"We went into a house which we saw had a fire in it. I believe it was the best in the town. The firestead was in the middle of the room, the cows at one end, and the hogs at the other. The folks lay near the fire, the smoke of which helped to keep them warm, and a flat stone over it to bake an oaken cake on." (ii. 157.)

After resting the pre-determined time Brian became anxious to resume his journey. His object was not only to deliver his message, but to return to Nun Appleton so as to be at the gathering on Marston Moor on New Year's day. But Shepard's horse was lamer than ever. Whilst they were in this difficulty a man appeared and offered his services as a guide, "saying," remarks Brian, "he had a good horse and would bring me to Kelso by next morning." Brian jumped at the offer without consulting Shepard. The new guide was a lusty raw-boned fellow, full of tales of feats that he had done, and fond of exhibiting his wounds. Shepard earnestly dissuaded Brian Fairfax from venturing with him. Fairfax himself began to suspect the fellow, but he determined to persevere. "I thought I was doing my duty," he remarks, "and that many men's lives in Yorkshire might depend upon General Monk's marching to their assistance." Shepard, very unwillingly, brought out his companion's horse, and Fairfax and the stranger started. They had not proceeded far when the new guide began to play tricks with his horse, galloping and charging about. Fairfax desired him to mind his way, but he was soon "at it again," and "now," says Brian Fairfax, "I plainly saw my own folly." They had gone about three miles when, on a sudden, the new guide wheeled round his horse, charged up to Fairfax, and seized him by the throat, "and, I think," he says, "asked for money." In the previous period of obvious preparation, when this notable border thief, for such he turned out to be, was caracolling about, Fairfax had commended himself to God, and determined what course he should adopt in case of an attack. He instantly put his plan in practice. He took the villain by the throat, and probably making play with his horse at the same time, managed to shake his assailant out of his saddle. The moss-trooper's

horse no sooner found himself released than he bolted back again along the road he had travelled. Fairfax thrust his baffled antagonist to the ground, and gave his own horse the reins to follow his riderless guide. In this manner he soon returned to the door where he had taken horse. Shepard hearing the noise of galloping came rushing to the door, "concluding I was murdered, but, seeing me, held up his hands, thanking God for my deliverance, for, says he, 'I never expected to see you again alive. Since you went I have heard who this fellow is.' I interrupted him, desiring him to say no more, but get up upon his lame horse and let us wander together any way upon the hills till morning." In this way, and with such guidance as they could obtain from cottagers, they reached Kelso about sunset. Here was a party of Monk's men under Colonel Morgan, who mounted Fairfax on his own horse, gave him arms and a guide, and sent him on at once to Coldstream, which he reached about midnight. Monk was "in a poor little thatched house."

"I was brought up into the room where General Monk was, with four or five persons with him. I knew none of them, nor they me, but since then they themselves have told me there was Dr. Barrow the Judge-Advocate, Colonel Knight, Mr. Loch, and I think Mr. Clerk his secretary, Messrs. Gumble and Price, chaplains, and Major Miller. I said to him, 'If it please your excellency, I desire to deliver a message to you in private.' He took me into a little hole-we must call it a closet-I told him, &c. &c. [delivering Fairfax's message]. General Monk embraced me, and thanked my Lord Fairfax and said, he would watch Lambert as a cat watches a mouse-it was his own expression-and that a troop of horse should not move but he would follow them." (ii. 161.)

Monk continued for some time in conversation with Fairfax, made him tell the history of his adventures on the road, refreshed him with a bottle of sack and a piece of roast beef"which his butler brought into the little room to us"-explained his hopes from his friends in the south, and then put him under charge of a Major Miller to find an uncle (Colonel Fairfax) who had a command in the army. After a pleasant meeting with his uncle, "who said little, but

was overjoyed to see me," and a rest of three or four hours, Brian took his way again to Kelso, where he rejoined Shepard, who had cured his horse and was ready to start homewards on the instant. Quick as they were, the rumour preceded them that "Yorkshire was up in arms, and my Lord Fairfax at the head of them, and had declared for General Monk." They varied their route on their return, and Fairfax reached Nun Appleton on New Year's Eve. On the day following, Lord Fairfax, being very ill of the stone, was conveyed in his coach towards the place of rendezvous. He was 66 forced to stop at a little house called the Papermill, half-way, where he voided a great stone," after which he proceeded onwards. Lambert's army deserted him; regiment after regiment declared for their old general; Monk's passage to the south was cleared for him; and the Restoration quickly followed.

Lord Fairfax went to Breda as one of the deputation sent to attend Charles II. on his return to England. He also presented his Majesty with a charger for his coronation-day, and a copy of verses in celebration of the joyful occasion. The latter have been often maliciously recollected as doing him no credit. He survived until the 2nd Nov. 1671, grievously tormented with bodily infirmities, and not a little, also, it may be feared, with troubles in his family.

His wife outlived him until 1704. If these books are to be trusted, they had three daughters; Elizabeth, mentioned in the inscription to Lord Fairfax in Bilburgh church near York; Anne, who is said in the first volume of the former publication of Fairfax Correspondence, p. 387, to have been born in 1640, and to have died in 1642; and Mary, who "had the misfortune," as is remarked in the Biographia Britannia, "of having for her husband the witty, wicked George Villars Duke of Buckingham." Probably the Anne, mentioned in this work, but not elsewhere, is a mistake.

Besides the Fairfax papers, these volumes contain many others, derived from a collection in the possession of Mr. Bentley the publisher. Some of these additional letters are curious, but they have often little connection with the GENT. MAG. VOL. XXXII.

main subject of the present work, and are therefore utterly lost where they are. Who would go to the Fairfax Correspondence to find letters of Tickell, or of Titus Oates, or of Father Coleman, or letters to or from John Evelyn, or Bishop Nicolson, or Archbishop Tenison, or William Penn? All these have been thrown in, like the reprints of two Civil War Tracts, merely to make up four volumes instead of two.

We wish we could be satisfied that the papers here printed are to be depended upon for accuracy. There is grievous evidence occasionally that the transcriber was sorely puzzled by proper names, and that the editor did not pay very sufficient attention to the correction of his assistant's blunders. For instance, where is Medwood Forest? i. 37. Is not Oracroft a mistake for Cracroft? i. 67. Is not Kirk House by Charing Cross intended for York House? i. 125-8. Who can the two gentlemen be who sign from the Star Chamber in 1645 by the names of "Roger" and "Rideant?" i. 221. And the Lord "London," who signs on behalf of the Scotch committee, was, we presume, "Loudon." i. 227. This is a dangerous class of mistakes in a book which has a large index, although perhaps not quite so fatal as misreadings and mispointings. For example, in the MS. we doubt not Lord Fairfax is told that " supply will be made by parliament care," but in printing, a full stop is put between "parliament" and care," which mangles one sentence and makes strange nonsense of its successor. i. 43. In the same letter is not "lordship's house" a mistake for "lordship's honour?" Cromwell no doubt urged the Cambridge people to hasten their levies, not their leavers. i. 59. The letters patent to which a noble lord refers at i. 126 were under the great seal of England, although it is printed "the Greek seal." And the "use," that is, the "interest," to be made for the state's service, mentioned at i. 131, was no doubt to be made from "moneys," not out of "attorneys," as it stands in type. This list might be greatly enlarged, but we have quoted enough to make those who read the book for historical purposes aware of the necessity for caution.

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This valley of yews, which reminds us of the remarkable wood of venerable beeches called Burnham Beeches, near Windsor, is not particularly noticed in the essay on the Botany of Sussex, by T. H. Cooper, esq. F.S.A. appended to Horsfield's History of that county, but he thus describes two memorable Sussex yews:

"In the churchyard of Crowhurst, although much decayed, there still exists a yew celebrated by Evelyn in his Sylva, which he was told was ten yards in circumference. This tree,' observed the late Mr. Cater Rand in a note in his copy of the Sylva, was alive in the year 1788, but decaying very fast. Mr. James Lam. bert, jun. made a drawing of it for John Pelham, esq. of Crowhurst.' Its measurement, at the present time (1835), is thirtythree feet in circumference at the ground, and twenty-seven feet at a distance of four feet from the base.

"The yew in Hurstmonceaux churchyard measures twenty-two feet six inches in circumference at the same distance from the ground."

In the same work are mentioned some other remarkable yew-trees in Sussex. One in the churchyard of Hardham, between Petworth and Arundel, measuring 21 feet in circumference at the ground; and others at Icklesham, Northiam, and Etchingham.

A churchyard yew said to be larger than any of the foregoing (except that at Crowhurst) is at Aldworth, in Berkshire. It measured 27 feet round in 1798, when a view was given in the Gentleman's Magazine, vol. LX. p. 1013. At Cudham, in Kent, were two, said in 1804 to be of about 30 feet in circumference. (Gent. Mag. vol. LXXXIV. p. 832.)

MR. URBAN, Dover, June 19. I HAVE noticed with much satisfaction in the May number of your Magazine the picturesque representation of "the Custom House at Dover in the seventeenth century." You have failed, however, (p. 490,) in identifying the spot on which the old Custom House stood.

May I therefore be permitted to inform your readers that the buildings forming the foreground of the picture were situated nearly three-quarters of a mile distant from the locality mentioned in the text, and can by no means be identified with the harbour Store-house, which Lyon describes as having been "built in the time of Elizabeth, and ornamented with the effigy of that princess (as patroness of the harbour), adjoining the New Sluice, and near to the lower end of Strondstreet."*

The Custom House represented in the print is most unquestionably that described by Kilburn in his "Topographie," anno 1659 (p. 83), only noticing, by the way, the slight mistake made by that otherwise accurate observer in naming the ancient gates. He says, "Snargate [Severus's gate], which was toward the south-west, where sometime was Penniless Bench, and is still so called, but is now made like a platform paved with stone, where merchants usually resort each day between eleven and one, and over the same the Custom House is built."

It would appear that this building continued to be used till after the restoration of the Stuarts, when the mansion at the old dock erected by Arnold Braems, 1662, and originally intended for the residence of himself and his son Walter, was let to the

* History of Dover, vol. i. p. 167.

Instead of Snargate Kilburn ought to have said Severus's gate (he has transposed the situation of the two). Snargate stood adjoining the present residence of Sir John Hamilton, as appears by a stone there which records that it was taken down in the year 1683.

Braems and Son were the principal merchants in the town; and, in the expectation that Dover would be made a free port, they obtained the grant of the waste beach on the opposite side of the basin, on which at vast expense they erected a spacious range of storehouses, which remained

government for the use of the Customs, and so continued, though in a very ruinous condition, until the year 1806, the date of the present Custom House. In the year 1821 the whole of those dilapidated buildings, which adjoined the newly erected Ship Hotel, were taken down to make room for the mansion designed by the late John Minet Fector, esq. for his town residence and banking establishment.

In closing these remarks on our ancient Custom Houses, I beg to notice the truthfulness of your engraving, comparing it with the contemporaneous description of quaint old Kilburnso singularly depicting the platform paved with stone, the noon-tide meeting of the merchants, and the Custom House crossing the entrance of their exchange; whilst with an equal interest we view the accurate representation of the tower on the right, which remained with the same appearance till the year 1819, when, together with nearly 300 feet of the town wall and the last remaining gate (Butchery), it was levelled to make room for the house and offices of the late Mr. Shipdem, and other modern alterations. It was the flanking tower of the Butchery Gate; but I do not find that it ever had any distinguishing name until of late years, when it was known as the "Black Hole," and was used under the old regime of watchmen, as a lock-up. The Round Tower alluded to in May, p. 490, was one of two built for defence of the harbour, by Clark, in the time of Henry VII. The two towers are shewn in the picture at Windsor Castle, representing the embarkation of Henry VIII. in 1520, engraved by the Society of Antiquaries. The foundation of one of these towers was discovered in building some houses, 1798, in Round Tower Street, and the massive iron ring by which the vessels had been secured was still found attached to the building.

I cannot, however, pass by the Platform without observing that it continued to be used as a place of defence, mounted

until 1808, when about one-half were destroyed by fire; the remaining part, together with the York Hotel and the whole of Union Street, was pulled down for the purpose of enlarging the harbour in the year 1846.