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The Cinque Ports. By Ronald and Frank Jessup. 7£ x 4f. Pp. x -f-
128, Figs. 52. London, Batsford, 1952. 9s. U.
One of the exhibits at the 1952 Antique Dealers' Fah was a tankard
inscribed : " This pott was made from ye shver of ye canopie when
Charles ye 2nd was crowned, April 23rd 1661."
This year, at the coronation, the representatives of the Cinque
Ports, the " coronation barons ", wih not actually carry a canopy
(with silver staves and bells) as did theh predecessors in unbroken line
from the coronation of Richard I in 1189 up to the crowning of George
IV. For one thing the Queen will not proceed from the Palace to the
Abbey on foot and for another, things went a little astray at the fourth
George's ceremony. But they will line the west side of the screen in the
Abbey and they will receive for custody the standards borne before her
Majesty.
So a privilege lives on and with it, as with the inscription on the
" shver pott ", sounds a clear echo from a most curious and interesting
chapter of English history—the rise, the hey-day and the decline of the
Cinque Ports, of the Two Ancient Towns and of the Corporate and
Non-Corporate Members.
Read the first chapter of Ronald and Frank Jessup's book, and the
story will come vividly ahve, a story touching significantly on most
of the elements which seem to crop up inevitably in any chapter of
English history: geography and geology (and seldom can changes in
the face of the land and in the line of the sea coast have affected the
fortunes of a group of towns more decisively); the provision of fighting
men and equipment (in this instance nothing less than the provision of
the enthe Royal Navy); constitutional bargaining ; the winning of
practical privileges in the shape of courts and markets ; the clash
between local autonomy and the Crown ; and, with the victory of the
central authority, the survival up to the present day of ancient forms
and customs. I beg leave to doubt whether, in the space of a single
short chapter, such a tangled story has ever been told with greater
authority, concision and clarity. It is a masterly and most attractive
performance.
In succeeding chapters, hnking the present with the past, the five
Head Ports and the Two Ancient Towns are described as they exist
to-day.
The authors make very modest claims for their book, and it is left
to Miss Ehzabeth Bowen, in her Foreword, to point out that they have
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done a great deal more than to give " a short account " of these places
of historic and of present interest. " As topographers and archaeologists
", she writes, " (they) could have kept to being no more than
informative. It is a gain, however, that they do also address themselves
to feeling (though never to sentiment) and to the visual
imagination."
Informative they certainly are. No visitors to these towns—
Hastings, where new jostles old ; New Romney, in, but not of, the
Marsh ; Hythe on its hillside ; the busy port of Dover ; land-locked,
wall-encircled Sandwich ; Rye with its pebble-cobbled streets ; and
the " new town " of Winchelsea—could ask for a better guide-book
than this. It tells you what you should look for and it tehs you, sensibly
and often amusingly, about the things that you wih see. But for myself
(and I suspect also for Miss Bowen) it is the authors' gift for getting
down on paper the present-day atmosphere—the feel—of these places
which is so whohy captivating. It is achieved by sensitive observation,
a great knowledge of the past, lightly worn, and a prose style which is
at once muscular and elegant. These quahties are " a gain " indeed.
It fell to my lot constantly to visit the Cinque Ports and the Two
Ancient Towns during the critical summer and autumn of 1940, when
invasion threatened once again from across the Channel. One was
living then very much in the present. Anything might happen any
day. And yet I was conscious, always, of that sense of the past which
Ronald and Frank Jessup describe so well. I wish that I had had this
little book which would have slipped so comfortably into my tunic
pocket.
RALPH ARNOLD.
Timber Building in England from Early Times to the End of the
Seventeenth Century. ByFred.H.Crossley. 10J X 6|. Pp.168.
London, Batsford, 1951. 30s.
It is rather surprising that this subject has not previously been dealt
with so fully when as a structional material timber was so obvious
and so adaptable. Certainly there was the need for such a conspectus
of the subject and Messrs. Batsford • It is unfortunate that
printing costs have risen to such an extent that the author has had to
suffer such compression of type, and such insufficient paragraphing,
that the make-up is unattractive. A further point is that as a
specialist's book more drawings should have been included ; and the
scale of several plans is too smah.
Reviewing the book from the Kentish aspect the Index only lists
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17 references to examples in the county, and only two—Brookland and
Eltham Hall—of note ; and with a barge board at Tonbridge.
The book is in two sections, Part I, Structures devoted to religious
purposes and Part II, Secular building. In them chapters one and
eight—recapitulations—could have been dispensed with and so allowed
a more lively treatment of mediaeval construction which is the be-all and
end-all of timber—that early primitive satisfaction of massiveness or
the later reduction to framework. Here there would seem to be a need
for more smah prototypes where the craftsman is evident.
Treating of details the greater part of the interest attaches to such
subjects as Bridges, Wind and Watermills, Timber-framing, and the
joinery which ignored iron work. We rejoice in those buildings which
have survived damp, and the insect pests of hundreds of years. Wood
absorbs moisture, and weathering, both above and below, is all
important. If roofs leak and wahs are not rain-repelling damp can
start decay in vulnerable ends, which also may be in darkness, and there
the wood-worm has his first food on those traces of sap-wood which only
too often were not adzed away.
In the use of the book the critic is inclined to note various gaps in
the Index where such a word as barn is missing, and, in the references,
no mention of Clapham and Godfrey's Some Famous Buildings and their
Story or attention drawn to their account of the development of the
timber hall, and the existence at Hertford and Pleshey in Essex of such
halls into the seventeenth century.
In the compilation of the book the author has included much of
interest in the use of timber in sea and marsh defences, and of those
moveable structures made in earlier ages to overtop a defender's walls.
The chapter on Bridges contains much of general information, and the
same may be said of the account of Water and Windmills although there
are a number of illustrations of the latter.
Details of the sources of supply and the carriage of mill-stones from
Sandwich is noteworthy (p. 106) but there is only the shghtest reference
to Andernach from whence came the black querns (Niedermendig lava)
so common on Roman sites. However, there are numberless details of
value in the book—as on p. 112 of a carpenter who wrongly used willow
instead of oak for building a house—but we fah to find mention of the
setting out on the ground of timber framing for the walls of a house and
then marking them with Roman numerals for ease in erection. Other
trades are necessary even in our oldest wooden buhdings, for example
the Avork of the blacksmith with his hinges, locks, closing rings and
knockers. The wooden latch was universal, but here in England the
lock and key, both of wood, of the Eastern Mediteranean does not seem
to occur.
W. P. D. STEBBING.
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Beginnings in Archaeology. By Kathleen M. Kenyon. 7£ X 4J. Pp.
203, with 12 photographs and 14 text figures. London, Phoenix
House, Ltd., 1952. 12s. 6d.
Dhectors of Excavations are usually too busy to explain all the
pros and cons of excavation technique to their amateur helpers. This
book should, therefore, be a godsend to them for they can safely lend it
to beginners who, provided they read it conscientiously from cover to
cover, can be reasonably expected thenceforward to work on a site in
an intelligent and able manner. As its title might lead one to assume
it is written in a straightforward way especiahy for the beginner and to
the present reviewer is an easier book to read than R. J. C. Atkinson's
Field Archaeology which was previously the most useful work of this
kind.
The first three chapters deal with the historical background of
Archaeology. There follows a chapter on how to become an archaeologist,
whether professional or amateur, and then comes the real
'.' meat ", 94 pages on fieldwork and excavation technique. Five
appendices include a bibliography and details relevant to careers in
archaeology. Throughout Miss Kenyon makes it clear that her methods
of excavation are not the only ones in vogue and it is to be hoped that
some of her critics will be stimulated to produce better introductory
textbooks to excavation—if they can.
Miss Kenyon has a maxim that " beginners are welcome on sites ".
However, she stresses the fact that a reading of her book wih be futile
unless two main points at least are kept in mind :
1. All excavation is destruction, therefore no inexperienced person should
undertake it on his own.
2. Excavation, however well executed, without adequate publication is
WANTON DESTRUCTION.
It is sad to think how many people have dug into Kent's early remains
without due thought to these principles.
L. R. A. GROVE.
Fatokham : The Story of a Kentish Village. By Frank W. Proudfoot.
1\ X 5. Pp. 142, illustrated. Arthur Barker.
It is a pleasure to notice this little book, written by a Member, for
it sets an excellent standard for those who asphe to write parish
histories. It is written in an easy and serene style which avoids alike
the Guide Book manner and that of our more pedantic historians. In
this " modest essay in local history " the outlines of the stories of the
parish and church, farms and lands, families and houses are sketched
into the general picture of a rural community in its slow development
through the centuries. The book is weh produced, with sufficient
hlustrations, and the admhable addition of a large scale folding
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reproduction of the Tithe Map of 1838. We commend it to our
Members, and suggest that all lecturers in local history slip it into their
pockets and produce it as Exhibit No. 1 when facing village audiences.
We are grateful to Mr. Proudfoot for this gift from his " scanty store ".
J.H.E.
Medieval Ecclesiastical Courts in the Diocese of Canterbury. By Brian L.
Woodcock. 8|- x 5 | . Pp. xii + 160. Oxford: at the University
Press, 1952. 18s.
In the years 1928-9 there were removed from the Diocesan Registry
store over the Christchurch Gate to the Library of the Dean and
Chapter, Act Books and records of the Consistorial and Archidiaconal
Courts of the diocese of Canterbury, where they remained without
further arrangement or adequate catalogue till, in 1947, a young scholar,
Brian Woodcock, began to study them. Ultimately in 1952 the result
of his investigations appeared in the Oxford Historical Series under the
title of Medieval Ecclesiastical Courts in the Diocese of Canterbury. It is
a work of outstanding merit and the author's untimely and sudden
death, while the book was stih in the press, has dealt an irreparable blow
to the world of scholarship. All interested in the subject matter owe
a vast debt to his widow, our Member, Mrs. A. M. Woodcock, who has
so competently concluded the task of seeing the book through the press
and we cannot be too grateful to her.
Mr. Woodcock tehs us that about 300 Act Books survive from the
Diocesan Registry of which about forty cover the period before 1535 ;
the earliest surviving Consistory Court Act Book dates from 1364 and
that of the Archdeaconry Court from 1476. In addition to this source,
much information was collected about the working of the Courts from
the archives of the Prior and Chapter of Christchurch for the thhteenth
century, during the vacancies occurring in the archiepiscopal see, when
the officers of the Prior and Chapter were in control. Further, the wills
coming under the jurisdiction of the courts and now preserved in the
County Record Office at Maidstone, were consulted to add theh quota
of knowledge to the general picture, whhe behind ah these, available for
study, were the archiepiscopal registers of the diocese and province,
preserved in the Library at Lambeth Palace.
All these sources have been most effectively used to produce a very
succinct and ihuminating account of the jurisdictions in question.
Dividing the book into two parts, Brian Woodcock treated first of the
jurisdictions involved and secondly of those jurisdictions in action as
revealed in the surviving Act Books and records. To these chapters he
added some important and most useful appendices giving the texts of
some of the commissions issued, of some of the suits recorded, including
a tuitorial appeal, and finahy, and not the least valuable of all, lists of
officers to be found acting in the two courts.
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As ah students of the evolution of jurisdictions are aware, and as
Brian Woodcock pointed out, the movement is from " the less formal
and ill-defined to the more formal and well-defined ". A commission
in a short form, conferring wide and undefined powers, may give more
scope • to the officer appointed than the much more elaborate and
detahed commissions issued to his successors a century or so later. It
is, therefore, of great importance that at the outset of this study there
is noted the sense in which certain titles are used and the distinctions to
be drawn therefrom. Thus " Curia Cantuariensis " is reserved to cover
the jurisdiction of the Archbishop over all his province as Metropolitan,
before the full delimitation of the various courts. The Court of Canterbury
implies the actual court and its apparatus as it evolved to deal
with provincial and metropohtical appeals. " Consistory Court"
denotes the Court at Canterbury, irrespective of the jurisdiction
exercised; and finally the title Consistory Court is restricted to the work
of the actual diocesan court as it developed, with its judge the
Commissary General of the city and diocese of Canterbury.
I t is perhaps in tracing the rise of this last officer that the author
makes his most solid contribution to the advancement of knowledge on
this matter of the nomenclature of the presiding judge in the Consistory
Court. If, following the parahel of the history of the Curia Regis
and the splitting off from it of the various royal courts, we consider the
" Curia Cantuariensis " and the development of provincial and diocesan
courts from it, the story takes on a clearer form. It seems a reasonable
supposition, and one borne out by surviving records, that, whhe the
" Curia Cantuariensis " was for the most part holding its sessions at
Canterbury, there was no clear distinction made between diocesan and
metropolitical or provincial jurisdiction. When, possibly for reasons of
convenience, the sessions of the Court of Canterbury, developing as the
metropolitical Court of the Province, came to be held in London, in the
Church of St. Mary le Bow in the Archbishop's Deanery of the Arches in
his immediate jurisdiction, it was presided over by the Archbishop's
Official, or in his absence by his deputy or commissary, almost invariably
the Dean of the Arches. Simharly, no doubt, the purely diocesan work
at Canterbury was entrusted to a commissary appointed by the
Archbishop, and from the late thhteenth century certainly there
survive commissions appointing a Commissary General to act in the
city and diocese of Canterbury. Such a process would account satisfactorily
for the title and when we turn to investigate the relations
between this court, presided over by the Commissary General, and that
of the Archdeacon, for whom his official most usually acted, it wih be
found that the jurisdictions of the two courts were for the most part
concurrent. That is to say that there was no appeal from the Archdeacon's
Court to the Consistory, but appeals from both courts lay
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either to the Court of Canterbury or to the Archbishop's Court of
Audience. This in itself suggests the likelihood of the Commissary
General being a later arrival on the scene than the Archdeacon.
The second and longer part of the book deals with the procedure and
practice of these two courts in chapters devoted to the types of
business and sessions, to the personnel and theh duties, and to the
practice of the courts in Fhst Instance and ex officio. An analysis of
the number and types of cases affords most interesting reading, as do
the chapters on the enforcement of discipline and illustrations of the
kind of information this class of records can be made to yield about the
social manners and conditions of the time.
It is greatly to be hoped that scholars wih fohow up this pioneer
work by investigating the records of other dioceses, now that information
about them is more readily available through the work of the
Committee on Ecclesiastical Records recently reporting to the Pilgrim
Trust. In particular it is much to be desired that a volume, or volumes,
giving the text of some of the earliest of the surviving Act Books at
Canterbury may appear as soon as possible in the series " Kent
Records ".
IRENE J. CHURCHILL.
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