The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. Volume 17, No. 479, March 5, 1831. Various
Inn, having been given by the executors of John Mackworth, dean of Lincoln, to the dean and chapter of Lincoln, on condition that they should find a pious priest to perform divine service in the cathedral of Lincoln—in which John Mackworth lies interred.
"Hatton Garden was the town house and gardens of the Lord Hatton, founded by Sir Christopher Hatton, lord-keeper in the reign of Queen Elizabeth. The place he built his house on was the orchard and garden belonging to Ely House.
"Brook House was the residence of Sir Fulke Greville, Lord Brooke.
"Southampton Buildings, built on the site of Southampton House, the mansion of the Wriothesleys, earls of Southampton. When Lord Russel passed by this house, on his way to execution, he felt a momentary bitterness of death, in recollecting the happy moments of the place. He looked (says Pennant) towards Southampton House, the tear started into his eye, but he instantly wiped it away.
"Gray's Inn is a place of great antiquity: it was originally the residence of the Lord Grays, from the year 1315, when John, the son of Reginold de Grey, resided here, till the latter end of the reign of Henry the Seventh, when it was sold, by Edmund Lord Grey, of Wilton, to Hugh Dennys, Esq., by the name of Portpole; and in eight years afterwards it was disposed of to the prior and convent of Shene, who again, disposed of it to the students of the law; not but that they were seated here much earlier, it appearing that they had leased a residence here from the Lord Grays, as early as the reign of Edward the Third. Chancery Lane gapes on the opposite side, to receive the numberless malheureuses who plunge unwarily on the rocks and shelves with which it abounds."
ANCIENT SLAVERY IN ENGLAND
"O Freedom! first delight of human kind."
Sharon Turner, in his interesting "History of the Anglo-Saxons," says, "It was then (during the reign of Pope Gregory I.) the practice of Europe to make use of slaves, and to buy and sell them; and this traffic was carried on, even in the western capital of the Christian Church. Passing through the market at Rome, the white skins, the flowing locks, and beautiful countenances of some youths who were standing there for sale, interested Gregory's sensibility. To his inquiries from what country they had been brought, the answer was, from Britain, whose inhabitants were all of that fair complexion. Were they Pagans or Christians? was his next question: a proof not only of his ignorance of the state of England, but also, that up to that time it had occupied no part of his attention; but thus brought as it were to a personal knowledge of it by these few representatives of its inhabitants, he exclaimed, on hearing that they were still idolaters, with a deep sigh, 'What a pity that such a beauteous frontispiece should possess a mind so void of internal grace.' The name of their nation being mentioned to be Angles, his ear caught the verbal coincidence—the benevolent wish for their improvement darted into his mind, and he expressed his own feelings, and excited those of his auditors, by remarking—'It suits them well: they have angel faces, and ought to be the co-heirs of the angels in heaven.'
"The different classes of society among the Anglo-Saxons were such as belonged to birth, office, or property, and such as were occupied by a freeman, a freedman, or one of the servile description. It is to be lamented in the review of these different classes, that a large proportion of the Anglo-Saxon population was in a state of abject slavery: they were bought and sold with land, and were conveyed in the grants of it promiscuously with the cattle and other property upon it; and in the Anglo-Saxon wills, these wretched beings were given away precisely as we now dispose of our plate, our furniture, or our money. At length the custom of manumission, and the diffusion of Christianity, ameliorated the condition of the Anglo-Saxon slaves. Sometimes individuals, from benevolence, gave their slaves their freedom—sometimes piety procured a manumission. But the most interesting kind of emancipation appears in those writings which announce to us, that the slaves had purchased their own liberty, or that of their family. The Anglo-Saxon laws recognised the liberation of slaves, and placed them under legal protection. The liberal feelings of our ancestors to their enslaved domestics are not only evidenced in the frequent manumissions, but also in the generous gifts which they appear to have made them. The grants of lands from masters to their servants were very common; gilds, or social confederations, were established. The tradesmen of the Anglo-Saxons were, for the most part, men in a servile state; but, by degrees, the manumission of slaves increased the number of the independent part of the lower orders."
When the statute 1st. Edward VI. c. 3. was made, which ordained, that all idle vagabonds should be made slaves, and fed upon bread, water or small drink, and refuse of meat; should wear a ring round their necks, arms, or legs; and should be compelled, by beating, chaining, or otherwise, to perform the work assigned them, were it ever so vile;—the spirit of the nation could not brook this condition, even in the most abandoned rogues; and therefore this statute was repealed in two years afterwards, 3rd and 4th of Edward VI. c. 16.
FINSBURY
Fitzstephen, in his Description of London, 1282, gives the following account of skating in Moor, or Finsbury Fields, which may afford amusement to the inquisitive reader:—
"When that vast lake which waters the walls of the city towards the north is hard frozen, the youths, in great numbers, go to divert themselves on the ice—some, taking a small run for an increment of velocity, place their feet at a proper distance, and are carried sideways a great way; others will make a large cake of ice, and seating one of their companions upon it, they take hold of one's hands, and draw him along, when it happens that moving swiftly on so slippery a plane, they all fall headlong; others there are who are still more expert in these amusements on the ice—they place certain bones (the leg-bones of animals) under the soles of their feet, by tying them round their ankles, and then taking a pole, shod with iron, with their hands they push themselves forward by striking it against the ice, and are carried on with a velocity equal to the flight of a bird, or a bolt discharged from a cross-bow."
This tract affords the earliest description of London; and Dr. Pegge, in his preface to said Description, says, "I conceive we may challenge any nation in Europe to produce an account of its capital, or any other of its great cities, at so remote a period as the 12th century."
THE SELECTOR; AND LITERARY NOTICES OF NEW WORKS
MOUNT ST. MICHAEL
No. 65 of Constable's Miscellany, just published, consists of A Journal of a Residence in Normandy, by J.A. St. John, Esq. This volume falls in opportunely enough for the further description of Mount St. Michael, engraved in No. 477 of The Mirror.
Breakfasting in haste, I procured a horse and a guide, and set out for the mount, no less celebrated for its historical importance, than for the peculiarity of its position. As soon as I had emerged from the streets of Avranches, I saw before me a vast bay, now entirely deserted by the tide, and consisting partly of sand, partly of slime, intersected by the waters of several rivers, and covered, during spring tides, at high water.—Two promontories, the one bluff and rocky, the other sandy and low, project, one on either hand, into the sea; and in the open space between these two points are two small islands, from around which the sea ebbs at low water: one of them is a desert rock, called the Tombelaine, and the other the Mont St. Michel.3 The space thus covered and deserted alternately by the sea is about eight square leagues, and is here called the Grève.
The Mont St. Michel, which is about the same height as the Great Pyramid of Egypt, and now stood, as that does, upon a vast plain of sand, which is here, however, skirted in its whole length by the sea, has a very striking and extraordinary aspect. It appeared, as the water was so close behind it, to rise out of the sea, upon the intense and dazzling blue of which its grey rocks and towers were relieved in a sharp and startling manner; and, as I descended lower and lower on the hill-side, and drew near the beach, its pinnacles seemed to increase in height, and the picturesque effect was improved.
At length I emerged from the shady road upon the naked beach, and saw the ferry-boat and the Charon that were to convey me and my charger over the first river. My Avranches guide here quitted me; but I had been
Why is the