EARLY ESSEX AND MEDIAEVAL HAMPSHIRE.* rHE sustained interest of the
first volumes dealing with the different counties of England in the admirable "Victoria" series is most creditable to the geologists, naturalists, and antiquarians of England. In some counties it has been less easy to find writers thoroughly acquainted with every branch of the fauna and flora, from the local mammals down to the still more local insects, or marine creatures, mosses and algx. But the level is very high, and that maintained in the opening volume on Essex is not below that of its predecessors. Each of these first volumes shows the great value, as a human as well as a topographical document, of the Domesday Book. Its "living" value is extraordinary. The editors of the "Victoria History" have also been most fortunate in having the aid of the very best expounder of the Domesday who has ever written, Mr. J. Horace Round. His knowledge of the whole record, county by county, enables him to interpret the story of each in the Slight shed by all the rest Mr. Round is also an Essex man ; and in this particular volume his help has by no means been confined to the Domesday chapters. The story of ancient Essex is contained in what is called the "Little Domesday," the smaller of the two volumes, in which the survey and assessment are written. It deals with Norfolk, Suffolk, and Essex. But the last was a Saxon • A History of the County of Essex, Vol. I.; A Hiatorv of the County of Hamp- shire and the Isle of Vinht, Vol. II. "The Victoria History of the Counties of England." London ; A. Constable and Co. [135s. each.] kingdom, and the two former part of East Anglia, for which reason apparently they were assessed on a different system.
The method of the Domesday enables the reader to use it as a kind of "range-finder," for it gives two distance-points to
make a basis for calculation,—the values, general condition,
population, and numbers of cattle, mills, and other property in the days of the Confessor ; and the corresponding figures at the time of the Survey. It must also be remembered that this
was made after twenty years of progress and increasingly settled government under William I. An instance of the method used by Mr. Round is his inference as to the area of forest in Essex—it seems to have been mainly forest—at the Conquest, and the proportionate amount of clearing which was done in the twenty years after the battle of Hastings. The money value of these forests was chiefly reckoned by their pig-feeding capacity. Where the woods were of much the same kind of trees, as they would be in Essex, the number of pigs the wood fed was an approximate measure of its size. In the Domesday the head of swine credited to the woods of each parish is recorded both for the days of Edward the Confessor and for the twentieth year of the reign of William I. At the latter date the pigs had greatly decreased, the figures being given in every case. By adding up the number of swine respectively fed at the earlier and the later date, the figures show that the forest area, expressed "in terms of pigs," had shrunk very greatly in most parts of the county. Probably this was mainly due to clearance for corn cultivation.
As Essex was not in the path of the Conqueror's march on London, or the scene of rebellions, it might have been thought that the inhabitants' land would have escaped confiscation. Yet their eviction was complete, and not a single ihstance occurs in which the Saxon was allowed a living rental of some fragment of his estate, though some widows, including the relict of one Phin, a Dane, kept a part of their lands. The Normans took over the land en bloc, and their names still dis- tinguish portions of it, though a few Saxon owners were kept on as reeves or caretakers. Besides the addition of the place- names of Mandeville, Ferrers, Gernon, Grays, Mortimer, Beauchamp, Mountnessing, and Mountfitchet, the English Alferestune was changed to Bigots at Dumnow, and the name of Bellencombre, the Norman fortress of the War- rennes, is repeated in Belcumber Hall, at Frenchingfield. To add insult to injury, the Normans endowed with Essex land St. Walery, whose relics their host had adored at the mouth of the Somme in the hopes that they might be granted a South wind, and who was duly rewarded with Essex manors for sending one. The name of " Warish Hall," in Takeley, records the transaction.
If Essex is remarkable for one natural feature more than another, it is for its great sea marshes, and the creeks and rivers between them. Many of these marshes are cut up into a kind of mosaic of patches, sometimes divided by natural creeks, sometimes by artificial cuts, each of which is labelled with the name of an Essex parish, and sometimes with that of a parish not adjoining the coast. Looking over Canvey Island from the cliffs of Leigh, a characteristic Essex scene well repre- sented in the frontispiece of this volume, the marshes below arc cut up into twenty-eight portions, each forming part of a parish, of which only four are adjacent. Mr. Round finds the explanation in the records in Domesday crediting "sheep pasture" to various inland manors. These manors enjoyed feeding rights on distant marshes, just as manors in Cumberland may enjoy sheep rights on distant fells. In the ancient stock lists both sheep and goats appear in a large proportion in Essex. Goats disappeared entirely, as they have done all over England. But the sheep still depasture the marshes, and the ancient industry of making ewe-milk cheeses continued on Canvey Island till Camden's days. Every pasture appears to have had its " wick " or shed, where the sheep's-milk cheeses were made. The name seems to have been interchangeable with that of dairy elsewhere, and though the cheeses are no longer made, the name of the dairy or "wick" still clings to the old pastures, there being five " wicks " on Canvey Island alone. This suggests that the popular derivation of Chiswick from "cheese wick may be correct.
Mr. J. C. Shenstone, in an interesting chapter on the botany of Essex, mentions that the plant Bupleurum, fat- eatum is confined in Britain to one locality in Essex, and that Lathyrus tuberous, still plentiful in Essex, is found in no other county. The oxlip country par excellence is in a part of Essex, where it is far more numerous than the primrose, and takes its place. En revanche, the primrose, by hybridising the oxlip, is gradually destroying it on the borders of its territory. The insects are dealt with by Mr. W. Har- wood; the birds by Mr. Miller Christy ; and the fish, rep- tiles, batrachia.ns, and mammals by Mr. H. Layer; while the various branches of marine zoology, mollusca, and crustacea are treated by Messrs. Garstang, B. R. Wood- ward, and the Rev. T. R. &ebbing respectively. The insects are very fully described, and the chapter will be a valuable local work of reference. One of the bees, Colletes succincta, which elsewhere frequents heath flowers, is in Essex "ex- clusively a coast species," confining itself to the flowers of maritime plants, mainly sea-starwort and sea-holly. A curious sweetmeat made from the roots of sea-holly was manufactured in Colchester from the days of the Civil War till forty years ago.
Though game-preserving has reduced some of the predatory birds, the protection of practically the whole foreshore of Essex has increased the numbers of shore birds and wild-fowl, and saved some, such as the lesser tern and sheldrake, from extinction. We could wish that more facts as to the results of protection had been collected. Among the mammals of Essex, the fallow-deer of Epping Forest are the only creatures of their species, except those in the New Forest, which can claim to be really wild from time immemorial. It is curious that the marten-cats remained so near London until recent days. One was killed in 1853. Others seen in recent years are referred to; but we believe these to have been liberated with a view to their restoration.
The chapter on Roman Essex has been postponed till the second volume, but the Anglo-Saxon remains, as well as those of early man, are fully described.
It cannot be said that the second volume of Hampshire and the Isle of Wight entirely maintains the high standard of the first. It contains a full and readable account of the ecclesi- astical history and religious houses of the shire by the Rev. J. C. Cox, and an account of forestry and of the New Forest by Mr. J. Nisbet and the Hon. G. Lascelles, which is logically necessary, though the abundance of New Forest literature of all kinds has covered the ground so recently as to mike a restatement almost superfluous. Winchester College and the various ancient but unimportant grammar schools occupy no less than fifty-nine pages, or more than one-tenth of the whole volume, which exhibits the full-page portraits of four- teen "eminent Wykehamists." We turn with more interest to see how the difficult problem of 'describing the parishes hundred by hundred, which nevertheless is a very important part of a county history, is solved. One hundred, that of Alton, is comprised in the volume. Were the space devoted to describing churches reduced, and some description 'of the land surface, water, old houses, and other matters of secular interest added, the treatment would gain both in scope and value; nor are examples wanting among the works of older topographers. The illustrations, where plates have been made from photographs, are fairly good ; but the drawings inserted in the text are weak and unsatisfactory. The difficulty in the way of illustration arises from the impossibility of printing from the process blocks on the rough paper. But this could be met by printing the smaller illustrations on one inserted page of glazed paper, divided into two or four compartments.
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