[96] The ancient London counterpart of the more modern “Rag Fair” known to literary fame.—W.
[97] The Kermess, or literally, “Church mass,” so famous in “Faust.”—W.
[98] Here follows a long treatise on the “Law of Ordeal.” Habam was at the mouth of the Trent, where the Romans crossed the Humber; Wannetting is Wantage; Thundersley survives still in Essex; Excester is Exeter; Crecklade (misprinted Grecklade) is Cricklade. All are of historic foundation.—W.
[99] A good deal of this chapter and the following one is mere compilation; but there are interesting bits of Harrison’s own self in his “old cock of Canterbury,” the prophecies or conferences then lately begun, and soon blessed, the taxes on parsons, the Church being the “ass for every market man to ride on,” the then state of the churches, and abolition of feast and guild-days, the popish priest “dressed like a dancing peacock,” the contempt felt for the ministry and their poverty.—F. [Some of the merely historical recapitulation has been banished altogether, along with the next chapter referred to, that upon “Bishoprics.”—W.]
[100] The Welsh name for England, as distinct from their own Cambria, usually written “Lloegr,” and poetically derived from the eldest of the three sons of Brute, Locrine of Loegria, Camber of Cambria, and Alban of Albania (Albany, Alban, or Scotland), the adventures of this trio furnishing all the island with names, as King Humber of the Huns defeated and drowned in the Humber, his beautiful protegée Estreldis and her daughter Sabra (by Locrine) thrown into the Severn (from Sabrina) by the jealous and discarded Queen Gwendolen after she had settled accounts with Locrine himself by the banks of the Sture. See Spenser, Milton, the old play of “Locrine,” and the new one by Swinburne: “How Britain at the first grew to be divided into three portions.”—W.
[101] In his first book and in this chapter.—W.
[102] This “authority” was for ever chopped off in the next generation with the head of William Laud.—W.
[103] “There can be no reasonable doubt that there existed an episcopal see at Caerleon in early times. It is pretty certain that it disappeared about the sixth century, and that the bishoprics of St. David’s, Llandaff, and Llanbadarn were founded about the same time. Nor have we, with a single doubtful exception, any indication of sees in any part of South Wales, with the sole exception of Caerleon. We may therefore regard the change to a certain extent as a portion of the spiritual jurisdiction between the three chief principalities into which South Wales seems at this time to have been divided, and partly as an imitation of the policy of St. Martin, by transferring it from the city to the wilderness. Or, if we please, we may regard St. David’s and Llanbadarn as new sees, Llandaff being the legitimate representative of Caerleon. The question remains whether a metropolitan jurisdiction resided with any of these sees, and with which of them. It was claimed in after times by the bishops of Llandaff, as well as by those of St. David’s,” etc. (History and Antiquity of St. David’s, by W. B. Jones and E. A. Freeman.)—W.
[104] This is a minor error, Canterbury having assumed the functions of St. David’s archiepiscopate over a century before Archbishop Lanfranc of the Conquest came to assert the primacy over York, which was doubtless in Harrison’s mind here.—W.
[105] Harrison had doubtless a special antipathy to Saint Dunstan, because that great autocrat of Canterbury, along with his busy labours of humbling kings, enforcing celibacy on the priesthood, building the “church triumphant” over the whole body politic, found time to usurp the archiepiscopal functions of Saint David’s in the year 983, thus bringing Welshmen for the first time under English ecclesiastical rule, where (much to their disgust) they remain to our own time.—W.