of their new Norman land-lords, or grantees of confiscated estates, in the same manner and upon the same conditions and services, (whether as slaves or villains regardant, or as free-men,) as they had before been the dependents of their former English land-lords. It may further be observed concerning the foregoing grant of the manor of Spalding, that the manner of executing it by the grantor and the grantee, and the other persons whose consent was necessary to its confirmation, and the manner of attesting the execution of it by the other persons above-mentioned who were only witnesses of it, was not by either signing their names to it or affixing their seals to it, but by making the sign of the cross after their several names, which were written at the end of the instrument by Living, the clerk, or priest, whom Thorold had employed to prepare and write it out. The art of writing was not, in this remote age, and even for three or four centuries after it, known to, or practised by, the generality of people in England, even in the upper ranks of life, but was confined to the clergy and the monks, or some of them, who had received a learned education, and the scriveners, or other practisers of some branch of the profession of the law. And the other manner of executing written instruments, by putting a seal upon some melted wax at the bottom of the instru ment, which is now in use, had not yet been introduced into England, but was so fifteen years after, or at the time of the conquest, and was then very strongly enforced by the authority of the Conqueror, to the exclusion of the former practice of execut ing written instruments by each party's affixing the sign of the cross immediately after his own name that had been written by the clerk, or scrivener, who had prepared and written out the instrument. And the very name of these instruments of the conveyance, or transfer of lands, which had till then been called chirographs, was changed to the word charters, which has ever since continued in use. This we are distinctly told by Ingulphus in page 70 in the following words: "Alias etiàm consuetudines [Normanni] immutabant. Nam Chirographorum confectionem Anglicanam, (quæ anteà usque ad Edwardi Regis tempora fidelium præsentium sub, scriptionibus, cum crucibus aureis, aliisque sacris signaculis, firma fuerunt,) Normanni condemnantes, Chirographa Chartas vocabant, et chartarum firmitatem cum cerea impressione per uniuscujusque speciale sigillum, sub instillatione trium vel quatuor testium astantium conficere constituebant." It may further be observed concerning the foregoing grant of the manor of Spalding to the abbot of Crowland, that it was ratified, or confirmed, by Wulfin, Bishop of Dorchester, because both Spalding and Crowland Abbey were at that time in the diocese of Dorchester, the seat of which diocese was afterwards, (in a famous English ecclesiastical council, consisting of bishops and abbots of monas teries, holden, first, at the festival of Easter in the 6th year of the reign of King William the Conqueror, A.1). 1072, in the King's chapel in the castle of Winchester, and afterwards in the following festival of Whitsuntide, in the same year, at the royal town (villâ regiâ) of Windsor, in the presence of the king himself and of Hubert, the legate of pope Alexander the IInd.) transferred to the city of Lincoln, as we are informed by the following passage of Ingulphus, in page 93: "In isto codem Consiljo Statutum est et decretum, secundùm scita Cano-. num, quòd Episcopi, transeuntes de villis, transferrent sedes suas ad suarum Diocesium civitates. Dorcastrensis ergò migravit in Lincolniam, Lichefeldensis in Cestriam, Selesiensis in Cicestriam, Shireburnensis in Salesbiriam, et Ælmanensis in Thetford. Lindisfarnensis autèm à diù transierat in Dunelmum." ART. DCCCXCIX. A List of the diminutions of the Royall Navy of England from December 1688 [unto the 30th of June 1697.] to the Rt. Honourable Edward MS. 4to. Humbly presented By this list of vessels lost, it appears that in about eight years and an half the navy suffered a diminution of 160 vessels, which are enumerated: from first to sixth rates, 79, fireships 35, advice-boats 4, bomb-vessels 7, brigantines 1, hulks 5, ketches 8, machines 14, pinks 3, sloops 2, smacks 1, and tow engine 1. Of this number 38 only fell into the hands of the enemy: 10 fireships appear to have been destroyed in a further attempt on the French fleet off Cape de Hague and Cape Barfleur, on the 19th and 23rd of May 1692, after the victory obtained by Admiral Russell over Count de Tourville; the remainder of the vessels are described as lost by accidents, sold, &c. The machines were from 18 to 107 tons burthen, carrying from four to ten men; and the pinks 96 tons burthen, having ten guns and fifty men. The other names are yet retained in the navy. Only one first-rate is mentioned, and the description will shew the extent of the writer's information: it was the Royal Sovereign, built 1637 at Woolwich by Capt. Pett, carrying 815 men, 100 guns, 1556 tons burthen, in ordinary, burnt by accident at Gillingham, 27 Jan. 1695. J. H. FURTHER ADDENDA. ART. DCCCC. Miscellanea. Prayers. Meditations.. Memoratives. By Elizabeth Grymeston. Non est rectum, quod à Deo non est directum. London: Printed by Melch. Bradwood for William Aspley, 12mo. ALTHOUGH this work has been previously described in the CENSURA LITERARIA,* yet as this edition varies materially from the one before alluded to, I doubt not but that the communication of it may be interesting. This difference principally consists in the quantity of matter it possesses beyond the other, the number of chapters being extended from fourteen to twenty. The heads of each are here subjoined, that their respective contents may be more easily compared. "1. A short line how to levell your life. 2. A mortified man's melancholie. 3. A patheticall speech in the person of Dives in the torments of hell. 4. Who lives most honestly, will die most wyllingly. 5. A sinner's glasse. 6. The union of mercie and justice. 7. No greater crosse than to live without a crosse. *Vol. VI. p. 161. |