often to gape over first and secondary causations, the systems of Empedocles and Lucretius, or the speculations of Cicero and Galen.

This society, which at first consisted of a small knot of clever lawyers, who had much leisure and little practice, used to meet at the Crown and Anchor Tavern in the Strand. It still exists, or at least did exist in 1828; and if in its origin it could show such names as Sharpe, Macintosh, Scarlett, Sam Rogers, and Dumont, the friend of the Abbé de Lisle, in later times it has had to boast of Lord Holland, Lord Lansdowne, and many others distinguished either for their rank or their talent.

The Hole in the Wall Club and the Iona Club may hardly seem to come within the fair limits of our essay, the one belonging to Norwich and the other to Scotland. We will, therefore, content ourselves with recording of them, that the first was an association of many clever, but eccentric, characters for mere amusement; and that the last was instituted in the March of 1833, for the purpose of investigating and illustrating the history, antiquities, and early literature of the Scottish Highlands. The results of their inquiries are given to the world in periodical numbers, which contain much novel and curious information.

(To be continued.)

THE WANDERER'S RETURN.

FROM THE GERMAN-BY A LADY.

TOWARDS his home he returns, his staff in his hand,
Full long has he wandered, and distant the land—
His face is embrowned, and he's covered with dust,
The poor wayworn stranger, who first shall accost?
He reaches the barrier, enters the town,
See close by its portal, the keeper sits down,
At the sight of that face, his delight who shall tell?
'Tis a friend of his youth, he remembers full well.
But alas! this old friend knows the wanderer not,
For burnt are his cheeks, and his features forgot,
Their greeting was short, and quick onward he goes,
And the dust as he walks, he shakes from his shoes.
Near a casement he halts, his own loved one is there,
Oh, welcome dear maiden, how welcome, how fair!"
In vain the appeal, for that eye knows him not,
So burnt are his cheeks, and his features forgot.
Slow and sad he moves on, a kind greeting to seek,
Dim and moist is his eye, a tear rests on his cheek:
But who now approaches, and totters this way,
"Tis his mother: "God bless thee," is all he need say.

She hears him, she see him, she sinks on his breast,

My son, oh! my son! now my heart is at rest."

More embrowned must he be, and the sun be more hot,
Ere the child, by the mother, be recognized not.

THE LANDS OF ENGLAND, AND THEIR PROPRIETORS SINCE THE CONQUEST.

Ankerwycke in prardisbury, Bucks.

In this sequestered parish are situated the remains of a Nunnery, founded by Sir Gilbert de Montfichet, Knt., and Richard his son, about the reign of Henry II. This religious house, of the order of Benedictines, was dedicated to St. Mary Magdalene. The inmates in the time of Edward III. modestly styled themselves " the Poor Nuns of Ankerwycke." To this priory many and considerable were the benefactors; among them King Richard II. constituted his quota of alms. The seal of the priory is well preserved in a deed, 54 Henry III., and on it is a building similar to a tent, which is surmounted on either side by Greek crosses. The exergue bears the words SIGILL ECCLE SCE MARIE MAG DE ANKWIC.

Previous to the dissolution of the monasteries, the conventual edifices here were in a state too dilapidated to be returned as amenable to the king's commissioners. King Henry VIII. gave this nunnery to Bisham Abbey, Berks, and it was held by Andrew, Lord Windsor, for life, and then to his issue, by the twentieth part of a knight's fee. This nobleman surrendered it again to the Crown, when by deed, 6th August, 1550, it was granted to Sir Thomas Smijth, Knt., who paid a fee farm rent of £1 6s. 8d. per annum. On the death of this distinguished knight, (whose name sheds a lustre over the Universities of England, for the depth of his erudition, and over the government of Britain, for the wisdom of his counsels and diplomacy, being thrice Ambassador to France and once to Brussels-as well as coadjutor with the learned Cheke, "who taught our Cambridge and King Edward, greek." Ankerwycke was devised by him in 1577, with his estates at Hill Hall, Essex, to his only surviving brother, George Smijth. He lived in the old mansion until his death, in 1584, and was interred in the chancel of Wyrardisbury church.

Wiresberie is cited as being held by a thane in King Edward's time, and in Domesday Book by Robert Gernon, and in Testa de Neville by Sir Richard Montfichet in capite. In 1281 the manors were in the Crown, and were granted conditionally to Christiana de Mariscis, at a fee farm rent of £110.

This lady gave certain lands to the prioress and monks of Ankerwycke. Subsequently the Queens of England were dowered in Wyrardisbury, until the manorial rights were purchased of the crown in 1627, by John Sharowe, for £617: 16s. 1d.; the regalian rights being however held in reservation. It was held as of the manor of East Greenwich, in common soccage and not in capite or by knight's service until 1641, when Andrew King, Gent., son of Ambrose King, of Wales, purchased it, and he died lord thereof, 1659. His son, Sir Andrew King, Knt., succeeded, and his nephew and heir continued here until it was alienated in 1685 to John Lee, Esq., of the Middle Temple, whose widow, Mary, enjoyed it till her decease in 1725, when it devolved on Elizabeth Lee, his sister, who had married Sir Philip Harcourt, Knt.

The ancient mansion and property passed into another hand by purchase in 1805, when Mr. Blagrove, its owner, pulled down the house and erected the present, which, with the lands, he bequeathed in 1824 to his daughters and coheirs, who retained them till 1829, when the present proprietor, George Simon Harcourt, Esq., repurchased the inheritance of his ancestors. The house bears no characteristic of grandeur, and is situated on a low level near the course of the Thames, and a small branch of the Coln: the grounds interspersed with lofty trees are charmingly disposed with every attention to their natural beauties, which consist of the softer cast of landscape. If the bold crag and deep dell be wanting, these are amply compensated by the richly enamelled meadows and highly cultivated plains on the banks of the Thames, while Windsor Castle bursts in all its majesty on the distant view. It boasts also of some celebrated yew trees, said to have existed 1000 years, and under their shade tradition alleges that King Henry VIII. woed the ill-fated Boleyn.

What scenes have passed, since first this ancient YEW-
In all the strength of youthful beauty grew—
Here Patriot Barons might have musing stood,
And plan'd the CHARTER, for their country's good-
And here perhaps from RONNYMEDE retired
The haughty John, with secret vengeance fired—
Might curse the day which saw his weakness yield
Extorted rights in yonder tented field-
Here too the tyrant HARRY felt love's flame,
And sighing breathed his Anna Boleyn's name.
Beneath the shelter of this yew tree's shade
The royal lover woo'd the illstarr'd maid,
And yet that neck round which he fondly hung,
To hear the thrilling accents of her tongue-
That lovely breast, on which his head reclined
Formed to have humanised his savage mind-
Were doomed to bleed beneath the tyrant's steel,
Whose selfish heart might doat-but could not feel-
Oh! had the yew its direst venom shed
Upon the cruel Henry's guilty head-

Ere England's sons with shuddering grief, had seen
A slaughtered victim in their beauteous queen.

WM. THOMAS FITZGERALD.

But by far the most famous object, perhaps of equal interest with any in England, is Magna Charter Island, now annexed to the land, in the parish of Wyrardisbury, rendered sacred to freedom, and admitted to be the spot where the celebrated charter of British liberty was ratified. Runnymede is on the opposite bank, where in 1215, the confederated barons having secured the person of King John, the terrified monarch yielded to the demands of his subjects; was conveyed to this part of the possessions of the nuns of Ankerwycke, where he signed the instrument of England's deliverance from the yoke of a despotism which had become intolerable.

In the interior of the fisherman's hut on the island is preserved a stone called the Charter Stone, on which the deed is affirmed to have been executed. A very curious old oak table, removed from Place farm, (formerly the Manor House and in the village styled, King John's Hunting box,) to the hall of Mr. Gyll, of Wyrardisbury House, lays claim to some such traditional honor.

VOL. IV. NO. XVIII.

2 D

The village of Wyrardisbury is very rural in its appearance, and it boasts a modern luxury, the gift of Mr. Harcourt, who in 1842 causd an iron suspension bridge to span the road, which in wet seasons was inundated by the joint overflowings of the Thames and Coln. The church for its external simplicity and interior embellishments, should not be pretermitted in a notice of this hamlet. It is of a very antique structure, and is adorned with two handsome stained glass windows of scrollage and mosaic patterns, which are relieved by the heraldic ensigns of the families of Gyll and Flemyng. It also contains in the chancel thirteen very noble monuments of the families of Gyll and Hassell, and in the body of the church are beautifully finished monuments to the memory of the ancient and illustrious family of Harcourt, to whom also the church is indebted for an organ.

The principal families resident in this secluded village seem to have very laudably vied with each other in contributing to the decoration of this church, and in thus affording to every admirer of these interesting repositories of the sacred remains of our departed ancestors and friends, an example worthy of imitation. The family of Gyll succeeded at Wyrardisbury, after the extinction of the Hassels, who leased the ecclesiastical lands of the Dean and Canons of Windsor, and became, as early as 1696, proprietors of freeholds there, which were devised to Wm. Gyll, Esq., who married the eldest coheir of the House of Hassel, and which have since descended to B. H. Gyll, Esq., who possesses the property originally in the tenure of Sir Thomas Smijth, Knt., and his brother Sir George Smijth, with whose posterity there is also an intermarriage.

On the whole we may add here in conclusion, while recounting the marvellous events which have taken place on Magna Charter Island, what Dr. Johnson said of the Isle of Iona in Scotland.

"To abstract the mind from all local emotion would be impossible; and if it were endeavoured it would be foolish if it were possible-whatever withdraws us from the power of our senses-whatever makes the past, the distant, or the future predominate over the present, advances us in the dignity of thinking beings. Far from me and my friends be such frigid philosophy as may conduct us indifferent and unmoved over any ground which has been dignified by wisdom, bravery or virtue. That man is little to be envied whose patriotism would not gain force upon the plains of Marathon, and whose piety would not grow warm among the ruins in Iona." We may justly superadd-" or whose zeal would not quicken of the birth place of our constitutional liberties."

Edenhall, co. Cumberland.

WATERED by the silvery stream from which the name is derived; and embosomed in richly wooded groves, peculiarly our country's own, Edenhall, “aula ad rivum Eden," is one of those lovely spots so abundantly scattered over the beautiful county of Cumberland :

Here thine eye may catch new pleasures,
Whilst the landscape round it measures:
Russet lawns and fallows grey,

Where the nibbling flocks do stray;

Mountains, on whose barren breast
Labouring clouds do often rest:
Meadows trim with dasies pied,
Shallow brooks and rivers wide;
Towers and battlements it sees
Bosom'd high in tufted trees.

The lands of Edenhall, situated in the forest of Inglewood, were first granted to Henry, son of Sweine, the second brother of Adam Fitz-sweine, and are next found, temp. Henry III., in the possession of Robert Turpe, whose grandson Robert Turpe left two daughters and coheirs, one of whom Julian wedded, 1 Edward III., William Stapleton. Subsequently, for five generations, her descendants, the Stapletons, held the property; but at length their direct male line failed, and Edenhall was conveyed by Joan de Stapleton in marriage to Sir Thomas de Musgrave. This alliance, which first fixed the Musgraves on the banks of the Eden, occurred in the reign of Henry VI., and from that period to the present its descendants have continued resident there in repute and honour.

The martial and warlike family" of Musgrave, as it is styled by Camden, was renowned in border warfare and border minstrelsy, from the earliest period, and has maintained an unbroken male succession, even to the present day. In early times the chief seat of the Musgraves was at Musgrave, in Westmorland, and subsequently at Hartley Castle in the same county, but after their alliance with the Stapletons, Edenhall seduced them altogether from their former residences. The present possessor is Sir George Musgrave, 10th Bart. His immediate ancestor, Sir Philip Musgrave, who acquired great renown under the royal banner during the civil war-at Marston Moor-as Governor of Carlisle,-at Worcester, and under the heroic Countess of Derby, in the Isle of Man, had a warrant, after the restoration, raising him to the peerage, as BARON MUSGRAVE, of Hartley Castle, but the patent was never taken out. This gallant cavalier's grand uncle, Thomas Musgrave, was captain of Bew Castle, and occurs in a curious indenture of the time, which exhibits the form and manner of

proceeding to the ancient trial at arms in single combat. A copy of this deed will not, we think, be uninteresting:

It is agreed between Thomas Musgrave and Lancelot Carleton, for the true trial of such controversies as are betwixt them, to have it openly tried by way of combat, before God and the face of the world, in Canonby Holme, before England and Scotland, upon Thursday in Easter week, being the 8th day of April next ensuing, A.D., 1602, betwixt nine of the clock and one of the same day to fight on foot; to be armed with jack and steel cap, plaite sleeves, plaite breeches, plaite socks, two swords, the blades to be one yard and a half a quarter of length, two Scotch daggers, or dirks at their girdles, and either of them to provide armour and weapons for themselves, according to this indenture. Two gentlemen to be appointed in the field to view both the parties, to see that they both be equal in arms and weapons, according to this indenture; and being so viewed, the gentlemen to ride to the rest of the company, and to leave them; but two boys, viewed by the gentlemen, to be under sixteen years of age, to hold their horses. In testimony of this, our agreement, we have both set our hands to this indenture of intent: all matters shall be made so plain as there shall be no question to stick upon that day; which indenture, as a witness, shall be delivered to two gentlemen; and for that it is convenient the world should be privy to every particular of the ground of the quarrel,