Page:Archaeological Journal, Volume 1.djvu/387

Rh other, inasmuch as the marginal notes on each successive membrane follow each other in the same sort of order, the contents merely varying for the most part in the number of workmen employed throughout a particular week, and in the relative sums paid for their labour. These side-titles are arranged under the heads of fodiatores, foundation or fosse diggers; cementarii, masons: dealbatores, plasterers; cubatores, layers; quarreatores, quarrymen; carpentarii, carpenters; plumbarii, plumbers; cissores, smiths; servatores, labourers; and all the weekly expenses incurred under these workmen, according as they were employed, are entered under their own peculiar divisions. The same regular system of arrangement is pursued in all the Rolls I have examined, and being once understood, it becomes a simple matter to refer to an item of expenditure under any of these departments. They are a class of records little consulted, and still less appreciated, but they are nevertheless a most curious and valuable series of documents, serving to illustrate in a most instructive manner, the comparative value of labour in Great Britain. They are replete with Medieval statistics, copious in architectural nomenclature, and above all they throw great light on the science of, developing the nature of military tenures and military defences, at a period when the barons of England were living in continual rebellion against the Crown, and when the nation at large had its thoughts and energies entirely turned to resistance and war.

It cannot, I think, but be deemed an historical loss that all these documents should have remained almost unexamined, and perhaps it is a fond hope that the unpatriotic economy which checked the publication of even a specimen of one of them, should be compensated for by the zeal of those societies whose aim and institution is professedly to elucidate British History and Antiquities. The talents and discrimination of the Rev. Joseph Hunter, have shewn however, how they may be rendered subservient to increasing our knowledge of art, when it rose to its greatest height in our country, and Mr. Botfield by printing at his own charge an entire Roll, has furnished a memorable example of taste and munificence. But as regards the future, while the press will reek with the ink of unread reprints and impure Elizabethan pamphlets, these, the varied records of England's greatness, the of history, civil, military, and ecclesiastical, the  of