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the Vicar recommended a "Bazaar" in aid of the restoration, and that more than half the funds collected were raised by this very questionable means.

Mr. Eastwood's book contains a great many curious details about the Vicars, the local charities, and various families belonging to the parish. Some of these approach to the nature of gossip, but most of them are in their place in a local history. There is also a list of odd names and other grotesque entries from the Register. In some we can see nothing very wonderful; Bettriss and Betteris are simply mis-spellings for Beatrice, as Damoris and Damorous are for Damaris, nor is there anything very amazing in pairs of twins being called severally Peter and Paul, Isaac and Rebecca, Rachel and Leah, Abraham and Isaac. Ulysses and Penelope, in the like case, is certainly going rather further a-field. But some of the entries are indeed odd; for instance, of male names we find Dud, Zeruiah, and Amor; the list of wonderful female names is much longer, including Bethelina, Anthanna, Avarilda, Phoebus, [sic] Virtuous, Enchora, Armenial, Avalinda, Granada, Rocksinelia, Sabran, Saint, Meseems, Emott, Seana, Joney, Ishub, Ouneriffa, and Bodishai.

We will end with a few matters taken at random. There are some primæval antiquities in the parish, but Mr. Eastwood gives no scientific account of them, only an extract from some bygone writer in the "Archæologia" who talks about "a piece of rock which appears to have artificial basons upon it." Geology and scientific archæology combined have driven out this kind. of nonsense in most places. We do not know whether Ecclesfield is blessed with the presence of any members of the "Yorkshire Welsh Club," but this sort of talk savours greatly of Druids.

In p. 34 Mr. Eastwood remarks that "Ship-money seems to have been as distasteful in those days as is the Income Tax at the present day." He forgets the important difference that the one is legal and the other was illegal.

In p. 47 Mr. Eastwood absurdly derives the first part of the name Ecclesfield from the Welsh Eglwys, as if it were Eglwysfield-half Welsh, half English. He adds a note of what we must call twaddle :

"It is worthy of remark, that most of the ecclesiastical terms in the Saxon language, and doubtless also in the British which preceded the Saxon, were

corruptions of the corresponding Greek and Latin terms, as was only likely from the fact that Christianity was first made known in this country through the Romans, at the time when Roman legions were stationed in the various towns, which still record the fact of such occupation in the chester, caster, or cester, with which their names are compounded. Church (A. S. cyrс) is кuрιaкǹ oixía, the Lord's house; mynstyr, or minster, is a corruption of monasterium. The words clerc, prior, abbot, bisceop (Gk. èñíσкOTоs, Brit. esgob), archbisceop, canon, regol (i.e. regula, rule), arckedekne, Pape (Brit. Páp), pallium, canceler, Apostol, and others, all of Greek or Latin origin, occur in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, pointing to the fact that words of this kind were naturalized in the language long before the time that the name of Ecclesfield is first mentioned."

Now here is a considerable display of elementary learning; but what is it to the point? What on earth have we to do with "the British which preceded the Saxon?" Who doubts that many ecclesiastical terms come to us from the Latin and, through the Latin, from the Greek? How could they fail so to do? Of course the really remarkable thing, both in German and in Old-English, is not that so many Latin words were adopted, but that so many were translated into good Teutonic. The derivation of Cyrice from κυριακή or κυριακόν, though accepted by better scholars than Mr. Eastwood, is against all analogy; but κυριακὴ οἰκία (we have somewhere seen Κυρίου οἶκος we fancy that Mr. Eastwood has all to himself. But all this is nothing to the purpose, as long as we have the simple fact that the word Ecclesia was never adopted in English. In expounding the names of Yorkshire villages, we can have no right to drag in Welsh words. Mr. Eastwood, in the next page, gives the real derivation only to reject it. Ecclesfield is the field of the mythical hero Egel. Mr. Eastwood objects that, in the other places named after him, the Egel is softened into Ayle-, and never becomes Eccle-. Very good; but throughout Northhumberland we expect to find harsher forms retained, and the name is actually written Aiglesfeld and Eglesfeld in some of the early documents cited by Mr. Eastwood himself.

We find from p. 72 that, so late as 1563, George, Earl of Shrewsbury (the keeper of Queen Mary), levied a feudal aid on his tenants at Ecclesfield and elsewhere, on the marriage of his eldest daughter. It was naturally "paid with great reluctance."

In p. 117, Eleanor, sister of Edward the Third, is married by Mr. Eastwood to a mysterious person whom he calls "the Earl of Gerl." The fact is that, in Rymer, he appears as Comes Gerlensis, which is an evident mistake of either writer or printer for Gelrensis, the person meant being the Count of Gelders.

We will wind up with Mr. Eastwood's account of a curious local custom :—

"This village is one of the few places in which lingers an institution, once more popular than now, of a village pack of hounds. Almost every man who can afford to keep a hound, and some who cannot, feeds and maintains one of these animals in more or less good condition. These are kept from hunting out of season on their own account, by the cruel expedient of passing a wire through the ball of the foot and twisting it fast, a remnant of the barbarous custom of lawing or expeditating enjoined by the old forest charters. In the season the neighbouring landowners occasionally 'give a day,' on which welcome occasions the village huntsman, duly licensed for the pursuit of game, summons his followers, biped and quadruped, by the sound of a horn, and forth come the latter trooping from the various cottages, yelping and tumbling over one another in their eagerness for the pursuit. Away they start, dogs and men, and it is hard if before the day is out they have not interpreted the leave to kill 'a hare or two,' into a permission to give chase to half a score. One of the old huntsmen still living, says that he has often walked and run with his pack forty miles and more, and carried perhaps a couple of hares great part of the way into the bargain, and it would take a good deal of hunting to tire him yet. A list has been preserved of more than forty hounds, with the names of the persons who kept them in 1751. Many of the names of the hounds, Musick, Gamester, Chanter, Nudger, etc., have descended to the present generation."

ANCIENT GRAVES IN CABRACH, BANFFSHIRE.-About the end of August last, while a labourer was digging sand in a clover-field on the farm of Forteath, Cabrach, he came upon a stone coffin. This field, which is situated upon the north side of the river Deveron, would appear to have been in early days a graveyard, for, during the past forty years, ten or twelve graves have been opened in various parts. The greater part of these graves have been found by the plough laying bare the top of the cists; but it is now seen that numbers of graves have been dug very deep, so that the plough will not reach them, the top of the cists being from two to three feet below the surface. The last two found were accidentally laid open in digging for sand, and were only a few feet apart from each other. In the present instance the stone coffin is a parallelogram, measuring 3 ft. 11 in. by 2 ft. 4 in. The sides and ends are formed of flags from 4 to 5 inches thick, of green stone, taken from the summit of the Keilmen's Hill, distant about three-quarters of a mile. The lid, or covering, measures 4 ft. 10 in. by 3 ft. 6 in., and is from 8 to 9 inches thick. The lid is a species of basalt, from a rock that overhangs the river upon the opposite side, distant about 300 yards, with a dip of upwards of 80 ft. The coffin lies almost due east and west. In general, the graves found at Cabrach have had the bottoms smoothly causewayed with round pebbles from the river; but in this one the bottom is laid with a flag. The body had been laid in the cist with the head towards the east, resting upon a flagstone for a pillow, about 5 inches diameter, with an elevation towards the north, and the body was compressed into the grave in a stooping position. An urn, which was found placed upon the breast, when exposed to the air, went to fragments. The only thing observed within it was a piece of flint; it was not an arrow-head, nor any part of a warlike instrument. There was a considerable quantity of charcoal found in the grave, also below the flag at the bottom. The body was all decomposed, except a part of the skull and the leg and thigh bones, which were in tolerable preservation.-Banffshire Journal.

GENT, MAG, VOL, CCXIII.

30

ECCLESIOLOGY OF WORCESTERSHIRE.

THE County and diocese of Worcester are not co-extensive, and I purpose confining my observations to the churches of the former or civil division, including the fourteen parishes belonging to the diocese of Hereford.

I shall first notice the different varieties of ground-plan, then briefly describe the chief characteristics of the various portions, and, lastly, point out the best examples of the several styles of medieval architecture exemplified in the churches of the county.

Worcestershire contains 252 churches and chapels: of these, 157 remain for the most part as they were left by the medieval church builders, saving the introduction of modern fittings and a few minor alterations; 19 churches have been partially and 31 wholly rebuilt; while 45 are entirely new structures, erected principally within the last fifty years, though a few were built during the last century, as Wribbenhall, Stourport, and St. Thomas's, Stourbridge.

Almost every variety of plan is to be met with, from the simplest structure possessing only those essential features of a church, chancel and nave, to the complex arrangement of the conventual and cathedral church.

Of the cruciform structure with a central tower-which may be termed the highest development of the plan of a Christian temple (whether considered from a symbolical or an æsthetical point of view)—there are but three examples exclusive of conventual churches, viz., Ripple, Old Broadway, and Alderminster; and the latter is destitute of aisles either to nave or chancel. Transeptal churches without a central tower lose much of the cruciform effect; and the transepts, being lower than the body of the building, have the appearance of mere projecting chapels, which they frequently were. There are eleven churches of this description, each having a tower at the west end of the nave, and four of them, viz., Kempsey, Powick, All Saints', Evesham, and Bretforton, north and south aisles to the nave. Crowle, Oddingley, Birt's Morton, and Middle Littleton, are small cruciform buildings without aisles. Seven churches in the neighbourhood of Evesham possess a transeptal chapel on one side of the nave only, five being on the north and two on the south side. Castle Morton and Severn Stoke have likewise a south transept, which in the latter case is balanced by a tower on the opposite side.

Of churches with aisles, thirty-four have them on both sides of the

* The substance of a paper by Mr. J. S. Walker, Hon. Sec. to Diocesan Archifectu al Society, read at the meeting of the Archaei ghal Fistitute, July 22 182

nave, and twenty-nine on one side only-thirteen on the north and sixteen on the south. In twenty-four instances there is a chapel or aisle to the chancel, and mostly on one side only; while seventy-four churches possess neither aisles nor chapels, either to nave or chancel.

Porches, as a rule, occupy the usual position on the south side of the nave; upwards of thirty, however, are on the north side; and at Leigh and Spetchley the porch stands against the west side of the western tower.

The tower is almost universally found at the west end of the nave, 103 out of 126 being so placed; three stand in the centre of cruciform churches (besides the Cathedral and the conventual churches of Pershore and Great and Little Malvern), and six between the nave and chancel where there are no transepts. At Hampton Lovett, Areley Kings, and Cotheridge, the tower occupies the position of a south porch; at Pirton it is on the north side of the nave; at St. Andrew's, Droitwich, north of chancel; Stoke Prior, south of chancel; St. Mary's, Kidderminster, and Eckington, west end of south aisle; at Severn Stoke, north-east of nave; and at Dodderhill it forms the south transept, having been erected in the seventeenth century in place of the central tower, which was much injured during the civil wars.

Forty bell-turrets rise from the west, and only three-Wyre, Alston, and the desecrated chapel at Netherton-from the east end of the nave. Sapey Pitchard Church has neither turret nor tower, the bells being hung just beneath the roof at the west end.

Chancels are generally well developed, and even in the smallest churches are, as a rule, distinctly marked by being lower and narrower than the nave; this is not, however, invariably the case, as in some instances the chancel appears externally to be a mere prolongation of the Pershore Abbey Church and the crypt of the Cathedral are the

nave.

only examples we have of the apse.

About sixteen high chancel-screens remain more or less perfect the finest are those at Shelsley Walsh, Little Malvern, Upton Snodsbury, and Blockley. The screen at Sedgeberrow is of very unusual design, having painted boards instead of tracery, and the lower part of stone. At Castle Morton is a very perfect high screen, surmounted by the royal arms, and bearing the date of 1682. The screens at Alvechurch and Hampton Lovett were removed during the recent restoration of those churches. The lower or solid panels alone sometimes remain in their original position, as at Alfrick, Wickhamford, and Birt's Morton, where the gates are still perfect, as they are also at Middle Littleton. Roodlofts still exist at Besford, Leigh, and Strensham; they are of late date, and enriched with colour. The one at Strensham, containing twentyfour painted figures of saints and martyrs, now forms the front of a western gallery, and the loft at Bredon was removed about 1842. The roodbeam remains at Little Malvern and at Shelsley Walsh.

The only example of an original reredos I have met with is at Sedge

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