A GREAT COUNTY HISTORY.•
The Victoria History of the Counties of England, the first fine volume of which appears at the opening of the new century, is conceived and published on a scale worthy of a great subject. The idea of issuing such a work as a complete history of the English counties, embodying not only a national survey of our land as it is to-day, but a complete record, from the earliest times, of the changes in the physical features of each shire, the story of its inhabitants from pre- historic times, of its antiquities, its social and ecclesiastical history, its land tenure, and its particular indust4es and products, marks emphatically that respect for local history and local feeling which is among the sound developments of
• The Victoria History of the Counties of &viand: Hampshire and the Isis of Wight. 4 vole. London; Constable and Co. [546s. net, to enbacnibers oni,vd the later part of the late Queen's reign. In the Middle readable, and copiously illustrated. Two geological maps, a botanical map, a Roman and a Domesday map, are good examples of the kind of cartography suited to the subject ; and the figures of Roman remains are clear and good. Every page is intended to be either itself material for reference, or to be a general guide to the intelligent use of the vast mass of material collected and arranged. In the natural history sections, that on the marine zoology of the county, by Mr. Walter Garstang, of the Marine Laboratory at Plymouth, is perhaps the newest feature, for until recent years it was a subject on which a plentiful stock of ignorance existed. Among the most numerous sections are those on the Insecta, under the general editorship of Mr. Herbert Goss. Hampshire and the Isle of Wight are famous for their butterflies, but here the legions of the smaller insects are also set forth. Not a beetle or fly, mollusc or spider, crawls on Hampshire marsh or heath but is duly entered in these lists of the minutest fauna. It is difficult to say much that is new of the Hampshire birds, but Mr. Meade Waldo, who has lived for years in the New Forest, gives abundance of personal observation in short compass of the habits and haunts of the rarer kinds. As this is the first volume of the series, the chapters introductory to such important subjects as the remains of Roman occupation, or the great survey and assessment of Domesday, are neces- sarily fuller and more important than will be the case in later volumes. This makes the present instalment more valuable, and in a sense indispensable to the due understand- ing of the treatment of these subjects in other counties. Domesday Book was kept at Winchester, and probably com- piled there. There the lost original returns were probably kept, in the Treasury of the Norman Kings. Mr. J. Horace Round's chapter on the Hampshire Domesday generally could scarcely be better done. After dismissing with good grounds the story of a previous Domesday Book of Alfred's, he takes the actual records dealing with the Hampshire manors, and pre- sents the real condition of the county at that date as the book reveals it to a skilled and sensible antiquary. What became of the dispossessed Saxon thegns ? Did the King really distribute his grants of the forfeited lands so that no Norman might have overweening territorial influence ? Did the King " waste " the county to make his forests? These are among the important questions to which Mr. Round brings his conclusions from the lists of tenants of Hampshire manors. It appears that the unhappy Saxon thegns simply disappeared. The possessors are nearly all Normans, the " antecessors " Saxons. Of sixteen manors held in Hampshire by Ralf de Mortimer, thirteen had belonged to a Saxon thegn, one Cheping. But Cheping seems to have been assigned a small property belonging to the King, just enough to keep him alive, in another part of the county. Others held parts of their former land as sub-tenants of some Norman. Only one named Ode of Winchester seems to have weathered the storm and kept his lands in many counties. "The names of even the greatest of Edward the Confessor's thegns were mere shadows in the land" when Domesday was written. The writer deems that the scattered grants of manors, which has been thought a deliberate policy of the Conqueror, was perhaps due to other causes, principally that a Norman had all the lands of some Saxon given him, lands which were often in detached and distant shires. The greatest Hampshire tenant, Hugh de Port, had fifty-six manors in the county held directly from the Crown, and thirteen others from the Bishop of Bayeux. He and his descendants held this solid block, as well as manors elsewhere for a long period, as tenant-in-chief. But he also held others as an under-tenant. Every manor on this " monstrous cantle" of Hampshire had belonged to a different Englishman, whose unhappy name is entered as the ante- cessor in each case. We agree with Mr. Round that the evidence for the " wasting " of the New Forest district is un- reliable. For much additional light on this subject the reader must consult the chapter. Victorian Era this sentiment had not had time to grow. The actual disadvantages under which the pro- vinces laboured from distance and difficulty of communication stifled natural local pride in actual local poverty. The dis- abilities of the counties were summed up under the name of "provincialism." There was a positive disinclination to enter- tain the idea of the continuity of county history as an actuality. A hard-and-fast Line was drawn between " antiqui- ties," whether buildings, dialect, or customs, and active county life. The existing county histories reflect this feeling. They are of all kinds, good and bad; some very bad. But nearly all were very costly, intended to be published by the aid of a limited number of subscribers, and, with some brilliant ex- ceptions, apparently meant only for perusal by local readers. Without indexes or references, with no sense of proportion or definite arrangements, their splendid folios are the despair of the student who consults them. The volume and complete- ness of the change, and the growth of knowledge and apprecia- tion of local history, which had been flowing unobtrusively in various channels, suddenly became manifest when the counties were given local self-government, and at the time of the Parlia- mentary Redistribution Bill. County history suddenly took she.). c 'n the new county administration. Forgotten boundaries and " shires" were revived in new Parliamentary divisions; old offices, from that of the Alderman to that of the " agister," were revived—even the " ale conner " may before long re- appear—the County Councils took under their wing the old mote halls and buildings, even the birds and plants of their shires ; great nobles became town Mayors and county Alder- men ; presidents of local antiquarian societies, instead of being looked on as dryasdusts. were held in honour; and the county assets, all and singular, castles, customs, flora and fauna, are scheduled, protected, and esteemed.
The object of the compilers and authors of the present series is to make the work as encyclopaedic as is possible. In each county the story begins, or is to begin, with the true tale of the soil, the earth and rocks, and the primitive lines of rivers and sea. Thence it travels through the ages down to the first traces of the appearance of man. The entire natural history of the county, with every branch treated by eminent specialists practically acquainted with the district, is inserted between the chapters on geology and palaeontology and those on primitive man, and exhaustive lists of every insect, bird, mammal, fish, flower, seaweed, lichen, and fern are given, with well-written introductions and notes as to the distribu- tion of each in the county, and remarks on the habits or locality of the more noteworthy. Thus in the volume before us the natural history alone embraces twenty-nine separate treatises, all by eminent hands, preceded by a general intro- duction by Mr. Aubyn Trevor-Battye, who acts as honorary secretary to the Advisory Council throughout.
In selecting Hampshire as the first county to be treated the compilers faced a task of the greatest interest, but of peculiar difficulty. The richness of its natural features is equalled by their diversity. There is little in common between the Isle of Wight and the North Hampshire downs. The New Forest has an absolutely separate life and history from the Dimon Valley, and the Portsmouth peninsula has nothing in keep- ing with either. The social and political history of the shire is still more locally particularised, and has been from the days of the Normans. Southampton Town, the military port of the late Plantagenets, has an absolutely diverse history from Winchester, the capital of Wessex and of the first Norman Kings. Still less is ecclesiastical Winchester linked to indus- trial Basingstoke, or Farnham Castle with Portsmouth Dockyard. Again, there was no Roman Hampshire in the political sense at all; and the admirable chapters on its Roman remains in the present volume have by necessity to be linked to the general scheme of Roman administration and life in the whole province of Britain. We may say that each and every subject dealt with in this volume is treated with seriousness and success, and that the later chapters on the history of the county, as generally under- stood—the Roman-British period, the Silchester ruins and remains, the Anglo-Saxon period, and closing with the com- plete text of the Hampshire Domesday, with a critical intro- duction, in which a page and the two covers of the Winton Domesday are shown in excellent full-page plates—is full, the later part of the late Queen's reign. In the Middle readable, and copiously illustrated. Two geological maps, a botanical map, a Roman and a Domesday map, are good examples of the kind of cartography suited to the subject ; and the figures of Roman remains are clear and good. Every page is intended to be either itself material for reference, or to be a general guide to the intelligent use of the vast mass of material collected and arranged. In the natural history sections, that on the marine zoology of the county, by Mr. Walter Garstang, of the Marine Laboratory at Plymouth, is perhaps the newest feature, for until recent years it was a subject on which a plentiful stock of ignorance existed. Among the most numerous sections are those on the Insecta, under the general editorship of Mr. Herbert Goss. Hampshire and the Isle of Wight are famous for their butterflies, but here the legions of the smaller insects are also set forth. Not a beetle or fly, mollusc or spider, crawls on Hampshire marsh or heath but is duly entered in these lists of the minutest fauna. It is difficult to say much that is new of the Hampshire birds, but Mr. Meade Waldo, who has lived for years in the New Forest, gives abundance of personal observation in short compass of the habits and haunts of the rarer kinds. As this is the first volume of the series, the chapters introductory to such important subjects as the remains of Roman occupation, or the great survey and assessment of Domesday, are neces- sarily fuller and more important than will be the case in later volumes. This makes the present instalment more valuable, and in a sense indispensable to the due understand- ing of the treatment of these subjects in other counties. Domesday Book was kept at Winchester, and probably com- piled there. There the lost original returns were probably kept, in the Treasury of the Norman Kings. Mr. J. Horace Round's chapter on the Hampshire Domesday generally could scarcely be better done. After dismissing with good grounds the story of a previous Domesday Book of Alfred's, he takes the actual records dealing with the Hampshire manors, and pre- sents the real condition of the county at that date as the book reveals it to a skilled and sensible antiquary. What became of the dispossessed Saxon thegns ? Did the King really distribute his grants of the forfeited lands so that no Norman might have overweening territorial influence ? Did the King " waste " the county to make his forests? These are among the important questions to which Mr. Round brings his conclusions from the lists of tenants of Hampshire manors. It appears that the unhappy Saxon thegns simply disappeared. The possessors are nearly all Normans, the " antecessors " Saxons. Of sixteen manors held in Hampshire by Ralf de Mortimer, thirteen had belonged to a Saxon thegn, one Cheping. But Cheping seems to have been assigned a small property belonging to the King, just enough to keep him alive, in another part of the county. Others held parts of their former land as sub-tenants of some Norman. Only one named Ode of Winchester seems to have weathered the storm and kept his lands in many counties. "The names of even the greatest of Edward the Confessor's thegns were mere shadows in the land" when Domesday was written. The writer deems that the scattered grants of manors, which has been thought a deliberate policy of the Conqueror, was perhaps due to other causes, principally that a Norman had all the lands of some Saxon given him, lands which were often in detached and distant shires. The greatest Hampshire tenant, Hugh de Port, had fifty-six manors in the county held directly from the Crown, and thirteen others from the Bishop of Bayeux. He and his descendants held this solid block, as well as manors elsewhere for a long period, as tenant-in-chief. But he also held others as an under-tenant. Every manor on this " monstrous cantle" of Hampshire had belonged to a different Englishman, whose unhappy name is entered as the ante- cessor in each case. We agree with Mr. Round that the evidence for the " wasting " of the New Forest district is un- reliable. For much additional light on this subject the reader must consult the chapter.
In reviewing such a monumental and varied work as this it is impossible even to give a complete list of the contributors. But we may safely say that the names all carry weight for local or general knowledge, and that the work done is even better than might be expected. The book is beautifully printed, on good yet light paper. It is also handsomely bound. No finer addition could be made to a country-house library ; it is, in fact, a library itself.
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