Notes.

OBLATION OF A WHITE BULL.

By lease dated 28th April, 1533, the Abbat of St. Edmund's Bury demised to John Wright, glazier, and John Anable, pewterer, of Bury, the manor of Haberdon appurtenant to the office of Sacrist in that monastery, with four acres in the Vynefeld, for twenty years, at the rent of 5l. 4s. to the Sacrist; the tenants also to find a white bull every year of their term, as often as it should happen that any gentlewoman, or any other woman, should, out of devotion, visit the shrine of the glorious king and martyr of St. Edmund, and wish to make the oblation of a white bull. (Dodsw. Coll. in Bibl. Bodl., vol. lxxi. f. 72.)

If we are to understand a white bull of the ancient race of wild white cattle, it may be inferred, I suppose, that in some forest in the vicinity of Bury St. Edmund's they had not disappeared in the first half of the sixteenth century. The wild cattle, probably indigenous to the great Caledonian forest, seem to have become extinct in a wild state before the time of Leland, excepting where preserved in certain ancient parks, as Chillingham Park, Northumberland, Gisburne Park in Craven, &c., where they were, and in the former at all events still are, maintained in their original purity of breed. They were preserved on the lands of some abbeys; for instance, by the Abbats of Whalley, Lancashire.

Whitaker (History of Craven, p. 34.) mentions Gisburne Park as chiefly remarkable for a herd of wild cattle, descendants of that indigenous race which once roamed in the great forests of Lancashire, and they are said by some other writer to have been originally brought to Gisburne from Whalley after the dissolution. One of the descendants of Robert de Brus, the founder of Gainsborough Priory, is stated by Matthew Paris to have conciliated King John with a present of white cattle. The woods of Chillingham Castle are celebrated at this day for the breed of this remarkable race, by which they are inhabited; and I believe there are three or four other places in which they are preserved.

In the form and direction of the horns, these famous wild white oxen seem to be living representatives of the race whose bones are found in a fossil state in England and some parts of the Continent in the "diluvium" bone-caves, mixed with the bones of bears, hyenas, and other wild animals, now the cotemporaries of the Bos Gour, or Asiatic Ox, upon mountainous slopes of Western India. I have read that white cattle resembling the wild cattle of Chillingham exist in Italy, and that it has been doubted whether our British wild cattle are descendants of an aboriginal race, or were imported by ecclesiastics from Italy. But this seems unlikely, because they were not so easily brought over as the Pope's bulls (the pun is quite unavoidable), and were undoubtedly inhabitants of our ancient forests at a very early period.

However, my present object is only to inquire for any other instances of the custom of offering a white bull in honour of a Christian saint. Perhaps some of your correspondents would elucidate this singular oblation.

I am not able to refer to Col. Hamilton Smith's work on the mythology and ancient history of the ox, which may possibly notice this kind of offering.

W. S. G.

Newcastle-upon-Tyne.

NEWSTEAD ABBEY.

The descent of property, like the family pedigree, occasionally exhibits the most extraordinary disruptions; and to those who may be ignorant of the cause, the effect may appear as romance. I have been particularly struck with the two interesting papers contained in the April number of the Archæological Journal, having reference to the Newstead Abbey estate, formerly the property of Lord Byron's family, which, amongst other matters, contain some severe remarks on the conduct of one of its proprietors, the great uncle and predecessor of our great poet, and having reference to dilapidation. Mr. Pettigrew, in his paper, states that—

"Family differences, particularly during the time of the fifth Lord Byron, of eccentric and unsocial manners, suffered and even aided the dilapidations of time. The castellated stables and offices are, however, yet to be seen."

And Mr. Ashpitel adds that—

"The state of Newstead at the time the poet succeeded to the estate is not generally known: 'the wicked lord' had felled all the noble oaks, destroyed the finest herds of deer, and, in short, had denuded the estate of everything he could. The hirelings of the attorney did the rest: they stripped away all the furniture, and everything the law would permit them to remove. The buildings on the east side were unroofed; the old Xenodochium, and the grand refectory, were full of hay; and the entrance-hall and monks' parlour were stable for cattle. In the only habitable part of the building, a place then used as a sort of scullery, under the only roof that kept out wet of all this vast pile, the fifth Lord Byron breathed his last; and to this inheritance the poet succeeded."

It is not necessary for me to refer to the lofty expression of the poet's feelings on such his inheritance, nor to the necessity of his parting from the estate, which appears now to be happily restored to its former splendour; but possessing some knowledge of a lamentable fact, that neither Mr. Pettigrew nor Mr. Ashpitel appears to be aware of, I feel inclined to soften the asperity of the reflections quoted; and palliate, although I may not justify, the apparently reckless proceedings of the eccentric fifth Lord, as he is called. In the years 1796 and 1797, after finishing my clerkship, I had a seat in the chambers of the late Jas. Hanson, Esq., an eminent conveyancer of Lincoln's Inn; and while with him, amongst other peers of the realm who came to consult Mr. Hanson regarding their property, we had this eccentric fifth Lord Byron, who apparently came up to town for the purpose, and under the most painful and pitiable load of distress,—and I must confess that I felt for him exceedingly; but his case was past remedy, and, after some daily attendance, pouring forth his lamentations, he appears to have returned home to subside into the reckless operations reported of him. His case was this:—Upon the marriage of his son, he, as any other father would do, granted a settlement of his property, including the Newstead Abbey estate; but by some unaccountable inadvertence or negligence of the lawyers employed, the ultimate reversion of the fee-simple of the property, instead of being left, as it ought to have been, in the father as the owner of the estates, was limited to the heirs of the son. And upon his death, and failure of the issue of the marriage, the unfortunate father, this eccentric lord, found himself robbed of the fee-simple of his own inheritance, and left merely the naked tenant for life, without any legal power of raising money upon it, or even of cutting down a tree. It is so many years ago, that I now do not remember the detail of what passed on these consultations, but it would appear, that if the lawyers were aware of the effect of the final limitation, neither father nor son appear to have been informed of it, or the result might have been corrected, and his lordship would probably have kept up the estate in its proper order. Whether this case was at all a promoting cause of the alteration of the law, I do not know; but, as the law now stands, the estate would revert back to the father as heir of this son. This case made a lasting impression on me, and I once had to correct a similar erroneous proposition in a large intended settlement; and I quoted this unfortunate accident as an authority. Now, although this relation may not fully justify the reckless waste that appears to have been committed, it certainly is a palliative. I do not recollect whether our fifth lord had any surviving daughter to provide for; but if he had, his situation would be a still more aggravated position.

W. S. Hasleden.