Part 13

A Manuscript was recently discovered in the Worcester Chapter library, which is believed to be unique in this country--at least there is no record of any similar one having ever been found here--it is Vacarius's Epitome of the Roman law. A description of this valuable manuscript was recently published in the "Legal Examiner" by Mr. Hastings, barrister-at-law, of Worcester. Vacarius was a celebrated Italian doctor of law, a native of Lombardy, who it is supposed was brought to this country by Theobald, Archbishop of Canterbury, and became professor of law at Oxford, in the reign of Stephen. There he introduced the study of the Roman law, just then reviving throughout Europe, after the discovery of the Pandects at Amalfi; there also he wrote his famous work, comprising an epitome of the whole Roman law, for the use of his very numerous pupils. At length, either through jealousy or Papal influence, he was forbidden to lecture, was banished from the University, and his books ordered to be destroyed. It is supposed that he himself took holy orders and retired to a monastery. Although his numerous pupils, on leaving Oxford, had each, no doubt, for the most part secured a copy for themselves, no record exists of one having ever been found in England during the seven centuries which succeeded, so effectual was the royal mandate for their destruction. The only instance in which Vacarius is known to be mentioned by any of our legal writers is by Blackstone, who merely states the fact of the introduction of the civil law into England by such a personage, and for a long time Vacarius was thought to be nothing more than a mythological embodiment of the introduction of Roman law into this country. On the continent the only four copies of his work known to be in existence are deposited in the libraries of Konigsberg, Prague, and Bruges, and one in the possession of the Emperor of Russia. Great search has been made in our public libraries, and those of the cathedrals especially, as it was thought that had any copies survived the order for their destruction, they would have been stored in the monasteries, and from thence been transferred to our cathedrals at the Reformation; but the inquiry was entirely unsuccessful until a few months ago, when a copy was found in the Worcester Chapter library, concealed under the name of the "Code of Justinian." Every reasonable proof of its identity has been given, although the title is missing. It is otherwise in good preservation, and beautifully written and illuminated. It need not be added how valuable the manuscript is as a monument of the first introduction of the Roman law into England after the Norman Conquest. The manuscript should be preserved, newly bound, and the missing portions supplied by copying from one of the other existing manuscripts. Then some enterprising publisher should give it to the world in English (as Mr. Bohn has done for the Norman and Saxon Chronicles).

ABINGTON'S MANUSCRIPT.

Mr. Cadby, bookseller, of 83, New Street, Birmingham, recently advertised for sale "Some Memoirs relating to the Church and City of Worcester, collected by one of the Ancient Family of the Abingtons, which came to the hands of Robert Dobyns, late of Easbath, and now of the City of Hereford, Esq., who, out of the Love he bears to the said Church and City where he was Born and Baptised, _transmitted this Copy to the Library at Worcester, there to be kept_, supposing the original to be lost in the late Civill Warrs; small folio, old vellum, neatly written in contracted German characters, about the period of Elizabeth and James I, 143 pp., 20 Guineas. The original could not be found when the above was bequeathed, nor has it been heard of since; consequently this is the only one in existence, and must now take the place of the original." I have not myself seen this Manuscript, but a friend informs me that it wears the appearance of genuineness. After referring to Worcester in connection with Roman times, its possession by the Wiccian Kings is spoken of, and then the foundation of the bishopric in A.D. 680. Year by year it records the events in the history of the bishopric up to 1486, which is the last date. Some reference is also made to the city, but the bishopric and its various prelates occupy most of the book. The chief towns and villages in the county are also referred to.

BISHOP SWINFIELD'S ROLL.

"A roll of the household expenses of Richard de Swinfield, Bishop of Hereford, during part of the years 1289 and 1290." This valuable Manuscript was discovered about forty years ago by Dr. Prattinton, of Bewdley, among the muniments at Stanford Court, the seat of Sir T. E. Winnington, Bart. Dr. Prattinton made an abstract of it, which he presented, with his other Worcestershire papers, to the Society of Antiquaries; but it was not till the year 1853 that the roll was edited and published, when the Rev. John Webb, of Tretire, undertook the task, and by his extensive research in mediæval history has succeeded in converting the meagre materials of the roll--presenting as it does nearly the earliest picture of English life in existence--into a most interesting detail of the character and events, the manners and customs of the thirteenth century, so as to attract considerable notice among antiquaries. The work was printed in two volumes, in 1853 and 1854, for the Camden Society; and as some portions of the Bishop's itinerary through his diocese is connected with Worcestershire I shall make a few extracts and comments thereon:--

Salt was purchased by the Bishop's household (when at Colwall) from Worcester, and supplied from the pits at Droitwich. His lordship's cook also made purchases at Worcester, (having been sent from Colwall for the purpose), and a large supply of ware in cups, plates, and dishes, was laid in against the Paschal entertainment at Colwall; so that this city, it would seem, was famous even six centuries ago for the manufacture of table ware, though composed of a different material from that which has rendered its products celebrated in the present day. Here also the prelate sent for a new bridle and saddle, on which Mr. Webb remarks--"Worcester might then have been, what it certainly in after times has been, more advanced than Hereford in the arts of life." The Bishop had some land in this county and a house in the city of Worcester.

The editor notices the prolific vines that cover the cottages in the counties of Worcester, Gloucester, and Hereford. Bishop Swinfield's vineyard at Ledbury yielded seven pipes of white wine and nearly one of verjuice in the autumn of 1289. Bristol was the great mart for foreign wine, and the custom was to send a "squire" to make the purchase there and accompany the cargo up the Severn home, to prevent the malpractices of boatmen, who it seems were as much inclined to "suck the monkey" in those days as at present. The wine was usually landed at Upton and thence conveyed by land carriage to Bosbury, where was the Bishop's favourite residence. No mention is made of Herefordshire cider in that century, nor is the date of its introduction known.

John de Kemesye, the Bishop's steward and treasurer (and the writer of this roll), belonged to a good family who took their name from the village of Kempsey, four miles south of Worcester. Walter of that name was instituted to the vicarage of Lindridge in July, 1277, and presented, in November, 1292, by the convent of Worcester, to the church of St. Martin, in the same city. Thomas de Kemesye was the abbot of Tewkesbury who received the benediction from Godfrey Giffard, Bishop of Worcester, on Trinity Sunday, 1282. The Bishops of Worcester had a palace at Kempsey, at which Henry II held his Court, and Simon de Montfort, with his royal prisoner, Henry III, lodged previously to the battle of Evesham. The writer of this roll was long remembered in the church of Kempsey, where he founded a chantry well endowed for masses at the altar of the blessed Virgin, for his welfare in life, his own soul, those of his parents and benefactors, and of all the faithful departed. He left rents for a taper to burn before her altar, and in his grants for these purposes took special heed to secure the respectability of such as should officiate at these services, by regulations drawn up with the minutest care.

In the year 1275 two questions respecting church property in the county of Worcester came under the decision of trial by combat: one on June 25th, in Hardwick Meadow, for the church of Tenbury, which was adjusted, after all, without duel, in favour of the Abbot of Lyra; a second, on July 9th, was for the bailiwick of Hembury (Hanbury?) and here the Bishop of Worcester's champion vanquished the champion of Philip de Stok. The Bishop of Hereford likewise kept a champion in his suite, who received regular wages; and when Gilbert de Clare, Earl of Gloucester, laid claim to the chase on the western slopes of the Malvern range, the Bishop's representative was prepared to do battle in the lists if need were; but a jury, composed of men drawn from the counties of Worcester and Hereford, decided in favour of the church, and a trench of separation between the two possessions was made by the disappointed Earl along the ridge of the hill, where it remains a memorial of the contest to the present day.

Foresters were in general an impudent and abandoned race. Those of Feckenham, where the king had a palace or hunting seat, incurred his particular displeasure by their depredations. He dealt summarily with them in the spring of 1289-90, when he progressed there, by committing some of them to prison, and some he fined. On April 2nd he admitted all the latter to bail to appear at Woodstock by the 5th of that month, in Easter week, and there he fixed their fines. In the following autumn they insulted the Prior of Worcester, near Herforton (Harvington?) as he was travelling along the road, robbed his servants of their bows and arrows, and sounded their horns on all sides against him. But the monk of Worcester who narrates this circumstance does not tell us what may be learned elsewhere, and was perhaps one cause of the insult, that his own Prior had been a trespasser in the said forest, and was fined for it. The Bishop of Worcester also was a trespasser, and paid 500 while the Prior paid 200 marks. (See further account of this in vol. iii, p. 149, of the "Rambler in Worcestershire.") In case of trespass by hunting or border hostility the foresters and others used to shout and blow their horns, to bring in the country to their aid. Hence the northern border tenure of cornage.

On occasion of episcopal visitations, the clergy visited were, except in special cases, bound to provide food, &c., for the Bishop and his attendants, but sometimes the suite was so numerous as to lead to great inconvenience. In 1290, Godfrey, Bishop of Worcester, in spite of canonical prohibition, being at variance with the Prior and Convent of Worcester, came to visit them with 140 horses and a multitude of attendants, and continued with them three days; but this was not done without an appeal on the part of the Prior. The Bishop turned the Prior out of the chamber; and it seems like an aggressive act that need not have been committed, if then, as since, the Bishop had a palace hard by the Cathedral. For remedy of such encroachments the Lateran Council, under Pope Alexander III, had specially defined the limits of bishops' and archdeacons' trains. Bishop Godfrey Giffard frequently preached at visitations, and some of the texts of his discourses addressed to religious houses are extant in his register; an instance of which is as follows: "Procurationes Episcopi. Item, die Jovis in crastino beati Michaelis, dominus Episcopus visitavit apud Sanctum Augustinum Bristolliæ, et prædicavit ibi, præsentibus priore et monachis Sancti Jacobi de Bristollia, et magistro ac suis fratribus Sancti Martii de ordin', cujus thema fuit: 'Videam voluptatem Domini et visitem templum ejus.' (Psalm xxvi, 4.) Et procuratus fuit eodem die sumptibus domus."

In the course of a visitation tour, Bishop Swinfield came to Tenbury, in the archdeaconry of Salop and deanery of Burford. The Norman abbey of Lyra held the great tithes; the vicarial amounted to just one half of them, £6. 13s. 4d. The associate of the _dominus proctor_, who helped to manage the revenues of the convent, was ready with his procuration for the party. After visiting Burford, they came to Lindridge, and visited the church, which had been both a rectory and vicarage; these, however, upon the recent death of the late vicar, Walter, in 1288, had been united under the present rector, John de Buterlee (Bitterley), and were valued jointly at £13. 6s. 8d. per annum. The reason for this proceeding, illustrative of the state of affairs in the church, is expressly set forth in the instrument framed for that purpose; that whereas it had been canonically provided that ecclesiastical benefices should not be divided; and that such as for certain causes had been divided, upon cessation of such causes should on the first opportunity be restored to their integrity, so that it should be one church, one rector; and that no rector of a parish church should employ a vicar, but be bound to serve it himself, as the cure thereof requires; unless a dignity or prebend be annexed to the said church, when the institution or creation of a vicar might be allowed. And whereas he (John de Bitterley) professed himself ready to reside personally on his church of Lindridge as the law required, there being no reasonable cause why there should be a vicar in the said church, the vicarage and rectory were perpetually united with all rights and appurtenances, emolument, burden, and cure. It may however be added, that this integrity came again, within a few years, to be more permanently violated by the appropriation of the great tithes to the Prior and Convent of Worcester, by special grant of the King, with consent of the Bishop of Hereford. Edward wrote a letter to his chancellor in French, directing that it might be translated into Latin, and sent by a clerk of the chancery to the chapter of Hereford; another instance of the employment of the French language in this reign. The rector of Lindridge discharged his duty of procuration; and on the following day (April 15) they moved forward in the direction of Bewdley to Aka (Rock). The parishes to which the visitor was directing his attention in this quarter lay within a small compass. Master William Brun was rector in 1276, and no subsequent incumbent has been detected up to this year of visitation. The value of the benefice was the same as that of Lindridge. Out of many of these benefices payments were made in other quarters; as in this instance: the Prior of Ware was paid £2. 13s. 4d. and the Prior of Conches £2. Out of Lindridge the Prior of Worcester received £6. 13s. 4d. Procuration was duly furnished here; and this is the fifth day since any expense on the part of the Bishop was incurred. On arriving at Kinlet, the visiting party were obliged to have recourse to Kidderminster for supplies. Robert the carter was the purveyor; he had a guide to attend him, probably through the intervening forest of Wyre, and paid for passing the Severn on his way to and from the town.

I cannot conclude my notice of this interesting Manuscript without strongly recommending my readers to possess themselves of a copy of Mr. Webb's admirable publication.

BISHOP SKINNER.

"Memoirs of Dr. Robert Skinner, Bishop of Worcester, who died 1670." Several manuscript volumes, in the handwriting of the Right Rev. Dr. White Kennett, Bishop of Peterborough, are to be found in the British Museum (MS. Lansdown, 986, fol. 135), containing biographies of distinguished ecclesiastics, one of whom was Bishop Skinner of Worcester. This prelate was elected to the see of Bristol in 1636, translated to that of Oxford in 1641, and to Worcester in 1663. While he lived in the times of usurpation, being deprived of his see, he remained in his diocese comforting his clergy, and ordaining those who were willing to enter the church, and was supposed to be the sole bishop that during that time conferred holy orders. Immediately after his Majesty's return an hundred and three persons did at once take holy orders from him in the Abbey Church at Westminster. At his death it was computed that he had sent more labourers into the vineyard than all his brethren he then left behind him had done. His biographer observes that, in the see of Worcester, he became by his many tenants more esteemed than family or friends because of his goodness as a landlord. He died an octogenarian, and was buried in a chapel at the east end of the choir of the Cathedral Church at Worcester; over his grave was soon after laid a flat stone, at the head of which are engraved the arms of his family, impaled with those of the see, surmounted by a mitre, and underneath is a long Latin inscription.

In the Bodleian Manuscript, Tanner 45, fol. 19, is a letter to Sheldon, Archbishop of Canterbury, interesting, though trivial, as applicable to the affairs of Worcester Cathedral.

"May it please your Grace,--Tandem aliquando I present your grace with all the papers that make (and as with humble submission, I conceive) are requisite in Mr. Deane of Worcester's defence against Mr. Hathaway's pretences and allegations about the choire organ made and fixt, and the great organ to be made, but now bargained for. And the reason I sent these papers up no sooner was my longing hope and endeavour to have made Mr. George Dallow's testimonie more pregnant and evident touching the promise of Hathaway and Dr. Gibbons to help him to this organ-worke at Worcester, but, to my satisfaction, there is more than probabilitie there had been monie enough to have satisfied Gibbons and Hathaway and Talbott, had it been in the Deane's power to have made a bargain, they well knew Mr. Deane's (Dr. Warmstrey) utter ignorance in re musica. They knew he was, as it is in the Greek proverbe, #onos pros lyran#, had no more skill in an organ than a beast that hath no understanding, and 'tis very considerable that Hathaway should dare to addresse a complaint at Council Board, when for above a whole yeare, Mr. Deane having forbidden him to proceede to the worke of the great organ, he never applied himselfe neither to Mr. Deane nor to the Chapter, nor to the Visitor, continuing his visitacion for nine months at least, no complaint all this while ever heard of, and for ye materials provided it signifies nothing, unlesse it did appeare they were provided for this organ, when soone after he had made the choire organ he was forbidden to proceed any farther. With Mr. Harrison (who was old Dallow's servant and married his daughter) I twice conferred about his testimonie, and he told me he would make good all he said upon oath, and make it good to all the organists in England, and if your grace shall secretly object, old Hesiod's testimonie in ye case, #kai kêramius kêramei phthoneuei#, an artist malignes his brother artist. I rely very much on Mr. Tomkin's skill, bred in his cradle and all his life among organs, who is an excellent organist, and has ever maintained an organ in his house, his letter will show what his judgment was before this difference was started. Little reason have I had to interpose in the least in Mr. Deane's case, but I cannot forbear to stand up for innocence, though joyned with much follie. I have returned a certificate to his Majestie's instructions about hospitalls, and by the grace of God shall returne a full answer to your grace's instructions about church affaires in ye due time. The Lorde in the meane time preserve your grace in health and safetie and ye comforts of his blessed spirit.

"May it please your grace, I am your grace's most obliged and most obedient humble servant,

"RO. WIGORN.

"Worcester, Aug. 5, 1665."

The Bishop was cousin of Richard Skynner, of Cofton Hackett, the eldest son of Edward Skinner, of Ledbury, who purchased that manor for him from the Dyneley family, upon his marriage with his first wife, Miss Dyneley; and of Dr. William Skynner, his brother, fellow of All Soul's, Oxford; 1612, LL.D. March 31; 1625, chancellor of Hereford, April 29, 1626; rector of Beckenham, Kent, 1628; and in 1650 deprived of his living by the Parliament in favour of John Soter, and never restored, as he died at Ledbury, 1657, aged 66. This Richard's will showed, by his selection of his executors, and the course pursued by them in the Civil Wars, how friendships were broken; two, his brother-in-law, Sir Edward Lyttleton, Baronet, and Sir Edward Sebright, Baronet, were fined by Parliament as Royalists, and one was Humphrey Salwey, also married to a Miss Lyttleton, whom he styles his dear brother Humphrey Salwey, and whose son sat as one of the judges on the trial of King Charles I, and was M.P. for Worcestershire in the Long Parliament. A younger son of the Bishop's, William, was by his father appointed rector of Hartlebury, and there is a monument to his memory in that church. There was also another member of the Ledbury family connected with this county, as having been a member of the Oxford circuit, the Right Hon. Sir John Skynner, Knight, Lord Chief Baron. He was grandson of Edward Skynner, of Ledbury, and Margaret, his wife. On the 15th March, 1757, he was one of the counsel present in court, at the Worcester Assizes, when, between two and three o'clock, p.m., as Sir Eardly Wilmot began to sum up in the last cause, a stack of chimneys fell through the roof, killing many. The counsel then in court, being five in number, saved themselves under the stout table, and of these, four--Aston, Nares, Ashurst, and Skynner--after became judges; the fifth dying a king's counsel. We find traces of this old Ledbury family in this county, for in Nash's History of Worcestershire, vol. 2, we read that in the east window of the south aisle of Little Malvern Church are the arms of John Alcock, who was Bishop of Worcester from 1476 to 1486, and, in the south part of the same window is written "Orate pro animabus Roberti Skinner et Isabellæ, uxoris ejus, et filiorum suorum et filiarum." Richard Skinner, of Cofton, served the office of sheriff of Worcestershire in the 4th of Charles I (1628), and Edmund Skinner, of Wichenford, in the 12th George I (1726). The arms of Skinner are "Sable, a chevron or, between three griffins' heads argent."

DODDINGTREE HUNDRED TWO CENTURIES AGO.

In Sir Thomas Winnington's library at Stanford is a bundle of manuscripts, being a survey of the parsonages and other church livings in the Doddingtree hundred of Worcestershire, date 1665, or returns made to a visitation by order of the Lord Protector Cromwell. These returns include thirty-three parishes or places, namely, Bockleton, Pensax, Knighton-on-Teme _alias_ Kington, Lindridge, Alfrick, Suckley, Little Kyre, Hanley Child, Orleton, Hanley William, Eastham, Tenbury, Cotheridge, Edwyn Loach, Shelsley Walsh, Lower Sapey, Clifton-on-Teme, Acton Beauchamp, Great Witley, Shelsley Beauchamp, Abberley _alias_ Abbotsley, Stanford, Kyre Wyard, Aka _alias_ Rock, Bewdley, Ribsford, Stockton, Martley, Bayton, Mamble, Dodenham, Astley, and Shrawley. As an abstract of some of the details may be interesting, I here present them.