Page:Archaeological Journal, Volume 5.djvu/116

78 rooms in these respective buildings are traced and assigned with sufficient distinctness, a task of no slight difficulty when it was to be performed under the obstructions and impediments the author had to contend against. There is one very singular arrangement in the gateway, that calls for especial mention. On the left hand side was the college bakehouse, and this position would seem to indicate that the bread was baked here for charitable purposes, and distributed to the applicants on their first entrance within the precincts of the institution. That it was a bakehouse of some importance, may be gathered from the fact of the field adjoining being called in the certificate of the college in 1546, the bakehouse mead. Connected in history with the college of Maidstone, is the church of All Saints, where the founder of the former, and the first master were buried. The tomb of the primate is marked by the indent of a very fine brass, and that of John Wootton, the first master, by some remarkable polychromatic decorations painted over it. Of these, the volume before us, besides other decorations, contains a coloured representation, indicating the original to be marked by the mystic symbolism peculiar to medieval works of art. In the name of William Grocyn, who was eleventh master of the college, the reader will recognise an individual, whose friendship with Linacre and Erasmus, and whose own literary acquirements, will however associate him with loftier sympathies. In addition to the chorographical facts relating to the habitation of these secular canons, which this work has brought to light, the author has laid before the public a series of documents bearing upon the general history of the foundation, which tend to throw new information on the manorial and ecclesiastical property in the neighbourhood. If Mr. Post had printed these only, he would have established sufficient claim to the thanks of all those who can appreciate the value of original materials.

the preparation of this agreeable and learned sketch of the history of Northampton, Mr. Hartshorne had the advantage of consulting the archives of the corporation, a valuable privilege rarely granted by our municipal authorities. It is to be hoped that the liberality of the mayor and town-council of Northampton will be generally imitated. What curious results may with reason be expected from the opening of the town chests of Yarmouth, and of Newcastle-on-Tyne, two ports of past and present importance on our eastern coast, the history of which remains to be written. We will say nothing of the metropolis; its great collection of muniments were but superficially examined by Stow, who left more than half of the