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HISTORY OF ECCLESFIELDa.

MR. EASTWOOD has produced a very complete and useful specimen of a local history. The book is the more remarkable, because it is clear that Mr. Eastwood is not a very profound or scientific antiquary in any branch. The architectural description of the church is meagre, and is clearly the work of one not very well versed in architectural technicalities. The historical portion is not written in the way in which it would be by one thoroughly accustomed to historical inquiries. Yet we are inclined to think that Mr. Eastwood has really done his task better than it would have been done by one who was specially learned in any particular line. Such an one would have been tempted to give undue prominence to his own branch. of the subject. An architectural antiquary might have produced a mere monograph of Ecclesfield Church; a documentary antiquary might have produced a mere collection of records about Ecclesfield Manor and Priory. Either would probably have despised a great many details which Mr. Eastwood has inserted, and which have an use of their own. Neither would have produced so thorough and complete a local history as Mr. Eastwood has done. Mr. Eastwood's attempts at general disquisitions are weak, and he does not always understand technicalities, either historical or architectural. But he has knowledge and tact enough to keep him from serious blunders, and his general love for his subject keeps him from giving any part of it an exaggerated prominence over the rest. It is no slight praise to say of Mr. Eastwood's book that, while he is full and minute enough to satisfy, as we should suppose, the most exacting inhabitant of Ecclesfield, there are large parts of the volume which may be read, not without interest, by those who know Ecclesfield only through Mr. Eastwood's history.

Ecclesfield is a parish in the southern part of the West Riding of Yorkshire, in the district locally known as Hallamshire. It is a very large parish, and besides a large allowance of wood, moor, and mountain, it contains a principal village and seven dependent hamlets or ecclesiastical districts. Mr.

"The History of Ecclesfield, in the County of York. By the Rev. J. Eastwood, M.A." (London: Bell and Daldy )

Eastwood has worked out, with most praiseworthy diligence, everything, old and new, which can be found out about these places, or about anybody who ever lived in any of them. To critics or readers who take no special interest in Ecclesfield the chief points of attraction will be found, as in other places, to centre round the history of the Manor, the Priory, and the Parish Church.

Hallamshire can boast the honour of having once had for its lord no less a man than the great Earl Waltheof. Mr. Eastwood is somewhat vague in his account of the patron hero of Crowland; we are sorry to find him believing in Ingulf; and he ludicrously overstates matters when he says that the English owners of estates were "in most instances put to death" by William the Conqueror. From Waltheof the lordship passed to his wicked widow Judith, and under her it seems to have been held by a certain Roger de Busli. It then passed through the hands of Lovetofts, Furnivals, and Nevils, till we find it again in the hands of a lord of more than local fame, the first Earl of Shrewsbury, better known by the illustrious name of Talbot. From the champion of England, the last bulwark of Aquitaine, it passed to the successive Earls of Shrewsbury, till, in 1616, it was transferred, by the marriage of Lady Alethea Talbot with Thomas Howard, Earl of Arundel, to the ducal house of Norfolk, in whose hands it has since continued.

"Hitherto," as Mr. Eastwood says, "we have spoken of the Manor of Ecclesfield as if it had always continued in the hands of the lords of the rest of Hallamshire." Manorial rights, however, over at least part of the parish were in the hands of the spiritual patrons of the place, between whom and its temporal lords there were not unfrequent dissensions. Ecclesfield was an instance of that strange abuse by which possessions in England, both spiritual and temporal, were held by monasteries in foreign countries. This of course is mainly owing to the fact that so many of William's followers held land both in Normandy and in England, and deemed it an act of piety to enrich the religious houses of their own land with some part of the spoils of the conquered people. As long as the King of England and the Duke of Normandy were the same person-Mr. Eastwood ought to know better than to talk of England and Normandy being "but one kingdom"-no public evil arose from this practice. A parish in Yorkshire suffered no more from having

its tithe appropriated and its rents paid to an Abbey in Normandy than if they had gone to an Abbey in Sussex. There was the general evil of appropriations and absentee landlordism, but nothing more. But when the two countries became distinct, and commonly hostile, the evil made itself very plainly felt. It was clearly against public policy to allow a considerable revenue to go yearly out of the realm to enrich the enemy's country. Hence, at the breaking out of a war with France, one of the commonest measures was to sequester the property of the Alien Priories. At last the nuisance was got rid of by their general suppression in the fifteenth century, when a large portion of their revenues went towards the endowment of the great foundations of King Henry the Sixth and Archbishop Chichele.

The foreign house which thus obtained property in the parish of Ecclesfield was the Abbey of Fontenelle, or St. Wandrille, in Normandy. It lies near Caudebec, not far from the right bank of the Seine, and in the neighbourhood of the two other great monasteries of Jumièges and St. Georges de Boscherville. The exact time when the monks of St. Wandrille obtained possessions at Ecclesfield is not exactly known, but it seems to have been during the reign of Henry the First, and by the gift of the then lord of Hallamshire, Richard of Lovetoft or William his son. They obtained, as usual, the advowson and rectory, and, as far as we can make out from the documents quoted by Mr. Eastwood, they first endowed a vicarage in 1245. The Abbey, as Rector, was to receive two-thirds of the tithe, and the Vicar one-third. This endowment, however, did not last, for at the beginning of the next century complaints are made to the Archbishop of York of the neglected state of the parish. It was large and scattered-"ampla et diffusa"-but "no regular vicar had been instituted to the said church for some years, nor any one else having the cure of souls." A better comment cannot be needed on the misappropriation of ecclesiastical property in England to the enrichment of foreign monks. It might be too much to expect the Abbot of St. Wandrille to care much for the cure of souls at Ecclesfield, but this abundantly shews that the Abbot of St. Wandrille ought never to have had property, least of all tithe property, at Ecclesfield. At last, in 1310, the then Archbishop, William Greenfield, procured the cessation of this scandal, and the endowment by the monks of a Vicar and

two assistant Chaplains. The advowson of course still remained in the Abbey.

These injurious privileges were not held by the foreign monks without dispute. Their right both to the manor and the advowson was occasionally disputed by persons on the spot, and the first endowment of the Vicarage in 1245 was the result of a compromise between the Abbey and an English clerk, one Jeremy of Ecclesfield, who claimed the Rectory, and seemingly the Manor also. Apparently, as Mr. Eastwood says, the Abbey let out both to farm, the tenant providing for the parish duty, or, if, like Jeremy, he chanced to be himself in holy orders, discharging it himself. Jeremy was not the first of his family who had held the lease, but probably he was the last. Being a priest, he could have no direct heirs; if he had no collateral heirs, he may have thought that his bargain was a good one for his own life. He gave up a disputed, and probably unfounded, claim to the freehold of the Manor and Rectory, but he got one-third of the spirituals, as Vicar for life, without any deduction, and the rest of the spirituals and all the temporals as tenant for life, at a yearly rent of 20 marks. At his death the monks seem to have thought that the Vicarage lapsed to themselves, and they therefore failed to appoint a successor. Hence the unsatisfactory

state of things which was reformed by Archbishop Greenfield. The Abbey of St. Wandrille, as usual, established a small dependent establishment on the spot, chiefly for the sake of looking after its property. It is well known that monasteries of considerable importance, as Leominster, Malvern, Brecon, and Steyning, were often in a state of greater or less dependence on some other house, native or foreign. But these, though some greater house possessed a certain degree of authority over them, were still distinct corporations, with officers, rights, and property of their own. The Priory at Ecclesfield, on the other hand, was one of the very smallest class of dependent houses. It consisted merely of two or three of the monks of St. Wandrille, sent over mainly as stewards on behalf of the parent house, and possessing no rights or property of their own of any kind. They had a small house and chapel near the parish church, portions of which, including a thirteenth century triplet, still remain under the name of Ecclesfield Hall. These alien monks seem not to have had a pleasant time of it, the lands of St. Wandrille being several times seized into the King's hands in the reigns of the

three Edwards. Indeed their possession did not even last till the general suppression of Alien Priories. In 1386 the Priory was again in the King's hands, and in that year Richard the Second gave all that had belonged to St. Wandrille at Ecclesfield to the newly founded Carthusian house of St. Anne near Coventry. The Carthusian monks do not seem to have kept up any dependent house at Ecclesfield at all, but to have leased out the whole of their property there. In 1542 Henry the Eighth granted Manor, Rectory, and Advowson, in exchange for other property, to Francis, Earl of Shrewsbury. Since then the former estates of St. Wandrille have been held by the successive Lords of Hallamshire. According to Mr. Eastwood, they consist of 600 acres of land, with the rectorial tithe and the Advowson of the Vicarage. Had Richard of Lovetoft been less eager to enrich foreign monks, the church of Ecclesfield might have remained a Rectory to this day b.

Ecclesfield parish church, according to Mr. Eastwood's account, is a large cruciform building, mainly of Perpendicular date, but retaining some Early English portions. But when we have so unscientific a description given us as, "the learned in such matters point to 'shafts and capitals' in the interior as being of earlier date," it is not easy to make anything out. As the pillars on the north side are round, we may suspect that we should really find Early English arches supporting a Perpendicular clerestory. Mr. Eastwood might surely find somebody able to explain to him such elementary matters as these. Anyhow it is plain that the church is externally Perpendicular. The transepts are of slight projection and lower than the nave, but they derive some importance from the addition of a quasi-aisle to the west. Mr. Eastwood mentions a rood-screen and stalls in the choir, and he gives wood-cuts which shew that they are really fine pieces of wood-carving; but we cannot make out from his description whether the choir is under the tower or in the eastern limb. We gather that in 1858 the chancel remained blocked off from the rest of the church. Since then there has been some kind of "restoration," which is not very minutely described. We are sorry to find that

The Vicarage is now valued at £573. This would make the whole tithe of the parish worth £1,719 yearly, a sum out of which the various district churches which have sprung up in the parish might have been decently endowed. Indiscriminate admirers of monachism should remember these things.

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