to Matthew White (which I have not been able to trace) and to the already-mentioned grant to "Ipolitus" Lynnett and Nicholas Haynes, and afterwards to Robert Dodd, and mentioned to be parcel of the Manor of Raynehurst in the said county of Kent, and reference is also made to the annual rent reserved, as to Filborowe, of £16. This was not a royal lease like the preceding documents, but a grant of the freehold reversion, with the usual exception of knights' fees, wards, marriages, royal mines of gold, and silver. The lands, etc., were conveyed in fee farm, and the two manors were to be held of the King of his Manor of East Greenwich by fealty only, in free and common socage, and not in chief or by knight service, at a yearly rent for the Manors, etc., of £72 15s. 3 d.

The orthography of Filborough has constantly varied, and a very common local form is Philborough at this day.

Thus at the expense, I fear, of my reader's patience I have endeavoured to redeem from obscurity another of our old timber-framed dwellings which are fast disappearing. I am informed two such houses were removed last year at Betsome, in the neighbouring parish of Southfleet. Such removals admit of no restitution, and the best we can do is to provide such accessible record, pictorial or literary, as we can lay hold upon.

NOTES ON FILBOROUGH FARMHOUSE BY MR. RALPH NEVILL, F.S.A., F.R.I.B.A.

This is a very interesting example of the small house midway between a manor-house and a cottage, and it is most desirable, in order that we may thoroughly understand the life of our ancestors, that plans of such houses should be put on record while they still exist.

Unfortunately examples have been generally so added to and altered that it is impossible to trace the original arrangements as we can in this case. Many such an example may also exist unrecorded for want of the observation exercised by Mr. Arnold.

Had not the smoke-begrimed condition of the walls in the roof been noticed by him, one would not have suspected that the fabric of so ancient a hall still remained under the additions of a period also respectable from its antiquity.

Probably a diligent search for similar evidence would lead to our assigning a much earlier date to many of these buildings than I confess I had myself given to them.

This building in the early half of the sixteenth century consisted of a hall open to the roof, without any louvre turret in the roof such as was used for more important buildings. At one end was a slip cut off for a buttery and larder, and with a low ceiling and a room over where servants probably slept. This would be approached by one of the straight, narrow, and steep stairs, cut out of a balk of solid timber such as are still sometimes found; the present stairs are of much later date. At the other end was the parlour, with a bedroom over for the family. The stairs to this would be of the newel kind, and probably opened out of the hall. The partitions of the parlour and that of the hall are of later date.

There is, however, certainly a difference in the date of the hall and that of the parlour wing; the hall had a king-post roof, as indicated by the dotted lines on the section; this, as Mr. Arnold has pointed out, was altered at the time the floor was put in to form a bedroom over the hall.

This latter is an alteration which was generally made from about the end of Henry VIII.'s reign, when so much property changed from the ownership of large proprietors who did not reside, to that of smaller men who used the houses to live in.

The wing is clearly of late fifteenth or early sixteenth century date, as is evidenced by the mouldings of the king-post.

The remains of tracery visible in the window of the face of this wing are also clearly of this date, and although at first sight they seem to resemble the complete panel at the side, a closer inspection shews that they vary both in the lines of the cusping and the section of moulding. This front window would probably be completed, as indicated by the dotted lines, in a pattern common to Perpendicular date.

The other tracery is a puzzle; it is of the Decorated period, and of very good execution, and it has not been subsequently inserted, but was framed in at the erection of the building. The most probable explanation seems to be, that the panel is part of an older building, and was fitted in to the new work, the corner post

being worked to receive it. Doubtless the tracery formed a window, and was closed by a shutter, as was usual in domestic work, where glass was too great a luxury. The discovery of such an interesting piece of fourteenth-century woodwork was a happy one.

This panel and the fabric of the hall may date from the time of the occupancy of the Martyns in the early part of the fifteenth century; the wing may date from the ownership of the Wyatts, terminating in 1540; the chimney and the floor over hall were evidently added after the property came into the hands of the Crown.

The sketch shews at the end of the range a two-storey building that is doubtless the "building of two rooms mentioned in the Survey of 1608, and the low building next to it appears to have been the kitchen there mentioned. Kitchens at early dates were always in buildings separate from the house.

The brick building joining this to the house has been put up since the 25-inch Ordnance Map was made in 1862, as that shews the mansion-house detached from the other buildings. A range of barns has been pulled down, but there seems to be some error in the way the outbuildings are drawn on that Map. The upper floor of the two-storey building was no doubt a dormitory for the farmservants.

It will be noticed from the sketch that the wing of the house terminated at this end in an overhanging timber front similar to that at the other end. That over larder is similar, but the curved braces start from the sides to the centre.

I have marked in black on the plan such of the timbers as are certainly old. The chimney is not earlier than the end of the sixteenth century, but I have given the plan of the stack above the roof, as the manner in which the flues of such chimneys are arranged to give as many angles as possible is most worthy of study, and very different from the bald way in which such features are treated

now.

LETTERS RELATING TO THE CONDITION OF THE CHURCH IN KENT, DURING THE PRIMACY OF ARCHBISHOP SANCROFT [1678-1690].

TRANSCRIBED FROM THE TANNER MSS.

BY THE REV. C. EVELEIGH WOODRUFF, M.A.

THE following letters from the "Sancroft Correspondence," preserved amongst the Tanner MSS. in the Bodleian Library, throw considerable light upon the condition of the Church of England and its clergy in the county of Kent during the latter half of the seventeenth century, and as they have not hitherto been published I venture to submit them to the notice of the Kent Archæological Society.

The debt of gratitude which the Church of England owes to Archbishop Sancroft for his courage in the great crisis known as the "Declaration of Indulgence" has been generally recognized, and his subsequent career as a "Non Juror" has earned for him the epithet of the "saintly" or "impracticable" according to the political bias of his biographers, but of his energy as a diocesan it does not appear that any notice has been taken. That the Archbishop was fully alive to the needs of his own diocese, and that in dealing with the abuses

*Sancroft bequeathed his library and MSS. to Emmanuel College, Cambs., with the exception of such papers as his friend Henry Wharton might care to select. It is stated, however, that, contrary to the Archbishop's wishes and instructions, a large portion of his MSS. were sold by his nephews to Bateman the bookseller, of whom they were purchased by Bishop Tanner, and by him presented to the Bodleian Library. (See D'Oyly's Life of Sancroft, vol. ii., p. 90, note.)

+ Canon Jenkins in his History of the Diocese passes over Sancroft's primacy with the remark that "nothing of note occurred in relation to the diocese," p. 370.

LETTERS RELATING TO THE CHURCH IN KENT. 173

he found therein he was prepared to exercise the same uncompromising firmness as when confronted with dangers and difficulties of a more public nature, his correspondence fully testifies. Indeed, it seems not unlikely that had not his opportunities been prematurely closed by deprivation, Sancroft would have so effectually roused the clergy of his diocese to a sense of their responsibilities, that in Kent at least the Church of England would have been spared the blight of apathy which afflicted her during the eighteenth century.

In the fourth year of his primacy (1682), Sancroft granted a commission to Dr. White, Bishop of Peterborough, to hold a visitation in Canterbury Cathedral. Dr. White writes to the Archbishop giving him an account of the proceedings [Letter No. I.], which do not appear to have differed much from those observed at the present day, except that owing to some neglect on the part of the public notary inadequate notice had been given to the Prebendaries. The result, however, of this visitation was important, for it seems that it revealed to the Archbishop the need of devising some means by which amid the many and engrossing cares of the primacy, he might be enabled to exercise a more effectual supervision over the clergy of his diocese. With this object he resolved to revive the ancient office of Rural Dean, thereby anticipating by more than one hundred and fifty years the reopening of these "oculi Episcopi" by Archbishop Howley in 1833.*

The clergymen appointed were :—

Dr. George Thorpet to the Rural Deanery of Canterbury. Dr. Giles Hinton‡

Dr. John Castilion§

Dr. Henry Ullock||

Charing.

Westbere.

Sandwich.

* In the diocese of Canterbury the office of Rural Dean seems to have fallen into disuse in the fifteenth century.

A similar revival was attempted at this period (1683) by Dr. Seth Ward of Salisbury, and of Dr. Fell of London.

On Tillotson's succession to the See we hear no more of Rural Deans. (See Dansey's Hora Decanica Rurales, vol. ii., p. 347.)

Canon of Canterbury and Chaplain to the Archbishop, obt. 1719. (See

Arch. Cant., Vol. XIV., p. 132.)

Successively Vicar of Westbere, Faversham, and Biddenden.

§ Canon of Canterbury and Dean of Rochester 1676, obt. 1688.

Rector of Great Mongeham, one of the six preachers in Canterbury Cathedral, Prebendary of Rochester, succeeded Dr. Castilion as Dean of Rochester 1689.