Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 8.djvu/576

Rh 554 ESSEX According to tlie recent alterations in the arrangement of the circuits, Essex, Herts, Suffolk, Norfolk, Cambridge shire, and Huntingdonshire are included in the south-eastern circuit, formed by the amalgamation of the home circuit with a portion of the Norfolk circuit. Ecclesiastically Essex be- lyngs to the new diocese of St Albans, instead of Rochester, as formerly. The new see, which also embraces Herts, has a population of 659,152, and an area of 2268 square miles. The county lunatic asylum is situated between Brentwood and Warley barracks; there is an infant orphan asylum at Wanstead, and a seaman s orphan asylum at Snaresbrooke. Essex is comparatively poor in prehistoric remains, but for this it is richly compensated by the variety and value of its Roman and medizeval antiquities. The so-called Dane-pits not improbably belong to the pre-Ronian period : they are almost certainly shafts sunk for chalk, and we know that at a very early date this material was ex ported from Britain to the Continent. By some antiquaries Lexden is regarded as the site of the British town of Camulodunum, and certain mounds are identified with its defences. We know from history that within the present boundaries of Essex the Romans had not only their great central post of Camulodunum, but also stations called Durolitum, Csesaromagus, Canonum, Iceanum, and Othona. The site of several of these, however, is still matter of debate. Durolitum was possibly at or near Romford, no Roman remains having been found at Lay ton, which was ou^e selected from a very superficial similarity of name; C.esaromagus is usually identified with Chelmsford, and Iceanum with Chesterford ; and there is little or no doubt that Othona, the Ithanceaster of Bede, was situated near BradwelL Roman military works have been recognized at Danbury, Tilbury, Harwich, Fleshy, &c., Roman dwelling- houses discovered at Chelmsford, at Sunken Church Field, near Hadstock, at Ridgewell, &c., and Roman cemeteries or tombs at Chelmsford, Chesterford, Hadstock, Bartlow, Coggeshall, and Wormingfield. At Wormingfield alone hundreds of urns have been exhumed. Large quantities of Roman ware have turned up at Stifford and Canvey Island ; and Hallingbury church is far from the only building that has been indebted to the Roman brickmakers. Of Roman works of art discovered in the county perhaps the most remarkable are the Colchester Sphinx and an effigy of a centurion unearthed in the same town. A Roman road connected London with Camulodunum, and another ran from Camulodunum to Cambridge, and sent off a branch to St Albans. It is supposed by many antiquaries that Saxon masonry can be detected in the foundations of several of the Essex churches, but, with the exception of Ashing- don church tower, believed to have been erected by Canute after his victory over Edmund Ironside, there is certainly no very recognizable building belonging to that period. This is probably to be in part ascribed to the fact that the comparative scarcity of stone and the unusual abund ance of timber led to the extensive employment of the latter material. Many of the Essex churches, as Black- mure, Mountnessing, Margaretting, and South Bemfleet, hive still massive porches and towers of timber; and St Andrew s church, Greenstead, with its walls of solid oak, continues an almost unique example of its kind. Of the four &quot;round churches &quot; in England one is in Essex at Little Maplestead ; but it is both the smallest and the most modern. The churches of South Weald, Hadleigh, Blackraore, Heybridge, and Hadstock may be mentioned as containing Norman masonry; Southchurch, Danbury, and Boreham as being partly Early English ; Ingatestone, btebbmg, and Tilty fur specimens of decorated architec ture ; and Messing, Thaxted, and Saffron Walden as speci mens of the Perpendicular. Stained glass windows have j left their traces in several of the churches, the finest remains being those of Margaretting, which represent a tree of Jesse and the daisy or herb Margaret. Paintings have evidently been largely used for internal decoration : a remarkable series, probably of the 12th century, but much restored in the 14th, exists in the chancel of Cop- ford church ; and in the church at Ingatestone there was discovered in 18G8 an almost unique fresco representa tion of the seven deadly sins. The oldest brasses preserved in the county are those of Sir William Fitz-Ralph at Pebmarsh, about 1323 ; Richard of Leltown, at Corringham, 1340 ; Sir John Gifford, at Bowers Gifford, 1348 ; Ralph de -Kneyton, at Aveley, 1370 ; Robert de Swynbourne, at Little Horkesley, 1391 ; and Sir Ingelram de Bruyn, at South Ockendon, 1400. The brass of Thomas Heron, aged 14, at Little Ilford, though dating only from 1517, is of interest as a picture of a schoolboy of the period. Ancient wooden effigies are preserved at Danbury, Little Leighs, and Little Horkesley. Essex was rich in monastic foundations, though the greater number have left but meagre ruins behind. The Benedictines had an abbey at Saffron AValden, nunneries at Barking and Wickes, and priories at Monk s Colne and Hedingham ; the Augustinian canons had an abbey at Waltham (see WALTHAM ABBEY), priories at Thoby, Blackmore, Bicknacre, Little Leighs, Little Dunmow, and St Osyth; there were Cistercian abbeys at Coggeshall, Stratford, and Tilty ; the Cluniac monks were settled at Prittlewell, the Premonstratensians at Beleigh Abbey, and the Knights Hospitallers at Little Maplestead. Barking Abbey is said to date its first origin from the 7th century, the most of the others arose in the 12th and 13th centuries. Besides the keep at Colchester there is a fine Norman castle at Hedingham, and two dilapidated round towers still stand at Hadleigh. Ongar, the house of the De Lacys, and Pleshy, the seat of the earls of Essex, have left only mounds behind them. Havering, the palace that was occupied by so many of our queens, is replaced by a modern house ; Wickham, the mansion of the bishops of London, is no more ; and Theobald s Park, the splendid creation of Lord Burleigh, has shared the same late. New Hall, which was successively occupied by Henry VIII., Elizabeth, the earl of Essex, George Villiers duke of Buckingham, and Cromwell, is now a nunnery of the order of the Holy Sepulchre. Audley End, the mansion of Lord Braybrook, whose name is so well known in connexion with Essex antiquities, is a noble example of the domestic architecture of the Jacobean period; Layer Marney is an interesting proof of the Italian influences that were at work in the time of Wolsey. Horeham Hall was built by Sir John Cutt in the reign of Henry VII., and Gosfield Hall is of about the same date. Its position in the south-eastern corner of England, and its con tiguity to the metropolis, have given Essex no small prominence in the general history of England. The Koinans of the first invasion (55 B c. ) received the nominal submission of its British inhabitants, the Trinobantes, who also occupied portions of what are now Middlesex, Suffolk, Hertfordshire, and Cambridge. &quot;We have nu mismatic evidence of no inconsiderable civilisation among this tribe in the following generation : Cunobelin or Cymbelineis well known from his coins, and his son Caractacus is the great hero of the national defence against the second Koman invasion. The defence, as is well-known, was futile : Camulodunum, the Trinobantian capital, was captured; and Aulus Plautius made it the seat of a magnificent temple to the honour of Claudius the emperor. Dur ing the great Boadicean rebellion, the Romans were driven from their post with terrible slaughter, but they soon recovered their ground and rapidly colonized the country. How thoroughly they took root can be read to this day in the relics they have left. When the Saxons from over the sea began to make raids on the decadent colony, Essex formed part of the domain of the count of tlie Saxon Shore ; and not long after the withdrawal of the Roman f- ires it was occupied by the men whose name it still bears, the Kast Seaxa or East Saxons. Their separate dynasty continued till