the credit of its enlargement and adornment, would assign its origin to a much earlier date. For a similar reason I shall leave to Mr. Wickes the history of Newark church, whose beautiful spire so well prepares the traveller at a distance for the sight of one of the choicest specimens of the later Gothic, and one of the finest parish churches in the kingdom; and to Mr. Dimock, the account of the collegiate church of Southwell, of the present appearance of which no lover of ecclesiastical architecture can be ignorant, but of its early history, dating from Saxon times in some of its parts, and from the earliest days of Christianity in England (so far back as the year 630 or thereabouts), and, in its present choir, to the reign of Edward III, many will be anxious for further information. The town of Southwell, itself, is of great antiquity. It was the principal Roman station west of the Trent, and appears to have the strongest claim to be recognized as the "Ad Pontem" mentioned in one of the Itineraria of the Roman empire. One very interesting antiquarian feature of this part of the country is to be found in the grand straight lines of Roman roads still easily to be traced. One of these is the great line from Leicester to Lincoln, along which the first ten miles of the present road from Newark to Nottingham passes, whilst others, much less visible, seem to have led to Southwell as a centre. About 60 years ago the foundations of a Roman bridge, across the river Trent, near Winthorpe, over which one of these roads from Lincoln to Southwell must have passed, were discovered. In the neighbourhood of Southwell-at Hexgrave Park -are the vestiges of a Roman encampment. Many interesting remains have from time to time been brought to light here. About three years since a perfect ancient pig of lead was discovered. It had a very legible inscription upon it, detailing the date, and the ancient name of Chesterfield, where it had been smelted and prepared for exportation. A large Roman camp also exists at the south-east end of Sherwood Forest, about two miles from Arnold. A small exploratory camp is also to be seen at Oxton, and another could be traced at Berry Hill, before the present residence was erected and the gardens laid out. Two more exploratory camps can be traced in the neighbourhood of Mansfield Woodhouse, and from the circumstance of so many of these small camps being found in the neighbourhood, it may fairly be supposed that Mansfield itself was a Roman station. This conjecture is confirmed, not only by the coins and other Roman antiquities which have been found there, but still more by the fact that in 1786 two Roman villas were discovered by major Rooke. Of these villas he communicated a description to the Society of Antiquaries, which is published in the eighth volume of the Archæologia. A vase of coins was found in 1848, by the workmen employed in making the railway from Mansfield to Nottingham, close to the King's Mill at Sutton in Ashfield. Another Roman encampment, of considerable extent, can be traced in the fields at Martin, near Bawtry, and great numbers of coins, both silver and brass, have been turned up by ploughs, and in other ways. There is also a camp at Laxton, which I believe has hitherto been unexplored. This is a brief outline of some of the chief Roman remains in this county, and I will venture to express a hope that one of the results of this meeting may be to produce an antiquary who will give us a record of all the Roman remains in Nottinghamshire, like that lately given for Derbyshire, by Mr. Bateman, of Youlgrave-the Vestigia Romana. The specimens of mediæval ecclesiastical architecture, in Nottinghamshire, are not very numerous, though those which exist are good and well worthy of inspection. I have already mentioned the churches of Nottingham and Newark, both fine specimens of the later or perpendicular style of Gothic, and the collegiate church of Southwell, a no less fine example of the decorated style. To these must be added the church of Worksop, a very fine specimen of the transition from Norman to early English, though rather late in the period; the little ruined chapel of Steetly, near Worksop, one of the most perfect and beautiful examples of the rich Norman to be found in England; the church of Hawton, near Newark; and some others in the villages in the vale of Belvoir. The conventual establishments in this county were both numerous and rich, but the remains for the antiquary are now but few. Welbeck, Rufford, Thurgarton, Newstead, and others, have been converted into modern residences, and in most of them we must be content to exchange, for the sombre walls of the religious houses, the rich cultivation, and the magnificent woods, which now form their characteristic beauties. AtNewstead, however, the members of the Association will have an opportunity of seeing, and I am sure of appreciating, the judicious restorations effected by its present owner, Colonel Wildman. As regards places hallowed by historical associations, the towns and castles of Nottingham and Newark (to which I have already referred), and the battle-field of Stoke, must bring to mind many interesting recollections. But even the trees of old Sherwood, few though there be that now remain of that vast forest which once spread over a full moiety of the county, have a history to tell. Between Mansfield and Edwinstowe, and not far from the latter, you pass an oak, well known as the "Parliament Oak". Under the branches of this venerable tree, a council, or parliament, is supposed to have been held, whilst the sovereign kept his court at the Hunting Palace at Clipstone, a large mass of which is still standing at no great distance from the tree. The records of the parliament which was held there are to be found in the Planta Parliamenti, in the time of Edward I. Amongst the heroes whom this county has produced, I fear it must be confessed that, as in many other countries so in Nottinghamshire, the greatest and most celebrated was a robber. History, tradition, poetry, and romance, have combined to immortalize Robin Hood. From the church (Edwinstowe) in which he is said to have married Maid Marian, to the well at which he drank, the Forest of Sherwood treasures up the records of his wild life. But not Sherwood alone. His name has been "borne as far as Palestine", as king Richard tells him in Ivanhoe. "Ille famosissimus sicarius", as one writer of the fourteenth century calls him; that "Prince of all robbers", as he is termed by another; that "Prædo mitissimus", as Camden, in a spirit, whether of justice or generosity, I know not, pronounces him,—will probably live in the VOL. VIII. 23 ballad poetry of this country when the last vestiges of the forest which he inhabited have yielded to the axe and the plough, and the names of many a rich and noble denizen of these same lands in more modern days are unhonoured and forgotten. "The merry pranks he play'd, would ask an age to tell, In praise of Robin Hood, his outlaws, and their trade.” But Robin Hood was a poacher; and I am reminded that I am poaching on the manors of Mr. Halliwell and Mr. Gutch, who have undertaken to read papers on the era and character of this celebrated outlaw, and upon the ballads which have been written in his honour,—each maintaining a distinct and opposite theory. Their presence, then, must warn me off the thickets of "merry Sherwood"; and with the fear of Sir Fortunatus Dwarris and the "forest laws, with the Chief Justice in Eyre north of Trent" before my eyes, I must leave them to pursue their noble quarry with a more persevering and unerring aim. I now leave the details of these different subjects to more practised artists. Archæology has been termed the key which unlocks the buried treasures of past ages. I have only endeavoured to point out the hoards to which that key may be applied. I have only attempted to lay before you a catalogue raisonné of some of the antiquarian riches of this county, in the hope that others may be found with more leisure and more skill to turn those riches to account, and unveil from the dust of ages the golden treasures, whose sterling worth many amongst us are only now beginning to appreciate. ON THE FOREST LAWS, COURTS, AND CUSTOMS, AND THE CHIEF JUSTICES IN EYRE, NORTH AND SOUTH OF THE WATERS OF TRENT. BY SIR FORTUNATUS DWARRIS, VICE-PRESIDENT, A.B., F.R.S., F.S.A. A GREAT part of this county, called in Domesday Snottinghamscyre, which we are now analyzing and tormenting, was once forest land, and as such, before its enclosure and the commutation of forestal rights, was subject to the laws, and amenable to the privileges, of which it is here proposed to treat. The law of the chase is of medieval growth, and not at all derived from classical antiquity. Sir Thomas Browne well says: "I believe all our sports of the field or chase are of gothic original. The ancients neither hunted by the scent, nor seem much to have practised horsemanship as an exercise; and though in their writings there is mention of aucupium and piscatio,-fowling and fishing,they seem no more to have considered these as diversions, than agriculture, gardening, or any other productive bodily labour." There is sufficient reason to believe that England was, at a very early period, covered with forests, abundantly tenanted by animals of chase. The Britons, who lived in a wild and pastoral manner, without enclosing their grounds, derived much of their subsistence from the chase, which they all pursued in common. But when, under the Saxon government, lands began to be enclosed and improved, the "wiser" beasts naturally fled into the woods and uncultivated tracks, which never having been appropriated were held to belong to the crown. The royal sportsmen reserved these for their own diversion, but seem to have left the few freeholders the liberty of sporting upon their own territory, provided they abstained from the king's forests. This is to be collected |