Seeing England E-Book

Charles Lancaster

• Herausgeber: Nonsuch Publishing
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2011

Beschreibung

In the seventeenth century antiquarianism was a well-respected profession and antiquarian works were in demand, particularly amongst the gentry, who were especially interested in establishing lineage and the descent of land tenure. Although intended primarily as a source of information about who owned what and where, they often contained fascinating descriptions of the English landscape. Charles Lancaster has examined the town and county surveys of this period and selected the most interesting examples to illustrate the variety and richness of these depictions. Organised by region, he has provided detailed introductions to each excerpt. Including such writers as John Stow, William Dugdale, Elias Ashmole, Daniel Defoe, Gilbert White and Celia Fiennes, this is a book that will appeal to anyone with an interest in both national and local history and to lovers of English scenery.

Leseprobe

To Rosemary

Acknowledgements

I would like to express my gratitude to the scholars who inspired and supported me during my mature-age studies at the University of Western Australia and the University of Notre Dame Australia: Patricia Crawford, Philippa Maddern, Iain Brash, and Catherine Kovesi. I would like to thank certain scholars in England who, in 1998, invited me to call on them and discuss my PhD thesis: Graham Parry of the University of York, Richard Cust of the University of Birmingham, and Jan Broadway, now of Queen Mary University of London. I would like particularly to thank Simon Hamlet, of Nonsuch Publishing, for his advice and assistance in the preparation of this work for publication.

I have acknowledged organisations which have allowed me to use images from works in their care in the captions to the illustrations. I am grateful for the generous and ready assistance offered by the staff of the libraries from which I have obtained these images: the Chatsworth Photo Library, the Wiltshire County Library, the Cornwall County Library, the Warwickshire County Library, the Hertfordshire County Library, the Cumbria County Library, the Oxfordshire County Library, the Hereford Cathedral Library and the Guildhall Library, London.

Most of all I am grateful to my wife Rosemary, my companion in everything, for her encouragement, criticism, and love.

Editorial Note

In transcribing the texts of these readings, I have tried to retain the early modern conventions and vagaries of spelling, punctuation, and usage of fonts. In the interests of giving the reader a slightly more familiar experience, however, I have modernised the use of ‘i’ and ‘j’ and of ‘u’ and ‘v’, I have used ‘the’ in place of ‘ye’, ‘that’ in place of ‘yt’, and have expanded such abbreviations as ‘wch’. I have not used blackletter, usually replacing it with italics, although in the case of those authors, such as Dugdale, who consistently used italics for personal names and blackletter for place names, I have used italics and bold respectively.

Contents

Title

Dedication

Acknowledgements

Introduction

The South-East

I

Kent: William Lambarde (1536–1601)

II

Canterbury: William Somner (1606–1669)

III

Berkshire: Elias Ashmole (1617–1692)

IV

Oxfordshire: Robert Plot (1640–1696)

The South-West

V

Wiltshire: John Aubrey (1626–1697)

VI

Cornwall: Richard Carew (1555–1620)

VII

Devon: Thomas Westcote (1567–1636)

London

VIII

London: John Stow (1525–1605)

IX

Hertfordshire: Henry Chauncy (1633–1719)

X

Seeing the World: The Tradescants

West Midlands

XI

Warwickshire: William Dugdale (1605–1686)

XII

Memorial Warwickshire: William Thomas

XIII

Myddle, Shropshire: Richard Gough (1634–1723)

XIV

Albion—Warwickshire: Michael Drayton (1563–1631)

East Midlands

XV

Albion—Derbyshire: Michael Drayton

XVI

Stamford, Lincolnshire: Richard Butcher (1586/7–1664)

East Anglia

XVII

Norfolk: Thomas Browne (1605–1682)

Yorkshire and the Humber

XVIII

York: Francis Drake (1696–1771)

XIX

Yorkshire: William Bray (1736–1832)

The North-West

XX

Cheshire: William Smith (c.1550–1618) and William Webb

The North-East

XXI

Britannia—Northumberland: William Camden (1551–1623)

After Antiquarianism

XXII

Newcastle and Cumberland: Celia Fiennes (1662–1741)

XXIII

Cambridgeshire: Daniel Defoe (1660–1731)

XXIV

Cumberland and Westmorland: William Gilpin (1724–1804)

XXV

Cornwall: William Borlase (1695–1772)

XXVI

Selborne, Hampshire: Gilbert White (1720–1793)

Imagining England

Bibliography

Copyright

Introduction

Concerning the Soyle: It is for the most part, chalkie, though the upper cruste in the South and West parts, be for the most part of redde earth mixed with gravell, which yet by reason of the white marle under it, yeeldeth good wheat and oates: But of it owne nature most enclined to wood, and coupisses, affording also faire wayes. In the North part of the Shire, as in the hundreds of Hitche, and Oddesey, the soyle is very apt to yeeld corne, and dertie wayes, especially that part which is accompted parcell of a vayle called of the countrie men the vayle of Ring-tayle or Wring-tayle or rather Ringdale, which extendeth it selfe also into Cambridg-shire. And affordeth no small store of wheat and malte towards the provision of London.

John Norden, 1598, describing Hertfordshire

This parish hath severall lands belonging thereunto, to be imployed to pious uses, viz. Henry Parson, and William his sonne, 13°. Junii 22°. Edw. 4. conveyed (to their use for ever) a messuage and acre of land (which messuage was of late times called the Church house, and adjoyneth to the Church-yard) the rent thereof, and of the land thereunto, is imployed towards reparation of the Church, and upon part of the land was erected an Almeshouse (which is imployed for the use of the poore of this Parish) and in the close of the said messuage, is another house, usually called the Sexton’s house, the same having been, for about sixty years past, used for the habitation of the Sexton of this Parish, and these messuages and lands are enjoyed accordingly.

Richard Kilburne, 1659, describing Hawkhurst, Kent

But ’tis more remarkable still, how great a Part of these Downs comes, by a new Method of Husbandry, not only to be made arable, but to bear plentiful Crops of Wheat, tho’ never known to our Ancestors to be capable of such a Thing; nay, they would probably have laughed at any one that had gone about to plough up the wild Downs and Hills, which they thought only fit for Sheep-walks; but Experience has made the present Age wiser, and more skilful in Husbandry; for only by folding the Sheep upon those Lands, after they are turn’d up with the Plough, (which generally goes within Three or Four Inches of solid Rock of Chalk) they become abundantly fruitful, and bear very good Wheat, as well as Rye and Barley.

Daniel Defoe, 1722, describing Salisbury Plain

Among the singularities of this place the two rocky hollow lanes, the one to Alton, and the other to the forest, deserve our attention. These roads, running through the malm lands, are, by the traffic of ages, and the fretting of water, worn down through the first stratum of our freestone, and partly through the second; so that they look more like water-courses than roads; and are bedded with naked rag for furlongs together. In many places they are reduced sixteen or eighteen feet beneath the level of the fields; and after floods, and in frosts, exhibit very grotesque and wild appearances, from the tangled roots that are twisted among the strata, and from the torrents rushing down their broken sides; and especially when those cascades are frozen into icicles, hanging in all the fanciful shapes of frost-work. These rugged gloomy scenes affright the ladies when they peep down into them from the paths above, and make timid horsemen shudder while they ride along them; but delight the naturalist with their various botany, and particularly with their curious filices with which they abound.

Gilbert White, 1789, describing Selborne, Hampshire

We see in different ways. We see by looking, but we also see without consciously looking. On returning to a place inhabited earlier in life, for example, we recognise not only the landmarks and features, but also the background landscape, the part of the scene which we never really noticed. When seventeenth-century writers described places in England, they gave details about whatever they deemed most significant about the place, and this did not usually include the background scenery. But they were not unaware of this background, and occasionally it emerged in their writing: a glimpse, an impression, perhaps something more. A writer reports consciously that which has been observed, and in an incidental way that of which he or she is aware by familiarity. In this collection, extracts containing remarks which, to a greater or lesser degree, describe scenes—either the landscapes of places or features of the landscape—have been taken from the works of certain seventeenth- and eighteenth-century antiquaries, travellers, and naturalists whose purpose was place description.

Over the course of the two hundred years in which these writers were active, the English landscape was seen and described in very different ways. The four passages quoted above, each describing a place in England, might serve to illustrate this statement. Yet it could justifiably be asked whether the authors were attempting to describe landscape at all, or, indeed, at least for the first two, whether they had a concept which would correspond to the idea of landscape as we understand it now.1 The first, written by John Norden, is from a topographical county survey and concentrates only on salient features, without any close detail. The passage by Richard Kilburne is from a county survey whose chief concerns are tenancy and genealogy: the county is seen only as consisting of properties. Six decades later, Defoe is writing an immediate and personal account, based on his own travels, in which the county is a lively society. Instead of boundaries, names, and dates drawn from documents, we are amongst the opinions and talk of people and learning something of their lives. Another sixty-odd years and we find, in Gilbert White’s description of Selborne, images of the landscape so vivid that we are conscious of the writer in the act of seeing; as well, we become aware of his lively interest in people and society, and the varied responses people may have to the landscape—and all this in an account of his investigations into the natural world as he found it in his parish.

In spite of the differences, each of these accounts may be read as a landscape of a type, whether rural, urban, or social. The early modern passages offered in this book are mainly from works which were written with the express purpose of describing places in England, including early topographical or, more correctly, chorographical county and town surveys,2 some other types of seventeenth-century antiquarian literature, and finally, looking ahead, descriptions which were not specifically antiquarian, like Gilbert White’s, and with which readers in the twenty-first century may feel more familiar. As well as illustrating the different ways town and country England might be seen, they describe country estates, streets, markets, churches, games, megalithic monuments, and scenery wild and gentle. But to begin, some remarks should be made about antiquarian writing, and for this purpose we will consider one of the most celebrated examples of its time.

The Antiquities of Warwickshire, which appeared in 1656, was a description written by William Dugdale of the county in which he was born, lived, and had his estate. Dugdale had searched for and collected detailed information over a period of about twenty years, and the resulting work was a daunting volume of some 800 folio pages of close printing. That it was an undertaking of such industry and dedication suggests that his feelings for his county were both proud and affectionate, and that his descriptive words and phrases should betray these feelings. And no more than a cursory scan of his text is sufficient not only to show this to be the case, but also to reveal the special direction of his admiration. But in the whole of his detailed textual traversal of Warwickshire, Dugdale scarcely used the adjective ‘beautiful’.3 Adjectives which he used much more frequently included ‘noble’, ‘ancient’, and ‘honourable’, consistent with the point of view of a gentleman writing for the class of people who owned land and who belonged to families of long and noteworthy standing. Therefore we may expect, instead of reading about hills and valleys, forests and fields, villages and farms, and of the buildings and views in which they consist, to encounter family lineages and histories of tenancies; instead of the architecture and decoration of church buildings and monastic remains, we read of charters and bequests, of the patrons and incumbents of livings, of obits and funeral monuments. The Warwickshire scene which Dugdale saw was indeed quite particular, and was different from that which other observers, in different times and with different attitudes, might have seen when they looked upon the same set of objects. The word ‘antiquities’ in the title of his book suggests immediately the selectiveness of his view: he sees that which is honourable and praiseworthy, that which can be perceived to be comparable with the remains of classical times. It was in these terms that he framed his description.4

Such county surveys were written primarily for readers who were themselves members of the families that were the subject-matter of the books. They were the subscribers who funded the printing, they contributed plates depicting their country houses or family tombs, they gave the authors access to their ‘evidences’—arms, charters, seals—and it was their ancestors whose exploits and titles were the matter of the historical narratives. The resulting book was a celebration of the gentry and an assertion of the place of gentry families in society. Amid the political uncertainties of the mid-seventeenth century, the county survey became moreover a means of preserving the fragile memorials of ancestors, for printed books, unlike stained-glass windows and marble gravestones, could not be smashed or defaced, and enjoyed the security of existing in numerous copies. And for the same reason they could better serve as evidence in future litigation when title to arms or land was contested.

The writing of place descriptions, whether historical or topographical, or with regard to sovereignty and tenancy of lands, was one of the main endeavours in which antiquaries were engaged. The modern counterparts of their works would perhaps be travel books, visitors’ guides, municipal directories, year books; all of which, to a greater or lesser extent and in one way or another, tell what a place looks like. Depending on purpose and intended readership, some such books will give prominence to the beauty of the place being described, others will give mainly factual data and statistics. The antiquaries, however, might be expected to provide both of these aspects of a place description, because as well as giving factual details, they were also, usually, extolling the superior resources, achievements, and desirability of the place. And amongst the attributes to be praised one would expect some account to be given of the landscape: its highlights and its unique features. But, in most cases, this is not so. For it is a very particular attribute of a place which predominates the antiquarian scene: this quality most earnestly sought is antiquity, whether in the place, in its name, in its buildings, or in the people and events of its past.

The dates of the antiquarian extracts in this book range from 1576, when the first early modern county survey was published, to 1777. Most are taken from works whose stated purpose was to describe a county, a town, or a parish, or, in the case of William Camden, who could also be described as a traveller, the nation as a whole. Some of the antiquarian authors, such as John Aubrey and Robert Plot, could also be described as natural historians, encompassing a broader range of interests than the more prevalent gentry-oriented subject-matter of which Dugdale’s book is an example. Surveying the works of this genre through the seventeenth century, it is possible to see a development from one decade to the next, but that development is neither consistent nor chronological. Of course, this is not at all surprising: a review of so many years of observing and writing should indeed produce a variety of ways of seeing England. Every writer has individual notions of the goals of the writing, the expected readership, and the purposes for which readers will read. But in antiquarian writing about England the constant reference to the past is ubiquitous: descriptions of places begin with their histories; families and estates are traced back, preferably to Domesday Book, or, failing that, as far as possible; placenames are analysed etymologically to determine their origins; earlier authorities are called upon in examining natural phenomena.

While this historical predilection is evident in all the antiquaries’ works, it may not be immediately apparent in every one of the scenes presented in this collection. This is an editorial consequence of the chosen extracts having been selected primarily for their descriptive content, so that they are not always typical of the whole works from which they were drawn. But the historical element is usually present to some degree, and, in many cases, especially in the type of writing of which Dugdale’s survey of Warwickshire is typical, it is not possible to find a single descriptive passage which does not primarily offer an historical point of view. It must also be said that much of what antiquarian works contain, while once of intense interest to certain contemporary readers, is now of value only to historical researchers. The present-day reader must hunt through pages of data to find those more lively interludes which give some glimpse of the background against which the transactions are made, the successions realised, the battles fought, the laws enacted. And it is in such interludes that we might see what the writer saw, and his words might betray his feelings as he wrote. But, if we are to judge by these extracts, the evocation of sensibilities on seeing the landscape is not readily discernible in descriptive writing during the seventeenth century, and it is the somewhat erratic emergence of the personal response that will be one of the more interesting features of the sequence of documents covered in this survey. In the latter section of the book are presented a few contrasting extracts of genres which emerged out of the antiquarian tradition: also descriptions of places in England, they have more focussed views and more specific purposes. Antiquarian research was their precursor, and in it their beginnings may be discerned.

The seventeenth-century antiquarian authors of county surveys were members of a scholarly profession which has no corresponding counterpart in our own times, the nearest approach to it being in the use of the adjective ‘antiquarian’ applied to old or rare books which are collected, bought, or sold. The obsolescence of a profession is intriguing, for it casts some light on our understanding of the needs of a past society and its differences from our own. Antiquarianism was, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, a sophisticated and arcane field of learning which found application in dealing with any of a wide range of interests. In general, antiquaries sought origins: of institutions, of laws, of names, of families, of estates. Their source materials were manuscripts, seals, coins, monuments, epitaphs, representations of arms in stained-glass windows and on tombs. Many had studied or were practising law, or else were gentlemen writing genealogical records of their ancestry, and therefore antiquaries were able to offer a very pertinent service to a particular sector of the population: those who owned land. They were frequently called upon in support of litigation, and their services were especially in demand after the dissolution of the monasteries in the later years of the reign of King Henry VIII: a far-reaching redistribution of property had taken place, and many landowners found it necessary to seek evidence of their title to lands which were held on the basis of ancestry.

The type of antiquarian research which developed in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in England is generally thought to have begun in Renaissance Italy with the work of Flavio Biondo.5 It is well known that one of the characteristics of early humanist thought was the admiration of classical civilization, with an associated concern to recover its remains from ruin. Biondo documented the remains in a geographical framework, producing early examples of what came to be known as chorography.6 Essentially this referred to the description of either or both of the natural and civil history of a particular place by following through the various locations in some systematic manner. By this means, local features which provided evidence of natural or past phenomena or events could be discussed. Some writers classified chorography according to the nature of the place being surveyed, so as to distinguish it from other methodologies such as cosmography, geography and topography.7 Although the chorographical form came to prominence at this time, it was not new, and moreover it was adopted into humanist scholarship, not invented by it. Medieval examples which were known in England included the works of Gerald of Wales, William of Worcester, and John Rous.8

The pursuit of antiquarian knowledge, like so many other types of learning, spread from Italy to other parts of Europe in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. In England this development coincided with the somewhat reluctant debate, which began in the first half of the sixteenth century, about the veracity of the traditional account of the history of Britain, the ‘Brut’, which had originally been written comprehensively four hundred years earlier by Geoffrey of Monmouth.9 It was becoming evident to scholars who were reading literature by Continental authors that this ancient history was discordant with those being written in Italy and France. Indeed it was an expatriate Italian scholar, Polydore Vergil, whose more detached and critical view of English history precipitated its re-examination.10 The growing consciousness of England as a prominent identity in the world, under the Tudor regime, stimulated the desire to discover anew the remains of England’s past, both in documents and in artefacts. The first major attempt to undertake such a work in the sixteenth century was an ambitious one whose author endeavoured to embrace the nation as a whole. He was John Leland, who had been commissioned in 1533 by Henry VIII to search monastic libraries for ancient documents, although the motives which prompted this task are not entirely clear.11 His vast project, which was to have included a detailed topographical description and maps of England and Wales, was never brought to completion, although his notes, compiled during years of travel through the country, served as valuable source material for antiquaries in decades to come.

Leland’s view was conservative: he was fervently patriotic, so that his work was to have been a celebration of the Tudor state, so much the better for an heroic history. Kendrick said of him that he had ‘in spite of his Renaissance upbringing, a medieval mind’12, suggesting that there were anomalies in his critical evaluation of sources, such that certain legendary figures were accorded historical status. It is, nevertheless, evident that Leland’s work was the beginning of a new approach in English scholarship, for he initiated, in his own age, the chorographical methodology for antiquarianism, he used observation as a tool for research, and he highlighted the wealth of manuscripts that could be used as historical sources. His name occurs frequently in the footnotes of authors of the seventeenth century. Above all, his work was the inspiration for a plan by Elizabethan antiquaries to develop a description of all the counties. William Lambarde was the author of the first of these, devoted to Kent.

It was not until fifty years after his death that the goal to which Leland had aspired was attained. William Camden’s Britannia, printed in 1586, was the first comprehensive description of the whole country; it became a model for antiquarian research, both in terms of its subject-matter and its methods. It was also the first historical study of England in which the country’s classical past was examined. Camden was in touch with European humanist scholarship, and he was aware of new approaches which had been taken to the historical and geographical framing of nationhood. His project was the investigation of the remains of the past in order to understand British origins—of places, customs, institutions, names. His chorographical methodology was inspired not only by Leland, whose notes he used, but also by the Flemish cartographer Abraham Ortelius.13 The particular past to which his attention was directed was the Roman past, the era before which he did not believe it was possible to go with any certainty.14 Camden’s work became so well known that it was a precedent which all succeeding antiquaries would have had in mind. Indeed, their footnotes show that they used it frequently as a source, thus according it significant scholarly standing.

Britannia was not, however, Camden’s only contribution to the development of English antiquarianism; he was one of the founders of the Elizabethan Society of Antiquaries, at about the same time as his great book first appeared.15 This group of up to twenty-four scholars, lawyers and administrative officials met regularly to exchange ideas on topics relevant to the English past. Their activities continued until early in the reign of King James I, when they suddenly ceased. This was possibly a result of royal disapproval, since the topical emphasis had moved from topography, titles and institutions to religion, law and parliament, and the flavour of the discussions had drifted from antiquity to politics.16 One of the most important contributors to the society’s proceedings was Robert Cotton, one of Camden’s pupils.17 He also made available to his fellow antiquaries his extensive library, which became one of the most valuable English antiquarian resources of the seventeenth century.18 The growth of libraries and the development of antiquarian research went hand in hand, for collections of manuscripts were the most necessary resource. Other significant collections were those of John Selden and of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, home of the manuscripts which were collected in the sixteenth century by Matthew Parker, Queen Elizabeth’s first Archbishop of Canterbury.19

Genealogical county surveys and histories of families and estates constituted only a small segment of the range of works that English antiquarian scholars were producing in the seventeenth century. With the benefit of the accumulation of manuscripts and books begun by John Leland and continued with great industry by Matthew Parker and others, editions of ancient documents, as well as surveys and investigations of pre-Conquest inhabitants and institutions, derived primarily from the study of such documents, were now being printed.20 Some idea of the variety of antiquarian investigation is indicated by a small sample of titles from the period: John Selden’s Jani Anglorum Facies Altera (1610), on the history of English law; his Titles of Honour (1614); his De Diis Syriis (1617), a study of Middle Eastern deities in biblical times; his History of Tithes (1618); James Ussher’s history of the British church, Britannicarum Ecclesiarum Antiquitates (1639) and his Annales Veteris et Novi Testamenti (1650–54), an historical commentary on the Bible; Henry Spelman’s history of church councils, Concilia, Decreta, Leges, Constitutiones in Re Ecclesarium Orbis Britannici (1639); Thomas Fuller’s Church History of Britain (1655); William Burton’s Commentary on Antoninus his Itinerary (1658); and William Somner’s Anglo-Saxon dictionary (1659).

The business of collecting, classifying, and interpreting the remains of the past was not the same as that of the historian, who was also concerned with the past but who had different goals in dealing with it. Through the Middle Ages there had been numerous chroniclers, whose narratives simply recounted reigns and events as they happened, year by year, and these compilations of data were indeed somewhat akin to antiquarian collections, in that their authors had not sought to understand the underlying causes and effects. The writing of real history demanded analysis of the past, enabling the writer to develop a narrative informed by some sort of understanding of the motives for and outcomes of the words and actions of the people whose lives and deeds it recounted. Its value was primarily didactic: history offered an extension, back into the past, of living human experience, from which we might learn and benefit. This was relevant especially for leaders, for history was made by the heads of nations, of churches, of armies, of monasteries. It is not surprising, then, that history was primarily written as material for the moral instruction of those who would become princes and generals, and that most histories dealt with the reigns of particular monarchs. Writers of history often sought to maximise the moral significance of events by having the historical protagonists deliver speeches which would seemingly have been appropriate, or by modifying details such as numbers of soldiers in armies.

Over the course of the sixteenth century, intellectual change in England was to a considerable extent precipitated by the introduction of the ideas which are now referred to as Renaissance humanism. In particular, historical methodology was influenced by the model of the classical historian Thucydides, demanding a new paradigm of accuracy and truth, to the extent that the only reliable source of data was the eyewitness. Such a position would have impossible consequences, not the least of which was that history about the more distant past could not be written. Here, then, was a part for antiquaries to play, for they could support history-writing by providing, from their collected remains of the past, sources of information comparable in their veracity with eyewitness accounts. The knowledge discovered by the antiquaries was the raw material for the revelation of wisdom by the historians. It was inevitable that antiquarian scholarship would come to be thought of as inferior, as Thomas Blundeville remarked in 1574 in his treatise on history-writing: ‘… I can not tell whyther I may deryde, or rather pittie the great follie of those which having consumed all theyr lyfe tyme in hystories, doe know nothing in the ende, but the discents, genealoges, and petygrees, of noble men, and when such a King or Emperour raigned, & such lyke stuffe …’21

While histories were narrations, an antiquary had less need for eloquence and rhetoric, and could present his information in such basic forms as lists, tables, and transcripts of documents. Fortunately few confined their treatises to so bald a presentation, and sought instead a more engaging and readable style. The first work from which we present an extract is A Perambulation of Kent, by William Lambarde, and this is an excellent example of the approach which antiquaries were to take in describing places in England: Lambarde’s was the first topographical survey for a very long time, and it was taken as a model for humanist county surveys for years to come. Apart from the fact that his work was the first of its type, Lambarde was influential because it was his stated desire that books should be written about all the counties, so that A Perambulation of Kent would be the beginning of an illustrious description of the whole of England. At the time, Lambarde’s friend William Camden was working on his description of the whole nation, Britannia, which was finished in 1586, ten years after the appearance of the survey of Kent.

Following the chorographical methodology, the reader of one of these works is taken from place to place and is given an historical account at each of the stops. The information provided might include any or all of the origins of the placename, the earliest establishment of the manor or whatever other seat of power that might be or have been there, references to relevant Domesday Book records, the lineal descent of the successive occupying families, patrons and beneficiaries of the living of the local parish church, and accounts of great events which occurred either at the place or which involved members of the families of the local lords. Prior to all this, the book would usually offer some more general data applicable to the county as a whole, such as important physical attributes, as well as administrative details: lists of members of parliament, sheriffs, mayors of cities, incumbents of bishoprics, and divisions into hundreds and parishes. It can readily be seen that such a scheme does not leave much room for describing the landscape, but elements of this may be found in the outlines of physical attributes or even in the passages on particular places. In Lambarde’s general description of Kent, where the features of the county are treated in turn with concision and purpose, the language is impersonal and rhetorical:

In fertile and fruitfull woodes and trees, this Country is most florishing also, whether you respect the mast of Oke, Beeche and chesten for cattaile: or the fruit of Apples, Peares, Cherries, and Plums for men: for besides great store of oke and beeche, it hath whole woodes that beare Chestnutt, a mast (if I may so call it, and not rather a fruite, whereof even delicate persons disdaine not to feede) not commonly seene in other countries: But as for Ortchards of Apples, and Gardeins of Cheries, and those of the most delicious and exquisite kindes that can be, no part of the Realme (that I know) hath them, either in such quantitie and number, or with such arte and industrie, set and planted.22

This is descriptive in a very limited way: it does not in fact describe any particular place, but gives only a general impression of a type of landscape one might expect to encounter in Kent. Yet William Lambarde himself is not entirely absent from this text, which faintly betrays his contentment and pride in his own part of England.

Lambarde’s hope that his study of Kent would be an example for others to write about their own counties was the beginning of an engagement, by several chorographical antiquaries, in the daunting task of describing their nation. Camden’s Britannia was an attempt to embrace all of the country, John Norden took up Lambarde’s challenge, himself writing about a number of counties, and, early in the seventeenth century, John Speed was the author of an ambitious cartographical project, presenting the nation and all its counties in maps.23 It was a period of national awareness, promoted by the emergence of England under the Tudor monarchy as a power in Europe, but searching for an identity which could be anchored to a heritage in antiquity.

By the end of the reign of Elizabeth I, the sense of nationhood in England was reinforced both in the light of having resisted the threats of the Catholic Church and of Spain, and with the advent of the Stuart monarchy and the concomitant union with Scotland. But a generation later, a new menace began to develop with the growing antagonism between Crown and Parliament. Even before the outbreak of civil war in 1642, there were tensions at many levels: between institutions of government, between classes of citizens, between adherents of differing religious practices. It was a time of iconoclasm and ‘levelling’, of political engagement and social change, its violent end being a world ‘turned upside down’.24 Those most threatened were the nobility and gentry, the traditional holders of political and social power and of wealth and influence. The writers of descriptions and histories of places in the nation were of this group, and in these works the dominant concern became the documentation of title and heritage. This is why books such as Dugdale’s study of Warwickshire are almost wholly genealogical, creating a permanent record, in the form of a published book, of the marble epitaphs and glass depictions of family coats-of-arms whose future preservation had become so precarious. As well, such texts, resolutely located in another, better time, nostalgically recaptured for their readers what Dugdale called ‘those flourishing Ages past’.25The Antiquities of Warwickshire was not the first book of its type, but it was the culmination of a development and the most perfectly realised example. Its predecessors were Samson Erdeswicke’s Survey of Staffordshire (1593–1603), which was not published during its author’s lifetime, an early edition of it being produced by Dugdale himself; John Stow’s Survay of London (1598), a vivid description of the late Elizabethan city; William Burton’s Description of Leicester Shire (1632); and another town survey, William Somner’s Antiquities of Canterbury (1640).

In the middle years of the seventeenth century, another type of observation of England became apparent. This had an investigative agenda which was part of a revival of scientific thinking and was consistent with the methodology of Francis Bacon.26 At the heart of the Baconian system was a principle which has been accepted without question ever since: that to find out about the world, it was necessary to observe it, and to know the truth of conjecture, it was necessary to experiment. Moreover, it came to be inherent in scientific methodology that knowledge did not have to be certain, as given by divine revelation or deduced by logic, but could be developed with increasing degrees of probability, by collecting numerous instances of confirmation and inducing a conclusion. Using such intellectual tools, antiquarian research could address natural history as well as civic history, and new fields of knowledge could be explored. Robert Plot, author of The Natural History of Oxfordshire (1677) and The Natural History of Staffordshire (1686) was a pioneer of studies which would now be classified as botany, zoology, geology, meteorology, and agronomy; John Aubrey, who wrote much but published little (his most interesting work, Monumenta Britannica, was not in print till 1982), was an early systematic investigator of archaeology and anthropology. In both cases, however, the maturity of their work does not really warrant the application of these names, belonging as they do to disciplines of a later age. But it was a major advance: when Dugdale investigated the origin of barrows, he relied for his evidence on the writings of previous, even Roman, observers; Aubrey, doing the same thing, went out and made measurements.

The second half of the seventeenth century was the time of a proliferation of intellectual endeavours: mathematics, astronomy, physics, chemistry, anatomy, medicine; it was the time of the Royal Society and of a growing fascination with scientific experimentation. Part of this was ‘natural history’, the term used to describe the study of all that which is to be found in the world around us, but which could not readily be attributed to people. Its objects were soils, rivers, rocks, plants, animals, meteorological phenomena, and the more inexplicable phenomena, such as fossils and megalithic monuments. With this last item we are again investigating the past, for it was understood that dolmens, standing stones and barrows were ancient, but that their history was apparently unwritten. In the observation and speculation on the origins of such ancient monuments, natural history and history merged, and knowledge of the world could be driven further and further back into the past. This was mysterious territory indeed, for it was understood that, as Bishop Ussher had demonstrated in 1650, the Creation had taken place in 4004 BC,27 so that exploration so far back in time made a significant approach to that awesome event.

The urge to discover more about the world naturally led to keener observation of the landscape, and this is evident in the texts of the time. But in the works of the exemplars included here (Robert Plot, John Aubrey and Thomas Browne), the landscape remains in the background, it is certain particulars within it which are being seen, and there is little more recognition of its qualities than there was in the genealogical studies of honour and tenure. At the same time as scholars were examining parts of the country to learn about nature, many continued to produce studies of estates and landed families, although in the early eighteenth century there was a perceptible change of emphasis from the manor to the parish. Robert Thoroton’s Antiquities of Nottinghamshire (1677), James Wright’s History and Antiquities of the County of Rutland (1684), and Henry Chauncy’s Historical Antiquities of Hertfordshire (1700) are all modelled on William Dugdale’s survey of Warwickshire. With Robert Atkyns’s Ancient and Present State of Glostershire (1712) the subject is, as the title suggests, as much the present as the past, and the more extensive examination of parishes broadens the scope from the gentry to the wider community.

Of these several surveys, the present collection includes, besides an extract from Dugdale’s Warwickshire, only one other, an example from Chauncy’s Hertfordshire, these two being offered as representatives of the genealogical approach.28 The second, updated, edition of Dugdale’s description of Warwickshire, produced in 1730 by William Thomas, was a financial failure, suggesting that there was a declining demand for folio tomes enumerating county estates and families. The selected eighteenth-century antiquarian descriptions include readings from Francis Drake’s magisterial Eboracum, a study of York, which appeared in 1736, and a very different piece, describing Yorkshire scenery, which is from a travel guide written by the antiquary William Bray in 1777. The former is a detailed and scholarly examination of the city as municipality, archdiocese and site of Roman remains, while the other, taken from the Sketch of a Tour in Derbyshire and Yorkshire, is a new genre and an example of a later direction in antiquarian writing.

This book is about written description, but in considering landscape scenes, it is pictorial art which comes firstly to mind, and some mention should be made of its part. Prior to the end of the Tudor period, the depiction of landscape is scarcely encountered in English painting, except when it constitutes a background in a portrait. The work usually credited to be the first English landscape is that known as Wedding at Bermondsey,29 and the genre did not develop until the seventeenth century, and then only in the hands of certain visiting Dutch artists, especially Anthony Van Dyck. Another continental artist, who stayed in England and did considerable work for antiquaries, including William Dugdale, Thomas Fuller, Inigo Jones, and Elias Ashmole, was the etcher Wenceslaus Hollar, who came from Prague in 1636 in the service of Thomas Howard, Earl of Arundel. Hollar’s best-known works now are his spectacular views of London from the south bank of the Thames, executed at various times both before and after the Great Fire of 1666. These are valuable historically, as are his views of the interior and exterior of St Paul’s Cathedral before it was destroyed in that same disaster: his images are the only record of the great building. His etchings of scenes at Albury, the Earl of Arundel’s seat in Surrey, are tranquil, nostalgic images which are utterly unlike contemporaneous antiquarian descriptions, recording neither events nor dates nor names, but only the perception of beauty in still waters, reflections of trees, and clouds above. These were perhaps more personal works, intended not as records and not undertaken for commission. If we are to judge by the remarks made variously by John Aubrey and Elias Ashmole when they had viewed collections of paintings, it would seem that the main function of pictorial art was deemed to be portraiture—the creating of likenesses of famous and powerful people—and the illustration of stories from classical mythology.30

As from the first half of the eighteenth century, there was huge diversification in the writing of the landscape, and the second group of selections given here is intended to do no more than show some of the directions to which antiquarian scholarship eventually led. The authors are the solitary traveller Celia Fiennes, the novelist and social commentator Daniel Defoe, the archaeologist William Borlase, the aesthetic tourist William Gilpin, and the naturalist Gilbert White. In their several ways, these observers attend specifically to the landscape so that it becomes a subject of enquiry itself: the background to which writers a hundred or so years before had been indifferent becomes the predominant component of what is seen. These are manifestations of the tandem cultivation of scientific research, which has been remarked upon above, and of sensibility to natural beauty, which were almost contiguous in the time-frame of their development.

Certainly there was at this time a consciousness of the landscape which led people to become aware, when seeing it, of such qualities as fecundity, beauty, mystery, power or desolateness. This is a sensibility which is familiar, for it has remained with us ever since, and there is no reason to suppose that it had not been a normal part of people’s perception of the world in earlier times, but prior to the eighteenth century it seems not to have been given expression in everyday descriptive accounts of places. Even when feelings evoked by nature are evident in earlier poetry and paintings, it is not as the subject of the work but as the backdrop. By the mid-eighteenth century this had changed: landscape scenes were becoming subjects for painting, they were being celebrated in poetry, and people were travelling away from their homes to seek them out. And moreover these scenic qualities, which are not empirical but are apprehended by human sentiment, came to be evident in descriptions which were written not to be poetical, but just to be informative. The response to nature became spontaneous instead of cerebral.

There were two important influences in the genesis of this development. The classical emphasis in literary education had made people familiar with the works of Horace and Virgil, both of whose poetry included pastoral episodes which invoked an idyllic Golden Age in which everyone enjoyed a peaceful existence in harmony with the natural world. In response to this came a tendency to associate real scenery with poetic imagery and a wistful contemplation of achieving the pleasures of a pastoral life by escaping into the countryside. As well, the eighteenth-century institution of the Grand Tour afforded those who were fortunate enough to participate in this indulgence the chance to enjoy the classical landscapes in reality, as they visited Italy, France, and the Alps. Travellers who desired to return to England with tangible memories of the evocative scenes they had experienced could purchase paintings by such artists as Claude Lorrain, Gaspard Dughet, and Salvator Rosa.31 Naturally the influx of this art had an influence, and landscape painting in England began to be valued more highly. At the same time there was a growing desire to seek such scenery at home, and travel to the more promising parts, such as the mountains of Wales, the highlands of Scotland, and the Lake District of northern England, began to become more popular.

There came, then, to be a new awareness of country scenery in which it was associated firstly with classical art and subsequently with vernacular art as painters increasingly produced local landscapes—especially in Gothic and Celtic traditions—comparable with those of the Italian masters. The aesthetic pursuit in this art was to capture the feelings termed the ‘Beautiful’ and the ‘Sublime’, which could not be apprehended by reason but by the imagination. Beauty was attractive and reassuring, while the Sublime was terrifying and powerful; Beauty was evoked by green meadows, calm waters and country cottages, the Sublime by towering mountains, waterfalls, and ruined castles. This was art which refrained from making moral or social statements, hence the relative unimportance of figures in the landscape. It was also art which invited travel into the countryside in order to experience the source of the art and to enjoy the comforting pleasure of the Beautiful and the ‘pleasing melancholy’ and ‘agreeable horror’ of the Sublime. This striking focus on seeing the landscape is in marked contrast to the general indifference with which it had usually been treated in earlier times. It was analysed, sketched, described, and extolled in poetry as people ‘discovered’ it and made it one of the most significant objects of their travels and leisure. William Gilpin developed an aesthetic system, the picturesque, for seeing the country and painting landscapes. Using picturesque guidelines, the artist could even improve the scenery encountered in nature. Scenes could be viewed with a ‘Claude glass’, a framed mirror which allowed the prospective picture to be visualised and the best angle chosen, the glass could be tinted to give the picture the mellow tones so common in the works of the Italian masters (possibly caused by over-zealous varnishing), and extra objects could be inserted in order to create more pleasing foregrounds or ‘off-skips’, framing of the landscape at the sides.

In the mid-eighteenth century, with the diminishing danger of highwaymen, improved roads, and better accommodation, travel became an activity in which more people participated, and this was a development which was supported by a burgeoning trade in travel guidebooks. As might be expected, these were to a considerable extent associated with the aesthetic interest in the countryside, and those locations which offered wild and undeveloped scenery became the most favoured. It was after the battle of Culloden in 1746 that the Highlands of Scotland became accessible to tourists, who could now be free from fear of Jacobite rebels.32 The attraction of this part of the country was enhanced by an interest in Celtic culture, especially after the publication in 1760 of James Macpherson’s Fragments of Ancient Poetry, Collected in the Highlands of Scotland, which was the first of several purported works of a third-century Caledonian bard called Ossian and his father Fingal.33 The wild and rugged landscapes of the Highlands were quite unlike the gentle scenes encountered in Italy, but they corresponded to the sentiments of Romanticism, an aesthetic attitude remote from the neoclassical influence of the destinations in the Grand Tour. A new kind of tourism developed, its destinations being Scotland, Wales, and the more remote parts of northern England, especially the Lake District.

Thomas West was a native of Cumberland, and his Guide to the Lakes did much to popularise the spectacular mountain and lake scenery which he described.34 He specified ‘stations’ around each lake, to which the artist-traveller was directed in order to obtain the ideal sketches. William Gilpin, who was from Westmorland, wrote a lengthy description of the Lakes in one of his ‘tour journals’, each of which describes a region of Britain and analyses the scenes in the countryside according to picturesque guidelines. Many were drawn to this region, the most famous being William Wordsworth, his sister Dorothy, and their friend Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Wordsworth himself wrote a Guide to the Lakes and the gentle beauty of the surroundings of Grasmere, where he lived when he first came to the district, pervades much of his earlier poetry. These last writers are not included in this collection, for it cannot be argued that they are descendants of the antiquaries of the seventeenth century: they represent a break from that tradition and set out on the declaration of a new apprehension of the landscape.

With William Borlase, the pioneering archaeologist, there can be no hesitation in recognising his literary ancestry: he was, indeed, an antiquary in the full sense of the word, but, like the remarkable John Aubrey, he went a step further in his methodology. For Borlase, observation and measurement were the main sources of knowledge, more than the authority of predecessors. Finally, in the work of Gilbert White little more remains of the antiquarian tradition than its essential framework. His survey embraces all that is in the parish of Selborne, the people, their properties, animals, and plants; he is an observant, thorough, and systematic naturalist; he is a scholar of the classics; he is a poet of the world around him.

Notes

1. John Norden was a topographer who embarked on a project to write descriptions of all the counties of England, collectively to be called Speculum Britanniae. Richard Kilburne wrote two studies of Kent; Defoe and White are discussed in later chapters of this book. The extracts are taken from: John Norden, 1598 Speculi Britanniae pars the description of Hartfordshire, 1598, pp.1–2; Richard Kilburne, A Topographie or Survey of the County of Kent, 1659, p.134; Daniel Defoe, A Tour thro’ the Whole Island of Great Britain, vol I, pp.272-273, Gilbert White, The Natural History of Selborne, p.11.

2. A chorographical survey is one in which the reader is given historical accounts of places arranged according to their geographical locations.

3. Three rare instances are when Dugdale is writing about the church of St Michael at Coventry, pp.92, 96, and 105.

4. The full title was The Antiquities of Warwickshire Illustrated; From Records, Leiger-Books, Manuscripts, Charters, Evidences, Tombes, and Armes: Beautified With Maps, Prospects, and Portraictures. The word ‘illustrated’ was not an indication that the book contained pictures (although it did), but in this context meant ‘made famous’.

5. See, for example, Joseph M. Levine, Humanism and History: Origins of Modern English Historiography, Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1987, p.77; Barbara Shapiro, Probability and Certainty in Seventeenth-Century England, Princeton University Press, 1983, p.121.

6. The first of these was the Roma instaurata of 1453, a survey of Rome’s ancient monuments.

7. Wilhelm Bedwell explained types of geography thus: ‘Cosmography importeth a description of the world, the whole world, consisting of the Heav’nly spheares and Earthly globe: Geography, of the Earth alone, and the Sea invironing it: Chorography, of some particular kingdome or province of the Earth: So is Topography, nothing els but a description of some one particular place, village, or towne in some kingdome, province, country or other.’ (Wilhelm Bedwell: A Brief Description of The Town of Tottenham High Crosse, in Middlesex, London, 1631, reprinted in 1818 as Appendix II of William Robinson: The History and Antiquities of the Parish of Tottenham High Cross, in the County of Middlesex, Middlesex, 1818, Book I, Ch. I, ‘Of the Definition, or Forme of the Village’.)

8. Gerard of Wales wrote accounts of journeys through Wales; John Rous studied arms, armour, clothing and seals in Warwickshire; and William Worcester wrote an account of a journey from Norwich to St Michael’s Mount and a survey of Bristol.

9. The date of Geoffrey of Monmouth’s book, now known as The History of the Kings of Britain, has been put at between 1130 and 1138. Little is known of his life (c.1100–1154) except for the last years, when he was Bishop of St Asaph. He was Welsh, but spent most of his life in England, probably at Oxford. See, for example, the Introduction in the edition by Lewis Thorpe, Penguin Books, 1966, pp.9 and 38.

10. Polydore Vergil (c.1470–1555) worked initially at Urbino, where he wrote his De inventoribus rerum, a learned study of origins, which quickly became widely celebrated. Joining the service of the Pope, Polydore was sent to England as sub-collector of Peter’s Pence in 1502, and was enthusiastically received both by Henry VII and by the leading English scholars. His major work was his history of England, Anglica historia, for which he used many sources which he treated critically and comparatively, following the rigorous precepts of humanist historiography. His research led him to repudiate the traditional history of Geoffrey of Monmouth, a matter which caused considerable controversy amongst English historical writers for decades to come. The development of doubt about the ‘Brut’ is discussed by Thomas Kendrick, British Antiquity, London: Methuen, 1950, chapters III, V, and VI, and May McKisack, Medieval History in the Tudor Age, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1971, chapter V. Kendrick in his chapter VI, ‘The Battle over the British History’, gives a number of the arguments that were used to defend the traditional account. Camden’s cautious approach is discussed by Graham Parry, The Trophies of Time: English Antiquarians of the Seventeenth Century, Oxford University Press, 1995, pp.27–8.

11. John Leland (c.1503–1552), poet and antiquary, studied at Cambridge, Oxford and Paris. On his return to England he was given a commission by Henry VIII to survey monastic libraries. Subsequently he travelled extensively in England, making his topographical observations. Kendrick, British Antiquity, pp.50–51; McKisack, Medieval History in the Tudor Age, pp.2–5. Kendrick’s fourth chapter is a useful account of Leland’s career.

12.British Antiquity, p.49. Kendrick was using the word ‘medieval’ pejoratively to suggest credulity. His assessment of Leland’s achievement was ambivalent.

13. Abraham Ortelius (1527–1598), map-maker of Antwerp, travelled widely and had many contacts in England. He corresponded extensively with intellectuals from all parts of Europe and accumulated a large library and a considerable collection of coins.

14.Britannia was first published in Latin in 1586, with an English edition appearing in 1610. A revised edition appeared in 1695. For a discussion of Camden’s Britannia, see Parry, Trophies of Time, pp.23-43.

15. McKisack, Medieval History in the Tudor Age, p.153; Kevin Sharpe, Sir Robert Cotton, 1586–1631: History and Politics in Early Modern England, Oxford University Press, 1979 pp.17–18.

16. Sharpe, Sir Robert Cotton, pp.30–32; Parry, Trophies of Time, p.44.

17.Ibid., pp.19–22. Robert Cotton (1571–1631) was both antiquary and member of parliament.

18.Ibid., pp.48–83.

19.Ibid., p.73. Matthew Parker (1504–1575) was a reforming clergyman who became the first Archbishop of Canterbury of the reign of Queen Elizabeth I. He was a patron of scholars and himself collected and edited medieval manuscripts, some not very sympathetically (his editing often involved correcting material with which he, as a Protestant, did not agree). See McKisack, Medieval History in the Tudor Age, pp.26–49.

20. See Parry, Trophies of Time, chapters 1–6, for a review of the work of the major antiquaries of the first half of the seventeenth century: Camden, Verstegan, Cotton, Selden, Ussher, Spelman, and Somner.

21. Blundeville, Thomas, The True Order and Method of Wryting and Reading Hystories, Amsterdam: Theatrum Orbis Terrarum, 1979. (1st edn, London, 1574)

22.A Perambulation of Kent, p.10.

23. John Norden (c.1547–1625), was himself a cartographer, but also the author of Speculum Britanniae, a set of county descriptions, of which he completed Northamptonshire, Middlesex, Surrey, Essex, Sussex, Hampshire, the Isle of Wight, Jersey, Guernsey, Hertfordshire, and Cornwall, each including a map. Some were published in his life-time, some later. The maps were incorporated into a later edition of Camden’s Britannia. John Speed (1552–1629) produced more detailed county maps in his Theatre of the Empire of Great Britain, with brief county descriptions which were, in turn, borrowed from Camden. The English ‘father of map-making’, however, was Christopher Saxton (c.1543–1610), creator, for Elizabeth I, of the first national atlas (although he did not use that term).

24. A contemporary phrase, used in recent times by Christopher Hill in the title of one of his studies of the English Revolution.

25. From the dedicatory epistle ‘To my Honoured Friends the Gentry of Warwickshire’, unpaginated. (In the second edition this is placed at the beginning of Volume II.)

26. Francis Bacon (1561–1657), of London and St Albans, pursued a legal and political career under Elizabeth I and James I, culminating in his appointment as Lord Chancellor and his being created Viscount St Alban, although this career ended abruptly in impeachment after he fell out of favour with the king and his favourite, the Duke of Buckingham. Of more lasting influence was his philosophical career: he wrote on politics and ethics and, most importantly, on natural philosophy.

27. The two completed parts of James Ussher’s Annales Veteris et Novi Testamenti appeared in 1650 and 1654 respectively. An English translation, The Annals of the Old and New Testament or The Annals of the World deduced from the origin of Time, was published in 1658, two years after Ussher’s death.

28. The inclusion of these titles here serves to show how few county surveys actually came to publication between 1656 and 1712. To those given must be added two studies of Kent, which would substantially have been written before Dugdale’s Antiquities of Warwickshire became available: A Topographie, or Survey of the County of Kent by Richard Kilburne and Villare Cantianum, or, Kent Surveyed and Illustrated, by John Philipot (both 1659). The paucity of these books is doubtless due to the enormous amounts of intricate research which they demanded: many were projected, but few authors were able to see the task through to completion. Dugdale commented critically on what he saw as inaccuracies and inadequacies in Thoroton’s Nottinghamshire, resulting from that author’s inability to do all his research himself and consequently having relied on work undertaken by others.

29.Wedding at Bermondsey, by Joris Hoefnagel, 1570, also known as Wedding at Horsleydown in Bermondsey, and as Fete at Bermondsey, is the result of a visitor seeing England. Hoefnagel was a Belgian artist who visited England for a few years, and his vision of a rural English festive occasion is Flemish in appearance. Sometimes described as the earliest English landscape painting, it is a valuable source of information about English dress and social customs of its time. Jan Siberechts (1627–1703) was another Flemish visitor of the late seventeenth century. He painted some scenes of country houses, one of which was Chatsworth, and it was from this painting that Richard Wilson’s View of Elizabethan Chatsworth was copied.

30. See extracts from these authors, below.

31. Claude Lorrain (1602–1682), also known as Claude Gellée, or simply as ‘Claude’, and Gaspard Dughet (1615–1675), were French artists who worked mainly in the vicinity of Rome, producing landscapes whose distinctive style was characterised by the choice of Arcadian scenery, presented in golden afternoon or morning light, with foregrounds of dark trees or rocks, backgrounds of serene mountains, and small pastoral figures to one side. Landscapes by the Italian Salvator Rosa (1615–1673) offered a different kind of Romance, with stormy skies, dark forests, waterfalls, and forbidding mountains.

32. It was the last battle fought on mainland Britain. The Jacobite Rising of 1745, in support of Charles Edward Stuart (‘Bonnie Prince Charlie’) as a claimant of the British throne, finished with the decisive defeat of the rebels by the British Army at Culloden.

33. James Macpherson (1736–1796), of the Scottish highlands, brought out other works of ‘Ossian’: Fingal: an Ancient Epic Poem