CHAPTER XXXII.--_The Gilds of Lincolnshire.

THE Gilds of this county were not only very numerous, but they were regarded as important in several respects. I shall give some account of them under the several towns wherein they flourished. There were also many village Gilds.

=Boston.=--In this ancient town were various Gilds of great note, but the materials for detailed history have only been preserved in exceptional cases.

_Gild of the Blessed Mary._--This appears to have ranked first amongst the Boston Gilds, and is believed to have been the _Gilda Mercatoria_ of Boston, although its constitution in considerable part was ecclesiastical. The earliest mention of this Gild appears to be in 1393. The Gild itself was probably founded earlier--certainly other Gilds of earlier date existed in the town. The first Patent was granted to it at the date just named. Another Patent is dated in 1445, and a third in 1447. In this last year, Henry VI. granted a licence to “Richard Benynton and others that they should give to the Aldermen of the Gild of the Fraternity of the Blessed Mary of Boston, in the County of Lincoln, five messuages, thirty-one acres of land, and ten acres of pasture in Boston and Skirbeck.” Another Patent grant was issued to this institution in 1483. This Gild had a Chapel, called the Chapel of our Lady, in the Parish Church.

In 1510, Pope Julius II. in a “Pardon” granted to the town, provided that whatsoever Christian people, of what estate or condition soever, whether spirituall or temporall, would aid and support the Chamberlain or substitute of the aforesaid Gilde, should have five hundred years of pardon!

_Item_, to all brothers and sisters of the same Gilde was granted free liberty to eate in the time of Lent, or other fast-days, eggs, milk, butter, cheese, and also flesh by the counsell of their ghostly father and physician, without any scruple of conscience.

_Item_, that all partakers of the same Gilde, and being supporters thereof, which once a quarter, or every Friday or Saturday, either in the said Chappell or any other Chappell of their devotion, shall say a _Paternoster_, _Ave Maria_, and _creed_, or shall say or cause to be said masses for souls departed in pains of purgatory, shall not only have the full remission due to them which visite the Chappell of Scala Cæli, or of St. John Latern [in Rome]; but also the souls in purgatory shall enjoy full remission and be released of all their paines.

_Item_, that all the souls of the brothers and sisters of the said Gilde, also the souls of their fathers and mothers, shall be partakers of all the prayers, suffrages, alms, fastings, masses and mattens, pilgrimages, and all other good deedes of all the holy Church militant for ever.

This pardon--and many such pardons, indulgences, grants and relaxations, were issued by Popes Nicholas V., Pius II., Sixtus, as well as Julius II.--was through the request of King Henry VIII., 1526, confirmed by Pope Clement VII.

It appears that at the time Pope Julius granted his “Bull” the Gild maintained seven priests, twelve ministers, and thirteen beadsmen; and also seems to have supported a grammar school. “The seats or stalls (says Thompson in his “Collections,” &c., 1820) on the south side of the chancel of the church were no doubt erected for the use of the master and bretheren of this establishment.” At the dissolution (1538) this college, as it was then called, was valued at £24.

The Guildhall of this establishment is yet remaining, and is used by the Corporation for their corporate and judicial proceedings. Beadsman-lane, adjoining the Guildhall, was no doubt inhabited by the beadsmen belonging to this institution; and the ancient buildings in Spain-lane were, it is very probable, the warehouses of the merchants. The possessions of this Gild were given to the Corporation in 1554, first of Mary.

_Gild of St. Botolph._--It is recorded that in 1349 (23rd Edward III.) a patent was granted for making a Gild in the town of St. Botolph--the ancient name of Boston. And also that in the same year Gilbert de Elilond gave to the Aldermen, &c., of the Gild of St. Botolph certain lands and tenements in that town. Another patent in behalf of this institution was granted in 1399.

In 1403, Henry IV. granted a licence to Thomas de Friseby and others, that they might give to the Aldermen and brethren of the Gild or fraternity in Boston one messuage, forty acres of land, and twenty acres of meadow with the appurtenances “which they held of the Lord of Bello-monto for services, &c.” In 1411, the King granted a licence to Richard Pynchebek and others, that they should give to Richard Lister, master of the Gild or fraternity in the town of St. Botolph, certain lands, &c.

It is not known who founded this Gild; what was the extent of its possessions; or the particular object of its institution. “It is most probable, however (says Thompson), that it was founded by a Company of merchants, and that its objects were entirely of a mercantile nature.” There is no account of any hall or other buildings belonging to this Gild.

_Gild of Corpus Christi._--The first mention of this Gild is in 1389, when a patent was issued for the “Guild or Fraternity of Corpus Christi in St. Botolph.” Another patent was granted in 1392 for an Alderman, &c., of this Gild; a third grant bears date 1403. King Henry V. granted a licence in 1413 to John Barker, chaplain, and John Wellesby, chaplain, that they should give to the Alderman and brothers and sisters of the Gild of Corpus Christi, in the town of St. Botolph, two messuages with certain lands, &c., in Boston and Skirbeck. In 1414 another patent was granted to this Gild.

Mr. Thompson considers that this was in all probability a religious Gild. At the dissolution it was called a “College,” and its valuation, as given both by Dugdale and Speed, was £32. The situation of the hall of this institution was contiguous to Corpus Christi-lane, in Wide Bargate. No remains of any buildings, &c., belonging to it were visible in 1820.

_Gild of the Apostles St. Peter and St. Paul._--The earliest record of this Gild is in 1393, when a patent was issued “for the Gild or Fraternity of the Apostles St. Peter and St. Paul, in the Church of St. Botolph in the Town of St. Botolph.” A second grant is dated 1448.

This appears to have been a religious establishment, and to have had a chapel, or at least an altar, in the parish church of St. Botolph. It was called a college at the dissolution, and was valued at £10 13s. 4d. It is supposed that St. Peter’s-lane, in Wide Bargate, had probably some connection with this Gild.

The charter of Philip and Mary, dated 1554, vested the possessions of this institution in the Corporation.

_St. George’s Gild._--This was founded prior to 1403, for in that year a patent grant was issued in confirmation of a licence for the formation of this fraternity. In 1415 a patent was granted for the keeping or governing of the Gild of St. George in the town of St. Botolph.

This appears to have been a trading company, no mention being made of it at the dissolution.

The hall of this Gild was standing in 1726 at the bottom of St. George’s-lane, on the west side of the river.

_Gild of Holy Trinity._--Patent grants to this fraternity were issued in 1409 and 1411.

It appears from documents in the archives of the Corporation of Boston that Stephen Clerke, warden and keeper of the fraternity of the Holy Trinity, in the town of St. Botolph, together with the brethren and sisters thereof, did surrender to Nicholas Robertison, mayor, and the other burgesses of the _new_ borough of Boston, all the estates, effects, and property of the said fraternity whatsoever, by deed under the common seal of their Gild, dated 22nd of July, in the 37th of Henry VIII. (1546). This surrender was formally made in a house then called the Trinity Chamber, which was most probably the hall or Gild of the fraternity. Its site is unknown. The possessions of this Gild were confirmed to the Corporation by Philip and Mary A.D. 1554; as were those of the St. Mary, St. Peter, and St. Paul Gilds, at the same time, “the better to support the Bridge and Port of Boston.”

It is more than probable that these Gilds played an important part in connection with the great fairs held in this town, but no evidence is at hand.

_Craft Gilds._--During the sixteenth and early in the seventeenth century, various Craft Gilds were founded in the borough. Of these, particular mention is made of the following: 1555, the Company of Cordwainers and Curriers established; 1562, the Tailors’ Company; 1576, the Glovers’ Company; 1598, the Smiths’, Farriers’, Braziers’, and Cutlers’ Companies; 1606, the Butchers’ Company established.

These Craft Gilds were founded and conducted on the usual model of the period, as may be seen by the constitution of the Cordwainers’ Company. This Company was authorised, and its regulations sanctioned by the Mayor, Aldermen, and Common Council of the borough in 1855, the following being the substance of its regulations:--

There should be elected on the Monday before the Feast of St. Martin, by the said Company, two wardens, who should choose a person as beadle, to be attendant on the said wardens.

The officers were to be presented before and sworn in by the Mayor for the time being, on the feast day of St. Andrew, to serve their respective offices for one whole year.

The said wardens should have authority over all manner of persons using the occupation or mystery of cordwainer in the said borough of Boston.

That no person or persons should set up within the said borough as cordwainers until such time as they could sufficiently cut or make a boot or shoe, to be adjudged by the said wardens, and were made free by the Mayor, Aldermen, &c., of the said borough, upon pain of forfeiting £3 6s. 8d., to be paid to the use of the Company: or to suffer imprisonment; this fine or imprisonment to be levied as often as any person should attempt the same.

If any foreigner, or person who did not serve his apprenticeship in the said borough, should be admitted to his freedom by the Mayor, &c., that he shall then pay to the wardens £3 6s. 8d. before he should be admitted a fellow of the said Company.

That no fellow of this Company, his journeymen or servants, should work on the Sabbath-day, either in town or country.

That the wardens of the said Company should have power once a month at least, or oftener if required, to search throughout the whole Company of Cordwainers and Curriers for unlawful wares or leathers.

There is no reference here to any powers of searching the stalls at the fairs for “unlawful wares;” but it is not improbable that such a power was exercised by the wardens of these Craft Gilds.

(_To be continued._)

Collectanea.

“CLAPHAM CHRONICLE.”--J. M. Kemble edited as a boy at school a little newspaper, a sheet of about six inches square, printed by himself from a diminutive hand press, and aping the style of the daily journals. I [_i.e._, C. J. M.] have a file of them still, “Edited by John Mitchell Kemble, printer, No. 1, Desk-row.” (See C. Dickens’ “Life of Charles J. Matthews,” vol. i. p. 34.)

CIVIC CONVIVIALITY IN 1759.--Mr. J. H. Round communicates the following: “The Mayor was also empowered [23 Nov. 1759] to give a grand Banquet at the ’Change to the Duke of Grafton and the officers of the Suffolk militia. The Suffolk militia then lay at Leicester, officered by the first characters in that county. It was then considered the most elegant and costly treat ever given by the corporation, and one the most inebriating. Mr. Mayor [Nicholas Throsby], at night, was assisted by the duke downstairs; and the duke soon after was assisted to his carriage by the town servants: there not being a soul left in the room capable of affording help to enfeebled limbs--Field Officers and Aldermen, Captains and Common Council, were perfectly at rest; all were levelled by the mighty power of wine.” (Throsby’s “History of Leicester” (1791), p. 162.)

Reviews.

_History and Description of Corfe Castle._ By THOMAS BOND. E. Stanford. 1884.

WE have here a book to which we can conscientiously pay a high tribute of praise. The noble ruins of mediæval castles in which England is so pre-eminently rich have rarely found competent historians, for the reason that while, on the one hand, their architecture is a special study, and understood by only a very few, who have made it their own subject; on the other hand, those who have thus acquired the necessary general knowledge are too often lacking in the special local knowledge, which is, in such cases, absolutely essential. Mr. Bond, however, has unquestionably succeeded in combining these two qualifications. In the present work he gives us, in an enlarged and final form, the results of those valuable researches on the castle, of which the outline has previously appeared in the third edition of Hutchins’ “Dorset,” and in his paper read before the Archæological Institute in 1866. The chief point which Mr. Bond has throughout sought to establish is the early date of the actual keep, which, as he shows, may with good reason be assigned to the days of the Conqueror. In this last controversy the most important point is the locality of the “Castellum de Warham,” mentioned in “Domesday.” Mr. Bond identifies it, beyond the shadow of a doubt, with Corfe Castle itself. Mr. Freeman’s unfortunate attempt to defend his own identification of it with the later and infinitely less important fortress of Wareham Castle is utterly shattered by Mr. Bond’s arguments, though he does not, strangely enough, allude to Mr. Freeman’s contention, which will be found under “Wareham,” in his work on “English Towns and Districts.”

We gladly call attention to the valuable searches made by Mr. Bond among original MS. authorities in the Public Records, especially the instructive “Fabric Rolls.” The careful excavations which he has been permitted to make have also led to important results, and, in short, we have in his book the fruits of long and patient study on the spot, combined with an unsparing and yet critical use of all available sources of original information.

We must not omit to notice the excellent plans and illustrations, with which the volume is liberally adorned, and which, by their great clearness, are admirably adapted to their purpose.

_Mediæval Military Architecture in England._ 2 vols. By G. T. CLARK. Wyman. 1884.

IT is with a feeling of real gratitude that we welcome this noble work. The prolonged labours of “Castle Clark” have long been familiar to antiquaries, and no archæological meeting at any spot that could boast a castle has seemed complete without the presence of “the great master of military architecture,” as Mr. Clark has been justly termed by Professor Freeman: to whom, by the way, these volumes are dedicated, as having been issued “at his suggestion.” It has long been a matter of natural regret that the valuable results of Mr. Clark’s researches should have been so widely scattered as to render them, for practical purposes, inaccessible to the student. In these volumes they have now been collected, gathered together from many quarters, such as the “Transactions” of the national and local Archæological societies, the _Builder_, and, not least, the scarce volume known as “Old London,” from which Mr. Clark has been allowed to reproduce his important monograph on the Tower.

The work begins with twelve introductory chapters, of which we may select, as of special interest, that on “earthworks of the post-Roman and English periods,” an obscure subject, on which Mr. Clark has here collected much instructive information. Three chapters deal with “the Castles of England and Wales at the latter part of the twelfth century,” and we can only regret that a subsequent chapter has not been devoted to the period of the Charter (1213-1223), when these fortresses played so large and important a part in the struggle. These chapters are succeeded by more than one hundred papers on various castles and works, not confined to England alone, as could be gathered from the title, but including many in Wales, Borthwick Tower in Scotland, and, beyond the Channel, the typical strongholds of Arques and Coucy, together with the famous Château-Gaillard. The plans and diagrams, so all-essential in a work dealing with these subjects, are bestowed with no sparing hand, and there are not a few illustrations of a less severe character.

The drawback incident to such a work as this is the great area which it has to cover. Not only a very wide knowledge of history, but also much special local knowledge is needed to secure a satisfactory result. It must be confessed that Mr. Clark has been more successful in the structural than in the historical portion of his theme. Nor have his views on the former always escaped challenge. His statements as to Pevensey were questioned at the time, and his account of Colchester, both of the structure and of its history, has been very gravely impugned. It is somewhat strange that, in this case, Mr. Clark has repeated, without correction, his statements, as he has inserted, in his account of the Tower, the important discovery of two fireplaces on the second stage, since the paper was originally written. We may also note that, notwithstanding the admiration which Messrs. Freeman and Clark profess for one another, their views are often very contradictory, as, for instance, on Norwich Castle, on the character of pre-Conquest keeps, on the earthworks at Lincoln, and on Richard’s Castle.

But while it is necessary to sound a note of warning, it is almost ungrateful to criticise a work which will be recognised as indispensable to every student of English history in the middle ages. Few studies could throw more light on the social life of the two centuries succeeding the Norman Conquest. When we learn that, of the papers reprinted in these volumes, that on Caerphilly was originally issued no less than half a century ago, we may form some idea of the duration of Mr. Clark’s labours, and may congratulate him on being not only the worthy successor of the painstaking and indefatigable Mr. King, but the greatest authority we have ever had on Mediæval Military Architecture.

_Cowdray: the History of a Great English House._ By Mrs. CHARLES ROUNDELL. Bickers & Son. 1884.

THIS handsome quarto volume possesses something more than local interest; it is the history of a house which was one of the most characteristic examples of Tudor architecture, and of a family which for several generations was conspicuous in the history of the times. Cowdray House stood close to Midhurst, in West Sussex; but it was burned down towards the end of the last century, and little now remains of the once magnificent pile but ivy-clad walls. With the mansion perished several invaluable historical treasures--among them the sword of William the Conqueror, his coronation robe, and the oft-disputed Roll of Battle Abbey. The house was full of rare and curious things, and contained a large number of family portraits of the Lords of Cowdray, whose fortunes were founded by Sir Anthony Browne, the friend and confidant of Henry VIII., and whose son, on the marriage of Queen Mary with Philip of Spain, was created Viscount Montague, a title which became extinct on the death of the ninth Lord in 1797. According to tradition, it was at Battle Abbey, where Sir Anthony Browne and his family were established within three months of its surrender to the Crown, that the famous “curse of Cowdray” was invoked. The story runs that while Sir Anthony was holding his first great feast in the Abbots’ Hall, “a monk made his way through the crowd of guests, and, striding up to the daïs on which Sir Anthony sat, cursed him to his face. He concluded with the words, ‘By fire and water thy line shall come to an end, and it shall perish out of the land.’” Two hundred and fifty years afterwards the curse was fulfilled, for Cowdray was burned down, and the eighth Lord Montague and his two nephews were all drowned. Misfortune seems to have been the lot of Lord Montague’s family from the first to the last, and the climax came with the burning of Cowdray; the last Viscount was a monk, who obtained the Papal dispensation to marry and continue the line; but he, too, died childless, and the male line of the Brownes of Cowdray became extinct. Mrs. Roundell thus describes the present appearance of the ruins of Cowdray: “Above the great gateway the face of the clock still remains, with its hands still pointing to the hour at which it stopped; by the door is the old bell, and the original staples which held the doors to the gateway. The kitchen still contains the enormous dripping-pan, five feet long and four feet wide, and the great meat-screen and meat-block. Among these relics of old Cowdray are lying a fine mirror-frame, a chandelier, and Lady Montague’s harp, on which are the words, ‘H. Naderman, à Paris.’”

It only remains to add that Mrs. Roundell has treated her subject exhaustively, but in a plain, unvarnished manner, and that the book is illustrated with reproductions, by a photographic process, of some old views of Cowdray.

_Life and Times of William IV._ By PERCY FITZGERALD, M.A., F.S.A.

THIS is rather a sample of book-making by a gentleman who can do better work, and has done it. The account of King William’s early years is dull and heavy; and that of the first Reform Bill contains nothing that has not been told before. His accounts of Holland House and its “set” (where he has had Macaulay to draw upon), and of the French _emigrés_ in London after the Revolution of 1830, and of the chief dandies and ladies of fashion who hung about Lady Blessington, are the most interesting parts of the book.

1. _Luther and the Cardinal._ Translated by JULIE SUTTER. 2. _Homes and Haunts of Luther._ By JOHN STOUGHTON, D.D. 3. _Luther Anecdotes._ By Dr. MACAULAY. Religious Tract Society. 1883.

CERTAINLY the enterprising publishers who call themselves the Religious Tract Society were not behindhand in contributing to the Luther Festival last year. The story of one of the bravest men in history (let us not hesitate to call him so) has seldom been more worthily enshrined than in the books now lying on our table. The “anecdotes” are an unambitious attempt to unite in a connected form the various stories told of Luther at various periods of his life. “Homes and Haunts of Martin Luther” is evidently written in the true spirit of the loving and faithful chronicler. We follow the great Reformer from the mines of Eisènach to the princely castle of the Wartburg; from the quiet of the Wittenberg monastery to the fierce conflict of the Diet of Worms. Everywhere Mr. Stoughton describes the life and doings of his hero with the tender reverence of an ardent admirer. A noticeable feature of the book is the elegance of the illustrations, which are artistically drawn and carefully engraved. The foregoing treat of the general story of Luther’s life; in the work entitled “Luther and the Cardinal,” we have a graphic historical picture of the memorable struggle between the Reformer and one of the greatest of the Papal adherents, Cardinal Albrecht, Elector and Archbishop of Mainz. It is written almost in the style of an historical novel, except that no imaginary personage or event is introduced. Pastor Metschmann thoroughly warms to his task when he describes in the latter part of the book the fierce retribution wreaked upon the Cardinal by Luther for the judicial murder of poor Hans von Schömtz, and he is appreciatively and carefully interpreted by his translator.

_Hanley and the House of Lechmere_, by the late Mr. E. P. SHIRLEY (Pickering), is a book to which much interest attaches, as the last (and indeed posthumous) work of one of the most noble and worthy of scholars and gentlemen. It is partly topographical, as giving an account of the parish of Hanley Castle; it is also partly architectural, and partly genealogical; and in all these three qualifications Mr. Shirley shone pre-eminent. The old seat of the Lechmere family, now known as Severn End, is one of those fine old timbered mansions which are scattered so thickly up and down the western and north-western counties from Gloucester to Lancaster; and it appears that the mansion must have ranked a century ago high among the houses of its class. Its general structure, its tapestries, its pictures, its painted glass, all serve to show this. The greater part of the volume is taken up with the diary of Sir Nicholas Les Lechmere, recording the history of the family from the days of the first two Edwards down to the reign of William and Mary, in fact to within a year of his own death in 1701. The entries exhibit to us the domestic pursuits,--pleasures, as well as the public duties of a worthy man and upright judge. A manuscript of Dr. Thomas, quoted by Nash, in his “History of Worcestershire,” observes of the Lechmeres: “This family came out of the Low Countries, served under William the Conqueror, and obtained lands in Hanley, called from them Lechmere’s Place, and Lechmere’s Fields. Lech is a branch of the Rhine, which parts from it at Wyke, in the province of Utrecht, and running westward falls into the Maes before you come to Rotterdam.” “Some foundation for the supposed foreign origin of the name,” remarks Mr. Shirley, “is derived from the fact that all the earlier ancestors of the Lechmeres used the prefix _de_, which was afterwards dropped; and as, with the exception of _Lechmere Heath_ in Hertfordshire, there is no place of that name in England, we may, perhaps, conclude that Dr. Thomas’s theory is the right one. There can be no reasonable doubt that the progenitor of the venerable House of Lechmere was seated in the parish of Hanley not long after the Conquest, and, after all, it may not be impossible that he was the Roger who held under Gislebert, at the time of the Domesday survey.” Mr. Shirley’s work, we may add, is illustrated with a view of the western front of Severn End, as it appeared in 1803, taken from a sketch by the late Sir Edmund Lechmere; whilst the pages of the volume are enriched with numerous carefully-executed coats of arms of the Lechmeres, and their several impalements through marriage. The arms of Lechmere, _Gules, a fess, and in chief two pelicans vulning themselves, or_--“may be taken as an early instance of what is called canting heraldry, _Lech_, in old Breton, meaning love, and _mere_, of course, mother,--a play upon the name symbolised by the pelican wounding herself and feeding her young with her blood.”

_The History of Newcastle and Gateshead in the 14th and 15th Centuries._, by Mr. R. WELFORD (Scott, 14, Paternoster-square), introduces us to a district which in the course of the present summer will be visited by the Archæological Institute of Great Britain; its appearance, therefore, is well timed. Mr. Welford has brought together and has arranged with considerable skill a mass of extracts from the records of “the King’s Town of the New Castle upon the Tyne,” founded by a son of the Conqueror; and in his introductory chapter he has given a sketch of the early growth of the town, with its charters, its commerce, and its pageants. The only fault that we can find is that this chapter is far too brief; for we should have been pleased to see more of Mr. Welford’s own handiwork, and of his comments on the most interesting materials which he has brought together, and which extend from A.D. 1301 down to the close of A.D. 1500. For a record of local annals the book strikes us as coming very nearly up to the standard of perfection.

_Gwilt’s Encyclopædia of Architecture_ (Longmans) is a work so thoroughly established as an authority that it needs no commendation of ours. If any proof of its value, and the public appreciation of that value be needed, it will be enough to say that it has reached its seventh edition. Thus, as to the two previous impressions, many amendments have been made, which the progress of time had rendered necessary. But for the present edition “The Tables of the English Cathedrals have been compiled; many chapters on public and private buildings have been re-written, and new ones have been inserted: the list of architects and their principal works has been removed from the glossary and re-compiled, the list of architectural publications has been enlarged, and formed into a separate list, while the glossary itself has received numerous additional terms and illustrations, together with such other amendments as appeared desirable.” Though the work is styled an “Encyclopædia,” the only portion of it which is alphabetically arranged is the “Glossary” at the end; the rest of the book is really an elaborate history of architecture, from the earliest period of a semi-barbaric age. In it Mr. Gwilt carries his readers through the annals of architecture, Druidical and Celtic, Pelasgic or Cyclopean, Babylonian, Persian, Jewish and Phœnician, Indian, Egyptian, Chinese, Mexican, Arabian, Moorish, or Saracenic, Grecian, Etruscan, Roman, Byzantine, and so on to the rise of that Pointed Style to which the name of Gothic has clung so strongly. He devotes sections also to a general view of the Italian, French, German, Spanish, Portuguese, and Russian styles; and then occupies the bulk of the work with the successive styles of architecture which have prevailed in this country, and the Pointed Architecture of France, Italy, Spain, Belgium, and other continental countries. The second and third parts of the work treat in great detail of the theory and the practice of architecture respectively: the fourth part concerns mainly the working builder, and the land agent. The work is illustrated by woodcuts, giving views, elevations, and ground-plans of the principal public and private buildings both at home and abroad. The short memoir of Mr. Gwilt, himself, prefixed to the work, is the record of a man whose name the present race of Englishmen would not wish to die.

_Lincolnshire and the Danes._ By the Rev. G. S. STREATFEILD. Kegan Paul & Co. 1884.

THE Great Fen District and the Danish occupation of this part of our country, together form an interesting episode in English History; and this Mr. Streatfeild has undertaken to illustrate. He is not without, at all events, one great qualification for his task, for he has long been a resident in the south of Lincolnshire; and besides that he has other merits, for he is a man of honest research, and he writes with the pen of a scholar and a gentleman. Perhaps the best chapter in the volume is the third, which treats of the Dane in his English home; though other readers will be inclined to bestow equal praise on the chapter on Danish Mythology, and on the influence which has been exerted by it upon our language and people. It should be added that the book is dedicated to the Princess of Wales, who can see almost from her windows at Sandringham the tower of Boston Church, which marks the district on which the Danes of old have left their stamp.

_Historic Sites of Lancashire and Cheshire._ By JAMES CROSTON, Esq., F.S.A. Manchester: John Heywood. 1883.

The author of this work says, rather grandiloquently, in his preface, that, without any pretension to the dignity of history, his aim has been “to combine with topographical description, personal narrative and local legend, and to snatch from Oblivion’s spoils the shadowy fragments of tradition that have floated down through centuries of time.” Certainly a worthy and admirable aim, not wanting, despite the writer’s disclaimer, in ‘dignity.’ He has contrived to clothe his descriptions of persons and places in a mantle of poetical beauty, which renders them exceedingly charming to the general reader, as they are also of pre-eminent interest to the antiquary. One of the chapters, that devoted to Alderley and the Stanleys, will be especially attractive to admirers of perhaps the most universally admired Churchmen of the century. Mr. Croston has wisely summarised in a few words the later and best-known part of his history, and paid most attention to the early years of Arthur Stanley in the pretty home at Alderley.

We must give an especial meed of praise to the spirited style in which the story of Sir William Brereton, who was such an excellent type of the higher class of the Parliamentarian soldier, is told. As the author remarks, to tell the history of his life is to write the record of the Civil war in the north-west of England. This he has told impartially and excellently, and in a style of narrative which can scarcely be too highly commended for its clearness and freedom from inflation. The pages of the work are enlivened by apt poetical quotations, many of them from little known old English poets, which show that Mr. Croston’s reading has been various and extensive. The book should find favour with more than local readers; old Moreton Hall, for instance, is one of those “stately homes of England” in which a national interest is felt; and none who love the quaintly venerable, albeit decayed, mansions of our forefathers, can fail to be grateful to the writer for his graphic and appreciative chapter on one of the most ancient and interesting of them.

Moreton Hall[12] is almost peculiar for its wealth of rich carving and mouldings, from the entrance, with its two side-posts, each carved to represent a soldier bearing a partisan, to the beautiful little chapel, now, alas! degraded to the service of a cattle-shed, lumber, storehouse, and such base uses. In the “long gallery,” which our author compares to the banquetting-room at Haddon Hall, are two draped figures of Fate and Fortune, admirably illustrating the difference between two terms frequently confounded with each other. Fate bears a sword, with which she pierces a globe above her head, and the inscription beneath is: “The speare of destinye whose ruler is knowledge;” while opposite to her is Fortune, blindfolded, pointing to her wheel, and her motto is: “The wheele of Fortune whose rule is ignorance.” This part of the mansion also gathers additional interest from the tradition that “Good Queen Bess” condescended to dance in the gallery, while on a visit to Moreton Hall during one of her royal progresses. If this be true, it is very possible that her visit may have contributed to the decline rather than to the exaltation of the family; for to have a Tudor sovereign as a guest was, in those days, much the same kind of undesirable honour as the gift of a sacred white elephant from the Burmese king to some subject whom he delights to honour--and to ruin. Witness the clean sweep which the royal Dame contrived to make of the riches of Kenilworth, when Leicester’s Earl paid so dearly for a glance from royal eyes.

“Between architecture and history there exists a closer connection than is commonly supposed,” remarks Mr. Croston, and this may almost be called the key-note of his book. When the author stands before a relic of the past, visions of past chivalry fill his imagination and, consequently, his narrative; and he is never happier than when following the fortunes of some old knight who lived by his sword.

“Those knights are dust, and their good swords rust; Their souls are with the saints, we trust,”

says Coleridge; let us add that their _names_ cannot be better commemorated than by books like the one before us.

_English Etchings_, Part 37 (D. Bogue, 3, St. Martin’s-place), contains three admirable examples of the etcher’s skill, namely “Dachsunds,” by Mr. A. M. Williams, representing three dogs of the badger-hound species; “In the Pursuit of Riches,” by Mr. Edwin Buckman, a spirited drawing of a couple of urchins endeavouring to catch a “copper” thrown to them from the roof of a passing vehicle; and a “Surrey Lime-Kiln,” by Mr. W. Holmes May.

Obituary Memoir.

“Emori nolo; sed me esse mortuum nihil æstimo.”--_Epicharmus._

MR. WILLIAM BRAGG, F.S.A., died on June 6. His collection of MSS., made during his travels, and dispersed not long ago; his collection of tobacco pipes of all nations, many of which are in the British Museum; and his almost complete collection of the editions of Cervantes’s works, presented to the Birmingham Reference Library, bear witness to Mr. Bragge’s archæological and literary tastes.--_Athenæum._

Meetings of Learned Societies.

METROPOLITAN.

SOCIETY OF ANTIQUARIES.--_May 29_, Mr. H. S. Milman, Director, in the chair. The Rev. George Ward, F.S.A., exhibited a Saxon coin of St. Eadmund, a gold enamelled ring of the seventeenth century, and several Nuremberg tokens, found in Lincolnshire. Dr. Samuel Birch exhibited the framework of a _sella prætoria_ of bronze, which had recently been brought from Cairo. “The Corporation Maces of the City of Rochester” formed the subject of a paper by Mr. W. H. St. John Hope. The regalia exhibited consisted of the great mace, a pair of silver maces, and a water bailiff’s silver oar.--_June 12_, Mr. E. Freshfield, LL.D., V.P., in the chair. This being a ballot evening, no papers were read.--_June 19_, Dr. C. S. Perceval, Treasurer, in the chair. “Clay Bars and Pottery from Bedfordshire” formed the subject of a paper by Major C. Cooper, F.S.A., Local Secretary of the Society for Bedfordshire. Dr. E. Freshfield, V.P., read a paper on “The Palace of the Greek Emperors of Nicæa at Nymphio.” Dr. J. Evans, F.R.S., V.P., exhibited a bronze medal of Sir Andrew Fountaine as Warden of the Mint. Mr. C. I. Elton, M.P., F.S.A., presented to the Society a contemporary corrected MS. of Sir John Eliot’s Speeches, and also a MS. of law notes of Sir J. Fortescue Aland, Solicitor-General in the second year of George I. (1715-16), containing several interesting particulars.

BRITISH ARCHÆOLOGICAL ASSOCIATION.--_May 7._ Annual general meeting. The Bishop of St. David’s was elected President for the congress at Tenby, and for the ensuing year. The officers and almost the whole of the old council were re-elected. The Hon. Treasurer, Mr. T. Morgan, F.S.A., V.P., gave a review of the work of the Association during the past year, and declared a satisfactory balance-sheet. The members afterwards dined together.--_May 21_, Mr. T. Morgan, F.S.A., Vice-President, in the chair. Mr. W. Myers, F.S.A., exhibited several objects of antiquarian interest lately brought from Egypt. Mr. Cecil Brent, F.S.A., exhibited a collection of ancient pottery, mostly from Cyprus, showing many of the varied forms of the ceramic ware of that island. Some gold earrings of Greek date were also among the collection. The Rev. S. M. Mayhew produced many articles of interest, especially to collectors of London antiquities: there being among them a handsome inlaid marquetry box, once, probably, the alms-box of the old church of St. Olave, Tooley-street, since it was found close to the site of the present building, below the surface of the ground. It bears the inscription, “The gift of R. Makepiece, 1692,” and appeared but little the worse for its rough usage. A carved bone knife of Roman date and some fine examples of glass of the same period were also exhibited. Mr. Loftus Brock, F.S.A., also exhibited several antiquities found in London, the most curious being a spur of great length. Mr. E. Walford read a paper on the ancient city of Luni, in Etruria, being an extract from a letter which he had recently received from La Signora Campion. This paper will appear _in extenso_ in the ANTIQUARIAN MAGAZINE. Mr. W. de Gray Birch, F.S.A., read a paper descriptive of a fine stained-glass figure of a lady in Long Melford Church, Suffolk, which was shown in _fac-simile_ by a drawing by Mr. Watling. The figure is that of Lady Anne Percy, then wife of Sir Lawrence Rainsforth, and probably the youngest daughter of Hotspur, and not the first or second, as has been believed. The lady’s third husband was Sir R. Vaughan. She is represented in a kneeling posture, clad in a red heraldic robe, on which are the arms of the Dukes of Brabant and Lucy; while on her ermine-lined mantle are those of Rainsforth and Brokesborne. This is the earliest known portrait of any member of the Percy family.--_June 4_, Mr. T. Morgan, F.S.A., in the chair. The arrangements for the Congress at Tenby were detailed. The meeting will commence on September 2, and end on the 11th, the Bishop of St. David’s being President. The Rev. S. M. Mayhew exhibited a Roman mortar of bronze found recently in the City, its silver covering showing the marks of intense heat from burning, the silver being fused into granules over the surface. A bronze lizard from Palestine, probably a Gnostic emblem, was also described. Mr. Morgan produced some interesting relics from Cagliari, Sardinia, recently found there. Mr. Hughes exhibited a fac-simile of the Charter granted by Richard III. to the Wax Chandlers Company of London, which he has reproduced in colours. Mr. J. W. Grover read a description of a tumulus still existing in the grounds of a house in the Cedars-road, Clapham, which is shown on old maps prior to the district being built over. It is called Mount Nod; but there is no evidence to show its date. The old house of Sir D. Gordon, where Pepys died, stood close to the spot. A discussion ensued, in which Messrs. Compton, Kershaw, Brock, and others took part; reference was made to the old Huguenot cemetery, Mount Nod, at Wandsworth, being called by the same name, apparently from the field so called extending thither. The position commands a view over the Thames valley. Excavations will probably be made. Mr. R. Smith contributed a paper, read by Mr. W. De Gray Birch, on Old Winchester, in which he showed that the so-called Roman Camp is in reality an ancient British oppidum of considerable size. Mr. L. Brock read a paper on a chapel of thirteenth century date, which still exists at Dover, close to the Maison Dieu, hidden behind the modern houses of Biggin-street, and hitherto unnoticed. It is used as a blacksmith’s shop. The Rev. Prebendary Scarth forwarded a paper read by Mr. Birch, on an ancient harpsichord which formerly belonged to Tasso. It is at Sorrento, and is dated 1564. It is decorated with paintings of Apollo and the Muses, and is in fair condition.

ROYAL ARCHÆOLOGICAL INSTITUTE.--_June 5_, Earl Percy, M.P., in the chair. Miss Farington exhibited a collection of Roman coins, found near Preston, in Lancashire, and also some curious wall tiles of ancient Chinese manufacture. Mr. J. G. Waller gave an interesting sketch of monumental brasses of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, the leading features of which he traced in chronological sequence from the well-known examples from Cambridgeshire and Stoke d’Abernon, Surrey, in 1320-30, down to the specimens of elaborate coat-armour which mark the conclusion of the Wars of the Roses. Mr. J. T. Micklethwaite, F.S.A., described certain curious mediæval frescoes, which had been brought to light by the late Canon Wickenden, in Pinvin Chapel, near Pershore. Illustrations of these two papers were hung on the walls. Mr. A. H. Church described at considerable length some Roman potters’ marks on ancient pottery, examples of which had been found in the neighbourhood of Cirencester, in Gloucestershire.

ROYAL SOCIETY OF LITERATURE.--_May 28_, Sir P. de Colquhoun in the chair. Mr. W. H. Garrett read a paper “On Macbeth,” chiefly with the view of elucidating the intention of Shakespeare with respect to the central figure of the tragedy. At the outset, Mr. Garrett endeavoured to fix the year when the play was first acted. After examining the source, Holinshed’s “Chronicle,” whence Shakspeare derived his first idea of the salient characteristics of the real Macbeth, and alluding to the introduction by the poet of the account given by the chronicler of the assassination of King Duffe, by Donewald, the author of the paper proceeded to analyse the character of Macbeth as created by the bard, contending that the prophecies of the witches had not the effect on the character and conduct of the Scottish chief which is usually claimed for them by commentators. Shakespeare’s text, it was argued, indicates not only that ambitious cravings existed in Macbeth before the action of the tragedy commenced, but that he had even consulted his wife respecting the means to be adopted to secure the throne for himself.--_Athenæum._

SHORTHAND.--_May 7_, Mr. T. A. Reed, President, in the chair. Mr. M. Levy read a paper, entitled “Shakespeare and Shorthand,” giving a _résumé_ of the opinions of Shakespearean students, critics and commentators, as to the probability of some of Shakespeare’s plays, and especially “Hamlet,” having been published from the notes of shorthand writers taken during the performances, thus accounting for the discrepancies between the various early editions of the plays. A long discussion followed.

ST. PAUL’S ECCLESIOLOGICAL SOCIETY.--_April 22_, Major Heales, F.S.A., in the chair. Mr. W. G. F. Phillimore, Q.C., D.C.L., read a paper on “The History of the Ecclesiastical Courts,” in which he described the origin and jurisdiction of the various Courts having cognizance of ecclesiastical causes, and how they became diverted from their primitive intention. He concluded by saying that these Courts were established by, and presided over by, the clergy, for the discipline of the laity, whereas now they were presided over by laymen for the discipline of the clergy.--_April 26._ The members paid a visit to the Priory of St. Dominic, Maitland-road, Haverstock-hill, and to the church of St. Augustine, Kilburn, under the guidance of the Prior and Vicar and churchwarden respectively.--_May 8._ Mr. Somers Clarke, Vice-President, F.S.A., in the chair. The Rev. W. Sparrow Simpson, D.D., F.S.A., read a paper on “St. Vedast.” The lecturer dealt with the Saint himself, and not the well-known church dedicated to him, and he traced the derivation of the name, described his miracles, emblems, works, &c., and concluded with a few words upon the affix, “_alias_ Foster,” which is associated with the church in Foster-lane.

PROVINCIAL.

ROYAL HISTORICAL AND ARCHÆOLOGICAL ASSOCIATION OF IRELAND.--The Munster Conference of this Association commenced on Tuesday, May 13, at Killarney, Mr. Richard Langrishe, V.P., in the chair. The Secretary having read the minutes of the quarterly meeting, and submitted the audited statement of accounts for 1883, they were signed by the Chairman. In explaining the minutes to those present, he said that they chiefly had reference to the schedule of the Act of 1883, for the Preservation of Ancient Monuments. Some of our Irish antiquities were included in it, but not as many as there should be. Kerry was full of monuments, which ought to be placed under the Act. Only four or five monuments in the south of Ireland were included, but this was far less than ought to be. The Society, as would be seen, was making exertions to have something done in reference to the matter. It was not generally known that this Act for the Preservation of ancient monuments was in existence, or greater efforts would be made in connection with it. The Chairman added that members ought to send a list of those monuments in their neighbourhood to the provincial secretaries, in order to have them placed under the Act. Mr. Arthur Hill, M.R.I.A.I., read a paper on “The Cathedral of Ardfert, and other remains there.” The President read a paper dealing with the subject of Bells in Ireland, and including, amongst others, a description of the six bells at St. Andoen’s, Dublin, with their inscriptions. Mr. Robert Day exhibited some curious specimens of stone and bronze implements, three copper celts, and an ancient silver pyx in good preservation. A visit was afterwards paid to Muckross Abbey, Inisfallen, and Aghadoe. On Wednesday the party, headed by the Rev. James Grant (Hon. General Secretary), proceeded to Tralee, whence excursions were made to Ardfert, where the ruins of the ancient churches, the cathedral, and the Franciscan abbey were duly examined; and to Barrow, where the great fort on the east side of the island called “Barrowaneanach,” was inspected. Thursday was devoted to an examination of Dunloe Gap, and the Ogham Cave, in the demesne of Dunloe Castle; and on Friday the party visited the caves at Shanavalla, Arbella, near Tralee.

CAMBRIDGE ANTIQUARIAN SOCIETY.--_May 26_, annual meeting, Mr. J. W. Clark, M.A., President, in the chair. The Council and other officers for the next year were elected. The annual report announced that the Society’s collections had been placed in the new Museum of Archæology, that eight meetings and two excursions had taken place during the past year, that forty-seven new members had been elected, and that the first of a series of loan-exhibitions of University and College portraits under the auspices of this Society was now on view in the Fitzwilliam Museum. Professor Hughes, in speaking of the so-called _Via Devana_ running from the end of Wort’s Causeway towards Horseheath, pointed out that there was little, if any, evidence of its Roman origin, and insisted that it was rather an entrenchment, to be referred to the same later age which has given us Offa’s Dyke in the west, and the Devil’s Dyke, and as many other notable earthworks in East Anglia also. The Roman roads in the neighbourhood of the Castle Hill, too, he remarked, seemed to converge to Grantchester rather than to Cambridge, and the Roman pottery found here indicated rubbish-heaps rather than the site of a camp or permanent fortification; and from all available evidence he drew the conclusion that the mound and all the earthworks about it are of Norman origin. Mr. Browne exhibited outline rubbings of two stones recently presented to the British Museum by Mr. A. W. Franks, acquired some years ago from persons who described them as coming from the city: also of the remarkable rune-bearing stone from St. Paul’s Churchyard, in the Guildhall Library. Mr. Waldstein made some remarks descriptive of two stones from the Via Appia at Rome, lately given to the Fitzwilliam Museum, and also of a red jasper intaglio, from Smyrna, in the possession of the Rev. S. S. Lewis.

Antiquarian News & Notes.

A STATUE of Martin Luther has been unveiled at Washington.

CHESTER CASTLE is no longer to be used as a prison for civil offences.

THE Curfew Tower, one of the oldest portions of Windsor Castle, is being repaired.

“THE Diary and Correspondence of Samuel Pepys,” in ten volumes, is promised in _édition de luxe_ form by Messrs. Dodd, Mead & Co.

A COMMEMORATIVE tablet is about to be placed at No. 46, Rue Richelieu, Paris, the house at which Molière died.

CORRINGHAM CHURCH, which has been elaborately restored at a cost of £10,000, has been re-opened by the Bishop of Lincoln.

THE Trustees of the British Museum have purchased an early impression of Jacobi’s last engraved work, the “School of Athens,” by Raphael, in the Vatican.

THE “Libraries of Boston,” about to be published by Messrs. Cupples, Upham & Co., will treat of more than 100 collections, both public and private.

MESSRS. TRUBNER & CO. have ready “Archæology in India,” with special reference to the works of Babu Rajendralala Mitra, by Mr. James Fergusson.

SHAKESPEARE’S table was exhibited at the Shakespearean Show held on behalf of the Chelsea Hospital for Women, at the Albert Hall, on the last three days of May.

IN cutting a trench in the Bois de Bologne, near Paris, the workmen have found a whole series of coins struck under Valois, from 1337 to 1342. Nearly all are in a good state of preservation.

ON Monday, June 16, was commenced the sale of the collection of objects of art formed by Sir Andrew Fountaine in the early part of the last century. Details of the sale are unavoidably postponed to our next.

MR. CHARLES B. STRUTT, of 34, East-street, Red Lion-square, is preparing for publication a work entitled “Some Account of Historical Chairs, of all Periods and Countries.”

MR. H. CHETWYND STAPYLTON, the author of the “Eton School Lists,” has nearly completed a new volume, uniform with its predecessor, bringing the list of old Etonians down to the Election of 1877.

THE Italian Government, says _The Times_, has concluded, through Professor Villari, the negotiations for purchasing the Italian MSS. in the Ashburnham Library. The amount to be paid for them is £23,000.

A REPRINT of the 1825 edition of Mr. Robert Chambers’s “Illustrations of the Author of Waverley,” being notices and anecdotes of characters, scenes, and incidents described in his works, has been issued in Edinburgh.

THE coming portion of Tischendorf’s Greek Testament promises to be of interest. It has been prepared by Dr. Caspar René Gregory, with the aid of the late Dr. Ezra Abbott, and will contain an account of Tischendorf’s life and writings.

MESSRS. SAMPSON LOW & CO. announce a new work by Mr. Charles F. Blackburn, entitled “Hints on Catalogue Titles, and on Index Entries.” The book includes a rough vocabulary of terms and abbreviations, chiefly from catalogues, and some passages from “Journeyings among Books.”

GREAT changes are to be carried out at Genoa; the fortifications to the east of the city, and the marble walk round the lower part of the harbour are to be pulled down, to make room for a military parade ground and for purposes of trade, and the famous old “Bank of St. George,” now used as the Custom House, is to be turned into an Art Museum.

THE second year’s issue of Mr. Henry Morley’s “Universal Library” will include Herrick’s “Hesperides,” Boccaccio’s “Decameron,” Sterne’s “Tristram Shandy,” George Chapman’s “Translation of Homer’s ‘Iliad,’” “Mediæval Tales,” “The Alchemist and other Plays,” by Ben Jonson, Hobbes’s “Leviathan,” Butler’s “Hudibras,” More’s “Utopia,” Bacon’s “New Atlantis,” &c.

AN inventory has just been made of the National Library of France. It contains 2,500,000 volumes. The cabinet of manuscripts includes 92,000 volumes, as well as 144,000 medals of all periods, both French and foreign. The engravings comprise over two millions of plates, preserved in 14,500 vols. and 4,000 portfolios. The more precious volumes, amounting to 80,000, are kept in the reserved gallery. In 1868 24,000 readers attended the reading-room, and in 1883 the number was 70,000.

THE _Times_ records the discovery of a Roman villa at Woolstone, in the Vale of the White Horse, Berkshire, where some fine tesselated pavements have been disclosed. Several interments have also been revealed, apparently of the Anglo-Saxon period. The seax or knife dagger is, strange to say, still attached to the girdle of two of the bodies, presumed to be those of Anglo-Saxon ladies. The excavations, which are closed to the general public, were inspected on May 23rd by the members of the Oxford Architectural and Historical Society, and the Newbury District Field Club.

THE following articles, more or less of an antiquarian character, appear among the contents of the magazines for June: _Art Journal_, “The Western Riviera;” _Cornhill_, “Some Literary Recollections;” _Literary Chronicle_, “Researches for MSS. in the Levant,” and “Contents of the British Museum Library;” _Blackwood_, “New Views of Shakespeare’s Sonnets;” _Army and Navy Magazine_, “Pepys as an Official;” _Eastward Ho!_ “Bethnal-green Museum;” _Cassell’s Magazine_, “The Folk-lore of Colours,” and “A Pilgrimage to Holy Island;” _Magazine of Art_, “Raphael and the Fornarina,” “The Keramics of Fiji,” and “Greek Myths in Greek Art.”

A ROMAN family burial-place has been lately discovered during some excavations at Lincoln. It contained a large number of urns, with a furnace or oven at the eastern end. “Unfortunately for the interests of archæology,” writes the Rev. Precentor Venables, “the discovery was made just when the excavators commenced their work, and from their ignorance of the value of the remains much of interest was destroyed before the foreman arrived. The whole of the oven had been demolished, only leaving one reddened wall, indicating the action of intense heat, and the blackened stones of the flue. The burial-place or ‘loculus’ was, however, perfect. It consisted of a stone-chamber, 5 ft. 10 in. in length, its breadth varying from 2 ft. ½ in. at the lower end to 3 ft. 1 in. in the middle.”

CATALOGUES of rare and curious books, all of which contain the names of works of antiquarian interest, have reached us from Messrs. Meehan, 32, Gay-street, Bath; Messrs. Reeves & Turner, 196, Strand, W.C.; Messrs. Fawn & Son, 18, Queen’s-road, Bristol; Mr. W. P. Bennett, 3, Bull-street, Birmingham; Mr. C. Hutt, Clement’s-inn-gateway, Strand, W.C.; Messrs. Robson & Kerslake, 43, Cranbourne-street, W.C.; Mr. W. H. Gee, 28, High-street, Oxford; Mr. W. Wesley, 28, Essex-street, Strand, W.C.; Messrs. Jarvis & Son, 28, King William-street, W.C. The last-named is called the “Dickens’s Catalogue,” and may be regarded as complete a list as possible of the various editions of Dickens’s Works and “Dickensana.” The complete set, inclusive of works, extra illustrations, and portraits, is priced at £200; the price for the “Dickensana,” which is described as “very interesting and scarce,” is set down at another £60.

ON May 22 was celebrated in London, at Lutterworth, where he died, and at other places in England, the Quincentenary of Wycliffe, the great English Reformer. Among the most noticeable features of the commemoration was the opening of a Wycliffe Exhibition at the British Museum. Contemporary printed books and engravings and commemorative medals formed the chief attractions in the Luther celebration last year. To illustrate the life and works of his English predecessor the resources of the manuscripts department have been chiefly drawn upon; and as Wycliffe’s name, before all others, is identified with the translation of the Bible into English, a great part of the collection displayed in the King’s Library consisted of a fine series of manuscripts of the two versions of the Wycliffe translation.

ON Wednesday, May 28, Mr. J. T. Wood, F.S.A., lectured in the Ephesian Gallery of the British Museum on “The Marbles from the Great Temple of Diana.” The lecturer said it was needless for him to tell the story of his finding the temple of the great goddess of the Ephesians. It would take too much time, and it had been so often told before that he might take for granted that his audience knew all about it; but he might say that it was a very difficult thing to accomplish, and that it was six years before he succeeded in hitting upon the site. It was found one mile from the city of Ephesus, among corn fields, on level ground, where there was not the slightest sign of any ruins. Having found the site he discovered sufficient of the remains to enable him to make a true elevation of the temple, but there were some details still missing which he hoped would be obtained by further excavations. They had before them a rough diagram from which they would see that it had 100 columns externally, each 6 ft. in diameter, and nearly 60 ft. in height. Only a portion of the superstructure had been found, which was the lower part underneath the capitals, some of the lions’ heads, and some of the enrichment of the cornice. The coloured diagrams were meant to show that the whole of the temple was coloured. The remains which they saw before them had lost their colour since they were placed in the museum, with but few exceptions, but there was one specimen before them in which the colour was clearly demonstrated. Several of the coloured diagrams would, however, show the state in which he found the fragments. He should tell them that these remains were found between 20 ft. and 24 ft. underground, and their being at so great a depth beneath the surface accounted for the great expense of these excavations, the Government having spent £12,000 upon them during the five years which it took him to clear out the temple. He need scarcely tell them that the remains they now saw were from the last of the three successive temples. He found evidence that all the bases were of about the same size, and that the same marble was used. There were two stones at the end of the temple which, he believed, belonged to the frieze of the temple, and which were got out from the drums of the last temple. One, which was marked H 4, he believed would be proved to be, what he had always thought it was, a portion of the frieze. Upon it was a representation of Hercules struggling with a female figure, and he believed it was Hercules taking the girdle of the Queen of the Amazons. The stone was very much hacked and disfigured. Mr. Fergusson thought that a column had been placed upon this; but there were reasons to the architectural mind which precluded the idea that this stone could have been part of the pedestal of a column. There was a second stone which he believed was a portion of the frieze of the temple. Upon one side of it was a representation of either Hercules lifting Antæus, or Hercules struggling with Cacus, probably the latter. On the other side they had the figure of a stag. These were the only stones which he claimed to be portions of the frieze. There was a third stone which was found in the aqueduct, and another which might or might not have been a fragment of the frieze, but it was at all events a corner-stone. All these blocks were supposed to have come from the same building, but whether they were portions of pedestals, on which columns had been placed, as contended by Mr. Fergusson, was a question which would probably be decided by further excavations. Alluding to a fragment of a sculptured column marked H 3, Mr. Wood said the question was whether Pliny would have called it a sculptured column if it had been of the height of this drum. Some people thought the columns in the diagram could not have been sculptured above the height of one drum, but he begged to differ from them. Passing on to another fragment of a sculptured column, the lecturer said he looked upon it as the most beautiful of all, and it was a pity it had been so much hacked about. This temple was built in the time of Alexander the Great, and when he visited Ephesus he wished to have his name inscribed upon it. The lecturer pointed out other specimens, one being a beautiful stone which had formed part of the base of a column, and another in which the delicate proportions of the fillet between the flutings were very noteworthy. He further remarked upon fragments of roof tiles, lions’ heads, and various fragmentary specimens of Ionic columns. There were also some splendid specimens of profiles of base mouldings, a representation of a medal of Gordianus found on the site, &c. Mr. Wood gave a continuation of his lecture on Wednesday, June 18.

Antiquarian Correspondence.

Sin scire labores, Quære, age: quærenti pagina nostra patet.

_All communications must be accompanied by the name and address of the sender, not necessarily for publication._

“THE SENTENCE OF PONTIUS PILATE.”

(See vol. v. pp. 80, 217.)

SIR,--This document appeared in English in _Galignani’s Messenger_ of March 23, 1859, copied from the _Herald_ of about that date. D. K. T.

A BAKER BLESSED.

SIR,--Can you explain the origin of the blessing invoked on the baker in the following rhyme, sung by village children in Norfolk, and perhaps in other counties also, on St. Valentine’s Day?

Good-morrow, Valentine, God bless the baker! You be the giver, And I’ll be the taker.

_Haileybury College, Hertford._

JOHN HUSSEY.

WESLEYANISM IN LONDON.

SIR,--Can you tell me who was the popular preacher at the Wesleyan Chapel in Great Queen-street, Lincoln’s-inn-fields, about 1811? Macready when first in London became acquainted with him, and was fascinated by his manners and learning, but was warned against him as a reprobate of most dangerous character. I fancy that he finally came to be publicly disgraced. The London Directories are useless at that date, and the Wesleyan Mission Books equally so. Do you know anything about him, or can you indicate where to search?

C. A. WARD.

_159, Haverstock Hill, N. W._

HISTORICAL CHAIRS.

SIR,--Will you kindly enable me to ask through your columns for descriptive particulars, with engravings, drawings, or photographs, of celebrated chairs in family residences, or in cathedrals, churches, colleges, town-halls, and public institutions at home or abroad? I am preparing an illustrated account of Historical Chairs from available literary sources; but as many interesting examples have escaped my search, and as I wish to make the proposed work as copious as possible, I thus beg your assistance.

C. B. STRUTT.

_34, East-street, Red Lion-square, London, W.C._

THE VISCOUNTY OF CULLEN.

SIR,--In reply to the inquiry of HERALDICUS MUS, I beg to inform him that the limitation of this dignity is correctly given in Sir Bernard Burke’s _new_ “Extinct Peerage,” and included, as he suggests, a remainder to the Berties, but that the original patent of creation being lost (and having, unfortunately, never been enrolled), the Earl of Lindsey cannot _prove_ his right, unless the patent should yet be discovered. The second Viscount having taken his seat, no difficulty could arise so long as there remained male issue of his body; but when that became extinct, the special remainder would have to be established by proof. I speak, of course, of England or Ireland, for, in the anomalous chaos beyond the Tweed, it is possible to take a remainder for granted, as in the Ruthven case, at one’s own sweet will.

J. H. ROUND.

_Brighton._

VISCOUNT HAMPDEN’S ANCESTRY.

(See vol. v. pp. 197, 331.)

SIR,--If your correspondent “Trombone” will re-peruse my letter on this subject, which appears at the first-named reference, he (or she) will see that whatever faults there may be of omission, there are none of commission, in regard to the families of Trevor and Hampden.

Nothing is certainly said concerning the bequest of the Glynde estates to the Honourable Richard Trevor, afterwards Bishop of Durham; but it is probable that he devised them on his decease to his brother Robert, then Baron Trevor, afterwards Viscount Hampden of Hampden. On the death of the last Viscount in 1824, the extensive estates were divided amongst co-heirs, from one of whom the present Viscount Hampden of Glynde is descended.

My first curacy was Bromham, in Bedfordshire, and I have, as the guest of George, Lord Dynevor, to whose daughters that estate belonged, sat at dinner under the portraits, in the dining-room at Bromham Hall, of the Lords Trevor and Hampden.

_Newbourne Rectory, Woodbridge._

JOHN PICKFORD, M.A.

WAS MILTON A PAINTER?

(See vol. ii. p. 1.)

SIR,--The following passage from the pen of the greatest critic of modern times, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, seems rather to militate against the argument in a former number of the ANTIQUARIAN MAGAZINE, that the portrait of Milton there spoken of might have been painted by the poet himself: “It is very remarkable that in no part of his writings does Milton take any notice of the great painters of Italy, nor, indeed, of painting as an art, whilst every other page breathes his love and taste for music. Yet it is curious that in one passage of the “Paradise Lost” Milton has certainly copied the fresco of the Creation in the Sistine Chapel at Rome. I mean those lines--

“Now half appeared The tawny lion, pawing to get free His hinder parts; then springs as broke from bonds, And rampant shakes his brinded mane,” &c.;

an image which the necessities of the painter justified, but which was wholly unworthy, in my judgment, of the enlarged powers of the poet. Adam bending over the sleeping Eve in the “Paradise Lost” (book vii. 463), and Delilah approaching Sampson in the “Agonistes” (book v. 8), are the only two proper pictures I remember in Milton.

F. H.

OLD BELLMEN’S BROADSIDES.

(See vol. v. p. 221.)

SIR,--It may be interesting to some of your readers to know that these quaint poetical productions continued to be issued by the bellmen of the city of Hereford down to the year 1835, and perhaps even later.

I have in my collection of Herefordian matters a series of six of them as follows:

(1) A copy of verses | for 1811 | Humbly presented to all my worthy Masters and Mistresses | in the City of Hereford | by James Lingham | Bellman and Crier of the said City. This has a quaint 17th century woodcut of the bellman, with bell in right hand, staff and lanthorn in left, accompanied by his dog. In background to left a house, with cock crowing on roof, to right a church, probably intended to represent St. Peter’s. The bellman wears a three-cornered hat, a long-skirted coat, confined at waist with belt, with a short coat underneath, embroidered down the front. Street shown as paved in chequers, as in the engraving in your ANTIQUARIAN MAGAZINE. W. H. Parker, printer, Hereford.

(2) Another copy of verses for 1824, by same bellman, with a later woodcut of bellman, in cocked hat and cloak with cape, in the act of proclaiming in the High Town, with view of old town-hall and St. Peter’s Church. W. H. & J. Parker, printers, 4, High Town, Hereford.

(3) A copy of verses for 1826, by Richard Jones, with a woodcut of bellman, similarly equipped to last, but the town-hall is shown on larger scale, and the church does not appear. W. H. Vale, printer, 5, Eign-street, Hereford.

(4) Another similar copy of verses for 1827, by Thomas Hall, and the same woodcut as last.

(5) Another for 1830, by James Davies, with woodcut as No. 2. John Parker, printer, High Town, Hereford.

(6) Another copy of verses for 1835, by James Davies, with same woodcut as last.

They all bear verses in same style as those quoted in the ANTIQUARIAN MAGAZINE, viz., Prologues, Epilogues, and on the various Saints, Festivals, addresses to the King, Queen, Princes, Masters, Mistresses, Young Men and Maidens, &c., but no two are alike.

In the Hereford Permanent Library is a copy of verses for 1822, by James Langham (?), City Crier.

JAMES W. LLOYD.

_Kington, Herefordshire._

PORTS AND CHESTERS.

SIR,--Mr. Round (see vol. v. p. 282) claims “Port as an English word, in itself distinct from the Latin _porta_ or _portus_;” later on (p. 283), “Port was in itself essentially an English word;” yet at p. 286 we read, “The English _borrowed_ it ... after the settlement ... or before the settlement.” How can it be generically an English word, yet borrowed from Latin? There is lamentable confusion throughout this paper, truly distressing confusion, and the little bits of assertion and argument are so cut into slices and sandwiched between slips of quotation and extract, that it is like dissecting a Chinese puzzle to ramify its purport.

We have the words ‘castor,’ ‘port,’ ‘street,’ and ‘wall;’ now, if these words were English forms of some Teutonic roots, they will have analogues in the allied tongues: where are those analogues?

(1) Castor, Caster, Caister, Ceaster, Chester, are all from the Latin castrum, as muddled by alien tongues; yet, at p. 285, we are told that the “English would presumably have only met, not with the Latin castrum, but the Welsh caer or kair.” Why so? As a fact, the Welsh forms are not borrowed from Latin, but come from an independent Celtic root--as I think, direct from the Hindu gir, giri, and far older than Latin. We find Keir in Dumfriesshire; Cardiff in Glamorganshire; Carhaix, Kersanton, Kervrin, Kerentrec, Plessis-Kaer, all in Brittany; Caerleon and Caerwent, both famous places in Monmouthshire, pronounced, the former, Karleen, the latter, Kerwent, thus showing the affiliation with Armorican forms.

(2) Port: note that “port” is the equivalent of hithe or haven; thus we have Hythe in Kent, as a substitute for Portus Lemanis; at Oxford, the Port-meadow adjoins Hythe Bridge, and was evidently the town haven. The conditions are similar at Gloucester, where certain meadows, inundated at floods, are called the Portham; adjoining we find Dockham, and Dockham ditch, which is a reduplicated name. The port-walls of Chepstow are the harbour defences on the land side, it being the port or gate of Wye River. New_port_, Mon., is in succession to Caerleon, the old port of River Usk. It follows, as a dead certainty, that the modern word port as used at London, where Port reeve was the precursor of our Lord Mayor, is in succession to the Latin portus, not introduced as a new English word, but preserved by Celto-Romans from Latin usage. Let Mr. Round study the course of those old English roadways throughout England, known as Portways, and called Roman; can the prefix be of English origin if it means “carry,” _i.e._, the portage of merchandise, from the Latin _portare_, to bear?

(3-4) Street and wall speak for themselves, and their plain facts will survive any amount of word-twisting.

A. H.

_TO CORRESPONDENTS._

THE Editor declines to pledge himself for the safety or return of MSS. voluntarily tendered to him by strangers.

Books Received.

1. History of the House of Arundel. By J. P. Yeatman. Mitchell & Hughes. 1883.

2. Nantwich. By James Hall. Privately printed. 1884.

3. New Light on Some Obscure Words in the Works of Shakespeare. By Charles Mackay, LL.D. Reeves & Turner. 1884.

4. Western Antiquary. May, 1884. Plymouth: Latimer & Son.

5. A Booke of Fishing. By L. M. 1599. (Reprinted.) Simpkin, Marshall & Co. 1884.

6. John Hopkins’ University Studies. Second Series. iv. Baltimore. April, 1884.

7. English Etchings. Part xxxvii. D. Bogue, 3, St. Martin’s Place, W.C.

8. Lord Beaconsfield on the Constitution. Edited by F. Hitchman. Field & Tuer. 1884.

9. Guildford and its Coinage. By G. C. Williamson. Privately printed.

10. Hanley and the House of Lechmere. By the late E. P. Shirley, M.P., F.S.A. Pickering. 1883.

11. The Congo Treaty. By T. Tomlinson, M.A. E. Stanford. 1884.

12. Clergyman’s Magazine. June. Hodder & Stoughton.

13. Charities Register and Digest. Longmans & Co. 1884.

14. Le Livre, No. 54. Paris, 7, Rue St. Benoit. June, 1884.

Books, etc., for Sale.

_Guardian Newspaper_, from commencement to 1864, bound; and 1865-70, in numbers. Offers to E. Walford, Hyde Park Mansions, Edgeware-road, N.W.

Books, etc., Wanted to Purchase.

_Antiquarian Magazine and Bibliographer_, several copies of No. 2 (February, 1882) are wanted, in order to complete sets. Copies of the current number will be given in exchange at the office.

Dodd’s Church History, 8vo., vols. i. ii. and v.; Waagen’s Art and Artists in England, vol. i.; East Anglian, vol. i., Nos. 26 and 29. The Family Topographer, by Samuel Tymms, vols. iii. and iv.; Notes and Queries, 5th series, vols. vi., vii. (1876-7); also the third Index. Johnson’s “Lives of the Poets” (Ingram and Cooke’s edition), vol. iii. A New Display of the Beauties of England, vol. i., 1774. Chambers’ Cyclopædia of English Literature, vol. i. Address, E. Walford, 2, Hyde Park Mansions, Edgeware-road, N.W.

_The

Antiquarian Magazine

& Bibliographer._

Southwell Minster.

Now that the Bishopric of Southwell has become an accomplished fact, and its ancient collegiate church has been elevated into the dignity of a cathedral, Mr. Livett’s recently-published work[13] on the history of that fabric will doubtless awaken additional interest. An Act of Parliament passed early in the present reign deprived Southwell Minster of its collegiate character, while another and later Act has made it the mother church of a new diocese, consisting of the counties of Nottingham and Derby, which had hitherto belonged to the dioceses of Lincoln and Lichfield respectively. The church of Southwell was despoiled of all its monuments and early records during the troubles of the 16th and 17th centuries, and the only MS. of any importance that has come down to us besides the Statutes of Queen Elizabeth is the “Registrum Album,” or “White Book of Southwell.” The former are printed both in Dugdale’s “Monasticon,” and in the appendix to Dickenson’s “History of the Antiquities of Southwell.” Mr. Dimock, the Editor of the “Magna Vita St. Hugonis,” in the Rolls Series, published some years ago a history of the fabric of Southwell Minster; and other local histories, one by Shilton, issued in 1818, and a third by Clarke & Killpack, in 1838, are, as Mr. Livett tells us, little more than abridgments of Dickenson’s work. Hitherto a general history of the origin and development of the ancient secular college, and of the position which it held in the Middle Ages, seems never to have been taken in hand; and this want Mr. Livett has endeavoured to meet in the little volume now before us.

That Southwell held an important position in the diocese of York before the Norman Conquest is certain; but it is difficult to fix a date for the foundation of the church. Mr. Livett writes: “Tradition points to St. Paulinus as the founder of a church here--the founder alike of York and Lincoln, the friend and companion of St. Augustine, the great missionary of Northumbria under King Edwin, and the first Archbishop of York, A.D. 627-633. This tradition rests upon statements to this effect contained in certain _private histories_ of the church, which are no longer extant. They are quoted, however, by Camden, in his ‘Magna Britannia,’ which first appeared in 1586, and were probably lost during the civil wars of the following century, when most of the church records were either destroyed, or, for safety, carried away. They tell us how St. Paulinus founded the church at Southwell when he was baptizing the people of this district in the Trent; and a careful consideration of the Venerable Bede’s account of the missionary work of St. Paulinus gives support to the statement. The ecclesiastical historian makes no direct reference to Southwell, but internal evidence in his account of Paulinus’ missionary work, more especially the evidence of the place-names mentioned, is strong in favour of the view that Paulinus extended his labours to the close neighbourhood of Southwell.”

No part of the present fabric, with the exception of one or two fragments, dates farther back than the 12th century; but there is abundant evidence that a stone church of considerable size existed here at any rate in the previous century. The Norman parts of the church, as it stands, remarks Mr. Livett, contain unmistakable evidence of an earlier building. “In the north transept, over the doorway leading to the newel by which one ascends the central tower there is a large sculptured stone which is worked into the building in such a way as to show at a glance that it is old material used up again. It is supposed by good judges to have formed the tympanum of an early Norman doorway.” The year 1110 is the date assigned to the nave and transepts. The choir is of the Early English period (1230-50), and appears to have been built during the episcopate of Walter Gray, for in Torre’s “Collectanea,” in the library at York, is preserved an indulgence, addressed by Walter Gray to the bishops and archdeacons of his province, “granting a release of thirty days from penance enjoined to all who, being truly penitent, should contribute to the construction of the church of Southwell, since the means of the church were insufficient for the consummation of the fabric a while since begun.” Torre gives 1235 as the date of the indulgence, but the document itself says, “in the nineteenth year of our Pontificate,” which, according to Drake, would be 1233.

The architectural details of the north transept chapel give the chief clue to its date, 1260. The cloister is somewhat later; but the chapter-house and its vestibule date from the close of the 13th century, and the organ-screen from about 1340.

The minster, as it now stands, consists of a clerestoried nave, with aisles and north porch, and two massive towers flanking the western front, each surmounted by a spire; a lantern tower, with its parapet adorned with pinnacles, rises from the intersection of the nave, transept, and choir; and cloister and chapter-house on the north side of the choir. “‘What either Cologne Cathedral, or Ratisbon, or Wiesen Kirche are to Germany; Amiens Cathedral, or the Sainte Chapelle are to France; the Scalegere, in Verona, to Italy, are the choir of Westminster and the chapter-house at Southwell to England.’ So writes Mr. G. E. Street; and assuredly Southwell chapter-house is placed in the foremost rank of our geometrical buildings. In the refined and natural treatment of the foliage which adorns it, it anticipated the artistic perfection of works of many years later date, and is excelled by none. In its more general features it may be compared with the earlier parts of the cloisters at Norwich, and with the ruins of the banqueting-hall in the palace grounds at Wells. It strongly reminds us, too, of its contemporary, the chapter-house at Wells; in its octagonal shape it follows the plan adopted in almost all the chapter-houses of secular communities. The resemblance to York is still more complete, the date of which is uncertain, but it is the only chapter-house besides Southwell which has no central pillar to support the vault, and the arrangement is more striking there on account of its greater size.”

Mr. Livett gives a minute description of the various parts of the Minster, which we have not space to follow, and his work is illustrated with drawings of some of its chief architectural features, one plate of which, by the courtesy of the author, we are enabled to reproduce. This shows (1) a circular window in the clerestory of the nave; (2) the ancient tympanum in the north transept, mentioned above; and (3) window tracery removed from the south-west tower. The ancient tympanum here referred to, which is in the form of a sculptured stone, now forms the lintel of the belfry door. “It must at one time have been the tympanum of an earlier doorway, and a part of it has unfortunately been cut away to make it fit into its present position. The sculpture embodies a double subject, rudely executed in low relief, the one representing probably David rescuing the lamb from the lion, the other very clearly representing St. Michael encountering the dragon.... The sculpture cannot be of later date than the middle of the eleventh century, when the church seems to have been considerably enlarged, perhaps altogether rebuilt, and it might be of earlier date still.”

The Congress Afield.

If you would know of olden days, You need not only read or look On quaintest type in early book Or learn almost forgotten lays.

There is a wider field; go forth: And ye who seek will surely find That which shall ever teach the mind, Go east or west, go south or north.

The massive mound in days of yore, The fortress hill, the castle grey, That speaks of strife and danger’s day, Which we in quiet know no more.

Here you may trace a Roman’s hand, Here the rude Saxon work, and there How Norman skill did once repair The ruined churches of the land.

For many a little church can tell Of other days. The ancient glass Through which the tinted sunbeams pass Speaks to us now. You hear the bell.

That told the tale of life and death, Of marriage feast, of times of prayer, When they, long dead, were gathered there, Who sleep the quiet sod beneath.

And many a home of days gone by, With timber gable richly dight, And tiny panes, through which the light Comes slowly stealing from the sky.

Go where you will, you still shall find Not only homes of old renown, But quaint old homes in market town, In streets that ever sway and wind.

The land we live in is a book In which is written much to read, And much that to the past will lead. Go forth, and on it kindly look.

H. R. W.

Forecastings of Nostradamus.

BY C. A. WARD.

_PART III._

(_Continued from Vol. V. p. 293._)

“Hunc solem, et stellas et decedentia certis Tempora momentis, sunt qui formidine nullâ Imbuti spectent.”--HOR., I. Epist. vii. 3.

Nostradamus was of a stature somewhat less than middle-size, rather thick-set, active and vigorous. He had a broad, open forehead, a straight, regular nose, grey eyes, of gentle appearance, but in anger flashing fire; the general expression was severe, but pleasant, so that through all the seriousness one could discern a benevolent disposition; his cheeks were rosy even in extreme age; he had a long thick beard, and his health was excellent, all his senses being alert and well-preserved. His spirits were good, and he comprehended readily whatever he gave his attention to. His judgment was penetrating, and his memory remarkably retentive. He was taciturn by nature, thought much and spoke little, was rather prompt, sudden, and irascible in temper, but very patient when hard work had to be encountered. He slept four or five hours only out of the twenty-four. He practised freedom of speech himself and commended it in others. He was cheerful and facetious in conversation, though in jesting a little given to bitterness. He was attached, so says De Chavigny, to the Roman Church, and held fixedly the Catholic faith; out of its pale there was for him no salvation. Though pursuing a line of thought entirely his own, he had no sympathy with the Lutheran heretics of so-called Freethought. He was given to prayer, fasting, and charity. As far as outward observance was concerned, he might be classed with the highly respectable and decent. Le Pelletier says, “sa fin fut Chrétienne;” but he adds a little further on that his style is very much more like that of the Pagan oracles of Greece and Rome than of the canonical prophets of Hebrew Inspiration. He remarks that the first Century opens with a regular incantation fortified by the most celebrated rites of Paganism, so that some suspicion of his orthodoxy may well be entertained. Certain it is, for he avows as much in the dedicatory epistle to Henry II.--which, by the way, the King never saw--that it was his custom prudently to veil in obscurity of expression whatever was likely to displease his protectors and so to damage his private interest. This is not the way with the heroes of Hebrew prophecy, Isaiah, Elijah, Samuel, but though it is somewhat cowardly, it becomes, when well reckoned up, a sort of sub-assertion of sincerity; for why should a man record the unpleasant things at all if he did not believe in them, and desired only to make himself agreeable? If he believed his own utterances he was _consciously_ a prophet: that he threw a veil over them, shows only that he declined to suffer martyrdom for his convictions. It is quite possible to be a seer, and yet not heroical, but it is the poorest of criticism not to distinguish between such frailty as this and imposture. Want of grandeur does not imply any _intention to deceive_. Modern Freethought effectually breaks down upon a point like this, it almost invariably classifies the weak spiritualist as an impostor. It reasons somewhat thus: “Astrologers are impostors--Nostradamus was an astrologer. Prophets and divines, owing to the spread of sound knowledge in modern times, are no longer to be reckoned as inspired, but as impostors; Nostradamus was a prophet and therefore an impostor. He arrived in the world a thousand years behind his time, and must lie down now under Scientific and Encyclopædic ridicule. At the close of the nineteenth century is it likely we can allow such claims to be made upon our credulity as the more rational part of the community refused to admit three hundred years ago?” To all this and to all such processes of reasoning, I need merely say that there is a credulity of superstition that has been always esteemed as degrading to human nature; but there is also a superstition of incredulity that is quite as debasing to human nature and even more so, for it springs from the folly of pride and conceit, and not, as the other does, from a misplacement of faith.

By his second wife he left three sons and three daughters. The eldest was Cæsar, to whom he dedicated his first volume of the “Centuries.” Of these he wrote twelve in quatrains, and three of them are left imperfect, the seventh, the eleventh, and twelfth. But he also left some Forecasts written in prose, which Chavigny collected and arranged in twelve books. They are said to comprehend the history of France for about a century after his death--its wars, troubles, and whispered intrigues. The book is not mentioned by Brunet, 1839-45, and I do not find it in the British Museum; but the National Library is rather imperfectly supplied with the literature relating to this remarkable man; no doubt the authorities there look down upon him from the Olympus of Bloomsbury with a scientific disregard, as being a sort of gipsy fortune-teller of the sixteenth century, not worth completing. Do we expect a Messiah from that quarter? Can there any good thing come out of Aix in Provence? “Loco exiguo, obscuro, ignobili, barbaro, impio atque prophano?”

This prose history of a hundred years would be interesting, if only to compare with the rhymed “Centuries,” which have a much vaster range, and are supposed by many to cover all the time from Louis XIV. to the establishment of Antichrist.

Jean de Nostradamus, the brother of Michael, was Procureur to the Parliament of Aix, and wrote a work entitled “Les vies des plus célèbres et anciens poëtes provensaux, qui ont floury du tems des contes de Provence,” Lyon, 1575, a book still sought for, and rather rare. It has been seen above that Cæsar also wrote on the same subject. His work was entitled “Chronique de l’Histoire de Provence:” in this he introduced the lives of the poets, and the book was published in 1614 by his nephew, Cæsar de Nostradamus.

These are almost all the facts of any importance that are recorded in the life of Nostradamus. It now remains to us to give some account of the most remarkable of his forecasts. They may be pronounced obscure, partial, useless, or what not, according to the special views and disposition of mind in each reader. That they are very curious must be admitted by all, and that some of the things foreseen with astounding particularity are inexplicable upon any hypothesis of reasoning, other than that which admits either a direct revelation in every case, or a general anticipatory faculty, forming part of the great scheme of the mental endowment of mankind. Call it divination, second sight, clairvoyance, magnetic affinity, or what you will. Everyone may in this decide, or, if you had rather, guess for himself. I prefer the second supposition, and think that there are certain organisations, somewhat rare and peculiarly wrought, that are endowed by nature with a subtle tact and anticipatory insight denied to the majorities. I further think that such exceptional instances occur more frequently in people of ancient and unmixed race, such as the Celt, the Basque, the Chaldean, Gipsy, and most frequently of all amongst those branches of them that inhabit mountain-ranges. These I imagine to retain the instincts of the birth of man more clearly than the mixed tribes that have busied and even degraded themselves in the social pursuits of money, power, and art, and have burnt down their souls to a kind of materialistic slag in the furnace of what is called civilisation.

If man is a creature born to immortality--and certainly no thought is so congenial to largeness and nobleness of heart as this is--I can see no reason why he should not have some vision given him of the minor things to happen on this theatre of the earth, which might serve as a sort of foretaste of that major light which is to clothe him as with a glorious garment when he steps forth from this his present condition of earthworm into that exalted bodily temple that he shall inhabit to all eternity. Science so-called is free to teach what it chooses: it may level man to the rank of a turnip by its insidious analysis and gradational processes. Its business is with the present, and with all its pretence of intellect it remains of the material earth, earthy. The future is out of its ken and reach. But the soul, which is the broad, many-sided reason of man in concrete, and the, so to speak, spiritually substantialised symbol of it, cannot be shut up to this. Chop logic by Aristotle’s chaff-cutter, whether handled by a Duncan, a Watts, an Aldrich, or a Whately, as you please, yet the soul, defies you with its _absoluteness_, pushes aside induction and the _contingent_ with it, and laughing at your littlenesses and your petty syllogisms, leaps at one bound into the incommensurable freedom of the future of eternity.

It now remains for me to show, not that Nostradamus is a grand type of the order of prophets, not that all the Quatrains in all of the twelve books of the “Centuries” are intelligible and of definite purpose, nor that everything he uttered and recorded is to be regarded as a prophecy either fulfilling or fulfilled. (This is not at all what I propose to do.) I intend simply to select, without over much attention to chronology or the sequence of events, such of the quatrains as by philological apparatus existing are capable of being translated into simple and intelligible language out of the occult prophetic, barbaric, and almost always pedantic phraseology (or old Franco-Provençal patois, if you like to call it so) in which it pleased or suited our prophet in his _fureur poëtique_[14] to record for us his “nocturnes et prophétiques supputations” (des astres). In doing this, if one case of unmistakable prevision can be established, the missing spiritual link is set up that connects the present with the future.

Christians generally grow almost rancorous against those who reject _their_ Scripture miracles, as Hume did, on the ground that the laws of nature being inviolable miracles become impossible; but a miracle that contravenes a law of nature is far more incredible _per se_ than such a spiritual link as the above. The miracle of bringing a man to life goes, so to speak, dead against nature and its laws customary. But a forecast, as such, is little more miraculous than a telescope that focuses and brings into range what lies out of the range of the ordinary human eye. It is really as feasible a thing to the seer, as for you and me to see that a kitten will become a cat nine months later on. He sees by imagination what you see by reasoning on association in the past. It is discovery by a different faculty, I admit. But if Christian belief accepts a future state and the immortality of the life (commonly called the _soul_) of man, then I say, that the Christian who denies the gift of prophecy to be inherent in mankind[15] is really as dead to spiritual life as if he were a materialistic member of a scientific society of the nineteenth century, or a Parisian enclycopædist of the eighteenth.

Again, if Christianity be a heaven-descended revelation, its foundations must be rooted deep in the spiritual world and should be full of correspondences. The material universe is full of them. There the meanest particle of dust is link by link connected at last with the grandest astral phenomena, and can we suppose that men are all possessed with an immortal spirit, and yet at the same time announce that not _one_ of them has any prescience, any foreknowledge of things coming on the earth, no sign rendered from the great unnameable Director, who, vast and invisible, also dwells in spiritual obscurity, and never gives an inkling to anyone born of woman that He cares more for an empire with its myriads of embryo angels (according to the doctrine of the Churches) than for an oak tree or a medlar? Yet we are willing to make it a point of virtue to believe that His only Son died for us, and that a whole line of prophets from Jacob to Caiaphas harped perpetually and in succession upon the Paganini string of the one great utterance of His advent. At the birth of Christ it is untruly said that the oracles stopped. So, according to the present Christian dogmatising, did the prophets. Would it not be a thousand times more fraught with hope, if we had not basely smothered such beliefs by materialistic science (or Atheism, for it is closer of kin to the blasphemy of unbelief), could we have said there _is_ a spiritual living link of prophecy existing, and now and again found amongst us; a correspondency in man with the future; a power in him to forecast it a little, though darkly--as with a dark lanthorn moving through a dark season--and touching so, through film, the future of time as to interlink the whole series into one, and make to-day, perishing--with its bells, its bustle, and its breathing--into a continuous whole, one with the glories of eternity?

It will perhaps be well before proceeding to the Quatrains to meet an objection against Nostradamus put forward by the famous Gassendi,[16] who received it from Jean-Baptiste Suffren. Gassendi, it seems, was at Salon in 1638, when Jean-Baptiste Suffren, a judge in that town, communicated to him the horoscope drawn by Nostradamus for his father Antoine Suffren, and written in our prophet’s _own hand_, giving ten points, such as he should have a long curly beard, so bent in age, that in his 37th year he should be wounded by his half-brothers, and he had none, and much more of the same sort, but invariably wrong, till the horoscope fixes Suffren’s death in 1618, whereas he died in 1597. Now, in the first place, Gassendi was of a sceptical turn of mind, so that he would be glad to find Nostradamus wrong. Then Nostradamus died in 1566, and only in 1638, seventy-two years after, do they produce this document and assert that it is in Nostradamus’s handwriting. We may assume that the MS. was eighty years old at least. Gassendi does not profess to know his handwriting, but took it to be so on Jean-Baptiste Suffren’s simple assertion. It is perfectly possible that Suffren had some desire to ridicule an astrologer, and might have invented the whole thing. At any rate, it is not likely that _every one_ of ten or eleven guesses would be precisely the contrary of the fact.[17] One of the clauses ran that at twenty-five he should cultivate rhetoric, arithmetic, geometry, theology, natural science, and the occult philosophy. Jean-Baptiste has the effrontery to say that he studied not one of these, but only the science of jurisprudence. It is not likely, I say, that Nostradamus would guess wrongly in all the sciences, and leave out the only one that the man pursued. This looks as if it had been manufactured for the express purpose of bringing the name of Nostradamus into ridicule and disrepute. It is quite certain that the late John Varley, the painter, could draw some most wonderful horoscopes; a cousin of my father’s, in whose family he taught, had seen his forecasts marvellously verified. So correct had he frequently been that at the time she knew him it was with the greatest difficulty he could be induced to draw one. It is not likely that Nostradamus would fall so absurdly short of John Varley. Guessing at haphazard would correspond with the facts better than this upon the mere doctrine of probabilities. Jean-Baptiste in his haste has proved too much, and Gassendi, like a multitude of incredulous people, was quite ready to receive too much of the things for which his mouth was open and eager.

(_To be continued._)

A Dead Flemish City.

_NOTES OF A VISIT TO DAMME._

BY THE REV. JOSEPH MASKELL.

There are few cities in Europe of greater interest for the intelligent traveller than Bruges, the “cradle of opulent Flanders,” and the “Venice of the North.” The student in history, the connoisseur in art, the lover of antiquity, all find here ample instruction and enjoyment. Even the superficial traveller, hurrying on to more fashionable localities, but “doing” Bruges _en route_, as the correct thing, finds much to interest him in its quaint exteriors, silent canals, and old-world streets, to say nothing of its many treasures of pictures, sculptures, wood carvings, and other monuments of antiquity, to be seen only by penetrating into interiors, and looking deeper than the surface. “A decayed, dull place, where the grass grows in the streets,” was the verdict of a fellow-traveller, as the train from Ostend steamed into the modern Gothic unfinished station of Bruges on a wet day in last July. Not so. Bruges is neither decayed nor dull, nor does the “grass grow in its streets.” Gone is the day in which it could be written of the turbulent Flemish cities--

“Bruges et Gaud, qui toujours, ces bouillonnantes cuves, Ecclataient à la fois, ainsi que deux Vesuves;”[18]

yet Bruges is still full of a steady kind of life and activity; and, as one of its intelligent citizens described it, “ce n’est pas ville morte; c’est une antiquité vivante,” retaining many tokens of the time when the proud Jeanne of Navarre, the Queen of Philippe le Bel, passing through streets lined with the palaces of its merchant princes, and observing the rich clothing of their ladies, cried out, “Je croyais être seule Reine de France; je vois ici cent reines que valent autant de moi.”

But my visit was not so much to Bruges as to its neighbour and ancient seaport, Damme. The former, lying so directly in the way of the English traveller to Brussels and Cologne, is fairly well known; the latter is known only to a select few. Damme[19], which is now a mere village, with a commune of less than 1,000 inhabitants, was, four centuries ago, a busy and prosperous town. It stands on the canal between Bruges and l’Ecluse, about three miles from the former place. Its full name is Hondts-Damme, _la digue du Chien_, so called from a circumstance that attended its origin. Anciently it stood at the head of the Zwyn, an arm of the North Sea; a broad digue extending from Bruges to Cadsand, made after a terrible inundation in the twelfth century, kept the waters of the Zwyn in their proper channel, and upon this digue Damme was built. The place was originally confined to the huts of the workmen from Zealand and Holland employed in the construction of the digue; by degrees it grew into a populous trading town, the convenient spot for a harbour, seaport, and depôt for merchandise. Its name of Honsdamme is thus explained. During the construction of the digue the workmen for a long time could not keep out the sea; as fast as their work proceeded the returning tides swept it away, till one of them advised that a great dog, who mysteriously appeared every day on the scene, without any apparent owner, should be thrown into the water. This done, the sea became calm, a solid foundation was soon secured for the digue, and the work rapidly accomplished. Hence the name Hondts-Damme, and the figure of a dog on the town’s escutcheon. The town dates from the completion of the digue in 1168; it grew immediately into influence and prosperity. In 1180 it was important enough to secure from Philip of Alsace, Count of Flanders, a charter of incorporation as an independent commune, under the government of two burgomasters and four echevins. The Zwyn was then a broad and deep gulf, protected from sea storms, and affording safe anchorage for vessels of all kinds. Even down to the seventeenth century, till the formation of the canal to Ostend, this was the only channel of communication between Bruges and the sea. In 1213, a fleet of 1,700 ships, equipped by Philippe Augustus of France for the invasion of England, entered the harbour. The craven fear of King John, and the intervention of the Count of Flanders having thwarted the designs of Philippe, the latter, in his rage and disappointment, resolved to carry the war into Flanders. The fine harbour of Damme, and the wealth of the town, excited the wonder of the French, who landed and made themselves masters of the place, and of a rich booty. “Les vins de France et d’Espagne, les bières anglaises, les laines d’Écosse, les soieries italiennes et orientales, les toiles, les filés, les attelages de chariots, les merceries, les épices de toute sorte, les peleteries de Hongrie, l’etain anglais, le cuivre rouge de Pologne”--these were some of the riches stored in Damme. Intoxicated with their prey, the French were easily surprised by an English fleet, under the command of Longsword, Earl of Salisbury, when 300 of the principal French ships were captured, and the rest scattered or destroyed. The captured vessels, laden to the deck with the rich booty, sailed with the conquerors to carry the joyful news to England. At the same time a Flemish army from the land side attacked the town, but without success. The French King, in revenge, set fire to the houses, and Damme was nearly destroyed. It was, however, quickly rebuilt, and recovered its prosperity. In 1240 it was admitted into the Hanseatic League, and the Lombards established banks here. Next year it received fresh privileges from Count John of Constantinople, and the extension of the canal to Ghent still further increased its importance. In 1270 its fortifications were renewed and enlarged. In 1297, during the brief war between England and France, and in consequence of the alliance between Edward I. and Guy de Dampierre, Count of Flanders, Damme was again temporarily in the hands of the French. A combined army of English and Flemish attempted to re-take the town: but the allies quarrelled over their respective shares of the plunder, and Edward, withdrawing his forces to Ghent, left to the Flemings the honour of success. In 1300 it was again assaulted and captured by the French; but the patriotic Flemings, led by the Brugois, quickly defeated their enemies and delivered their country. In 1384, during a war with the French, arising out of the insurrection of Flanders against the oppression of its Count, Louis le Mâle, the powerful walls of Damme withstood the attack of a French army, under Charles VI. It was garrisoned by only 1,500 of the men of Ghent, commanded by the patriotic Francis Ackerman, and for six weeks held out against 80,000 of the enemy. The capture of the town was as remarkable as its subsequent defence. Having received information that the Governor of Damme and his chief officers were absent at Bruges, Ackerman marched from Ghent with his little army, scaled the walls by night, and took the place without difficulty. In the citadel he found seven ladies of high degree, who had come to visit the Governor’s wife. Ackerman invited them to a banquet, and paid them every mark of courtesy. “I do not make war upon women,” he said, “notwithstanding that many of your nobles have treated the families of the burgesses in a very different manner.” After a brave defence, scarcity of drinking water and the non-arrival of the English allies, compelled the brave garrison to return under cover of the night to Ghent, which they reached in perfect order and safety.

But another enemy than the French was now silently plotting the destruction of Damme. The sea had shown signs of retreating from the Zwyn as early as the fourteenth century, navigation to Sluys became more and more difficult, and in 1475 the harbour was almost lost in the sand.[20] Still Damme long retained its outward signs of prosperity. Its _entrepot_ of wines, founded by Louis de Crescy in 1357, continued till 1565, and its situation rendered it so important as a frontier fortress and outpost of the Southern Netherlands that possession of it was frequently disputed. The dissolution of the Hanseatic League in the sixteenth century and the partition of the Netherlands by the consolidation of the Northern provinces into the Dutch Republic, which strengthened the power and developed the commercial importance of Holland to the prejudice of Belgium, all helped to hasten the decay of Damme as a commercial town. In 1637 the Dutch occupied the place during the war of Holland with Spain arising out of the fruitless treaty between Richelieu and the United Provinces for the partition of the Spanish Netherlands. By the Treaty of Westphalia it was restored to Flanders, and the boundaries between the two Netherlands were left unaltered. In 1706 it was taken by Marlborough without a struggle, for the Flemings everywhere welcomed the allies and submitted to the authority of the English, although it was not very judiciously exercised. The Barrier Treaty, signed at Antwerp in 1715, finally secured that Damme should be included within the Austrian Netherlands, but, except from its situation close to the frontier, the town had now lost all its importance. Thus the decay of Damme was not less rapid than its rise, and its fall as remarkable and complete as was its opulence and greatness. From being a flourishing maritime town it has become only an inland village. The ancient harbour, where 1,500 ships could ride safely at anchor, is now a corn-field; its broad quays, stately warehouses, and fortified walls cannot be traced even in outline; its streets, once crowded with merchants and their goods, are now deserted: indeed it is difficult to realise that this slumbering village was ever awake. _Jam seges est ubi Troja fuit._ But there are not wanting signs of a departed greatness. The Hotel de Ville still occupies a prominent position in the Place, and though much neglected and injudiciously restored it is yet an object of beauty. It was founded in 1242, but the present building is of the fourteenth century. It is constructed in white stone, rectangular in shape, with small turrets at each corner. A double stair conducts to an elegant porch, much disfigured, but still quaint and interesting. On entering the building the first room that we see to the left is an _estaminet_, quite humble in character. Behind this is the Salle de Justice, still used by the communal authorities, and the remaining room is now a kitchen. On the oaken and cedar roof there are carvings of the Blessed Virgin and other saints, King David, and Van Maerlandt, “the Flemish Chaucer.” There are also some curious fire-tongs and fire-dogs, an enormous chimney corner, and some faded pictures and inscriptions. The crypt, partly a store-room and partly a stable, is striking, but very dirty and neglected. In the quaint central tower there are two ancient bells.

The church, dedicated to Notre Dame, is built throughout of grey bricks, and is a noble monument in ruins. It was begun in 1180, but the chief part of the present structure belongs to the fourteenth century. The work of destruction was begun by the Dutch Calvinists, who set fire to the church in 1578; the growing poverty of the town prevented repairs, till the transepts and part of the nave were destroyed in 1725. The walls of the ruined nave are left standing, leaving the massive and lofty tower nearly isolated from the main body of the church. The choir only is used for service. It is a fine relic, but sadly spoiled by whitewash. The west door is in the modern brick wall which shuts in the choir, beneath what was once the roof-screen, but now serves as the organ gallery. The monuments of the dead are few; several matrices of brasses remain, and a few modern tombs. A very fine memorial of Jacques van Maerlandt, “the father of Flemish poetry,” and a native of Damme, was destroyed by an ignorant curé about half a century ago. The poet died in 1300, and is buried at the base of the tower. His memorial was very curious. He was seated on a chair with an owl by his side, wearing spectacles and reading from a book supported on an eagle lectern. To atone somewhat for the destruction of the monument there is a poor statue of the poet in front of the Hotel de Ville.

In this church, in 1429, was celebrated the marriage of Philip le Bon with Isabella of Portugal, and on the 9th July, 1468, that of the unfortunate Charles the Bold, Duke of Burgundy, with Margaret of York, sister of Edward IV. Her brother brought her hither with a considerable fleet, and many of the English nobility in her train, from Margate. They landed at Sluys, where the Duke met her and went through the ceremony of betrothal. The town of Damme received her with many tokens of welcome. As she passed through the streets every householder stood at his door carrying a blazing torch, and from this town the bride and bridegroom made their festive entrance into Bruges on the day following the wedding.

There is still in Damme a small hospital dedicated to St. John, founded by Margaret of Constantinople in the twelfth century.

I visited Damme towards the end of July last year. The road lies through the town of Bruges, past the Episcopal Seminary, and out of the Porte de Damme, along the canal, a perfectly straight line, bordered with poplars and with corn-fields on each side. In scenery of this kind there is a certain sense of repose and of general, though not brilliant, prosperity, but the eye of an artist is needed to extract beauty out of so many straight lines and such formal regularity. Many of the fields are planted with colza, which is said to look very gay when in flower. It was the annual horse fair of Bruges, and the scene was busy, but it could hardly be called picturesque or lively, with the multitude of peasants accompanied by young colts as “stolid, stubborn, and sturdy” as themselves. Harvesting operations were proceeding with the sickle in a very leisurely manner, and the mode of tying up the sheaves, till they looked as if they were only bundles of straw with the corn cut off the top, seemed very primitive. Altogether it was a scene not to be forgotten. The world here, instead of advancing, seems to have gone back several centuries, and there are fewer signs of progressive civilisation than when Bruges was, in fact, the “Venice of the North,” and Damme its busy sea-port.

The importance of Damme in the middle ages is shown by the fact that the Judgments or Customs of Oleron, out of which the maritime laws of the nations of Europe are derived, and which were said to have been brought by our Richard I. on his return from the Crusades, were generally called “Le droit maritime de Damme.” But the Flemish laws were merely a translation of the original customs.

Visitors to Damme should extend their excursion to the cathedral-like and judiciously restored church of Lisseweghe, with its noble thirteenth century tower. This village is within an easy walk of the watering-place of Blankenberghe, where once more the modern world may be studied in some of its brightest and most amusing aspects.

The Dignity of a Mayor: or, Municipal Insignia of Office.[21]

BY R. S. FERGUSON, F.S.A., MAYOR OF CARLISLE 1881-2 AND 1882-3.

_PART I._

Those members of the Archæological Institute who attended the Congress held at Carlisle in 1882, will recollect that, though the mayor of Carlisle did not exactly blow his own trumpet, yet he was rarely seen without his trumpeter in immediate attendance. They may possibly, therefore, have set down to his credit a disposition to magnify the dignity of an office to which he, however unworthy, has been a second time elected. Indeed, they would not be far wrong; and he must admit that his recreations during office took the form of a research into MUNICIPAL PAGEANTRY AND MUNICIPAL HERALDRY.

These are very large subjects indeed, and I cannot now undertake to grapple with them. I am glad to say that my valued friend, Mr. Lewellinn Jewitt, has _seisin_ of them both; and that he is preparing for publication an exhaustive treatise on “The Corporation Plate and Insignia of Office of all the Cities and Corporate Towns of Great Britain.”

I propose merely to gossip a bit about MUNICIPAL INSIGNIA OF OFFICE; to make a few remarks as to what they mean, under what authority they are, or have been assumed; and to bring under your notice a few examples.

Under the term MUNICIPAL INSIGNIA I include _Rods_ or _Wands_ of office; _Maces_, both great and small; _Swords_ of _Honour_ or _State_; _Caps_ of _Estate_ or _Maintenance_; _Chains_ and _Badges_, both of Mayors’ and of other officials; _Rings_ and _Robes_; _Halberts_, _Horns_, and _Constables’ Staves_.

“Few people,” writes Mr. Llewellinn Jewitt, “have even the most remote idea of the amount of artistic wealth, of antiquarian treasure, and of historical relics possessed by and lying hidden away in the strongholds and chests of the various corporate bodies of this kingdom. The corporations ... are rich beyond compare in works in the precious metals, in emblems of state and civic dignity, in relics of mediæval pageantry, in badges and insignia of various offices, and in seals and records of different periods.”

The neglect with which these treasures have been treated is astounding. The reformed corporations of 1837 despised Municipal Pageantry; many actually sold their insignia for the best prices they would fetch, as “relics of the barbarous ages,” to use the words of a mayor of the town of Maidenhead. Others discarded the use of their insignia, and their existence was almost forgotten. A reaction, however, set slowly in. The Great Exhibition of 1851 caused some places, Nottingham for one, to provide their mayors with chains, in order to attend at the opening. Other places were induced to buy new, or furbish up old insignia on the occasions of Royal visits. During the International Exhibition of 1862 a loan collection, but on a small scale, was formed, to which several corporations contributed their maces and other objects.

In the year 1874, the Royal Archæological Institute presented to the mayor of Exeter a chain of office, in commemoration of the Congress held at Exeter in the previous year. This excited so much interest that the Council of the Institute, in 1875, entertained the idea of holding in London an exhibition of chains of office and other municipal insignia. A committee was formed, and circulars were sent to nearly 600 municipal bodies, asking for information as to their insignia, and as to the possibility of their being exhibited in London. About 300 replies were received; but in those about one-half neglected to describe their insignia, or contented themselves by saying they were “_old and_ OF NO VALUE.” In fact, the municipalities still lacked proper education on the subject, for some of those that replied in the above terms possess most valuable insignia, as also do some that did not answer at all. Difficulties arose, many municipalities “did not see their way” to the loan of their insignia, and so the proposed exhibition was, temporarily as I hope, abandoned. But the attention thus drawn to the subject had good results; it awakened an intelligent interest in the treasures possessed by various corporations, and Mr. Llewellinn Jewitt seems to have had less difficulty in getting information than the Institute found. In the years 1880, 1881, and 1882, he published in the _Art Journal_ a series of most interesting and beautifully illustrated articles, on CORPORATION PLATE AND INSIGNIA OF OFFICE, shortly to be developed into the book which I have already mentioned.

Now it must not be supposed that a municipality can of its own free will adopt any insignia it pleases. On the contrary, the right to use certain insignia, such as maces, swords of state, &c., requires to have been conferred by special charter or royal donation, or else to be based upon prescription of such duration that a lost special charter or a forgotten royal donation may be presumed. Thus at Carlisle, where we possess a great mace, several sergeants’ maces, and a sword of state, our governing charter--of the time of Charles I.--authorises us to have three sergeants-at-mace, who are--

“To carry and bear maces of gold or silver, and engraved and adorned with the sign of the arms of this our Kingdom of England, everywhere within the said City of Carlisle, the limits and liberties of the same, before the Mayor of the said city for the time being.”

This was merely the confirmation of an older custom, for we have a set of sergeants’ maces of older date than this charter, as well as a set of about this date. The charter also authorises us to have a sword-bearer, “Portator gladii nostri coram Mayore,” a bearer of our sword (the King’s sword) before the Mayor. Thus, we have special authority by charter for our sword of honour, and our sergeants’ maces, but none of our charters mention our great mace or authorise us to have an official to bear it. But our great mace was given us by Colonel James Graham, Privy Purse to King James II., and I presume that no one will now object to our using it, and to our having an official to carry it. For robes and a chain I fancy no special authority at all is necessary; they are part of the idea of a mayor, and he may assume them or not as his corporation or he please to do. And, further, he may appear in them outside of his jurisdiction, as at the Mansion House. But his maces and sword (if he has one) he cannot with propriety display outside of his jurisdiction, and I should, as Mayor of Carlisle, resent bitterly the intrusion into that ancient city of a strange mayor with mace and sword, even of my Lord Mayor of London, unless he should prove his right from charter to carry them in Carlisle. The Templars never allowed the Lord Mayor to appear in state within their precincts.

Different views have been held as to the origin of the mace. Some have supposed that the regal sceptre, the ecclesiastical virgo or verge, and the civic mace, all had their origin in the simple emblem of straightness and integrity of rule, consisting of a plain slender rod anciently borne before kings and high public functionaries, and retained to the present day as an official badge by sheriffs and attendants in courts of justice. The other, and I venture to think the better idea, is that the civic mace is derived from the military weapon of that name, which itself is derived from a simple club or stick. The civic mace is nothing but the military one turned upside down. At one end of an early mace you have the flanged blades of the military weapon, at the other on a small bowl-like head the royal arms, the emblem of authority. In a mace of later date the military part, the flanges, survive only as a small button, while the bowl, on which are the royal arms, swells, until the peaceful end is itself capable of dealing a heavy blow.

In support, however, of the rod idea, I may mention that the Mayor of Carlisle always on state occasions carries a white rod, an ordinary white stick of deal. This is a very ancient custom. A Captain, a Lieutenant, and an Ancient, all of Norwich, who visited Carlisle in 1634, say of that place:--

“It makes shifte to maintain a Mayor, distinguished by his white staff, and twelve Aldermen his brethren, _sans_ cap of maintenance, but their blew bonnets which they are as proud in as our southerne citizens in their beavers.”

The blue bonnets would be the ordinary head-gear of the local gentry, and of the Aldermen thus dressed more than one was of knightly rank and of high degree. The Mayor of Berwick had also a staff, and when James I. came to the English throne he sent the Abbot of Holyrood to secure the allegiance of the Mayor of Berwick, by which town he travelled into England. The Mayor’s staff and the keys of the gates were delivered to the Abbot, and immediately returned to the Mayor.

At Newark the Mayor carries a black rod with a gold head. At Marazion and at Wigan he carries a staff with a silver head; at Guildford ebony with silver top. Other instances probably exist, while various bailiffs’, head boroughs’, and other staffs are only varieties of the same idea. In the City of London this staff is represented by the Lord Mayor’s jewelled sceptre.

The mace with the royal arms thereon (and no civic mace is a proper civic mace unless it has the royal arms thereon) is the symbol of the power of the central government in municipal matters, and when borne before the mayor denotes that to him and to his colleagues is entrusted the government of their community. It is, in fact, the symbol of that which all Englishmen are proud of--local self-government.

The committee of the Royal Archæological Institute, who indexed the returns obtained in 1875, divided maces into two classes, great and small, but the proper and better division is into mayors’ maces and sergeants’ maces, though the two nearly correspond. I define as a great mace, or mayor’s mace, one whose _raison d’être_ is to be carried before the mayor in procession, and to be displayed beside him in church or in court. The great mace is the insignia of the mayor. The sergeants’ maces are the insignia of the sergeants-at-mace; these maces are also carried before the mayor, but that is because it is part of the sergeants’ duty to precede and attend him in civic processions.

The maces belonging to sergeants-at-mace are generally small, from six to eighteen inches long, and the reason of their being of this small size comes from the use they were put to. The sergeants-at-mace were the officers of the mayor’s court; they served the processes of the court, which were not in the form of written summonses, but were actually delivered verbally, and by a sergeant-at-mace, who produced the mace and showed it as his authority. For convenience, he carried it in his pocket, and at Carlisle, prior to 1837, the gowns of the sergeants-at-mace had pockets in them for this purpose. At Scarborough, the sergeants-at-mace wore their maces in their official gowns, and at Stafford they carried them in their girdles. Hence convenience necessitated that the sergeants’ maces should be of small size; for the same reason they are generally without the open crowns, surmounted by orb and cross, which were added to most great maces after the Restoration. It would be difficult to pocket and unpocket a mace with a crowned head. Of course, there are exceptions to all rules. Yarmouth has a mayor’s mace of very small size, but the reason applies: it is called the pocket mace, and is intended to be carried in the mayor’s pocket, so that he always may have evidence of his authority about him. There was no such reason for making the other maces of small size; nay, the bigger they are, the grander, and the great mace of the City of London is 5 ft. 3 in. long. My own great mace at Carlisle is 4 ft. 2 in., while the maces carried by my sergeants are only about 9 in.

It is quite certain that a municipality cannot have sergeants-at-mace (and therefore cannot have their maces) without a special authorisation by charter. The sergeants-at-mace were originally the peculiar body-guard of the king, and the granting permission to a municipality to have sergeants-at-mace is a high mark of honour. In the case of old corporations, the right to a great mace will originally have been acquired in the same way, or else by a royal present of a mace, but a great mace has now come to be an essential which every place that has a mayor can with propriety adopt.

Even during the Commonwealth much importance was attached to maces; in 1649, Parliament ordered the royal arms to be taken off them, and those of the Commonwealth substituted. This was not done at Carlisle; but, in 1650, three new maces were bought for the sergeants at a charge of £12. After the Restoration the royal arms were again restored, and the Carlisle maces were sent to Newcastle to be altered.

(_To be continued._)

The History of Gilds.

BY CORNELIUS WALFORD, F.S.S., _Barrister-at-Law_.

_PART IV._