University of Virginia Library

The old bridge was built in 1247, with rows of houses upon it on either side, supported by small gothic arches. An engraving of it is still extant in Barrett's “Bristol.”

The old name for a merchant vessel, here in Bristol.

According to William of Worcester, “The Catherine” was of 140 tons burthen; she was one of Cannynge's ten ships.

Sebastian, with his father, John Cabot, in the spring of 1497, sailed from Bristol in a ship called “The Matthew.” On the 24th of June they discovered Newfoundland, S. John's, and the continent of North America.

The Hermitage dedicated to S. Brendan on the summit of Brandon Hill existed till 1565.

Edward III., in 1354, finding the wool staple had been carried to Flanders, re-established the trade here in Bristol, with all its rights and liberties. Edward Blanket, representative of the city in 1362; and his relatives, Edmund and Thomas, distinguished themselves as manufacturers of the article that still bears their name.

The topographer, Botoner, better known as William of Worcester, was born on Saint James' Back, 1415, died 1484. He was author of “The Itineraries,” a survey of Bristol, full of the most accurate measurements. His Memoranda were discovered in the Library of Benet's College, Cambridge, and deciphered by Nasmith in 1778.

Henry VII., in 1487, was met at this gate by a pageant of many “mayden children, richly besene with girdels, beds (beads), and onches.” v. Taylor's “Bristol,” p. 134.

Elizabeth, on her passage through Bristol, in August, 1574, was addressed by three boys, severally representing salutation, gratulation, and obedient good-will. They were attired as knights, and must have wearied her Majesty by the length and mock heroism of their wretched verses. See Corrie & Evans, p. 354.

The weather-worn statues on either side Saint John's Arch are supposed to represent Brennus and Belinus, sons of Dunwallo, an early king of Britain, the reputed founders of the city. Of Eulogium Historiarum, 1366 A.D., “Brennius civitatem condidit in occidentali parte Britanniæ, et eam nomine suo appella scilicet Brenston; nunc vero per syncopen Bristow vocitatur.” Vol. II., p. 242.

Brennus, B.C. 390, crossed the Apennines, defeated the Romans, and marched upon Rome. The eighty Fathers (senators) sat silent in their robes of office in the senate house; and Brennus and his Gauls were so awe-struck by their majestic appearance that they deemed them the gods of Rome. A Gaul stretched out his hand and stroked the beard of one of the Fathers, named Papyrius, who struck the insolent soldier with his staff. The man smote him dead; and a general massacre ensued. Livy's account is familiar to every schoolboy.

A large ransom was offered by the Romans; the Gauls, bringing false balances, the former remonstrated, whereupon Brennus arrogantly flung his sword into the scale, exclaiming— “Væ victis!”

“Boy-canaries.” Effect produced by the boys of the Elizabeth School, playing in their yellow hose and canary coloured coat linings.

“Pikemen.” On Monday, July 25, 1643, at the siege of Bristol, Colonel Wentworth sent Thelwall, with two hundred pikemen, to lodge himself at the bottom of Brandon Hill, where he was well sheltered by ferns and bushes.—Cf. Taylor on Bristol.

An allusion to the embattled parapets of the Queen Elizabeth's School, on the slope of Brandon Hill.

On Tuesday, July 26, 1643, it was determined, in council of war, that Prince Rupert should storm the city on all sides, the following day, the signal-cry to be “Oxford!”

“Wisdom's hermitage on Isis' shore.” Balliol and New College, Oxford, have promised to give a large sum for five years to further the aims of the Bristol University College.

Nine-Tree Hill, at the north end of Stokes' Croft, was so called from nine elms, that stood on the knoll.

Hard by, the ground, now Fremantle Square, was within memory called “Mother Pugsley's Field.” Pugsley, the possessor of it, was an officer in Prince Rupert's army. He met his death upon it by a shot from Montpelier.

His widow, a very beautiful lady, true to his memory, erected a hut over his grave here; and, when season permitted, came and watched over the ground so consecrate to his life and death. She lived to eighty years of age; and was buried, in accordance with her will, wrapped in her wedding sheets; two maidens strewing the way before her bier with sweet herbs, and a fiddler playing before her corpse.

1461.

Cf. Chatterton's “Lay of Sir Baudwin.” Sir Baldwin Fulford had given his bond to Henry VI., that he would take the life of the Earl of Warwick, who was then plotting Henry's dethronement.

King Edward IV., coming to Bristol in September, 1461, with a cruel and summary vengeance, had Sir Baldwin executed at the High Cross. Edward was staying with Cannynge at the time.

“Trunk-hosed,” etc., refers to the carven chimney-piece in Cannynge's house, wherein King Solomon is represented as sitting in trunk-hose, in the act of giving judgment between “the two mothers.”

In the same room, and opposite the fire-place, hangs a portrait of young Chatterton.

This Tower, built by Shipward, a wealthy merchant, who was Mayor of Bristol, 1455, is remarkable for its entire absence of buttresses.

The Tower is crowned with latticed battlements and pinnacles, which give the effect—1st. Of the castle, as seen in the City's seal; 2nd. Of the heavy “crows' nests” for fighting men, with which “The Great Harry” is represented as being armed.

The Guild of Saint Stephen's Ringers is of old foundation. The earliest copy of its ordinances, whose original was earlier, bears date 1620. The Articles and Decrees, thirty in number, are still read at the annual meeting of the Company, Nov. 17th.

“None shall be of the said Society but those that be of honest, peaceable, and good conversation.” All must accept challenges, or defend allegations made against the Company, with intent not only to stop the mouths of those that shall exasperate themselves against them, but to gain reputation by their musical exercise; so that others of their rich neighbours, hearing these loud cymbals with their ears, may, by the sweet harmony thereof, be enlarged in their hearts to pull one string to make it more sweet.

The body of the Church, with its memories of 1,200 years, has been sold to furnish funds for the erection of a new Church in the suburbs.

By a special clause inserted in the Act for this removal, the Corporation were allowed to retain the Tower at their will. This, by a majority of seven votes, on Dec. 6, 1876, they refused to do, on the grounds that they could not vote public monies towards retaining public monuments, and that the Tower was an obstruction to traffic.

Hence this Tower—built in 1385—as remarkable for its architectural worth as for its beauty of position, whether viewed singly or in combination with its neighbour towers; as great a joy to the eyes of strangers as it is justly a pride to Bristol Citizens, with its history and civic associations of 492 years, is doomed to destruction.

At the Western end of the Church are kneeling figures of Nicholas Thorn, with wife and children.

Nicholas, with his brother Robert Thorn, founded Bristol Grammar School, in Unity Street. He was buried August 19th, 1546.

Old Fuller speaks thus of the Thorns:—“I see it matters not what the name be, so the nature be good. I confess thorns came in by a curse, and our Saviour saith ‘Do men gather grapes of thorns?’ But this, our Thorn (God send us many coppices of them!) was a blessing to our nation; and wine and oil may be said freely to flow from him.”

In the Pestilence, that devastated Bristol at the beginning of the seventeenth century, 390 persons died in Saint James' Parish between August 20th, 1603, and March 22nd, 1604! The present enclosed Burial Ground was used for their interment; and the soil has remained unbroken for fear of the development of latent contagion.

The Plague broke out in Pepper Alley, Marsh Street, and 2,600 people died thereof in a single year!

The Evening Primrose, which only opens at night, and closes in the morning; and which grows in abundance in Saint James' Churchyard.

This was a literal fact during the Plague of 1348, when it is chronicled that “grass grew several inches high in High Street and Broad Street, the then chief thoroughfares!”

Southey was born No. 9, Wine Street.

Savage was buried opposite Saint Peter's Church.

Coleridge composed his “Religious Musings” in Cottle's parlour, now Hayward's book shop.

Wordsworth penned his poem on Tintern Abbey in the same room.

The Brazen Tables, in front of the Exchange, belonged once to the Tolzey, where the merchants assembled, and used them for making payments over.

On the 15th July, 1480, Mr. Jay, a Bristol merchant, sent two ships of eighty-tons burden to discover, if possible, the coast of Brazil. We are told by a contemporary, “Thylde is Master of the Ships, and the most skilful mariner of all England.”

By a patent dated Dec. 9th, 1502, Henry VII. authorised James Elliott and Thomas Ashurst, merchants of Bristol, to go, with English colours, in quest of foreign countries.

In September, 1577, Captain Frobisher, under the patronage of Queen Elizabeth and Sir Philip Sydney, arrived at Bristol from Cathay, with a quantity of supposed valuable ore, which was deposited under four locks in the Castle.

Thorn,—this was the merchant to whom, in 1534, Henry VIII., passing through Bristol incog., said, “This is now the Town of Bristol, but I will make it the City of Bristol.”

The outer rim of one Table, the gift of White, a Bristol merchant, 1631, is inscribed:—“The Church of the Living God is the Pillar and Ground of the Truth! So was the work of the Pillars finished.”

The spectator is supposed to be standing on Bristol Bridge, looking up the river.

The centrifugal process is the main feature of this Sugar Refinery. The hot, liquid, brown sugar is poured into a centrifugal machine, which makes more than five hundred revolutions a minute, and in two minutes re-appears as dry, white, shining crystals.

Conrad Finzel, the founder of the firm, was drawn as a conscript into the army of Napoleon I., then master of Germany; to escape the service, he fled to Hanover, thence with two companions took open boat on the stormy North Sea, reached Heligoland, from whence he took sail for England. From a poor worknan, in London, he became principal refiner in a Bristol house, and opened a small refinery, which was burnt down, on the same site where now stands the present magnificent factory.

Those who remember the shape of a cutter's mainsail, and the rake aft of a cutter's mast, will have no difficulty in seeing how, against the sky, the letters A H seem to be formed by the two vessels at the moment of meeting, and how, as they part, the curve of their two mainsails makes, with the sky, the initial letter U of the word “United.”

It is supposed that the ancients signalled from height to height by means of mirrors of bright metal flashed in the sun.

“Those thirteen camps.”—In A.D. 50, the Proprætor Publius Ostorius Scapula was appointed general of the Roman forces in Britain. He subjugated and disarmed the Cangi, a Somersetshire tribe of aborigines, and, to prevent revolt, occupied the British camps on the heights of the Avon—e.g., Stokesleigh, Bowerwall or Rownham, and the Clifton Observatory camps. Tacitus tells us “that he maintained authority over the inhabitants on the banks of the Avon and Severn by surrounding them with camps.” This he virtually did by occupying or constructing a double line of fortified posts which remain to this day. These, roughly stated, are— Sea Mills, Henbury, Almondsbury, Elberton, and Old Abbey, along the Severn; and Lansdown, Old Sodbury, Westridge, The Drakestone, and Uleybury, farther inland on the Cots-wolds. To these latter may be added Wick, Burril, Horton, and Bloodyacre.

Gilbert Strongbow, the nephew of Walter de Clare, the founder of the Monastery, died 1149 A.D., and was buried in the Abbey.

Walter de Clare lies side by side with him, in the Monastery, which legend says he founded to atone for his cruelty in working the destruction of the unhappy inhabitants of the country. Obiit March 10, 1139 A.D.

Maud, eldest daughter of the Marshall Earl of Pembroke, married Hugh Bigod, Earl of Norfolk, and afterwards John de Warren, Earl of Surrey; she died in the year 1248, and was buried in the choir. She was carried, dressed in her grave-clothes, and coroneted, upon a simple bier, on the shoulders of her four sons, Rogers, Hugh, Raplh, and John, and laid to rest under the high altar.

The great window of the choir contained the heraldic achievements of Roger de Bigod, the second founder of the Abbey.

Tewdrig, or Theodoric, a devout King of Glamorgan, slain in battle in defence of the Christian religion against the Pagan Saxons, over whom he obtained a great victory on the banks of the Wye, near the ford of Tintern.

“And the Angel of the Lord said to him on the night preceding, ‘Go, to-morrow, to assist the people of God against the enemies of the Church of Christ; and the enemy will turn their face to flight, as far as Pwll Brochwael; . . . . but thou wilt be wounded by a single stroke in the district of Rhyd Tintern, and in three days die in peace.’”— Liber Llandavensis, or the Ancient Register of the Cathedral Church of Llandaff.

The “Liber Llandavensis” recounts how the sorely-wounded king was conveyed in a chariot, drawn by two Heaven-sent stags, to a place near a meadow towards the Severn; and how, on the journey, “wheresoever they rested, there fountains flowed,” and when the final halt was made, “a most clear fountain flowed, and the carriage was completely broken;” and how the saintly hero, ordering the stags to depart, commended his soul to God, and expired.—Cf. Lib. Lland, p. 384.

Now known as Mathern, near Chepstow, in the church of which place is to be seen a renovated inscription to the memory of the martyred king. In the church, built by his son Mewrig, or Maurice, according to his own directions, he was interred, in the year 600. Maurice also gave the contiguous estate to the Church, and named the place Merthwr Tewdrick, or, “The Martyrdom of Theodorick.”—Cf. Godwin's De Præsulibus Angliæ, p. 593.