CORRESPONDENCE

OF SYLVANUS

URBAN.

HERALDIC CHARLATANERIE.

MR. URBAN,

is a great pity such a noble

HERALDIC OFFICET science as that of heraldry-on

which so many facts of history and biography turn-should in our day be open to the mercy of quacks and self-constituted heralds, who are allowed to take to themselves the power of arranging blatant blazonry, at variance with personal history and in violation of all precedent. Heraldic devices have been called the hall-marks of nobility, and as such should be sacred from the contrefacteur, who would commit a misdemeanor if he infringed a merchant's mark -thanks to the Act of the Board of Trade and Mr. Milner Gibson, passed a few sessions back. The Exhibition Medals Act of 1863 protects prize awards-thanks to Earl Granville; but are the badges worn by the "supporters" of the noble earl himself protected? Has Leveson-Gower protection against Brown, Jones, or even Robinson, -if they will it?

It is not as if we had no College in London, with its heralds and pursuivants, who are antiquaries, and alone the recognised authorities; yet their ancient prerogatives are every day usurped by advertising charlatans, who announce "heraldic studios" and "armorial offices" for the sale of appropriated and spurious devices, that are sold over and over again to the simple; who, if they are not wise enough themselves to detect the fraud, presume they have imposed upon all others.

Ignorance of the laws of blazonry amongst the people, leads empirics to trade upon public credulity; blindness as to physical laws, to a faith in

being made "beautiful for ever;" who would not be made gentle, beautiful, and spiritual, for a small consideration?

"Crests is my leading article, but I do a deal in scutcheons,” once said a "professor" of heraldry, who kept a "studio." "They come for cheap crests 'as advertised;' but when I once get them in my mediveal office, under the influence of a dim, religious light through stained glass-to sit in my antique chairs, and behold my libary, presided over by an ancient suit of armour-it is all 'up' with them, and they take anything." Of course he did not tell (even if he knew it himself) that the glass came from Houndsditch, the chairs from Wardour Street, that the folio books were mostly dummies, and, moreover, the antique armour made of metal from Birmingham, rolled by steam power. Yes, this "professor" managed to draw something from all who fell into his trap; selling the ancientproperty of others, taking good care to intonate all heraldic terms, and evince great particularity about the county of birth, because it sounded well, and gave satisfaction, if it made no difference.

"HOWARD, did you say, sir? Yes, sir; very noble crest, sir. Lion statant guardant. Sketch, ten shillings and sixpence; with casque and mantling in proper colours, one guinea and a half; illuminated on vellum, two guineas; in oak frame for the hall, three guineas. Thank you, sir. On signet ring, did you say, sir? Yes, sir!" And off goes another imbecile, with the crest of the Duke of Norfolk (and "the blood of all the Howards," dirt cheap for the money), in blissful ignorance of twothirds of the drawing being a lithograph painted over. Sometimes a little want of faith has been evinced afterwards, leading him to a rival establishment, at which the same farce is enacted over again (in common names), mostly tending to the same results, thus causing unbounded faith in heraldic studios.

Of course in the majority of cases these pleasantries are harmless, though in others they lead to errors,-getting on documents and tombs, where they have been taken as evidence by the law, history, and biography.

Crests are the portions most affected, but shields and mottos are daily appropriated. They are taxed luxuries, without the protection of trademarks, an anomaly it would be well to remedy. It need not be said that good heralds are rarely deceived by modern fabrications, whilst with ancient grants the genuine stamp of the time is always traceable, at least by experts familiar with the expression, artistic or architectural, of past periods. Yours, &c.,

Quartier St. Germain, Paris.

LANCELOT BAYARD.

DISCOVERY OF A ROMAN CEMETERY NEAR TO

ERMINE STREET.

MR. URBAN,-The modes of burial have been various, since the day when the patriarch Abraham, seeking a place of sepulchre for his wife Sarah, said to the sons of Heth, "I am a stranger and sojourner with you give me a possession of a burying-place with you, that I may bury

my dead out of my sight" (Gen. xxiii. 4). Among the Jews, as we know from Holy Writ, the dead were usually wrapped in winding-sheets, with spices, and laid in rocky tombs or caves in fields and gardens. The ancient Egyptians embalmed their dead; the Parsees, Thibetans, and Kaffirs left the exposed corpses to be devoured by birds, beasts, or sacred dogs; the Scythians hung the dead bodies on trees; the Hindoos placed them on the muddy banks of the Ganges, to be washed away by its sacred waters; and the Greeks and Romans commonly burnt the bodies and placed the ashes in cinerary urns-urns which, with other heathen emblems of inverted torches and the like, have been made so common in our christian churchyards and cemeteries that the intelligent New Zealander or Zulu might suppose them to be the monumental memorials of so many pagans.

66

But, although the ordinary Roman custom was to burn the corpse and to place its ashes in an urn, yet the more ancient custom of burying the body was occasionally followed. Thus, in the Roman occupation of Britain both practices were observed; and in the numerous Roman cemeteries whose traces have been discovered in this country bodies have been found in coffins of wood, lead, and stone, or under coverings of tiles; and side by side with them have been found cinerary urns containing the ashes of the dead; and also, in a certain part of the cemetery, traces of the ustrinum where the togus or pyra was piled and lighted for the burning of the bodies. Together with these remains are discovered a great quantity of such things as it was thought would be found useful by the deceased in the land of departed spirits, the piece of money that was placed in his mouth to pay for his passage thereto by the ferryman Charon, drinking cups and other vessels, lamps, glass bottles (lachrymatories), weapons, personal ornaments, and articles of dress. The sites for such cemeteries were without the walls of the fortified towns, or by the side of the great high roads, or streets," as they were called (from the Anglo-Saxon, stræt; Latin, strata), which were formed with such wondrous art by the Romans, and traversed the length and breadth of this country. One of their four great roads was called Ermine Street— or, as it is also written, Ermen, from the Anglo-Saxon deity Eormen, after whom it was named. It went from London to Lincoln, and from thence to York, crossing the modern county of Huntingdonshire, where it had two military stations, Durolipons (Godmanchester), on the river Ouse; and Durobrivæ (Castor), on the river Nene. At the latter place and Water Newton (near to which Durobrivæ is marked on the Ordnance Map) most extensive discoveries have been made, at various times, of Roman remains, which were described and illustrated by Camden, Stukeley, Gibson, and Gough; but all previous discoveries in this vicinity were surpassed by those made by Mr. Artis in 1828. He not only found groups of Roman villas and houses, mosaic pavements, baths, sepulchral memorials, and ornaments; but also laid bare some potters' kilns, with numerous specimens of the ware in all its stages. He traced these potteries along the banks of the Nene for a distance of twenty miles, and he conjectures that not less than two thousand persons must have been employed in these extensive Durobrivian potteries. Mr. Artis published a quarto work, in

which his discoveries are most elaborately illustrated. This work, however, is, unfortunately, not very accessible to the general reader, and is not to be found in many public libraries; but this is the less to be regretted, as much of its information and many of its plates have been reproduced (the latter as small woodcuts) in Mr. Wright's most useful work, "The Celt, the Roman, and the Saxon." Following the course of Ermine Street, two miles south of Water Newton, is Chesterton, where were discovered, in Camden's time, some “cofins or sepulchres of stone;" subsequent and similar discoveries at the same spot are mentioned by Dr. Stukeley; and further discoveries of coffins, coins, &c., were made here in 1754. Log canoes, with various fishing implements, have also been discovered in this neighbourhood, whose soil would seem to be filled with evidences of its Roman possessors and their immediate descendants. Three-and-a-half miles further south of Chesterton is the old village of Folkesworth, where the Saxon Folk-mote was wont to be held; and close by this village (though in the parish of Stilton) has recently been discovered the traces of another Roman cemetery, with which I first made acquaintance on December 26, 1866.

It was on the morning of that day that a labourer came to me and said, "We've just begun to mark out for tile-draining in the Folkesworth Close (meadow), and we've found a great stone coffin, with a heap o'buns in it (he meant to say bones); and the gaffir (i.e. the bailiff, which must surely be a corruption of giaffir) wants to know if it is to be took to the churchyard?" To have done this, however-even if such a course had been advisable-would not have been an easy matter; for, on going to the field, I found that the coffin was still in its original position, a foot below the level of the soil, the earth being cleared from above and around it, and that its weight must have been considerable, its dimensions being as follows:-Internal length, 6 feet 2 inches; internal depth, I foot 5 inches; width of base, I foot 2 inches, gradually increasing to a width of 2 feet at the head. The coffin was hewn from a solid block of stone, smoothed only on the inner side, and having a general thickness of 8 inches. Its lid had been raised, and was a ponderous stone of 6 feet 6 inches by 2 feet 2 inches. The position of the coffin was S.E. by N.W., and its southern side had been broken in two places. This had given admission to water and silt, with which the coffin was filled, and in roughly clearing out which the two skeletons had been, unfortunately, disturbed. A surgeon, who saw them on their discovery, pronounced them to be the bones of a male and female: the male, that of a man in the prime of life, who, judging from his thigh-bone, was of more than average height. The skulls were in good condition, and I noticed a few molar teeth in that of the male. No ornaments, pottery, coins, or weapons, were found in or near the coffin, which was without an inscription. The bones of a horse were found in the shallow soil that covered the coffin-lid. The field is on a plateau of high ground overlooking Whittlesea Mere and the whole district of the fens as far as Ely, and it was not brought into cultivation till the year 1803. It is a portion of the Washingley estate, now the property of the Earl of Harrington, who ordered the coffin not to be removed, but to be again covered with the soil, which was accordingly done. The accompanying

sketch was made shortly after the discovery, and shows Folkesworth Church in the background, with the tops of the thatched cottages in the village, and one of those squarely-built pigeon-houses, which formed so important a source of revenue, not only to their owners, but to the royalty which taxed them.

During the three months that succeeded upon the discovery of the stone coffin, the field (of fifteen acres) was tile-drained; but no systematic exploration of the ground has been made, and it is obvious that in the

formation of narrow trenches, many yards asunder, a very inconsiderable portion of the soil would be disturbed. The drainers, too, were only intent on the rapid execution of their own task-work; and, although I offered to reward them for any discoveries, they appeared to think that nothing less than a stone coffin would satisfy me. They, therefore, " made no account of pottery," but smashed and buried it; and in answer to my inquiries replied that they had found nothing but "a few old pots and jars and sich like," the sich like, in one case, including a heap of oyster-shells, the remains, doubtless, of a British delicacy of which the Roman conquerors had partaken. The only coin brought to me from the field was a Nürnberg token, which, of course, was what geologists would call a much later deposit. But, by grubbing about in the drains and turning over the soil, I discovered so many fragments of pottery that the ground, in some cases, was literally strewn by them. These, together with patches of ashes and moist black earth, were found throughout the whole extent of the level field of fifteen acres ; but when, in the following two months, the adjoining field (which is on a sharp slope towards Washingley) was tile-drained