A History of the Weald of Kent. By Robert Farley.
Volume U.,. Parts 1 and 2. (Ashford, H. Igglesden ; London, John Russell Smith.) —Mr. Furley has done so much, has collected so vast an amount of information, that it would be most ungracious not to make an ample acknowledgment of his learning and industry. Much of his volume seems to an ordinary reader to possess little interest and value. Yet archaeologists often find a use for details of the apparently trivial kind- What we do miss in the book is the treatment of certain subjects of undoubted importance. We do not object to being told who was the possessor of this and that manor in a given year of the thirteenth and fourteenth century, but we are dissatisfied if this matter excludes what is really of more importance. There are schools, for instance, of considerable antiquity and standing in Kent.. There is Tunbridge, to mention one of out of several. Now Mr. Furley does tell us of an interesting circumstance about education at Tunbridge. In 1525, Archbishop Warham consulted the inhabitants of that town about the priory. He wished to make them understand, that "it would be more to the pleasure of God and the advantage of them and their children" that they should have "forty children of that country to be brought up in learning, and afterwards promoted to Ox- ford," than that six or seven canons should subsist on the revenues in. question. Religious duties were not to be neglected, for certain priests were to sing continually for their founder. The inhabitants of Tunbridge, however, "two or three excepted," preferred their canons, not knowing the times, for they soon lost them, and failed to get their school. Wolsey got the lands of the priory for Cardinal College, and when Wolsey fell the Crown got them, and from the Crown they came to Sir Henry Sidney, whose descendants, we imagine, hold them now. It was not till nearly thirty years afterwards that Sir A. Judd founded the present grammar-school. Of the fortunes of that institution we might well have been told something. It has been presided over by some mon of note, Vicesiums Knox, for instance, and has turned out others. Sir Thomas White included it in the benefits of his foundation of St. John's. College, Oxford. It has wealth in prospect, if not in possession, which should make it one of the greatest schools in England. We hope that Mr. Farley may be called upon for a second edition of his work, which indeed well deserves such support, and that he may then remove the cause of our complaint. We are sure that he would do it very well.
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