1833.]

Massey's principal service had been his able and protracted defence of Gloucester, when besieged by the King in person, in the year 1643: the importance of which may be estimated from the opinion given by Lord Clarendon, that its duration enabled the Parliament to recover their broken spirits and forces, and thus opened the way to "that greatness to which they afterwards aspired." Mr. Ormerod, in his second volume, p. 400, has given a memoir of Major-Gen. Massey, chiefly derived from Clarendon; and in vol. III. p. 448, is appended a catalogue of his various atchievements, from the works of Ricraft and Vicars. Among these, however, is not enumerated his capturing Malmesbury by storm, and taking Col. Henry Howard prisoner, on the 24th of May, 1644, as related in Corbet's "Military Government of Gloucester." It is to be regretted that in the "Bibliotheca Gloucestrensis," a collection of tracts relating to the civil war in that county, which was carefully and laboriously edited in 1825, and in which a fine copy of Col. Massey's portrait is published, the Editor should have been so ignorant of the Cheshire family, as to commence his memoir with stating, "We have been unable to ascertain any thing respecting his parents or the time of his birth." Yours, &c.

Mr. URBAN,

J.G. N.

New Kent-road, Oct. 6. THE very curious relic which is communicated to you for engraving by Mr. William Till, medallist, of Great Russell-street, Covent-garden, is said to have been discovered in the Temple Church during some of the repairs which have of late years taken place in that edifice. There appears no reason to doubt the authenticity of this statement, and the high antiquity of the object is certain.

It is delineated in the accompanying plate, of the original size, and is of brass very strongly gilt. It has formed, I think, a portion of the embossed ornaments of a pyx or small shrine, in which the consecrated Host GENT. MAG. October, 1833.

305

was kept. The whole box was probably of an oblong figure, and this brass-work was attached to one of its ends. The little chest was perhaps surrounded by military figures similar to the three which have been preserved, and they doubtless represent the soldiers watching the body of our Lord, which the shrine enclosed in its mystical form. The costume of the Roman centinels is made of course to conform with the period in which these figures were formed, and they are all represented with heads inclined forward, as if drowsy on their guard; a fancy quite at variance with Roman discipline.

It would be assuming too much to say that these figures were intended for Knight Templars, but they are certainly of a period somewhat anterior to that in which the more ancient portion of the Temple Church was first founded, and might with much probability have been part of the sacred ornaments used in Divine Service at that edifice, and which had been brought thither by the Templars, when they removed to the Thames side from their first establishment in Holborn.

The date of the foundation of the Round Church at the Temple has been preserved by an inscription formerly over one of its doors, and which I thus render after the original Latin:

"In the year from the incarnation of our Lord 1185, on the fourth of the Ides of February, this Church was dedicated to the honour of the blessed Mary, by the Lord Eraclius, by the grace of God Patriarch of the Church of the Holy Resurrection; who indulged those who should repair thither annually, with sixty days remission of their enjoined penance."

We may safely attribute to the figures before us, which are said to have been found in this Church, an antiquity coeval with the earlier portion of the 12th century. They wear the steel cap of the Phrygian form, furnished with a nose-piece or nasal,-an appendage of the helmets which appear

on the heads of the warriors in the Bayeux Tapestry. The mailles or ringlets of the hauberk appear as in the armour depicted in that remark

Engraved in Pegge's Sylloge of Inscriptions, pl. V.

able work, not interlinked, but sewn down, perhaps on a sort of gambeson. They bear kite-shaped shields, raised en dos d'áne, and having in the centre a boss remarkably resembling that on the shield of the enamelled sepulchral memorial of Geoffrey Plantagenet, Earl of Anjou, which was formerly suspended over his tomb in the Cathedral of Mans. On two of the shields are some approaches to armorial bearings. One is marked with four narrow bendlets, another is fretted. This fret is repeated in the front of the cap of the same figure. The shield of the third figure bears on each side of the boss the Grecian scroll, and in the front of his chapelle de fer are bendlets. The under tunics of the figures are long, and reach to the ancles. Such precisely is the form of the drapery on the figure of Geoffrey Plantagenet. The shoes are admirable illustrations of that passage of Geoffrey of Malmesbury, where, reprehending the luxury of costume in which the English indulged at the time when Henry the First began his reign, he says, "Then was there flowing hair and extravagant dress, and then was invented the fashion of shoes with curved points; then the model for young men was to rival women in delicacy of person, to mimic their gait, to walk with loose gesture half naked." The curvature of the points of the shoes in the little relic before us, in conformity with the custom censured by Malmesbury, is quite remarkable. One turns up, another down, one to the left, another to the right, and scarcely any two in the same direction.

It may be incidentally observed, that the fashion of long flowing hair, (fluxus crinium, Malmesbury's original expression,) is admirably illustrated by contemporary examples in the figures of Henry I. and his Queen, placed in the caryatid form, on either side the west door of Rochester Cathedral. The King's hair falls over his shoulders, and the Queen's is disposed in long plaited tresses, reaching almost to the knees.

Similar figures are described by Montfaucon, as decorating the front of the Cathedral of St. Denis, but he gives them an antiquity higher than their just date, and calls them les Rois

See it represented in Stothard's Monumental Effigies.

Merovingiens. Where shall we seek for such lively illustrations of ancient manners, as in the contemporary sculptures, illuminated paintings, and embossed ornaments (like those now before us), which the great consumer of all things may have suffered to descend to these later days?

I should have observed that the three figures I have been describing, are placed before as many arches of the circular style. The whole ornament has apparently been cast in a mould, and is in high relief. The armorial ornaments, mailles, &c. have been marked out with an engraving tool. A. J. K.

Mr. TILL has also communicated the Seal (fig. 2) which was likewise found near the tombs of the Knights Templars in the Temple Church, in the year 1830. It is of lead, with a cavity straight through it, to admit the silken cord, which formerly attached it to a deed; and it is highly preserved (save a cut across the obverse, from the spade of the workman). It belonged to Berengar, who succeeded De Pim as Custos, or Grand Master, of the Knights of St. John of Jerusalem, in 1365, and died in 1373. On the obverse, the prior is represented on his knees before the patriarchal cross, on either side of which are the letters A and (the latter defaced by the blow), and under the former a small star. On the reverse is represented the holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem, the Saviour in his tomb; at his head an elevated cross; and above, a tabernacle or chapel, from the roof of which depend two incense pots. The inscriptions together on both sides read, "FR. (frater) BERENGARII.

CUSTOS. PAUPERUM. HOSPITALIS JHERUSALEM."

The value and curiosity of this Seal is enhanced from the situation where it was discovered, and had lain above four centuries, being so accordant with its identity.

The British Museum wished to possess it, but as Mr. Till had previously promised it to his friend and an intelligent antiquary, Edward Spencer, esq. of Highgate, the original is in that gentleman's possession.

The Masters of this establishment appear, like the Popes, to have continued the same design upon their seals for a long succession of centu

In "The Geste of Kyng Horn," (Ancient Metrical Romances, ii. 147,) we find some lines thus printed:

"God geve him the myhte
That wynd him hider dryve,
To don hem alle of lyve,
And slowen Kyng Mury,
Horn es com es mon hardy."

work of a poet who lived at a later period than the Rhymer,) but must remark; 1. that Price is unquestionably right in stating that the Romance has nothing in it distinctively Scottish; 2. that he is as certainly wrong in ascribing the Harleian MS. of the French King Horn (on Ritson's authority) to the 12th century, when it is of the close of the 13th; and, 3. that Price was by no means the first to show that the Thomas von Britannie of God

the original MS. appears thus:

"Hornes cunes mon hardy."

i. e. "Horn's kinsman hardy.'

"

It may also be observed, that Ritson was not sufficiently acquainted with MSS. to know where a word or letter was expuncted, or to understand the meaning of a final contraction, particularly after n or h.

But of all the volumes of old poetry which have ever issued from the press, that printed under the superintendence of the Rev. C. H. Hartshorne, is the most faulty. Scarcely a single line can be depended on throughout the book, and my own copy (which has been collated with the originals) exhibits such sad proofs of want of knowledge, or even common care, that it is to be deeply lamented that the work should have passed into the hands of our continental neighbours in so very inaccurate a shape.

But to return to Sir Tristrem, which is "the head and front" of my present communication.-It is much to be wished that the editor of the recent edition had reprinted with it the Remarks of the late Mr. Price (annexed to Warton's History of English Poetry), more particularly as, in a prefatory notice, some attempt is made to reply to these remarks. I shall not here enter into a discussion respect. ing the authorship of Sir Tristrem (although I confess it appears to me that the English Romance is decidedly borrowed from the French, and the

Erceldoune (supposing him author of the English Romance), were not the same, since the impossibility of its being so had already been hinted at by Von der Hagen and Busching, in their materials for a History of German Poetry, and proved more at length by Van Groote in his Introduction to the quarto edition of Godfrey's Tristan, published at Berlin in 1821. But it never seems to have occurred to any one, that Thomas of Erceldoune may have written his Romance in Norman-French, and, consequently, after all, be the original referred to by Godfrey of Strassburg; ‡ and, perhaps, the author of the fragment in Mr. Douce's library, and of the French King Horn. But there is another Thomas who may put in a claim to these, viz. THOMAS OF KENT, who wrote in the 12th century a continuation of the Romance of Alexander, described in the Catalogue of La Vailiere, vol. ii. p. 160. Lastly, is it not possible that the passage of Robert of Brunne may not be interpreted, that Thomas of Erceldoune wrote the story originally, and that it was translated by Kendale? The discovery of a perfect copy of the French text of Thomas von Britannie, or of the English Sir Tristrem, might perhaps throw more light on the subject. The recent editor of this Romance seems ignorant of the existence of Van Groote's edition of the German text, or of the more complete reprint of it by Von der Hagen,§ in which the