gaol possibly awaited him. The bishop ruthlessly urging his rights, declared Adam permitted himself to be married, to the bishop's damage of 100 marks. The youth acknowledged his marriage. belonged to the Right Reverend Father, and placed himself "in misericordia "-though he was of the primest of those "whose sires came over with the Conqueror." The bishop afterwards remitted to Adam forty marks of the hundred the damage was laid at; and for this remission Adam permitted the bishop to continue to hold all the land in his custody after Adam shall come of age, until the sixty marks shall have been fully received from the issues of the estates. So the poor youth had to support his bride upon the love which had constrained him to anger the Holy Father, who probably had entertained far other views touching his matrimonial possibilities. The episode is not without grim humour; Benedict in "reduced circumstances" is a fine suggestion, for chivalry in rags is the bathos of all dreams. It is to be hoped Adam resisted the snares of Shylock, who was a more enormous power in those days than he is in our own, though his modest rate of interest was exactly the same.

When love matters were pressed not wisely but too well under King John, the monarch was not so easily dealt with even as an incensed bishop. The weight of his hand was not only quickly and heavily felt; it knew no relaxation until its grip had extorted the uttermost farthing, and as much more as could be squeezed out. Walter de Fellington, anxious or calculating, but equal to any occasion, first married the woman he loved, and then approached the font of rapacity. Her "valuation" appears to have been 200 marks; John found room for an "increment" as necessary to secure his "benevolence," the result being that Walter offered to the king 200 marks for the crime, and additionally twenty marks to have the king's goodwill concerning the wife whom he had married, and to have that part of her father's lands which rightfully belonged to her. Having won the woman, he was content to let John count the cost, the highest wisdom. But, notwithstanding his omnivorous nature, if the landless John happened to be approached on his humorous side, there was evidently a grim joke to be found in him. What, for instance, are we to say of the adventure of William Lespec, who purchased his wife's sister with a part of the inheritance which fell to his wife, and John ratified the bargain for forty marks and a good hawk! We take the including of the hawk to be a masterpiece of satire. It is indeed astonishing how John availed himself of matrimonial necessities. Had Charles I. been his equal, we should never have heard of ship money and civil war. It would be difficult, for

instance, to advance beyond this point of opportunity, which nevertheless involves an acknowledgment of John's own treachery-Robert de Vaux owes five of his best palfreys that the king will hold his tongue about the wife of Henry Panel-except it be thus: the wife of Hugh de Neville gives 200 hens "eo quod possit jacere una nocte cum domino suo, Hugone de Nevill." That instance of the purchase of the royal grace and goodwill is presumably unique.

But of all the matrimonial trafficking, the ways of the widows are at once the boldest and most comprehensive. As a rule, their methods seldom resort to blandishment; it is remarkable when tenderness is an item in their bargain. Speed was their maxim; it was one John honoured, for he profited by it. Yet one of the rarest exceptions in the way of delicacy to these commercial negotiations has evidently been prompted by a widow who had quite an exceptional lover. In 1206, William de Landa-either one of the most famous of the Crusaders or his son-offers fifty marks and a palfrey for having to wife Joan, who was the wife of Thomas de Aresey, "if he may be pleasing to the said Joan"; the sheriff is instructed to ascertain the widow's wishes, "and if the said Joan shall be pleased to have him for a husband, then the sheriff shall cause William to have seizin of Joan and her land"—both of which he obtained in the name of gentle love and the faith of a true soldier. It is fitting that the name of one of the men who led the assault of Acre should be preserved in such a record as the above. He was in truth a very perfect knight. One of the most rampagious of the northern borderers manifested the like delicacy. Young Walter de Umfraville, son of Gilbert, had left a widow, Emma, presumably in the very blush of her charms. Peter de Vaux had fallen at her feet, but he declined to obtain her in border fashion; and this fact is the earnest pledge of the chivalry of his love. If he would not steal her he was bound to buy her, and coin with the De Vaux was always a scarcity. So he offered the king five palfreys for her "if she wished it," and with what would read as a graceful acknowledgment of the borderer's pure chivalry, John absolutely drops the commercial from his reply and simply orders Robert FitzRoger, the sheriff, "to permit it to be done."

The ways of the rank and file of these negotiations were very different. Sometimes they are interesting specimens of light diplomacy; at other times they are profound. Sarah, who was the wife of Thomas de Burgh, offers fifty marks and a palfrey, besides a former promise of £100, to be free to marry whom she pleases in the king's land, excepting he be of the land of the King of Scots, or

one of the men of the lord Archbishop of Canterbury. It is somewhat difficult to understand Sarah's tactics; she starts as a prude in 1200, offering the £100 "not to be asked to marry," and yet before the year expires she has become ardently anxious and so commiserating in her anxiety as thus to exclude from her choice only Scotsmen and the men of his Grace of Canterbury. Following on the heels of this, and separated from it not by months, but by weeks only, we find she has given her widowed heart and crushed affections to Simon FitzWalter, who in his haste flies off to the king with a further offer of thirty marks or six palfreys to have her incontinently, and he gets her at the price. John's appreciation of an impatient lover was at once sympathetic and accurate. Sometimes the tables are turned on the wily dames, though the operation does not seem to have been satisfactory in all instances. Geoffrey de Luvein offers four hundred marks to have the land and widow of Ralph de Cornhull, unless she can show reason why she ought not to accept him! In some pleasant way, however, of which we are ignorant, the widow had outwitted her furious admirer, for she had offered two hundred marks, three palfreys and two hawks not to marry Geoffrey, but to be allowed to marry whom she pleases, and to have her lands. John must have been as clearly outwitted as the ardent lover, for he thus concludes the entry: "The marks are paid because she married of her own accord."

Then we have the friendly offers of disinterested neighbours. Simon de Kime offers one hundred pounds sterling on account of Rohesia, wife of Stephen de Falconbridge, that she may have liberty to marry whom she pleases with the advice of her friends; and the sheriff of Nottinghamshire is commanded to take from her secure pledges thereupon, the said Simon de Kime to be superpledge for the £100. The arrangement had been cleverly worked out, for Simon married her forthwith. One of the best "squeezes" John ever obtained was that of Amabel, the widow of Hugh Bardolf, one of the foremost of the king's roystering companions. She gave him two thousand marks-say £30,000 of present money—and five palfreys not to be compelled to marry, but that she may remain a widow as long as she pleases, yet if she should wish to marry, she will not do so without the king's will and assent. Dame Amabel may be credited with knowing that such a husband as John would have chosen for her might have been far less desirable than a vastly reduced fortune. At least, she had had much experience of his methods and selections.

The picture here painted from contemporary sketches of the

national life is a dire revelation of the ways of our wise and virtuous ancestors. It is a sad blow to the dreamers of chivalry as an institution without shame and without reproach. Viewed in the light of human experience nothing could be fouler, for it started in shame and could not fail to end in reproach. Such lives as the ill-assorted couples who furnished its personnel must perforce lead could only result in a social degradation that could not be described as black by any contemporary writer, because there was no chance of comparing it with white. Men are now surprised how, at the moment of its dissolution, chivalry came to be described as abominable. Remembering snatches of its love-songs and the claims of its accepted maxims, they said it must have been divine. So they clung to it as to a divinity, for the knowledge had been lost that it was probably the most filthy of human charnel-houses. The only modern parallel to the morals of chivalry was the morals of the American slave plantations in the days before the emancipation of the negro; and what they were has been described beyond description.

W. WHEATER.

189

OF

TRADE ROUTES OF ROMAN

BRITAIN.

F the five great highways of South Britain-Watling Street, Ermine Street, the Fosseway, Ikening Street, and Ryckneld Street-most people have heard; but few, I think, have any very clear idea whence they come, whither they go, or what was their origin. That they were the work of the Romans is certain, in spite of the Saxon names they bear; and that they existed as beaten tracks across forest, heath, and marsh, at a date anterior to the Roman conquest, is highly probable. In the following pages I have set myself the task of tracing the routes of these five streets, so far as it is possible to recover them at the present day, and in so doing have selected as landmarks those towns and villages whose names recall the existence of a great highway, or of a Roman camp established to protect the same. To the former class of names belong Stratton (Stræt tun) and Stamford or Stan-ford (stone road); to the latter, Caistor and Chesterfield. Many who have tried to study the course of Roman roads as laid down in the county histories have been absolutely cowed, and for ever deterred from pursuing their research, by constant references made to a dreadfully obscure and corrupt document called the "Antonine Itinerary," containing Latin names of stations. and summaries of Roman miles. I have endeavoured to steer clear of that rock, and I hope that, with the help of the localities I have given below, and the assistance of a county atlas, the reader may find the task of following these roads not a dull one, but, on the contrary, a fascinating occupation.

There are grounds for believing that in very ancient times minerals. and other merchandise passed by these same routes from hand to hand, and from one tribe to another, until they eventually reached the sea-coast. Mr. Alfred Tylor, in a most interesting paper contained in the forty-eighth volume of Archæologia, ably supports his contention that the main object of the Roman occupation was to develop an ancient and indigenous mineral industry, and especially

VOL. CCLXXIII. NO. 1940.