The business of the Association then terminated, and about twelve o'clock nearly a hundred ladies and gentlemen left Newark for Rufford abbey, the seat of the right hon. the earl of Scarborough. His lordship, accompanied by the hon. Mrs. Saville Lumley and several other members of his family, received his visitors on the steps of the terrace, and conducted them through the ancient crypt of the abbey (an exceedingly fine specimen, now forming a noble servants'-hall), and the private chapel, containing some remains of the original structure. The company afterwards wandered for an hour in the grounds of the abbey and by the side of the noble sheet of water in the park, and were summoned by the dinner-bell, at three o'clock, to a sumptuous collation in the great hall, where they were joined by the earl and countess of Belhaven, Mr. Evelyn and lady Charlotte Denison, colonel and Mrs. Wildman, etc. During the repast, a band of music executed several appropriate airs in the gallery, and, at the termination of it, his lordship's fine pack of hounds were brought upon the lawn in front of the windows by the huntsmen in full costume, for the gratification of the company. The health of the earl of Scarborough was given by Mr. Heywood, and acknowledged by his lordship in terms highly flattering to the Association. Mr. Heywood also proposed the health of J. E. Denison, esq., M.P., which was acknowledged in an eloquent speech by that gentleman. About four o'clock the party reassembled on the terrace, and took leave of their noble entertainer, and thus terminated one of the most successful and agreeable Congresses ever held by the British Archæological Association. THE JOURNAL OF THE British Archaeological Association. JANUARY 1853. ARCHITECTURAL HISTORY OF THE CHURCH BY THE REV. JAMES F. DIMOCK, M.A., MINOR CANON OF SOUTHWELL. THERE are but few and meagre materials in existence, for the history of the fabric of Southwell church. In the published works of our ancient historians, little, or rather nothing, directly to our purpose is to be found. Archæological writers of more modern times, Leland, Camden, Dugdale, and the historian of our county, Thoroton,—all these equally fail us: and a still later writer, Mr. Rastall, —who, seventy years since, devoted a quarto volume to the history of Southwell, which some twenty years afterwards reappeared in a second edition, under the name of Dickenson, will do far more towards misleading us, at any rate as regards the structural history of the church, than towards giving us any true information. The manuscript records of the church, which once no doubt would have given us full information, have on two occasions suffered from the ravages of the spoiler,-in the reign of Edward VI, and again in the century following, in the great rebellion. Certain of these ancient records, however, have escaped destruction: in these is to be found much interesting antiquarian lore regarding the general fortunes of the church as a collegiate establishment, but all direct history of the fabric has disappeared. From these records, still preserved at Southwell, the greater part of my materials, VOL. VIII. 35 nevertheless, will have to be derived: the record rooms of York Cathedral have furnished me with one or two other valuable documents: but, in the absence of all direct continuous history, it is only from a few indirect notices, a few unconnected and distant fragments, that the historical portion of the following paper has been put together. EARLY HISTORY, FROM THE FOUNDATION OF THE CHURCH TO A.D. 1100. No portion of the existing fabric of Southwell church, except perhaps mere fragments worked up in a later reconstruction, can claim to be older than the twelfth century. I shall, however, commence by referring to one or two of the few remaining historical notices which relate to earlier periods. Before we attempt to trace the history of the existing church, it is but natural to enquire whether any predecessor occupied its site, and to whom we have to attribute the first foundation of a christian sanctuary, which, from small beginnings, perhaps, and after many reconstructions, at length resulted in the glorious building now before our eyes. We learn from Camden,' who wrote before the second spoliation of the records in the days of Cromwell, that in his time there were private histories of the church in existence, which claimed for the founder, St. Paulinus, one of the companion apostles of St. Augustine, the first Archbishop of York, the founder as well of the churches of York and Lincoln. Now Venerable Bede' tells us that St. Paulinus, after his successful missionary labours in the more northern parts of England, preached the word also, about A.D. 630, to the province of Lindsey, south of the Humber. And he gives an interesting account of a vast 1 "Hinc clementi alveo præterit Trenta non procul a Southwell, collegiata Præbendariorum ecclesia B. Mariæ sacra, non splendida illa quidem, sed firma, opulenta, antiqua, et celebri; quam Paulinum primum archiepiscopum Eboracensem fundasse scribunt, cum hujus agri incolas in Trenta flumine sacro baptismate Christo regeneraret. Hanc civitatem esse quam Beda Tiovulfingacester vocat firmius credo, quod quæ ille de Paulino baptizante in Trenta juxta Tiovulfingacester retulerit, hoc in loco facta fuisse privata hujus ecclesiæ historia constanter affirmarit."-From the first Edition of Camden's Britannia, London, 1586. It was necessary to the argument of a subsequent page, to give the words of the first edition: the only alteration, as regards Southwell, in after editions, was the omission of the epithet "opulenta" from the description of the church. 2 Bede's Eccl. History, ii, 16. crowd of the inhabitants of that province having been baptized by St. Paulinus, in the presence of king Edwin, in the river Trent, near a city called in the English tongue, Tiovulfingacester. No doubt it was in the course of this missionary expedition that Paulinus, extending his labours beyond Lindsey up the valley of the Trent, fixed upon Southwell for the site of a christian temple, as related according to Camden in the now lost histories. Camden, indeed, supposed that Southwell was the same place as the Tiovulfingacester of Bede. This supposition, it seems to me, has no ground to rest upon. The Southwell history said that St. Paulinus baptized the people of Nottinghamshire in the Trent, and founded the church of Southwell: Bede had said that he baptized the people of Lindsey in the Trent near Tiovulfingacester. It would surely be no safe logic hence to conclude, that Tiovulfingacester and Southwell are one, even were there in the case no discordant circumstances. But as it happens that Southwell is three miles distant from the Trent, and some twenty miles from the nearest point of Lindsey, I conceive these to be facts not to be reconciled with the statement of Bede;1 and I fear we must not appeal to his venerable authority, when we claim St. Paulinus as the founder of the church. We do make the claim, nevertheless, though with less full satisfaction, no doubt, than if we had the additional authority of Bede. That St. Paulinus was the founder, rests upon no supposition of Camden, but upon the statements of then existing histories cited by him. There is some ground for concluding that a church had existed at Southwell before the time of St. Paulinus. Amongst the existing records is a manuscript of much interest, bearing the title of "Simposion, contayning a dialogue touching the state of the church of Southwell." It was written in the year 1604 or '5, by a prebendary of the church evidently well versed in its history: most of its statements can be verified from other sources of undoubted authority. In this MS. the following passage occurs; -"If I fetch the antiquity of the church no further than that learned godly antiquary Mr. Cambden hath done, although it come far short, yet it may easily thereby appear, Dr. Stukeley's opinion that Torksey was the Tiovulfingacester of Bede, seems to have much more likelihood of truth.-Gough's Camden, ii. 252. as otherwise, that there was, many hundred years past, a collegiate and parochial church at Southwell". This passage seems to assert plainly enough, that the then existing histories gave an earlier date to the foundation of the church than that assigned to it by Camden, and therefore it may be that the foundation of St. Paulinus was a reestablishment of an ancient British church, which had fallen before the paganism of the Saxon invaders, rather than an entirely new creation. I may add that a town existed on the present site in the earlier days of British christianity, as is proved by various Roman remains that have at different times been discovered about the place. In the foundations, moreover, of the present church, and in the rubble work of its walls, fragments of Roman brick are constantly to be met with; fragments these, it may be, of an ancient British church, built during the Roman occupation of the island, which have again and again been worked up in the various subsequent reconstructions of the fabric. Of the general fortunes of the church thus founded by St. Paulinus, but few and scanty records remain, until after the period of the Norman conquest. There is one historical notice, however, worth mentioning; as it seems to convey some intimation of the church having been rebuilt, or of an addition having been made to it. We are told by Thomas Stubbs, the ancient biographer of the archbishops of York, that archbishop Kinsius, who occupied the see from 1050 to 1060," added to the church of St. John at Beverley a lofty stone tower, in which he placed two magnificent bells; and in like manner, to the other churches of his archbishoprick beyond the Humber, namely at Southwell and Stow, he gave bells of the same magnitude and sound." Now it is matter of history, that 1 "Kinsius archiepiscopus ad ecclesiam sancti Johannis apud Beverlacum turrim excelsam lapideam adjecit, et in ea duo præcipua signa posuit. Similiter et in cæteris ecclesiis archiepiscopatus sui quæ sunt trans Humbram, scilicet apud Southwelham et apud Stou, signa ejusdem magnitudinis et soni contulit." Thomas Stubbs; in Twysden's X Scriptores, p. 1700. Godwin, without giving his authority, attributes these benefactions to Abp. Alfric Puttoc, the predecessor of Kinsius, A.D. 1023-1050. He passes over in silence the above statement of Stubbs, but says that an anonymous MS. attributes to Kinsius many benefactions of Alfric. He says, however, that Kinsius built nearly the whole of the church at Beverley.-Godwin, De Præsulibus, p. 661. 2 See Florence of Worcester, and Henry of Huntingdon, under the year 1057. |