Gravestone of Albert de Chaz.

formerly at Farley Priory, and now at Lacock Abbey, Wilts.

thial Adat LB6

ancestor Thomas Bath became seized of it. The families of Knightstown and of Athcarne were both younger branches of the Baths of Drumcondra, near this city, which from the year 1350 they made their chief seat of residence. On the failure of male issue in the Athcarne branch in 1620, that property, by family settlement, reverted back to the Drumcondra line, from which I am descended.

Sir Peter Bath was married to Margaret Talbot, the niece of Richard Talbot, the favourite of King James, who subsequently created him Duke of Tyrconnel, and appointed him Lord Lieutenant of Ireland. Through this influence the King, even before he had

THE accompanying fac-simile of this very curious Inscription has been recently published in Mr. Bowles's "History of Lacock Abbey," at which place the original is preserved; and we have been induced by its singularity to transfer it to our pages.

A practice of which instances are found in some Roman inscriptions, and which was imitated by our earliest monastic scholars, is here exhibited in excess. Within such letters as afford cavities practicable for the purpose, those letters which immediately follow are placed (in small); the extent of the whole being thus compressed in a surprising degree, at the same time that the height of the inscription remains very considerable, and is therefore more visible at a distance, how. ever difficult a task it may prove, on closer inspection, to decipher it.

Other instances of this species of writing are the epitaph on William Deincourt, in Lincoln cathedral, about the year 1100 (engraved in Dugdale's Baronage, Hearne's Trivetus, Gough's Monuments, vol. ii. pl. xiv. Pegge's Sylloge of Inscriptions, pl. iv.); that of Bishop Roger, at Salisbury Cathedral, 1139 (engraved in Archæologia, vol. ii. pl. 13, Gough's Monuments, vol. i. pl. iv. Gough's Camden, vol. i. pl. xi.); and that on Archbishop Theobald, at Canterbury, 1161 (in Archæologia, vol. xiv. pl. 10); and the dedication stones of Tewkesbury and PostGENT. MAG. VOL. IV.

ling (in Pegge's Sylloge of Inscriptions, plates i. and iii.); but none of these are so much compressed as the epitaph before us; and the only inscription which in this respect approaches it, is that on the dedication stone of St. George's, Southwark, engraved in Archæologia, vol. ii. pl. xiii., Gough's Monuments, vol. i. pl. iv., and Pegge's Sylloge, p. 56. The epitaph at Magdeburg, in Germany, of Edith, an Anglo-Saxon Princess (though supposed to be not quite so ancient as her time), is also engraved in this style; see the Gentleman's Magazine, vol. c. i. 195. In the epitaph of the Conqueror's Queen, at Caen, engraved in the Introduction to Stothard's Monumental Effigies, p. 3, the contrivance of inserting some letters in small is partially adopted, but only to a very moderate extent.

The length of the present inscription is 4 feet 9 inches, the height of the first stroke of the letter H is six inches, that of the last letter D 3 inches. When read at length, it forms these two Leonine hexameters :

Hic jacet Ilbertus de Chaz bonitate refertus, [dona. Qui cum Brotona dedit hic perplurima The monks themselves appear to have felt that this puzzling involution of the letters was here carried to too great an extreme; and in consequence they had the inscription repeated, at length, though in a much smaller size, 3 C

round the margin of the stone. With respect to this smaller inscription, it is worthy of observation that its antiquity is probably but little removed from that of the larger one: from fifty to a hundred years is perhaps all the difference. The letters are all squarer; and the E and c are closed, the former taking a round back, as is usual in what are termed Lombardic characters; but it is very remarkable that, in one part (near the centre of the inscription, when the carver may have been doubtful of his space) the contractions of the original are retained much as before,-in the words REFERTUS, QUI CUM- The name of the party is in the smaller inscription spelt CHAT, though in the larger the final letter is clearly different, and may be safely read as z, which orthography is supported by some charters which will be quoted presently.

This curious gravestone was brought to light at Monkton Farley in Wiltshire, in the year 1744, after having been buried for two centuries; a rabbitwarren having been formed over the site of the priory church! On the ground being levelled, in the year mentioned, the pavement of the chancel appeared nearly complete, and several gravestones and skeletons were disclosed. Two of the former were adorned with sculpture, one of them representing a prior named Lawrence, and the other a man's bust and a lion, which, from its situation near the altar, was attributed to the founder. These, it is feared, were destroyed; for when Mr. Gough made inquiry respecting this inscription of Ilbert de Chaz in the year 1772, he was told "it had lately been broken to pieces* to mend

*Mr. Gough in consequence copied in the Archæologia, vol. ii. (in illustration of an essay on Bishop Roger's tomb at Salisbury, above mentioned) a very imperfect copy of this inscription, which had been engraved in the Gentleman's Magazine for March 1744, shortly after its first discovery. See the account of the remains in Gent. Mag. vol. xiv. p. 139, copied in vol. i. of Camden's Britannia, by Gough. The plate engraved for the Archæologia is also printed in Gough's Camden, vol. i. pl. xi. and in his Sepulchral Monuments, vol. i. pl. iv. Though Mr. Gough afterwards heard of the original being at Lacock, he appears never to have seen it, nor to have obtained a correct copy.

the roads!" Such was probably the fate of the other sepulchral memorials; but the unique monument before us had fortunately been removed from the power of the destroyers, having been transferred by Lord Webb Seymour, the owner of Farley, to the congenial shades of Lacock Abbey, where it is now carefully preserved, but little injured by time or its long interment.

The researches of Mr. Stapleton into the records of Normandy, have developed the origin and history of Ilbert de Chaz. Cats (as it is now written), the place from which he derived his name, is a parish in the arrondissement of St. Lo, and canton of Carentan. St. Georges and St. André de Bohon are parishes in the same canton. The following charter is from the cartulary of the neighbouring Abbey of Montbourg:

"Notum sit omnibus presentibus et concedo in perpetuam elemosinam abbatie futuris quod ego Ilbertus de Caz do et s'c'e Marie Montisburgi, ecclesiam de Caz, cum omnibus ad eam pertinentibus, libere et quiete, pro salute anime mee et omnium antecessorum meorum, concedentibus domino meo Unfrido de Bohun, et nepotibus meis Willelmo de Greinvill et Bartholomeo le Bigot, et ut firma sit imperpetuum hæc donatio signo dominice crucis hanc chartam confirmo et munio coram subscriptis testibus, Ilberto + Unfrido de Bohun, Bartholomeo le Bigot, et multis aliis."-(fol. 104.)

Having accompanied the Bohuns to England, Ilbert was enfeoffed by them in Wiltshire: and the following extracts from the Confirmation charter to Farley priory of Humfrey and Margaret de Bohun, to which Ilbertus de Chaz is himself the first witness, set

forth his "plurima dona," and prove the justice with which that phrase was employed in the epitaph:

"Præterea concedimus eis et confirmamus Broctonam, quam ILBERTUS DE CHAZ eis dedit, solutam et quietam ab omni servitio ad nos pertinente. Et deci

mam de Cluttona cum uno homine sex solidos reddente in eadem villa, ex dono Ilberti de Chaz, et ecclesiam de Ferenberga post mortem Haraldi presbyteri, et ecclesiam de Cluttona, ex donatione prædicti Ilberti, et ex dono ipsius decem solidatas terræ de Hethesingtona (vel Hethelhamtune)."

This charter not only fully exhi