her steward, Reginald de Wyndsor, and was afterwards given to her brother Josceline, who held it of the honour of Arundel. Josceline married Agnes de Percy and assumed the surname of Percy. The honour and manor of Petworth followed the descent of this family until 1708. In 1377 Henry Percy was created earl of Northumberland. The only daughter of the last earl married Charles, duke of Somerset, in 1682, and Petworth descended through their daughter Catherine to the earls of Egremont. The adopted son of the third earl was created Baron Leconfield in 1859.
PEUTINGER KONRAD (1465–1547), German humanist and
antiquarian, was born at Augsburg. In 1497 he was town clerk
of his native place, and was on intimate terms with the emperor
Maximilian. He was one of the first to publish Roman inscriptions,
and his name remains associated with the famous Tabula
peutingeriana (see Map), a map of the military roads of the
western Roman Empire, which was discovered by Konrad Celtes,
who handed it over to Peutinger for publication. Peutinger also
edited the Historia Gothorum of Jordanes, and the Historia
gentis Langobardorum of Paulus Diaconus.
The Tabula peutingeriana was first published as a whole by F. de Scheyb (1753); later editions by E. Desjardins (1869–1874) and C. Miller (1888); see also E. Paulus, Erklärung der Peutinger Tafel (1867); and Teuffel-Schwabe, Hist. of Roman Literature (Eng. trans., 1900).
PEVENSEY, a village in the Eastbourne parliamentary
division of Sussex England, 65 m. S.S.E. from London by the
London, Brighton & South Coast railway. Pop. (1901),
468. The village is a member of the Cinque Ports, but the sea
has receded a mile from it in historic times. The outer wall,
with solid towers, of the celebrated castle, is of Roman construction,
and originally enclosed a complete oval; it is generally
considered to have enclosed the strong town of Anderida. Within
rise the fine ruins, principally of the 13th century, but in part
Norman, of the castle proper, with a keep and four massive
round towers. The church of St Nicholas, close to the castle,
shows beautiful Early English work. It has been supposed that
Pevensey was the scene of the landing of Caesar in 55 B.C., but the
question is disputed.
The name of Pevensey (Paevenisel, Pevensel, Pevenes, Pemsey) first occurs in a grant of land there by the south Saxon Duke Berthuald to the abbey of St Denis in 795. In later Saxon times, at least by the reign of Edward the Confessor, it was a royal borough and had a harbour and a market. Its early importance was due to its fencible port. It was the landing place of William the Norman on his way to conquer, and was the caput of the rape of Pevensey, which was granted by William to the earl of Mortain and subsequently became the Honour of the Eagle. Some time before the reign of Edward I. the town of Pevensey was made a member of Hastings and shared the liberties of the Cinque Ports, but apart from them it possesses no charter. It was governed by a bailiff and twelve jurats, elected annually, until by an act of 1883 it ceased to exist as a borough. Its seal dates apparently from the reign of Henry III. The gradual decline of Pevensey was complete in the 15th century and was caused by the recession of the sea and consequent loss of the harbour.
PEW (Mid. Eng. puwe, through O. Fr. puya, pui, mod. puy, in the sense of hill, cf. appuyer, to lean against; from Lat. podium,
a high place, balcony; Gr. πόδιον, pedestal, πούς, foot), a term,
in its most usual meaning, for a fixed seat in a church, usually
enclosed, slightly raised from the floors, and composed of wood
framing, mostly with ornamented ends. Some bench ends are
certainly of Decorated character, and some have been considered
to be of the Early English period. They are sometimes of plain
oak board, 212 to 3 in thick, chamfered, and with a necking
and finial generally called a poppy head; others are plainly
panelled with bold cappings, in others the panels are ornamented
with tracery or with the linen pattern, and sometimes with
running foliages. The large pews with high enclosures, curtains,
&c, known familiarly as “horse boxes,” and common in English
parish churches during the 18th and early part of the 19th
centuries, have nearly all been cleared away. The parish church
of Whitby, in Yorkshire, is perhaps the best surviving example of
an unaltered interior.
The Latin word podium was particularly applied to a balcony or parapet next to the arena in the Roman theatre where the emperor and other distinguished persons sat According to Du Cange (Glossarium, s.v. podium), it is found in medieval Latin for a bench (subsellium) for the minor canons at a church in Lyons (1343), and also for a kneeling stool in a monastic church. The word “pew” in English was often used for a stall for the minister, for a reading desk, or for a pulpit. The floor space of the nave and transepts of medieval churches was usually open, mats being sometimes provided for kneeling, and if any fixed seats were provided these would be for the patrons of the church or for distinguished people. Some enclosed seats, however, seem to have been reserved for women, as is seen in Piers Plowman, ch. vii. 144, “Among wyves and wodewes ich am ywoned sitte yparroked in puwes.” They did not come into general use till the middle of the 15th or beginning of the 16th century (see Gasquet, Parish Life in Medieval England. (1906, pp. 62 and 133). Over the few seats thus allotted dispute arose and attempts were made to appropriate them. Thus the constitutions for the synod of Exeter, drawn up by Bishop Peter Quivel in 1287, forbid any one “to claim any sitting in the church as his own . . . Whoever first comes to pray, let him take what place he wishes in which to pray.”
At common law all seats in a parish church are for the common use of all the parishioners, and every parishioner has a right to a seat without paying for it. The disposition of the seats is in the discretion of the churchwardens acting for the ordinary for the purpose of orderly arrangement (as to the exercise of this discretion see Reynolds v. Monckton, 1841, 2 M. & R. 384), and this can be exercised in cases where all the seats are free (Asher v. Calcraft, 1887, 18 Q.B.D. 607). The right to a seat does not belong to a non-parishioner. As against the assignment and disposition of seats by the ordinary, acting through the churchwardens, two kinds of appropriation can be set up (a) by the grant of a faculty by the ordinary, and (b) by prescription, based on the presumption of a lost faculty. Such faculties are rarely granted now; they were formerly common; the grant was to a man and his family “so long as they remain inhabitants of a certain house in the parish”, the words “of a certain house” are now usually omitted. The claim to a pew by prescription must be in respect of a house in the parish; the right is subject to the burden of repairing the pew; it is not an easement, nor does the Prescription Act 1832 apply to it (see for the whole subject of a claim by prescription Phillips v. Halliday, 1891, A.C. 228). The letting of pews in parish churches became common in the 16th century, but there are some earlier instances of the use, for example at St Ewens, Bristol, in 1455 (Churchwardens’ Accounts, Sir J. Maclean, Trans. Bristol and Gloucester Archaeol. Assoc., vol. xv., 1890–1891). The taking of pew rents in parish churches is illegal (Lord Stowell, in Waller v. Gunner, 1798, 3 Hag Consist. 817); but under the various Church Building Acts seats may be let and rents charged to pay the salary of the minister, &c.
See A. Heales, History and Law of Church Seats and Pews (1872); Phillimore, Eccles. Law (1896), ii. 1424 seq.
PEWTER, a general name used to denote a number of alloys of various metals in diverse proportions, the sole common feature of which lies in the fact that tin is always the chief constituent The etymology of the word is doubtful, but it is probably an English modification of spelter, which was adopted with more or less local alteration by the continental European nations, who
at an early period were eager purchasers of the ware, becoming peauter in Dutch, peutre, peautre or piautre in French, peltro in Italian and peltre in Spanish. Roman pewter, the oldest known, which has been disinterred at various places in England and elsewhere, was composed of tin and lead alone, for the occasional traces of iron are believed to be accidental, in proportions which, though varying considerably, group themselves around two definite formulae, one containing 71·5 parts of tin to 27·8 of lead, the other 78·2 of tin to 21·7 of lead, or one libra of tin to 412 and 3 unciae of lead respectively. On the European continent in the middle ages, some ten centuries later than the supposed date of the Roman pewter found in Britain, when we first get definite records of the composition of pewter, lead remained the chief, if not the only secondary ingredient. In 1437 the pewterers of Montpelier added 4 parts of lead to 96 of tin,
