D
AN APOLOGY TO THE READER Mea culpa. Mea magna culpa! I am now within sneezing distance of the commencement of my 47th year. For an horrific portion of those years I was in the grip of the dual addictions (a word I use with great odium, inasmuch as I find the whole notion of ‘addiction’ as noxious and as deleterious as such other quasi-notions as ‘witchcraft’, ‘possession’. ‘insanity’ and so on and so forth; we still live in the ideological dark ages, to slightly remould the formulations of William Burroughs and Kurt Vonnegut - both of whom have been there themselves). Since 1973 - the year in which I entered higher education - so much
has changed. I come from an era in which handwriting (the bane of my youth due
to a tremor) and typewriting were the norm for textual communication. This is the first prolonged text which I have produced entirely and
solely using the computer keyboard - the word processor - as its first
and final mode of presentation. Previously I have experimented with
this device, using it form short letters of a bureaucratic nature within
which the odd gaffe counted for nothing in my estimation: part of a
dialectic of shoddy disrespect which characterizes British bureaucracy
A.D. 2002. * It may seem the most bizarre medium in which to write an introductory text on the history of antiquarianism in Britain, 1550-1830. Especially as I write (as indeed most who have contributed to this area of cultural history) from the viewpoint of a collector and bibliophile. The notion of scanning in my small, hard-won collection of antiquarian books, traducing them onto cd-roms fills me with giddy horror. The bibliophile - as Walter Benjamin poetically expressed it in his essay ‘On Unpacking my Books’ regards his collection as something peculiarly personal. Something akin to an extension of the self, even of the ego; an outlook which he shared with with the otherwise so different polymath Jacques Lacan. However, for many of the early antiquaries, the most valued items in their working collections were archaeological items, the buildings in which they lived, the traces in the landscape which formed part of or adjoined their demesnes. The manuscripts, whether complete or fragmentary, rescued from the Dissolution of the Monasteries under Henry VIII, were regarded by the richer collectors (e.g. Sir Robert Cotton) as being incomparably more important than even the most lavish of printed books (with notable exceptions, if the boks contained woodcuts or engravings of a superior quality executed by those regarded by artists in their own right). For such antiquaries, those who had landed fortunes, or court positions
to fall back upon, the printed volume was often an inferior product.
And those who wrote them did so for two reasons: either to maintain
their finances; or, as a form of court etiquette via the protocol of
dedication. For dedication was a form of guaranteeing court support
and protection, in other words, the granting of funds from the royal
coffers, or, in exceptional circumstances, political and court influence. * What, may one ask, is the immediate relevance for such a study as
this in the year 2002? This is not a roll-call for nationalist Conservatism, for a reinforcement of elitism. Quite the reverse, in fact. Rather, in this respect, there is a parallel to be drawn betwen the early antiquaries - those responsible for the discovery of Britain during the Tudor and Stuart period and the present-day supporters of heritage. Heritage as a form of custodianship, and not as an ‘industry’. In recent
decades figures such as James Lees-Milne, John Betjeman, John Piper,
Sir Nikolaus Pevsner and the members of the Penguin Buildings of
England series and the Victoria County History project have, in different
ways, drawn upon the achievements of the earlier antiquaries - even
though they worked and continue to work within a distinctly different
epistemological network: one of specialist methodologies and technologies.
Such divisions would have been by and large quite alien to the early
antiquaries, who adopted a far more far-reaching, almost ‘magpie-outlook’. As will
be reiterated during the course of this study - from different angles,
in diferent contexts - the lack of scientific or academic ‘discipline’ greatly
assisted the dynamism of the antiquarian movement per se. Even though
travel was expensive, difficult if not downright perilous for much
of this period, against the odds a close-knit cameraderie developed.
This, so it seems at this present stage of research, was more prevalent
in those members of the middle and mercantile classes for whom the
continental tour was either financially out of the question, or impossible
because of the pressures of estate management, which kept them in England.
Moreover, during the early decades of the seventeenth century, the
Thirty Years’ War which ravaged Europe acted as a deterrent to
English travellers. Moreover, this period of continental unrest roughly
coincided with the period of the English Civil War. * However, it is time to terminate these preliminary leaves, and to
engage with the text proper, for better or for worse. C O N T E N T S.
PAGE Introductory Synopsis ...................................... 7. Five Representative Books as Case-Histories .................... 9. A Note on the Presentation of the Text .........20. ANTIQUARIAN & COUNTY
HISTORIES. RELIGION AND THE IDEOLOGICAL FUNCTION OF
INTRODUCTORY SYNOPSIS The purpose of the following text is to offer a tentative, preliminary introduction to the history of antiquarian and topographical writings and books covering Britain during the period 1550-1835. These dates are chosen as convenient, makeshift chronological markers, indicating the (temporary/permanent?) historical bounds of this study at the present point in my research (July 2001). The dates have been ‘rounded off’ provisionally, so to speak. To elucidate: The text of John Leland’s Itinerary in its bound manuscript form was presented to King Henry VIII in 1546 as a New Year’s Gift to the monarch, upon whom he was dependent indirectly for his financial support, as well as for the warrants allowing him to travel freely across the domains of the King (i.e. England and Wales). As a
New Year’s Gift (the courtly equivalent, at that time,
of what would now be termed a Christmas present) it constituted a testament
of fidelity to the King; gratitude for the issuing of his warrants
and for whatever financial assistance he received from the royal coffers.
An act of seasonal etiquette in a textual form. - However, having stated
the last remark, it is alas no longer possible to ascertain precisely
how the fascicules of the manuscript were stitched; nor how elaborate
was the original binding. Although many fine bindings of the medieval
and early Tudor period are still to be found intact and in a state
of good preservation (even accounting for subsequent repairs and refurbishments
to binding, stitching and gatherings), this has not been the case with
Leland’s text. 1. Leland did not present a systematic account of the King’s domains. There were several models which he could have well adopted and adapted for his own purposes. For instance, he could have divided his text into an organizational structure of shires. Another alternative would have been a division by dioceses. This would have been especially appropriate, as the text was written and completed during and in the aftermath of the break from Rome and the Dissolution of the Monasteries - arguably the two most far-reaching occurrences of Henry VIII’s reign, politically, religiously and culturally. Moreover, an added dimension or overlay of aptness in this respect is evident time and again in Leland’s text, in the form of his frequently reiterated attacks against the malpractices, idolatry and superstitions and allegiance to the Pope over and above the King, which liberally pepper Leland’s text. So many diatribal, anti-Papal digressions! 2. Leland had no established pattern from classical learning on which to base the structuration and organization of his method or the presentation of his findings. He had to gropingly find a new albeit tentative way of organizing his material. And to all intents and purposes it can be said that he never adequately did so. - And to the foregoing, there may be added a third consideration, related to the above: 3. Neither Lucy Toulmin Smith nor T.D. Kendrick, in their introductory essays to the 1964 edition of the Itinerary (the second publication of this work; the first being that of Thomas Hearne in the early 18th century; and still the most recent transcription of Leland) decisively solve the problem of the status of Leland’s ms ( and the subsequent copies). Namely: Did Leland himself regard the text as being in a state of completion? Or was it regarded by him as a work in progress? A preliminary draft presented in the hope of securing further royal largesse and finance so that the ms could be refined with a view - possibly - to being printed? A manuscript
(or in the case of Leland’s Itinarary a series
of incomplete mss, the collation and comparison and analysis of which
allow one to conjecture a relatively fluid yet still difficult, digressive,
broken text of tesserae) is fundamentally different in material status
from a printed text. * The above remarks are intended as a tentative caveat: primarily aimed
at myself; and apologetically addressed to the readers of this work
in progress.
Five key books representing original work of antiquaries. 1. William Lambarde, A Perambulation of Kent, 1576. Commentaries on antiquarianism. These are in the main scattered through a whole variety of journals
from the Victorian period onwards. Often each county zealously guarded
its own historiography. Biographies of particular antiquaries are thin on the ground; and,
produced in small print runs by university presses, inevitably expensive.
And, moreover, difficult to obtain as they go out of print so rapidly.
Yet they are being produced sporadically at the moment. Subscription
to mailing-lists or to on-line specialists seems to be the most efficient
way of being informed of such publications. However, at long last this situation shows signs of changing; for now, in a small number of university history departments throughout the country, postgraduate units and courses are evidently focusing upon this aspect of historiography, most often under the aegis of specific, scattered scholars who have an active interest in this field; among whom one may cite Kevin Sharpe, Stephen Bann and Graham Parry as being eminent in their fields of Tudor and 17th century studies. Also, Professor Charles Thomas continues on a part-time basis at the University of Exeter and at the Institute of Cornish Studies to combine the domains of the historiography of local history, archival research and archaeology and the history thereof, in specific relation to the counties of Cornwall and Devon. (In this respect, he has an illustrious predecessor in the figure of Professor W.G. Hoskins who, with the publication of The Making of the English Landscape and Local History in England, both originally published in the 1950s indicated that social history per se could and should be approached in a far more specific, well-documented manner than had previously been laid out in the pages of G.M. Trevelyan’s English Social History. (Trevelyan’s work, although later historians such as Sir Keith Thomas, in the Preface to Man and the Natural World in particular, have duly paid homage, now seems as outmoded as the historiography of Gibbon.) * To apply the above observations concerning Derrida to the topic of
antiquarian thought. The early antiquaries and county historians seldom worked within university environments. The closest any of them had to what might be termed an academic tenure was Sir William Dugdale, who as Norroy King of Arms was the undisputed head of the Royal College of Arms. In this position he was not only the supreme adjudicator in questions of heraldry. He was also the principle legislator in questions of the utmost importance in the economics of 17th century England: namely financial inheritance and land-ownership, having privileged access to the Record Office, at that time housed in the Tower of London. As for a specific environment or establishment of antiquarian research,
this still remains a vexed, uncertain issue. In 1720 there was published a curious collection of treatises and
tracts collected by Thomas Hearne entitled A Collection of curious
Discourses, written by eminent Antiquaries, upon several heads in our
English Antiquities, and now first published by Thomas Hearne, M.A.. From the notes and journals which he kept,Hearne emerges as a not
particularly likeable, friendly character. One might say that he was
suspicious and vindictive (even to a greater extent than Anthony Wood,
the author/editor/gatherer of material of Athenae Oxoniensis). Problems
of religious belief - his Roman Catholic sympathies - prevented his
development of an academic career in either Oxford or Cambridge, as
well as the other domain of intellectual exchange, the Inns of Court.
As his diaries show, his sympathies for the Jacobite cause surpassed
his allegiance to the Hanoverian. Thus, under the first three Georges
he could not expect any academic or court preferment at all. Indeed,
one gets the impression that he was treated cautiously by his fellow
antiquaries because of his potentially dangerous (even treasonable)
religious allegiance. Nor was his own ill temper particularly endearing. Moreover, from the outset of its establshment proper, it could be
said (and indeed it was felt by many leading figures of the time) that
the Society of Antiquaries was, in a way, representative of second-league
scholarship. * It would, however, be completely wrong to consider a spirit of antagonism
creating a void separating the Fellow of the Royal Society from the
antiquary during the Stuart and early Georgian period. Quite often,
figures held dual membership. Why the diaristic mode came to the fore during the 17th century is
a problem which, albeit deserving detailed attention, lies beyond the
confines of the present text. Some have considered it as a vernacular,
Protestant form of confessional. Others as an extension of book-keeping/accountancy. This may seem wildly tangential to the main theme of antiquarianism,
the focal topic of this study. * This notion of the trace (for which once more I am endebted to Jacques Derrida) can in turn ‘by a commodious vicus of recirculation’ to quote James Joyce return the reader to the medieval chronicles (some of the most important monastic examples being published in the latter 17th century, as well as being incorporated into the original Latin edition of Dugdale’s Monasticon Anglicanum) which were first critically perused by John Leland and incorporated into his Itinarary... Whilst the dissolution of the monasteries under Henry VIII undeniably entailed the loss of an inestimable amount of cultural heritage (as Sir Roy Strong has noted; and before him, John Aubrey bewailed, as he remembered seeing bakers’ pie-trays being lined with pages of illuminated manuscripts, presumably from the large monastic houses, notably Malmesbury, in his immediate vicinity, as well as other westcountry religious centres such as Bath and Wimborne (see both Anthony Powell and Michael Hunter respectively on Aubrey)) the dissolution also caused many such manuscripts removed from the monastic scriptoria to be brought into the commercial domain of the collector. Most notable in this field was Sir Robert Cotton. Sir Robert
Cotton has recently been the subject of critical-historical re-evaluation.
Previously, the major study of him was that by Hope Mirrlees - very
much an amateurish effort, frequently lapsing into a style which
makes the reader cringe - evidently, if one is to judge by the opening
dedicatory preface, owing much to the intervention of T.S. Eliot
at Faber & Faber to see it into print. Like Eliot’s
own forays into Elizabethan and Jacobean cultural criticism, Mirrlees’ text
tends towards the subjective, the nebulous, and the downright condescending
in its attitude towards the reader. * Such a reconsideration of a figure as Sir Robert Cotton is indispensible
in any consideration of the history of antiquarianism inasmuch as it
is via a scrutiny of figures such as he that a primary, tentative taxonomy
of the early exponents of antiquarianism -the early antiquaries -becomes
feasible. Sir Robert
Bruce Cotton (1571-1631) was educated at Westminster School and Jesus
College, Cambridge. (William Camden became head of St Paul’s
School in 1593; the first edition of his Britannia, a small 8vo, was
published in 1586. For further information on the genesis of Camden’s
Britanna, see Stuart Piggott’s essay in Piggott, Ruins in a Landscape).
Cotton’s library , although it was housed in his London residence,
rather than being a separate building or institution, became an intellectual
landmark in late Elizabethan and Stuart London. Among the most eminent
scholars to be allowed use of his collection of coins, books, mss and
curios were Bacon, Camden, Speed, Selden and Ussher. ...Thus
one essentially fugitive writer’s works become collected
and arranged by another of a similar ilk. For Howell himself is equally
difficult to pin down. The actual basis (if any) of the Cotton-Howell relationship certainly
needs more clarification. * To adequately investigate the career of Sir William Camden, or even to carefully evaluate the various elements and figures at work in the masive reshapings which his magnum opus, the Britannia, went through from the first small 8vo Latin edition to Gough’s late 18th century text would demand a study in itself, incorporating detailed biographies of all the various contributors to the different editions, and the fundamental difference in prose style separating the first English translation by Philemon Holland (erstwhile ‘translator-general of his age’, so many Latin texts did he render into English) It is
strange, not to say apparently unfair that several writers on the
historiography of English topography have sought to belittle Philemon
Holland’s translation. The most common critique is that he took
so many liberties with Camden’s Latin, whilst adding turns of
phrase and additional material of his own, that he produced a mangled
text. However, before proceeding further, some minimal information
concerning Philemon Holland himself. To the above comments it may be added that Shakespeare scholarship has uncovered many borrowings of turns of phrase from his translations of Pliny and Suetonius peppering the works of the bard himself. Nonetheless,
by the end of the 17th century a new edition of Camden’s
Britannia was thought desirable. This desire fuelled in no small way
by the burgeoning of county histories and antiquarian research in England,
instead of a reissue of Holland’s translation, it was decided
that the whole enterprise should be started anew. The new translation has precision and a comfortable dignity, though one regrets at times the enthusiastic, if wayward, style of Holland. We lose, for instance, the charming phrase which describes Camden’s visit to Hadrian’s Wall - ‘Verily I have seene the tract of it over the high pitches and steepe descents of hilles, wonderfully rising and falling’, which is accurately, but how flatly, rendered ‘I have observ’d the track of it running up the mountains and down again, in a most surprising manner’. [Piggott, Ruins..., p. 48] As Piggott comments: [ibid., p. 48] Moreover. Piggott raws attention to the fact that the subsequent edition of 1722 acknowledged John Aubrey’s conribution to scholarship concerning Avebury in particular . On the other hand, however, Piggott elides the underhand way in which everyone except Aubrey himself seemed to benefit from his benevolence in circulating the various drafts of the facsicules of his work in progress, The Monumenta Britannia. Nor does Piggott indicate the unscrupulous way in which William Stukeley was later to pillage Aubrey ms masterpiece, and pioneering work of field archaeology. In fact, in his biography on Stukeley (which still remains the standard work on this antiquary) the apparently partisan Piggott heralds Stukeley as one of the most humane of eighteenth-century archaeologists and scholars. Personally, I am more inclined to the opinion regarding Stukeley propounded by Professor Michael Hunter in his monograph on John Aubrey and in his co-authored (yet predominantly his) Avebury Reconsidered as being a plagiarist, mentally unstable, primarily wishing to somehow reconcile his fabulist druidism with his own Christian beliefs. *
A NOTE ON THE PRESENTATION OF THE FOLLOWING TEXT. Each section - where appropriate, i.e. devoted to a text or the oeuvre
of a specific antiquary - is prefaced by a brief biographical entry
concerning the writer in question. Most of these are taken, with alterations
and augmentations where apt, from the Dictionary of National Biography.
*
ANTIQUARIANISM & COUNTY
HISTORIES: WILLIAM LAMBARDE. A PERAMBULATION OF KENT, 1576. *** The first published county history. [The
only monograph on William Lambarde so far published was written by
Retha Warnicke. Containing valuable background detail, Dr Warnicke’s
text, however, does not engage in a close reading of Lambarde’s
text on Kent. Questions such as the methods used by Lambarde in the
collection of his data - especially whence they came, access to Tower
Records, the extent of his own collection, etc., are absent from the
text. *
[From the D.N.B.:] LAMBARDE,
WILLIAM (1536-1601), historian of Kent, born in the parish of St.
Nicholas Acon, London, on 18 Oct. 1536, was the eldest son of John
Lambarde, draper, alderman, and sheriff of London. [...] On the death
of his father in August 1554, he inherited the manor of Westcombe
in Greenwich, Kent. He was admitted of Lincoln’s Inn on 12 April
1556, and studied Anglo-Saxon with Laurence Nowell. [This information
is evidently taken from Anthony Wood’s Athenae Oxoniensis, which
first appeared in Latin translation, under the direction of Dr Fell,
who, evidently, expunged many of the more candid passages. In 1721
there was published a second - English language - edition, largely
thanks to the travails of Thomas Tanner, whose Notitia Monastica was
published in 1695 - much detail being taken from Dugdale’s Monasticon
Anglicanum (an epitome of which, translated and devised by James Wright,
the historian of Rutland, in 1695, was unfairly dismissed by Lowdnes
in his Biblographer’s Manual, as a work of little use!)] [From the D.N.B. entry, it is evident that Lambarde became embroiled, of necessity, in matters of national and local law and judiciary. This indicates, from the inception of the role of the county historian, his entanglement, whether desired or an encumbrance, with the intricacies of the Elizabethan and Jacobean legal system. In fact, such burdens seem to have been a necessary function of landowners in the Elizabethan and Jacobean period. This point has been indicated above, in the introductory pages of this study. In this respect alone, the early county historian markedly differs from his subsequent followers. This, it seems plausible to conjecture, was entangled with the county historian’s status as landowner - and often member of te titled gentry with oligations of a national and local parliamentary character.] On 22
June 1592 Lambarde was appointed a master in chancery by Lord -keeper
Sir John Puckering, and made keeper of the records at the Rolls Chapel
by Sir Thomas Egerton on 26 May 1597. In 1597 by William Brooke,
lord Cobham, as one of his executors and trustees for establishing
his college for the poor at Cobham, Kent, and drew up the roles for
the government of the charity. He was personally noticed by the queen
in 1601, and appointed on 21 Jan. keeper of the records in the Tower.
On 4 Aug. of the same year he presented Elizabeth with an account which
he called his ‘Pandecta Rotulorum’, and he left behind
a delightfully quaint note in the queen’s privy chamber at East
Greenwich. *
Thus, gratis the pages of the Dictionary of National Biography, does
the figure behind the text (within the text? who left his traces upon
the text?) become more visible.
[...] even at the end of the [16th] century,it required some courage
to study Saxon antiquities for their own sake, it ws probably antiquarian
and topographical interests that in the first instance inspired the
Saxon researches of Laurence Nowell, Dean of Lichfield, whose knowledge
and collections bore fruit in the topographical dictionary of his friend
William Lambarde, and at least as early as 1574 for for even the pagan
Saxons had become noticeable. [...] [Kendrick continues by drawing attention to the continuation of Saxon studies during the seventeenth century, especially in the work of Richard Rowlands, alias Richard Verstegan, especially in his Restitution of Decayed Intelligence, 1634; also to be noted in Stephen Skinner’s Etymologicon Linguae Anglicanae of 1671. [N.B. It is interesting/significant that the word ANTIQUARY is ABSENT from the entries in this book. One problem being, of course, the precise cutting of Saxon characters for the seventeenth-century letter-press... and how many keyboards in the present day have a function to render Saxon characters? Perhaps, as as a tentative explanation of this curious phenomenon during this period was the primacy of classical scholarship at grammar school and universities; thus leaving the quaintness, so to speak, of Saxon characters, to a small, scattered group of aficionados? (To cite an instance from the 20th century, one could name J.R.R.Tolkien’s devoted studies to runic and Saxon texts: an enthusiasm which was passed on to his immediate scholars, but never entered the mainstream of university education, but remained the enclave of scholars who had come under the influence of Tolkien, or of his immediate scholars... such as Dr Stephen Medcalf, formrly of the University of Sussex; the only peson, other than Seamus Heaney, whom I have heard attempt to render vocally the cadences of Saxon poetry in performance.) From
the above it is worth noting the following specifically. First of
all, that Lambarde’s researches were evidently begun in situ,
in his manor of Westcombe, in Kent itself, rather than in his London
chambers where, with the exception of the holdings of of the ecclesiastical
libraries of Canterbury and Maidstone, a walk around the confines of
the City would have yielded up a greater, more easily accssible source
of original documentation at locations such as the Inns of Court and
the Tower Records. For, given the social importance of Lambarde’s
patron and dedicatee, Thomas Wotton, he would have been grnted relatively
easy access to the major royal and governmental repositories of records
in London. This
last-mentioned hypothesis is in tune with A.L. Rowse”s
argument, cited above, concerning what he eferred to as ‘the
Elizabethan Discovery of England’ - a discovery (and conquest)
undertaken on horseback, in carriages and on foot, rather than in galleons
and pinnaces; the navigation of roads rather than seas and oceans. *
Having no textual precursor or template from which to work, or from which to derive his own ideas of presentation, how does Lambarde construct and present his finished text? In the following draft, I take the two published editions into consideration
only. There are important issues which should be tackled prior to opening
these books and attempting any analytical reading. the following notes constitute a preliminary, tentative counting and
identification of the major pieces of the jigsaw, so to speak, prior ... Lambarde commences his text by casting a critical eye implicitly and
explicitly over the ms chronicles of the medieval period. Especially
those of monastic origin. It is worthwhile paying careful attention to the opening dedication
to Thomas Wotton. In this passage, Lambarde mentions This rhetorically well-crafted foreword is followed by a commendatory reply from the dedicatee, Thomas Wotton, following which ambarde once again obliquely approaches the problem of the intended readership, the mode of reading implicit in his text, and the utility of such writing. From the vantage point of the early 21st century, it is difficult
to fully appreciate the diffiulties faced by Lambarde in determining
precisely who constituted his readership; what they expected of his
text; and indeed whether the text would be lisible (in the Barthesian
sense) to his contemporaries. There seems to be a nagging worry that
the text would somehow meet with incomprehension; that there would
be a linguistic rift separating Lambarde from his readership. Put briefly:
would they comprehend his intentions, let alone appreciate the labour
invested in the production of such a tome? Lambarde’s text (difficult to appreciate and to succinctly formulate today, in the wake of the ongoing series of the volumes of the Victoria County History and the far more easily accessible volumes of the highly successful Penguin Buildings of England series) seemed to defy the taxonomies of reading at the time. It did not readily fit into the syllabuses of the schools and universities of his time, inasmuch as it was not History as such. Perhaps the nearest classical precursor was to be located in Pausanias’ guide to Greece. But then again, to the Tudor classicist, to compare the legendary achievements of Greek civilization with the traces of human settlement and cultivation contained in Lambarde’s survey of Kent would have seemed rather absurd. Moreover, fine and undoubtedly important book that it is, there is one serious drawback to both the 16th century editions of his text. Both lack any illustrations. And, to the general scholar, perhaps based in the environs of London, there might feasibly be a reason for visiting the major ecclesiastic sites, namely Canterbury, Rochester and Maidstone, if only on the offchance of visiting the monastic libraries; and, after the Reformation, in a more piratical fashion, paying a visit to ascertain what could be purchased or plundered from such sites. For, indeed, the backbone of many private libraries - and there were few, books being such expensive commodities - of the time was in fact the result9s of pillaging the monastic libraries. It has to be borne in mind that ‘sightseeing’ as a category of pleasure per se was not widely developed in Tudor and early Stuart England. Travel, for most, consisted in the trudge to nearby work. For the wealthy, too, it was something of an ordeal rather than a pastime: the necessity of balancing one’s time between court and countryside. And when in the countryside, within an agrarian-based economy, it was the careful overseeing and maintainance of one’s own property which was of paramount importance. Necessity rather than pleasure remained the fundamental dynamic for travel within England until the Restoration. I set upon this date, for it saw the publication of the first of the genre of ‘road books’, namely that of John Ogilby who in strip-format showed the accepted routes interlinking the major English centres of commerce. However, in another way, Ogilby’s undertaking, however laudable, was both impractical and unnecessary. The format and expense of the book made it impractical for even carriage travel. Moreover, most journeys, because of the foulness of the ways in bleaker parts of the countryside, and the mercantile commerce betwixt nearby towns, were relatively short. Or, if a longer progress was intended from town house to country house (so that the London house could be adequately cleansed, and to avoid the dangers of pestilence in summer, then guides and outriders were quite often hired at stages along the route: hence the growth of the coaching inns from the late medieval to the late Georgian period. * However,
following the above digression, to return to the text which it was
intended to contextualize - namely Lambarde’s Kent. There
is little to be found in the way of descriptive, detailed topography
in his book. Does this indicate a lack of the command of what might
be called the EKPHRASIS OF PLACE in Lambarde’s writing? Faversham is a market town franchised with a sanctuary, and hath a great abbey of blake monkes of the fundation of King Stephane. The towne is encluded yn one paroche, but that ys very large. Ther cummeth a creke to the towne that bereth vesels of xx. tunnes, and a myle fro thens north est is a great key cawled Thorn to disscharge bygge vessels. The creke is fedde with a bakke water that cummeth fro Ospring and a thorowgh fare amyle and more of, wherwas sumtyme a Meason de Dieu, that now longeth to S. John’s yn Cambrige. Herteye joyning to Shepeye liyth agaynt Faversham and the Thorn. [Leland’s
Itinerary, L.T. Smith ed., vol. 4, p. 68f.] As it
is very likely, that the Towne of Feversham received the chiefe nourishment
of her increase from the Religious house; So there is no doubt, that
the place was somewhat of price long time before the building of
that Abbay there. For it is to be seene, that King Ethelstane helde
a Parleament, and enacted certeine lawes at Feversham, about sixe hundreth
and fortie yeares agoe: at which time (I thinke) it was some Manor
house belonging to the Prince, the rather, for afterwarde King William
the Conquerour (to whose handes at length it came) amongst other thinges,
gave the advowson of the Church, to the Abbay of S. Augustines, and
the Manor itself to a Normane in recompence of service. But what time
king Stephan had in purpose to build the Abbay, he recovered the Manor
againe, by exchange made with one William de Ipre (the founder of Boxley)
for Lillychurch and raysing there a stately Monasterie (the temporalities
whereof did amount to a hundred and fiftie & five poundes) he stored
it with Cluniake Monkes. Tempting though it is to quote more from Lambarde, for reasons of
brevity and focus of argument, the aboe must suffice. For Leland, the essential task is the presentation of a prose-picture,
a topographical ekphrasis of the situation of aversham as it presents
itself to the traveller. For him, it is the present impression of the
specific situation (wherever it may be) which is the essential point. *
Tentative
remarks arisisng from Retha M. Warnicke’s study Retha Warnicke aptly draws attention to Lambarde’s privileged social position: namely his relative wealth, both in land and in financial investment. Secondl, his positions of influence and access to circles of refinement, firstly at the University of Oxford and then at the Inns of Court. Continuing to quote from Retha Warnicke (p. 27): [...] he [Lambarde] had an unfavourable opinion of Stonehenge which he believed had been built in honour of the deaths of British noblemen. He wrote that he not seen anything impressive about the stones for ‘they hange with no more Wonder then one Post of a House hangeth upon another [...] ...The problem of the dating of Stonehenge remained a vexed issue from the late middle ages until the relatively methodical investigations and conjectures of Sir Richard Colt Hoare in the early nineteenth century, which dispelled many of the antiquaries’ hypotheses, paving the way for the investigations of Professors R.G.C. Atkinson and Alexander Thom - despite the great variance which separates their conclusions. More accessible - for the layman as opposed for the archaeological controversialist - are the well-written popular contributions of Rodney Legg and John Fowles (who have collaborated upon establishing he first published transcribed text of Aubrey’s Monumenta Britannica ; a text which will be discussed during the course of this work in progress; see below, eventually). To return to Retha Warnicke’s monograph; p.30: [...] Although the chronicles and their narratives formed a major part of the work formed a major part , the Perambulation has a significant historical importance because it contains many of Lambarde’s own personal observations about sixteeenth century. Again, from p. 30: [...] It is apparent that he [Lambarde] visited Kent often and knew the county well, since he discusssed with some authority its climate, the people and their customs, the land and its vegetation, the rivers and its vegetation, the rivers and the ships that sailed them, and the tenures of land and their history. Although the chroniclers and their narratives formed a major portion of the work, the Perambulation has a significant historical importance because it contains many of Lambarde’s own personal observations about 16th-century Kent. Retha Warnicke continues by drawing attention to the meticulous characteristics of Kilburne’s textual composition which are quite apposite in this context. She comments: Usually he begins his description of the Kentish towns with a discussion of their histories, but occasionally, as with the village of Teynham, he permitted his own feelings to take precedence: I woulde begin with the Antiquities of the Placeas commonly I doe
in others, were it not that the latter and present estate thereof far
passeth any that hath been tofore it. For heere have wee, not onely
the most dainty piece of all our Shyre, but such a singularitie as
the whole British Island is not able to patterne. Warnicke, p,30
Albeit that Retha Warnicke has great empathy with her subject - William Lambarde - she is critically aware of the shortcomings of his outlook and textual approach concerning the responsibilities of the tasks of the county historian. Moreover, it is significant in the pasage about to be quoted, Lambarde’s approach was - even as he wrote - going out of favour; that another mode of writing was being painstakingly forged: The greatest modern criticism of the county history [i.e. Lambarde’s; although the remarks, I think, can be applied to many other texts - both published and remaining in ms form during the Interregnum] is that the author dwelt too long on its Saxon past, and not enough on the county of his own day. Primarily a Saxon scholar, Lambarde was not interested in the ancient Britons and he had very little to add to that period of English history. [...] (Warnicke, p. 35] - As a tentative aside, could one state that the same criticism is valid for another book of the seventeenth century, devoted to the antiquities and topography of Kent - namely Philipot’s Villare Cantianum, a text which will be considered later in this study? As indicated in the forgoing text, Lambarde was not an antiquary pure and simple, but performed many other functions; one of which was that of Justice of the Peace. As Warnicke indicates, in this capacity, Lambarde was responsible, among other things, his responsibility for the levying of militia and the mustering of troops, etc.. This was in one sense - that of his later readership and the collectors of antiquarian county histories - tangential to his work as an antiquary. Nonetheless, Retha Warnicke’s comments that his cultural-topographical efforts were by no means his exclusive concerns and commitments. Considered from another viewpoint - one which is, perhaps askew at this particular point in the text - could one argue that the Perambulation was the work of a seventeenth-century ‘proto-amateur historian’ (to utilize an anachronistic turn of phrase - one which Kilburne certainly would not have understood)? Warnicke
indicates that Lambarde’s Kent residence was at Halling
Palace [...] The ragstone
wall in the NE corner of the churchyard [of St John the Baptist,
Halling] is what is left of the BISHOP’S PALACE. The
three blocked trefoil-headedlancets with segmental rere-arches, made
of an unusual reddy-brown sandstone. Return wall at the N. end, not
bonded in. Bishop Hamo de Hethe repaired and enlarged between 1322
and 1337. Retha Warnicke supplements the major text of the foregoing in the provision of the following material: While
his material wealth was increasing, Lambarde was not neglecting his
intellectual pursuits and probably joined the Elizabethan Society
of Antiquaries that was founded in 1586. The Society, whose goal
was to further research into England’s past, had many lawyers and
knights among its members, and since Lambarde was held in great esteem
by the outstanding antiquaries of his age, he too, was probably a member.
John Stowe gave his ‘loving friend’ credit for suggesting
the form for the Survey of London , and Camden not only depended upon
his knowledge for an understanding of Kent, but also asked him to review
the Britannia before it was printed. Clearly two of the most noted
antiquaries of Elizabethan England knew and respected his scholarship.
That the society had so many lawyers and knights in its membershipindicates
that the late 1580s gentlemen commonly studied antiquity, but Lambarde,
of course, was a pioner in awakening his contemporaries to the value
of that study since his historical research had become some twenty
years before the founding of the society. It was
essential that William Lambarde secured some, however modest, financial
support to further his antiquarian pursuits (despite his own landed
income). As Retha Warnicke indicates Lambarde established (tenuous?)
contacts with both Lord Burghley and Archbishop Parker during 1573.
Moreover, Lambarde also sent Burghley notes on Stamford, Burghley’s
home.
RELIGION AND THE IDEOLOGICAL FUNCTION OF THE ANTIQUARY. The preceding paragraph raises an incredibly knotty problem, difficult
to formulate without falling foul of anachronistic misreadings. However, to bemoan the fate of the monasteries and other religious
houses, their libraries, their stained glass, their furnishings and
objects of devotion, was a matter of an entirely different order. One
had to distinctly differentiate between acts of collecting and acts
of veneration. It is evident from reading the mss of John Aubrey that
this was something which he found difficult to do. His various biographers
are all in agreement that whatever views one has of his intellectual
acumen and particular fixations, he was of what might best be termed
a generous yet highly unsettled temperament. He was hopeless at handling
finances and property of any kind. Opportunities and offers of help
were squandered and frittered away; fundamentally wrong decisions were
made throughout his life - as Aubrey was the first to admitand emphasize,
as if proffering a warning tothose who followed after him. An Antiquary Hee is a man strangely thrifty of Time past, and anememy indeed to his Maw, whence he fetches out many things when they are now all rotten and stinking. Hee is one that hath that unnaturall disease to bee enamour’d of old age and wrinckles, and loves all things (as Dutchmen doe Cheese) the better for being mouldy and worme-eaten. He is of our Religion, because wee say it is most ancient; and yet a broken Statue would almost make him an Idolator. A great adrirer hee is of the rust of old Monuments, and reades only those Characters, where time hath eaten out the letters. Hee will goe you forty miles to see a Saints Well, or a ruin’d Abbey, and if there be but a Crosse or stone footstoole in the way hee’l be considering it so long, till he forgets his journey. His estate consists much in shekels, and Roman Coynes, and he hath more pictures of Caesar, than of James , or Elizabeth: beggars coozen him with the musty things which they have rak’t from dunghills, and he preserves their rags for precious Reliques. He loves no Library, but where thereare more Spiders volums then Authors, and lookes with great admiration on the Antique worke of Cob-webs. Printed bookes he contemnes, as a novelty of this latter age, but a Manu-script hee pores on everlastingly, especially if the cover be all Moth-eaten, and the dust make a Parenthesis betweene every Syllable. He would give all the Bookes in his study (which are rarities all) for one of the old Romane binding, or sixe lines of Tully, in his owne hand. His chamber is hung commonly with strange Beasts skins, and is a kinde of Charnel-house of bones extraordinary, and his discourse upon them, if you will heare him, shall last longer. His very attyre is that which is the eldest out of fshion, and you may picke a Criticisme out of his Breeches. He never lookes up on himself til he is gray-hair’d, and then he is pleased with his own Antiquity. His Grave do’s not fright him, for he ha’s bene us’d to Sepulchers, and he likes Death the better, because it gathers him to his Fathers. John Earle, Micro-cosmographie [...] The sixth Edition; augmented. London 1633. Reprinted by Methuen & Co., London, 1904., n.p.. - This
is by no means the earliest description of a collector/transactor
in antiquities and curiosities in the English language. In Shakespeare’s
Romeo and Juliet one is presented with a marvellous evocation of a
treasure-house of clutter... demonstrating that it was often difficult
to discriminate between an apothecary and a dealer in antiquities;
for quite often they would be one and the same person; or items from
one classification system would migrate into another, according to
the whims of fashion and the vagaries of trade. ...Meanwhile, to quote Shakespeare’s marvellously evocative description of such an assortment - evidently part collection, part stock in trade of the apothecary, from Romeo and Juliet. I quote from the 1685 edition of Shakespeare: I do remember an Apothecary, This
is, of course, one of the most famous and evocative descriptions
of the contents and ambience (somewhat ambiguous to say the least)
of the late Tudor and Stuart apothecary and his ‘shop’ -
a word which is inserted in inverted commas inasmuch as at the lower
end of the market (i.e. that which was not part of an aristocrat’s
collection or within a college environment or the library cum study
of one of the better-off antiquaries whwerein objects held in duplicate
were usually exchanged or bartered rather than sold for instant monetary
gain) . This
is a key issue (as far as I know not fully investigated) of how information
was obtained, collected and eventually collated prior to being composed
into a text during this period. Earle in his satire, implies that
antiquaries of his age were notoriously unsystematic. A study lined
with a jumble of diverse objects through which the antiquary gingerly
moved, entrapped within a labyrinth of his own devising, composed
of disparate elements. One thing it was definitely not - and that was
a collegiate library. Nor was it the study or inner room of a person
working for or on behalf of the state. One may think of Pepys’ Library,
with its specially bound volumes arranged in bookcases which he had
specially constructed, according to his own specifications. From reading and rereading the opening historical sections, the insecurities in Lambarde’s composition become all too apparent. There are no specific headings, devoted to topics such as topography; varieties of scenery; varieties of agriculture; in brief, the ‘making’ of the landscape as W.G. Hoskins termed it in The Making of the English Landscape. This is mainly because the division of history and geography and the way in which they inter-relate were quite unknown to Lambarde. (Richard Carew, in his Survey of Cornwall of 1602, less than 30 years after Lambarde, shows a much greater degree of confidence in the ordering of his material, as well as in the perambulation (or sequential arrangement) of the history and topography of his specific county. Carew was a member of the lower aristocracy, wealthy and well-educated, versed in the Humanism of European learning and more so in its courtly Elizabethan variant. He possessed money, estates, and courtly connections which Lambarde lacked.) To continue
with the reading of Lambarde’s text, in the hope
of dialectically deconstructing/reconstructing his method (?) or procedure
(progression) in his writing. The people of this countrie, consisteth chiefly (as in other countries
also The gentlemen be not heere (throughout) of so auncient stockes as Lambarde continues by indicating the following factors: i. the sea; ii. the rivers; iii. an established highway connecting it to - iv. London. All of which are determinants specific to the flourishing gentry. Via their entrepreneurial status, they are able to free themselves from direct contact with the land which they own, thus enabling them to enter into ‘the publique service’, and thus have time and money to utilize the countryside for pastimes. Next in Lambarde’s text there follows the second class:
This form of land tenure, peculiar to Kent implies, so Lambarde insinuates, lesser friction between landowner and tenant; the latter in Kent being quite content economically, and not wanting the responsibilities of county and court attendance imposed upon the gentry. Next come the group termed by Lambarde the ‘artificers’, a loosely-knit category, roughly to be understood as craftsmen, skilled and semi-skilled: providers of raw materials ‘handmaidens to husbandry’, providing building materials (it is implied for the first phase of noble and lower gentry rebuilding within the period still known by many historians of vernacular architecture as the phase of the first great rebuild; and also those invloved with the provision of coloured woollen cloth, both for home use and foreign export. Here again, it is worth emphasizing that there is an emphasis upon local pride insamuch as the woollen produce is of a high quality, good enough, in fact, to vie with the established woollen trade of the Low Countries. However, at a point such as this, where Lambarde seems to be coming to grips with the rural economy of the county, in the next paragraph, without warning, there follows a digression wherein again the historical content is brought back into the foreground. The first issue to be raised here is the vexed issue of the human inhabitation of Britain. Here is must be remembered that the most inflential passages regard |