Antiquities.—Buckinghamshire contains no ecclesiastical buildings of the first rank. Monastic remains are scanty, but two former abbeys may be noted. At Medmenham, on the Thames above Marlow, there are fragments, incorporated into a residence, of a Cistercian abbey founded in 1201; which became notorious in the middle of the 18th century as the meeting-place of a convivial club called the "Franciscans" after its founder, Sir Francis Dashwood, afterwards Lord le Despencer (1708-1781), and also known as the "Hell-Fire Club," of which John Wilkes, Bubb Dodington and other political notorieties were members. The motto of the club, fay ce que voudras (do what you will), inscribed on a doorway at the abbey, was borrowed from Rabelais' description of the abbey of Thelema in Gargantua. The remains of the Augustinian Notley Abbey (1162), incorporated with a farm-house, deserve mention rather for their picturesque situation by the river Thame than for their architectural value. Turning to churches, there is workmanship considered to be of pre-Norman date in Wing church, in the neighbourhood of Leighton Buzzard, including a polygonal apse and crypt. Stewkley church, in the same locality, shows the finest Norman work in the county; the building is almost wholly of the later part of this period, and the ornamentation is very rich. The Early English work of Chetwode and Haddenham churches, both in the west of the county, is noteworthy; especially in the first, which, as it stands, is the eastern part of a priory church of Augustinians (1244). Good specimens of the Decorated style are not wanting, though none is of special note; but the county contains three fine examples of Perpendicular architecture in Eton College chapel and the churches of Maids Moreton to the north, and Hillesden to the south, of Buckingham. Ancient domestic architecture is chiefly confined to a few country houses, of which Chequers Court, dating from the close of the 16th century, is of interest not only from the architectural standpoint but from its beautiful situation high among the Chiltern Hills between Prince's Risborough and Wendover, and from a remarkable collection of relics of Oliver Cromwell, preserved here as a consequence of the marriage, in 1664, of John Russell, a grandson of the Protector, into the family to which the house then belonged. The manor-house of Hampden, among the hills east of Prince's Risborough, was for many generations the abode of the family of that name, and is still in the possession of descendants of John Hampden, who fell at the battle of Chalgrove in 1643, and is buried in Hampden church. Fine county seats are numerous—there may be mentioned Stowe (Buckingham), formerly the seat of the dukes of Buckingham; Cliveden and Hedsor, two among the many beautifully situated mansions by the bank of the Thames; and Claydon House in the west of the county. Among the Chiltern Hills, also, there are several
splendid domains. Associations with eminent men have given a high fame to several towns or villages of Buckinghamshire. Such are the connexion of Beaconsfield with Edmund Waller and Edmund Burke, that of Hughenden near Wycombe with Benjamin Disraeli, Lord Beaconsfield, whose father's residence was at Bradenham; of Olney and Stoke Pogis with the poets Cowper and Gray respectively. At Chalfont St Giles a cottage still stands in which Milton completed Paradise Lost and began Paradise Regained. In earlier life he had lived and worked at Horton, near the Thames below Windsor.
Authorities.—The original standard history is the laborious work of G. Lipscomb, History and Antiquities of the County of Buckingham (London, 1831-1847). Other works are: Browne Willis, History and Antiquities of the Town, Hundred, and Deanery of Buckingham (London, 1755); D. and S. Lysons, Magna Britannia, vol. i.; R. Gibbs, Buckingham (Aylesbury, 1878-1882); Worthies of Buckingham (Aylesbury, 1886); and Buckingham Miscellany (Aylesbury, 1891); G.S. Roscoe, Buckingham Sketches (London, 1891); P.H. Ditchfield, Memorials of Old Buckinghamshire (London, 1901); Victoria County History, "Buckinghamshire."
BUCKLAND, FRANCIS TREVELYAN (1826-1880), English zoologist, son of Dean William Buckland the geologist, was born at Oxford on the 17th of December 1826. He was educated at Winchester and Christ Church, taking his degree in 1848, and then adopted the medical profession, studying at St George's hospital, London, where he became house-surgeon in 1852. The pursuit of anatomy led him to a good deal of out-of-the-way research in zoology, and in 1856 he became a regular writer on natural history for the newly established Field, particularly on the subject of fish. In 1866 he started Land and Water on similar lines. In 1867 he was appointed government inspector of fisheries, and in the course of his work travelled constantly about the country, being largely responsible for the increased attention paid to the scientific side of pisciculture. Among his publications, besides articles and official reports, were Fish Hatching (1863), Curiosities of Natural History (4 vols., 1857-1872), Logbook of a Fisherman (1875), Natural History of British Fishes (1881). He died on the 19th of December 1880.
See Life by G.C. Bompas (1885).
BUCKLAND, WILLIAM (1784-1856), English divine and geologist, eldest son of the Rev. Charles Buckland, rector of Templeton and Trusham, in Devon, was born at Axminster on the 12th of March 1784. He was educated at the grammar school of Tiverton, and at Winchester, and in 1801 was elected a scholar of Corpus Christi College, Oxford, becoming B.A. in 1804. In 1809 he was elected a fellow of his college, and was admitted into holy orders. From early boyhood he had exhibited a strong taste for natural science, which was subsequently stimulated by the lectures of Dr John Kidd on mineralogy and chemistry; and his attention was especially drawn to the then infant science of geology. He also attended the lectures of Sir Christopher Pegge (1765-1822) on anatomy. He now devoted himself systematically to an examination of the geological structure of Great Britain, making excursions, and investigating the order of superposition of the strata and the characters of the organic remains which they contained. In 1813, on the resignation of Dr Kidd, he was appointed reader in mineralogy in Oxford; and the interest excited by his lectures was so great that in 1819 a readership in geology was founded and especially endowed by the treasury, Dr Buckland being the first holder of the new appointment. In 1818 Dr Buckland was elected a fellow of the Royal Society, and in 1824 and again in 1840 he was chosen president of the Geological Society of London. In 1825 he was presented by his college to the living of Stoke Charity, near Whitchurch, Hants, and in the same year he was appointed by Lord Liverpool to a canonry of the cathedral of Christ Church, Oxford, when the degree of D.D. was conferred upon him. In 1825, also, he married Mary, the eldest daughter of Mr Benjamin Morland of Sheepstead House, near Abingdon, Berks, by whose abilities and excellent judgment he was materially assisted in his literary labours. In 1832 he presided over the second meeting of the British Association, which was then held at Oxford. In 1845 he was appointed by Sir Robert Peel to the vacant deanery of Westminster, and was soon after inducted to the living of Islip, near Oxford, a preferment attached to the deanery. In 1847 he was appointed a trustee in the British Museum; and in 1848 he was awarded the Wollaston medal by the Geological Society of London. In 1849 his health began to give way under the increasing pressure of his multifarious duties; and the later years of his life were overshadowed by a serious illness, which compelled him to live in retirement. He died on the 24th of August 1856, and was buried in a spot which he had himself chosen, in Islip churchyard.
Buckland was a man many-sided in his abilities, and of a singularly wide range of attainments. Apart from his published works and memoirs in connexion with the special department of geology, and in addition to the work entailed upon him by the positions which he at different times held in the Church of England, he entered with great enthusiasm into many practical questions connected with agricultural and sanitary science, and various social and even medical problems. As a teacher he possessed powers of the highest order; and the university of Oxford is enriched by the large and valuable private collections, illustrative of geology and mineralogy, which he amassed in the course of his active life. It is, however, upon his published scientific works that Dr Buckland's great reputation is mainly based. His first great work was the well-known Reliquiae Diluvianae, or Observations on the Organic Remains contained in caves, fissures, and diluvial gravel attesting the Action of a Universal Deluge, published in 1823 (2nd ed. 1824), in which he supplemented his former observations on the remains of extinct animals discovered in the cavern of Kirkdale in Yorkshire, and expounded his views as to the bearing of these and similar cases on the Biblical account of the Deluge. Thirteen years after the publication of the Reliquiae, Dr Buckland w as called upon, in accordance with the will of the earl of Bridgewater, to write one of the series of works known as the Bridgewater Treatises. The design of these treatises was to exhibit the "power, wisdom, and goodness of God, as manifested in the Creation," and none of them was of greater value, as evinced by its vitality, than that on "Geology and Mineralogy." Originally published in 1836, it has gone through three editions, and though not a "manual" of geological science, it still possesses high value as a storehouse of geological and palaeontological facts bearing upon the particular argument which it was designed to illustrate. The third edition, issued in 1858, was edited by his son Francis T. Buckland, and is accompanied by a memoir of the author and a list of his publications.
Of Dr Buckland's numerous original contributions to the sciences of Geology and Palaeontology, the following may be mentioned:—(1) "On the Structure of the Alps and adjoining parts of the Continent, and their relation to the Secondary and Transition Rocks of England" (Annals of Phil., 1821); (2) "Account of an Assemblage of Fossil Teeth and Bones of Elephant, Rhinoceros, Hippopotamus, &c., discovered in a cave at Kirkdale in Yorkshire in the year 1821" (Phil. Trans.); (3) "On the Quartz Rock of the Lickey Hill in Worcestershire" (Trans. Geol. Soc.); (4) "On the Megalosaurus or Great Fossil Lizard of Stonesfield" (Ibid.); (5) "On the Cycadeoideae, a Family of Plants found in the Oolite Quarries of the Isle of Portland" (Ibid.); (6) "On the Discovery of a New Species of Pterodactyle in the Lias of Lyme Regis" (Ibid.); (7) "On the Discovery of Coprolites or Fossil Faeces in the Lias of Lyme Regis, and in other Formations" (Ibid.); (8) "On the Evidences of Glaciers in Scotland and the North of England" (Proc. Geol. Soc. Lond.); (9) "On the South-Western Coal District of England" (joint paper with the Rev. W.D. Conybeare, Trans. Geol. Soc. Lond.); (10) "On the Geology of the neighbourhood of Weymouth, and the adjacent parts of the Coast of Dorset" (joint paper with Sir H. De la Beche, Trans. Geol. Soc. Lond.).
With regard to the Glacial theory propounded by Agassiz, no one welcomed it with greater ardour than Buckland, and he zealously sought to trace out evidences of former glaciation in Britain. A record of the interesting discussion which took place at the Geological Society's meeting in London in November 1840,
after the reading of a paper by Buckland, was printed in the Midland Naturalist, October 1883.