Capt. John Stevens, in a note in his translation of Bede, (A.D. 1723,) says, as to the true place being Cliffe, “Of this opinion are the two great antiquarians, Spelman and Talbot, to which Lambard likewise gives in, though with caution.” This must be Dr. Robert Talbot, Canon of Norwich, another early Saxon scholar, reign Henry VIII., who left transcripts of charters of Abingdon,[44] and is, therefore, another early learned witness of the tradition. Spelman’s interpretation is “Cloveshoviæ (vulgo Clyff).”[45] The Rev. Joseph Stevenson[46] recites the option of Cliffe and Abingdon. Of the church historians, Fuller remonstrates against Camden’s doubts, with his usual moderation. Collier merely calls it “Clovesho, or Clyff, near Rochester.”
By this time the Abingdon speculation had become strong enough to carry double: to be able to be called in to the help of other theories, on outside matters. The ingenious Welsh philologer, William Baxter,[47] gets from it an offspring ergo. He makes Abingdon the “Caleva Attrebatum,” because it had been “Clovesho:” upon which, by a sort of “To-my-love and from-my-love” formula, Dr. W. Thomas[48] completes the symmetry of a logical circle, by citing “Calleva Attrebatum” as evidence that Cloveshoe is near Henley-on-Thames, then thought to be Calleva.
R. Gough, in Additions to Camden, leaves it at Abingdon on Bp. Gibson’s argument: and, throughout the eighteenth century, Abingdon seems to have been favoured; the writers being much given to copy each other. Dr. Lingard, 1803, quoting Capt. Stevens’s translation of Bede, says “probably Abingdon,” and so also puts it in his Anglo-Saxon map; but Capt. Stevens had only quoted both views, without adopting either.
The later editors of the Saxon Chronicle, Dr. Ingram and Mr. Thorpe, return to the tradition, contenting themselves with the simple gloss “Cliff-at-Hoo, Kent,” “Cliff near Rochester.” Miss Gurney, however, prudently says, “Cliff in Kent, or Abingdon.” Professor Earle gives the valuable note and question about Dr. Heath, before mentioned, but leaves the main question, of the place, open. On the other hand, the Dictionaries, since Somner: Lye says “fortasse Abbingdon,” and Dr. Bosworth follows with “perhaps Abingdon,” quoting both Somner and Lye.
But the nineteenth century took a fresh stride away from the start of the seventeenth. Whilst accepting from the eighteenth the inheritance of the doubt, it next renounced the claim itself for which the doubt had been raised. It is no longer Abingdon, but wherever it may be thought likely—Dr. Lappenberg[49] places it in Oxfordshire; Mr. N.E.S.A. Hamilton[50] “co. Berks.” Mr. Kemble more boldly carries it to “the hundred of Westminster, and county of Gloucester, perhaps near Tewksbury.”[51] Next year,[52] he more firmly says “Doubts have been lavished upon the situation of this place, which I do not share,” and concludes that it was “not far from Deerhurst, Tewksbury, and Bishop’s Cleeve; not at all improbably in Tewksbury itself, which may have been called Clofeshoas, before the erection of a noble abbey at a later period gave it the name it now bears.”
Messrs. Haddan and Stubbs[53] accept the objections of their forerunners against Cliff-at-Hoo, thinking that this place “rests solely on the resemblance of the name.” They say of the Abingdon = Sheovesham theory, that it is also “the merest conjecture.” They also reject Mr. Kemble’s Tewkesbury as founded on a mistaken identity of Westminster hundred with another place sometimes called “Westminster,” in the Mercian charters, (A.D. 804-824). This is, indeed, Westbury-on-Trym. But why was the minster there called “west,” and where was the minster that was east of it? At an earlier date (A.D. 794) it had already got its present name, “Uuestburg.” Messrs. Haddan and Stubbs leave the question of the true place of Cloveshoe as they find it, neither endorsing the original tradition, nor indulging in the freedom of choice which had been established for them. In another work,[54] however, Mr. Haddan has said, “On the locality of Cloveshoo itself, unfortunately, we can throw no more light than may be contained in the observation, that St. Boniface invariably styles the English synod, ‘Synodus Londinensis;’ and that … the immediate vicinity of that city—in all other respects the most probable of all localities—seems consequently the place where antiquarians must hunt for traces of the lost Cloveshoo.” How far Cliffe, situated near the mouth of the Thames, may satisfy or contradict the “Londinensis” of S. Bonifatius must be left to be judged. Dean Hook recites his fore-goers, but not quite understanding them:—“Where Cloveshoo was it is impossible to say, some antiquarians placing it at Cliff-at-Hoo, in Kent; some in the neighbourhood of Rochester; others contending for Abingdon; others again for Tewkesbury.”[55] But Cliff-at-Hoo in Kent is in the near neighbourhood of Rochester. The present state of the question, therefore, seems to be, that it is given up as hopeless.
But the most strenuous renunciator of the Kentish tradition, in favour of the Berkshire conjecture, was a learned and distinguished native of the Kentish locality itself: the Rev. John Johnson. He is usually reckoned among the learned and suffering body of the Nonjurors, but, by personal merits and some concessions, he appears to have escaped their political ordeal; having retained his preferments throughout a long life. He is commonly distinguished, from the other Johnsons of literature, as “Johnson of Cranbrook.” His remarks deserve all the more careful consideration, because he was born at Frindsbury, immediately adjoining Cliffe, and the intermediate parish between it and Rochester. At Frindsbury, in fact, was the “Aeslingham” of the Textus Roffensis, in one of the charters that concern the Hoo and the locality now in question. He printed a Collection of Canons of the English Church, in 1720.[56] In his preface and notes to the Synod at which was ratified the submission of the usurped primacy of Lichfield to that of Canterbury, A.D. 803, which is one of those held at “clofeshoas;”[57] he oddly brings it, as an argument that Abingdon was the place, that the triumphant Archbishop of Canterbury “was willing to meet” his reconciled insubordinant rival, half way between Lichfield and Canterbury. Converting what is a very strong presumption against Abingdon, into an act of extreme humility on the part of the Archbishop. The learned writer must have felt the difficulty, which he thus strove so hard to liquidate into a virtue. After this, he goes on to allege that “there is not a more unhealthy spot in the whole province, I may say in all Christendom,” than this district of the Hoo. With deference, however, to such a writer, and a native of the spot, this account of it does, to a mere visitor, seem to be exaggerated. The Gads-Hill, of Falstaff, will bring the neighbourhood to the remembrance of many; and it has become more widely known of late years, by the last residence of another great master of humour and fiction, which is less than four miles from the church of Cliffe, and the outlook from which would be about identical with that from any Mercian Villa Regia that may have existed here. An ungrateful remembrance of the inflictions of schoolmasters, or other childish griefs, is often observed to haunt the later career of those to whose distinguished position they may have contributed.
In his “Addenda,” Johnson afterwards says, “I find some worthy gentlemen still of opinion, that Cliff … was not unhealthy in the age of the Councils:” and he truly quotes charters from the Textus Roffensis, to show that the northern marshes, or levels, then already existed; and he urges that it “was, therefore, altogether unfit for a stated place of synod.” That “As Cliff in Hoo was never a place of great note itself, so it lies, and ever did lie, out of the road to any place of note;” and he goes on to recite Somner and Camden’s plea of the greater likelihood of Abingdon, for synods limited to the times of Mercian domination.
But the marshes are not in question, they are but an appendage to the Hoo. This peninsula is formed of a large fragment of the chalk at the eastern end of the North Kentish downs, called by geologists an “inlier” into the Thames basin; upon the heights, and in the valleys, of which the places concerned in this enquiry were situated. The marshes are a broad fringe of level pasture land,[58] advanced into the Thames estuary, beyond its north chalk cliff. In Kent the word “marsh” signifies the same as “more” in Somersetshire: which, although even Dr. Jamieson confounds the two, is a totally different word and thing, from the “muir,” or “moor,” for waste lands of a highland character. It is to such land as this that we owe the dairies of Cheddar; and if this objection should be good, Glastonbury and Wells, not to mention Ely and Croyland, must resign their venerable places in history. A very similar projection of alluvial level pasture extends from Henbury and Shirehampton to the Bristol Channel, without disparagement of their salubrity. Mr. Johnson, having suffered much in health by a residence of a year or two at Appledore, in Kent, obtained the vicarage of Cranbrook, where he lived for eighteen years. It is likely that he was sensitive of climatal influences, and shy of those breezes that reach this island after passing over the great plains of central Europe: a tenderness, which neither Æthelbald nor Offa can be supposed to have shared with him.
It is plain, however, that this broad alluvial margin, extending from the northern edge of the heights, which are the substantial constituents of the Hoo peninsula, already existed, A.D. 779, at least a very large extent of it; for the first charter, so dated,[59] describes it as then “habentem quasi quinquaginta iugerum.” In a later charter, A.D. 789,[60] the name of the projecting level appears as “Scaga.”[61] It must already have become land of value to be granted in these charters; and its identity is certain from the limits—Yantlet (“Jaenlade”) water to “Bromgeheg,” now “Bromey,” on the higher land at Cooling. Does not the word “jugeru,” used in the charter, indicate that this “marsh” was already cultivated or pasture land? How it had been originally caused is, however, not hard to discern. It is, evidently, a large portion of the delta of the Thames, intercepted by the confluence of the other great river, the Medway, and thrown back behind the chalk promontory of the Hoo. Inside, and westward of this deposit, the tidal estuary makes a bold reach southward; sweeping the western side of this level, and approaching the heights, so as, at Cliffe, Higham, and Chalk, to leave only a comparatively narrow fringe of level; and it is on the heights at the southern bend of this reach, that are situated these three villages, which will presently be found, it is thought, to be interesting to us.