Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 25.djvu/417

H of Richard III (Mich. f. 22), but the offence is there stated to have consisted in the falsification of a record, in order to reduce a fine imposed on a poor man from 13s. 4d. to 6s. 8d. Nothing is said of the committal to the Tower, and the amount of the fine is given as eight hundred marks. According to a tradition which first makes its appearance in Coke's ‘Institutes’ (pt. iv. 255), the fine was applied to building a tower in Palace Yard, opposite the entrance to Westminster Hall, with a clock which struck the hours so as to be heard within the hall. There appears to be no reason to doubt that a clock-tower which stood on the spot indicated, and was not pulled down until 1715, was erected towards the close of the thirteenth century. In the time of Elizabeth the tradition was so well known that Justice Southcote, in refusing to alter a record, observed that he did not mean to build a clock-tower (, Survey of Westminster, ed. Strype, vi. 55; Archæologia, v. 427, xxxiii. 10). The same formula was used by Chief-justice Holt on a similar occasion. After the demolition of the tower its site was marked by a sundial, with the motto ‘Discite justitiam moniti,’ until the present century (, Antiq. Westm. p. 28). Notwithstanding his disgrace, Hengham was summoned to the parliament of March 1300 among the justices and others of the council; was commissioned to perambulate the forests in the counties of Essex, Buckingham, and Oxford in the following April (Archæologia, xxxvii. 435); and on 14 Sept. 1301 was appointed chief justice of the common pleas. He was degraded, however, on the accession of Edward II, to the post of puisne judge of the same court. His last summons to parliament is dated 27 April 1309. He died on 18 May 1311, and was buried on the 27th in St. Paul's Cathedral (Chron. Edw. I and II, Rolls Ser., i. 270). His tomb was in the north aisle facing the choir, and bore the following inscription:— Per versus patet hos Anglorum quod jacet hic flos; Legum qui tuta dictavit vera statuta, Ex Hengham dictus Radulphus vir benedictus. (, St. Paul's, ed. Ellis, pp. 33, 68). Hengham is the reputed author of a register of writs, which perhaps formed the basis of the great compilation entitled ‘Registrum Cancellariæ,’ or ‘Registrum omnium Brevium,’ first printed in 1531, and styled by Coke ‘the most ancient book of the law’ (Inst. pt. iv.); also of two manuals of practice, entitled ‘Hengham Magna’ and ‘Hengham Parva,’ written in barbarous Latin, and edited by Selden in 1616. The antiquity and repute of these treatises is established by the fact that Selden mentions an English translation of them as extant in a manuscript of the time of Edward II or Edward III (, Chron. Ser. 56;, De Laudibus Legum Angliæ). Tanner (Bibl. Brit.-Hib.) mentions two other Hengham manuscripts, namely, ‘Summa Judicandi essonia,’ and ‘Cum sit necessarium,’ the first of which seems by its title to be merely a fragment of the ‘Hengham Magna.’ There are also some treatises ascribed to Hengham in the manuscript collection in the possession of Lord Tollemache, of Helmingham Hall, Suffolk (Hist. MSS. Comm. 1st Rep. App. 61). 

HENGIST (d. 488), joint-founder with his brother Horsa (d. 455) of the English kingdom of Kent, belonged to a leading family of the Jutes, settled in the peninsula of Jutland, where they held land as far south as the river Sley, which runs into the sea near Schleswig. In early traditions their ancestry is traced back to the gods. Witta, who is described as their grandfather, and, according to Beowulf, ‘ruled Sueves,’ is supposed by Sir James Simpson to be the Vetta, son of Victi, whose burial is commemorated by the inscription on the Catstane at Kirkliston, between six and seven miles from Edinburgh. The suggestion is ingenious, and it is clear from Ammianus Marcellinus that Saxons, a name that might fairly be taken to include Jutes or Angles, were in Scotland, leagued with the Picts and Scots, about 364, a date at which it is quite possible for the grandfather of Hengist to have been alive. Kemble suggested, on the other hand, that not only their ancestors, who are traced back to Teutonic divinities, but Hengist and Horsa themselves, were mythical. The word ‘Hengist’ means a horse, and in the names of the hero's family ‘names of horses’ form a distinguishing part of the royal appellatives. Thus the whole story, it is suggested, may spring out of some prehistoric worship of horses. But there is sufficient contemporary evidence of the existence of Hengist and Horsa as human beings to make this theory untenable. The absence, however, of any contemporary accounts of their careers in