Reviews

( 249 REVIEWS. STONE-IN-OXNEY. Historical Notes on the Church of Stone-in-Oxney, Kent, by W. H. Yeandle, M.A. The Church Army Press, Cowley, Oxford, 1935, 6d. (The pamphlet can be had from the Rev. R. C. J. White, Stone Vicarage, Tenterden.) Tms is a paper of the type which, happily, an ever increasing number of incumbents are writing, or are having written about their churches and their records, and the antiquities connected with the church and parish. St. Mary's, Stone-in-Oxney, is memorable not so much for its a.rchitecture a,s for its possession of a Roman altar. The vicissitudes of this barbarously treated stone are recorded in detail, and a facsimile of the Rev. William Gostling's letter to Edward Hasted, describing it, is given. Much additional matter relating to Mr. Gostling and his tenure of the living may be found in Dr. Cock's paper in this volume of A.O. Testamenta Oantiana, the extra volume issued by our Society in 1907, is drawn on for the bequests of pa.rishioners to the church, to the endowing of lights and altars, or for the painting and gilding of images. In this connection there are some useful notes on various saints who were worshipped in the church, and there is an interesting order of the Archdeacon of Canterbury, dated in 1557, enjoining the restoration of pre-Reformation ornaments, and the providing of missing church goods, vestments, etc., which had no meaning in the Reformed Church. The photograph of the interior of this late fifteenth century church is poor-t,he earlier building had been burnt down in 1464-but the pamphlet is surprisingly good value for the sum charged. On p. 6 mention is made of a very large flat slab in the floor of the N. chapel. A clue to its use might be gathered from knowledge of its geological age. On p. 20 250 REVIEWS. Stone might be better described as being by a tidal channel than on the sea-coast. An interesting survival is the thatched lodge with mangers described on p. 8 as having been built as a stable for those farmers from outlying farms who had to ride to church over founderous ways. W.P.D.S. CONSTITUTION.AL HISTORY OF THE CINQUE PORTS. Constitutional History of the Cinque Ports, by K. M. E. Murray. Manchester University Press, pp. 282, octavo, IOs. 6d. Tms volume of 250 closely written pages is an extremely useful addition to our knowledge of the confederation of shipping towns known as the Cinque Ports. It fills a niche long tenantless for there has hitherto been no study of the ports sufficiently based on the appropriate manuscript records. The result of this research is in one way rather shocking, although none the less true. With no uncertain hand it extinguishes the glamour which has long illuminated the name of the Ports while obscuring the brutal piracy and rapine on which their power was based during the short period in which they had any real political significance. But it must not be thought that Miss Murray makes the mistake of overstressing the piracy. She does nothing of the sort and does not even mention the "claret wine knights" of later days. She treats the piracy and the pride and glory of Honours at Court with the same level sobriety. One is borne slowly along upon a sea of references of which there are more than fifty in the eight pages of Introduction alone. Now and again one checks at the shoal of some untranslated quotation but it is in the main a well charted sea and if it is also somewhat monotonous the authoress is not entirely to blame. Modern economic conditions do little to promote the writing of history. Full and adequate treatment of the constitutional history of the Cinque Ports would require a book of twice the length of this. Half of that book would be filled with what is to the normal reader essential connecting and REVIEWS. 251 illustrative material, although to the learned historiap. it may be little better than padding. It is this half of the book which economic conditions oblige the writer to omit. Perhaps a quotation will make the matter clearer. On page 65 we read of the Court of Shepway, " It resembled in fact a hundred court shorn of its normal jurisdiction in favour of the local town courts, but exercising the functions of the special sessions of both hundred and shire." One cannot readily understand this sentence without some explanation of what is intended by the phrases " local town courts " and "special sessions of the hundred". But to have explained exactly what these phrases were meant to convey would have greatly lengthened the paragraph. On the other hand, to omit even a hint of such parallels would tend to defeat the object of the treatise. Thus it happens that Miss Murray keeps her course as best she may between the Scylla of expense and the Charybdis of undue concentration, and who shall say that she is other than wise if she regards her references as more important than readability 1 She has equally been obliged to jettison many stimulating conjectures to which her material gives rise but which it fails to satisfy. There is, for one, the interesting question of whether the Ports' court of Shepway was not a lineal descendant of the court of Shipway lathe. In historic times the lathe of Shipway is known only as a collecting area for subsidies, a centre of militia administration and generally as existing for purposes which did not need the holding of a court. But in Domesday times, and before, the lathe may well have held a court and there are not lacking some evidences which point that way. It is difficult to see who other than the sheriff could have presided in this court. But the Ports' court of Shepway was also held by an officer very closely analogous to a sheriff. Both courts met at Shipway near Lymne. Both dealt with very similar matters and in particular with the King's interests in the matter of land fyrd or sea fyrd, taxation, and so forth. One cannot develop the question in a review but one is bound to regret that Miss Murray felt unable to do so, The scant remarks on page 61 do not even 252 REVIEWS. raise a clear issue, far less attempt to discuss it. Indeed, they strongly suggest the ruthless use of a blue pencil. But if certain things are absent which one would gladly have found present, there is no really serious criticism on this head except the omission from an appendix of the Domesday references. It is quite inexcusable to devote a chapter to " Origins" and yet to leave out the very texts on which that chapter is chiefly based. One may take the wording of a Charter Roll' or Patent Roll on trust but the meaning of Domesday phrases is not a matter for ex cathedra utterances, the relevant extracts should be given in full ; they are neither many nor long. In chapter after chapter one notes that the thirteenth century is the all important period of Cinque Ports history although even then the drift of sand and beach in the channel was already threatening the destruction which has since come about. It is only after 1200 that the complete organization of head ports and members becomes clear, that the Warden is seen to assume and improve his unique position, that royal charters descend in showers. Each of these matters is treated separately and many charters are given in full, but without the translations which are nowadays so essential. There are also chapters on the Brodhull, which secures no less than three, the Guestling, the Decline of the Ports, and so on. One of the most interesting is that on " Origins " while that headed " Conclusion " is much shorter than one could have wished. The latter contains a very brief reference to the corporate Stannaries which immediately arouses interest from its hint of a fairly close constitutional parallel to the organization of the Ports. It would have been entirely proper in a constitutional history to carry this discussion further. But in spite of certain limitations, we are bound to welcome most heartily the abundant material with which Miss Murray provides us, as well as the opinions to which her studies have led her. She has produced a most valuable work of reference which will long remain a classic. G.W. REVIEWS. 253 MATTER, MYTH AND SPIRIT . Matter, .llfyth and Spirit, by Dorothea Chaplin. Messrs. Simplcin, Marshall, Ltd., 1935, octavo, pp. 199, 19 illustrations, 8s. 6d. 2nd Edition, revised, with preface by Sir ElUot Smith, F.R.S. Messrs. Rider & Go., pp. 224, 21 illustrations, 8s. 6d. OUT of twelve plates in this book no less than eight are devoted to Kent, in fact, to the Margate Grotto, where the authoress discovers a very significant picture of the Indian deity Ganesh with the elephant face. Here she seems to rate her authority too high, nor do we think she is wise to quote "The Tinker's Daughter, written in 1846 ", as evidence that "The Keltic home of the Dead was in the west ". Nor is it as fully established as she would suggest that St. David was related to King Arthur. In these circumstances we cannot recommend this volume to Kentish archreologists, except for its Margate pictures. The second edition does little to remove the objections which may be urged against the first. On page 17 we read, with no reference or authority quoted, " The Gaels, in an ethnological sense, are a distinct race with a language of their own. They are Goidelic Kelts, and their progenitor was Gaethel, or Goidel Glass, the son of Scota and Nell." Comment would be superfluous. G.vV. SANDS, CLAYS AND MINERALS. Sands, Clays and Minerals. Vol. II, No. 3, June, 1935. (A. L. Curtis, Ghatteris, Gambs., 3s. 6d. post free.) Tms valuable technical magazine, while being well edited, seems also to be successful as this number is considerably larger than earlier ones which have reached us. Of articles of genera) interest though of a scientific nature, there are those on Radium Discoveries in North-West Canada, and on Zirconium and its uses. Those on Early English Lead Mining and Ancient Tin Mining in Cornwall will appeal to a larger public and they contain much interesting archreological 20 254 REVIEWS. matter. To dwellers in and about the new Kentish Coal Field there are two contributions which from the health of the miner and the commercial prosperity of the industry raise important questions. The first is on Silicosis in Industry. Under schemes. arising out of the Workmen's Compensation Act of 1925, all industries which cause the raising of silicious dust and the possibility of the inhaling of it by the workmen are made responsible and are liable to pay compensation. The section which affects the coal field is " the drilling and blasting of stone by hand or power-driven machines in any colliery working, including the handling of such stone ". Recent correspondence in a local paper claimed that the moderate drinker was less liable to silicosis than the teetotaller. The second article is '' The Briquetting of Small Coal " by Mr. Mason, the Chemical Engineer to the Tilmanstone Colliery. The housewife, with the problem of a pile of coal dust in the cellar before her, may feel jealous that a commercial success has been made of this troublesome material, but she may remember that under war-time exigencies briquetting was carried on at home, and not unsuccessfully. The article deals with the subject purely as a trade proposition, but it has great importance when a coal shatters easily and there is no likelihood of using it all for steam raising at the pit head. An important section of the subject is that dealing with the binder, especially when the resulting product in its final form may have to be handled in the home after possible storage in warmth and moisture. CORRECTION. THE author of" The History of Knockholt, Kent," reviewed in Vol. XLVI., is Mr. G. H. WARLOW, not Marlow. ADDENDA (" A NoTE oN THE REv. WM. Gos􀁻LING "). DR. F. W. CocK ·writes that the portrait of Wm. Gostling is now being restored. Also that another version of the portrait engraved by Bartolozzi appeared in the second edition of the "Wallrs" in 1801.