Part 5

In 1361 the Black Prince married Joan the Fair Maid of Kent. The marriage took place at Windsor, and after her husband's death Joan lived a good deal at Wallingford.

The reign of Richard II, which lasted from 1377 to 1399, was marked by constant troubles between the King with his favourites on the one hand and the nobles on the other. In 1387 Radcot Bridge was the scene of a fight between the King's party of 5000 men under De Vere, Duke of Ireland, and Henry Earl of Derby (afterwards Henry IV). De Vere was defeated, and only escaped by swimming down the Thames.

In 1399 Richard's inglorious reign came to an end. He was deposed in favour of Henry of Bolingbroke, son of John of Gaunt, who became King as Henry IV.

14. THE HISTORY OF BERKSHIRE (CONTINUED).

The reign of Henry IV lasted from 1399 to 1413. The hereditary heir to the Crown on the death of Richard II was a child, Edmund Mortimer, Earl of March, and he was detained a prisoner at Windsor Castle during the whole of Henry's reign, and only liberated by Henry V in 1413. There was at least one fight in Berkshire during the time of Henry IV. In 1400 an attempt was made by some of the nobles to fall on the King at Windsor, but he was warned in time, and retired to London, and when the insurgents reached Windsor, they entered the Castle without opposition, searched for the King, but found he had gone. Meanwhile he had raised a force in London, and came to attack the insurgent nobles, who retreated, and a sharp encounter took place at Maidenhead Bridge. The insurgents retired to Oxford and were eventually defeated.

James I, King of Scotland, was a prisoner at Windsor during most of the last ten years of his long captivity, which ended by his release in 1424. His book, The King's Quhair, was written at Windsor, and it was at Windsor that he fell in love with Jane Beaufort, who afterwards became his Queen.

Henry VI was born at Windsor in 1421, and became King when about nine months old. He grew up weak in mind, and during his reign all England was involved in the Wars of the Roses. Berkshire was during most of the time held by the Lancastrian party, but in 1460 Newbury was taken by the Earl of Wiltshire on behalf of the Yorkists. In the next year, 1461, the Duke of York obtained the Crown under the name of Edward IV.

Henry VI held several Parliaments at Reading, and Edward IV also visited the Abbey, and it is recorded that in 1464 he made the first public announcement of his marriage with Elizabeth Woodville at a great Council of the Peers at Reading. The marriage was not popular, and it was especially disliked by the Nevilles, the most powerful of whom, Richard Earl of Warwick, subsequently defeated Edward's forces and restored Henry VI, but Henry's renewed reign lasted only some six months, for Edward defeated Warwick, who was killed, at the battle of Barnet in 1471. Warwick and his brother the Marquis of Montagu, also killed at Barnet, were both buried at Bisham Abbey in Berkshire.

The greater part of St George's Chapel in Windsor Castle dates from the reign of King Edward IV, and he was the first of our kings to be buried there, 1483. The body of his rival Henry VI was removed to Windsor from Chertsey Abbey in 1484. The beautiful Rutland Chapel in St George's Chapel was built by Sir Thomas St Leger in memory of his wife Ann, sister of Edward IV. St Leger was beheaded by Richard III, but was buried in the chapel and a brass to himself and his wife still remains on the wall there.

After the Wars of the Roses peace reigned in Berkshire for many a long year, and the county no doubt increased in wealth and prospered generally. A considerable part of the land was in the possession of the Church, but in the days of King Henry VIII the whole of the monastic institutions were swept away.

Owing to the dissolution of the monasteries a large part of the land in Berkshire passed into the hands of the Crown. Some of it was granted to Oxford colleges and much to private persons.

In 1544 three persons, Testwood, Filmer, and Peerson were burnt at Windsor as heretics, and in 1556 Julius Palmer, Master of Reading Grammar School, John Gwin, and Thomas Askew were burnt at the sandpits near Newbury.

Elizabeth, before her accession in 1558, lived for some three years at Sir Thomas Hoby's house at Bisham; indeed she was practically a prisoner under the charge of Sir Thomas and his wife's sisters. When she came to the throne Elizabeth like her predecessors lived a good deal at Windsor, and we hear of visits by her to Reading, Englefield House (Sir F. Walsingham) and other places. It was in her days that the tragedy took place which made "Cumnor Hall" known all over the world, though its celebrity is due more to Scott's novel Kenilworth than to history. The real facts were, however, sufficiently tragic. Amy, the daughter of Sir John Robsart, married Lord Robert Dudley, afterwards Earl of Leicester, in 1550. Ten years later she was found dead, at Cumnor Place, which had been recently purchased by Anthony Forster the steward of Lord Robert. Foul play was suspected and it was suggested that Dudley had reasons for wishing to get rid of his wife as she stood in the way of higher ambitions. There were no "haunted towers of Cumnor Hall" for Cumnor Place was not a large house. Now only a few remains of walls are left on the site.

At the beginning of the Civil War Berkshire was generally Royalist, and the county was the scene of much fighting during the whole war, an account of which can be found in any History of England. The Earl of Essex captured Reading after a siege in 1643, and on September 20th of the same year there was a hard-fought battle between Charles and Essex near Newbury. Lord Falkland, who was on the King's side, was killed at this battle, and a granite monument to his memory stands on the high ground south of the town.

A second battle took place near Newbury on October 27th, 1644, when the Royalists occupied a position near Shaw House between the rivers Kennet and Lambourn. Earthworks, remains of this fight, may still be seen at Shaw House. Donnington Castle, near by, held out for the King until 1646, and Wallingford Castle fell into the hands of the Parliament in the same year.

On February 8th, 1649, Charles was buried in St George's Chapel at Windsor Castle.

Since the Civil War there has been only one small fight in Berkshire and that was in 1688. On December 6th of that year William of Orange reached Hungerford, and a force of 250 of his men came into conflict with 600 of James's Irish troops at Reading. Superior discipline enabled William's men to drive the Irish in confusion through the streets into the market-place where they attempted to rally, but being vigorously attacked in front, and fired upon at the same time by the inhabitants from the windows, they fled with the loss of their colours and 50 men, the conquerors only sustaining a loss of five.

There is not much to say of the history of the county since that date, though, owing to the frequent residence of the Sovereign at Windsor, many an event of the highest importance and interest has taken place there.

15. ANTIQUITIES--(A) PREHISTORIC.

We have no written records of Man as he first lived in our land long ages ago. Writing was an unknown art, and records--even if they had existed--could not have survived to come down to us. We therefore speak of this period as the Prehistoric--the time when the people of the past were unable themselves to record their story. Yet, though these sources of information are closed to us, we are able from the relics they have left behind them--the implements and weapons that they used, the bones of the animals they fed upon, the structures they erected--to form a fairly clear idea of these early peoples.

But this Prehistoric period, vast in its extent, has for convenience sake been further subdivided. At first the metals were unknown, or at least unused, and this period is spoken of as the Stone Age, for it was of flints and other stones that weapons and domestic implements were mainly fashioned. Later, man learnt how to get the easily-worked ores of tin and copper from the rocks and by their admixture to form bronze. From this, beautiful weapons and other articles were made, and from the time of the discovery we date what is known as the Bronze Age. Doubtless the ores of iron had long been known, but how to smelt them was another matter. At length the method was discovered, and mankind was in possession of hard metal implements having great advantages for all purposes over those previously employed. Thus the Iron Age began, and the early inhabitants of Britain had arrived at this stage of civilisation when the Romans came to our land.

We may now turn to a consideration of these various epochs in their order. Firstly the Stone Age. This, though a convenient term as covering all the period before the advent of the Metal Ages, is too indefinite both as to time and race, and hence it is usual to speak of the Palaeolithic or Old Stone Age, and the Neolithic or New Stone Age. The people of these two Ages were very distinct, and most authorities hold that--at all events in our land--a vast gap of time separated them, though no such gap occurred between the later Ages. Palaeolithic man, from various causes, ceased to inhabit what we now call Britain, and when the country was re-peopled it was by Neolithic man. Palaeolithic man lived in the days when the mammoth, reindeer, and hyaena roamed over our country; made leaf-shaped roughly-flaked flint weapons which were never ground or polished; cultivated no plants and tamed no animals; and built no monuments, graves, or houses. Neolithic man, on the other hand, learnt how to grind and polish his implements; was both a farmer and a breeder of stock; had many industries; and built megalithic monuments, houses, and graves--the remains of which survive to the present day.

The earliest signs of the existence of man in Berkshire are, as we have said, the implements of stone, mostly flint, found in the gravels; and the implements of the Palaeolithic Period take us back to a very old time, so old that the surface features of our district were then quite different from what we see now.

There is a fine series of Palaeolithic implements in the Reading Museum, and most of them have been found in gravel-pits near the river Thames in the Reading and Twyford district, or in the Cookham and Maidenhead district. The implements occur in the gravel in such a way as to prove that they were brought into the position in which we find them at the same time and in the same manner as the other stones in the gravel, and the men who made them consequently lived at or before the date of the making of the beds of gravel. All the gravels in question were made by our rivers, and as the places where we find the implements are in some cases from 85 to 114 feet above the present level of the river, we infer that the valley has been deepened as much as from 85 to 114 feet since the time when the men who made the implements lived.

We now come to the Neolithic Period when, as we have seen, man was a much more civilised person than the earlier man is believed to have been. Some of his burial mounds still remain, and being oval in plan are known as long barrows. Wayland Smith's Cave, a mile to the east of Ashbury (p. 83), is composed of some 32 stones, the remains of a long barrow of Neolithic times.

Neolithic implements are of stone, but in many cases they are unlike the older implements in being of polished stone. In the Reading Museum there is a fine polished flint chisel from Englefield, and also polished axes from Broadmoor, from Pangbourne, and from the beds of the Thames and Kennet. In the British Museum there is a beautiful dagger of flint from a barrow on Lambourn Down. Pretty little arrow-heads have been found at many places on the downs and in the Wallingford district.

There was in Berkshire a long interval between the Palaeolithic and the Neolithic Periods, but so far as we know there was no such break between the Neolithic Period and the Bronze Age. All we can say is that there was a time when the inhabitants of our district began to use implements of copper, or of copper alloyed with tin, i.e. bronze, for some purposes, but they still continued to use implements of stone, and it is not always possible to say whether a stone implement belongs to the Neolithic Period, to the Bronze Age, or to an even later date.

Many remains of the Bronze Age have been found in burial-mounds or barrows, and the barrows of this period are circular, with a diameter of fifty to one hundred feet, and hence termed round barrows. Many pieces of sepulchral pottery of this age from Berkshire will be found both in the British Museum and the Reading Museum. A considerable number of bronze implements were found in one place at Yattendon, and another hoard of them was discovered at Wallingford. A great many bronze swords, daggers, and spear-heads have been found in the river Thames, and are to be seen in the Museums.

A cemetery of this period was found at Sulham, and many earthenware urns from it are in the Reading Museum. There are also in the Museum some urns from Neolithic barrows at Sunningdale.

The extensive deposits of peat at and around Newbury show that it was a marsh and lake district until historical time, and remains of pile dwellings have been found in the market-place, in Bartholomew Street, and in Cheap Street. Their date cannot be fixed with certainty, but they are almost certainly prehistoric in age.

The substitution of iron for bronze indicates a considerable advance in knowledge, for, except in meteorites, pure iron is not found in nature, and no small skill is required to separate the metal from the earth or rock in which it occurs. There is, however, no definite division between the Bronze and the Iron Age, for implements and ornaments of both bronze and stone continued to be used. Nor is there any definite end to the Iron Age: it passes onwards into the period of written history.

A number of bones and various objects found in a grave on Hagbourne Hill seemed to show that a man, a horse, and possibly also a chariot had been buried there.

Ancient British coins have been found at Brightwell, Newbury, Wallingford, and at other places in Berkshire. Many of them bear on one side a rude representation of a horse, probably an imitation of the horse on the gold stater of Philip II of Macedon, who became king in B.C. 359. These gold coins, known as Philips, were current in Greece and in the East for a long period, and have been occasionally found in circulation even in modern times. The White Horse, which is cut in the turf on the chalk hill above Uffington, bears a considerable resemblance to the horse on the British coins, and may very probably be of the same date.

There are a great number of mounds and earthworks scattered over Berkshire, and it is exceedingly difficult to assign to them their proper dates. We have already mentioned Wayland Smith's Cave as the remains of a long barrow of the Neolithic Period, and we have also referred to the round barrows of the Bronze Age. Some of the fortifications may date from these early times but many are probably of later date. It was for a long time needful to provide defence for the dwellings, not only against men, but also against wild animals, and the earthworks were no doubt used over and over again by successive peoples.

As we have said, the chalk district was at one time the most populous part of the county, and we consequently find the downs dotted over with mounds and earthworks of very ancient date. Perhaps the best known of these is the fine earthwork named Uffington Castle on White Horse Hill (see p. 7). Alfred's Castle is a circular earthwork close to Ashdown Park and three miles south-west of Uffington Castle. Letcombe Castle is another fair-sized work on the Ridge Way, rather more than five miles east of White Horse Hill. There is a large earthwork called Danish Camp on Blewburton Hill to the south of Didcot.

There are a few old earthworks in the Vale of White Horse district. One crowns Badbury Hill near Faringdon. Cherbury Camp is a large oval work on low ground near Buckland. Sinodun Hill to the north of Wallingford has evidently been fortified in early times, and Wallingford itself has the remains of an old and extensive earthwork round the town.

Passing to the Forest District we find many mounds and banks on the heaths, and there is one very fine earthwork known as Caesar's Camp near Easthampstead. It was very likely used by the Romans, but is almost certainly of still older date. Finally it is highly probable that Windsor Castle stands on the site of an old fort.

16. ANTIQUITIES--(B) ROMAN AND SAXON.

The Reading Museum contains one of the finest Anglo-Roman collections in England. It is the result of careful and systematic excavation, carried on for a series of years, on the site of the town of Silchester, and the collection is of the greatest interest to us as illustrating the life in an English country town in the days of the Romans. The locality is however in Hampshire, the Berkshire boundary making a detour so as to leave it in the neighbouring county.

According to the ordnance map, Speen House near Newbury was the site of the Roman Spinae, but no Roman remains have been found there, though there is evidence of a settlement of some importance at Newbury itself.

The foundations of houses of the Roman period have been found at several places in Berkshire; thus at Frilford near Marcham the remains of a small Romano-British house were found; and near by, in Frilford Field, a cemetery of the same period, which had subsequently been used by the Anglo-Saxons. Remains of a house with tessellated pavements were found on the Great Western Railway at Basildon, and other remains of Romano-British buildings have been discovered near Maidenhead and Waltham St Lawrence.

The words "Roman Villa" will be found marked on the ordnance map at two places to the south of Hampstead Norris, and remains of buildings have been discovered near Letcombe Regis, and at other places. The earthworks on Lowbury Hill to the west of Streatley are usually believed to be a Roman camp, and it is probable that the Roman soldiers occupied many of the old British forts at one time or another.

Roman coins and pottery of the Romano-British period have been found almost all over the county, though they may be said to be most common along the valley of the Thames and least so near Faringdon. In the Reading Museum there are a good many objects of Roman date which were found in Reading itself. Specimens are exhibited from two small hoards of coins dating from the Emperor Valentinian A.D. 364 to the Emperor Honorius A.D. 423. The coins are in very good preservation and were probably hidden when the Roman soldiers departed from England.

There are signs of Roman settlements along the Devil's Highway, the road from Silchester to London. Thus there was evidently a Romano-British village at Wickham Bushes close to Caesar's Camp on Easthampstead Plain. A collection from this locality exists at Wellington College.

A number of objects of the Anglo-Saxon period found in Berkshire will be seen in the Anglo-Saxon room at the British Museum. There is a very fine sword-blade from Ashdown, and a variety of objects--shield-bosses, knives, etc.--from Long Wittenham, where a Saxon burial-place has been explored. In some cases the body had been burnt, whilst in others the skeletons remained, and were found to be of a large-sized and robust race. Another Anglo-Saxon cemetery was discovered at Arne Hill near Lockinge, and a number of Anglo-Saxon interments in the Lambourn valley near East Shefford. Two burial-places of this period have been found at Reading. One contained spear-heads, knives, and bronze ornaments, and was probably of pagan date, whilst the other is believed to have been to some extent a Christian burial-place. In it a pewter chalice was found which may have been buried with a priest. The objects from these two localities are in the Reading Museum. Numbers of Anglo-Saxon coins have been dug up in Berkshire, more especially in the Cholsey and Wallingford district. They are of silver about the diameter of a sixpence but much thinner and are called pennies.

17. ARCHITECTURE--(A) ECCLESIASTICAL. CHURCHES.

A preliminary word on the various styles of English architecture is necessary before we consider the churches and other important buildings of our county.

Pre-Norman or, as it is usually, though with no great certainty termed, Saxon building in England, was the work of early craftsmen with an imperfect knowledge of stone construction, who commonly used rough rubble walls, no buttresses, small semi-circular or triangular arches, and square towers with what is termed "long-and-short work" at the quoins or corners. It survives almost solely in portions of small churches.

The Norman conquest started a widespread building of massive churches and castles in the continental style called Romanesque, which in England has got the name of "Norman." They had walls of great thickness, semi-circular vaults, round-headed doors and windows, and lofty square towers.

From 1150 to 1200 the building became lighter, the arches pointed, and there was perfected the science of vaulting, by which the weight is brought upon piers and buttresses. This method of building, the "Gothic," originated from the endeavour to cover the widest and loftiest areas with the greatest economy of stone. The first English Gothic, called "Early English," from about 1180 to 1250, is characterised by slender piers (commonly of marble), lofty pointed vaults, and long, narrow, lancet-headed windows. After 1250 the windows became broader, divided up, and ornamented by patterns of tracery, while in the vault the ribs were multiplied. The greatest elegance of English Gothic was reached from 1260 to 1290, at which date English sculpture was at its highest, and art in painting, coloured glass making, and general craftsmanship at its zenith.

After 1300 the structure of stone buildings began to be overlaid with ornament, the window tracery and vault ribs were of intricate patterns, the pinnacles and spires loaded with crocket and ornament. This later style is known as "Decorated," and came to an end with the Black Death, which stopped all building for a time.

With the changed conditions of life the type of building changed. With curious uniformity and quickness the style called "Perpendicular"--which is unknown abroad--developed after 1360 in all parts of England and lasted with scarcely any change up to 1520. As its name implies, it is characterised by the perpendicular arrangement of the tracery and panels on walls and in windows, and it is also distinguished by the flattened arches and the square arrangement of the mouldings over them, by the elaborate vault-traceries (especially fan-vaulting), and by the use of flat roofs and towers without spires.

The mediaeval styles in England ended with the dissolution of the monasteries (1530-1540), for the Reformation checked the building of churches. There succeeded the building of manor-houses, in which the style called "Tudor" arose--distinguished by flat-headed windows, level ceilings, and panelled rooms. The ornaments of classic style were introduced under the influences of Renaissance sculpture and distinguish the "Jacobean" style, so called after James I. About this time the professional architect arose. Hitherto, building had been entirely in the hands of the builder and the craftsman.