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whose epitaph was copied by Somner, "in the body" of the church :

"Pray for the sawlys of Iohn Caxton and of Ione

And Isabel that to this church great good hath done,
In making new in the Chancell

Of Dexkys, and Setys aswell,

An Antiphon the which did bye,

With a table of the Martyrdome of St. Alphye;

For thing much which did pay,

And departed out of this life of October the 12. day.
And Isabel his second wiff

Passed to blisse where is no strife

The xijt day to tell the trowth

Of the same moneth as our Lord knoweth,

In the yeare of our Lord God, a thousand fower hundred fowerscore and five."

It was usual to familiarize the names of saints to which churches were dedicated; thus St. Olave became St. Tooley, whence Tooley Street in Southwark, &c. In the epitaph of the Rector who died two years after John Caxton, the church is also called St. Alphey:

"Here lieth Sr Robert Provest, Parson of S. Alpheys, which died the 22th day of Ianuary, Anno Dom. 1487. Mercy Ih'u."

We cannot leave Selden's account of St. Alphage, without extracting one more remarkable poetical epitaph,

which records the consecration of the churchyard, in 1502, and also contains a remarkable allusion to the Dance of

Death.

"In the West wall, without.
O ye good people that here go this way
Of your charite to have in remembrance
For the sowle of Agnes Halke to pray
Sometime here of acquaintance.
In this churchyard so was her chance,
First after the hallowing of the same,
Afore all other here to begin the dance
Which to all creatures is the loth game
The Tuisday next before Pentecost
The yeare of our Lord M. De, and two,
Whose souie Ih'u pardon that of myght is
most."

Notes. Line 1, O ye, evidently bearing the imperative sense of the French oyez, mind, remember to have in remembrance. Line 8, loth, unwilling.

All these epitaphs have been long since destroyed. Another set, taken in 1789, (many of which have now perhaps shared the same fate,) were placed on record by the late Sir Egerton Brydges, in the first volume of the Topographer; and they were also taken in May 1792, for Parsons's Kentish Monuments; and about the same time for Cozens's Tour in Thanet and East Kent. J. G. N.

MR. URBAN, Huddersfield, March 1.

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ON noticing the number of churches in the Domesday Survey, and the proportion assigned to each county, I was most forcibly struck with the frequency with which they are mentioned in some portions of the kingdom, and their entire omission in others. It is true the precept which directed the formation of the Domesday Survey, laid no injunction on the jurors to make return of churches, and the mention likely to be irregular. Yet it is singuof them, if at all made, was of course lar that, while in the return for Cambridgeshire one only is mentioned, and none in Lancashire, Cornwall, or even Middlesex, the seat of the metropolis, so many are enumerated in other more obscure and, at that time, almost unknown parts of the kingdom. I was led to this remark more immediately by finding that in one wapentake of the West Riding of Yorkshire, the wapentake of Skyrack, no less than thirty places are mentioned, wherein a return of a church, or of a church and priest is made. It appears, therefore that in Saxon times Christianity must have been extensively diffused throughout this part of the West Riding, and, as all mention of chapels is excluded from the Domesday Survey, it seems probable that at that æra, and long before the Norman power was established in Britain, the number of churches and chapels conjointly was probably greater in proportion to the population than it actually is at the present day. It were a bootless task even to indulge a conjecture on the origin of these Saxon churches, which were built in a dark age, and of which their pious founders have left us no memorial. But it is evident that the whole

number of churches recorded in the Norman survey forms but a small proportion of those that existed before the Conquest. Indeed the whole number noticed in the Survey, for the entire kingdom, amounts to a few more than one thousand seven hundred, a return notoriously incorrect had it been an object of the Survey to ascertain the number of churches throughout the kingdom. It is more than probable therefore that in this and in some other parts of the kingdom, the number of small edifices dedicated to divine worship, was far more considerable than has hitherto been supposed. Indeed Sherburne, in the wapentake of Barkstonash, in the West Riding of Yorkshire, was the residence of the Saxon Archbishops of York, who had a palace here, bestowed upon the see of York by Athelstan, with a consider able part of the town, and during the residence of so many metropolitans there, in the Saxon times, it is to be presumed that many, both churches and chapels, were erected in this part of Yorkshire, of which no record was preserved.

The church at Sherburne was a Saxon church, and, as far as can be ascertained in point of architecture, it is purely Saxon, and believed to be the work of some one of the first archbishops who became possessed of the place. The nave is magnificent, the columns massy, yet tall and graceful. This, be it remembered, was a Saxon metropolitan church; but, besides this edifice, there was a detached chapel, as appears by the ruins, from which was formerly dug up the head of a very rich and elegant cross. It may have been the site of the primitive church, or one of the ecclesiolæ or capellæ of the survey, which are sometimes incidentally mentioned as subordinate to the ecclesiæ. "Ibi æcclesia et alia capella is sometimes part of the description of places in Domesday. But the greater part of the Saxon churches were of a meaner structure, and all the earliest specimens of Saxon churches, it is supposed, were constructed of timber. The first cathedral at York was a wooden structure. But there is little doubt that the use of stone was introduced in the construction of the later Saxon churches; other wise we should have found more in

stances than one in Domesday of a church built of wood. The only example of a church so constructed, to be met with in Domesday, is Begeland, in Yorkshire. "Ibi presbiter et ecclesia lignea."

We learn from William of Malmesbury that in the year 1017 the Danish King, Canute, who became also King of England, gave sufficient evidence of his zeal in the cause of Christianity, not merely by repairing the monasteries that had been destroyed by his Pagan countrymen, the Danes, in the late wars, but by building and endowing churches. His first system of ecclesiastical laws contains twenty-six canons, of which the four first enlarge and secure the protection of the church, or its rights of sanctuary. But the third of these canons, which divides churches into four classes, sufficiently demonstrates that in his time these sacred edifices must have amounted to a large number. The mulct for violating the protection of a cathedral was five pounds, of a middling church one hundred and twenty shillings, of a lesser church, that hath a burying place, sixty shillings, of a country church, without a burying place, thirty shillings; and I cannot resist noticing the following law as shewing that, even in the eleventh century, idolatry still prevailed in this island. "We strictly prohibit all Heathenism, that is, the worship of idols or Heathen Gods, the sun, moon, fire, rivers, fountains, rocks, or trees of any kind; the practice of witchcraft, or committing murder by magic, or firebrands, or any other infernal tricks." In the reign of Edward the Confessor, so often alluded to in Domesday, there must have been a great increase of what were strictly denominated parish churches, it being asserted in one of the laws ascribed to that king, that in many places there were three or four churches, where in former times there was but

one.

But without expatiating on the ecclesiastical state of the kingdom at large, I wish more immediately to invite the attention of your readers in general, but especially of such Yorkshire antiquaries as I know are in the habit of perusing your time-honoured periodical, to this singular circumstance, that in one wapentake (Sky

rack) there should be thirty places recorded, in which mention is made of a church. I will take only such places in that wapentake having a church at the period of Domesday, as belonged to Ilbert de Laci, and to those of your readers who may not have access to the volume itself, the list subjoined may not be unacceptable,

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Of which the first and fifth belonged to William de Perci, the second, third, and sixth, to William de Warenne, and the fourth and last to Robert Malet. It appears, therefore, that out of about thirty churches in this wapentake, twenty-three formed part of the Lacy fee, though it must be borne in mind that the advowson of the living did not always follow the manor. remarkable that of the two great houses which for generations held the sway over so great a part of the West Riding of Yorkshire, viz. the Warren and Lacy families, the former should, at the period of Domesday, hold but

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three places with churches, while the Lacy family held twenty-eight places with churches attached to them, and it is still more remarkable that of these twenty-eight churches, twenty-three should be in the Skyrack wapentake.

In the parish of Batley, in the Morley wapentake, there was a church and presbyter in the time of Domesday, and the two Saxon lords, Dunstan and Stainulf, were disseized of their possessions here, in order to make way for Ilbert de Lacy. In Morley also there was a church; and the same Dunstan was here also superseded by Ilbert de Lacy.*

It see as by another passage in Domesday relating to Morley, under the head of "Claims of the West

Riding," that " according to the verdict of the men of Morelege (Morley) wapentake, concerning the church of St. Mary, which is in Morley wood, the king has a moiety of the three festivals of St. Mary's, which belongs to Wakefield. Ilbert and the priests who serve the church have all the rest." The family of Ilbert de Lacy was of Norman origin, and he himself came in the train of the Conqueror. To this family this district owes the foundation of most of its antient churches. We read of them, too, as being the founders of three several religious houses at Nostel, Pontefract, and Kirkstall.

Dr. Whitaker supposes that the church at Wakefield, at the time of Domesday, was not one of the original Saxon churches, of which, in the hundred of Morley, there were only two, namely, Morley itself, the hundred church, and Dewsbury. I shall not, in the present paper, undertake to combat this opinion, as it would occupy too much of your pages; but it cannot admit of a doubt, that a division of offerings was not unfrequently resorted to in the later Saxon times, at the foundation of new parishes. If a Thane erected on his own bocland (i. e. freehold or charter land,) a church, having a cemetery or place of burial, he was allowed to subtract one third part of his tithes from the

*The author of the History of Mor ley has mistaken the sense of Domesday, by erroneously interpreting the passage Ilb't' h't-Ilbertus habuit, instead of habet.

mother church, and bestow them upon his own clerk.

It seems from this ecclesiastical ordinance, (and, indeed, it is so recorded,) that many country churches were built in such situations as appeared to their pious founders to stand most in need of them, of a more humble description, and without the appendage of a burying ground. It is probable that to many of the manor-houses of the Saxon lords an oratory was attached, and afterwards accommodation found for the vassals and dependents of such lords. As population increased, a church of a larger size was built; though this, perhaps, in the first instance, was no more than a single nave and a choir, and the officiating presbyter supported chiefly by the liberality of the lord of the manor. How many of these ecclesiolæ or capella were in existence in the Saxon times, will probably never be ascertained, but the very names of many places mentioned in Domesday, without any mention of any church in that venerable record, sufficiently shew that, either at that or some former period, places of worship did there exist. There are five places of the name of Cherchebi mentioned in Domesday in the county of York, to not one of which is there any church assigned at the time of the conquest. There are also in this county ten places of the name of Chirchebi enumerated in Domesday, which have no mention either of eccl'ia or pb'r attached to them; of this number eight are in the West Riding. Can it be doubted that these names point out to the existence of a church or chapel at some period? One would expect in a place called Santacherche, in the West Riding of Yorkshire, that a church would be included in the Domesday description; but there is not any allusion to it. At Whitkirk, in this riding, where we know that a church did exist not long after the conquest, yet it is not mentioned in Domesday.

The discovery of a Saxon wheel cross among the Roman remains of Burghdurum, near Adel, in the West Riding, also plainly indicates the existence of a place of Christian worship there in the Saxon period; yet, though Adel is mentioned as well as Burhdurum in Domesday, no church is re

corded as in existence at that time. We must not, therefore, conclude, because we find an omission of a place of worship in a survey designed for other purposes than that of recording the number of ecclesiastical edifices, that none such ever existed. I might also mention the various towns in Domesday named Prestone, or Preste-tune, without any church.

There was a capella at Hertshead in the West Riding, known to have existed at the time when the living of Dewsbury was granted by the second Earl Warren to the priory of Lewes, about the year 1120. The absence of all mention of such chapel in the Domesday account of the place is no proof of the non-existence of such chapel before the time of Domesday. The base of a genuine Saxon cross, still in existence at that place, affords presumptive evidence that Christianity had shed its light here in Saxon times, and subsequently led to the erection of a chapel. The marks of crosses on some tiles found in the ruins of the Roman towns would seem to warrant a suspicion that in some instances such chapels existed before the final evacuation of this island by the Roman armies. In the various excavations that have at sundry times been made on the site of the antient Cambodunum in the neighbourhood of Huddersfield, tiles have been thrown up that had very distinct impressions of the cross on their surface, perhaps only a single cruciform figure, entirely disconnected from all other figures, and such as could not have been impressed for the sake of ornament. They were dug up not far from some others bearing this inscription, COH IIII BRE. Now it appears that at the period when this latter inscription was made, the Christian religion had extended itself through most, if not all, the Roman settlements; and it appears to me no improbable supposition that, on the site of this Roman town, the first Christian edifice, how mean soever it might be, was planted in this part of Yorkshire. The progress of the Roman arms, though without any intention of theirs, was made the instrument, under Providence, of promoting the progress of the Gospel, by opening a freer and less interrupted intercourse over the whole country. The arrival of the

Saxons in Britain, being all heathens, led to the temporary overthrow of most, if not all, the British churches. At length, however, these Pagan invaders were themselves converted, and they, in their turn, became church builders. The number of these Saxon churches, at the period of the Norman conquest, was much greater than is generally supposed, and when we find that in one wapentake alone (Skyrack) thirty such churches are recorded in Domesday, we may draw some inference what the number must have been in other more populous and more civilized districts. Yours, &c.

J. K. WALKER, M.D.

MR. URBAN, B.S.G.S. April 8. YOUR correspondent J. R. never puts pen to paper without laying before your readers a great abundance of information, amusement, or matter for consideration and reflection: "if to his share some trifling errors fall," they are rather attributable to the humana parum cavit natura than to incuria. In your February Number his communication takes up the subject of ennobling Physicians and Lawyers: from among the latter class of persons many have been raised to the rank of nobility; among the former, baronetcy is almost without exception the highest honour that has been attained. J. R. says, p. 145, "A rumour existed, I remember, of George the Fourth's desire to confer a peerage on Sir Astley Cooper, but that he was deterred by the absence of all precedent." If such a desire existed on the part of George the Fourth, the absence of precedent need not have deterred him, for the precedent did exist in the person of Sylvester Douglas, Lord Glenbervie, who was educated, and for a short time practised, as a surgeon. It is

true he became afterwards a barrister and a distinguished diplomatist, to which circumstance, and not to his surgeoncy, he owed his elevation. The literary acquirements of Lord Glenbervie were splendid, and he did honour to each of the professions that he had cultivated, and medical professors are to be excused when they look up to Lord Glenbervie and to the present Lord Langdale, likewise originally a surgeon, as having, by attaining the high rank of nobility, conferred dignity and honour upon a truly GENT. MAG. VOL. XIX.

meritorious but toilsome profession; a profession oppressed, indeed, in various ways, and miserably ill-paid, but cherished and beloved by those who aspire to the enviable distinction of relieving the infirmities of their fellow-creatures. Alas! how much it is to be deplored that the generality of those who exercise this delightful profession should be compelled to leave their families in slender, if not in indigent, circumstances.*

J. R. says, p. 146, "I cannot say whether any [medical] gentleman in direct practice had been in parliament previous to my friend, Dr. Herbert Baldwin, who represented Cork from 1832 to 1837." J. R. did not call to mind the case of the celebrated Dr. Freind, a highly distinguished physician. He was member of parliament for Launceston, and for his attachment to the cause of the Stuarts, and his speeches in Parliament in defence of Bishop Atterbury, was on the 15th of March, 1722-3, committed to the Tower. The very commendable and noble conduct of Dr. Mead, a zealous Whig, towards his Tory friend, Freind, cannot be too much applauded, though it has been strangely exaggerated. By his personal and earnest representations to Sir Robert Walpole, then his patient, for whom, it is said, he refused to prescribe unless his request was granted, Mead obtained Freind's release from prison on bail, Drs. Mead, Hulse, Levet, and Hale being his sureties; and it is further reported that Mead afterwards presented to Freind the sum of five thousand guineas, which he had received from Freind's patients, whom he had visited during his imprisonment. But in this there must be much incorrectness. It is stated upon good authority that Mead, the most fully employed physician in London, never made more

*The records of the Society, founded in 1788, for the "Relief of Widows and Orphans of Medical Men in London and its Vicinity," fully prove this fact. If the widow's income, from every source whatever, exceeds 50l. a year, she is ineligible to receive relief, and a comparative rule obtains with regard to orphans; yet to the widows or orphans of one-fourth of the members stipends have been voted, and the average amount of income has been greatly lower than the stipulated modicum.

3 R

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