Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 11.djvu/267

 10 s. XL MAR. is,

NOTES AND QUERIES.

219

NOTES ON BOOKS, &a

Memorials of Old London. Edited by P. H.

Ditchfield,'F.S.A. 2 vols. (Bemrose & Sons.) ALL lovers of old London (and who is not ? ) should possess themselves of these two delight- ful volumes, edited by a well-known antiquary, Mr. Ditchfield, who has also written the chap- ters on Crosby Hall and the forthcoming London Pageant. Of the latter he says that it " will be all very beautiful, very grand, instructive and edifying, and profoundly interesting ; but, after all, London needs no Pageant to set forth its attractions, historical and spectacular. London is in itself a Pageant. The street-names, the buildings, cathedral, churches, prisons, theatres, the river with the bridges, and countless other objects, all summon up the memories of the past, and form a Pageant that is altogether satisfying." The other chapters have also been written by experts who have made the subjects treated their special study. Of course there is no attempt to make the work exhaustive, for " London con- tains so much that is of profound interest that many additional volumes would be needed in order to describe all its treasures." Our readers can well endorse this, to judge from the space the subject has occupied in our columns.

The first chapter, ' London hi Early Times,' is by Mr. W. J. Loftie. This is divided into three portions Celtic, Roman, and Saxon Lon- don. The vexed question as to the origin of the name of London is thus dealt with : " The Welsh Lynn is pronounced lunn. Dun or down has passed into English. Thame or thames occurs in many parts of England, everywhere denoting the same thing, and, according to most authorities, being practically the same as the English word tame" A great authority, Mr. Bradley, is said to have stated that Lynn hi London may be a personal name. " The ordinary interpretation," continues Mr. Loftie, "is so simple that it seems hardly worth while un- philosophical, in fact to search for another. Lynn, pronounced Lunn, is a lake. Dun is a down or hill. London, as the first syllable may be taken adjectively, will mean the Lake Hill."

Mr. Harold Sands writes on the Tower of London : "Of the various fortress -palaces of Europe, not one can lay claim to so long or so interesting a history." " Probably the sole building erected by a reigning monarch as a combined fortress and palace at all comparable with the Tower of London is the great citadel of Cairo, built in 1183 by Saladin, which, like it, is still ha use as a military castle ; but, secure in its venerable antiquity, the Tower is superior to all. The greater portion of the site upon which the Tower stands has been occupied more or less since A.D. 369, when, according to Am- mianus, the Roman wall surrounding the city of London was built." We are glad to notice that Mr. Loftie complains of the hideously ugly effect of the staring new red bricks of the guardhouse built between the Wakefield Tower and the south- west angle of the Keep. This contrast with the old and timeworn stone of the ancient fortress, Mr. Loftie truly says, " must be seen to be realized."

Mr. J. Tavenor-Perry in the chapter on St. Bartholomew the Great, Smithfield, shows the

difficulties which lay before the restorers, who began their work hi 1863, and tells how, after forty years' continuous work, " although por- tions are evidently modern in design and execu- tion, the choir of St. Bartholomew's Priory Church has been preserved for future generations as an example of the earliest and most important ecclesiastical buildings of London."

Dr. Woods, Master of the Temple, writes on The Temple, and hi a short space we get a suc- cinct history of the church. As regards the settlement of the lawyers, it has now lasted for nearly six hundred years, almost from times as long as the tenure of the Knights Templars, "and for the greater part of that tune we find in every generation legal names which still survive in history, and which have been concerned with the making of history." Dr. Woods adds : " If the lawyers had never settled in the Temple, the Temple Church would probably have met with the fate which overtook the church of St. Bartholomew the Great, and all that could now be done would be to restore a rum."

Dr. Woods regrets that only a few of the Temple buildings are named after eminent men, and that the choice of names has been to some extent capricious or accidental : " Among lawyers thus commemorated we have Edmund Plowden. Hare Court preserves the memory not of Sir Nicholas Hare, Master of the Rolls hi Mary's reign (died 1557), but of a nephew of his, a comparatively un- known Nicholas Hare, who rebuilt the chambers on the north side of the court. The present Har- court Buildings replace earlier chambers erected during the treasurership of Sir Simon Harcourt, afterwards Lord Chancellor (died 1727). The eponymus of Tanfield Court was Sir Lawrence Tanfield, a well-known judge in his day, who resided there."

In an account of the Guildhall that battle- ground of many a hard-won fight for civil and religious liberty Mr. Charles Welch is of course at home, as is also Mr. H. B. Wheatley in ' Pepys's London.' In this he says : "A full account of the fire, and of the rebuilding of the city has stilJ to be written, and the materials of the latter are to hand in the remarkable ' Fire Papers ' in the British Museum. I have long desired to work on this congenial subject, but having been pre- vented by other duties from doing so, I hope that some London expert will be induced to give the public a general idea of these valuable collec- tions." Notwithstanding this, we still hope to see this work carried out by Mr. Wheatley.

We wish that space would allow of our noticing the other valuable articles hi these volumes, including those by Sir Edward Brabrook on ' The Clubs of London,' by Elsie M. Lang on ' Literary Shrines of Old London,' and by Mr. T. Fairman Ordish on ' Elizabethan London.' The work has several useful illustrations, two of these being coloured ; ' The Old Bell Inn, Holborn, 1897,' and ' The Crab Tree Inn, Hammersmith, 1898.'

Burke's Peerage and Baronetage. By Sir Bernard Burke and Ashworth P. Burke. (Harrison & Sons.)

WE have received with pleasure ' Burke's Peerage ' for the present year, the seventy-first edition of the book. We have allowed ourselves more tune than usual to deal with so exhaustive a volume, and it appears to us that the editor has done his work with great thoroughness. In his