names have long been the common property of England and of France. Yet the sight of this place is a mortifying one. The remains of the fine cloisters have been turned into a dining-room, and, to use the words of the "Guide-Book," "Part of the site of the church is now a parterre which in summer exhibits a fine collection of Flora's greatest beauties." This was the very church whose high altar was described by the old writers to have stood on the spot where the body of Harold was found, covered with honourable wounds in the defence of his tattered standard. "Flora's greatest beauties!" Those who can look upon this desecration of a spot so singularly venerable without a burning blush for some foregone barbarism, must be made of different stuff from the brave who here fought to the death because they had a country which not only afforded them food and shelter, but memory of great men and heroic deeds, which was to them an inheritance to be prized and defended.

the

The desecration of Battle Abbey of course began at the general pillage under Henry the Eighth. The lord Cromwell's commissioners write to him that they have "cast their book" for the dispatch of the monks and household. They think that very small money can be made of the vestry, but they reckon the plunder of the church plate to amount to four hundred marks. Within three months after the surrender of the Abbey it was granted to sir Anthony Browne; and he at once set about pulling down the church, the bell-tower, the sacristy, and the chapterhouse. The spoiler became viscount Montacute; and in this family Battle Abbey continued, till it was sold, in 1719, to sir Thomas Webster. Brown Willis who wrote at the beginning of the last century, thus describes it in his day :-" Though this abbey be demolished, yet the magnificence of it appears by the ruins of the cloisters, &c., and by the largeness of the hall, kitchen, and gatehouse, of which the last is entirely preserved. It is a noble pile, and in it are held sessions and other meetings, for this peculiar jurisdiction, which hath still great privileges belonging to it. What the hall was, when in its glory, may be guessed by its dimensions, its length above fifty of my paces; part of it is now used as a hay

barn; it was leaded, part of the lead yet remains, and the rest is tiled. As to the kitchen, it was so large as to contain five fireplaces, and it was arched at top; but the extent of the whole abbey may be better measured by the compass of it, it being computed at no less than a mile about. In this church the Conqueror offered up his sword and royal robe, which he wore on the day of his coronation. The monks kept these till the suppression, and used to show them as great curiosities, and worthy the sight of their best friends, and all persons of distinction that happened to come thither: nor were they less careful about preserving a table of the Norman gentry which came into England with the Conqueror."

Speeches before the Battle of Hastings.

WARNER'S ALBION'S ENGLAND.

HAROLD'S SPEECH.

"See, valiant war-friends, yonder be the first, the last, and all
The agents of our enemies, they henceforth cannot call
Supplies; for weeds at Normandy by this in porches grow:
Then conquer these would conquer you, and dread no further foe.
They are no stouter than the Brutes, whom we did hence exile:
Nor stronger than the sturdy Danes, our victory ere while :
Not Saxony could once contain, or scarce the world beside
Our fathers, who did sway by sword where listed them to bide:
Then do not ye degenerate, take courage by descent,
And by their burials, not abode, their source and flight prevent.
Ye have in hand your country's cause, a conquest they pretend,
Which (were ye not the same ye be) even cowards would defend.
I grant that part of us are fled, and linked to the foe,
And glad I am our army is of traitors cleared-so :
Yea, pardon hath he to depart, that stayeth mal-content;
I prize the mind above the man, like zeal hath like event.

Yet truth it is, no well or ill this Island ever had,

But through the well or ill support of subjects good or bad;
Not Cæsar, Hengist, Sweyn, or now (which ne'ertheless shall fail)
The Norman Bastard, Albion true, did, could, or can prevail.
But to be self-false in this Isle a self-foe ever is,

Yet wot I, never traitor did his treason's stipend miss.

Shrink who will shrink, let armour's weight press down the burd'ned earth,

My foes, with wond'ring eyes shall see I over-prize my death.
But since ye all, (for all, I hope, alike affected be,

Your wives, your children, lives, and land, from servitude to free)
Are armed both in show and zeal, then gloriously contend,
To win and wear the home-brought spoils, of Victory the end.
Let not the Skinner's daughter's son possess what he pretends,
He lives to die a noble death that life for freedom spends."

DUKE WILLIAM'S SPEECIL.

"To live upon or lie within this is my ground or grave,
(My loving soldiers), one of twain your duke resolves to have.
Nor be ye Normans now to seek in what ye should be stout,
Ye come amidst the English pikes to hew your honours out,
Ye come to win the same by lance, that is your own by law,
Ye come, I say, in righteous war revenging swords to draw.
Howbeit of more hardy foes no passed flight hath sped ye,
Since Rollo to your now-abode with bands victorious led ye,
Or Turchus, son of Troilus, in Scythian Fazo bred ye.
Then worthy your progenitors ye seed of Priam's son,
Exploit this business, Rollons, do that which ye wish be done.
Three people have as many times got and foregone this shore,
It resteth now ye conquer it, not to be conquered more:
For Norman and the Saxon blood conjoining, as it may,
From that consorted seed the crown shall never pass away.
Before us are our armed foes, behind us are the seas,
On either side the foe hath holds of succour and for ease :
But that advantage shall return their disadvantage thus,
If ye observe no shore is left the which may shelter us,

And so hold out amidst the rough whilst they hail in for lee,
Whereas, whilst men securely sail, not seldom shipwrecks be,
What should I cite your passed acts, or tediously incense
To present arms; your faces show your hearts conceive offence,
Yea, even your courages divine a conquest not to fail.
Hope then your duke doth prophecy, and in that hope prevail.
A people brave, a terren Heaven, both objects worth your wars,
Shall be the prizes of your prow's, and mount your fame to stars.
Let not a traitor's perjur'd son exclude us from our right:
He dies to live a famous life, that doth for conquest fight.”

Industry of the Anglo-Saxons.

Agriculture.

C. KNIGHT.

The opening of the year was the time in which the ground was broken up, and the seed committed to the bounty of heaven. We cannot with any propriety assume that the seed was literally sown in the coldest month, although it is possible that the winter began earlier than it now does. December was emphatically called Winter-monat, winter-month. The Anglo-Saxon name of January was equally expressive of its fierce and gloomy attributes; its long nights, when men and cattle were sheltering from the snowstorm and the frost, but the hungry wolf was prowling around the homestead. Verstegan says, "The month which we now call January, they called Wolf-monat, to wit, Wolf-month, because people are wont always in that month to be in more danger to be devoured of wolves than in any season else of the year; for that, through the extremity of cold and snow, these ravenous beasts could not find of other beasts sufficient to feed upon." There are preserved in the Cotton Library some very curious dialogues composed by Alfric of Canterbury, who lived in the latter part of the tenth century, which were for the instruction of the Anglo

Saxon youth in the Latin language, upon the principle of interlinear translation; and in these the ploughman says, "I labour much. I go out at daybreak, urging the oxen to the field, and I yoke them to the plough. It is not yet so stark winter that I dare keep close athome, for fear of my lord." (Turner's "Anglo-Saxons.") We thus see that the ploughing is done after the harvest, before the winter sets in. The ploughman continues, "But the oxen being yoked, and the shear and coulter fastened on, I ought to plough every day one entire field or more. I have a boy to threaten the oxen with a goad, who is now hoarse through cold and bawling. I ought also to fill the bins of the oxen with hay, and water them, and carry out their soil." The daily task of the ploughman indicates an advanced state of husbandry. The land was divided into fields; we know from Saxon grants that they had hedges and ditches. He was as careful, too, to carry upon the land the ordure of the oxen, as if he had studied a modern "Muck-Manual." He knew the value of such labour, and set about it probably in a more scientific manner than many of those who till the same land nine hundred years after him. Mr. Sharon Turner has given a brief and sensible account of the Anglo-Saxon husbandry, from which the following is an extract :—

"When the Anglo-Saxons invaded England, they came into a country which had been under the Roman power for about four hundred years, and where agriculture, after its more complete subjection by Agricola, had been so much encouraged, that it had become one of the western granaries of the empire. The Britons, therefore, of the fifth century may be considered to have pursued the best system of husbandry then in use, and their lands to have been extensively cultivated with all those exterior circumstances which mark established proprietorship and improvement : as small farms; enclosed fields; regular divisions into meadow, arable, pasture, and wood; fixed boundaries; planted hedges; artificial dykes and ditches; selected spots for vineyards, gardens, and orchards; connecting roads and paths; scattered villages and larger towns; with appropriated names for every spot and object that marked the limits of each property, or the course of