TWO HISTORICAL BOOKS.*
THE reverse of the Queen's Gold Medals at Winchester College bear, underneath a representation of William of Wykeham's chauntry-tomb in Winchester Cathedral, the inscription " Etiam sepulti vivit fama Wykehami." If William of Wykeham deserves this reversal of Shake- speare's dictum that " the good " men do " is oft in- terred in their tombs" for having furnished successive generations with a place of education, so do writers like the late Mr. J. R. Green, who has done more than any one else to make history—one of the most important subjects of instruction—a living power in education. Mrs. Green has done good service alike in keeping her husband's fame fresh, and in enlarging the field of his work by bringing out a new edition with illustrations from original—that is, as far as possible, contemporary—sources to enliven by pictures the lively narratives of the text. People talk glibly about the early saints and heroes of our race, and discuss the characters and conduct of St. Columba or Becket, Edgar or Henry II., as if they lived the same lives, or were of the same model, as to-day. These early pictures serve to remind us that St. Columba appears to have borne a stronger likeness to the Grand Lama, and William I. to the Great Mogul, than to the ordinary civilised beings of to-day, or to the statesmen-heroes of Periclean Athens, or Ciceronian Rome.
When we seethe picture of St. Matthew from the "Book of Kells " in 650, gorgeous but utterly barbaric. we may realise more easily that it was no disadvantage to England that it received its Christianity from Rome, more than from Celtic Ireland. So, too, a comparison of the representations of the old Teutonic gods and the new Christian saints, as shown in the representation of Dunstan at the feet of Christ, or the monastic cell off the coast of Kerry with the church of Brad- ford-on-Avon, may remind us that our religion is not only the cause, but also the product of civilisation, and that Christianity is as different a thing among barbarous peoples and civilised, as the Greek religion of Socrates was from the Greek religion of Homer. For the real understanding of that mysterious chapter in the early history of England, the Danish invasions—in which, if we believe the Saxon Chronicle, the same counties were devastated and depopu- lated about ten times over in the same number of years— nothing can be more striking than the pictures of the Viking ships discovered in Sweden. We see from the representation of these mere boats what they really meant. They are not as large or powerful as those of the savages of New Guinea now. The Vikings rowed and sailed over in the summer calms, penetrated the country as far as creeks and rivers could carry them, burnt some of the scattered wooden farm-houses in the neighbourhood, carried off the women and a few slaves, and the few hangings and paltry ornaments of a monastic or collegiate church, and returned over sea, to do the same next summer up the next creek or river. Sometimes a few boat- loads stayed and entrenched themselves in a camp, and so an English borough became a Danish by ; or settled on a farm, out of which the English farmer had been driven or slaughtered, and tilled the soil, probably by means of the same slaves, and so the English ham became a Danish garth. Where they did not settle, the natives, who had taken refuge in the woods or with their neighbours, simply • (1.) d Short History of the English People. Dlustrated Edition. By Mm. J. R. Green and Miss Nate No, gate. London : Macmillan. and Co —(2.) Story of King Edward and New Wiachelsta. By F. A. Inderwick, Q.O. London: Sampson Low, Marston, and Co. returned to their petty tillage and rebuilt their wattled cot- tages, and were ready for another harrying and " depopu- lation" next year. Striking, too, as illustrating the semi-savage condition of the people in the days of the Norman Conquest, are the illustrations of agricultural pursuits culled from a Bodleian Manuscript ; the ploughing and carting with oxen, instead of horses ; the pointed spade—like those on cards—as still used in Ireland, an instrument of not half the power of modern spades ; the threshing, with such an instrument as Araunah the Jebusite might have used. To tarn to a later date, how can the salient fact of the politics of the Middle Ages —government by clerics—be more easily impressed on the mind than by the picture of the House of Lords under Edward I? It is, indeed, of the date of Edward IV. ; but is true for either period. For here we see the King on the throne ; beneath him, on either side, the King of Scots and Llewellyn, Prince of Wales; at either end of the same bench as these, the Arch- bishops of York and Canterbury, with the Master of the Rolls, a cleric, standing by the latter ; while on the floor of the House are seated twenty-seven Bishops and mitred Abbots, and only twenty temporal lords, and in the centre, on veritable wool- sacks, the Chancellor and officials, all clerics. So, too, we see equally strongly presented the clerical character of learning and education. The last picture in the book shows a drawing (which has been admirably reproduced on a large scale in the last volume of the Archleologia) of New College, Oxford, then, perhaps even more than now, one of the leading colleges in the University, showing the warden, fellows, and scholars standing outside the college in 1453 (which is exactly the same as a photograph from the same point would show now), and not only the warden and fellows, who were necessarily priests, and the chaplains and clerks, but every scholar, and even the choristers, are tonsured. The same appears even in the companion picture of Winchester College, given in the same volume of Archxologia, where the boys of the school, equally with the priest-fellows, are one and all tonsured ecclesiastics. But we must pass on from this fascinating work, for which not only historical students, but every schoolboy, will thank Mrs. Green.
Mr. Inderwick's book is of a different kind. It is the work of an amateur, not of an expert. But it is an interesting contribution to public knowledge of an interesting phase in English history. He tells us, not without charm of style and picturesqueness of narration, of the founding of Winchel- sea—New Winchelsea as it is called, in distinction to its predecessor, which lies beneath the waves—by that most con- structive of English Kings, Edward I. It is a curious and almost unique incident in English history. No other English town but one owes its foundation to the deliberate intention of the ruler of the State. Newcastle was founded deliberately enough by William L as a castle, as, perhaps, Edinburgh had been before by Edwin. But Edward I. is, we believe, the only King who deliberately created full-grown towns to be towns, and not mere strongholds ; in Winchelsea at one end of the kingdom, and Hull at the other. It is curious that the one which was most of a new creation has been most success- ful; and that while New Winchelsea has sunk into the state from which Hull arose, Hull itself has taken rank among the great seaports of England and the world.
Igham was the name of the place where Winchelsea now stands, a manor of the great Earl Godwin, Harold's father, but (or, perhaps, therefore) devastated by William I., and returned as waste in Domesday ; a return, by-the-way, as to which Mr. Inderwick makes the extraordinary blunder of thinking that the waste "suggests some long-forgotten period anterior to the coming of the Conqueror, when there were dwellers with houses and properties at Igham, who had either been destroyed by the petty warfare of jealous princelete, or overwhelmed by a tornado of ruthless tempests." As if Kent had ever, since the days of Ethelbert, been subject to the "petty warfare of jealous princelets," until the ruin of Norman Conquest, and of Stephen's wars, burled England back into the savagery of domestic warfare. Not even Mr. Freeman has succeeded in giving a better word-picture of an ancient town than Mr. Inderwick in his description of the site selected by Edward for New Winchelsea. The site, like the site of a modern American city, or, indeed, of any new and deliberately founded town, was laid out in eight streets meeting at right angles, and the whole town divided into thirty-nine quarters. The description of the
an interesting paper, which would have been more valuable if done in concert with an expert. For instance, when he calls " Ham° Campion" "the attorney and defender of prisoners," he wholly mistakes the remarkable position of the professional champion. He was either the royal approver, a pardoned malefactor who impeached people for felony, and fought against them in the trial by battle to which they were forced ; or, perhaps, a more respectable person, the town champion, the person hired at so much a year to appear in battle, which then took place in civil as well as criminal cases. on behalf of the town, if its rights of property were attacked by any. Whichever he was, he was a very characteristic product of the vile system of Norman jurisprudence which had superseded the English common law ; and substituted 'might for right even in the sacred precincts of Courts of Justice. Nor is it easy to understand why Mr. Inderwick says that none of the women tenants are described as having any occupation, when we find Matilda Bakestre, or the baker. Alicia Ciggere, a caulker, Kabala Lynleggestre, a linen- weaver, and Juliana Gitebedde, whose profession was more ancient than honourable. town, with the names and rents of the tenants, is preserved' in a contemporary record of the Exchequer, A.D. 129. which Mr Inder wick prints at full length, ai.d discusses iu
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