History and Description of Corfe Castle. By Thomas Bond. E. Stanford. 1884.

We have here a book to which we can conscientiously pay a high tribute of praise. The noble ruins of mediÆval castles in which England is so pre-eminently rich have rarely found competent historians, for the reason that while, on the one hand, their architecture is a special study, and understood by only a very few, who have made it their own subject; on the other hand, those who have thus acquired the necessary general knowledge are too often lacking in the special local knowledge, which is, in such cases, absolutely essential. Mr. Bond, however, has unquestionably succeeded in combining these two qualifications. In the present work he gives us, in an enlarged and final form, the results of those valuable researches on the castle, of which the outline has previously appeared in the third edition of Hutchins’ “Dorset,” and in his paper read before the ArchÆological Institute in 1866. The chief point which Mr. Bond has throughout sought to establish is the early date of the actual keep, which, as he shows, may with good reason be assigned to the days of the Conqueror. In this last controversy the most important point is the locality of the “Castellum de Warham,” mentioned in “Domesday.” Mr. Bond identifies it, beyond the shadow of a doubt, with Corfe Castle itself. Mr. Freeman’s unfortunate attempt to defend his own identification of it with the later and infinitely less important fortress of Wareham Castle is utterly shattered by Mr. Bond’s arguments, though he does not, strangely enough, allude to Mr. Freeman’s contention, which will be found under “Wareham,” in his work on “English Towns and Districts.”

We gladly call attention to the valuable searches made by Mr. Bond among original MS. authorities in the Public Records, especially the instructive “Fabric Rolls.” The careful excavations which he has been permitted to make have also led to important results, and, in short, we have in his book the fruits of long and patient study on the spot, combined with an unsparing and yet critical use of all available sources of original information.

We must not omit to notice the excellent plans and illustrations, with which the volume is liberally adorned, and which, by their great clearness, are admirably adapted to their purpose.

MediÆval Military Architecture in England. 2 vols. By G. T. Clark. Wyman. 1884.

It is with a feeling of real gratitude that we welcome this noble work. The prolonged labours of “Castle Clark” have long been familiar to antiquaries, and no archÆological meeting at any spot that could boast a castle has seemed complete without the presence of “the great master of military architecture,” as Mr. Clark has been justly termed by Professor Freeman: to whom, by the way, these volumes are dedicated, as having been issued “at his suggestion.” It has long been a matter of natural regret that the valuable results of Mr. Clark’s researches should have been so widely scattered as to render them, for practical purposes, inaccessible to the student. In these volumes they have now been collected, gathered together from many quarters, such as the “Transactions” of the national and local ArchÆological societies, the Builder, and, not least, the scarce volume known as “Old London,” from which Mr. Clark has been allowed to reproduce his important monograph on the Tower.

The work begins with twelve introductory chapters, of which we may select, as of special interest, that on “earthworks of the post-Roman and English periods,” an obscure subject, on which Mr. Clark has here collected much instructive information. Three chapters deal with “the Castles of England and Wales at the latter part of the twelfth century,” and we can only regret that a subsequent chapter has not been devoted to the period of the Charter (1213-1223), when these fortresses played so large and important a part in the struggle. These chapters are succeeded by more than one hundred papers on various castles and works, not confined to England alone, as could be gathered from the title, but including many in Wales, Borthwick Tower in Scotland, and, beyond the Channel, the typical strongholds of Arques and Coucy, together with the famous ChÂteau-Gaillard. The plans and diagrams, so all-essential in a work dealing with these subjects, are bestowed with no sparing hand, and there are not a few illustrations of a less severe character.

The drawback incident to such a work as this is the great area which it has to cover. Not only a very wide knowledge of history, but also much special local knowledge is needed to secure a satisfactory result. It must be confessed that Mr. Clark has been more successful in the structural than in the historical portion of his theme. Nor have his views on the former always escaped challenge. His statements as to Pevensey were questioned at the time, and his account of Colchester, both of the structure and of its history, has been very gravely impugned. It is somewhat strange that, in this case, Mr. Clark has repeated, without correction, his statements, as he has inserted, in his account of the Tower, the important discovery of two fireplaces on the second stage, since the paper was originally written. We may also note that, notwithstanding the admiration which Messrs. Freeman and Clark profess for one another, their views are often very contradictory, as, for instance, on Norwich Castle, on the character of pre-Conquest keeps, on the earthworks at Lincoln, and on Richard’s Castle.

But while it is necessary to sound a note of warning, it is almost ungrateful to criticise a work which will be recognised as indispensable to every student of English history in the middle ages. Few studies could throw more light on the social life of the two centuries succeeding the Norman Conquest. When we learn that, of the papers reprinted in these volumes, that on Caerphilly was originally issued no less than half a century ago, we may form some idea of the duration of Mr. Clark’s labours, and may congratulate him on being not only the worthy successor of the painstaking and indefatigable Mr. King, but the greatest authority we have ever had on MediÆval Military Architecture.

Cowdray: the History of a Great English House. By Mrs. Charles Roundell. Bickers & Son. 1884.

This handsome quarto volume possesses something more than local interest; it is the history of a house which was one of the most characteristic examples of Tudor architecture, and of a family which for several generations was conspicuous in the history of the times. Cowdray House stood close to Midhurst, in West Sussex; but it was burned down towards the end of the last century, and little now remains of the once magnificent pile but ivy-clad walls. With the mansion perished several invaluable historical treasures—among them the sword of William the Conqueror, his coronation robe, and the oft-disputed Roll of Battle Abbey. The house was full of rare and curious things, and contained a large number of family portraits of the Lords of Cowdray, whose fortunes were founded by Sir Anthony Browne, the friend and confidant of Henry VIII., and whose son, on the marriage of Queen Mary with Philip of Spain, was created Viscount Montague, a title which became extinct on the death of the ninth Lord in 1797. According to tradition, it was at Battle Abbey, where Sir Anthony Browne and his family were established within three months of its surrender to the Crown, that the famous “curse of Cowdray” was invoked. The story runs that while Sir Anthony was holding his first great feast in the Abbots’ Hall, “a monk made his way through the crowd of guests, and, striding up to the daÏs on which Sir Anthony sat, cursed him to his face. He concluded with the words, ‘By fire and water thy line shall come to an end, and it shall perish out of the land.’” Two hundred and fifty years afterwards the curse was fulfilled, for Cowdray was burned down, and the eighth Lord Montague and his two nephews were all drowned. Misfortune seems to have been the lot of Lord Montague’s family from the first to the last, and the climax came with the burning of Cowdray; the last Viscount was a monk, who obtained the Papal dispensation to marry and continue the line; but he, too, died childless, and the male line of the Brownes of Cowdray became extinct. Mrs. Roundell thus describes the present appearance of the ruins of Cowdray: “Above the great gateway the face of the clock still remains, with its hands still pointing to the hour at which it stopped; by the door is the old bell, and the original staples which held the doors to the gateway. The kitchen still contains the enormous dripping-pan, five feet long and four feet wide, and the great meat-screen and meat-block. Among these relics of old Cowdray are lying a fine mirror-frame, a chandelier, and Lady Montague’s harp, on which are the words, ‘H. Naderman, À Paris.’”

It only remains to add that Mrs. Roundell has treated her subject exhaustively, but in a plain, unvarnished manner, and that the book is illustrated with reproductions, by a photographic process, of some old views of Cowdray.

Life and Times of William IV. By Percy FitzGerald, M.A., F.S.A.

This is rather a sample of book-making by a gentleman who can do better work, and has done it. The account of King William’s early years is dull and heavy; and that of the first Reform Bill contains nothing that has not been told before. His accounts of Holland House and its “set” (where he has had Macaulay to draw upon), and of the French emigrÉs in London after the Revolution of 1830, and of the chief dandies and ladies of fashion who hung about Lady Blessington, are the most interesting parts of the book.

1. Luther and the Cardinal. Translated by Julie Sutter. 2. Homes and Haunts of Luther. By John Stoughton, D.D. 3. Luther Anecdotes. By Dr. Macaulay. Religious Tract Society. 1883.

Certainly the enterprising publishers who call themselves the Religious Tract Society were not behindhand in contributing to the Luther Festival last year. The story of one of the bravest men in history (let us not hesitate to call him so) has seldom been more worthily enshrined than in the books now lying on our table. The “anecdotes” are an unambitious attempt to unite in a connected form the various stories told of Luther at various periods of his life. “Homes and Haunts of Martin Luther” is evidently written in the true spirit of the loving and faithful chronicler. We follow the great Reformer from the mines of EisÈnach to the princely castle of the Wartburg; from the quiet of the Wittenberg monastery to the fierce conflict of the Diet of Worms. Everywhere Mr. Stoughton describes the life and doings of his hero with the tender reverence of an ardent admirer. A noticeable feature of the book is the elegance of the illustrations, which are artistically drawn and carefully engraved. The foregoing treat of the general story of Luther’s life; in the work entitled “Luther and the Cardinal,” we have a graphic historical picture of the memorable struggle between the Reformer and one of the greatest of the Papal adherents, Cardinal Albrecht, Elector and Archbishop of Mainz. It is written almost in the style of an historical novel, except that no imaginary personage or event is introduced. Pastor Metschmann thoroughly warms to his task when he describes in the latter part of the book the fierce retribution wreaked upon the Cardinal by Luther for the judicial murder of poor Hans von SchÖmtz, and he is appreciatively and carefully interpreted by his translator.

Hanley and the House of Lechmere, by the late Mr. E. P. Shirley (Pickering), is a book to which much interest attaches, as the last (and indeed posthumous) work of one of the most noble and worthy of scholars and gentlemen. It is partly topographical, as giving an account of the parish of Hanley Castle; it is also partly architectural, and partly genealogical; and in all these three qualifications Mr. Shirley shone pre-eminent. The old seat of the Lechmere family, now known as Severn End, is one of those fine old timbered mansions which are scattered so thickly up and down the western and north-western counties from Gloucester to Lancaster; and it appears that the mansion must have ranked a century ago high among the houses of its class. Its general structure, its tapestries, its pictures, its painted glass, all serve to show this. The greater part of the volume is taken up with the diary of Sir Nicholas Les Lechmere, recording the history of the family from the days of the first two Edwards down to the reign of William and Mary, in fact to within a year of his own death in 1701. The entries exhibit to us the domestic pursuits,—pleasures, as well as the public duties of a worthy man and upright judge. A manuscript of Dr. Thomas, quoted by Nash, in his “History of Worcestershire,” observes of the Lechmeres: “This family came out of the Low Countries, served under William the Conqueror, and obtained lands in Hanley, called from them Lechmere’s Place, and Lechmere’s Fields. Lech is a branch of the Rhine, which parts from it at Wyke, in the province of Utrecht, and running westward falls into the Maes before you come to Rotterdam.” “Some foundation for the supposed foreign origin of the name,” remarks Mr. Shirley, “is derived from the fact that all the earlier ancestors of the Lechmeres used the prefix de, which was afterwards dropped; and as, with the exception of Lechmere Heath in Hertfordshire, there is no place of that name in England, we may, perhaps, conclude that Dr. Thomas’s theory is the right one. There can be no reasonable doubt that the progenitor of the venerable House of Lechmere was seated in the parish of Hanley not long after the Conquest, and, after all, it may not be impossible that he was the Roger who held under Gislebert, at the time of the Domesday survey.” Mr. Shirley’s work, we may add, is illustrated with a view of the western front of Severn End, as it appeared in 1803, taken from a sketch by the late Sir Edmund Lechmere; whilst the pages of the volume are enriched with numerous carefully-executed coats of arms of the Lechmeres, and their several impalements through marriage. The arms of Lechmere, Gules, a fess, and in chief two pelicans vulning themselves, or—“may be taken as an early instance of what is called canting heraldry, Lech, in old Breton, meaning love, and mere, of course, mother,—a play upon the name symbolised by the pelican wounding herself and feeding her young with her blood.”

The History of Newcastle and Gateshead in the 14th and 15th Centuries., by Mr. R. Welford (Scott, 14, Paternoster-square), introduces us to a district which in the course of the present summer will be visited by the ArchÆological Institute of Great Britain; its appearance, therefore, is well timed. Mr. Welford has brought together and has arranged with considerable skill a mass of extracts from the records of “the King’s Town of the New Castle upon the Tyne,” founded by a son of the Conqueror; and in his introductory chapter he has given a sketch of the early growth of the town, with its charters, its commerce, and its pageants. The only fault that we can find is that this chapter is far too brief; for we should have been pleased to see more of Mr. Welford’s own handiwork, and of his comments on the most interesting materials which he has brought together, and which extend from A.D. 1301 down to the close of A.D. 1500. For a record of local annals the book strikes us as coming very nearly up to the standard of perfection.

Gwilt’s EncyclopÆdia of Architecture (Longmans) is a work so thoroughly established as an authority that it needs no commendation of ours. If any proof of its value, and the public appreciation of that value be needed, it will be enough to say that it has reached its seventh edition. Thus, as to the two previous impressions, many amendments have been made, which the progress of time had rendered necessary. But for the present edition “The Tables of the English Cathedrals have been compiled; many chapters on public and private buildings have been re-written, and new ones have been inserted: the list of architects and their principal works has been removed from the glossary and re-compiled, the list of architectural publications has been enlarged, and formed into a separate list, while the glossary itself has received numerous additional terms and illustrations, together with such other amendments as appeared desirable.” Though the work is styled an “EncyclopÆdia,” the only portion of it which is alphabetically arranged is the “Glossary” at the end; the rest of the book is really an elaborate history of architecture, from the earliest period of a semi-barbaric age. In it Mr. Gwilt carries his readers through the annals of architecture, Druidical and Celtic, Pelasgic or Cyclopean, Babylonian, Persian, Jewish and Phoenician, Indian, Egyptian, Chinese, Mexican, Arabian, Moorish, or Saracenic, Grecian, Etruscan, Roman, Byzantine, and so on to the rise of that Pointed Style to which the name of Gothic has clung so strongly. He devotes sections also to a general view of the Italian, French, German, Spanish, Portuguese, and Russian styles; and then occupies the bulk of the work with the successive styles of architecture which have prevailed in this country, and the Pointed Architecture of France, Italy, Spain, Belgium, and other continental countries. The second and third parts of the work treat in great detail of the theory and the practice of architecture respectively: the fourth part concerns mainly the working builder, and the land agent. The work is illustrated by woodcuts, giving views, elevations, and ground-plans of the principal public and private buildings both at home and abroad. The short memoir of Mr. Gwilt, himself, prefixed to the work, is the record of a man whose name the present race of Englishmen would not wish to die.

Lincolnshire and the Danes. By the Rev. G. S. Streatfeild. Kegan Paul & Co. 1884.

The Great Fen District and the Danish occupation of this part of our country, together form an interesting episode in English History; and this Mr. Streatfeild has undertaken to illustrate. He is not without, at all events, one great qualification for his task, for he has long been a resident in the south of Lincolnshire; and besides that he has other merits, for he is a man of honest research, and he writes with the pen of a scholar and a gentleman. Perhaps the best chapter in the volume is the third, which treats of the Dane in his English home; though other readers will be inclined to bestow equal praise on the chapter on Danish Mythology, and on the influence which has been exerted by it upon our language and people. It should be added that the book is dedicated to the Princess of Wales, who can see almost from her windows at Sandringham the tower of Boston Church, which marks the district on which the Danes of old have left their stamp.

Historic Sites of Lancashire and Cheshire. By James Croston, Esq., F.S.A. Manchester: John Heywood. 1883.

The author of this work says, rather grandiloquently, in his preface, that, without any pretension to the dignity of history, his aim has been “to combine with topographical description, personal narrative and local legend, and to snatch from Oblivion’s spoils the shadowy fragments of tradition that have floated down through centuries of time.” Certainly a worthy and admirable aim, not wanting, despite the writer’s disclaimer, in ‘dignity.’ He has contrived to clothe his descriptions of persons and places in a mantle of poetical beauty, which renders them exceedingly charming to the general reader, as they are also of pre-eminent interest to the antiquary. One of the chapters, that devoted to Alderley and the Stanleys, will be especially attractive to admirers of perhaps the most universally admired Churchmen of the century. Mr. Croston has wisely summarised in a few words the later and best-known part of his history, and paid most attention to the early years of Arthur Stanley in the pretty home at Alderley.

We must give an especial meed of praise to the spirited style in which the story of Sir William Brereton, who was such an excellent type of the higher class of the Parliamentarian soldier, is told. As the author remarks, to tell the history of his life is to write the record of the Civil war in the north-west of England. This he has told impartially and excellently, and in a style of narrative which can scarcely be too highly commended for its clearness and freedom from inflation. The pages of the work are enlivened by apt poetical quotations, many of them from little known old English poets, which show that Mr. Croston’s reading has been various and extensive. The book should find favour with more than local readers; old Moreton Hall, for instance, is one of those “stately homes of England” in which a national interest is felt; and none who love the quaintly venerable, albeit decayed, mansions of our forefathers, can fail to be grateful to the writer for his graphic and appreciative chapter on one of the most ancient and interesting of them.

Moreton Hall[12] is almost peculiar for its wealth of rich carving and mouldings, from the entrance, with its two side-posts, each carved to represent a soldier bearing a partisan, to the beautiful little chapel, now, alas! degraded to the service of a cattle-shed, lumber, storehouse, and such base uses. In the “long gallery,” which our author compares to the banquetting-room at Haddon Hall, are two draped figures of Fate and Fortune, admirably illustrating the difference between two terms frequently confounded with each other. Fate bears a sword, with which she pierces a globe above her head, and the inscription beneath is: “The speare of destinye whose ruler is knowledge;” while opposite to her is Fortune, blindfolded, pointing to her wheel, and her motto is: “The wheele of Fortune whose rule is ignorance.” This part of the mansion also gathers additional interest from the tradition that “Good Queen Bess” condescended to dance in the gallery, while on a visit to Moreton Hall during one of her royal progresses. If this be true, it is very possible that her visit may have contributed to the decline rather than to the exaltation of the family; for to have a Tudor sovereign as a guest was, in those days, much the same kind of undesirable honour as the gift of a sacred white elephant from the Burmese king to some subject whom he delights to honour—and to ruin. Witness the clean sweep which the royal Dame contrived to make of the riches of Kenilworth, when Leicester’s Earl paid so dearly for a glance from royal eyes.

“Between architecture and history there exists a closer connection than is commonly supposed,” remarks Mr. Croston, and this may almost be called the key-note of his book. When the author stands before a relic of the past, visions of past chivalry fill his imagination and, consequently, his narrative; and he is never happier than when following the fortunes of some old knight who lived by his sword.

says Coleridge; let us add that their names cannot be better commemorated than by books like the one before us.

English Etchings, Part 37 (D. Bogue, 3, St. Martin’s-place), contains three admirable examples of the etcher’s skill, namely “Dachsunds,” by Mr. A. M. Williams, representing three dogs of the badger-hound species; “In the Pursuit of Riches,” by Mr. Edwin Buckman, a spirited drawing of a couple of urchins endeavouring to catch a “copper” thrown to them from the roof of a passing vehicle; and a “Surrey Lime-Kiln,” by Mr. W. Holmes May.