towns having that suffix to their names, this alone, with the exception of Tonbridge and Edenbridge, proclaims the presence of water sufficient to entitle it to the designation of a brook," or requiring a "bridge," the present narrow stream running below the town representing what was then no doubt a brook of goodly proportions. May not this account for the selection by Edward III. of this spot for his imported broadcloth workers ?

This brings us back to the Church itself. Its dedication to St. Dunstan is not without interest. In the not remote parish of Mayfield, included also within the Weald, are still preserved reputed relics of that distinguished but much maligned Primate, who was wont to find there a favourite place for retirement and retreat, and whose legendary life had no doubt made him an object of awe and veneration in the neighbourhood.

Assuming then, as I think we must, that three successive churches have stood on this site, and more or less on the same lines, it is clear that the earliest could not have been built before the later years of the thirteenth century, and that would have been of the simple form. No bold massive Norman, or Romanesque, which belongs to the preceding centuries, and arrests the eye and calls out the admiration of the antiquary in almost every Church along the eastern fringe of the county, nor any of that lighter and more ornate style which characterizes the following one, would be found or looked for in it. Rough rubble walls pierced by narrow lancet windows would probably have been the best that this retired, little known, and but recently redeemed Weald could boast.

The question then arises, "Does any part of that earliest church remain in the present building ?" The answer must, I think, be in the affirmative. In the west end of the north aisle, in the corner abutting from the tower, the extreme and irregular thickness of the wall suggests that it must have formed the eastern wall of the basement of a tower; and this is confirmed by the discovery made by the Rev. T. A. Carr of the foundations of such a tower extending westward from this north aisle, where the lines could be

distinctly traced. Then again, along the north wall of this aisle, the rough rubble work externally of the first four bays, without plinth, and the corresponding string-course along the wall inside, carry us back to the thirteenth century, and seem to have belonged to the first small Early English church.

As the village grew into a small town, boasting too its market, the enlargement of the Church became necessary. This enlargement was enough to constitute it a second Church, for what was left of the earlier one was converted into a north aisle, retaining its old level; while at a lower level, to adapt itself to the sloping ground, a new nave and aisle were added on at the south. In the porch we detect the improved masonry of the early years of the fourteenth century, and, very soon after, the lower stages at least of the present Tower. The Church was now carried eastward as far as the present Chancel arch (where at the restoration in 1868 the basement and the marble slab that had formed the top of the high altar were discovered). About eighty years later (1430) it seems as if the north aisle was extended by the addition of a chapel dedicated to the Virgin, marked off by a roodloft, trace of which remains in the small door now built up, still visible in the wall, to which access was gained by the newel stair running up in the projecting buttress. Another little trace of the handiwork of the fourteenth century may be seen in a very delicately moulded recessed niche in the north wall, which may have been used for an image or a light. And in the same wall, nearer the north doorway, is a wider recess under a debased arch, which once could boast of fresco work, now so utterly disfigured as to be undecipherable.

Such, it may be assumed, were the leading features of the second Church; such it would have stood through the fourteenth and into the fifteenth century. By that time, however, the Flemish clothworkers had become a prosperous and influential body. In their native land they had doubtless been accustomed to grander and more ornate churches, and were not content with the chaste simplicity of the Early English style. Moreover the addition of so many to the population of the town would have necessitated an expansion

VOL. XXII.

Q

of the church; for the "Grey Coats" of Kent had now become very numerous and wealthy. To attain to this end they seem to have swept away all the ruder work they found, retaining only the south porch and the tower, and then to have lengthened the nave by adding on a chancel, carrying the high altar farther eastward; and with it apparently the chancel arch itself, for its curves and mouldings belong rather to the fourteenth than the fifteenth century. And may not the same remark apply to the two side windows of the chancel, that they too belonged to the earlier church, and were moved here when the chancel was lengthened?

The church then had a high-pitched roof at a lower level than the present one; for before the recent alterations were made there were traces on the east wall of the tower and corresponding ones on the chancel arch, shewing that the roof originally lay on the line of the present string-course, which runs along over the arcade on the south of the nave. (But these have since disappeared.) The present clerestory was evidently a subsequent addition, in the Perpendicular style of the early years of the sixteenth century, and probably contemporary with the Perpendicular windows of the north and south aisles. It was at this time doubtless that the nave itself was widened some 4 feet, and the south aisle carried out the same distance at the expense of the groining of the roof of the porch. The parish records shew that about the years 1520-1522 liberal benefactions and subscriptions were made for the enlargement of the church. Among others Mr. Walter Roberts left in his will the following legacy: "Towards the makynge of the Middel Ile of the Church oon (one) half of all the tymbers that shall be (required) for the makynge of the Rooffe of the said worke.”+

In early Wills mention is made of several altars and chapels besides the high altar; one dedicated to St. Mary, probably at the east end of the north aisle; another to

* A noteworthy evidence of this widening is also to be detected in the fact that a plain semicircular arch in the west wall of the nave, leading to a turret stair of the tower, was now closed up and half hidden by the pier of the first bay of the colonnade which separates the nave from the south aisle.

+ Somerset House, Maynwarynge, f. 22, dated 1522.

St. Giles* (St. Egidius), eastward in extension of that of St. Mary, the pious work of John Roberts of Glassenbury in 1460, which his son Walter embellished by inserting in the east window a kneeling figure of his father in armour with his helmet by his side, and some shields containing family escutcheons. The shields and the upper portion of the good knight's figure have been preserved, but were removed from the east window and placed in one in the north wall.

During the next century a change had passed over the religious mind of the nation, and Thomas, the son of Walter Roberts (the first Baronet), in abhorrence of all trace or association of Popery, which he connected with the chapel his grandfather had endowed and his father embellished, transferred his affection from the north to the south aisle, into which he collected the family tombs, and caused it to be thenceforth known as the "Roberts' Chapel."+

There were altars also to St. Thomas, St. Katherine, and St. Clement, mentioned in various Wills, which cannot now have their several places assigned to them.

In the south wall of the chancel is a door now opening to the vestry, which before vestry-rooms came into vogue was known as the "Priest's door." On these the architects of those days were often wont to bestow special care, and display special taste, as was evidently the case here. For, when the comparatively modern vestry was introduced into this angle of the Church, the original doorway was removed and placed where it now stands, inserted under the lower part of the easternmost window in the south wall, the full proportions of which it somewhat mutilates, though in itself a very beautiful specimen of the elaborate stonework of the fifteenth century, no doubt the pious offering of Thomas Hendley, then living at Corsehorne, as the initials "T. H." indicate.

One feature of traditional, if not historical, interest demands notice. In the upper part of the south porch is a small room, now closed off from the Church itself, but evi

"Corpusque meum sepeliendum ad aram S'ti Egiddi." Extract from the Will of John Roberds [sic]. Prerog. Court of Canterbury, Stockton 22.

This at least is the solution of the transfer given by Tarbutt in his Cranbrook Church and its Monuments, p. 33.

dently at one time opening out into it by a wide spanned arch, the traces of which are still visible in the wall. This was doubtless the parvise, a room of many uses in connection with the church; a living room for a chantry priest, or a library, or a school-room, or a Record-room. It was sometimes called the "Church-house." After the Reformation its use was much more secular, and answered the purpose of a vestry-room for the clergy, or even for parish meetings.* But the room we are describing, now only a lumber-room, has obtained traditionally a distinction in connection with the Marian persecutions, which gives it a notoriety. On the authority of old John Foxe, it was used as a temporary prison, the occasion being this: a poor Cranbrook man, named John Bland, was tried at the Sessions here for heresy, and convicted of holding "new doctrines." There was no jail near, or even a police cell, so Sir John Baker, the then owner of Sissinghurst, who presided at the trial, had him thrust, that night at least, into this room for security; hence it obtained the name of "Baker's Hole," or "Baker's Jail;" while he himself, in consequence of the severity of his judgments on those who favoured the Reformation, was thenceforth known as "Bloody Baker."

Now the very aspect of this place, its double doors, the outer one very massive, and the thick staples on which it turned, the heavy lock in its unwieldy frame of wood stretching nearly across the door, undoubtedly suggest a place of security for some highly valued treasure, whether church vessels or MSS., and also have certainly a very prison-like character. Nor is the key of this outer door unworthy of special notice, not only for its size, but still more for its complex construction (of which a sketch is given opposite). It is no mere dummy, but the elaborate wards within the lock itself correspond exactly with those of the key, and present a remarkably fine specimen of the beautiful ironwork which a fourteenth-century smithy could produce.

Before leaving this room and the steps leading up to it,

This is supported by the fact that old Samuel Dence, who died in 1573, having founded the "writing school" in the place, willed that he should be buried at the foot of the vestry steps, and his tomb still stands at the bottom of the stone steps leading up to this room.