Page:Archaeological Journal, Volume 2.djvu/361

Rh has been usual to speak of this building as a barn, but it presents many claims to be reputed a specimen of domestic architecture.

Tradition has called it the Parliament-house, or the House of Commons, the castle being called the House of Lords, but its legitimate title to that distinction also rests on suppositious evidence. I must, however, confess myself inclined to favour the conjecture that it either was so or at all events formed part of a contiguous building. Meanwhile passing over this point as one that will probably never admit of satisfactory settlement, we come next to the transactions that have more immediately associated Acton Burnell with the constitutional history of England.

Much unmerited obloquy has been cast upon the name of Edward, for his supposed massacre of the Welsh bards, and this harsh and erroneous estimate of his character has become interwoven with history itself, and thus passed into current