is found to be in the possession of Walter Lacy; and after it had subsequently been held by various captains for king John, it was again restored to Lacy in 1215.

Fitz Warine's great grievance, how ever, as represented by the poet, was his deprivation from his paternal inheritance of Whittington, which was given by king John to Roger de Powis and this drove him into defiance of the regal authority. He became an outlaw and a buccaneer, and many of his adventures closely resemble those of Robin Hood. His first quarrel with the king had happened, as the poet relates, in very early life. The elder Fulk is represented to have lived in the court of Henry II. where

Young Fulk was bred with the four sons of King Henry, and much beloved by them all, except John, for he used often to quarrel with John. It happened that John and Fulk were sitting all alone in a chamber, playing at chess. John took the chess-board, and struck Fulk a great blow. Fulk felt himself hurt, raised his foot, and struck John in the middle of the stomach, that his head flew against the wall, and he became all weak, and fainted. Fulk was in consternation; but he was glad that there was nobody in the chamber but they two, and he rubbed John's ears, who recovered from his fainting-fit, and went to the king, his father, and made a great complaint. "Hold your tongue, wretch," said the king, "you are always quarrelling. If Fulk did anything but good to you, it must have been by your own desert." And he called 'his master, and made him beat him finely and well for complaining. John was much enraged against Fulk; so that he could never afterwards love him heartily.

The poet naturally enters into the spirit of this hatred with true feudal cordiality. His character of the tyrant is as follows:

King John was a man without conscience, wicked, quarrelsome, and hated by all good people; and so lecherous, that, if he could hear of any handsome lady or damsel, wife or daughter of earl or baron or other, he would have her at his will either seducing her by promise or gift, or ravishing her by force. And therefore he was the more hated; and for this reason many of the great lords of England had thrown up their homages to

And Llewellyn, Prince of Wales, is represented as saying to Fulk, "The King of England knows not how to have peace with you or me, or any one else."

Another incident, no doubt intended to be very characteristic of the faithless monarch, is placed in Windsor Forest, where Fulk and his comrades were secreted as outlaws:

They heard huntsmen and men with hounds blow the horn, and by that they knew that the king was going to hunt. Fulk and his companions arned themselves very completely. Fulk swore a great oath that for fear of death he would not abstain from revenging himself on the king, who forcibly and wrongfully had loudly his rights and his heritage. Fulk disinherited him, nor from challenging made his companions remain where they were, and said he would himself go and seek for adventures.

*

Fulk went his way, and met an old collier carrying a basket of coals; he was clothed all in black, as colliers are wont to be. Fulk begged the favour of him that he would exchange his clothes, with his basket, for his own. "Sir," said he,

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willingly." Fulk gave him ten besants, and prayed him to tell no one of the transaction. The collier went his way. Fulk remained; and now, dressed in the attire which the collier had given him, he fire. Fulk saw a great iron fork; so he went to his coals, and began to tend the took it in his hand, and turned his pieces of wood backwards and forwards. length the king came with three knights, all on foot, to the place where Fulk was tending his fire. When Fulk saw the king, he knew him well enough, and cast the fork from his hand, and saluted his lord, and cast himself on his knees before him very humbly. The king and his three knights had great laughter at the breeding and bearing of the collier, and stood there very long. "Sir villan," said the king, "have you seen no stag or doe pass this way?" "Yes, my lord, a while ago." "What beast did you see?" "Sir, my lord, an antlered one: and it had long antlers." "Where is it?" "Sir, my lord, I can easily lead you to where I saw it." "Onward then, sir villan, and we will follow you." "Sir," said the collier, "shall I take my fork in my hand? for, if it were taken, I should have a great loss of it." Yea, villan, if you will." Falk

took the great iron fork in his hand, and led the king to shoot, for he had a very handsome bow. "Sir, my lord," said Fulk, "will you please to wait, and I will go into the thicket, and make the beast come this way by here?" "Yea," said the king. Fulk hastily sprang into the thick of the forest, and commanded his company hastily to seize upon king John, "for I have brought him there, with only three knights, and all his company is on the other side of the forest." Fulk and his men leaped out of the thicket, and cried upon the king, and captured him at once. "Sir king," said Fulk, "now I have you in my power; such judgment will I execute on you as you would on me if you had taken me." The king trembled with fear, for he had great dread of Fulk. Fulk swore that he should die, for the great damage and disinheriting that he had done to him and to many a good Englishman. The king implored his mercy, and begged his life of him for the love of God; and he would restore him entirely all his heritage and whatever he had taken from him and all his people, and would grant him his love and peace for ever, and of this he would make him in all things such security as he might himself choose to devise. Fulk soon yielded his demand, on condition that he gave him, in presence of his knights, his faith to keep his covenant. The king pledged his faith that he would keep his covenant, and he was very glad that he could thus escape.

Of course, when John returned safe to Windsor Castle, he was convinced that there was no obligation upon him to keep an oath which had been extracted from him by such violence: and his immediate alternative was to send out all his available power to arrest "those felons in the park." Fulk is treated with more generosity by Randolph earl of Chester, who denies that Fulk and his men were traitors, and asserts the outlaw's claim to respect as a cousin of all the grandees, and even of the king himself. Though bound by his loyalty to obey the king's command, the earl holds a friendly parley with Fulk; afterwards he attacks him vigorously, but is beaten off, and Fulk, though wounded, escapes to his ship, and resumes his adventures at sea.

We have now sufficiently shown the

spirit and character of this romance, and its interesting qualities as a picture of the times of which it is nearly a contemporary mirror. Whilst imaginative in its particular incidents, we may accept it as a truthful exhibition of the manners and sentiments of the period to which it relates, and of the popular appreciation of the historical characters who are introduced into the story.

Fulk fitz Warine was at length reconciled to the king in the year 1203, and many documents relative to his reconciliation, together with lists of all his followers-both his original personal adherents, and those who from time to time had joined his band when outlawed for other excesses of their own-are given from the public records in Mr. Wright's illustrative notes; which, we should add, are enriched with the critical remarks of the Rev. R. W. Eyton, the author of the "Antiquities of Shropshire," now in course of publication.

The text was before edited, in the year 1840, by M. Francisque Michel, and printed at Paris. The main facts of the story had been previously known from the abstract which is given by Leland in his Collectanea from an Anglo-Norman poem on the same subject, now either latent or altogether lost. Mr. Wright considers the present prose paraphrase to have been made shortly before the year 1320; but that the poem was composed before the death of the third Fulk fitzWarine, who was drowned at the battle of Lewes in 1264. Leland had also the reading of "an old Englische boke yn ryme of the Gestes of Guarine and his sunnes," which, from his extracts, appears to have been composed from the same materials; but the old antiquary was evidently less equal to master its language than even the NormanFrench, and from that and other indications Mr. Wright concludes that it was written in the difficult form of alliterative verse, like the visions of Piers Ploughman. It will be a very interesting literary discovery should either of these compositions hereafter reappear in any of our manuscript collections.

THE GROWTH

MR. URBAN,-If it were possible, it would be curious indeed to trace the effect of the statute 35 Eliz. cap. 6,* passed to prevent the increase of buildings in and near London, and the proclamations for carrying out that object brought under notice by T. E. T. That those instruments were continued in force for a considerable period your correspondent has already shown by the licences granted for new buildings both before and after the Restoration. (Feb. 1855, p. 160, June, p. 596.)

The statute was passed in the year 1592-3, and refers to a proclamation to the same effect issued from the palace of Nonsuch, and dated 7 July a° 22 (A.D. 1580). It was aimed against the increase of dwellings for the poorer class of persons, and the subletting of tenements to "inmates or undersitters," except of a class sufficiently well off to have a house of their own. It was in fact the Metropolitan Building and Lodging-house Act of that time; and no one can have been aware of the offences against health and morals caused by an absence of any restrictions in those matters, in later times at least, without desiring some enactment to regulate them. But the good which would have ensued from proper restrictions was lost under the pressure of the wrongs done and the inconveniences produced by the operation of the statute; and the systems of " houses in flats," or "model lodging-houses," as yet were not.

I send you a copy of some proceedings for carrying out the Act, which are important as being taken very shortly after the statute was passed, and showing how strictly the terms thereof and of the proclamations were acted upon. These proceedings relate to the ward of Farringdon Without, and represent the results of actual surveys of the localities they refer to. The originals are separate slips or membranes of parchment fastened together at the head, and each having a title more or less full. From the most comprehensive of these titles (that on the third slip) that portion appears to be a list of persons in the parish of St. Sepul

OF LONDON.

chre who had erected tenements for habitation "where no foundacione was before " between the 7th July, 1580, and the 20th July, 1597, "accordinge to a precepte directed from the right ho. the Lord Maior of the Cytty of London berynge ye same date." The first date is that of the Nonsuch proclamation recited in the statute; the second is four or five years subsequent to the passing of the Act itself. Now considering, as I think may fairly be done, that all the slips are merely one set of returns as regards a particular district, perhaps not quite in their regular order, we have in them probably the first report of the City authorities for the purpose of carrying out the Act in that quarter.

The description of tenements which came under the notice of the viewers varies very much. On the first membrane are entries of three tenements built "in part of a dawnsingscoole in Scrowps-place, and one fayre house in the Field-lane flytt for a subsidy man at ffyve powndes to be assesed," which was a building of a sufficiently high standard to be specially exempted from the operation of the Act.

The course of proceeding by which the "great wen" progressed towards its present enormous discussions will be found to have been very similar (though slower) in the sixteenth century to what has been seen in our own times. In the outlying suburbs, especially those near or leading to places of holiday and public resort, the sides of the roads would be occupied by small and fragile tenements, which would in time be replaced by more substantial edifices; the larger residences and grounds would be cut up into smaller buildings and gardens, the latter to be in their turn entirely covered up. In Stowe's time this process had still been going on in this district, which is the subject of the following proceedings, so that it might be inferred that the Act was never strictly carried out. But, by a memorandum at the end of the third membrane, and the heading of the fourth, it appears that these proceedings were certainly acted up. "Answering "before the Privy Council doubtless involved a fine.

(Mem. 1.) For St Androwe's parrish in Holbourn, wthin the ffredome of the Cittye.

John Noakes, a horner, dwellinge near Holbourn bridge, in St Sepulcher's parrish, hath built in Shew-lane seyven smale tenementes unfytt wthin this xiiij yeres.

Mr Carewe, a baker, dwellinge neare Holbern Condett, in St Sepulcker's parrish, hath buylt one smale tenement in Shewelane gardens wthin this x years.

Mr Thomas Fogge, gentleman, dwellinge in Salisberry-court, in Fleet-streett, in St Bryde's parrishe, hathe buylt one new house in Shew-lane wthin this yeare nowe past.

John Holmes, dyce-maker, dwellinge in Fewter-lane, hath buylt two tenementes backwardes near to his howse wthin this yeare and halffe past.

Rycharde Holt, carpenter, dwellinge in Fewter-lane gardens hath buylt two tenementes in the aforsayd gardens wthin this two yers past.

John Phillipps, dwellinge in Fewter-lane, hath buylded two tenementes in Fewterlane gardens wthin this two years past.

The saide John Phillips hathe buylded one other smalle tenement within the yarde behynde Thomas Towe abought xij yea's past.

Gyles Wydgyngton, dwellinge in St Bryde's parrish, bath buylt one new howse at the lower ende of Gunpowder-ally wthin this year now past, wch we take to be within St. Androwe's parrish.

Mr Antony Burbidge, a skynner, dwellinge in Fleet-strett, hath buylt two smalle tenementes backwardes of the other syde Fewter-lane within this vj or vij yers past. Lewke Clement, carpenter, dwellinge in Fewter-lane, hath buylt one new house backward for himselffe and let out his owen wthin this year past.

Raffe Crowder, in Fewter-lane, deceased, hath buylt one new house theare in the sayde lane abought vij years past.

Christopher Lovett, carpenter, nowe gone into the contreye, hath buylt one newe tenement backward ffrom his howse in Fewter-lane abought thre yers past. Thomas Whitby, smyth, deceased, hath buylt one new tenement back warde from his house in Fewter-lane wthin ten years past.

Henrye Fisher, whelwright, dwellinge neare Flowerdelewse-alley, hath buylt four or fyve smalle tenementes backward in the sayd ally within this ffyve years past.

Wm Myller, a glasyer, dwellinge in Graysin-lane, hath buylt one newe tenement in Flowerdelewse-ally wthin six years past.

Robert Denett, carpenter, dwellinge in St Androwe's parrish, hath buylt one new tenement in Scrowpe-plase a bought vij ye's past.

Mr. Shearman, a mussysshon, dwelling in St Awstyn's parrish, wthin Criplegate, hath made thre tenementes in part of his dawnsingescoole in Scrowp's-plase wthin this vij or viij years past.

George Buckley, carpenter, in the Forestrett, deceased, hath buylt two fayre houses in the Fore-strett aforeseyd wthin this xj years past.

George Isacke, carpenter, dwellinge in Shew-lane, hath buylt one fayre house in the Field-lane, but we knowe not whether yt be London or Mydlesex, and ffyt for a subsidy man at ffyve powndes to be assesed.

(Endorsed) ffor Seynt Androwe's parrish in Holborn, whin the ffredom.

(Mem. 2.)-Recd this certificatt, the
26 Augusty, 97.

Farrington wthout.

Md the xxvth daye of August, 1597, a vew taken of certayn buyldinges not predrowe's in Holborn, as followeth :sented before wthin the parrish of St An

Item, two smale tenementes adjoynynge to the comon sewer, the on of them beynge a very smale borded shead or a leanə twoe, bylded by one Mychill, a

seale-maker in Fleet-lane, havynge no recorse in or out of or parrish of St Androwe's, but through Blake Horse-ally into Fleet-street, and not knowen, but that the maye be buylt wthin this xvij yeres.*

Item, an other little borded howse not thre yardes square in the same place, buylded by on Mathewes, a seale graver in Fleet-lane, and no other passadge but as aforesayd.

Shew-lane, hath buylt on tennement backJohn Fysher, carpenter, dwelling in ward behynde his owen howse in the sayd lane abought a year past, and a tenant plased n yt.

Mr

Burford, clothworker, dwellinge in Distaffe-lane, hath buylt on smale tenement in Shew-lane gardens abought two years past.

Farrington.

Black Horse Alley.

One cottage buylded by Richarde Cooke about half a yere past, he dwelling wth Richard Browne.

Mrs Marey hath increased certeyne buyldens to a garden howse, and hath made three ten'ts there.