and probably about that time knighted. He purchased the barton or insulated demesne of Kilworthy, distant about a mile from Tavistock, where he erected a mansion-house, some traces of the importance of which are still extant. Of this place Mrs. Bray has given us an interesting sketch in her work on the Tamar and Tavy, vol. III. p. 305, which we shall here adopt, with slight abbreviation.

"The now humbled remains of Kilworthy, once the splendid mansion of the Glanviles, a family long distinguished in Devon. The house was built by them in the reign of Elizabeth. This structure partook of that combination of heavy and clumsy ornament common to the period, yet rendered imposing by the grandeur that characterised the original proportions of the building to which it was appended. The front of Kilworthy-I speak of what it was, not what it is-facing the south displayed many a window divided in the midst by mullions so large and broad that they not a little obscured the light the windows were intended to admit.

"A small tower, not unlike the top of a pepper-box, stood at either end of the building. Along the front the parapet was embattled, and a noble cluster of chimneys rose to a considerable height, and displayed their ornamented caps far above every other part of the building. A projecting porch stood before the principal entrance, over the outward door of which appeared carved in stone the arms of Glanvile, three crosses in the form of that called St. Andrew's; in the language of heraldry, three saltires or on a field

azure.

The date of the building was beneath, likewise carved in stone.*

"Such was Kilworthy, but it no longer appears in its original form. It underwent considerable alterations in the reign of Charles II. and lastly, and still worse, in that of George III. when, nearly sixty years since, the front was entirely modernised."

Here we take leave to interrupt Mrs. Bray, and to express our hope that the Archæological Society lately established will prove truly conservative, and be on the alert to remonstrate against and prevent, as far as possible, the perpetration of similar barbarous atrocities. In a long passage of the house, as well as in one of its chambers, may still be seen, Mrs. Bray informs us, a vast

* We regret that Mrs. Bray has omitted the date.

GENT. MAG. VOL. XXI.

number of paintings on panel, representing in succession the arms, alliances, &c. of the family of Glanvile for many generations. The hall, though now but a vestige of what it once was, shows enough to indicate its former grandeur.

The gardens of Kilworthy were on a scale suited to the place. They ran along the side of an elevated piece of ground to the west of the house; the entrance to them was through a pair of ample gates, on either supporting pier of which was a lion rampant. Kilworthy had once a chapel; a dovecote, stables, and other offices are near the house. A noble avenue of old beech-trees, overgrown with moss, and casting the deepest shade, formed the principal road to the mansion, "affording the passenger here and there those peeps of landscape and of the Dartmoor heights, between their trunks and branches, always so welcome to a lover of the picturesque." So far by the aid of Mrs. Bray have we been enabled to describe the mansion of the Glanviles; we now request her as an eye-witness to speak of its possessor's tomb.

"The effigy of Glanvile, lauded by Prince, is certainly a very superior work of art; there is so much character about the face and head that I have no doubt it was an excellent likeness. . . The effigy is that of a corpulent man lying at full length on his side, the upper part of the body being raised, and the left arm resting on a cushion.

"The countenance and brows in particular exhibit those strong marks of intellectual superiority which ever distinguish a man of talent. As a whole his head is striking and impressive, notwithstanding the injury it has sustained, by a loss of a part of the nose; the hands have likewise been mutilated.

"In front of the Judge, but beneath the figure, kneels in a praying attitude the effigy of Dame Glanvile."

A singular tradition is current at Tavistock that Judge Glanvile passed sentence of death on his own daughter. The tale is thus related on the authority of the Rev. E. Bray.†

"The Judge's daughter was attached to George Stanwich, a young man of Tavistock, lieutenant of a man of war, whose

letters, the father disapproving of the attachment, were intercepted. An old miser of Plymouth of the name of Page, wishing to have an heir to disappoint his relations, who were too confident in calculating upon sharing his wealth, availed himself of this apparent neglect of the young sailor, and, settling on her a good jointure, obtained her hand. She took with her a maid servant from Tavistock; but her husband was so penurious that he dismissed all the other servants, and caused the wife and her maid to do all the work themselves. On an interview subsequently taking place between her and Stanwich, she accused him of neglecting to write to her, and then discovered that his letters had been intercepted. The maid advised them to get rid of the old gentleman, and Stanwich at length, with great reluctance, consented to their putting an end to him. Page lived in what is now the mayoralty house at Plymouth, and a woman who lived opposite, hearing at night some sand thrown against a window, thinking it was her own, arose, and, looking out, saw a young gentleman near Page's window, and heard him say, For God's sake stay your hand! a female replied, 'Tis too late, the deed is done. On the following morning it was given out that Page had died suddenly in the night, and as soon as possible he was buried. On the testimony, however, of his neighbour (above mentioned) the body was taken up again, and, it appearing that he had been strangled, his wife, Stanwich, and the maid were tried and executed."

a

Sir John Glanvile, the story adds, was the presiding Judge at the trial; and this circumstance may be true if his own daughter as the culprit be omitted; it appears, that such murder was a matter of great pub. licity and interest with the common people, and gave rise, it is said, to a drama intituled "The lamentable tragedy of Page of Plymouth;" just as the violent death of Arden of Feversham, by a treacherous wife, some fifty years before, furnished a subject for stage representation.

Judge Glanvile had gained a high reputation for his knowledge of law, and equity in dispensing it, but did not long enjoy his elevation to the Bench, for he died two years after his promotion. He married a lady whose maiden name was Skerret, by whom he had seven children, particularised in the following inscription, which occupies four separate compartments on

his tomb, divided as in the following paragraphs:

"Honoratæ sacrum memoriæ Johannis Glanvil unius quondam Justiciarorum de Communi Banco. Qui merito factus

judex summo cum labore administravit Justiciam; Justicia conservavit Pacem ; Pace expectavit Mortem; et Morte invenit Requiem, 27° die Julii, Ann. Dom. 1600.

Statum erat hoc monumentum, Ann. Dom. 1615. Impensis Dominæ Alicia Godolphin viduæ, priùs uxoris ejusdem Johannis Glanvil, renuptæ vero Franciso Godolphin militi jam etiam defuncto. Quæ peperit fidem Johanni viro suo et septem liberos.*

"Quorum nomina et connubia proxima tabula suo ordine continentur.

error.

Any one who attentively peruses the above inscription will be happy, we think, to come to the conclusion that the tale respecting Judge Glanvile's daughter and Page of Plymouth is perverted by some The marriages of three of the Judge's daughters are specified in the inscription; no one of these was united to the name of Page, and the remaining daughter Alice died unmarried. The Judge was therefore, we conclude, never called upon to execute an office from which Christian propriety would have certainly exempted him had he been so unhappy as to find his child thus guilty and disgraced.

The dissolute manners of Sir Francis Glanvile, the Judge's eldest son, and the touching circumstances of his reform, have been noticed in the communication to which we have referred in our vol. for 1830, pt. I. p. 493, effectively by Mrs. Bray.t also by Prince, and very copiously and

His second son John became an

*This clause of the inscription appears to be much blundered; perhaps the words engraved on the stone should have been "et quæ peperit eidem Johanni, &c." Viro is corrupted by a typographical error in Prince's book to vero.

† Tamar and Tavy, vol. II. p. 338.

since a tradition of the Syrian church, as well as the various dates which individuals have adopted in this matter, implies (to borrow Dr. Greswell's reasoning,) that the Jews celebrated the Passover either before or after the vernal equinox, just as they happened to have intercalated a month or not,* it is of unavoidable importance to ascertain if such were really the fact; since, if it were, a search for the exact date of the Crucifixion would be hopeless.

THE HISTORY OF THE TIME FOR KEEPING THE PASSOVER, as far as I understand it, is this:-During their residence in Egypt the Jews having for some uncertain period counted their months by the motions of the moon, or "from one new moon to another," naturally adopted the days of that lunation which came nearest to the autumnal equinox for the measure of the first month of the year, in order that their account of time might tally with the Egyptian account, which dated from about this season. And so, guided by a mixed rule, they commenced the computation of the year in which they left Egypt on the evening of the eighteenth or nineteenth of September, as we may call it, B.C. 1492, such having been the first day of a visible moon.

By the succeeding spring, therefore, that division of the year had arrived which was known to them on account of the then state or forwardness of vegetation, as the month Abib. For this name, literally taken, means the month of young ears of corn. And because it so happened that they obtained their liberty at this well-marked date, very shortly after the vernal equinox, they were then and subsequently enjoined by their legislators and prophets, over and over again, to remember the month Abib as the first month of the sacred year, from year to year for ever, "at the season that they came forth out of Egypt."

Nor was this injunction a difficult one in a country situated under a sky

Josephus's Antiquities of the Jews, B. 1, ch. 3, sec. 3; Book 3, ch. 10; and B. 4. ch. 8, last section.

* Greswell on the time that the passover was celebrated, vol. 1, p. 328. + Is, 66, 23.

that invited and encouraged observation of the heavens, and in which the former and the latter rain, and other especial notes of season on earth, enabled men to judge of periodical returns of time with great precision.‡

"In its appointed season,' therefore, the Passover was observed in the wilderness, where the appearances of the heavens, rather than the state of vegetation, were its signs. And in season it continued to be observed by Ezekiel and his companions in a strange land during the captivity, and by Josephus and his contemporaries in Judea, after the date of the Crucifixion: this very continuance for ages of two kinds of year among the same people, under various circumstances, implying, without actually proving, a different form of computation to have existed for the purpose.

Without, however, entering at large into this question at present,§ it may be noted here that, having lived in Judea very soon after the date of the Crucifixion, and having there obtained "an accurate understanding of Jewish laws," the especial historian of the Jews variously records that his countrymen still used two kinds of year, the style of the one being as their forefathers had "ordered it in Egypt," but that of the other "as Moses appointed on bringing them out of this country." For their great legislator fixed that the seventh month of the civil year "should be the first for the festivals, because he brought them out of Egypt in it, and, consequently, it began the year as to all the solemnities, while the more ancient order of

"Rain in due season" is spoken of in Leviticus. Solomon writes, "The rain is over and gone, the flowers appear." Joel speaks of "the latter rain in the first month;" Jeremiah of 'the former and the latter rain in season, and the appointed weeks of the harvest." And Christ says, "There are yet four months and then cometh harvest," all which expressions mark how strictly the seasons were observed in Judea.

§ On some future occasion I hope to demonstrate that neither form of year adopted by the Jews could possibly have been computed agreeably to our commonly received notion of their having intercalated a month every third year.

Life of Josephus, section 2.

the months was preserved as to buying and selling, and other ordinary transactions," because it was a comparatively simple form of computation, whereas the great solemnity was kept "on the fourteenth day of Nisan, according to the moon, when the sun is in Aries," whereby, as Josephus continues, the Jews in so far "to that day most religiously observed the ordinances and constitutions of Moses."*

From these undeniable authorities, therefore, it is plain that in the first century of the Christian era the Passover was never intentionally celebrated before the vernal equinox, because the occurrence of this equinox is distinguished by the sun's entrance into that particular sign which, by some form of calculation, was understood to have preceded, or coincided with, the fourteenth day of Nisan or Abib. And since this month, as the first of the sacred year, was measured by the appearance of the vernal moon, and not by the popular form of intercalation, it began when this moon was at least a day old, because under the most favourable circumstances she could not have been sooner discernible; and as the vernal moon cannot begin her course more than half a lunation before the sun's entrance into Aries, the fourteenth day of Nisan corresponded to some part of the fifteenth day of this moon; or, in other words, the day of the Passover corresponded to some part of that full moon which happened at, or next after, the vernal equinox.

To assert, however, that the Jews had general rules of perfect character for finding the true or astronomical time of their moveable feasts would be to assert too much, when we, with all the boasted aids of the nineteenth century, are unable in extended tables to avoid error in determining the time of ours; and, these points being settled, we are now prepared more accurately to examine the date of the Crucifixion at the legitimate season of a Passover.

THE YEAR OF THE CRUCIFIXION, then, it is evident, must appear consistent with the time occupied in the life of Christ after his baptism, at an acknowledged date in the reign of Tiberius Cæsar, just as the account of

*See Antiquities of the Jews as referred to in note 2.

Christ having suffered on a Friday must appear consistent with the occurrence of a Passover not many years afterwards; and the rules for using the Metonic Cycle and other measures of time, already detailed in this Magazine, will show that there are but two years from the time of Christ's baptism to the latest reasonable date assigned to his Crucifixion, in which the day (as daylight) of the Passover could possibly have corresponded to the sixth day of the week, or Friday; for Christ having begun his public ministry not later than A.D. 27; in the year 29, the Passover must have happened on a Sunday, and in the years 28, 31, and 32, each on a Monday; while, as to A.D. 33, though the Passover was kept in it on a Friday, it could not have been the year of the Crucifixion, because the time occupied in the life of Christ after his baptism could not possibly have extended to so late a period, as, I believe, is now acknowledged by the highest authorities; and, therefore, all other years being rejected, it only remains to prove that the day of the Passover in the year 30 corresponded to the sixth day of the week.

The Golden Number, then, for A.D. 30 was XII.; and, the Golden Number being XII in the 41st century B.C., the date of the full moon in March was the sixteenth day, in the afternoonor, in decimals

To which add the anticipation of the Metonic Cycle for the 1st century C.E.

16.66

18.76

35.42

And the result is That is, the 35th day near noon, dating from the first of March-which, of course, means the 4th of April, about midday; but, when certain astronomical anomalies are taken into account, so many hours must be added to this amount of time that the result will prove the true date of the full moon, A.D. 30, to have been after eight o'clock in the evening of this 35th day, according to our division of the twentyfour hours, and therefore, in the beginning of the 36th day, according to

the Jewish division of them.

And now, calling such 36th day the

See the Gentleman's Magazine for April and July, 1844.

See Ferguson's Astronomy, p. 308.