The works are now almost completed, and it is said
with entire success. When we saw them some time back, they
certainly appeared to us to be performed with great judgment ; but it
was difficult to decide as to the general effect from the place being
so occupied by the scaffolding.

We cannot better commence our notice of Lichfield Cathe
dral than with a short story. Penda was King of Mercia, the
most extensive and powerful of the kingdoms of the Saxon
heptarchy. The princes whose dominions lay contiguous to his
had been induced to cast aside their pagan idols, and assume the
name of Christians. Penda was continually engaged in war with
them, and obtained, some writers believe undeservedly, the character
of a sanguinary persecutor. The middle Angles, or English, who
inhabited Leicestershire, were at the time governed by his eldest
son, Peda, to whom the authority had been delegated. In 653 this
young prince arrives on a visit at the court of Oswy, a converted
King of Northumbria. Oswy has a daughter, Alchfleda, for whom
the pagan prince conceives a passion. Oswy consents to the
marriage, on condition that the young idolater is baptized into the
Christian faith. Love prevails, and Peda returns to his own
province with his bride, and four priests, who are to teach his
people the new religion. Troubles rapidly thicken around him.
His wife proves unworthy of his attachment, his father and his
father-in-law are involved in a cruel war, whilst he cannot con
sistently take part with either, for though he may suspect Oswy of
having decoyed him into the recognition of Christianity, from
secret motives of selfish ambition, yet he cannot help his father
without, aiding paganism, and violating his baptismal vows ; nor, on
the other hand, can his wishes to see Mercia a converted kingdom
induce him to draw the sword for his father's inveterate enemy,
who is seeking to enhance his own dominions by Penda's ruin.
After two years' warfare the ambitious Northumbrian attains his
object. Penda is defeated in battle, and slain, and Oswy adds King
of Mercia to his other titles. Nor is this all ; from 642 to 670 he
is also Bretwalda, that is, Emperor of the whole Heptarchy. He
seems to have been one of the most ferocious, vigorous, and am
bitious spirits of his day. His unhappy son-in-law, Peda, was per
mitted for twelve months to share his triumphs (he ruled over the

1017.— Poets' Comer, Westminster Abbey.

I018.-The Nave, Westminster Abbey, looking West from St. Edward's Chapel.

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1 020.— Funeral of Henry V.

ail., -Choir of Westminster .Abbey. .

1023.— Westminster Abbeyand Hall in the Seventeenth Century.

1024.— Westminster Abbey, Western Entrance*

1023.— Flan of Westminster Abbey.

No

.34.

[OLD ENGLAND.]

265

266

OLD ENGLAND.

[Book III

Mercians south of the Trent, the chief part of his father's do
minion), but was then basely murdered, and according to general
belief, by his treacherous wife, at the instigation of her father. Oswy
had now removed his enemy and the; heir of his enemy, and was at
the summit of his desires ; but he was as incapable of moderation in
the use of power as in attaining it, and was ultimately driven from
Mercia by an insurrection, to give place to Wulfhere, a younger
brother of Peda, but who was, like his father Penda, a determined
pagan. This Oswy and his converted son-in-law Peda were the
first founders of Lichfield church and monastery ; and one of the
four priests that we have mentioned as having been brought out of
Northumbria by Peda to his own dominions was Diuma, the first
bishop of the great see of Mercia, which included nearly half of
England. The conversion of King Wulfhere was accomplished, we
are told, by a most unique miracle, and the narration, as given by
the monks of Peterborough, introduces us to a very illustrious
personage in Catholic history, — St. Chad, the first bishop who
established the see at Lichfield, and whose relics were worshipped
here upwards of a thousand years after. At one time, probably
when the pagan Wulfhere was persecuting the Christians of his king
dom, Ceadda, or Chad, or Chadd, for his name is spelled in various
ways, lived as a hermit in a cell by the side o£ a spring, where his
only nourishment was the milk of a doe. The two sons of Wulfhere,
accidentally discovering his retreat, were induced by the eloquent
instructions of the recluse not only to keep secret his place of abode,
but to change their own faith. Wulfhere, having some reason to
suspect what had occurred, watched his sons to the cell, whither
they were in the habit of resorting to engage in devotional exercises
with their teacher. In his fury, Wulfhere slew them in the
sight of the venerable man, who fled in terror, to seek for himself
another hiding-place. But Wulfhere was more a violent than a hard
hearted man. Remorse and grief led him to the feet of the hermit
of whom he sought forgiveness and consolation, and begged
that he would intercede with heaven for him. Ceadda seized the
favourable occasion to turn the yielding heart ofthe king to the faith
he had persecuted ; ana as a proof of the power of that faith, which
it would have been wonderful indeed if mortal man could have
resisted, hung Wulfliere's cloak on a sunbeam. With or without
the miracle, Wulfhere became one of the most ardent of converts
and the legend is valuable as giving an insight into the sufferings of
the early English Christians, and the manner in which (apart from
mysteries ofthe cloak-and-sunbeam sort, which were no doubt often
gratuitously added afterwards) the faith of Jesus gradually
superseded the Saxon idolatries. It may be mentioned in
passing, that the corruptions defiling that holy faith were fewer
at that time than they became afterwards. The Anglo-Saxon
bishops were less magnificent personages than those of subsequent
ages. Their sees were fixed in retired villages, and they loved
seclusion and simplicity, and spent a great part of their lives in
prayer and meditation and Christian communion, approximating
indeed near to the Apostolical standard. Thus, Ceadda, in the
house he built for himself, near the monastery, in the humble
village of Lichfield, was wont to read and pray with a few, that
is, seven or eight, of the brethren, as often as he had any spare
time from the labours and ministry of the word. That he was a
pure and zealous minister of God there is not a doubt ; and it is a
pity that with the truth of his history so much adulteration should be
blended : though one feels not unwilling to be credulous, when we
read ofthe pleasant songs of angels with which his transit from this
painful life to a happy immortality was announced and solemnized.
In the history of the see, the first event of moment is the
splitting of the Mercian diocese into five separate bishoprics by
Theodore of Canterbury, by whom Ceadda had been made bishop ;
a clear indication this how the new faith had prospered in Mercia
under Ceadda and his three predecessors since Diuma. The next
event, about 786, is the elevation of Lichfield to an archbishopric,
comprehending the kingdoms of Mercia and the East Angles : this
was clone by Pope Adrian, at the suit of Offa, a warlike king of
Mercia, who, having conquered the kingdom of which Canterbury
formed a part, and having a personal hatred to the archbishop,
did not choose his prelates should be in subjection in any way to the
humbled province, or to a man whom he regarded as his enemy.
But the 'honour lasted only during the life of him who had obtained
it " fraudulently and surreptitiously," as the Synod of 803 declared
when deciding to resume the pall, and compel Lichfield to return to
her ancient duty to the metropolitical see of Canterbury. Under
the Norman regime the see of Lichfield was removed to Chester,
thence subsequently to Coventry, and thence back again to Lich
field, but in Connection with Coventry. The see of Lichfield and
Coventry is the present designation.

The primitive church of Lichfield was rebuilt by Hedda, in
700, who brought St. Chad's bones to a shrine he had prepared, and
dedicated the edifice to him. In the twelfth century Roger de
Clinton " built it new " to the honour of St. Mary and St. Chad,
and his church was the foundation of the present cathedral, which
on the whole is of the style of the thirteenth and.fourteenth cen
turies : Bishop Heyworth, in the fifteenth, is stated by Fuller
to have completed it. If not one of our very noblest cathedrals,
Lichfield is able to boast a harmony and elegance, and especially a
picturesqueness, highly original and attractive. In length it is four
hundred and ten feet, in width one hundred and fifty-three. The
engraving will convey a better idea than any description of the
three remarkable and elaborately wrought spires, the chief of which
is two hundred and eighty feet high. (Fig. 965.) The west
front abounds in " exquisite imagerie," now sadly mutilated by
time and war. Walter Langton's Lady-Chapel, which enclosed
St. Chad's miraculous shrine, is very beautiful, with its high and
rich windows filled with stained glass brought from the nunnery
of Herckenrode in Liege. We are permitted to have a free view
of every part of the exterior of this cathedral by the fine open
space around it, which is elevated above the rest of the city, and is
entirely under the cathedral jurisdiction.
During the civil wars this close sustained no less than three
sieges, alternately from Puritans and Cavaliers, , in the course of
which it is said that two thousand cannon-shot and fifteen hundred
hand-grenades were discharged at the cathedral. In the first siege
Lord Brook was shot by a gentleman of the Dyott family, who was
on a battlement of one of the cathedral towers, and saw his lordship
directing a battery on the east gate of the close, while partially
sheltered under the porch of a small house. Lord Brook had
vowed the destruction of this " hateful temple of episcopacy," and
prayed for some especial token of God's favour during his enter
prise. He had the token, said the royalists, but not as he had
anticipated. As the event occurred on St. Chad's day, of course
the saint had the credit of interposing for Lord Brook's punish
ment. The memory of these sanguinary times seems now little to
accord with the aspect of the cathedral close, with its tranquil
lawn-like verdure — its fine old trees — its quiet mansions — and its
sheet of water, one of Lichfield's three ancient pools. Near the
close Tvas formerly a willow tree, the delight of Johnson's " early
and waning life," and even still more so of Miss Seward's; it was
the ornament of Stowe Valley, the subject of every writer, the
gratification of every naturalist, and the admiration of every
traveller. Dr. Johnson never visited this city but he proceeded
to his favourite willow, a description of which was drawn up at
his desire, by Dr. Jones, for the ' Gentleman's Magazine' for- 1731.
This willow, after having often been shattered by the high winds,
was finally uprooted in the night of April 28, 1829. (' Family
Topographer,' vol. iv. p. 262.)
In the wars just mentioned the cathedral was so much injured
as to be almost deemed beyond repair ; but what cannot be accom
plished by zeal ? On the Restoration, and only the very morning
after the arrival of Dr. Hacket, the bishop, that dignitary set his
servants to remove the rubbish, and helped vigorously with his
own hands. He made extraordinary exertions to get money con
tributed for the work, besides being profuse with his own means,
until the melancholy ruin once more was restored to form and
beauty ; but not exactly as we now see it, for in 1788 it was found
necessary to obtain the services of Mr. Wyatt, to institute a
thorough repair, involving some important alterations, the expense
being met by subscriptions.
The almost total absence of ancient tombs, monuments, and
brasses is deeply to be regretted: we owe this, as well as the
destruction of the cathedral records, to the two periods so fatal
to our great ecclesiastical houses. Henry VIII. swept away,
among other treasures of the church and see, every shrine, except
St. Chad's, which he spared on the petition of Bishop Rowland Lee.
The Puritans accomplished a greater destruction, when they stabled
their horses in the nave, placed courts of guard in the cross aisles,
and relieved their sterner duties (as party statements tell us) by
tearing up the pavements, and hunting a cat with hounds through
the sacred edifice, to delight themselves with the echoes from the
roof. Among the modern mementoes of the dead, there is one
that will long be sought by the pilgrims of art with feelings only
less ^reverential than actuated their religious predecessors : we
allude to the far-famed piece of statuary of the Sleeping Children,
by Chantrey, placed above the tomb of the two grand-daughters
of Dean Woodhouse. When we can turn from this to lesser ob
jects, we perceive a bust of the " great cham " of literature, Johnson
which reminds us of his long friendship with Garrick, that began

Chap. II.]

OLD ENGLAND.

267

at Lichfield, where David was one of the three pupils of Johnson's
school,, and from whence both started off together to try their
fortunes in London, and both to be most successful. Miss Seward's
monument, with Scott's inscription, provokes a smile even here,
by the recollection ofthe vain lady and her works, and the ludicrous
dilemma in which an unhappy passing expression of admiration placed
him. Here too is a monument of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu,
the firm-minded experimentalist of vaccination.
Pacing meditatively the " long-drawn aisles," the sweet and
solemn chimes of the bells recall an anecdote of the enthusiastic
churchman Hacket, the first of whose peal of six was hung when
he was near death. He went from his chamber into the next
room, where he could better catch the sound, seemed exceedingly
gratified, and blessed God who had favoured him with life to hear
it, at the same time observing it would be his passing-bell — and so
it was, for he went back to his chamber and left it no more until he
was borne to the grave. Among the curiosities of the library is a
remarkable book with strange drawing, said to be a thousand years
old, in Saxon characters, entitled the Gospels of St. Chad ; also
a Koran taken from the Moors ; and a folio illuminated Chaucer.
It has been a cherished tradition in Lichfield, that the place was
originally chosen for the bishop's seat in order to keep in honoured
remembrance the martyrdom of a thousand Christians under
Dioclesian and Maximilian, and a spot called Christian Field is
pointed out as the scene of the slaughter. Dr. Johnson's opinion,
and which he took care to put into his Dictionary, that Lichfield
means " a field of the dead," is relied on in confirmation of the story.
But the antiquarian doctors differ among themselves — so who shall
decide ? Dr. Stukely derived the name from the marshes about ;
Mr. Britton, curiously enough, believes, after all, that it means
Pleasant Field. This interpretation at all events harmonizes most
with modern 'Lichfield, that stands in a verdant valley (nearly in
the centre of England), with gentle hills on every side.
There appears to have been at Bath a body of religious men
from the very earliest ages of Christianity, who had their house
near the springs, which according to tradition were first discovered
by Bladud, son of Lud Hudibras, who, being infected with the
leprosy, was banished from the palace, and found an asylum with a
swineherd, who employed him to watch his pigs. " Then," how
ever, in the words of a humorous " Zomerzetshire " poet, who 'has
somewhat richly treated a rich subject,
Bladud did the pigs invect, who grunting ran away,
And vound whot waters presently, which made 'em vresh and gay.
Bladud was not so grote a vool, but zeeing what pig did doe,-
He beath'd, and wash'd, and rins'd, and beath'd, from noddle down to toe.
Bladud was now (Grammercy, pig !) a delicate vine boy,
and returned to his friends, and ultimately succeeded to the throne
of Lud Hudibras, when he erected a city around the springs, to
commemorate the circumstance of his own recovery, and blazon
their fame abroad to aid in the recovery of others. And so Bath
became, says tradition — not very trustworthy, we fear, in this
instance — the capital of the British monarchs. Bath was, in truth,
a Roman city, chosen like many other of their cities, solely on ac
count of its hot springs.
This house of religious devotees appears to have undergone many
changes of constitution, to have experienced many vicissitudes of
fortune. Among its earliest benefactors were Osric, a Saxon king,
Offa, king of Mercia, Athelstan, and Edgar. During the insurrec
tion of Odo, Bishop of Bayeux, in the reign of Rufus, the town
and monastery were burnt and ruined. The circumstances of its
restoration are not a little remarkable. A monk of Tours, one
John de Villula, who, like many of his brethren, practised medicine,
settled at Bath, and, says the historian Warner, though nothing
more than an empiric, found means to accumulate a large fortune
by his practice, which included the imposing upon the ignorance
and credulity of the invalids who flocked to the healing waters of
the city. Nothing less would content John de Villula's ambition
than the purchase of Bath, which he managed by a payment to
Rufus of five hundred marks, and its restoration to prosperity and
splendour by the re-erection of its chief edifices, including the
church and monastery. And all this he accomplished. Still un
satisfied, he next sought to remove to Bath the see of Wells, and
again he was successful, through the professional process of
anointing the king's hands, as Matthew Paris slily observes, with
" white ointment." The conclusion to the whole was, that Henry I.
very fittingly and justly marked his sense of Villula's public spirit,
by confirming all the existing privileges of Bath,'and conferring
new ; and that, in 1106, Villula, then Bishop of Bath, gave the
whole, with a more than princely generosity, to the monastery,
reserving to himself and successors the right of appointing the

prior, who was , thenceforth to rule in the place of the abbot of
former times. And now, looking at John de Villula's earlier life
by the light of his later, may we not conclude that the modern
historian has probably been a little too hasty in his judgment, when
he brands such a man as an empiric and an impostor ?
Bath Cathedral (Fig. 984) has one architectural feature which
distinguishes it in an interesting manner from all other English build
ings of the same class : it was the latest of the whole in the period
of its erection, having been begun in the reign of Henry VII. and
finished in the reign of the second James. Oliver King was the
bishop to whom the commencement of this good work was owing ;
and the circumstances that made him determine to undertake such a
mighty task in those degenerate days are not unworthy of narration.
" Lying at Bath, and musing or meditating one night late, after
his devotions and prayers for the prosperity of Henry VII. and
his children (who were all in most part living), to which king he
was principal secretary; and by him preferred to his bishopric — he
saw, or supposed he saw, a vision of the Holy Trinity, with angels
ascending and descending by a ladder, near to the foot of which
there was a fair olive-tree, supporting a crown, and a voice that
said, ' Let an Olive establish the crown, and let a King restore the
church.' Of this .'dream or vision ' he took exceeding great
comfort, and told it divers of his friends, applying it to the king,
his master, in part, and some part to himself. To his master,
because the olive, being the emblem or hieroglyphic of peace and
plenty, seemed to him to allude to King Henry VII., who was
worthily counted the wisest and most peaceable king in all Europe
of that age. To himself (for the wisest will flatter themselves
sometimes), because he was not only a chief counsellor to his king,
and had been his ambassador to conclude the most honourable peace
with Charles VIII., .... but also, because he carried both the
Olive and the King in his own name, and therefore thought he was
specially designed for this church work, to the advancement of
which he had an extraordinary inclination. Thus though (as St.
Thomas of Aquina well noteth) all dreams, be they never so sensible,
will be found to halt in some part of their coherence, and so perhaps
may this ; yet most certain it is, he was so transported with his
dream, for the time, that he presently set in hand with the church
(the ruins whereof I rue to behold even in writing these lines), and
at the west end thereof he caused a representation to be graved of
this his vision of the Trinity, the angels, and the ladder ; and on
the north side the olive and crown, with certain French words
which I could not read, but in English is the verse taken out of
the book of Judges, chap. ix. :
" Trees, going to choose their king,
Said— Be to us the Olive King, &c."*
The " French verses " here mentioned were most probably merely
a later translation of the English one which is understood to have
been inscribed on the part in question ; and the window to which
Harrington refers in the words " at the west end," is at the present
time one of the glories of the cathedral, representing, by means of
many figures, the dream we have described, and which led to the
re-erection of the pile. The author from whom we have quoted
the foregoing passage was the well-known poet, and the godson and
favourite of Elizabeth ; and to him we are indirectly indebted for
the completion of the cathedral. Being left unfinished by Bishop
Kino-, and the Reformation coming to arrest all such architectural
labours, the edifice fell into a very dilapidated state, although in
the reign of Elizabeth certain benefactors stepped forward and did
something. But in Harrington's time, according to his own words
above transcribed, the church remained in ruine, and he then deter
mined if he could, to be instrumental in its restoration. And an
opportunity soon occurred. Whilst Bishop Montague was at Bath,
on his primary visitation, and walking in the grove, he was suddenly
cauo-ht in a shower, which induced him, on the invitation of Sir
John, to seek shelter in the church. The knight took him into the
north aisle, then entirely roofless, which made the bishop remark
that this situation did not shelter him from the rain. " Doth it not,
mv lord ?" said the knight ; " then let me sue your bounty towards
covering our poor church ; for if it keep not us safe from the waters
above, how shall it ever save others from the fire beneath ? " The
appeal was successful ; Bishop Montague set to work, and all but
completed the cathedral.
And the edifice, when finished, though not large (the extreme length
is two hundred and ten feet, extreme breadth one hundred and twenty-
six), looked noble, with its superb central tower, and formed alto
gether a very pure and beautiful example of the latest period of
pointed architecture; but it has been reserved for the present time
to show practically how little such work was appreciated, by
* Harrington's ' Nugae Antique.'
2 M 2

ftr ,,.„,'S;

1026«— Unnb of theBoyfBiihqp, Salisbury.

1028. — Franciscan, or G-rey Friar.

1027.— Ruins of Netley Abbey.

268

i^Z^/^

1034.-New Abbey, Kirkcudbrightshire. (From an Original Sketch.)

1035.— Lich-Gate at Eeckenham.

1032.— Leicester Abbey.

1031.— Tintem Abbey.

269

270

OLD ENGLAND.

[Book I1L

making in it the most extensive and most injurious alterations.
The remarkable square east window was supported by square
towers ; these the clever improvers of the nineteenth century have
changed into octagonal pinnacles. The— but it is idle to parti
cularise — for ia short the whole character of the cathedral has been
wantonly destroyed,— it was called, from its general lightness and
elegance, the lantern of England; we may keep the title— but if so,
let it be as we hang lights against dangerous places in our streets, to
warn rather than to attract. We may add that the interior is
crowded, with monuments of all shapes, sizes, and materials, a hete
rogeneous assemblage, which may excuse the somewhat irreverent
tone of the lines —
These walls, adorn'd with monument and bust,
Show how Bath waters serve to lay the dust.

The first religious Oratory in Britain is said by monastic writers to
have been built of " wreathed twigs " at Glastonbury, by Joseph of
Arimathea and eleven other disciples of St. Philip ; and that hence
arose the conversion to Christianity of the native Britons of the
district in which Wells and Glastonbury are situated. If the
legend be true, the doctrines thus taught were soon effaced, for
when the West Saxons possessed the country, the Italian missionary
Birinus, observing how deeply all were sunk in idolatry, paused
in his progress, as he was journeying to parts beyond the dominion
of the English, where he had intended to sow the seed of the Holy
Faith, and addressed himself to the difficult task of enlightening the
hearts of the pagans he saw around him, wisely concluding that the
need of knowledge could nowhere be greater. It was a work of
time to uproot the deeply-seated pagan superstitions ; and the West
Saxons had so far relapsed into their old infirmities, as greatly to
incense Pope Formosus, who issued a thundering missive ; fulminat
ing eternal damnation against their king, Edward the Elder (the
son and successor of Alfred), and all his subjects, if they should
invalidate this decree, namely, that among other changes, in conse
quence of the West Saxons having been left seven years without a
pastor, three new bishoprics "should be forthwith instituted among
them. One of these three was Wells. Doubts have been
cast on the genuineness of the Pope's missive ; but, at all events,
the see was certainly formed about this period — the beginning of
the tenth century. It seems generally believed that the first
church was built at Wells two centuries earlier, in 704, by King
Ina, and that it was a religious seminary, dedicated to St. Andrew,
because placed near a medicinal and miraculous spring reverenced
as St. Andrew's well, and sometimes called the Bottomless Well ;
and this account is based both on tradition and probability, although
there is no evidence in contemporary documents to stamp certainty
upon it. The connection of a common and honoured origin was not
forgotten by the housesjrof Glastonbury and Wells. A distinguished
monk or abbot of Glastonbury was often elected to be bishop of
Wells ; and in the reign of Richard I. the abbey of Glastonbury
was annexed to this see, in exchange for Bath. The means by
which this was accomplished are most remarkable. Savaric, bishop
of Wells ; had earnestly coveted the abbey, on account, it would seem,
of its great wealth ; and being a kinsman of the emperor of Germany,
he employed his secret influence with that monarch to seize Coeur-
de-Lion on his return from the Holy Land, in order to make one of
the conditions of the king's release his surrendering the abbey of
Glastonbury to Savaric. For the proof of this story we have a
record of Henry III., mentioned by Stow ; and Coeur-de-Lion after
wards declared " that the abbey had been extorted from him by
force and terror." Savaric, however, kept his prize, and removed
his see thither.
The undaunted founder of the present cathedral (Fig. 982, 983)
was Joceline de "Welles, who " built it new from the very foundation,"
in the year 1239. " No one," says the Canon of Wells, in ' Anglia
Sacra,' " had ever been like this man, and we have never seen a
successor equal to him." The body of the church, from the west end
to the middle of the choir, is visibly of or about the time of this
prelate. The style is pointed, but bears strongly upon it the im
press of the Norman architecture out of which it had just arisen,
being much more ponderous and sombre than the eastern parts of the
fabric, built in later times. The quadrangular main tower, resting
on four broad arches, is particularly massive, even to a fault.
Mr. Britton observes, that in passing through the choir toward
the eastern end, lightness and richness and elegance grow on us
until we arrive at the part about the altar, which is exceedingly
florid and beautiful. Even this, however, is far surpassed by the
exquisite Lady-Chapel — that perfect gem of ecclesiastical archi
tecture, ?ich, placed amid so much that is glorious beside, seems
to us like a sweet fanciful episode to a noble poem. As the Lady-

Chapel is the most superb, so is the west front the grandest portion
of the edifice. The mere amount of the sculpture upon it is truly
astonishing, comprising an assemblage of one hundred and fifty
statues of life size, and above three hundred smaller ones. The
niches are beautifully decorated, and the canopies rest on slight
and elegant pillars of finely-polished marble. The quadrangle of
the cloisters measures on each side from one hundred and fifty to
one hundred and sixty feet. The two western towers, erected
toward the end of the fourteenth century, and the chapter-house,
a handsome octangular building fifty-two feet in diameter, sustained
on one central pillar, are, among the other portions of the edifice,
peculiarly deserving notice. The dimensions of the pile are as
follows : — 371 feet in length from east to west ; 135 feet the
transept or extreme breadth; 160 feet the height of the main
tower; and 126 feet the height of the west tower. The whole
cathedral, both within and without, forms one of the grandest of
our national architectural effects. A more majestic object can
hardly be conceived than it presents as seen from all the great
roads leading to the ancient city, to which it imparts an aspect of
great dignity. Nature, too, has favoured the spot. The Mendip
Hills on the north, in form like an amphitheatre, and the rich and
green meadows on the south, present lofty and beautiful combina
tions, finely harmonizing with the stately work of human intelligence
before them. We may here observe that several of the bishops of
Wells of the middle ages were wont to pursue the unclerical sports
of hunting and hawking, — nay, we are told that Ralph de Salopia
(the builder of that lofty and embattled wall, with its broad moat,
that gives such a fortress-like character to the episcopal palace of
Wells, and also the founder of the Vicar's Close) actually destroyed
by hunting all the wild beasts of Mendip forest ; and Reginald
Fitz-Joceline, a bishop of most rare geniality of temperament/was
not only passionately fond of the field-sports of his time, but took
pains that his successors might enjoy them also, for he obtained
from Richard I. liberty for the bishops of Wells to keep dogs for
hunting throughout all Somersetshire. But if it could not be said
of Joceline that cure of souls was his chief aim, neither could it
be said that he was oppressive or ambitious, inasmuch as he
relieved the"' city burgesses from feudal offices of a servile nature,
and when offered the dignity of archbishop, replied with tears, that
" so far was he from having any ambitious desire of that place,
that it was a great grief unto him to be chosen, and that he would
be very glad if they would take some other in his room : howbeit
(quoth he), if they will needs stand to their election, though with
grief and heart's sorrow, I must and will accept of the same.''
There was often a little affectation of humility in such cases, and
probably those who were so bent on forcing Fitz-Joceline to the
archiepiscopal throne, had little doubt that his reluctance would
soon wear away : it did not, however ; for though he submitted, he
was taken suddenly ill, put on a monk's cowl, and so died. This
sporting taste in the episcopals of Wells seems to be commemorated
in the monument of Salopia in the cathedral, which presents two
dogs, collared, at the feet of the bishop's effigy. The other sepul
chral memorials of Wells are chiefly of antique date.

Peterborough Cathedral (Fig. 991) is another of the ec
clesiastical foundations which we owe to Peda or Peada, the son of
the pagan monarch Penda, converted, through the instrumentality
of human love, to divine worship. He it was who founded the
Benedictine Abbey of Medeshamstead, which in course of time
became one of the most magnificent in England, and of which,
under the name of Peterborough, we possess a noble remain
in the church. In our account of Penda and his son, in the notice
of Lichfield Cathedral, we have spoken of the conversion of the bro
ther of the latter Wulfhere ; the records of Medeshamstead furnish
us an interesting glimpse of the subsequent conduct of this prince.
That valuable but in general brief record of ancient events, the
Saxon Chronicle, for once in its notices is tolerably diffuse. It states
that " In Wulfhere's time Medhamstead waxed very rich. He loved
it much, for the sake of his brother Peda, and for the love of his
wed-brother Oswy, and for the love of Saxulf the abbot. He said
therefore, that he would dignify and honour it by the counsel of
his brothers, Ethelred and Merwal; and by the counsel of his
sisters, Kyneburga and Kyneswitha ; and by the counsel of the
archbishop, who was called Deus-dedit ; and by the counsel of all
his peers, learned and lewd [unlearned], that in his. kingdom were.
And so he did. Then sent the king after the abbot, that he should
immediately come to him. And he so did. Then said the° king to
the abbot, ' Beloved Saxulf, I have sent after thee for the "good of
my soul, and I will plainly tell thee for why : my brother Peda and
my beloved friend Oswy began a Minster, for the love of Christ and

Chap. II.]

OLD ENGLAND.

St. Peter. But my brother, as Christ willed, is departed from this
life; I will, therefore, entreat thee, beloved friend, that they
earnestly proceed on their work ; and I will find thee, thereto, gold
and silver, land and possessions, and all that thereto behoveth ! '
Then went the abbot home and began to work. So he sped as Christ
permitted him ; so that in a few years that Minster was ready."
The Chronicle goes on to describe the interesting circumstances at
tending the opening and dedication, when the charter of its estates
and privileges was granted in the presence of all the chief nobility
of the kingdom. It may serve as an example.of the spirit of these
Saxon princes, and show how impossible they thought it was to
render too much to God in return for all he had given them, to
state that the lands then conferred extended nearly twenty miles
east and west, and that in the erection of the buildings the founda
tion-stones were of such dimensions that eight yoke of oxen could
with difficulty draw one of them.
The known wealth of \he abbey of course made it a mark for the
assaults of the Danes, during the period they harassed England
with their piratical attacks. About 870 they came hither, after
the destruction ofthe neighbouring monastery of Croyland, and, on
finding the gates closed against them, besieged the abbey. For
some time the monks appear to have successfully resisted, notwith
standing that the walls were battered by some species of warlike
engine. Talba, the brother of the Danish leader Hubba, was
slain by a stone from the walls, and that casualty led to the destruc
tion of the entire body of inmates. An entrance was forced by the
vindictive Hubba, who then slew — it is said with his own hand, but
this can hardly be true — every one of the monks, eighty-four in
number, including the Superior. Whatever was valuable, and that
could be removed, was then taken away, and the monastery burnt :
for fifteen days the fire continued.
From the state of desolation into which this horrible event plunged
the establishment, Edgar raised it about 970, who, not content with
a mere restoration, appears to have made it even more splendid and
wealthy than before. The " golden burgh " or golden city was the
name fittingly applied to it by some ; but Peter-burgh, from the
name of the patron saint, gradually superseded both that and the
earlier designations.
The same kind of sweeping destruction, followed by the same kind
of persevering and Christian liberality in restoration, has twice since
the Danish attack been experienced by Peterborough ; namely,
during the insurrection under Hereward le Wake, in the wars
against the Conqueror, and during an accidental fire in the year
1116. But the result was, that, down even to the very dissolution
of monasteries, Peterborough was one of the most magnificent and
powerful of English abbeys. Some rude old rhymes descriptive of
the characteristics of several monasteries of the neighbourhood, seem
to imply that it was not a little puffed up by its distinctions. They
run thus : —

271

Let me be us'd with honour ; strew me over
With maiden flowers, that all the world may know
I was a chaste wife to my grave : embalm me,
Then lay me forth : although unqueen'd, yet like
A queen, and daughter to a king, inter me.
Poor and yet rich Catherine, thou hast been " used with honour ! "
The flowers wet with tears have been, and will continue to be, in
spirit at least, dropped over thee, in lands the very name of which
thou never heardest of, and to ages more distant than any of us
may venture to compute.

Eamsay, the rich of gold and fee ;
Thorney, the flower of many fair tree ;
Croyland, the courteous of their meat and their drink ;
Spalding, the gluttons, as all men do think ;
Peterborough, the proud;
Sautrey by the way — that old abbey —
Gave more alms in one day than all they.
The cathedral was begun immediately after the fire of 1116, by
Abbot John de Sais, a Norman, and finished, in all its greater parts
at least, before the close of the century. The style, therefore, is
Anglo-Norman, aud remarkable for its solidity of construction and
aspect. The more noticeable architectural features may be briefly
summed in — the low central tower which forms a lantern, the
double transepts with a tower at the extremity of the north-western
only, the semicircular eastern .end, the lofty and richly decorated
portico, in three compartments, that forms the western front, the
wooden roofs of the nave, transepts, and choir, and the very beau
tiful fittings and decorations of that choir, entirely completed in
the style of Edward III. The dimensions of the cathedral are —
length 476 feet, breadth at the great transept 203 feet, length of
the western front 156 feet, height of central tower 184 feet. The
devastations of the civil war have left but few specimens of monu
mental sculpture. Two burials of no ordinary interest have taken
place here — Mary Queen of Scots, whose body was afterwards
removed by her son King James to Westminster Abbey, and
Catherine of Arragon, the noble and suffering wife of that ignoblest
and most brutal of husbands, Henry VIII. However, if a credit
it be thaj he did not altogether disregard her dying injunctions, let
him have the benefit of it. Heaven knows, they were simple and
easy enough. " When I am dead," she says, according to the words
of her most faithful chronicler, the great poet,

To Lichfield and Peterborough we have now to add Gloucester,
in enumerating the services of the family of Penda in the cause
of the new faith they had embraced under such peculiar and
interesting circumstances. Wulfhere, who had assisted to finish at
Peterborough what his brother Peda had begun, appears to have
thought it necessary to mark in a more independent manner his
sympathy with his brother's views, his gratitude to the class of men
who were so active in extending the knowledge of Christianity,
and, above all, his piety towards the God who had been so newly
declared unto him : hence the establishment at Gloucester. Of
course there are no remains of a building so early as the seventh
century : whether time would have permitted any parts of Wulf.
here's structure to descend to us we know not, for fire, that agent
of destruction which sooner or later, either through design or by
accident, invariably attacks all such mighty memorials of the past,
has been busy at Gloucester. The most ancient portions of the
cathedral are the crypt, the chapels that surround the choir, and
the lower part of the nave— all erected, it is supposed, by Bishop
Aldred in the latter half of the eleventh century, and all forming
a portion of his " New Minster." This was burnt with the monas
tery about 1087, and it is supposed by the same fire that destroyed
a great portion of the city ; the incendiaries were the adherents of
that Robert, the son of the Conqueror, who now lies in the cathedra],
with his effigy " carved to the life, in heart of oak." Here too is laid,
beneath a very remarkable bracket monument, Abbot Serle, who
after the fire rebuilt the edifice, with the exception of the parts
above named. To this excellent abbot William of Malmesbury
pays the high compliment of adducing him as an example that
England was not , then destitute of virtue ; and another writer, a
monk of the same monastery, shows that Serle had even achieved the
difficult task of becoming a prophet in his own immediate sphere.
Godfrey, the prior, says —
The Church's bulwark fell when Serlo died,
Virtue's sharp sword, and Justice's fond pride ;
Speaker of truth, no vain discourse he lov'd,
And pleased the very princes he reprov'd.
A hasty judgment, or disordered state
Of life or morals, were his utter hate.
The third of March was the auspicious day
When Serlo winged through death to life his way.
He died in 1104. Whether any portion of his edifice remains
appears doubtful : so many circumstances of injury and reparation .
and improvement are recorded, that it is most probable that the
cathedral has been entirely rebuilt since his time, with the ex
ception of those older portions which existed before him ; for we
find distinct notices of the raising of the south aisle and transept
between 1310 and 1330; of the commencement of the choir soon
after this period ; of the erection of the cloisters between 1351 and
1390'; and of the chapel of Our Lady toward the close of the fif
teenth century ; and lastly, of the noble tower, with its four beau
tiful and delicate pinnacles, which was completed in the beginning
of the sixteenth. (Fig. 1001.) ¦ One of the abbots who was con
cerned in these rebuildings, Abbot Thokey, deserves especial mention,
not so much for what he did in that way himself, as for what he
was the means of enabling his successors to do. About 1319
Edward II. paid the abbey a visit, and was received with great
honour. As he sat in the hall, he noticed on the walls the portraits
of his kingly predecessors, and jocosely asked if his own were among
them. The abbot, desiring apparently to pay some great compliment,
answered, that he hoped to have him in some more honourable place.
The words were unmeaning enough then, but proved to be prophetic
ones. Edward was murdered at Berkeley Castle, and three several
monasteries refused to receive the corpse, dreading the anger of the
ruling powers. Abbot Thokey, however, stepped forward, brought
it in honourable procession to his monastery, and there interred it
near the great altar. That event gave the monastery an incalculable
increase of wealth, popularity, and influence ; for the young Edward
speedily overthrew his father's murderers, and then — why then,
every one was glad, were it but for the son's sake, to come and pay

10 38— rurch of Malmesbury Abbey.

1 037.— Arch of Transept in Malmesbury Abbey.

1037*.— Arms of Malmesbury. ti

103.9,— Tomb in Malmesbury Abbey.
K

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ii

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272

[OLD ENGLAND.]

274

OLD ENGLAND.

[Book III.

their respects to the dead father's shrine. Offerings flowed in a
continuously glittering stream. The monks at one time were
obliged — painful obligation! — to sell some hundred pieces of silk
interwoven with gold, their treasury became so very crowded. That
Edward and his family should pay especial attention to the shrine,
was only to be expected. We find the former, at a certain period,
when he was in danger of shipwreck, vowing a golden ship if he
escaped ; and he performed the vow, but subsequently redeemed the
ship for one hundred pounds. Among the family offerings may be
mentioned a heart and urn of gold, by Queen Philippa, and a gold
cross, given by the Black Prince.
During the abbacy of Horton — a name never mentioned by ancient
monk of Gloucester without a blessing, for he provided that the
anniversary of his death should be celebrated by a mass, the priests
wearing vestments of blue velvet, interwoven with little moons and
stars — probably of silver, and by a distribution of wine, wassail,
and pittance, or money ; — during this abbacy Richard II. held a par
liament at Gloucester, and kept his own court in the monastery,
where, it appears, the laws of arms were regulated in the refectory,
the House of Lords sat in the common hall, and the Commons in
the chapter-house. The abbey was so crowded, as to look more
like, a. fair than a house of religion, and the green plat in the
cloisters was so trampled down by the wrestlers and ball-players,
¦that not a vestige of green grass was to be seen. Does not this little
passage in the history of Gloucester monastery give us curious
•glimpses of the public business and private sports of an English
king in the fourteenth century, when the court regulating the laws
of arms seems to have been a kind of third estate, and when
the court precincts formed an arena for the display of gymnastic
sports? How the pious and sedate monks must have been puzzled
at the whole affair ! how whimsically out of place they must have
felt themselves, wandering about amidst such gay and reckless and
turbulent throngs !
We need not add much to the particulars of the cathedral inci
dentally given in the previous pages. The choir is the portion
which more especially attracts admiration ; a writer in the ' Trans
actions of the Society of Antiquaries ' observes of it, that " the
great elevation of the vault, the richness of the design, the elabo
rate tracery which covers the walls, and the vast expanse of the east
ern window, render it an almost unrivalled specimen of the florid
style of architecture." The whispering-gallery has been mentioned
by Lord Bacon. We allude to it for the sake of the verse inscribed
on the wall : — Doubt not but God, who sits on high,
Thy secret prayers can hear,
When a dead wall thus cunningly
Conveys soft -whispers to the ear.
In its extreme length the cathedral measures 423 feet, the nave
171, the choir 140, the Lady-Chapel 92; the north and south transepts
each 66 feet ; the height of the tower is 225 feet. The alabaster
tomb of Edward II. is the most interesting among the monuments.
Here, too, is a statue to that truly good and great man who, while
the civilized world was ringing with his fame, and waiting to shower
wealth and honours upon him if he would but come to receive them,
stayed quietly in his native village, content with the fulfilment of his
ordinary duties, and happy in the knowledge that they left him ample
leisure to promote by unceasing labour the discovery that has im
mortalized the name of— Edward Jenner.

The history of Hereford Cathedral introduces to us a love-
story of a very different character and termination to that related in
our notice of Lichfield, though, like that, tending powerfully to pro
mote the progress of Christianity, in times when such progress must
have seemed, to all but its enthusiastic promoters and guides, a very
uncertain and hazardous business. Offa, king of Mercia, had
a daughter, beloved by Ethelbert, king of the East Angles, who
in consequence sought her hand. Offa, receiving his advances
in a friendly spirit, invited him to his palace at Sutton, some three
miles from Hereford, and on his arrival treated him with great
kindness, and professed, perhaps sincerely, his desire for an alliance.
Offa's queen, however — a person of the most unscrupulous and
ambitious character — thinking the occasion a fitting one for enabling
her husband to add Ethelbert's dominions to his own, induced Offa
to forget alike what was due to Ethelbert as a king, a man, and as
her guest, and to give consent to the horrible crime proposed—
Ethelbert's murder. The unfortunate king was speedily beheaded ;
or, as some writers state, precipitated into a hollow space beneath
her bed-chamber, and there stifled by the queen's agents. And
now mirages occurred, if we are to believe the monkish annalists.
" On the night of his burial, a column of light, brighter than the sun,

arose towards heaven ;" and three nights after, the figure of the
wounded king appeared to Brithfrid, a nobleman, and commanded
him to carry the body to a place called Stratus Waye, and to inter
it near the monastery there. Brithfrid, with the aid of another
column of light, proceeded on his journey, bearing the head and
body in a carriage. On the way, the head accidentally fell, but
was found by a blind man, who picked it up and restored it to the
driver, receiving as a reward his sight. On their arrival at the
place now known as Hereford, they interred the body. Asser,
Alfred's biographer, says, that so numerous and considerable were
the miracles then and there performed, that Offa sent two bishops
to Hereford to inquire into the matter : they beheld the cure of a
Welsh nobleman afflicted with palsy; and at once believed. Offa, on
receiving their report, did the same, and conferred a tenth of all his
possessions on the saint, that is to say, on the church where he was
buried. He also built a magnificent tomb over Ethelbert's remains.
Nor was that all : he actually set out on a pilgrimage to Rome, by
way of penance, and whilst there, consented to subject his kingdom
to the payment of Peter's pence ; — which, by the way, was making
his subjects, who were innocent, do penance too. To these circum
stances we owe the origin of Hereford Cathedral ; for although
there was a church on the site before the period of the occur
rences in question, it was through them only that the religious
establishment obtained fame, wealth, and ecclesiastical rank. One
of the first results, apart from Offa's munificence, was that Milfrid,
governor of the province under King Egbert, built a new church,
a stone structure, which, having become decayed by the beginning
of the eleventh century, was rebuilt by Bishop Athelstan. That
building again destroyed by the Welsh in an incursion about 1055,
it was reserved for one of the admirable Norman prelates whom
(to his honour be it said) the Conqueror appointed, Robert4 de
Lozing, or Lozinga, to raise the proud fabric once more from ruins.
To his labours, then, we owe the commencement of the existing
cathedral (Fig. 1002). Of this ecclesiastic's death an interesting
and not at all improbable story is told ; for although an able priest,
mathematician, and architect, he is known to have been so super
stitious as to decline attending the dedication of the cathedral of
Lincoln, when invited by Remigius, on the ground that he had
consulted the stars and found them unpropitious. It appears that
during the illness of Wulstan, bishop of Worcester, Lozing, being
then at court, beheld the form of his friend in a dream, who said to
him, " If you wish to see me before I die, hasten to Worcester."
Hurrying to the king, Lozing obtained leave to depart, and travel
ling night and day, he reached Cricklade, where, overcome by
fatigue, he slept. His friend there again appeared, saying, " Thou
hast done what fervent love could dictate, but art too late. I am
now dead; and thou wilt not long survive me: but lest thou
shouldst consider this only a fantastic dream, know that after my
body has been committed to the earth a gift shall be given to thee,
which thou shalt recognise as having belonged to me." Lozing
proceeded to Worcester on the following morning, where, truly
enough, the good old bishop, the last ofthe Saxon ecclesiastics, lay
dead. Lozing performed the obsequies, and was preparing to de
part, when the priest said to him, " Receive as a testimony of our
departed lord's love his lambskin cap which he wore." No
wonder the words caused Lozing's " blood to run cold;" or that the
coincidence wrought out its own greatest marvel in Lozing's death.
Wulstan died in January ; Lozing, in June of the same year, 1094.
At Hereford, as at Bath, the restorers have been at work in the
true spirit of the restorations of the last century ; that is, to add and
to take away, to beautify and make comfortable, and to make neat,
without the smallest reference to the original design of the edifice,
or indeed to any design whatever. That a distinguished name,
Wyatt's, is connected with such unworthy proceedings in relation to
a building that all architects should look on with reverence and
wonder, makes the matter only the more painful. Our space will
not permit us to pause over any descriptive details : we can there
fore only observe, the cathedral stands near the banks ofthe beautiful
Wye; that the chief external characteristic of its appearance is the
broad, low, but highly enriched square tower ; that the original
west front is lost, having been destroyed by the fall of its tower,
and that we have one by Mr. Wyatt in its place, as contemptible al
that was noble ; and, lastly, that the interior presents many archi
tectural objects of high interest, in addition to some very old and
very highly decorated monuments. In its extreme length the
Cathedral measures 325 feet ; the extent of the great transept is
100 feet ; the height of the body of the church 91 feet. There
were two exceedingly beautiful appendages of Hereford Cathedral,
the chapter-house and a genuine Saxon Chapel ; for the destruction
of both, the dignitaries of the cathedral during the last century

Chap. II]

OLD ENGLAND.

275

must enjoy all the merit or the disgrace. For ourselves we should
say it was a merit, if the alternative was, as is most probable, that
the building should be pulled down, or what they would call
restored.

In the aisles of Carlisle Cathedral (Fig. 1007) there is a very
remarkable series of ancient legendary paintings from the histories of
St. Anthony, St. Cuthbert, and St. Augustine, or St. Austin, the
founder of the order of Austin Canons. Over each subject is a
distich, in uncouth rhyme. The series relating to St. Austin com
mences with a picture beneath which we read an explanation of its
subject — Her [here] fader and mod' of Sanct Austyne
Fyrst put him her to learn doctrine ;
and then proceeds to show us, with extraordinary minuteness and
correctness, all the different phases of the saint's career, from the
time that his parents thus early bent his mind to study, up to the
period of his burial at Pa via. At one period, we see he has become
a distinguished scholar, but proud in his tastes and immoral in his
conduct, and a defender of the early heresies, until the sermons of St.
Ambrose and the tears of his mother Monica bring him back to the
purity and truth of the Gospel — not, it appears from these rhymes,
without miraculous interposition : —
Her wepying and walyng, as he lay,
Sodonly a voice thus herd he say,
"Tolle lege, Tolle lege."
Bishop Tanner remarks of Carlisle, " This is the only episcopal
chapter in England of the order of St. Austin ;" and, we may add,
that while Carlisle Cathedral was of this order, all the rest of the
English religious houses connected with our cathedral churches
wrere Benedictines. As this, then, was the peculiarly distinctive
feature of the establishment, it was a happy thought that of placing
on the walls a complete pictorial narrative of the life, fame, and
teachings of the founder of the Austin rule. In respect to St.
Cuthbert, bishop of Lindisfarn, Egfrid, king of Northumberland,
gave the town of Carlisle, walled and rebuilt, to him ; and in 686
the saint "was carried by the townspeople," says Bede, "to see
their walls." Carlisle continued an appendage of the see of Lindis
farn until 1133, when Henry I. made it a separate see, and also
founded the priory and built the cathedral. A religious institution
had previously been founded at Carlisle by St. Cuthbert, or about
his time (the seventh century), which Walter, a priest and fol
lower of the Conqueror, had attempted to revive. As some parts
of the present fabric are as old as the Saxon times, Henry I. must
have remodified and enlarged an older structure. The nave and
south aisles were built by William Rufus, and the choir — the finest
part ofthe church — between 1363 and 1397, when indulgences and
remissions of penance were granted to such of the laity as con
tributed money, materials, or labour to the holy work. The priory,
to which the cathedral was attached, " wanted -not for relics of saints,
for Waldeive, the son of Cospatrick, Earl of Dunbar, brought from
Jerusalem and Constantinople a bone of St. Paul and another of
St. John the Baptist, two stones of Christ's sepulchre, and part of
the Holy Cross, which he gave to the priory, together with a man
sion near St. Cuthbert's church, where at that time stood an ancient
building called Arthur's Chamber, taken to be part of the mansion-
house of King Arthur, the son of Uther Pendragon, of memorable
note for his worthiness in the time of ancient kings." (Denton's
MSS.) In the civil wars of the Commonwealth, Carlisle Cathedral
was sadly curtailed of its fair proportions ; what was left of the nave
is now converted into a separate parish church, the cathedral service
being performed in the choir. The chapter-house and cloisters dis
appeared iu these wars, and the ancient refectory has been used for
the modern chapter-house. Dr. Paley was Archdeacon of Carlisle,
and has a monument here. There are some ancient sepulchral
remains ; but it seems scarcely to be known for whom any of them
were originally intended. A small chapel of St. Catherine's, ad
joining the transept in the south aisle, was separately founded and
endowed by John de Capella, a citizen of Carlisle, previous to 1366,
at which time an attempt was made to deprive it of some of its re
venues ; but Bishop Appleby interrupted this process in a peculiarly
decisive way, ordering public notice to be given that he should ex
communicate the parties by bell, book, and candle, unless restitution
were made before the expiration of ten days : no doubt the threat
was successful, for it was an awful one at that day. In a chamber
of the deanery is a curious painted ceiling, and on the sides of the
cross-beams several couplets, and this inscription : —
Symon Senus, Prior, sette yis roofe and scallope here,
To the intent wy thin thys place they shall have prayers every daye in the year.
Lofe God and thy prynce, and you neydis not dreid thy enimys.

As the cathedral appears at present, it seems to be of various
styles, and the material of which it is composed, a coarse reddish
freestone, is unfavourable to architectural beauty ; but nevertheless,
at a distance it is still imposing, an effect greatly to be attributed
to the elevation of the city on an eminence of a lozenge
shape, formed by the swelling banks of three rivers, the Eden,
Caldew, and Peteril, and to the flat plain that extends all around
this picturesque capital of one of the most picturesque of counties,
until it terminates in mountain, cloud, and mist. " Bonny Carlisle,"
as it is called in old Border Song, was once a strong border town ;
and the ancient garrison-fortress still seems to stand as a guard near
the cathedral, conspicuous at the distance of many miles. It used

also to be sung,

The sun shines fair on Carlisle wa ;

but though the sun still shines fair as ever on Carlisle, very little
of those celebrated walls or their bulwarks now meet its rays, and,
happily, there is no longer any necessity for them.

There is little in the architecture of Chichester Cathedral
(Fig. 1003), and not much in its history, that will need a lengthened
notice. The original cathedral was founded and the building com
pleted towards the close of the eleventh century. In the year 1114 it
was greatly injured by fire, and, though soon restored, it was entirely
destroyed by a second fire in the year 1186. Bishop Seffrid, who-
had been appointed to the see about this time, immediately com
menced the renovation of the cathedral. According to some of the
historians, he built the church from its foundations ; while others say
that he " engrafted upon the remaining walls a new work, adapting-
it to the style and architectural ornaments peculiar to the age in
which he lived." Be that as it may, it is agreed that his building
is the nucleus of the existing cathedral : it consisted of the " present .
nave with its single aisles, the centre arcade with its low tower and
transept, and of the choir." It was consecrated by Seffrid on the
13th of September, 1199 ; but he had not quite completed it at his-
death in the year 1214. There is little remarkable about it, except
that it presents one of the earliest specimens of a stone groined
roof: the cathedral having been twice burnt already, owing chiefly
to its wooden roof, Seffrid resolved in his church to prevent, if he
could, a similar disaster. Great additions and alterations were
made to Seffrid's structure during the three next centuries, and its
architecture consequently shows the marks of many periods. The
lateral towers belong, at least up to the second tier, to the original
church ; that facing the south exhibits four elegant examples of
early Norman arches ; the arches in the third tier are of the tall
lancet shape. The central tower was begun by Bishop Neville in
the year 1222 ; the spire was raised about the year 1337 — it is nearly
three hundred feet high, and bears a considerable resemblance to
that of Salisbury Cathedral, though much less graceful. (Fig. 1003.)
In the interior of the cathedral may be seen some of the earliest.
applications of the Sussex, or Petworth marble, so much used in our
ecclesiastical edifices of the "early English" period. We cannot
say much for the appearance of Chichester Cathedral ; it is indis
putably the least handsome of our cathedrals. The outside is un
adorned ; and there is nothing in the general form to redeem the
inelegance of the details.' During the great Revolution it suffered
much from the Commonwealth soldiers; and part of its present
uncomely appearance may be laid to the charge of their fanaticism
and the want of taste displayed in the subsequent restorations.
The northern tower, for instance, was so much injured in the siege of"
1642, that it fell a few years afterwards, and the present unsightly
tower was substituted for it in the year 1791. The ugly western
window too is modern, Cromwell's soldiers having entirely destroyed
tbe old one. Nor is the cathedral fortunate in its site, which is
low, and it is surrounded by houses. The entire length of the
cathedral is four hundred and seven feet; of the transepts, one
hundred and fifty feet ; the nave and aisles are seventy-eight feet
wide. The interior is plain. At a short distance from the north
west angle of the cathedral stands a campanile, or bell-tower, one
hundred and twenty feet high. It has four detached turrets at its
summit, exactly similar to those at the base of the spire, whence it is
thought that it was built at the same time, to receive the bells from
the old tower.
The only noticeable circumstance in the history of Chichester
Cathedral is its treatment by the parliamentary soldiers, to which
we have just alluded. When the city was taken by Waller, in
1642, some of the troops were quartered in the church, and the
devastation they committed was terrible. They threw down the
organ and destroyed the screen, stripped the tombs of their brasses
and defaced the sculptures, broke down the pulpits, pews, and taber-
2N3

1045.— Stone Church.

1046»— South Door of Stone Church.

¦¦¦fc&Pl ¦WE-' i pg£\ ¦afflRSe

TaW

HI

1047 — Stone Church : Nave and Chancel.

1048.— Hadley Chnrcli Tower and Beacon.

1049.— Lutterworth Church. Wickliffe's Rectory.

1050.— Chilton Church.

276

1051.— Choir of St, Patrick's Cathedral.

1052,— St. Nicholas Church, Newcastle-upon-Tyne,

278

OLD ENGLAND.

[Book III.

nacle-work, and tore, into fragments the Bibles and service-books,
scattering their leaves over the church ; in addition to which they
defaced the carvings both of the interior and exterior of the church,
and broke the stained windows. Yet a few years afterwards another
party was sent, under the command of Sir Arthur Haslerig, to
finish "the work of destruction, which it was alleged had been left
incomplete ; and they did finish it. As we have said, the restora
tions subsequently made were without the least regard to propriety ;
but in 1829 the interior was restored to much of its original cha
racter. When we were at Chichester a few years back, there was
some talk of bringing the exterior to something more of consis
tency, but we believe nothing has been done yet to that end.
On the walls of the south transept are some remains of two
singular pictures painted about the year 1519, for Bishop Sherburne,
by Theodore Bernardi, an artist he had invited from Italy for the
purpose. They were designed to represent two "principal epochs"
in the history of the cathedral of Chichester — the foundation of the
see of Selsey by Caedwalla, and the establishment of his own four
prebends — rather unequal epochs, it should seem. These pictures
were defaced after the siege, and repaired without much skill after
the Restoration : there is little artistic merit in them ; whatever
value they may possess is antiquarian. There is another by the
same hand, which contains a series of portraits of the Bishops of
Chichester, and of the kings of England from the Conqueror to
Henry VII. These have been since brought down to George III.
When the interior was repaired some years back, four stone coffins,
supposed to be those of bishops, were discovered, in one of which
was the skeleton, it is thought, of Stigand (1070), with episcopal
robes and insignia, and- a large and curious thumb-ring, an agate
set in gold. One was the black marble coffin of Bishop Ralph,
having his name engraved on it — being one of the oldest with a
name existing in England. There are some interesting monuments
in the cathedral. Among others the splendid chantry of St.
Richard ; tbe tomb of William Chillingworth, the learned and
able defender of Protestantism ; Flaxman's monument to the poet
Collins, &c. The Lady-Chapel is appropriated to the monuments
of the family of the Duke of Richmond: a large vault was con
structed under it in the year 1750. Over the entrance to this vault
is a stone with the inscription " Domtjs Ultima," on which Dr.
Clarke, one of the Residentiaries, wrote an epigram that has been
classed among the first in our language. It has so much point that,
though often printed, we may quote it as a little relief to our dull
details : — Did he who thus inscribed this wall
Not read, or not believe, Saint Paul,
Who says there is, where'er it stands,
Another house, not built with hands ;
Or may we gather from these words,
That house is not a — House of Lords.

Early in the times of the Saxons, there wis a religious house
dedicated to St. Peter and St. Paul at Chester, which was«then an
important fortified place on the English frontier next Wales, and had
rendered itself remarkable as one of the very last of the strong posi
tions wrenched from the native British. In 875 the event occurred
to which Chester chiefly owed its celebrity in later times. We have
made frequent mention of Wulfhere in connection with the kingdom
and diocese of Mercia, and the five sees taken out of it, one of which
was Chester. That remarkable convert from paganism had, it
seems, a daughter, scarcely less remarkable than himself, who
became a nun or abbess of Chester (William of Malmesbury), and
after her death her relics were placed in an honoured sepulchre at
Heanburgh, where they remained for two centuries ; until fear of
the Danes led to their being removed to Chester for safety. A new
community of secular canons, in honour of this sainted lady and St.
Oswald, was now formed at this place, under King Athelstan, and
grew rapidly into notice ; but at the Norman Conquest it was de
prived of much of its lands, and the great Norman Earl of Chester,
Hugh Lupus, swept it aside altogether, to make room for a Bene
dictine colony from Bee, in Normandy. " The earl," say Pennant
"possibly did not care to trust his salvation to the prayers of the
Saxon religious,'' at a time when sickness and a troubled conscience
made him feel that there was particular need of effectual intercession
for him with the offended majesty of Heaven. He richly endowed the
new Benedictine brotherhood, and his countess Ermentruda and
his numerous tenants followed his example ; so that the abbey was
inundated with the good things of this life in all shapes — lands,
mansag, chapels, churches, woods, plains, and tithes, together with
privileges of •hing with one vessel and ten nets, and all the profits

of the profitable feast of St. Werbnrgh. Before the great abbey-
gate, at this feast, were ranged the booths for the merchants, who
brought wares of all kinds from various lands, and disposed them
beneath coverings of reeds, which the monks were especially char
tered to gather from Stanlaw Marsh. Here, too, was erected the
moveable theatre for the performance of the Chester Mysteries,
attributed by some writers to the inventive brain of a monk of this
abbey, Randle or Ralph Highden, and by Mr. Markland to one of
the earlier brethren, or to several of them unitedly. Two or three
of the manuscripts of these Chester interludes have come down to
us ; there are twenty-four mysteries in each, and their subjects are
the most striking incidents of the Scriptures, both old and new.
There was a strange privilege (and one on which many reflections
might be offered, where they not irrelevant to our present purpose)
afforded to malefactors coming to the great fair — they were not to be
arrested, however heinous their crimes might be, unless they com
mitted some new offence. The concourse of loose people which
such a regulation insured we might have fancied rather detrimental
than otherwise to the interests of Chester. There was an occasion,
however, when it proved of signal service, if not to the town, to its
earl, Randle the Third, who being surrounded in the castle of Rhud-
' land by a Welsh army, and in imminent danger, despatched a mes
senger to Robert de Lacy, his general or constable, for assistance.
Lacy was attending the fair/'when immediately he and his son-in-
law, Ralph Dutton, collected a numerous body of minstrels, musi
cians, and various idle persons, and led them to the relief of his
lord. The Welsh, descrying from a distance .the approach of this
extraordinary army, and of course unaware of the materials of which
it was composed (for Lacy had done the best he could to place them
in battle array), broke up the siege, and the earl was saved. The
grateful lord bestowed some remarkable privileges on Lacy for his
prompt and very original services — he had " full power over all the
instruments of the earl's preservation." Every anniversary of the
event was also to be distinguished by a gathering of the county
musicians and minstrels, who " were to play before him and his heirs
for ever, in a procession to the church of St. John ; aud, after divine
service, to the place where he kept his court. The minstrels were
then to be examined concerning their lives and conversation, and
whether any of them played without annual licence from their lord,
or whether they had heard any words among their fellows tending
to his dishonour." (Pennant.) The annual procession of the Ches
ter minitrels was not discontinued before the middle of the last
century. The privileges enjoyed by Lacy and his heirs descended to
the Dutton family, whose steward presided over the courts for the
examination of the minstrels, from whom they claimed at the feast
four bottles of wine, a lance, and a fee of fourpence-halfpenny. The
jurisdiction of the Duttons over the minstrels has been recognised
by parliaments, as late as George II., and clauses " saving their
rights " have found their way into modern Vagrant Acts.
We have other curious glimpses afforded us of the manners and
pastimes of the Benedictines of St. Werburgh. The hospitality of
the abbey appears to have been of the most splendid character ; its
dependants resembled those of the great barons in number and im
portance. A curious document shows us that at a period when the
number of the actual monks was by no means considerable (sup
posed about twenty-eight), the abbey cook was allied to families of
importance ; that his office was honorary— a feudal tenure by which
he held several manors ; and that he had kitchen perquisites worth
a regular recovery in the Portmote Court. Among the remains of
the abbey may be mentioned the great abbey-gate, and the cloisters,
which form a quadrangle one hundred and ten feet square,.in the style
of the fifteenth century. The south walk is gone, but on that side six
semicircular arches on short pillars indicate the places of sepulchre
of the Norman abbots. We need hardly say that the refectory, or
dining-hall of the abbot and his brethren, was a noble apartment ;
where good living was so highly appreciated there was not likely
to be a want of ample and handsome accommodation : the style
is of the thirteenth century.- The Bishopric of Chester dates from
the reign of Henry VIII., who founded within the site of the
Abbey of Werburgh a new episcopal see and a cathedral church,
which foundation Elizabeth confirmed, and added to its endowments
in order « that the Holy Gospel of Christ may be preached con
stantly and purely, that the youth ofthe kingdom may be instructed
there in good learning, that hospitality may be exercised by the
dean and prebends aforesaid, and the poor be there continually
relieved." The cathedral thus instituted is an irregular, spacious,
heavy building, of the red stone of the county, and chiefly of the
times of Henries VI., VII., and VIII. (Fig, 1011.) The space occu
pied by the conventual buildings is very great, and we scarcely need
any other evidence of the grandeur of the ancient establishment. The

Chap. II]

OLD ENGLAND.

279

sculptured stone-case of the city of Chester's tutelar saint, Wer
burgh, is used as the bishop's throne. The chapter-house of the
cathedral is interesting, not only for the great beauty of the archi
tecture, but on account of the burial in it of Hugh Lupus, by his
nephew, the builder of the chapter-house, Randle the First. In
1724 the remains of the great earl were there discovered in a stone
coffin, on which was sculptured a wolf's head, in allusion to the
name. There was originally, it seems, a rhyming inscription
annexed, commencing —
Although my corpse it lies in grave,
And that my flesh consumed be,
My picture here now that you have,
An earl sometime of this city,
Hugh Lupe by name, &c.
The sword of Hugh, we may observe, is preserved in the British
Museum.

" On the first establishment of Christianity in Britain," says the
Rev. J. Evans (' Beauties of England and Wales'), " the particular
assemblies of people for the purpose of divine worship were desig
nated by the appellation c6r, a circle, society, or class. These
c6r-au afterwards received the name of their respective evangelical
instructors, as c6r-Bybi, cor-Illtud, cor-Deiniol, &c. When any
one of these was invested with paramount authority over certain
others, it assumed the distinctive name of Ban-c6r, or the supreme
society." Hence the"present Bangor. The cathedral (Fig. 1010)
stands in a narrow fertile vale, at the base of a steep rock ; the city,
founded by Maelgyn Gwynedd, a sovereign of North Wales, as early
as the sixth century (Cressy), forms but one narrow crooked street,
of a mile in length, with openings to the water-side. This Maelgyn
had rendered himself notorious by his guilty life, and, anxious to
make his peace with God and his offended people, he left his throne
and government, and became a penitent recluse in the monastery
that had a few years before (in 525) been founded by Deiniol or
Daniel, son of the Abbot of Bangor Iscoed, as a cell to his father's
house ; but which afterwards became so much more famous than its
parent, as to be distinguished from it by the appellation vawr, or
great. But the first novelty of this change over, Maelgyn soon
grew disgusted with a life so opposed to all his previous habits,
and once more went back to his old excesses, and persevered in them
to the last. To appease, probably, his own conscience, silence his
murmuring subjects, and at the same time soothe Deiniol, he caused
him, as the founder of the monastery, to be made a bishop ; the con
vent church, then a cathedral, to be flatteringly dedicated to him ;
and bequeathed some few lands with certain franchises to the chapter.
Such was the origin of the diocese of Bangor, its constitution, and
revenues (never very great). In 1118 Archbishop Baldwin and
Giraldus de Barri, the preachers of the Crusades, came to Bangor,
through a serpentine ravine that fatigued them excessively ; the
archbishop sat down on an oak torn up by the violence of the winds,
and began to be very amiable and pleasant with the Crusaders who
accompanied him, when the sweet notes of a bird in a wood adjoin
ing led to a discussion as to what bird it was. " The nightingale
was never heard in this country," it was observed ; the archbishop,
significantly smiling, replied, " The nightingale followed wise coun.
sel, and never came into Wales ; but we, unwise counsel, who have
penetrated and gone through it." After being rested and refreshed
in Bangor by Guy Ruffyus, the bishop, Archbishop Baldwin cele
brated mass in the cathedral, and, "more importunate than per
suasive," compelled him to take the cross, amid the general lamenta
tion of his people, who seemed broken-hearted at the prospect of
his departure from them. (Hoare's ' Giraldus.') In the cathedral,
built in 1 102 (the previous one was destroyed at the Conquest),
that characteristic scene occurred, in which King John, irri
tated by opposition to his rapacity, displayed his violent and tyran
nic disposition by seizing the Welsh bishop as he was officiating at
the altar. A handsome ransom procured the bishop's release, for
money was John's prime object, especially as the discovery had been
forced on him, in the course of several visits to Wales, that it was
far easier in his rage to vow the extermination of the whole Welsh
race, than to fulfil that vow when it was made. In the revolt of
Owen Glendwr, 1402, Bangor Cathedral was once more reduced
to a wreck, and so remained during nearly a century. The choir
was then rebuilt by Bishop Dean, and the tower and nave by his
successor, Bishop Skeffington, in 1532. The next bishop, Bulkeley,
alienated much of the church property, and, says Godwin, "having
sacrilegiously sold away five bells out of the steeple of his cathe
dral, and, going to see them shipped off, he was on his return home
wards struck with blindness, insomuch that he never saw after

wards." This can hardly be true, or the bishop must have possessed
extraordinary faculties, for there are many writings of his in exist
ence dated during the years of his supposed deprivation of sight.
The present excellent condition of the cathedral is attributable to
Dr. Warren, its liberal improver at the beginning of the present
century. Several ancient Welsh princes, besides many bishops and
ecclesiastics, have been buried here. The most interesting sepul
chral relic is a tomb of Prince Owen Gryffydd, in an arched access.
At the same time that Maelgyn Gwynedd, as we have just
seen, governed North Wales, his uncle Cadwallon seems to have
been in possession of that little province of the princedom which
now forms the county of Flint ; and to him fled from persecution
Kentigern, or, as the Scottish historians call him, St. Mungo,
Bishop of Glasgow, and was received with generous hospitality.
Cadwallon assigned him a pleasant spot on the banks of the turbulent
stream Elwy, which a little below falls into the river Clywd, where
he built, about 560, the church called Llan Elwy, and founded a
monastery for religious instruction and devotion. Kentigern
allowed his monks (at one time said to have been nearly a
thousand in number) no indolent careless life, for his regulations
provided that one-half should labour whilst the rest prayed, and that
the twofold duty should be reciprocally performed. Recalled to
his own see in his native country, he left this flourishing institution
to the care of Asa, or Asaph, a pious scholar. Whether Kentigern
had been a bishop here we know not ; but Asaph is certainly styled
in ancient writings episcopus Asaphensis. And thus was founded the
see-cathedral of St. Asaph. The cathedral, an unpretending struc
ture, situated on the summit of a small hill (Fig. 1012), has a square
embattled tower in the centre, ninety-three feet in height, whence a
delightful prospect is obtained ofthe rich and extensive Vale of Clwyd.
The nave and transept contain some fine parts of decorated English
style, and the window at the east end of the choir is especially ob
servable for its painting, copied from a picture of Albano ; but as
to the choir itself, rebuilt under Bishop Shipley, that is of no style
or character whatever : we are told that the perpendicular has been
aimed at ; this may be, but the architect has shot strangely wide of
his mark. The monuments are neither numerous nor very impor
tant ; the principal one is that of Bishop David Owen, who died 1.512.
St. Asaph being a frontier town, it followed, as a necessary conse
quence, that its cathedral would be in frequent peril during the
fierce wars that so often broke out between the high-spirited Cam
brians and their encroaching and powerful neighbours. To these
wars we trace the loss of the church records, and the destruction by
the English, in 1282, of the first stone cathedral, that had super
seded St. Kentigern's timber structure. The present building may
be dated from 1284; for though it was afterwards burnt by Owen
Glendwr in 1402, its walls were left standing, and these — after
eighty years of desolation and neglect — were incorporated with the
gradually-renewed cathedral of St. Asaph. The sees of Bangor
and St. Asaph were united a few years ago.

We have before had occasion to speak, in terms not very com
plimentary, of those who have been concerned in the restorations of
some of our great ecclesiastical edifices ; persons who, whatever
their intentions or abilities, have injured the buildings it was their
especial duty to guard from injury, whq have degraded art, and
made the country itself contemptible by showing it as unable to
appreciate the value of those heirlooms which form no inconsider
able portion of its truest wealth. But none of the cases to which
we refer are to be compared for a moment with that of Llandaff
(Fig. 1013), where the ecclesiastical and architectural "Vandals of
the last century, finding the old western front out of repair, actually
erected a new one across the nave nearer the centre of the pile,
leaving the original facade to decay ; and what, think you, gentle
reader, was the character of the said new front ? Why, Grecian !
After that, we can hardly be surprised at anything— not even at
the erection of a Grecian portico around the altar, which was also
,done at Llandaff. That, however, has been removed ; how long,
may we ask, will it be before the other piece of barbarism will
share the same fate ? The condemned west front is just what might
be expected from the proceedings we have mentioned, — one of the
most interesting and valuable portions of the cathedral, with nu
merous delicately-executed lancet windows, of different sizes, and
a fine tower at the northern angle. The other tower was thrown
down by a great storm in 1703. The entire length of the church
is three hundred feet, the breadth eighty. The Lady-Chapel and
the chapter-house, both in" the decorated English style, are among
the more interesting appendages of the edifice. The episcopal
palace, close by, a ruin, was destroyed, it is said, by Owen Glendwr.

1 057.— South-east View of Melrose Abbey.

1059.— Cathedral of Elgin.

1060.— Cathedral of Kildare.

No. 36.

[OLD ENGLAND.]

281

282

OLD ENGLAND.

[Book III.

The cathedral of St. David (Fig. 1014), we hardly need say,
derives its name from the tutelary saint of Wales and Welshmen ;
but that is the least part of its connection with the holy man, as we
shall see by a brief notice of his life. He was the son of a Prince
of Cardigan (whose name we need not transcribe, considering that
it requires some seven words — and those Welsh ones — to do so), and
was born about the middle of the fifth century. After a long
period of study, first of general knowledge and literature, and
secondly of divinity, he settled in a secluded place called the Valley
of Roses, established a religious house, and brought around him a
considerable number of scholars. The discipline he caused to be
observed was unusually strict and severe. All were bound to
labour with their own hands for the common welfare, all gifts or
possessions offered by unjust men were to be refused, and a hatred
of wealth was to be cherished. " They never conversed together
by talking but when necessity required, but each performed the
labour enjoined him, joining thereto prayer or holy meditations on
divine things ; and having finished their country work, they returned
to their monastery, where they spent the remainder of the day till
the evening in reading or writing. In the evening, at the sounding
of a bell, they all left their work, and immediately repaired to the
church, where they remained till the stars appeared, and then went
all together to their refection, eating sparingly and not to satiety.
Their food was bread with roots or herbs seasoned with salt, and
their thirst they quenched with a mixture of water and milk.
Supper being ended, they continued about three hours in watching,
prayers, and genuflections. As long as they were in thej, church it
was not permitted to any to slumber, or sneeze, &c. After this
they went to rest, and at cockcrovving they rose, and continued at
prayer till day appeared. All their inward sensations and thoughts
they discovered to their superior, and from him they demanded
permission in all things  Their clothing was skins of beasts."
(' Acta Sanctorum Martyrum.') Rapidly did the place, and still more
so its founder, rise into repute. When the Pelagian heresy, as it was
called, reappeared in Wales, a Synod was called, about 519, to
endeavour to cheek its progress. Moved by repeated entreaties,
David at last consented to repair thither and personally engage
in the undertaking ; and, says Giraldus, " When all the fathers
assembled enjoined St. David to preach, he commanded a child
which attended him, and had lately been restored to life by him, to
spread a napkin under his feet ; and, standing upon it, he began to
expound the Gospel and the law to the auditory. All the while that
his oration continued, a snow-white dove, desending from heaven, sat
upon his shoulders ; and, moreover, the earth on which he stood raised
itself under him till it became a hill, from whence his voice, like a
trumpet, was clearly heard and understood by all, both near and
far Off." If any doubt the truth of these somewhat marvellous
statements let them go to the spot, and there to this day they will
assuredly find a little hill,~and a church (Llanddewi-Brefi) built
upon it in commemoration of the event above mentioned. To
return, however, to St. David: it appears the assembly were so
delighted with his eloquence and zeal in opposing the obnoxious
doctrines, that they unanimously called upon him to accept the arch
bishopric of Caerleon, one of the three archiepiscopal seats (York
and London being the others) into which England was then divided.
David accepted the honours and duties, but on the condition of
removing the see to Menevia, the establishment |he had founded in
the Valley of Roses. The period of these interesting events was
the reign of that most interesting of sovereigns— King Arthur.
Five-and-twenty archbishops in succession filled the archiepiscopal
seat, and then the last of the number withdrew with all his clergy
' to Brittany, and after the lapse of some time the see became subject
to Canterbury;. Such was the origin and history of the present
(bishopric of St. David's.
The cathedral stands near the seashore, amidst the wreck of
various religious edifices, and in a city which itself is but a wreck of
what it was, when pilgrims thronged from all parts of Britain to pay
their respects to St. David's shrine, which is still preserved in the
cathedral, and exhibits four recesses for the receipt of offerings.
Pope Calixtus ordained that two pilgrimages to this place should
be reckoned as equivalent to one to Rome. Among the monarchs
who are known to have come hither may be mentioned the Con
queror, Henry II., and Edward I. and Eleanor. Giraldus relates
a pleasant anecdote in connection With the visit of the second Henry.
Across the river Alan, which runs through the cathedral precincts,
there was in very ancient times a beautiful marble bridge consisting
of a single slab, measuring ten feet in length, by six in breadth and
one in depth. « Henry II., on his return from Ireland, is said to
have passed over this stone before he entered the church. Pro
ceeding toqpids the shrine of Saint David, habited like a pilgrim

and leaning on a staff, lie met at.the White Gate a procession of the
canons, coming forth to receive him with due honour and reverence.
As the procession moved along, a Welsh woman threw herself at.the
king's feet, and made a complaint against the bishop of the place,
which was explained to the king by an interpreter; the woman,
immediate attention not being paid to her petition, with violent
gesticulations, and a loud and impertinent voice, exclaimed re
peatedly, " Vindicate us this day, Lechlavan ! Revenge us and the
nation in this man!" alluding to a vulgar fiction and proverb of
Merlin, that a king of England and conqueror of Ireland should be
wounded in that country by a man with a red hand, and die upon
Lechlavan on his return through Menevia. The king, who had heard
the prophecy, approaching the stone, stopped for a short time at
the foot 'of it, and, looking earnestly at it, boldly passed over ; then
turning round and looking towards the stone, thus indignantly
inveighed against the prophet : " Who will hereafter give credit to
the lying Merlin ? " One of the bystanders then called out in a
loud voice, " Thou art not that king by whom Ireland is to be
conquered, or of whom Merlin prophesied ! "
The cathedral, which was erected by Peter, the forty-ninth
bishop, is partly in the Norman, partly in the Pointed style, three
hundred and seven feet long, with a lofty square tower at the west
end, and a lofty choir. The bishop's throne is of exquisite work
manship, and the rood-loft-screen and roof are greatly admired.
Giraldus Cambrensis, from whose writings we have borrowed the
preceding anecdotes, lies buried here, obtaining in death that
position among the bishops of the see which he failed to obtain in
his lifetime; but to which his virtues and the twice-recorded suf
frages ofthe Chapter of,. St. David's so well entitled him.

It is not unamusing or uninstructive to mark how, in the record
of our great ecclesiastical establishments, as we ascend step by step
towards the contemplation of the greatest, the importance of the
alleged miracles that shed such a halo round the foundation, as well
as the position of the alleged founder, grow in a like proportion,
till nothing less than the presence and exertions of St. Paul
himself will suffice to explain the first erection in London of the
famous church that bears his name; whilst, to do honour to the
ceremony of the consecration of its great rival at Westminster, a
St. Peter must not only be directly concerned, but the apostle must
be brought down from heaven, centuries after his death, to share in
the very pleasant business of self-dedication. When Sebert, king of
the East Saxons, overthrew, in the beginning of the seventh century,
the temple of Apollo, which, according to Flete, a monk of
Westminster, had previously occupied that "terrible place," so
overrun with thorns as to have obtained the name of Thorney
Island, he built on the site a Christian temple, and thus, if other
ancient authorities speak truly, restored the worship which that
most perplexing of monarchs, King Lucius, first established there,
on his conversion to Christianity, about the year 184. Mellitus
Bishop of London, encouraged Sebert in the good work, which was
at last fully completed, and about to be opened with great splendour
by the bishop. St. Peter, however, anticipated him. One evening
as a fisherman was busy iii his vocatipn on the banks ofthe Thames,
just opposite to Thorney Island, a figure suddenly appeared to him|
and requested to be taken across the river. On reaching the other
side, the fisherman was desired to wait awhile ;, and the figure pre
sently disappeared into the new church. All this seemed very strange
to the fisherman, but as he gazed on the church it suddenly became
lighted up .with a most unearthly-looking blaze of light, and then
choral hymns were heard; as from innumerable hosts of angels.
The trembling fisherman knew then it must be St. Peter he had
rowed across the river, and that the new church was then beino-
dedicated by a heavenly priesthood. St. Peter himself soon re
appeared, confirmed what the fisherman had supposed, and bade him
go at daybreak to Mellitus to inform him of what had passed,
observing at the same time, that the bishop would find, in cor
roboration of the statement, marks of consecration on the walls of
the edifice. The apostle concluded by bidding the fisherman cast
his nets into the river, and take one of the fish he should catch to
Mellitus ; the fisherman did so, and a truly miraculous draught of
the finest salmon (which was undoubtedly a Thames fish in those
days) rewarded his services, and assured' him of the truth of all
these marvellous occurrences when the apostle had vanished.
Mellitus, on hearing the fisherman's tale, hurried to the church and
there truly enough he found marks of extinguished tapers and ofthe
chrism; so, instead of rededicating the pile, he contented himself
with the celebration of mass. Now it is a remarkable feature of
this story, that one ofthe rights of the abbey of Westminster, that
of claiming a tenth of all the fish caught in the Thames within

ENTRANCE TO THE CHAPEL OF EDWARD THE CONFESSOR.

Chap. -II.]

OLD ENGLAND.

283

certain limits, which existed for many centuries, was avowedly
asserted and admitted on the ground that St. Peter told the fisher
man that neither he nor his brethren should ever want fish so long
as they gave a tenth to the church he had just dedicated.
Sebert's church had many benefactors in the course of the next
three centuries ; but up to the time of the Confessor, the building
and revenues were on a scale far from commensurate with the
spiritual rank to which it had been elevated by St. Peter*. The
monastery also, it may be observed, had suffered greatly from the
Danes. Whilst King Edward, however, was in exile during the
Danish invasion, he vowed a pilgrimage to Rome, if God should
please to restore him to his throne. He was restored, and Edward
prepared to fulfil his vow ; but his nobles persuaded him to send an
embassy instead, and the Pope granted absolution of the vow on
condition that the sums of money that were to have been spent in
the journey, should be bestowed on some religious house dedicated
to St. Peter. Just at the very critical time, it happened that a
monk of St. Peter's at Westminster, a man of great sanctity and
simplicity of manners, it is said, had a dream, which showed that
the apostle himself condescended to point out the establishment that
should be the fortunate recipient of the king's treasures. Wulsine,
the monk in question, was asleep one day, when St. Peter appeared
to him, and thus spake : " There is a place of mine in the west part of
London, which I chose, and love, and which I formerly consecrated
with my own hands, honoured with my presence, and made illus
trious by my miracles. The name of the place is Thorney; which
having, for the sins of the people, been given to the power of the
barbarians, from rich is become poor, from stately, low, and from
honourable is made despicable. This let the king, by my com
mand, restore and make a dwelling of monks, stately build, and
amply endow : it shall be no less than the house of God, and the
gates of Heaven." Edward implicity believed the dream to be a
special interposition to decide all his doubts, and at once set to work
in such a spirit that a new pile soon appeared, which was, indeed,
for the times, stately built, and as amply endowed as a tenth part
of all the king's property, and an extensive set of relics of the most
inestimable character, could make it. It was a sad grief to Edward
that he could not witness its consecration ; the day, the Feast of
the Innocents, was appointed, the chief nobility and clergy
throughout England were summoned, all was ready, when he fell
ill, and his queen, Editha, was obliged to preside in his absence :
however, he had lived to see the whole completed ; to learn the par
ticulars even of the last concluding ceremony, and that was much :
he died almost immediately after, and was of course buried in the
edifice he had erected. Of the Confessor's building there are still
some very interesting remnants preserved, as the Pix Office, and
the parts adjoining against the east cloister and the south transept,
all evidencing the simple grandeur of the original structure, which,
says Matthew Paris, was built novo compositions genere, — an evi
dence, it seems to us, that the Norman style of architecture was
then new in England. Admired, and deservedly, as that style was
at the period in question, men could have little supposed that in
less than two centuries after, another king, Henry III., should find it
necessary to pull down the greater part of the Confessor's building,
in order to raise it anew, more in harmony with the architectural
tastes of his day; still less could they have supposed that such
presumption — as it must have seemed to them — would be excused by
the fact, that the rebuilding would really be an improvement on
their own noble church. That it was so, we need only walk into
the existing Westminster Abbey, to satisfy us, for the present edifice
is, in a great degree, the pile so rebuilt by Henry. He it was
who erected the chapel of the Confessor, which forms the rounded
end of the choir, or the apsis of the building, the four chapels in
the ambulatory, that extend around the choir, a considerable portion
ofthe choir itself, a small portion of the nave, the transepts, and
probably the chapter-house. We may complete the necessarily
brief notice that our space compels us to give of the erection of the
abbey, by observing that the nave thus begun was carried further
in the reign of Edward I., and gradually finished, with the other
portions of the edifice, in the course of the thirteenth and fourteenth
centuries, and that the grand close to the whole works took place
in the reign of Henry VII. by the erection of the chapel, not
unhappily named the world's wonder. The great central tower
and the western towers, however, were still unbuilt, and so to this
time the former remains ; the latter have been added by the architect
of St. Paul's, in a style that makes us regret he did not confine
himself to St. Paul's and works ' of a kindred character : most
assuredly he was profoundly ignorant of the character and merits of
the productions to which he' presumptuously applied the epithet of
» Gothic crinkle-crankle."

In walking round the exterior of the abbey, the parts that more
especially attract the eye are the wonderfully rich and elaborate
chapel of Henry VII., forming the rounded eastern extremity of
the pile— the north transept, formerly called, on account of its ex
treme beauty, Solomon's Porch (Fig. 1019)— the western or chief
front, with the towers which Wren raised to their present propor
tions — and the doorway shown in our engraving (Fig. 1024) beneath,
which, when the niches were filled with their proper statues, must
have formed a glorious specimen of the sculpture of the middle ages.
Scarcely less interesting than these great features of the exterior of
the abbey itself, are its numerous adjuncts. It was to the Jeru
salem Chamber, which rests against the northern corner of the base
of the west front, that Henry IV., on falling ill in the abbey,
desired to be carried, saying,
It hath been prophesied to me many years,
I should not die but in Jerusalem,
¦Which vainly I supposed the Holy Land ; ^
But bear me to that church and there I'll lie, —
In that Jerusalem shall Harry die.
Then again, there are close by the various domestic buildings
still remaining of the old monastery, as the cloisters and the college
dinino'-hall, the last a most perfect specimen of an old refectory,
and still used for its original purpose, though the monks are changed
into the boys of the Grammar-School of Westminster, who were
connected with the cathedral foundation by Henry VIII. after the
dissolution of the monastery. In the cloisters stood formerly 'a
little chapel dedicated to St. Katherine, which was used for the
meeting of synods. Hollinshed has recor.ded some rather amusing
circumstances respecting one of these assemblies, held in 1 176, before
the Pope's legate : — " When the legate was Set, and the archbishop
on his right hand, as primate of the realm, the Archbishop of York
coming in, and disdaining to sit on the left, where he might seem
to give pre-eminence unto the Archbishop of Canterbury (unman
nerly enough, indeed), swash'd him down, meaning to thrust himself
in betwixt the legate and the Archbishop of Canterbury. And
where, belike the said Archbishop of Canterbury was loth to
remove, he sat himself in his lap ; but he scarcely touched the
archbishop's skirt, when the bishop and other chaplains, with their
servants, stept to him, pulled him away, and threw him to the ground ;
and beginning to lay on him with bats and fists, the Archbishop of
Canterbury, yielding good for evil, sought to save him from their
hands. ... . . • The Archbishop of York, with his rent rochet,
get up, and away he went to the king, with a great complaint
against the Archbishop of Canterbury ; but when, upon examina
tion of the matter, the truth was known, he was well laughed at for
his labours, and that was all the remedy he got. As he departed
so be-buffeted forth of the Convocation-house towards the king,
they cried upon him, ' Go, traitor, thou that diddest betray that
holy man Thomas (-a-Becket) ; go, get thee hence, thy hands yet
stink of blood !' " But of all these architectural offsets the chapter
house is that which demands our warmest admiration. Nothing
can be imagined more exquisitely beautiful than must have been
the entrance in the east cloister, or than the building to which that
entrance leads— nay, we might almost say, than they still are, in
spite of decay, mutilation, and the most disgraceful neglect on the
part of the dignitaries of the abbey. Here exist many important
traces of painting on the walls, and the floor has still large portions
of the original pavement, most beautifully tessellated. The chapter
house is now used for a Record-office, and is therefore a closed place
to the public; the same maybe said of the adjoining Pix-office,
which, as before stated, forms the chief remains of the Confessor's
pile. Whatever the beauty or intrinsic value of the architecture of
Westminster Abbey— and it is impossible to estimate either too
highly— there are few who can yield to that architecture the atten
tion it deserves ; for the very first glimpse of the building conjures up
a host of associations of a more absorbing and stimulating character.
This is the church, we say to ourselves, in which so many kings have
been crowned, or buried ; in which so many of England's greatest
men sleep their last sleep, statesmen and warriors, poets, philoso
phers and philanthropists, actors, artists, musicians -the illustrious
by their genius or virtues— and with no inconsiderable sprinkling
of the illustrious merely by rank or courtesy. It would be difficult
to find a parallel in any age or country to the wealth stored up in
the vaults of this one building— this truly national mausoleum—
this fine old Abbey of Westminster. Through century after
century England has poured into it a large proportion of those whose
memory the world would not willingly let die, till every part of the
pile, nave, choir, transepts, and ambulatory, have been filled to
* 202

I HI

Mm . .. W

1 061.— Upper Chapel of St. Thomas
London Bridge.

1064.-Lambeth Palace, before the recent alterations.

*

I062.-Lower Chapel, or Crypt, of St. Thomas.

1065.— Doorway in Lollards' Tower.

f^Wvf^

loer.^eeimenfromaCwofWycliffe^BihlemtheBriUshMnsenm. (Royal MS. I. C via )
284

10e,-The Cbapel ofSt. Thorny erted into a HoU3e

1068.— Tomb of Archbishop Grey, York Cathedral.

1070.— Tomb of William of Windsor and Blanch de
la Toar, Westminster Abbey.

1069.— Glower's Monument, St. Saviour's Church, Southwark.

I

mmm ¦

1071.— Early English Capitals, Tork Cathedral.

1072.— Decorated English Capitals, York Cathedral-

W*

1075:— Pinnacles : 1,-Early English, from Wells Cathedral ;
2, Decorated English, from St. Mary's, Oxford; 3,
Decorated English, from York Cathedral.

A

1073.— Tomb of Aymer de Valence, Westminster Abbey.

1076-— Niches.: 1, Early English, from Salisbury Cathedral ;
2 and 3, Decorated English, from York Cathedral.

1074.— Monument of Hugh Le Despenser, Earl of Gloucester,
and bis Countess, Tewkesbury Cathedral. 285

286

OLD ENGLAND.

[Book III.

overflowing, and the stream has found vent only in the cloisters
surrounding. Let us begin in them our hasty observations. There
lie in strange juxtaposition with some of the earliest abbots of the
monastery, a host of actors and actresses, as Barry, Betterton,
Foote, Mrs. Bracegirdle, Mrs. Cibber, and Mrs. Yates— several
musicians, among whom we may mention Lawes, Milton's friend,
and the composer of the original music to ' Comus,' Sir John'
Hawkins the musical historian, and Benjamin Cooke, with the
appropriate musical score of the Canon by twofold-augmentation
engraven on his monument. The great engraver, Vertue, also lies
in the cloister.
We will now enter, in fancy at least, by the great western door ;
the only mode, let us observe, in which the authorities permit the
public to use that approach; in ignorance, probably, that the
builders, when erecting that grand entrance, saw no grander pur
pose to which it could be put than to allow a people to draw nearer
to their God, and so planned all things in accordance for due
architectural effect ; or, if not in ignorance, is it, then, that the
authorities shut up their chief doors, simply because money-taking —
a very pleasant, but not peculiarly Christian or even reputable-look
ing process, under the circumstances — would look too bad at that
part of the church, and so the affair is smuggled up into a corner ?
Well, we enter, in fancy at all events, by the western door, and at
once the full and vast magnificence of the nave— one of the most
elegant, and, without exception, the highest in England — is before
us, extending far away its glorious columnar ranks and airy
sweeps of arches. As we wander along towards the choir, and
then turn, the gorgeous western window breaks upon us with its
Jewish patriarchs wrapped, as it were, in all the coloured glories of
one of the most glorious of sunsets. What beds of purple and
amber ! what streams of golden light ! But we have no time to
pause, with this endless array of monuments, busts, and statues
before us. A few preliminary words as to the route we propose to
take, and we must hurry along as fast— ay, almost as fast as one of
the abbey guides himself could wish, even though he were reckon
ing up at the time how many more sets of visitors might be driven
through the abbey before closing-time. If the reader will look at
the plan of the abbey (Fig. 1023),* he will be able readily to follow
us as we advance along the right side, or southern aisle of the nave,
then back again, and along the left side, towards the north transept ;
from thence into the ambulatory as far as Henry VII.'s Chapel.
and then round by the other half of the ambulatory, to the south
transept, or Poets' Corner, on the other side of the choir ; and so,
lastly, into the choir itself. Among the many memorials on the
walls of the south aisle of the nave that more peculiarly attract the
eye or interest the mind, are those to Craggs, the Secretary of
State, who was so deeply concerned in the nefarious South Sea
Scheme as to sink under the exposure, and who was yet the
satirist's beau ideal of a man
Who broke no promise, served no private end;

Pope.
and Mrs. Oldfield, the actress, whose vanity was lashed, possibly
with not much better reason, by the same poet in the lines —
Odious ! in woollen ! 't would a saint provoke
(Were the last words that poor Nareissa spoke) :
No, let a charming chintz and Brussels lace
Wrap my cold limbs and shade my lifeless face :
One would not, sure, be frightful when one's dead !
And— Betty— give this cheek a little red.
Then we have Congreve, in his full-bottomed wig ; and several of
a military character, including one of the most outre description,
Admiral Tyrrell's ; and one that has drawn tears down many a fair
cheek, as it suggested the melancholy particulars of its owner's fate 
unfortunate, brave, noble Andre, whose very chivalric generosity of
disposition seems to have led him into a position that he must have
abhorred in the abstract more than most other men, and so brought
upon him a spy's death. Well, we can sympathize with him, with-

* 1. General entrance.
2. Poets' Corner.
3. St. Blaize's Chapel.
, 4. South Aisle of Choir.
5. South Aisle of Nave.
6. North ditto.
7. New Screen.
8. North Aisle>f Choir.
9. West Aisle of North Transept.
10. East Aisle of North Transept.
11. Islip's Chapel.
12. St. John the Baptist's.
13. St. Paul's.%

14. Abbot Ware's Mosaic Pavement.
15. Edward the Confessor's Chapel and
Shrine.
16. Porch to Henry VII.'s Chapel.
17. Henry VII.'s Tomb.
1 8 . North Aisle of Henry VII.'s Chapel.
19. South ditto.
20. St. Nicholas's Chapel.
21. St. Edmund's.
22. St. Benedict's. .
23. Jerusalem Chamber.
24. College (formerly Abbey) Dining.
Hall.

out questioning the justice or the expediency, in a military sense, of
Washington's severity toward him, which was exercised under cir
cumstances of no ordinary nature : it was not simply that Andre
had put off the British uniform for secret objects, but to arrange
the particulars of an act of the most diabolical treachery towards
the American cause, then meditated by the unsuccessful but ever-
infamous Arnold. This monument has suffered frequent mutilation ;
and Charles Lamb, with malicious sportiveness, made the circum
stance an instrument of attack on his friend Southey's change of
political opinion. Designating the injury as the wanton mischief
of some schoolboy, fired, perhaps, with some notions of trans
atlantic freedom, he observed to Southey, " The mischief was done
about the time that you were a scholar there. Do you know any
thing about the unfortunate relic ? " Remembering Eoubiliac's mo
nument to Newton at Cambridge, it is but an act of charity to pass
Kent's quietly by, which stands on one side of the entrance into
the choir. Ofthe memorials along the northern aisle, of the nave,
we may first mention that of the sublime coxcomb Kneller, who
was, says Pope, in the inscription,
By Heaven, and not a master, taught;
Whose art was Nature, and whose pictures thought.
Major Bennell, Tierney, Spencer Percival, so strangely assassinated
by Bellingham, with Freind, Woodward, and Mead, the memorable
trio of physicians, are among the names that are read upon the
walls, as we pass on towards the part where the projecting choir
narrows the space. Here the " spoils of time " become rich indeed
in one particular class of eminent men, who in this abbey excite
even more than usual interest, on account of their living as well as
their dead connection with it ; we find here one of the finest of the
great ecclesiastical English musicians, Dr. Croft, who was organist
of the abbey ; Blow, another admirable musician ; Dr. Burney, the
historian of music ; Samuel Arnold, also organist to the abbey ;
and, lastly, Henry Purcell, who might almost be called the Shak
spere of the art, on account of the height and variety of his powers,
and of whom some one — Dryden, it is supposed— has finely said in
the inscription, he has " gone to that blessed place where only his
harmony can be exceeded."
The north transept is the wealthiest part of the abbey for me
morials of a miscellaneous kind, but especially statesmen. Here
lie, within a short distance of each other, Chatham, Pitt, Fox,
Castlereagh, Canning, Wilberforce, and Grattan, — all their party
contests over, — A few feet
Of sullen earth divide each winding-sheet.
How peaceful and how powerful is the grave,
That hushes all 1
Then again, as specimens of art, there are among numerous others
Flaxman's monument of Judge Mansfield, one of the noblest, per
haps the noblest of the specimens of modern sculpture; Chantrey's
statue of Canning ; Westmacott's memorial of Fox, and the same
artist's exquisite group of a mother and child. Lastly, as examples
of what epitaphs may become when dictated by true sentiment or
poetic feeling, let us commend to all readers the inscription on
the Newcastle monument, in which the Duchess says of herself
" Her name was Margaret Lucas, youngest sister to the Lord Lucas
of Colchester; a noble family, for all the brothers were valiant
and all the sisters virtuous ; "—and this, placed upon a plain tablet
to Grace Scot, 1645 :—
He that will give my Grace but what is hers,
Must say her death hath not
Made only her dear Scot,
But virtue, worth, and sweetness widowers.
In a part of the transept, now divided from it by a wall of mo
numents, is that most picturesque of monumental works, Sir Francis
Vere's, where the knight lies in effigy on the bottom, whilst four
knights at the corner, all full length, but kneeling figures, support
a table or canopy above, on which rest the warrior's arms, his
helmet, breastplate, and other accoutrements. Koubiliac was 'seen
one day gazing upon one of these figures, with his arms folded, and
evidently quite absorbed in its contemplation. " Hush ! " said he to
one who approached, pointing at the same time to the figure : " He
will speak soon." We need not go far to inquire into the value of
¦this praise; Eoubiliac's own and most distinguished work the
Nightingale monument, is close by, almost exceeding the legitimate
bounds of art by the powerful fidelity of its representation The
king of terrors is seen suddenly arising from the depths below and
about to cast his fatal dart at the victim, a female ; who is supported
by her husband with one hand, whilst with the other he endeavours
in frantic agony, to avert the threatened blow.

TOMB OF SIR FRANCIS VERE
IN WESTMINSTER ABBEY,

Chap. II.]

OLD ENGLAND.

287

,r Scarcely less attractive are the funereal memorials in the ambu
latory, though we cannot even mention the names of most of them.
Here, or- in the chapels that we find on our left, are the colossal
statues of Telford and Watt, the last most absurdly placed in the
petite and exceedingly beautiful chapel of St. Paul, — how it got
there is a mystery to us ; General Wolfe's monument ; various
works of the character of Lord Hunsdon's, that is to say, stately
and magnificent, but most intolerably cumbrous and heavy; and
lastly, tombs of some of the early abbots of Westminster, and of a
bishop, Ruthall, who died, it is supposed, from mortification at an
unlucky mistake he made: — having drawn up a book on state
affairs, he sent it, as he thought, to the king ; but, unfortunately,
the book really sent turned out to be an inventory of his treasure ;
— an awkward accident to have occurred at any period of English
history ; what then must it have been when the king so favoured
was— Henry VIII. ? We might here, too, stop to mention the
beautiful tomb of the standard-bearer of Henry V. at Agincourt ;
but the monument of that sovereign himself is before us, and draws
us onward by its superior attractions.
The engraving of the shrine of Henry V. (Fig. 1016) shows us
the headless effigy of the hero-king on his tomb, shadowed by an
arch deep and solemn, through which the spectator, as he stands
with his back toward the choir, may obtain his first view of the
dim porch and radiant chapel of Henry VII. This chantry is
" adorned with upwards of fifty statues : on the north face is the
coronation of Henry V., with his nobles attending,- represented in
lines of figures on each side ; on the south face of the arch the cen
tral object is the king on horseback, armed cap-a-pie, riding at full
speed, attended by the companions of his expedition. The sculpture
is bold and characteristic ; the equestrian group is furious and war
like ; the standing figures have a natural sentiment in their actions,
and simple grandeur in their draperies, such as we admire in the
paintings of Eaphael and Masaccio" (Flaxman). In the very
flower of his youth, in the flush of victory, enjoying such fortune
and happiness as kings are rarely blessed with, Henry V. died. His
had been a brief reign, but he had had his
One crowded hour of glorious life,
and had left a name to be remembered by his countrymen with
unfading admiration and delight. He was a second Black Prince
to them, the model of all chivalric virtue. They placed him by
that hero's side in their gallery of great ideals ; and he gained
by the contrast. He was" a man, says the historian Walsingham,
" sparing of words, resolute in deeds, provident in council, prudent
in judgment, modest in countenance, magnanimous in action, con
stant in undertaking, a great almsgiver, devout to Godward, a
renowned soldier, fortunate in field, whence he never returned with
out victory." He died in France, in 1422, and was carried to
Paris, to the Church of Notre Dame, where high funereal obsequies
were performed, in the presence of a concourse of lords of England,
France, Normandy, and Picardy. Thence he was borne to Rouen,
to remain there until all was prepared for a progress to England
worthy of his rank and deeds. Paris and Rouen, it is said, offered
large sums of gold to have his remains interred among them ; but
England would almost as soon have sold her independence. There
was but one place of sepulchre for Harry the Fifth, St. Peter's
Abbey. And if the mourners could not gaze on his actual form,
they at least saw him with the eyes of fancy, in the effigy that Speed
tells us was artificially moulded and ''painted according to life ;
upon whose head an imperial diadem of gold and precious stones
was set the bodv clothed with a purple robe furred with ermine ; in
his right hand it held a sceptre royal, and in the left a ball of gold :
in which manner it was carried in a chariot of state, covered with
red velvet, embroidered with gold, and over it a rich canopy, borne
by men of great place."
The king of Scotland, and many princes, lords, and knights of
England and France, went with the procession out of Rouen :
" the chariot all the way compassed about with men, all in white
o-owns bearing burning torches in their hands ; next unto whom
followed his household servants, all in black ; and after them the
princes, lords, and estates, in vestures of mourning adorned ; then,
two miles distant from the corpse, followed the still-lamenting
queen, attended with princely mourners, her tender and pierced
heart more inly mourning than her outward-sad weeds could in any
sort express  And thus, by sea and land, the dead king was
brought unto London, where through the streets the chariot was
drawn with four horses, whose caparisons were richly embroidered,
and embossed with the royal arms, the first with England's arms
alone, the second with the arms of France and England in a field
quartered, the third bore the arms of France alone, and the fourth

three crowns, or, in a field azure, the ancient arms of King Arthur
— now well-beseeming him who had victoriously united three king
doms (France, England, and Ireland) in one."
The clergy chanted the service for the dead as the bier was borne
with slow steps to St. Paul's, where the parliament of the nation
were assembled to witness the celebration of the grand obsequies.
The procession then moved to Westminster Abbey (Fig 1020), and
the body, after its long pilgrimage, rested at last. This superb
chantry rose to grace the spot : and thrice a-day mass was sung in
it for the repose of the hero's soul. And if now we could conjure
up the living presence of the valiant Henry, we have but to gaze
on that shield and war-saddle fastened on the columns, and on that
battered casque which he wore at Agincourt, and which is now set
up on the wooden bar, conspicuous between the entrance towers :
compared with these relics, sculpture, tomb, and effigy are, to our
feelings, as regards him, but cold abstractions. The mutilations of
the effigy happened at the suppression of the abbey by Henry VIII.,
when that monarch, who was generally so very fond of taking off
heads because he did not like them, took off this, from an opposite
principle — he loved it, like Othello, " not wisely, but too well " — it
was of solid silver. The body and tomb he also stripped of their
silver and gilded ornaments. Queen Katherine of Valois, who had
first placed that costly effigy on her husband's tomb (Speed), and
who most probably erected the whole chantry, suffered a worse
because more directly personal desecration after her death. " She
was buried in Our Lady's Chapel," says Speed, "within Saint
Peter's Church, at Westminster ; whose corpse was taken up in the
reign of King Henry VII., her grandchild, when he laid the
foundation of that admirable structure (the chapel of Henry VII.),
and her coffin placed by King Henry in her husband's tomb, hath
ever since so remained, and never reburied : where it standeth, the
cover being loose, and to be seen and handled of any that will."
It was reported that the body was left thus strangely exposed by
Katherine's own appointment, "in regard of her disobedience to
King Henry, for being delivered of her son at the place he forbade."
Pepys says of one of his visits to the abbey : " Here we did see,
by particular favour, the body of Queen Katherine of Valois, and
I had the upper part of her body in my hands, and I did kiss her
mouth, reflecting upon it that I did kiss a queen, and that this was
my birthday, thirty-six years old, that I did kiss a queen." In
1776 the remains were at last*restored to the seclusion of the grave
in St. Nicholas' Chapel. That Henry, her grandson by a second
marriage, in building his " world's wonder," should not have had
grace enough to treat with ordinary decency the corpse of his
ancestress, is, we presume, only to be accounted for by the fact
that he was in such continued anxiety about his own soul, that
neither the souls nor bodies of any one else, however nearly related
to him, could receive much attention. For the welfare of that
soul he erected this sumptuous edifice, into which we now enter,
and in which, to use Washington Irving's words, stone seems, by
the " cunning labours of the chisel, to have been robbed of its
weight and density, suspended aloft as if by inagic, and the fretted
roof achieved with the wonderful minuteness and airy securityof a
cobweb." For the good of his soul, Henry did cause to be carefully
erected, in his own lifetime, the most sumptuous of monuments, for '
his soul's mortal tenement ; a monument which lends new grace and
splendour to the surpassing loveliness of the chapel in which it stands.
Lastly, it was for the especial good of his soul, that he directed three
masses to be performed daily before his tomb while the world should
last. It is but justice to state, that another of the great artistical
treasures ofthe chapel, the tomb of Margaret, Countess of Richmond,
executed by the same masterly sculptor, Torregiano, shows that
Henry did, upon some occasion or other, find time to cast one pious
and filial thought towards the memory of his mother and her soul.
This mother seems to have had in her composition all the warlike
aspirations that her son, however .personally brave, lacked, or was
too politic to give scope to. Camden says of her, that she was
accustomed to remark that, "on the condition that the princes
of Christendom would combine themselves and march against th
common enemy, the Turk, she would most willingly attend them,
and be their laundress in the camp." Such enthusiasm was thrown
away upon her royal son; had there been opportunity for out
witting the Mohammedans, he might have been induced to try
his skill, but fighting them was quite another matter. Among
the many other interesting monuments in the chapel, we may
especially particularize those two superb ones, which cover re
spectively the remains of Mary Queen of Scots, and her cousin
and persecutor Elizabeth; the monument of the young princes
murdered in the Tower, Kings James and Charles II., Monk,
Duke of Albemarle, King William and Queen Mary, George II.,

:"^)£'''g"'lii---

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' " - ¦¦> "im- ~<nn
1677. — Piscina, Gloncesler
Cathedral.

1078.- Piscina, Great. Gidding,
Northamptonshire.

107,9.— Piscina, Romsey
Hampshire.

1 080.— Piscina, Hexham,
Northumberland.,

1

1086.— Early Brass (inlaid in stone).

9 --_ 30
r n i -n w . 2,089.— -Progressive Examples of Windows in the Thirteenth and FouriasnJh Centuries.
I. Early English : 1, From the Lady-Chapel, Winchester ; 2, York; 3, North Transept, York ; 4, Westminster Abbey ; 5, Chapter
house, York, transition to  II. Decorated English : 6, Exeter, Geometrical Tracery ; Kirton Church, Lincolnshire.
flowing Tracery; 8, Badgeworth Church, Gloucestershire, Example of the Ball-Flower Decoration: 9, 10, Choir, York,
transition to the Perpendicular.

1 087.— Brass of Bishop Compton.

288

1063.— Piscina, Salisbury Cathedral.

1084.— Piscina, Bapchild, Kent.

1085.— Piscina in Norman. Arch, Bapchild, Kent.

9
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in':;.

1091. — Froissart reading to the Count of Foix after Supper.

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1090. — Fi-oissart and SirEspaing de Lycn.

J093.— Long-bow Archers. (From an original Drawing.)

1092.— Bertrand du Guesclin at the head of a Free Company.

290

OLD ENGLAND.

[Book III.

and the " butcher " of Culloden, Addison, and his patron and
friend Lord Halifax ; and, lastly, the exquisitely beautiful recumbent
statue by Westmacott, of the Duke de Montpensier. We must not
quit the chapel without a glance at the banners of the Knights of
the Bath, that, hung on high along the chapel walls, remind us of
the superb ceremony of installation that takes place in this chapel
on the creation of a new knight.
We pass on now towards Poets' Corner (Fig. 1017), casting a mere
passing glance into the chapels that lie by our side on the left.
One of the most poetical of prose writers has given us his impres
sions of this, the more peculiarly attractive part of the whole abbey,
and we cannot do better than transcribe the passage, for such
writers enhance, by the personal sentiments they excite in connection
with themselves and their visits, the sentiments they may have
occasion to express with regard to what they felt and saw. " The
monuments," observes Washington Irving, " are generally simple,
for the lives of literary men afford no striking themes for the
sculptor. Shakspere and Addison have statues erected to their
memories ; but the greater part have busts, medallions, and some
times mere inscriptions. Notwithstanding the simplicity of these
memorials, I have always observed that the visitors to the abbey
remain longest about them. A kinder and fonder feeling takes
place of that cold curiosity or vague admiration with which they
gaze on the splendid monuments of the great and the heroic. They
linger about these, as about the tombs of friends and companions ;
for indeed there is something of companionship between the author
and the reader. Other men are known to posterity only through
the medium of history, which is continually growing faint and
obscure ; but the intercourse between the author and his fellow-
men is ever new, active, and immediate : he has lived for them
more than for himself; he has sacrificed surrounding enjoyments,
and shut himself out from the delights of social life, that he might
the more immediately commune with distant minds and distant
ages. Well may the world cherish his renown ; for it has been
purchased, not by deeds of violence and blood, but by the diligent
dispensation of pleasure. Well may posterity be grateful to his
memory ; for he has left it an inheritance, not of empty names and
sounding actions, but whole treasures of wisdom, bright gems of
thought, and golden veins of language."
It is hardly necessary to enumerate the separate" stars of this
poetical Milky- way ; but there is a distinction of some importance to
be observed : some of our poets have simply monuments here — such
are Shakspere, Milton, Butler, Gray, Thomson, and Goldsmith;
whilst others were really interred in Poets' Corner. As we wander
about this little spot — surely the most precious any age or country
can boast of— we have beneath or around us the ashes of Chaucer
(fit name to commence the custom of burying poets in the abbey,
worthy leader of the illustrious host that were to follow), Spenser,
prince of poets, Beaumont, Dray ton,. Cowley, Dryden, Rowe, Prior,
Gay, Denham, Macpherson, the author or discoverer of Ossian,
Samuel Johnson, Richard Brinsley Sheridan, and the poet who has
just put off his mortality to put on immortality, Thomas Campbell.
The words " 0 rare Ben Jonson !" inscribed on the wall' near the
door, remind us that Ben Jonson, though not buried in the corner,
lies in the abbey, in the north aisle of the nave; and a curious
story is told as to the grave. The Dean of Westminster rallied the
poet one day about his burial in the abbey vaults. " I am too
poor for that," said Jonson ; " and no one will lay out funeral
charges upon me. No, sir, six feet long by two wide is too much
for me : two feet by two will do for what I want." " You shall
have it," replied the Dean ; and so the conversation ended. On
the poet's death, continues the story, a demand was made for the
space promised, and a hole made in it eight feet deep, and the
coffin deposited therein upright. Many other eminent men enjoy
the honourable companionship ofthe poets,— such are the musician
Handel, the actors Garrick and Henderson, the men of learn
ing Casaubon and Camden, the divine South, the architect
Chambers, &c.
And now, in the choir (Figs. 1018, 1021), do we reach what may
be called the holiest spot of the pile, not only in a religious, but in an
artistical sense. Here, in the chapel ofthe kings, at the back of the
choir, from which it is divided only by a screen, rests the monarch
who may be considered the original founder of the pile, Edward
the Confessor, beneath a monument that speaks, if ever stone did
speak, of the primeval simplicity and comparatively rude magni
ficence of the Anglo-Saxon times, to which it belongs, and to which
it at first sight carries back our thoughts. And what a circle of
dead monarchs surround him ! — Henry III., Edward I., Edward
III., Richard II., and Henry V. ; with Queens Eleanor (a monu
ment so befttiful, that it may be questioned whether, in the whole

world of art, there is aught else that can surpass it), Philippa, and
Anne of Bohemia, the spouse of the unfortunate Richard. Then
against the screen are the two coronation-chairs, one of them with
the stone of destiny beneath, whose real history (see Fig. 1018 ot
our work) goes back so far, and through such marvellous details, that
a little faith may carry us even to end in the fabulous ; and we
may believe that it was the very stone that Jacob laid his head upon
during the night of his memorable dream. And what a history is
suggested by these chairs of the ceremonies that have taken place
in this abbey from the days of Harold, the successor of the Con
fessor, down to our own times, on the accession of every new sove
reign ! What thoughts are not forced upon the mind as we turn
from these types of the glory attending the rise of the kingly sun
to those that speak of its setting ;— sometimes still more gloriously
 sometimes, alas ! as in poor Richard's case, in tempest and deepest
gloom. " It would be hardly possible," we have had occasion to
observe elsewhere, " to present a more impressive lesson on the
mutability of earthly glory than is afforded by. the contrast between
the two grand ceremonials which connect the history of our sove
reigns- for so many centuries with that of Westminster Abbey. The
few steps upward to the throne, and the few downward into the
grave ; the airy sweep of the beautiful pointed arches, tier above
tier, and the low and narrow vault ; the spirit-stirring splendours
of one pageant, and the sombre and dread magnificence of the other ;
the new-born hopes, which, binding king and people for the time in
a common sympathy, make the past appear as nothing, the future all
— and, alas ! the melancholy comment provoked when all is over, as
to the necessity for the repetition of the process : — these are but the
regular and almost unchanging phenomena of the momentous ebb
ing and flowing of regal life which meet us in the memories of the
abbey. It were a curious question to inquire whether those who
have been the chief actors in such different ceremonials, have ever,
during the one, thought of the other; whether, among all the
monarchs who have passed along in their gorgeous robes, and
beneath the silken canopy which the proudest nobles have been most
proud to bear, there has been one to whom the secret monitor has
whispered, in the words of a writer (Dart) better known as the
historian than as the poet of the cathedral, —
While thus in state on buried kings you tread,
And swelling robes sweep spreading o'er the dead ;
While, like a god, you cast your eyes around,
Think, then, oh! think, you walk on treacherous ground;
Though firm the chequered pavement seems to be,
'Twill surely open, and give way to thee.

Never, probably, has there been a time of greater misery or
humiliation for England than during the sovereignty of Ethelred
the Unready, when the kingdom was about to pass from the family
of the glorious Alfred to the Northern Pirates, by whom it had
been so long harassed. Ethelred inherited no spark of the genius
of his ancestor ; and that dreaded consummation he made no deci
sive effort to avert, except by bribing the adventurers of the
" Raven's " standard with his subjects' gold. To get this, he insti
tuted the regular tax of the Dane- Geld, or Gold for the Danes,
which he levied with such cruel rigour that he grew as odious
to his people as even the terrible Northmen. The religious
houses, having settled endowments, were a ready prey ; and the
monastery of Peterborough is recorded as one of those which, having
failed to pay its Dane-geld, suffered loss of land and estate. Thus
it was that the manor and collegiate establishment of St. Peter at
Howden (or Hovedon) passed from the Peterborough monks to the
crown. We know scarcely anything of its after history, except
that it was dissolved by Edward VI., and that, excepting a portion
which is now the parish church, all was left to decay. And yet the
place has been a considerable one, for the ruins (Fig. 1025) are
extensive and of beautiful Gothic architecture. The chapter-house
is one continuous specimen of rich and delicate ornament in stone.
Here are thirty seats with ribbed canopies and carved rose-work,
seven windows full of light and elegant tracery, and niches for
statues 'garnished with tabernacle-work. Some antiquarians go so
far as to say that this, though small, is the most beautiful chapter
house in England. There is a high and shapely tower overtopping
the ruins of Howden church, that was built by Walter Skirlaw
Bishop of Durham, about the end of the fourteenth century, at the
same time with part of the church, and the palace of the Durham
bishops, also a ruin. The Book of Durham, quoted by Camden
gives Howden tower an origin similar to the tower of Babel, on the
plain of Shinar — that is to say, it was to save the people of this
district in the^ event of the rivers Ouse and Derwent flooding the

WESTMINSTER ABBEY.— HENRY THE SEVENTH'S CHAPEL.

Chap. II.]

OLD ENGLAND.

291

laud. The population must have been very scanty, judging by the
accommodation provided for them in the interior of this tower.
With all deference to Camden, however, the story is not deserving
of credit.

To the desecrators of the fine old relics of England we commend
the story told of a builder of Southampton, in connection with
Netley Abbey (Fig: 1027). Soon after the beginning of the last
century, Mr. Walter Taylor purchased this abbey, intending to
pull the whole fabric to pieces, and with the materials erect a town-
house at Newport, and dwelling-houses at other places. After the
contract had been made, some of Mr. Taylor's friends appear to
have been conversing with him on the unworthiness of it, and
uttered the forcible remark, that " they would never be concerned
in the demolition of holy and consecrated places." Mr. Taylor
than began to feel less satisfied with his undertaking ; and his family
have since stated that 'he related to the father of Dr. Isaac Watts
a dream that he had, in which, whilst taking down the abbey, the
keystone of the arch over the east window fell from its place, and
killed him. Dreams were held in more respect a century ago than
they are at present ; but Mr. Watts' advice went no further than
recommending that the builder should not personally be concerned
in the destruction of the abbey. His advice, such as it was, was
not followed. Mr. Taylor superintended the operations of his
workmen at their melancholy task ; and, singularly enough, while
he was removing some boards within the east window, to admit air,
a stone fell upon his head and fractured his scull. The- injury was
not at first deemed mortal ; but the decree had gone forth— the
spoiler of the holy edifice was doomed — he died under the operation
of extracting a splinter. It might certainly be said that the acci
dent of the surgeon's instrument slipping aside and piercing the
brain was the immediate cause of death, and not the stone ; but we
can think only of the moral bearing of the incident, nor will a little
superstition on this point be amiss, if it induce certain people to lay
more reverent hands on time-honoured remains like Netley Abbey.
In fact, the feelings of awe and fear produced by this occurrence
have been useful in preserving what we now see from more
attempts of the same sort : and we rejoice at it. The wise law
giver of Israel has said, " Cursed is he that removeth the ancient
landmarks ; " and here is a landmark not only ancient, but also
otherwise sacred. " Materials," indeed ! When will it be remem
bered that the value of such fragments is not in stones, or brick
or mortar — hardly even in the artistical fashioning of them — but
in their associations. An enlightened German tourist thus speaks of
Netley : — " One principal cause of the beauty of English ruins is
the dampness ofthe climate, which covers them so immediately with
a mantle of verdure. At Netley Abbey the court-yards, chapels,
halls, and chambers, are all filled with trees, the edges of the walls
covered with plants, and the ivy has hung its rich garlands round
every elegant column and window-frame. In the centre of the
largest space within»the ruins, some speculator has established a
table where the traveller may obtain ginger-bread and ginger-beer,
soda-water and biscuits, and the vender of these dainties has set up
his tent in the cell of one of the monks. The trees and bushes seem
here as if they were representing the scenes in Ovid's Metamor
phoses. A thorn, covered with its red berries, seems to be looking
out of one of the windows at the Southampton Water, as once the
young daughters of the Earl of Hereford, or some among the 103
descendants of the Marquis of Winchester, may have done. Instead
of porters and tall lacqueys, two tall trees keep watch at the gate ;
and instead of horses, we find in the stables fine specimens of the
stately ash. For the aged crones who may once have tenanted its
chimney corners, we find there knotted and gnarled trunks ; and
the church is filled with plants and shrubs, which seem like a meta
morphosed congregation of devout worsh'ippers. Beyond the abbey
the ground rises a little, and thence I had the view of the sea
through its arched windows." (Kohl's < England,' 1844.)
It is said that" Netley Abbey tower, of which we see the fragments
of a spiral staircase, was once a mark for seamen. Our forefathers
designated the scene amid which the ruins are situated, Letley, or
Pleasant Place, the most beautiful* features of which are the fine
bay called Southampton Water, the gentle slopes of ' rich ' green
verdure, and the woods that screen the abbey from the' busy world.
Grandly the wintry blast.eounds in these woods, as it sweeps through
crypt and chapter- house and refectory, and seems' to raise in the
chapel (whose rich roof >lies broken on the ground, and whose
interior is exposed to the gaze of all the host of heaven) echoes of
long-departed strains' of prayer andVpraise. The monks of Letley
came from the neighbouring Cistercian monastery of Beaulieu, and
their abbey was founded about 1239. It was dissolved in the first

year of Edward VI., and passed to the possession of the eminent
Sir William Paulet, who retained his office of High Treasurer of
England, through the perilous changes of the reigns of Henry VIII.,
Mary, and Elizabeth, owing his safety to his partaking more of the
nature of the willow than the oak. The Earls of Hereford next
held Netley Abbey, and inhabited part of it, until it grew too
dilapidated. But without calling up remote particulars of history,
we have here abundant materials for interest and suggestive thought.
Fallen pile ! I ask not what has been thy fate ; —
But when the weak winds, wafted from the main,
Through each lone arch, like spirits that complain,
Come hollow to my ear, I meditate
On this world's passing pageant, and the lot
Of those who once might proudly, in their prime,
Have stood with giant port; till, by time
Or injury, their ancient boast forgot,
They might have sunk, like thee ; though thus forlorn
They lift their heads with venerable hairs
Besprent, majestic yet, and as in scorn
Of mortal vanities and short-lived cares ;
E'en so doth thou, lifting thy forehead grey,
Smile at the tempest, and time's sweeping sway. Bowles.

Of the large world of monachism, just previous to the rise of
the mendicant orders, we might truly exclaim, in the words of
Hamlet,— Fye on't ! O fye I 't is an unweeded garden,
That grows to seed ; things rank and gross in nature
Possess it merely.
A few illustrations of its overseers and guides, the leading clergy,
about the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, will be proof enough of
the general degeneracy. They (the monks and clergy together)
held nearly half the lands of England, yet were still unsatisfied. At
one time, in the twelfth century, we hear it said of a great prelate,
Roger, Bishop of Sarum, or Salisbury, that " was there anything
adjacent to his possessions which he desired, he would obtain it
either by treaty or purchase, and if that failed, by force." At
another time, we see an archbishop of Canterbury, Boniface, in the
thirteenth century, sweeping down among his pastoral flocks to
strip them of all he can by mean and tyrannic devices, putting the
revenues at his control into his own private purse, and quartering
himself and his ^retainers wherever he can find entertainment ; and
all the while fully prepared with bell, book, and candle for who
ever may be disposed to question the holiness of his proceedings.
How the riches of these spiritual leaders were spent we are at no
loss to comprehend ; for it is said of one bishop that he " wasted
his wealth on hawks and hounds ; " of others, that they were cour
tiers, politicians, men of pleasure, men of the world, who thought
far more of a fine dinner than a fine sermon, of a good cook than a
good preacher, of a purse of gold than all the souls that were to be
saved in their dioceses. All were men of magnificence, or at least with
very rare exceptions. It was said of that consummate churchman,
Becket, " that he wished to be greater than the saints, and better than
St. Paul : " and many others assumed, like him, the port of super
human beings moving about in this sublunary world, to which' they
only appeared to have deigned to belong. And the spiritual power
and influences they professed were backed, whenever necessary, by
force of a more temporal nature, such as bands of armed retainers
and strongly-fortified castles. As for the rules of the respective
orders, they had ceased to be regarded both by great, and small clergy.
A simple Archbishop of Rouen once gave it as his opinion that
certain bishops ought to live as their orders enjoined, humbly and
quietly, without meddling with military affairs, or building castles
or places of war: he found few to agree with him. Of the
spirit of these Christian pastors we have a striking instance in
the little incident that gave rise to this novel doctrine. At Oxford,
when a court was held there, the numerous and disorderly retainers
of the Bishops of Lincoln, Ely, and Sarum-the last the same
Roger before mentioned-happening to quarrel with the Earl of
Brittany's retainers, drew their swords, and killed a knight in the
fray The sovereign was not sorry for that "disgraceful blood-
shedding," because he was able to imprison these three holy fathers,
and make them ransom themselves with some of their fortresses and
treasures At the Conquest, and often afterwards, the high clergy
were mounted on war-steeds, clad in full panoply, and directed the
siecre or headed the attack; notfogetting afterwards to draw their
lots with the rest for their share of the booty. In every civil com
motion they were prominent, turning their palaces into fortresses,
callino- up their knightly vassals, and performing with tfiem (to say
the truth) as splendid achievements in war as the more
2 r <a

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292

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1100.— Hertranddu Guesclin fullv aimed.

1099.— Portrait of Bertrand du Guesclin.

1102.--:Tjlting-matchbetweenNich. Clifford and J. Boiicmell. (From Froissart.)

1101.— Accepting the Chaltc^je.

1 1 03,— Young Eertrand dn Guesclin at the Tournament.

1104.— A Herald reading his Despatches.

293

294

OLD ENGLAND.

[Book Ul

timate martialists. A few lights, and but a few, shone through
the murky atmosphere; for human goodness cannot be wholly
quenched. The famous Grosteste was one of the purest and noblest
of bishops, who lived through the most miserable times of church
profligacy under King John and Henry III., and whose successless
struggles for the cleansing of the Augean stables furnish us with a
most dismal picture of the state of our English monasteries, and of
the utter impossibility of reforming them so long as there lived a
priest at Rome ready to listen to every appeal to him that came
strengthened by a bribe, and sufficiently powerful to shelter all the
vices of Christendom. The good Fulk Basset, Bishop of' London,
and others, might also be mentioned, but these only made the dark
ness of the times more'visible, until suddenly, in the beginning of
the thirteenth century, day seemed to brighten around, and was joy
fully hailed by the friends of mankind, in the institution of religious
orders adopting the habits of life and teaching once practised by
the Saviour and his Apostles.
At Assisi, in Umbria, in 1182, was born Francis, son of Peter
de Bernardino, a wealthy merchant: he was at first christened
John by his mother Pica, but his father, returning after an ab
sence, changed that name to the one which was afterwards destined
to become illustrious. Francis early acquired French, intending
to adopt his father's profession ; but, about 1206, the whole cur
rent of his mind underwent a singular change ; a fit of sickness
opened to him new worlds of thought — at once and for ever he
abandoned the dissolute life he had been some time leading, and
gave himself to prayer, to poverty, and to solitude. The good
folks of Assisi deemed him mad.; but his father was] more disposed
to blame his will than his infirmity, and, in the hope of coercing
him to return to common duties, shut him up in a prison. This
proving ineffectual, another plan was tried for reclaiming Francis,
by taking him before the Bishop of Assisi, and requiring him to
renounce his right in the paternal property. Francis was prepared
and willing to make even this sacrifice for his principles. He sur
rendered all, even to the last article of his .clothing, and from that
time a coarse habit of grey cloth, tied with a common cord round
his waist, and reaching to his ankles, superseded the handsome
habiliments of the rich merchant's son. His feet were bare, only
protected from the earth by rude sandals, and his head was shaded
by a grey cowl. Such, with the addition of an occasional cloak,
was the garb uniformly adopted by his followers, the Grey Friars
(Fig. 1028). In 1210and 1215, the rule of St. Francis was approved
by the Pope and the Council of Lateran. In 1211 he had his first
church near Assisi ; and no later than 1219, when Francis was but
thirty-seven, he enjoyed the title of " Seraphic Father," and held a
chapter of some five thousand friars. He was no longer thought
, mad. His death took place at Assisi, in 1226, and he was canonized
four years after. In a great measure, men are created by their
times. Powerful and new minds were just then loudly called for,
and they sprang up at the call. There was a contemporary of St.
Francis, born in another land, and with whom it does not appear
he had any communication, yet they seem to have been inspired
with perceptions, zeal, and talents nearly identical, were canonized
within five years of each other, and were the founders of orders so
nearly alike, that the chief difference we can discover was, that the
habits of the followers of Dominic de Guzman were black, with a
white rochet (Fig. 1029), and those of Francis grey. The Domini
cans first entered England. Thirteen Spanish friars and a superior
came, with high testimonials and recommendations from the Pope and
other leading men of the holy see ; they came on foot, being forbidden
to mount on horseback by the humility of their rule ; they came
teaching the poor and ignorant, who had almost ceased to hear the
voice of a preacher, and they came with so little of the cumbersome
formality of ecclesiastical worship, that their portable pulpits and
altars were set up in the streets and highways. Great was the sensa
tion these zealous strangers excited. They asked no revenues or lands
they sought no glorification of themselves ; they only desired per
mission to teach and pray, and to subsist on the alms of the pious.
These poor preaching-friars became ere long the ornament and sup
port of our greatest university at Oxford, where they grew eminent
for all the learning of the time. Their second house was the noted
Black Friars at London, near the present Blackfriars Bridge. The
Franciscans very soon followed the Dominicans, and were generously
entertained by the latter. Their first English house was at Canter
bury ; their second, the Grey Friars of London, where part of the
buildings of the magnificent monastery that rose on the site still
remains in the famous Blue-Coat School of Christ Church. In the
course of time this church, built and endowed by royalty and
nobility, cagie to be a place of sepulchre for four queens and nearly
seven hundred persons of quality ; whilst the Black Friars' Church in

the same metropolis was equally gorgeous and equally fashionable, it
beino- generally believed that to be interred there, in the habit ot that
order, preserved the dead from the Great Enemy. No wonder other
men endeavoured to imitate St. Francis and St. Dominic in found
ing mendicant orders, or in bringing previous orders near to their
standard. A very modest fraternity arrived in 1244; they only
asked from the opulent a house to live in, and exemption irom
being reproached by any one;" meekly promising excommunication
to those who failed to comply with the latter demand. Two London
citizens accommodated these Crossed or Crutched Friars, who were
distinguished by carrying an iron cross in their hands (changed to
silver afterwards), and by wearing a cross of cloth on their
garments, at first of grey, then red, and lastly blue. Gerard, prior of
St. Mary de Morillo, at Bologna, in 1169, first instituted this order
of friars, whose houses were dedicated to the holy cross. The Car
melites, or White Friars, " originated from the hermits of Mount
Carmel, who inhabited the mountain which Elias and Eliseas,
Elijah and Elisha, inhabited " (Pennant). Another order was " for
such married people as were desirous of repentance," as a sign of
which they wore sackcloth. They were taken under the special
protection of Queen Eleanor, wife of Edward I., under the designa
tions of Friars Penitents, or Friars of the Sac. There were also
Trinitarians, or. Maturines, Austin Friars, Bethlemites, Friars of St.
Anthony of Vienna, Friars de Pica, Bonhommes, or good men,
introduced in 1283, by the Earl of Cornwall, and many others.
Prosperity proved soon fatal to the moral elevation of all these dif
ferent friars, or freres (brethren), precisely as it had done to the
monkish orders and their clergy before, fy The barefooted friar"
came to be ludicrously associated with a p'amperecV-indolent, sensual
life ; and the proverb, " It is not the cowl that m^es the friar,"
expresses how wofully they too (like-tho^red^cessors the monks)
had degenerated from their early professions. New men were
again demanded to create a new state of things : and one was found
in the memorable rectory of Lutterworth (Fig. 1049). Wickliffe
arose, the morning star of the Reformation, and began the noble
movement that was to make glorious his name by unsealing the
Book of Books, and enabling the people to gather for themselves,
without the interposition of monk, friar, or priest, the saving truths
of the Gospel, in a popular version of the Scriptures. Our engraving
(Fig. 1067) is a specimen of Wickliffe's translation.

To our notice of the friars of the thirteenth century, we< named
two bishops worthy of better times. Others might have been men
tioned had space permitted.. The century following had its lights
also. Monastic and clerical morality in England had little improved,
when a poor boy was placed in the " great Grammer School of Win
chester " by a generous lord of the manor of Wykeham. The boy
did not turn out one of those prodigies of musty lore of which the
monastic ages were so fond ; but he had rare talents for architec
ture, and that was an equally sure passport to preferment in the
middle ages. A mightier patron than the Lord of Wykeham —
Edward III. — fostered the genius and rewarded the exertions of
the rising man, until William of Wykeham was presented with a
rich mitre. He proved a great builder in other than architectural
respects. His diocese of Winchester underwent at his hands a
thorough purification and renovation ; but his crowning work,
and which he lived to see complete and flourishing, was the
bestowment of his wealth for the good of posterity in provision
for a liberal and exalted education for those who had not the means
to pay for it — and the erection for this purpose of two extensive
buildings, New College, Oxford, and its preparatory College of
Winchester. The latter opened with its full establishment in 1393,
on the site of the old grammar-school, chosen no doubt by Wykeham
from grateful remembrance of the kindness and instruction which
he had received there. The Winchester foundation has withstood
successfully the innovations of time, that has changed all things
about it. We have still the seventy poor Wykehamite Sciiolars of
Winchester, forming with the two masters the holy number of
seventy-two, that of the early disciples ; the warden and ten
fellows (who have appointments for life) still stand for the eleven
apostles, and the sixteen choristers still represent the four great and
twelve lesser prophets. We have even still the Gothic style, and the
antique arrangement of the various erections in and about the col
lege, similar to those of Eton and Oxford Schools. The approach
through two courts, beneath an ancient tower and gateway (Fig.
1033), wears the secluded and venerable air of a learned retreat
of monastic days. The beautiful chapel and hall speak worthily
of the architect-bishop's genius. In the cloisters (one hundred
and thirty-two feet square) is John Fromond's Chantrey, built in
1430; it was deprived of its chaplain at the Reformation, and

Chap. II.]

OLD ENGLAND.

295

converted into a library by Dr. Pinke in.,1629. In one of the
schoolrooms we find some ancient admonitory symbols, offering
the scholars three alternatives, a bishop's cap and staff, with a motto
in Latin, signifying that lie may stay and learn ; an inkstand and
a sword, with a motto meaning, that if he does not choose to learn,
he may leave; and finally a rod, that needs not the motto attached
so unmistakably does it imply that if he will neither learn nor
leave, he must submit to something more disagreeable. A noble
schoolroom was built by the " Wykehamites " in 1687, at a cost
of 2592/. Over the entrance is the bronze statue of William of
Wykeham, that was modelled, cast, and presented to the college by
the father of Colley Cibber. One of the curiosities of the coWe
is a figure illustrative of a good servant according to the ideas of
our ancestors : it is compounded of a man, a stag, an ass, and a hog,
severally representing, we presume, the intellect of mind, the
swiftness of foot, the gentleness of temper, and the accommodating
character of appetite, that ought to be at the master's service.
One would like to see a corresponding figure, showing what the
master thought he ought to be, to be worthy of such an attendant.
We must conclude this sketch by a touching extract, after pre
mising that there are upwards of a hundred boys not on the founda
tion lodged in a spacious quadrangular building contiguous to the
college, many of them belonging to wealthy or distinguished fami
lies. " At the close of the school year, the scholars break up, after
having solemnly sung, in the presence of the assembled clergy and
gentry of the neighbourhood, the hymn of ' Dulce Domum,' known
throughout England, and said to have been composed by a poor
Wykehamist, condemned as a punishment to remain at school
during the holidays. The story goes that after composing this song
and the melody to it, he continued singing it incessantly, till, lan
guishing more and more, in vain longing for his home, he fell sick
and died. The aesthetic value of the composition is of course not
great, but it is so expressive of the feelings which animate millions
of hearts, that it has spread from Winchester to Eton, Harrow,
Westminster, and all public schools, and is everywhere sung with
enthusiasm. The mail coaches used formerly at Christmas and
other holiday times to be filled with boys, singing this favourite
ditty, and holding in their hands little banners, on which ' Dulce
Domum ' was inscribed in great letters." (Kohl's '-England,' 1844.)

Canons have been often mentioned in connection with cathedral
and collegiate establishments. They lived a modified monastic
life under the control of the bishop, by whom they were often
sent out into the rural districts to teach the ignorant population,
and perform among them the rites of religion. For a long time
they thus sufficed, during the primitive ages of the Anglo-Christian
religion, instead of a parochial clergy. They were also students
and interpreters of the great canon laws, those emanations of the
legislative wisdom of the successors of St. Peter, to which all Europe
rendered obedience. It was by these canons' assistance, as a sort
of privy council, the bishop exercised his extensive powers. Such,
before 1105, were the canons, a class still attached to our episcopal
establishments, generally under the denomination of prebendaries,
though the ancient ideas of their duties are quite extinct. After 1 105
they were called Seculars, to distinguish them from the Regulars,
who lived more like monks, but not so strictly, although they kept
close in their monasteries, instead of going forth to teach. The
regular canons' first home in England was at Colchester. Tanner
mentions above one hundred and seventy-five houses of canons and
canonesses in England and Wales. Of these houses the great lords, as
in other orders of monachism, were the chief founders. Among them,
Robert Bossu, Earl of Leicester, in 1 143, established Leicester
Abbey (Fig. 1032), for one of the reformed canon orders, of St.
Mary's Pre ; that originated in the diocese of Laon in Picardy, where
the Virgin herself had, it was asserted, pointed out a place to be its
head. Leicester Abbey became rich and fashionable, and the place
of rest and refreshment for monarchs and other' great personages
(Richard II. and his queen and courtiers among the rest), as they
passed to and from the North. It is now a mere heap of ruins (Fig-
1032), destitute of form or dignity, and deriving its chief interest
from its having been the scene of the death of one of the most remark
able personages of the detestable reign of Henry VIII. — Cardinal
Wolsey. The common reproach that human nature loves to trample
on fallen greatness was not borne out [in the instance of Wolsey's
precipitate descent from high fortune. He found himself indeed
deserted by the minions of the court, but the common people, to
whom he had been disguised by prosperity, found out in his adver
sity that he was possessed of amiable and estimable qualities, and
would have risked even their lives to rescue him from his tormentors,
and take him to the sea-coast, where he might escape to another

land. But no ! Wolsey indeed looked to another land for safety,
but that was beyond this world. He had been twenty years the
dearest friend of Henry, and he could not survive this bitter
reverse : Blow, blow, thou winter's wind,
Thou art not so unkind
As man's ingratitude.
The suffering prisoner had reached Sheffield Park when he was
attacked by a mortal sickness. A fortnight's illness left him
in the last extreme of feebleness, so that he could scarcely sit
upon his mule. It was growing evident to those who had charge
of him, that there would be no dungeon but the grave for Wolsey :
that the Tower would not number him among its list of victims,
that the axe would thirst in vain for his blood. He was passing
out of the reach of earthly potentates. In the full consciousness of
this, when, late on the third evening, he and his keepers reached
Leicester Abbey, and the abbot and [monks came out with burning
torches at the gates to receive him, with [the honour rather due to
his former than his present condition, he said to the abbot, " Father,
I am come to lay my bones among you." The weeping brethren
carried him from his mule to a bed, where swoon followed swoon.
His memorable last words were then uttered to the lieutenant.
" Master Kingston, I pray you have ine commended most humbly
to his majesty, and beseech him, on my behalf, to call to his
gracious remembrance all matters that have passed between us from
the beginning, especially respecting Queen Catherine and himself,
and then shall his conscience know whether I have offended him or
not. He is a prince [of most royal courage, and hath a princely
heart — for, rather than miss or want any part of his will, he will
endanger one half of his kingdom. And I do assure you, I have
often kneeled before him in his privy chamber, sometimes for three
hours together, to persuade him from his appetite, and could not
prevail. And, Master Kingston, this I will say — had I but served
God as diligently as I have served the king, he would not have
given me over in my grey hairs. Howbeit this is my just reward
for my pains and diligence, not regarding my service to God, but
only my duty to my prince." Never did deathbed speech contain
a more profound or pathetic moral. He died soon after. It was
at midnight that the heartbroken Cardinal was interred by the
brethren of Leicester Abbey, in the chapel of Our Lady in the
church, with no solemnity except such as was essential to the [awful.
duty, and arose out of heartfelt reverence and sorrow.

Before the Conquest, the only order of monks known in England?
was the Benedictine, instituted early in the sixth century, and first
generally established by St. Dunstan in the tenth. One of the-
principal of their houses was at Malmesbury, the buildings of which.
occupied forty-five acres of ground. It was the second establish
ment for extent and importance in the west of England. The
founder was a Scotchman of the seventh century, Maildulph, or
Maydulph, first known at Malmesbury as a teacher. When he had
collected a few pupils who were willing to forsake the world for a
monastery, he began to build one. Neither master nor pupils
could have been in possession of much worldly wealth ; for though
we may presume they had the alms of the pious to help them, yet
for some time they could scarcely manage to live. But this did not
last long. Their humble house was in a few years transformed into
all the magnificent complication of a great abbatial structure,
endowed by Saxon bishops, and Saxon kings, Ina, Athelstan, Edgar,
Edward the Confessor, and others. The first founder lived to be
a rich abbot. He was associated with Aldhelm, a monk still of
note as a Saxon writer. To honour Aldhelm's memory after his
decease, King Athelstan chose him for his patron saint, and be
queathed his own body to be buried in the abbey. The altar tomb
in our engraving (Fig. 1039) has been called King Athelstan's,
but the situation does not correspond with the spot mentioned by
William of Malmesbury as the place of his burial, which was under
the high altar. The style also is later than the age of Athelstan.
The tomb has been examined, but contained no vestiges of in
terment. Whom the royal-robed effigy is intended to represent we
shall probably never discover, but we know fhat other Saxon kings
have been interred in this abbey beside Athelstan. The Norman
era, fatal to many Saxon monasteries, advanced this ; the Norman
kings being pleased to shed over Malmesbury the genial sunshine of
their favour. About the end of the eleventh century was born the
valuable old English historian whom we have just quoted, William,
called " of Malmesbury," because he was an inmate of this abbey.
He was placed here in his boyhood, became librarian and precentor
(Leland), and ultimately refused the mitre. The number of works

1109.— Croyland Bridge.

1113.— Interior of a Chester " Bow.

1110.— u Pant"' in front of, the Freemen's' Hospital, Newcastle-upoa-jTyne .

1111.— Black Gate, Newcastle.

298

OLD ENGLAND.

[Book III.

that he produced speaks much for the life of the Malmesbury re
cluses, as we may fairly presume he was not the only one of them
who spent his time in quiet trains of thought, or in the exercise of
the pen. Life in the monastic communities was no doubt eminently
favourable to mental pursuils, when there was any taste or desire
for such occupations, and we find this evidenced not only in literary
and architectural, but in various other productions. Thus we find
one monk, Oliver of Malmesbury, who live d in the abbey about the
same time as William, making a daring and novel experiment in
mechanical art, like that of Johnson's flying philosopher in ' Rasselas.'
One day he presented himself on the top of a lofty tower, in
the centre of a pair of wings that he had contrived for sailing
through the air. G-reat was the admiration and wonder of the be
holders, when Oliver boldly sprang forth into that element which
had hitherto eluded man's skill. But Oliver's pinions unfortunately
proved no more trustworthy than those that betrayed their author
in the Happy Valley. He flew a furlong space (it is said), and
than dropped, fracturing his limbs. Fig. 1036 gives us an exterior
view of all that remains of this proud establishment — a few frag
ments of the abbey church, " that right magnificent thing " (Leland).
The time of its erection is referred generally to that of Roger, Bishop
of Sarum, in the twelfth century. The character of the whole is
massive, large, and curiously decorated. The grand southern porch
(Fig. 1038) is the finest part. The arch of the transept (Fig. 1037)
is also well worthy of attention.

Though the Benedictines were, as a body, averse to new forms
of religion, they became the source of many. One reformer of
this primary body was an abbot of Citeaux in the bishopric of
Chalons, in Burgundy, where he had founded a house, to be more
retired from the world than the Benedictines generally deemed
necessary. The third abbot of Citeaux was an Englishman, Ste
phen Harding, canonised as St. Etienne, who may be esteemed the
real founder of the order les Citeaux, or Cistercian, that began in
his time first to make a name in the world. Until the period of
the French Revolution, the abbots of Citeaux were superiors-
general of the whole order. A marked feature of the Cistercians
was and is their reverence for St. Bernard, the founder, it is said, of
sixty houses. He was abbot of Clairvaux, or Clarevel, in the dio
cese of Langres. The Cistercians are also designated Bernardines.
The sudden rise of this great order was truly remarkable. Within
fifteen years five hundred abbeys sprang to light, in solitary and
uncultivated places, it being a rule of the body that no house, even
one of their own, should be built within a certain distance. Their
own historians say they had six thousand monasteries in all. The
English Cistercians came from Aumoue Abbey in Normandy, 1128.
Walter Giffard, Bishop of Winchester, established them in his new-
founded abbey at Waverley. The abbots of this place had precedence
in the chapters, and over all the order in England. At the suppres
sion, by Henry VIII., there were thirty-six Great Bernardine houses
in this country, besides many smaller, and twenty-six nunneries.
The monks wore white habits at their religious exercises, but when
they went abroad the white gown over the white cassock was ex
changed for a black gown. All their houses were dedicated to the
Virgin. Those that remain of the ancient foundations in this coun
try are mostly ruins, but such ruins as one would not willingly
exchange for most modern and complete establishments. The beauty
and solitariness of their situations of course greatly enhance the effect
of the relics of their beautiful and lofty architecture. In slightly
noticing some of the chief Cistercian houses in England, such as
Kirkstall, Tintern, and Melrose, the thoughts not unnaturally
revert to the house of White Monks, located in Charnwood Forest,
where some Cistercians of our own day, are busily occupied in com
pleting a Cistercian abbey on the largest scale, with a Gothic
church that may almost rival those ofthe middle ages.
Henry de Lacy, in the reign of Stephen, being in a bad state of
health, made a vow that if he should recover he would build an
abbey in honour of the blessed Virgin and the Cistercian order.
He did recover, and at once set about fulfilling his vow. It seems
that he held the town and appurtenances of Bernoldswic, or Ber-
noldswie, in fee of Hugh Bigod, Earl of Norfolk, himself a munifi
cent benefactor to holy church. This property was made over
by Lacy to Abbot Alexander, " Prior of Fountains," and called St.
Mary's Mount. Alexander brought twelve monks and ten converts
from Fountains, and became abbot of Lacy's new monastery. But
it was ill provided against the rigours of the wintry season, and war
added to the distress of the mor.ks. After enduring much from
hunger and cold, during six months, the abbot in very despair
began to look about for some better place, where the abbey would
be more liVy to flourish, and the inmates have more chance of

comfort. He found this place in a beautiful and well-wooded dale
through which the river Aire flowed clear and full. Here he'
selected the site of a new abbey, close on the river margin. There
was plenty of stone in the neighbourhood for building, and abund
ance of fuel, which, with water, formed three great indispensables for
the undertaking. But what seems to have chiefly determined Abbot
Alexander in his choice, was the finding already settled here a few
anchorites. Lacy now obtained a grant of the land necessary for
the abbey from William of Poieton or Poiteven, to whom and his
heirs the monks of Kirkstall paid five marks annually. The church,
built entirely at Lacy's expense, the two dormitories for monks
and lay-brothers, the refectory, cloister, chapter-house, and other
offices, were all built during the good Alexander's long abbacy.
Lacy supplied the brethren with money and provisions, and other
patrons soon followed, who must have been very liberal if we may
judge from the large possessions Kirkstall ultimately acquired.
The plan of the abbey (Fig. 1041) exhibits an arrangement
common to all such edifices. The beauty of the present ruins (Fig.
1040) is enhanced by the grand masses of ivy that in some parts
clothe it from the ground to the topmost fragment. The Style
involves the changes from Early Norman to Pointed. In fine
weather, especially on Sundays, the neat little village of Kirkstall,
placed at a most convenient distance for the pleasure-seekers of
busy Leeds, is quite thronged by manufacturing artisans and others,
who wander about the celebrated abbey, aud on the banks of the
Aire, devoid, for the most part, of sympathy with its original
purposes, but fully alive to the two interesting facts — all they know
of it — that it is beautiful and old. Some, as they peep into the
remains of cells and cloisters, long to know more of those who
formerly tenanted them ; or, as they attempt to climb the dim and
perilous steps to the remains of weird-looking galleries, fancy the
moonbeam glancing though the deep shadows to be the form of a
white monk ; or, gazing with still deeper awe, not to say fear, into
the inscrutable vaults, shudder as they recall to mind all the terrible
stories of which they have ever read in history or in fiction of monks
entombed alive, for striving to burst the stern cold barriers which
they had placed between themselves and the world of human nature.
In another respect Kikstall Abbey is unfortunate in its nearness
to the great dep&t of woollens ; there was not room enough, it
seems, in that big town for tall chimneys, and rows of formal factory
windows, and great unsightly masses of stone and mortar, but they
must encroach on a domain sacred to the poetry of the past, and so
rob Kirkstall, in our opinion, of half its charms.

The Black Canons were introduced into Scotland about the
same time as in England. One of their houses was at Jedbukgh,
the inmates of which came from Beauvais in France, early in the
twelfth century. It suffered greatly in the visitations of the
English, was pillaged and burned by Surrey, in 1253, at the storm
ing of Jedburgh, and injured by Hertford in 1545. We have now
only the ruins of the church (Fig. 1056), two hundred and thirty
feet in length. The central tower is one hundred feet high. There
are two beautiful Norman doors, and a fine, west gable. The style
is Norman and Early English. Foundations ofthe abbey are trace
able to a considerable distance. The burial-ground is very spacious.
Jedburgh parish was in old days celebrated for its castles, fortified
dwellings, and magnificent ecclesiastical establishments; and for
the picturesque woodland scenery amid which they were situated.
One of the pious works of the Bigod, Earl of Norfolk, alluded
to in our notice of Kirkstall, was the abbey church of Tintebn,
whose ruins adorn that part of the margin of the Wye between
Monmouth and Chepstow, which has been so celebrated by tourists
and poets. How oft,
In darkness, and amid the many shapes
Of joyless daylight, when the fretful stir
Unprofitable, and the fever of the world,
Have hung upon the beatings of my heart,
How oft, in spirit, have I turned to thee,
O sylvan Wye ! Thou wanderer through the woods •
How often has my spirit turned to thee !
The poem containing these lines, composed a few miles above
Tintern Abbey, on revisiting the banks of the Wye, July 13, 1798
must be known to most of our readers. Familiar almost as house
hold words are some of the thoughts it contains— thoughts which,
whilst we trace the outward and visible objects described in the
poem, interpret to us, in sweet and mournful music, their spiritual
purposes. Nor is this all. They lead us to admire and rejoice in

Chap. II.]

OLD ENGLAND.

299

the sympathy that unites pure and lofty minds of all ages and
creeds, whether Catholic fathers, such as those who selected the
romantic and pastoral vale of Tintern, and then invested the spot
with a higher interest by the erection of their beautiful monastery
— or Protestant bards like Wordsworth, who have drawn inspira
tion from it, and added yet another charm to Tintern by their
writings. Wordsworth and the early monks seem to have felt with
equal intensity, that — Nature never did betray
The heart that loved her : 'tis her privilege,
Through all the years of this our life, to lead
From joy to joy : for she can so inform
The mind that is within us, so impress
With quietness and beauty, and so feed
With lofty thoughts, that neither evil tongues,
Harsh judgments, nor the sneers of selfish men,
Nor greetings where no kindness is, nor all
The dreary intercourse of daily life,
Shall e'er prevail against us, or disturb
Our cheerful faith, that all which we behold
Is full of blessings.
We have a singular distant view of the ruin from a spot at a
little distance on the other side the river, presenting fine illusory
effects. It seems to stand in the front of an interminable forest.
The grand east window, set in shrubs aud ivy, is changed into a
majestic portal, through which we gaze on a vista whose limits
baffle us, so indefinitely are they prolonged by the foliage twined
about columns, and dropping from arches, and clustering beyond
the opposite extremity of the ruin, the arch of the western window.
The best near view of the shell of the abbey church is given in
Fig. 1031. The total loss of the tower is unfortunate, as in con
sequence there is felt a deficiency of elevation to harmonise the
exterior. It happens too that the most prominent parts left standing
are gables of common, formal, and obtrusive outline. The roof
of the church, like the tower, has long ago fallen. Other parts
of the building are in tolerable preservation, and amply justify
the praise bestowed upon it by Mr. Rickman, that, " in beauty
of composition and delicacy of execution, it yields to few edifices
in the kingdom." Tintern is chiefly noted for the fine perspective
of the interior (Fig. 1030). No jarring point meets us there. . All
is antique and regular, airy and grand. The smooth and verdant
turf contrasts well in colour with the grey walls, and, by preserving
the original level of the ground, preserves also the original
proportions of the building. It seems likely that the choir of
the church was first built, as in 1268, William of Worcester
informs us, the abbot and monks entered it and celebrated
mass at the high altar. The style was Early English, pass
ing gradually into Decorated, as the edifice advanced to com
pletion. The abbey was founded a short time previous to the
church (in 1131), by Walter de Clare, grandson to Walter Fitz-
osbert, Earl of Ew. Some remains of the abbot's lodge and fratry
are close to the water's edge, and droop their ivy clusters over it.
The monks' cells are partly incorporated into miserably poor
tenements, the abodes of indigent people, whose unseemly rags and
importunate solicitations for alms by no means enhance the natural
associations of the place. One cannot but remember that their
forefathers were in all probability very differently cared for. Well,
time has swept away worse things than the spirit of Catholic love
and reverence for the poor ; which is ill exchanged for the cold
selfish policy that prevails too much in our own age.

Some of the general features of the great abbeys of the Cister
cian order, that we have noticed in England, we find repeated in the
Scottish houses Melrose and New Abbet. The former, the
mother Cistercian church of Scotland, was founded in 1136, by
that " sore saint for the Crown," as James VI. styled his ancestor, the
royal David I., when he found how his revenues were impoverished by
that saint's pious doings. The monks came from Rivaulx Abbey
in Yorkshire ; they were wealthy and numerous (nearly a hundred),
and have left no good character behind them. The old border
ballad thus slily alludes to their luxury and rapacity —
0 the monks of Melrose made gude kale
On Friday, when they fasted ;
They wanted neither beef nor ale
As long as their neighbours' lasted.
As usual, the remains are those of the church (Fig. 1057). The
length of the nave and choir together is two hundred and fifty-
eight feet, that of the transept one hundred and thirty feet. In
this fabric, in Mr. Hutchinson's opinion, are the finest lessons in,
and the greatest variety of, Gothic ornaments that the island affords.

Francis Drake, writing in 1742, also observes, " Mailross, I shall
take it upon me to say, has been the most exquisite structure of the
kind in either kingdom." Lastly comes the poet, also pointing out,
as the great architectural attractions of Melrose, its intricate and
exquisite stone carving :
Nor herb nor floweret glistened there
But was carved in the cloister arches as fair.
And he settled the business. The beauties of Melrose became a
point of fashionable faith. By day and night, the great and the
small crowded about it, in consequence of the descriptions in the
famous " Lay." Some who had never heard of Melrose before,
never forgot it after ; some cared nothing about it then, and only fol
lowed in the popular wake to be able to say they had seen it ; but
all pressed to look for the shadow of the blood-red cross that
marked where the wizard lay ; and all, even the most prosaic people,
talked poetry about Melrose by moonlight (Fig. 1058), and
repeated the famous lines, and even made Johnny Bovver, the
" decent-looking little old man in a blue coat and red waistcoat,"
get up a kind of artificial illumination, when the moon was in
eclipse. If thou wouldst view fair Melrose aright,
Go visit it by the pale moonlight ;
For the gay beams of lightsome day
Gild but to flout the ruins gray.
When the broken arches are black in night,
And each shafted oriel glimmers white ;
When the cold light's uncertain shower
Streams on the ruin's central tower ;
When buttress and buttress, alternately,
Seem framed of ebon and ivory ;
"When silver edges the imagery,
And the scrolls that teach thee to live and die ;
When distant Tweed is heard to rave,
And the owlet to hoot o'er the dead man's grave ;
Then go, — but go alone the while,
Then view St. David's ruined pile ;
And, home returning, soothly swear
Was never scene so sad and fair.
A point of high interest not generally known, though Scott'-
himself mentions it, is connected with the abbey. We have else- -
where said that the royal Bruce bequeathed his heart to the care
of his tried friend and companion in arms, Sir James Douglas,
to be conveyed to the Holy City in Palestine. After " the good
Sir James " had fallen, fighting with the Moors in Spain, the glorious
relic found its way back to its native clime, and was enshrined in
" Old Melrose." There are some interesting sepulchral remnants'
" I can never forget," says Mrs. John Ballantyne (in a number of
' Chambers's Edinburgh Journal,' of September, 1844), " the awe-
striking solemnity with which he (Scott) pronounced an elegiac-
stanza inscribed on a tombstone in Melrose Abbey :
" Earth walketh on the earth,
Glistering like gold ;
Earth goeth to the earth
Sooner than it wold.
Earth buildeth on the earth
Palaces and towers ;
Earth sayeth to the earth,
All shall be ours."

Among the other curiosities of New Abbey, in Kirkcudbright
Stevvartry, Scotland, is a small curious gate leading into the abbey,
and an escutcheon, supposed to bear the abbey arms, with an
inscription over it in old English, " Choose time of need." In
those arms is a heart, in allusion to a touching circumstance re
lating to the foundation of the abbey by the mother of John Balliol,
that unpatriotic or incapable king, who brought disgrace on Scot
land, such as only a Wallace and a Bruce could wipe away. She
was a coheiress of Alan the last of the ancient lords of Galloway,
and the wife of John Balliol, lord of Barnard Castle. He died in
1269, and his heart was preserved by the beloved woman who
mourned for him. She enclosed it in a beautiful ivory box, highly
ornamented, and bound with enamelled silver, and then caused it to
be set in the wall near the high altar of the New Abbey. From
that relic and memorial of true affection, the abbey was called
afterwards, Dolce Cor, or the Abbey of Sweet-heart. Henry, the
first abbot, died on a journey to Citeaux ; Eric, the second, was
among the free barons who swore fealty to Edward I. on his
undertaking the arbitration between the claims of Balliol and
Bruce and other competitors for the crown of Scotland. Gilbert
Brown, the last abbot, was an active Catholic controversialist, " a
busy trafficker for Rome and Spain," and sat in Parliament when
20 2

1114.— Portrait of Chaucer

1118.— The Talbot, 1841.

im^-The Tabard.^ (From a Drawing about 1J80.)

1116.— The Tabard. (From Urry's edition of Chaucer, H20.)

300

1113.— The Knight and the Squire.

1120.— The Sergeant-at-'Law and the Doctor of Medicine.

1121.— Cardinal's Hat. (Royal MS. 16 B. vi.)

1 1 22.— Male Costume, time of Edward II. (Royal MS. E. iii
Sloane, MS. 346.,

^^^Mi

1123.— The Monk and the Friar.

1 124,— The Parson and the Clerk of Oxenford.

301

302

OLD ENGLAND.

[Book. III.

the Confession of Faith was adopted, 1560. The Commissioners of
the Assembly particularly noticed him in their list of grievances,
and so Abbot Brown had to forsake his abbey, and betake himself
to concealment. He eluded his enemies until 1605, and then the
people attempted his rescue. Happily, the edge of persecution had
been dulled before he was cast into prison, and after lying in Black
ness and Edinburgh castles long enough to be convinced that all
was over for his church in Scotland, he was allowed to retire into
France, where he died, at Paris, in 1612.
New Abbey stands in a small valley or "bottom," by the river
Nith. A large portion of the English coast is included in the
varied and extended prospect seen from the abbey, and from the
tower Loch-Kindar is visible, with its little island and ancient
ruin. The parish of New Abbey (formerly Kirkander) extends
to the Solway Frith, and consists of low and high ground, the
latter broken into rocks, hills, mosses, and muirs. On one of the
heights near the abbey, some fragments, called the Abbot's
Tower, mark what was once the private residence of the abbots of
Sweet-heart. The abbey ruin is begirt with a space of twenty
acres, designated " the Precinct," that used to be enclosed with a
wall of most substantial fabric, of which little is left, but that little
exhibiting stones of a ton weight each, even near the top. Beside
the ruins of the church, of light decorated Gothic (Fig. 1034), there
is part of the chapter-house standing. A parish kirk in 1731
was formed out of the ruins of the other buildings. There are
very antique tombstones in the burial-ground. One bears a cross
and a large and broad sword — an anomalous union, unless the
ingenious artist meant to shadow forth the two opposite principles
which rule this world. Lord Karnes published an account of a very
singular ash-tree which formerly grew from some seed dropped on
one of the abbey walls, and which was supplied with nourishment
from a runner that descended to the earth.

Among, the less distinguished classes of motiachism that also
sprang out of the original Benedictine, may be mentioned that to
which Kelso Abbey, in the town of Kelso, Roxburghshire, be
longed. It acknowledges the same founder as Melrose, St. David.
Kelso was repeatedly burned or otherwise injured during the English
invasions. The ruins (Fig. 1054) .are of mingled styles, the
Norman predominating. At a certain period they were injured by
incongruous additions for the use of a church congregation, but, to
the credit of all concerned, these blemishes have been removed, and
we see the building now in all its own unadulterated and venerable
grandeur.

Considering that Ireland is a Catholic country, we feel some
surprise and disappointment to meet with so few Gothic remains in
it of magnitude or importance. The chief structure of this kind,
though not the most antique, is St. Patrick's Cathedral, in Dublin,
situate at the foot of the declivity, on the ridge of which stands the
castle and another cathedral of older foundation. St. Patrick's is
an imposing pile ; the most beautiful part is the choir (Fig. 1051),
to which the handsome roof, the monuments, the stalls and* banners,
of the Knights of St. Patrick (their installation takes place here), and
other accessories, give a very striking if not altogether harmonious
effect. The cathedral was first erected by Archbishop Comyn, about
the end of the twelfth century. Being consumed by fire in 1362,
through the negligence of " John the Sexton," Minot, a successor of
Comyn in the primacy, began two years after to build it up again.
How much he thought of his work we may see in the device on his
seals, where he appears holding the steeple in his hands. As we
walk round the interior to view the memorials of the dead who have
found a place in St. Patrick's, two especially rivet our attention,
that of Swift, who was Dean of St. Patrick's, and that of his ill-
starred and most amiable wife, poor Stella. When we read in his
inscription of his resting "where bitter indignation can tear his
heart no more," we are led to moralize on the source of that bitter
indignation, which was not, as he wished us to believe, the vices and
follies of mankind, so much as the failure of his ambitious aspira
tions ; and we cannot but wonder how a heart that was undeniably
fraught with strong and generous. feeling could be so lamentably
deficient in magnanimity. When we look to Stella's tablet, we
half anticipate some expression of her bitter indignation against the
eccentric being who caused her so much suffering, and it seems
very likely broke her heart : but woman's wrongs are seldom
paraded before the world, like those of the loftier sex ; in Stella's
case they are not, however, and never can be, forgotten.

As St. Patrick's Cathedral is the chief specimen of Gothic archi
tecture in Ireland, so is Glasgow Cathedral (Fig. 1053) the

most perfect relic of the kind in Scotland, or anywhere else, in the
opinion of some of its frequenters and admirers. It is one of the
four remarkable points of Glasgow, namely, the cathedral, the
Green, a great public esplanade, the Trongate, a noble specimen of
a street, and the graceful river Clyde, said by a Glasgow poet
to be — • Glory of that and all the world beside.
Mr. Robert Chambers tells us that on these four " the native of Glas
gow principally grounds his ideas regarding the consequence of the
city," and that he would defend them from any species of violation,
as though they were his personal instead of public property. And
this has been proved as well as said. When the zeal of the Puritans
was working so much mischief in ecclesiastical edifices, an order
went forth bearing the signatures of A. Argyle, James Stewart,
and Ruthven, to " tak down the hail images " of Glasgow Cathe
dral, " cast down the altaris, and purge the kirk of all kind of
monuments of idolatrye," and so make a general bonfire of all the
most precious objects of antiquity. The pious Destructives thus let
loose, it seemed likely that even the reservations in the order, that
neither the " dasks, windocks, nor durris " should be in " ony ways
hurt or broken, either glassin wark, or iron wark," would have
been neglected, and thus the whole fabric destroyed, but for a
sagacious provost's recommendation that before the old church
were destroyed a new one ought to be built. After this there was
a second attack by a body of workmen sent with beat of drum,
but the sturdy craftsmen and burgesses rallied to the rescue^
headed by their deacons, and fully prepared to bring the matter to
a life and death issue. It did not, however, reach that extremity.
On their threatening that the first man who dared to pull down one
stone, should not live to pull down another, it was deemed best to
treat with the defenders pacifically, and, in short, they saved the
grand old cathedral. This has been described by a master hand : —
" Ah, it's a brave kirk, nane o' yere whigmaleeries and curliewurlies
and opensteek hems about it, — a' solid wheel-jointed mason wark, that
will stand as long as the warld, keep hands and gunpowther off it.''
Andrew Fairservice is perfectly right in his character of the pile ;
it does indeed seem to defy all the ordinary processes of decay, and
besides is pervaded by so awful an expression, that it may almost be
entitled to the epithet sublime. This expression — made up of gloom
and majesty — is not lessened by the ancient and irregular cemetery,
crowded every inch with mementos of death, and bordered on
one side with the broken battlemented wall, shown in the en
graving, and on the other with a wild and sombre ravine, whose
opposite bank exhibits the modern pillar and statue of John Knox,
looking, says Mr. Chambers, like the "spirit of the reformer
come back to inveigh, with outstretched arm, against the cathedra],
and, if possible, complete the work which he left unfinished at his
death." The scene might be in a desert, so completely is the
cathedral isolated from the populous and flourishing city around.
The spirit of restoration has not left Glasgow unvisited ; and
Kohl makes a striking reflection in connection with the recent repair
of St. Kentigern's Cathedral. "It possesses," he observes, " the
finest crypt in Great Britain. I regret I could not obtain a sight
of it, on account of the repairs that were in progress, adding another
to the hundreds and hundreds of public churches of Europe under
repair and restoration in the year 1842. Ten years -more and
Gothic Europe will stand around us as it stood in the fourteenth
and fifteenth centuries." This crypt was used, from the time of the
Reformation down to the beginning of the present century, as a
church, called the Barony Kirk ; and the extraordinary aspect of
the place will at once recur to every one's mind when it is remem
bered that it was the place where Rob Roy so mysteriously ap-
pointed the assignation with Frank Osbaldiston. And here, we may
add, St. Kentigern was buried.
The Reformation in Scotland, which had so nearly caused the
destruction of Glasgow Cathedral, spared one other building of the
same kind, and only one-^tlie Cathedral of St. Magnds, at the sea
port town of Kirkwall (Fig. 1055), the capital of the Orkney
Islands, and this pile too has become familiar to us through the
writings of the great novelist, who has made the neighbourhood the
scene of his romance of ' The Pirate,' and with happy propriety ;
for the spot chosen may be said to have been dedicated from the
very earliest period to the service of those who adopted on the
largest scale the principle —
That they should take, who have the power,
And they should keep, who can.
The Orkneys formed the general rendezvous of the Danish pirates
and the cathedral itself was founded by a Danish monarch Olave.
Rollo, Earl of Orkney, was the conqueror of Normandy, and the

Chap. II.]

OLD ENGLAND.

303

ancestor of the conqueror of England. It will be seen from the
engraving that St. Magnus' is in excellent condition; it is still
the parish church.
Redcliff Church, Bristol (Fig. 1043), is still more closely
identified with one of the great names of our national literature,
Chatterton, a name so suggestive of melancholy considerations as
to make us, to a certain degree, unfit for the contemplation of its
more cheering and glorious ones, and which should chiefly occupy
our attention. But alas ! we cannot do justice to the poetry, from
the all-absorbing character of our recollections of the poet. Over
every line and verse rests the awful shadow of the boy-suicide. It
was on the steps of the porch of this church of Redcliff that Chat.
terton, as yet a child of eight or ten years of age, was accustomed
to rehearse the first heirs of his invention to his playmates. It was
in one of the towers of Redcliff Church that the parchments were
found which first probably suggested to Chatterton the idea of
issuing his poems in the garb of antiquity, such as he could easily
borrow from those black-letter writings. It was in the aisles of
Redcliff Church that he was generally found wandering about, or else
seated by one of its tombs, that of Canynge, when missed for any ex
traordinary length of time by his mother and sister, engaged, no
doubt, in developing more and more satisfactorily to himself his
mighty scheme. Lastly, it was toward that same Redcliff Church
that, even when absent, all his thoughts were directed ; he could not
stroll through the neighbouring meadows but he was most likely on
•some sudden impulse to turn, throw himself on the green sward, and
there, fixing his eyes upon the venerable structure, remain lost, as
one of his companions has described him, in a species of ecstasy.
Poor Chatterton ! it is difficult to say which was the unhappiest
case : thine, involving a deception in which thon sawest no immo
rality, but which led to ruin ; or the world's, which being deceived,
saw, like Horace Walpole, no differences in deception — " All of
the house of Forgery are relations" — and so treated the poet (and
one of the proudest, because one of the poorest and most sensitive,
of poets that ever trod the earth), who had deceived it into the
possession of a body of the most glorious and original poetry, just
as if he had juggled it out of the possession of a bundle of those
" promissory notes " which Walpole so brutally, we might almost
say infamously, dares to insinuate the poet's literary skill might
have led him to fabricate. Walpole has been charged with Chat-
terton's death ; that is cruel : heaven knows there rests enough on
his memory in connection with Chatterton without that imputation.
" Oh ! ye," exclaimed Coleridge, reflecting on some of these things,
" who honour the name of man, rejoice that this Walpole is called a
lord." The pile thus memorably connected with our poetical
history is undoubtedly the finest parish church in England ; and,
indeed, possesses all the lofty beauty of a cathedral. The erection
was begun in the thirteenth century. One ofthe chief benefactors
was Chatterton's Canynge ; an eminent merchant of the reign of
Edward the Fourth.

Among the more important churches erected in the period of
which we treat, that of Newcastle-upon-Tyne holds an honour
able place (Fig. 1052). It, crowns a bold eminence, and forms from
every point of view the chief ornament of the town. The founder
was St. Osmond, Bishop of Salisbury ; the time, the reign of Wil
liam Rufus. Henry I. gave the church to the canons of Carlisle. It
was burned in 1216, and rebuilt, as supposed, about 1359. The
most remarkable feature is the steeple, two hundred and one feet
high, erected in the reign of Henry VI., which is of the most elegant
character, in the form of an imperial crown ; the tall pinnacle is
hollow, the stones only four inches broad ; indeed, of such airy
construction is the 'whole tower, that it has been observed, a man
could carry with ease under his arm the largest stone contained in it.
During a siege in 1644, a Scottish general threatened to destroy this
steeple, unless the keys of the town were delivered to him. The
people of Newcastle were sadly distressed between such alternatives,
until their mayor ordered that some Scotch prisoners, who had been
taken in the struggle for the mastery'of the town, should be sent to
the top of the steeple : " And then," said he, " our enemies shall
either preserve it, or be buried in its ruins." There was no more
talk of annihilating the steeple.
The tower of Boston Church, Lincolnshire (Fig. 1044), if less
graceful in its outlines, is still very beautiful, and of far greater
height than St. Nicholas, rising as it does to three hundred feet.
The top forms an elegant lantern, from which formerly issued the
guiding or saving light for the mariners in the Boston and Lynn Deeps
during the hours of darkness. The somewhat excessive height of
the tower is owing to this particular use of it. The model from
which this fine piece of architecture was taken was the tower of the

great church at Antwerp. No wealthy lord or prelate built the
church of Boston ; it originated in the pious feelings of its people.
In 1039 the first stone was kid, and Margery Tilney put five
pounds on it, two other persons the same, " and these were the
largest sums given at that time." There is not a church in England
without cross-aisles to be compared with Boston's for magnitude: it
is at the same time well proportioned, and of capital masonry. The
town was the ancient Icanhoe of Bede, where St. Botolph, a famous
abbot of the seventh century, had a monastery.
A beacon-tower, of ruder fashion than that of old St. Botolph's, and
used generally for less peaceful purposes, is to be seen at Hadlet
Church, Middlesex (Fig. 1048). " Before the reign of Edward III.,
beacons were but stacks of wood set up on high places, which were
fired when the coming of enemies was descried ; but in his reign pitch-
boxes, as now they be, were, instead of those stacks, set up ; and this
properly is a beacon." (Lord Croke.) The pitch-box, or fire-pot, is
still remaining at Hadley, and a picturesque object it is, reminding
us of the warlike days when watches were regularly stationed at such
places, and horsemen, called hobbelars, according to Camden, waited
by, "to give notice in daytime of an enemy's approach, when the fire
would not be seen." A perilous task these watchers and hobbelars
must have had of it, for of course it would be an object with the
enemy to seize the beacons to prevent alarm spreading. Many a
deadly fray that has left no record may have occurred on this
tranquil and rural spot.
But worse even than such encounters, as bringing into play a
thousand times worse passions, are those private feuds that often
spring up where nature seems most peculiarly to invite to peace and
love. One of these has given a bad reputation to the rural parish
of Chilton, Bucks. In the reign of Charles II., at the Aylesbury
Assizes, Larimore, an Anabaptist preacher of Chilton, by the advice
of Sir John Croke, grandson of the celebrated judge, and lord of
Chilton manor, carried a bill of indictment against the incumbent
of Chilton Church, Robert Hawkins, charging him with burglary
on the house of Larimore, and with feloniously taking away, " by
force and arms," two gold rings, one white-holland apron, two pieces
of gold, and nineteen shillings in silver. The judge was the good
Lord Hale, whose presence lends great interest to the extraordinary
trial that followed (see Knight's' English Causes Celebres'), and
which at that day was one of life and death. It opened with a
challenge of two jurymen by the parson, because he had been in
formed " they were no friends to the Church of England," whose
cause he evidently considered bound up with his own. The Ana
baptist made his case so clear and strong, in spite of the close
questioning of the judge, and the crossfire of the acute and un
daunted parson, that before three witnesses had been heard, Lord
Hale observed, " Here is enough sworn, if believed, to hang twenty
men." "'I doubt not to clear myself, notwithstanding their- evi
dence, if I may but be heard," stoutly rejoined the parson. " You
shall be heard," said Lord Hale. Still, with all the ready logic
and tact of the parson, the case grew darker and darker ; his life
seemed not worth a straw. But at this most critical point the
scale began to turn — malice on account of a lawsuit began to
appear among the prosecutor's motives. An honest fellow sent to
witness that the parson stole a pair of boots of him, took the judge
and court by surprise ; showing that from the time of the parson
pressing for tithes, the lord of the manor and his son, the Ana
baptist, and several farmers and yeomen of Chilton, sought by per
suasion and threats to make him swear falsely against the parson.
Other exposures as striking followed ; and in short, by the time
Hawkins began his sermon-like defence, regularly divided, and
formal in its inductions, few could have had a doubt of his having
been the victim of one of the most atrocious conspiracies that ever
disgraced humanity, and which thus originated :¦ — " I was," says
Hawkins," " entertained by Sir John Croke, of the parish of Chilton,
in the county of Bucks, Baronet, to attend as chaplain in his house,
and also to serve the cure of the said parish, for which he did,
under his hand and seal, promise to pay me fifty pounds per annum,
he being impropriator ofthe said parish, and to pay it by quarterly
payments. When I had faithfully performed my duty in both these
capacities above two years, and in all that time had received no
money from him, but upon some occasions had lent him several sums
out of my pocket, at last I was somewhat urgent with him for
money"; and then he told me plainly, that I did not know him as
yet, for he had cheated all persons he had ever dealt with, and I
must not expect to speed better than they had done. I told him I
hoped for better things from him ; but he replied, that he never
intended to pay me any money, and that therefore I might take my
Hawkins did take his course — up to London; where he

course.

found tbe baronet had been outlawed on account of debt, his manor

1125.— The Prioress and tie Wife of Bath.

1186.— The Franklin and the Merchant.

mT.-Fernale Cortuine, time of Richard H.
(Royal MS. 16 Q. v., and Harleian MS. 431$.)

U28.— Ladies' Head-Dresses. (Royal JUS. .15 D. jij

1129>— Female Costume, time nf Edward III
'(RoyaUMS;M5D:a.

-U30.— Miller. Manciple, and neve.

1135.— Ladies' Costume, time of Edward I. (Sloane MS. 3983.)

1136.— Head-Dresses, time of Edward II. . (Royal MS. 14 E. iii.) |

1137.— Female Dress, time of Edward II. (Sloane IIS. 346..)

ft

1132.— Carpenter, Haberdasher, Weaver, Dyer, and Tapestry ma!;er.

^-^>J «^t?lv
JHHIKU1

ai38.— Malepostunre; time of Edward ITT. (Royal 'MP. 19 I).
' * . (and Strutt,).

1139.— Male Costume, time of Richard H.
^Royal MS..30.B. vi.,.and Harleian MS. 1319.)

U33.— The Host and the Ccofe.

1134.— Sompnour and Pardoner.

No.

1. ilit.

[OLD ENGLAND.]

oOo

306

OLD ENGLAND.

[Book III.

of Chilton extended into the king's hands, and a lease of the rectory
granted to the creditors who had pursued him. This lease they re-
granted to Hawkins, to pay him for his spiritual services, who then
went back to Sir John Croke, offering to deliver it up if he would
pay what was due. The baronet, however, set him at defiance, per
suaded his tenants to do the same, and so lawsuits began against
Larimore and others, who in return joined with the baronet in the
nefarious scheme thus happily exposed. The last witness examined
was a King's Bench officer, who had had Sir John in charge, and
who, when asked what he had to say, said he dared not speak on ac
count ofthe threats that had been used. When he did speak, under
the judge's protection, he said he had overheard a private conversa
tion between Sir John and the Anabaptist, in the course of which
the following conversation took place : — Larimore remarked, " The
parson is too hard for us still." Sir John replied, " If thou wilt
but act, I will hatch enough to hang Hawkins." " But how shall
we bring this to pass ? " asked Larimore. " Canst not thou convey
some gold or silver into Hawkins' house, and have a warrant
ready to search ; and then our work is done." The worthy
baronet, after some further instructions, concluded — " Charge him
with fiat felony — and force him before me, and no other justice —
and I'll send him to gaol without bail, and we'll hang him at the
next assizes." Judge Hale seems to have been perfectly appalled
with these revelations. " Come, come, Larimore, thou art a very
villain: nay, I think thou art a devil," said he. Presently he
added, addressing the justices — " Gentlemen, where is this Sir
John Croke?" They said he was gone. "Is Sir John Croke
gone ? Gentlemen, I must not forget to acquaint you (for I had
thought Sir John Croke had been here still), that this Sir John
Croke sent me this morning two sugarloaves for a present, praying
me to excuse his absence yesterday." Of course the judge had sent
them back. With the loaves came also a letter, which the judge
produced from his breast. The result was the entire acquittal of
Hawkins, who obtained compensation from his. enemies, and that
Sir John Croke was deprived of his commission of the peace. He
afterwards sold his ancestral manor of Chilton, and died in poverty
and disgrace. His only son, Sir Dodsworth Croke, also concerned
in the plot, reached old age, and died in great destitution. He was
the last of a family that had come in at the Conquest under the
name of Blount, and which is traceable to still more remote periods
in a great Italian race. Some of their mailed effigies are still in
the old parish church of Chilton. (Fig. 1050.)

The trial of the Chilton parson furnishes an example of the
romantic incidents often to be found linked with our rural parish
churches and the country gentry. We have not much of this to
boast in the next village church which our artist has engraved for
us (Fig. 1045). Yet Stone Church associates itself with several
important Kentish families, and more especially with those who have
successively been the owners, through some five centuries, of Stone
Castle. In the last reign but one (Edward III.) of the period
whose remains we have at present under review, Sir John de North-
wood held the castle, and about that time, or the previous reign, when
the second form of the Gothic, the Decorated, was displacing the
Early English, this church was built in the place of an earlier one,
founded probably in Saxon times. In 995 we find Stone given by
King Ethelred to the church and see of Rochester, and the bishops
often resided here afterwards. To that see the manor of Stone still
belongs. In Stone Church we have a good deal of the trefoil,
quatrefoil, rose, and other ornaments of the decorated Gothic,
Fig. 1047 exhibits another beautiful feature, tall and slender
columns linked by light and elegant arches, dividing the nave
from its two aisles. The chancel is seen through a single arch of
the same graceful form. Traceried arches on each side show the
circular figure which is so common in the Early English style.
A more flowing tracery prevails in the windows, especially the
large east one. Round the chancel runs a low range of trefoil,
headed arches, in relief, springing from slight pillars of grey marble.
The door-head in Fig. 1046 presents a cluster of rich mouldings
one within the other. The tower is extremely curious for its
scientific construction. Not to mar the lightness of the nave and
aisles, it is open beneath on three sides, which rest on arches. At
the same time, to give it stability, the fourth side is solid from the
foundation of the church, supported by two graduated buttresses of
considerable strength and projection, and by two light and elegant
flying buttresses that shoot directly athwart the north and south
aisles. Such tact and precision are evinced in the design and
execution of the tower, that it has been from the first, is, and is
likely to remain, immovable and solid as any piece of Gothic work
manship in tne land. The chapel adjoining the chancel was built

by a lord of Stone Castle of the reign of Henry VII., Sir John
Willshyre, Knt., comptroller of the town and marches of Calais.
He and his lady were interred under a rich altar-tomb with an
arched recess behind, where, in addition to niches and other orna
mental work, there is a cornice of grapes and vine-leaves, and the
arms of Sir John and Dame Margaret.
In Gough's < Sepulchral Monuments' is engraved a remarkable
brass in Stone Church. Such memorials, we may take this oc
casion to observe, were but in very partial use before the middle
of the present period; after that they rapidly became general
among all ranks, were often extremely elaborate in point of orna
ment, and of elegant design. The brass in the chancel of Stone
Church is inlaid in a slab in the pavement, about six feet iu length.
The figure represents a priest in his canonical vestments standing in
the centre of a cross composed of eight trefoil arches, and adorned
with vine-leaves. The stem of the cross rises from four steps, and
on it is a Latin inscription. Another inscription is on a scroll
over the priest's head ; and a third round the face of the arches.
The whole is about to be completely restored. We" are happy
to see this very beautiful,' and appropriate architectural decoration
coming again into use. Among the other services of the Cambridge
Camden Society, this especially demands grateful mention.
Quitting for the present the fertile and pleasing subject of village
antiquities, we can only give a passing glance to one feature that is
occasionally presented to our notice, the ancient canopy over the
rustic churchyard gate, beneath whose cover the dead brought for
interment used to be set down to rest awhile. Such is the one at
Beckenham (Fig. 1035), in the same county with Stone; they
were called lich-gaies, lick signifying a " corpse."
The county town of Elgin was one of ^the most noted Scottish
towns of Saxon and Norman times for its monks and friars, and
ecclesiastical establishments, to say nothing of its royal fort. It was
in the diocese of Moray -K and Bishop Andrew Moray, or of Moray,
early in the thirteenth century received instructions from Pope
Honorius to build a new cathedral for that diocese, in consequence
of requests that had been made to his Holiness. The situation
pointed out was at Spynie, a mile and a half northward from the
present ruin. This did not please Bishop Andrew, for, as he care
fully represented to the Pope, all the provisions for that part of the
country were to be had at Elgin ; and if the establishment were at
Spynie, the canons would be put to inconvenience to fetch their
provisions from the former place. Pope Honorius felt the full
force of the objection, and Elgin was the place fixed upon, and
there, in 1224, the first stone was laid of a building to be called, " in
all time coming," the cathedral church of the diocese of Moray.
That edifice did not long exist; a bishop of - the next century,
Alexander Barr, had lands in Badenoch, which were seized by the
freebooting and ferocious lord " the Wolf of Badenoch," whose
rank as a prince (he was a son of Alexander II. of Scotland)
rendered it difficult for the bishop to obtain redress. The spiritual
sword was resorted to : the lord of Badenoch was excommunicated ;
a punishment that only served to stimulate him to phrensy, and set
him, in the summer of 1390, burning and wasting all before him.
The town of Forres, situated twelve miles from Elgin, including its
manse and church, was first laid in ruins, and then Elgin itself, its
cathedral, the church of Maison Dieu, and eighteen houses of
canons and chaplains. After this sweeping revenge, in which the
Wolf of Badenoch seemed to have fully expended his rage and
animosity against the bishop, he cooled down, began to see that all
he could do was, after all, as nothing compared with the terrors of
the Church, and so he submitted himself to a public declaration of
penitence, and humbly received absolution at the hands of Walter
Trail, bishop of St. Andrews, in Blackfriars Church at Perth.
The Bishop of Moray immediately began rebuilding Elgin Ca
thedral (Fig. 1059), which was finished in about twenty years,
and resembled Lichfield Cathedral, excepting that it was far more
extensive and elaborate ; indeed few finer structures, for symmetry,
loftiness, or sculpture, adorned the palmiest days of Catholic Scotland.
The cause of its decay was the stripping off the lead which covered
it, in 1568, by the Regent Morton, in order to raise money for the
payment of his troops. The judgment of God, it was said, lighted
on the ship in which the lead of Elgin and Aberdeen Cathedrals
was to be conveyed, to Holland. Scarce had it left the coast of
Scotland, when vessel, cargo, and crew went to the bottom of the
sea. Elgin Cathedral had originally five towers ; the main one fell
on Easter Sunday, 1711, with a mighty crash. A few minutes
before, a crowd of persons had been standing close by, and it seemed
almost miraculous that no one was hurt. The two largest remain
ing towers command a delightful prospect. The churchyard is very

Chap. II.]

OLD ENGLAND.

307

large, and peculiarly suggestive of historical memories on account
of the Scottish kings and chieftains who lie buried in it. The
college attached to the cathedral had walls extending nine hundred
yards, in which were four gates. The houses and gardens of the
bishop and twenty-two canons stood within the area. The gateway
left in part of the wall had formerly an iron gate, portcullis, and
watchman's lodge.
At Kildare, in Ireland, still remain the relics of a small build
ing in which, previous to the thirteenth century, the holy fire of
St. Brigid used to be kept burning. It was suppressed at that period
by Henry de Loundres, Archbishop of Dublin, a man who seemed
to rise above many ofthe superstitions of his age. After his death it
was revived, and only ceased at the Reformation. One of the
popular saint's disciples, Conlseth, under St. Brigid's directions,
founded, in the beginning of the sixth century, the ancient cathedral
of Kildare (Fig. 1060), of which the choir only is now in use, the
nave and transepts having been completely ruined in the civil wars of
the seventeenth century. The successor to St. Conlseth in the
bishop's throne was Aodh Dubh, who had been previously an abbot
and a monk, and king of Leinster. The history of this ancient see
is almost a blank from the days of the kingly recluse to 1272, when
Simon of Kilkenny died, and a dispute concerning the succession
left the see vacant seven years. Pope Nicholas III. put an end to
the quarrel by nominating Nicholas Cusack. William Miagh suc
ceeded in 1540 ; who seems to have done individually what the nation
did collectively — halt between two opinions, but verging nearer to
Protestantism than Catholicism. The next bishop, Thomas Lan
caster, consecrated by Browne, Archbishop of Dublin, in July,
1550, was altogether Protestant. But the Reformed Church has
not profited much in any way by the acquisition of Kildare. The
second Protestant bishop, Alexander Craik, shamefully and absurdly
alienated the diocese lands and manors to one Sarsfield, taking in
return nothing but tithes of scarcely any worth. The poverty of
the see in consequence, the absence of any suitable residence for
the bishop, and the very great disproportion between the number
of Catholics and Protestants, there being on a fair average eight of
the former to one of the latter, naturally led the way to the enact
ment of William IV., that at the next vacancy Kildare should be
united to the see of Dublin, and that the deanery of Christ Church,
and the Preceptory of Tully, which Kildare had held since 1681,
on account of its impoverished condition, should vest in the Eccle
siastical Commissioners. We may observe, in conclusion, that if
the establishment of Kildare has for some time taught little that is
in accordance with the religious faith ofthe inhabitants, it must at
least be entitled to some credit among them for its educational
exertions, ranking eighth among the thirty-two dioceses of Ireland
in that respect.
Not all the admirable works of benevolence, piety, and art which
the people of England during the present period owed to Catho
licism, could sustain its wondrous hierarchy in the proud position
it occupied at the close of the last. Step by step through every
reign we can trace its retrograde progress. The statute circum-
specte agatis of 13 Edward I. established a firm settlement of the
limits of the hitherto oppressive ecclesiastical courts — the statute
of Westminster the First made ecclesiastics guilty of crimes amen
able to temporal judges, and gave the crown the control of their
property — the first Statute of Mortmain restrained that grand source
ofthe Church's acquisition of wealth, the making over of lands to
it by the laity — another statute of the same vigorous and fearless
monarch cut away all the host of benevolences and tributes by
* which Rome had impoverished this country ; and though Edward
II. cared little whether his subjects were in subjection to Rome
or not, his parliament carried forward the perilous work. One
of the principal charges made against Edward at his deposition
was, that he had given allowance to the bulls of the see of Rome.
(Fig. 1066.) Edward III. was fashioned more after his grandsire's
mould ; he at first tried calm expostulations, to which his Holiness
replied menacingly and contemptuously, informing him that the
emperor of Germany and the king of France had lately submitted
to the Holy See. Edward then took another tone, and apprised the
pontiff, that if both the emperor and the French king should take
his part, he (King Edward) was ready to give battle to them all,
in defence of the liberties of his crown. And he followed this cha
racteristic speech by equally characteristic acts. Citations of the
king or any of his subjects to the court of Rome were immediately
declared unlawful, and several penalties attached to them, for all
over whom our crown had any power ; no English priest was per
mitted to accept a benefice by any foreign provision ; no one

was to aid papal interference with English presentations ; and the
crowning assumption of Rome since the reign of King John, that
England was her vassal and bound to pay her annual rent, was put
an end to at last, by the declaration made solemnly by parliament,
that John's disgraceful surrender of his kingdom was null and
void. Finally, under the last reign (Richard II.), there was added
to all the other edicts for the assertion and security of our temporal
rights against the encroachments of the Romish power, the famous
Statute of Premunire. Thus far Rome had contested every inch of
ground, but had been fairly defeated, because England was at unity
with herself, and determined on shaking off the yoke. But now, a
new kind of opposition arose, still further to injure the Roman
Catholic church. The temporal power only hitherto had been
attacked, men now stepped forth to attack its spiritual conduct and
principles ; these were Wickliffe and Wickliffe's disciples. And
the country was soon deeply agitated by the news that Wickliffe had
been cited before the Bishop of London, and delegates sent from the
Pope " expressly to inquire into the matter." What was intended
by this inquiry seemed to be well understood, and the people, to
whom martyrdom for religious opinions was yet new, rallied
for the protection of Wickliffe. Princes and nobles also took the
alarm. The delegates must have seen at once there was nothing
to be done at St. Paul's, when the offender arrived attended by two
such friends as John of Gaunt and Percy, Lord Marshal. In order
to be more private, another council was held at Lambeth Palace
(Fig. 1064). The council took place, but they were disappointed
in regard to the privacy. The proceeding was too awful in its
character and probable consequences for the sagacious and free-
spirited citizens of London and others of the commons to permit it
to reach a conclusion without their voices being heard. They
forced themselves into the archbishop's chapel, where the council
sate, " to speak," says Walsingham drily, " on Dr. Wickliffe's be
half." The delegates were startled by these determined and self-
appointed advocates. And if a doubt remained in their minds con
cerning what course they should take, that doubt was fully dispelled
by the arrival of Sir Lewis Clifford from the queen-mother, peremp
torily forbidding them to proceed to any definitive sentence. Then,
" as the reed of a wind shaken, their speech became as soft as oil,
to the public loss of their own dignity, and the damage of the whole
Church. They were struck with such a dread, that you would think
them to be as a man that heareth not, and in whose mouth are no
reproofs." (Walsingham.) And so the council broke up in most
admired disorder, Wickliffe for form sake being commanded to put
forth no more such propositions in his sermons, or in the schools, as
those he had presented in writing to the council. The baffled dele
gates and the leading English clergy at the same time must have
been fully aware that the obnoxious propositions (especially the
leading one, that the Bible is the only infallible rule of faith) had
already spread far and near, — perhaps had instinctively guessed that
the result would be the loosening of the very roots of Catholicism
in. England. To the alarm thus engendered we may no doubt attri
bute the immediate preparations that were made to check the move
ment, and which failing, were only pursued with the greater eager
ness and intensity, until what was intended for a wholesome spiri
tual correction became savage ferocity, and ended in the sacrificial
horrors of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Archbishop
Chicheley's Lollards' Tower was attached to Lambeth Palace very
soon after Wickliffe's sudden death. We need not inquire the
purpose of its uppermost room, planked all over, ceiling, walls,
and floor — the .eight rings riveted in the wall inform us but too
plainly; we need not ask why those doors and their frameworks
are so massy and strong; and we can even dimly surmise the
mysterious purposes of the Post Room, with its stout central
pillar, that forms the lower story, and from which we ascend to the
Lollards' dungeon by the same stairs which so many of the noble
army of English martyrs have ascended before us : the door (Fig.
1065) stands open which proved to numbers the confines of life and
death. In the next period we shall have to speak of the deeds of
some of the heroic men for whom all these things were made ready.

"I well remember," says Pennant, "the street on London
Bridge [removed gradually during the last century], noisome,
darksome, and dangerous to passengers from the multitude of car
riages ; frequent arches of strong timber crossed the street from
the°tops of the houses, to keep them together, and from falling into
the river. Nothing but use could preserve the repose of the
inmates, who soon grew deaf to the noise of falling waters, the
clamours of watermen, or the frequent shrieks of drowning
wretches." How potent this " use " was we have an instance in
Nichols's < Literary Anecdotes.' Mr. Baldwin, a haberdasher, who
2R2

tBKlH "B

1140.— Library Chair, Eeading Table, and ReadiDg Desk
(Royal US. 15.D. iii.)

Li,- j. _ - _ -i«
tBBpBL ',! llil

*jm*%

1141.— Bed. (Koyal MS. 14 E. iii;)

mrn^l mm
1143.— Bed. (KoyatMS: 15 D. iii.)

1143".— Mummers. (Bodleian MS.)

<^^E^^^^^r^^r^.

liati— Qharter-staff.' (From the old Ballad ofTJobin-Hood
and the Tanner.)

1145.— Playin&at Draughts. (Harleian MS. 4431.)

IHfe-Chair. (Royal MS. 14 E. iii.)

114V.— Hand-Organ or Dulcimer, and Violin.
(Royal MS. 14 E. iii.)
308 •

1148.— Circular Chess-board. (Cotton MS. and'
Strutt.)
The Figures show the places of the Pieces': — l.The
King— 2, The Queen, or Fevee— 3/The Castle, .
Rook, or Rock— 4, The Knight— 5, The Bishop, or
Alfln— 6, The Pawns.

114S.— Hand-Bells. (Eoyal MS. 16" D. Iii.)

.riasin«feK^Ba«TOr<T f3«vL(«n MC W« MCia\

„* ira«rw tv onri his Oneen. at Canterbury Cathedral.

S10

OLD ENGLAND.

[Book III.

was born in a house that had been built over the ancient chapel of
St. Thomas-a-Becket on the bridge, and lived in it all his life, being
ordered, at the age of seventy-one, to go to the country for a change
of air, could not sleep " for want of the roaring lullaby that he had
been always used to hear." The same Baldwin, or Yaldwin, dis
covered the remains ofthe tomb of Peter of Colechurch, the original
architect of London Bridge, who died in 1205, three or four years
before his great work was fully completed. The tomb was found
under a staircase wliich Mr. Baldwin was repairing. It is singular
no curiosity should have been felt to search for the body. Peter,
curate of St. Mary, Colechurch, is one of the few of the great
ecclesiastical architects of the middle ages of whom any record,
however brief, has been preserved. He built a London Bridge of
wood, before that celebrated one of stone which rendered him
famous, and both were preceded by others which were successively
swept away by battle, flood, or fire. There used to be a popular
saying that Peter of Colechurch's London Bridge was built upon
woolpacks, because its cost was defrayed by a tax upon wool. That
bridge came to be the scene of many of the most stirring events of
English history, some of which we shall have hereafter to refer to.
In the insurrection of 1381, Sir William Walworth, Mayor of
London, anticipating the arrival of Wat Tyler, and his commons of
Kent, fortified the bridge, raised the drawbridge (which formed
one of the arches), and fastened a great chain of iron across.
" Then the commons of Surrey, who were risen with others, cried to
the wardens of the bridge to let it down and give them entry, where
by they might pass, or else they would destroy them all : whereby
they were constrained by fear to let it down and give them entry, at
which time the religious [of the chapel] present were earnest in pro
cession and prayer." The insurgents were not deterred, it seems,
by the terrible spectacle of decapitated heads stuck on poles over
the Traitor's-gateway Tower, which formed another of the singular
characteristics of the ancient bridge. Over that Traitor's Gate the
noble features of William Wallace long blackened in the wind,
accompanied by others perhaps as little deserving such a situation.
The shocking exhibition was kept up as late as the Restoration.
We do not read that the peace of the realm suffered in consequence
of its cessation. It might be that some spectacles, only less
shocking, of our own day, might be discontinued with as little
harm. We have thus slightly noticed some of the most interesting of
the features of Old London Bridge, for the sake of the chapel on the
tenth or centre arch, Peter of Colechurch's burial-place, and which
was built with and perished at the same time as the bridge. Our
engravings (Figs. 1061, 1062) represent the ancient appearance
of its interior, and the changed form of its exterior in the last
century. The lower chapel, or crypt, was twenty feet high, with
vaulted roof and clustered columns, in beautiful Early English style.
The ranges of windows in both the upper and lower chapel looked
out over the river. The crypt was last used as a paper-warehouse,
and although at high-water mark the floor was always from ten to
twelve feet under the surface, yet such was the excellence of the
materials and the masonry, that not the least damp or ieak ever
happened, and the paper was kept as safe and dry as it would have
been in a garret." (Smith's ' Ancient Topography of London,'
1701.) A fish-pond, grated over, had been made in the sterling of
the long pier on which the chapel stood. When the tide was over
the sterling, the fish were carried in at the bars, and at ebb they
were left in the pool. Persons used to go down through the chapel
to fish in this pond. The last transformation the chapel underwent,
some time before its final destruction, was the shrouding the upper
part under brickwork and boarding, whilst a crane for taking in
goods from the river for the paper-warehouse assisted to render the
lower chapel of St. Thomas-a-Becket as unlike itself in former times
as anything could well be.
Architectural details and changes, even of an order so interesting
to the imagination as the Gothic, will better please unprofessional
readers, and be more clearly understood by them, in our pictorial
representations than in any written descriptions. We will not
bewilder them, therefore, in technical phrases, or presumptuously
attempt in these pages to impart a knowledge which can only be the
fruit of careful study of the science. A few hints only will be requisite
as explanatory of the engravings to convey a general understanding
of the progress of art in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.
And first it will be necessary to bear in mind that the historical
periods into which this work is divided are not the periods of its
architecture. For instance, in the century we have now to treat of,
we have the close of the First Pointed style, the Early English, or
Lancet, extending through the reign of Edward I. ; the whole of

the Second Pointed style, or Decorated, which lasted through the
reigns of Edward II. and III. ; and the beginning of the Perpendi
cular, that thoroughly English style, commencing with Richard II.
And 'of all these reigns, that of Edward III. produced works in the
highest state of perfection— works which, the more they are inves
tigated, inspire delight, wonder, and reverence, so bold and lofty
are the principles of their composition found to be, so rich the
fancy lavished on them, and so surpassing the skill with which
those principles and that fancy have been embodied in the inert
material. We proceed now to show the more obvious transitions
of the art from the first pointed style to the beautiful decorated,
leaving the perpendicular to the next period, to which it properly
belongs. In the first place the pointed arch itself, which had been
too narrow, too sharp at the point, and ungracefully turned (with
exceptions, of course), became now of the most exquisite outlines
and proportion ; then the upper part of the arch in windows grew
generally more superb. If the reader will take the trouble to
observe the gradual elaboration of the ten examples of window
arches given in Fig. 1089, it may easily be comprehended
how the length of the clustered column came to be better
proportioned to the rise of the arch, and more beautifully
modelled ; how the bow of the arch slowly expanded into perfect
ease and grace, and how it came to be filled up with exquisite
flowing tracery, and edged and finished with -an endless variety of
ornaments. If from the windows we turn to the four specimens of
tombs (Figs. 1068, 1069,'1073, 1074), and recall to mind the example
we gave of the simple sarcophagus, with scarcely any ornament
and no canopy, that prevailed towards the close of the last period,
no difficulty will be felt in comprehending how much had since
been done in this great branch of Old English art. The different
forms of tombs succeeded each other in something like the following
order : — coffin-shaped stones, prismatic and plain at top ; the same,
prismatic and carved- at top, with crosses plain or otherwise ; altar-
tombs, sometimes with, sometimes without effigy or effigies ; and then
the same with the tester or arch over it, with vine or oaken foliage.
Archbishop Grey's tomb (Fig. 1068) shows the next advance; he
died in 1225. The altar-tomb or table is lower than it afterwards
became ; the figure of the archbishop is in pontificals, stretched
upon it. The canopy is composed of arches, pinnacles, and other
Gothic ornaments, rather heavy on the whole. The tombs of
Aymer de Valence, 1324 (Fig. 1073), and of Hugh le Despenser,
1359 (Fig. 1074), display the canopy over the altar-tomb in its
full perfection. Both evince extraordinary splendour and originality
of imagination. We are never weary of admiring in the one (that of
Valence) the free span of the main arch, the bold and singular
variations of the subordinate arches, the gorgeous gable, the spear
like pinnacles that taper upwards from airy buttresses, the mixture
of heraldic devices and sculpture (especially the graceful little
group mourning at the head of the earl), and the high finish of
every part. In the other canopy we have an assemblage of open
arches in four tiers, aud scarce know which to praise the most, the
novelty of the design, the lightness of the effect, the flowing
curves, the exquisite proportioning of each to each, or the fairy
like adorning. The poet Gower's monument (Fig. 1069) was
built in 1408, after the decorated Gothic had passed into the third
style, called the Perpendicular. We have already described it in
connection with the beautiful church that contains it, St. Mary
Overies. This class of tombs is chiefly to be found in cathedrals, in
small chapels, with the accompaniments of piscinas, niches, altar
monuments, &c. Finally, many tombs of this period were, as has
been previously observed, inlaid with brass (Figs. 1087, 1089),
having inscriptions in cameo or intaglio. Gough, in his ' Sepulchral
Monuments,' mentions one in the choir of St. Margaret's church at
Lynn, " so highly finished and so. exquisitely embellished, that one
knows not what censure to pass on those tasteless topographers who
content themselves with a hasty transcript of its epitaph. ....
This admirable brass, the execution of some Cellini of the four
teenth century, is the monument of a burgess of one of our most
commercial and opulent boroughs. The inscription, in Gothic
letters round the verge, sets forth that Robert Brauuche and his
two wives Letitia and Margaret are buried under it, and that he
died October 15, 1364." Beside the usual decorations, there is
represented, under three principal figures, a feast (Fig. 1088)
that "for the splendour of the table and company, the band of
music and attendants, might pass for some grand anniversary cele
brated in the wealthy town, perhaps the feast of St. Margaret
their patroness, or the fair-day granted them by King John, or
perhaps the mayor's feast, when Mr. Braunche held that office
1349 or 1359. He may be seated at the upper end or right hand
of the plate, and the aldermen and their wives in a row below him.

Chap. II.]

OLD ENGLAND.

311

In confirmation of this last conjecture one might even fancy one
sees, among other decorations of the table, the silver cup which
King John had presented to the town at his last visit, 1216, above
a century before. Among the delicacies of this splendid table one
sees the peacock, that noble bird, the food of lovers and the meat of
lords (such are the epithets bestowed on it by romance writers).
Few dishes were in higher fashion in the thirteenth century, and there
was scarcely any royal or noble feast without it. They stuffed it
with spices and sweet herbs, and covered the head with a . cloth,
which was kept constantly wetted to preserve the crown. They
roasted it and served it up whole, covered after dressing with the
skin and feathers, the comb entire, and the tail spread. Some
persons covered it with leaf gold, instead of its skin, and put a piece
of cotton dipped in spirits into its beak, to which they set fire as
they put it on the table. The honour of serving it up was reserved
for the ladies most distinguished for birth, rank, or beauty, one of
whom, followed by others and attended by music, brought it up in
the gold or silver dish, and set it before the master of the house, or
the guest most distinguished for his courtesy or valour ; or, after a
tournament, before the victorious knight, who was to display his
skill in carving the favourite fowl, and take an oath of valour and
enterprise on its head. The romance of ' Lancelot,' adopting the
manners of the age in which it was written, represents King Arthur
doing this office to the satisfaction of five hundred guests. A picture

by Stevens, engraved by L'Empereur, represents a peacock-feast.
M. d'Aussy had seen an old piece of tapestry of the thirteenth
century representing the same subject, which he could not after
wards recover to engrave in his curious history of the ' Private Life
of the French.' It may flatter the vanity of an English historian
to find this desideratum here supplied.
We have mentioned pinnacles, piscinas, and niches. All these, as
well as the capitals of the pillars (Figs. 1071, 1072), partook of
the same spirit of progress as we have seen manifested in
windows and tombs. The first of our three specimens of pinnacles
(Fig. 1075) shows the period when they were rare and plain ; the
second and third, when they shot up at the sides of almost
every arch, and on the top of every buttress, and when, enlarged
in size and added to the square tower, they became lofty and
beautiful spires that seemed to point to heaven, and so formed a
singularly appropriate and striking (ornament, which gave the last
finish to the Christian Church of the middle ages. The Latin word
piscina is used to indicate a stone basin for the holy water ; it was
a cavity in a niche, generally near an altar, for the use of the priest
previous to the celebration of mass, &c. It was furnished with a
pipe to carry off waste water. (Figs. 1077, &c.) The plain niches
of the thirteenth century became gorgeous tabernacles in the four
teenth (Fig. 1076), and were filled with statuary, executed often
with consummate art.

¦gggBjil:'

HBilQIiH

1158— King with his Privy Council. (Haitian MS. No. 4379.J

H59.-A Parliament of the time of Henry V. (Harleian MS. No. «,.,'

1160—Ancient Gateway of Queen's College, Oxford.

1162.— Portrait of Owen Glondower^Trom his Great
Seal, engraved in Ihe ArcfflBlogia.)
312

1164 -Richard H. knighting Henry of Monmouth. "

1161,-Karl of Westmoreland.

1166.— Southampton.

1167.— The English Fleet.

nw — Arnbhifthnrt Chiehelev.

1173.— Henry V. being armed by his Esquires.

1174.— Montacute, Earl of Salisbury.

1175.— Sir Thomas Erpingham.

314

OLD ENGLAND.

[Book. III.

CHAPTER III.— POPULAR ANTIQUITIES.

N directing our attention to the
Manners and Customs of the period
under review, Chivalry again first
demands notice : for although a sys
tem built up as it were for war, it
was not, like our military system, a
mere blank as regards domestic life in
time of peace. The warrior of the
middle ages was still a warrior,
though for a time he had left the
battle-field for the family hall ; with
the difference, that whereas in the one
case he fought, in the other he was
always to a certain degree preparing
for fighting. If he read, his book was tolerably certain to be some
romance of chivalry ; if he interfered in the education of his chil
dren, it was almost literally to teach the young idea how to shoot ;
his sports were mostly but so many military exercises ; to him if
peace had its victories as well as war, it was only in the tilting-match
(Fig. 1 102), or in the tournament, with all its " pomp and circum
stance" (Figs. 1096, 1103), that he found them. All this was at
once necessary to, and a consequence of, the system. Success in
battle then depended in a very great degree on the personal and
individual skill, courage, and prowess of the knights and other men
of rank among the combatants, and to develop these qualities there
fore was the primary object ofthe whole social system of feudalism:
on the' other hand, the opportunities afforded for display and for ob
taining reputation were a continual incentive to men to admire and
carry out most vigorously the system they submitted to. All this
was to be changed, though gradually, by the appearance of the
terrible engines of war — cannon, which are said to have been used
at the battle of Cressy, and of which one of the earliest forms is
shown in our engraving (Fig. 1097).
We have already had occasion to speak of Froissart as the
historian of Chivalry and of all that relates to it, and have inci
dentally furnished various illustrations, chiefly from his pages, of
its manners and customs. The engraving of Froissart and Sir
Espaing de Lyon (Fig. 1090) reminds us of the indefatigable zeal
and industry which the historian added to his other accomplish
ments for the labour of love he had undertaken. We behold him
there on his way to the court of Gaston de Foix, or, as he was
called for his manly beauty and love of hunting, Gaston* Phoebus,
one of the last of a now extinct class in Europe, the sovereign
nobles, who enjoyed every kingly privilege and power but the name.
Froissart thus relates his motives in commencing this journey : —
" Considering in myself how there was no great deeds by arms
likely toward in the parts of Picardy or Flanders, and seeing that
peace were made between the Duke and them of Ghent, and it
greatly annoyed me to be idle ; for I knew well that after my
-death this noble and high history should have his course, wherein
^divers noble men should have great pleasures and delight : and as,
yet, I thank God, I have understanding and remembrance of all
things past, and my wit quick and sharp enough to conceive all
-things showed unto me touching my principal matter ; and my body
is yet able to endure and suffer pain ; all things considered, I thought
2 would not let [cease] to pursue my said first purpose ; and to the
intent to know the truth of deeds done in far countries, I found
occasion to go to the high and mighty prince, Gaston, Earl of Foix
and Beam. For I well knew that if I might have that grace to
come into his house, and to be there at my leisure, I could not be
so well informed of my purpose in none other place of the world.
For thither resorted all manner of knights and strange squires for
the great nobleness of the said earl." On his way he fell into
company with Sir Espaing de Lyon, a knight attached to the Earl
of Foix, and a very pleasant and valuable meeting it was for
Froissart, for he received from Sir Espaing a world of information,
not only as to the character of the great man he was going to visit,
but as to history (often most eventful) of the places through which
lay their Mite. One little specimen of their conversation must

suffice. As they pass a ruined castle, the knight observes, " The
Count of Foix on a night sent his brother, Peter de Beam, with two
hundred spears, and with them four hundred villains [the knight
of course speaks in a social, not in a moral sense] of the county,
charged with fagots, much wood, and torches ; and they brought it
to the bastide, and then set fire thereon, and so burnt the bastide,
and all them that was therein, without mercy ; and since it was
never made again." Froissart was received by Gaston de Foix
in a most kindly and liberal spirit, excited evidently by the simple
consideration that the guest was a man of letters. As a kind of
literary bonne-bouche the prudent historian had brought with
him a book of songs, ballads, rondeaux, and virelays, the product
of the Duke of Bohemia's leisure hours, and collected by himself as
the duke's protege, and this book De Foix was especially glad to see.
" Every night after supper," says Froissart, " I read therein to him ;
and while I read there was none durst speak any word, because he
would I should be well understood ; whereat he took great solace "
(Fig. 1091).
One of the most minute and in every way complete descriptions
of a great noble of the middle ages, is Froissart's account of the
appearance, character, and habits of Gaston de Foix : it is too long
for us to transcribe here ; we will only observe, therefore, that the
limitation with which all Froissart's statements must be received as
to the virtues of the heroes of chivalry, are nowhere more indis
pensable than here. One can hardly believe that the man whom he
characterizes as in everything so perfect that he could not be praised
too much, who loved that which ought to be loved, and hated that
which ought to be hated, is the same man of whose cruelty to his
son, a mere boy, he elsewhere relates so piteous a narration.
The interesting incident that forms the subject of another of our
engravings (Fig. 1094) we borrow from the same writer's account
of the campaign of the Black Prince in Spain, who went thither
to assist Pedro or Peter the Cruel, to regain the throne he had lost
by his misdeeds, and which was occupied by his half-brother Enrique
or Henry. The latter, at the head of a large army, advanced to
meet the combined army of the English and their allies, and on the
evening of the 2nd of April, 1366, the combatants confronted each.
other before Najara, which is situated a few miles from the banks
of the Ebro. The battle did not commence till the following morn
ing, when the armies advanced toward each other just as the " sun
was rising up," and a great beauty, Froissart says, it was to behold
the battalions and the armour shining against the sun. It was
when all was prepared, that the event we have referred to occurred.
Sir John Chandos, whose name as a knight and a commander is
only a little less famous than his sovereign's, and his sovereign's
son's, the Black Prince, " brought his banner rolled up together to
the prince, and said, ' Sir, behold, here is my banner ; I require you
to display it abroad, and give me leave this day to raise it ; for,
Sir, I thank God and you, I have land and heritage sufficient to
maintain it withal.' " No knight, we may observe, could raise his
banner unless he had a train of not less than fifty men-at-arms, with
their usual complement of archers and followers. " The Spanish
King and the Black Prince then took the banner between their
hands, and spread it abroad, the which was of silver, a sharp pyle
gules, and delivered it to him, and said, < Sir John, behold here your
banner ; God send you joy and honours thereof.' Then Sir John
Chandos bare his banner to his own company, and said, < Sirs,
behold here my banner, and yours ; keep it as your own ; ' and they
took it, and were right joyful thereof, and said that by the pleasure
of God and St. George they would keep and defend it to the best
of their powers ; and so the banner abode in the hands of a good
English squire, called William Allestry, who bare it that day, and
acquitted himself right nobly." The battle ended, as usual, in favour
of the English, though Pedro did not permanently profit by it, for
h» died at last by the hands of his brother, in a kind of unpremeditated
duel to which mutual hatred had led them on meeting, and Henry
afterwards reigned the unquestioned king of Castile.
A very remarkable person was taken in the battle of Najara,
Du Guesclin, one of the most popular and renowned of French

Chap III.]

OLD ENGLAND.

315

warriors, who commanded that day a body of French soldiers, and
who, previously, at the head of thirty thousand men, chiefly con
sisting of those military freebooters called the Free Companies (see
Fig. 1092), had been the principal instrument of Henry's accession to
the throne of Castile. As Nature had not fitted him for success in
one of the objects of a knight's ambition, love, he devoted himself with
the greater earnestness to the other, war : as he used himself to say,
" I am very ugly, and shall never please the ladies ; but I shall make
myself dreaded by the enemies of my king." At the early age of
seventeen he distinguished himself in the tournament (Fig. 1103) ;
then, entering on a military career, rapidly rose to fame and rank.
After the battle of Poictiers it was to him that France was indebted
for the successful maintenance of the struggle against the English
power ; though he was himself on one occasion so unfortunate as
to fall into their hands. When peace was concluded, he was
liberated, and immediately performed a service scarcely less valuable
than any for which his country was indebted to him, that of ridding
it ofthe vast number of disbanded soldiers, native and foreign, who,
under a variety of leaders, roamed about, exercising all kinds of
oppression. These, at the French king's request, Du Guesclin
undertook to remove. So calling them about him, he commenced
with a magnificent gratuity of two hundred thousand golden florins,
promising them as much more on the road, if they would follow him.
They did so with the utmost enthusiasm, and after a visit to the
Pope at Avignon, to make him take off the excommunication he had
laid on the " Companies," and to tax him to the amount of one
hundred thousand francs — by way of remainder, we presume, that he
was not to do so again — they were conducted by their commander,
not against the Saracens, as had been intended, but against Pedro
of Castile. The result we have seen, so far as regards those for and
against whom he fought. As to himself, the circumstance of his
release from his captivity furnishes another and scarcely less striking
illustration than any we have given of the graceful generosity of
chivalry in its better moods. Du Guesclin remaining a long time
at Bordeaux, the continental head-quarters ofthe Black Prince, a
friend of his hit upon the ingenious scheme of suggesting to the
captor that it was believed by some persons that he only kept Du
Guesclin a prisoner because he was afraid of restoring him to
liberty. That was enough ; the prince sent for the French war
rior, and said he only asked one hundred francs for his ransom, or
even less, if that was too much. Du Guesclin immediately offered
¦one hundred thousand golden florins, but the prince said it was too
much ; seventy thousand was then offered, as being the lowest sum
the prisoner would allow to be given, and thus it was settled. On
his release Du Guesclin rejoined his friend, Henry, and helped to
restore him to the Castilian throne. To the engravings already
mentioned in connection with his history, we append two (Figs.
1099, 1 100) that may afford a glimpse of his appearance.
The last illustration of the spirit of chivalry that we shall at pre
sent give, and which forms the subject of the engraving (Fig. 1102),
refers to the period immediately after the peace concluded in 1379
between De Montfort, Duke of Brittany, and the French, when the
English, who had been in alliance with the former, under the com
mand of the Duke of Buckingham, set out to make the best of their
way home, having received a " safe-conduct " from the Constable of
France. Among them were a party of knights, who one day
rested in the town, near the castle of Josselyn, where the Constable
then was. Whilst there, certain Frenchmen of the castle, knights and
squires, courteously came to see them, " as men of war often-time
will do" with each other, says Froissart, and "especially English
men and Frenchmen." Among the attendants of the knights
of the two nations that met, were two who had been previously
acquainted, one an English squire called Nicholas Clifford, the other
the French Earl of March's squire " and one that he loved entirely,"
called John Boucmell. When they had " beheld each other"
and communed together awhile, the following conversation ensued.
" Nicholas," observed the Frenchman, " divers times we have wished
and desired to do deeds of arms together, and now we have found
each other in place and time where we may accomplish it. Now
we be here before the Constable of France, and other lords that be
here present, therefore, I require you, let us have now three
courses afoot with a spear each of us against other." The English
man answered, " John, ye know right well we be here going on
.our way, by the safe-conduct of my lord, your Constable ; therefore
that ye require cannot be done, for I am not the chief of this safe-
conduct, for I am but under these other knights that be here ; for
though I would here abide, they would not do so." Again the
French squire urged the acceptance of the challenge (Fig. 1101).
" Nicholas, excuse you not by this means ; let your company depart
if they list, for I promise you by covenant, the arms once done be

tween you and me, I shall bring you into the vale of Cherbourg with
out damage or peril ; make ye no doubt thereof." But the English.
squire had no armour with him, neither he nor his company ; a
custom possibly with knights when thus travelling under safe-con
duct. John Boucmell would not be answered with this objection ;
he had harness of different sorts at his command, they should be
brought before Clifford, and after he had made his choice from them,
Boucmell would make his. We can well understand and appre
ciate the feelings of our gallant countryman at being compelled
by a sense of propriety, as he evidently felt he was, still to decline
so generous an antagonist. However, he promised him he would
take advice, and added, that at all events, as soon as they came into
each other's neighbourhood, which they expected would shortly be
the case, that he would come to him, and deliver the challenge he
so despised. " Nay, nay," was the reply, " seek no respite. I have
offered, and yet do offer you so many things so honourable, that in
no wise ye can depart, saving your honour, without doing deeds of
arms with me, sith I require you of it." And so they parted, the
Englishman probably not choosing to be compelled even by such
remarks into a line of conduct he had determined to avoid, but
evidently stung with them, and " sorer displeased than he was
before." But this conversation reached the ears of the French
Constable, who at once saw how to obviate all difficulties, and
determined that the trial of skill should take place. So when the
English knights waited upon him to make arrangements for their
departure, he told them pleasantly that he arrested them all as his
guests, and that on the morrow after mass they should see deeds of
arms done between the two squires. The remainder we must tell
in Froissart's own inimitable style. " Then these two squires, John
and Nicholas, advised them well of the battle that they must furnish
the next day ; and so in the next morning they both heard one
mass and were confessed, and leaped on their horses, and all the
lords of France on the one part, and the Englishmen on the other
part, and so came all together to a fair plain place without the
castle of Josselyn, and there tarried. John Boucmell had made
ready two harnesses, fair and good, according as he promised to the
English squire, and then he said to him, ' Nicholas, choose which
ye will have ;' but he would in no wise choose, and gave the first
choice to the French squire, and so he took the one and armed him
therewith, and Nicholas did help to arm him, and so did he in like
wise again ; and when they were both two armed, they took good
spears all of one length, and so each of them took his place and
came a fair pace afoot each against other; and when they should
approach, they couched down their spears, and at the first stroke
Nicholas Clifford strake John Boucmell on the breast, and the
stroke did slide up to the gorget of mail, and the spear-head did
enter into his throat, and did cut asunder the jugular vein, and the
spear broke, and the truncheon stuck still in the squire's neck, who
was with that stroke wounded to death : the English squire passed
forth, and went and sate down in his chair. When the lords saw
that stroke, and saw how the truncheon stuck still, they came to him
and took off his bascinet, and drew out the truncheon ; and soon
as it was done he turned about without any word speaking, and so
fell down dead suddenly, so that the English squire could not come
to him time enough, for he had certain words to have stanched him
that would have holpen ; but when he saw that he was dead, he was
sore displeased because of that adventure, seeing how he should
slay so valiant a man of arms. He that then had seen the Earl of
March would have had pity to see what sorrow he made for> his
squire, for he loved him entirely. The Constable recomforted him,
and said, ' In such deeds of arms let no man look for nothing else ;
though this evil fortune be fallen on our squire, the English is not
to blame, for he cannot amend it !" Then the Constable said to the
Englishmen, ' Sirs, let us go and dine ; it is time :' and so the Con
stable, against their good will, had them with him into the castle to
dinner, for he would not break his promise for the death of his
squire. The Earl of March wept piteously for his squire, and
Nicholas Clifford went to his lodging and would not dine in the
castle, what for sorrow, and for doubt of the French squire's friends.
But the Constable sent so for him, that it behoved him to go to the
castle ; and when he was come, the Constable said, ' Certainly
Nicholas, I believe verily, and see well how ye be sorry for the
death of John Boucmell ; but I excuse you, for ye cannot amend
it : for as God help me, if I had been in tbe same case as ye were
in, ye have done' nothing but I would have done the same, or more
if I might ; for better it is a man to grieve his enemy, than his
enemy should grieve him : such be the adventures of arms ;' so they
sate down at the table and dined at their leisure." This touching in
cident forms the subject of two of our engravings (Figs. 1 102, 1095 )

2S2

ll79.TT-NeHftof-Henjy<V.

1176.— rertrait of Henvy V.

1177.— Katherine

1180.— Half-Noble of Henry V.

1181.— Qnarter>Noble of Henry V.

1178.— Great Seal of Henry V.

HSfr^Gxoat of Henry V.

*

1185.-rSignature of Henry V.

1184.— Penny of Hen-.y V.

1183.— Half-Groat of Henry V.

m

m

Kffeii^lllM1  „
¦Hfi

:
1

1187.— Tomb of Henry V. in Westminster Abbey.

1186.— Henry V. and his Court.

316

1188.— Henry XL in Ms Youth.

1193.— Great Seal of Henry VI.

sfyn

lia*.— Groat of Henry VI.

HS7-.--Signatore of Henry TT.

1189.— Portrait of Henry VI.

1190.— Henry VI. and Court. John Talbot receiving a Sword.

1191.— Marriage of Henry VL.and Margaret of Anjou,

318

OLD ENGLAND.

[Book III.

The establishment of regular colleges for the residence of students
in separate communities, commenced about the middle of the thir
teenth century, and thus considerably changed as well as improved
the two great Universities of Oxford and Cambridge. It may not
be uninteresting to glance at university life previous to that time.
It presents many curious features. In the first place, the number of
students is quite startling ; they were counted by tens of thousands.
The old Oxford historian, Anthony-a-Wood, tells us that many of
them were mere " varlets who pretended to be scholars," who
" lived under no discipline, neither had any tutors, but only for
fashion sake would sometimes thrust themselves into the schools at
ordinary lectures ; and when they went to perform any mischiefs,
then would they be accounted scholars, that so they might free
themselves from the jurisdiction of the burghers." A pretty law
less state of society those unfortunate burghers must have lived in :
all sorts of violent crimes were perpetrated, and the townspeople,
who generally suffered from them, had no redress but such as they
could enforce by a hasty resort to arms, or obtain from the tardy
and ineffeetual interference of. the king or high clergy. How these
disorderly crowds of students were all boarded and lodged it is
almost impossible to tell. The School of Pythagoras at' Cambridge
(Fig. 1107), a Norman house or hostel, is said to have been used for
the residence of scholars there. It seems pretty evident that they
fared as they could, each according to his means, among the sur
rounding villages or townsfolk. We have a few glimpses of the
university teachers. Hebrew was taught at Oxford by Jews, long
resident there ; Greek was a recent study, taught by a monk from
Athens, called Nicholas the Greek. It is pleasant to find among
these professors of learning, at a time when the clergy were
scrambling for wealth and power and pomp, some who stood apart
in dignified simplicity and humility, asserting practically in their
lives the beauty and glory of knowledge, and making it to them its
own exceeding great reward. Thus we read, in 1362, the rector
and masters of the faculty of arts petitioned for a postponement of
the hearing of a cause in which they were: parties, because " we
have difficulty in finding the money to !pay the procurators and
advocates, whom it is necessary for us to employ, we whose pro
fession it is to possess no wealth." The vows of the Franciscan
friars enjoined poverty, manual labour, and study ; and though only
a few years had elapsed since they first entered Oxford, the
university had become thoroughly imbued with their principles,
and its leading men were either Franciscans or the patrons of
Franciscans. The most eminent of the former class was Eoo-er
Bacon, who had been persuaded to join them by Eobert Grosteste,
their most distinguished and, indeed, their first patron at Oxford.
These two scholars were contemporaries, and in all respects kindred
minds; their training, their studies, their conflicts, their whole
career, were almost identical in their leading points, and furnish
us with a striking illustration of the state of learning at the period
and the difficulties and dangers that beset those who dared to start
from the beaten track. We see Bacon, in the first instance, as
the younger brother and disciple of Grosteste: both had been
placed at Oxford early in life, both 'had finished their studies (so
far as study depended upon schools) at the first university in
Europe, that of Paris, then resorted to by all who aspired to the
honoured name of scholar. Both had returned to Oxford with
laurels on their brows, there to drink inspiring draughts of pure
faith and morality from the new orders of friars, and to receive
from them quickening impulses of mental advancement. And both
did advance : both were distinguished mathematicians ; students
of Janguages ; and diligent collectors of such books as were then to
be had : in twenty years Bacon spent two thousand livres (French)
in books and instruments, no doubt through the liberality of the
opulent friends of the learned mendicants. Both also searched
into the operations of nature, real and imagined; and whilst
Grosteste strenuously opposed the moral and spirituaWdepravities
of the church, Bacon, undistracted by the arduous and stormy
duties into which his friend had plunged when he became a bishop,
ascended the heights of philosophical discovery, and produced his
' Opus Majus.' There are thoughts scattered like gems through
that work, which will bear the closest comparison with the wisdom
of his illustrious namesake of a, later time (who, curiously enough,
exhibits a striking mental resemblance to him), whilst at the same
time a beautiful ease and simplicity pervade the whole composition ;
indeed nothing finer of the kind was produced for several ages. The
mechanical discoveries indicated in his writings, especially the tele
scope and gunpowder, are very remarkable, as showing how thought
may anticipate all things; for, be it carefully observed, the most
valuable of Bacon's discoveries were, it is quite manifest, of imagi
nation amt reflection solely, without actual experiment. (' Penny

Cyclopaedia'— Bacon.) The common ideas of ¦" Friar Bacon "
have always represented him as a magician, who made a brazen
head that could answer questions concerning futurity. Grosteste
divides the credit of this wondrous invention with Bacon ; but the
truth is, that the charge of magic originated with the monks, by
whom Bacon and Grosteste (and all the friars) were heartily
detested. Anthony-a-Wood wittily shows us how little their
researches could be understood. The clergy, says he, "knew no
property of the circle, except that of keeping out the devil ; and
thought. the parts of a triangle would wound religion." The court
of Eome was equally the foe of the spirit of free investigation
which these early reformers were spreading. Both were successively
in their old age cited to Eome ; the one to answer for his actions,
the other for his writings. Grosteste was excommunicated, 'and
after his death narrowly escaped having his bones flung out of
Lincoln Cathedral ; Eoger Bacon suffered ten years' rigorous con
finement at Eome, and was only released at the intercession of some
powerful nobles. But he was worn out by captivity and grief, and
died in 1292, a few months after he had returned to Oxford, where
he was buried in the Franciscan church. There was formerly a
tower on the bridge at Oxford (Fig. 1108), which was traditionally
said to have been Bacon's study ; perhaps, then, it was to that
tower the bigots hastened "on Bacon's death to search for his papers,
and immediately placed under lock and key all that they could find ;
which in process of time were consumed by insects. But enough
has been left to show us that their author stands in the very fore
most rank of Old England's scientific and philosophical minds.

To obtain, in the present day, the best idea of the aspect of an
English city in the middle ages, we must go to Chester, which
preserves its original aspect, with such remarkable completeness
that even the surrounding wall is still to be found there ; though
that work of defence, so common in former times, is attributed by
tradition to Cymbeline — that is to say, to a period a century before
the birth of Christ. Having been altered at different periods, and
much reduced in height, as no longer needed for their original object,
these walls, some two miles round, now serve the much pleasanter
purpose of a promenade for the inhabitants. And, as Kohl observes,
a very " curious promenade it is ; sometimes up hill and sometimes
down ; at one point closely wedged in between houses, while at
another the narrow path passes under some ancient watchtower ;
here it runs under a gateway, and there we must descend a flight
of steps, because the wall has' been cleared away to make room for
a street ; now we pass behind the venerable cathedral, and now in
front of the spacious old castle, which has been converted into a
military barrack." The antiquity of Chester will be tolerably
evident from these remarks, and its importance in past times is
equally worthy of notice. Kohl says, it may be considered as the
" mother of Liverpool, for at a time when nothing was yet known
of Liverpool commerce on the Mersey, the fame of Chester and her
trade on the Dee was widely spread in Germany, Spain, and
France." Liverpool, however, has proved but an ungrateful child,
for, taking advantage of the injury done^to the navigation of the
Dee by accumulations of sand, it has gone on flourishing at the
parent's expense, until it has grown into all its present magnitude
and power, and left Chester in all its present comparative insioni-
ficance. °
The interior of Chester is even still more extraordinary than the
exterior, on account of a feature that appears to be peculiar to the
place, and which has sadly puzzled all our antiquarians to account
for or explain the origin of. We allude to the long covered public
passages, called Eows (Fig. 1106, 1113), that extend through the
first floors ofthe houses, parallel with the streets. The best description
we have seen of these Eows is that by the pleasant writer before
mentioned; although, as he observes, "the thing is not very easy to
describe. Let the reader imagine the front wall of the first floor
of each house to have been taken away, leaving that part, of the
house completely open towards the street, the upper part being sup
ported by pillars of beams. Let] him then imagine the side walls
also to have been 'pierced through, to allow a continuous passage
along the first floors of all the houses. How the people of Chester
came, in this way, to spoil their best floors in so many of their
houses, is a matter that was never' made perfectly clear to me We
have^also a number of towns in Germany, particularly in Silesia
and the Austrian dominions, where covered passages, for- the accom
modation of the public, have been made to run through or round
private houses; but then these passages or galleries are always
on the ground-floor, and on a level with the street." The two
great intersecting streets are to a considerable extent con
structed on this plan, and as those, as well as the other streets of

Chap. III.]

OLD ENGLAND.

319

Chester exhibit in the simplicity of their plan very clear evidence
of their builders — the Eomans, who made Chester the station of
their twentieth legion, it is not improbable that Pennant may be
correct in considering that the peculiar mode of construction exhi
bited in the Eows may have existed from the Eoman period. Other
antiquarians are satisfied that the Eows were intended for defence,
and therefore attribute their design and erection to the ages when
the city was exposed to continual attacks by the Welsh and the Scots ;
in order that, if the citizens failed to keep their enemies outside the
walls, yet that they might still be able to prevent them from taking
possession of the place. It is certainly much in favour of this
theory that the Eows were in later times found of great importance
for military purposes ; it is asserted, that in the civil wars, the pos
session of the Eows decided the possession of Chester, whether for
the Eoyalists or the Parliamentarians.
" It must not be imagined," continues Kohl, " that these Eows
form a very regular or uniform gallery. On the contrary, it varies
according to the size or circumstances of each house through which
it passes. Sometimes, when passing through a small house, the
ceiling is so low that one finds it necessary to doff the hat, while in
others one passes through a space as lofty as a saloon. In one house
the Eow lies lower than in the preceding, and one has in conse
quence to go down a step or two, and perhaps, a house or two
farther, one or two steps have to be mounted again. In one house
a handsome new-fashioned iron railing fronts the street ; in another,
only a mean wooden paling. In some stately houses, the support
ing columns are strong and adorned with handsome antique orna
ments ; in others, the wooden piles appear time-worn, and, one
hurries past them apprehensive that the whole concern must topple
down before long. The ground-floors over which the Eows pass
are inhabited by an humble class of tradesmen, but it is at the back
of the Eows themselves that the principal shops are to be found.
This may give an idea of how lively and varied a scene is generally
to be witnessed here. Indeed the Eows are often full of people,
either making their little purchases in the shops, or mounting to
their boarded floors, to avoid the disagreeable pavement of the
streets. Perhaps these Eows may be connected with another singu
larity pointed out to me at Chester. The streets do not, as in other
towns, run along the surface of the ground, but have been cut into
it, and that moreover into a solid rock. The Eows are in reality on
a level with the surface of the ground, and the carriages rolling
along below them are passing through a kind of artificial ravine.
The back wall of the ground-floor is everywhere formed by the
solid rock, and the court-yard of the houses, their kitchens, and
back buildings lie generally ten or twelve feet higher than the
street." A place so rich in these broad features of antiquity could
hardly be destitute of many of its minor and more ordinary details.
A more richly picturesque example of domestic street architecture,
than is shown in our engraving (Fig. 1112) of some ofthe old
houses of Chester, it would be hardly possible to find or to desire.

Among the places which one often hears of, but few ever see, may
be reckoned Crowland or Croyland in Lincolnshire, famous for
its abbey. It lies in the very heart of the fens, and the traveller whom
business or accident takes there for the first time, say from Spalding
or Market Deeping, will not speedily forget either the way by which
he reaches it, or the place when reached. For miles the road ex
tends through a dead flat, where endless drains, occasional large
sheets of water, pollard willows, and, if he be fortunate, a flight of
wild ducks, are the only objects that meet his gaze. Not a habitation
or a human being anywhere appears. The road itself, at times neces
sarily raised to a considerable height, causes him many a twinge of
fear as to the consequences of his horse starting at any sudden
occurrence, and dropping the vehicle over the undefended edge ; and
if another vehicle meets him in such places, he must have confidence
indeed in the animal, if he does not get out and, carefully holding
him by the head, draw him within a very few inches of the edge,
and there keep him standing while the other equipage passes. But
the town is reached, and the superb ruins of the monastery at once
attract the eye, and suggest all kinds of pleasant anticipations as to
the place itself. Curiously are we disappointed. Never surely
before were there so many dull and spiritless-looking houses congre
gated together ; the drains that run through some of the streets
seem to have shed over everything their own stagnant qualities.
Not a good-looking public building of any sort relieves the tedium
of brick and mortar— nay, we question whether there is such a thing
as a public building in the place : we certainly remember none,
though some years have passed since we were there. A handsome-
looking or superior mansion is almost equally scarce: strange as
the fact at first may appear, we were informed that there was not a

single person resident in Crowland that could be supposed even to
aspire to the rank of a country gentleman. We think we do recol
lect a few trees, but are not at all sure about flowers. In a word, a
place more completely out of the world, as it were, one cannot well
imagine. And yet after all Crowland is an interesting place. It
is interesting, if it be only to see how completely time has swept
away every incidental vestige of the magnificence of the abbey,
which had few rivals in the country ; and the very existence of
which one would now be inclined to doubt, did not the existing
ruins still stand there to be its witnesses. It is' interesting also for
another structure — the one exception to the universal blank of
the town — the bridge, which is at once the oldest and most extra
ordinary structure of the kind in England. It is triangular,
having three roadways meeting at the top in a common centre,
which is high in proportion to the other dimensions of the edifice.
This curious form, and its steepness, rendering it useless except for
pedestrians, though horses might cross it — whilst at the same time
neither need it — have induced antiquaries to suppose the whole to be
simply a material embodiment of the idea of the Trinity. It seems
to us that whilst the builders did intend to shadow forth one of the
grand mysteries of their religion, they intended its immediate use to
be that of a proper bridge for foot passengers over the two drains
that there met and mingled their waters beneath, and which drains
were probably too wide to be crossed without its assistance ; though
horsemen might ford them. The drains have long disappeared, and
hence the wonder with which a visitor looks upon the strange and
apparently unnecessary bridge. The period of its erection is said
to have been 860 ; but the style implies a much later date, bring
ing it down to the era upon which we now write. The statue
seen in our engraving (which exhibits the bridge as it appeared in
the last century) is now so much mutilated, that hardly a feature
is discernible. We can see, however, it represents a king ; and
may therefore be a statue of Ethelbald, who founded the monastery
about the beginning ofthe eighth century (Fig. 1109).
The castle of Newcastle-tjfon-Tyne, that extensive and majestic
relic of the war times of Old England, has already engaged our
attention (see page 110) ; we have also alluded to the ancient im
portance of the town: we have now to glance at the fragments
which time has left us of the walls, to which both the town and the
castle were mainly accustomed to trust for security. The great
Norman fortresses had generally two walls: the outer one of
Newcastle enclosed three acres of ground ; the inner joined it at two
places, and formed a second enclosure, within which, thus doubly
intrenched, stood the main buildings of the fortress. The outer
wall had a main entrance and two posterns ; the inner wall had the
same. Of all these entrances and walls nothing now remains but
the Black Gate (Fig. 1111), which was the great gateway of the
outer wall, built in the time of Henry III. at a cost of about five
hundred and fourteen pounds old money. As we now see it, it is
apt to convey a gloomy impression of Norman character and times :
in passing under the low and narrow arch, louring and characteristic
is the effect of the great depth, thirty-six feet, and suggestive
of thoughts of the awful dungeons of the mighty barons and
the deeds of cruelty too often perpetrated in them ; and we thank
God that it is given to us to live in other times. Two lofty cir
cular towers formerly added to the strength and majesty of this
gateway, and one of them is still very perfect towards its base, but
the rest of the structure is mixed up with confused masses of extra
neous building. The town of Newcastle, independent of the castle,
had been walled from a very early period : in proof of which a
strong barrier of earth remains behind the priory of Black Friars.
But by the time of Edward I. these walls had become quite inade
quate to the defence of the inhabitants; the Scots entered and
ravaged the town at will, and at one of their visits, in addition to
making the customary use of fire and sword, carried off a rich
citizen to Scotland. The captive, being ransomed after a short
confinement, formed a resolution to prevent such unpleasant acci
dents for the future. So he employed his wealth in rebuilding the
fortifications ; and in that great undertaking was assisted by the rest
of the inhabitants of Newcastle, and encouraged by the king. The
result was a rampart twelve feet high and eight thick, strongly
resembling, it is said, the walls of Avignon. They extended two
thousand seven hundred and forty yards, with a fosse or ditch
running along the foot outside sixty-six feet broad, and named the
Kino-'s Dykes. There were seven gates in them, and seventeen
round towers, "between every one of which were, for the most
part, two watch-towers, made square, with the effigies of men cut
out in stone upon the tops of them, as though they were watching."
(Bourne.) These great works were not completed until the reign

1198.- Duke of Bedford.

1199;— Talbdt, Earl of Shrewsbury.

1200.- Old Monnment of Joan of Are, Konen.

1201.— Rouen.

1203,-Effigy upon the Tomb of John Talbot,

.3202.— Talbot, the great Earl of Shrewsbury, presenting a Book of Bomances to Henry VL
• (Royal MS. 15 E. 6.)

320

1204.— Lydgate presenting his Poem of • The Pilgrim ' to the Tfart of
VarwickandSaUBbury. (Hartelan^X 482(5

y^jUJlliillitll

1200. — Queen Margaret.

1208.— Eichard Nevil, Earl of Warwick,

1205.— Westminster HalL— Treaty Ibetween Henry VI. and Richard, Duke of York.

•1207.— Richard, Thtkc of York. •

, 1209.— Cardinal Beaufort.

1210.— Battle of Bamet. (From an Illumination in a MS. at Ghent.)

¦K</

f.s .¦»,".-, i.,. ^^*

yij-w.","

.lau^Heldof.Bataa near. Barnet.

i 1

1213.— Humphrey, Duke of .Gloster.

[OLD ENGLAND..]

1212.— Fields near St. Albans.

321

322

OLD ENGLAND.

[Book III.

of Edward HI. The town was then divided into twenty-four
wards, according to the number of gates and round towers upon
them. All the free burgesses of each ward buckled on their
harness as soldiers for its defence whenever there was a cry of
danger ; and regularly, in the reign of Henry IV., did a hundred
of those burgesses pace the bulwarks nightly. In the opinion
of Leland, " the strength and magnificence of the wauling of
this town far passeth all the waulles of the cities of England,, and
most of the towns of Europa." The relics of these noble ramparts
are fast becoming obliterated, like many of the minor curiosities
of this fine old town, among which may be mentioned the public
conduits of peculiar construction, " having each a small square
reservoir before, them for retaining the water for the use of
horses, or common domestic purposes." (Brand.) Pond was
anciently pronounced pand, according to Dr. Thomas Shaw, and
Skinner derives the word from the Anglo-Saxon pyndan, to enclose
or shut up. On the Scottish and English borders, pand seem3 to
have been converted into pant, meaning a little reservoir or pond-
In a deed of 1450 a public conduit in the market-place of Durham,
similar to the pants of Newcastle, is described in Latin and Anglo-
Norman as " the fountain head, vulgarly called the ' Pant ' head."
The pant of which we have given an engraving (Fig. 1110)
stands in front of the Freemen's Hospital, or the Hospital of the
Holy Jesus." The charity was founded in 1683, by the mayor and
burgesses, for the relief of freemen and freemen's widows, or sons
and daughters of freemen, being unmarried. The buildings erected
for this purpose stood on a piece of ground called the Manors, and
the institution was incorporated under the title of " The Master,
Brethren, and Sisters of the Hospital of the Holy Jesus." The
hospital was thus described by Bourne, upwards of a century ago,
in his account of Newcastle : — " You ascend to it by stairs from the
High-street, and then enter into a pleasant field, on the north side
of which is the said hospital. It is three stories high, and the
under story is adorned with piazzas, which are about sixty yards in
length, and make a very agreeable walk. About the middle of the
piazzas is the entrance into the second and third stories, and ove1'
against this entrance is a fountain (very much beautified) for the
use of the hospital." Some of the many pants in Newcastle are
beautiful, others merely curious. The want of water that New
castle has, to a certain extent, experienced for ages, evidently led
to the erection of the pants. In the last century, the common
council, in order to obviate the deficiency, accepted the liberal
offer of a neighbouring gentleman to supply the town with water
from his property, on their preparing aqueducts. Other provision
has since been made.

Whilst Froissart was busily engaged collecting materials for his
great history, and journeying from land to land in order to increase
their amount, or obtain additional verifications of their correctness,
an Englishman was no less actively employed in the study of the
manners and customs, and modes of thought, of his own countrymen,
of all ranks and classes of society, and embodying the result of his
experience in poems that were to be at least as permanent as his
contemporary's prose, and infinitely more valuable, Froissart re
corded but one feature of his age, the most conspicuous undoubtedlv,
but one so little calculated for durability, that the record has become
in the lapse of ages chiefly interesting and valuable for its own sake.
Chaucer also described the men of the fourteenth century ; but in
doing so, went so much deeper beneath the surface, that he at the
same time described human nature under a thousand varying aspects ;
the consequence is, we turn with ever-fresh instruction to his pages-
Froissart's beau ideals — the gentle warriors who set and kept Europe
in a blaze— are happily extinct ; but the characters of the ' Canterbury
Tales ' yet seem to live, breathe, and move among us, so thoroughly in
dividual are they, so thoroughly men and women, having all our own
peculiarities, humours, follies, virtues, and vices. Through all litera
ture we may look in vain for any parallel to the amazing amount and
variety of descriptive powers of the highest class, lavished in the small
space occupied by the prologue to the great poem we have named ;
and yet that prologue hardly bears a smaller proportion in quantity
to the rest of the ' Canterbury Tales,' than do the powers exhibited
in it to those which the'poet's complete works reveal. In a word,
of the few supreme master spirits that stand out above all other of
the illustrious of the earth, Chaucer is one. The design ofthe poem
itself is one of almost unequalled skill and magnificence. Taking
that exceedingly picturesque feature of Old England, the pilgrim
ages, and availing himself of the opportunity such occasions offered
for the mingling of different ranks (we need hardly say that such
unnatural and pernicious extreme social divisions as mark our time
were unTOown in Chaucer's), he brought together as the dramatis

persona: of his " Comedy not intended for the Stage," a most com
plete and picturesque set of examples of all the- different classes of
society. These he causes to meet, himself among the number, at
the Tabard, now the Talbot, in Southwark, a place especially
favoured by pilgrims departing from London, and which still pre
serves much of its antique character. There are reasons even for
believing that the very gallery, along which Chaucer himself may
have walked as a pilgrim, among pilgrims, and the room where they
may have dined, .still exist. (See 'Xondon :— The Tabard,' Vol. i.
No. IV.) Our engravings (Figs. 1116, 1117, 1118) show the pro
gress of the changes that have from time to time modernised other
portions of the original Tabard. In the engraving of the supper
(Fig. 1115), the artist has aimed to restore the pilgrims' room of the
Tabard, and to exhibit the pilgrims as Chaucer has described them
at supper. The meal scarcely over, the Host, evidently excited
with some unusual thought, rises. Chaucer says of him —
A seemly man our hoste was with all
For to have been a marshall in a hall ;
A largS man he was, with eyen steep,
A fairer burgess is there none in Cheap.
Bold of his speech, and wise and well ytaught,
And of manhood him lacked righte nought.
Eke therto was he right a merry man ;
evidence of which is afforded by his address to the company.
Having told them how welcome they were to his " herberwe," or
inn,, he adds : —
Fain would I do you mirth, an I wist how.
And of a mirth I am right now bethought
¦ To do you ease, and it shall cost you nought.
Ye go to Canterbury ; God you speed,
The blissful martyr [Becket] quitd [requite] you your meed,
And well I wot as ye go by the way,
Ye shapen you to talken and to play ;
For true'ly comfort ne mirth is none
To riden by the way dumb as the stone ;
And therefore would I maken you disport,,
As I said erst, and do you some comfort.
And if you liketh all by one assent
Now for to standen at my judgement,
And for.to worken as I shall you say
To morrow, when ye riden by the way ;
Now by my father's soule" that is dead,
, :".' But ye be merry, smiteth [smite] off my head :
Hold up your hands withouten more' speech.
The pilgrims thought it not worth while to " make it wise," so
agreed to his proposal, and bade him give what verdict he pleased.
And now the Host explains the idea that he has been brooding' over
all the supper-time : —
This is the point, to speak it plat and plain ;
That each of you, to shorten with your way
In this viage [journey] shall tellen tales tway ;
To Canterbury ward, I mean it so,
And homeward he shall tellen other two
Of aventures that whilom have befall.
And which of you that beareth him best of all,
That is to say, that telleth in this case
Tale's of best sent€nce and most solace,
Shall have a supper at your aller cost
Here in this place, sitting by this post,
When that ye^come again from Canterbury.
Such is the proposal of the Host, but fortunately that is not all he
has to say, or we should have wanted through the ensuing pilgrim
age the life and soul of the party, and the poet would have wanted
the most important of the links by which to connect the stories
that form the staple of the poem. So the liberal-hearted and joyous
Harry Bailly tells them that he will himself ride with them at his
own cost, and be their guide. 'The pilgrims not only received this
offer in the spirit in which it is made, but asked him to undertake
the office of governor on the pilgrimage, an.d the judge ofthe tales
that are to be told, observing, in short, that they will be ruled by
him in " high and low." Lots are now drawn to see who shall tell
the first tale, and the Knight is the man. The pilgrims soon after
retire to bed, and the following morning they depart on their way
to Thomas-a-Becket's shrine. Having thus briefly sketched the
plan of the poem, we will now pause to look a little more in detail
at the characters of the pilgrims. We may, however, add to this
notice of the Host, a few words on a character who accompanies
¦the party as a man of business rather than a pilgrim (Fig. 1133)—.
To boil the chickens, and the marrow bones
And poudre marchant tart and galingale 
delicacies (we mean, the marchant tart and galingale) of which the

Chap. III.]

OLD ENGLAND.

323

said pilgrims had a better understanding than we confess we have.
There is no difficulty in respect to his other accomplishments —
Well could he know a draught of London ale ;
He coulde" roast, and seethe, and broil and fry
Baken mortrewGs, and well bake a pie ;
For blanc-manger that made he with the best.
The mortrewes consisted of meat — generally pork — brayed in a
mortar (une mortreuse), and mixed with milk, eggs, spices, &c. :
and we fancy we should be inclined to relish the, composition from
such able hands, always providing that the saffron were omitted
with which it used to be " coloured very deep." But the blanc
mange we should decidedly object to, personally, if made according
to an ancient recipe in { A Proper New Book of Cookery,1 1575 : —
" Take a capon, and cut out the braune of him alive," &c. Among
all our modern improvements, let us be thankful for increased
humanity in the treatment of the helpless creatures that have to die
— not always that we may live — but too generally that we may
abound in luxuries. Even our improvements in this respect have
by no means reached their limits. The cry of pain still ascends to
the Maker and Father of All from his humble creatures ; and to an
extent that few would believe who do not enter deeply into the
mysteries of the gastronomic art. It is strange that man, who
shares so much of their nature, should continue so long insensible
to the tortures he inflicts. In vain still are we told, —
Never to blend our pleasure and our pride
With sorrow ofthe meanest thing that feels.
We see by the mention of London ale, that our metropolitan
breweries have enjoyed their high reputation for a long period.
Perhaps the earliest allusion to an English cook's shop is con
tained in some lines in another part of the ' Canterbury Tales,'
where the Host banters the Cook for selling in his shop the fly
blown stubble goose, and for his redressings of his provisions — the
Jack of Dover — probably a kind of pasty,
That hath been fwies hot and twie"s cold.
One might have expected that a poet manifesting such wonder
ful discernment as Chaucer would have brought into view the
absurdities of knight-errantry, but we suppose the high and beauti
ful qualities of the chivalric character had too much won on his
imagination ; and so he gave us his picture of the sedate, wise, and
veteran warrior, That from the time- that he first began"
To riden out, he love"d chivalry,
Truth and honour, freedom and courtesy ;
and who was in all respects
A very perfect gentle knight.
Chaucer speaks of his worthiness in "his lorde's war," a passage
which may not unaptly be illustrated by a few remarks on the
military system of the Middle Ages. Every knight, except the
sovereign, whatever his degree, was military vassal to some superior
lord, b'ound to arm at his call, and attend him forty days in the
field. • This tenure by knights' service was performed as an equiva
lent for so much property in land, sufficient to maintain and equip
him without ordinary labour. Such property was called a knight's
fee, The heads of the nation settled the maximum value of knights'
fees, the object being to create as many as possible, in order to have
an ample supply of knights for war. When the king wanted their
aid, he issued his writs to his tenants-in-chief, each possessing large
property in land, and rated respectively at so many knights' fees.
On the appointed day, and at the appointed spot, came these tenants-
in-chief, with their standards unfurled, as rallying points for their
respective hosts. On receiving their sovereign lord's writs, they
had issued their own summonses to the knights, for whose appear
ance they were responsible. Their tenants in fee, again, had called
together their tenants, holders of half or quarter knights' fees, and
bound to render only half or quarter the ordinary term of military
service. A beautiful and gallant sight it must have been, to beh6ld
such an army of knights as were often raised by our Edwards, and
Henries, and Eichards, all mounted and equipped to the very best
of their ability in the mixed stern and gorgeous panoply of the order,
and attended by squires only a little less proudly apparelled than
their masters.
We have seen how much cause English sovereigns often had to
wish that any other system existed rather than that which made the
barons so "powerful for the control of royal despotism, and left them
only less ready to war against than for their liege master. But
there was yet a third resource for the restlessness of chivalry.
When there was no enterprise stirring in England, they could go
abroad, and revive a sort of little Holy war, now that the Crusades

had ceased, by entering into the service of princes who had embraced
Christianity, or who supported without embracing it (for such cases
there were), and who, either to defend or increase their territories,
still waged war against the infidels. Thus, for example, did
Bolingbroke in his youth, and Edward III.'s youngest son, Thomas
of Gloucester; and thus did the knight who may have been
Chaucer's model, so closely does the history of his adventures in
different parts of the world, as described on his tomb, and copied in
Xeland's ' Itinerary,' agree with the adventures of Chaucer's hero.
We refer to " the noble and valiant knight, Mathew de G-ourney,"
who died in 1406, aged ninety-six years. It appears he "was at
the battle of Benamaryn, and afterwards at the siege of Algezir
against the Saracens, and also at the battles of L'Escluse, of Cressy,
of Deyngenesse, of Pey teres [Poictiers], of Nazare, of Ossey, and
at several other battles and sieges in which he gained great praise
and honour." Chaucer's knight has been at three victories won by
Pierre de Lusignan, king of Cyprus : that of Satalie, the ancient
Attalia, in 1352 ; that of Alexandria, in 1365 ; and that of Loyas,
a town in Armenia, in 1367 : he has served with the knights of the
Teutonic order in Prussia ; he has journeyed for adventures in
Lithuania, and Russia, and Africa ; he assisted in 1344 to take from
the Moorish king of Granada that very city of Algezir, or Algegiras,
mentioned in the above epitaph ; and he has been with the lord of
Palathie in Anatolia, against a Turkish infidel: in short, he has
been altogether in fifteen mortal battles, besides thrice slaying his
foe in the lists. The knight's appearance is that of one who has
outlived the chivalric love of personal display. His gipon, or short
cassock, is but of fustian, and " all besmottered," or soiled, with his
habergeon, or coat-of-mail, whilst the horse he rides on, though
good, is not gay (Fig. 1119).
The Squire may be considered as representing the Knight in his
youth ; and in connection with him we must again refer to the
training of the order. The boy from infancy was taught to
reverence and emulate knighthood ; he played with chivalric toys,
his dawning imagination was impressed with chivalric splendours,
and at seven years old he was first taken from the society of the
ladies of the household, and allowed to take the degree of page to
a knight, and commence that companionship and those exercises
which were at once to stimulate his mind to love and yearn for
war, and render his body agile and robust, and in other respects
thoroughly fitted for it. The precocious warrior became a no less-
precocious lover. The boy was expected to devote himself to some
young maiden, and to study to deserve her favour next to that of
Heaven. At fourteen he enters his second novitiate and becomes a
squire. The first arms he is to wear are laid on the church altar,
and are blessed with all solemnity by the priest, who girds them on
in the presence of his near relations and friends, whilst the young
heart of the future hero swells proudly with the foretaste of fame.
Glowing hope and ambition fill up the next seven years, during
which he. goes on practising all martial exercises with constantly-
increasing severity, not, however, forgetting to master at the same
time all polite accomplishments. Occasional excursions with his
knightly tutor give the finishing touch to the novitiate's character.
And thus at last we have such a result as the poet has embodied in
the following exquisite description : —
With him [the Knight] there was a young Squie'r,
A lover and a lusty bachelor,
'With locke's curl'd as they were laid in press ;
Of twenty year of age he was, I guess.
Of his stature he was of even length ;
And wonderly deliver [active, agile] and great of strength.
' And he had been some time in chevachie [a chivalric expedition]
• In Flanders, in Artois, and in Picardy ;
And borne him well, as of so little space [considering his little
experience],
In hope to standen in his lady's grace.
Embroidered was he [his garments] as it were a mead
All full of freshe- flowre's, white and red.
Singing he was, or floyting [fluting] all the day,
He was as fresh as is the month of May.
Short was his gown, with sleeve's long and wide.
Well could he sit on horse, and faire' ride.
He coulde songes make, and well indite,
Joust, and eke dance, and well pourtray, and write.
So hot he loved, that by nightertale [night-time]
He slept no more than doth the nightingale.
Courteous he was, lowly, and serviceable,
And carved before his father at the table-
as was the custom at the time.
The final ceremony of knighting, at the age of twenty-one, was
highly solemn, and designed to give the aspirant a profound
impression of the dignity and responsibility of the profession of
arms. Hence the rigorous fast, the night vigil in the church — the
2T2

Wbs0S$Bsi^

-

Wkwkwto9m&

"  " isst

gMjE|i^^^

1 n 1 1 i

1 M 4.— Edward, JPrince of Wales.

1215.— Cher tsey.

1217.— Edward IV.

f21£— Queen Eliiabethi Woodville .

1216.— Tomb of Henry VI., formerly at .Windsor.

1219.— Signature of Edward IV.,
E. E. (for Bex Edwardus).

1221.— Groat of EdwaraiV.

122ZT— Half-Groat of Edward IV.

1223^— fenny of Edward IV.

1220,-Great Seal of Edward IV.

1224.— 'Angel of Edwstd IV.

ia25.-Half-Ang*l of Edward IV.

324

1230.— Eichard ni.

1235.— Half-Groat of Eichard HI. '" ?

1236.— Anne, Queen of Eichard in.

325

326

OLD ENGLAND.

[Book III.

strict confession, sacrament, and solemn mass — the sponsorship
required for the aspirant's good conduct — the instruction in his
duties from priest and lord — and the inspiring attentions he received
after the magical accolade, when the fairest and the best thronged
about him to buckle on his new and splendid armour, and to bring
near the charger on which the belted knight was to shine forth as
a newly-risen sun upon the multitudes waiting without. Such
circumstances could hardly fail to make the character that was
desired. Few were the recreants that, according to its own standard,
disgraced the rolls of English knighthood.
From the men of war, turn we now to the men of law and physic
(Fig. 1120). The Sergeant of the Law, wary and wise,
was chosen from the most opulent and learned of the profession.
The investiture with the robes and coif was attended with much
pomp and ceremony. Generally several sergeants were created at
one time, and held their seven days' feast in one of the chief London
palaces. A new sergeant was obliged to be rather more generous
than, we dare say, he always liked. He was required to spend not
less than four hundred marks — a great sum in those days — for the
dinner, for rings distributed among officers and other notable men
in the king's courts, and for suits of cloth to his household and all
persons who were fortunate enough to be of his acquaintance at the
time. The Sergeant, we are told, had often been at " the Parvise."
The Parvis of London has been supposed to have been situate in
Old Palace Yard, before "Westminster Hall, or, with more likeli
hood, at St. Paul's. Dugdale mentions " the Pervyse of Paul's."
It was a sort of law school, where " not only young lawyers repaired
to learn, but old sergeants to teach and show their cunning." —
(Waterhouse.) Chaucer's Sergeant is not a man to hide his light
under a bushel. Not only
Discreet he was, and of great reverence,
but He seemed such, his worde"s were so wise.
Nowhere so busy a man as he there n' as ;
And yet he seemed busier than he was.
The sergeant often acted as judge at assizes, and was apparently a
personage of greater importance in some respects than his modern
namesake. A peculiar source of profit attached to that as well as
to other important legal offices, were the " robes," which Chaucer
mentions in connection with " fees," and which seem to have been
almost as important. Summer and winter these were regularly
supplied out of the king's wardrobe, and most probably upon all
great public occasions. Money was then scarce in England, and
all possible payments were made " in kind."
In connection with the title of Doctor of Physic we may observe
that there are examples of degrees taken in the medical science
nearly as early as the Conquest; for instance, the Bachelor of
Physic- at Oxford. Passing over the poet's hint that the doctor,
having enriched himself in a pestilence, has " kepte what he won,"
and the witty two-edged sarcasm at physic and its professors, in the
shape of a defence of the latter —
For gold in physic is a cordial,
Therefore he loved gold in special, —
let us inquire into a subject of more general interest, as showing
us the state of the profession in the fourteenth century — what were
the doctor's professional qualifications ? His study, it appears, was
but little in the Bible, that is one negative fact ; the positive in
formation, if less amusing, is somewhat more direct and explicit.
Chaucer gives, us a catalogue of the books which the doctor did
study. Esculapius, Hippocrates, Galen, and Dioscorides are there,
with. Eufus, a physician of Ephesus during the time of Trajan •
and we may observe, in reference to these, that all our medical
knowledge rests on Greek foundations. Then follow the later
commentators and improvers upon those originals : Haly, John
Serapion, and Avicen, Arabians of the eleventh century; Rhasis,
an Asiatic physician who lived at Cordova in Spain in the century
previous ; Averroes, professor in the university of Morocco, who
taught in the Moorish schools of .Africa and Spain ; Damascene,
who wrote on various sciences before the Arabians or Saracens
brought medicine into Europe ; and Constantinus Afer, a monk of
Cassino in Italy, a Saracen (one of the few converts to the faith
of the Crusaders), who formed the Salernitan School, chiefly by
translating Arabian and Grecian medical writings into Latin.
Lastly, we find in the doctor's library the writings of the chief
medical contemporaries of Chaucer : Bernard, a professor of
medicine at Montpelier, the author of many treatises ; and John
Gatisden, a fellow of Merton College, where the poet himself was

n, a fe
i, ana

educated, ana who was author of the 'Rosa Anglica,'a popular

medical work. Gatisden was the first English court physician.
Several of the above list of authors were writers on astronomy, as
it was then called, though by this was chiefly meant divination by
the stars, a science in the East still deemed essential to the healing
art, whence our Old English professors of Physic and Astrology
derived both. Astronomy, says Roger Bacon, is the better part of
medicine. Our doctor was well grounded in this indispensable
knowledge of the heavenly bodies ; by his magic natural he was
able to tell immediately the proper hours for his operations, and
determine when a propitious star would be in the ascendant ; his
genius also extended to the cause of every malady, be it cold or
hot, or moist or dry (into these divisions were diseases of all kinds
then classified, under the Arabic system of Physics) ; he knew also
where it was engendered, and of what humours j and with this
perfect understanding, he was able to give the sick man his remedy
presently, having ready at hand his apothecaries (or druggist, as
we now call the class referred to) to sand him lectuaries and drugs.
One could have hoped that death would have been completely
vanquished by such " a, very perfect practisour," It is true the
bard adds an insinuation that rather modifies our respect both for
him and his apothecaries —
For each of them made other for to win ;
Their friendship was not newe to begin.
Unfortunately for the dignity of the medical profession and the health
of the people, their too close friendship promises to last. Drugs
ignorantly or heedlessly administered still make patients for the
doctors ; and doctors find ample employment, in return, for drugs.
What we have said elsewhere of the pride and profligacy which
had crept into the monastic system receives complete confirmation
in Chaucer's descriptions of the Monk and Friar (Fig. 1123). The
Monk, though only, the superior of a cell — that is, a subordinate
monastery — has all the pride and luxury of an abbot. His sleeves
purfled with the finest fur (then a most expensive ornament), his
hood fastened with a curious gold pin, a love-knot in the greater
end (though jewellery was forbidden in monastic rules), his supple
boots, his horse of great estate, are hints not to be mistaken.
Epicureanism is legibly written on his bald head and face, shining ,
like glass, or as though they had been anoint ; and we can almost
anticipate the finishing touch to the whole-
He was a lord full fat, and in good point.
His golden bridle-bells jingling in a whistling wind as clear and
loud as his chapel bell, also gives us a lively idea ofthe conspicuous
state with which he rides abroad. Some instances have been given
in this work of hunting prelates : we are not, therefore, surprised
to find many a dainty horse in our monk's stable, or that he, ha'd
greyhounds swift as birds of flight, or that he was a hard rider, and
spared no cost in the prosecution of his, favourite sports,. To be
sure, the rule of St. Maur and St. Benedict, that he professed,
forbade all these things, but it was too old and narrow for him ; his
philosophy was to let old things pass out of sight, and to follow the
new. From this " fair prelate" turn we to the companion portrait
ofthe Friar — how lamentably changed since St. Francis of Assisi
and St. Dominic, scarcely two hundred years before, revived the
original apostolic purity, simplicity, and poverty of the Holy
Catholic Church. The Friar so far resembles the Monk that he
wears no threadbare cope, like a poor scholar, but a semicope of
double worsted, round as a bell out of the press, and looks like a
master or a pope. But his enjoyments are of a more popular and
social character. He is wanton and merry. No brother of all the
orders four (Dominican,. Franciscan, Carmelite, and Augustine)
can make himself so agreeable, or has such fair language—0
Somewhat he lisped for his wantonness
To make his English sweet upon his tongue,.
As, a capital boon companion, he is much beloved, and familiar
with all the franklins of his country district— a jovial class of old
English gentlemen, who keep open house and a plentiful table.
He carries knives and pins in his tippet to give " faire wives :" he
is as strong as a champion. He knows well the taverns in every
town, and every " gay tapstere." Among his popular delights are
harping and singing, that make his eyes twinkle like stars in a
frosty night : and certainly, says Chaucer, he had a merry note
So much for the Friar in his worldly relations, and his spirituai
ones exhibited a marvellous resemblance. He heard confession
with great sweetness of manner, and his absolution was pleasant.
He had a large charity for human infirmities. He knew the human*
heart to be a stubborn thing ; therefore, instead of prayers and
tears, as outward signs of penitence, the amiable confessor was
willing to compound with tl em for silver instead. The Friar boasts

Chap. III.]

OLD ENGLAND.

327

a humility peculiar to himself: he pays a certain rent for an
exclusive right of begging in " his haunt," and in that haunt he
exhibits himself the best beggar of his fraternity. There is one
allusion to a beautiful old custom, full of the spirit of Christianity,
in the sketch of this character — the love-days for the reconcilement
of differences ; but this, like all the other pious customs of the
primitive times, had been corrupted, and turned into a roystering
occasion, better suited to draw out our Friar's genial qualities than
to promote any abstract goodness.
In striking contrast to the luxurious and unprincipled Monk
and Friar, we are presented with a pair of portraits (Fig. 1124),
drawn with an utter absence of pretension or ornament, yet more
perfect and grand, intellectually, religiously, and morally, than any
it was ever our good fortune to meet with. This is the description
of the first : — A good man was there of religidn
That was a pourd parson of a town,
But rich he was of holy thought and work,
He was also a learned man, a clerk
That Christes gospel truely would preach.
His parisheus devoutly would he teach.
Benign he was, and wonder diligent,
And in adversity full patient.
• ... a •
Full loth were him to cursen for his tithes ;
But rather would he given out of doubt
Unto his poure" parishens about
Of his off' ring, and eke of his substance.
He could in little thing have suffisance.
Wide was his parish, and houses far asunder,
But he ne left not for no rain nor thunder,
In sickness and in mischief [misfortune] to visit
The farthest in his parish, much and lite [rich and poor],
Upon his feet, and in his hand a staff.
...... 4t
Out of the Gospel he the wordes caught,
And this figtire he added yet thereto : —
That if gold ruste, what should iron do ?

And though he holy were, and virtuous,
He was to sinful men not dispitous [not wanting in pity],
Nor of his speeche" dangerous, nor digne [disdainful],
But in his teaching discreet and benign.
To showen folk to heaven with faireness,
By good ensample was his business.
But it were ony person obstinate,
What so he were of high or low estate,
Him would he snibben sharply for the none"s [occasion],
A better priest I trow that no where none is.
He waited after no pomp ne reverence,
Ne maked him no spiced conscience,
But Christy's love, and his Apostles twelve
He taught, but first he followed it himselve.
With all our enlightenment we have not advanced beyond this
surpassing conception of a Christian pastor, which is so free from
bigotry that almost any class of the sincere followers of Jesus might
adopt it for their own. If there be any character worthy to stand
beside this poure parson, it is Chaucer himself must furnish it in
the Clerk of Oxenford. There is the same touching 'simplicity
and sublime elevation of character_ exhibited ; the same wonderful
penetration into the essentials of human position and duties. We
shall wait long before we see a more admirable summary of the
true student than is conveyed in the last line —
Gladly would he learn, and gladly teach.
Three ladies are amongst the pilgrims — a nun, a prioress, and a
¦ Wife of Bath (Fig. 1 125). The Nun is a kind of duenna, and servant
of the Prioress. The description of the latter is a delicate morceau
of the richest comedy, levelled at the fine-ladyism of convent life,
and at the same time a picture of feminine nature for all time, in
which beauty and meekness mingle so closely, one hardly knows
which predominates.
Ladies taking the veil in our own day discard their baptismal
name for another of pious or fanciful association, by which they
are henceforth to be known. To this custom the fashionable
Prioress may have been indebted for hers — of fascinating sound —
Madame Eglantine. She was no doubt a very finished specimen of
refinement, as we may see in her smile so coy and "full simple,"
in her pretty and innocentest of oaths, " by Saint Eloy " — in her
singing the service divine so sweetly " entuned in her hose," — in
her elaborately precise behaviour at meals,— -and in her superfine
JTrench. spoken After the School of Stratford atte Bow,
where candidates for the cloister received the polish of which we

are giving an example. That school taught, it seems, a French of
its own, for French of Paris was as unknown to the Prioress as to
some of the boarding-school ladies of our own time, who pride
themselves on the polite language. Then, too, mark the exquisite
sensibility of her nature —
She was so charitable and so pitedus,
She woulde weep if that she saw a mouse
Caught in a trap, if it were dead or bled.
Of smalle' houndds had she, that she fed
With roasted flesh, and milk, and wastel bread [cakes of the finest flour],
But sore" wept she, if one of them were dead,
Or if men smote ft with a yerde [rod] smart,
And all was conscience and tender heart.
The other lady, who is seen in the same engraving with this
exquisite gentlewoman, has a face "bold and fair, and red of hue."
She is a dame of the burgess' class, habited in a hat as broad as is a
buckler or a targe, a fote-mantle, or riding-skirt, girdled round the
hips, and fine scarlet red hose. Her masculine disposition is indi
cated by the sharp spurs on her feet, and her gay temper not only
by her gay dress, but also by her ready laugh and carp (repartee).
She has been a most unwearied pilgrim to holy places. No less
than three times has she been at Jerusalem, and '( passed many a
strange stream :" she has been also to Rome, to Boulogne, to Cologne,
and other places. It needs but little consideration to perceive how
such rovings, often without any, or very inadequate protection, were
likely to injure the growth of true womanly qualities ; their too
frequent results we see more than hinted at in the history of this
Wife of Bath, who Coulde much of wand' ring by the way.
The town just named was famous for cloth-making, and the
" Wife," it appears, so far excelled in the art as even to surpass
"the famous manufactures of Ipres and of Ghent." Thus she had
made herself comparatively wealthy, and was able to gratify her
passion for dress, wearing coverchiefs on her head on a Sunday of
the finest texture, and so heavy that they might have weighed a
pound. Perhaps her very immoralities induced her to lavish money
on church ceremonies to appease her conscience. This was an
easy and agreeable way to heaven. In her eagerness to be the
first at the " off'ring," and in her being so wroth as to be out of
all charity if any wife in all the parish went before her, we have a
humorous hint how female vanity helped to fill the church coffers
under the semblance of piety. She had had five husbands at the
church door — the marriage service, for the most part, being then
performed in the entrance porch, instead of at the altar.
In Chaucer's Franklin (Fig. 1126) we have the old English
gentleman in all his glory, the rich landed proprietor settled upon
his own estate, looking after his own and his tenants' interest, and
settling, nominally at least, half the public business of his neighbour
hood. He is one with whom charity may begin at home ; but, if
so, only becomes therefore the more sensible of the enjoyment that
it may be the means of diffusing when sent abroad. So though
his beard be white as the daisy, and his complexion of the true
sanguineous hue, though he be Epicurus owen son,
That held opinion that plain delight
Was verily felicity partite —
though his house is so nobly supplied with provisions that the poet
humorously observes it snowed there with meat and drink, who can
help loving and admiring him: we know he would like all his
fellow-creatures to look as xosy and enjoy the same philosophy as
himself, and therefore keeps something very like open house for the
country round. Mr. Warton observes, " that his impatience if. his
sauces were not sufficiently poignant, and every article of his dinner
in due form and readiness, is touched with the hand of Pope or
Boileau." This Mr. Todd calls a happy observation, and it is
meant certainly for high praise ; but we apprehend a time is not
very distant when Pope and Boileau will.be honoured by its being
said {if with truth it can be) that they touch satire .with the hand
of Chaucer.
The mercantile spirit of gain, absorbing everything into its own
self, our bard hits off in a single line in his description of the
Merchant. He was,
Sounding alway th' increase of his winning.'
Much of the Merchant's anxieties were for the well-keeping or
guarding of those great highways of his trade, the seas and rivers.
At the Exchanges, well could he " sheldes " sell, that is, French
crown-pieces with a shield on one side. The worldly prudence of the

123?.— Portrait of Eichard HI.— The armSifrom a design by J. E. Planche, Esq. ¦ At top— Boswprtji Field ; at the bottom— ,
Ludlow Castle, and Bichard'B Lodging-Honse at Leicester.

121L— John Howard, first Duke of Norfolk.
328

1238^-K-chard III.

;133B.— Eichard III.

1 2 10.— Duke of Norfolk.

1242,— The Bloody Tower.

1213.— Anne, Qaeen of Eichard HI.

jbH

1245. — Crosby House.

1S44.— Tamworlh Castle.

1246. — Interior of Crosby Hall, the Upper Floor, before its being Resto.ed

*-sste

1247. — Leicester.

1249.— Thomas Howard, Earl of Surrey.

AO

[OLD ENGLAND.]

329

330

OLD ENGLAND.

merchant also well expresses the class. His bargains and agree
ments were made with great care, and no man could tell how his
affairs stood in regard to debts, so closely and secretly he governed
them. In personal matters, we fancy he would surprise his com
mercial descendants, could he suddenly step in amongthem. His
beard was forked, the style of his dress motley. He sat high on
his horse, perhaps on a high saddle, and wore a Flanders beaver-
hat, and boots tight and neat. We might illustrate the character
of the merchant by actual personages of the time, but space forbids ;
so we pass on to the
Miller, Manciple, and Reve (Fig. 1130). The Miller is the very
personification of low mirth and churlish humours ; a stout carle,
full big of brawn and bones : a famous wrestler, and a goliardeis,
so called from Golias, a man of wit of the end of the twelfth
century, the founder of a jovial sect, which, if the miller may be
taken as a specimen, was not singularly full of moral or Christian
graces. It is intimated there was a good deal of dishonesty in the
miller-trade, in regard to the corn intrusted to be ground ; the cha
racter before us, it is said, could well steal corn, beside cheating his
customers in their reckonings in some peculiar way. " And yet,"
exclaims Chaucer, " he hath a thumb of gold'pardie ; " alluding to
the use of the thumb in testing the qualities of the meal as it came
from the spout ; on which the old proverb was founded, " Every
honest miller has a thumb of gold." Mr. Todd thinks the passage
may mean, that notwithstanding his thefts, he was an honest miller
— as honest as his brethren. This uncultivated fellow is prone to
jangling and scandalous speech, but happily for those who are to
share his society, he has a bagpipe with him, and can well " blow and
soun " upon it (this being an English rustic accomplishment), and
so he led the pilgrims out of town. Certainly a curious instrument
to announce the approach of a religious cavalcade, and played by a
no less unseemly performer; for the miller's face was pale with
drinking, and from the same cause he sat uneasily on his horse ; to
say nothing of other traits of his outward man — the mouth wide as
a furnace, the so.w's-ear bristles on his nose, the beard red as a fox
and broad as a spade, &c.
The Eeve, though not a whit more prepossessing, is a very
different man for all that. He is particularly slender, with close-
' i shaved beard, and hair docked like a priest's. His choleric nature
tells sad things for the poor hinds and their bailiffs under his control
as steward of a manor. Every sleight of cunning he knew per
fectly ; and " they were adread of him as of the death ;" to which
doom, by the way, many of them were liable without judge or jury,
at the lord's behest, which would often mean in practice at the
steward's. The reve's bargains, it appears, were often made for his
•own advantage more than for his .lord's, and hence he was richly
furnished with secret stores ; nevertheless, he could please his lord
subtilely, and bend him to his own purposes,
And have a thank, and get a cote and hood.
By covenant or agreement he had to give reckoning for the whole
«state since his lord was twenty years of age, and that under close
.auditorship ; so, after all, anxieties and cares may have made him
the irritable and unpleasing man he is, and be the cause of that
unsocial temper which is manifested in his riding ever the " hinderest
of the rout." (
Placed in juxtaposition with this steward of a landed estate, is a
steward of a temple — the manciple, as the officers were called,
who served the different inns of court, colleges, and other public
institutions. The word was derived from the Latin manceps,
and signified, more particularly, a superintendant of a bakehouse,
arid from thence a baker generally. The office, which chiefly
related to provisions, yet exists ; as, for instance, at the London
Charter-House. This gentle manciple is exceedingly wise in the
purchase of provisions ; on which Chaucer exclaims, " Now is
not that of God a full fair grace," that a wit wholly uncultivated
should surpass and, we presume, take advantage of the wisdom of
a heap of learned men.
In the Ploughman (Fig. 1131) we have a direct and delightful
testimony to the worth of the obscure ; and more especially of the
poor tillers of the soil, those of whom laws and lawmakers had
hardly begun to take any cognizance, except to keep them in
bondage, in spite of all the efforts they were making to rise above it.
Chaucer did much for this degraded class when he showed prejudice
and injustice how the best Christian virtues often graced their lot
— in their peaceful and charitable lives, in their contentedness to
labour not alone for self, but for every poure wight that needed
help, " for Christe's sake." And more sweet and effectual we are
sure did such brotherly help prove, than the ostentatious and
hurailiatinp;harities of the rich and proud. Willingly also out of

[Book III.
his small substance— the fruits of his husbandry and his cattle— did
the ploughman pay tithes ; he was therefore a rural tenant, and as
such, one of a class of which we could say much did space permit.
Most of the rural tenantry were in a state of villanage — and hence
unable to remove from the place of their settlement to any other
spot on the wide earth, were their desire ever so strong ; for they
formed essentially a part ofthe estate ofthe feudal lord, as much as
any tree that grew thereon. There is nothing in the description
of the ploughman to inform us whether he was a rural tenant in
villanage, or free. His being on pilgrimage is quite consistent
with the former condition, for, to the honour of the Catholic system,
its rites and ceremonies were for poor as well as rich, bond as well
as free, and the feudal lords under its influence permitted their
bondmen often to quit their contracted sphere for the great world
in a journey of pilgrimage, for which they furnished them with
letters patent that signified the time when they were to return. It
is delightful to think what a blessed relief from a monotonous round
of servile toil and constant confinement to one scene must have
been afforded by such a custom. When, therefore, we are disposed
to smile at pilgrimages, let us think of the poor, who owed so much
to them. Another beautiful feature of the system must not be
overlooked. The poor pilgrim would meet with gratuitous enter
tainment at the different monasteries and hospitals where such
travellers were received, and Ije assisted in intermediate stages by
their fellow-pilgrims of larger means. The ploughman rides on a
mare — horses were not used, or rarely, in husbandry ; when one horse
was kept, therefore, as in the present case, it was simply for riding.
The true British sailor of Chaucer's time exhibited nearly the
same strong traits as our own brave tars. The Shipman in the
engraving is clad in a gown of falding (coarse cloth) to the knee,
and in the Prologue he rides on a common hack, called a rouncie,
as well " as he couthe," considering he is little accustomed to such
a situation. " For aught I know," says the poet, " he was of
Dartemouth j" that place being as famous-then for ships and shipmen
as now Portsmouth is. He took his share of the perils of war, and
rather a large one, and carried his dagger or short sword hanging
by a lace about his neck and under his arm. All the trade- vessels
were liable to be called at any hour to fight the king's enemies ; and
there was, we are afraid, a spice of the piratical spirit in them —
they thought no harm sometimes to fight as knights fought on land, *
for the glory and love of the thing, and also for the spoil. If our
shipman fought and had the higher hand, why then, wherever he
was, he sent his ships and prisoners home to their respective lands —
first, however, we presume, helping himself with perfect freedom
to all that was valuable' among the contents of the prizes. The
shipman had no nicety of conscience, as we see demonstrated in his
conduct at Bordeaux, where he drew full many a draught of wine
while the chapman slept. But liberal indulgence is to be made for
a sailor's aberrations, and Chaucer's shipman was in the main " a
good felaw, hardy and wise." In his stout " barge," the Magdalen,
he had sailed far and near.
With many a tempest had his beard been shake.
As for his craft, he knew the tides, the streams, the strands,
from Hull to Carthage, the heavens from "Jotland to the Cape
Finisterre," and every creek in "Bretagne and Spain;" a know
ledge that says much indeed for the naval enterprise of England,
even so early as the fourteenth century.
We have next five London citizens (Fig. 1132) — very flattering
representations of the wealth and consequence of our great metro
polis at that comparatively early period. Each is attired in a
" fresh and new " and handsome livery of " a solemn and great
fraternity;" their knives adorned with silver, instead ofthe ordinary
brass. Each looked well worthy to sit on a guildhall dais (raised
platform), and to be made an alderman— a dignity their good wives
would have not the smallest objection to. For is it not
Full fair to be ycleped Madame,
And for to go to vigils [festival eves] all before [taking precedence],
And have a mantle royally ybore ?
The five trade companies represented by these burgesses were the
haberdashers, carpenters, weavers, dyers, and tapisers, or makers of
tapestry, then a highly-important trade.
The ecclesiastical abuses of his day are the poet's next mark •
and vividly are they shown up to utter scorn and abhorrence^
through the medium of the Sumpnour and Pardoner (Fig. 1134).
The Summoner was so called from delivering the summonses of
the archdeacons to persons discovered to have deviated from the
straight path in morals or manners, in witchcraft, defamation,
church reves, testaments, contracts, lack of sacraments, ifturv'

Chap. Ill]

OLD ENGLAND.

331

simony, and loose life; for such is the list of cases under the
summoner's control given in the Frere's Tale. The worthy
officer employed spies to inform him what offenders it " availed "
to punish, or to draw into evil, in order that they might become
open to punishment. Full privily it seems the Sumpnour could pull
a finch, or, as we should say, pluck a pigeon, by which we under
stand that he was in the habit of deceiving and plundering the
unsuspecting. On the other hand, to give him his due, he was
never backward to sell his silence ; he would countenance the worst
deviation from rectitude for a quart of wine ; and if he found liberal
treatment, would teach the offender to have no care of the arch-
, deacon's curse, and in all friendliness argue with him that money
dould clear all. " Purse is the archdeacon's hell," said he ; until
the dupe discovered a worse probably in a significavit, or writ of
excommunication ; when his case really did reach the archdeacon.
The Sumpnour's attainments, person, and tastes correspond with his
vocation. We see him crowned with a gay garland, large enough
to set up over an alehouse sign : he has made him a buckler of a
cake ; he has a fire-red cherubinnes face, with whelkes white, and
knobbes sitten on his cheeks —
Well loved he garlic, onion, and leeks,
And for to drink strong -wine as red as blood ;
Then would he speak, and cry as he were wood [mad],
And when that he well drunken had the wine,
Then would he speaken no word but Latine.
A fewe" termes could he, two or three,
That he had learned out of some decree.
No wonder is — he heard it all the day,
And eke ye knowen well, how that a jay
Can clepen " "Wat!" as well as can the pope.
, But whoso would in other thing him grope
Then had he spent all his philosophy.
Aye, questio quid juris, would he cry.
Quid juris ? often occurs in Ealph de Hengham, a law-writer and
Chief Justice of King's Bench in the reign of Edward I. — who,
after having stated a case, makes use of these words, and then pro
ceeds to answer the question as to what is the law ?
The people of this country have long ceased to suffer from the
vexatious inquisitions and impositions of Summoners or Arch
deacons ; they have also ceased to be credulous of relics, such as
.-used to be exhibited by the Sumpnour's amiable friend and compeer
the Pardoner ; and it could not have been otherwise, after expo
sures like those which Chaucer gave ; for the truth must have been
at once and deeply felt, and the conclusion, to common sense, irre
sistible. The searcher after transgressions, and the vendor of Holy
Church's pardons for them, sing together, as they ride ; the Par
doner taking the lead, in " Come hither, love, to me !" and the
Sumpnour joining in the burden in a voice louder than a trumpet.
The Pardoner affects fashion,
Him thought he rode all ofthe newe- get,
but does not exactly see himself as others see him. His hair in
parted locks, yellow as wax, overspreads his shoulders. His hood is
trussed up in his wallet, and a small cap, with an ornament on the
front, leaves those dishevelled locks all bare to the free admiration
of his fellow-pilgrims, and as many others as choose to gaze. His
glaring eyes resemble those of a hare. But what of his craft ? — his
wallet lies on his lap,
Bretful of Pardon come from Eome all hot.
From Berwick unto Ware there is not another such a Pardoner;
so rich is he in potent relics, including a covering of a pillow for
Our Lady's veil, a morsel of St. Peter's sail when he walked on the
sea, a glass containing " pigges bones," &c, with which, when he
, found " a poure parson dwelling up on lond," he would make more
money in one day than the parson got in two months ; and so, says
the poet, more broadly than his wont, l( he made the parson and
the people his apes." The cheat is amusingly candid with the
.pilgrims, and describes the processes of his trade. On entering a
church, he preaches commandingly to the people, informs them he
is sent from the pope, and shows his bulls, and " our liege lorde's
seal," on his patent, that no man be so bold as to disturb him in
Christ's holy work. Then his precious relics are displayed, and he
fairly tells the pilgrims,
By this gaud have I wonnen, year by year,
A hundred marks since I was Pardoner.
If any have opposed his or his brethren's practices, the unlucky
offender cannot escape being defamed falsely in the course of the
Pardoner's preaching ; for, though the " noble Ecclesiast " does not

tell the proper name, men well know whom he means, by signs and
other circumstances: and thus he spits out his venom under the
colour of holiness. Such Was one of the modes taken to suppress
the truth in Chaucer's day, and the shameless frauds practised on
the people were thus often acquiesced in through fear. Chaucer,
having made the Pardoner boldly confess his own love of lucre,
adds, Therefore my theme is yet, and ever was,
Radix malorum est cupiditas.
[The love of money is the root of all evil.]
The principal changes of Costume during the five reigns of the
period now drawing to a close will be found so amply exhibited jn
our engravings as to require little verbal comment. Four ofthe
six examples of ladies' head-dresses in the reign of Henry III.
(Fig. 1128) exhibit the hair enclosed in a caul of gold, silver,
or silk network : the veil added on one of the heads was called a
peplum ; and a round hat or cap was also sometimes worn. A
beautiful style for the fair and young was the chaplet without the
caul, encircling the braided hair with goldsmith's work, or a
wreath of nature's jewels — natural flowers. The grey hairs of age,
or the sad brows of widowhood, were shadowed with the wimple,
or, head-kerchief. To this was added, in the time of Edward I.
(Fig. 1135), the gorget, a cloth wrapped once, twice, or thrice
round the throat, so as utterly to conceal it, and then fastened with
a great quantity of pins on either side the face, higher than the
ears. " Par Dieu !" exclaims Jean de Meun, the continuator of
Lorris's ' Eoman de la Rose,' " I have often thought in my heart,
when I have seen a lady so closely tied up, that her neckcloth was
nailed to her chin, or that she had the pins hooked into her flesh."
These head and throat cloths are now peculiar to the habits of
nuns, but the cloistered votaresses of old seem to have followed,
perhaps often led, the fashions of their time. Extravagance in
dress was the exception, not the rule, under Edward I., when
sterner business engrossed men's minds, and the king himself
despised ornament ; " it was absurd," he said, " to suppose he could
be more estimable in fine than in simple clothing." The head
dresses of Edward II. (Fig. 1136) consisted of a picturesque
chaperon or hood, worn by (both sexes, and twisted or folded into
fanciful shapes. The ladies' costume of this reign (Fig. 1137)
gives us the apron, called by Chaucer a barme or lap-cloth. The
fashions took an entire change in the very lengthened reign of
Edward III. The long streamers or tippets in the two engravings
of male and female costume form (Figs. 1129, 1138), in our opinion,
a more conspicuous than elegant ornament ; but in the effigies of
William of Windsor and Blanche de la Tour (Fig. 1070), daughter
of Edward III.,— examples of the dresses generally worn by the-
'nobility on peaceful occasions — we meet with better taste, parti
cularly in the habit of the princess, in the graceful folds of the
lower robe, in the picturesque jacket, bordered with fur (or other
costly ornamental materials), and in the mantle flowing down the
back, gathering in a voluminous train at the feet, and held on the
shoulders by a band of jewels across the full breadth of the chest,
thus leaving the arms free, and the whole front of the dress fully
displayed. The very prevalent cote hardie, worn by William of
Windsor, was formed of the richest materials, buttoned closely
down the front, and fitted the figure perfectly. In length it
descended a very little below the hips, round which was worn a
broad and gorgeous girdle. These were the " gay cotes graceless "
said, by the Scots, to make England " thriftless." Could the wearers
of them now mingle in the sombre-looking crowds of our streets,
how they would wonder at the change of tastes which had banished
from male attire all their rich variety of material and colour, all
their shining embroidery and jewelled arms ! and they would think
us grown a very dull and spiritless people. Nor less would the
subjects of Eichard II. marvel to see men living and moving about
England without elaborated edges to their garments, of leaves or
other forms, without letters or mottoes on them in shining silver,
silk, or gold, without party-coloured hose, or excessively short
jackets, and even — most wonderful of all — without that fashion of
fashions, the long-ypiked shoes, fastened up with silver chains. So
we, could we some century or two hence walk these streets, might
wonder to find perhaps that the very fashions we now write of as
obsolete trifles of the past, were again occupying the fancy and the
industry of no small proportion of the nation — such an insubstan
tial, vacillating, and comparatively uninventive thing is this same
Fashion. Of the domestic furniture of the thirteenth and fourteenth
centuries the beds of the nobility (Figs. 1141, 1142) were most
lavishly adorned. The simple form was that of a railed box, or crib ;
2 U 2

lS53.-Breachine:-Towpr ; Archers belrnd their Pa-reor. ; Cannon, Crossbow-men, &c.

1 2:4.— Tournament. (Harleian MS. 4379.)

1255.— Tournament. The Melee. 1 hirty on each Side. (Harleian MS. 4379.)

332

333

334

OLD ENGLAND.

[Book III.

the " brases," or rails, of costly material : the draperies at the
head magnificent in substance and in armorial blazonry. In the
wills of our old nobility, one bed is mentioned " powdered with blue
eagles," one of red velvet, with ostrich feathers of silver, and heads
of leopards of gold ; others of black velvet, black satin, blue, red,
and white silk, &c. Cloth of gold and silver coverlets, and rich
fur of ermines, are also specified ; and sheets of fair white silk, and
pillows from the East. The earliest mention of carpets in this
country is in the romance of 'King Arthur,' where they are described
of silk, "poynted antt embroidered with images of gold." The
square-backed chair (Fig. 1 146) was frequent in the mansions of
the thirteenth century. In the fourteenth, they, and other articles
combining household utility and elegance, were modified by the
pointed architecture, and partook of the beautiful variety of its
forms: thus, in the engraving of library furniture (Fig. 1140) we
see in the reading-table a miniature spire or pinnacle, with little
pointed arches.
We cannot greatly compliment our forefathers on the sport called
mummings (Fig. 1 143), in which men masqueraded as brutes ; but it
seems they were determined to have mirth, however they procured
it. We, perhaps, err on the other hand, and may be too fastidious
to be happy. Quarter-staff (Fig. 1144) was the glory of the stout

old English peasant or yeoman, in which, as far as we can learn, he
was without a competitor in any forejgn nation. Draughts (Fig.
1145) and chess were amusements of the higher ranks. The circular
board (Fig. 1148) is peculiar; the chessmen differed somewhat in
form and name from ordinary chessmen. Dulcimer and violin
players (Fig. 1147) were among the regular musical performers
mentioned in the roll of Edward III.'s household. Hand-bells
(Fig. 1149) were also played upon.
But one fact more remains to complete our notices of the 13th
and 14th centuries — an extraordinary and all but unaccountable
fact, that, previous to the year 1400, when we enter on a new period,
not a single specimen of musical invention can be traced — not a
dancing tune, or minstrel accompaniment, or church air — though
never was a people apparently more keenly alive to the charm of
music in connection with the services of the church, with poetry,
and with dancing. We should say, therefore, that there was plenty
of genuine national music, but that it was either unwritten, or that
all the MSS. of the art have been lost.
The incidental illustration of costume, furniture, &c, contained
in our series of the Chaucer portraits, will not, of course, escape
the reader's attention in connection with this deparment of our
subject.

END OF BOOK III.

BOOK IV.

THE PERIOD

FBOM THE

ACCESSION OF HENRY IV. TO THE END OF THE REIGN OF RICHARD III.
a.d. 1389—1485.

CHAPTER L— REGAL AND BARONIAL ANTIQUITIES.

HE
English

interest attending the lives of

monarchs generally com
mences with the act of coronation
(Figs. 1150, 1151). In the case of
Henry IV. it may be rather said to
have ended there; No doubt, that of
the three insurrections that disturbed
his reign, there was one destined to
be long remembered; but the house
hold names connected with that event
are those of the great leader, Owen
Grlendower (Fig. 1162) himself, of his
coadjutor, Hotspur, and their youthful
conqueror, Henry of Monmouth, not of Henry of Bolingbroke,
however deeply the latter was concerned in the issue. Yet was
this, as far as King Henry IV. was personally concerned, the most
important event of his reign. The future poet-king of Scotland,
then a boy, was taken on the seas, and kept in a long captivity :
some trifling movements were made in connection with the still-
asserted claim of sovereignty over France, and laws were passed
declaring that relapsed Lollards, or Lollards who refused to abjure
their faith, should be burned ; and that was in effect the sum of
Henry IV.'s reign. A dreary contrast to the brilliant anticipations
caused by his early career ; it seemed as though all the genius and
energies with which nature had blessed him had been lavished upon
the one grand act of his life — the obtaining the English throne —
and which, when obtained, he could thus make little or no worthy
use of. . It appears, indeed, tolerably evident, that remorse preyed
upon' his mind for his conduct towards Eichard, as well it might,
if, as has been supposed, he had any hai)d in, or previous cognizance
of, the murder. From being one of the most popular of kings, he
became one of the most universally disliked. His friends changed
to enemies. His own son became in his lifetime the cynosure of all
eyes and hearts : the mightiest man in England was one of the
most desolate ; Henry could not but perceive that his subjects were
weary of him, and' looked forward with eager hopes to the day that
should see their darling Harry of Monmouth on the throne. To
crown all, he suffered from bodily ailments and mental superstitions,
and both enhanced in a thousand ways all his other anxieties. He
fancied that Heaven would not permit his descendants to enjoy the
crown, and at last meditated a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, in I

order to soothe his conscience, and probably believing too that he
should be thus .fulfilling the divine behests, as conveyed to him
through the prophecy, which had said he should die in Jerusalem.
One day whilst he was praying before the shrine of the Confessor in
Westminster Abbey, he was seized with an apoplectic fit. The
attendants carried him to the abbot's apartments, and there laid him
down in the chamber which still exists, apparently unaltered, against
the corner of the western front. He inquired the name of the
place, — " the Jerusalem Chamber," was the answer. Here Henry
IV. died. He was buried at Canterbury, where a sumptuous table-
monument (Fig. 1156), bears the effigie3 of himself and his second
wife, Joan of Navarre. Portraits of both, with the great seal, will
be found among our illustrations (Figs. 1153, 1155).
Popular as Henry of Monmouth, the prince, had been, sage men
shook their heads as they thought of the consequences when he
should become king. They remembered that
His addiction was to courses vain ;
His companies unletter'd, rude, and shallow ;
The hours filled up with ilots, banquets, sports ;
whilst, on the other hand, they had
Never noted in him any study,
Any retirement, any sequestration
From open haunts and popularity.
Yet had they chosen to look for the soul of good beneath all these
things evil, they would have seen it was a most promising and noble
soul—one that might accomplish all that other enthusiastic minds
only dreamed of, when the right time and circumstances came. We
allude not so much to his courage, that shone out so suddenly and so
brilliantly in his defeat of the best warrior of his own country and
times,, in the great northern insurrection, but rather to those romantic
incidents which no doubt mainly made him so popular with the people,
who in this, as in a thousand other cases, showed their practical wisdom.
One of these is supposed to have been afterwards commemorated on
the silver coins ofHenryV. (Figs. 1181, 1182). The time referred to
is the latter part of Henry of Bolingbroke's reign, when, being " some
what crazy, and keeping his chamber," he received news daily of his
son's loose excesses, and heard constructions placed upon them, that
at last alarmed him for the safety of himself and crown. When
the knowledge of these dreadful suspicions reached the Prince, he

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[OLD ENGLAND.]
337
338

OLD ENGLAND.

[Book IV.

strengthened himself with his chief friends, and well-wishers, and
with such a troop repaired to his father's court, as a greater in those
days had not been seen. (Otterborne.) The manner of his approach
is described by an eye-witness, the Earl Ormond of Ireland. He
attired himself in the garb of his college (Queen's, at Oxford, Fig.
1 160), " a gown of blue satin, full of oylet holes, and at every hole
a needle hanging by a silken thread;" which, in fanciful explanation
ofthe name of the founder of the college, Eglesfield, was to represent
aiguille, a needle, and fil, thread. We may add, as showing the
thoughts upon the mind of the prince, in thus arraying himself, that
it had been from a very early period a custom for the bursar of the
college to give to each student on New Year's Day the implements
just mentioned, with the words, " Take this, and be thrifty." Going,
then, to Westminster, with these tokens about him of his faith in,
and gratitude for, the peaceful and honourable instruction that had
been afforded him in the academic lore of the university, he com
manded his followers to wait by the fire in the hall, and then passed
on with one of the household to the presence of his father. " The
king," continues Earl Ormond, " weak then with sickness, and
supposing the worst, commanded himself to be borne into a with
drawing chamber, some of his lords attending upon him, before
whose feet Prince Henry fell, and with all reverent observances,
spoke to him as followeth : — Most gracious sovereign and renowned
father, the suspicion of disloyalty, and divulged reports of my
dangerous intendment towards your royal person and crown, hath
enforced at this time, and in this manner, to present myself and life
at your Majesty's dispose. Some faults and mis-spent time (with
blushes I may speak it) my youth hath committed ; yet these made
much more by such fleering pickthanks that blow them stronger
into your unwilling and distasteful ear. The name of sovereign
ties allegiance to all ; but of a father, to a further feeling of nature's
obedience, so that my sins were double if such suggestions possessed
my heart : for the law of God ordaineth that he which doth presump
tuously against the ruler of his people shall not live, and the child
that smiteth his father shall die the death. So far, therefore, am I
from any disloyal attempt against the person of you, my father and
the Lord's anointed, that if I knew any of whom you stood in the
least clanger or fear, my hand, according to duty, should be the first
to free your suspicion. Yea, I will most gladly suffer death to ease
your perplexed heart ; and to that end I have this day prepared
myself, both by confession of my offences past, and receiving the
blessed Sacrament. Wherefore I humbly beseech your grace to
free your suspicion from all fear conceived against me with this
dagger, the stab whereof I will willingly receive here at your
Majesty's hand, and so doing, in the presence of these lords, and
before God at the day of judgment, I clearly forgive my death.
But the king, melting into tears, cast down the naked dagger
(which the prince delivered him), and, raising- his prostrate son,
embraced and kissed him, confessing his ears to have been over-
credulous that way, and promising never to open them again
against him. But the prince, unsatisfied, instantly desired that at
least his accusers might be produced, and, if convicted, to receive
punishment, though not to the full of their demerits ; to which
request the king replied that, as the offence was capital, it should be
examined by the peers, and therefore willed him to rest contented until
the next parliament. Thus by his great wisdom he satisfied his father
from further suspicion, and recovered his love, that nearly was lost."
The other incident we have alluded to originated in the arraign
ment of one of Prince Henry's servants, before the bar of the
King's Bench, for felony. Receiving intelligence that he was to
be sentenced to death, the prince posted thither, and found him
strongly fettered, and about to be conveyed away for execution ;
he immediately commanded his fetters to be struck off, and the
felon set free. A command so sudden and peremptory, perfectly
astonished and awed the court. In the midst of the panic the chief
justice, Sir William Gascoigne (Fig. 1165), stood up, and showed the
prince that his seat was the king's ; that laws were the sinews of
the commonwealth; that the prince himself was sworn to do
justice, and must yield an account for all that he did ; that he
honoured the prince as the eldest son of the sovereign ; but to set
free the prisoner he could not, having so apparently endangered his
life to the law: and therefore he (the chief justice) desired the
prince, if he held the prisoner in such esteem, to save him by
pardon from the king, and not to enfringe the law, which he told
him plainly, he should not do. The prince, more enraged by
denial, began to resort to violence to enforce his will; but the
chief justice firmly forbade him, commanding him upon his alle
giance to cease from such riot, and to keep the king's peace ; but
he was interrujj^d by Prince Henry, who in a fury stepped up to
the bench, and gave Sir William Gascoigne a blow on the face.

The imperturbable judge was not daunted by the outrage, but sat
still in his place, and with' a bold countenance said, " Sir, I pray
you remember yourself; this seat of judgment, which here I possess,
is not mine, but your father's, to whom and to his laws you owe
double obedience. If his highness be thus contemned, and his laws
violated by you, that should show yourself obedient to both, who
will obey you when you are a sovereign, or minister execution to
the laws that you shall make? Wherefore, for this attempt, in
your father's name, I commit you prisoner unto the King's Bench,
there to remain until his Majesty's pleasure be further known."
The storm-fit of the young man was as brief as violent ; he stood
mute by the judge, greatly abashed ; and, fixing his eyes oil his
reverend face, laid down his weapons, made an humble obeisance,
and departed to prison ! When the king heard of this extraordinary
scene, he greatly rejoiced that he had a son capable on reflection of
such obedience to the laws, and a judge so upright to administer them
without either favour or fear. Yet he thought fit to mark his sense
of his son's offence by removing him from the presidency of his privy
council, and placing his second brother in his stead — a punishment
that was deeply felt, but which by no means diminished his general
popularity. The sparkles of a better hope were indeed beautifully
visible in jhese ever-memorable and touching incidents ; and no
sooner had the breath left his father's body, according to Shakspere,
than they merged in the full effulgence of as dazzling a reign as
English heart or ambition had learned to desire. Then,
Consideration like an angel came
And whipped the offending Adam out of him ;
Never came reformation in a flood
With such a heady current, scouring faults,
Nor never hydra-headed wilfulness
So soon did lose his seat, and all at once,
As in this king.
We are often tempted to ask ourselves, as we pause on the early
records of his reign, can this be the same " mad compound of majesty"
that played the masquer at Gadshill, and in the Boar's Head Tavern
at Eastcheap, to draw out the humorous vices of the " fat rogue "
Falstaff? Now, his "unlettered, rude, and shallow " companions
must not approach him within ten miles, or alter their manners — a
most necessary decree, albeit harsh of sound. His " riots, banquets,
and sports " are forsaken all ; and instead, " every day after dinner,
for the space of an hour, his 'custom was to lean on a cushion set by
his cupboard, and there himself received petitions of the oppressed,
which with great equity he did redress." His conduct towards the
remains of Richard II. was of the same lofty character. They were
exhumed by his command, and buried in Westminster Abbey, beside
the murdered king's beloved wife, Anne of Bohemia. In the funeral
procession Henry himself walked as chief mourner. There was in
all this evidenced a peculiarly graceful and generous disposition ;
and the circumstances are perhaps enhanced, as well as in some
degree explained, by our knowledge that Henry of Monmouth had
been knighted by the unfortunate Richard only a little time before
his ruin by Henry's own father's hands. The young kino's mag
nanimity towards his enemies deserves also especial admiration. The
son of Hotspur was restored to the family estates. Mortimer the
rightful king by descent, was set free from his long Captivity, though
his name, afterwards as before, was used by those whom no excellence
could induce to lay aside their machinations. But as regards Mortimer
himself, what danger accrued ? Did Henry live to rue the nobleness
of his act of mercy ? We have an answer in the fact, that Mortimer
accompanied Henry to France, fought for him, bled for him (he was
wounded at Harfleur), and was by his kind master sent home in all
care and confidence, to get well again. Thus did the new sovereign
win golden opipions from all sorts of people, and found, as true
wisdom teaches us we may find, that in so doing it was not at all
necessary to dim their lustre to his own conscience, even on the
severest self-examination.
The French war, criminal as toe must now consider it in the
abstract to have been, wy recommenced by him under much more
excusable circumstances than usual. With a sense of a kind of
right, there was mingled a just feeling of indignation at the treatment
that his honourable overtures for peace received. In the first year
of his reign, application was made to Charles VI., king of France
for an alliance with his daughter, the Ladie Katherine. The
ambassadors, says one French writer, were told " the king had no
leisure to think on that business ;" or, according to another authority
Franciseus Rosienius, "The king, scornfully smiling, answered
that France was neither destitute of dukes nor he at leisure to think
about the proposition." It was also commanded, that the Duke of
Burgundy and all other princes of the blood should make no alliance
of marriage with England. The English peers, highly exasperated,

Chap. I.]

OLD ENGLAND.

339

met immediately (Fig. 1159) ; and then was made the famous oration
of Archbishop Cliicheley (Fig. 1172) for a war with France for the
conquest of the country ; in which he repeated the old arguments with
new force, and brought to bear upon the subject an amount of know
ledge that might well help to blind Henry to the true character of
the policy that the head of the Church — the Christian Church of
England — advised : namely, war ; and one of the worst of wars — a
war of acquisition. The archbishop's speech, indeed, may furnish
a most valuable lesson to those persons, still too numerous, who
think every kind of proceeding, as well as of faith, may be justified
by isolated extracts of Scripture, read too in the most literal
manner ; instead of basing both, as they ought, on a careful con
sideration of its general tenor and spirit. War was determined on
by the assembled council unanimously ; and a summons was sent
forthwith to France to surrender Normandy, Aquitaine, Guienne,
and Anjou. It could not have been made at a worse time for
France, which was then reduced to a state of anarchy by her lawless
aristocracy, who had been at war with one another, and had oppressed
the French people of that fair land during twenty years. The pro
fligate dauphin, who had the upper hand in the state, was at once so
foolish and so vulgarly impudent as to send a tun of tennis-balls to
King Henry as " bullets most fit for his tender hands, who had spent,
his youth more among rackets " than in matters of state. Henry
quietly answered, that he would repay the dauphin's present with
balls of more force, against whose stroke the gates of Paris should
not prove rackets sufficiently strong to make them rebound. Imme
diately he prepared to keep his word, aided with all the wealth,
enthusiasm, skill, and courage of England. In what state, we may
ask, was France meanwhile ? One illustration will suffice by way
of answer. "What," cried the poor people of France, when they
heard of the mighty preparations for depriving their land of its
independence — " what can the English do to us more than we suffer
from our own princes ? " And when the burghers and others did
offer to defend France, they were refused with haughty insolence —
none but gentlemen were worthy of that honour. For this the said
gentlemen had to suffer a sore penance. A sincere and manly policy
was also wanting in all French negotiations at that time, or respect
able terms might have been made. Failing these, the English Par
liament met to vote supplies for the war — Henry's uncle, Beaufort
(Fig. 1209), opening the proceedings with a speech turning upon the
- text, " Whilst we have time let us work the good work." On the
following April fifteen prelates and twenty-eight peers met in
council at Westminster (Fig. 1158), and heard with enthusiasm
Henry's announcement of his firm purpose to head in person the
war on France, and leave his brother, the Duke of Bedford (Fig.
1198), regent during his absence.
Now all the youth of England are on fire,
And silken dalliance in the wardrobe lies.
Now thrive the armourers, and honour's thought
Reigns solely in the breast of every man.
They sell the pasture now, to buy the horse,
Following the mirror of all Christian kings
With winged heels.
The French began now to feel something of Henry's own earnest
ness, with a difference however. At the last moment attempts at
negotiation were made by a French ambassador, a spirited ecclesi
astic, who told Henry he would be either made captive, driven
into the sea, or slain. "We shall see," said Henry, and dismissed
him with rich presents and marks of honour. At Southampton (Fig.
1166), where rode his mighty fleet of vessels (Figs. 1157, 1167),
he was delayed by the conspiracy of some lords who, professing to
adopt Mortimer's cause, but receiving, it is supposed, French gold,
and acting upon French instructions, had determined upon the
almost inconceivable wickedness of killing the youthful and admir
able sovereign. Fortunately the plot was discovered, and the
plotters sent to the scaffold. The twelve or fourteen hundred
vessels at last set sail, bearing an army of six thousand five hundred
horse and twenty-four thousand foot. The landing, near Harfleur,
occupied three days, and they might have* been opposed with effect,
but all was perfectly quiet. The siege of Harfleur occupied thirty-
six days ; then the victorious Henry passed through the streets (Fig.
1169), not .proudly as a conqueror, but barefooted to the church
of Saint Martin, "where with great devotion he gave most humble
thanks unto God for this his first achieved enterprise." The dauphin,
declining Henry's challenge to personal combat, prepared to assem
ble the whole strength and chivalry of France at Rouen. Sickness
now attacked the English ; shipful after shipful of diseased men
were sent home, until a mere remnant was left, and the chiefs beo-an
to urge the king to re-embark at once. " No," said Henry, " we
must first see, by God's help, a little more of this good land of

France, which is all our own. Our mind is made up to endure
every peril rather than they shall be able to reproach us with being
afraid of them. We will go, an if it please God, without harm or
danger ; but if they disturb our journey, why then we must fight
them, and victory and glory will be ours." So, with at the utmost
but nine thousand men, he prepared to pass through Normandy,
Picardy, and Artois, to Calais; an attempt so daring as almost to
reach the point of imprudence ; but then Henry knew that his men,
as well as himself, were prepared to perish rather than return
without glory to their countrymen, who remained so full of expect
ation. So, Forward! was the word. French armies, fresh and
vigorous, were gathering from all directions under the mightiest chiefs
of the realm on the line of his route ; but still the cry was, Forward !
Attacks multiplied, famine pressed, sickness weakened, and fatigue
lay heavy on the strongest. Still they went on — those gallant
hearts — until they saw before them the river Somme, where every
bridge had been broken down, every fort fortified, and where multi
tudinous columns of horse and foot covered the opposite bank.
Yet that river must be crossed. A chaplain of the army says,
" I and many others looked bitterly up to heaven, and implored the
divine mercy." Much time was lost in trying to force a passage,
and had the French fallen on their rear we should not have had to
record the battle of Agincourt. Get over, however, ultimately they
did, baggage and all. The French Constable fell back disconcerted
on the Calais road : the English followed, aud, as it seemed, to
certain death. When all the war strength of France had assembled,
they sent notice to Henry they should give him battle. He replied,
calmly and firmly, that " he meant to march to Calais, — not to
seek them, — but left the issue to God ;" and then regularly and
steadily he pursued his dismal route, men dropping about him con
stantly. The French made their stand at the village of Agincourt :
Henry did the same in another village close by. Night intervened,
and the moon shone over combatants thus picturesquely con
trasted : " The French, gallant, fresh, and, through vain hope of
honour, already mounted above men of mean rank: the English,
weak, weary, and sore starved, made no such show, and yet their
courage was no less than the other. The one spending the night
before battle in feasts, triumphs, and other-like sports, distributing
their captives, dividing their spoils, and decreeing none to be saved
but the king and his nobles, all others must die or be incurably
maimed : the other, trimming their arrows, sharpening their spears,
buckling their armours, and refreshing their bodies for the next
day ; and, beside other observances, by the light of the great fires
made in the French camp the English discerned what was therein
done, and took the advantage of their order and ground." Those-
" other observances " of the English included also solemn prepara
tion for death, and exhilarating martial music. Next morning-
" the beauty and honourable horror of both the armies no heart.
can judge of, unless the eye had seen it : the banners, ensigns, and
pennons, (Fig. 1 171), streaming in the air, the glistering of armours
the variety of colours, the motion of plumes, the forests of lances,
and the thickets of shorter weapons, made so great and goodly a.
show." The armies thus ranged, awhile stood still and faced each.
other. Then King Henry, in bright armour (Fig. 1173), distin
guished by a rich coronet on his helmet, mounted on a horse of
" fierce courage," with the royal standard borne before him, with
cheerful countenance and words full of resolution, rode through his
ranks. " We have not come," said he, " into our kingdom of France
like mortal enemies, we have not burnt towns and villages, -we have
not outraged women and maidens, like our adversaries at Soissons,"
where in addition to these atrocities, two hundred brave English
prisoners had been hung like dogs. The allusion had an almost
electric effect, Still there was cause enough to make the most brave
warrior doubtful of the issue. Walter Hungerford [Shakspere
says the Earl of Westmoreland (Fig. 1161)] wished that some of the
many men then living in idleness in England could be present there.
' No,' exclaimed Henry, ' the fewer there are, the more honour ; and
if we lose, the less will be the loss to our country. But we will not
lose ; fight as you were wont to do, and before night the pride of our
numberless enemies shall be humbled to the dust." And so it was.
The wonderful success of the English in this battle has been attri
buted chiefly to the perfect unity of spirit among them ; and the dis
graceful failure of the French to their divisions. " The Constable,"
says M. de Barante, an eminent writer, " was, by right of his office,
the commander-in-chief of the French army, but there were with
him so many princes who had wills of their own, that it was not easy
for him to obtain obedience." The consequence was, that the very
numbers which gave the French all their mighty strength proved
unwieldy and confused in action ; whilst Henry, with his mere
handful of men, laid his plans with such consummate art, and
2X2

1272.— West Gate, Canterbury.

gglgPi"-

IB73.— Presenfatate of Borthv ioTi Castle.

1874.— Moveahle Tower of Archers, Cannon, &c. (Royal MS. 14 Edw. IV.)

1275.— Tomb of Sir John Croshy.

340

342

OLD ENGLAND.

[Book IV.

prompted their execution with such calm unwavering confidence,
that his little army proved perfectly irresistible. Next to Henry's
genius, it was the bravery and skill of the fine old English
bowmen that won Agincourt. As, the bow was a_ vulgar weapon,
they had no competitors on the other side, where all stood on
their gentility ; so, undismayed by the far-stretching and innumer
able ranks of heavily-mailed and splendidly-adorned horsemen, they
threw aside their leathern jackets, and waited like eager hounds
in the leash for the king's order to begin the attack. Near noon
Henry gave the welcome words — " Banners, advance ! " and in the
enthusiasm of the moment the leader of the archers, Sir Thomas
Erpingham (Fig. 1 175), threw his truncheon into the air, and cried
aloud, "Now strike ! " The archers ran forward to within bow
shot of the French, planted their stakes, and did great havoc by the
rapidity and impetuosity of their flights of arrows. Some confusion
was produced by a charge from the great leading division of the foe ;
but the archers rallied, and leaving their stakes, and slinging their
bows behind them, grasped their billhooks and hatchets, and with
bare and brawny arms sprang among the knightly melee, making the
welkin ring again with the war-shout of England. Many a famous
gentleman of France sank before them, including the Constable him
self, and speedily the French dead became so numerous as to form
a kind of wall, on the top of which our men leaped to continue the
fight. The encounter of the chivalry of England and France
nevertheless took place with fearful odds against the former. The
beautiful nature of Henry here again shone out ; he was seen planted
by, or, according to Speed, bestriding the fallen body of his brother
Clarence and beating off the assailants. The stroke of a battle-
axe brought the hero himself to his knees, and after that the coronet
on his casque was cut through by a similar blow ; but he who made
it was instantly slain, as he was in the act of calling out to Henry
" I surrender myself to you, I am the Duke of Alencon." The
battle was closed in effect with his fall. And certainly never,
under a, Hannibal or a Napoleon, was there one more wonderful,
whether we regard the mighty energies lavished on it — the dis
crepancy of numbers — the genius of the conqueror — or the death-
roll of noble names, numbering, it is thought, eight thousand
gentlemen of France, seven of whom were personal relatives of the
French king, and a hundred and twenty knights-in-chief, or banner-
knights. Like the Black Prince, Henry brought back to England
with him an illustrious captive, the Duke of Orleans, who had been
pulled out from under a heap of slain. As to John of France, so
to this royal duke was the most marked courtesy paid. Once when
Henry was trying to console him, the king is recorded to have
given this striking testimony to the misery of France : — " If God
has given me the grace to win this victory, I acknowledge that it is
through no merits of mine own. I believe that God has willed
that the French should be punished ; and if what I have heard be
true, no wonder at it ; for they tell me that never were seen such a
disorder, such a licence of wickedness, such debauchery, such bad
vices, as now reign in France. It is pitiful and horrible to hear it
all, and certes the wrath of the Lord must have been awaked."
At Dover the English rushed into the sea to meet their victorious
king, on his return, and actually bore him on their shoulders to the
shore. We call ourselves the sober English — our forefathers had
plenty of fire in their veins, as was very clear not only in that
reception, but through all the subsequent proceedings. As Henry
rode toward, London, never was such enthusiasm — such rapture 
such boundless and passionate love beheld as everywhere welcomed
him. SfcfcJW»ey admired him the more for his modesty, in not
allowing His broken casque and bruised arms (Fig. 1170) to be carried
before him (Fig. 1168). The victory of Agincourt opened the way
to Henry's alliance with Katherine (Fig. 1177), princess of France,
to his being adopted heir and regent of France, and virtually to his
exercising over it the power of a king. And, to give the climax to
the greatness of Henry V., and to show the true origin, after all of
the people's love for him, we may observe, on the one hand, that
the " poor people of France " grew happier under his rule than they
had been for many a day, and honoured his death only with less
intensity than Henry's own subjects, who, on the other, there is every
reason to believe, never had occasion to make one complaint of his
government (Fig. 1186). Worth a thousand such brilliant victories
as Agincourt is that one homely-sounding fact. His death and burial
have already been described in our account of Westminster Abbey
it will only be necessary therefore to refer to the page in question
(Fig. 287), and to our additional engraving (Fig. 1187) representing-
the tomb in the abbey, with the effigy of Henry, to which we have re
stored the head. The personal appearance of Henry is represented at
very different periods of his life in our engravings of the boy (Fig.
1 163) a^the warrior (Fig. 1 17h) : see also the great seal (Fig. 1 178).

When' Henry V. died, his son, named after himself, was but nine
months old ; the unsettled character thus given to the reign at its
commencement, followed it to its premature and terrible close. It
would have been impossible to have found a better regent than was
chosen to exercise rule during the king's minority : the very name of,
Humphrey the Good (Fig. 1213) was a tower of strength; and
notwithstanding the weakness that almost invariably characterizes
regencies, all seems to have gone well in England, until the boy
for whom so much ,'had been done to smooth the way to actual as
well as nominal power, grew to a man, and showed his utter unfit
ness for his position. Henry, it has been said, would have made an
excellent monk : no wonder, therefore, that he did make a very bad
king. His intentions were admirable ; but served only as a foil to
show off his'utter want of power to perceive what he should intend,
and the absence of all firmness in carrying resolve into execution.
Two great events mark his reign : the loss of all, or nearly all, that
his father had gained in France ; and the wars of the Roses, which
deprived him of all that his birthright had given him in England :,
for the first he was in no way personally answerable; the second
may be considered to have entirely originated in his own infirmity of
character. Whilst Duke Humphrey became Protector at home, another and
elder brother, the Duke of Bedford (Fig. 1198), equally, or even
more highly gifted, assumed the administration of affairs abroad —
that is to say, in France. We are not about to detail step by step
the decline of our power in that country, which proceeded steadily,
if slowly, in spite of occasional victories, and in spite of the most
consummate prudence and energy. It is true, there was a time
when the duke thought he could recover the lost ground ; and so,
in 1428, he prepared to make a great effort for the extension of
the English sovereignty beyond the Loire. The posture of affairs
was encouraging in many points, but especially in these — that
France, like England, had a very young monarch, and was divided
against itself, through the jealousies and hatred of the two great
houses of Orleans and Burgundy ; the latter of whom was now in
alliance with the English. The city of Orleans was besieged by
the Earl of Salisbury (Fig. 1 1 74) ; and Charles saw no hope of
saving even that last bulwark of his kingdom. Then it was that a
new and extraordinary personage appeared upon the scene, whose
doings could be only accounted for in her own age by the supposi
tion that they were connected with sorcery — and who in ours, and
in all succeeding ages, is, and will be, a subject for the deepest
sympathy and warmest admiration, not only on account of her
melancholy fate, but also for her lofty and beautiful character.
The mists that so long obscured the life of Joan of Arc — and
which, among many other manifestations of its effects, caused
Voltaire to injure permanently his own reputation by misunder
standing and ridiculing hers — have passed away ; and poets and
philosophers in all countries have rivalled each other in the fervency
and grandeur of their tributes to her genius and virtue. Schiller
in Germany, and Southey in England — two names that at once
occur among others — are for ever bound up with the memory of the
heroic French peasant's daughter. Joan was born in 1410 or 1411,
in the little hamlet of Domremy, near the Meuse, on the borders of
Champagne ; and there it was that she imbibed her rustic supersti.
tions and her fervent public spirit ; for even in that remote district
village rose against village— Burgundians against Armagnacs (the
Orleans party). And what was it but those superstitions and that
public spirit acting upon a generous and enthusiastic temperament,
that made the girl of thirteen a marvel unto her fellow-villagers,
and ultimately caused the woman to excite the wonder of a world ?
Among the superstitions was one to the effect that France would be
yet saved by a virgin : it was not Jong before Joan conceived the
idea that it was she who was to realize the faith. Then strange
visions were hers: she saw a great light, from amidst which a voice
proceeded, bidding her be devout and good, and promising her the
protection of Heaven. Rising with the demands made upon her,
Joan prepared herself for the great work, and, as a commencement,
vowed eternal chastity. Again and again came the voices, until
Joan found them her constant companions and advisers. At last
they bade her take the grand step, and act— they prompted her to
quit her parents and home, take arms, and drive the foe before her
until the young king should be able to be crowned in the national
place of coronation, Rheims. Joan may have smiled to herself in
her calmer moments as she recapitulated such a programme of
.proceedings ; but the smile would be succeeded by a still calmer
expression of confidence, as with eyes mirroring, as it were, the
shadows of the future that passed before her mind, she gazed deeply
into her own nature, and saw that she was equal to the position.
But she was a maiden, she was young, she was friendless— and still

Chap. I.]

OLD ENGLAND.

343

she hesitated. The incursions of a band of Burgundians into her native
village, and the destruction of her beloved church, decided her. The
voices then became even still more practical. They not only bade
her commence her mission, but directed her as to the best mode —
she was to go to De Baudricourt, the governor of Vaucouleurs.
Joan did so, and was treated with contempt. But there were others
who believed, in spite of De Baudricourt's scepticism. The whole
history of human kind shows how mighty is the power of self-
conviction, when we would influence others. No scheme, however
absurd and pernicious, but has obtained disciples through its
influence : nothing greatly good will ever be achieved in its
absence. Among the converts whom Joan of Arc's faith in herself
had induced to arrive at a similar conclusion, were two gentlemen,
named John of Metz and Bertram of Poulegny ; these ultimately
obtained permission of the governor of Vaucouleurs to conduct her
to the dauphin ; so it was evident that even he was moved at last,
though the paramount motive with him in sending her may have
been his desire to do anything that might have a tendency to raise
the French from their desperate condition, and enable them to raise
the siege of Orleans. Joan's powers were put to a severe trial on
her first appearance at court : she was required to recognise Charles
as he stood amongst his nobles, undistinguished in any way from
them. She did so. Even that was not enough. It was agreed she
had a mission — but was it from heaven, or from the Evil One?
A body of ecclesiastics proceeded to determine that point. Her
chastity, of which the most unquestionable evidence was obtained,
proved, according to the notions of the day, that Joan of Arc was
indeed commissioned by God to deliver France from her enemies ;
even though she declined to perform miracles, answering ever to
such requests — " Bring me to Orleans, and you shall see. The siege
shall be raised, and the dauphin crowned king at Rheims." Joan
was now raised to the rank of a military commander ; she arrayed
herself in suitable armour, and sent for a sword from Fierbois,
where she said one would be found buried within the church. The
sword was du'g up at the spot indicated ; Joan, it is to be observed,
had spent some time at Fierbois. previously. It was not long before
Orleans was relieved by the entrance of a body of French with Joan
at their head, though not by the path that she would have chosen if
the French leaders would have permitted her — right over the English
fortifications. Their spirits, however, raised by this first successful
step, the French speedily consented to follow Joan, or La Pucelle,
as she was called, to attack the English strongholds. They were
forced one after the other. The English behaved as of yore ; but it
was of no avail against men who fought with a more than mortal
bravery, such confidence had been instilled into their hearts by their
young and beautiful and religiously-inspired leader. Joan herself
shared in one of the fiercest assaults, and was wounded by an arrow
in the shoulder just as she was about to ascend a scaling-ladder.
She was taken aside, and for a moment the woman overcame her —
she wept : but the sight of her standard in danger renewed all her
heroism — she forgot her wound, leaped up, ran back, and presently
the irresistible French drove all before them. The siege was then
raised ; and in one week Orleans was altogether free from its
terrible enemy. It is not necessary to enumerate the remaining
steps of her wonderful career ; suffice it is to say, that in spite of the
presence of the bravest of the English warriors, our countrymen
were everywhere beaten ; until, at the battle of Patey, even John
Talbot himself, the famous Earl of Shrewsbury (Fig. 1199), was not
only defeated, but taken prisoner. Within three months after the
first appearance of Joan on the scene, Rheims opened its gates without
attempting to strike a blow in defence ; and Charles was crowned,
where the virgin had prophesied he should be. With that act her
work may be said to have been essentially accomplished. She had
roused and animated'the national feeling and courage, and there was
no longer any danger of permanent defeat ; a consideration that must
have been full of consolation to her under the frightful circumstances
attending the close of her career. In May, 1430, she was taken
prisoner by the Burgundian party, who ultimately handed her over
to the English. And then commenced the proceedings which were
to make for ever infamous all those directly concerned in them.
Under pretence of trial, this maiden, not yet arrived to the age of
womanhood, was for month after month harassed by unceasing
examinations and interrogations, in order to draw from her the
acknowledgment of the influences which had actuated her, and which
might then form the groundwork for the charge of sorcery which
it was desired to bring against her. Of course the reverend and
learned inquisitors were successful; one by one they drew forth
the statement of the visions, and the belief in them that Joan's
highly-wrought enthusiasm had given rise to. More than all, they
obtained from her a declaration that she declined to submit to the

ordinances of the church, whenever her voices told her to resist ;
which was in effect but saying that she would follow the guidance
of that inward light which had been given to her, and by which
alone she, and alL of us, can safely walk, seeing that it is the
power which must test all things before we can worthily accept
anything — church ordinances not excluded. But ignorance is ever
intolerant of what it does not understand ; and Joan's judges, having
had no experience ofthe influences that determined her to lofty and
sublime action, could only attribute the whole to some evil spirit,
for which again poor Joan was to become bodily responsible. She
was declared guilty of heresy and schism, and threatened with the
stake if she did not acknowledge her visions to be false, forswear
male habits and arms for the future, and own how deeply she had
erred. These are the tricks that men play with human nature,
before high heaven, and which are indeed sufficient to make angels
weep, or a Mephistopheles laugh. Joan indignantly resisted. The
scaffold was prepared at Rouen (Fig. 1201) ; the victim brought forth.
The Bishop of Beauvais read the sentence; and while he was
reading, the pious men who would have moved heaven and earth to
induce her in effect to destroy her soul — by saving it in their way —
were very solicitous about the dangers to her body. Joan was
moved. The frightful aspect of the scene was too much for her.
She uttered some words of contrition ; a form of confession was
instantly produced, and to that the miserable, wretched creature —
not daring to pause to think of what she did — signed with a cross,
the only signature she could make. She was led back to prison
under a sentence of perpetual imprisonment. Well, was this not
enough for the most bigoted of all earthly men, for the most hard
of heart of all Joan's unnatural French enemies ? No ; the incon
ceivably cruel and base men in whose hands she was, placed her
male attire in her dungeon, hoping, we presume, either thoroughly
to break down every particle of the heroine's lofty and undaunted
nature, by showing her to herself as too timid to give vent in any
wav to the feeling that was certain to rise in her heart at the sight
of these tokens of her glorious career ; or to entrap her, should she
be induced by any revulsion of sentiment to put them on once
more. Joan did put them on ; and with them all her original faith,
courage, and fortitude. She heard her voices reproaching her with
her pusillanimity ; she determined to be true to them and herself.
She told her persecutors, " What I resolved, T resolved against
truth : let me suffer my sentence at once, rather than endure what
I suffer in prison." Her fate was then sealed irrevocably. Again
the scaffold and the faggots were prepared; again the vast sea of
upturned and unpitying faces met the eye of the friendless maiden
in the market-place of Rouen ; again she wept, but not again was
there to be the smallest symptom that Mercy had any place in the
world. She was burnt, and her ashes afterwards thrown into the
Seine. The old monument (Fig. 1200) marks at once the scene of
the transaction, and the opinions of Joan's later countrymen upon it.
There have been some not very profitable discussions as to where
the infamy of this execution chiefly lies ; whether with the English,
who sanctioned and, as it were, superintended the murder (the
great Cardinal Beaufort (Fig. 1209) was present, but was so overcome
as to be obliged to retire before the close), or with the French of
Joan's own party, who made not the smallest effort to rescue her,
although she had done everything for them — or, lastly, with the
French of the opposite party, who first took her captive, and then
were in effect her real executioners: it seems to us th»* ^the differ
ent circumstances of each party considered, they may iW^/whole
divide the merit of the deed pretty equally between them. This
tragedy, consummated in 1431, for a time checked the retrograde
progress of the English authority in France ; the more especially that
the spell having been removed, which chilled all the fire of our troops,
such men as the Duke of Bedford and the Earl of Shrewsbury
recovered the supremacy naturally belonging to their great skill and
indomitable energy ; but in 1435 the duke died, and eighteen years
later the earl was defeated and killed in battle. And with brave
John Talbot, the man whom sovereigns and people had alike delighted
to honour (see the portraits and other engravings illustrative of his
career, Figs. 1190, 1199, 1202, 1203), we lost also every inch of
ground we had possessed in France, Calais only excepted. Such
was the issue of one of the great questions of the reign of Henry
VI. We now address ourselves to the other, involving that period
so peculiarly interesting to all Englishmen, the Wars of the Roses.
The origin of the poetical designation given to these wars is
supposed to have been an incident that took place in the Temple
Gardens on the Thames, when were present the chief of the younger
branch of the Lancastrian or kingly family, the Duke of Somerset,
and the chief of the Plantagenets, the Duke of York. These two
are quarrelling ; and Plantagenet, impatient at perceiving that the

1981,-Djorway, King's College Chapel, Cambridge.

1280,-King's College Chapel.

344

1282.— Dutch Church, Austin Friars.

yjwaii
,.'..ffllii;r

1285.— Interior of St. Helen's.

128,',— Porch of St. Arnhage.

KilGBdlfe'

1286.— Tower of St. Michael's, CornhilL

1287.— Cloisters, Charter-House.

le Quern.

1288.— Inner Gateway, Charter-House.

[OLD FNGLAND.1

345

346

OLD ENGLAND.

[Book IV.

nobles around seem unwilling to give an opinion as to which of the
disputants is right, and probably attributing their unwillingness to
their deference to Somerset's position as the great man of authority
and influence on the kingly side, exclaims —
" Since you are tongue-tied, and so loth to speak,
In dumb significants proclaim your thoughts :
Let him that is a true-born gentleman,
And stands upon the honour of his birth,
If he suppose that I have pleaded truth,
From off this brier pluck a white rose with me."
Somerset accepts the challenge, and immediately adds :—
" Let him that is no coward, nor a flatterer,
But dare maintain the party of the truth,
Pluck a red rose from off this thorn with me."
The nobles pluck their red and white roses, in mute expression of
their opinions of the previous argument ; and possibly at the same
time half intimating their anticipation of the coming mightier one,
for which also they thus take sides. Suffolk plucks the red rose ;
he is with Somerset — Warwick the white ; he is with Plantagenet.
Add to the former the other powerful members of Somerset's
family — the Beauforts, and especially the great cardinal ; add to the
latter, the Earl of Salisbury, Warwick's father, and we see with
tolerable accuracy the two great baronial divisions formed during
the struggles for political power that each party so ardently desired,
as involving under such a sovereign as Henry VI. all the real
powers of sovereignty.
Before, however, these parties became so formed, and so con
fronted each other, most, if not all of the members of both, had
found ample employment in getting rid of a man whose nature was
of too lofty a kind to descend to the intrigues they so much
delighted in, and who saw too plainly the evils of faction to allow
them even to pursue their own way unmolested. This was the Duke
of Gloucester, the king's uncle and presumptive heir, — the good
Duke Humphrey, as the people admiringly and affectionately de
signated him. He had been placed at the head of the Council of
Regency, immediately after the death of Henry V. ; but there was
also in that Council Henry Beaufort, Bishop of Winchester, a man
of the most unbounded ambition, and who never ceased his endea
vours to supplant the duke, until, failing every other means, he
succeeded at last, by having the young king, a boy of eight years
old, crowned, and Gloucester's office of Protector abolished. If
any evidence were needed that it was Beaufort's unprincipled ambi
tion that was the real cause of all the contentions that kept England
for so many years in trouble, and which had more than once nearly
broken out into civil war, it is furnished by this act — on the face of
it a dishonest one. If Gloucester were an unfit Protector, why
another might have been appointed ; but to pretend that the eight-
year old king did not want a protector at all, was, under the
circumstances, perhaps a stroke of subtle policy, but not one calcu
lated to win our admiration for its ecclesiastical author. Beaufort
thus succeeded, and Gloucester descended to the position of a mere
peer of the realm. But even then he so exposed the misdoings of
the new governors, as to bring upon the cardinal the necessity of
asking and obtaining from parliament an immunity for all crimes
committed up to a certain period. The hatred of the Beauforts
towards "good Duke Humphrey," under such circumstances, may
be imagined; awS as he had attacked, to the great satisfaction of
the nation 'ai'mirge, the custom of choosing statesmen from the
church, the whole body of churchmen "shared the cardinal's feel
ings, and sought to compass his ruin. Other influences were in
operation to aid them in that object. In 1445 Henry had married
(Fig. 1191) the beautiful but unprincipled and masculine-minded
daughter of the King of Sicily (Fig. 1206), who speedily showed
to the English people her contempt alike for her husband and their
notions of morality, by lavishing every mark of favour that it was
in her power to bestow on the minister who had negotiated the
marriage, the Earl of Suffolk. These two now sought to concen
trate in themselves all the power of the realm, and, as the people
believed, for the worst purposes. One man, again, stood in their
way — the " good duke ; " who was also the man, as Margaret, no
doubt, took care to remember, who had opposed Henry's marriage
with her when first proposed. For the events that follow, it is
now impossible ^to say to which party, that of the queen and her
favourite, or that of the Beauforts, we should attribute them.
Suffice it that Gloucester's utter ruin was determined upon and
accomplished, and must therefore have had its agents. If his
inveterate enemies who obtained the credit of such deeds were
innocent, <rfcy have certainly been very unfortunate.
Gloucester's wife was first attacked. Being a great patron of

learning, the duke supported constantly in his house certain
doctors and clerks, among whom was one Roger Bolingbroke, an
adept in all the astrological mysteries of the day. The duchess,
thinking somewhat too curiously of her husband's prospects, is
supposed to have been desirous to know the time of the king's
death, and to have held, therefore, consultations with the clerk as
to the means of discovery. The simple credulity of the duchess
is evident, for it was proved she had sought for love-philters to
secure the constancy of her husband ; but it was not proved that
she had sought to hasten as well as to know the period of Henry's
death, as charged against her ; and which it was stated she strove
to accomplish by keeping by her a wax figure endowed with such
magical sympathy, that, in proportion as it wasted away, when
melted before a fire, so would the flesh and substance of King
Henry wither and dissolve. She was found guilty, however, and
sentenced to perpetual confinement, besides doing public penance at
three different places in London. . The duke, whatever his emo
tions, stifled them, and instead of breaking out into violence, as
may have been hoped, appeared patient and resigned. A short time
after, a parliament was summoned at Bury St. Edmunds ; the duke
went without suspicion, was arrested for high treason, and in a few
days later found dead in his bed : murdered there can hardly be a
doubt, . Our great poet makes both Suffolk and the cardinal partici
pators in the crime. Beaufort, strangely enough, survived the duke
but six weeks. His dying thoughts, as described by Shakspere, pre
sent the most awful picture of a criminal and despairing mind that
the whole range of literature can afford, —
Died he not in his bed ? Where should he die ?
Can I make men live, whe'r they will or no ?
O ! torture me no more, I will confess —
Alive again ? then show me where he is !
I'll give a thousand pounds to look upon him. —
He hath no eyes, the dust hath blinded them. —
Comb down his hair; look, look, it stands upright
Like lime-twigs set to catch my winged soul ! —
Give me some drink ; and bid the apothecary
Bring the strong poison that I bought of him.
The amiable monarch, who bends over him, anxious for his soul's
welfare, solemnly adjures him, —
Lord Cardinal, if thou think'st on heaven's bliss
Hold up thy hand, make signal of thy hope. —
He dies, and makes no sign.
Now, if the poet were right in attributing the murder of good
Duke Humphrey, in part to this old man of eighty years, as the
concluding act of a life full of turmoil, and ambition, and worldly
acquisition, — and we have seen how much ground there is to presume
Shakspere was right in so doing, — who, in that case, shall say that
penetrating beneath the surface, and discarding the mere conven
tionalities of the bed of death, the dramatist has not given us the
essential truth after all, even though it be known that the cardinal
bade all present pray for him, and that, when he could no longer
enjoy his enormous wealth in person, he still made it subservient to
his fame, by directing that a considerable portion of it should be
expended in works of charity ?
Suffolk was now supreme in power, and the formidable insurrec
tions under Jack Cade may be taken as evidence of the character of
his government, which became at last unbearable to other classes of
the people of England than those which had followed Cade. The
Commons impeached the favoured minister, and were evidently
determined upon his conviction and death. The queen was no less
determined to save him ; and the weak Henry having been induced to
throw himself into the breach, Suffolk was banished for five years—
to the discontent of both parties. The people endeavoured to seize
him, and execute justice in their own summary fashion ; but he
escaped, and embarked for the Continent. As the two small vessels
that carried him and his retinue were between Dover and Calais, they
were brought-to by a great ship-of-war, the Nicholas, from whence
presently came orders for the duke to come on board. As Suffolk
stepped upon the deck, he was received by the significant salutation
" Welcome, traitor ! " For two days, however, his fate remained
uncertain, the captain of the Nicholas, in the meantime, constantly
communicating with the shore ; but on the third day a boat came
alongside, with block, axe, and executioner all prepared; and
Suffolk was speedily sent to his great account. And thus, one by
one, were the men swept away from the scene, upon which a more
important actor than any of them had been long, but secretly
waiting for a favourable opportunity to enter and play his part.
This was the Plantagenet of the Temple Gardens, the man in
whose person centred the real right to the throne, as the lineal

Chap. I.]

OLD ENGLAND.

347

descendant from the third son of Edward III. ; except,— and the
exception of course, in ordinary circumstances, ought to be a deci
sive one, — possession, and the long-continued sanction of the nation
through three reigns, were to be considered as making permanent
the seizure of the throne by Bolingbroke, who was descended from
the fourth son of the king before named. But it must be confessed
the circumstances of Henry's reign were not ordinary ones. That
king was not only weak at the best of times, but unable, at certain
periods, even to appear to exercise kingly authority. And although
there was no hope of supplanting the good duke, had he lived to
succeed his nephew, that difficulty was removed by his assassination.
And, in short, Richard Plantagenet (Fig. 1207), to speak of him by
the name that Shakspere has made familiar, determined to aim, at least,,
at the attainment of the ' golden round ; ' continuing, however, to act
with his usual prudence and secrecy, and confine his exertions for a
time to the task of winning the Parliament of England to his cause,
by his great deference to their authority, in all the offices entrusted
to him, and more especially in the protectorship of the realm, rendered
necessary during the king's fits of aberration. He took up arms, it
is true — and more than once — but that was with the full sympathy
ofthe nation at large, and in order to check the continual machina
tions of the court party, of whom Queen Margaret was still the
ruling spirit, and Somerset— a Beaufort in ambition as well as in
blood — the professed leader. And here, as in all the private events
that we have spoken of, circumstances worked most favourably for
Plantagenet ; as enabling him to draw together all the armed force
that he could, and yet in so doing to appear but as a supporter of
the people generally, against a most unpopular minister. The
aspect of affairs, therefore, when the wars of the Roses really began,
was this : — two great baronial parties in the state struggling for
political power, and for each other's destruction, and one of the two
at the same time concealing beneath its ostensible claims, others of
an infinitely more important and dangerous kind. . And it is only
by keeping in view the complex character of the wars at their com
mencement, and the insincerity almost necessarily imposed upon the
combatants by their position and views, that we can understand how
Englishmen became engaged in such deadly hostilities with so little
apparent principle to fight for on either side — how such battles as
that of St. Albans (Fig. 1212) came to be fought, for no other
evident reason but to decide whether Plantagenet or Somerset should
be chief minister. In that bloody field the royalists lost their
leader, Somerset, with other nobles ; and the king himself, a warrior
• only in his appearance (Fig. 1192), fell into the hands of the Duke
of York, as prisoner. Still the latter contented himself with a kind
of modest reversion to his former state, of protector, with, however,
this important change in the terms of his appointment, that he held
it during the parliament's, and not the king's pleasure. And that
was all the use he made of the battle of St. Albans. He had not
even the gratification of obtaining what he had most probably all
along hoped and wrought for, a formal parliamentary declaration
that he should be the successor to the throne. And soon after, all
hopes of this nature were destroyed by the birth of a prince. The
duke, however, does not appear to have esteemed the event by any
means of the decisive character that might have been anticipated.
As the nation generally looked upon the child as the son of Suffolk,
and not of King Henry, the Duke of York found it easy to do
the same ; and so abated, it should seem, no jot of heart or hope
that he would yet be king of England. If so, it was clear that
there must be some more powerful acting mind than the duke's at
work, and that mind he found in his great coadjutor Warwick, one
of the most eminent — perhaps, on the whole, the most eminent — of
English nobles. (Fig. 1208.) This eminence was partly owing to
position : the Nevil family, to which the earl belonged, was, it is
supposed, at that time the most extensively-connected family ever
known in England ; and the earl himself was immensely rich ; but
his eminence was still more directly based on his personal qualities ;
on his unbounded hospitality ; his frank and affable bearing ; on his
eloquence and general talents ; on his military skill : so that with
all classes of men he was necessarily popular. The people seem to
have almost adored him. And it must be acknowledged, he had
found a happy mode of preparing them to appreciate all his excel
lences. " When he came to London," says Stow, " he held such
a house, that six oxen were eaten at a breakfast, and every tavern
was full of his meat ; for who that had any acquaintance in that
house he should have had as much sodden and roast as he might
carry upon a long dagger." In fine, he kept open house wherever
he presided; and it has been estimated that not less than thirty
thousand persons were fed daily at his different mansions during the
period of his prosperity. )Such was the man who bound up his
fortunes with Plantagenet, and really did for him all that was done- i

He it was who chiefly won the battle of St. Albans, and thus marked
himself out for the especial attacks of the queen and her party.
Thus when Henry, once more interposing with kind thoughts and
desires, patched up a formal reconciliation between Margaret and
Plantagenet, and induced them to walk together most lovingly
hand in hand with him to St. Paul's, it was Warwick who first
experienced the hollowness of the reconciliation, in an attempt to
assassinate him in the streets of London, in consequence of which
he suddenly left the metropolis. It was he, again, who, after the
parliament that met at Coventry in 1459 had attainted him, with
Plantagenet, and all their chief friends, shortly returned to express
his opinions of the attainder, at the head of thirty thousand men. It
was he who then gave Plantagenet the courage and determination
to throw aside the mask, at last, and declare his purpose ; and most
characteristic was the duke's method of doing so. He returned
from Ireland, entered London witli an armed retinue, and made the
best of his way to the House of Lords. Awful was the state of
excitement and expectation as to what he was about to say — what
do. He went straight to the throne, and laid his hand upon the
gold cloth that covered it ; he was evidently about to announce
himself as king — but his old vacillation checked him even then : he
paused, looked around, and then stood still in the position he had
taken. What a picture of his mind did not that position present ?
The Archbishop of Canterbury asked him if he would not visit the
king in the adjoining palace. The duke replied that Henry ought
rather to wait upon him— that he was subject to no man in that
realm — but, under God, was entitled to all respect and sovereignty.
Still there was no explicit and formal claim made. But in a week
that too followed ; and after much discussion— conducted, however,
under the very awkward circumstance that Warwick's great army
was at hand — the House of Lords suggested that Henry should
retain the crown during his life, and that Richard, Duke of York,
should succeed him. (Fig. 1205.) The Yorkists agreed ; but the
Lancastrians flew to arms, headed by Margaret herself, now not
unnaturally anxious to maintain her son's rights to the throne.
And thus at last, the objects of all parties became open, their
movements real, and the wars of the Roses began in earnest. And
these wars may nearly all be comprised in the history of the illustrious
noble of whom we have spoken. The battle of Northampton was
won by Warwick, and the king taken prisoner for a second time.
That success was followed by a reverse, at the battle of Wakefield,
in which Plantagenet, with all his long-cherished hopes, disappeared
from the busy and bloody scene, that had been got up more
especially for his advantage ; he was defeated by Queen Margaret,
and slain. Warwick's father, the Earl of Salisbruy, was also taken
prisoner, and beheaded by the savage female conqueror. But the
death of the Duke of York caused no pause in the terrible action
that was going on ; it rather, indeed, infused new vigour into it, by
the introduction of the duke's son, a brave and able warrior, who
at first took his father's title of Duke of York, but soon after that of
Edward IV., King of England.
These wars of the Roses, we may observe by the way, tried all
parties' fortitude pretty severely. The cast of a die was hardly a
more uncertain thing than the issue of a battle. The victor had
hardly either time or inclination to congratulate himself on the
conquest of to-day, for it was not at all improbable that he would
be beaten to-morrow. The vanquished, again, suffered not only
the ordinary humiliations of defeated men, but had always super
added the anguish arising from the tremendous losses invariably
inflicted upon their friends and kindred on all such occasions. But
both parties went on till they got used, we suppose, to all kinds of
horrors, and until the only possible end to their mutual intensity of
hatred, was utter exhaustion.
To the loss of his father, as a consequence of Plantagenet's
defeat at Wakefield, Warwick soon after added the disgrace of his
own defeat at St. Albans, Margaret again being the successful
opponent ; but this was before the junction' of Warwick and the
new Duke of York. After that junction, all opposition for the
time was beaten aside, and the combined forces entered London,
and Edward was formally declared king. Instead of Westminster
Abbey, however, Towton was destined to be the scene of Edward's
virtual coronation. There it was that he was to be his own
champion, not in vain words, but by deeds such as the winning of
a battle ; there was he anointed — by the sweat that ran down his
brows, as he reposed from his labours after that well-fought and
successful field. Edward IV. was then indeed King of England ;
and to the miserable but still persevering and resolute Margaret
herself there could have appeared little ground for hope, except
through the severance of Edward and Warwick ; and that event,
little as it could have been anticipated, did occur, in connection
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350

OLD ENGLAND.

[Book IV.

with one of the many romantic stories of which these wars of the
Hoses are full.
King Edward went one day to visit the Duchess of Bedford, who
had married a second husband, Sir Richard Woodville, and was
then living at her manor of Grafton, near Stony Stratford. The
duchess's daughter Elizabeth was present, the young and beautiful
widow of a Lancastrian knight who had been killed at the second
battle of St. Albans and lost his estates by forfeiture. Availing
herself of the opportunity, Elizabeth, kneeling at the feet of
Edward, implored him, for the sake of her helpless and innocent
children, to reverse the attainder. The beautiful supplicant gained
at once her estates and the king's heart, who married her secretly
on an appropriate May morning, in the year 1464. After con
siderable delay and preparation, Edward caused the nobility and
chief estates of the kingdom to meet him at Eeading Abbey, where
Edward's brother, the Duke of Clarence, and Warwick, overcoming
their great indignation at the marriage, took the fair queen (Fig.
1218) by the hand, and introduced her to the assembly. Edward
rewarded them by shortly after making the queen's friends his
bosom counsellors and the recipients of his bounty, to the exclusion
of the Nevils, who had previously enjoyed both, and who had so
well deserved them. The growing division was increased by the
marriage of Edward's brother, Clarence, to one of Warwick's
daughters, and; it is said, by a truly villanous attempt made by
Edward on the honour of another near relation of the great earl
in his own house. At all events a new insurrection broke out in
Yorkshire in 1468, followed almost immediately, to the astonish
ment of Europe, by the capture of the king by Clarence and
Warwick. Eeconciliations and ruptures now again succeeded in
the most perplexingly rapid and unexplained succession ; and at
the next pause it was Clarence and Warwick who were at the
bottom of the wheel, or, in other words, who were flying for their
lives to the Continent. There they met Margaret. The next
marvel for the gossips of England to dilate upon, was the news that
the apparently irreconcilable enemies, who had each upon his or her
head the blood of the other's nearest and dearest kindred, had made
a solemn compact of alliance (secured by the marriage of Prince
Edward to Warwick's -second daughter), and that they were
preparing to invade England. Sudden and almost as causeless, to
all appearance, as the changes of a dream, were those that now
followed. England was invaded — Henry VI. was again proclaimed
king — Margaret, Warwick, and Clarence march to- London —
Edward, in his turn, now becomes the continental fugitive — the
Nevils are reinstated in all their offices. Well, shall we not rest
at last ? By no means. Edward IV., of course, has to act all the
same manoeuvres over again, so he too invades England, with the
assistance of his brother-in-law the Duke of Burgundy — his brother
Clarence joins him — Warwick advances to meet the invaders —
and at Bamet, on the 14th of April, 1471, the opposing forces
encounter each other. The result of that battle (Figs. 1210, 1211)
is the defeat of the Lancastrians, the death of their leader Warwick,
and peace for England, produced, as we have before intimated,
by the utter exhaustion of the principal element of the* wars, the
ambitious and turbulent nobles, who were nearly all destroyed
in them. It is true that, only a few days after, the indefatigable
Margaret was again at the head of an army; but the struggle
was but momentary, and may be rather called a slaughter than
a battle, though of the most decisive character. Margaret
and her son (Figs. 1206, 1214) were both taken. "What
brought you to England ? " said King Edward to the prince. " My
father's crown and mine own inheritance," was the bold reply.
He immediately received a blow on the mouth with the kind's
gauntleted hand ; and that brutal act was the signal for his murder,
which was 'performed by Clarence and Gloucester, afterwards
Eichard III., who thus fittingly makes his first important appearance
as a public man. One thing only remained to do. Edward
returned to London on the 21st of May, and on that very evening,
or the following morning, the poor captive in the Tower, who had
undergone more alternations of fortune during the few previous
years than we have space to mention, was found lifeless. He was
buried at Chertsey monastery (Fig. 1215), though subsequently his
remains were removed, and it is said to Windsor, where a tomb
(Fig. 1216) was erected to his memory. Popular rumour seems to
have had ample reason for attributing Henry's murder to Eichard
of Gloucester, to whose subsequent career we now pass on, seeino-
that the remainder of Edward's reign presents, as regards himself,
no features either of high interest or intrinsic importance, unless
the mysterious death or murder of his brother Clarence in the
Tower be considered an exception. Edward died on the 9th of
April, 14Sfc Portraits of him (Figs. 1217, 1226), with his

autograph and great seal (Figs. 1219, 1220), and his coins
(Figs. 1221 to 1225), and a view of his Court (Figs. 1227, 1228),
will be found among our engravings.
At the time of his father's decease, the Prince of Wales was
with his maternal uncle, the Earl of Eivers, at Ludlow Castle;
and the Duke of York, his brother, in the care of his mother,
Queen Elizabeth Woodville, at London. Poor boys ! They wept,
no doubt, when the mournful tidings reached them; but with
far more reason might they have mourned for themselves could
they have seen into the heart of the powerful uncle who claimed
the charge of them under the title of Protector. That uncle,
Eichard o.f Gloucester, had many advantages to recommend him
to a nation who set great price on strong manly qualities in their
rulers : he was an accomplished warrior, and through all the vicissi
tudes of the previous reign- had been Edward's companion in arms,
and his sagacious and energetic adviser. And if there were men in
England able enough to foresee danger from the high position to
which a character of such force was raised by Edward's death, and
who might try to prevent any injury to those who interposed be
tween the duke and his right of succession to the throne ; there
was, probably, on the other hand, a great proportion of the nation
who wished that he were king, in their apprehensions of the
troubles of a royal minority, and in their admiration of Eichard's
talents. Thoroughly aware of all he had to hope and all he had to
fear, and with a mind fixed, it would seem, on assuming the sceptre
that he professed to hold for his nephew, Gloucester marched instantly
from the Scottish border, where he was commanding an army
against the Scots, and on reaching York on his way to London, sum
moned the gentlemen of the north to swear allegiance to Edward V. :
he was himself the first to take the oath. Arrived at London, he
seemed to be very earnest about the preparations for the young
king's coronation, whilst in reality he was clearing the way for his
own. His chief adviser was the Duke of Buckingham, his cousin,
and their subtle deliberations were carried on daily at a mansion in
Bishopsgate-street, built by Sir John Crosby, an Alderman of
London, who was knighted by Edward IV. after his landing at
Eavenspur in 1471. The mansion (Fig. 1245), known as Crosby
Place, is one of the most interesting antiquities of our metropolis.
Here, and most probably in the Hall (Fig. 1246), sat Gloucester
and his friend in deliberation ; and " To turn the eyes and minds of
men from perceiving their drifts," says Sir Thomas More, they
sent for lords from all parts of the realm to the coronation. " But.
the Protector and the duke, after that they had set the Lord
Cardinal, the Archbishop of York, the Lord Chancellor, the Bishop
of Ely, the Lord Stanley, and the Lord Hastings, then lord cham
berlain, with many other noblemen, to commune and devise about
the coronation in one place (the Tower), in part were they in
another place [Crosby Place] contriving the contrary, and to make
the Protector king. To which council, albeit there were admitted
very few, and they very secret, yet began there, here and there
about, some manner of muttering among the people, as though all
should not long be well, though they neither wist what they feared
nor wherefore : were it that before such great things men's hearts,
of a secret instinct of nature, misgive them, as the sea without
wind swelleth of itself some time before a tempest ; or were it that
some one haply somewhat perceiving, filled many men with suspicion,
though he showed few men what he knew? Howbeit, somewhat the
dealing itself made men to muse on the matter, though the council
were close; for, by little and little, all folk withdrew from the
Tower and drew to Crosby Place in Bishopsgate Street, where the
Protector kept his household. The Protector had the resort, the
king in a manner desolate ; while some for their business made suit
to them who had the doing, some were by their friends secretly
warned that it might haply turn them to no good to be too much
attendant about the king without the Protector's appointment ; who
removed also divers of the prince's old servants from him, and set
new about him. Thus many things coming together, partly by
chance, partly of purpose, caused at length, not common people
only, who wave with the wind, but wise men also, and some lords
eke, to mark the matter and muse thereon : so far forth that the
Lord Stanley, who was afterwards Earl of Derby, wisely mistrusted
it, and said, with the Lord Hastings, that he much misliked these
two several councils, ' for while we,' quoth he, < talk of one matter in
the one place, little wot we whereof they talk in the other place.' "
•Yet neither of these lords seem to have had any idea, when they
rode to the meeting of the two councils the next day, in what a
fearful shape the mystery was to be unfolded to them. Let us
glance at the scene. They enter the council-chamber— the lords
are met— the Protector in a particularly agreeable mood. He leaves

Chap. I.]

OLD ENGLAND.

351

them awhile, and returns with an aspect so entirely changed, as to
strike all present with astonishment and fear. He bares one of his
arms, that had been shrunken from his infancy, and exhibits it as a
proof of the sorceries of traitors that are seeking to destroy him and
Buckingham, and all the old nobility. Ferociously he glares on
those he is about to destroy. Suddenly the room fills with armed
men, and Stanley narrowly escapes a deathblow by lowering his
head below the council-board. Every one knows the fate of the
amiable and courtly Hastings, the incorruptible friend of Edward IV.
and of his heirs. With scarce breathing-time between a doom
utterly unexpected and its execution, he was barbarously beheaded
on a log of wood that happened to be lying on the green within the
Tower. This was the first of the state murders which rendered
that green, and the fearful spot where it is said the grass will not
grow, so memorable. Indeed the whole fortress, instead of a
portion of it, might from that time have justly borne the name
attached to the gateway leading into the area — the Bloody Tower.
(Figs. 1242, and 1264.) Only two days after a similar scene was
enacted before Pontefract Castle, where died three of the queen's
near relations. By such acts, and by making free use of the dungeon,
Gloucester swept aside or awed into passiveness many whom he
could not tempt to support him by active measures. Throughout
all these and other events originating in his ambition, a remarkable
acquaintance with human character is displayed by Eichard, and a
singular power of operating upon it for the furtherance of his own
selfish ends. Nowhere is this more apparent than in his choosing
to divulge his intentions through oratorical appeals to the people,
made for instead of by him, by the principal orators ofthe day — Dr.
Shaw, the preacher at Paul's Cross, and the Duke of Buckingham,
who from the hustings of Guildhall declaimed to the citizens, as
Dr. Shaw had done on the previous Sunday, on the bastardy of
Edward IV. and his children, and his luxurious vices, in contrast
with the noble Duke of Gloucester. A cry was attempted to be raised
of " Long live King Eichard ! " but it was a feeble cry, and short
lived, and Buckingham could only draw from the respectable part
of his audience a promise to think of it. This was disconcerting :
nevertheless, as if the acclamations had been unanimous, Buckingham
expressed a very earnest gratitude; and, proceeding to collect as
many influential persons as he could, led them to Baynard's Castle,
the residence of the Duchess of York, mother of Edward IV.,
Clarence, and Gloucester. The arch dissimulator appeared surprised
at the embassy who there craved audience of him, and with great
humility listened to a long address offering him the crown and royal
dignity in the name of the three estates of the realm. After much
modest reluctance, Eichard of course felt it to be his duty to obey
the voice of the people, so next day he was declared King of England
and France in Westminster Hall. He began his reign by popular
acts of justice and clemency, and might perhaps have kept his
usurped greatness, and after all not have proved one of the worst
of kings, but for the murder of the children that he had in
his charge. Buckingham had fallen from him, and was heading a
great rising of the people throughout Kent, Essex, Sussex, Berk
shire, Hampshire, Wiltshire, and Devonshire; and, to check this
perilous movement, Eichard imagined it necessary to destroy the
young princes on whose behalf it was made ; and this step, by the
horror it excited, and the enemies it multiplied around him, proved
his ruin. A man in his particular confidence, one John Greene,
was secretly sent to Sir Eobert Brakenbury, constable of the
Tower, with a letter, and sufficient credentials, directing Sir Eobert
"in any wise" to put the children under his charge to death.
Brakenbury had probably been induced to take an oath of secrecy,
for he received the terrible command " kneeling before our Lady.''
He had either too much fear or too much conscience to obey
(though his refusal must have been nearly as dangerous), for Greene
returned to report the failure of his embassy, " whereat King
Eichard took such displeasure and thought, that the same night he
said to a secret page of his, ' Oh ! whom shall a man trust ? They
that I have brought up myself— they that I thought would have
mostly served me — even those fail, and at my commandment will
do nothing for me.' ' Sir,' quoth the page, ' there lieth one in the
pallet-chamber without that I dare well say, to do your Grace
pleasure the thing were right hard that he would refuse.' —
Meaning by this Sir James Tyrrel." To this Sir James, Eichard,
according to the narrative of Sir Thomas More, opened his
thoughts regarding the princes, and Sir James "devised that
they should be murdered in their beds, and no blood shed : to the
execution whereof he appointed Miles Forest, one of the four that
before kept them, a fellow fleshbred in murder beforetime ; and to
him he joined one John Dighton, his own horsekeeper, a big,
1-irnarl. snnarp. find strnn<r L-nnve." The merciless deed is thus

described : — " Then, all the others being removed from them, this
Miles Forest and John Dighton, about midnight, came into the
chamber, and suddenly wrapped them up amongst the clothes,
keeping down by force the feather-bed and pillows hard upon their
mouths, that within a while they smothered and stifled them, and,
their breaths failing, they gave up to God their innocent souls into
the joys of heaven, leaving to their tormentors their bodies dead in
bed; after which the wretches laid them out upon the bed, and
fetched Tyrrel to see them; and when he was satisfied of their
death he caused the murderers to bury them at the stair-foot, meetly
deep in the ground, under a great heap of stones." In 1674 the
bones ofthe royal victims were discovered beneath a circular flight
of stairs winding up to the chapel of the White Tower ; and thence
they were removed, by order of Charles II., to Henry VII.'s
Chapel at Westminster. Eichard had now to learn that he had for
once failed egregiously in his policy, for instead of resting quiet
under the sway of so inhuman a tyrant, because he had the power
to strike terror into their hearts, the English at once sent to
Bretagne, to invite to their throne a young man of the Beaufort
branch of the great House of Lancaster, who from five years old,
as he himself afterwards told the French historian, Comines, had
been either in prison or under strict surveillance. The boy was in
the hands of the Yorkists in Eagland Castle when Jasper Tudor,
Earl of Pembroke, his uncle, who was attainted at Edward IV.'s
accession, stole secretly from France, and, at imminent personal
hazard, carried off young Henry to Pembroke Castle, and thence to
sea, where they were driven by stress of weather into the port of
Bretagne. Duke Francis the Second detained both in honourable
captivity, until the Earl of Eichmond was chosen by the chiefs
of the English nobility to cope with Eichard III. for the throne.
The experiment was hazardous, considering Eichmond was wholly
inexperienced in war. After the death of Edward IV.'s sons, his
eldest daughter, Elizabeth, was the rightful sovereign of England,
and the offer made to Eichmond was conditional on his marriage with
her — he therefore took a solemn and public oath to complete that
alliance when he should have conquered Eichard. Henry's personal
claims were very defective. The Beauforts were illegitimate
descendants of John of Gaunt and Catherine Swynford ; and it is
not clear that the patent of legitimacy subsequently entered on the
rolls of Parliament, after the marriage of Gaunt and Catherine,
admitted them to the right of regal succession ; but even granting
that it did, there were in existence nearer offshoots of the Lancas
trian tree, though, being aliens in all respects but this, the nation
paid small regard to them. The only other Lancastrian beside
Henry who was at all formidable was the Duke of Buckingham ;
the mother of each was a Beaufort. It does not seem to be known
with any accuracy what first induced Buckingham to fall from
Eichard ; but it is clear family interest would weigh with him in
supporting Henry, to whom he stood next in a right line of
succession. He might naturally dream that royalty for himself
might be attainable. But Buckingham was not moulded for great
enterprises; his party broke asunder without a blow, and he fell
into Richard's hands and was beheaded instantly. All the hopes
of the nation were then concentrated on Eichmond ; whose name,
Henry Tudor, suggested a train of associations connected with
his descent that, though not amounting to a claim, operated a
good deal in his favour. As grandson of Sir Owen Tudor and the
widow of the lamented Henry V., he was a descendant of the
Welsh sovereigns and the royal house of France. The prophecy
of Henry VI. would also be remembered. One day, as he was
washing his hands at a great feast, happening to cast his eye on
Henry, then a boy, he said, "This is the lad that shall possess
quietly that we now strive for." (Bacon.) The prophecy might
have been in Edward IV.'s mind when he so repeatedly importuned
Duke Francis of Bretagne to render up the young earl. To the
duke's steadfast refusals, dictated it would seem by generous solicitude
for the safety of his guest or prisoner (since he could hardly have
anticipated at that time a restoration of the Lancastrian dynasty),
Eichmond owed most likely his escape from the practices that had
summarily shortened the lives of Duke Humphrey and Henry VI.
After the first abortive attempts of his friends in England, during
which he reached the Devon coast but did not land, Eichmond was
driven from his former shelter in Bretagne by the power of King
Eichard, and resorted to France, where, after an interval of nearly
two years, he prepared for his second descent with a small army of
foreign adventurers and English exiles, placing his reliance entirely
on the aid he should receive after landing.
In this reliance, and in the generally bold character of the
attempt, he ensured for himself success. Those whom King
Richard had planted to defend the coasts suffered the invaders to land

1304.— Chapel at Guy's Cliff.

1203.— Guy's Cliff in the 17th Century,

1308.— Stratford Church: West End.

1305.— Church of Aston Cantlow.

^

1309.---Ancicnt Font, formerly in.Stratford Church

1306.— The Parish Churches, Evesham.

1311.— Luton Church.

1310.— Front of Henry V.'s Chantry, Westminster,

J.
Jkhi

emmf
mm I

13U.— Ebrthleach Chnrch, Gloucestershire.

1312. — Inlaid Brass Monument of Eleanor
Bohun, wife to Thomas of Woodstock, Duke
of Gloucester.— Died 1399.

J313.— Font in East Dereham Church, Norfolk.

1 315.— Weston Church.

No.

45.

1316.— Leatherhead Church.,;

[OLD ENGLAND.]

353

354

OLD ENGLAND.

[Book IV.

without obstruction at Milford Haven, and fo march on unopposed
as far as Tamworth Castle (Fig. 1244). Let us see how Eichard
had employed the time. After the first failure of Henry he
passed various acts that show him to have been fully equal to
the comprehension and advancement of the economical welfare
of the country ; therefore making it still more to be regretted that
he should not have known better what were his true interests than
to pollute himself, with blood and murder, when he was in posses
sion of so much more effectual means for working out his objects.
His restless fears were as furies goading him to destruction. To
prevent the alliance of Eichmond and Elizabeth, he would have
married that princess to his own only son, Edward ; and when the
untimely death of the latter stopped that scheme, Richard had the
insanity and wickedness to propose to her himself; and she, his
own niece, the sister of the poor boys he had murdered, is said to have
been not merely willing but eager to accept the offer — aud this whilst
Eichard's queen, Anne (Figs. 1236 and 1243), yet lived, though
presently after she died, as suspected, of poison. Surely Elizabeth
of York must have dissembled through fear of her uncle. Eatcliff
and Catesby, two of Eichard's most trusted advisers, have the merit
of dissuading him from this infamous scheme, by assuring him it
would rouse the indignation of the people from one end of the
kingdom to the other. Then Eichard publicly disclaimed all
intentions of the kind, though the grossness of the falsehood could
only serve to sink him lower in public estimation. Another of
Eichard's cruelties was the beheading of Collingbourne, a gentle
man whose only crime was his being the author of a popular
rhyme — The cat, the rat, and Lovel our dog,
Kule all England under a hog :
alluding to Eatcliff, Catesby, Lord Lovel, and Eichard, whose
crest was a wild boar. But the tyrant's career was soon to draw
to a close. His power and influence rapidly declined. He was
without money, and durst not ask supplies. Forced loans destroyed
the little remnant of his popularity in London. Hourly he heard
of his nobles passing over to Eichmond. Many that remained
excused themselves on various pretences from arming in his defence.
Under these wretchedly disheartening circumstances, the genius of
the last-crowned Plantagenet shook off every encumbrance, and
displayed itself in a promptitude, ability, and dec i son worthy of
any of his great progenitors. He sent forth a proclamation, drawn
up with infinite skill, according to which Henry Tudor could have
no claim to the crown of England but by conquest, — had bought
the aid of the ancient enemies of France by the surrender in perpe
tuity of all those rights in France that the English had won so
hardly, and by promises of gifts of all that was valuable in England ;
and he was coming with bands of robbers, murderers, and attainted
rebels. Therefore Eichard called on " all true and good English
men " to arm against these invaders, promising himself, like a
diligent and courageous prince, to spare no labour or peril in their
behalf. By such energetic measures, under every disadvantage,
Eichard was able to march toward Leicester with a large force ;
but, according to the Oriental metaphor, having sown the wind, he
was now to reap the whirlwind. Deserters went over in crowds to
his enemy, and Eichard saw around him very few in whom he
could place any faith. The two armies left the towns of Tam
worth and . Leicester (Fig. 1247) at the same time precisely; they
then encamped during the night before the battle, Eichmond at
Atherston, and Eichard near Bosworth, and took up their final
positions on Eedmore plain on the morning of the 22nd of August,
' 1485. The desertions, still increasing, filled Eichard with the
worst forebodings. These haunted him when he lay down to rest
before arming for the fight, and in his sleep he fancied himself
pulled and hauled about by terrible devils, so that in the morning
he looked " piteously," and had not that alacrity, and mirth of mind
and of countenance, that he was accustomed to have before he came
toward the battle. (Hall.) Nevertheless his soldiers beheld him on the
following morning riding on horseback through their ranks, bravely
apparelled, with the crown on his head, and marshalling all into
due order. "When Eichard saw the earl's force had passed a
morass that lay between the armies, he " commanded with all haste
to set upon them ; then the trumpets blew, and the soldiers shouted,
and the king's archers courageously let fly their arrows. The
earl's bowmen stood not still, but paid them home again. The

terrible spot once passed, the armies joined and came to hard
strokes, where neither sword nor bill was spared; at which en
counter the Lord Stanley [who headed one of the three divisions
of Eichard's army] joined with the earl, having three thousand
men with him." The junction at this moment had been sagaciously
planned. The movement, extending as it did throughout Eichard's
army, was completely bewildering; all was confusion and uncer
tainty. "Some," says Fabyan, ''stood hovering afar off till they
saw to which side victory should fall." Of the nobility with
Eichard, only two were perfectly faithful. to him to the last — John
Howard and his son, whom Eichard had created first Duke of
Norfolk (Figs. 1240, 1241) and Earl of Surrey (Figs. 1249). Our
readers will remember the scroll found- by Norfolk in his tent in
the Shaksperian scene —
Jockey of Norfolk, be not too bold,
For Dickon thy master is bought and sold.
Norfolk made a most gallant - attack on the earl's van, which
might have carried victory with it, had the other great leaders
supported him. Sir Eichard Eatcliffe, Sir Eobert Brackenbury,
and a1 few other knights, kiso fought and died nobly for their
master. The fierce struggle had lasted near two hours, and
Eichard's doom seemed certain, when single-handed he nearly re
trieved all misfortunes. He was told that the Earl of Eichmond
with a small number of men-at-arms was not far off, separated it
would appear from the rest of the army ; and as Eichard marched
nearer, he recognised him " by certain demonstrations and tokens
which he had learned of others." On a sudden he spurred " out of
side of the range of his battle, leaving the avant-gardes fighting,
and like a hungry, lion ran with spear in rest towards him.'' His
attack was made with resistless might. Eichmond's standard-bearer
was instantly slain and the standard thrown down. Sir John
Cheney, a man of great force and strength, met him hand to hand,
but was overthrown, and others who tried to stop his way to Eich
mond shared the same fate. Before the troops of Eichmond per
ceived his imminent danger, the earl and the king were met, and
the earl, though he received the shock most bravely, was at last
giving way before the deadly thrusts of Eichard, and beginning to
despair alike of life and throne, which at that moment rested
indeed upon the hazard of the die, when Sir William Stanley, who,
like his father, had the command of three thousand of Eichard's
men, suddenly destroyed the last hope of Eichard, by turning upon
him : then, and not till then, fell Richard III., " manfully fighting
in the midst of his enemies;" The Stanleys unquestionably caused
his defeat and death, and it was Lord Stanley (Fig. 1248) who, on
the spot now called Crown Hill, picked up his battered and blood
stained crown, and placed it on Eichmond's head. We should have
been glad to see more of the old chivalric generosity actuating the
victor's treatment of his rival's dead body, which was stripped,
flung over a horse, exposed ignominiously for three days, and buried '
without respect in the church of Greyfriars in Leicester. We have
given four portraits (Figs. 1230, 1237, 1238, 1239), besides those
on the coins and great seal (Fig. 1232 to 1235), of this remarkable
man. Excepting one, they contradict the vulgar notions of his
person. He may have had some slight deformities, and his stature
was low, but his features were rather handsome, and his aspect polished.
The best notion of the historical Eichard III. is to be gained from
the portrait that we have surrounded by localities of Bosworth Field.
(Fig. 1237.) It was originally published by the Eoyal ^Antiquarian
Society. This shows him young— he was, indeed, scarce thirty
when he seized the crown, and only in his thirty-third year when
he died. The positions of the encampments and armies on Bos-
worth-Field may be yet distinctly traced ; though the ancient barren
wild, without a hedge or tree, gleams and glows beneath the sum.
mer sun with the products of cultivation. The well of which it is
said Eichard drank during the heat of the combat, was drained and
plosed when Dr. Parr visited it in 1812, and wrote his Latin in
scription for a monument. There have been dug up at various
times, shields, crossbows, arrow-heads, halberds, armour, spears
skeletons, &c. In taking leave of Bosworth, we must observe that
the contest was not on that extensive scale which we might 'have
anticipated, considering its eventful character, involving as it
did the death of Eichard, and the introduction to the throne of
England of the Tudor race of sovereigns.

Chap. II.]

OLD ENGLAND.

355

CHAPTER II.— ECCLESIASTICAL ANTIQUITIES.

LL that is fair must fade, or at least
for a time appear to do so, is a rule
as applicable to architectural styles
as to every thing else; and so,
having traced the rise of the beau
tiful Gothic, through its simplest up
to its sublimest developments, we
have now, on entering upon a third
period, to speak of its decline, of
which a too rank prosperity seems to
have been the predisposing cause.
It is as if the great artists of
the day had grown so habituated
to their labours, that when they
found they could rise no higher, why, they were even content to
descend lower, so long as they were still going on ; a wise deter
mination, if they had but changed the direction of their labours,
and endeavoured to raise some other style to the level of the Gothic,
instead of lowering the Gothic itself, while pursuing their experi
ments. As it was, they set to work to "gild refined gold," and
with no better success than might have been anticipated. A style
of which decoration is the peculiarly distinctive characteristic
sprung up, and was intermingled with a style which had ever been
the theme of wonder and admiration on account ofthe stern beauty and
consummate grandeur of its outlines ; the two could not harmonize
on terms of equality ; every principle of art forbade it ; and the result
was the predominance of the first, and the consequent gradual degra
dation and ruin of the Order to which both belonged. But even in
that ruin, the Gothic, like a dying flower, scattered abroad the seeds of
a vigorous progeny, which, under the name of the Tudor Domestic
architecture, forms to this day the most valuable of all styles for
general purposes, which combines at once all the qualities that can be
derived for the largest or the smallest public or private building (ec
clesiastical edifices of course excepted), which, in a word, will give
us the sumptuous magnificence of the Houses of Parliament, or the
picturesque comfort of the suburban or roadside cottage, with its
bay win.dow and gabled roof. It is no doubt from the very want of a
direct or highly-elevated purpose in the minds of the promoters of
this third stage of the Gothic, that the names given to their style
have been so various, and all so comparatively inadequate or inap
plicable. Of these, perhaps the best known, but the least archi
tecturally expressive, is the Tudor, given no doubt on account of
the period when the style was so much in vogue, — the reign of
Henry VII., the first of the Tudor family who occupied the throne
of England. The Depressed Arch order is good, inasmuch as it
shows at once the very feature in which it chiefly differed from the
previous Pointed Arch style ; but very bad in this — that the arch
became a less and less conspicuous feature, and consequently did
not, for long at least, stand in the same relation to the style that
the Pointed Arch did to the Gothic. We come next to the name
by which the style is generally spoken of in scientific works, the
Perpendicular, which is derived from the mullions, or slender strips
of stone that divide the windows longitudinally, and the panellings
that so largely decorate all otherwise vacant spaces of wall. But
on such grounds, as has been well observed, Horizontal Architec-
Jure would be quite as fit, if not indeed a more fitting designation.
If the reader will turn for a moment to the three engravings at the
top of page 356, he will see in the first— ra window from St.
Mary's, Oxford (Fig. 1317) — something like a Perpendicular
effect ; but in the second — a door from the ruined Bishop's palace,
Lincoln (Fig. 1318) — the broad square label over the door gives
a decidedly Horizontal expression to the whole ; while lastly, in the
third, showing the window in the nave of Winchester Cathedral (Fig.
1319), the transoms (or stone strips that cross the mullions, and with
them form the inner framework of a window) are so numerous that
the window becomes cut up into panels, to which the names Perpen
dicular and Horizontal become equally applicable, and equally
unmeaning. But there are other points that make the second the

more appropriate of the two as applied to the style ; such for
instance as the depression of the arch already alluded to, which
conveys the idea of an approximation to the horizontal, in the arch
of Eton College (Fig. 1278), and also the string-courses marking
the different stories of an edifice, which when bold and prominent,
asr in the building just mentioned, aid materially to increase the
horizontal and to decrease the perpendicular effect. Lastly, it
is to be observed, that none of these names convey the slightest
idea of all the other features of the style — the increased expansion
of the windows, and the frequently embattled character of their
transoms, nor of the gorgeous tracery of the fan-roofs, and their
vast pendants suspended in mid air, as^if to mock, in very wanton
ness of artistical skill, the fears and precautions of ordinary
architects ; neither do they suggest ought of the wondrous luxuriance
of heraldic emblazonry that enriched the buildings of the style,
and formed in themselves one of their most peculiar features. Looking
at all these circumstances, perhaps we shall agree that the only name
we have not yet mentioned, the Florid, is on the whole the best.
To judge of the effect of the combination of all these qualities, -
one must pay a visit to Henry VII.'s Chapel at Westminster,
King's College, Cambridge, or St. George's Chapel, Windsor,
three perfect and unadulterated examples of Florid architec
ture. Writers date the decline of the Pointed architecture from
the introduction of this style, and abstractedly we have in a
preceding sentence agreed with them. The purity of the Gothic
was spoiled no doubt ; but when we look upon the superb works
just named, one can hardly help echoing the remark of a friend
of ours to his lady, who remonstrated that some choice dish would
be spoiled by his method of dressing it : — " I like it spoiled," was
the quiet reply. Assuredly one must have very little taste, or a
great deal of it, who does not like the spoiled Gothic.
In all the characteristics of the style that we have enumerated,
King's College, Cambridge, begun in the reign of Henry VI. and
finished in that of Henry VII., stands pre-eminent. Decoration
runs riot there, and the , sense aches again at the beauty and splen
dour and variety that everywhere meet the gaze. Floor alone
excepted, the whole is, to begin with, one mass of panelling in all
the forms of panelling. One thinks nothing can exceed the
elaborate splendour of the entrance-doorway (Fig. 1281) until the
painted windows meet the gaze; yet both these again presently
appear to be surpassed by the roof, composed entirely of arches of
the most airy and most indestructible construction, and covered with
exquisite fan-like tracery, beside which all previous decoration seems
so insignificant, that we feel to want a new word to. express worthily
the character of that which makes the chapel of King's College
glow as it were with a lighter kind of light. And yet we are told ,of
what was intended, of the grandeur and magnificence that loere to
have been exhibited, had not the wars of the Eoses interrupted the.
good King Henry in his projects ! Some interesting records have
been preserved as to the mode of proceeding in those days, from
which it appears that when a king wanted some grand chef-d'oeuvre
of the arts, he had only to send out his commands to that land of
romance in the days of Henry VI., as well as in the days of
Shakspere and Ben Jonson— Southwark, and the matter 'was in
effect settled. At the time fixed there were the windows, or doors,
or roofs required ; or, in fine, a St. George's, a King's College, or
a Henry VII.'s Chapel. In these records we find, for instance,
contracts for the windows of King's College, and for the " orient
colours and imagery" with which they were to be adorned, drawn
up in the same matter-of-fact manner that one would now employ
if a number of mere modern sashes were concerned ; and yet the
" orient colours and imagery " came.
Leaving our readers now to trace out for themselves, by the aid
of these preliminary remarks and our numerous engravings of the
period in question, the many modes in which the Perpendicular
style then developed itself, we proceed to notice the more im
portant and interesting of the buildings represented in those
engravings, occasionally, perhaps, in connection with their archi-
2 Z 2

1317 .—Perpendicular Window.— From St. Mary/a 1318.r^Pernendicu!ar Door.— From, the Bishop's
Church, Oxford. • * palace, Lincoln.

1321.— Effigy of Beatrice, Conntefs
of Arundel. In Arundel Church.

1322.— Efflgy of Lady de Thorpe. In
Ashwelthorpe Church, Norfolk.

m

pp

W 10

1320.— Specimen of Old Paintings in St.
Stephen's Chapel,

IKBi— Efflgy of Sir Thomas Peyton,
Isleham Church, Cambridgeshire.

1326.— Efflgy of Richard Beauchaao, Earl of
Warwick. From his MonumenfVthe Lady
Chapel, St. Mary's Church, Warwick.
356

1327.— Efflgy of Michael de la Pole
Earl of Suffolk. Haversham
Church, Notts.

1326.— Eobert Chamberlain, Esquire to Henrv V
(Cotton MS. Nero, I) 7.)

1324.— Effigy of Lady Peyton. Isleham
Church, Cambridge.'

1328 —Effigy, 0f Sir BtobsmjttBfcflL
Haversham Church, Notts.

1329.— The Duke of Bedford and St. Gejrge. (From the Bedford Missal.)

1330.— Richard Beauchamp, Eail of Warwick, as a Pilgrim, worshipping at
the Holy Sepulchre, Jerusalem. From a MS. of Rouse's ' History of the
Earls of Warwick,' in the Cottoniaii Library (Engraved in Strutt's ' Regal
and Ecclesiastical Costume).'

1332.— Convocation of Clergy. (From the Hail. MS. 4379.

133 U— Transcriber at Work.

1333 —Friar Preaching from a Moveable Pulpit.— (Royal
MS. HE. iii.)

1334.— Passage

ofthe Host. Cripples Worshipping.-(Cotton MS. Nero, D. -0

357

358

OLD ENGLAND.

[Book IV.

tectural characteristics, but generally in the more popular view —
of their uses and history. "We may begin with St. George's
Chapel and Eton ; the last founded by the same monarch, and at
the same time, as King's College, Cambridge, and indeed connected
•with it as a preparatory school. A poet thus introduces us to Eton
and Windsor : —
Ye distant spires, ye antique towers,
That crown the wat'ry glade,
Where grateful Science still adores
Her Henry's holy shade !
And ye, that from the stately brow
Of Windsor's heights, the expanse below
Of grove, of lawn, of mead survey,
Whose turf, whose shade, whose flowers among
Wanders the hoary Thames along
His silver winding way !
Standing on the finest part of the noble terrace (Fig. 1259) on
" Windsor's heights," the matchless prospect described by .Gray, in
his celebrated ode ' On a distant Prospect of Eton College,' is
before us in all its beauty and glory, glittering under a bright
October sun, and a crisp keen atmosphere, that brings out all the
attractions of the " silver winding " Thames, and throws into most
picturesque prominence the antique towers of Eton, a most inte
resting and ornamental feature of the view. '
Let us be thankful that the exclusive spirit which debars the
people from so many of the fairest scenes of our fair island has not
shut up this noble terrace, from which, as from a vantage-ground,
we now resume our notices of the chivalric history of Windsor
(s,ee p. 242), whose knightly sovereigns seem still to rule the
place from their urns. Windsor appears still pervaded by their
spirit — still to echo back the sound of their footsteps — still to be
glorified by their pomps. Our thoughts are here carried back, age
after age, through Tudor and Plantagenet dynasties, through the
various scenes they have enacted here (too many even for the briefest
enumeration), to that earliest period, when, from the first battle
ments, rude and stern, of the fortress and hunting-seat of William
the Conqueror and William Eufus, fair dames looked forth over the
thick woods and tangled vales to see the Norman chivalry —
With cry of hounds, and merry blasts between,
. . . . chase the fearful hart of force. Eabl op Surrey.
That period was the first principal epoch in the history of Windsor
Castle. Of the second we have spoken in Edward the Third's
chivalric career. But we must say a few words more on his
buildings, and the purposes to which he applied them. First, as
to the distribution. Most people know that Windsor Castle extends
around two principal areas, divided by the "proud keep," and
called the Upper and Lower Wards ; the upper being of grand extent.
Thus did Edward III. arrange his home. St. George's Hall, used
for the high festivals of the Knights of the Garter, is on the north
side of the great quadrangle, or Upper Ward (Fig. 1260), and
looks so antique and chivalric that one might almost fancy we
have but to step in to behold the Bound Table itself, with Edward
and all his knights in their glory around it. The hall "forms an
oblong room of vast length, and terminates' a continuous line of
state apartments, to which the public" are admitted. Most truly
does this grand quadrangle deserve the epithet by which it is dis
tinguished ; "grand" it is unquestionably, in its combination of
large space, with regularity of form in the ranges of buildings, and
general dignity of style. Invention in Gothic architecture had so
far ceased by the time of Charles II., that the monarch could find
no better substitute for Edward III.'s buildings in this quadrangle
than the style of Louis XIV. ! But the bad taste of that change
has been remedied, and hence the present fine quadrangle. Fine as
it is, however, its chief interest to an imaginative mind must consist in
its suggestions of the old days, when Edward's thick embattled walls,
and narrow towers, and crooked steps, and loopholed apologies for
windows, letting in a few rays of light in confined and rude apart
ments, were here watched by mailed warriors, and pierced ever and
anon by some shrill trumpet-blast, indicating a new arrival to share
the boundless hospitality of Windsor, and try a passage of arms
with its renowned knights. Those were indeed the palmy days of
Windsor : with all its modern improvements and .heightened refine
ments, we must not look to see their like again, — no — not even
under our present youthful and pageant-loving sovereign.
The interval of twenty-one years between the "jousts, tourna
ments, dances, carols, and great and beautiful repasts" in honour
of Edward's bridal with Philippa of Hainault, in 1328, and the first
grand installation of the Order that promises to be an immortal
memorial qLthe king's unfortunate passion for the lovely and noble-
hearted Countess of Salisbury — marks the rise of Windsor to the

zenith of its glory, when its fame went abroad over the earth. It
was a great day, that anniversary of St. George, in 1349, when
twenty-five of England's best and bravest knights, banded together
by the order of the Garter, and headed by a king in all respects
their fitting leader and glorious exemplar, walked in solemn pro
cession, amid a concourse from all the nations that then partook of
the chivalric fire, and laid their honours and their arms at the feet of
the Most High, in the College or Free Chapel of St. George (Figs.
1276, 1277), that had been founded expressly for the new Order, and
for the maintenance of poor knightly brethren, who might there offer
up prayers for the weal of the souls of the knights-companions. In
this, as in a thousand other instances, we see how deeply the precept
" He that giveth to the poor lendeth to the Lord " had entered into
the hearts and minds of our ancestors, and consequently into all
their institutions ; and thus it is that these institutions, notwith
standing the mighty revolutions of society, still constantly arrest
the eye in some shape or other, to reproach our colder faith and
charity. Gorgeous and protracted was that first festival of St.
George ; full of knightly skill and daring the martial encounters.
The knights-companions, bound to assist and defendfeach other by
the oath of the "golden badge of unity" (Speed) and of martial
honour, boldly met all comers, and challenged the best of the
heroes of all lands. The chief ladies, who presided at the festival,
with Queen Philippa, at their head, were splendidly attired in the
habit of the order, wearing the garter around the left arm, and were
called Dames de la fraternity de St. George. These honours were
conferred from time to time upon a certain number of distinguished
ladies until a century after, when they began to fall into disuse.
Charles I. and his queen would have revived, them, had not the
civil wars prevented.
The habit of the knights-companions was for a long time chiefly
distinguished by its colour (blue), and by embroidered garters,
over the mantle, tunic, and hood, all ' three then prevalent parts of
royal and noble costume. The knights' tunics were lined with
minever, the sovereign's with ermine, fur being then a most costly
and fashionable ornament. Henry VIII. added the collar and the
greater and lesser medallion of George killing the dragon. The
blue riband was Charles II. 's addition. The habit, when worn in
full, with all the msignias, has a most magnificent appearance.
The variety of rich and resplendent objects, each having its own
associations, feasts at once the eye and the imagination. There
are the blue velvet mantle,- with its dignfied sweep, the hood of
crimson velvet, the heron and ostrich plumed cap, the gold medal
lion, the blazing star, the gold-lettered garter, to all which may be
added the accessaries that rank and wealth have it in their power to
display ; as, for example, the diamonds worn by the Marquis of
Westminster at a recent installation, on his sword and badge alone,
worth the price of a small kingdom, or, richer still, her present
Majesty's jewels, that seem to have' been showered by some eastern
fairy over her habit of the Order, among which the most beautiful
and striking feature is, perhaps, the ruby cross in the centre of the
dazzling star of St. George.
The second sovereign of the Order of the Garter was Eichard II.,
in whose reign the knights of England sought elsewhere for fame,
though there was plenty of revelling at Windsor, and on a scale of
the most extraordinary magnificence. There is a very singular fact
in connection with this king and St. George's Chapel, that mio-ht
raise many conjectures. The chapel was falling to ruin, and no less
a person than Geoffrey Chaucer was made " clerk of the works "
for its repair, with a salary of two shillings a day. He did not
however, long occupy the post. We wonder if impressing " car
penters, stone-cutters, and other workmen" quite met with the
bard's approbation. The absurdity and injustice of such a system
is so apparent now, that one hardly likes to find an illustrious name
like the poet's connected with it, though in truth the subject of the
right of the poor to dispose of their labour was in Chaucer's time
little understood even by their best friends. We perhaps err on the
other side, and, by not taking sufficient care to see that our people
are all thoroughly employed, do too often in effect, under the sem
blance of affording freedom to industry, in reality secure to it only
its own misery and degradation.
After the great poet" and his ill-starred master had been gathered
to the grave, Henry of Bolingbroke, having spent his chivalric
energies in foreign wars " for the faith," and his ambition in com
passing the crown, shut up his state captives here, where one  the
Meal heir of the throne— pined thirteen years, until the accession
of a more magnanimous and fearless king, who set wide his rival's
prison doors, and became his true friend and companion in arms.
When this " mirror of all Christian kings " (Henry V.) with his
" grace and myght of chivalry " went forth to France— to die—

Chap. II.]

OLD ENGLAND.

359

he left his young queen, Katherine of France, at Windsor, and
there was born " Henry of Windsor," the sixth of that name, who
had, perhaps, less of chivalric ardour in his composition than any
king that ever sat on the English throne, which was the secret of
his melancholy fate ; for none but a very able or a very chivalric
king could possibly then have governed the [bold and ambitious
English. His relics found their way from the Tower to St.
George's Chapel, where they were worshipped, if not as a hero's,
yet as a saint's, and miracles were long believed to take place at his
tomb (Fig. 1216).
A new epoch in the chivalric history of Windsor would have
opened with the reign of Edward IV., if that monarch, so cruel and
brave in war, so gay and affable in peace, could have accomplished
what he wished. During the few happy years that relieved his
tempestuous career, he laboured hard to restore the declining genius
of chivalry ; but well as he was fitted for the task, it was too diffi
cult even for him, though assisted by the general desire ofthe nation,
and by the stimulus given by the first printed books — the chivalric
romances — of the Caxton press. Firearms were also fast dissi
pating the, prestige attached to knightly skill ; commerce and
literature were opening new and boundless fields for the energies
that had been wasted hitherto on war. A more enlightened reli
gious faith was introducing new refinements and enhancing the
value of life; and, in short, chivalry was already as a lamp of the
night, whose beams grew wan and useless in the radiance of the
opening day of knowledge. Finding that neither authoritative
edicts, brilliant example, nor liberal encouragement could bring
back the old ardour, Edward IV. was fain to solace himself with
the shows instead of the substance of chivalry ; and even in them
was no less strikingly exhibited the growing spirit of the time.
The tournaments, for instance, of the fifteenth century (Figs. 1254,
1255), provided with such cafe for the protection ofthe combatants,
that the chief object of the sport, the development of martial bravery,
was lost ; and the fire of emulation burned so low in the breasts of
the chief knights of the time, tha| they were content to have the
number of blows that should be struck, reduced to as mechanical a
precision as any of the commonest arrangements of the tilt-yard.
The shock of the war-horses, that had formed one of the leading
perils of the encounter, was prevented by a double, barrier of par
titions dividing the hostile parties, and stretching across the area
of the lists ; whilst the thrust of the lance and the sword was also
rendered harmless enough by the points being blunted. (Sir
Walter Scott.)
We are not surprised to find Edward, under such hopeless cir
cumstances, turning to other courtly delights. One day the Lord
Mayor of London, and the aldermen and their wives, received his
summons to attend him at Windsor, — not to present addresses, or
to perform any other state formality — no — but simply to "hunt in
his company, and himself to be merry with them." (Stow.) One
can hardly help smiling to think of grave and solid burgesses,
unused to courtly amusements or courtly society, riding might and
main in Windsor's glades after the jovial king and his favourites
and parasites ; and when the sport was done (a trying sport to
them, very likely), banqueting in the gay silk tents that Edward set
up in his summer hunting for the ladies, " wherein," says Comines,
"he treated them after a magnificent manner," his humour and
person being, in the words of the same excellent judge, "as well
suited to gallantry as those of any prince I ever saw in my life, for
he was indisputably the most beautiful man of his time." Whilst
at Windsor these worthy city guests of Edward IV. would pro
bably do something more for their monarch's amusement than
simply hunt ; Jhey could not " ride in the mumming," as their fore
fathers had done at the Christmas festival of Henry IV., and for
which the said civic mummers " had great thanks ? " What would
our present city dignitaries say to amusing our court in this way ;
capering grotesquely before the highest personages of the realm in
visors and suits of buckram, representing wild men and women,
birds, beasts, and angels? (Fig. 1256.)
But there was other sports at Windsor. There was one personage
who, we imao-ine, must have -been particularly dreaded by the mayor
and aldermen at Windsor, for many would be the quips and cranks
he would have at their expense as he stood at the king's elbow,
ready to receive their largesses, and those of the rest of the company,
for his biting wit. But then, mayor and aldermen would know full
well, there was no restraining the court fool (Fig. 1257), and if
they winced a little, why, so did others : and, after all, without the
relish of the mirth he created, pageants and sports would have been
but indifferent enjoyments. When spirits grew dull, who like him
could brighten them? The jingle of the bells attached to his
motley yellow-fringed garments, the flourish of his bauble— a staff

with a blown bladder or zany head at the top of it, the shake of
his ass's ears, and his various practical jokes, made even the grave
gay, and prepared men of all moods to abandon themselves to the
humours of the time. The court fool is thus painted, not over
favourably, in ' Lodge's Wit's Miserie,' 1599 :— " In person comely,
in apparel courtly, but in behaviour a very ape, and no man : his
employment, it is asserted, was to coin bitter jests, and to sing
profligate songs and ballads ; give him a little wine in his head, he
is continually fleering and making of mouths : he laughs intempe-
rately at every little occasion, and dances about the house, leaps
over tables, outstrips men's heads, trips up his companion's heels,
burns sack with a candle," and performs a great many other mad
cap and mischievous feats, in the course of which hi* morals, it is
more than hinted, " lose all quality of fastidiousness." Such v/as the
darker and coarser side of the picture ; but under much of the
fool's folly and caustic insolence would be often conveyed useful
truths, that durst only be uttered by all-licensed lips, and the
utterance of which was indeed virtually a part of the court fool's
office, which required of course anything but a fool to fill it success
fully, and was sometimes rewarded by kinder feelings in the royal
master than their respective positions might seem to warrant.
There were affection and regret in the exclamation of the distracted
Lear—" And my poor fool is hanged ! " Bouffbn in French and
Buffoon in English have been occasionally used as synonymous with
court fool. The word is derived from buffa, a corrupted Latin
word of the middle ages, meaning "a slap on the cheek:" Buffe
and Buffet in the old French, and Bofetada in Spanish, were of the
same sense. At present the Italian Buffone means a ludicrous
fellow, but not always a contemptible one ; and this seems to have
been the idea of the court buffoon or fool of the fifteenth century,
who was a regular officer of the royal household from the Conquest
to Charles II.
Lest too much of the sweets of life should cloy, the appetite, was
sharpened now and then by a war-movement, intended for Scotland
or France, the latter got up manifestly as a pleasant stimulus, on
the old pretensions. In 1475, Garter king-at-arms was sent by
Edward as herald to make a suitable demand. What followed is
so rich in traits of character, that we must find room for it in
passing. Louis XI., " the Fox," whom two of the greatest romance
writers of England and France have, each in his own peculiar way,
made familiar to the world as a character supereminent for craft
and cruelty, was seated with the lords of the French court, when
Garter with due form delivered to him. a letter from Edward IV. of
England. The sight of it must have created a painful commotion in
the mind of Louis, for though he despised his brother king's effemi
nate luxuries, he knew and feared the warlike propensities to which
Edward was no less prone. The crown must have seemed just then
to shake upon his, head. He took care to read the letter first to
himself as he sat, and found his worst fears verified. He was
requested, in, very elegant and polite terms, to render up the sove
reignty of France as the inheritance of King Edward, and it was
suggested that, in the event of a refusal, there might be more
French wars. For either alternative Louis had no relish whatever,
but lest some of his court might, he withdrew into another room,
and sent quietly for the herald, to whom he professed the most won
derful respect and affection for his master, who he knew had been
set on to this step by others, and he showed Garter how desirable
for both England and France would be a peaceful accommodation,
using various arguments, the best of which, to the herald's mind,
would be the three hundred crowns that Louis's own royal hands
put into his pouch, with a promise of a thousand more when the
good peace should be completed. The least that Garter could do
in return was to give so very generous and so very amiable a king
the best advice he could think of, and then go back to make a
mediatory report of his embassy. So much for Garter. The French
nobles had now to be dealt with. There were, says Comines, the
historian, and a sharer in the scenes he describes, " many persons
waiting outside during the king's private discourse with the herald,
,all of them impatient to hear what the king would say and to see
how his majesty looked when he came forth. When he had done,
he called me," continues Comines, " and charged me to entertain
the herald till he ordered him some other company, that might
keep him from talking privately with anybody. He commanded
me likewise to give him a piece of crimson velvet of thirty ells ;
which I did. After which, the king, addressed himself to the rest
of the company, gave them an account of his letters of defiance, and
callino- seven or eight of them apart, he ordered the letters to be
read aloud, showing without the least sign of fear in the world;
and indeed he was much revived by what he had got out of the
herald." Louis was not, however, to get rid of his adversary so

1335 — Male Costume in the time of Henry XV.

1336.— Male Costume in the time of Henry V.

1337.— Female Costume in the time of Henry V. (Royal MS. D 3.

1338. — Male Costume in the time of Henry VI.

13311,-Servant, to prevent Treachery, tasting the Wine before serving it at Table
(Royal MS. 14 E3.)

1340.— Male Costume in the time of Edward IV. (Cotton MS
.Nero, D a, and Royal MS. 15 E. 2.)

1341.— Law Habits ofthe Fifteenth Centnrv. (Collected from vari»us"eontempoiary MSS, Eneraved in
Strutt's 'Angel-Cynnan.'} "

IStt-^Sayiag Grace. (Royal MS.S14 E. 3J

1343.— Female Costume in the time of Edward IV. (Cotton MS
Nero, D 9, and Royal MSS. 15 E 2 and 15 E 14.)
360

1245.— Tilting Helmets in the time of Henry V —In
Cobham Church, Kent

1844.— Female Costume in the time of Henry VI.

mmm

ISP :

No.

46.

[OLD ENGLAND.]

361

362

OLD ENGLAND.

[Book IV.

easily as he hoped, Edward landed in France in 1475 with a
choice army. Louis's fears were intense, but • he knew how to dis
guise them. One thing was- clear to him, there must be no more
. Agincourts, no more pitched battles. The only antidote of the
English, a Pope had said, was the Scotch. Louis had "found out
another. They were a straightforward, unsuspicious people, these
English, and Louis resolved to dupe them. It is most amusing to
read in the narrative of Comines, how the simplicity of our war
riors, king and all, was operated upon by Louis, who, exulting in
his superior guile, despised them for the quality that was in reality
one of their greatest ornaments. He won their hearts by the same
kind of false professions and profuse liberality that had been so
successful with the Garter herald ; they were his dear and honoured
guests ; nothing was too good, too troublesome, or too costly, that
he could provide for their accommodation or enjoyment. At his
very first meeting with Edward on the bridge of Picquigny, near
Amiens, when the kings saluted each other from the opposite sides
of a strongly-grated barrier, Louis at once found the way to Ed
ward's good graces by telling him jocosely he should be glad to see
him at Paris, where he should have for his confessor the Cardinal
of Bourbon, who would grant him pleasant absolution for any little
peccadilloes he might commit there in the way of love and gal
lantry. A treaty was soon concluded ; but, to Louis's vexation,
Edward accepted the invitation given. " Certes," observed Louis
to Comines, in his characteristic way, " our brother of England is
a very fine man, and a warm admirer of the ladies ; he might chance
to find some dame at Paris so much to his taste, as to tempt him to
return ; his predecessors have been too often in Paris and Normandy
already, and I have no great affection for his company on this side
the Channel, though ready to hold him as friend and brother on the
other side of the water." Edward however did not go to Paris,
but returned to England, fairly bowed, as it were, out of the coun
try which he had entered with such lofty determinations to make his
own. But it is time that we should speak of the most memorable of all
the incidents of Edward's life at Windsor, his rearing of the ex
quisitely superb St. George's Chapel, the general effect of which on
the imagination, and especially in the choir (Figs. 1276, 1277), has
been already alluded to, though to convey an adequate impression of
it, to one who is a stranger to the place, would be next to impossible.
King's College Chapel, and Henry the Seventh's Chapel, unrivalled
for gorgeousness, must yield to St. George's in diversity, chasteness,
and elegance. Though called a chapel, it is more like a small
Cathedral; indeed, by the word chapel our forefathers generally
meant a small church, in which sense it was here applied, St.
George's Chapel being the church to the royal College of Windsor,
composed of canons, poor knights, and various officers and attend
ants. The first founder of both the college and collegiate chapel
was Henry I. Of the chapel, rebuilt by Henry III., there remain
to this day evident traces in the range of closed arches on the south
side of the Dean's cloisters, and some others behind the altar. We
readily perceive other styles also after that date, and previous to
the florid Gothic of Edward IV. ; but these interminglfngs of the
productions of various periods by no means mar the perfection ofthe
whole as a work of consummate art. The merit of the new design
belongs probably to Richard Beauchamp, Bishop of Salisbury, and
first chancellor of the Garter, whose religious profession did not
prevent him from having a most intense devotion to chivalry, which
led him, " out of mere love towards the order " of the Garter, " daily
to attend the advancement and progress of this goodly structure."
Beauchamp commenced the work about 1476, and died before it was
completed. The gifted knightly architect, Sir Reginald Bray, then
followed up the high task, and brought to it equal genius and taste.
He too died while theTabric was in progress, and after that we find,
in 1507, that the groined ceiling of the choir was intrusted to two
freemasons, John Hylmer and William Vertue, who agreed to con
struct it for seven hundred pounds by the Christmas of 1508.
The rich stalls of the knights companions, and other decorations of
the choir, were chiefly added by Henry VIII., at whose death all
the solid masonry, roof, side chapels, and embellishments were
nearly if not quite finished. Thus piece by piece were the
richest productions of the middle ages composed, till the whole at
tained to full development, and the glorious composition, as it has
been beautifully said of King's College Chapel, seemed as if " knit
together by the fingers of angels." One is never tired of wondering
at the exhaustless invention of the architects of these royal chapels.
The roof of St. George's presents a distinct novelty, of the boldest
and most luxuriant fancy. Between the fan-work runs a central
space, fille^up with diversified pannelling, enriched with pendants.
To effect this, it was necessary to widen the nave more than usual,

though the aisles are left of the ordinary proportion ; and, observes
Dalloway, " they have all the magic perspective of the cloisters at
Gloucester," and are " even improved by loftiness." The magnifi
cent west window, as at King's College Chapel and Henry the
Seventh's, fills up the whole width of the nave : the stained glass
was collected here from other windows of the chapel, in 1774,
and the whole has been recently perfected. The side chapels, or
chantries, commemorative of illustrious personages of the fifteenth
and sixteenth centuries, are highly beautiful, and in perfect keeping
with the rest of the fabric. One of the most unique of tombs is found
in the chapel, being the iron or steel work by Quintin Matsys placed
over the remains of Edward IV., who was buried here with great
pomp, near the tomb of Henry VI., the guilt of whose death he pro
bably shared with the Duke of Gloster, who had the general infamy
of it. Pope, struck by the circumstance of the rival kings of York
and Lancaster thus neighbouring each other in the peaceful shadows
of the grave, writes —
Let softest strains ill-fated Henry mourn,
And palms eternal flourish round his urn ;
Here, o'er the martyr king, the marble weeps,
And, fast beside him, once-fear'd Edward sleeps,
Whom not the extended Albion could contain,
From old Bolerium to the German main.
The grave unites, where e'en the great find rest,
And blended lie the oppressor and the oppress'd.
Some workmen repairing the chapel in 1789, perceived an aper
ture in the side of the vault where Edward was interred. This
being enlarged, and' the interior laid open in the presence of the sur
veyor and two of the canons, the skeleton of the monarch was
found enclosed in leaden and. wooden coffins, the latter measur
ing six feet three inches in length. The head was reclined to the
north side ; there was no appearance of cere-cloth or wrapper, rings,
or other insignia. The bottom of the coffin was covered with a
glutinous muddy liquor, about three inches deep, of a strong saline
taste. It is somewhat singular that the coffin of his queen in the
same tomb should have been found entirely empty. She died in
confinement in Bermondsey Abbey, about three years after her con
sort, and is supposed to have been secretly interred. Among other
celebrated personages interred in St. George's Chapel, we may
briefly enumerate Henry VIII. and Jane Seymour, Charles I., the
Crookback's victim Hastings, both the gifted ecclesiastical and
knightly architects of the chapel, many of the noble Beauforts ; and,
in Wolsey's tomb-house, first built by Henry VII., to which a sub
terranean passage leads from the foot of the altar, various members
of the present royal family, down to King William IV.
One should not simply see St. George's Chapel, but stay to hear
Divine service performed in it, if we would feel in all their power
the influences of the place. It has been observed in the paper,
' Windsor, as it Was ' (' Penny Magazine '), "I account it one of the
greatest blessings of my life, and a circumstance which gave a tone
to my imagination, which I would not resign for many earthly gifts,
that I lived in a place where the cathedral service was duly and beau
tifully performed. Many a frosty winter evening have I sat in the
cold choir of St. George's Chapel, with no congregation but two or
three gaping strangers, and an ancient female or so in the stalls
lifted up to heaven by the peals of the sweetest of organs, or en.
tranced by the Divine melody of the Nunc Dimittis, or of some
solemn anthem of Handel or Boyce, breathed post exquisitely from
the lips of Vaughan. If the object of devotion be to make us feel,
and to carry away the soul from all low and earthly thoughts,
assuredly the grand chaunts of our cathedral service are not without
their use. I admire — none can admire more — the abstract idea of
an assembly of reasoning beings offering up to the Author of all
good their thanksgivings and their petitions in a pure and intelligible
form of words ; but the question will always intrude, does the heart
go along with this lip service ? and is the mind sufficiently excited
by this reasonable worship to forget its accustomed associations with
the business, and vanities, and passions of the world ? The cathe
dral service does affect the imagination, and through that channel
reaches the heart. In no place of worship can the cathedral service
harmonise better than with St. George's Chapel. It does not im
press the mind by its vastness, or grandeur of proportions, as York
— or by its remote antiquity, as parts of Ely ; but by its perfect and
symmetrical beauty. The exquisite form of the roof — elegant yet
perfectly simple, as every rib of each column which supports it
spreads out upon the ceiling into the most gorgeous fan — the painted
windows — the rich carving of the stalls of the choir — the waving
banners — and, in accordance with the whole character of the place,
its complete preservation and scrupulous neatness — all these, and

Chap. II.]

OLD ENGLAND.

363

many more characteristics which I cannot describe, render it a gem
of the architecture of the fifteenth century."

The close proximity of Eton and Windsor is a fact familiar to
most persons, however personally unacquainted with the neighbour
hood. The two places, indeed, are essentially one, though lying
in different counties, and on opposite sides of the Thames. There
was a time, also, it appears, when the lords of Windsor and
of England thought that the college of Eton really should be
as united by the laws of its establishment, as by the circum
stances of the locality to Windsor. Edward IV. petitioned Pope
Pius II. to remove the foundation and unite it to Windsor, on the
ground of the heavy expenditure required to finish the establish
ment begun by Henry VI. at Eton ; and then, curiously enough,
when his wishes had been formally carried into effect, he again
petitioned the Pope (Paul II.) to undo what had been done, urging
that he had been deceived. But for the comparatively peaceable
character of the establishment then meditated, namely, a pro
vost, ten priests, four clerks, six choristers, and twenty-five poor
men, with the leaven only of twenty-five riotous scholars, one
might have supposed that Edward had felt some misgiving in
his mind, in the interval, as to the inroad the new institution
might make upon his own comfort at Windsor if brought too
close. The bronze statue of Henry VI. that meets our gaze in the
quadrangle, as we approach the academic buildings, shows us, as
all works so situated should, the founder of the pile ; though the
monarch's labours were, as we have incidentally seen, interrupted,
and by a cause that every one readily divines — the wars of the
Roses, and his own constantly-increasing misfortunes, which ter
minated only in a bloody and secret death. This statue is not
the only one of the unfortunate Henry at Eton, there is another
by Bacon in the chapel ; a part of the structure that stands out,
externally, from the generally plain character of the rest of the pile»
not only in materials, being of stone, while the buildings generally
are of brick, but also by its pretensions and beauty, the college
exhibiting little of either of those qualities elsewhere. The aspect
of the whole has been likened to the aspect of the well-known St.
James's Palace, London. Lupton's Tower, in the centre of the
facade shown in our engraving (Fig. 1278), was the last portion
erected of the ancient structure, and was only finished in the early
part of the reign of Henry VIII.
The assemblage in the chapel at prayer of such a number of the
" flower of English aristocratic youth," as Kohl justly designates
them, must be indeed a stirring sight, and one, at the same time,
calculated to beget high and solemn speculations, "particularly
when it is recollected that the past annals of Eton prove that who
ever at any time sees six hundred scholars assembled, sees among
them a great number whose names and lives will hereafter become
interesting to the whole world. How many famous lawyers and
authors, how many distinguished statesmen, ecclesiastics, generals,
and admirals have received their education at Eton, and knelt on
their knees in this chapel, morning and evening ? how many future
famed and influential heroes, statesmen, actors, and legislators knelt
there at that moment among the rest ? " The writer of this passage
speaks of something as appearing strange and unbecoming to him,
a German, namely, the order of the congregation, " commoners "
above " poor scholars," and " noblemen" above commoners. There
is no such distinction whatever at Eton, either in chapel or
school. Rank, except the rank of scholastic merit, is entirely
unknown. Of the three chief schools of England, Eton, Winchester, and
Westminster, the first is the most important in numbers, wealth,
and popularity. Of the two objects that the founder had at heart, the
educating youth and providing for old age, the first alone has been
observed, and the second apparently sacrificed to it ; no *\ poor and
infirm old men " now form any part of the foundation. At the
head of Eton we find a provost, a vice-provost, and six fellows.
These together constitute, as it were, the senate that rules the little
¦world of Eton. The executive government may be said to be
carried on by the head-master, with a numerous corps of under-
masters and assistants. Lastly, as to the body for whom all this
machinery exists ; it is divided into two classes, the one consisting
of the seventy scholars, who form a part of the foundation, and who
wear the black, college gown; and the other, formed of the
" Oppidans," or scholars who are simply sent to Eton to receive
their education, and who, having no other connection with it, are
boarded in the different houses established for that purpose in the
town of Eton. The college is of course anything but a cheap

school. Even for the king's scholar, that is, one of the seventy,
all of whom should be poor boys, the incidental charges are per
fectly incompatible with the means of very poor parents.
For those parents who, without being wealthy, have still sufficient
means to secure for their sons a king's scholarship at Eton, the
college offers great advantages. Even the fagging system, brutal
as it has been, and brutal as to some extent it must remain whenever
the powers given by it rest in the hands of a boy-tyrant (ever the
worst of tyrants), yet even that system gives to the king's scholar
a means of asserting his independence and dignity, which might
otherwise be seriously compromised by the thoughtless or selfish
recklessness of the purse-proud young merchant or haughty young
lordling. Then, too, there are the continually-recurring vacancies
for the king's scholars at King's College, Cambridge, according to
the arrangement of the royal founder of both, where they are at
once provided for, and after three years succeed to fellowships.
An ancient festival called Montem takes place every three years.
It has been supposed that it sprung from another custom, one
of the most popular in the middle ages, known by the name
of the boy-bishop. " What merry work," says Bishop Hall, in
his ' Triumphs of Pleasure ' (written in the seventeenth century),
" it was here in the days of our holy fathers (and I know not
whether in some places it may not be so still), that upon St.
Nicholas, St. Katherine, St. Clement, and Holy Innocents' day,
children were wont to be arrayed in chimers, rochets, surplices,
to counterfeit bishops and priests, and to be led with songs and
dances from house to house, blessing the people, who stood grinning
in the way to expect that ridiculous benediction ! Yea, that boys
in that holy sport were .wont to sing masses, and to climb into the
pulpit to preach (no doubt learnedly and edifyingly) to the simple
auditory : and that was so really done, that in the cathedral church
of Salisbury (unless it be defaced) there is a perfect, monument of
one of those boy-bishops (who died in the time of his young pon-
tificality), accoutred in his episcopal robes, still to be seen." This
very interesting monument (Fig. 1206, p. 268) will be found
among our engravings. The boy-bishop of Salisbury, here referred
to, is actually said to have had the disposal of any prebends that
might fall vacant during his brief term of authority. The custom
was abolished by Henry VIII. ; and then it was, in all probability,
that the scholars of Eton, setting their wits to work how to obey the
statute and yet keep their holiday, hit 'upon the Montem. We
know that there was a boy-bishop of Eton in papal times ; — we
know that a boy dressed in a clerical habit formed at one time a
part of the existing ceremony, and read prayers, evidentally repre
senting the abolished bishop ; and, lastly, we know that the present
Montem did, up to the middle of the last century, take place on the
very day originally set apart for the pranks of the mitred youthful
ecclesiastic.

Among the Norman visitors to King Edward the Confessor's
court, who first gave England a foretaste of what they were after
wards to suffer from that imperious and warlike people, was Eustace,
Earl of Boulogne, who, on his return, engaged in a disgraceful affray
at Dover, arising out of the insolence of his armed followers as he
marched them through the town : eighteen perished for their pre
sumption, and the bold Norman earl fled for his life before the
English whom he had insulted. He was, however, protected by
the king, and became the husband of Goda, the Confessor's sister,
a match that could not be very pleasing to the English nation.
Earl Eustace bestowed the manor of St. Mary, called also Lanchei,
and Lamhea, now Lambeth, the property of Goda his wife, on the
bishops of Rochester, who by certain exchanges in the twelfth cen
tury transferred it to the archbishops of Canterbury.
The removal of the chief residence of the archbishops from
Canterbury to London was a consequence of some of those factions
which in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries so disturbed the
Catholic constitution, and at the same time revealed how much evil
there was latent in its system. The primates of Canterbury were
at enmity with the monks thereof: on the side of the primates was
the sovereign of England ; on the side of the monks was the pontiff
of Rome. Archbishop Baldwin tried to set up a rival house for
canons regular at Hackington near Canterbury, but the monks,
backed by°the Pope, soon put a stop to that plan. Archbishop
Hubert next resolved to carry out what Baldwin had failed in,
only at another place, the manor of St. Mary at London. Richard
I approved Hubert's scheme, and the important fabric was set
about with due energy. In a sad state of agitation, the Canterbury
monks, terrified lest the glorious and gainful relics of St. Thomas-
a-Becket should be taken from them, to lend a lustre and brmg
3 A 2

1356.— House of the Fifteenth Century, at Leicester. In which it is
said tticairi III. slept the night bsfora the Battle of Bosworth.

1358.— Vault under Gerard's Hall.

364

1339.— St. Mary's Hall : Street Front.

1361.— Street in, London : Cheapside

1360.— St. Mary's Hall : Interior.

1352.— Street in London.

%k § if mimii

JffiiiMniirEjBU^lM

in
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'v ^lliSIIli!3l!l

13BS.— Street in London.

1364.— An Inn Yard.

366

OLD ENGLAND.

[Book IV.

substantial offerings to the rising establishment at London, again
implored the help of the supreme head of the church. It was
not denied. Bull rapidly followed bull, high-toned and threatening,
commanding Hubert to desist, and the king to cease to support
him. These tremendous missives in a short time bowed the iron
wills of Archbishop Hubert and of Coeur-de-Lion, who found it
easier to cope with savage beasts and Saracens than with the Pope-
But Hubert was not compelled to return to reside at Canterbury,
and thus that city lost an honour which it never afterwards re
gained. For some years the primates seem to have been but humbly
lodged in the manor-house of St. Mary's parish ; until another
of the fiery discords of the age, still more remarkable than the
preceding, was the occasion of an edifice being erected worthier
of its exalted inhabitants. Archbishop Boniface was one of the
foreign prelates whom the king in the thirteenth century had
favoured the country with, a person without the least fitness for a
spiritual vocation, though installed at the very summit of the
English church. Not content with the princely revenues he received,
Boniface was in the habit of making what he styled his visitations,
that is, travelling in great pomp, and with a yast retinue, from
monastery to monastery, parish to parish, at the expense of those
whom he visited, who suffered cruelly under his shameless exactions.
One of these visitations brought him to the Priory of St. Bartholo
mew in Smithfield, " where, being received with procession in the
most solemn wise, he said that he passed not upon the honour, but
came to visit them." The canons, who might well shrink at the
word from his mouth, knowing what was meant by it, answered
that they, " having a learned bishop, ought not, in contempt of him,
to be visited by any other; which answer so much offended the
archbishop, that he forthwith fell on the sub-prior, and smote him
on the face, saying, ' Indeed, indeed ! Doth it become you English
traitors so to answer me ?' Thus raging, with oaths not to be
recited, he rent in pieces the rich cope of the sub-prior, and trod it
under his feet, and thrust him against a pillar of the chancel with
such violence that he had almost killed him. But the canons seeing
their sub-prior almost slain, came and plucked off the archbishop
with such force that they overthrew him backwards, whereby they
might see he was armed and prepared to fight. The archbishop's
men, seeing their master down, being all strangers, and their
master's countrymen, born at Provence, fell upon the canons, beat
them, tore them, and trod them under foot. At length the canons,
getting away as well as they could, ran, bloody and miry, rent and
torn, to the Bishop of London to complain : who bade them go to
the king at Westminster, and tell him thereof. Whereupon four of
them went thither ; the rest were not able, they were so sore hurt.
But when they came to Westminster the king would neither hear
nor see them, so they returned without redress. In the mean
season the whole city was in an uproar, and ready to have rung the
common bell, and to have hewed the archbishop into small pieces ;
who was secretly crept to Lambeth, where they sought him, and,
not knowing him by sight, said to themselves, ' Where is that ruffian
— that cruel smiter? He is no winner of souls, but an exacter of
money, whom neither God nor any lawful or free election did bring
to this promotion ; but the king did unlawfully intrude him, being
unlearned, a stranger born, and having a wife,' " &c. (Stow.) In
stead of receiving redress, those who had been so grossly injured
were presently excommunicated by the archbishop. The Pope then
stepped in to adjust the affair, and with a shrewd eye to the
splendour and profit of the church, ordered Boniface to do penance
for his fault, by building for the see of Canterbury a rich palace
at Lambeth, in the room of the then existing manor-house. And
the palace was built accordingly. Six hundred years of mighty
changes for England and the church have rolled away since that
atoning act, and we cannot help wishing that with the palace the
custom had survived in which it originated. How would the land
be studded over with noble edifices, if every distinguished offender
of the Boniface kind had been so put to his purgation !
There are few antique edifices in the metropolis more reverenced
and cherished by the inhabitants than Lambeth Palace. It is not
hidden out of sight, as many are. Its conspicuous position on the
banks of the Thames (Fig. 1290), where all who pass up or down
the river between Westminster and Blackfriars, or across it at the
former place, must behold the edifice literally embosomed in green
woods, renders it widely familiar. But the strong interest that
attaches to the. palace has more potent foundations than this. We
think of its high antiquity ; we remember that it has been the place
of judgment and confinement for many of our earliest martyrs to
Protestant prhiciples ; visions of splendour float before the mind, as
we recall the visits so often made to the palace by our kings and

queens, especially Mary and Elizabeth. Mary completely furnished
the palace at her own expense for Cardinal Pole, whom she fre
quently visited : and Elizabeth during her long reign honoured
successive archbishops in the same way, especially Parker and
Whitgift, staying sometimes two or three days together, and being
magnificently feasted. The barges of these high visitors still to
the wandering fancy seem to move to and fro in the sunlit river in
all their glitter and pomp, and between banks fairer than the Thames
now possesseth. In such day-dreams, of course, good Queen Bess
figures conspicuously in her ruff and hooped petticoat : we see her
landing at Lambeth Palace, and handed forth by the courtly arch
bishop, who however, we suspect, would gladly lose the honour of
the visit, if at the same time he could avoid hearing his gracious
mistress's somewhat free'-spoken words. It is not pleasant, for
instance, after one's lady has been expending all her energies in the"
entertainment of a queen, to hear the guest at departure express
her thanks in the fashion of Elizabeth to Archbishop Parker's
lady : " Madam I may not call you, and Mistress (a word used then
in a disreputable sense) I am ashamed to call you, so I know not
what to call you, but yet I do thank you ;" — and all because her
self-sufficient Majesty does not like the clergy to be married !
Supposing the reader to be a stranger to the existing palace, we
will take leave to usher him into its precincts, and conduct him
through it, reviving by the way a few — it can be but a few — of the
memories that attach to particular parts. The entrance gate of the
outer palace-court first impresses us by its extraordinary height and
size. The most beautiful part of it is the groined roof under the
deep arch. This we see at once is a relic of the rich Gothic of
the fifteenth century. The whole gate was rebuilt about 1490 by
Cardinal Morton, in place of the " Great Gate " that we find
mentioned in the steward's accounts of the palace in the reign of
Edward II. That would be a sort of castle-gate, better suited,
according to our modern notions, to the home of a warrior than a
prelate. But prelates' houses were, in effect, castles ; often regularly
fortified, and in times of civil commotion defended against sieges
and attacks, like any of the regular fortresses. At that great old
gate, in the reign of Edward I., the daily fragments of the house
were distributed, and every Friday and Sunday a loaf of bread was
given to every beggar that came, sufficient for a day's sustenance.
On high festival days one hundred and fifty pence (old money) were
given to one hundred and fifty poor people, besides all which, good
Archbishop Winchelsey sent provisions, money, and apparel to the
aged, the sick, and the unfortunate who were either ashamed or
unable to beg. The venerable Protestant Archbishop Parker, the
translator of the Bible, already mentioned, was as eminent as any of
his Catholic predecessors for his liberality to the destitute and the
stranger ; and if the reader turn to our engraving of the gateway
(Fig. 1291), he will perceive by the groups of poor persons gather
ing at the gate, that the old custom has not grown entirely obsolete.
But the gate has gloomier memories. A low door under the arch
leads to' a mysterious-looking room, with ponderous stone walls,
having three strong iron rings in them, and a name — Grafton —
inscribed, said to be that of one who perished here. This was a
reserve-prison for Lollards, when the tower that bears their name
was full. We enter now the outer palace-court. A picturesque
ivy-covered wall on the left divides us from the beautiful and well-
known Bishop's Walk by the Thames. On the right is the Great
Hall and Manuscript-room, the latter a fireproof modern erection,
containing many precious literary Curiosities of the middle ages.
Before us is the Water Tower, built of brick, and the Lollards'
Tower, of stone, whose sad and fearful history provokes without
satisfying the curiosity. Of those who have been immured or
perished in it we have few records beyond their handwriting on the
walls ofthe Lollards' prison in the upper part ofthe tower (Fig. 1294).
The carved stonework of the exterior of the windows is mouldered
with age ; the statue of Thomas-a-Becket is gone from its lofty and
beautiful niche ; but so long as a stone of that worn tower remains,
it will be gazed on with intense and reverent emotions for the sake of
the heroic men who laid with incalculable pains, and cemented with
their blood, the foundations of our inestimable religious freedom.
Glory to them for ever ! and as for their persecutors and murderers
sure we are, that those most worthy of the name of martyrs would
breathe for them the prayer of Christ, " Father, forgive them, for
they know not what they do." Neither ought we to judge them
harshly. On entering the great hall (Fig. 1295), its noble dimensions first
take us by surprise, then the lofty and richly-painted window oppo
site excites our admiration. In it are collected beautiful relics from
other windows of the old palace, including the portrait of Archbishop
Chicheley, builder of the Lollards' tower and rebuilder of the old

Chap. II.]

OLD ENGLAND.

367

hall, first built most likely by Boniface. Chicheley's hall would
of course be of the architecture of his time, the beginning of the
fifteenth century, and Gothic being then in its perfection, his work
would doubtless be a considerable advance on Boniface's. But
it was not destined to last. Scot and Hardyng, two of Charles
the First's judges, having Lambeth Palace granted them by the
Commonwealth, pulled down the hall, and sold the materials. Arch
bishop Juxon after the Restoration rebuilt it on the ancient model,
at a cost often thousand five hundred pounds. The distinguishing
feature of the hall is its roof, of timber, most richly carved, with
a series of broad semicircular arches. The old uses of the hall
were dining and feasting; it is a place for feasting still to antiqua
ries and scholars ; for whom few greater epjoyments could be de
vised than to turn them loose among the books of the very valuable
library that now occupies all the available space of the hall. This
library was formed by Archbishop Bancroft, who died in 1610 ;
and after experiencing strange vicissitudes and wanderings, it seems
now safe and settled at last.
The great quadrangle, or inner court, has a beautiful and dignified
effect, with its lofty trees here and there overhanging the walls ; its
ornamental cross, supporting lamps, on a little green in the centre ;
its ranges of buildings, where we see in regular succession a but
tressed side of the great hall, with an elegant modern porch, the
guard-room, with a curious and beautiful gable window, and the
splendid new palace of the primates of Canterbury. The old build
ings thus superseded about twelve years ago, were famous for a fig-
tree, the last of those which had been planted by Cardinal Pole.
They were of the Marseilles kind, and bore what those who liked
green figs esteemed^ delicious fruit. There are yet some shoots of
this tree growing between the buttresses of the hall.
No part of the palace has a more quaint and beautiful expression
than the guard-room (Fig. 1293) ; mention of which occurs in the
steward's accounts of the time of Henry VI. The guard-room of
Boniface's palace had then been rebuilt. The designation of the
guard-room, and the arms kept here from the period of the middle
ages, speak forcibly to the mind of the military character of their
archiepiscopal owners, and of their deficient comprehension of the
doctrines of the Gospel that they presumed to teach. Around the
walls of the guard-room extends an unbroken chronological line of
portraits of archbishops, from Warham to Sutton, with a few of
earlier date. The earliest is that of Arundel, the brother of that
Earl Arundel previously mentioned as beheaded by Richard II.
While one brother thus perished, the other joined Bolingbroke in
his banishment, and, returning to England with him, shared his
triumphs. It was this Arundel by whom Bolingbroke was crowned.
But he, the tonsure of whose hair, as Fuller observes, was alone the
cause of "the keeping of his head," had not been improved in ten
derness of heart by adversity : he sent the first English martyr to
the stake — William Sawtre, priest of St. Osyth's, London — who was
condemned in accordance with the provision of the famous law
passed against relapsed heretics in the second year of the reign of
Henry of Bolingbroke. The ceremonial of degradation preliminary
to Sawtre's execution was calculated by its formality and impres-
siveness to produce a strong effect on the minds of all who witnessed
it. In his priestly garments, holding in his hands the chalice of the
host, and its paten or lid, Sawtre was brought into St. Paul's Ca
thedral, before Arundel and six bishops. The sentence of degra
dation fell in solemn tones from the archbishop's lips, while he
took from the poor priest the chalice and paten, and his casule, or
scarlet robe. Sawtre. then ceased to be a priest. The New Testa
ment was put in his hands, and taken away, and the stole or tippet
removed from his neck ; and Sawtre was then no longer deacon.
His alb or surplice, and the maniple on his left wrist, were next
taken off; and Sawtre's sub-deaconship had departed from him. A
candlestick, taper, and small pitcher given up ; and his office of
acolyte was gone. With his book of exorcisms he surrendered the
power of exorcist ; with his book of daily lessons, his task of reader ;
with his sexton's surplice and church-door key, a sexton's authority ;
and by way of finish, his priest's cap was taken from his head, the
tonsure obliterated, and the cap of a layman put 9n instead. Thus
stripped of all dignity, except such as he derived from his intrepid
constancy to the truths he advocated, — with a recommendation to
mercy that only adds to our disgust and horror, — the victim was for
mally delivered over by Arundel to the high constable and marshal
of England. Sawtre was burned in Smithfield, in 1401, amid avast
multitude of people, whose, feelings at a sight so new and dreadful
it is, hardly possible to analyze, but who surely never could have
allowed such a revolting act to be perpetrated, if they had seen,
however dimly, in anticipation the awful character and extent of the
passions that, once let loose, were to rage through the length and

breadth of England, destroying its best and bravest sons, putting
strife between the dearest friends and relations, turning the domestic
hearth into a pandemonium, with bigotry set up on high as the only
household god.
Whilst Arundel thus endeavoured to keep down the new opinions,
he strove more and more to encourage and enforce the practice of
the old. Fresh saints and fresh holydays were added to the calen
dar ; religious processions (see the Passage of the Host, Fig. 1334)
became more frequent and magnificent ; altars and images of all
kinds were crowded more thickly into the churches ; priests partook
of the spirit of their chief leader, and grew more zealous ; friars
preached in their moveable pulpits about the streets (Fig. 1333) ;
the holy wells at Northampton (Fig. 1297), and other places, .the
shrines of Becket, and our Lady of Walsingham, were each the re
sort of countless pilgrims. Rome, nay Jerusalem itself (Fig. 1330)
was haunted by titled and wealthy and pious wanderers from Old
England. But not the less did the heresy still lift its low but clear
and thrilling voice, not the less were there to be found believers in
it, ready to endure martyrdom for its sake. One of the most re
markable of the next chosen two or three victims was a man, whose
death, we regret to say, reflects disgrace on a reign, otherwise free
from all that can personally lessen our love and esteem for the
ruler, that of Henry V. When he came- to the throne, he found the
Lollards following the guidance of one of his own early friends and
associates, Sir John Oldcastle, or as he was often called in right of
his wife, Lord Cobham. At first Henry would not let Arundel
work his pleasure upon such a heretic, but would talk with him
himself. The young king could do much ; but there was one thing
he could hot do — roll back in Cobham's heart and mind the stream
of thought by which he had been borne on to the haven where he
had anchored at last. It is a fearful evidence of the bigotry that
exists in us all, to find such a man as Harry the Fifth making up for
the want of the legitimate success of reason by the illegitimate as
sistance of threats of the stake and the flames. Cobham thought it
time then to withdraw to his manor and castle of Cowling, in Kent,
but was obliged speedily to surrender to an armed force, and submit
himself a prisoner to those who came to guide him to the Tower of
London. At his examination by a synod of prelates and abbots,
he debated every point raised with the .utmost ardour and self-confi
dence, and so was sentenced to the martyr's doom. But Henry granted
a respite of fifty days, and during that time Cobham escaped. It
was a critical moment. Something decisive must be done. He
determined to raise the Lollards in arms, and so endeavour at once.
to secure the prosperity ofthe cause. He failed, miserably failed,;.
first, in the attempt to seize Henry at Eltham Palace, and secondly,.
in his idea of seizing London, where, instead of the twenty- five
thousand men that he hoped to have met in St. G iles's Fields, scarcely
a hundred assembled, aware, probably, that the king had discovered.
their intentions, and was prepared. Cobham for a time escaped, but at
a later period, when his hopes for the progress of Lollardism induced.
him, it is said, to invite the Scots, he was taken prisoner, after a
gallant struggle, arraigned before the House of Lords, and finally
condemned to be hanged as a traitor and burnt as a heretic. A
frightful sentence, but executed in all its horrors. He was hung up
by the armpits, and actually roasted alive, in the same place where
his followers had previously suffered.
Quitting the guard-room by a passage leading through some pri
vate apartments down to the vestry, we pause a minute to admire
the valuable antique chest kept in the vestry, supposed of Chinese
work, exceedingly rich and elaborate, and then enter the chapel
(Fig. 1292). Here the walls and windows appear in the main as
old as the palace built by meek Archbishop Boniface. When Laud
first came to Lambeth, the stained windows were " shameful to look
on, all diversely patched, like a poor beggar's coat." It was charged
against Laud afterwards, "that he did repair these windows by their
like in the mass-book." But Laud replied, that he and his secre
tary had made out the story as well as they could by what was left
unbroken. That " story " was man's history from the creation to
the day of judgment — the types in the Old Testament being painted
on the side windows, the antitype and verity in the New on the
middle windows. Laud also set up the beautiful oaken screen and
other decorations, now disguised by paint. In this chapel Miles
Coverdale assisted to consecrate Archbishop Parker, who was after
wards buried at Lambeth. An inscription for his monument was
shown to the subject of it while he lived. He replied, he could not
assume the description of such a character to himself, but he would
so make use of it as to attain, as far as possible, the good qualities
and virtues it specified. It is a pity that the writers of laudatory
epitaphs generally do not in the same way anticipate death, and thus
o-ive the object of their praise a chance, at all events, of conforming

.

iMffifitltoii...

1365  Old House at Warwick,

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- - 4$l/NmWfc

1366.- CM Tirsber Houses at Coventry.

136!*.— A Tlpd rcprn"iinl-e (Ir-pof KdwardTV. Trom House's Hist, of Rich.
;: audi.:, r, Ui'iuf Ware ids. (Cotton MS. Julius, E 4.)
3rJS

1368.— Ancient Kitchen, at Stanton Harconrt.

1370 — Crimhiala conducted to Prison. (Harleian MS. Kb 4374.)

1371.— Criminals conducted to Death. (Harleian MS. No. 4374.)

1372. — Caxton.— With Paper-marks.

1373.— Woodcut ola Blight. (From Carton's ' Game of the Chess.')

1376.— St. Albans. Hawflsing Part/

1374.— Convre-fen.

[1377.— Whitsun Morris-Dance.

r- 17

[OLD ENGLAND.]

369

370

OLD ENGLAND.

[Book IV.

his life to the epitaph, since they will not make the epitaph conform
to the life. These good qualities and virtues did not prevent the
archbishop's remains from being most unworthily treated. He had
been no good friend to the Puritans, and when Scot and Hardyng,
as we have said, had the palace granted them, Colonel Scot, desir
ous of turning the chapel into a hall or dancing-room, demolished
Parker's monument. Not satisfied with that, Hardyng exhumed
the corpse of the archbishop, sold the leaden covering, and buried
the venerable relics in a dunghill. There it remained until the
Restoration, when Sir William Dugdale, hearing accidentally of
that dastardly outrage, repaired immediately to Archbishop Sancroft,
who obtained an order from the House of Lords for re-interment of
the desecrated relics in Lambeth Chapel. On a stone we read the
result. The body of Matthew Parker, archbishop, here rests at last.
His monument is also restored, and is in that part of the chapel di
vided from the rest by the screen. The painted windows were de
stroyed in the civil wars.
Again we stand in the green and handsome quadrangle, and turn
to inspect the irregular and embattled front of the new palace,
which, if not in entire accordance with the old remains (or they
would have exhibited a compound of styles), do honour to the taste
and skill of Mr. Blore, the architect. The entrance-hall is espe
cially admirable ; the staircase has an elaborately-worked balus
trade ; at the top, a screen of three arches opens to the corridor,
which, on the right, conducts to the principal apartments of the
new palace, and on the left, to those of the old. One front of the
palace looks on the gardens (Fig. 1296), which are charmingly laid
out, and have altogether an air that makes us, on entering, ask
ourselves in surprise, can this be indeed London ?

A terrible year for England was the year 1348. There were
solemn masses aud prayers in the churches, fastings and humiliations
in the monasteries, processions of public penitents scourging them
selves in the streets, funeral bells tolling by night and by day.
Fear and horror sat on every countenance. The cry of lamentation
was heard from almost every house ; the Destroyer had gone forth —
there was a mighty pestilence in the land. This had begun in the
heart of China, traversed the deserts of Cobi, the wilds of Tartary,
the Levant, Egypt, Greece, Italy, Germany, and France, and
entered this country by the western coast. On its route it had
desolated or depopulated whole regions. We may imagine with
what terror our countrymen must have anticipated its presence
among them ; alas ! the reality far exceeded even their fears.
Amidst the chilly winds and rains and mists of November it en
tered London. The poor people having thus to endure the winter's
cold at the same time that they were exposed to this ghastly and
awful visitant, and living generally pent up in great numbers in
dirty, narrow, ill-ventilated streets, so favourable to the progress
of disease, it is impossible even to estimate the amount of their
actual sufferings ; but the amount of their dead is knowledge suf
ficient. The churchyards of London were soon filled, and more
room was demanded. The devout feeling so prevalent, made people
unwilling to bury even the infectious bodies of the deceased in any
but consecrated ground and in the neighbourhood of a house of
prayer. The dead were not therefore, as in later instances, huddled
into the earth in any fashion, to get them out of the way of the
living, but fields were bought or bestowed by the wealthy and pious,
to make new churchyards of. One of these fields was called " No
Man's Land," though had it belonged to no one, Ealph Stratford,
Bishop of London, could not have purchased it for the purpose just
stated. " No Man's Land " was walled round, consecrated, and a
church built on it. The situation was between the north wall of
the present Chahtek-Hotjse in Wilderness Bow and Sutton Street,
" It remained," says Stow (writing more than two centuries ago),
" till our time by the name of Pardon Churchyard, and served for
burying such as desperately ended their lives, or were executed for
felonies ; who were fetched thither, usually in a close cart, bayled
over, and covered with black, having a plain white cross thwarting,
and at the fore-end a St. John's cross without, and within a bell
ringing by shaking of the cart, whereby the same might be heard
when it passed ; and this was called'the Friary Cart, which belonged
to St. John's and had the privilege of sanctuary." No Man's Land,
in its turn, became filled, and in an appallingly short space of time.
So a noble knight next gave thirteen acres adjoining Pardon
Churchyard, which were called the Spittle Croft, and afterwards
the "New Church Haw." This new piece of ground was conse
crated by the same Bishop of London who gave and hallowed the
other ; and a chapel was built, in which masses were offered up for
the sufferers. This chapel stood about the centre of the present

Charter-House Square. There was employment enough for the
priests who prayed in it, for within the year; fifty thousand persons,
cut off by the pestilence, were interred in that one burial-ground.
The same noble knight, after the plague had passed away, in a
spirit probably of. devout thankfulness that it had so passed, devoted
the spot permanently to the support of a body of religious, twenty-
four in number, of the strictest of all monkish orders, the Carthu
sians. That knight we can readily believe to have been " noble,"
were there nought else known of him ; but his name was Sir Walter
Manny, one of the bravest and most skilful of English warriors
(though not English-born), and the man who, with Queen Philippa,
divides in some degree with the more important actors the admira
tion raised in our minds by the ever-memorable events of the siege
of Calais, an event that has been for several centuries, and no doubt
will for ever remain, best known by its connection with the simple
but much-meaning words — the Citizens of Calais. That story has
been already narrated in these pages, so we will here speak of
another incident in the life of Manny. Edward on one occasion
sent him to the Continent with a body of troops to relieve the
Countess de Montfort, who, while her husband was a prisoner in the
power of Philip, King of France, was besieged hy Montfort's enemy,
Charles de Blois, who sought to seize his duchy of Brittany. The
countess, however, in her castle of Hennebon, made a gallant and
protracted defence, under such extreme privations as induced the
stoutest warriors about her to prepare for surrender ; well on that
occasion was Froissart's description of her borne out— she displayed
the " courage of a man and the heart of a lion " until the joyful
moment when the English ships were descried bringing assistance.
We can well imagine with what enthusiastic and grateful feelings
the countess must have welcomed Sir Walter Manny and his troops.
They were handsomely entertained ; but the next day the knight
had to begin the serious business that he came for : the siege had
to be raised ; the enemy driven from their camp. He was making
inquiries of the countess concerning the state of the town and of
the enemy's army, when, looking out of a window, and seeing a
large machine placed very near, probably one of the moveable
towers of the day (see our engravings, Figs. 1253, 1274), under
cover of which operations were carried on by the enemy against the
castle walls, to the great annoyance of the defenders, Sir Walter,
with a few other bold knights, resolved to destroy it, Accordingly
" They went to arm themselves, and then sallied quietly out of one
of the gates, taking with them three hundred archers (Fig. 1250),
who shot so well, that those who guarded the machine fled, and the
men-at-arms, who followed the archers, falling upon them, slew the
greater part, and broke down and cut in pieces the large* machine.
They then dashed in among the tents and huts, set fire to them, and
killed and wounded many of their enemies before the army was in
motion. After this they made a handsome retreat. When the
enemy were mounted and armed, they galloped after them like
madmen. Sir Walter Manny, seeing this,, exclaimed, ' May I never
be embraced by my mistress and dear friend if I enter castle or
fortress before I have unhorsed one of those gallopers.' He then
turned round, and pointed his spear towards the enemy, as did the
two brothers of Land-Halle, le Haze-de-Brabant, Sir Yves de Tre-
siquidi, Sir Galeran de Landreman, and many others, and spitted
the first coursers. Many legs were made to kick the air. Some
of their own party were also unhorsed. The conflict became very
furious, for reinforcements were perpetually coming from the camp,
and the English were obliged to retreat towards the castle, which
they did in good order until they came to the castle-ditch ; there
the knights made a stand until all their men were safely returned.
.... The Countess of Montfort came down from the castle to
meet them, and with a most cheerful countenance kissed Sir Walter
de Manny and all his companions, one after the other, like a noble
and valiant d me." (Froissart.) Under such a commander the
castle precincts soon became too hot to hold the French : the siege
was raised.
The establishment formed by this very " perfect gentle knight,"
and in which he was buried (Fig. 1372) with solemn pomp, amidst
the regrets of the whole English nation, was called the Chartreux
House, from Chartreux, a place in France, where, about 1080, the
order originated; hence the corrupted English name ofthe Charter-
House. The rule prohibited the eating of flesh, and of fish, unless
it were given to them ; and beside these prohibitions, one day in
each week was set apart for fasting on bread, water, and salt. The
monks slept upon cork, with a single blanket to cover them ; they
rose at midnight to sing their matins^ and none were permitted to
go beyond the bounds of their monastery, except the prior and
proctor, and they only on indispensable business. Their habit was
white, witli a black cloak.

STRATFORD CHURCH.
INTERIOR, SEEN FROM THE DOOR.

Chap. II.]

OLD ENGLAND.

371

During about a century and a half, the history of Sir Walter
Manny's monastery presents no particular event to engage our
attention, the best proof of the contented and quiet lives passed
within its walls ; but at the period when the religious houses were
dissolved, the monks of this place rise suddenly into prominence,
and become ever memorable for their honest and high principles,
tried by the extremest inflictions of cruelty and oppression, which
they had to endure at the hands of one who has had few superiors in
the art of testing how far human fortitude can go in what it esteems
to be a good cause. And that very fact is, indeed, the one, and the
only one source of consolation that is presented to us in tracing the
more sanguinary proceedings of Henry VIII.
In our notices of Lambeth Palace, we had occasion to allude to
the sufferings of the early Protestants in England under the Catholic
heads of the church in the fifteenth century ; in the melancholy fate
of the Charter-House monks in the sixteenth we have to exhibit a
counter-picture, in which the conscientious Catholics are made to
undergo equal wrongs under Protestant ascendancy. The evil was
the same on both sides, each in turn making his own convictions
the tribunal by which to judge and punish those of the other.
This has been an error of ages, and still exists, we fear, among
nearly all classes of thinkers and believers. The most vital point
of the old religion was deemed by its professors in the Chartreux
Monastery to be Papal Supremacy. They refused, therefore, to
take the oaths that set up the king in the Pope's place. The prior
and the proctor, named Houghton and Middlemore, were in conse
quence sent to the Tower, and tortured into a temporary sub
mission. But they were not then permitted to return to the
monastery. Three governors were appointed in their stead ; " most
wise, learned, and discreet men " they were styled ; and such they
proved themselves in all that could tend to promote their royal
master's designs on the monastic revenues, in corrupting the minds
of such of the monks'as were open to corruption, and in procuring
the destruction of the remainder. They assembled the whole com
munity which had also submitted, and informed them that all
heresies and treasons were pardoned up to that day, but that death
would follow the commission of new offences. Then they de
manded the keys of the convent from the prior, and took the
regulation of the receipts and expenditure into their own hands!
accounting for both to the king only thenceforward. And thus
commenced a system of persecution, almost without parallel even in
the worst ages of religious bigotry. Before, however, the monks
were called upon to exert all the strength alike of body and mind
that they possessed, their superior, the prior, renouncing the safety
that his first partial submission had promised, showed them the
path they should pursue, and proved himself worthy to be their
superior by the way in which he himself trod it. He, with four
others, all Carthusians, and two of ,them, like himself, heads of
houses, perished at Tyburn, and their" bodies being quartered, one
of Houghton's quarters was set over his own gate. Such was the
position of affairs when the triad of governors began their subtle
practices upon the monks generally of the monastery. Ffyloll, the
most influential, it would seem, of the three governors, wrote from
time to time to Cromwell, the equally unscrupulous and time-serving
minister of Henry VIII. ; and his letters afford us much insight into
the proceedings of these worthies. It appears they altered and broke
up the arrangement of the establishment by gentle degrees. The
large charities and hospitalities of the monastery were thus attacked.
Ffyloll " learns " that the proctor used to account for an expendi
ture, chiefly for hospitality, charity, and buildings, of 105H. a year,
the regular receipts being 642?. 4*., and the deficiency made up by
the benevolence of the city of London. And the monks, "not re
garding this dearth, neither the increase of their superfluous number,
neither yet the decay of the said benevolence and charity [nor, we
may add, the ruin that was fast coming on them], would have and
hath that same fare continued that then was used, and would have
plenty of bread and ale and fish given to strangers in the buttery
and at the buttery-door, and as large distributions of bread and ale
to all their servants and to vagabonds [travellers] at the gate as was
then used." These bounties, Ffyloll, under favour of his worship,
Cromwell, deems necessary to have diminished ; and diminished, of
course, they are, as a step merely to their entire suppression. But
Ffyloll had not yet done interfering with the buttery. " I think,
under correction of your mastership, that it were very necessary to re
move the eleven lay-hrothers from the buttery, and set eleven tem
poral persons in that room, and likewise in the kitchen, for in those
eleven offices lie waste ofthe house." One of Ffyloll's petty perse
cutions was the endeavour to cpmpel the lay-brothers and steward
to dine on flesh in the refectory; irritated, it would seem, by their
carrying messages to and from the confined monks. How the pri

vacy of the brethren's cells was invaded, and their lightest actions
subjected to the worst constructions, we may easily perceive in the
following extract : — " It is no great marvel though many of these
monks have heretofore offended God and the king by their foul
errors, for I have found in the prior and proctor's cells three or
four sundry printed books, from beyond the sea, of as foul errors
and heresies as may be, and not one or two books be new printed
alone, but hundreds of them ; wherefore, by your mastership's
favour, it seemeth to be more necessary that these cells be better
searched, for I can perceive few of them but they have great plea
sure in reading of such erroneous doctrines, and little or none in
reading of the New Testament, or in other good book." In a post
script to another communication, Ffyloll sends Cromwell a list of
all the monks, with a significant G and B placed before each name.
Better endeavours than those of coercion were not wanting to per
suade them to bend to the king's authority, by friends who pitied
their sufferings, and trembled for their final fate.
Archbishop Cranmer sent for two of the monks, Bochester and
Rawlins, to try what his kind persuasions could effect. One was
gained, whom the archbishop kept with him, and induced to lay
aside his religious habit, and to depart from the abstemious rules of
his order ; but Rochester was sent back to his monastery, and to his
fate. The confessor-general of the monks of Sion, who had him
self conformed to the king's supremacy, also tried the power of
friendly importunities. He had " found by the word and will of
God, both in the Old and New Testament, great truths for our
prince, and for the Bishop of Rome nothing at all." Therefore, he
beseeches them, "die not for the cause ; save yourselves and your
house ; live long, and live well, to the honour of God ; wealthy
by your prayers, and edifying by your life to the people. Subject
yourselves to your noble prince ; get his gracious favour by your
duty doing to his grace." A noted friar was brought to preach
to them, but they refused to hear him, after they found that he
sought to draw them from the faith they esteemed most holy.
Books, entitled the ' Defence of Peace,' were distributed among
them by one William Marshall ; but though, on consideration of
their new prior's consent, they were induced to receive these books,
twenty-three out of twenty-four were almost immediately returned
unread, and the twenty-fourth, after being kept four or five days by
John Rochester, was buried by him — an act which, says Ffyloll,
" is good matter to lay to them." By the accumulation of such
" good matter, these unhappy men were ere long brought to their
fearful end. From first to last, only six were drawn aside from
their resolution, the rest were executed, like their prior, or perished
no less miserably in prison, under the influence of filth, neglect,
cruelty, and despair, until, in the words of a Mr. Bedle, whose
loyalty to his sovereign seems to have been accompanied by some
thing very like blasphemy to his Maker, they were all despatched
by " the hand of God." Henry, alone at last in his glory, sat down
to count the proceeds, namely, some six hundred and twenty-two
pounds a-year from the revenues of the Charter-House, being twenty
less than the proctor used to account for, which twenty the king
graciously vouchsafed as a retiring pension to the new prior, Traf-
ford, who had been appointed after the murder of the old, to give
perhaps an ait of legality to the surrender. Subsequently the mo
nastery buildings and site, whilst passing from one proprietor to
another, under favour of the king, put on a new aspect, and became
a noble mansion. In the reign of Elizabeth, Thomas Howard,
Duke of Norfolk, made it his chief residence, and built most of the
existing edifice (Figs. 1287, 1288). His son sold the whole to the
founder of the Charter-House, Thomas Sutton, of whom we may-
have to speak in a future page.
From the ecclesiastical buildings represented in our engravings
as belonging either partially or wholly to the Perpendicular period
of architecture, we may now first select for brief notice a group of
country churches. That of Stratford-upon-Avon (Figs. 1307, 1308)*
perhaps of all others the dearest to Englishmen, on account of the
ashes it holds,-- consists generally of Early English, with additions
in the late Perpendicular style : of which the chancel especially
forms a very fine specimen. And here Shakspere was buried, needing
not the remarkable invocation- contained in the lines on his grave
stone, to secure the sacredness of his repose. There was here also at
one time the font (Fig. 1309), in which, no doubt he was baptized.
But after having been long disused, the relic was found in the old
charnel-house, from whence it was turned out as a piece of de
cayed and worthless stone into the churchyard. But even utilita
rianism itself is not always sufficiently utilitarian ; the parish clerk,
when he looked on the despised old font, saw that it was worth
something still— it would make an excellent pump-trough— and so
6 3 B 2

1378.— Bowling-Bali. (From a MS. in the Douce Collection.)

1'379.— Tumbling. (From
' "1*07

Sloane MS. 264.)

1385.— The Dance in the 'Garden of Pleasure:' from the 'Eoman de la Eose.'— (Harl. MS. 1425.)

1380.— Two-wheeled Plough. (From^Harleian'MS.^No. 4374.)

1331.— Trap-Ball.

1382.— River-FWhmg. '(-From Harleian MS. No. 4374.)

1383.— Drummers. (Engraved by Strutt, from
the Liber Regalia, Westminster Abbey.)

1384.— Golf, or Bandy-ball. (From a MS. in the
Douce Collection.)-

1336.-Hoodman Blind. (Bodleian MS.)

1387.— Leaping through "a Hoop. (Ancient MS. engraved in Strutt's Sports.)

^

1388.— Club-ball. (From a MS. in Bodleian Collection.fahd Royal MS. 14 B 4.)
372

1389.— Ancient Dice-Box,

-1390.— Shuttlecock. (From a MS. in the Douoe Collection.)

Chap. H.]

OLD ENGLAND.

373

pump-trough it became. In time, however, the relic attracted
attention, was bought, and thenceforward carefully preserved. It
now decks the garden of a gentleman at Stratford, and few gardens
in England can boast of a greater treasure. Yet one cannot but
ask — Is that its proper place ? When shall we learn in England,
the truth that one might have supposed was too evident to remain
long unlearnt or unpractised, that the reverential care of all that is
directly concerned with a great man's life and history is the best of
all monuments to his memory ? What piece of sculpture, though
it be by a Chantrey or a Westmacott, and reared in the most mag
nificent of national mausoleums, even in Westminster Abbey itself,
ever excited a tithe of the interest that is felt on looking on the
humblest relics of a man of genius in the spot where he was born,
where he lived, or where he died ? The first may teach us to think
of him, the second will assuredly make us both think and feel with
him. The font in question, we may add, though mutilated, has
been evidently beautiful, and worthy of a time that abounded in ex
quisite pieces of sculpture, devoted to the same or similar purposes :
let the reader look, for instance, at the font of East Dereham church,
Norfolk (Fig. 1313), and the piscina (Fig. 1298, p. 349, where it
has been accidentally miscalled a font).
From Stratford church and font we turn not unnaturally to the
church of Aston Cantlow (Fig. 1305), in the heart of the woodland
•district, some five or six miles in a north-west direction, where the
poet's father and mother were married ; and to Weston (Fig. 1315),
also in the neighbourhood of Stratford, where no doubt the wan
dering bard has often paused to admire the picturesque building,
perhaps to " stand by and mark " while some funeral procession
passed into it, and his imagination busied itself with the feelings
stirred to the very depths of the mourners' hearts ; or, pleasanter
occupation, to gaze with earnest and admiring eye upon some village
bride led in all her virgin loveliness to the altar by the youth of her
choice, to whom with quivering lips, but unfaltering heart, she re
signs the care of her future life and welfare. Evesham churches
(Fig. 1306), we are happy to say, exhibit a kind of parallel feeling
in connection with fine structures to that we so anxiously desire to
see infused into the hearts of the people in connection with their
illustrious men. That beautiful church of St. Lawrence, — formerly
connected with the neighbouring abbey, from the top of which
Simon de Montfort's messenger hastily descending, announced the
appalling news of the approach of the army that was to crush the
patriots — that church in which to this hour exists the exquisitely
decorated tomb of Clement Lichfield, the last abbot, and the muni
ficent builder of the sumptuous gateway that still arrests the eye of
every visitor to Evesham, — even that edifice, so interesting alike
for its intrinsic and extrinsic features, was allowed to moulder away
year after year till the whole was in a state of ruin. But the re
viving love of middle-age architecture has embraced the church of
St. Lawrence in its active ministrations, and the pile is in conse
quence restored. Of tbe other three churches included in our group,
Luton in Bedfordshire (Fig. 1311), Northleach in Gloucestershire,
(Fig. 1314), and Leatherkead in Surrey (Fig. 1316), we need only
particularise the first, and that not so much for the sake of its noble
architecture, which may be best .appreciated in our engraving, but
in order that we may say a few words upon an adjunct of Luton
church, the adjoining chapel, erected by John, Lord Wenlock,
prior to the year 1461. The following lines, from a manuscript in
Harleian Miscellany, British Museum, appear to have been formerly
inscribed in the chapel over his remains : —
" Jesu Christ, most of might,
Have mercy on John le Wenlock, knight,
And of his wife Elizabeth,
Who out of this world is passed by death ;
Who founded this chapel here,
Help them with your hearty prayer,
That they may come to that place
Where ever is joy and -solace."
This John Wenlock was knighted by Henry VI., made constable
of Bamburg Castle, and chamberlain to the queen. Having gained
great wealth, he lent the king a sum of money exceeding a thousand
pounds, for which he received an assignment of certain moneys
granted by the parliament. ' For this service he received the order
of the Garter. He was dreadfully wounded at St. Albans. In
1459 he went over to the Duke of York, and was attainted by the
Lancastrian parliament. He fought well at Towton, was created a
baron, employed in several embassies, and advanced to the dis
tinguished and important office of Lieutenant of Calais. He changed
sides again, and raised forces for Warwick and Margaret of Anjou.
He commanded the middle ward of the army at Tewkesbury. At
, the first brunt his old vacillations returned ; he was standing with

his troops in the market-place when he should have supported the
commander-in-chief, the Earl of Somerset, who, returning to ascer
tain the cause of his being left without aid in his fierce charge upon
the enemy, rode up to Wenlock, and with one blow of his battle-axe
cleft his head.
For a second group of churches we take four metropolitan edifices.
Two of these are dedicated to the same saint, namely, St. Michael
le Quern (Fig. 1289), go called from the corn-market in the im
mediate neighbourhood, and St. Michael's Cornhill (Fig. ,1286), to
which Wren, after the fire, first put an Italian body to the existing
Gothic tower, and then, fifty years later, on pulling down the tower,
added a Gothic tower to the existing Italian body, as though his
tastes and the requirements ofthe structure were constantly playing
at cross purposes. The other two are the church of St. Alphage, of
which, however, the porch (Fig. 1284) is the only existing remain
possessing any pretensions to antiquity, which belonged to the old
Elsing Priory ; and Ely Place (Fig. 1300), the once famous metro
politan seat of the Bishops of Ely, of which the engraving (Fig.
1300*) shows the last, but fortunately a most important relic,
namely, the chapel. Many a pleasant passage in the history of the
palace might we here dilate upon : gladly should we dwell upon the
life of the saint Etheldreda, to whom the chapel of Ely Place, as
well as the parent foundation, the Cathedral of Ely, was dedicated —
that daughter of one of our West- Anglian monarchs, who, having
devoted herself in heart to heaven, and being compelled by cir
cumstances into marriage at two different periods of her life, still
persevered " with both husbands to live in a state of virginity."
Then — how John of Gaunt, that great progenitor of kings, -not only
English, but Spanish, died at Ely Place, whilst residing here after
the destruction of the Savoy by the followers of Wat Tyler ; how
the Sergeants' feasts used to be held in the great hall of Ely Place,
with a magnificence that almost outstrips belief; how Sir Chris
topher Hatton, who danced into Elizabeth's good graces and— the
Chancellorship, lived here ; and how Bacon and Coke came to Ely
Place at the same time as suitors to the daughter of Lady Hatton,-
who by marriage inherited the Chancellor's name and property :
how all these and a host of other pleasant and suggestive incidents
took place, we should indeed be glad to pause awhile and narrate ;
but the remembrance of the encroachments we have already made
upon our space forbids. There are, however, two other matters
that we must notice, the Shaksperian incident of the strawberries,
and the characteristic letter that a. Bishop of Ely caused the virgin
queen to write. When Gloucester was meditating the murder of
Hastings, and had called the council in the Tower as already
described, Hollinshed (from Sir T. More) observes :— " These lords
so sitting together, communing of this matter, the Protector came
in amongst them, first about nine of the dock, saluting them courte
ously, and excusing himself that he had been from them so long,
saying merrily that he had been a sleeper that day. After a little
talking with them he said unto the Bishop of Ely, ' My lord, you
have very good strawberries at your garden in Holborn ; I require
you let us have a mess of them. ' Gladly, my lord,' quoth he,
'would God I had some better thing as ready to your pleasure as
that ! ' " and therewith he sent his servant for a mess of straw
berries ; who, when he returned, must have found Hastings dead in
the area of the Tower— his master under arrest— confusion, distrust,
and horror on every countenance. It may be naturally asked, how
Ely Place came to pass from the possession of its episcopal owners.
The answer forms another great proof of the favour Sir Christopher
Hatton enjoyed at the hands of his mistress ; and how evanescent,
after all, that favour was. It was Sir Christopher who, having
taken a liking to the palace, urged his mistress to obtain it for him,
first on a temporary, but afterwards on a permanent tenure. She
did so with some difficulty, and then ultimately kept it herself, when
the Chancellor fell into the queen's debt, and through her exacting
demands broke his heart. Another bishop had in the interval suc
ceeded to the see, and was not at all inclined to fulfil the enforced
bargain which his predecessor had made : then it was that Elizabeth
wrote the following letter, a model for absolute sovereigns who
would like to gratify their wishes without any troublesome expendi
ture of time in expressing them :—
" Proud Prelate, — *
« You know what you was before I made you what you are
now : if you do not immediately comply with my request, by G— d
I will unfrock you. "Elizabeth."
The bishopric, however, in the end lost Ely Place though it
obtained in the last century a fee-farm rent of a hundred a-year in
compensation.

374

OLD ENGLAND.

[Book IV.

The only ecclesiastical buildings now remaining to be noticed are
those which we have specially reserved as being in some important
respects relics of those events that have made the period so memo
rable, namely, the Wars of the Boses. In one of these quiet little
neighbourhoods which the pedestrian occasionally lights upon, to
his great surprise, in the very heart of busy, bustling, restless Lon
don, stands the Dutch Church, as it is called; which, in spite of
its name and its Dutch congregation, is essentially an English
structure, and one of no ordinary magnificence. That church,
large and noble as it is (Fig. 1282), was nothing more than the
nave of the church of the Austin Friars, once resident here. The
spire, that " beautifullest and rarest spectacle " in London, has long
disappeared ; so have the monuments that once lined its walls with
work after work in apparently interminable range, each as you
walked along in front, seeming to grow more and more rich in ar
chitectural beauty, more and more interesting from their associations
with the great and influential of the land. Here lay, for instance,
Edmond the half-brother of Bichard II., Humphrey Bohun, the
munificent founder of the pile in 1253, and Richard, the great Earl
of Arundel, beheaded by Richard II. Here too, to pass on to its
later history, was "poor Edward Bohun," Duke of Buckingham,
interred after his execution ; and all these names, if the most con
spicuous, form but a very small proportion of the important per
sonages whose ashes were disturbed and left to be scattered by the
winds of heaven, when the possessor of the estate, in the beginning
of the seventeenth century, pulled down the steeple and choir, and
sold the monuments for one hundred pounds ; that worthy was the
" most noble " Marquis of Winchester. But there were a class of
nobles Who lie buried in the church of the Austin Friars, that we
have not yet mentioned, — the victims of that most fratricidal, we
might almost call it suicidal, War of the Roses. Vere, Earl of
Oxford, beheaded 1463, was the first and most unhappy of these
men ; for the others did, at all events, fall sword in hand on the
field of battle. These were the lords who perished at the battle of
Bamet in 1471, and who were all buried together in the body of
the church.
• A short walk eastward from the Dutch church, and we find our
selves in another, and scarcely less interesting building for its ge
neral associations, and for its connection with the wars in question.
This is the church of St. Helen's in Bishopsgate (Fig. 1285), for
merly the remains of a priory of Benedictine nuns, whose long row
of carved seats against the wall yet exist in the structure. As the
burial place of Sir Thomas Gresham, St. Helen's is most popularly
known. That truly illustrious merchant lies in the corner shown
in our engraving ; his arms are emblazoned in the window above.
But the monument that more especially attracts us at the present
time is that of Sir John Crosby and his lady, with their effigies, a
truly beautiful piece of sculpture. (Fig. 1275.) Sir John, the
founder of Crosby Hall, was an alderman of London, and the holder
of various other important offices — a fact that no doubt made his
accession to the friends of Edward IV. a matter of importance ; by
Edward he was knighted during the adventurous march from Ra-
venspur to London. *
A mission given to Sir John the following year marks most de
cisively the confidence reposed in him by the Yorkists. He was
sent with other eminent persons to the Duke of Burgundy to ar
range various matters, amongst the rest, most probably, the treaty
of alliance which, as we have already seen, Edward sought to make
prior to his invasion of France. From Burgundy the party pro
ceeded to. the court of the Duke of Brittany, to conclude a similar
treaty, and where also, observes Stow, they hoped to have gotten
the two Earls of Pembroke and Eichmond. So that Edward was
already conscious ofthe exact quarter from whence danger was to be
apprehended, though he could have little foreseen what course Rich
mond's endeavour would take, namely, the overthrow of the mur
derer of his— Edward's— own children. The ambassadors wrought
so subtilly that they at last persuaded the two nobles to return to
England, and they were actually about to embark at St. Malo,
when the minister of the Duke of Brittany, foreseeing probably the
destruction that assuredly would have fallen upon them, caused a
delay, and Richmond at last took the alarm and disappeared.
But whilst the church of the Austin Friars and the church of
St. Helen's thus in some particular features carry us back into the
sanguinary times of the two rival houses, there is one building that
in spot, purpose, and founder, is entirely devoted to them, forming
at once a memorial of its greatest acts and its most deeply
tragical incidents. Many will anticipate the words— the chapel on
Wakefield Bridge. (Fig. 1302.) The building that had previously
occupied thg site was, it appears, a wayside chapel. We cannot

the
cnb

better describe this class of structures, once so numerous in and so

important to Old England, than in the words of the authors of an
account of Wakefield Chapel, just published by John Cliessell and
Charles Buckler : — " Wayside chapels were the only ancient places
of public worship with which burial-grounds were not locally con
nected. They had no walled enclosures, and could never have been
more alone than many are now on the highways to Walsingham.
Those near Hillborough have been planted on the bleak brows of
elevated ground near the roadside, and are without particular archi
tectural distinction, being little oblong buildings of square breadth
throughout, as plain in design as in their figure. The walls are
roofless and broken, the cracks and chasms serving to channel away
the water from the moss-grown summit. The interior, which could
once afford rest to the weary and a pittance to the distressed, is now
too desolate to be sought as a shelter by cattle. No marvel then
that travellers in later days have neglected to turn a few paces out
of the way to visit these ancient relics. They would find them not.
altogether uninteresting, but overgrown with briers, and half filled
up with heaps of old rubbish. No kind of sepulchral memorial has
been discovered within or on the outside [of any of these edifices,
often as death must have overtaken the pilgrim on his way. Chances
of this kind were not provided for by a consecrated space for burial,
as the custom of entombing the dead around the sanctuary in whicli
the living assembled for worship was never extended to wayside
chapels, neither was the administration of baptism .nor the celebra
tion of matrimony included in the duties prescribed to them, as was
sometimes the case in privileged instances in assistant chapels be
longing to districts at a distance from the mother-church." The
simple but sufficient and admirable object aimed at by the founders
of these buildings, appears to have been to cheer the heart of the
fainting pilgrim, or traveller, or mendicant, by affording him a
temporary rest and refreshment for soul and body, and comfortable
assurance of better entertainment further on. And as along the
roads that religious pilgrims traversed they were the most needed,
why, there were they the most frequent.
Let us now see how it was that the wayside chapel on Wakefield
Bridge, founded, it is supposed, in the reign of Edward II., became
alienated from its original purpose, and transformed into the superb
little structure that now, in spite of decay and neglect, meets the
eye. The first battle that followed the attempt of the House of
Lords to compromise the respective demands of Henry IV. and
Richard Plantagenet, Duke of York, was that of Wakefield, which
took place between the town and neighbouring Castle of Sandal
(Fig. 1269), the property of Plantagenet, who himself commanded
the Yorkist army, with the aid of the Earl of Salisbury, whilst the
Lancastrians were led by the Duke of Somerset, the Earls of North
umberland and Devon, the Lords Clifford, Dacres, and Nevil ; and
who were as superior in numbers of troops as of noble leaders. As
the fight began, " the Duke of York with his people descended down
in good order and array, and was suffered to pass forward toward
the main battle ; but when he was in the plain ground, between his
castle and the town of Wakefield, he was environed on every side
like a fish in a net, or a deer in a buckstall ; so that he, manfully
fighting, was within half an hour slain and dead, and his whole army
discomfited ; and with him perished nearly three thousand men, in
cluding some of the duke's most trusty friends, and many " young
gentlemen and heirs of great parentage in the south part, whose
lineages revenged their deaths" within a short period after. Chief
of these was the innocent Duke of Rutland, the fourth son of the
Duke of York, scarce of the age of twelve years, whose murder by
the ruthless Clifford, one ofthe chief supporters of Margaret of An-
jou, is touchingly narrated by the same authority— Hall : " Whilst
this battle was in fighting, a priest called Sir Robert Aspall, chap
lain and schoolmaster to the young Earl of Rutland  a fair
gentleman and a maidenlike person, perceiving that flight was more
safeguard than tarrying, both for him and his master, secretly con
veyed the earl out ofthe field, by [past] the Lord Clifford's band,
toward the town ; but ere he could enter into a house he was by the
said Lord Clifford espied, followed, and taken, and by reason of his
apparel demanded what he was. The young gentleman, dismayed,
had not a word to speak ; but kneeled on his knees imploring mercy
and desiring grace; both with holding up his hands and making do
lorous countenance, for his speech was gone for fear. < Save him '
said his chaplain, ' for he is a prince's son, and peradventure may-
do you good hereafter.' With that word the Lord Clifford marked
[recognised] him, and said, <,By God's blood, thy father slew mine
anfl so will I do thee and all thy kin;' and with that word stuck
the earl to his heart with his dagger, and bade his chaplain bear the
earl's mother and brother word what he had done and said." Cer
tainly a more barbarous act than this never disgraced the chivalry
of England. It filled all right-feeling men with disgust and abhor-

CHANTRY CHAPEL.
ADJOINING THE BEAUCHAMP CHAPEL, WARWICK,

Chap. JL]

OLD ENGLAND.

375

rence, and even by many of his own party the deed was condemned,
and the doer of it stigmatised, in the words of Hall, "a tyrant and
no gentleman." Hollinshed describes the death of the Duke of
York as not occurring in the heat of the fight, but after it was over,
under circumstances fully as barbarous as those attending his son's
death. " Some write that the duke was taken alive, and in derision
caused to stand upon a mole-hill, on whose head they put a garland
instead of a crown, which they had fashioned and made of segges
[sedges], or bullrushes, and having so crowned him with that
garland, they kneeled down afore him, as the Jews did to Christ, in
scorn, saying to him, ' Hail, king without rule ! hail, king without
heritage ! hail, duke and prince without people or possessions ! '
And at length, having thus scorned him with these and divers other
the like despiteful words, they stroke off his head," which they pre
sented to the queen, Margaret, whose whole conduct shows with
what pleasure she must have looked upon the bloody ruin of her
chief and, as she then thought, most dangerous enemy. The head
was by her order fixed on the gates of York, and a paper crown
placed upon it in mockery. It was not long, however, before all
these brutal proceedings were avenged by others scarcely, if at all,
less brutal ; and then Edward, in pious and filial sorrow, erected
near the place where his father had been slain, and on the very
bridge where his brother had been so foully murdered, the chapel
that to this day attracts the eye of the traveller by the Manchester
and Leeds Railway, on the southern side of the Wakefield station.
This, too, we may add, is one of the structures that, long neglected,
is now again attracting attention, and about to be restored by the
Yorkshire Architectural Society. All honour to the gentleman
who, we understand, originated the movement in its favour — the
Vicar of Wakefield.

In examining works of extraordinary architectural beauty or
grandeur, one feels something of the same desire to know all about
the men who produced them, and the circumstances under which
they were produced, that we feel in every little bit of gossip relating
to the history of a great poem, or painting, or piece of music ; with
the difference, however, that it too often happens that the only
records we have of the first come through bills of expenses, or such
similar media, and thereby lose in passing nearly all the real interest
they possessed ; while when we do know anything of the second,
our knowledge must, from the less public and mechanical character
of the superficial operations, be more or less attractive. But not
even such documents can absolutely destroy the charm that invests
the subject of the origin of a great edifice ; and Beauchamp Chapel,
Warwick, forms a strong case in point. Of this structure, attached
to the church of St. Mary, Warwick, we need hardly repeat the
oft-told tale of its exquisite beauty of proportion and decorative
detail (see Fig. 1301). A more useful labour will be to give
some idea, by means of the valuable papers printed in Britton's
' Architectural Antiquities,' of the mode in which the executors of
Richard Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick, who died in 1439, went to
work to erect the chapel that he had in his lifetime devised, and
the altar-tomb to his memory, which now stands in the centre of
the chapel. These accounts do not apply to the raising of the walls,
but to their adornment when finished. First, there-are the windows
to be supplied with stained glass, which is settled by the following
agreement with John Prudde, of Westminster, glazier, who on the
23rd of June, in 25 Hen. VI., " Covenanteth, &c, to glaze all the
windows in the new chapel in Warwick with glass beyond the
seas, and with no glass of England ; and that in the finest wise,
with the best, cleanest, and strongest glass of beyond the sea, that
may be had in England, and of the finest colours of blue, yellow,
red purpure, sanguine, and violet, and of all other colours that shall
be most necessary, and best to make rich and embellish the matters,
images and stories that shall be delivered and appointed by the
said executors, by patterns in paper : afterwards to be newly traced
and pictured by another painter in rich colours at the charges of the
said glazier : all which proportions the said John Prudde must make
perfectly, to fine, glaze, anneal it, and finely and strongly set it in
lead and souder, as well as any glass is in England. Of white glass,
green glass, black glass, he shall put in as little as shall be needful
for the showing and setting forth of the matters, images, and stories.
And the said glazier shall take charge of the same glass, wrought,
and to be brought to Warwick, and set up there, in the windows of
the said chapel, the executors paying to the said glazier for every
foot of glass 2s., and so for'the whole, 91Z. 1*. lOd." To the evi
dence of "liberality that spared no cost in the attainment of the object
sou°ht, given in this curious document, we may observe, that after
the windows were finished, alterations were made, enhancing their

generally sumptuous character, especially by the addition of pic
tures, including the marriage of the Earl of Warwick, and these
also were " set forth in glass and most fine and curious colours."
Next to the agreement with the glazier comes that with the car
penter for desks, poppies, seats, sills, planks, an organ-loft, &c. The
walls have now to be painted, so the executors are off again to the
metropolis, where they secure the services of John Brentwood, citi
zen and stainer of London, who, on the 12th of Feb., 28 Hen. VI.,
" doth covenant to paint fine and curiously to make at Warwick, on
the west wall of the new chapel there, the doom of our Lord God
Jesus, and all manner of devices and imagery thereto belonging, of
fair and sightly proportion, as the place shall serve for, with the
finest colours and fine gold ; and the said Brentwood shall find all
manner of stuff thereto at his charge, the said executors paying
therefore 13/. 6*. 8d." But the painter of the walls must not also
be the painter of the sculpture, so for them Kristian Coleburne is
engaged, a painter dwelling in London, who, on the 13th of June,
32 Hen. VI., " Covenanteth, &c, to paint in most fine, fairest, and
curious wise, four images of stone ordained for the new chapel in
Warwick, whereof two principal images, the one of Our Lady, the
other of St. Gabriel the angel, and two less images, one of St. Ann,
and another of St. George : these four to be painted with the finest
oil colours, in the richest, finest, and freshest clothings, that may be
made of fine gold, azure, of fine purpure, of fine white and other
finest colours necessary, garnished, bordered and powdered in the
finest and curiousest wise, all the cost and workmanship of painting
to be at the charge of the said Kristian, the executors paying for the
same 121." The marbler follows the painters, who undertakes the
erection of the tomb, and the adjoining part of the chapel pavement ;
then another marbler, with a founder and a coppersmith, who to
gether agree to provide the metal ornaments, the latten-plates, for
the tomb, consisting of one large plate, and two narrow ones to go
round the tomb, with hearse, shields of arms, inscriptions, &c,
which are to be gilded with the finest gold, and the whole executed
at a cost of 125/. of the money of the fifteenth century. But the
tomb is not yet prepared for the effigy that is to crown the whole ;
some fourteen images of lords and ladies, called weepers, of a
certain £ze, and some eighteen angels are needed. William Austin,
the " founder " of the previous agreement, undertakes this labour
alone ; covenanting " to cast, work, and perfectly to make, of the
finest latten to be gilded, that may be found, viz. : images embossed
of lords and ladies in divers vestures, called weepers, to stand in
housings made about the tomb, those images to be made in breadth,
length, and thickness, &c, to fourteen patterns made of timber.
Also he shall make eighteen less images of angels to stand in other
housings as shall be appointed by patterns, whereof nine after one
side, and nine after another. Also he must make an hearse to
stand on the tomb, above and about the principal image that shall
lie in the tomb, according to a pattern ; the stuff and workman
ship to the repairing to be at the charge of the said Will Austin.
And the executors shall pay for every image that shall lie on the
tomb, of the weepers so made in latten, 13s. Ad., and for every
image of angels so made 5s. ; and for every pound of latten' that
shall be in the hearse 10d., and shall pay and bear the costs of the
said Austin for setting the said images and hearse." And now, at
last, the tomb is complete, with the single but important exception
of the effigy of the deceased earl, the founder of the beautiful work
around. William Austin's services, are here a third time in requi
sition, who doth covenant " to cast and make an image of a man
armed of fine latten, garnished with certain ornaments, viz. : with
sword and dagger, with a garter, with a helm and crest under his
head, and at his feet a bear muzzled and a griffon, perfectly made of
the finest latten, according to patterns." Our modern sculptors
may like to know what was the cost of such a statue— engraved in
p. 356, Fig. 1326— it was just 40/. of the money of the time. But
who made all the patterns that are so constantly referred to in all
the agreements? We wish we could answer the question, but un
fortunately we are there left in the dark. Among the executors
was one called Will. Berkswell, priest, who was dean of the col
legiate church ; Mr. Britton thinks he was also the architect of the
chapel. If so, the inexhaustible variety of these " patterns " was
probably owing in. a great measure to him.
The Richard Beauchamp to whom we are indebted for this libe
ral and artistical expenditure, was a man of no ordinary importance
in his day. In the reign of Henry IV. he did good service against
Glendower and the Percies ; in the reign of Henry V. he was one
of the glorious few at Agincourt —
Harry the King, Bedford, and Exeter,
Warwick, and Talbot, Salisbury and Gloucester :
and lastly, in the reign of Henry VI., the youthful king was con-

376

OLD ENGLAND.

[Boor IV.

fided chiefly to his tutelage. He died in the castle at Rouen, leaving
behind him a name of the highest honour, — the Good Earl. One of
the most interesting incidents of his life was his pilgrimage to the
Holy Land (Fig. 1330), where he was magnificently entertained by
the Soldan's lieutenant, on the ground that " he was descended from
the famous Sir Guy of Warwick, whose story they had in books of
their own language." (Dugdale.)
Among the many wild and picturesque legends told by Old Eng
lish Chroniclers of the early heroes of England, there is none more
popular than that just referred to, which has made the name of Guy
as famous to this day as those of King Arthur and St. George the
Victorious. The story in question can be traced back to the twelfth
century, and whatever of truth there may be in the events to which
it relates, belongs probably to a period not much earlier, though
usually assigned to the tenth century, and the reign of Athelstan.
The tradition runs to the effect that in the year 926 the Danish and
Norwegian powers, who then kept the country in continual terror,
invaded England and advanced as far as Winchester. Athelstan
saw the crown about to depart from him, and his only hope lay in
being able to find a champion who might cope successfully with a
champion of the Danes in a single combat that was to decide the
fate of Athelstan and of England. There were stout and skilful
warriors among the Saxons, but none, it would seem, who durst en
gage with the Dane, a man of gigantic size and prowess, a sort of
Goliath among the Philistines: his name was Colbrand, and he was
an African or a Saracen ; hence probably the interest felt in Guy
among the Saracens, of which Dugdale gives us so pleasant an evi
dence. Amidst the fears and distress which this dark and terrible
giant excited among our Saxon forefathers, Athelstan was favoured
by a vision, directing him to the man whose valour was to save his
country in her dire extremity. " Like a palmer poore " appeared
this hero, chosen by heaven itself, for the momentous ordeal: he
had just landed at Portsmouth from the Holy Land. Athelstan
engaged him, acting on his faith in the vision, and knowing nothing
of the palmer's history and fitness. The hour of trial and peril
arrives. If the giant conquers, England and her king will be en
slaved to the " Lord Danes." It is a fearful venture. All outward
advantages are on Colbrand's side. Does he not seem to shake the
solid earth with his tread, as, in the sight of a multitude of English
and of Danes, he advances towards his victim ? Does he not swell
with disdain and defiance to even more than his ordinary vastness
of dimensions? And Athelstan, when he hears the foreboding
murmurs of his people, and the scornful threats of the insolent foe,
regrets he not his trust in the vision ? Is he not sick to the soul
with agonising suspense as the combat begins, and the sword-strokes
rattle on the casques and shields ? He averts his gaze, and adds
his prayer to the many that are ascending around him. Suddenly

the sun breaks out from behind the cloud that had enveloped their
fortunes. Colbrand falls ! The " palmer poore " is victor. The
welkin rings with shouts of joy from the English host. Overpower
ing is the grateful enthusiasm of the liberated people. But, shrink
ing from the general gaze, desiring no earthly glory, the pilgrim-
hero retires from the scene. To the king alone, and on a promise
of secrecy, he reveals himself as Guy, the renowned Earl of War
wick. Therewith he passes from Athelstan's presence to strict
retirement, in the neighbourdood of his castle of Warwick. There,
with his own hands,, as the peasants about Guy's Cliff now tell us,
he hewed out a cave, in which he lived and died. His remains were
interred by his beautiful countess, Felicia, who' most probably
applauded the superstitious delusion which had consigned her to
solitude and sorrow, and worshipped her husband's memory in con
sequence as that of a glorious saint. Guy's- Cliff (Fig. 1303) is situ
ate a mile and a half from Warwick, by the river Avon, that here
winds through beautiful meads and rocks and woods, the centre of
one of the most lovely and romantic of scenes. The cave is not
the only local memorial of the ancient hero ; armour is preserved in
the castle, that, according to tradition, he once wore ; a rude statue
of him, eight feet high, was carved from the solid rock by Richard
Beauchamp, the same Earl of Warwick, who founded the chapel on
the cliff (Fig. 1304), and the contiguous buildings, as well as the
more superb Beauchamp Chapel. The right hand of the statue held
a drawn sword, the left arm supported a shield ; the sword-arm and
the sword, and the left hand are now wanting: a leg was also de
ficient, but " a new one was bestowed a few years back by a female?
statuary of rank and deserved celebrity, while on a visit to the
castle" ['Beauties of England and Wales']. The Hon. Mrs.
Damer, we presume, is the lady here referred to. The legend of
Guy was doubtless the attraction that drew a greater hero than
Guy to visit the hermitage, Henry V., who was about to found a
chantry on the cliff for two priests, but his illness and his early death
prevented. In his father's reign, and in the reign of Edward III.,
there was a hermit resident at Guy's Cliff; other recluses have most
probably dwelt there, whose lives have passed in holy quiet without
a record. But there is one hermit of this "house of pleasure"
and "place meet for the Muses" (Leland), of whom we have a.
record — John Rous, the antiquary, sou of Geffrey Rous of War
wick. He was a chantry priest at Guy's Cliff, and officiated daily
in its chapel. Having acquired considerable learning at Oxford,
he surrounded himself here with his books, and employed most of
his time in writing chronicles of his country and a history of War
wickshire and its famous earls, without manifesting the smallest
desire to win the notice or applause of the world, but sufficiently
rewarded by the gratification afforded him by his studies : he died
in 1491.

Chap. ILL]

OLD ENGLAND.

377

CHAPTEE III.— POPULAE ANTIQUITIES.

T is with curious feelings and thoughts
that we contemplate such a view of the
metropolis of the Middle Ages as is
furnished in our engraving of the ap
proach towards the City from West
minster (Fig. 1348). A kind of
doubtful wonder seizes us when, look
ing for the localities that have become
celebrated over half the globe, we
have to recognise them under such
very different aspects, in so very differ
ent a scene. One can hardly believe
that the pastoral landscape in the fore
ground, stretching away on the left into
the country around Hampstead and Highgate, and scattered over with
isolated mansions, farms, and homesteads, whilst on the right it ex
tends down literally to the river's strand, broken, however, at intervals
by the embattled mansions and " pleasances " of the nobility, should
be really the same place along which the throng of men, women, and
children, coaches, omnibuses, cabs, now passes from " morn to dewy
eve," and long after, without apparent cessation or rest. One may
look in vain to trace in the Convent Garden of the view any
resemblance to the present Covent Garden, though the flowers
bloom there as of yore, only in a thousand times greater luxuriance
and beauty and variety. How one of the pious monks would have
stared at the sight of gorgeous cacti suddenly put among his little
collection ! How he would have luxuriated over a pine-apple !
The first of the mansions along the old route towards St. Paul's
was Durham Place ; on a line with it, farther on, were Essex House
and York House, names chronicled in historic and poetic pages.
"The old church of St. Mary, Strand, appears at the bend of the road,
on its left side. Looking towards the river, we see the silver current
flowing on to the foot of the many-arched Old London Bridge,
loaded with houses, gates, and chapel,; the airy pinnacles of St.
Mary Overies appear on its right, the Tower of London on its
left, and nearer the front of the picture Old St. Paul's, whose
elevated position, and queenly height and dignity, attest the cathe
dral of the great metropolis, only, instead of the grand Grecian
dome that lords it over modern London, a most beautiful, bold, and
elegant Gothic spire is there seen to pierce the sky. Glancing from
the general view, to that of one of the streets of London (Figs. 1 362 ,
1363), we are enabled to judge ofthe extent, arrangement, and cha
racter of the houses generally of the ancient metropolis. Art was not
then merely art for the great. The merchant and the small trader
had their homesteads built substantially and picturesquely ; and
when on the occasion of a public pageant, the windows were
adorned with rich tapestry and the streets festooned with gar
lands of flowers, it would be hardly possible to desire a more
agreeable picture, even without the royal personage and his splendid
train for whom the show might be got up ; as, for instance, when
the boy-king, Henry VI., returned from his coronation at Paris.
Cheapside (Fig. 1361) was the principal place for the exhibition
of the more important features of these old pageants ; where the
towers full of singing angels and allegorical characters were set
up, where the conduits flowed with wine, and around which
another garden of Eden seemed spontaneously to grow.

Let us turn aside for a few moments to look at Guildhall, pre
senting a very altered aspect from the Guildhall of the last century
(Fig. 1349), and both as unlike as they could be made to the first
building erected here in the year 1411, when a " little college " was
changed into the great Guildhall ; funds having been obtained by
large gifts from the different companies, and by a mode that reminds
us of, and no doubt was borrowed from the custom of raising money for
the great ecclesiastical foundations ; it seems " offences of men were
pardoned for sums of money towards this work ;" at the same time
"extraordinary fees were raised, fines, amerciaments," which con
tinued more or less for the space of ten years.' Among the particular
no. 48.

benefactors were the executors of Richard Whittington, who gave
thirty-five pounds towards paving the hall with Purbeck marble.
That hall (Fig. 1350), notwithstanding the disgraceful treatment it
has undergone as respects externals, and which makes one of the most
noble and stately of buildings look to a stranger approaching it as one
of the most supremely ugly that, it was ever his fortune to behold
— that hall still remains, and within needs only the superficial
restoration of the old architectural style in the upper story, and a
new roof, and the being relieved of those two pretty monstrosities,
Gog and Magog, that give one the idea that the mayor, aldermen,
and common council of the metropolis of the British empire must be
a parcel of overgrown children playing at government, rather than
dealing with their duties in that lofty abstract spirit which they
require, — there want but these alterations and renewals to make
the interior of the Guildhall a very noble specimen of the archi
tecture of the fifteenth century. The crypt (Fig. 1383) below the
hall is scarcely less interesting. It seems to have been a custom at
the period in question to build these strange-looking places, too low
and dark to have been intended for any very public or important
proceedings, too beautiful to be mere vaults beneath the halls of
great mansions. There is the same at Crosby Place ; the same at
Gerard's Hall (Fig. 1358).
It would be superfluous to say that the historical recollections
of Guildhall'are of no ordinary weight and interest. Here it was
that Garnet the Jesuit, that extraordinary man, was tried for his
connection with the Gunpowder Plot, and, after a most skilful and
elaborate defence, condemned. Here was Throckmorton placed on
his trial for treason as a friend of Sir Thomas Wyatt, and for
once, by his consummate skill, by his mingled boldness and tact,
obtained what was little less than a miracle, a verdict of not guilty
from a packed jury, the members of which were well-nigh ruined
for their honesty. Here was the brave Anne Askew doomed to
the last fiery trial of the strength of her religious principles ; and
here did Richard, Duke of Gloucester, through his mouthpiece
Buckingham, first seek in public the suffrages of the citizens
of London to make him king, and very amusing were the pro
ceedings, or would be, if there were not such tragical "issues"
behind. Buckingham commenced by an allusion that found a
powerful echo in the hearts of his hearers : he spoke of the tyran
nies and extortions of Edward IV., who had taxed the pockets and
patience of the Londoners pretty severely ; thence he led them to
the consideration of his amours, which some present had probably
especial reason to remember in their desolate and ruined homes,
and so, by easy stages, the grand point was attained, of preparing
the auditory to listen to the assertion that Edward himself was only
an illegitimate son of Richard Plantagenet the late Duke of York,
therefore as the Lords and Commons had sworn never to submit to
a bastard/what was to be done but to acknowledge Gloucester as
king ? and that, Buckingham energetically called upon them to do.
He paused — there was dead silence. No wonder that even Buck
ingham himself was for the moment " marvellously abashed."
Recovering his presence of mind, he said privately to the mayor
and others, who had been gained over, " What meaneth this, that
the people be so still?" "Sir," was the reply, "perchance they
perceive [understand] you not well." Of course, Buckingham could
amend that, and " therewith, somewhat louder, rehearsed the same
matter again, in other order and in other words, so well and ornately,
and nevertheless so evidently and plain, with voice, gesture, and
countenance so comely and so convenient, that every man much
marvelled that heard him ; and thought that they never heard in
their lives so evil a tale so well told. But were it for wonder or
fear, or that each looked that other should speak first, not one word
was there answered of all the people that stood before ; but all were
as still as the midnight, not so much rouning [speaking privately]
among them, by which they might seem once to commune what was
best to do. When the mayor saw this, he, with other partners of
the council, drew about the duke, and said that the people had not
been accustomed there to be spoken to but by the recorder, which
3 C

378

OLD ENGLAND.

[Book IV.

is the mouth of the city, and haply to him they will answer. With
that the recorder, called Thomas Fitzwilliam, a sad (serious) man and
an honest, which was but newly come to the office, and never had
spoken to the people before, and loth was with that matter to begin,
notwithstanding, thereunto commanded by the mayor, made rehearsal
to the commons of that which the duke had twice purposed himself;
but the recorder so tempered his tale that he showed everything as
the duke's words were, and no part of his own ; but all this no
change made in the people, which alway after one stood as they had
been amazed." One cannot but admire the fortitude of Buckingham
in persevering under such very discouraging, and personally humi
liating circumstances, but he came to do certain work, and do it he
would and did. So, changing his style, he began to stand somewhat
upon his dignity, without abating, however, in the particular affection
he had conceived for the citizens. So, again coming forward, " ' Dear
friends,' said he, ' we come to move you to that thing which, per-
adventure, we so greatly needed not, but that the lords of this realm
and commons of other parts might have sufficed, saying, such love
we bear you, and so much set by you, that we would not gladly do
without you that thing in which to be partners is your weal and
honour, which as to us seemeth, you see not or weigh not, wherefore
we require you to give us an answer, one or other, whether ye be
minded, as all the nobles of the realm be, to have this noble prince,
now protector, to be your king ? ' And at these words the people
began to whisper among themselves secretly, that the voice was neither
loud nor base, but like a swarm of bees, till at the last, at the nether
end of the hall, a bushment of the duke's servants, and one Nash-
field, and others belonging to the Protector, .with some prentices
and lads that thrusted into the hall amongst the press, began sud
denly, at men's backs, to cry out as loud as they could, ' King
Richard ! King Richard ! ' and then threw up their caps in token of
joy, and they that stood before cast back their heads marvelling
thereat, but nothing they said. And when the duke and the mayor
saw this manner, they wisely turned it to their purpose, and said it
was a goodly cry and a joyful to hear every man with ''one voice, and
no man saying nay." Of course, there was no resisting such an
expression of opinion, and Buckingham departed to persuade the
reluctant Gloucester to take upon him the sovereignty of England.
How the latter must have enjoyed the narration of his friend's
exploits ! if, indeed, for either enjoyment could exist, under such
hazardous and unprincipled movements.

can

As to the Tower, seen with such propriety looming in the back
ground of our view, we may begin by observing that some important
reparations were made in it during the reigns of Edward IV. and
Richard III., connected probably with the rapidly-increasing uses
that it was put to, especially as the grand state-prison of England.
We have an evidence of what Edward IV. was thinking about, in
the attempt of his officers to set up their own scaffold and gallows
on Tower Hill ; but the city resisted, and the sheriffs successfully
maintained their right of superintending the business of extinguish
ing human life, with all its then usual revolting and cruel accom
paniments. Our plan and engravings furnish a tolerably comprehensive view
of the Tower in what may be called its complete state. We
see in the first (Fig. 1262), the shape of the site, and the ar
rangement and names of the different buildings ; whilst in the
last, we see the exterior of the Tower in the time of Henry VL
(Fig. 1263) ; then the interior (Fig. 1261) shown us in a more
useful than artistical way, with the French prisoner of Agincourt,
the Duke of Orleans, busy writing, surrounded by his guards ; and
lastly comes, in addition to the engravings already given of parts of
the Tower, the view of the old Jewel House (Fig. 1265), and the
north side of the Bloody Tower, or gateway (Eig. 1264), which
was so termed, "for the bloodshed, as they say, of those infant
princes of Edward IV., whom Richard III., of cursed memory (I
shudder to mention it), savagely killed two together, at one time."
So says W. Hubbocke, the orator who welcomed James I. when he
visited the Tower, in 1604, and who gives us a new impression of
the transaction, evidently hardly knowing which was worse, the mur
der or its climax, the killing " two together, at one time."'
What, thinks the reader, is the Duke of Orleans doino- at such an
evidently important time ? Some treaty, is it, he is about to si-n
that shall restore him to his country, and give peace hereafter
between England and France ? No ; the duke is writing simply—
poetry ! and the guards looking on with such interest and attention
are watching the process of gestation. Talk of knowledge under
difficulties! if this is not the pursuit of poetry under difficulties no
matter how f*necessary or self-created, we know not what is We

. ... imagine when an approving hem ! broke forth from the satisfied
poet, how the long silent guards must take advantage of the pause,
and give way to their hems ! too ; then if some lame line will not get
into easier paces, some thought will not leave the palpable obscure
where it is first born, and the poet looks round unwittingly upon
the faces of the sympathising men-at-arms, how he may be answered
by some satirical rascal's cough here, and a sudden droop or turn of
the head there, lest royalty should see its anxieties doubled like
Wordsworth's swan and shadow. Then, as a poet when he has
pleased himself, must read his production aloud, to hear how it
sounds, what a pleasant little knot of critics are at hand, not only
to form opinions, but to express them too — when they get safely away
to the buttery-hatch among their companions.
That the Tower of London was formerly a royal palace as well
as a royal fortress and prison, we are forcibly reminded by a sight
of the regalia still kept here. The small tower in which they were
exhibited until the recent fire, stands at the north-east angle of the
great area. The first mention of these jewels occurs in the reign of
Henry III., who, returning from France, commanded the Bishop of
Carlisle to replace them in the Tower, as they were before. The
same king pledged them to certain merchants of Paris : being re
deemed, they were again pledged to the merchants of Flanders by
Edward III., and a third time to the merchants of London by
Richard II., when they were placed in the charge of the Bishop of
London and the Earl of Arundel. Henry VI. also pledged to his
wealthy uncle, Cardinal Beaufort, as security for seven thousand
marks, an immense quantity of such valuables, which were all to
be forfeited if the borrowed moneys were not re ;iaid by the feast of
Easter, 1440. Being returned in safety to the Tower, the crown
jewels were permitted to .rest until the accession of the great spoiler,
Henry VIIL, who ordered his minister Cromwell to go to the jewel-
house and take therefrom as much plate as he thought could possibly
be spared, and coin it immediately into money. Even after this
characteristic reduction, the royal treasure remained of great value
and variety, as appears by an inventory made by order of James I.
The regalia at present in the Tower includes five crowns : St. Ed
ward's (made at Charles II.'s coronation, to replace the one which
the Confessor is supposed to have worn), the crown of state the
queen's circlet of gold, the queen's crown, and the queen's rich
crown. Of these, the first and fourth are proper coronation
crowns. Three of the most precious of jewels are on the state
crown— a ruby, a pearl, and an emerald, seven inches round.
Here also are the other coronation jewels : the orb, emblem of
universal authority, borrowed from, the Roman emperors ; the am-
pula, or eagle of gold, containing the anointing oil ; the curtana
or sword of mercy, borne between the two swords of justice, spiritual
and temporal ; St. Edward's staff, which is a sceptre of gold, four
feet seven inches and a half long, with a small foot of steel, and a
mound and cross at top ; four other sceptres of gold and precious
stones (one of these discovered in 1814, behind some-old wainscoting
in the jewel-house) ; the queen's ivory rod, a short sceptre of ivory
and gold, made for the queen of James II., &c., &c.
The office of " master and treasurer of the jewel-house " was one
of great honour and profit in the old days. The regalia was first
exhibited to the public in the reign of Charles II., when the direct
emoluments were reduced, and the "show" permitted by way of
compensation. In the same reign an incident occured that would
in all probability have put a stop to the custom almost as soon as it
was begun, but for the circumstance just narrated. Amono- the no
tonous men of that day, one of the most notorious was a° Colonel
Blood, a native of Ireland, who under the Commonwealth had occu
pied a very respectable position in society, having received a grant of
land for his services as a lieutenant in the field, been in the commission
of the peace, and married a gentleman's daughter of Lancashire. The
Irish act of settlement blighted his fortunes, and threw him on the
world a restless, discontented, desperate man. He headed an Irish
insurrection for surprising Dublin Castle, and seizing the person of
the lord lieutenant, the Duke of Ormond. Failing in this, he made
himself still more notorious, by a most extraordinary and daring
attempt to seize and hang at Tyburn the same duke on the niffht of
the 6th of November, 1676, in revenge for Ormond's having dealt
that doom on some of the" colonel's friends in the insurrection The
duke was actually tied on horseback to a confederate of Blood's
when timely aid saved him. This brief summary of Blood's career
may prepare the reader to understand the character of the man
who was concerned in one of the most extraordinary attempts thai
the annals of felony can furnish. During the reign of Charles IT
the keeper of the regalia was one Talbot Edwards, an old and wn"
fidential servant of Sir Gilbert Talbot, master of the jewel-house
Edwards, with his wife and daughter, dwelt in the domestic apart

Chap. III.]

-L

OLD ENGLAND.

379

ments adjoining the place where the t easure was kept. One day
there came a respectable-looking parson and his wife, to whom
Edwards was exhibiting the jewels/ when the lady was suddenly
taken ill. To call his wife to render assistance was naturally the
keeper's first thought, and to invite the sufferer to a private room
as naturally occurred to Mrs. Edwards. The lady recovered but
the civility and kindness of the worthy old couple and their daugh
ter, and the gratitude of the strangers, led to a continuance of their
intimacy, and to a proposal from the parson of a marriage between
his nephew and the keeper's daughter. All this was arranged be
fore the lover's appearance on the scene ; and of course the old
people and their daughter were worked up into a state of high ex
pectation by the time when the first meeting of the pre-affianced
pair was to take place. The nephew came at the appointed time,
attended by his uncle and two other friends. Leaving their horses
at St. Catherine's gate, they walked through the Tower to the jewel-
house, at the door of which, one of the gentlemen — (all of whom it
afterwards appeared were furnished with daggers, pocket-pistols,
and rapier-blades in their canes) — made some slight pretence for
remaining while the others entered. The parson wished his friends
to be shown the regalia, as Mrs. and Miss Edwards did not imme
diately appear, and, accordingly, the unsuspecting keeper entered
the jewel-room with them. Hardly was the door closed, when a
cloak was thrown over him, and a gag forced into his mouth :
he was then informed of the true character of his visitors, and
their real object, which the reader will have already foreseen. The
pretended parson was Colonel Blood, the nephew and friends his
associates, with whose assistance he was determined to possess him
self of the regalia of England, an object so bold, and so certain it
would seem to ordinary eyes of failure, that none but men who fancied
there was a kind of glory in acts of outrageous wickedness, if re
quiring great courage, would have set their lives upon the hazard
of such a cast. Edwards, faithful to his trust, resisted them man
fully, and the poor old man was beaten and stabbed before he could
be quieted ; his life, probably, was only saved by the singularly
opportune arrival of his son from Flanders. The confederate who
watched at the door below had attempted to stop the young man,
and inquired with whom he would speak. Edwards, probably wish
ing to give his family an agreeable surprise, and supposing perhaps
that the person was stationed there on duty connected with the
Tower, answered he belonged to the house, and ran up stairs. What
a meeting for father and son after a long separation ! At the mo
ment when the robbers were interrupted, Blood had slipped the
crown under his cloak, one of his associates had secreted the orb,
the other was filing the sceptre into two parts. At the stranger's
appearance there was an instantaneous flight, to stop which the
wounded keeper, relieved from his gag, shouted " Treason and
Murder ! " his daughter, waiting near, heard and repeated the cry,
as she rushed into the open air. The warders of the Tower seemed
panic-stricken. The first whom the fugitives encountered, on trying
to stop them, received a pistol-shot ; the second did not so far pro
voke them, and they passed the drawbridge. As they ran along
the Tower wharf, they joined in the shouts of " Stop the rogues,"
thus bewildering the pursuers. They would probably have got
clear off but for the courage of a brother-in-law of young Edwards,
a Captain Beckman, who followed and stopped them. Blood fired
at him, but, missing his aim, was secured. The crown was still
beneath his cloak, and he struggled hard to keep it. His witty
exclamation, when he saw that all was over, "It was a gallant
attempt, however unsuccessful ; it was for a crown," affords good
evidence how far he was from repentance or fear. Strange to say,
he had, after all, little cause to be afraid. At a time when the
most trivial felonies were so frequently punished with death, one is
amazed that so audacious a criminal should be spared ; but how
much more, to find him in a short time actually elevated to the
dignity of a favourite at court, so that it became the mode for
suitors to make application to the king through Colonel Blood;
whilst the petty reward to the keeper and his son, of three hundred
pounds, was delayed so long that the orders for the money were pre
viously disposed of at half their nominal value. Little as we know
Charles II. was inclined to estimate mere probity and loyalty in
comparison with wit, humour, and a bold spirit, and much as he
might sympathize with a "fine, gay, bold-faced villain," it seems
wonderful that his majesty could not have contented himself with
benefiting the accomplished colonel in a private way, instead of
letting all the world perceive how little he regarded the laws he
proposed to rule by. But conceit, like charity, covers a multitude
of sins. Charles was not proof against that compliment paid to his
august person by the colonel in the circumstance, as related by
himself, that he had been once deterred from taking the king's life

from among the reeds by the Thames side above Battersea, as he
had undertaken to do, by a sudden and irresistible " awe of majesty."
The public opinion of Colonel Blood's elevation is apparent, in an
epigram by one of the witty and profligate lords of Charles' court,
the noted Rochester : —
Blood, that wears treason in his face,
Villain complete in parson's gown,
How mucb he is at court in grace
For stealing Ormond and the crown !
Since loyalty does no man good,
Let's steal the king, and outdo Blood.
From the London of the fifteenth century, suppose we now direct
our attention to the Coventry of the same period, as one of the most
important and interesting of English provincial towns. It was at
that period that the magnificent St. Mary's Hall was erected (see
page 246), of which we subjoin additional engravings of a street
view (Fig. 1359), and a view of the interior (Fig. 1360). Of
course no essential difference need be looked for between the general
style and appearance of the houses of the wealthy and other inha
bitants of Coventry (Fig. 1367) and those of houses belonging to the
same classes in London. Coventry, too, was, like London and all
our principal cities of the middle ages, fortified ; its appearance from
a distance may be seen in the view of Coventry (Fig. 1268) which
represents Edward IV. in arms, and encamped against his formidable
enemy, the Earl of Warwick, who is lodged with his forces in the
town. The time is a little before the terrible and decisive battle Of
Barnet. In that representation of Coventry is suggested what the
known history of Coventry confirms — its importance in a military
point of view. We refer not to its brick or stone walls and entrench
ments, but to the spirit, wealth, and liberality of the inhabitants.
In the year 1448 Coventry alone fitted out 600 armed men for
service. The attention paid to it by the chief rulers of the nation
evidences in a striking manner its rank among the towns of Old
England. It was, as has been previously stated, the favourite resi
dence of the Black Prince. In Coventry have sat two of those
parliaments which have achieved as it were an individual reputation
for their doings : the first being that of 1404, composed, entirely of
laymen ; the other that of 1459, which, for the number of attainders
it issued against the Yorkist party, received the appellation of Par-
liamentum Diabolicum. A better known, as, well as still more
important incident in the history of Coventry, was the meeting
there in the time of Richard II., when Bolingbroke and Nor
folk were to decide their quarrel, by personal combat, after the
fashion of the chivalric code. We have on more than one occasion
alluded to this custom, and have given various engravings illustra
tive of the proceedings ; we have also described, from Froissart, an
actual deed of arms, that, though ending unhappily, was intended
to have been only a friendly encounter; we may now add, from
Holinshed, an account of the preparation for a more deadly en
counter, and where mightier combatants were concerned. At the
time appointed, " the Duke of Aumerle, that day, being high con
stable of England, and the Duke of Surrey, marshal, placed them
selves between them, well-armed and appointed ; and when they
saw their time, they first entered into the lists with a great company
of men, apparelled in silk sendall, embroidered with silver, both
richly and curiously ; every man having a tipped staff to keep the
field in order. About the hour of prime came to the barriers of the
lists the Duke of Hereford, mounted on a white courser, barded
with green and blue velvet, embroidered sumptuously with swans
and antelopes of goldsmiths' work, armed at all points. The con
stable and marshal came to the barriers, demanding of him what he
was ; he answered, ' I am Henry of Lancaster, Duke of Hereford,
which am come hither to do mine endeavour against Thomas Mow
bray, Duke of Norfolk, as a traitor, untrue to God, the king, his
realm, and me.' Then, incontinently, he sware upon the holy
evangelists, that his quarrel was true and just, and upon that point
he required to enter the lists. Then he put by his sword, which
before he held naked in his hand, and, putting down his vizor, made
a cross on his horse, and with spear in hand entered into the lists,
and descended from his horse, and set him down in a chair of green
velvet, at the one end ofthe lists, and there reposed himself, abiding
the coming of his adversary.
"Soon after him entered into the field with great triumph,
King Richard, accompanied with all the peers of the realm, and
in his company was the Earl of St. Paul, which was come out
of France in post to see this challenge performed. The king
had there above ten thousand men in armour, lest some fray
or tumult might rise amongst his nobles by quarrelling or par
taking. When the king was set in his seat, which was richly
hanged and adorned, a king-at-arms made open proclamation, pro-
5 3C2

380

OLD ENGLAND.

Pook IV.

hibiting all men in the name of the king, and of the high-constable
and marshal, to enterprise or attempt to approach or touch, any
part of the lists upon pain of death, except sueh as were appointed
to order or marshal the field. The proclamation ended, another
herald cried, ' Behold here Henry of Lancaster, Duke of Hereford,
appellant, which is entered into the lists royal to do his devoir
against Thomas Mowbray, Duke of Norfolk,, defendant, upon pain
to be found false and recreant.' The Duke of Norfolk hovered on
horseback at the entrance of the lists, his horse being barded with
crimson velvet, embroidered richly with lions of silver and mulberry
trees ; and when he had made his oath before the constable and
marshal that his quarrel was just and true, he entered the field
manfully, saying aloud,. 'God aid him that hath the right;' and
then he departed from his horse, and sate him down in his ehair,
whieh was of crimson velvet curtained about with white and red
damask. The lord marshal- viewed their spears to see that they
were of equal length, and delivered the one spear himself to the
Duke of Hereford, and. sent the other unto the Duke of Norfolk by
a knight. Then the herald proclaimed that the traverses and chairs
of the champions should be removed!, commanding them on the
king's behalf to mount on horseback, and address themselves to the
battle and combat. The Duke of Hereford was quickly horsed, and
closed his beaver, and cast his spear into the rest, and when the
trumpet sounded set forward courageously towards his enemy six
or seven paces. The Duke of Norfolk was not fully set forward,
when the king cast down his warder, and the heralds- cried, ' Ho,
ho ! ' Then the king caused their spears to be taken from them, and
commanded them to repair again to their chairs, where they re
mained two long hours, while the king and his council deliberately
consulted what older was best-to be had in so weighty a cause."
The banishment,, return, and change of dynasty that followed this
—for Richard — most unfortunate interference, we have already
narrated. But there is something for which Coventry has been,
nay is, even, more famous than for any or all of these events, stirring
as is the interest and high as is the argument concerned in them ;
need we say we allude to its pageants? It is something to see one
of these even in the present day, when the vital spirit that was of
old infused into them has to a great degree departed.- And a stranger,
who sees that pageant for the first time, is at no loss to understand
its origin, and must be of somewhat unexcitable materials if it does
not revive in his mind, however faintly, the romance with which
he heard, in his boyish days, the very story that now comes before
his eyes in so palpable a- shape. Amidst the general accessories of
processions — here, however, richer and more picturesque tham usual
—amidst the exhilarating music, the waving ribands and feathers;
the motley assemblage of woolcombers and men in annour, Bishop
Blaize, Jason, and puffy aldermen, city companies, and St. George of
England', all superbly habited, amidst all these comes a lady riding
on a beautiful grey horse, her long hai» flowing over her beautiful
limbs, enveloped in flesh-coloured muslin* — the representative- of
that Lady Godiva who — but the story is too good to fee told in
the end of a sentence, and though well known, never, to our mind,
tires by repetition. Best of all, even that class- of antiquaries who
so much delight in destroying for other people tfhe enjoyments they
cannot appreciate themselves, even those laborious mischief-makers
have been unable with all their researches to do more with the story
of Godiva than— in essentials at leas*— confirm it. One undeniable
evidence is as good as a thousand ; such a one is furnished by the
inscription that formerly existed in a window at Coventry, set wp so
far back as the reign of the second Richard. Thus it ran t
"I, turiche, for the love of thee
Doe make Coventry tol-ffee."
This Luriche, or Leofric III., was one of the'aldermen os earls
of Coventry, in the time of Canute, and obtained a bad reputation
for his oppressive conduct, more especially in matters relating to
taxation and finance. In vain did the citizens remonstrate and
entreat for relief. The great business of commerce,, then begin
ning, was too little understood by any of the rulers of the people
to induce them to show any particular favour to the men or the
towns whose prosperity depended upon it, while in too many cases
their only feelings and desires seem to have been to act like the boy
with his eggs in the fable, and by seizing all that could be laid hold
at once, stop all future growth and supply. Such a man this
Leofric seems to have been ; and the rising town of Coventry might
possibly have been effectually checked and have gone to ruin,
leaving not even its name to future times, but for the interposition of
his countess, a very beautiful,, pious, and modest woman, who, un
able to endure the sight and knowledge of the people's distress,
added her prayJfc to theirs, and constantly importuned her husband
to remove the cause, and would not be silenced. Irritated at what

he looked upon as a mere urt eflecting desire to be charitable at the
expense of his heavv revenue.', Leofric appears to have thought
he would at once put a stop to all further intercessions, by naming
some impossible condition as the price of his consent ; so in a moody
humour one day told her, that when she would ride on horse
back, nakedy through the town of Coventry, he would grant the
remission of tolls desired. " But," returned the countess quickly,
"will you give me leave so to do ? " He could not of course but
be consistent with his humour, so said " Yes." And' before he had
really dteamt, perhaps, of the possibility of his wife's taking him
at his word, the compact was at once settled by her. As the news
flew abroad, Coventry must" indeed' have been in- a strange state of
excitement and expectation ; but was it true ? A public announce
ment soon decided that question ; it was ordered that all persons on
pain of death should keep within doors, and away from their win
dows, the shutters being at the same time universally closed. At the
appointed time, the countess came forth, beautiful and innocent as
the poet has painted our first mother in her first days of innocence ;
and the physical beauty was but a type of the mental beauty that
had determined upon such a deed : and both must have been alike
strange and abashed, and shrinking as it were within themselves,
at the sudden revelation of themselves they were called upon to
make. One man, a tailor, disobeyed the proclamation r and may we
not consider our knowledge that there was such a one as a kind of
evidtence that there were few, or no more, and that the general feel
ings and thoughts of the inhabitants were worthy of the occasion,
namely, thankful, lofty, almost reverential, and utterly incapable of
receiving the service their benefactress did them, in any other spirit
than that in which it was offered ? And thus, with her long hair
drooping over, and almost concealing- her form, her head bowed, and
a strange but rglorious confusion of womanly fears and fancies for
herself, womanly tenderness and resolve for her poor clients floating
through her brain, can we imagine Godiva, pursuing her way, till
the eventful ride was over, and her lord, forgetting all those unwor
thy motives that must have actuated him in allowing her to do what
she had done, and borne away by a new sense of the truly noble and
beautiful being that it was his happiness to call wife, would receive
her with open arms at her gates, and give her not only what she
had asked for the people of Coventry, but what must have been still
dearer, personally to herself, his own fervent admiration and respect.
However this may have been, it is certain that Coventry was re
lieved, and that Coventry, to this day, neither forgets, nor intends
to forget, what it owes to the Lady Godiva.
This is no doubt the essentially popular event in the history
of Coventry; but considered simply as a pageant on the one handr
or as regards its connection with the dramatic literature of England
on the other, there yet remains to be noticed the most important
of the exhibitions that have made the«city so famous ; we allude to
the performances of the mysteries that from a very early period
have taken place in Coventry, and which were there carried to a
higher pitch of splendour than in any other part of England, unless
the Chester plays may be considered an exception. The place of per^-
formance was the street or churchyard, the stage a moveable plat
form (Fig. 1299), the actors and managers the trading companies or
guilds, and the subjects the most solemn of the Bible themes. To the
histrionics ofthe fifteenth century there appeared no difficulty what
ever in getting up a play that should' represent the- Creation, or Fall
of Man, the Nativity, or Crucifixion of Christ ; nay, even the last
solemn day of Judgment, were quite within their means — at least- so
they thought. Nothing of course was too expensive for such repre
sentations ; and in the items that have been preserved of the cost of
particular plays, there are some amusing evidences' of the knowledges
of\the importance of the property-man and machinist, and' of the
want of knowledge of the boundaries that divide piety from what
looks like blasphemy, but which is so only in look, for we know it
was all done in innocence and perfect simplicity. Here are some
items from Sharp's ' Dissertation * on these pageants : — Payd for 2
pound of hayre for the divill's head, 3*. ; mending his hose, %d. ?
black canvas for shirts for the damned, 4s. ; red buckram for the
wings of angels (represented by naked children), 7*. ; paid for a cote
for God, and a payre of gloves, 3s." The auditory were not unwor
thy of such magnificent preparation and subjects. The king and
royal family, the nobles, and chief ecclesiastical dignitaries of Eng
land, were usually present, with a host of strangers from different
parts, of the kingdom. The crafts went previously through the
streets in solemn procession. The times of performance were chiefly
the Christmas and Whitsun LHolidays. The pageants were rightly
so named, for the dialogue was generally rude, with very little or
no plot, and the whole formed a succession of scenes, rather than a
connected story. We may here glance at the pageant of the Birth

Chap, in.]

OLD ENGLAND.

381

of Christ and offering of the Magi, and which included also the
Flight into Egypt and Murder of the Innocents. This, according
to the principle of division of different parts of a general series among
different companies, was prepared by and at the expense of the com
pany of Shearmen and Tailors. The piece opens amidst the sound of
harp and trumpet, and Israel appears prophesying the blessing that
awaits mankind. The poet does not trouble his head about niceties,
so presently several centuries are passed over, and Gabriel comes
to announce to Mary her share in the great transactions that are
about to take place. This is followed by a conversation between
Mary and Joseph, and then preparations are made for the first
appearance on the scene of the wonderful stranger. This is done
with fine poetic feeling. It is night, and the scene represents a
field where shepherds are scattered about, who are cold and heavy
in spirit, when a star shines, and the song of Gloria in excelsis Deo
is Beard. Immediately follow three songs, sung in parts, treble,
tenor, and bass (the music, a simple kind of melody, is preserved) ;
the singers being the shepherds, and certain women who represent
the mothers of the country sorrowing over Herod's cruel edict : —
" O sisters two, how may we do
For to preserve this day
These poor younglings, for whom we do sing
By, by, lully lullay.
Herod the Kng, m his raging,
Changed he hath this day
The men of might, in his own sight,
All young children to slay.
That woe is me, poor child, for thee,
And ever mourn and say
For thy parting, neither say nor sing
By, by, lully, lullay."
The star now guides the shepherds to the "crib of poor repast,"
where the child Jesus lies, and the shepherds present their offerings,
one his pipe, another his hat, a third his mittens. The action now
moves on with more rapidity. Prophets come declaring where he
would not be born, namely, in halls, castles, or towers, in order to
enhance the humility of the chosen place : Herod's messenger fol
lows ; then the three kings, who seek to persuade Herod to recal his
cruel decree, but in vain ; and so at last the slaughter takes place,
the infant Jesus being previously carried off into Egypt. With two
specimens of the author's powers respectively in pathos and fury, we
conclude our notice of the Shearmen and Tailors' pageant. Whilst
one mother thus entreats for mercy —
" Sir Knightes, of your eourtesy,
This day shame not your chivalry,
But on my childe have pity' f
another threatens all and sundry in these words —
"Sit he never so high in: saddle
But I shall make his biaines addle,
And here with my pot-ladle
With him will I fight."
" There is abundant evidence," observes the author of an admi
rable article on the English Drama in the 'Penny Cyclopaedia,'
" that the Romish ecclesiastics, In their first introduction of this
kind of representations, especially that part of them relating to the
birth, passion, and resurrection of Christ, had the perfectly serious
intention of strengthening the faith of the multitude in the funda
mental doctrines of their church ,- and it seems the less extraordi
nary that they should have resorted to this expedient, when we
reflect that, before the invention of printing, books had no existence
for the people at large. But it is no less certain that the repetition
of these exhibitions rapidly worked upon the popular mind an effect
which it is likely, the priestly dramatists themselves had not con
templated in the first instance: it developed' the universally latent
passion in the breast of social man for spectacle in general, and for
dramatic spectacle especially, for its own sake. Here again was the
strongest encouragement of all for the elergy to persevere in then-
dramatic efforts. Finding the lively pleasure which the people took
in this mode of receiving religious instruction, they were tempted to
add, according to their barbarous ability, embellishment after em
bellishment to the simple copies which they had originally presented
ofthe most remarkable passages of Scripture story, until the profane
exhibition itself, the miracle play, and not the sacred subject of it,
became the sole object of interest to the people who composed the
audience at these representations, as, also, it certainly became the
primary object of the greater part of the ecclesiastics who took part
in getting them up." And, starting from this point, it is easy to

perceive how, step by step, the growing power went on, until it
became what it now is, the richest division of the richest of national
literatures. 
In the beginning of the present chapter we alluded to the manifold
uses to which the florid Gothic style of architecture became applicable
during the present period : this is one of its distinctive features as com
pared not only with all previous forms ofthe Gothic, but as compared
with most other styles of architecture by whatever name known. In
carrying this style, which had been hitherto an exclusively ecclesias
tical one, into buildings intended for domestic purposes, the alterations
and adaptations were not at first very considerable. The parts were
on a smaller scale, and exhibited some specialties of composition ;
but their details and ornaments, even the doors and windows, were
essentially the same. But gradually new members sprang up, the
chimney, for instance, and gave at once a domestic expression to the
whole. Bays and oriels also became highly beautiful and picturesque
parts of the new style. _ Then the timber roof began to rival the
ecclesiastical stone ones ; and, although originated, like them, in an
earlier period, were carried in the present one to the highest pitch
of mechanical skill and artistical effect. The arch of timber in a
simple form is frequently found in buildings of the thirteenth and
fourteenth centuries. In Westminster Hall, completed in 1399, we
find one of the earliest examples of a novel method of constructing
and ornamenting the open roofs ; and which in its turn led the way
to the more elaborate roofs of Eltham Palace, Crosby Place, &c.
In the castellated structures of the period we find the new
Domestic style blended with what may be called the old Domestic
style of those barons who were always attacking or being attacked,
and whose houses therefore exhibited more of wall and battlement,
tower and turret, than any of the lighter features that speak of
social comforts, splendour, or refinement. And thus, according to
the peaceable or the turbulent characters of their possessors, did the
mansions that were built in the fifteenth century partake more or
less of the Domestic or the Military aspect. Generally speaking,
the difference within half a century was very great. What, for
instance, can be more striking than on turning from the view of
the Westgate, Canterbury (Fig. 1272), with its solid towers, and
machicolated gateway, breathing as plainly as stone and mortar and
iron can, defiance and war, to the contrast presented in the elegant
range of building that forms a part of the great court of Warwick
Castle (Fig. 1270)? Yet but a small interval of time occurred
between the erection of these structures. Warwick Castle generally
is, we may notice in passing, what the first sight of it suggests, the
growth of long centuries, and no product of any one founder
or architect, any more than of one style. We need not dwell on
the individual architectural characteristics of some of the other
buildings of the period, represented in our engravings ; such for in
stance as the Manor-house of Great Chatfield in Wiltshire (Fig.
1351), an Inn-yard (Fig. 1364), or the houses in Warwick (Fig.
1365), Grantham (Fig. 1352), and Leicester (Fig. 1350), where
Richard III. slept the night before the battle of Bosworth ; whilst
of the merely decorative features of domestic architecture, the
chimney-piece at Tattershall Castle (Fig. 1357), and the heraldic
vane of Oxburgh Hall (Fig. 1353), it will be sufficient to observe
that they show very happily that love of heraldic display which
forms the characteristic of the style and time. The Crosses that so
picturesquely adorned our old English towns, are not unworthily
represented in the Market cross at Winchester (Fig. 1354).
How necessary it was, even so late as the fifteenth century, to
make eveTy mansion of a certain rank capable of military resistance,
is shown in a very remarkable manner, in that collection of letters
known as the Paston Letters recently edited from an earlier edition,
by Mr. A. Ramsay, and which consists generally of the corre
spondence of the Pastons and their connections between the years
1440 and 1505. It appears that, in 1459, the celebrated warrior
Sir John Fastolf died, and left by will to the respectable family of
the Pastons, his relations in Norfolk, " the estate of Caister." The
Duke of Norfolk laid claim to the same estate, which he asserted
Sir John had already given to him in his lifetime. Out of these
opposite claims litigation arose, and the Letters furnish some
curious examples of the manner in which it was carried on. After
seven years spent in preliminaries, one of which was a bargain for
the purchase of the estate from one of Fastolf's executors, in order
to put his right on the most solid ground possible, the duke proceeds
to besiege the manor-house, a course of action that no one seems
to have thought for a moment inconsistent with the most formal
respect for law ; indeed, the age was one of legal formality, and the
Pastons and the Norfolks were the very concentration of its spirit.
While the duke prepared for his attack on the Caister manor-house,

382

OLD ENGLAND.

[Book IV.

Sir John Paston, knight, a distinguished soldier, who had succeeded
his father as chief of the family, sent help for the defence from
London, where he was living. On his brother John devolved the
perilous task of resisting the duke's men at Caister. The soldiers
sent by the knight are described by him in his letter to his brother
as " four well assured and true men to do all manner of thing that
they be desired to do in safeguard or strengthening of the said
place ;" and he says, " they be proved men, and cunning in the war
and in feats of arms ; and they can well shoot both guns and
crossbows, and amend and string them, and devise bulwarks, or any
things that should be a strength to the place ; and they will, as need
is, keep watch and ward : they be sad (serious) . and well-advised
men, saving one of them which is bald, and called William Penny,
which is as good a man as goeth on the earth, saving a little,
he will, as I understand, be a little copshotten (high-crested), but
yet he is no brawler, but full of courtesy," &c. Kindly regarding
their comforts, he points out that a couple of beds must be provided
for them, and further explains that he prefers sending such men
from a distance, to relying upon the neighbouring people, who
might be timid on account of the losses they may bring upon
themselves, and so discourage the " remanent," that is to say,
we presume, the great body of the knight's own servants and re
tainers, whom, no doubt, these skilled men of war were brought down
from the metropolis to guide and instruct. The siege now goes on
week after week, the law taking not the slightest notice. On the
12th of September we learn from another letter, written by the
mother of Sir John, the garrison are getting pressed.
" I greet you well," she writes, " letting you weet that your
brother and his fellowship stand in great jeopardy at Caister, and
•lack victuals'; and Daubeney and Berney (two friends who had
joined him in the defence) be dead, and divers other greatly hurt ;
and they fail gunpowder and arrows, and the place is sore broken
with guns of the other party, so that, unless they have hasty help,
they be like to lose both their lives and the place, to the greatest
rebuke to you that ever came to any gentleman, for every man in
this country marvelleth greatly that ye suffer them to be so long in so
great jeopardy without help or other remedy." Fresh strength too is
to be given to the besiegers : the duke, she says, has sent for all his
tenants to come to Caister on the following Thursday, when " there
is like to be the greatest multitude of people that came there
yet ; and they purpose then to make a great assault ; for they have sent
for guns to Lynn and other places, by the sea's side, that with their
great multitude of guns, with other shot and ordnance, there shall
no main dare appear in the place ; therefore, as ye will have my
blessing, I charge you and require you that you see your brother
be holpen in haste." The anxious mother, however, living at a
distance, 'finds from Sir John's answer that matters are not so bad
as she anticipates. The grand difficulty is the want of money, and
it is really surprising, as well as touching, to hear this man of rank
and property say, " I have but ten shillings, and wot not where to
have more ; and moreover, I have been ten times in like case or worse
within this ten weeks." Under such circumstances, and contending
against a nobleman, it is not difficult to foresee the result ; the
garrison were obliged to surrender, and then— what dees the brave
defender, John Paston, but prepare to engage in the service of the
very duke who had overthrown him ; a fact partly perhaps to be
attributed to the duke's behaviour when he had achieved his wishes
and partly to the feeling of the time, which allowed men to engage
in these affairs without' any particular animosity towards each other. '
Eventually the Pastons got back their property, the duke having
died, and the duchess having been from the first friendly'to them.
A few words by way of appendage to this part of our subject
may here be devoted to the subject of our engravings, representing
the storming of a fort (Fig. 1251), the siege of a town (Fig. 1252),
and the chief machines used on such occasions, namely, the breach
ing and the moveable towers (Figs. 1253 and 1274). Cannon we
see were now in constant use. The art of attacking fortified places
was greatly advanced by the English during the period under
review, as the French found to their cost when Henry V. was
among them. Every town that he attacked he took ; a fact that
forms a striking contrast to the state of things but a few years
before, when, for instance, Edward IIL was kept for a whole
twelvemonth before Calais, wasting his resources and losing his
temper. Henry's engineers, it appears, drew their lines of contra-
vallation and circumvallation, approached by entrenchments, ran
their secret mine through the bowels of the earth, battered the walls
with rams as well as artillery, showered darts, stones, and bullets
over the ramparts and their defenders. As a specimen of one of the
fortresses built in the fifteenth century, consisting essentially of a
mere tower^r keep, mounted with extensive fortifications, therefore

evidently intended for defence, and not for accommodation, we may
refer to Borthwick Castle, in Scotland (Fig. 1273), erected about
1430, an edifice well known as having been frequently visited by
Mary, Queen of Scots, an honour which it owed to its proximity to
the castle of Crichton, the property of Bothwell. Sir Walter Scott
tells a good story ofthe nobleman to whom Borthwick then belonged.
In consequence of a process betwixt Master George Hay de Min-
zeansand the Lord Borthwick (in 1547), letters of excommunication
had passed against the latter, on account ofthe contumacy of certain
witnesses. William Langlands, an apparitor or macer of the see of
St. Andrews, presented these letters to the curate pf the church of
Borthwick, requiring him to publish the same at the service of high
mass. It seems that the inhabitants of the castle were at this time
engaged in the favourite sport of enacting the Abbot of Unreason,
a species of high jinks, in which a mimic prelate was elected, who,
like the Lord of Misrule, in England, turned all sort of lawful
authority, and particularly the church ritual, into ridicule. This
frolicksotne€ person with his retinue, notwithstanding the apparitor's
character, entered the church, seized upon the primate's officer
without hesitation, and dragging him to the milldam on the south
side of the castle, compelled him to leap into the water. Not
contented with this partial immersion, the Abbot of Unreason
pronounced that Mr. William Langlands was not yet sufficiently
bathed, and therefore caused his assistant to lay him on his back in
the stream, and duck him in the most satisfactory and perfect manner.
The unfortunate apparitor was then conducted back to the church,
where, for his refreshment after his bath, the letters of excommuni
cation were torn to pieces, and steeped in a bowl of wine, the mock
abbot probably being of opinion that a tough parchment was but dry
eating. Langlands was compelled to eat the letters and swallow
the wine, with the comfortable assurance that if any more such
letters should arrive, during the continuance of this office, they
should "a' gang the same gait."

Anthony Bee, the famous military Bishop of Durham, in the
thirteenth century, was guardian of the legal heir of the manor of
Eltham, — William de Vesci, — grandson of the powerful baron,
John de Vesci. As covetous as he was warlike, Bee possessed
himself of the manor, depriving the heir of his right. A large
and splendid mansion was built by the bishop, in place, it would
seem, of an earlier manor-house. Ultimately the property reverted
to its original possessor, John of Eltham. Edward II. 's sovereign
son was born here in 1315. Parliaments met several times at
Eltham in the reign of Edward III., who, with his heroic sons,
here celebrated great feasts and festivals, for the solace of John,
the captive King of France. Edward IV. almost entirely rebuilt
the palace, of which the hall was the noblest part. In that hall,
he celebrated the Christmas of 1483, as Christmases of old were
wont to be celebrated, with bountiful hospitality for high and low,
and abundance of mirth and sport. The palace was much
enlarged by Henry VII. His barons dined with him daily in
the -hall. In its finished state at that time, the structure was
extensive and magnificent. Four quadrangles were enclosed
within a lofty wall and deep wide moat. The principal entrance
consisted of a bridge and gateway in the north wall. Another gate
with a bridge opened in the south wall. The hall, chapel, and state
aparthients were the principal interior features. A garden and
three parks surrounded the palace, stocked with deer, and adorned
by noble trees. Such was the fine old palace of Eltham previous to
the rise of the new palace at Greenwich, which stole away all its
lustre, and caused it to be deserted, if we except an occasional visit
from royalty down to the period of James I. Its decline was
hastened by the Commonwealth. The parks were broken into, the
deer dispersed and killed by the soldiers and others. The greater
part of the buildings were completely destroyed. Charles II. after
his restoration was too intent on his pleasures to think about reco
vering or preserving any part of the melancholy wreck. The old
palace was turned into a quarry, and stones were carried away for
any and every purpose ; indeed the whole would have gone, most
likely, but for the hall being converted into a barn, a circumstance
to which we owe the preservation of one ofthe most beautiful archi
tectural specimens of the reign of Edward IV., whose symbol, the
expanded rose, is visible in different parts of it. Mr. Buckler
observes, " The interior is magnificent. The taste and talent of
ages are concentrated in its design ; and it is scarcely possible to
imagine proportions more just and noble, a plan more perfect orna
ments more appropriate and beautiful ; in a word, a whole more
harmonious than this regal banqueting-room." The. forms ofthe
windows are admirable ; but the timber roof (Fig. 1267) is the great
attraction of this valuable remain. " The main beams of the roof

METHLEY HALL.

Chap. III.]

OLD ENGLAND.

383

are full seventeen inches square, and twenty-eight feet long, per
fectly straight and sound throughout, and are the produce of trees of
the most stately growth. A forest must have yielded the choicest
timber for the supply of this building; and it is evident that the
material has been wrought wit^ incredible labour and admirable
skill." Of late years this riti. and noble roof has been restored
by Mr. Smirke, at the expense of the Government. The area of
the palace is still surrounded by a high stone wall and a broad deep
moat, now converted into a garden, over which are two bridges
At Eltham, as at a hundred other great and ancient places, there
has long existed a tradition that subterranean passages existed ; and
true enough such passages have been found. We learn from a little
pamphlet published a few years ago, that under the ground-floor
of one of the apartments of the palace, a trap-door opens into a
room under ground, ten feet in length, which conducts the passen
ger to the series of passages, with decoys, stairs, and shafts, some of
which are vertical, and others on an inclined plane, which were
once used for admitting air, and for hurling down missiles and
pitchballs upon enemies, according to the mode of defence in those
ancient times ; and it is worthy of notice that, at points where wea
pons from above could assail the enemy with the greatest effect,
there these shafts verge and concentrate. About five hundred feet
of passage have been entered and passed through in a direction west,
towards Middle Park, and under the moat for two hundred feet.
The arch is broken into 'the field leading from Eltham to Notting
ham, but still the brickwork of the arch can be traced farther.
Proceeding in the same direction, the remains of two iron gates, com
pletely carbonized, were found in that part of the passage under the
moat ; and large stalactites, formed of super-carbonate of lime, hung
down from the roof of the arch, which sufficiently indicate the lapse
of time since these passages were entered.
Glancing at the interior of the mansions of the fifteenth century,
something or other of novelty to our eyes everywhere presents
itself. The antique bedrooms (Figs. 1366, 1369), the couvre-
feu (Fig. 1374), which gave name to the custom that the Normans
made so odious, the kitchens (Fig. 1347), all speak of habits dif
fering materially from our own ; and still more do some at least of
the arrangements for the feast (Figs. 1339, 1342, 1346), and es
pecially that of the servant on his knees tasting the wines to satisfy
the guests there was no death in the cup. A very interesting view
of the economy of the house of the chief personage in the realm, has
been just made public (by means of the Athenaeum, Nov. 16), in
the ' Travels of Leo von Rozmital', the brother of George, King of
Bohemia, who, with a retinue including the narrator, Tetzel, visited
England during the reign of Edward IV. Tetzel, after having
confirmed the truth of the usual remark as to Edward's own hand
some person, adds, that he " has the finest set of courtiers that a
man may find in Christendom. After some days he invited my
Lord Leo and all his noble companions, and gave them a very
costly feast, and also he gave to each of them the 'medal of his
order, to every knight a golden one, and to every one who was not
a knight a silver one ; and he himself hung them upon their necks.
Another day the king called us to court. In the morning the
queen (Elizabeth Woodville) went from childbed to church with
a splendid procession of many priests, bearing relics, and many
scholars, all singing, and carrying burning candles. Besides there
was a great company of women and maidens from the country and
from London, who were bidden to attend. There were also a great
number of trumpeters, pipers, and other players, with, forty-two of
the king's singing men, who sang very sweetly. Also, there were
four-and-twenty heralds and pursuivants, and sixty lords and knights.
Then came the queen, led by two dukes, and with a canopy borne
over her head. Behind her followed her mother and above sixty
ladies and maidens. Having heard the service sung, and kneeled
down in the church, she returned with the same procession to her
palace. Here all who had taken a part in the procession were
invited to a feast, and all sat down, the men and the women, the
clergy and the laity, each in his rank, filling four large rooms.
Also, the king invited my lord and all his noble attendants to the
table where he usually dined with his courtiers. And one of the
king's greatest lords must sit at the king's table upon the king's
stool, in the place of the king ; and my lord sat at the same table,
only two steps below him. Then all the honours which were due to
the king had to be paid to the lord who sat in his place, and
also to my lord ; and it is incredible what ceremonies we observed
there. While we were eating, the king was making presents to all
the trumpeters, pipers, players, and heralds ; to the last alone he
gave four hundred nobles, and every one, when he received his
pay, came to the tables and told aloud what the king had given
him. When my lord had done eating, he was conducted into

a costly ornamented room, where the queen was to dine, and
there he was seated in a corner that he might see all the ex
pensive provisions. The queen sat down on a golden stool
alone at her table, and her mother and the king's sister stood far
below her. And when the queen spoke to her mother or to the
king's sister, they kneeled down every time before her, and remained
kneeling until the queen drank water. And all her ladies and
maids, and those who waited upon her, even great lords, had to
kneel while she was eating, which continued three hours (!) After
dinner there was dancing, but the queen remained sitting upon her
stool, and her mother kneeled before her. The king's sister danced
with two dukes, and the beautiful dances and reverences performed
before the queen — the like I have never seen, nor such beautiful
maidens. Among them were eight duchesses, and above thirty
countesses and others, all daughters of great people. After the
dance the king's singing-men came in and sang. When the king
heard mass sung in his private chapel my lord was admitted : then
the king had his relics shown to us, and many sacred things in
London. Among them we saw a stone from the Mount of Olives,
upon which there is the footprint of Jesus Christ, our Lady's girdle,
and many other relics." This is altogether about the most extra
ordinary picture of the life of royalty in England ever presented ;
and one can with difficulty believe that it really refers to a time not
quite four centuries removed from our own.

A peculiar and very significant evidence of the value placed upon
books in day's when authors were few, and copies of their writings
could only be obtained by the labours of the transcriber (Fig. 1331),
is furnished to us by the very numerous cases recorded of the
presentation of books to persons of high rank, amidst circumstances
of great ceremonial. In some cases that presentation seems to have
taken place from the single desire of the poet or writer to obtain
patronage ; or show, in a graceful manner, the appreciation of services
already enjoyed. Thus Lydgate presents his poem of the ' Pilgrim '
to Thomas Montacute, Earl of Salisbury (Fig. 1204). In other
cases, the object appears to have been to make some offering
of unusual value and magnificence ; and what could be more valu
able or magnificent in the eyes of a man like Henry VI., than the
missal presented to him on his coronation by his uncle the Duke of
Bedford, one of the most beautiful and elaborate specimens of the
art of illumination ever produced before or since ? The manuscript
contains fifty-nine- drawings of the most highly-finished character,
nearly the size of the page (eleven inches by seven and a half),
and above a thousand tiny miniatures, in addition to the border of
foliage, and other rich and exquisite decorations. In one of these
(Fig. 1329) we have the only portrait known of the duke, at whose
cost it was executed. Then again, other nobles who desired to gra
tify their monarch by such gifts, happily combined with the grati
fication of that feeling their desire to call his attention to subjects in
which they felt a peculiar interest ; some such feeling it was, we
may conclude, that led the Earl of Shrewsbury to present to the
same king a book of romances (Fig. 1202) ; and how the circum
stance seems to explain, and, in our estimation, to enhance the exploits
of brave John Talbot ! But a mighty change came over the spirit
of literature, small as were its earliest manifestations. The famous
mercer, William Caxton (Fig. 1372), came back to- England with
those few, and simple, and rude implements which had cost him so
much wealth, labour, time, and anxiety to obtain ; and then, from the
precincts of Westminster Abbey, speedily issued the art of printing.
And certainly it is an extraordinary fact, that the power that was
to destroy the supremacy of the Eoman Catholic Church, with
all those rank abuses which a gentler mode of treatment might
have failed to remove, should have issued as it were from its
own bosom ; and one calculated to enhance our estimation of that
church ; for, of all the services rendered by it to humanity—
and who can doubt but that these were many and momentous ?—
none can be compared with that which we owe to it, in connection
with the most magical of all arts and instruments— printing and the
press. It almost seems, as though she had been conscious (hat the
manifold corruptions that had gathered around her, crippling her
energies, and bending her once-erect forehead towards the earth,
had removed all chance of future usefulness, and that, therefore,
she had used all her remaining strength to summon up a new
and infinitely more potent spirit to take her place, and continue
with increase of success proportioned to the increase of means, the
good work that the church had in its days of purity begun and
carried on, all things considered, so well and wisely for many a
century, which, in some respects at least, would- have been " dark
ages "indeed, but for her exertion?. It i? certain, at all events,
whatever the notions and thoughts of the men who did welcome the

384

OLD ENGLAND.

[Book IV.

new thing, that inattention to its possible effects formed no part of
them. Among the enemies of printing, there was a bishop who said
plainly, " If we do not destroy that remarkable invention, it will
destroy us." Caxton — a name ever to be revered by all who have
faith in and a yearning for the progress of mankind, which he, in con
nection with the establishment of such a literature as that of England,
has done more perhaps to promote than any other man, working with
similar material agencies — Caxton came to England about 1473 or
1474, and — ominous locality — was located, it has been supposed, in
the scriptorium of the abbey, the place" where its transcribers were
wont to be employed ; at all events it is certain that he began to print
in some building either forming a part ofthe actual abbey, or directly
connected with it ; and that the Abbot Milling, and probably Mil
ling's successor, Esteney, patronised him. Caxton's residence appears
to have been a house in the Almonry (Fig. 1355). Caxton's publica
tions were of a very miscellaneous character, such as treatises on
heraldry, hawking, and chess (Fig. 1373) ; romances of religion and
literature ; translations of classical works ; chronicles, &c. ; all, no
doubt, carrying out, as far as circumstances would permit, his desire,,
which was to make the books capable of " instructing the ignorant in
wisdom and virtue." But Caxton, too, must be presented at court,
and make his offering — a most memorable one — the first English
printed book ever presented to an English monarch. On our
engraving (Fig. 1228), copied from the illumination of a beautiful
manuscript at Lambeth Palace, we see two persons engaged in the
ceremony of presentation. Caxton's fellow-labourer (for he worked
as a contributor to the Caxton press) and patron, is the Lord
Rivers, the most accomplished of all the men who fell as the victims
of the sanguinary wars of the Roses. He was beheaded, with Lord
Grey, Sir Thomas Vaughan, and Sir R. Hawse, at Pomfret, by
order of Richard III., immediately after the death of Edward IV.,
and in order, evidently, to get them out of the way of his projected
usurpation. " O Pomfret ! Pomfret ! " is the passionate address of
Lord Rivers, as he, with his companions, goes to execution (Fig.
1271)—  " O thou bloody prison —
Fatal and ominous to noble peers !
Within the guilty closure of thy walls
Eichard the Second here was hacked to death;
And for more slander to thy dismal seat
We give to thee our guiltless blood to drink."
Shakspere, Eichard III.

The war of the Roses, it has been observed, was essentially a
barons' war, and thus the people were but little interested either
way in the conclusion. It is a well-known fact that the former
were, for once, the chief sufferers, and that the latter were gene
rally spared by both parties ; but not the less is it certain that the
peaceful pursuits of industry must have been fearfully arrested (Fig.
1380) ; that the ploughshare was too often turned into a sword,
and that a state of general disorder must have ensued, calculated to
impoverish and demoralise all within its influence, and especially
the poorest and most ignorant peasantry. The string of miserable
malefactors going to prison (Fig. 1370), and the dreadful proces
sions issuing from it towards the scaffolds (Fig. 1371), that so often
met the startled gaze, thrusting their hideous outlines athwart the blue
and serene-looking sky, were symptoms of a worse mischief done to
the national heart and intellect by these unnatural wars, than the
disappearance even of that long line of nobles who were their more
prominent and more lamented victims.
But they are ended at last, and affairs gradually fall into the old
channel. Commerce revives ; the tradesman looks busy and con
tented. Literature and art continue their respective missions. The
ministrations of the church assume somewhat of their former influ
ence, now that the practical anomaly of an atmosphere of war is
removed from the houses of peace and of God. The towns again
exhibit their magnificent religious plays; the villages once more
resound with the clamour of the popular sports ; the mummers and
the tumblers (Fig. 1379) arouse not only the mirth of the rustics
but— what the wars had checked— their liberality; the drums
(Fig. 1383) are beaten by hands that seem to know the influence
of better living than the poor performer has been lately in the habit

of experiencing ; the green sward that had been trampled by unac
customed feet is rele veiled for the bowls (Fig. 1378 ) ; the hall again
flies across the green from the hand, the trap (Fig. 1381), or the club
(Fig. 1388) i and if the boys leap through their hoops (Fig. 1387),
as before— to them war itself has been but a new subject for sport —
their parents look on with a fresh feeling of satisfaction ; if shuttle
cock (Fig. 1390) and hoodman-blind (Fig. 1386) have not ceased to
be played, there is now assuredly more of the players' hearts in the
sports. The bow, however, is neglected — a significant fact — the
people have had enough. :of war, and so their own favourite weapon
is laid aside. The government of Edward IV. — a thing of force —
grows alarmed at the idea of any decrease of the materials of force,
and so the popular sports are condemned, and the instruments used
in them are to be destroyed — dice (Fig, 1389) among the restj and
shooting-butts (Fig. 1375) are to be erected in every township.
But the edict fails ; the use of the bow still declines ; and the go
vernment, as it ceases to find the materials for its armies always ready
among its subjects generally, leans more and more towards a chosen
portion of them — the growing hired and standing army of England.
The systematic slaughter of the most distinguished warriors
engaged in the wars of the Roses, must have given a fresh impulse
to the desire already strongly and universally felt of making armour
more and more impregnable, and complete from head to foot. An
evidence of the importance previously attached to this -subject is
furnished by the fact that when Bolingbroke was preparing for the
ordeal trial at Coventry, he sent to Galeazzo, Duke of Milan, for a
choice suit of armour. The duke placed all his stock before his
messenger, and when he had chosen what he liked, sent with him
four of the best armourers out of Milan to attend to the fitting
of it to Bolingbroke's person. About 1400 plate armour began
to supersede the old chain mail, and — that accomplished— grew in
a few years more and more rich and fantastic. In our engravings
are exhibited various stages of the progress of plated armour,
beginning with the suits worn by Henry V.'s squire, of which the
plumed bascinet of war is a striking feature (Fig. 1325), and
by the Earl of Suffolk (Fig. 1 327) ; and -then onwards through the
suits of Sir Robert Grushill (Fig. 1328), Richard Beauchamp, Earl
of Warwick (Fig. 1326), and Sir Thomas Peyton (Fig. 1322).
The helmets shown in Fig. 1245 are tilting helmets only, and
were not worn in war. Looking at the richness and splendour
of some of these examples of the armour of the fifteenth century,
we can better appreciate the incident related by Froissart in
connection with Raymond, the nephew of Pope Clement, whose
beautiful armour was the cause of his destruction : he was taken
prisoner, and put to death by his reckless captors, for the sake of the
dazzling shell in which he had enveloped himself. With a few
words on costume we conclude. This was in some respects an
age of fashionable monstrosities. Let the reader who would enjoy
a quiet laugh at the expense of our ancestors, look for instance at
the head-dresses ofthe ladies, square (Fig. 1337), horned (Fig. 1344),
steepled (Fig. 1424), and winged (Fig. 1343), and then contrast
them with the exquisitely graceful figure and dress exhibited in the
brass monument of Eleanor Bohun (Fig. 1312) in Westminster
Abbey, which is a proof after all how solid are the foundations of
good sense and fine taste : what the sculptor of that effigy admired,
and had a circle around him prepared to admire also, we look upon
with exactly the same sentiment. It is Fashion again, that whim
sical fantastic being, who must be answerable for all these head
dress vagaries, as well as for the equally numerous and equally
absurd characteristics of portions of the male costume (Figs. 1335,
1336, 1338, 1340), one of which, the long sleeves, thus fell under
the quaint satire ofthe poet Occleve : —
What is a lord without his men ?
I put case, that his foes him assail
Suddenly in the street, what help shall he
Whose sleeves encumbrous so side trail
Do to his lord, — he may not him avail ;
In such a case he is but a woman;
He may not stand him in stead of a man ;
His arms two have right enough to do,
And somewhat more, his sleeves up to hold.

END OP VOLUME I.

( 385 )

INDEX

TO THE

ENGRAVINGS OF VOLUME I.

No. of
Engraving.
Abbess, Costume of an  498
Abbot, Costume of an English Mitred. . 497
Abury, General View of, Restored ... 25
Abury, Plan and Section  26
Abury, Extended Plan  27
Abury, Bird's Eye View, from the North 28
Agreement with the Barons, Copy of the
Seal of King John to the  459
Alfred, Portrait of  308
Alfred, Coin of  268
Alfred, Silver Coins of  272
Alfred's Jewel  309
Alfric, Earl of Mercia, Seal of ... . 213
Almanac, Clog  472
Alnwick Castle  382
Altar of Apollo, and Vases  167
Anglo-Saxons, military habits of the . . 331
Antoninus Pius. From a Copper Coin in
the British Museum  146
Antoninus Pius, Copper Coin of, comme
morative of his victories in Britain . : 147
Arch  203
Arch-moulding  757
Arch-moulding  758
Arch-moulding  759
Arch-moulding  760
Arch-moulding  761
Arch-moulding  762
Arch-moulding  763
Arch-moulding  764
Arch-moulding  765
Archbishop reading a Papal Bull . . . 1066
Archer, Genoese, winding up or bending
his Cross-Bow  872
Archers  1250
Archers at the Long-Bow  1093
Architectural ornament  766
Architectural ornament  767
Architectural ornament  768
Architectural ornament  769
Architectural ornament  770
Architectural ornament  771
Architectural ornament  772
Architectural ornament on a flat surface . 775
Architectural ornament on a flat surface . 776
Architectural ornament on a flat surface . 777
Architectural ornament on a flat surface . 778
Architectural ornaments, Long and Short -
Work  201
Architecture, Specimen of Lombardic . . 779
Architecture, Specimen of Lombardic ¦ . 780
Armour, Mascled  388
Armour, Tegulated  401
Arms and Costume of a Saxon Military
Chief  189

No. of
Engraving.
Arms and Costume of an Anglo-Saxon
King and Armour-Bearer  190
Arms and Costume of the Tribes on the
Western Shores ofthe Baltic . ... 191
Arms and Costume of Danish Warriors . 192
Arundel Castle  926
Arundel Church, Effigy of Beatrice, Count
ess of Arundel, in  1321
Ashwelthorpe Church, Norfolk, Effigy of
Lady de Thorpe in  1322
Aspatria  721
Aston Cantlow, Church of  1305
Astronomical Instrument  10
Athelstan, Silver Coin of  269
Athelweard, Silver Penny of  243
Athlone, Leinster, North Gate at . . . 848
Attack on the walls of a besieged Town . 869
Augustus  117
Avantailes  „ . . . 443

B.

Balustre  202
Ballyhendon, Plan of Chambers at . . 52
Ballyhendon, Plan of Chambers on a Farm
twelve miles from  53
Bamborough, Rock of, with the Castle in
its present state  383
Bangor  1010
Banners used in the Battle of Agincourt . 1171
Bapchild, Kent, Piscina at  1084
Bapchild, Kent, Piscina in Norman Arch at 1085
Barfreston Church  723
Barfreston Church, Kent, Doorway of . 722
Bamet, Battle of  1210
Barnet, Field of Battle near  1211
Barrow, varieties of ....... 19
Barrow, varieties of Druid  20
Barrows, Ancient British, Contents of . , 24
Barrows, Long, Druid, Bell-shaped, Co
nical, Twin  18
Bartholomew Close, entrance from Smith-
field to  529
Base  939
Base  •  940
Bath, Roman, Strand Lane  159
Bath Abbey Church, West Front of . . 984
Battle Abbey, as it appeared about 150
years since  351
Battle Abbey Gateway  358
Battle Scene  330
Battering-rams, Machines used for the De
fence of stone walls against the Action of 868

No. of
Engraving.
Battering-ram, Machines used for boring
holes in fortified walls to make openings
for the Action of the  870
Baynard's Castle  923
Beauchamp Chapel, Warwick .... 1301
Beaufort, Cardinal  1209
Beaumaris Castle  830
Becket, Baptism of the Mother of . . . 508
Becket, Marriage of the Father and Mo
ther of  509
Becket, Thomas-k, Martyrdom of . . . 411
Bed  1141
Bed  1142
Bed, Wheel, Cotton MS  276
Bedroom in the time of Henry VI., Fur
niture of a  1 367
Bedroom in the time of Edward IV. . . 1369
Bedford, Duke of  1198
Beds, Saxon  278
Bells, Hand  1149
Benedictine, a  492
Beornvvlf, King of Mercia, Silver Penny
of  251
Berhtulf, King of Mercia, Silver Penny of 253
Berkeley Castle  853
Berkeley Church, Font in  504
Bermondsey, Remains of the Eastern Gate-
House of the Abbey  697
Bermondsey, existing Remains of the Con
ventual Buildings ....... 698
Bermondsey, Remains of the Abbey . . 699
Bestiarii, a Sculpture from Pompeii . . 127
Betchworth Castle  928
Birdcatching by Clap-net  791
Bishop and Priest  221
Blacklow Castle, near Guy's Cliff ... 854
Boar Hunting. From Cotton MS. . . 231
Bob, Apple  787
Bodiam Castle, Sussex  925
Boothby Pagnel Manor House, Fireplace . 810
Borthwick Castle, present state of . . . 1273
Bosham Church  216
Boss  941
Boss  942
Boss  943
Boss  944
Boston Church  1044
Bowling  794
Bowling Ball  1378
Bracket .  938
Bracket, Early English Foliage .... 933
Brass, Early (inlaid in stone) .... 1086
Brass of Bishop Compton  1087
Brass of R. Braunche and his Wives, lower
compartment of the  108
3 D

386

INDEX TO THE ENGRAVINGS.

No. of
Engraving.
Breaehing-Tower ; Archers behind their
Pavison ; Cannon, Cross-Bowmen, &c. . 1253
Breastplate, British, remains of a ... 64
Bridekirk Font, west side of .... 502
Bridekirk Font, east side of  503
Bristol, Abbey Gateway at  573
Bristol Cathedral  1000
Britannia on a Roman Coin, the earliest
Figure of  122
Building a House  809
Burford, Oxfordshire, Piscina at . . . 1082
Burgh Castle, Wall of  129
Burgh Castle, Wall of  130
Burial of a deceased Monk in the interior
of a Convent  510
Burnham Beeches  476
Bury St. Edmunds  691
Bury St. Edmunds  692
Bury St. Edmunds, 1745  693
Bury St. Edmunds, Saxon Tower at' (by
mistake named Abbey Gateway) . . 469
Bury St. Edmunds, Saxon Tower at . . 695
Bury St. Edmunds, Parliament in the Ab
bey of  696
Bvrgred, King of Mercia, Silver Penny
of  259
Byland Abbey, Yorkshire  700
Byland Abbey  70]

C.

Caernarvon Castle  827
Caerphilly, Leaning Tower of ... . 909
Calais, the Siege of  867
Cambridge, Round Church at ... . 540
Cambridge, Interior of Round Church at . 539
Cambridge, the School of Pythagoras at . 1107
Camp at Caer-Caradoc  77
Candlestick  799
Cannon, mounting of  1097
Cannon raised from the Godwin Sands,
ancient  1098
Canoes, ancient British, found at North
Stoke, Sussex  57
Canopy  937
Canterbury, Staircase in the Conventual
Buildings in  569
Canterbury, Ruins of the Augustine Mo
nastery at  570
Canterbury, St. Augustine's Gate ... 571
Canterbury, West Gate and Holy Cross
Church at  922
Canterbury, West Gate at  1272
Canterbury Cathedral  553
Canterbury Cathedral before the Tower
was rebuilt  554
Canterbury Cathedral, the Nave of . . 551
Canterbury Cathedral, south side . . . 565
Canterbury Cathedral, Precinct Gateway 566
Canterbury Cathedral, Chapel in . . . 567
Canterbury Cathedral, Archiepiscopal
Chair in  556
Canterbury Cathedral, Base in the Crypt of 558
Canterbury Cathedral, Base in the S.E.
Transept of  ... 560
Canterbury Cathedral, Capital of a Column
in the Crypt  214
Canterbury Cathedral, Capital in the Crypt
°f  557
Canterbury Cathedral, Capital in the Crypt
of  559
Canterbury Cathedral, Capital in . . . 562
Canterbury Cathedral, Capital in the S.E.
Transept of  5gl
Canterbury Cathedral, Capital and Base in
the S.E. Transept of  568
Canterbury Cathedral, Crockets in. . . 564
Canterbury Cathedral, Font in ... . 555
Canterbury Cathedral, Finials in . . . 563
Canute, Silver Coin of  280
Canute, Silver Penny of  279
Canute and his Queen  312
Capital  935
Capital .. m. .....'.' | 936
Carausius, British Coin of 173

No. of
Engraving.
Cardiff Castle, as it appeared in 1775 . . 390
Cardinal's Hat  1121
Carisbrook Castle, the Keep of . - . . 427
Carlisle  380
Carlisle Castle  379
Carlisle Cathedral  1007
Carlisle Cathedral, part of the Nave of . 1008
Carlisle Cathedral, Ornamental Gable in . 1009
Carnbre Castle  - . . . 33
Carpenter, Haberdasher, Weaver, Dyer,
and Tapestry-maker  1132
Carriages, temp. John  461
Carrighhill, Ground Plan and Section of
the Subterranean Chamber at ... . 54
Cart, Welsh Agricultural  74
Carthusian, a  491
Castle, a Norman  346
Castleacre Priory, Norfolk  720
Castleton Castle, Plan of . , . . . . 910
Castou Church, Northamptonshire, Nor
man Window in .  730
Caxton, with paper-marks  1372
Celt  70
Celt . . •  71
Ceolnoth, Archbishop of Canterbury, Silver
Penny of  225
Ceolvvlf, King of Mercia, Silver Penny of 250
Chair  1146
Chair, Reading Table, and Reading Desk 1140
Chairs. From Harleian MS  240
Chairs. Ancient Chessmen .... 798
Challenge, accepting the  1101
Chamberlain, Robert, Esquire to Henry V. 1324
Charing Cross  826
Chariot, British War, Shield and Spears . 75
Charter House, Cloisters of the . . . 1287
Charter House, Inner Gate of the . . . 1288
Chaucer, Portrait of  1114
Cheesewring, as seen from the North-west 47
Chepstow Castle  908
Chertsey  1215
Chessboard, circular  1148
Chessmen, ancient  800
Chester  . ion
Chester, Old Houses in  H12
Chester " Row," interior of a ... . 1113
Chester, St. John's, at  713
Chester, Watergate Street, with an exter
nal view of the " Rows " at .... 1106
Chevy Chase, Field of the Battle of . . 845
Chicheley, Archbishop  ] 172
Chichester Cathedral  . 1003
Chichester Cathedral, carving on the Floor
of the Presbytery of . . . . . . 1006
Chilton Church  1050
Christchurch, Hampshire ...... 712
Christ Church, Oxford ...... 683
Chun Castle, Plan and Section of . . . 51
Ciolvvlf, King of Mercia, Silver Penny of 260
Cistercian, a  493
Claudius  us
Claudius, Coin of  120
Claudius, Coin of, representing his British
Triumph  119
Cloaks, Plain and Embroidered Tunics, and
Shoes, Saxon  285
Club-ball  1388
Coenvvlf, King of Mercia, Silver Penny of 242
Coffin and Grave-clothes  289
Coin found in London  123
Coin and Fragment  155
Coin-mould, Roman  170
Coin, Silver  233
Coiner at work  795
Coins, Ancient British  68
Coins, Ring, Group of  69
Column and Capital  204
Column, Shaft of  749
Column, Shaft of  750
Column, Shaft of  751
Column, Shaft of  752
Column, Shaft of  753
Column, Shaft of  ' 754
Column, Shaft of  755
Colunn, Shaft of  ° 755
Conisborough Castle  357
Conisborough Castle, Fireplace at . . . 353

No. of
Engraving.
Conisborough Castle, second story of . . 354
Conisborough Castle, third story of . . 355
Conisborough Castle, fourth story of . 356
Conquest, Group associated with the . . 340
Consecration of a Saxon Church. . . . 215
Constantine the Great. From' a Gold Coin
in the British Museum  172
Constantine Tolman, Cornwall .... 41
Convocation of Clergy  1332
Conway Castle  829
Conway Castle  834
Coracles, British  58
Corfe Castle Dorsetshire  919
Corn Hand-mill  802
Corn-sacks and Store-basket  797
Cornice  773
Cornice  774
Coronation Chair  45
Costume, Gaulish  61
Costume, Gaulish  62
Costume, Gaulish ........ 63
Costume of a Soldier  ] 93
Costume, Royal, and the Harness and
Equipment of Horses  283
Costume of Female. Harleian MS. . . 286
Costume of the Anglo-Saxons, Civil . . 288
Costume of the time of John . .... 783
Costume of Norman-English Ladies in the
12th century  rV 790
Costume, Ladies'. Time of Edward I. . 1135
Costume, Male. Time of Edward II. . 1122
Costume, Female. Time of Edward III. 1129
Costume, Male. Time of Edward III. . 1138
Costume7 Female. Time of Richard II. . 1127
Costume, Male. Time of Richard II. . 1139
Costume, Male ; in the time of Henry IV. 1335
Costume, Male ; in the time of Henry V. 1336
Costume, Female ; in the time of Henry V. 1 337
Costume, Male ; in the time of Henry V. 1338
Costume, Male ; in the time of Edward IV. 1340
Costume, Female ; in the time of Ed
ward IV  1343
Costume, Female ; in the time of Henry VI. 1344
Cotton MS., from  314
Couvre-feu  1374
Coventry  1268
Coventry, Ancient Gate of  874
Coventry, Court Front of St. Mary's Hall at 881
Coventry, Font iu  1298
Coventry, Old Timber Houses at . . . 1366
Coventry Pageant  1299
Coway Stakes, the Thames at  113
Cowling Castle, Gateway to .... 911
Cows' Horns, drinking from .... 249
Cradle  803
Cressy, the Battle of  873
Criminals conducted to Prison .... 1370
Criminals conducted to Death .... 1371
Cromlech at Plas Newydd, Anglesey . . 40
Crosby, Tomb of Sir John  1275
Crosby House  1245
Crosby Hall, interior of. The upper floor,
before its being restored  1246
Cross, Golden. Worn by St. Cuthbert . 223
Cross-bow and Quarrel  882
Cross-bow, shooting at Small Birds . . 482
Croyland Bridge  1109
Crusader, a Norman  441
Cunobelinus, Coin of  121

D.

Dance. Cotton MS  266
Dance in the " Garden of Pleasure," from
the " Roman de la Rose "  1335
Dautocher Bridge  151
Darenth Church, Kent ; heads of windows in 213
Death of " the Squire "  1095
Deer, Ladies hunting'  431
Devil's Bridge, South Wales. Built 1187 714
Dice-Box, ancient  1389
Dining-room and Kitchen  7347
Dinner Party  247
Dinner. The Company pledging each
other  265

INDEX TO THE ENGRAVINGS.

387

No. of
Engraving.
Domesday Book, Specimen of ... . 363
Dominican, or Black Friar  1029
Donoughmore, Round Tower of . . . 35
Dorchester, Amphitheatre at ... . 126
Dover, Country near  87
Dover Castle, Roman Church in . . . 91
Dover Castle, Roman Lighthouse, Church,
and Trenches in  89
Dover Cliffs  88
Dover Cliffs  90
Draughts, playing at  1145
Dress, Female. Time of Edward II. . . 1137
Druid, Arch-, in his full Judicial Cos
tume  29
Druid Grove  56
Druidical Circle at Darab  7
Druidical Circle of Jersey  9
Druidical Ornaments  14
Druidical Stone in Persia  8
Druids, and Arch-Druids, Group of . . 15
Druids, two. Bas-relief found at Autun . 13
Drummers  1383
Dryburgh Abbey  717
Duel, or Ordeal Combat  878
Dumbarton Castle, Gate betwixt the upper
and lower parts of  839
Dumbarton, Rock of  838
Dunbar Castle, Ruins of  842
Dunfermline Abbey, Fife ; the Burial-place
ofBruce  837
Dunluce Castle  847
Durham  587
Durham Cathedral  588
Durham Cathedral  589
Durham Cathedral, Nave of  592
Durham Cathedral, Plan of .... . 593
Durham Cathedral, North-west view of . 586
Durham Cathedral, Bede's Tomb in . . 603
Durham Cathedral, Bishop's Throne in . 602
Durham Cathedral, Stone - Chair in the
Chapter-House of.  . 590
Durham Cathedral, Arcade of the Chapter-
House of  591
Durham Cathedral, Capital in ... . 595
Durham Cathedral, Early English Capital
in 
Durham Cathedral, Norman moulding in .
Durham Cathedral, Norman moulding in .
Durham Cathedral, Norman Moulding in .
Durham Cathedral, Norman moulding in .
Durham Cathedral, Ornamental Shaft,
Door of North Cloisters of. ... . 596
Durham Cathedral, Ornamental Shaft,
Door of North Cloisters of . . .
Dutch Church, Austin Friars . . .

594598599600601

597
1282

E.

Eadgar, King of England, Silver Penny of
Eadwald, King of Mercia, Silver Penny of
Earl's Barton Church, Tower of . . . .

241244209711
1313 261
Cotton MS  311

Easby Abbey 
East Dereham Church, Norfolk, Font in
Ecgbeorht, Silver Penny of
Edgar, King.

840 885
315 316281282

No. of
Engraving,
Edward III. From the Tomb in West
minster Abbey  857
Edward III., Great Seal of  861
Edward III., Groat of  862
Edward III., Penny of  863
Edward III., Half-Groat of  864
Edward III. and the Countess of Salisbury 865
Edward III., Tomb of  884
Edward the Black Prince, Monument in
Canterbury Cathedral of  877
Edward the Black Prince presenting his
banner to Sir John Chandos .... 1094
Edward IV  1217
Edward IV  1226
Edward IV. and his Court  1227
Edward IV., Earl Rivers presenting
Caxton to  1228
Edward IV., Signature of  1219
Edward IV., Great Seal of ...... 1220
Edward IV., Groat of  1221
Edward IV., Half-Groat of  1222
Edward IV., Penny of.  1223
Edward IV., Angel of  1224
Edward IV., Half-Angel of  1225
Edward the Fourth's Chapel on Wakefield
Bridge  1302
Edward V., Signature of  1229
Edward, Prince of Wales  1214
Egbert, Silver Coin of  271
Eleanor Bohun, wife to Thomas of Wood
stock, Duke of Gloucester, Inlaid Brass
Monument of.  1312
Elgin Cathedral  1059
Eltham Palace, Hall of  1266
Eltham Palace, Great Hall of ... . 1267
Ely Cathedral  662
Ely Cathedral, North-west  661
Ely Cathedral, Bracket in  665
Ely Cathedral, Capital in  667
Ely Cathedral, Early English Capital in . 668
Ely Cathedral, Figure of Athelstane in . 663
Ely Cathedral, Figure of Alwin in. . . 664
Ely Cathedral, Shrine of St. Ethelreda in 669
Ely Cathedral, Vesica Piscis in ... . 670
Ely House, Chapel of ....... 1300
Ely, Niche in St. Mary's Chapel at . . 666
Ely Palace, 1772  1300
Erpingham, Sir Thomas  1175
Ethelbert, King of the Saxons, Shrine of 992
Ethelbert's Shrine, Inscription on . . . 997
Ethelwulf, Silver Penny of  262
Ethelwulf, Silver Coin of  270
Eton College  1278
Evesham, Bridge at  819
Evesham, Parish Churches at ... . 1306
Exchequer Tally  471
Exeter Cathedral  640
Exeter Cathedral, West Front of . . . 639
Exeter Cathedral, Bracket in  641
Exeter Cathedral, Bracket in  642
Exeter Cathedral, Bracket in  645
Exeter Cathedral, Bracket in  646
Exeter Cathedral, Effigy of Bishop Mar
shall in  647
Exeter Cathedral, Effigy of Bishop Bar
tholomew in  648
Exeter Cathedral, Section of Shaft in . . 643
Exeter Cathedral, Section of Shaft in . . 644

Edinburgh Castle 
Edmund of Langley. ..*.....
Edward the Confessor, Great Seal of . .
Edward the Confessor, Great Seal of . .
Edward the Confessor, Silver Penny of .
Edward the Confessor, Silver Coins of .
Edward the Confessor, sickness and death
Edward'the Confessor, Funeral of, at West
minster Abbey 
Edward I 
Edward I. From a Statue in the Choir of
York Minster 
Edward I., Great Seal of  828
Edward I., Penny of  81J
Edward II. From the Tomb at Gloucester 851
Edw%rd II., Effigy of, Gloucester Cathe
dral  8f
Edward II., Great Seal of.  852

317321 821 820

F.

Farnham Castle, Ruins of  426
Feast at a Round Table  275
Females, Anglo-Saxon  287
Finial  945
Finial  946
Fire-bell Gate (and Curfew), Barking,
Essex  813
Fishing in a River  1382
Fishing with a Seine Net  785
Fleet, the English  1167
Foliage, decorated  947
Foliage, decorated  948
Fonts, Group of Norman-English ... 507
Fool and Buffoon, Court  1257

No. of
Engraving.
Forest King, the  474
Fountains Abbey  702
Franciscan, or Grey Friar  1028
Franklin and Merchant, Canterbury Tales 1126
Friar preaching from a Moveable Pulpit . 1333
Froissart  866
Froissart and Sir Espaing de Lyon . . . 1090
Froissart reading to the Count de Foix after
Supper  1091

G.

Gable Crosses  934
Galley, Prow of a Roman  86
Galley, Roman  93
Galley, Roman  94
Galley, Roman  95
Gascoigne, Sir W  1165
Gaulish Deity, Cernunnos  11
Gaulish Deity, Hesus  12
General, Standard Bearers, Sec, Roman . 82
Gerard's Hall, Vault under  1358
Glasgow Cathedral  1053
Glastonbury Abbey, Ruins of. As they
appeared in 1785  512
Glastonbury Abbey, Cup found in the
Ruins of.  513
Glastonbury Thorn, the  514
Glendower, Owen ; Portrait of , . . . 1162
Gloster, Humphrey, Duke of. ... . 1213
Gloucester Cathedral  1001
Gloucester Cathedral, Piscina in ... . 1077
Golf, or Bandy-ball  1384
Goodrich Castle  422
Gospels, presented by King Athelstane to
the Church of Canterbury, fac-simile
from the  226
Gower's Monument,inSt.Saviour's Church,
Southwark  1069
Grace, Saying  1 342
Grantham, Lincolnshire, House at . . . 1352
Great Chatfield Manor-House, Wilts . . 1351
Great Gidding, Northamptonshire, Piscina
at.  1078
Greensted, Ancient Church at ... . 306
Grisogono, Ground Plan of the Church of 185
Guesclin, Bertrand du, Portrait of . . . 1099
Guesclin, Bertrand du, fully Armed . . 1100
Guesclin, Bertrand du, at the head of a
Free Company  1092
Guesclin, Bertrand du, at the Tournament 1103
Guildhall, about 1750  1349
Guildhall, the Hall of  1350
Guildhall, Crypt at  1283
Guildhall, Chichester  1105
Guy, Ancient Statue of; at Guy's Cliff . 418
Guy's Cliff in the 17th Century. . . . 1303
Guy's Cliff, Chapel at  1304

H.

Hadley Church Tower and Beacon . . 1048
Hadrian, from a Copper Coin in the British
Museum  144
Hadrian, Copper Coin of  145
Hanaper  470
Hare Stone, Cornwall  44
Harfleur, Street in  1169
Harlech Castle  832
Harold, the Crown offered by the People to 322
Harold, Coronation of  323
Harold coming to Anchor on the Coast of
Normandy  324
Harold's Appearance at the Court of the
Count of Ponthieu  325
Harold's Oath to William  326
Harold taking Leave of Edward on his De
parture for Normandy  318
Harold's Interview with King Edward on
his Return from Normandy  319
Harold on his Journey to Bosham . . . 320
Harold, Death of  339
3D2

388

INDEX TO THE ENGRAVINGS.

No. of
Engraving.
Harold's Stones, Trelech, Monmouthshire 43
Harp, accompanied by other Instruments.
Cotton MS  284
Harrowing and Sowing (Bayeux Tapestry) 257
Hastings, from the Fairlight Downs . . 350
Hastings, St. Mary's Chapel, and the Ruins
of Castle on the Cliff  381
Hastings, Orders given for the Erection of
a Fortified Camp at  334
Hastings, Cooking and Feasting of the
Normans at  335
Hastings, Duke William addressing his
Soldiers at the Field of  336
Hastings, Battle of  337
Hastings, Battle of  338
Hastings, William I. and Tonstain bearing
the Consecrated Banner at the Battle of 341
Haversham Church, Notts, Effigy of Mi
chael de la Pole, Earl of Suffolk, in . . 1326
Haversham Church, Notts, Effigy of Sir
Robert Grushill  1328
Hawking. From Cotton MS  230
Hawking at St. Albans  1376
Head-Dresses, Ladies'  1128
Head-Dresses, time of Edward II. . . . 1136
Helmet, Shield, and Saddle of Henry V. . 1 170
Helmets, Tilting ; in the time of Henry V. 1345
Henry I., Great Seal of  384
Henry I., Silver Penny of.  387
Henry I., Vision of.  499
Henry II., drawn from the Tomb at Fon-
tevraud  406
Henry II., Effigy of  407
Henry II.. Arms of.  409
Henry II., Great Seal of  405
Henry II., Silver Penny of  408
Henry III. From his Tomb in West
minster Abbey  814
Henry III., Great Seal of.  815
Henry III., Penny of  816
Henry IV. and his Queen, Tomb in Can
terbury Cathedral of.  1156
Henry IV. From the Tomb at Canter
bury  1153
Henry IV., Coronation of.  1150
Henry IV., Coronation of.  1151
Henry IV., Great Seal of  1152
Henry IV., Signature of  1154
Henry V., Portrait of  1176
Henry V., Entry into London of . . . 1168
Henry V., being Armed by his Esquires . 1173
Henry V. and his Court  1186
Henry V., Great Seal of  1178
Henry V., Noble of  1179
Henry V., Half-Noble of  1180
Henry V„ Quarter-Noble of  1181
Henry V., Groat of.  1182
Henry V., Half-Groat of  1183
Henry V., Penny of ....... 1184
Henry V,, Signature of  1185
Henry V., Funeral of  1020
Henry V., Tomb in Westminster Abbey
of  1187
Hertry VI  1192
Henry VI., Portrait of.  H89
Henry VI. in his youth  H88
Henry VI. and Court. John Talbot re
ceiving a Sword  1190
Henry VI. and Margaret of Anjou, Mar
riage of  1191
Henry VI., Great Seal of  1 193
Henry VI., Groat of  1194
Henry VI., Half-Groat of.  1195
Henry VI., Penny of  1196
Henry VI., Signature of  1197
Henry VI., Tomb formerly at Windsor of 1216
Henry of Monmouth  1163
Herald Reading his Despatches .... 1104
Hereford Cathedral  1002
Hereford Cathedral, Ancient West Win
dow of  998
Hereford Cathedral, Modern West Win
dow of  999
Herefordshire Beacon  76
Hertford Castle  916
Hexham, East End of the Priory Church
at. ... M.  704

No. of
Engraving.
Hexham, Northumberland, Piscina at . . 1080
Hexham, Northumberland, Piscina at . . 1081
Holy Well at Northampton  1297
Holyrood Chapel, Interior of. ... . 732
Hoo'dman Blind  1386
Horn of Ulphus  292
Horse-Baiting  788
Horse, Beating a Tabor  784
Horse, Beating a Tabor  786
Host and Cook. Canterbury Tales . . 1133
Howden Church  1025
Hugh Lloyd's Pulpit  48
Hunting Rabbits, Royal Party .... 368
Hunting, Stag  367
Husbandmen. Vision of Henry II. . . 782
Huts in a Cingalese Village  49
Huts, Gaulish. From the Antonine Column 50

IfHey Church  ... 724
Iffley Church, Font in  505
Hluminated Letter, Anglo-Saxon . . . 301
Illuminated Letter, Anglo-Saxon . . . 302
Illumination, from an  1258
Illumination from St. Athelwold's Befcev-
dictionel  303
Illumination from St. Athelwold's Bene--
dictionel  304
Inn^Yard  1364
lona  199
lona, or I.-Columb-Kell," Ruins of the-
Monastery of  198
Isleham Church, Cambridgeshire, Effigy
of Sir Thomas Peyton in  1323
Isleham Church, Cambridgeshire, Effigy
of Lady Peyton in  1327
Ixworth Abbey, Suffolk. Stone Coffins . 511

Jedburgh  1056
Joan of Arc, Old Monument at Rouen of. 1200
John of Eltham. From his Tomb in West
minster Abbey  871
John, King  448
John, King,' Portrait of  446
John, Great Seal of  445
John, Great Seal, &c, of „ . . . . . 452
John, Irish Silver Penny of  447
John, Tomb at Woreester of: .... 465
John of Gaunt . . . . _ ... 887
Julius Caesar  84
Julius Caesar. From a Copper. Coin in the
British Museum  83
Jumieges, Norman Capital at  737

Kelso  1054
Kenilworth Castle in 1620  430
Kenilworth Gastte, View from the Gate-
House of  822
Kenilworth Castle, Great Hall of . . . 823
Kenilworth, Ruins in the-l7th Century of 818
Kildare Cathedral  1060
Kildrummie Castle, Ruins of  836
Kilmarnock Rocks, as seen from the South-
East ..•-...  4g
King, with his Privy Council . . . . 1158
King's College Chapel, Cambridge. . . 1279
King's College Chapel, Cambridge. . . 1280
King's College Chapel, Cambridge, Door
way of  1281
Kingston, St. Mary's Chapel at . . . 305
Kirkstall Abbey  1040
Kirkstall Abbey, Plan of . . .» . . . 1041
Kit's Coty House, near Aylesford, Kent . 36
Kit's Coty House ....'.... 37
Kit's Coty House  33
Knight and Squire. Canterbury Tales . 1119

No. of
Engraving.
Knight, Figure of a. From Caxton's
' Game of the Chess '  1373
Knight Templar  544
Knighting on the Field of Battle ... 442
Knights Combating  879
Knights Jousting  880
Knights Jousting  904

Lady-Chapel, St. Mary's Church, War
wick, Effigy of Richard Beauchamp,
Earl of Warwick,™  1325
Lambeth Palace  , „ . 1064
Lambeth Palace, from the River. . . . 1290
Lambeth Palace, Gateway of .... 1291
Lambeth Palace, Chapel of  1292
Lambeth Palace, Guard-Room of . . . 1293
Lambeth Palace, Lollards' Prison in . . 1294
Lambeth Palace, Great Hall  1295
Lambeth Palace. Garden View. . . . 1296
Lancaster  A 844
Lantern, Saxon  310
Law Habits of. the 15th. Century. . . . 1341
Leaping.through a Hoop  1387
Leatherhead Church  1316
Leeds Castle  927
Leicester  1247
Leicester Abbey- ......... 1032
Leicester, House .of the 15th Century at . 1356
Lewes Priory  515
Lich Gate at Beckenham  1035
Liehfield Cathedral. General View . . 965
Lichfield Cathedral, from the Door of the
Chapter-House of  974
Lichfield Cathedral, Western Doorway of. 972
Liehfield Cathedral, Western Doorway of. 975
Lichfield Cathedral, Base in the North
Transept, of  967
Lichfield Cathedral, Base in the Chapter-
House of.  969
Lichfield Cathedral, Bracket in ... . 970
Lichfield Cathedral, Bracket in the Chap
ter-House of  977
Lichfield Cathedral, Bracket in the Chap
ter-House of  981
Lichfield Cathedral, Capital in ... . 966
Lichfield Cathedral, Capital in ... . 979
Lichfield Cathedral, Capital in the Chap
ter-House of  968
Lichfield Cathedral, Crocket in .... 980
Lichfield Cathedral, Dripstone termination
in  971
Lichfield Cathedral, Dripstone termination .
in  973
Lichfield Cathedral, Dripstone termination
'»  976
Lichfield Cathedral, Finial in  978
Lillebonne, Castle of  345
Lincoln, Jew's House at  812
Lincoln, Norman interesting Arches at . 781
Lincoln, Perpendicular Door in Bishop's
Palace at  1318
Lincoln Cathedral  574
Lincoln Cathedral  576
Lincoln Cathedral, Interior of ... 577
Lincoln Cathedral, Boss in the Nave of . 585
Lincoln Cathedral, Bracket in ... . 584
Lincoln Cathedral, Bracket in the Chap
ter-House of  583
Lincoln Cathedral, Early English Capital
in the Chapter-House of  579
Lincoln Cathedral, Norman Capitals in the
Tower of  575
Lincoln Cathedral, Early English Turret
of  580
Lincoln Cathedral, Gable Cross of . . . 581
Lincoln Cathedral, Gable Cross of . . . 582
Lindisfarn, Ruins of the Priory of . . . 572
Llandaff  1013
Lollards' Tower, Doorway in  1065
London, Plan of Roman  158
London, Restoration of the Ancient Tho
roughfare from Westminster to . . . 1348
London, Street in  1362

INDEX TO THE ENGRAVINGS.

389

No. of
Engraving.
London, Street in ........ 1363
London, Street in ; Cheapside . . . . 1361
London Bridge, 1209  808
London Bridge, Southwark side .... 807
London Stone  150
Lorsch, Portico at  183
Lorsch, Capital from the Portico at . . 184
Ludlow Castle  421
Luton Church  1311
Lutterworth Church. Wickliffe's Rectory 1049
Lydgate presenting his Poem of 'The
Pilgrim ' to the Earl of Warwick and
Salisbury  I204

M.

Magna Charter and its Associations . . 454
Magna Charta Island  455
Magna Charta, Specimen of  458
Malmesbury Abbey  1036
Malmesbury Abbey, Arch of Transept in 1037
Malmesbury Abbey, Tomb in ... . 1039
Malmesbury, Arms of  1038
Map of the 10th Century, Anglo-Saxon . 299
Melrose Abbey  1058
Melrose Abbey, South-east View of . . 1057
Mentz Cathedral, Capital, from the Door
way of  186
Miller, Manciple, and Reve. Canterbury
Tales  1130
Minstrels' Pillar, Beverley  902
Monk and Friar. Canterbury Tales . . 1123
Monk Bar, York  386
Morris-Dance, Whitsun  1377
Mummers  1143
Mummers, Court  1256

N.

Neswick Church, Font in  506
Netley Abbey, Ruins of  1027
New Abbey, Kirkcudbrightshire . . . 1034
Newark Castle, Interior of  425
Newcastle-upon-Tyne, Castle of . . . 431
Newcastle Castle, Chapel in  432
Newcastle-upon-Tyne, "Pant" in'front of
the Freeman's Hospital at  1110
Newcastle, Black Gate at  1111
Newport Gate, Lincoln, Restoration of the
Roman Arch forming  139
Newport Gate, Lincoln, Roman Arch as it
appeared in 1792 forming  140
Niches  1076
Norfolk, Duke of  1240
Norfolk, John Howard, First Duke of . 1241
Norham Castle, Ruins of  428
Norman House, Elevation of a .... 811
Normans Conveying Arms and Provisions
for the invading Fleet  329
Northleach Church, Gloucestershire . . 1314
Norwich  610
Norwich, Erpingham Gate at ... . 609
Norwich, Flint Masonry, St. Ethelbert's
Gateway at  617
Norwich, Flint Masonry, St. Ethelbert's
Gateway at  618
Norwich Castle  399
Norwich Castle, South-west View of . . 398
Norwich Cathedral  619
Norwich Cathedral, from the F'rior's Gate,
Cloisters in  621
Norwich Cathedral, from the Prior's Gate,
Cloisters in  622
Norwich Cathedral, Arcade in ... . 631
Norwich Cathedral, Arcade in the North
Transept of  626
Norwich Cathedral, Norman Arcade in . 629
Norwich Cathedral, Norman Base in . . 624
Norwich Cathedral, Capital in the North
Transept of.  615
Norwich Cathedral, Capital in the North
Transept of  616

No. of
Engraving.
Norwich Cathedral, Early English Capital
in  623
Norwich Cathedral, Norman Capital, East
End of the Gallery of  630
Norwich Cathedral, Effigy of Bishop Gold-
well in  620
Norwich Cathedral, Figure over the En
trance to the Transept of  625
Norwich Cathedral, Finial in ... . 627
Norwich Cathedral, Font in  613
Norwich Cathedral, Gable Cross in. . . 628
Norwich Cathedral, Niche in .... 612
Norwich Cathedral, Pinnacle in ... . 614
Norwich Cathedral, Piscina in ... . 611
Nottingham Castle, Ancient Caves near . 921

0.

Oaks in Welbeck Park  480
Odin, Entrance of the Mine of . . 296
Odo, Bishop of Bayeux, Pronouncing a
Pastoral Blessing  500
Offa, King of Mercia, Silver Penny of . 234
Organ or Dulcimer, and Violin . . . . 1147
Ornament, Anglo-Saxon  300
Ornamental Letter of the 12th Century . 805
Ornaments and Patterns of the Ancient
Britons  . , 30
Oxburgh Hall, Heraldic Vane at . . . 1353
Oxford, a Tower which formerly stood on
the Bridge at  1108
Oxford, Arcade, Tower at  684
Oxford, Boss at  689
Oxford, Corbel Shaft at  '686
Oxford, Norman Capital at  690
Oxford, Norman Capital at  748
Oxford, Pinnacle at  685
Oxford, Poppy-Head at  687
Oxford, Poppy-Head at  688
Oxford, Shrine of St. Frideswide at . . 682
Oxford Castle Tower of  396
Oxford Castle as it appeared in the 15th
Century  397
Oxford Cathedral  733

Painted Chamber, the  901
Parliament Assembled for the Deposition
of Richard II  896
Parliament of the time of Henry V. . - . 1159
Parliament Oak in Clipstone Park . . . 488
Parson and Clerk of Oxenford. Canter
bury Tales  1124
Party, a Convivial. Harleian MS. . . 239
Passage of the Host. Cripples Worship
ping  . . . 1334
Patera Bronze. View 1  152
Patera Bronze. View 2  153
Patera Bronze. View 3  154
Paul's Cross  520
Paul's Cross, Roman Antiquities found on
the Site of  164
Paul's Walk  518
Pavement, Tessellated  161
Pearl-Shells, British  59.
Pembroke Castle  831
Pembroke, William Marshall, Earl of . 451
Pershore  707
Pershore, Cross near  708
Peterborough  991
Peterborough, Arch of the Cloisters of . 994
Peterborough, Parapet at  993
Peterborough, Parapet at  996
Peterborough, Recesses at  995
Peterborough, Andrew, Abbot of, 1199;
Peterborough Cathedral  495
Pevensey Bay, Sussex  349
Pevensey Castle, General View of the
Ruins of  105
Pevensey Castle, Plan of  106
Pevensey, Interior of Norman Tower . 112

No. of
Engraving.
Pevensey, Norman Keep  ill
Pevensey, Sally-Port  110
Pevensey, Supposed Saxon Keep ... 109
Pevensey, Walls and Gate  107
Pevensey, Walls  108
Peverel Castle, Derbyshire  424
Pig of Lead, with the Roman Stamp . . 155
Pig of Lead, with the Roman Stamp . . 156
Pig of Lead, with the Roman Stamp . . 157
Pigsty, Welsh  55
Pinnacles  1075
Planta Genesta  410
Plantagenet, Geoffrey  402
Playing Bears  793
Plough, Two-wheeled  1380
Plough, Wheel (Bayeux Tapestry) '. . 256
Ploughing, Sowing, Mowing, Gleaning,
Measuring Corn, and Harvest Supper . 238
Ploughman and Shipman. Canterbury
Tales  '. 1131
Poitiers, the Battle of  876
Pomfret Castle  429
Pomfret Castle  1271
Pompeii, Amphitheatre at  128
Pontefract Castle, temp. Charles II. . . 899
Porchester Castle, Hants, Plan of . . . 104
Pouch, Leathern  468
Prioress and Wife of Bath. Canterbury
Tales  1125
Prison, temp. John  462
Prudhoe Castle, Northumberland . . . 841
Pusey Horn  290
Pusey Horn, fac-simile of the Inscription
on the  291

Q-

Quarter-Staff  1144
Queen Anne, Wife of Richard III. . . 1236
Queen Anne, Wife of Richard III. . . 1243
Queen Berengaria  440
Queen Eleanor, Wife of Henry II. . . 412
Queen Eleanor. From her Tomb in West
minster Abbey  824
Queen Elinor  449
Queen Elizabeth Woodville  1218
Queen Joan of Navarre, Second Wife of
- Henry IV  1155
Queen Catherine, Wife of Henry V. . 1177
Queen Margaret of Anjou  1206
Queen Matilda, Wife of Henry I. ... 385
Queen Philippa. From the Tomb in
Westminster Abbey  855
Queen's College, Oxf°ru> Ancient Gate
way at . .  1160
Quintain, Ancient; now standing at Off-
ham, Kent  792
Quoined Work  200

R

Reading Abbey, the Burial-place of
Henry I., Ruins of  389
Reaping and Gleaning  801
Reculver, Ruins of the Ancient Church
of  103
Red King, Vignette from the Poem of the 366
Redcliff Church, Bristol  1043
Reynold, King of Northumbria, Silver
Penny of"  235
Reive-Pole, Saxon  473
Repast, Inviting to the  1346
Residence of a Saxon Nobleman. . . . 229
Revel, Country  490
Richard I. From his Tomb at Fonte
vrault  438
Richard I., Effigy of  439
Richard I., Great Seal of  437
Richard and the Lion  444
Richard II. Portrait in the Jerusalem
Chamber  886
Richard II., Portrait of  889
Richard II., Half-Groat of  890

390

INDEX TO THE ENGRAVINGS.

No. of
Engraving,
Richard II., Groat of  891
Richard II., Penny of  892
Richard II., Great Seal of  888
Richard II., Banishment of Bolingbroke
and Norfolk by  893
Richard II. and Gower  894
Richard II. and Bolingbroke, meeting of . 898
Richard II. and Bolingbroke arrived at
London  900
Richard II. knighting Henry of Mon
mouth  1164
Richard II., Funeral of  905
Richard, Duke of York  1207
Richard III  1238
Richard III  1239
Richard III  1230
Richard III., Portrait of  1237
Richard III., Signature of  1231
Richard III., Great Seal of  1232
Richard III., Groat of  1233
Richard III., Penny of  1234
Richard III., Half-Groat of  1235
Richborough, Plan of  98
Richborough, General View, from the
East  99
Richborough, North Wall of ... . 100
Richborough, Plan of the Platform and
Cross  101
Richborough, Bronze found at ... . 102
Richmond, Yorkshire  359
Richmond Castle, from the River Swale . 360
Richmond Castle, Keep of  361
Rievaulx, Abbey of  719
Ringed Mail  194
Robin Hood and Little John  485
Robin Hood, Scarlet, and John .... 477
Robin Hood and the Tanner. Quarter-
staff  478
Robin Hood's Stride, or Mock Beggar's
Hall, near Burchoven in Youlgrave,
Derby  486
Rochester Castle, Plan  376
Rochester Castle, Entrance of ... . 374
Rochester Castle, the Keep, with its En
trance Tower  375
Rochester Castle, Interior of the Remains
of the Upper Story of  373
Rochester, Conventual Seal of ... . 651
Rochester, Conventual Seal of ... . 652
Rochester Cathedral, Principal Entrance
and Interior of  " . . : 649
Rochester Cathedral, West Front of . . 650
Rochester Cathedral, St. Augustine, from
the Door of the Chapter-House of . . 659
Rochester Cathedral, Emblematic Figure
of the Mosaic Dispensation, from the
Door of the Chapter-House in . . . 660
Rochester Cathedral, Capital of a Crypt
Column in  653
Rochester Cathedral, Capital of a Crypt
Column in  654
Rochester Cathedral, Norman Capital in . 742
Rochester Cathedral, Norman Capital in . 743
Rochester Cathedral, Norman Capital in . 744
Rochester Cathedral, Norman Capital in . 746
Rochester Cathedral, Coloured Tile in . 657
Rochester Cathedral, Coloured Tile in . 658
Rochester Cathedral, Norman Recess on
the West Front of  655
Rochester Cathedral, Norman Recess on
the West Front of  656
Roger, Bishop of Sarum, 1193. Salisbury
Cathedral  494
Rolls of Records  466
Roman Citizen  133
Roman Eagle  85
Roman Eagle  92
Roman Highway on the Banks of the
Tiber  I37
Roman House, Atrium of a  174
Roman House, Atrium of a  181
Roman House, Room of a  175
Roman House, Room of a  180
Roman Hypocaust, at Lincoln, Remains of 141
Roman Image of Victory  135
Roman Victory  116
Roman Villa, ¦gnor  179

No. of
Engraving.
Roman Villa, Great Witcombe, Glouces
tershire  178
Roman Villa, Plan from Vitruvius, to show
the general arrangements of a ... 176
Roman Villa, Woodchester  177
Roman Wall and Vallum, near the South
Agger Port Gate, Profile of ... . 138
Roman Wall, part of a ; the Site of the
Ancient Verulam, near St. Albans . . 148
Roman Wall of London, part of the ; ex
cavated behind the Minories . . . 149
Romans and Barbarians, Conflict between 114
Rome. A fragment after Piranesi . . . 115
Rome, Ancient Arch on Road leading into 142
Rome, Old Walls of  143
Romsey, Hampshire, Piscina at ... . 1079
Romsey Abbey  725
Romsey, the Abbey Church of ... . 726
Romsey Abbey, Doorway of .... 727
Room of State, temp. John  464
Rosette on the Tomb of Bishop de la Wich 1004
Rosettes on the Tomb of Bishop de la Wich 1005
Roslin Castle, Ruins of  833
Roslin Castle and Chapel, Ruins of . . 835
Rouen  1201
Rougemont Castle  . 395
Rufus, Tomb of  371
Runnemede  456

s.

Salisbury 
Salisbury, Tomb of the Boy-Bishop at . .
Salisbury Cathedral, North-west View of
Salisbury Cathedral, Choir of ... .
Salisbury Cathedral, Chapter-House in .
Salisbury Cathedral, Piscina at ... .
Salisbury, Montacute, Earl of ... .
Salisbury, William Longespee, Earl of .
Sandal Castle 
Sandbach, Crosses at 
Sanson-sur Rille, Roman Capital at . .
Sarcophagus 
Sarum, Old, Remains of 
Sarum Plain 
Savoy, The 
Savoy Palace, Ruins of the, 1711 . . .
Saxon Emblems of the Month of January
Saxon Emblems of the Month of February
Saxon Emblems of the Month of March
Saxon Emblems of the Month of April
Saxon Emblems of the Month of May
Saxon Emblems ofthe Month of June
Saxon Emblems of the Month of July .
Saxon Emblems of the Month of August
Saxon Emblems of the Month of September
Saxon Emblems of the Month of October
Saxon Emblems ofthe Month of November
Saxon Emblems of the Month of December
Scarborough Castle,. Ruins of 
Seat, elevated and richly ornamented . .
Sepulchral Stone found at Ludgate . .
Sergeant-at-law, and Doctor of Medicine.
Canterbury Tales 
Servant, to prevent Treachery, tasting the
Wine before serving it at Table . . .
Severus, Wall of, on the Sandstone Quar
ries, Denton Dean 
Severus, Wall of, near Housetead, North
umberland 
Sharnbourn Church, Norfolk, Font in . .
Shield in the British Museum ....
Shield in the Meyrick Collection . . .
Shield, Circular, British 
Shield, metal coating of an ancient Roman-
British 
Ship-building 
Ships, Saxon 
Ship of the Fleet of Duke William trans
porting Troops for the Invasion of
England  f .
Ships of War'of the 15th Century, English
Ships, English, temp. John 
Ships of the time of Richard II. ...
Shooting at Butts 

932
1026 929
930931
1083
1174 450
1269 208738 804 23 17
897924
227 228
236237245246 254
258263264273274920 267 160
11201339 131 132
501 656667
171
795298

328
1157 460 883
1375

No. of
Engraving.
Shrewsbury, Talbot, Earl of .... 1199
Shrewsbury, Talbot, the Great Earl of,-
presenting a Book of Romances to
Henry VI.. . . •  1202
Shrewsbury, Effigy upon the Tomb of
John Talbot, Earl of  1203
Shuttlecock  1390
Siege of a Town  1252
Signs ¦  467
Silbury Hill, Wiltshire  32
Silchester, the North Wall  124
Silchester, Plan of City  125
Skippet  469
Smithy. Cotton MS  294
Smithy ; a Harper in the other compart
ment. Cotton MS  295
Soldier, Roman  136
Soldiers, Roman  97
Southampton  1166
Southampton Gate, North Front . . . 915
Spalatro, Golden Gate of the Palace of
Dioclesian at  187
Spalatro, Console from the Palace at . . 188
Spear, as it would have come from the
Mould  73
Spear-Mould  72
St. Albans,. Fields near  1212
St. Albans, Abbey of  606
St. Albans, Nave of the Abbey of '. . . 607
St. Albans, Transept ofthe Abbey of . . 608
St. Alphage, Porch of  1284
St. Asaph's  1012
St. Augustine  217
St. Augustine, Archbishop of Canterbury,
and Abbot Elfnoth ...'.... 222
St. Bartholomew's Church, South Side of 523
St. Bartholomew, Plan of the Priory of . 524
St. Bartholomew's Church, the Crypt of . 525
St. Bartholomew's Church, the Choir of . 526
St. Bartholomew's Church, the Western
Entrance, Interior  527
St . Bartholomew's Church, Prior Rahere's
Tomb in  528
St. Bartholomew's Church, Prior Bolton's
Rebus in  530
St. Botolph's Priory Colchester .... 516
St. Cross, near Winchester  728
St. Cross  729
St. Cross, Norman Window in ... . 731
St. Cuthbert. From one of the external
Canopies of the Middle Tower of
Durham  220
St. Cuthbert, Egfrid, King of Northum
berland, and an Ecclesiastical Synod
offering the Bishopric of Hexham to . 219
St. David's  1014
St. Dunstan  224
St. Dunstan in full Archiepiscopal Costume,
Portrait of  218
St. Edmundsbury, Altar at  463
St. Etienne, Abbey of ...... 348
St. Faith's  517
St. George and the Duke of Bedford . . 1329
St. George at Dijon  875
St. Georges de Bocherville, Norman Ca
pital at  745
St. George's Chapel, Windsor .... 1276
St. George's Chapel, Windsor, South
Front  1277
St. Helen's, Interior of  1285
St. John's, Chester, Norman Capital at . 741
St. John's, Chester, Norman Capital at . 747
St. John's Gate, Clerkenwell, 1841 . . 542
St. John's Hospital  541
St. Keyne, Well of, Cornwall .... 715
St. Magnus, Kirkwall  1055
St. Martin's Church, Canterbury . . . 197
St. Mary's Church, Oxford, Perpendicular
Window in  1317
St. Mary's Hall, Street Front .... 1359
St. Mary's Hall, Interior  1360
St. Mary Overies, from the South, General
View of  545
St. Mary Overies, the Choir of ... . 550
St. Mary Overies, Norman Arch in . . 546
St. Mary Overies, the Lady Chapel . . 547
St. Mary Overies, Gower's Monument in 548

INDEX TO THE ENGRAVINGS.

391

No. of
Engra-ving.
St. Mary Overies, Templar in ... . 549
St. Michael's Church, St. Albans ... 196
St. Michael's, Cornhill, Tower of . . . 1286
St. Michael le Quern  1289
St. Nicholas Church , Newcastle-upon-Tyne 1052
St, Patrick's Cathedral, Choir of . . . 1051
St. Paul, at Rome, Basilica of ... . 182
St. Paul's Cathedral, Old, South View of 519
St. Paul's, East Window) from the Choir of . 521
St. Paul's, Old, before the destruction of
the Steeple  522
St. Peter's, Northampton  735
St. Peter's, Northampton, Norman Capital
at  739
St. Peter's, Oxford, Crypt of. ... . 718
St. Stephen's Chapel, Ruins of ... . 906
St. Stephen's Chapel, Restoration of . . 907
St. Stephen's Chapel, Specimen of Old
\ Paintings in  1320
St. Thomas, Upper Chapel of, London
. Bridge  1061
St. Thomas, Lower Chapel, or Crypt of . 1062'
St. Thomas, Chapel of, converted into a
Hou.se and Warehouse  1063
Standard  403
Standard  404
Standard Bearers, Roman  96
Stanley, Lord  1248

34
1368 162
740 392
393

Stanton Drew, Stones at
Stanton Harcourt, Ancient Kitchen at .
Statues found in the Thames, Bronze .
Steetly, Derbyshire, Norman Capital at
Stephen 
Stephen, Arms of 
Stephen, Silver Penny of  394
Stephen, Great Seal of.  391
Stewkley Church, Buckinghamshire . . 734
Stirling  846
Stirling Castle  843
Stirling Castle, View  849
Stone in the New Forest  370
Stone Church  1045
Stone Church, South Door of. ... . 1046
Stone Church, Nave and Chancel . . . 1047
Stonehenge  •>
Stonehenge  6
Stonehenge, Perspective Elevation, restored 3
Stonehenge, Restored Plan  2
Stonehenge, Restored Plan, Fig. 2 . . 4
Stonehenge, Ground Plan of, in its present
state  1
Storming a Fort  1251
Strand Gate, Winchelsea  914
Stratford Church  1307
Stratford Church, West End  1308
Stratford Church, ancient Font formerly in 1309
Styca, copper  232
Sueno's Pillar at Forres  207
Sumpnour and Pardoner  1134
Surrey, Thomas Howard, Earl of . . . 1249
Swingfield, Preceptory at  543
Sword Dance  489483 79

Sword Fight . .
Symbols of Rome

No. of
Engraving.
Temple Church, Effigies of Knights Tem
plars in  537
Tents  453
Tewkesbury  • . . . 705
Tewkesbury  706
Tewkesbury Cathedral, Monument of Hugh
Le Despenser, Earl of Gloucester, and
his Countess in  1074
Threshing  806
Threshing and Winnowing Corn . . . 255
Tilting Match between Nich. Clifford and
J. Boucmell  1102
Tintern Abbey, View of  1030
Tintern Abbey  1031
Tomb of a Young Roman Physician . . 134
Tomb, coped  949
Torque, Captive wearing the  81
Tournament  1096
Tournament  1254
Tournament. The Melee  1255
Tournament, Knights entering the Lists . 860
Tournament, a Water  789
Tower of Arches, Cannon, &c, Moveable 1274
Tower of London  1262
Tower of London in the 15th century . . 1261
Tower of London, temp. Henry VI. . . 1263
Tower of London, from the Thames . . 377
Towerof London, the Bloody Tower in the 1242
Tower of London, Bloody Tower in the . 1264
Tower of London, Gateway of the Bloody
Tower at the .  436
Tower of London, Jewel House in the. . 1265
Tower of London, Interior of the Chapel
in the White Tower in the  433
Tower of London, St. Peter's Chapel in
the  434
Tower of London, the Traitor's Gate at the 435
Transcribers at Work  1331
Trap-Ball  1381
Trevethy Stone  39
Trombones, or Flutes  248
Tumbling . . .  1379
Tumuli at Bartlow Hills, Essex .... 21
Tumuli at New Grange, Galleries of . . 22
Tunbridge Castle  918
Tutbury Castle Yard  912
Tutbury, Representation of the Coins as
found at  913
Tynemouth  709
Tynemouth Cliff  710

u.

Tabard, the  ms
Tabard, the (from Urry's edition of Chau
cer, 1720)  1116
Tabard, the (from a Drawing about 1780) 1 1 17
Tables, Saxon  277
Talbot, the, 1841  1118
Tamworth Castle  1244
Tantallon Castle, View of, with the Bass
Rock in the distance  850
Tattershall Castle, Chimney Piece at . . 1357
Temple Church, from the entrance . . . 531
Temple Church, from the south .... 538
Temple Church, the Western Window,
Altar, &c, of  532
Temple Church, Porch of.  534
Temple Church, interior ofthe Round of. 535
Temple Church, Effigies of Knights Tem
plars in  536

Urns, Vases, Key, Bead, and Fragment of
Pottery, found in Lombard Street . .

found after the Great

Vates, Lamp, &c.
Fire 
Vessels, &c, Roman, found in Britain .

w.
Walmsgate Barbican, York  362
Walsingham Abbey  703
Waltham Abbey  605
Waltham Abbey, from the North-west. . 604
Waltham Cross  825
Warkworth Castle  419
Warkworth Castle, Interior of a Room in . 420
Warkworth Hermitage  716
Warwick, Old House at . ... . . • 1365
Warwick Castle, Great Court of . . . 1270
Warwick Castle, Entrance to  415
Warwick Castle, Guy's Tower at . . . 917
Warwick Castle, Guy's Tower .... 416
Warwick Castle, from the Island ... 417
Warwick, Richard Nevil, Earl of . . . 1208
Warwick, Richard Beauchamp, Earl of,
worshipping at the Holy Sepulchre, Je
rusalem  1330

No. of
Engraving.
Wayland Smith's Cave  42
Weapons, Anglo-Saxon  332
Weapons, Anglo-Saxon  333
Weapons, British and Roman  80
Weapons, Mantles and Caps, Anglo-Saxon 195
Weapons of Bone and Flint, Ancient Bri
tish  16
Weapons of Bronze, British  31
Weapons, Ornaments, &c, Roman-British 168
Well, raising water with a loaded lever
from a  297
Wells Cathedral, West Front of . ... 982
Wells Cathedral, Interior of  983
Wells Cathedral, Boss in  986
Wells Cathedral, Boss in  989
Wells Cathedral, Bracket in  987
Wells Cathedral, Bracket in  990
Wells Cathedral, Capital in  985
Wells Cathedral, Capital in  988
Westminster, Almonry, where Caxton's
Printing-Office was at  1355
Westminster, one of the early Abbots of . 496
Westminster, Sanctuary at  736
Westminster, Doorway from the Palace of 212
Westminster, Windows from the Palace of 211
Westminster Abbey and Hall in the 17th
Century  1022
Westminster Abbey, North Aisle, looking
west  1015
Westminster Abbey, looking west from St.
Edward's Chapel  1018
Westminster Abbey, Western Entrance . 1024
Westminster Abbey, Choir of . . ... 1021
Westminster Abbey, Plan of  1023
Westminster Abbey, Front ofthe Northern
Transept  1019
Westminster Abbey, Poets' Corner in . . 1017
Westminster Abbey, Edward the Confes
sor's Chapel  210
Westminster Abbey, Front of Henry V.'s
Chantry in  1310
Westminster Abbey, Shrine of Henry V. in 1016
Westminster Abbey, Tomb of William of
Windsor and Blanche de la Tour in . . 1070
Westminster Abbey, Tomb of Aymer de
Valence in  1073
Westminster Hall, with the ancient sur
rounding Buildings restored .... 895
Westminster Hall, Principal Entrance to . 903
Westminster Hall. Treaty between Henry
VI. and Richard, Duke of York . . . 1205
Westmoreland, Earl of  1161
Weston Church  1315
Wiglaf, King of Mercia, Silver Penny of. 252
" Will Scarlet, he did kill a buck". . . 487
William the Conqueror, Statue of . . . 347
William the Conqueror, Great Seal of . . 342
William the Conqueror, Arms of . . . 343
William I., Silver Penny of .... . 344
William I. giving Orders for the In
vasion  327
William I. granting Lands to his Nephew
the Earl of Brittany  352
16 William Rufus, Great Seal of ... . 364
1,9 William II., Silver Penny of . . . . 365
William of Cloudeslie and his Family in
Englewood Forest  479
Winchester  372
Winchester  400
Winchester Cathedral  672
Winchester Cathedral, North-west Viewof 671
Winchester Cathedral, Nave of . . . . 1319
Winchester Cathedral, Effigy of Wykeham

166

674

673 680681 675

Winchester Cathedral, Head of Waynflete
in  •
Winchester Cathedral, Finial in. . . .
Winchester, Finial in the Lady Chapel at
Winchester Cathedral, Font in . .
Winchester Cathedral, Norman Capital in
the Crypt of  678
Winchester Cathedral, Norman Capital in 679
Winchester Cathedral, Pinnacle in Bishop
Fox's Chantry in  676
Winchester Cathedral, Pinnacle in the Al
tar Screen of  677
Winchester College  1°33

392

INDEX TO THE ENGRAVINGS.

No. of
Engraving.
Winchester Market Cross  1354
Window . . •  205
Window  206
Windows of the 13th and 14th Centuries . 1089
Windsor Castle  858
Windsor Castle, temp. Edward III. . . 859
Windsor Castle, North Front and Terrace 1259
Windsor Castle, Great Quadrangle . . . 1260
Wine-Press, Cotton MS  293
Witenagemot, the, Cotton MS  307
Woad (Isatis tinctoria)  60
Woodstock  413
Woodstock, as it appeared before 1714 '*. 414
Worcester, General View  632
Worcester Cathedral, King John's Tomb
in  633
Worcester Cathedral, Capital and Base in 684
Worcester Cathedral, Capital and Base in
the Chapter House of  636
Worcester Cathedral, Effigy of King John
in  , , . 637

No. of
Engraving.
Worcester Cathedral, Effigy of Lady Har-
court in  638
Worcester Cathedral, Tudor Badges, Shrine
of Prince Arthur in  635
Wrestling  484
Wycliffe's Bible, Specimen from a Copy of 1067

y.

Yew, the Ankerwyke ...,,.. 457
Yew Tree in Hayes Churchyard . . . 369
Yew Tree at Fountains Abbey, Ripon,
Yorkshire  475
York, General View  953
York, from the Ancient Ramparts . . . 951
York Castle, Clifford's Tower, and En
trance to  423
York Cathedral, Tomb of Archbishop Grey
in . . .  1068

No. of
Engraving.
York Cathedral, Early English Capitals in 1071
York Cathedral, Decorated English Capi
tals in  1072
York Minster, West Front of .... 950
York Minster, Choir  954
York Minster, Interior of the Choir of. . 952
York Minster, Bracket in  957
York Minster, Bracket in  963
York Minster, Capital in the Crypt of. , 955
York Minster, Capital in the Crypt of . . 958
York Minster, Capital in the Crypt of. . 964
York Minster, Figure of Archbishop Sa
vage in  959
York Minster, Figure of Archbishop Grey
in  960
York Minster, Pendent "in the Chapter-
House of  961
York Minster, Sculpture over the West
Door of  956
York Minster, Sculpture over the West
Door of  962

London : Printed by William Clowes & Sons, Stamford Street.

YALE UNIVERSITY j