SOUTHWELL CHURCH.
The town of Southwell, in the county of Nottingham, is situated in the midst of an amphitheatre of well-wooded hills; the soil is rich, and the air, from the vicinity of the River Trent, is remarkably pure. It is fourteen miles north-east of Nottingham, about as many south-east of Mansfield, and eight south-west from Newark; the River Greet, famous for red trout, runs by the side of the town, falling into the Trent, at about three miles distance.
The most ancient part of the church is of the order usually called Saxon, and from tradition is said to have been built in the time of Harold, predecessor of William I. But there is no history or written instrument of any kind now extant, concerning the origin of this structure. The two side aisles are of pure Norman architecture. The choir was built in the reign of Edward III. as appears by a license of the eleventh year of that king's reign, to the chapter, to get stones from a quarry in Shirewood Forest for building the choir. The chapter-house is a detached building, connected by a cloister with the north aisle of the choir, and is on the model of that at York. The arch of entrance from the aisle, is said to exceed in elegance and correctness of execution, almost every thing of the kind in the kingdom; the chapter-house is of Gothic architecture, and the arch forming the approach is considered of modern insertion, the sculpture being finer and more delicate than any thing near it. This church and Ripon are said to be the only parochial, as well as collegiate, churches now in England, the rest having been dissolved by Henry VIII. or his successors.
At the Reformation, its chantries were dissolved, and the order of priests expelled about the year 1536. In 1542, Lee, then Archbishop of York, granted, by indenture to the king, the manor of Southwell. In the thirty-fourth year of his reign, Henry VIII., by act of parliament, declared Southwell the head and mother church of the town and county of Nottingham, and soon afterwards re-founded and re-endowed it, probably at the instance of Cranmer, at that time in the height of favour, who was a native of Nottinghamshire, not far from Southwell. Soon after the accession of Edward VI. the chapter was again dissolved, and its prebendal, and other estates granted to John, Earl of Warwick, afterwards made Duke of Northumberland; by him they were sold to John Beaumont, Master of the Rolls, and coming soon afterwards to the crown, by escheat, were granted to the favourite Northumberland, who retained them until his attainder in 1553, when they again reverted to the crown; and by Queen Mary were restored to the Archbishop of York, in as ample manner as they had before been holden. It appears from the Registrum Album, a register of the church, that in the latter end of the reign of William I. there were at least ten prebends. In the office of augmentation, an estimate of Southwell College, in the first of Edward VI. states King Edgar to have been the founder of the church, which consisted of sixteen prebends, and sixteen vicars. There are now sixteen prebends, of which the Archbishop of York is sole patron, a vicar-general appointed out of the prebendaries by the chapter, six vicars, and six choristers. Alfric, appointed to the See of York in 1023, gave two large bells to the church of Southwell (William of Malmsbury.) This was about the time of bells coming generally into use. King Stephen granted that the canons of Southwell should hold the woods of their prebends, in their own hands, which succeeding monarchs, Henry II. Richard, John, and Henry III. confirmed. There are two fellowships, and two scholarships, founded in St. John's College, Cambridge, by Dr. Keton, canon of Sarum, twenty-second Henry VI. to be presented by the master, fellows, and scholars of that college, to persons having served as choristers in the chapter of Southwell. In the civil wars nearly all the records of Southwell Church were destroyed, the Registrum Album escaping, which contains grants of most of the revenues belonging to the church, from soon after the conquest, nearly to the end of Henry VIII. Southwell is supposed by antiquarians to be the "Ad Pontem" of the Romans, one of the stations on the Roman Way from London to Lincoln, situated at a distance from any route of importance between the most frequented part of the kingdom. For many centuries it was hardly known by name—and, till within thirty years there was no turnpike road to it in any direction. Thus denied access to the rest of the world, the people of Southwell lived a separate and distinct society, retaining their own manners untainted by the world; and among them traditions were handed down pure and unadulterated by the speculations of the learned, or the discoveries of antiquarians.