36 Compendium of County History-Wiltshire. Studley House, Edward Hortock Mortimer, [July, Warneford Place, Sevenhampton, F. Warne- Westbury, Sir M. M. Lopes, bart. Whetham, Rev. Money. Wroughton, Mrs. Codrington. Peerage. Calne and Calstane Viscountcy to Petty, Marquis Lansdowne. Charleton Barony to Howard Earl of Suffolk. Clarendon Earldom to Villiers. Crudwell Barony to Campbell Countess Grey. Foxley Barony to Fox Lord Holland. Grinstead Barony to Cole Earl of Enniskillen. Hindon Barony to Villiers Earl of Clarendon. Longford Barony to Bouverie Earl of Radnor. Lydiard Tregoze Barony to St. John Viscount_Bolingbroke. Malmsbury Earldom and Barony to Harris. Marlborough Dukedom and Earldom to Churchill. Salisbury Marquisate and Earldom to Cecil. Stourton Barony to Stourton. Tottenham Barony to Brudenel Earl of Aylesbury. Wardour Castle Barony to Arundel. Warminster Barony to Thynne Marquis of Bath. Willoughby de Broke Barony to Verney. Wiltshire Earldom to Marquis of Winchester. Members of Parliament for the County 2; Calne 2; Chippenham 2; Cricklade 2; Devizes 2; Downton 2; Great Bedwin 2; Heytesbury 2; Hindon 2; Ludgershall 2; Marlboro' 2; Malmsbury 2; Old Sarum 2; Salisbury 2; Westbury 2; Wilton 2; Wootton Bassett 2; total 34. Produce. Chalk; free-stone. Orcheston grass, wheat, barley, oats, pease, beans, turnips, potatoes. Sheep, pigs, &c. Manufactures. Butter, cheese. Cutlery and steel goods. Parchment, leather, glue. Flannels, carpets, broad-cloths, kerseymeres, linen dowlas and bedticks, cotton, gloves, serges. POPULATION. Hundreds 29. Liberties 5. Whole Parishes 304. Parts of Parishes 13. Market Towns 25. Inhabitants, Males 108,213; Females 113,944; total 222,157. Families employed in agriculture, 24,972; in trade 16,982; in neither 5,730; total 47,684.—Baptisms. Males 29,841; Females 29,004; total 58,845.— Marriages 15,654.—Burials. Males 16,263; Females, 17,726; total 33,989. Places having not less than 1000 Inhabitants. Houses. Inhab. Great Bradford2,100 10,231 Ramsbury Houses. Inhab. | 220 405 Houses. Inhab. 308 1,357 1,909 9,545 Tisbury 2,122 Longbridge 269 1,349 NEW SARUM 1,684 8,763 Wilton 2,058 Deverill MALMESBURY 399 1,976 Pewsey GREAT BEDWIN 349 1,928 Box Purton 347 1,766 HEYTESBURY WOOTTON BASSET Trowbridge Westbury, (including 1,411 7,846 the Bo rough) 379 335 1,682 Fisherton Anger 216 1,253 332 1,609 Burbage 336 1,609 White Parish 282 1,580 Ashton Keynes 249 1,151 North Bradley 478 2,615 Wroughton 255 1,381 Westport, St. 329 1,527 Sherston Magna 250 1,146 299 1,438 Alderbury 286 1,443 West Lavington 252 1,123 DOWNTON 572 3,114 Swindon 1825.] [ 37 ] REVIEW OF NEW PUBLICATIONS. 1. The History and Antiquities of the Tower of London, with Memoirs of Royal and Distinguished Persons, deduced from Records, State Papers, and Manuscripts, and from other original and authentic Sources. By John Bayley, Esq. F. R. S. and F.S.A. of the Honourable Society of the Inner Temple, &c. In Two Parts. Part II. 4to. pp. 671. Append. cxxviii. ENGLAND of Government, but NGLAND in our early periods not a Constitution. The Sovereign was in point of fact despotic, provided he was popular, or had the Nobles in subjection. The Commons were perSODS merely assembled to sanction unpleasing necessities, or cruel measures. No evidence more illustrative of this state of things exists, than the subject of the first part of the present volume, viz. the history of the State Prisoners confined in the Tower of London, a banqueting house of the Devil, where he was gluttonously feasted with misery. However, in so saying, we ought not to particularize this spot with pre-eminent infamy, the said prince of darkness having various haunts, where he has ever been and Dow is kindly treated in other parts of that enormous forest of houses, the Metropolis of Great Britain. In our preceding review of Mr. Bayley's Work, we had occasion to notice with warm approbation his judicions manner of treating the subjects which came before him. We have, therefore, opened the book with great impatience, and have diligently investigated those lives which concerned very obscure and difficult parts of the history of England. So plausible does this appear in our popular Historians, that general readers conceive that there is nothing but a plain story to relate. They are contented with superficial narrative. Not so literary men and philosophers. They see no accession of knowledge in a mere succession of events, no more than in the accustomed revolution of the earth round the San; but if they know the principles by which it is actuated, they are able to calculate eclipses, and make discoveries useful to society. The prisoners in the Tower of London consisted of traitors, real or pre Bar of the House of Lords in 1478, but the prisoner. (p. 336.) This mon- such an advocate none dared to answer It is, however, impossible for us to discuss the histories of all the murdered people who, if their ghosts in vindictive resentment haunted the Tower and Tower-hill, would depopulate the whole place in less than five minutes, without the slightest possibility of any human power effecting further habitancy. We shall, therefore, take such parts of Mr. Bayley's valuable Work as tend to throw light upon dubious parts of history, and enable us to do the Author jus tice. The first point we shall take is the Death of Henry VI Mr. Bayley thinks with some historians, that he was not assassinated by the Duke of Gloucester, but died naturally of grief. The original arguments are too lengthy to be copied. We shall therefore abstract them. 38 REVIEW. Bayley's History of the Tower. "It is certain (says Mr. Bayley) that Henry was of a most weakly constitution, and had long suffered under an ill state of health; and, therefore, when we reflect on his melancholy change of fortune; the entire ruin of his house; the slaughter of his friends at Barnet and at Tewkesbury; the murder of his only child, and the captivity of his queen; can any thing appear to us more natural than that the baneful effects of grief should by course of nature have terminated his unhappy life?" P. 329. The arguments by which Mr. Bayley supports this opinion are, 1. The propensity of common fame to attribute foul means, in regard to State offenders who die under imprisonment. (p. 329.) 2. That it is improbable to suppose a brother of the King, only a youth of eighteen, to have been employed by the latter as an assassin, or that brother to have committed the murder on his own account, when Clarence, with every prospect of a family from his recent marriage, barred him (Richard) from any prospect of the Crown. 3. That the Duke of Gloucester was not in London at the time of Henry's de cease. (pp. 330-334.) The second point is the drowning of Clarence in a butt of malmsey. Mr. Bayley says, "The Duke was privately put to death in the Tower, but the precise manner of his end has never been satisfactorily discovered; though it was the vulgar report that he was drowned in a butt of malmsey, a tale which in all probability owed its origin to the Duke's great partiality for that liquor. The historian of Croyland Abbey [a contemporary], who gives a circumstantial and very feeling account of all the measures pursued against him, only speaks of his execution having been private, without a word respecting the malmsey." p. 337. Mr. Bayley observes, that during the reign of Henry VII. it was the fashion to blacken the house of York, and that Sir Thos. More imputes this and other crimes to the Duke of Gloucester (afterwards Richard III.), without even a shadow of reason. (pp. 327, 338.) There can be no doubt but that Henry VII. was full as great a murderer as Richard III. Warwick, son of Clarence, the last male of entire blood of the Royal line of Plantagenet, without a crime, and without a fault but his high birth, was slaughtered in cold blood, from political motives. It is stated that Ferdinand, King of Spain, had refused his daughter in [July, marriage with Prince Arthur, on the ground of Warwick's title to the Crown. The third point is the identity of Perkin Warbeck and Richard Duke of York, brother of Edward V. and with him by Richard III. in the said to have been murdered together Tower. It is certain that the story of Perkin Warbeck, told by Fabian, Polydore Vergil, Hall, Grafton, and Lord Bacon, bear every aspect of a concerted tale. We regret that the length of Mr. Bayley's excellent reasoning on the subject obliges us again to abstract the account, pp. 347-352. -- there was a strong impression on the In the first place, it is certain that minds of the people, that one at least of Edward the Fourth's sons was still alive (p. 347); that Perkin Warbeck likeness of the Duke of York,-poswas acknowledged by all to bear the sessing courteous and princely manlanguage, so thorough a knowledge ners, a perfect acquaintance with the of every circumstance and particular prince, his family, and the affairs of respecting the person of the young the English nation, that "no man," by company or conversation, was ever as admitted by Lord Bacon, "either able to detect him ;" and, in fact, identified with his person by the testimony of Sir Rob. Clifford and other credible witnesses." Tirrel, the supposed murderer of the It is further to be observed, Ist. that young princes, stood high in Henry's favour, probably on account of the pretended confession. 2d. That the story of Perkin's imposture was, by the confession of Lord Bacon, a story derived from the Court. 3d. That Archduke Philip refused to give Perkin up, because he did not believe that he was an impostor. 4. That the pretended discoveries concerning Perkin's parentage were unknown in Flanders, and if they had been known, would have been familiar to the Duke. 5th. That the whole story is full of inconsistencies and absurdities. 6th. That the earlier chronicles, and the account of Lord Bacon, are at variance with Perkin's pretended confession. After these premonitions, we shall introduce Mr. Bayley's excellent account in his own words; commencing with the Duchess of Burgundy's presumed share in the plot. "How the Duchess could have selected 1825.] REVIEW. Bayley's History of the Tower. this young man for his likeness to her nephes the Duke of York; how she could have described to him the persons of his brother, his sisters, and others nearest him in his childhood; how she could have given him minute details of the affairs of England, and how she could have instructed him in what passed, while he was in the sanctuary at Westminster, and more especially of the transactions in the Tower, would be difficult to imagine; for this Princess, who is represented as bitter against Henry, was married out of England in 1467, before either of Edward the Fourth's children was born; and as she never returned, she could never have seen the Duke of York, his brother, or either of the Princesses, nor could she have had such knowledge of the extraordinary chain of events that had since occurred in England, as would have made her a capable instructress of a Flemish youth in the wily and difficult course he would have to tread. But without dwelling longer on these circumstances, however material to the question, without asking when or where this *young mercurial' was first picked up, and without resting on the moral impossibility of making a perfect polished Prince, in whom all things met as could be wished, in so short a time out of a mere wandering Flemish Jew; let us proceed to the still more important features of the story." P. 350. Mr. Bayley then points out the dis agreement of the first story and the confession, and the means which the King had of undeceiving the world, as to the importance of Warbeck, by producing the testimony of Lady Brampton, the pretended agent of the Duchess, in the transmission of Perkin from Flanders to Portugal, and thence to Ireland. Mr. Bayley then proceeds: "When we see falsehood and inconsisteacy so blended together, is it easy to determine which of the accounts we may give the most discredit to,-that which ascribes the alleged imposture entirely to the Duchess of Burgundy, or the other, which would have us believe a story of the Irish taking up a foreign youth, who came accidentally to their country, and not only qualifying him to assume the name and character of a Prince, whom he could have never seen, but teaching him to indulge in the extravagant notion of supplanting a powerful and vigilant Monarch, and of usurping the throne of a nation, to which he must have been an absolute stranger? Must we Bot reject the former, as contradictory and inconsistent in itself, and must we not treat the latter as one of the most preposterous fictions, with which the credulity of man was ever tried." 89 "How extraordinary the King's conduct! In the first place, he attributes to the Duchess of Burgundy every thing connected with Warbeck's appearance; and then, failing to prove the reports he had spread of her having trained up an impostor, he thinks it wise to drop that story altogether; because to every considerate person it must appear that her support of him was only from the conviction that he was her nephew. Indeed it is impossible to account either for her conduct, or for that of the King of Scotland, unless they were satisfied that this person was in truth the Duke of York. The one may have borne the most implacable hatred towards Henry, as a descendant of the house of Lancaster, and the other might have been glad of any opportunity to annoy and weaken a rival nation; but would either have gone so far? Henry had married Edward the Fourth's daughter; and, therefore, whatever might have been Margaret's antipathy to him, is it to be believed that she would have brought forward an impostor, and laboured by every artifice to transfer the diadem from her own niece, the heiress of the house of York, to the brow of that low-bred wanderer, that Perkin Warbeck has been described? At war with Henry, policy might have induced the King of Scotland to support his rival, whether true or false; but what motive could he have had for sacrificing to him a Princess of his own blood, unless he had been satisfied that he was the heir to the throne of England? These circumstances are corroborated by the conduct of Sir William Stanley, Lord Fitzwalter, and others of Edward the Fourth's friends, who embarked in his cause, and who would hardly have risked their lives and fortunes on the crazy bottom of a Flemish counterfeit they are likewise supported by Henry's rigid treatment of the Queen dowager*, whose conduct manifested a conviction also of her son's existence; and if Henry himself were not impressed with the same idea, how are we to account for his actions, and for his extraordinary saying on the death of the Earl of Lincoln." After the death of the Earl, a principal person of the House of York, the King said that he was sorry for the Earl's death, because through him he might have known the bottom of his danger. p. 352. "Our observations, however, do not end here. Is it not extraordinary that, after Perkin fell into the King's hands, no means were ever resorted to, to satisfy the world of the imposition which had been practised upon it? After he had been received and She was detected, as supposed, in some secret correspondence at the time of Lambert Simnel's appearance. p. 351. supported 40, REVIEW.-Tales of the Crusaders. supported by the Courts of France, Burgundy, and Scotland; after his alliance had been sought by a marriage with a Princess of the latter nation; when Peers, Knights of the Garter, Privy Counsellors, and dig nitaries of the Church had espoused his cause; and after the Lord Fitzwalter and other great men had laid down their lives in the conviction of his truth, ought not the King to have shown how all had been deceived? If a counterfeit, Henry might then have convicted him out of his own mouth; or he might have produced him before Tirrel and Dighton, the supposed murderers; and surely, though no one else in the whole court and kingdom of England could so cross-examine this Flemish youth, as to detect him in a single falsehood, their appearance must have confounded him. There were enough too in Henry's court, who must well have remembered the person of the Duke of York: the famous Dr. Oliver King, then Bishop of Exeter, who was Edward's as well as Henry's secretary, was still alive, as were other prelates and barons of the realm, besides servants of Edward's household, who must often have seen both the princes, and whose evidence, if taken, would instantly have decided his character. Why, moreover, was he never produced before the Queen dowager, the Queen herself, and the other sisters of the Duke of York? Why were they never asked, Is this your son? Is this your brother? Their declarations would have admitted of no doubt. Their denial of his person would have undeceived the world, and have silenced for ever the voice of scepticism. But no: the King withheld or avoided this obvious mode of detection! He was never confronted with them; and must we not thence infer that Henry was afraid to put their natural emotions to such a trial? For, if he were the Duke of York, no lapse of time could have effaced him from their memory, nor could the injunctions of a tyrant have restrained the impulse of a mother's or a sister's feelings. "When we review all the circumstances of this extraordinary case; the entire want of evidence that the princes were put to death; the inconsistency of the King's conduct; his avoiding every species of inquiry by which he might have proved him an impostor, if he were so, and the many shifts he had recourse to, to blind the world on the subject; when we estimate the character of the historians of those times, and re member that the only sources of our information are the testimony of writers swayed by prejudices, or subservient to the Lancastrian interest, and the statements put forth by the King himself,-when we consider too all the traits in Warbeck's character,his personal likeness to King Edward the Fourth, his princely manners, and his acknowledged perfection in the English [July, language; when we call to mind that his origin and history were never traced, that he never failed in his part, and that neither his words nor actions were ever said to bear the semblance of imposition ;-in fact, when we fairly and deliberately weigh all the strong and leading points of his story, we must be rooted indeed to the common impressions entertained on this subject, if we hastily conclude that he was an impostor. At all events, we have shewn that he could not have been such a person as he was represented: and the more deeply any candid inquirer will search into the history and times of Richard the Third, the less credit he will attach to that common herd of writers, whose venality or prejudices have led them from the paths of uprightness and truth, and made them indiscriminately load his memory with all the foulest crimes that distinguish the dark and troubled æra in which he lived." pp. 350, 352. A disquisition on this subject is attached to Henry's History of England. We think that the case of Perkin Warbeck being the Duke of York, is made out up to strong presumption. But what became of Edw. V.? Nobody says that he was Lambert Simnel. (To be continued.) 2. Tales of the Crusaders. By the Author of Waverley, &c. 4 vols. Robinson & Co. INEXHAUSTIBLE in his resources, we have here another annual offering from a writer, whose title to our praise owes nothing to the mystery with which he seeks to envelope his name. Who shall attempt the wasteful and ridiculous excess' of lauding him whom the King delighteth to honour? whose fame reacheth from one end of the civilized world to the other! and whose works are destined to that in mortality which appertains to the language in which they are embodied? Let us to our office, and leave the delights of eulogy to the thousands and ten of thousands, into whose hands the volumes have fallen. After a facetious introduction, more suo, in which some of the favourite characters of preceding works are the interlocutors, and from which we glean that the author purposes a History of the Life of Buonaparte, we enter upon the first Tale of the Crusaders, entitled "The Betrothed," a tale of the twelfth Century, during the reign of Henry II. and at a period when the violent and frequent conflicts between the Welsh and their Norman |