The more historic portion of this paper, I mean the political part of it, I have purposely avoided in these simple Notes, although at some future time, as I have already remarked, it is my intention to embody the views of our late friend, Mr. Holt, in a longer essay for our Journal; and thus endeavour to show, as our departed friend conceived, that there was no attempt upon Henry's part to keep Philip a prisoner whilst he extorted treaties and engagements from him; and that in the matter of the Earl of Suffolk's being given up to the King, who so far kept his royal word (Suffolk living, albeit a prisoner, throughout Henry's reign), the King of Castile did all that a high minded and generous hearted man could do, and when at length compelled by circumstances to give up the custody of this troublesome Earl, did so in the most reluctant manner, taking care in every way to bind Henry, on his honour as a gentleman, and on his royal word as a King, not to punish Suffolk with death, and to be as lenient to him as he well could.

WAREHAM AND ITS RELIGIOUS HOUSES.

BY E. LEVIEN, ESQ., M.A., F.S.A., HON. SEC.

"De mortuis nil nisi bonum"; and so, as we are about to consider a place which is sacred, as it were, to the memory of Hutchins, it would ill become me to offend the genius. loci, or to speak slightingly of his labours, which have been, and will, I trust, long continue to be, duly recognised by all those who are able rightly to appreciate them. Nevertheless, since the accounts of the ancient town, borough, and manor of Wareham, which are to be found in his work and in those of other writers upon the county of Dorsetshire, are so meagre, and the particulars concerning its religious establishments which are set forth there and in the well known works of Tanner and Dugdale, are in so many respects confused, if not altogether inaccurate (notably with regard to the ecclesiastical branch of the subject), I venture to hope that a short chronological synopsis of the varied fortunes of the place, illustrated by documents which are in many instances unpublished, and are now brought forward for the first time,

may not prove unacceptable, especially to such as may have personally visited and inspected a site where so much that is worthy of our attention once existed; and where, amid the remains of the past, we may even yet trace somewhat of its long departed strength and sanctity.

I do not purpose, however, to detain my readers by any disquisition as to the origin of the name of Wareham; or as to whether, during the Roman occupation of our island, it was, as some have asserted, a strongly fortified station or castrum known under the name of Morinio, Morionium, or Moriconium, as all this is capable of being discussed and elucidated in a much abler manner than I could hope to do it, by our learned associate and palæographer, Mr. W. H. Black, and others, whose special knowledge on such topics renders their opinions upon these points more authoritative than mine would be. Neither shall I enter into the question of the date of the first building of its castle or of its walls, which are assigned by Mr. Warne to the Saxon period, in his admirable essay upon the subject printed in the Gentleman's Magazine for 1865, where he most satisfactorily, as I think, negatives the supposition of its ever having been a Roman fortified station at all, and gives his reasons for asserting that Stukely, Baxter, and others, who have supposed that it was so, have been entirely mistaken in their ideas upon this matter. With this view also, that great Dorsetshire authority, the Rev. Wm. Barnes, coincides, and says in his paper on Ancient Dorset, published in the Journal of the Royal Archæological Institute for 1865, that" although they (the Saxon English) must have known Wareham as early as Dorchester," and took it as their Dorset haven, they did not call it a ceäster, but took it only as a" Wareham,' i. e.," a mound-enclosure"; and the same writer argues that as the Anglo-Saxons settled in this county so near the time of the withdrawal of the Roman legions, they would not have so designated it had they found an already existing castrum with marks of Roman life, handicrafts, and occupation, already existing there. But Mr. Barnes will not even allow that the walls are as early as the Anglo-Saxon period. 'He attributes them to the Britons, and gives a variety of reasons, both historical and etymological, for his belief. (See also Notes on some Vestiges of a Roman Occupation in Dorset, by the Rev. John H. Austen, M.A., F.R.G.S., in the

Journal of the Royal Archæological Institute for 1867, pp. 161-170.)

There is no need, therefore, to enter into a recapitulation of the arguments upon these points adduced by each of these learned antiquaries, as their views are set forth in the periodicals I have already mentioned, which all those who are interested in the question can readily consult for themselves. Merely premising, then, that the existence of a road made by the Romans between Wareham and Dorchester indicates the fact that the former station was known to that people as well as the latter, albeit it was never fortified by them, I shall proceed at once to the Anglo-Saxon period, when Wareham was, without doubt, a place of some importance, as we are told that Beorhtric, King of Wessex, was buried here A.D. 800, after a reign of sixteen years. During his time the Danes, in their numerous attacks upon our island, frequently landed here; and in A.D. 876 a body of them marched from Cambridgeshire and surprised the town, which they held until they were bought off by King Alfred, and swore to him, upon "the holy bracelet," that they would speedily depart from his kingdom. This promise, however, they with the usual morality-or rather, I should say, immorality-of the period utterly failed to keep, and it was not until the year 879 that they finally evacuated this part of the country. In 915, according to Richard of Cirencester, "Elfleda Mercionum domina" (wife of Æthelred, Earl of Mercia) “Fadesbury et Warham villas construxit”; and in 979, King Edward, the saint and martyr, was, as the story goes, stabbed at Corfe gate on the 15th of the Kalends April (18th March), and was buried at Wareham without any kingly honour.

In 981 St. Dunstan and the Ealdorman Alfhere conveyed the body of the King with great honour from Wareham to Shaftesbury, and in the next year "there arrived in Dorsetshire three ships of the Vikings, who ravaged Portland, and two Abbesses died in Dorsetshire, viz., Herelupe at Shaftesbury, and Wulfina," to whom I shall have occasion to refer hereafter, at Wareham. In 1015 Canute sailed up the Frome, and after having ravaged Dorsetshire, Somersetshire, and Wiltshire, and plundered Cerne Abbey, returned to Wareham, from whence he set sail for Brownsea.

From Domesday Book we learn that in Edward the Confessor's time there were one hundred and forty-three houses

in the King's demesne, whereof at the time of the Survey only seventy remained. In the division of S. Vandrille forty-five houses were standing, and seventeen were in ruins. In the portion belonging to the Barons twenty were standing and sixty destroyed; so that in the time of the Confessor it had contained two hundred and eighty-five inhabited houses, which by the year 1086 were reduced to one hundred and thirty-five. The town, however, must have begun to recover somewhat of its ancient importance immediately after this period, as we are told that William "built" (or rather rebuilt) "the Castle of Wareham" (which had been demolished by the Danes in 876), "on a hide of land belonging to Chingestone, for which he had exchanged the Church of Gelingham with the nuns of Shaftesbury," and a mint was established, which is fully treated of by Mr. Warne in his erudite and valuable work upon Ancient Dorset.

In 1104 Henry I, who had overthrown his brother Robert and taken him prisoner in Normandy, sent him to England, and had him closely confined in the Castle of Wareham, and in 1113, according to the Saxon Chronicle, “the King (Henry I) was, at the Nativity, and at Easter, and at Pentecost, in Normandy, and afterwards, in the summer, he sent hither to this country Robert de Belesme to the Castle at Wareham, and himself soon after came hither to this land." During the ensuing reign the strength of its position made the Castle of Wareham a frequent "bone of contention," and in the struggle for the throne between Stephen and the Empress Maud it was seized for the latter by Robert, third Baron de Lincolne, in A.D. 1138, and held for her, as we are informed in Roger de Hoveden, by Robert de Nicole. In 1142 the town was burnt by Stephen, and in July, 1204, according to Matthew Paris, it was visited by King John, who put in here on his return from France; and the same writer, in speaking of the year 1213, says:"On the morrow (23rd May) was the feast of the Ascension, a day much dreaded and mistrusted, not by the King only, but all classes of the people, on account of the prophecy of Peter the Hermit" (of Pomfret, surnamed the Wise), "who, as I have before stated, had declared to the said King that he should be reigning on Ascension Day, and no longer. But when the monarch had outlived the appointed day in health

and safety, he commanded the aforesaid Peter, whom he had imprisoned in Corfe Castle, to be tied to a horse's tail, and, after having been dragged through the streets of Wareham, there to be hung on a gallows together with his son." In August, 1215, and in June and July, 1216, as we learn from Hardy's itinerary of King John, that monarch again visited the town, and in 1297 Edward I was busily engaged in making preparations for his continental war, by contracting alliances with the Count of Flanders and other foreign princes. Accordingly we find that on 17th May in that year he was at Wareham superintending the manning and victualling of ships to join the expedition. In Rymer's Fœdera, under that date, is printed a letter from him in Norman French, addressed to Adolphus, King of the Romans, which I need not inflict on my readers in extenso. It is sufficient to state that it is dated from Wareham, and its purport is to inform Adolphus of the contemplated attack of Philip IV (commonly known as Philippe le bel), King of France, upon the domains of (Gui de Dampierre) the Count of Flanders, and he requests his immediate assistance and co-operation, begging him to join the English forces in Flanders with as many men as he can collect, and announcing his own intention of going over himself, and heading his troops in person.

In this place it will be convenient that I should introduce one of the original documents which I mentioned at the commencement of my paper-the whole of which, however, the time and space allotted to me will preclude the possibility of my bringing forward in these pages—as an illustration of the prices paid for sea transport at the period of which it treats. It occurs in the Liber Garderoba, 25 Edward I, in the British Museum, numbered Add. MSS. 7965 f. 88, b, and is an account of wages paid to seamen, under the title, "De vadiis nautarum navium in diversis flotis ad diversos portus congregatarum, tam pro passagio regis Edwardi, filii regis Henrici, versus Flandriam quam Ducisse Brabantiæ filiæ regis, et Comitis Hollandiæ versus propria, et pro aliis diversis passagiis anno præsenti 25to. a festo S. Edmundi, Regis et Martyris" (28th November, which was the first day of the King's regnal year). We here find that thirty shillings were paid to John le Prest, "Magistro cogæ S. Mariæ, uno constabulario, et