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fe shrivel under the first frosts of historical criticism. Arrangement of materials is not their strong point. r They adopted every variety of plan, or not infrequently, t none at all. Many, like John Aubrey, 'set Things down tumultuarily, as if tumbled out of a Sack, as they came to my Hand, mixing Antiquities and Natural Things.' Colder and more impersonal are the aims of the modern school of searchers after historical truth. The

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new spirit is admirably illustrated in the important monograph on an interesting village among the Berkshire Downs which Mr Arthur Humphreys has recently produced. In his East Hendred, a Berkshire Village,' he lays down principles of method and arrangement which, in form, may well serve to standardise the work of local historians of the future. To the biographical and personal portion of his work he has devoted particular attention. The genealogies of the old yeoman families, as well as of the larger landowners, are carefully traced. Except in this respect, he is severe, if not ascetic, in his abstention from the ordinary luxuries of parochial historians. His main object has been to collect and classify all the sources of information which relate to every branch of the history of the parish, But he indulges in no conjectures or guesswork; he allows himself no pictures of life, manners, and customs. Within these limits the work is admirably done. He has added in nearly 100 pages, an index which for accuracy and completeness is beyond all praise.

Fresh records are continuously published. Among recent publications is the very complete series of documents relating to the Manor of Banstead in Surrey, translated and admirably edited by Mr Lambert. It contains, among other documents, accounts rendered by stewards or bailiffs from 1275 onwards, Court Rolls on which are entered the proceedings of manorial courts, surveys of the estates in which, on the sworn testimony of the tenants themselves, are recorded their number and names, the sizes of their respective holdings, their money or produce rents, their labour services, and other obligations. Similar evidence relating to villages in Somersetshire, Lincolnshire, and Sussex may be gathered from the books whose titles stand at the head of these pages.

In many of our villages the signs of extreme antiquit are unmistakable. They do not force themselves of the eye by glaring contrasts of medieval buildings wit modern erections. Rather the long passage of time ha mellowed the whole into a harmony of unobtrusiv colouring, and steeped it in the pervasive atmosphere c age. Nowhere is the old-world character more faithfull preserved than in the features of hamlets on the slope of the Downs. Here are found some of the oldest sites o villages, and for obvious reasons. It was on the edge of the Downs that the least labour told the most, an that the transition from the nomadic life of pastors hordes to more settled agricultural communities wa the easiest. Fertile valleys, tangled with forest growth remained uncleared when dry and comparatively treeles uplands were occupied and cultivated. To these chall escarpments, with their wide bare pastures and sheltere dips, were attracted not only the Saxon settlers, but the more ancient inhabitants of the country. The upland were grazed by flocks and herds, while the steep sides or the pockets of soil below the rise, were scratched uj for scanty patches of corn. Nor did the Downs serve agricultural purposes only. They were the sites mysterious megalithic monuments. They were camp and battlegrounds and burying places. They were also natural highways. In districts along the lines of the Downs it was a common tradition that, on quiet nights could still be heard the tramp of armed hosts and the creak of their heavy chariots as they passed from cam to camp along the ancient tracks.

In its physical aspects, East Hendred is a typica Down village, following the uniform plan that our fore fathers stamped on the face of the uplands of South Eastern England. The shape of the parish is that of a long-sided parallelogram, running north to south. The northern and north-western base follows the course of a stream; the southern base, high up on the Downs themselves, meets and rests on the boundaries of other parishes. Between the two long eastern and western sides is the land, cultivated, grazed, or mown by the occupiers, and adapted to the various needs of a selfsupporting, self-sufficing community. At the southern end stretched the wide grazing grounds of the Downs,

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At the northern and north-western extremity, where
the brook turned the corn-mills, the best of the land was
chosen for the meadows; the poorer parts afforded the
rough pasture, mixed with bush, small wood, bracken,
and rushes, that are suggested by the field names of
Band's Moor, Long Moor, Great and Little Moor, Mill
Moor, Barn Moor, Picked Moor, Further and Upper
Moor. The arable land lay on the drier portions, push-
ing upwards to the slope of the hills, until the soil
became too thin and poor for cultivation. According to
this uniform arrangement, the Downs were never
ploughed. It would therefore almost seem that the
horizontal terraces on the hills, which are a prominent
feature of the country, and are popularly known as
'daisses,' 'lynches,' or 'lynchets,' were the work of hill-
folk at a stage of husbandry more primitive than that
of the Saxon settlers.

The arable land is the 'land of Ceres.' Here were grown, in unvarying triennial succession, the crops of wheat, rye, barley, vetches, oats, and peas,' which Shakespeare exhaustively enumerates in The Tempest.' The appearance of the land under the plough preserves some of the features which it bore in the days of the Plantagenets. It is still a bare, hedgeless, and, but for recent plantations, treeless expanse, with none of the small enclosures or detached isolated farmhouses which generally mark individual occupation and modern farming. A prophet of the 17th century foretold that 'thorn and horn will make England forlorn,' or, in other words, that pasture fields enclosed by hedges, and stock farming, would strip England of her rural population. East Hendred has so far escaped these dangers. It has remained a corn-growing district, and such divisions as are made between the broad arable fields are not made by thorn hedges, but by the grass-grown banks, 'balks' or 'meares' of medieval farmers. To-day the iron plough traverses the land drawn by the untiring arm of steam. But the great hedgeless expanse makes it easy to conjure up a picture of the teams of eight oxen, plodding slowly to and fro over the patchwork pattern of acre and half-acre strips, dragging behind them the Cumbrous plough with its wooden mould-boards, as in the days of Crecy or of Agincourt.

Towards the northern and north-western bounda of the parish, at no great distance from, but above, tl stream, stands the village. In it are gathered practical all the population. Though the danger of isolation am the need for combined defence have passed away detached farmhouses and cottages are still almost rare as they were in Norman times. Surrounded by th wide expanse of meadow, arable pasture, and moorlan the occupiers clustered round the church and mana house for mutual help and protection in this world an the next. The village was laid out on no plan. It gre Straight lines are rare. Nothing shows its natur growth more clearly than the labyrinth of winding lan which saunter from one homestead to another. A parently engineered on the medieval principle that o good or bad turn deserves another, their direction mostly governed by ancient enclosures of individu occupiers. One called 'Cat Street' commemorates Catharine, on whose festival was held one of the tv annual fairs, abandoned three centuries ago. Two othe Ford Lane and King Lane, leading to one of the mil strike towards the stream with the purposeful directne of public utility.

Timber-framed, straw-thatched, or tile-roofed, mc of the houses belong to Tudor times. But they ha displaced the mud-built, earth-floored, single-roome one-storied, chimney-less structures which sheltered t families and the live-stock of the earlier settlers. Bish Hall's picture of the interior of the home of the Eliz bethan copyholder, with its outside walls of timber u rights and cross-beams forming raftered panels daub with clay or cob, was at least true of three previo centuries:

'Of one bay's breadth, God wot, a silly cote

Whose thatched spars are furred with sluttish soote
A whole inch thick, shining like blackmoor's brows
Through smoke that through the headlesse barrel blow
At his bed's feete feeden his stalled teame,

His swine beneath, his pullen o'er the beam.'

Otherwise the changes have been slight. From ear times, orchards and gardens, in which to grow fruit a such green vegetables as were then known, and most

beans, were essential to the health of a population living
largely on meat and fish in salted form. Nor was it long
before the open-field farmers had fenced in their topts
and crofts-tiny yards for their ricks and stacks, as well
as small enclosures of grass for rearing calves, or for the
working oxen which could not endure to labour all
daye and then to be put to the commons or before the
herdsmen.'

East Hendred has not been associated with events of
national importance. It has given birth to no one con-
spicuous in history. Yet it possesses one rare feature
which, it may not be fanciful to think, intensifies the
pervasive charm of its old-world atmosphere. The village
has known no complete severance from the Church of the
Middle Ages. A portion of the people always adhered
to the older faith. The parish church is, of course, in
Protestant hands. But, in a free chapel, attached to the
ancient home of the Eystons, services of the Roman
Catholic Church have been held with remarkable con-
tinuity. Built between 1253 and 1291, and dedicated, in
a quaint order of dedication, to St Amand and St John
the Baptist, it lost its endowments at the Dissolution of
the Monasteries. But the chapel itself remained. In
1688 it was desecrated, probably rather from wantonness
than by the order of any responsible authority. The
story is told in a manuscript volume, addressed to his
Deare Children,' by Charles Eyston (1667-1721), the 'great
friend and acquaintance' of Thomas Hearne, and himself
known in the family as the 'antiquary.' At Hungerford,
in December 1688, the Prince of Orange had met the
Commissioners of James II. His troops, on their way
from that town to Oxford, passed over the Golden Mile,
the turf road which runs along the eastern border of
Fast Hendred.

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Some loose fellowes (whether by orders or not I cannot hyther, went into the Chappell, pretended to mock the priest by supping out of the Chalice, which they would have taken away had it been silver, as they themselves aftergave out; however, having torn down the JESUS MARIA from the Altar, which holy names were painted ear upon Pannells in the same Frames, where the JESUS MARIA are now wrought in Bugles, they retired, taking an old suite of Church stuffe with them to Oxford, where they dress Vol 241.-No. 478.

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