A History of Royston. By Alfred Kingston. (Elliot Stock. 75.
6d.)—Royston stands, partly in Cambridgeshire, partly in Hertfordshire, at the crossing of Erwin Street and Icknield Street. Such a situation would soon become more or less populous. This certainly was so in very early times. As to the name, little can be said. We may_dismiss the popular etymology of the "Lady Royale." The place could hardly have waited for a distinctive appellation till the earliest of the personages so named. The first great event in the history of Royston is the foundation of the monastery, a house of Augustinian Canons. This never became very great or very distinguished. But we happen to know a good deal about it. Its history shows that it was as much a secular as a religious institution. It exercised an extensive civil jurisdiction, and it farmed on a large scale. Nothing could be more remote from the coenobitism of the early Church, as it was practised, say, in the deserts of the Thebaid. With the Dissolution began the parochial existence of Royston. The people had used the conventual church, and were left without spiritual help. The town seems to have purchased the building, though no record of the transaction is extant ; and the King made a not very liberal provision for the parson. He was to be a vicar endowed with the small tithes, the great being left to the four old parishes out of which the new one was carved. Trouble, of course, followed. The church fell into disrepair, and in 1650 the Parliamentary Commissioners reported that the tithes were worth .f.,5 per annum, and that "the parish was destitute of a minister for want of maintenance." In 1660 an Act was passed which gave the vicar a rate of one shilling in the pound on rental. The present value is .2282, of which more than a half comes from Queen Anne's Bounty and the Ecclesiastical Commissioners. Royston furnished James I. with a country house, which was built out of two old inns,—the town was well supplied with these conveniences, as indeed most English towns both were and are. A pack of harriers was set up, for which £66 13s. 4d. was allowed, being somewhat more than £3 per couple. For non-hunting days, &c., a cockpit was provided. The Xing liked to have his hunting made easy, for in 1617 the farmers were bidden to take down the high bounds between lands which "hinder his Majesty's ready passage." King Charles carried on his father's habits till the time came when be had to be otherwise occupied. Nothing of a remarkable kind has to be recorded, but we may say that Mr. Kingston has performed his task with admirable industry and care.—With this volume may be mentioned The Royal Manor of Hitchin and its Lords, by Wentworth Huyshe (Macmillan and Co., 10s. 6d. net). The speciality of Mr. Huyshe's volume—a matter, as he observes with well-justified satisfaction, "unknown to any of the county historians "—is the pre-Conquest tenure of the Hitchin Manor. Tovi Prude, was a great noble in the days of King Runt, a constant witness of that King's Charters,—it was at Ton's wedding that King Hardicannte dropped dead "as he stood at his drink." Tovi founded a religious House -in honour of an "Invention of the Cross," of which an even unusually extravagant account is given by a monastic chronicler. King Harold largely increased the foundation. Finally, the manor passed into the hands of the Balliols, a noble house of Picardy. The earliest extant grant is one of William II. to Guy de Balliol. Guy was a liberal donor to the Church, maldng a grant of a virgate of land to Bt. Albans, which, by way of return, received him into full fraternity. After Guy came his nephew Bernard, the builder of Barnard's Castle, and he vias followed by his son Bernard II. Eustace came after Bernard II., and after Eustace, Hugh. The oldest son and successor of Eustace was John I. He married Devorgilla, the- foundress of Balliol College, Oxford,—a generous act, no doubt, but not so impressive as it might otherwise seem when we read that she possessed in her own right most of the county of Galloway,. Betel and Kenmore Castles, and many other estates and manors. They were worth £80,000 a year in terms of our money. It was this Devorgilla's son, John Balliol II., who, having the fataL inheritance of the Scottish Crown, fell out with Edward I. And. so we are brought into the general current of history. This is a. most painstaking and interesting book.
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