the sea once covered that place, and made a harbour near this castle. Kilburn saith, this castle was built by Orse or Usk, son of Hengist, King of Kent, which, perhaps, was only a repair or enlargement of the old one built before by the Romans; as was also what was done to it by Henry of Essex Baron Raleigh, and for a time Lord Warden of the ports; who held it of the Archbishop of Canterbury, in King Henry II.'s time; but being accused of treason, by Robert de Montford, for cowardly deserting the king's standard at a battle in Wales; and being vanquished by him in single combat, which he demanded in his own vindication, and left for dead upon the spot, King Henry II. seized on the castle, and kept it in his possession all his reign, as did King Richard I. after him; but King John, in his first year, restored it to the archbishop, to whose see it had been given, at first by Halden [A. D. 1036], a great man in the Saxon times. In King Henry II.'s time, it was accounted an honour, and had several places held of it; as appears from a passage in Matt. Paris, and cited by Lambard, wherein he saith, King Henry II. restored to Thomas Becket (on their accommodation) all his goods and possessions, and ordered a meeting of the knights and eminent men holding of the honour of Saltwood, to enquire into the archbishop's rights and fees, in order to his being put into possession of them again. Archbishop Courtney built very much here, beautifying and enlarging it, and either he, which is most probable, or some of his predecessors, inclosed a park about it, and made it an usual place of residence. And Lambard tells a pleasant story of the pride and loftiness of this great prelate, which was transacted here. Some poor men of his manor of Whingham having carried him some straw or hay, not decently in carts as ought to be done to an archbishop, but slovenly in sacks, on their horses' backs, he summoned them to this Castle of Saltwood, and after having rated them soundly with proper efforts of wrath, he bound them by oath to obey him, and then enjoined them for penance, that they should all march in procession bareheaded and barelegged, with each one a sack of straw on his back, so open at the mouth that the straw might appear, to disgrace them for their disrespect. It continued part of the archiepiscopal revenue till the twenty-ninth year of Henry VIII. but then Thomas Cranmer exchanged it with that prince for other lands, and King Edward VI. in his First year, granted it to John Earl of Warwick and Joan his wife, but somehow coming to the crown again, that king, in his fourth year granted it to Edward

Lord Clinton, and in the last year of the reign confirmed it to them, together with the bailiwick of Hithe. But not long afte? he sold Saltwood to Mr. Thomas Broadnax, who parted with it the same way to Knatchbull; and Mr. Reginald Knatchbull, in the Thirty-first year of Queen Elizabeth, sold it to Mr. Gibbons, from whom, in two years time, it went the same way to Sir Norton Knatchbull; and he, in four years after, demised it to Robert Cranmer, Esq. by whose daughter and heir, Anne Cranmer, it passed in marriage to Sir Arthur Harris, of Crixey, in Essex; and his son, Sir Cranmer Harris, alienated it to Sir William Boteler, father to Sir Oliver Boteler, the possessor in Philpot's time; and his son, Sir Philip Boteler, A.D. 1712, sold it to Brook Bridges, Esq. senior, together with the Grange Farm, and several other lands." It was at this castle the meeting took place between Reginald Fitz-Urse, William de Traci, Hugh de Mouville, and Richard de Brito, four gentlemen of the king's household, who had left Baïeux, in France, unknown to the king, who then resided there, for the purpose of assassinating Thomas-à-Becket Archbishop of Canterbury, and having added some assistants to their number, proceeded immediately to the archiepiscopal residence, and from thence followed him to the church of St. Benedict, where the fearless prelate had gone, with very few attendants, to hear vespers. And here, before the altar of this church, the infatuated archbishop was murdered by repeated blows on the head. It would be foreign to our purpose to state the multitudinous vexations that Henry II. suffered from the insubordinate and ambitious spirit of Becket, a man surpassing in pomp and luxury* any subject that England had till that time known; but we cannot withold the following statement from Hume, of what appears to have been one of the earliest subjects of dispute between Henry and his primate, as serving to mark the shameless license and brutality of the age. "The ecclesiastics in that age had renounced all immediate subordi

* Among other articles of luxurious extravagance that Beeket is said to have indulged in, is reckoned, that he had his rooms covered every day in summer with green rushes or boughs of trees, and in winter with fresh hay or straw, that the gentlemen who attended him might be enabled to sit on the floor without sullying their dress, when the dinner or supper table was too full to allow them a seat.

nation to the magistrate: they openly pretended to an exemption, in criminal accusations, from a trial before courts of justice; and were gradually introducing a like exemption in civil causes: spiritual penalties alone could be inflicted on their offences; and as the clergy had extremely multiplied in England, and many of them were consequently of very low characters, crimes of the deepest dye, murders, robberies, adulteries, rapes, were daily committed with impunity by the ecclesiastics. It had been found, for instance, on enquiry, that no less than a hundred murders had, since the king's accession (nine years), “been perpetrated by men of that profession, who had never been called to account for these offences; and holy orders were become a full protection for all enormities. A clerk in Worcestershire having debauched a gentleman's daughter, had, at this time, proceeded to murder the father; and the general indignation against this crime, moved the king to attempt the remedy of an abuse which was become so palpable, and to require that the clerk should be delivered up, and receive condign punishment from the magistrate. Becket insisted on the privileges of the church, confined the criminal in the bishop's prison, lest he should be seized by the king's officers; maintained that no greater punishment could be inflicted on him than degradation: and when the king demanded, that immediately after he was degraded he should be tried by the civil power, the primate asserted that it was iniquitous to try a man twice upon the same accusation, and for the same offence."

GROSMONT CASTLE.

Monmouthshire.

ON the high banks of the little river Monnow, one of the tributaries of the Wye, stands the Castle of Grosmont, once the favourite residence of the Earls of Lancaster, to whom it had been granted by Henry III. although formerly belonging to the families of Braoze and Cantilupe. Henry, the grandson of Edmund Crouckback, surnamed Grosmont, or Grismont, from the place of his birth, was particularly attached to this place. The castle is surrounded by a dry ditch, and was also strengthened by a barbican,* carried out towards the south-east, and of which some small remains are still discoverable. Although the pointed arches of the windows and doorway mark the erection of this castle to have taken place during, or subsequent to the reign of Henry II. there is reason to think that the foundations existed long prior to the time of that monarch. The form of the building is irregular, with circular towers at the angles of the walls; some traces of the great hall still remain, as well as several indications of other apartments. On the north side of the castle are the ruins of an apartment, with a tall pinnacle-fashioned chimney, crowned on the top with a coronet. The whole of the

• The barbican is an outwork for the protection of the principal entrance, and is usually a wall or tower, from which an approaching enemy might easily be annoyed. The term is sometimes used for a fort at the entrance of a bridge, and in large fortresses, or fortified towns, the barbacan is proportionally strong, having towers, ditch, and drawbridge of its own.

buildings are now so covered with ivy, that when seen in some directions, the castle has more the appearance of a grove than a fortress. The surrounding country is delightful, and were the roads made passable both this and the old British fortress of Skinfrith, which is distant about four miles, would be much oftener visited by the antiquarian and the admirer of picturesque beauties.