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archæologist, but it was selected as a convenient centre whence various places which have hitherto escaped notice might be conveniently reached, and in its results this meeting may be reckoned among the most successful the society has held. The presi dential address dealt in a masterly manner with the subject of a new county history. Allowing all credit to Collinson, yet the want of an adequate history of the county has been much felt for many years, and there is now every reason to think that the attention which has been directed to the subject by this meeting, and the steps which it is proposed to take at once in furtherance of it, will produce good results. In direct connection with the place of meeting some excavations which were undertaken in order to verify the exact position of a castle which has disappeared from history since its destruction, as described in the Geste Stephani, produced unexpected and very important results. Some large earthworks, where obviously the castle ought to have been found, produced no traces of any building whatever of any importance; but close under one portion of the high earth-bank there were discovered the foundations of a square keep measuring 78 feet by 78 feet, the outer walls being 15 feet, and a transverse dividing wall 8 feet in thickness with a fore-building along one side. These measurements, according to Mr. Clark's book, place the keep of the Castle of Cary fifth in point of size among the Norman castles of England, and show that it was a place of far more importance than has ever hitherto been suspected. The task of excavation is a somewhat serious and expensive one on account of the great depth it is necessary to go to, as all the upper parts of the foundations have been removed for building purposes. The work, however, is being carried on in a systematic and careful way with the view of completing whatever is touched upon so thoroughly, that it will not be necessary to go over any part a second time. The residents of Castle Cary have raised a considerable fund for the purpose, and it is hoped that the work will not be stopped until everything has been done that is desirable. In the present incomplete state of the works there are several questions very difficult to solve, especially what is the relation of a lofty earth rampart to the castle, to which it is in immediate juxtaposition. At present the evidence would suggest that it is a later work thrown up in haste upon the old site after the destruction of the walled castle by Stephen. The first place visited in the afternoon of the 27th was the cruciform church at Ditcheat, where there are many points of interest. The most remarkable of these is, perhaps, the exceedingly beautiful fourteenth-century chancel, of a style of work of which there are but few examples in Somersetshire, with a second story added in Perpendicular days. This very curious and unusual feature has an exact parallel in the fine neighbouring church at Pilton, but does not occur elsewhere. Both these churches were in connection with both Glastonbury and Wells Cathedral, and it seems probable that one mind is answerable for this peculiar arrangement in both cases. Between the transepts and the chancel in Ditcheat Church, in the place of the usual hagioscopes, there are openings sufficient for a passage, and it is suggested that these may have been made for processional purposes. A Jacobean screen has disappeared from the church within the

last few years. Another part of this afternoon's programme, which was omitted on account of rain, was a visit to a very curious narrow bridge, only some 4 or 5 feet wide, with pointed arches. From its position and evident antiquity it seems likely that this must have been one of the regular ways leading to Glastonbury from Bruton Abbey and Salisbury for pilgrimage and general traffic. At the evening meeting a very valuable paper by Professor Browne, of Cambridge, upon "Ecclesiastical Art in Stone in the West," was read for the author, who could not be present, in preparation for the visit next day to West Camel Church, where there is preserved a portion of the shaft of a Saxon cross. The Professor's paper pointed out the remarkable likeness between this stone and that which was found a year or two since at Gloucester, and suggested that somewhere about the year 939, when the manor of West Camel was given by Athelstan to Muchelney Abbey, would probably be its date. The first place to be visited on the 28th was the fine Perpendicular house of the Lytes at Lytes' Cary, with its decorated chapel. The whole forms a remarkable and beautiful group of buildings. West Camel Church, which came next, is a small country church, where one may follow out the change from one style to another through the tenth, twelfth, thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth centuries, and find good specimens of the work of each. There is the Saxon cross. The font is a good example of Norman. An exceedingly curious double piscina, cut out of a single stone, belongs to the thirteenth century, as do also the tower, the lower parts of the walls, and some of the buttresses. The fourteenth century is seen in some good tracery; the fifteenth in fine windows and a fine roof of the usual Perpendicular style of the district; and the thirteenth and the fifteenth are very curiously combined in a tiny threelight window of great beauty, Perpendicular in its tracery, and Early English in its outline and moulding. Queen Camel Church is the finest and most interesting church in the district. It consists of a Decorated arcade and tower and some Decorated windows, a Perpendicular clerestory, a later Perpendicular chancel, and a noble rood screen. The font, too, is one of peculiar and very fine design. This church was appropriated to Cleeve Abbey, and it is interesting to note the close likeness between the chancel here and the refectory at Cleeve, and also the cusped traceries of the east window at Queen Camel, with detail such as does not occur anywhere except in the neighbourhood of Cleeve. The last day was devoted to the Cadburys, where the Dorset Field Club joined their forces. The morning visit was to Cadbury Camp, where the hon. sec. gave his reasons for thinking it the capital of the West Welsh after their expulsion from Sarum-in fact, that it is Camelot, as Leland says it was. In the afternoon North Cadbury Church drew together a large company. It is in some respects as fine a building as Queen Camel, but being all of one uniform-fifteenth century-date, it lacks the interest of a more compound building, and it lacks, moreover, the screen and the choir stalls which once were (and the latter not so very long ago), but, alas! are no longer there. Two special features may be mentioned. The bench ends bear many curious carvings: single heads, which look like portraits; coats of arms, ecclesiastical

devices, such as the Virgin and Child; St. Margaret the Salutation, single figures-such as a serving-man with puffed sleeves and hose; a flute-player with instrument as long as himself, and hat with feather almost as long; a church, a pack-horse, a windmill, initials, and some which seem to be simply grotesque. The work is bold and good, though somewhat coarse, and suggests a Flemish or German artist. The date of 1538 upon one of the seats seems likely to be the true date. The whole series needs an interpreter. The other point is in the vestry. This is a room of unusual size, and exactly opposite its window there have been found, under several coats of whitewash, three or four black-letter alphabets. Query, was this the school-room in early days? Cadbury House, with which the meeting ended, is upon its northern side a good specimen of Elizabethan work. All the rest of the house has been changed and rebuilt out of knowledge.

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The members of the NEWBURY DISTRICT FIELD CLUB visited Aldermaston House, Upton Court, and Silchester on September 2. Aldermaston House is the handsome modern residence of Mr. Higford Hig. ford, but the old carved staircase and various antiquities that were removed from the former hall at the time of the destructive fire forty-five years ago give it a charm in the eyes of archæologists. Here a paper descriptive of the parish of Aldermaston, and the descent of the manor, was read by the hon. sec. Mr. Walter Money, F.S.A. Upton Court dates from 1610 to 1680, and is associated with the memory of Arabella Fermor, the heroine of Pope's "Rape of the Lock." Mr. W. A. Boulnois pointed out the most noteworthy architectural features. At Silchester the party were received by Messrs. St. John Hope and Fox, who are supervising and directing the important excavations now being actively pressed on by the Society of Antiquaries. The Reading Mercury and Oxford Gazette gives a good three-column account of this expedition.

The Antiquary has not much concern with the greater part of the valuable proceedings and work of the BRITISH ASSOCIATION. Nevertheless some brief record should here be made of the meeting at Leeds, which was concluded on September 11, for at least one section is full of interest for archæologists. The Anthropological Section was fitly presided over by that prince of antiquaries, Dr. John Evans. His opening address chiefly dealt with two questions, the age of the earliest known traces of humanity, and the origin and home of the Aryan family. With regard to the first of these questions, upon which his opinion can be second to none, Dr. Evans still firmly adheres to his previously expressed view that no true evidence has yet been produced of the existence of tertiary man. Several of the papers read in this section were of value to antiquaries. Our contributor, the Rev. E. Maule Cole, described the outcome of the opening by Sir Tatton Sykes, last July, of a great mound at Duggleby, on the Yorkshire Wolds, giving details about some interesting weapons and other Roman remains discovered. Mr. Cole also read two papers by Mr. J. R. Mortimer on "The probable site of Delgovitia," and "A supposed Roman

Camp at Octon." In the former of the two contributions the author of the paper wrote that at a point in the parish of Wetwang with Fimber, on the Yorkshire Wolds, where the Roman road from York to the coast crosses the Roman road from Malton to Beverley, he had discovered a Romano-British graveyard, in which fourteen bodies were. Close by were a number of peculiar trenches, in form like a gridiron, and in which were numerous animal bones and fragments of Roman pottery. The probability of this situation for the long-lost Delgovitia had already been stated by Phillips and Akerman, though other sites had been indicated. In his second paper Mr. Mortimer stated that at Octon, close to the Roman road between York and the coast, was a well-preserved camp, divided into two portions by a ditch and mounds. The appearance of the camp and its accessories encouraged the writer in the belief that this work was not British, but Roman.

Dr. Munro also contributed a paper on "Prehistoric Otter and Beaver Traps." In this communication the author described some curious wooden machines which have been discovered in various peat bogs in different parts of Europe, and of which hitherto no satisfactory explanation has been offered. Two of these objects were found in the great Laibach Moor, in the vicinity of the famous group of lake-dwellings then being investigated. These machines, not being actually found on the site of the lake-dwellings, though at the same depth in the peat, were not at first included among the relics from these habitations. From suggestions received, and considering the character of the fauna of the lake-dwellings at Laibach, which yielded an enormous number of the bones of the beaver, Dr. Deschmann came to the conclusion that the Laibach machines were beaver traps. Quite recently, Dr. Meschinelli, of the Geological Museum of the Royal University of Naples, published a memoir on some prehistoric remains discovered at Fontega, near Vicenza, in North Italy. When Dr. Meschinelli wrote his memoir, he was unaware of the discovery of similar objects elsewhere in Europe, and he was much puzzled to account for their use, conjecturing that they might have been models of boats. After the principal facts in regard to the previous discoveries were laid before him, he has published a second memoir. To find so many of these machines, of unknown use and so remarkably similar in structure, in such widely separate districts as Ireland, North Germany, Styria, and Italy, must be a matter of interest to archæologists, and no one can say that the correct explanation of their use is to be found in any of the suggestions hitherto offered on this point. Dr. Munro directed attention to an important factor, viz., that all the examples from Italy, Laibach, and Ireland were found in bogs which in earlier times had been lakes. This may be also true as regards those from North Germany; but the point is not referred to in the short notices that have appeared of them. If these machines are really traps, they could be used only in water, where the animal could insert its head from below.

Several of the excursions of the members of the association were of an archæological character. On the concluding day, Rev. Dr. Cox, F.S.A., expounded on the site, the history and architecture of Kirkham Priory.

Literary Gossip for
Archæologists.

HERR LIEBFRIED SUDHAUS will publish shortly at
Leipsic a new critical edition of the fragments of
Philodemos discovered in the Papyri of Hercula-

neum.

M. M. Schwab has presented to the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles Lettres of Paris a memoir upon magic cups and the hydromanteia of the Easterns. He has studied the numerous cups of this kind in the British Museum and the Paris National Library inscribed with Syriac, Hebrew, and Arabic conjurations, designed to defend persons from magicians and the jettatura of the eye.

Professor Sogliano has published in the Monumenti Antichi of the Roman Lincei, a memoir on the very ancient temple of the Forum Triangulare of Pompeii, in which he declares it to be a Greek temple, showing Oscan influence, and dedicated most probably to Apollo and Artemis. The archaic remains found here, together with the coin of Neapolis, seem to prove that the temple must have been in ruins in the second century B.C., when it was used as a quarry for stone, and as a public waste ground for rubbish. Hence the scarcity of architectural remains.

Professor Marucchi, of Rome, has in preparation two works, one on the residence of SS. Peter and Paul in Rome, the other on Egyptian archæology, in which he will give the inscriptions of the obelisks of Rome and a translation of the hieroglyphics.

B

Locscher, of Rome, has published the first fasciculus of a specilegium Vaticanum of rare or inedited documents contained in the archives of the Bibliotheca Apostolica.

Professor Dragatses has just published in the Athenian Hestia some sepulchral inscriptions from the Piræus, amongst which is one in verse of a certain Metrobios of Proconnesos, and another of a woman of Miletus. Two of the stela are adorned with figures in relief.

Messrs. Robert Clarke and Co., Cincinnati, have just published two valuable archæological works. One of them is "The Antiquities of Tennessee and the Adjacent States," a series of historical and ethnological studies, illustrated with maps, plates, and woodcuts, by General G. P. Thruston, cor. sec. of Tennessee Historical Society. The other is a careful survey of "The Great Prehistoric Earthwork, of Warren Co., Ohio," made in 1889 by W. K. Morshead, of the Smithsonian Institution, illustrated with a topographical map and thirty-five full page phototypes.

Mr. Reginald L. Poole, says the Athenæum, is preparing for publication at the Clarendon Press an autograph manuscript of Bishop Bale, preserved in the Selden Collection in the Bodleian Library, which

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Reviews and Notices
of New Books.

[Publishers are requested to be so good as always to mark clearly the prices of books sent for review, as these notices are intended to be a practical aid to book-buying readers.]

FOLKLORE OF EAST YORKSHIRE. By John Nicholson, Hon. Librarian, Hull Literary Club. Simpkin, Marshall and Co., 1890. 12m0., pp. xviii., 168. Price 5s.

The folklore of England has hitherto been so imperfectly and unevenly recorded, that every addition to the scanty list of local collections must be gladly welcomed, especially as the scientific discoveries and consequent social changes of our day are wiping out the ancient lore of the people as surely, as ruthlessly, and almost as rapidly, as the hand of the "restorer too often wipes out the traces of the past in some time-honoured village church. Happily, however, public appreciation of the value of the study of folklore seems to gain ground almost in proportion as the material for the study decays. The little volume before us is, for example, an immense advance, both in method of treatment and in general understanding of the subject, on the Lancashire Folklore of Messrs. Harland and Wilkinson, published no longer ago than 1867. Instead of a distracting patchwork of second

hand scraps and irrelevant "tall talk," we have a short preface on folklore in general-not very profound, perhaps, but sufficient for the locally-interested readers for whose sake it is required-and fifteen chapters treating of Customs-Ceremonial, Festival, and Local-Minor Superstitions, Place Legends, Goblindom, Charms and Divinations, Witchcraft, Place Nicknames and Sayings, Hero Tales, Plants, etc., Animals, etc., Leechcraft, Games, and Nursery Rhymes, in an unpretending, straightforward, business-like fashion, without digression or useless verbiage.

In fact, Mr. Nicholson errs rather in the opposite direction of too great conciseness. There is a general scarcity of dates, and we are too seldom told when and by whom "it was customary" to do so and so. Nor should a collector of folklore be content to say of the Christmas, "Plough Lads" that they "execute a rude dance," without attempting to give any description of it, though it appears that he has frequently seen it performed. These rustic festival dances vary very much in different parts of England, and a full consideration of them, whenever the evidence collected shall warrant the attempt, will probably yield valuable and perhaps unexpected historical results. Meantime every scrap of detail, the number and costumes of the dancers, the musical instruments and tunes used, the figures danced, the extent to which a dramatic element is introduced, the use or non-use of swords, bells, and songs-should be recorded; and it is a pity that Mr. Nicholson, who could so well have told us all this, has not perceived the necessity for it. He does, however, tell us that one of the party is dressed as a woman, carrying a besom, and is called Besom Bet; while another, with strips of many-coloured rags hung all over his hat and coat, carries a bladder at the end of a stick, whence he is known as Blether Dick, and that these two "form the comic element." These seem to answer to the "Tom

and Bessy "who accompany the Durham sworddancers, and we should like to know whether Bet or Bessy occurs as one of the party of dancers further south than Derbyshire. She has been introduced into the Mummers' Play in Dorsetshire, but we think nowhere else.

By "East Yorkshire," Mr. Nicholson means not the whole coast from the Tees to the Humber, but the East Riding, and especially Holderness and the Wolds. It will be seen from the list of contents already given that he does not profess to give an exhaustive account of the folklore of his district. Proverbs, ballads, songs, and folktales are wanting, for the chapter on "Hero Tales " merely treats of sundry modern local celebrities, beginning with the late Sir Tatton Sykes! We would not complain of the absence of those very shy game, märchen, but are there no legendary local heroes whose deeds might be chronicled? Were there never any 66 worms be slaughtered south of the Cleveland moors? And do no stories of giants or dwarfs cling to the numerous earthworks of the Wolds? We are loth to believe that the East Riding is, for its size, less rich in legends of the kind than the North or the West; and we would fain hope that Mr. Nicholson may some day see his way to give us a much fuller volume of East Riding folklore than the present one, and that he will include in it some account of the fishing popula

to

tion and their customs, and a great deal more detail of farmhouse life, agricultural customs, horse-dealing superstitions, and so forth, than he has at present made public.

In the meantime, he has laid a good foundation for future work, especially in the department of customs. He sensibly observes that many of those noted " are not confined to the East Riding. Their presence here simply means their prevalence in the Riding, as their absence might mean they were unknown there" (the italics are ours). Among the most curious items recorded is Kirkham Bird Fair, formerly annually held at 2 a.m. on Trinity Monday on the bridge over the Derwent connecting the North and East Ridings. The wares were jackdaws, starlings, etc., the stalls the parapet of the bridge; and the rest of the day was kept as a " pleasure fair," often ending in an exchange of blows between the North Riding men from Malton and the Easterners from Westow. The game of football, played annually within living memory on the Race Sunday at Beverley, between the townsmen and the neighbouring villagers, was a formal and, as it were, authorized expression of a similar rivalry, and the same feeling has given rise to most of the sayings recorded among local nicknames. Stang-riding, as a means of public censure on wife-beaters, is yet a living practice, and it is believed that it must be done three successive nights to make it legal, and so ensure the riders against a summons for breaking the peace. (The same end is, in the West Riding, supposed to be attained by marching three times round the parish church.) The end of harvest was formerly celebrated by a bonfire in the fields, "to burn the old witch." No effigy appears to have been consumed, but peas were parched in the fire, and eaten with ale amid a good deal of romping. The witch, says Mr. Nicholson, "is really a bad fairy." He gives us accounts of a good many human reputed witches, one of whom, when she departed this life, "flew over Driffield Church on a blazing besom!" Nearly every sandpit or chalkpit in the Riding is haunted by its own peculiar "boggle," often in animal form. The wellknown Barguest, or Bah-ghaist, as Mr. Nicholson calls it, is, he says, a bear-ghost, appearing as a bear or a black dog, with flaming eyes, and is a portent of death. He tells of one spectre, a headless man, which has only been seen once, and that was by a man who had spent some hours at the public-house. There are people who say the man was drunk, but for all that, they believe the road is haunted." "drudging goblin" occurs under the names of "Hob Thrust" and "Robin Round Cap," with the usual stories, but we were not prepared to find so much mention of the fairies spoken of as such. Several stories of fairy dancers having been seen and heard are noted. Willey How," a mound near Wold Newton, is the subject of a legend of a drinking-cup snatched from a fairy banquet, and it was reported of a boulder beside the road, on Nafferton Slack, that it was in reality the gathering of the fairy's hall, and that fairy revels were held within it.

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Some of the local sayings may be noticed. It is said of Cranswick that "there was only one honest man in the place, and he stole a saddle," which, considering that "if you shake a bridle over a Yorkshireman's grave, he will rise and steal a horse to put in it," may be counted a venial error. A good old

Methodist, one Tommy Escritt, used every day, as he ascended the hill to the farm where he worked, to pause at a spot overlooking the village of Cranswick, and to pray for the conversion of the people. To this day no grass will grow on the mark of his footprints, and pilgrimages are made to the place, as in bygone times to the well or hermitage of some early Northumbrian saint. Truly folklore is of no age or country, but innate in simple and unlearned minds wherever they may be found.

CHARLOTTE S. BURNE.

MONUMENTAL BRASSES IN NORFOLK. Part I. Six plates, folio. Price 2s. 6d.

The first part of the series of photo-lithographs of Norfolk brasses, taken from rubbings of Mr. E. M. Beloe, jun., of King's Lynn (to whom subscribers' names should be sent), has reached us. The impressions are excellent; they will rejoice the heart of the rapidly-increasing tribe of brass collectors, and should be of value to all students of mediæval costume, armour, or metallic art. The minor details of the fine though mutilated brass of Sir Hugh Hastings, builder of Elsing church, 1347, come out well. One of the plates, Robert Attelath, 1376, was formerly at Lynn, and is taken from an impression in the British Museum, on which is written: "The above is on a flat stone in St. John's chapel on north side of St. Margaret's church at Lynn, Norfolk ; there is his wife also, but as her dress did not differ from those in the Quire I did not take her."-Craven Ord., September 13, 1780.

ST. RICHARD THE KING OF ENGLISHMEN, AND HIS TERRITORY. Thomas Kerslake. 8vo., pp. 96.

That independent antiquary, Mr. Kerslake, of Clevedon, Somerset, has just written and printed another pamphlet. It deals with an honourable episode in early English history of the eighth century that has hitherto escaped much attention. Mr. Kerslake writes with vigour, and this all too brief treatise is eminently worthy of attention. "St. Richard, King of Englishmen, Confessor and Pilgrim, still commemorated in some places out of England, is one of those historical waifs that has had the luck to be stranded in the better and more authentic class of our earlier hagiological biography, among the leakages or overflows of genuine history which may be gleaned from that more weedy pasture. He is a conspicuous and irrepressible figure, whose memory has chiefly been preserved by his having been nearly related to, and father of, those who were adjutant to one who made one of the most considerable and important post-Roman social revolutions in central Europe, also an Englishman, or more definitely a Saxon, but known throughout Christendom as St. Boniface, Archbishop of Mainz, and often further designated the Apostle of Germany. But for this connection St. Richard would most likely have never been known to us.' We have not always agreed with the result of Mr. Kerslake's undoubted learning and research as applied to certain details of Westcountry archæology, nor have we always appreciated his energy as a disputant, but in this pamphlet his scholarship is put to an excellent use, and there can be no reasonable doubt that he has established the

claim of St. Richard, whose body lies at the church of St. Frigidiano at Lucca, to a substantial place in English history, and this although Murray and Baedeker ignore him in Italy, aud Messrs. Smith and Wace, in their voluminous "Christian Biography," drop him out without even a single line or even a reference under his name! We offer our congratulations to Mr. Kerslake on this work of his, and wish that he would be induced to follow up the subject still further. The true critic has often more cause to complain of verbosity than brevity, but in this instance a small volume would be better than a pamphlet. The accurate ingenuity with which King Richard's territory is marked out must be read to be appreciated. Never before have the questions of hagiology and church dedication been put to so sound an historical use.

F. S. A.

ALL HALLOW'S, BARKING. By Rev. Joseph Maskell. H. Parr. Pp. 32.

This is a corrected abridgment from a larger work, published by Mr. Maskell so long ago as 1864. The brief history of this old church and parish of the City of London is sufficiently interesting to make us wish that it had been considerably extended. It is well illustrated. "Curiosa" from the register books which begin in 1558, and are thirteen in number, and from the churchwardens' account books, tend to whet the appetite. Surely an entertaining and interesting little volume might be compiled from these sources? A remarkable entry in the marriage register for 1650, under March 28, says: "A cupple being married went away and gave not their names!" Who was Mr. Abbott referred to in these extracts from the parish accounts, and who acted as an intermediary for benefaction to the Eastern church?

"Dec. 7, 1631. Delivered to Mr. Abbott for a Greek Archbishop, 4s.'

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"Dec. 8, 1633. Given Gregory Argenopulus a Thessalonian by consent of Mr. Abbott, 6s."

"April 7, 1634. Paid Mr. Abbott when he gave Abraham, patriarch of Achidone, 6s. 8d."

MARKET HARBOROUGH PARISH RECORDS, to A.D.

1530. By Rev. J. E. Stocks, M.A., assisted by Mr. W. B. Bragg. Elliot Stock. Demy 8vo., pp. xii., 267. Price 11s.

The chief object of these pages, and of a successor which will shortly be in the press, has been to place in the hands of the inhabitants of Market Harborough and the neighbourhood a full account of the important records that are in the custody of the Trustees of the Town Estate. The town records have been supple. mented by copious extracts from the stores at the Public Record Office, from the muniments at Lincoln, and from the wills of the District Probate Court at Leicester. Pages 1-158 are simply lettered as "Introduction"; it would have been better if the valuable matter in this part of the volume had been broken up into chapters and better arranged. The documents quoted are translated when given in extenso, and in other places given in an English summary. We do not agree with several of Mr. Stock's renderings of medieval Latin, especially in the will of Geoffrey le Scrope, rector of Great Bowden, who died in 1382. Roberto carectario, for instance, should

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