quest; as a proper preliminary, in the opinion of the author, to elucidate the subsequent part of the work. The statement appears to be generally accurate; though not without many posi tive decisions on the dubious and contested points of our history. These are not the only instances of dogmatism, which, we conceive, might as well have been omitted. This dissertation, comprising a period of more than seven centuries, after a just eulogium on the many virtues which form the character of our beloved sovereign, concludes with describing the present state of the British empire.

During the period I have noticed, containing more than seven centuries, vast changes have been insensibly wrought. Our religion, our laws, customs, manners, have been altered; our monarchs are not absolute, like the Norman Kings; nor our nobility terrific to the sovereign, and oppressive to the people, as they were in the reigns of the Plantagenets, The lesser barons, become the great commoners, with the prin cipal inhabitants of our cities and boroughs, form a middle class: these, representing the great mass of the people in parliament, make the base of the column, terminating in a point, surmounted with a crown. Thus our constitution, the work of ages, is the pride of our own, the envy of other countries. It affords a liberty universally diffused; such as no nation, ancient or modern, ever knew. We have privileged orders: we prize them as excellent incitements to glory: they are attainable by all who can merit them. Nothing can so well prove the excellence of the British constitution as the progressive, since the revolution, though rapid increase of population. William I. found in England about two millions of inhabitants: there are now more than fourteen, it is supposed. For ages she had been the prey of every lawless foe: Romans, Saxons, Danes, and Normans, had each subdued her. What is the difference now? She awes the mightiest empires. How many millions give a willing submission to her sceptre :-In how many languages is his Majesty addressed as a sovereign! Whithersoever a Briton turns his eyes upon the globe, he sees reason to exult in his country's greatness, wealth, and fame. The sea is, as it were, exclusively his own: there the British navy rides triumphant. These favoured islands are alike the seat of arms, of arts, and of commerce. So long as we retain our religion and our laws, our public integrity and private virtues, we may, with humble confidence, trust that we shall never sink to the defenceless state from which we have so long immerged,(emerged) to be placed amonst the most honourable of the earth.' pp. 43, 44.

Mr. Noble must excuse us if we express some disappointment, when perusing the history which forms the body of his work, in being referred to other authors, such as Spelman, Weaver, Anstis, Edmonson, &c. for accounts which should certainly have been introduced here, according to the professions of the title-page He appears, indeed, to have narrowed his plan; for he afterwards informs us, that he only designs "to give the successions of the different kings, heralds, and pursuivants, since their incorpora

tion by Richard III. with the most authentic memorials of them interspersed with remarks relative to the Society." But, desirable as this information certainly is, it cannot be thought satisfactory in a professed" History of the College of Arms."

The history is divided into parts, corresponding with the several reigns from Richard III. inclusive, to the present; and it ' recounts the degree of patronage which the college has experienced under each of our monarchs; including the attendances of its officers, at home and abroad, on professional occasions. The reader will here receive much information and instruction, and we consider this part of the work as very creditable to the author. A list of the officers of the College is annexed to each reign, under their respective departments. Of these, an historical account is given, with the exception of about twenty-five, in the whole; exclusive of the occasional heralds, and pursuivants extraordinary. Of the officers thus excluded from biographical fame, Mr. Noble, we imagine, could not find any vestiges; nor many, indeed, of some of those whom he has recorded, beyond their nominal existence in the parochial volume, "where," as Pope observes," to be born and die, makes all the history."

Biographical memoirs, and genealogies, our limits prevent us from extracting. For these we must refer to the volume itself; and can only gratify our readers with a short account of the collegiate residences of the officers, from their earliest incorporation; previously, however, expressing our concern that this article has not formed a detached and more considerable portion of the work.

66

As Charles VI., in the year 1406, had incorporated the heralds in France, Richard III., following his example, gave his officers of arms a charter of incorporation, by the name of the College of Heralds, and granted them many privileges, making them free from subsidies end tolls, with exemption from all troublesome offices. His majesty also, by his letters patent, dated at Westminster, March 2, 1483-4, granted to John Writh, alias Garter, principal king of Englishmen, a large mansion called Cole-Herbert, standing in the parish of All Saints the Little, in the city of London, to him and his successors for ever. This house had long been the residence of the princes of the blood, the nobility, and the highest gentry. It was conveyed in these words: one messuage, with the appurtenances, in London, in the parish of All Saints, called Pulteney's Inn, or Cold Harbore, to the use of twelve the most principal and approved of them, the heralds for the time being, for ever, without compte, or any other thing thereof, to us or to our heirs, to be given or paid.'. A chaplain was appointed, with an annual stipend of twenty pounds, who was directed to pray for the good estate of King Richard, Ann his Queen, and Edward their son, during their lives, and for their souls after death. Stow calls it Cole Herbert, Maitland and Mr. Pennant Cold Harbour, anciently Coldherbergh: "it was a right fair, and stately house." Sir John Poulteney built it in the reign of Edward III., who had been lord

mayor

mayor of London four times; whence it was called Poulteney's Inn, which it long retained after it had gone into other hands. He gave it, with the adjoining wharf to Humphrey de Bohun, Earl of Hereford and Essex: the Earl of Arundel became possessed of it by marrying that nobleman's niece. In the year 1397, it belonged to John Holland, Duke of Exeter and Earl of Huntingdon, who here magnificently feasted his half-brother, Richard II. In the next year it passed to Edmond of Langley, Earl of Cambridge: it came thence to the Crown. Henry IV. by his patent, dated March 18, 1410, granted it to his son Henry, Prince of Wales. Henry VI. in his 22d year, conveyed it to John Holland, Duke of Exeter, whose son Henry being a Lancastrian lost it, by attainture of parliament. Edward IV, kept it in his hands, and at Richards III.'s accession it was in the Crown.

When Richard III. fell at Bosworth, all his acts were rendered null, his grants cancelled, and himself declared a tyrant and usurper. Richard, with great and splendid talents, mixed qualities that but too justly merit those epithets. The heralds had a double loss. The earl marshal, the Duke of Norfolk, likewise lost his life with his royal master, at whose request this grant of Cole Herbert had been made. It was in vain that they pleaded having performed the duties enjoined them. The grant was declared void, and the officers at arms were ordered to remove. Garter claimed it in his private capacity. How long he kept possession does not appear; but in the reign of Henry VIII. it was given to Bishop Tunstal to reside in, that monarch having seized Durham Place, the town residence of the prelatical palatines. It was then given to the Earls of Shrewsbury, one of whom, in Stow's time, took down the ancient edifice, and erected upon its scite a number of small tenements let out at great

rents.

The heralds being obliged to quit their college, retired to our Lady of Rounceval, or Ronceval, near Charing-cross, which had been a cell to the priory of Rouncevaux, in Navarre, founded by William Marshal, Earl of Pembroke, in the reign of Henry III. and suppressed by Henry V. amongst the alien priories, but had been rebuilt by Edward IV., who settled a fraternity in it: the cell stood upon part of the scite of Northumberland-house. The heralds having no claim to it, they were only there upon sufferance of the Crown, until Edward VI. granted the scite of it to Sir Thomas Cawarden. I have placed these circumstances here, as connected with the history of the Herald's College. pp. 54.-56.

From this period the officers of the College of Arms, appear to have had their residence in the court. Edward VI. indeed intended to gratify them with a collegiate mansion, but his premature death defeated this munificent design. Mary, however, realized his intentions, in granting them Derby House, on the same spot with the present College. This was destroyed "in the great fire of London, in the reign of Charles II. It was rebuilt with brick, in a very handsome manner, after a design by Sir Christopher Wren, is still the residence of the officers of arms, and the depository of their valuable collections, which are as useful as they are curious. Here, too, they hold, on the first

Thursday in every month, their meetings, called chapters, where all affairs are determined by a majority of voices of the kings and heralds, each of the former having two voices: they meet oftener, when necessary. One of the heralds, and one pursuivant attend daily in the public office, according to rotation. There are belonging to the College, a register, a treasurer, and a messenger, with two watermen having badges." p. 150.

In the return made to the inquiry of a Select Committee of the House of Commons, into the state of the public records of this kingdom, in 1800, the building is represented as being in a truly hazardous state..

A sugar-house immediately adjoins the library; there is no partywall between the buildings, and the timbers of the sugar-house are actually inserted in the walls of the College. When the room which is now, and ever has been, the library, was first appropriated to that purpose, there was ample accommodation for the number of books; but that number has increased so much in the space of 130 years, that the library has long since been found too small to contain the whole; and some hundreds of volumes are now in presses in the hall, where they are subject to great injury from damp, &c." Appendix p. xlii.

A parliamentary attention to these evils, we anxiously hope, will be paid,as soon as pacific leisure will allow it; that our countrymen may provide a hortus,' where the records of the laurels reaped so gloriously for ages in the field, may be preserved from the ravages of time.

To the eulogium the author pays to the late amiable, and accomplished herald, John Charles Brooke, Esq.' we cordially assent, having ourselves been honoured with his acquaintance. In mentioning this respected name, it is impossible not to heave a sigh at the recollection of the melancholy manner, in which he and his friend Pinto, York Herald, met an untimely death, while attempting to press into the Haymarket Theatre, on the 3d of February, 1794. That affection for their Majesties, which was conspicuous in their characters, prompted them to incur the danger which unhappily proved fatal. The admonition conveyed by the catastrophe is not, on that account, the less solemn; and we regret that the reverend author has restrained those reflections which must have arisen in his mind, and which, in our opinion, would have been more appropriate than the remarks he has given us.

An Appendix of 44 pages, contains records and other instruments which could not well be inserted in the body of the work. Fidelity to the public now assigns to us the truly painful yet necessary task, of censuring the numerous violations of grammar, which discredit a work especially designed for the learned; and which was under compilation during a space of thirteen years!

However,

However unheraldic it might have been, Mr. Noble should at least have favoured his readers with a faithful table of errata, in addition to the few genealogical mistakes he has goticed at the bottom of their respective pages. Besides sentences embarrassed so as to be nearly unintelligible, we find false concords, relatives without antecedents, and other inaccuracies scattered throughout the work, from the preface itself, in the first line of which began appears instead of begun. We are incapable of ascertaining errors in the pedigrees, being reviewers, and not heralds. But we are competent to correct the mistakes of Captain Gostlin, in his account of the celebrated Mr. Grose, Richmond. (pp. 434.) We state, from sources the most authentic, that Francis Grose, Esq. came into England from the Canton of Berne, in Swisserland, was an eminent jeweller in Broad-street, London, and was honoured with making the crown of state for the coronation of George II. By Anne, daughter of Thomas Bennett, he had Francis Grose, Esq. the above herald; John Henry Grose, Esq. author of the voyage to the East Indies; Daniel Grose, Esq. a captain in the royal regiment of artillery; Jacob Grose, Esq. deputy lieutenant for the county of Hants; and Anne, first married to Captain Mathison, of the Panther man of war, and afterwards to Thomas Waterhouse, Esq. one of his majesty's justices of the peace for the county of Surrey. Francis Grose, Esq. had a son, the present Major General Grose; and the above John Henry Grose, Esq. was father of the Rev. John Grose, A.M. F.A.Š. and Rector of Netteswell, in Essex, author of a volume of Ethics, and three volumes of Sermons; and the above Daniel Grose, Esq. was father of lieutenant Daniel Grose, Edward Grose, Esq. of Threadneedle-street, and Sir Nash Grose, Justice of the King's Bench, were of a different family.

Though it cannot consistently be classed with the errata, yet we consider Mr. Noble, in his laudable zeal for the heraldic officers, to be inaccurate in asserting that "every order of men are now paid according to the present value of the precious metals." (p. 406.) In this statement he has strangely overlooked his professional brethren of the stipendiary class. We entirely concur in his judicious remark, 'that, to excel in any profession, the mind ought to be at ease, which is incompatible with a narrow, a very circumscribed income.' Highly as we respect the officers of the College of Arms, and sincerely as we wish their salaries were more adequate to their talents, we cannot but look with greater concern to the hardships of so large a part of that body of men, whose office it is to instruct us to aspire to unfading honours, and to have our names registered in the book of life!

Art.