HORSELYDOWN FAIR, IN THE TIME OF QUEEN ELIZABETH.—Page 255.

NOOKS AND CORNERS

OF

ENGLISH LIFE,

Past and Present.

BY

JOHN TIMBS,

AUTHOR OF "STRANGE STORIES OF THE ANIMAL WORLD,"

"THINGS NOT GENERALLY KNOWN," ETC.

SECOND EDITION.

WITH ILLUSTRATIONS.

LONDON:

GRIFFITH AND FARRAN,

(Successors to Newbery and Harris,)

CORNER OF ST. PAUL'S CHURCHYARD.

M DCCC LXVII.

PREFACE.

Pictures of the Domestic Manners of our forefathers, at some of the most attractive periods of English History, form the staple of the present volume. These Pictures are supplemented by Sketches of subordinate Scenes and Incidents which illustrate great changes in Society, and tend to show, in different degrees, the Past as the guide for the Present and the Future.

The value and interest of Archæological studies in bringing home to our very doors the information required of special localities, and their former life, have, it is hoped, been made available by the Author of this work, so far as to render it acceptable as well for the soundness of its information as for its entertaining character. The antiquary of old was but, in many instances, "a gatherer of other men's stuff;" whereas the archæologist of the present day adds to the worth of antiquarian studies by placing their results in new lights, and thus extending the utility and amusement which they afford.

The materials for writing English History are inexhaustible; and one of the aims of this work is to seize upon and group from such stores leading facts and transitions, and by means of condensation to present their narratives in a more tangible form than that in which they were originally written. In this task the Author has brought to bear, from a variety of accredited sources, evidences of the condition of the English people—in their "woods and caves, and painted skins"—their homes and modes of living, in cavern and castle, mansion and cottage; the origin of their Domestic Inventions and Contrivances in the several stages of comfort; House-furnishing, Dress and Personal Ornament; Provisions and Olden Cookery, and Housewifery; Peasant Life, with its curious Customs, Laws, and Ceremonies; Fairs and Festivals and Amusements. To these succeed a few Historic Sketches: Traditions of Battle-fields, and other memorable sites; Mansions and their Families: romantic Narratives, Portraits of eminent Persons, &c.

The authorities and sources of information conveyed in the following pages, are fully acknowledged. "Quotation," said Johnson, "is a good thing; there is a community of mind in it;" although some writers seem to ride upon their readers, like Pyrrhus on his elephant, forgetting that "there is not so poor a book in the world, that would not be a prodigious effort, were it wrought out entirely by a single hand, without the aid of prior investigation." Real antiquarianism has been well defined as a lively knowledge of the Past, comprehending the spirit of a period through the details of its customs, events, and institutions; the language of its writers, the movements of its sciences and arts; and, by keeping in view these points, the writer of the present volume hopes he has succeeded in producing a recreative result worthy of the acceptance of the reader.

CONTENTS.

[I. Early English Life.]

Aboriginal Britons—British Caves—Bosphrennis Bee-hive Hut and Picts' House—On the Brigantes of Yorkshire; by Prof. Phillips

[Britain before the Roman Colonization.]

Lappenberg's Picture of South Britain—War Chariots—Druidism, its Rites and Customs—Arch-Druid and Mistletoe—Legend of Stonehenge—Charles II. at Stonehenge—Fire Worship—Druidical Serpents' Eggs—Druids' Medicines—Druid Schools and Priests—Trade of the Phœnicians—Tin-trade of Cornwall—Ornamental Art—British War-chiefs—Britain and New Zealand compared

[The Romans in England.]

Civilization of Ancient Britain—British and Roman Encampments—British Trackways and Roman Roads—British Railways—Country of the Brigantes—London of Roman origin—The Romans leave Britain—Roman London in Leadenhall Street—Mr. Roach Smith's Museum—Roman Wall, Pottery, and Glass—Roman City of Uriconium, Wroxeter, described—Owen Glendower's Oak—Shropshire Legends of Giants—Silchester explored—Conquest by Cæsar: Condition of the People then and now

[Domestic Life of the Saxons.]

Saxon Architecture—Saxon Houses—Mead-hall, or Beer-hall—Saxon Beds—Story of Vortigern and Rowena—Origin of the Wassail Cup and the Loving Cup—Dinner in the Middle Ages—Peg Tankards and Drinking Horns—Mazer Bowls—The Hanap—Saxon Metal-working—Alfred's Jewel, and Ethelwulf's Ring—Saxon Coins—Glass-making—Saxon Cloths and Dyeing—Embroidery—Iron-smelting—Alfred's Inventions—Travelling in the Saxon Times—Sussex Roads—Stirrups, Spurs, and Bridles

[Meals—British, Anglo-Roman, and Saxon.]

Britons' Early Living—Roman Luxury—British Oysters—Roman Supper—Saxon Law of Host and Guest—Canute's Dinner-law—Origin of "Lady"—Saxon Provisions—Saxon Feasts—Early Baking—Elecampane—Ale and Beer—Brewing in Monasteries and Colleges—Oxford Ale—Ancient Vineyards—Danish Drinking—Ancient Names of Provisions

[II. Castle Life.]

Castles of England—Roman Castles—Pevensey—Maiden Castle and Poundbury—Introduction of Bricks—Norman Castles—Conisborough and Ivanhoe—Tonbridge Castle—Bedford Castle Siege—Raby Castle, Durham—Kitchen of Raby—Durham Castle, Kitchen and Buttery—Legend of Mulgrave Castle—Corfe Castle, and King Edward the Martyr—Lady Bankes's Defence of Corfe—Castles temp. Edward III.—Windsor Castle, its History and Description—St. George's Chapel—Round Tower and Round Table—William of Wykeham and Chaucer, Clerks of the Works, Windsor Castle—Restoration of Windsor Castle, by George IV.—Sir Jeffrey Wyatville's Gothic—Canon Bowles on Windsor Castle—Pictures at Windsor; Keep, and Private Apartments—Warwick Castle, its History: Pictures, Warwick Vase—Guy's apocryphal Curiosities—Historical Earls of Warwick—Kenilworth Castle—Leicester and Queen Elizabeth—Arundel Castle—Dukes of Norfolk—Bevis's Tower and its Legend—Norman Remains, Interior, Vineyards, Historical Picture

[III. Household Antiquities.]

The Old English House—Norman Houses—The Manor-house—The Hall—City Companies' Halls—Embattled Mansions—Wingfield and Cowdray—Mary Queen of Scots at Wingfield—Thornbury Castle and its History—Longleat, Wilts—John Thorpe, the Elizabethan Architect—Holland House, Kensington—Burghley, Northamptonshire—Hatfield House, Herts—Campden, Gloucestershire—Haddon Hall, Derbyshire—Lines on Haddon—The Great Hall—Hall at Hampton Court—Hall Windows—Hall Fires—College and Inns of Court Halls—Hall in Aubrey's Time—Queen Victoria at Hatfield—Eltham Palace Hall, its present Condition—Early Mansions of the English Gentry—The Oldest Dwelling-house in England—Wood and Stone in building—London built of Wood—Chestnut Timber and Ornamental Carpentry—Kenilworth Hall Roof—Half-Timbered Houses in London—English Cottages—Sussex Cottages, by Cobbett—Brambletye House and the Comptons

[The Englishman's Fireside.]

Warmth and Ventilation—Count Rumford and Dr. Arnott—Introduction of Chimneys—The Hall Louvre or Lantern—Chimneys of Wood—Smoke Farthings and Hearth-money—Crosby Hall—The Hall Fire and God's Sunday—Rushes used—Coal introduced—Awnd-irons—Hever Castle—Christmas in the Great Hall—Silver Fire Implements—Invention of Grates—Prof. Faraday on Ventilation by the Chimney—The Open Coal Fire—Roman Mode of heating Houses—Flue-Tiles and Hypocausts—History of the Curfew, and Curfew ringing

[Private Life of a Queen of England.]

Last Days of Isabella, Queen of Edward II.—Private Life of Five Hundred Years since—Mortimer and the Queen—The Castle of Castle Rising—Daily Expenses—Visitors and Pilgrimages—Ancient Meal Hours—Queen Isabella at Windsor, Tottenham, and Canterbury—Death of Queen Isabella—Messenger, Alms, and Doles—Repairs—The Queen's Love of Jewels—Minstrels' and New Year's Gifts—Murder of Edward II. (note)

[The English Housewife.]

Gervase Markham's Tract—Olden Cookery—Banquet Bills of Fare—Brewing and Wine-making—The Bakehouse—Spinning—Domestic Medicines—Carving by Ladies—Lady Mary Wortley Montague on Carving

[A Herefordshire Lady in the Time of the Civil War.]

Hereford, the ancient City—Mrs. Joyce Jeffries and her Servants—Gifts to Country Cousins—Lending Money—Dress of the Lady, 1638—Housekeeping Expenses—Amusements and Social Customs—Civil War Imposts—Lord Strafford's Trial—Mrs. Jeffries' Generosity

[House-furnishing in the Middle Ages.]

Cabinet-work—Bedsteads—Beds—Tapestried Chambers—Blanket and Worsted—Great Bed of Ware—Warming-pan, ancient—Chairs—Chamber at Hengrave—Rushes and Carpets—Hall Furniture—Court Cupboard—Wardrobes—Loseley, near Guildford, described

[Dress—Personal Ornaments.]

Laundry Accounts—Hangings—Woollen Clothing—Pomanders—Country Life, 17th century

[Pins and Pin-money.]

Pins introduced from France—Pins first made in England—Pinners' Company—Pins, temp. Elizabeth—Pinners on London Bridge—Origin of Pin Money—What becomes of all the Pins?—Pin Wells

[Provisions—Bread-making, Grocery, and Confectionery.]

Olden Bread-making—Manchets, Recipes for—The Manciple—Pastry-making taught in Schools—Christmas Game Pie, 1394—Cookery, temp. Richard II.—History of Sugar, 195—Tea and Coffee introduced—Spices and other Condiments—Olden Confectionery—March-pane and Biscuits—Dessert Fruits, 13th century—Oranges introduced—Lincoln's Inn Fruit and Vegetable Garden—Ornamental Fruit Trenchers—Vegetables in early use—Conveyance of perishable Food—Antiquity of Cheese—Banbury and Cheshire Cheese—Ballad on Cheshire Cheese—Sage Cheese—Ale and Beer—Hops introduced—Our National Drink

[IV. Peasant Life.]

"A bold Peasantry, their Country's Pride"—Serfdom—Were and Wergild—Operative Tenants—Rent paid in Labour—Monday-men—Villeins—Stocks for Vagrants and unruly Servants—Services of Tillage—Ploughing Boon—Harrowing and Bed-weeding—Threshing, Thatching, Delving, &c.—Inclosures—Malting for the Lord—Malt-silver—Ancient Harvest—Reaping Boon—Hayward—Love-boons or Law-days—Autumnal Precations, temp. Edward II.—Ram Feast—Beltane Superstition—Hayfield cut and cleared—Mutton Rewards—Hock-day Court and Sports—Hardicanute's Death—Scot Ales—Sheep Shearing and Clipping-time Customs—Conveyance Service—Arriage and Carriage—Farming a Castle or Monastery—Vraic in the Channel Islands—Langerode—Watch and Ward—The Beadle—Sleeping in Church—"Firm Locks make faithful Servants"

Olden Housemarks: Land, Cattle, Sheep, Swans, and Ducks; Houses and Cottages—Merchants' and Tradesmen's Marks—Picture Marks—Ancient Conveyancing

[V. Customs and Ceremonies.]

May-day Carol on Magdalen College Tower, Oxford—Flower Customs at Oxford—May-day Song at Saffron Walden—May-poles still extant—Raine's Charity—Picture of Oxford

[Banbury Cakes, Congleton Cakes, etc.]

Banbury Cakes abolished by the Puritans—Banbury Cross—Banbury zeal and veal—Old Fuller on Banbury—High Church Banburians—Congleton Triangular Cakes and Gingerbread—Sale of Banbury Cakes—Banbury Cheese—Banbury Cross restored—Sack Brewage at Congleton—Shrewsbury Cakes—Islington and Holloway Cheesecakes

[Horselydown Fair in the Reign of Queen Elizabeth.]

Horselydown—Curious Picture at Hatfield House, of the Fair, described—Hermitage

[Wake Festivals in the Black Country.]

Bull-baiting, Cock-fighting, &c.—Wake-time, better spent—Bloxwich Bull

[Keeping Birds in the Middle Ages.]

Alexander Neckam and his Treatise—Love of Animals—Hawk and Eagle—Parrot—Barnacle—Swan, Nightingale, Sparrow, Raven, and Crow; Cuckoo, Cock, Wren, &c.

[VI. Historic Sketches.]

[The Story of Fair Rosamund.]

Woodstock Bower, and Rosamund's Well—The Nunnery at Godstow, near Oxford—Rosamund born—Known to Henry II.—Maze at Woodstock—The Silken Clue—The Poison Cup—Rosamund's Tomb at Godstow—Legend from the French Chronicle

[Cardinal Wolsey at Esher Place.]

Fall of Wolsey—Retires to Esher—His Servants and Retainers—Henry VIII. demands a cession of York House—The "comfortable Message"—Death of Wolsey at Leicester—The Abbey—Esher Place embellished by Kent—Dr. Johnson's Portrait of Wolsey—At Cawood—Weighing his Plate—Wolsey and Christchurch—Death and Interment of Wolsey—Tomb-house and Sarcophagus—Cavendish's Life of Wolsey

[Traditions of Battle-fields.]

Worth of Tradition—Antiquity of Tenure—The Wapshotts—Flodden Field Tradition—Battle of Hastings described—Roll of the Conqueror's Companions—Towton Field described—Tewkesbury Field explored—Bosworth Field—The Battle—Relics of Richard, Duke of Gloucester—His Autograph—Black Boy Inn, Chelmsford, a Plantagenet Lodge—Baynard's Castle and Crosby Place—King Richard's Inn, Leicester—Omens to the King—Oxford, Norfolk, and Surrey—Richard's Last Charge—Sir John Cheney—Combat of Richard and Richmond—Richard's Body carried to Leicester—Legend on the Corporation Bridge—Wars of York and Lancaster—Rose-tree at Longleat—False Traditions

[Curiosities of Hatfield.]

Princess Elizabeth kept Prisoner here—Old Palace—Park—Queen Elizabeth's Oak—The Vineyard—Historical Documents at Hatfield—Olden Furniture—Portraits of Queen Elizabeth, and other Pictures—Elizabeth's Abode at Hatfield—The Mansion built by the Earl of Salisbury

[The Grand Remonstrance]

[Cavaliers and Roundheads]

[The Evelyns at Wotton.]

The Evelyn Family—Wotton House built—Grounds planned and laid out by John Evelyn—His Tour in France and Italy—Public Services—Sayes Court—Retires to Wotton—Great Storm of 1703—Mills on the rivulet at Wotton—Lord Abinger—Lines, to the Countess of Donegal, by Swift—Abinger Church—Kneller's Portrait of Evelyn—Historical Curiosities—Character of Mrs. Evelyn—Evelyn's "Elysium Britannicum"—His Planting—Milton Court and Jeremiah Markland

[Lord Bolingbroke at Battersea.]

Battersea Parish and Manor—Sir Robert Walpole and Bolingbroke—Pope, Swift, Arbuthnot, Thomson, and Mallet at Bolingbroke House—Burning of 500 Copies of the Patriot King—Death of Bolingbroke—Tomb, by Roubiliac—Site of Bolingbroke House—Horizontal Mill—"Pope's Parlour," and Essay on Man—Rose's Diaries, and Mallet's treacherous Executorship—Bolingbroke's Ingratitude—Lord Brougham's Comments—York House, Battersea—Archbishop Holgate—Residence of Sir Thomas Boleyn at Battersea—A Shakespearian Query

[The Last of Epping Forest.]

Inclosure of the Forest—A Royal Chase—Hainault—Forest Scenery—History of Epping Forest—Visit to Queen Elizabeth's Hunting Lodge—Chingford Hall—Curious Tenure Custom—Elizabeth's Fondness for Hunting—Conclusion

[APPENDIX.]

Ancient British Dwellings—The Saxon Hall—Abury and Stonehenge

[I. Early English Life.]

DWELLING-PLACES OF THE EARLY BRITONS.

t has been well observed that the structure of a house reveals much of the mode of life adopted by its inhabitants. The representations of the dwellings of the people of the less cultivated parts of Europe, contrasted with those of the more cultivated countries, should afford us the means of comparing their different degrees of civilization. In the same manner we may measure the growth of improvement in any one country by an attentive consideration of the structure and arrangement of the homes of the people at different periods.

The aboriginal Britons are described as dwelling in slight cabins of reeds and wattles, and in some instances in caverns of the earth, many sets of which, arranged with some degree of symmetry, antiquaries have recognised; but Cæsar tells us that the maritime tribes had buildings in the fashion of the Gauls—that is, of wood, of a circular figure, and thatched. Such towns as they had were clusters of huts erected on a cleared portion of the forest, which covered the greater part of the island; and they were invariably surrounded by a rampart, constructed of felled trees strongly interlaced and wattled, and a deep fosse, which together formed a fortification. The site of the modern city of London, with the river Thames in front, the river Fleet on the west, and an almost inpenetrable forest in the rear, may be taken as a fair specimen of the locality usually selected for the residence of the British Chief.[1]

That our ancestors lived in caves is attested by the existence of a group of these abodes near Penzance, the most remarkable of all ancient British Caves hitherto discovered in Cornwall, and thus described by Mr. J. Edwards, to the Royal Institution of that county:—"Half of a mile W.S.W. of Caër Bran, and four and a half miles W. by S. of Penzance, there is, in the village of Chapel Euny, a cave, consisting for the most part of a deep trench, walled with stones, and roofed with huge slabs. It extends 30 feet from N.N.W. to S.S.E., and then branches eastward, and probably also to the S. or S.W. So far it accords with the description of an ordinary British cave. But its floor (as I was informed by the miner who opened it about three years ago) was well paved with large granite blocks, beneath which, in the centre, ran a narrow gutter or bolt, made, I imagine, for admitting the external air into the innermost part of the building; from whence, after flowing back through the cave, it escaped by the cave's mouth—a mode of ventilation practised immemorially by the miners in this neighbourhood, when driving adits or horizontal galleries under ground.

"Another peculiarity is still more remarkable. Its higher or northern end consisted of a circular floor, 12 feet in diameter, covered with a dome of granite, two-thirds of which are still exposed to view; and my informant had observed a still greater portion of the dome-roofed chamber. Every successive layer of the stones forming the dome overhangs considerably the layer immediately beneath it; so that the stones gradually approach each other as they rise, until the top stones must originally have completed the dome; not, however, like the key-stones of an arch, but by resting horizontally on the immediately subjacent circular layer. The miner found no pottery, or anything else, in the cave. The height of the present wall of the dome is about 6 feet above the lowest part I could see; how much lower the original floor might have been, I could not ascertain.

"Another British cave, not even referred to in any publication, is to be seen at Chyoster, nearly three miles north of Penzance, the walls of which, instead of being perpendicular, are constructed on the same principle as the inmost part of the cave at Chapel Euny; so that the tops of these walls which support the huge slabs forming the roof, are much nearer each other than their bases. Each cave formed part of a British village, that of old Chyoster being decidedly in the best state of preservation of all the British villages in this neighbourhood."[2]

Both caves are built of uncemented stones unmarked by any tool. The cave at Chyoster extended originally, as appears from its remains and the rubbish left by its recent spoilers, fifty feet or more in a straight line up the sloping side of the hill. It is 6 feet high, 4 feet wide on the top, and 8 feet wide at the bottom, and is thought to have been originally a storehouse. It appears to have been built on the natural surface of the hillside, and then covered over with stones and earth, and planted with the evergreens which still abound there.

A few years subsequently to the above investigations, in one of those intellectual excursions by means of which our acquaintance with the early history of our island is so greatly extended, the following results were arrived at:—In the autumn of 1865, in an excursion made jointly by the Royal Institution of Cornwall and the Penzance Natural History Society, they inspected on the north coast of the county, Gurnard's Head, a rocky promontory, jutting some distance into the sea, and bearing very distinct traces of having been fortified by the early Britons against an enemy attacking from the sea, this being the only specimen of an ancient British fortification where traces of sea defences have been found. In all other cases they seem to have been erected as a protection from an attack by the land side, and to have been evidently the last retreat of the natives.

Next was visited the Bosphrennis Bee-hive Hut, first brought to light by the Cambrian Archæological Society: it was seen in clusters or villages by Cæsar. And, on an eminence near the village of Porthemear, was found a large inclosed circle, now hidden by briars and thorns, which, on examination, showed the remains of several circular huts, leaving no doubt that here a considerable ancient British village had once existed.

Of the homes of the Picts, the most distinguished among the barbarous tribes inhabiting the woods and marshes of North Britain, there remain some specimens in the Orkneys: they are rude and miserable dwellings underground, but they are supposed to be calculated for the requirements of a more advanced state of society than that of the dwellers in Picts' houses. A complete drawing of one of the Orkney specimens has been made, and was exhibited to the British Archæological Association in 1866.

PICTS' HOUSE.

About the year 1853, there was discovered in Aberdeenshire a Pict's house, in the parish of Tarland. It is a subterranean vault, nearly semicircular, and from five to six feet in height; the sides built with stones, and roofed with large stones, six or seven feet wide, and a kind of granite. These excavations have been found in various parishes of Aberdeenshire, as well as in several of the neighbouring counties. In the parish of Old Deer, some sixty years back, a whole village was met with; and, about the same time, in a glen at the back of Stirlinghill, in the parish of Peterhead, one was discovered which contained some fragments of bones and several flint arrow-heads and battle-axes, in various stages of manufacture. Such buildings underground as those described as Picts' houses were not uncommon on the borders of the Tweed. A number of them, apparently constructed as above, were discovered in a field in Berwickshire about fifty years ago. They were supposed to have been made for the detention of prisoners taken in the frays during the border feuds; and afterwards they were employed to conceal spirits, smuggled either across the border or from abroad.

Professor Phillips, in his very able volume on Yorkshire, describes the houses of the Brigantes (highlanders), inhabitants of the hilly country towards the north of Britain, and extending from the German Ocean to the Irish Sea. Of these huts there appear to be three varieties, of which we have only the foundations. The first occurs in north-eastern and south-eastern Yorkshire; the ground is excavated in a circular shape, so as to make a pit from six to eight feet, or even sixteen or eighteen feet in diameter, with a raised border, and three to five feet in depth. Over this cavity we must suppose the branches of trees placed to form a conical roof, which, perhaps, might be made weather-proof by wattling, a covering of rushes, or turf. The opening we may believe to have been placed on the side removed from the prevalent wind: fire in the centre of the hut thus constructed, has left traces in many of the houses examined. The pits in Westerdale are called "ref-holes," i.e. roof-holes, for our Saxon word roof has the meaning of the Icelandic raf and Swedish ref. In several places these pits are associated in such considerable numbers as to give the idea of a village, or even town. On Danby Moor, the pits are divided in two parallel lines, bounded externally by banks, and divided internally by an open space like a street; a stream divides the settlement into two parts; there are no walls at the end of the streets; in the most westerly part is a circular walled space, thirty-five feet in diameter.

"A second type of these foundations of huts has been observed south of the village of Skipwith, near Riccall, south-east of York. These were oval or circular rings slightly excavated in the heathy surface, on the drier parts of the common. On digging into this area, marks of fire were found: they were concluded to be the foundation-lines of huts, mostly enclosed by single or double mounds or ditches.

"The third form of hut foundation, an incomplete ring of stone walls, has only yet been observed in Yorkshire, on the summit of Ingleborough. How strange to find at this commanding height," says Professor Phillips, "encircled by a thick and strong wall, and within this wall the unmistakeable foundations of ancient habitations! The Rev. Robert Cooke, in 1851, concluded Ingleborough to be a great hill-fort of the Britons, defended by a wall like others known in Wales, and furnished with houses like the 'Cittian,' of Gwynedd. The area inclosed is about 15 acres, in which space are nineteen horse-shoe-shaped low foundations, evidently the foundations of ancient huts, the antecedent of the cottages of England,—a low wall foundation, a roof formed by inclined rafters, and covered by boughs, heath, rushes, grass, straw, or sods. The relative dates, surely, admit of no doubt. The huts and walls of Ingleborough exhibit principles of construction which remove them from the catalogue of barbarian works."[3]

The Britons, before the first Roman invasion, slept on skins spread on the floor of their rude dwellings. Rushes and heath were afterwards substituted by the Romans for skins; and on the introduction of agriculture they slept upon straw, which, indeed, was used as a couch in the royal chambers of England at the close of the 14th century.

[BRITAIN BEFORE THE ROMAN COLONIZATION.]

itherto we have but glanced at the dwelling-places of our ancestors, chiefly from existing evidences. Of the general condition of the people before the Roman Conquest, we find this picturesque account in Lappenberg's able work on the Anglo-Saxon Kings. The earliest inhabitants of Britain, as far as we know, were probably of that great family, the main branches of which, distinguished by the designation of Celts, spread themselves so widely over middle and western Europe. They crossed over from the neighbouring country of Gaul. At a later period, the Belgæ, actuated by martial restlessness or the love of plunder, assailed the southern and western coasts of the island, and settled there, driving the Celts into the inland country. Lappenberg's life-like picture of the condition of these people is as follows:—

"In the southern parts of England, which had become more civilized through commerce, the cultivation of grain, to which the mildness of the climate was favourable, had been greatly improved by the art of marling. The daily consumption was taken from the unthrashed corn, preserved in caves, which they prepared for food, but did not bake as bread. Horticulture was not in use among them, nor the art of making cheese; yet the great number of buildings, of people, and of cattle, appeared striking to the Romans. Copper and bits of iron, according to weight, served as money. Their custom of painting themselves with blue and green, for the purpose of terrifying their enemies, as well as that of tattooing, was retained till a later period by the Picts of the North. At certain sacrifices, even the women, painted in a similar manner, resembling Ethiopians, went about without clothing. Long locks and mustachios were general. Like the Gauls, they decorated the middle finger with a ring. Their round simple huts of reeds or wood resembled those of that people; and the Gaulish chequered coloured mantles are still in common use in the Scottish Highlands. Their clothing, more especially that of the Belgic tribes of the south, enveloped the whole body; a girdle encircled the waist, and chains of metal hung about the breast. The hilts of their huge pointless swords were adorned with the teeth of marine animals; their shields were small. The custom of fighting in chariots, on the axles of which scythes were fastened, and in the management of which they showed great skill, was peculiar to this and some other of the Celtic nations, in a generally level country, and where the horses were not sufficiently powerful to be used for cavalry. The charioteer was the superior person; the servant bore the weapons. They began their attacks with taunting songs and deafening howls. Their fortresses or towns consisted in the natural defence of impenetrable forests. In the interior of the country were found only the more rugged characteristics of a people engaged in the rearing of cattle; which, together with the chase, supplied skins for clothing, and milk and flesh for food. The northern part of the country seems in great measure to have been abandoned to the shaft and javelin of the roving hunter, as skilful as he was bold. Simplicity, integrity, temperance, with a proneness to dissension, are mentioned as the leading characteristics of the nation. The reputation of bravery was more especially ascribed to the Norman races."

The only persons in Britain who possessed any knowledge before the Roman invasion, and even for some considerable time after it, were the Druids: the real extent of their attainments is, however, doubtful and superficial, from the fact that, though they were acquainted with the Greek letters, they taught almost entirely by memory, and committed little or nothing to writing. A summary of what is known concerning Druidical knowledge is contained in the following particulars:—Concerning the universe, they believed that it should never be entirely destroyed or annihilated, though it was expected to suffer a succession of violent changes and revolutions, by the predominating powers of fire and water. They professed to have great knowledge of the movements of the heavens and stars; indeed, their religion required some attention to astronomy, since they paid considerable regard to the changes of the moon. Their time was computed by nights, according to very ancient practice, by moons or months; and by years, when the planet had gone the revolutions of the seasons. That at least they knew the reversion of the seasons, as adapted to agricultural purposes, is evident from the fact, that Cæsar landed in Britain on the 26th day of August, when he states that the harvest was all completed, excepting one field, which was more backward than the rest of the country.

The sacred animal of the Druids' religion was the milk-white bull; the sacred bird, the wren; the sacred tree, the oak; the sacred plant, the mistletoe; the sacred herbs, the trefoil and the vervain; the sacred form, that of three divine letters or rays, in the shape of a cross, symbolizing the triple aspect of God. The sacred herbs and plant, with another plant, hyssop, the emblem of fortitude in adversity, were gathered on the sixth day of the moon. The great festivals of Druidism were three: the solstitial festivals of the rise and fall of the year, and the winter festival. At the spring festival, the bâltân, or sacred fire, was brought down by means of a burning-glass from the sun. No hearth in the island was held sacred till the fire on it had been relit from the bâltân. The bâltân became the Easter festival of Christianity, as the mid-winter festival, in which the mistletoe was cut with the golden sickle from the sacred oak, became Christmas. The mistletoe, with its three berries, was the symbol of the Deity in his triple aspect—its growth on the oak, of the incarnation of the Deity in man.

The canonicals of the Arch-Druid were extremely gorgeous. On his head he wore a tiara of gold, in his girdle the gem of augury, on his breast the ior morain, or breast-plate of judgment; below it, the glan neidr, or draconic egg: on the forefinger of the right hand, the signet ring of the order; on the forefinger of the left, the gem of inspiration. Before him were borne the volume of esoteric mysteries, and the golden implement with which the mistletoe was gathered. His robe was of a white linen, with a broad purple border.

The sickle with which the mistletoe was cut could not have been of gold, though so described. Stukeley maintains that the Druids cut the mistletoe with their upright hatchets of brass, called celts, put at the end of their staffs. The kind of mistletoe found to this day in Greece is the same with that found in England; and Sir James Smith, the distinguished botanist, contends that when the superstitions of the East travelled westward, our Druids adopted the Greek mistletoe as being more holy or efficacious than any other. The Druids, doubtless, dispensed the plant at a high price: "as late as the seventeenth century peculiar efficacy was attached to it, and a piece hung round the neck was considered a safeguard against witches." (W. Sandys, F.S.A.)

It is concluded that the Druids possessed some knowledge of arithmetic, using the Greek characters as figures, in the public and private computations mentioned by Cæsar; they were not unacquainted with mensuration, geometry, and geography, because, as judges, they decided disputes about the limits of fields, and are even said to have been engaged in determining the measure of the world. Their mechanical skill, and particularly their acquaintance with the lever, is generally argued from the enormous blocks of Stonehenge, and the numerous other massive erections of rude stone which are yet remaining in many parts of the kingdom, and which are commonly attributed to these times.

The remains of the mystic monument of Stonehenge, which stands in the midst of Salisbury Plain, have been variously explained, as to the purpose for which Stonehenge was reared. When perfect, it consisted of two circles and two ellipses of upright stones, concentric, and environed by a bank and ditch; and outside this boundary, of a single upright stone, and a sacred way, via sacra, or cursus. One writer has beheld in Stonehenge a work of antediluvians, and another, a sanctuary of the Danes; and Inigo Jones, a temple of the Romans. By the Saxons it was termed Stonhengist, the hanging stones; and thence came Stonehenge, of which we have this terrible historic legend:—

Ebusa, brother of Hengist, with his brother Octa, landed on the Frith of Forth with an armament of five hundred vessels. The Britons flew to arms. A conference was proposed by Hengist, and accepted by Vortigern. It was held at Stonehenge (Hengist's Stones), and attended by most of the nobility of Britain. On the sixth day, at the high feast, when the sun was declining, was perpetrated the "Massacre of the Long Knives," the blackest crime, with the exception of that of St. Bartholomew, in the annals of any nation. The signal for the Saxons to prepare to plunge their knives, concealed in their boots and under their military cloaks, into the breasts of their gallant, unsuspicious conquerors was, "Let us now speak of friendship and love." The signal for action were the words, "Nemet your Saxas," ("Out with your knives,") and the raising of the banner of Hengist—a white horse on a red field—over the head of Vortigern. Four hundred and eighty of the Christian chivalry of Britain fell before sunset by the hand of the pagan assassins; three only of name—Eidol Count of Gloucester, and the Princes of Vendotia and Cambria—escaping, the first by almost superhuman courage and presence of mind. Priests, ambassadors, bards, and the boyish scions of many noble families, were piled together in one appalling spectacle on the site of the banquet, "Moel Œore"—the Mound of Carnage, about three hundred yards north of the great Temple.

A learned band of inquirers are induced to consider Stonehenge as a Druidic temple, reared on the solitary plain long before Roman, Dane, or Saxon had set foot within the country. Still, Stonehenge was the work of two distinct eras: the smaller circles are attributed to the Celtic Britons, and the other to the Belgæ. There is a common notion that the stones cannot be counted twice alike; but when Charles II. visited Stonehenge in 1651, he counted and re-counted the stones, and proved to his satisfaction the fallacy of this notion.[4]

A few months since, Professor Nielson, in a paper read to the Ethnological Society, considered that Stonehenge was a temple of early fire-worshippers, and of pre-Druidical origin, and belonging to the "Bronze Period" of the northern archæologists. The remains of Stonehenge, he remarked, are placed, not on the summit, but on the declivity of a hill surrounded by numerous barrows, from which bronze articles have been exhumed, with others of flint, but never any of iron. He considers that fire-worshippers preceded Druids in Britain and Gaul, and gives what he regards as numerous proofs of the building of such stone open temples by colonies of Phœnicians. Circles of large stones, exactly identical in description with those called Celtic or Druidical, he continued, are found in countries where neither Celts nor Druids ever existed; but who knows at what time the ancient religion of this country may be truly said to have been pre-Druidical or pre-Celtic in its principles? From various considerations the author of the paper thinks there may be sufficient reason to regard the remains of Stonehenge as Phœnician, and connected with the rites of Baal, or the early worship of fire.

Mr. Fergusson and others say that to the Buddhists rather than to the Druids we owe Stonehenge. It is also thought to have been an assemblage of burial-places.

A popular poet has thus apostrophised this mysterious circle and its historical associations:

"Thou noblest monument of Albion's isle!
Whether by Merlin's aid from Scythia's shore
To Amber's fatal plain Pendragon bore,
Huge frame of giant hands, the mighty pile,
To entomb his Britons slain by Hengist's guile:
Or Druid priests, sprinkled with human gore,
Taught 'mid thy mighty maze their mystic lore:
Or Danish chiefs, enrich'd with savage spoil,
To Victory's idol vast, an unhewn shrine,
Rear'd the rude heap: or in thy hallow'd round,
Repose the kings of Brutus' genuine line:
Or here those kings in solemn state were crown'd:
Studious to trace thy wondrous origin,
We muse on many an ancient tale renown'd."
Warton.

The Druids were suspected of magic, which, Pliny remarks, derived its origin from medicine. They highly esteemed a kind of stone, or fossil, called Anginum Ovum, or Serpents' Egg, which should make the possessor superior in all disputes, and procure the favour of great persons. It was in the form of a ring of glass, either plain or streaked, and was asserted to be produced by the united salivas of a cluster of serpents, raised up in the air by their hissing; when, to be perfectly efficacious, it was to be caught in a clean white cloth before it fell to the ground, the person who received it instantly mounting a swift horse, and riding away at full speed from the rage of the serpents, who pursued him with like rapidity, until they arrived at a river. It has been supposed that these charms were no other than rings of painted glass; and, as it is allowed that the British had home manufactures of glass, it seems that there were imitations of them sold at an equally high price with the real amulet. Their genuineness was to be tried by their setting them in gold, and observing if they swam against the stream when cast into the water; they were, in fact, beads of glass, and the notion of their rare virtues exactly accords with the African exposition in the present day of the Aggry beads. Sir Richard Colt Hoare found one of the Druidic beads in a barrow in Wiltshire, in material resembling little figures found with the mummies in Egypt, and to be seen in the British Museum. "This curious bead," says Sir Richard Hoare, "has two circular lines, of opaque sky-blue and white, and seems to represent a serpent entwined round a centre, which is perforated. This was certainly one of the Glain Neidyr of the Britons; derived from Glain, which is pure and holy, and Neidyr, a snake."[5]

The accounts we have of the Druidical orations and discourses afford some notion of their admitted eloquence, which was of a lofty, impassioned, and mysterious character. Their counsel was equally solicited and regarded; and those orators who succeeded the Druids in the Western Islands seem to have possessed no less power, since, if one of them asked anything even of the greatest inhabitant, as his dress, horse, or arms, it was immediately given up to him—sometimes from respect, and sometimes from fear of being satirized, which was considered a great dishonour. The British chieftains, also, appear to have been gifted with considerable oratorical powers when they addressed their soldiers before a battle; as Tacitus translates the British names of such by "incentives to war."

The Druids were the only physicians and surgeons to the Britons; in which professions they blended some knowledge of natural medicines, with the general superstitions by which they were characterised. The practice of the healing art has ever commanded the esteem of the rudest nations; hence it was the obvious policy of the priests or Druids to study the properties of plants. Their famous Mistletoe, or All-heal, we have seen, was a cure in many diseases, an antidote to poisons, and a sure remedy against infection. We have in the present day a popular remedy for cuts and other wounds, sold under the name of Heal-all. Another plant, called Samulus, or Marsh-wort, which grew chiefly in damp places, was believed to be of excellent effect in preserving the health of swine or oxen, when it had been bruised and put into their water-troughs. But it was required to be gathered fasting and with the left hand, without looking back when it was being plucked. A kind of hedge hyssop, called Selago, was esteemed to be a general charm and preservative from sudden accidents and misfortunes; and it was to be gathered with nearly the same ceremony as the mistletoe. To these may be added Vervain, the herb Britannica, which was either the great Water-dock, or scurvy-grass; besides several other plants, the virtues of which, however, were greatly augmented by the rites in plucking them; superstitions not entirely out of use, while the old herbals were regarded as books of medicine. We gather from Pliny's Natural History some hints on the preparation of these materials, showing that sometimes the juices were extracted by bruising and steeping them in cold water, and sometimes by boiling them; that they were occasionally infused in a liquor which he calls wine; that they were administered in fumigations; and that the dried leaves, stalks, and roots of plants, were also used to impart a virtue to various liquids. The almost solitary shop of the herbalist in our great market in Covent Garden, will thus carry the mind's eye back through many centuries.

It appears that the Druids prepared ointments and salves from vegetables. Of their surgery nothing is certainly known, though much has been conjectured of their acquaintance with anatomy, from the barbarity of their human sacrifices; but it is probable that their practice extended only to the plainer branches of the art, as healing of wounds, setting of fractured bones, reducing dislocations, &c.; all which were perhaps conducted with great rudeness, though with considerable ceremony. It has been asserted that one of the Druid doctors, called Hierophilus, read lectures on the bodies of upwards of 700 living men, to display the wonders and secrets of the human fabric.

The Greek letters were used by the Druids for keeping the public or private records, the only matters which they reduced to writing. The Druid schools and seminaries were held in the caves such as we have already described, or in the recesses of the sacred groves and forests of Britain. The most eminent academy is said to have been in the Isle of Anglesey, near the residence of the Arch-Druid; and there are still two spots there called "the Place of Studies," and "the Astronomer's Circle." The British youth, separated from their parents, were under Druidical instruction until they were fourteen, and no one was capable of a public employment who had not been educated by a Druid. The Roman invasion, however, greatly improved the Druidical plan of instruction; since Julius Agricola was careful that the sons of the principal Britons should be taught the liberal sciences. His endeavours were considerably assisted by the expulsion of the Druids, which took place about this period; and also by the ability of the British youth, whom he declared to excel the Roman. The ranks of the priests were recruited from the noblest families of the early Britons: their education, which often extended over a period of twenty years, comprehended the whole sciences of the age; and beside their sacred calling, they were invested with power to decide civil disputes. Their dwellings and temples were situated in the thickest oak groves, which were sacred to the Supreme Deity.

No sculptured stones or storied bricks have ever been found of this period; nothing but weapons of stone, of bronze, and lastly, of iron, remain to attest the slow progress of a rude people towards a higher stage of civilization, in the arts relating to the chase and to war. As the Gauls used to ornament their shields and helmets with brass images of animals and horns, it is not improbable that some rude endeavour decorated the armour of the Britons. Whatever their skill might be, it was, doubtless, greatly improved by the Romans, since their bas-reliefs and effigies have been found in different parts of the kingdom; and as early as a.d. 61, not twenty years after the invasion of Claudius Cæsar, a statue of Liberty was erected at Camulodunum, or Colchester.

The early custom of painting the body has been incidentally mentioned. The Southern Britons stained their bodies with woad, deep blue, or a general tint; the Northern Britons added something of design by tracing upon their limbs figures of herbs, flowers, and trees, and all kinds of animals. It is doubtful whether in these arts they were improved by the Romans; since the delineation of deities, which Gildas mentions, on the walls of the British houses, are said by him only to resemble demons.

Although Cæsar describes the natives of Britain as a hardy race of shepherds, whose simple wants were provided for in their own country, even then the commerce of Britain was of considerable importance; since the tin of Cornwall, and the hides of the vast flocks of cattle, had already induced the merchants of Phœnicia to visit and settle on our southern shores. They are believed to have supplied the Eastern world with Cornish tin, of such important use in the manufacture of bronze tools, weapons, and helmets of antiquity.[6]

The principal and most ancient exports from Britain were, besides its famous tin, lead and copper; but lime and chalk, salt, corn, cattle, skins, earthenware, horses, staves, and native dogs, which appear always to have been held in great estimation, were also carried thence. The largest and finest pearls, too, are said to have been found on the British coasts; and the wicker baskets of Britain are celebrated by Martial and Juvenal as luxuries in Rome. And from Rome, the Britons received ivory, bridles, gold chains, amber cups, and drinking glasses.

There are few remains of the ornaments in use amongst the Britons at a very early period: there are many relics, however, of that just preceding the Roman Conquest. We find torques or chains for the neck and wrists coarsely manufactured, like curb-chains. Beads were also in use. Many of the most ancient ornaments were cruciform. With the Roman Conquest came in the Roman ornamentation. This does not seem to have been modified by its introduction into Britain. The Romans imported Rome bodily into Britain, as was their custom in all the conquered countries, and the Britons were too uncivilized to make improvements on what was presented to them. For this reason it is that there is the greatest difficulty to distinguish between pure Roman and Anglo-Roman ornaments.

That the Britons both understood and practised the art of working in metals, is ascertained from the relics of their weapons, as axes, spear and arrow heads, swords, &c. which are yet extant; and it is supposed that tin was the first ore which they discovered and refined. Lead they found in great abundance, very near the surface. The British iron was of uncommon occurrence, and was much prized, since it was used in personal ornaments, and was even formed into rings and tallies for money. This then precious metal has contributed more than any other to the greatness of England in those mighty works of our own times, her railways and vast ships of passage and war.

All the Britons, except the Druids, were trained early to war. Their most ancient weapons were bows, reed-arrows with flint or bone heads, quivers of basket-work, oaken spears; and flint battle-axes, which are now considered to have been called celts, though there is no connexion between this word and the name of the nation, Celtæ. The British forces included infantry, cavalry, and such as fought from war-chariots. The southern foot soldiers wore a coarse woollen tunic, and over it a cloak reaching below the middle, the legs and thighs being covered with close garments. They had brass helmets, breastplates full of hooks, and long swords suspended from an iron or brazen girdle. They also carried large darts, with iron shafts eighteen inches long; and shields of wicker or wood. The inland foot soldiers were more lightly armed, with spears and small shields, and dressed in skins of oxen. The Caledonians and other northerns usually fought naked, with only a light target; their weapons pointless swords and short spears. The British cavalry were mounted upon small but strong horses, without saddles, and their arms were mostly the same as those of the infantry. The soldiers of the war-chariots were mostly the chiefs of the nation, and the flower of the British youth. Their chariots were of wicker, upon wooden wheels, with hooks and scythe blades of bronze attached to the axles, with which the charioteer mowed down the enemy. Other chariots contained several persons, who darted lances; both machines broke the hostile ranks, and threw an army into confusion. Their number must have been very great; since Cassibellaunus, after he had disbanded his army, had still 4,000 remaining.

Primitive British vessels have occasionally been found embedded in morasses. In 1866, there was discovered at Warningcamp, about a mile from South Stoke, in Sussex, a canoe, in widening a ditch, or sewer, which empties itself into the river Arun: although now narrow, it appears to have been, until recently, of much greater extent, and at one time must have formed an important estuary of the river, for in the soil are now seen several thousands of shells of fresh-water fish. About four feet beneath the surface the end of the canoe was found. It proved to be 13½ feet long, and consisted of the hollowed trunk of an oak tree; but bears evidence of design, for having insertions cut on the edge, in which it is evident three seats had been secured for the boatmen. It is perhaps not so interesting as the canoe discovered at Stoke about twenty years ago, and now in the British Museum, because it is not so perfect. Still, it would appear of the greatest antiquity, from its extremely rude form. The canoe is the general vessel of New Zealand, the present state and people of which country are thought to exhibit more nearly than any other land the condition of Britain when the Romans entered it nearly eighteen centuries since.

[THE ROMANS IN ENGLAND.]

"The Romans in England they once did sway."

Old Song.

rchæological information obtained of late years shows that at the time of the Roman invasion, there was a larger amount of civilization in Ancient Britain than had been generally supposed: that in addition to the knowledge of the old inhabitants in agriculture, in the training and rearing of horses, cows, and other domestic animals, they were able to work in mines, had skill in the construction of war-chariots and other carriages, and in the manufacture of metals; and there is evidence that British manufactures and materials were exported to certain parts of the Continent, probably in British vessels. The ancient coinage of this period is also well worthy of attention.

In connexion with the Ancient British period, it would seem that probably 2,000 years before the Roman times there had been in Great Britain a certain degree of civilization, which from various causes declined in extent. If Stonehenge may be considered as of the same antiquity as similar remains in various parts of the East—which are reckoned by good authorities to be 4,000 years old—we had in this country a degree of civilization which was contemporary with the prosperous period of the Egyptian empire; and, in times more immediately preceding the Roman occupation, we know that Britain was the grand source of Druidical illumination (whatever relation that may have had to a true civilization) to the whole of Continental Europe.

That the Ancient Britons, even after they were conquered by the Romans, had still a strength considered dangerous, is shown by the fact that upwards of forty barbarian legions which had followed the Roman standards were settled chiefly upon the northern and eastern coasts; and it is shown that a force of about 19,200 Roman foot and 1,700 horse was required to secure peace, and the carrying out of certain laws in the island.

The encampments, Roman and British, are thus described. In the Roman camp, the plan is invariably the same—a rectangular area, surrounded by a ditch, the earth thrown inwards, forming a high mound, defended on the top with wooden palisades, but of these all vestiges have disappeared: in the middle of each side the entrance, from which a way led to the opposite gate; and at or near the outer action of the two ways, was the Prætorium, the remains of which may frequently be traced. These camps are not usually found on very high hills. The Britons, on the other hand, always occupied the highest ground, frequently an isolated hill, which they surrounded with deep trenches and a series of low terraces scooped out of the side of the hill, rising one above another, not in an unbroken line, but forming, in some places, a network of flat forms, commanding every approach to the entrances, with advantageous positions for the sling, in the use of which the Britons peculiarly excelled. Every inequality of the ground was taken advantage of: the entrances sometimes opened into one of the trenches, through which the approach to the interior leads, so as to expose an enemy to an overwhelming storm of darts and stones from the heights above.

Our early historians mention four great roads by which South Britain was traversed, and these usually have been considered as the work of its conquerors; but recent researches have led to the conclusion that the Romans only kept in repair, and perhaps improved, the roads which they found in use on their settlement in the island. Along the course of the great roads, or in their immediate vicinity, are found the principal cities, which, in pursuance of their usual policy, the Romans either founded or re-edified; and to which, according to the privilege bestowed, the various names were given of colonies, municipalities, stipendiary, and Latian cities. Many other Roman roads exist.

"The old British roads, or trackways, were not paved or gravelled, but had a basis of turf, and wound along the tops or sides of the chains of hills which lay in their way. Surrey furnishes a remarkable example of such an appropriation of one of its chalk ridges; and it may be inferred that the agger called the Hog's Back presented to the earliest inhabitants of Britain a natural causeway of solid chalk, covered with a soft verdant turf, peculiarly suited to the traffic of the British chariots, and connecting the western Belgæ with the Cantii, and affording through them an access towards the continent at all seasons of the year. These advantageous peculiarities, no doubt, rendered it the grand strategic route by which an invading army would have penetrated to the westward; and Vespasian may be supposed, with great reason, to have marched along it."[7]

To return to the Roman Roads. Although inferior to the Britons of the nineteenth century in the art of spending money, if judged by the present state of science, the Roman road-makers could not be despicable engineers: their levels were chosen on different principles, but their lines of roads passed through the same counties, and generally in the same direction as our railways. A diagram in the Quarterly Review, exhibiting a general view of the direction of the principal Roman roads in England, shows that, on comparing one or two of our principal lines, we shall find, that the Great Western supplies the place, with a little deviation near Reading, of the Roman iter from London to Bath and Bristol; the Liverpool and Manchester, and on to Leeds and York, replaces the northern Watling-street; the Great Eastern follows a Roman way, and so of the rest.[8]

Professor Phillips has thus strikingly illustrated this comparison to be made in the North of England. "As now two railways, so a little earlier two mail-roads, and far earlier two British tracks, conducted the traveller from South Britain through the sterner country of the North. This is the inevitable result of the great anticlinal ridge of stratified rocks—our Pennine Alps—thrown up from Derbyshire to the Scottish Border. This is the 'heaven water' boundary of the river drainages: on the west of it ran the line of road northward from Mancunium; on the east of it the line from Eburacum; the former nearly in the course of the North-eastern, the latter not lately deviating from the North-eastern rail. Along these routes Agricola divided his troops: these were the routes followed alike by the Pict and Scot, Plantagenet and Tudor, Cavalier and Roundhead. Wade lay on the east of these mountains, while the Stuart overran their western slopes: and Rupert swept up the western tract to surprise the besiegers of York."[9] On the whole it appears that the lines of the earlier British roads were indicated by the great features of nature; and that, for the most part, the Roman ways followed and straightened the old tracks.

"It is equally remarkable and significant that the Roman municipia and coloniæ became the centres of Saxon and Anglican strength; and if in this day of the steam-engine their relative importance is less conspicuous, it is still a matter of English history. From the top of the Brigantian mountain we may reanimate the busy world which has long passed away from life: the jealous boundaries of propriety disappear; the chimneys vanish; the thundering hammer is silent. From the midst of boundless forests of oak and pine, rise many peaks or bare summits of heaths crowned with monumental stones or burial mounds. The rivers gliding through the deepest shade, bear at intervals the light wicker boat, still frequent in Dyfed, loaded with fish, or game, or fruit. On dry banks above are the conical huts of the rude hunters, and near them the not narrower houses of the dead,—perhaps not far off the cave of the wolf. Lower down the dale, the richest of pastures is covered with the fairest of cattle and the most active of horses. Still lower, the storehouse of the tribe, the water station to which large canoes, hollowed from the mighty oaks of Hatfield Chase, have brought from the Humber the highly-prized beads and amulets, perhaps the precious bronze which is to replace the arrow, spear, and axe of stone.

"Both north and south of the Humber very different scenes appear on the high and open Wold: within the memory of man, many parts of these wild regions were untouched by plough, traversed by bustard, and covered with innumerable flocks. The more we reflect on the remains which crowd this region—the numerous tracks, the countless tumuli, the frequent dykes—the clearer grows the resemblance between the Yorkshire Wolds and the Downs of Wilts and Dorset. On opening the tumuli we discover similar ornaments, and from whatever cause, consanguinity of race, or analogy of employments and way of life, the earliest people must be allowed to have been very much the same along the dry chalk hills from the vicinity of Bridlington to the country of Dorchester. This is the region of the tumuli: on its surface are not unfrequent foundations of the British huts."

The main population did not reside on these hills, since they are for miles naturally dry. But, from below their edge rise innumerable bright streams, by which, "no doubt, were the settled habitations, the Cyttian of the early Britons, followed by the Saxon tun and the Danish by; on the hills above were long boundary fences, and within these the raths and tumuli, the monumental stones and idols. In situations where nature gave peculiar advantages, one of the grand manufactures of the tribes was established. The fabrication of pottery, from the Kimmeridge clay about Malton, was undoubtedly very extensive in British days, and characteristic both as to substance and fashion; that of bricks and tiles at York was equally considerable in Roman days, and it is curious to walk now into the large brick-yards and potteries which are successfully conducted at these same places, on the very sites which furnished the funeral urn, and the perforated tube which distributed air from the hypocaust."

We may acquire some idea of Roman road-making from the following details:—"From the wall of Antoninus to Rome, and from thence to Jerusalem, that is, from the north-west to the south-east point of the empire, was measured a distance of 3,740 English miles; of this distance 85 miles only were sea-passages, the rest was the road of polished silex. Posts were established along these lines of high road, so that 100 miles a day might be with ease accomplished. A fact related by Pliny affords an example of the quickest travelling in a carriage in ancient times. Tiberius Nero, with three carriages, accomplished a journey of 200 miles in twenty-four hours, when he went to see his brother Drusus, who was sick in Germany." (Burgess.)

The towns, and forts, and roads are, however, very far from being the only traces of Roman occupation that remain in our country. Camps, occupying well-chosen positions, occur in numbers, which testify the difficulty with which the subjugation of the island was accomplished; while the remains of stately buildings, with ornamented baths, mosaic pavements, fresco paintings and statuary, and articles of personal ornament, which are discovered almost every time that the earth is uncovered to any considerable depth, prove the eventual wide diffusion of the elegant and luxurious mode of life which it was the aim of the conquerors to introduce. Roman glass and pottery, in great variety, and frequently of the most elegant shape, abound; but the most valuable are the sepulchral urns, which betoken the neighbourhood of towns, of which perhaps no other traces now remain.

At Aldborough, in Yorkshire (the Roman Isurium), and in some of the small towns on the line of Hadrian's wall, in Northumberland, masses of the small houses have been uncovered, and their appearance leads us to believe that the houses of a Roman town in Britain were grouped thickly together; that they were mostly separated by narrow alleys, and that there were in general few streets of any magnitude; most ancient towns, even in the present day, abound with alleys.

It is maintained by some antiquaries that London is almost of Roman origin. In the "Conquest of Britain," by Claudius, a.d. 44, "the first care of the Romans was, to make good military communication across the north of Essex, and the tenure of London was then a matter of minor importance. It is remarkable that, though the bridge over the Thames is mentioned, there is no allusion to a city. It is not improbable that the Romans, perceiving the advantage of the position at the head of the estuary and at the mouth of a large river, and having the power (after the occupation of both banks of the Thames) of giving it better military protection than the native tribes, continually in conflict, could ever give it, promoted the commercial growth of the city by all means in their power. Thus it would seem that London, almost from its origin, is a Roman city."

In the revolt of the Britons, a.d. 61, Londinium (London), already, according to Tacitus, "famed for the vast conflux of traders, and her abundant commerce and plenty," was destroyed by the Britons.

London has hitherto yielded up many traces of the manners and indications of our Roman ancestors, but few of our earliest antiquities. Our Roman London has been buried beneath the foundations of the modern city, or rather beneath the ruins of a city several times destroyed, and as often rebuilt. It is only at rare intervals that excavators strike down upon the venerable remains of the earliest occupation; and huge masses of genuine Roman fortifications have been seen in our day, but by few persons in comparison with the busy multitudes which daily throng our streets.

When the Roman legions were finally withdrawn, Britain possessed more than fifty walled towns, united by roads with stations upon them; there were also numerous military walled stations. These towns and stations possessed public buildings, baths, and temples, and edifices of considerable grandeur and architectural importance, and their public places were often embellished with statues: one bronze equestrian statue, at least, decorated Lincoln; a bronze statue stood in a temple at Bath; one of the temples at Colchester bore an inscription in large letters of bronze; and Verulam possessed a theatre for dramatic representations, capable of holding some 2,000 or 3,000 spectators. Verulam now presents nothing to the eye but some fields, a church, and a dwelling-house, surrounded by walls overgrown with trees. Colchester, Lincoln, and Bath exhibit few indications of their Roman times; but Chester is richer in these characteristics. The spacious villas which once spread over Roman Britain, are now known to us as from time to time their splendid pavements are laid open under corn-fields and meadows. In a nook of the busy Strand is a Roman bath, of accredited antiquity, its bricks and stucco corresponding with those in the City wall: this bath can be traced to have belonged to the villa of a Leicestershire family, which stood upon this spot,—the north bank of the Thames.

In the year 1864, there was discovered on the site of the portico of the East India-house, in Leadenhall-street, the remains of a Roman room, in situ 19 ft. 6 in. below the present surface of the street, and 6 ft. below the lowest foundations of the India-house. The room was about 16 ft. square; the walls built of Roman bricks and rubble; the floor paved with good red tesseræ, but without any ornamental pattern; the walls plastered and coloured in fresco of an agreeable tint, and decorated with red lines and bands. This was a small room, attached to the atrium of a large house, of which near the same spot a large and highly ornamented pavement was found in 1804; the central portion of this pavement is now preserved in the Indian Museum at Whitehall. This was the most magnificent Roman tesselated pavement yet found in London. It lay at only 9½ ft. below the street, and appeared to have been the floor of a room 20 ft. square. In the centre was a Bacchus upon a tiger, encircled with three borders (inflections of serpents, cornucopiæ, and squares diagonally concave), and drinking-cups and plants at the angles. Surrounding the whole was a square border of a bandeau of oak, and lozenge figures, and true lovers' knots, and a 5 ft. outer margin of plain red tiles.

Mr. Roach Smith has shown, in his admirable Illustrations of Roman London (the originals now in the British Museum), that the area and dimensions of the Roman city may be mapped out from the masses of masonry forming portions of its boundaries, many of which have come to light in the progress of recent City improvements. The course of the Roman Wall is ascertainable from the position of the gates (taken down in 1760-62), from authenticated discoveries and from remains yet extant. Recent excavations have also proved that within the area thus inclosed, most of the streets of the present day run upon the remains of Roman houses; and it is confidently believed that the Romans had here a bridge across the Thames, probably a wooden roadway upon stone piers, like those of Hadrian at Newcastle, and of Trajan across the Danube. It seems to be ascertained that there was a suburb also on the southern side of the Thames (Southwark), not inclosed in walls; and that the houses constructed upon this swampy spot were built upon wooden piles, of which some remains are still in existence.

The Roman inscriptions and sculptures which have been discovered in London are very numerous. Sir Christopher Wren brought to light a monument to a soldier of the Second Legion, now among the Arundelian Marbles at Oxford. At Ludgate, behind the London Coffee-house, a monumental inscription, a female head in stone (life-size), and the trunk and thighs of a statue of Hercules, were dug up in 1806. In 1842 was found at Battle Bridge a Roman inscription, attesting the great battle between the Britons under Boadicea and the Romans under Suetonius Paulinus, to have been fought on this spot. Stamped tiles have been found in various parts of the city. A group of the Deæ Matres was discovered in excavating a sewer in Hart-street, Crutched-friars, at a considerable depth, amongst the ruins of Roman buildings, and is now in the Guildhall Library. A fine sarcophagus was dug up in Haydon-square, Tower Hill; a statue of a youth in Bevis Marks; and an altar, apparently to Diana, was found under Goldsmiths' Hall. Fragments of wall-paintings have been carried away by cart-loads. Bronzes of a very high class of art have been found: a head of Hadrian, of superior workmanship, has been dredged up from the bed of the Thames; a colossal bronze head found in Thames-street; an exquisite bronze Apollo, in the Thames, in 1837; a Mercury, worthy to be its companion; the Priest of Cybele; and the Jupiter of the same date, are most important figures, and the first two worthy of any metropolis in any age. A bronze figure of Atys was also found at Barnes among gravel taken from the spot where the preceding bronzes were discovered. A bronze figure of an archer, also a beautiful work of art, was discovered in Queen-street, in 1842. An extraordinary bronze forceps, adorned with representations of the chief deities of Olympus, was also found in the Thames, whence again, in 1825, came the small silver Harpocrates, now in the British Museum.

Nowhere has the pottery of antiquity been so abundantly discovered as at London. Roman kilns were brought to light in digging the foundations of St. Paul's, in 1677; specimens of the Castor pottery have been found here; Samian ware is abundant, as have been potters' stamps which present 300 varieties, fragments of clay statuettes, terra-cotta lamps, tiles, and glass; and among the Roman glass discovered in London are several fragments of a flat and semi-transparent kind, which have every appearance of having been used as window-glass. And still more curious it is to find that specimens of a glass manufacture termed pillar-moulding, and for which Mr. James Green took out a patent, have also turned up among the débris of the Roman city. Mr. Green's patent had been worked for some years under the full belief that it was a modern invention, until Mr. Apsley Pellatt recognised in the fragments evidence of the antiquity of the supposed discovery.[10] Among the personal ornaments and implements of the toilet are the gold armillæ dug up in Cheapside in 1837; the tweezers, nail-cleaners, mirrors, and strigils of the city dames of Londinium; the worn-out sandals thrown upon the dust-heaps; the sporls, spindles, fishhooks, bucket-handles, bells, balances, cocks, millstones, mortars, and other utensils which show the resources of an opulent city in the enjoyment of ancient luxury, and of the choicest appliances of ancient civilization. Of Roman coins found in London, in the bed of the Thames, Mr. Roach Smith enumerates 2,000; from gravel dredged from the Thames, 600 were picked out; a hoard of denarii of the Higher Empire was found in the city; and vast quantities were found in removing the piers of old London Bridge. In excavating for the foundations of the new Royal Exchange, in 1841, was discovered a gravel pit, supposed by Mr. Tite, the architect, to have been dug during the earliest Roman occupation of London; and then to have been a pond, gradually filled with rubbish. In it were found Roman work, stuccoed and painted; fragments of elegant Samian ware; an amphora, and terra-cotta lamps, seventeen feet below the surface; also pine-wood table-books and metal styles, sandals and soldiers' shoes, a Roman strigil, coins of Vespasian, Domitian, &c.; and almost the very footmarks of the Roman soldier.

More recently, the investigation of the ruins of the Roman city of Uriconium, at Wroxeter, near Shrewsbury, has presented us with a scene for our special wonder. The earliest antiquarian report of this interesting spot will be found in the Philosophical Transactions for the year 1701, where Lyster has described a Roman sudatory, or hypocaustum, discovered in Wroxeter in that year. It is strange that so important a locality should have remained unexplored during a century and a half of archæological research. The present is the first instance in which there has been in this country the chance of penetrating into a city of more than fourteen centuries ago, on so large a scale, and with such extensive remains of its former condition; where the visitor may walk over the floors which had been trodden last, before they were thus uncovered, by the Roman inhabitants of this island.

Giants are frequently associated with ruins and ancient relics in the legends of Shropshire.[11] In the history of the Fitzwarines we are given to understand that the ruined Roman city of Uriconium, which we are now exploring at Wroxeter, had been taken possession of by the giants. The city is mentioned by the geographer Ptolemy to have been standing here as early as the beginning of the second century, when it was called Viroconium, a name which appears to have been changed in the later Romano-British period to Uriconium. The line of the ancient town-wall forms an irregular oval more than three miles in circumference, on the Watling-street road, which occupies the line of one of the principal streets of the old city. The only portion of the buildings above ground is upwards of twenty feet high, seventy-two feet long, and three feet thick, and is a solid mass presenting those unmistakeable characteristics of Roman work—the long string courses of large flat red bricks. This "Old Wall" stands nearly in the centre of the ancient city, which occupied the highest ground within the walls—a commanding position, with the bold isolated form of the Wrekin in the rear, and in front a panorama of mountains formed by the Wenlock and Stretton Hills, Caer Caradoc, the Longwynd, the Breidden, and the still more distant mountains of Wales. With the exception of this wall, all the remains of the Roman city had long been buried beneath the soil, when, in February 1859, the excavation of the remains was commenced by public subscription. In one of the plundering invasions by the Picts and Scots, Uriconium is thought to have perished, towards the middle of the fifth century, by fire, and such of the inhabitants as were not massacred were dragged away into captivity. Thus the town was left an extensive mass of blackened walls; and such was the condition in which the ruined Roman towns remained during several centuries. The ruins would in time be overgrown with plants and trees, and would become the haunt of wild beasts, which were then abundant. Thus Uriconium stood ruined and deserted from the middle of the fifth century to the middle of the twelfth; the level of the ground was raised by decaying floors and roofs, and vegetation; for at this time England was covered with the débris of Roman ruined towns and villages standing above ground. Such ruins were frequently pillaged for building materials; and Uriconium was probably one of the great quarries from which the builders of Haughmond Abbey, and other monastic houses in this part of the country, were supplied.

The ruins were explored for treasure, and the damaged state of the floors of the Roman houses is attributed to this cause. In the excavations at Wroxeter, we see the floor sometimes perfect, and sometimes broken up; the walls of the remaining houses, to the height of two or three feet, as they were left by the mediæval builders, when they carried away the upper part of the walls for materials; the original level of the Roman town on which its inhabitants trod, strewed with roof-tiles and slates and other material which had fallen in during the conflagration under which the town sank; and the upper part of the soil mixed up with fragments of plaster and cement, bricks and mortar, which had been scattered about when the walls were broken up.

In the early excavations at Uriconium, the bottom of the Old Wall was found at fourteen feet deep; it must have been a public building; portions of the capitals, bases, and shafts of columns were found scattered about, and among other objects were a fragment of strong iron chain, the head of an axe, and pavements of fine mosaic; the building is concluded to have formed the corner of two principal streets of the Roman city. A hypocaust, of great size, was found, with a quantity of unburnt coal; and from the end wall of this hypocaust we learn the interesting fact, that the Roman houses were plastered and painted externally as well as internally; the exterior wall was painted red, with stripes of yellow. A sort of dust-bin was found filled with coins, hair-pins, fibulæ, broken pottery and glass, bones of birds and animals which had been eaten. In another hypocaust were the remains of three persons who had crept in there for concealment; near one lay a little heap of Roman coins, 132 in number, and a decomposed box or coffer. This, Mr. Wright believes, "is the first instance which has occurred in this country, in which we have had the opportunity of ascertaining what particular coins, as being then in daily circulation, an inhabitant of a Roman town in Britain, at the moment of the Roman dominion, carried about with him. The majority of these coins point to the very latest period previous to the establishment of the Anglo-Saxons as the date at which Uriconium must have been destroyed."

Three fine wide streets, paved with small round stones in the roadway, have been found in Uriconium. The Roman houses in Britain had no upper stories, and all the rooms were on the ground-floor; no traces of a staircase have ever been found; the roofing in Uriconium was slates or flags, fixed with an iron nail to the wooden framework; they lapped over each other, in lozenges or diamonds; some of the walls were tesselated in ornamental patterns; few doorways were discovered; window-glass was found one-eighth of an inch thick, though until recently it was thought that the Romans, especially in this distant province, did not use window-glass. The rooms were sometimes heated by hot air circulated in the walls, from hypocausts, and flue-tiles with holes in the sides for the escape of the air; though the hot air merely under the floor was more used, the ashes, wood and coal, and the soot of the fires were found in the hypocausts at Uriconium just as they were left when the city was overthrown and ruined by the barbarians. A large hypocaust is described with 120 columns of bricks, and is thought to have belonged to the public baths. A wide space is pointed out as the forum of Uriconium, and the basilica here holds exactly the same place as at Pompeii.

We have thus glanced at the houses of Uriconium; we now turn to their domestic articles. First is the pottery, of which the most striking is the ware of the colour of bright red sealing-wax, commonly known as Samian ware; several of the pieces found at Wroxeter have been mended, chiefly by metal rivets. There were also found specimens of the Upchurch ware, of simple ornamentation; and of the pottery from Castor, ornamented with hunting-scenes laid on a white substance after the pottery had been baked: the colour of both wares is blue, or slate-colour. Two classes of Roman pottery, both evidently made in Shropshire, were also found: the first, a white ware, consisted of elegantly formed jugs, mortaria or vessels for rubbing or pounding objects in cookery; and bowls painted red and yellow. The other Romano-Salopian pottery is a red ware, and included bowls pierced all over with small holes so as to have served for colanders. Fragments of glass vessels were found, with a ladle, several knives, a stone knife-handle, and several whetstones. Hair-pins of bone, bronze, and wood were found, with bronze fibulæ, buttons, finger-rings, bracelets, combs, bone needles, and bronze tweezers for eradicating superfluous hairs. The most curious of the miscellaneous objects is a medicine-stamp for salves or washes for the eyes, inscribed with, probably, the name of a physician resident in Uriconium. The stones with Roman inscriptions, chiefly sepulchral, are numerous. The church, a Norman edifice, at Wroxeter contains amongst other architectural and sepulchral fragments two capitals, richly ornamented, of the late period of Roman architecture which became the model of the mediæval Byzantine and Romanesque; also, a Roman miliarium, or mile-stone. The general result of these discoveries, is that they show the manner in which this country was inhabited and governed during nearly four centuries; we also learn, from the condition of the ruins of Uriconium, and especially from the remains of human beings which are found scattered over its long-deserted floors, the sad fate under which it finally sank into ruins; and thus we are made vividly acquainted with the character and events of a period of history which has hitherto been but dimly seen through vague tradition.[12]

Many of our Roman cities have become entirely wasted and desolate. Silchester is one of these, where corn-fields and pasture cover the spot once adorned with public and private buildings, all of which are now totally destroyed. Like the busy crowds who inhabited them, the edifices have sunk beneath the fresh and silent greensward: but the flinty wall which surrounded the city is yet firm, and the direction of the streets may be discerned by the difference of tint in the herbage; and the ploughshare turns up the medals of the Cæsars, so long dead and forgotten, who were once masters of the world.[13]

Silchester, thirty-eight acres in extent, is now being excavated, at the cost of the Duke of Wellington. Unlike other Roman sites, Silchester has never been built upon by Britons or Saxons; many beautiful mosaics have been found here, as well as more than 1,000 coins; and in July, 1866, a portion of a wall, hitherto undetected, was brought to light; and here have been found shells of the white snail, which was most extensively imported as food for the Roman soldiers.

We now approach the close of the Roman Era, when, in the words of the Saxon Chronicle, a.d. 418, the conquerors "collected all the treasures that were in Britain, and some they hid in the earth, so that no one has since been able to find them; and some they carried with them into Gaul." With this passage the authentic history of Britain ceases for a period of nearly sixty years. The Roman power being finally withdrawn, a state of society prevailed in the island, much the same as had existed at the coming of Cæsar. The British cities formed themselves into a varying number of independent states, usually at war among themselves, but occasionally united by some common danger into a confederacy under an elective chieftain. Such was Vortigern, who bears the reproach of calling in the aid of the Saxons against both his foreign and domestic foes. Recent researches have rendered it probable that the well-known names of Hengist and Horsa, ascribed to their leaders, are not proper names, but rather titles of honour, signifying war-horse and mare, bestowed on many daring leaders of bands. Meanwhile, the mighty empire of Rome, of which Britain had so long formed a part, was falling into utter ruin. The Britons made several applications to the Romans for aid: one, couched in the most abject terms, is known in history as "The Groans of the Britons;" but the succour they received had no permanent effect on the contest.

In a retrospect of the Roman Era, the conquest of Cæsar is commonly referred to as the starting point in our social progress; and it has been thus felicitously illustrated by a leading writer of our time:—"If," he says, "we compare the present situation of the people of England with that of their predecessors at the time of Cæsar's invasion; if we contrast the warm and dry cottage of the present labourer, its chimney and glass windows (luxuries not enjoyed by Cæsar himself), the linen and woollen clothing of himself and his family, the steel and glass and earthenware with which his table is furnished, the Asiatic and American ingredients of his food, and, above all, his safety from personal injury, and his calm security that to-morrow will bring with it the comforts that have been enjoyed to-day; if we contrast all these sources of enjoyment with the dark and smoky burrows of the Brigantes or the Cantii, their clothing of skins, the food confined to milk and flesh, and their constant exposure to famine and to violence, we shall be inclined to think those who are lowest in modern society richer than the chiefs of their rude predecessors. And if we consider that the same space of ground which afforded an uncertain subsistence to a hundred, or probably fewer, savages, now supports with ease more than a thousand labourers, and, perhaps, a hundred individuals beside, each consuming more commodities than the labour of a whole tribe of ancient Britons could have produced or purchased, we may at first be led to doubt whether our ancestors enjoyed the same natural advantages as ourselves; whether their sun was as warm, their soil as fertile, or their bodies as strong, as our own.

"But let us substitute distance of space for distance of time; and, instead of comparing situations of the same country at different periods, compare different countries at the same period, and we shall find a still more striking discrepancy. The inhabitant of South America enjoys a soil and a climate, not superior merely to our own, but combining all the advantages of every climate and soil possessed by the remainder of the world. His valleys have all the exuberance of the tropics, and his mountain-plains unite the temperature of Europe to a fertility of which Europe offers no example. Nature collects for him, within the space of a morning's walk, the fruits and vegetables which she has elsewhere separated by thousands of miles. She has given him inexhaustible forests, has covered his plains with wild cattle and horses, filled his mountains with mineral treasures, and intersected all the eastern face of his country with rivers, to which our Rhine and Danube are merely brooks. But the possessor of these riches is poor and miserable. With all the materials of clothing offered to him almost spontaneously, he is ill-clad; with the most productive of soils, he is ill-fed; though we are told that the labour of a week will there procure subsistence for a year, famines are of frequent occurrence; the hut of the Indian, and the residence of the landed proprietor, are alike destitute of furniture and convenience; and South America, helpless and indigent with all her natural advantages, seems to rely for support and improvement on a very small portion of the surplus wealth of England."[14]

At length, the connexion between Britain and Rome was entirely severed. The Saxons joined the Picts and the Scots in their great invasion, and continuing their predatory warfare reduced the country to the greatest misery. Any degree of union amongst the Britons might have enabled them to repel their enemies; the walls of the principal cities, fortified by the Romans, were yet strong and firm. The tactics of the legions were not forgotten. Bright armour was piled in the storehouses, and the serried line of spears might have been presented to the half-naked Scots and Picts, who could never have prevailed against their opponents. But the Britons had no inclination to use the sword, except against each other.

[DOMESTIC LIFE OF THE SAXONS.]

he infant state of our Saxon ancestors when the Romans first observed them, exhibited nothing from which human sagacity could have predicted greatness. A territory on the neck of the Cimbric Chersonesus, and three small islands, contained those whose descendants occupy the circle of Westphalia, the Electorate of Saxony, the British Islands, the United States of North America, and the British Colonies in the two Indies. Such is the course of Providence, that empires, the most extended and the most formidable, are found to vanish as the morning mist; while tribes, scarcely visible, or contemptuously overlooked, like the springs of a mighty river, often glide on gradually to greatness and veneration.

Our inquiry, however, must be confined to the arts of these people. Concerning their architecture, it is supposed that the most ancient buildings were of wood; since the Saxon verb Getymbrian, to build, signifies literally to make of timber. The early English churches were built of logs of wood; and the erection of buildings of reeds and trunks of trees seems to have existed in some parts of England to a late period; since, in 940, Hoel Dha, King of North Wales, erected his White House, where his famous laws were made, of twisted branches, with the bark stripped and left white, whence it derived its name. Even in the days of Henry I. also, Pembroke Castle was built of twigs and turf. Bricks were made in England by the Saxons; but they were thin, and were called wall-tiles. It has been supposed that the Saxons and Normans adopted the masonry which the Romans introduced into England, altering it as architecture improved. The principal peculiarities of the Saxon style are the want of uniformity in all its parts, massive columns, semicircular arches, and diagonal mouldings. The first two are common to the barbaric architecture of Europe; the round arches are believed to have been taken from the Romans; and the zig-zag mouldings have been thought to allude to the stringing of the teeth of fishes. According to the best authorities, there are very few specimens of architecture now in existence in this country which can properly be called Saxon,—that is, of date anterior to the Conquest, and not of Roman origin; and these few are of the rudest and most inferior description. Saxon, therefore, as far as the architecture of this country is concerned, is an improper term.[15]

SAXON HOUSE.

The ordinary Saxon homes were of clay, held together by wooden frames; bricks being uncommon, and only used as ornaments: the houses were generally low and mean, or as we should call them, cottages. In a Saxon house of larger proportions, the upper rooms only are lighted by windows; there is no appearance of chimneys; the doorway is in one of the gables, and reaches more than half-way to the top of the house; and above it are some small square windows, which indicate an upper room or rooms. On one side is a low shed, or wing, apparently constructed with square stones, or large bricks, covered, like the house, with semicircular tiles, probably shingles, such as we to this day see on church-spires.

From the Mead-hall and the other Saxon houses of the period, we also get the type of the modern English mansion, with its enceinte and its lodge-gate, as distinguished from its hall-door. The early Saxon house was the whole inclosure, at the gate of which beggars assembled, for alms, and the porter received the alms of strangers. The whole mass inclosed within this wall constituted the burgh, or tun; and the hall, with its duru, or door, was the chief of its edifices. Around it were grouped the sleeping-chambers, or bowers, as they were designated till a late age, with the subordinate offices. Mr. Wright (in his able work on the Domestic Life of the Middle Ages) draws many of his inferences from the description of the Mead-hall, or beer-hall, of Hrothgar, and adds that he believes Bulwer's description of the Saxonized Roman house inhabited by Hilda, in The Last of the Barons, is substantially correct.

We learn from the romance of Beowulf, that "there was for the sons of the Geats (Beowulf and his followers altogether), a bench cleared in the beer-hall; there the bold spirit, free from quarrel, went to sit; the thane observed his office, he that in his hand bare the twisted ale-cup; he poured the bright sweet liquor; meanwhile the poet sang serene in Heorot (the name of Hrothgar's palace); there was joy of heroes." Although our conceptions of this scene are faint and vague, the antiquary is enabled to represent certain items as "the twisted ale-cup," a favourite fashion of our forefathers, many of whose ale-cups, as discovered in their barrows or graves, are incapable of standing upright, implying that their proprietors were thirsty souls.

The lamps of the Romans were certainly used by the Saxons, and were indispensable in the winter-time. Their beds were simply sacks filled out of the chest with fresh straw, and laid on benches as they were wanted; though the pictures indicate that there were some bedsteads of a more elaborate construction, and that others were placed in recesses and protected by curtains. These bed-rooms were public enough, for they were sitting-rooms as well, and we find Dunstan walking to the king's bedside "as he lay in his bed with the queen," and rating him as freely as if he had audience by appointment. The Saxon ladies were very opt to scourge their domestic servants for very slight offences, and the punishment of servile and other transgressors was in other respects barbarous. They were given much to bathing in the baths which the Romans had left them, and it may be that this resource had some influence in determining the national bias towards personal cleanliness, which is such a distinguishing characteristic of the English among northern nations. We may add that the Saxon knew how to build a gallows, how to bait a bear, drive a chariot, fly a hawk, cultivate roses and lilies, and that he certainly knew the use of an umbrella.

A convivial custom which originated in this rude age is too interesting to be omitted here. It is said by some writers that Vortigern married Rowena, the daughter of Hengist. She was very beautiful; and when introduced by her father at the royal banquet of the British king, she advanced gracefully and modestly towards him, bearing in her hand a golden goblet filled with wine. Young people, even of the highest rank, were accustomed to wait upon their elders, and those unto whom they wished to show respect; therefore, the appearance of Rowena as the cup-bearer of the feast was neither unbecoming nor unseemly. And when the lady came near unto Vortigern, she said in her own Saxon language—"Wæs heal plaford Conung;" which means, "Health to my Lord the King." Vortigern did not understand the salutation of Rowena, but the words were explained to him by an interpreter. "Drinc heal," "Drink thou health," was the accustomed answer, and the memory of the event was preserved in merry old England by the wassail cup—a vessel full of spiced wine or good ale, which was handed round from guest to guest, at the banquet and the festival. Well, therefore, might Rowena be recollected on high tides and holidays for the introduction of this concomitant of good cheer.

This story has, however, a pendant. At our great city feasts, to this day—especially at the Mansion House of the Lord Mayor—the Wassail or Loving Cup is passed round the table immediately after dinner, the Lord Mayor having drunk to his visitors a hearty welcome. The more formal practice is for the person who pledges with the loving cup to stand up and bow to his neighbour, who, also standing, removes the cover of the cup with his right hand, and holds it while the other drinks; a custom said to have originated in the precaution to keep the right, or dagger hand employed, that the person who drinks may be assured of no treachery, like that practised by Elfrida on the unsuspecting King Edward the Martyr at Corfe Castle, who was slain while drinking: this was why the cup possessed a cover.

The usages of domestic life, especially at dinner, are copiously illustrated in ancient manuscript illuminations. Mr. Wright quotes the Boke of Kervyng, which enjoins the carver to handle the meats with his thumb and two fingers only,—for the Middle Ages, with all their artistic ingenuity, had not attained to the invention of a fork. In none of the pictures have the guests any plates; they seem to have eaten with their hands and thrown the refuse on the table. We know also that they often threw the fragments on the floor, where they were eaten up by cats and dogs, which were admitted into the hall without restriction.[16] In the Boke of Curtesye it is blamed as a mark of bad breeding to play with the cats and dogs while seated at table. The drinking vessels of this period display fine workmanship and ingenious devices. The Anglo-Saxons were unquestionably huge drinkers, and ornamented their drinking vessels with all the skill in working the precious metals for which they were so famous. But the primitive drinking-cup was the simple horn of the bullock, which was retained as an appendage of the Anglo-Saxon dinner-table until after the Conquest. There were also other drinking vessels, suggested by that ornamentation with which the Anglo-Saxon artificers had enriched the simple cup of the Danes. Peg Tankards are of the Saxon period: one is to be seen in the Ashmolean Museum; but a finer specimen, of undoubted Anglo-Saxon work, formerly belonging to the Abbey of Glastonbury, is now in the possession of Lord Arundel, of Wardour: it holds two quarts, and formerly had eight pegs inside, dividing the liquor into half-pints. On the lid is carved the crucifixion, with the Virgin and John, one on each side; and round the cup are carved the twelve apostles.

Drinking-horns are represented on the Bayeux tapestry, and in the magnificent collection of antiquities in the British Museum there is a capacious specimen of one formed of the small tusk of an elephant, carved with rude figures of that animal, unicorns, lions, and crocodiles. It is mounted with silver; a small tube, ending in a silver cup, issues from the jaws of a pike, whose head and shoulders inclose the mouth of the vessel, on which the following legend is engraved:—

Drink you this and think no scorne
All though the cup be much like horn.

The horn was not long before it had rivals: the commonest of these was the Mazer-bowl, a utensil which, with its cover on, resembled two saucers placed together rim to rim, with a topknot on the upper one. It was usually made of maple wood, from which it is supposed to have derived its name—maeser being Dutch for maple. Of this shape was the early and famous wassail-bowl. When these bowls, which in process of time were made of costlier materials than maple, were large, they were lifted to the mouth with both hands; when small, in the palm of one hand. Our ancestors were much attached to their mazers, and incurred considerable expense in embellishing them, in embossing legends admonitory of peace and good fellowship on the metal rim or on the cover, or in engraving on the bottom a cross or the image of a saint. Spenser, in The Shepherds Calendar, thus describes a vessel of this kind:—

"A mazer ywrought of the maple warre,
Wherein is enchased many a fayre sight
Of bears and tygers, that maken fiers warre;
And over them spred a goodly wilde vine,
Entrailed with a wanton yvy twine.
"Tell me, such a cup hast thou ever seene?
Well moughte it beseeme any harvest queene."

The Mazer continued in use to the seventeenth century, when it was still a favourite with the humbler classes. But on the tables of the rich it gave place to new vessels. There was the Hanap, a cup raised on a stem, with or without a cover. Besides the Hanap, a sort of mug or cup, called the Godet, had also come into vogue; then there were the Juste, used in monasteries to measure a prescribed allowance of wine; the Barrel, the Tankard, the "standing-nut," or mounted shell of the cocoa-nut; and the Grype, or Griffin's Egg, probably the egg of the ostrich. These vessels, except of course the nut and the egg, were ordinarily of silver, and sometimes of ivory, but rarely of gold; and still more rarely of glass, which did not obtain for drinking cups until the close of the fifteenth century. They were for the most part embossed or enamelled with the armorial bearings of their owners, parcel-gilt—i.e. where part of the work is gilt and part left plain; set with jewels and elaborately designed with dances of men and women, with dogs, hearts, roses, and trefoils.

One of the most esteemed Saxon trades was the smith, including workers in gold, silver, iron, and copper. The English were very expert in these arts; and in the laws of Wales the smith ranked next to the chaplain in the Prince's court. The Saxons produced some very highly-finished specimens of jewellery, goldsmith's work, and even of enamelling. A very beautiful specimen of gold enamelled work is preserved in the Ashmolean collection at Oxford: it is commonly known as Alfred's Jewel, as it bears his name, and was found in 1693, in the immediate neighbourhood of his retreat. It is filagree work, inclosing a piece of rock crystal, under which appears a figure in enamel, which has not been satisfactorily explained. The ground is of a rich blue, the face and arms of the figure white, the dress principally green, the lower portion partly of a reddish-brown. The inscription is "Aelfred mee heht gevrean," (Alfred ordered me to be made,) thus affording the most authentic testimony of its origin. Curious reliquaries, finely carved and set with precious stones, were, for excellence, called "the English work" throughout Europe. The representations of the crowns of the Saxon kings, commencing with Offa, present us with specimens of the ornamentation of the period. The ring was also a most important ornament. It was used not only for display, but also as a charm, or protection against natural or supernatural evil. The gems with which the ring was set, were believed to possess, severally, special qualities, and symbolical meanings. The sapphire indicated purity—the diamond, faith—the ruby, zeal—the amethyst was good against drunkenness—the sapphire was a protection against witchcraft, and the toad-stone against sickness. The accredited properties of decade rings, pontifical rings, alchemy rings, posie rings, and gimel rings are illustrated in various anecdotes and legends. In the medal-room of the British Museum is a gold ring, bearing the name of Ethelwulf, upon blue and black enamel: it was found in a cart-rut, at Laverstock in Hampshire; its weight is 11 dwts. 14 grains.

The crosiers of the bishops of this period were curious specimens of metal-work and gem ornamentation; as were also the shrines of the saints. In 1840 a hoard of about 7,000 coins (beside many silver ornaments) was discovered at Coverdale, near Preston, in Lancashire; they are considered by the best numismatists indisputably to belong to the chief of the Danish invaders in the ninth century, and their immediate successors. In the sepulchre of Thyra, ancestress of Canute, in Jutland, have been found the figure of a bird formed of thin plates of gold, as well as a silver cup plated with gold, both being remarkable examples of the state of the decorative arts in the tenth century.

The art of glass-making was introduced to the Saxons in the seventh century, and ordinary window-glass was first used for building purposes at the great monasteries at Monkwearmouth, on the river Wear, and at Jarrow-on-the-Tyne; although we have already seen that window-glass was used in the Roman city of Uriconium. The Venerable Bede, in the seventh century, relates that his contemporary, the Abbot Benedict, sent for artists beyond seas to glaze the Monastery of Wearmouth; and such was the change made in their churches by the use of glass, instead of other and more obscure substances for windows, that the unlettered people avowed a belief, which was handed down as a tradition for many generations, "that it was never dark in old Jarrow Church." By a singular coincidence, the first manufactory of window or crown glass in Great Britain was established at Newcastle-upon-Tyne, within a few miles of these monastic establishments. In the year 1616 Admiral Sir Robert Maunsell erected glassworks at the Ouseburn, Newcastle, which were carried on without interruption till nearly the middle of the present century, when they were closed.

The art of making woollen cloth, which was known to the Britons, was, by this time, brought to perfection in England, especially in the south. This seat of manufacture must have been handy to the fuller's-earth pits of Nutfield, where fuller's-earth has been for centuries dug:—"While Bradford was still the little local centre of a wild hill tract in pastoral Yorkshire, the 'grey cloths of Kent' kept many a loom at work in the homesteads of Tenterden, and Biddenden, and Cranbrook, and all the other little mediæval towns that dot the Weald with their carved barge-boards and richly-moulded beams." (Saturday Review, No. 182.) The distaff and the spindle, which appear to have been anciently the type, and symbol, and the insignia of the softer sex in nearly every age and country, were in the Saxon times still more conspicuous as the distinguishing badge of the female sex. Among our Saxon ancestors the "spear-half" and the "spindle-half" expressed the male and female line; and the spear and the spindle are to this day found in their graves.

The Saxons had the arts of dyeing of purple and various colours; and the Saxon ladies were eminent for their embroidery. There are descriptions extant of a robe of purple embroidered with large peacocks in black circles; and a golden veil worked with the siege of Troy, the latter a king's bequest to Croyland Abbey, where it was to be hung up on his birthday. The standards were also beautifully worked: the Danish standard, called the Raefen, was woven in one night by the three sisters of Ubbo, the Danish leader. The standard of Harold, the last Saxon sovereign of England, was the figure of a warrior richly embroidered with precious stones. In the Anglo-Saxon, and even in late periods, men worked at embroidery, especially in abbeys. At this time the dressing of hides and working in leather was practised to a great extent by the shoewright; and the wood-workman, answering to our modern carpenter, was also in general estimation. Sandals were worn by the early Saxons: there exists a print of one, made of leather, partly gilt, and variously coloured, and for the left foot of the wearer; so that "rights and lefts" are only a very old fashion revived.

The art of smelting iron was known in England during the Roman occupation; and in many ancient beds of cinders, the refuse of iron-works, Roman coins have been found. Cæsar describes iron as being so rare in Britain, that pieces of it were employed as a medium of exchange; but a century later it had become common, since in Strabo's time it was an article of exportation. There is reason to believe that the Romans worked iron ore in the hills of South Wales, as they undoubtedly did in Dean Forest, where ancient heaps of slag have occasionally been struck upon. Remains of ancient iron furnaces have also been found in Lancashire, Staffordshire, and Yorkshire.[17]

The working in steel was also practised in Britain before the Norman Conquest; and we are told that not only was the army of Harold well supplied with weapons and defensive armour of steel, but that every officer of rank maintained a smith, who constantly attended his master to the wars, and took charge of his arms and armour, and had to keep them in proper repair.

The inventions attributed to Alfred must be noticed. It will be remembered how he measured time by graduated wax-tapers—the consumption of an inch denoting twenty minutes; but the wind rushing through windows, doors, and crevices of the royal palace, or the tent-coverings, sometimes wasted them, and disordered Alfred's calculations. He then inclosed his tapers in lanterns of horn and wood; but their invention has been attributed to an earlier period, from some Latin verses attributed to Aldhelm, Abbot of Malmesbury, in the seventh century. "Let not," say they, "the glass lantern be despised, or that made of a horn, hide, or thin skin, although a brass lamp may excel it." This passage has, however, sometimes been referred to the twelfth century.

Travelling, in the Saxon times, was very different from what it is in the present day: coaches were not invented, and the only vehicles which went upon wheels were carts and wagons, and these were very heavy and clumsy. Horseback was the only conveyance, so that the sick and infirm could hardly ever leave their houses. In those times there were very few roads upon which one could travel with safety. The Romans left excellent roads, which, however, were neglected, and they fell into decay. Marshes were perilous to cross: a bridge might be broken down, and when you tried to ford the stream, your horse might get out of his depth, and then he and his rider might be drowned. Sometimes the traveller had to pass through a dark forest, abounding with bears and wolves; and, at the end of his day's journey, instead of putting up at a comfortable inn, he was often compelled to stretch his cloak on the dark earth, in some wretched hut. And what was worst, the kings and princes were almost always at war with each other, and a stranger was constantly liable to be plundered and seized, or put to death by the contending parties.[18]

Stirrups and spurs were known to the Saxons; the Britons had bridles ornamented with ivory: a bit, presumed to have belonged to a British chief in the Roman service, is a jointed snaffle. The side-pieces, or branches, of curb bits, are of equal antiquity. The Saxons had very superb bridles, ornamented with plates of tin and pewter; and those for women's horses were lily-white. We have seen a bridle of Norman manufacture, said to have been on the horse which William Rufus rode when killed in the New Forest: it has blinkers, is very broad; and cloth, cut by a mould into rich patterns, is glued upon the leather. We read of Athelstan receiving valuable presents of running horses, with their saddles and bridles studded with gold; one of our earliest illustrations of horse-racing.

[MEALS—BRITISH, ANGLO-ROMAN, AND SAXON.]

he Britons, we learn, made their table on the ground, on which they spread the skins of wolves and dogs. The guests sat round, the food was placed before them, and each took his part. They were waited upon by the youth of both sexes. They who had not skins were contented with a little hay, which was laid under them; they ate very little bread, but much meat, boiled, or broiled upon coals, or roasted upon spits, before fires kindled as gipsies do in these days. The best living appears to have been in South Britain, where venison, oxen, sheep, and goats were eaten; and ale or mead was the common drink. The whole family attended upon the visitors, and the master and mistress went round, and did not eat anything till their guests had finished their meal.

The Romans made little use of cattle as food; and the fattening of cattle for this specific purpose was unknown to them. Neither can we find evidence that beef and mutton were eaten by the Roman people generally. Pliny mentions the use of beef, roasted, or in the shape of broth, as a medicine, but not as food. Plautus speaks of beef and mutton as sold in the markets; but, amidst the immense variety of fish, flesh, and fowl, we hear little of the above meats in the Roman larder. Fish and game, poultry, venison, and pork, are often mentioned as elements of a luxurious banquet; but undoubtedly the common food of all classes was vegetable, flavoured with lard or bacon. Among the Romans the hare was held in great estimation. Alexander Severus had a hare daily served at his table; yet Cæsar says that in his time the Britons did not eat the flesh of hare.

"The Romans, after their colonization of Britain, must have enjoyed its great supplies of fish; with them its fine oysters were celebrities. They were fattened in pits and ponds by the Romans, who obtained the finest oysters from Ruterpiæ, now Sandwich, in Kent. The Roman epicures iced their oysters before eating them; the ladies used the calcined shell as a cosmetic and depilatory. Apicius is said to have supplied Trajan with fresh oysters at all seasons of the year. The Romans, according to Pliny, made Ostrearii, or loaves of bread baked with oysters. There is one secret we may well desire to learn from the Romans; namely, the manner of preserving oysters alive in any journey, however long or distant. The possession of this secret is the more extraordinary, as it is well known that a shower of rain will kill oysters subjected to its influence, or the smallest grain of quick-lime destroy their vitality."[19] Pliny records that one gentleman, Asinius Celer, gave 8,000 nummi (between 64l. and 65l. sterling) for one mullet, such as may now be bought in good seasons in London for sixpence! How the Anglo-Roman epicure must have enjoyed the mullet from our western coast! The lamprey was also with the Romans a pet fish: it is now rare. The celebrated Roman garum must here have been made in perfection. A Roman supper is thus described by the officer of the household of Theodosius:—"For the first course there were sea-hedgehogs, raw oysters, and asparagus; for the second, a fat fowl, with another plate of oysters and shell-fish; several species of dates, fig-peckers, roebuck, and wild boar, fowls encrusted with paste, and the purple shell-fish, then esteemed so great a delicacy. The third course was composed of a wild-boar's head, of ducks, of a compôte of river-birds, of leverets, roast-fowls, Ancona-cakes, called panes picandi," which must have somewhat resembled Yorkshire pudding. The old Romans had their fancy bread as well as the moderns, as loaves baked with oysters, cakes like our rolls, and others. A sort, of nearly the same quality as our middle sort of wheaten bread, was sold, according to the calculation of antiquaries, at 3s. 2d. the peck-loaf, present money.

Before the arrival of the Romans, mead, that is, honey diluted with water, and fermented, was probably the only strong liquor known to the Britons; and it continued to be their favourite drink long after they had become acquainted with other liquors. Its manufacture was an important art; for the mead-maker was the eleventh person in dignity in the courts of the ancient princes of Wales, and took precedence of the physician.

Of Saxon living we have many details. The Saxons were noted for their hospitality. On the arrival of a stranger he was welcomed, and water was brought him to wash his hands; his feet were also washed in warm water. A curious law was enforced at this period respecting host and guest; if any one entertained a guest in his house three days, and the guest committed any crime during that period, his host was either to bring him to justice, or answer for it himself; and by another law, a guest, after two nights' residence, was considered one of the family, and his entertainer was to be responsible for all his actions.

The meal now assumed more regularity; the parties sat at large square tables, on long benches, according to rank; and by a subsequent law of Canute, a person sitting out of his proper place, was to be pelted from it with bones, at the discretion of the company, without the privilege of taking offence! The mistress of the house sat at the head of the table, upon a raised platform, beneath a canopy, and helped the provisions to the guests; whence came the modern title of lady, being softened from the Saxon lief-dien, or the server of bread. The tables were covered with fine cloths, some very costly; a cup of horn, silver, silver-gilt, or gold, was presented to each person; other vessels were of wood, inlaid with gold; dishes, bowls, and basins were of silver, gold, and brass, engraven; the benches and seats were carved and covered with embroidery; and some of the tables were of silver. All tables were square at this period; they were displaced by the old oaken table, of long boards upon tressels.

The food of the period consisted of meat and vegetables, and the tables were plentifully but plainly supplied. There were oxen, sheep, fowls, deer, goats, and hares, but hogs yielded a principal part of the provision. On this account, swine were allowed by charter to run and feed in the royal forests. All sorts of fish now taken, were eaten at the above time; herrings were preferred. The porpoise, now no longer eaten, was then preferred. Bread was made of barley; wheaten bread was a delicacy. Baking was understood, as well as cookery; and if a person ate anything half-dressed, ignorantly, he was to fast three days; and four, if he knew it. Roasted meat was a luxury; but boiling was general, and broiling and stewing were in use. Honey was used in most of the meals of this period, on which account, added to that of sugar not being brought to England until the fifteenth century, the wild honey found in the English woods became an article of importance in the forest charter. Fruit, beans, and herbs were commonly eaten; the only vegetable was kale-wort; peppered broths and soups, and a kind of bouilli, were esteemed; buttermilk or whey was used in the monasteries; and salt was employed in great quantities, both for preserving and seasoning all sorts of provisions.

In representations of Anglo-Saxon feasts, the men and women are seated apart at table; a person is cutting a piece of meat off the spit into a plate, held underneath by a servant; and cakes of bread, with oblong, square, and round dishes are on the table. Festivals were given to people on religious accounts; they kept it up the whole day on state occasions, and the feast was accompanied with music. The company sat on forms, the chief visitors seated in the middle, and the next in rank on the right and left. A dish on the table was set apart for alms for the poor; and when our Anglo-Saxon kings dined, the poor sat in the streets, expecting the broken victuals. At private parties, two persons eating out of the same dish was a peculiar mark of friendship. Forks were not invented, and our ancestors made use of their fingers; but, for the sake of cleanliness, each person was provided with a small silver ewer containing water, and two flowered napkins, of the finest linen. The dessert consisted of grapes, figs, nuts, apples, pears, and almonds.

In early baking the use of ovens was unknown; and when the lady had kneaded the dough, it was toasted either upon a warm hearth, or bake-stone, as it was called, when later it was made of some metal. In Wales, bread is, or was, lately baked upon an iron plate, called a griddle. The earliest bakers were probably the monks, since bakehouses were commonly appended to monasteries; and the host, or consecrated bread, was baked by the monks with great ceremony. In a charge to the clergy, date 994, we find:—"And we charge you that the oblation (i.e. the bread in the Eucharist), which ye offer to God in that holy mystery, be either baked by yourselves, or your servants in your presence." Bakehouses were also appended to the churches; for, on taking down some part of the church at Crickhowell, county Brecon, a small room with an oven in it was discovered, which had long been shut up. Although the monks were early bakers, they do not appear to have fared much more sumptuously than the people on bread; for the Anglo-Saxon monks of the Abbey of St. Edmund, in the eighth century, ate barley bread, because the income of the establishment would not admit of the feeding twice or thrice a day on wheaten bread.

Elecampane, now known as the sweetmeat of childhood, was esteemed for ages in the domestic herbal. The leaves are aromatic and bitter, but the root is much more so. The former were used by the Romans as pot-herbs; and appear to have been held in no mean repute in after times, from the monkish line,—"Elena campana reddit præcordia sana." When preserved, it is still eaten as a cordial by Eastern nations; and the root is used in England to flavour the small sugar-cakes, which bear its name. It is tonic and stimulant.

Of the manufacture of Ale and Beer we have a record of the fifth century, directing it to be made without hops, instead of which various bitters were used. Ale is next mentioned in the laws of Ina, King of Wessex, who ascended, the throne about the year 680. It was the favourite drink of the Saxons and Danes; and so attentive were the Saxons to its quality, that in their time it was a custom in the city of Chester to place any person who brewed bad ale in a ducking-chair, to be plunged into a pool of muddy water, or be fined 4s. In the Saxon Dialogues, in the Cotton Library, a boy, in answer to the question, what he drank, replies, "Ale, if I have it; or water, if I have it not." He adds, that wine is the drink of the elders and the wise. Ale was sold to the people at this time, in houses of entertainment; but a priest was forbidden by law to eat or drink at places where ale was sold. About the middle of the eleventh century, ale was one of the articles of a royal banquet provided for Edward the Confessor. At this time the best ale could be bought for 8d. the gallon. This was spiced, and double the price of common ale, and mead was double the price of spiced ale. One of the vessels out of which ale was drunk was the Saxon nap, now the neap, or nip, out of which we drink Burton ale. The Saxons had also cups of wood, ornamented with gold, besides the peg tankards introduced by King Edgar, to check excessive drinking. In Northamptonshire—a famous ale county—a small public-house is to this day called an ale-hus, the original Saxon hus being retained.[20]

As the monasteries were in ancient times reputed for ale, which the monks brewed for themselves with such remarkable care, so colleges, which rose upon the Dissolution, became famous for ale, and their celebrity continues to this day. Warton, poet-laureate in 1748, has left a panegyric on Oxford ale (which he dearly loved), and thus apostrophises:—

"Balm of my cares, sweet solace of my toils,
Hail, juice benignant!
"My sober evening let the tankard bless,
With toast embrown'd, and fragrant nutmeg fraught.
What though me sore ills
Oppress, dire want of chill-dispelling coals
Or cheerful candle, save the make-weight's gleam
Haply remaining, heart-rejoicing ale
Cheers the sad scene, and every want supplies.
"Be mine each morn, with eager appetite
And hunger undissembled, to repair
To friendly buttery; there on smoking crust
And foaming ale to banquet unrestrain'd,
Material breakfast. Thus, in ancient days
Our ancestors, robust with liberal cups
Usher'd the morn, unlike the squeamish sons
Of modern times; nor ever had the might
Of Britons brave decay'd, had thus they fed,
With British ale improving British worth."

They who recollect the ale of Magdalen and Queen's will acknowledge that Oxford well maintains its character for our national drink.

The brewers were formerly women, and those who sold the ale were ale-wives, one of whom, "Eleanor Rumming, the famous ale-wife of England," is commemorated by another poet-laureate, Skelton. Of her ale-house, at Leatherhead, there are some remains, and she lives in the rude woodcut portrait (1571), with this inscription:—

"When Skelton wore the laurel crown,
My ale put all the ale-wives down."

The introduction of foreign wines by the Normans did not altogether supersede the wines of our own country. The vine had been cultivated here long before. Vines are mentioned in the laws of Alfred, and Edgar makes a gift of a vineyard, with the vine-dressers. In a Saxon Calendar, preserved in the British Museum, there is a series of rude drawings representing the different operations of the rural economy of the year; that prefixed to February showing husbandmen pruning what are supposed to be vines. At the time of the Norman Conquest, new plantations appear to have been made in the village of Westminster; at Chenetone, in Middlesex; at Ware, in Hertfordshire, and other places. Of ancient wine-cellars we find some curious particulars, and drinking-glasses have been found in Roman-British barrows.

The Danes, in their visits to this country, added much to the gross hospitalities, against the consequences of which Saxon laws were enacted. They were accustomed to sing and play on the harp in turn; and to be entertained by the gleemen, ale-poets, dancers, harpers, jugglers, and tumblers, who frequented the earliest taverns, called guest-houses, ale-shops, wine-houses, &c. And it may be regarded as indicative of the reckless manners of the times, that the last of the Danish kings of England died suddenly at a marriage-feast; his death being imputed by some to poison, but, with more likelihood of truth, to his being then intoxicated.

We have now reached the period at which the Danes arrived in this country; but they so neglected the arts essential to life as to have little claim upon our respect. Their neglect of husbandry was great. The other arts were abandoned to the women, who spun wool for their clothing. Rude carving with the knife seems to have been the principal and natural talent of the Danes. Their houses were mostly erected near a spring, a wood, or an open field, at a distance from any others. The best of their dwellings were only thick, heavy pillars, united by boards, and covered with turf; though there sometimes existed a pride in having them of great extent, and with lofty towers.

In a late volume of the Gentleman's Magazine, we find this interesting page of research upon the names of provisions, which throw some light upon the mode of living among the higher and lower classes of our population. "Bread, with the common productions of the garden, such as pease, beans, eggs, and some other articles which might be produced in the cottage-garden or yard, retain their Saxon names, and evidently formed the chief nourishment of the Saxon portion of the population. Of meat, though the word is Saxon, they ate probably little; for it is one of the most curious circumstances connected with the English language, that while the living animals are called by Anglo-Saxon names, as oxen, calves, sheep, pigs, deer, the flesh of those animals when prepared for the table is called by names which are all Anglo-Norman—beef, veal, mutton, pork, venison. The butcher who killed them is himself known by an Anglo Norman name. Even fowls when killed receive the Norman name of poultry. This can only be explained by the circumstance that the Saxon population in general was only acquainted with the living animals, while their flesh was carried off to the castle and table of the Norman possessors of the land, who gave it names taken from their own language. Fresh meat, salted, was hoarded up in immense quantities in the Norman castles, and was distributed lavishly to the household and idle followers of the feudal possessors. Almost the only meat obtained by the peasantry, unless, if we believe old popular songs, by stealth, was bacon, and that also is still called by an Anglo-Norman name."

[II. Castle Life.]

ENGLISH CASTLE-BUILDING.

he history of building of Castles in England and Wales may be divided into periods of transition, changing with the exigencies and requirements of the age, and its character of civilization.

The Castles of England consist of those erected by the Romans; of British and Saxon castles erected previous to, and Norman castles erected after, the Norman Conquest; also of the more modern stone and brick castles, erected from about the reign of Edward I. to the time of Henry VII.

The Roman castles in this country are numerous, and some of them still in very perfect condition, such as Burgh Castle and Richborough. More popularly known is Pevensey, once a maritime town of considerable importance, the site of which is now fixed with all but certainty, as that of the strong old city, Anderida, though this distinction has been claimed by no less than seven Sussex towns. Abundance of Roman bricks have been found here, affording strong presumption of there having been originally a Roman fortress on the spot. But the celebrity of Pevensey (for, though reduced to a village, it has an undying name in our history) rests upon its having been the place of debarkation of William, Duke of Normandy, on his successful invasion of this land in 1066. It was, therefore, the first scene of the Norman Conquest, the most momentous event in English history, perhaps the most momentous in the Middle Ages. Here William landed from a fleet of 900 ships, with 60,000 men, including cavalry; and having refreshed his troops, and hastily erected a fortress, he marched forward to Hastings, and thence to Battle (then called Epitou), where, on the 14th of October, he obtained a decisive victory over King Harold. Southey, upon the conjoint authorities of Turner, Palgrave, and Thierry, gives such a version of the Normans landing at Pevensey, as to decide its having been a Roman station. "They landed," he says, "without opposition, on the 28th of September, between Pevensey and Hastings, at a place called Bulverhithe. William occupied the Roman castle at Pevensey; erected three wooden forts, the materials of which he had brought ready with him for construction; threw up works to protect part of his fleet, and burnt, it is said, the rest, or otherwise rendered them unserviceable."[21]

Upon his accession, the Conqueror gave the town and castle to his half-brother, Robert, Earl of Mortagne in Normandy, whose descendant, William, was deprived of all his possessions, and banished the realm, by Henry I. for rebellion. That monarch granted them to Gilbert de Aquila, in allusion to whose name this district was afterwards styled the Honour of the Eagle.

The outer work of the castle contains many Roman bricks and much herring-bone work. The outer walls, the most ancient part of the fortification, inclose seven acres, and are from twenty to twenty-five feet high. The moat on the south side is still wide and deep; on the other side it has been filled up. The entrance is on the west or land side, between two round towers, over a drawbrige. Within the walls is another and much more modern fortification, approaching a pentagonal form, with nearly five circular towers, moated on the north and west. It is entered from the outer court by a drawbridge on the west side between two towers. The principal barbican, or watch tower, is not at the entrance, but towards the north-east corner. The walls are nine feet thick, and the towers were two or three stories in height. The castle was of great strength: it withstood the attacks of William Rufus's army for six days, protecting Odo, Bishop of Bayeux, who ultimately yielded only for want of provisions; and it afterwards successfully resisted the siege of King Stephen, who personally superintended the attack, but met with so gallant an opposition from Gilbert, Earl of Clare, that he was obliged to withdraw his force, leaving only a small body to blockade it by sea and land. It once more resisted hostile attacks, when it was fruitlessly assailed in 1265, by Simon de Montfort, son of the renowned Earl of Leicester. Again, when Sir John Pelham was in Yorkshire, in 1339, assisting Henry, Duke of Lancaster, to gain the crown, the castle, left under the command of Lady Jane Pelham, was attacked by large bodies of the yeomen of Kent, Surrey, and Sussex, who favoured the deposed King Richard, but was bravely and successfully defended by Lady Jane Pelham.

Pevensey castle remained as a fortress till the reign of Elizabeth: two ancient culverins, one of which bears her initials, are yet preserved; after which its history is not traced till the Parliamentary survey of 1675, when the fortress was in ruins, and the ground within the walls was cultivated as a garden. The demesne and castle are now held by the Cavendish family, under a lease from the Duchy of Lancaster, which was originally granted to the Pelhams by Henry IV., son of the famous John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, to whom the Honour of the Eagle had been given, on his surrender of the great earldom of Richmond.

It is remarkable that no mention is made of Pevensey Castle in the Saxon times; but if not erected by the Romans, it was certainly built from the remains of an older fortress. The Saxons most probably adapted the Roman inclosures to their modes of defence; and it appears that they often raised a mound on one side of the walls, on which they erected a keep or citadel.

We are indebted to the Saxons but for few social improvements; since, in the words of the Wiltshire antiquary, John Aubrey, "They were so far from having arts, that they could not even build with stone. The church at Glaston (bury) was thatched. They lived skittishly in their houses, they ate a great deal of beef and mutton, and drank good ale in a brown mazzard, and their very kings were but a sort of farmers. The Normans then came, and taught them civility and building."

In various parts of England, Scotland, Ireland, and Wales, there are numerous encampments or castles, mostly occupying the summits of hills, which have been ascribed to the aboriginal inhabitants. Amongst the most remarkable are the Hereford Beacon, on the Malvern hills, in Worcestershire; the Caer-Caradock, near Church Stretton, in Shropshire; Moel Arthur, in Flintshire; Chun Castle, in Cornwall; and the magnificent hill-fort, Maiden Castle, or the Castle of the great Hill, within three miles of Dorchester.

Maiden Castle had four gateways of stone; in excavations have been found round stones, probably sling stones, and pottery, denoting its original occupation by Britons; how the fortress was supplied with water has not been traced. This famous earthwork is considered of a period anterior to that of the Britons and Romans: the extent of the work is one mile, and the ramparts are, in some places, sixty feet high. Another famous earthwork in Dorset is Poundbury, a Roman encampment, though it has been set down as Danish, and an Anglo-Saxon camp of council.[22]

Before we leave the Roman period, we may remark that the manufacture of bricks and tiles must then have been known in England, because it was practised in such perfection by our conquerors during their occupation, as is evident in the numerous remains of their buildings.[23] It has, however, been asserted that up to the reign of Elizabeth, the houses of the gentry throughout England were built entirely of timber; whereas, of the mansions of earlier date than that reign, which remain entire or in part to this day, three-fourths, at least, are built of stone or brick. The latter material is stated by Bagford and others to have been first introduced in the reign of Henry VII. Yet, Endure Palace, in Oxfordshire, erected by William De la Pole, and Hurstmonceux Castle, in Sussex, both of which are of brick, are attributed to the reign of Henry VI. Oxburgh Hall, in Norfolk, was erected in the reign of Edward IV. Leland mentions the walls of Hungerford, as early as the reign of Richard II., being of that material; and Stow records Ralph Stratford, Bishop of London, inclosing the burial-ground of Charter-house, for those that died of the plague in 1348, with a wall of brick. That roofing-tiles were in use before the time of Richard I. is proved by the order made in the first years of that reign, Henry Fitzalwayne being Mayor of London, that the houses of that city should be covered with "brent tyle," instead of "strawe," or reeds. The ancient name for bricks appears to have been wall-tiles, to distinguish them from floor-tiles, used for paving.

William the Conqueror lost no time in erecting strong castles in all the principal towns in the kingdom, as at Lincoln, Norwich, Rochester, &c. for the double purpose of strengthening the towns, and keeping the citizens in awe. The Conqueror's followers, among whom he parcelled out the lands of the English, imitated their master's example by building castles on their estates; and so rapidly did they increase, that in the reign of Stephen, or within a century after the arrival of the Conqueror, there are said to have been 1115 castles completed in England alone.

One of the earliest was Conisborough Castle, built by William, the first Earl of Warren, about six miles west of Doncaster: the remains, as far as can be traced, extend about 700 feet in circumference; but the chief object is a noble round tower, strengthened by six massive square buttresses, running from the base to the summit. The extreme thickness of the walls is 15 feet; of each buttress 23 feet; and the entrance is 24 feet from the ground, up a flight of steps. In the centre of the first floor is a round hole, which is the only entrance to a lower apartment, or dungeon. This Castle is chosen by Sir Walter Scott for one of the principal scenes of his romance of Ivanhoe.

Many of the castles of this age were of great size. Instead of a single tower, they consisted of several towers, both round and square, united by walls, inclosing a space called a courtyard, the entrance to which was generally between two strong towers. The whole building was surrounded by a moat or ditch, across which a drawbridge led to the massive doors, which were covered with plates of iron, and in front of them, an iron portcullis—like a harrow, such as we see in the arms of the city of Westminster—was let down the rough, deep grooves in the stonework; whilst overhead projected a parapet, resting on corbels, with openings through which melted lead or hot water could be poured, or stones thrown on the heads of the assailants, who should attempt an entrance by forcing, or, as was the usual mode of attack, by setting fire to the door.[24] The gateways of Caerlaverock, Conway, Carisbrooke, and Caernarvon castles, present good specimens of this kind; as do the Middle Tower, and the Bloody Tower, in the Tower of London: the latter has the most perfect portcullis in the kingdom.

A principal tower or keep rose prominently above the rest, and generally from an artificial mount. It contained the well of water, without which the garrison, when besieged, could not hold out in this their last place of refuge. The keep also had its subterranean prison, and several stories of apartments communicating by a staircase, either in the walls, or built outside the tower.

As the railway traveller journeys along the South Eastern line, he will see close to the Tunbridge station, the towered entrance-gate of the castle built by Richard de Tonbridge, a follower of the Conqueror. The whole building was moated, and the exterior walls inclosed an area of about six acres. There remain only two massive towers flanking an arched gateway, with walls of great thickness, and having no other openings than long narrow slits, called oilets, through which, when besieged, archers shot their arrows. In front of this entrance was formerly a drawbridge, thrown across the moat, which, when raised, formed a strong door, closing up the archway. This opening was again guarded by two portcullises and two thick doors. The towers appear to have been divided into four stories, or floors, the lower being dungeons or prisons, and the upper formed into a large and noble hall, extending the whole width and depth of the two towers. It was lighted by two large windows towards the inner court. The towers are supposed, from their style, to have been built in the reign of King John, or Henry III. The windows were not glazed, but had iron bars; the floor and ceiling were of immense thickness, the latter three feet. Branching from this tower-entrance, are certain walls to the right and left; the first extending up the side of a lofty hill, whereon was the keep-tower, or chief residence of the baron: to this, it is presumed, he retreated when other parts of his castle had been taken by an enemy.

The following account of the siege of Bedford Castle by Henry III., given in Camden's Britannia, is interesting, as containing a summary of the principal portions of the building, and the several stages of the attack:—"The castle was taken by four assaults: in the first was taken the barbican; in the second, the outer bail (ballium); at the third attack, the wall by the old tower was thrown down by the miners, where, with great danger, they possessed themselves of the inner bail through a chink; at the fourth assault, the miners set fire to the tower, so that the smoke burst out, and the tower itself was cloven to that degree, as to show visibly some broad chinks; whereupon the enemy surrendered."

The most perfect of our northern castles now existing, is Raby, the stately seat of the Duke of Cleveland, the history of which is traced through eight centuries and a half. Raby, pointing by its name to a Danish origin, is first mentioned in connexion with King Canute, who, after making his celebrated pilgrimage over Garmondsway Moor to the shrine of St. Cuthbert, there offered it, with other possessions, to the saint. Bishop Flambard wrested the rich gift from the monastics, but restored it again on his death-bed. It continued in the peaceful possession of the monks till 1131. In that year they granted it, for an annual rent of £4, to Dolphin, son of Ughtred, of the blood-royal of Northumberland. Whoever the original founder might have been, Dolphin's descendant, Robert filius Maldred, was Lord of Raby when, early in the thirteenth century, he married Isabel Neville, by the death of her brother the last of that line. From their son Geoffrey, who assumed his mother's surname, the history of the Nevilles may be said to date. To his descendant, John Lord Neville, they owed Raby. Some portion of the older fabric is thoroughly incorporated with the new, so as to present the work and ideas of one period, and a perfect example of a fourteenth-century castle, without any appearance of earlier work or later alteration whatever. Its apparent weakness of site has been pointed out; but though not set on a hill, it had the defence of water, which was drawn off centuries since. But the real defences of Raby lay beyond the mere circuit of its own walls and waters. They are to be found in the warrior spirits of its lords and in the border castles of Roxburgh, Wark, Norham, Berwick, and Bamburgh, which they commanded continuously as warders and governors from the days of Robert Neville, in the thirteenth century, to the time of Queen Elizabeth. Apart from the question of the site, the stately castle itself is of great strength, and skilfully disposed.

Passing through a fine gate-tower, the bailey (immediately within the outer ward) is entered. The castle itself consists of a quadrangular mass of great dignity and splendour, with an open court in the centre. One side of the court, or the quadrangle, is occupied by two halls, one above the other, of such stupendous proportions that carriages are admitted to drive across the quadrangle into the lower hall. The sides of the quadrangle have the kitchen and offices springing from one end of the hall, and the principal chambers of the castle from the other, according to the usual distribution of the age.

Although a view of most of those fortresses which are destined chiefly for the purposes of war or defence, suggests to the imagination dungeons, chains, and a painful assemblage of horrors, yet some of these castles were often the scenes of magnificence and hospitality,

"Where the songs of knights and barons bold
In weeds of peace high triumph hold;"

or where, in the days of chivalry, the wandering knight or distressed princess found honourable reception; the holy palmer repose for his wearied limbs; and the poor and helpless their daily bread.

Leland considered Raby as "the largest castle of logginges in all the north country." At different periods alterations have been made, according to the more modern ideas of comfort and convenience, without materially affecting its external form, so that it recalls to the mind the romantic days of chivalry. The embattled wall with which it is surrounded, occupies about two acres of ground. At irregular distances are two towers, named from their founders, the Clifford Tower and the Bulmer Tower. The halls are large and grand. In the upper, or Baron's hall, ninety feet in length, and thirty-four in breadth, the baronial feasts were held; and here,

"Seven hundred knights, retainers all
Of Neville, at their master's call,
Together sat in Raby's Hall."

When the British Archæological Association visited Raby in the autumn of 1865, the Duke of Cleveland, as the President of the Association, entertained some 200 guests at a sumptuous dinner, in which venison, venison pasties, and grouse were paramount. The kitchen is on a scale to correspond with the enormous festivals of the seven hundred knights: it is a square of thirty feet, having three chimneys, one for the grate, a second for stoves, and the third (now stopped up) for the great cauldron. The roof is arched, and has a small cupola in the centre; it has likewise five windows, from each of which steps descend, but only in one instance to the floor; and a gallery runs round the whole interior of the building. The ancient oven is said to have allowed a tall person to stand upright in it, its diameter being fifteen feet; according to Pennant, it was one time converted into a wine-cellar, "the arches being divided into ten parts, each holding a hogshead of wine in bottles." "The park and pleasure grounds belonging to this magnificent castle are upon the same extensive scale, with woods that sweep over hill and sink into valley, and command a constant change of beautiful prospects."[25]

Durham Castle is another noble pile of the north. The outer gateway is a Norman arch; traces of Norman work are seen in the courtyard; and we then reach the hall, which, as left by Bishop Hatfield, was at least a third longer than it is at present. It owes it curtailment to Bishop Fox (1494-1502), who erected a kitchen and other offices at the lower end. This kitchen remains in its original form, with wide-yawning fireplaces still applied to their original purpose; and the buttery hatches in old black oak have the motto of "Est Deo gracio," in black-letter, carved upon them. A tapestried gallery, with an elaborate Norman doorway, leads to Bishop Tunstall's chapel; and in another apartment, now the senate-room of the University of Durham, is some curious tapestry of the history of Moses. The keep, now refaced and restored, was rebuilt by Bishop Hatfield. The castle is commonly said to be no older than William the Conqueror; but a fortress must have existed from a much earlier period, and the mound is artificial. The Norman chapel of the castle, its most ancient portion, is usually assigned to King William I., though of the time of Rufus. The pavement of herring-bone is, no doubt, coeval. The whole of Durham Castle is now in excellent preservation, and the union of the past with the present is well maintained; for the old keep, which commands beautiful views of the Wear and the outlying country, is parcelled out into rooms, which are occupied by the students of the University. The great hall of the castle is hung with old paintings, chiefly the portraits of bishops and ecclesiastics connected with the see. At the lower end of the apartment, about half way between the roof and the ground, are two niches, at opposite sides, built for the minstrels of the period, and from which they regaled the guests.

The legendary histories of our castles would take us too far afield for our limits. Sometimes, in these legends, the very names of the Teutonic mythic personages are preserved. Thus, a legend in Berkshire has retained the name of the Northern and Teutonic smith-hero, Weland, the representative of the classical Vulcan. The name of Weland's father, Wade, is preserved in the legend of Mulgrave Castle, in Yorkshire, which is pretended to have been built by a giant of that name. A Roman road, which passes by it, is called Wade's Causeway; and a large tumulus, or cairn of stones, in the vicinity is popularly called Wade's Grave. According to the legend, while the giant Wade was building his castle, he and his wife lived upon the milk of an enormous cow, which she was obliged to leave at pasture on the distant moors. Wade made the causeway for her convenience, and she assisted him in building the castle by bringing him quantities of large stones in her apron. One day, as she was carrying a bundle of stones, her apron-string broke, and they all fell to the ground, a great heap of about twenty cart-loads,—and there they still remain as a memorial of her industry. Another castle in Yorkshire, occupying an early site, was said, according to a legend related by Leland in the sixteenth century, to have been built by a giant named Ettin. This is a mere corruption of the name of the eotenas, or giants of Teutonic mythology.

One of our most celebrated castles of defence is Corfe Castle, in Dorset, a remarkable specimen of mediæval military architecture. The earliest notice of this fortress is in an Anglo-Saxon charter of the year 948. In 981 Corfe was the scene of the murder of King Edward the Martyr. After the death of his father, Edgar, Elfrida, his widow, headed a faction in opposition to the accession of Edward, and continued her intrigues until her unscrupulous ambition at last led her to the perpetration of a deed which has covered her name with infamy. This was the murder of her step-son by a hired assassin, as he stopped one day while hunting, at her residence, Corfe Castle; he was stabbed in the back, as he sat on his horse at the gate of the castle, drinking a cup of mead. The 18th of March, 978, is the date assigned to the murder of King Edward, who was only in his seventeenth year when he was thus cut off. He is retained in the calendar of the Anglican Church as a saint and martyr. The castle, which was the strongest fortress in the kingdom, formed an irregular triangle, the apex of which was connected by a narrow isthmus with the high ground, on which the town of Corfe stands. The isthmus had been cut through, and the ditch thus formed was spanned by a stately bridge of arches leading to the principal entrance of the fortress. Only the south side and parts of the east and west sides of the keep are standing, and large masses of prostrate walls lie in confusion around. The keep is Norman, believed to have been built by the Conqueror. King John kept his treasure and regalia here, and used the castle as a state prison. Twenty-four nobles concerned in the insurrection by his nephew, Arthur, Duke of Brittany, were, save two, it was said, there starved to death. King John caused Prince Arthur to be murdered, and sent his sister, the beautiful Princess Eleanor, prisoner to Corfe, where she remained several years.

Edward II., when he fell into the hands of his enemies, was, for a time, imprisoned here. In 1635, the castle and manor came into the possession of Sir John Bankes, Lord Chief Justice of England, and ancestor of the present owner. In the great Civil War, Corfe Castle was strongly defended for the king, by Lady Bankes, wife of the Lord Chief Justice, with the assistance of her friends and retainers, and of a governor sent from the king's army. The castle was one of the last places in England that held out for Charles I. In the year 1645, it was captured by the Parliamentary forces through treachery, and reduced to the shapeless but picturesque fragments that now remain. Lady Bankes's heroic defence is narrated in the Story of Corfe Castle, a volume of stirring interest; and the event is a favourite subject with our historical painters. The ruins of Corfe are extensive, and from their very high situation, form a very striking object. "The vast fragments of the King's Tower," says Hutchins, "the Round Tower, leaning, as if nearly to fall, the broken walls, and vast pieces of them tumbled into the vale below, form such a scene of havoc and desolation, as strikes every spectator with sorrow and concern. The abundance of stone in the neighbourhood, the excellence of the cement, harder to be broken than the stones themselves, have preserved these prodigious ruins from being embezzled and lessened."

In the age of Edward III. the castles differed from those of previous periods. The confined plan of the close fortress expanded into a mixture of the castle and the mansion; comprising spacious and magnificent apartments, the hall, the banqueting-room, the chapel, with galleries of communication, and sleeping chambers. The keep was entirely detached, and independent of these buildings. Such was the royal palace of Windsor, erected by Edward III.; and such were the splendid baronial castles of Warwick, Ludlow, Stafford, Harewood, Alnwick, Kenilworth, Raglan, and many others. The last-mentioned is one of the most perfect examples we are acquainted with, of the union of vast strength and security, with convenient accommodation and ornamental splendour. The keep is a perfect fortress in itself, and encircled by a range of minor towers and moat. Its masonry is unrivalled.[26]

Of one of these spacious castles we give a descriptive outline, chiefly from the paper read by Mr. J. H. Parker, on the visit of the Archæological Institute to Windsor, in July 1866. Amongst the royal and palatial edifices of Europe, that of Windsor holds a very high rank, and is, in a manner, to England what Versailles is to France and the Escurial to Spain; and while it is infinitely superior to both in point of situation, it far exceeds them, and indeed every other pile or building of its class, in antiquity. From having been the residence of so many of our kings, its history is, to a certain extent, identified with that of the kingdom itself from the time of the Conquest. The castle stands on an outlying promontory of chalk, commanding the winding shores of that part of the Thames, with a rich valley, which seems to have pointed it out as a natural position for a fortress in primitive times, when the natives wished to protect their country from invasion. The wide and deep entrenchments, and the high artificial mounds, indicate an early date. There are also roads at the bottom of the fosses, with a wide bank between them, on which several keeps were erected, first of wood and afterwards of stone. A subterranean passage leading from the bottom of the outer foss, at a depth of thirty feet, to the bottom of the inner foss, at a depth of fifteen feet (the present pantries), cut in a very rude manner through the solid chalk, has a vault of the time of Henry II. carried on chalk walls, built over a small part of it as far as the Norman buildings extended only: the doorways are of the same period, one of which is quite perfect, and opens into the inner foss. If Windsor Castle had been built in the fifth century by King Arthur, as was believed by Edward III. and the chronicler Froissart, the roads would have been on the level. They are more likely of the time of Caractacus or Julius Cæsar. Edward the Confessor is believed to have resided chiefly at Old Windsor, where some of the ancient earthworks certainly belong to a period before the Norman Conquest. William himself is said to have built a castle at Windsor, but there is no evidence of it. The Domesday Survey rather proves that there was one previously existing, which had been inhabited by Earl Harold in the time of the Confessor. Henry I. is said by Stow, writing in the fifteenth century, to have built New Windsor chiefly of wood; some of the fragments of stone carving found in the castle may be of his time.

Stephen built nothing here, but Windsor is mentioned in the treaty of Wallingford as a fortress of importance. The name "Norman Tower," as given to one part of the pile, is erroneous, as the Norman keep is nothing more than earthworks surmounted by a wooden structure. The earliest date which can be assigned to any stone masonry which has been discovered at Windsor is the reign of Henry II. In the time of Henry II. the first mention of the castle is made in the Pipe Rolls. The outer wall of the south front of the upper ward remains, with the lower part of the king's gate, its hinges, and portcullis groove; the upper part was destroyed, and the whole concealed in other buildings by Wyatville, in the restoration works under George IV. In the reigns of Richard I. and John only necessary repairs were made.

With Henry III. the history of the existing castle may be said to begin. The whole of the lower ward was then first built of stone, and many portions of the existing walls are found to be of that period. The Clewer Tower—now known as the Curfew Tower—remains almost unaltered, and exhibits in good condition a prison of the above period.

The King's Hall is now the Chapter library, but the chambers of the King and Queen have been destroyed. Plans and drawings of them have been preserved; and the measurements agree with the orders of the kings, as recorded in the public rolls.

Of the primitive chapel the north wall is still preserved; the galilee being now the east end (behind the altar) of St. George's Chapel. The doorways of the galilee are one of Henry III., the other of Edward III.; the west end of the chapel has been rebuilt several times. The arcade in the cloisters was protected by a wooden roof only. This chapel was completed by Edward III. and made into a lady-chapel, when the great St. George's Chapel was built. It was partly rebuilt by Henry VII. for the tomb of Lady Margaret, his mother, and afterwards was proposed for that of Henry VIII. It was much altered by James II. and partly restored by George IV. At the present time it is being made the object of devoted care, under the direction of Mr. Gilbert Scott. The roof has been vaulted in stone, the pattern of that of Henry VII. is being inlaid with mosaic work, and the windows filled with stained glass; and the edifice is to be a sepulchral chapel over the Royal vaults, in memory of the late Prince Consort. Mural paintings of kings' heads have been found of the date of Henry III. and Edward III., and are preserved in the cloister and galilee.

During the reign of Edward I. the accounts show that the great works begun by Henry III. were carried on and completed; but no new works appear to have been undertaken. In the reign of Edward II. there were considerable sums expended on repairs of the walls, towers, and bridges, chiefly for timber and carpenters' work.

The reign of Edward III. is one of the most important in respect to the history of Windsor, a large part of the existing castle having been built at that period, and its survey has been lately brought to light. Another equally important document is the builder's account for the Round Tower, which was entirely built from the ground in the eighteenth year of this reign, and still remains, though much altered in appearance, from the additional story superposed by Mr. Wyatville, under George IV.

This building is sometimes called the Round Tower, and sometimes the Round Table; and, from other peculiarities in the same accounts, it is evident that the tower was built to hold the table. The galleries on which this round table was placed are still remaining, and the general disposition of the apartment where the knights dined on St. George's day is well seen from the summit of the Round Tower. The tables of those days were seldom more than a few planks in width, and the guests sat round on one side, the other being open for the service of the attendants. The centre of this great round table, then, was designed for the latter purpose, and was open to the air, a passage communicating on a level from this central space to the kitchen on the top of the middle gate, which has thus acquired the title of the "Kitchen Tower." The tower and table were erected in ten months, the greatest haste being made in order that the new order of knights might dine here on St. George's day following.

Edward III. did not build a chapel at Windsor, but only completed the one which had been begun by Henry III.; adding to it or rebuilding a cloister, a vestry, and other adjuncts.

After the thirteenth year, when William of Wykeham was appointed clerk of the works, with a salary of one shilling a day, an entirely new hall, with a new suite of apartments and offices, was built in the upper bailey, where the royal apartments now are; and the fine series of vaults under these apartments, forming ceilings to the servants' hall and other rooms and offices, still remain in perfect preservation, as built by Wykeham, who remained in this appointment only six years. The summary of his accounts during that time shows an expenditure of 5,658l.—equivalent to 120,000l. (?) of our money.

From this period, comparatively little was done for a century, when Edward IV. began to re-erect St. George's Chapel, nearly as we now see it; thereby adding, if not immediately to the castle itself, to the buildings within its precincts, one of extraordinary beauty and interest, as being in some respects the very finest specimen of the Perpendicular style and of ecclesiastical architecture in the kingdom. What adds, in some degree, to the interest of this edifice is, that the architects' names are preserved to us, it being known to be the work, first of Richard Beauchamp, Bishop of Salisbury; and, after his death, in 1481, it was completed by Sir Reginald Bray, who was also architect of Henry VII.'s Chapel. This sovereign intended to erect a mausoleum for himself at Windsor, and had begun to do so on the site of the original chapel built by Henry III.; but he abandoned the idea in favour of that at Westminster. Henry VII., however, added to the castle that building which is still called after him, and which is situated at the western extremity of the north side of the great quadrangle. Fortunately, this has been preserved, owing, perhaps, partly to its situation; for, although a mere "bit," it is a singularly fine one, and a noble specimen of palatial architecture, in that particular style.[27]

The small tower at the south-west angle of the Royal apartments near the library, now called erroneously King John's Tower, is an octagonal building, and the two chambers in it have very good vaults, with the ribs meeting in a central boss, which is in both cases carved into the form of a rose. This enables this rose-tower and the rose-vaults to be identified in a very remarkable manner. The tower was very richly painted, and the quantity of paint and other materials charged on the roll misled the late Mr. Hudson Turner, who had only seen a portion of these accounts, and made him think they belonged to the great Round Tower, and that it was painted on the outside. The dates do not agree with this, and there is no evidence of external painting.

The works which had been carried on during a great part of the long reign of Edward III. were not completed at the time of his death, and were continued under Richard II.; but with the exception of necessary repairs, the accounts for this reign relate chiefly to the offices and dependencies of the cattle, especially the mews for the falcons, which was evidently a large and important establishment not within the walls.

Geoffrey Chaucer, "the father of English poetry," was appointed, in the fourteenth year of this reign, clerk of the works, but very little was done in his time. The old chapter house, the remains of Henry the VII.'s palace, and the Clewer Tower and prison, are objects of much interest. A flight of about twenty steps leads down into the dungeons, which had been constructed by Henry III. for the confinement of State prisoners: it is a large and finely-arched vault, surrounded by seven small cells, each dismally lighted through a loop-hole in the thick wall.

The reign of Elizabeth forms almost an epoch in the architectural history of the castle, because, though she did not do much to it in the way of building, except annexing the portion erected by Henry VII., that which is distinguished by the name of Queen Elizabeth's Gallery, she first caused the terraces to be formed, thereby adding to the royal abode of Windsor, these truly regal characteristics. Under the Stuarts nothing material was done until the Restoration, when the castle began to be modernised, but in insipid taste. The principal addition made by Charles II. was the Star Building (containing the State Apartments shown to the public). The rooms were spacious and lofty, with large arched windows, commanding enchanting prospects; their only embellishment was derived from the sprawling pencil of Verrio. The first two Georges did nothing for Windsor; George III. on the contrary, much, especially in restoring the interior of St. George's Chapel. In 1796, James Wyatt Gothicised the Star Building, and other portions. Meanwhile, the east and south sides, the portions actually inhabited, were so inconvenient that it was found indispensable, in 1778-82, to erect a separate building for the actual occupation of the royal family: this was the Queen's Lodge, a large, plain house on the south side of the castle, near the site of the present stables. About 1823, George IV., with a grant of 300,000l. from Parliament, began his grand improvements, with Jeffry Wyatt for his architect; commencing with George the Fourth's Gateway, the entrance into the quadrangle on the south side, in a direct line with the Long Walk. We shall not attempt to detail the improvements: among the most effective is the fine architectural vista quite through from the north terrace by George the Fourth's Gateway; the addition of the Waterloo Gallery, lighted from above, and brought into a group with the Throne-room and the Ball-room. St. George's Hall has been greatly improved, and at its western end has been constructed the Chapel. By renovation and remodelling the exterior, greater height has been given to most of the buildings; some of the towers have been carried up higher, and others added: amongst these last are the Lancaster and York, flanking George IV.'s Gateway; and the Brunswick Tower at the north-east angle. But the most striking improvement of the kind was that of carrying up the Round Tower thirty feet higher, exclusive of the Watch Tower on its summit, which makes the height in that part twenty-five feet more; thus rendering the castle much more conspicuous than formerly as a distant object.

The architect's work has been much animadverted on: the details and strange intermixture of the earliest and latest styles of Gothic are very objectionable; and, as to general effect, Canon Bowles objected that the renovated pile looked as if it had been washed with soap and water! Nevertheless, it is a stately pile; the venerable Canon, just named, says of it: "Windsor Castle loses a great deal of its architectural impression (if I may use that word) by the smooth neatness with which its old towers are now chiselled and mortared. It looks as if it was washed every morning with soap and water, instead of exhibiting here and there a straggling flower, or creeping weather-stains. I believe this circumstance strikes every beholder; but, most imposing indeed is its distant view, when the broad banner floats or sleeps in the sunshine, amidst the intense blue of the summer skies; and its picturesque and ancient architectural vastness harmonizes with the decaying and gnarled oaks, coeval with so many departed monarchs. The stately, long-extended avenue, and the wild sweep of devious forests, connected with the eventful circumstances of English history, and past regal grandeur, bring back the memories of Edwards and Henries, or the gallant and accomplished Surrey." In 1825, Canon Bowles, who had been chaplain to the Prince Regent, and writes himself down as not a Laureate, but "a poet of loyal, old Church of England feelings," sung as follows:—

"Not that thy name, illustrious dome, recalls
The pomp of chivalry in banner'd halls,
The blaze of beauty, and the gorgeous sights
Of heralds, trophies, steeds, and crested knights;
Not that young Surrey here beguiled the hour,
With eyes upturn'd unto the maiden's tower.[28]
Oh! not for these, and pageants pass'd away,
I gaze upon your antique towers, and pray—
But that my Sovereign here, from crowds withdrawn,
May meet calm peace upon the twilight lawn;
That here, among these grey, primeval trees,
He may inhale health's animating breeze;
And when from this proud terrace he surveys
Slow Thames revolving his majestic maze,
(Now lost on the horizon's verge, now seen
Winding through lawns, and woods, and pastures green,)
May he reflect upon the waves that roll,
Bearing a nation's wealth from pole to pole,
And feel (ambition's proudest boast above)
A king's best glory is his country's love!"

"The range of cresting towers has a double interest, whilst we think of gorgeous dames and barons bold, of Lely and Vandyke's beauties; and gay, and gallant, accomplished cavaliers like Surrey. And who ever sat in the stalls of St. George's Chapel, without feeling the impression, on looking at the illustrious names, that here the royal and ennobled knights, through so many generations, sat each installed, whilst arms, and crests, and banners glittered over the same seat?"[29]

The interior of Windsor Castle, half a century since, mostly presented the decorative taste of the time of Charles the Second. To the seventeen State Apartments the public were admitted, until they were wearied with the mythological ceilings of Thornhill, Rigaud, and Matthew Wyatt; and the crowning genius of Verrio, in St. George's Hall. Throughout the apartments was placed the royal collection of pictures, then including the cartoons of Raphael; and the seven pictures of the glories of Edward III. painted by West for George III., remarkable for their historical accuracy, attributable to the friendly aid of Sir Isaac Heard, Garter King-at-arms, who was constantly at the elbow of the artist. And foremost among the decorative furniture were the State Bed of Queen Anne, silver chandeliers and glass-frames, and a "massive silver table from Hanover." Most of Gibbons's fine carvings appear to have been removed to Hampton Court. The Keep, or Round Tower, was the residence of the Constable or Governor of the castle, which he defended against all enemies, and he had the charge of all prisoners brought thither: the last was Major Belleisle, who lived in tapestried chambers, and beguiled his captivity with the loves of Hero and Leander and Cupid and Psyche. In the guard-chamber was a small magazine of arms. At the top of the stairs, within the wall, was planted a large piece of cannon, levelled, through an aperture, at the lower gate; there were also seventeen pieces of cannon mounted at the embrasures round the curtain of the towers, which was then the only battery in the castle, though formerly the whole place was strongly fortified with cannon on each of the several towers, besides those on the two platforms in the Lower Ward.

The remodelling of the private apartments of the castle has been effected with due regard to convenience and splendour. Among the more pleasurable memorials of royal visits, are the fittings of the apartments refurnished for the Emperor and Empress of the French, in which satin hangings, bordered with long-stitch needlework, in the natural colours of the flowers portrayed, are much admired, as are also the Brussels lace and white silk toilet-table, &c. There are in the state-rooms some fine Gobelin tapestries, inlaid cabinets, superb clocks, and a malachite vase and doors. In the plate room, among other superb works, is a tall vase of oxydized silver, produced for the Prince Consort, a short time previous to his death, at the cost of 1,000l.; besides rock crystal cups and beakers, the gold mounts studded with jewels, and the cups engraved and ornamented with flowers in silver filigree. Two of the most splendid receptions at the castle in the present reign, were the fêtes at the christening of the Prince of Wales in 1842, and the visits of Louis Philippe and some of his family in 1844: upon the latter occasion, the castle, seen from a distance, in the shades of an autumnal evening, with lights gleaming from nearly every window of the long-extended and stately pile, had a most enchanting effect.

Next to Windsor, deserves to be ranked Warwick Castle, in picturesqueness of site rivalling the royal palace; it is one of the finest specimens in the kingdom of the ancient residences of our feudal nobles. Not only for its architecture, but for its scenic accessories, and the sylvan character of the surrounding grounds, Warwick Castle is of almost matchless beauty. Of its archæology, on reference to the Pipe Rolls, we find it first mentioned in the 19th of Henry II., when it was furnished and garrisoned, at an expense of 10l. (equal to 200l. now), on behalf of the king against his son, and so it remained in the hands of Henry II. for three years. In the 20th and 21st of Henry II. are records of outlay for the soldiers, and in the latter year 50l. was spent in repairs. In the 7th year of King John, the castle, then belonging to the Crown (not the present castle, but a castle on the same site), was defended for 253 days; and in the days of Henry III. the walls were completely thrown down and destroyed. In the 9th of Edward II. (1315) it was returned, on an inquisition, as worth nothing except for the herbage in the courts and ditches, valued at 6s. 8d. a year. In the reign of Edward III. (1357) a new building was commenced by Thomas Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick, and finished about 1380. Guy's Tower was built in 1394. The next period in the architectural history of the castle is two or three hundred years later. The castle was then used as a gaol. The next work was the erection of the entrance-hall. Mr. Salvia, the architect, has been called in by the Earl of Warwick, and has made habitable a portion of the castle which before had been unused. The extreme beauty of the two towers is considered as unequalled in the world.

In the valuable collection of pictures in Warwick Castle are a curious portrait of Queen Elizabeth, painted very early in her reign; portrait of Sir Philip Sydney, the intimate friend of Fulke Greville; Charles I. on horseback, probably a copy made by Vandyke from that at Blenheim; and the colossal picture of Charles I. copied from the original in the Vandyke Room at Windsor, a duplicate of which is to be seen at Hampton Court. At Warwick, too, is Holbein's portrait of Henry VIII. noted for the exquisite finish of its details. The collection of ancient and modern armour is very valuable. The great hall of the castle, in its appearance and furniture, retains much of its ancient character. Externally, the form of the building has sustained little alteration; its site is a solid rock, in which the cellars are excavated. Cæsar's Tower is the most ancient; Guy's Tower, of Decorated English character, is la fine preservation. In one of the greenhouses is the celebrated ancient marble vase brought to England by the Earl of Warwick, to whom it had been given by Sir William Hamilton; it is known as the Warwick Vase, and has been copied in various materials.

As you look from the castle windows upon the soft-flowing Avon, with its gentle ripple in your ears, the effect is fascinating, and you are almost carried back to the age of fays and fairies. Henry V. visited Guy's Cliff; and Shakspeare is supposed to have made it a favourite retirement.

Warwick has its apocryphal antiquities, more especially Guy's curiosities. The story of this famous fellow is said to have been taken from the exploits of Earl Leofric, husband of Lady Godiva; though the legendary Guy is derived by some from a French romance of the twelfth or thirteenth century. Guy, or a prototype, was reputed to be a living personage, and his sword and coat of mail formed the subject of a bequest in 1369. In the reign of Henry VIII. a pension was granted for the preservation of Guy's porridge-pot; but the conflict with the dun cow is not mentioned until in a seventeenth century play, though Dr. Caius, about 1552, saw a bone of a bonassus (cow) at Warwick Castle kept with the arms of Guy. In 1636 the rib of the dun cow was exhibited at Warwick. Guy's armour is a medley: a bassinet of Edward III.; breast-plate, fifteenth and seventeenth century; sword, Henry VIII.; staff, an ancient tilting-lance, very curious; the horse-armour, and "Fair Phillis' slippers" (strap-irons), are fifteenth century. In conclusion, "the renowned Guy" is considered to be a myth.

The first historical Earl of Warwick was so created by the Conqueror. The history of the castle has some strange episodes. In 1468, Edward IV. marching towards Warwick, was met by an embassy from the Earl of Warwick to treat for peace; which the king, too credulously listening to, rested in his camp at Wolvey; but the Earl surprised him by night in his bed, and took him prisoner to his castle at Warwick. In the Civil War, 1642, Warwick Castle, garrisoned for the Parliament, was besieged; and, after the battle of Edge Hill, when Charles left Birmingham, the inhabitants seized the carriages containing the loyal plato, and conveyed them to Warwick Castle. Then Warwick and Kenilworth were in deadly hate: in 1230 (47th Hen. III.), Maudit, Earl of Warwick, and his Countess, were surprised in Warwick Castle, by a party of rebels from Kenilworth Castle, when the walls were thrown down lest the royalists should use them again; and the Earl and Countess were carried prisoners to Kenilworth Castle.

Kenilworth, five miles from Warwick and Coventry, respectively, had a castle which was demolished in the war of Edmund Ironside and Canute the Dane, early in the eleventh century. In the reign of Henry I. the manor was bestowed by the king on Geoffrey de Clinton, who built a strong castle, and founded a monastery. The castle keep is attributed to the reign of King John; the outer wall to the time of Henry III. The castle was one of the strongholds of Simon de Montfort, Earl of Leicester, in his insurrection against Henry III. and afforded shelter to his son, and others of his adherents, after the fatal battle of Evesham, in 1265; next year, however, it capitulated, after a gallant defence. A tournament of 100 knights was held here in 1278, the Earl of March principal challenger of the tilt-yard: of the ladies, who were splendidly attired, it is recorded, that they wore "silken mantles." The east range of buildings is referred to the middle of the reign of Edward II. who was confined in the castle, shortly before his murder in Berkeley Castle, in 1327. In the following reign, John of Gaunt became owner of the castle, which he much augmented by new and magnificent buildings. Henry IV. son of John of Gaunt, united the castle, which he inherited, to the domains of the Crown, of which it formed a part until the time of Elizabeth, who granted it to Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, who erected "Leicester's Buildings." The magnificent entertainments given here by Leicester to Elizabeth are minutely described by Laneham, an attendant on the court, in a tract, entitled The Princely Pleasures of Kenilworth. On her way thither, the Queen was entertained by Leicester under a splendid tent at Long Itchington. Kenilworth has been made familiar to the general reader by Sir Walter Scott's picturesque romance, which has sent thousands to pic-nic among the castle ruins: it was dismantled after the Civil War of Charles I.

Kenilworth ruins remind one of a puzzle, a few of the pieces of which have been lost, but are so few as to be readily supplied. The ruins are principally Late Perpendicular, but there are some Norman portions. Cæar's Tower, of which three sides remain, has walls sixteen feet thick. John of Gaunt's large and massive additions are in decay; and the Leicester Buildings, though comparatively modern, present, from the friable nature of the stone, an appearance of great antiquity: they contain the remains of the noble banqueting-hall. The gate-house, also Leicester's, is better preserved, and has in our time been occupied as a farm-house. The ruins are, in many parts, mantled with ivy, which adds to their picturesqueness; and being on an elevated, rocky site, they command extensive views of the country round: