Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 4.djvu/397

jedus ad Alonam,^[1] the place of the bridge at which the Avon was crossed. The vestiges of Roman occupation, however, on the site of the ancient city are scanty, and consist almost solely in the discovery at different spots of some coins of Sevcrus and other emperors. Caer Jirito, one of the thirty-three early cities of Britain mentioned by Nennius, is interpreted by Henry of Huntingdon (1154 A.D.) to mean Bristol. If (as now municipally) the name include the outlying heights of Clifton this interpre tation may be adopted with less hesitation. 300 feet above the surface of the Avon, on both sides of the river, are Belgic British camps, with traces of superadded Roman work, one of which is comparatively perfect, a second of well-marked outline, while a third has been wantonly destroyed within the last two or three years. The existence of coins of Canute, of Harold L, of Hardicanute, of Edward the Confessor and of Harold II., of Bristol mintage, shows that the place was a centre of population under the Danes and Anglo-Saxons, but there is no positive mention of a Danish invasion except by Polydore Vergil, a 16th century

historian.

Obverse. Reverse.
Corporation Seal (Motto : Vlrlnfe el Tndusiria).

The history of the town hardly begins till the subjugation of Gloucestershire by the Conqueror, in 1068. Bristol is not specially named, but there is no reason to believe that it offered any futile resistance to the sweeping tide of con quest. Early in the following year, three sons of Harold, Godwin, Edmund, and Magnus, resolving to reconquer the kingdom their sire had lost with his life, came at the head of fifty-two ships from Ireland up the Bristol Channel, and laying waste the coast on their way, sailed up the Avon to Bristol. Here they vrere sharply repulsed by the townsmen, and afterwards more thoroughly routed by Geoff ry Mowbray, bishop of Coutance, nephew to the famous Tancred the crusader (King. Univers.) Though Bristol is mentioned in Domesday, Bristol Castle is not, but appears first in history in connection with the constable- ship of the martial prelate just named, who held the fortress for Robert duke of Normandy against William Ruins. When the king had crushed the insurrection and driven the rebel churchman out of the realm, he granted the royalty, or Honour of Gloucester, which included Bristol, to his kinsman Robert Fitzhamon, who thus became feudal chief of the territory. Fitzhamon s daughter, Mabel, marrying Robert earl of Gloucester, natural son of Henry I., that noble, upon the death of his father-in-law, became lord of the tower and town of Bristol. He rebuilt the castle, which soon received as captive within its walls Robert duke of Normandy, who was afterwards removed to Gloucester s stronghold at Cardiff. The red earl of Gloucester, as he was called, was the most powerful baron of his age ; and among his successes in war, was the capture of king Stephen at the battle of Lincoln, who was brought to Bristol, and, like Curthose, imprisoned in the castle, where he remained in chains till exchanged for Gloucester himself, who in his turn was defeated and captured by Stephen s queen at Winchester. Earl Robert died in 1147 and was succeeded by William his son, whose daughter, Avisa, marrying John earl of Moreton, afterwards king John, the town and castle of Bristol became an apanage to the crown, and as such it continued to the time of Charles I. John was as many as nineteen times at Bristol, the neighbouring forest of Kingswood, which stretched 14 miles square to the east of the city, no doubt resounding frequently to the cry of his hunt.

Henry III., upon the death of John, came for security to Bristol Castle, when he permitted the town to choose a mayor after the manner of London ; and in like usage that the mayor of London was sworn before the constable of the Tower, so here he was directed to be sworn before the con stable of the castle of Bristol, each fortress being distinct from its respective city. This feudal custom was continued here until Edward III. conceded, among other chartered benefits, that the new mayor should take oath of office before the retiring mayor in the Guildhall of Bristol in the presence of the commonalty. Other privileges from the same monarch were the establishment here of the wool- staple, and the empowering of the mayor and sheriff to elect from time to time forty of the " better and more honest " men of the town, as a council to rate and levy taxes, &c., which common council, in nearly the same form as instituted, is yet maintained.

Richard II. confirmed all the grants of his predecessors, and directed that the steward and marshal and clerk of the royal household should not sit in the town of Bristol, as before had been granted to the city of London. In 1387 the king was at Bristol castle " with," says Froissart, " the queen and all the ladies and damsels of her court," having accompanied thus far his favourite, De Yere, towards Ireland. Two years later Henry Bolingbroke, with his vast northern army, surrounded the walls of this important western city which immediately surrendered. After four days siege the castle also capitulated, one of the terms of the treaty with the duke of York, agreed to by its governor, Sir William Courtnay, being that Lord Scrope, earl of Wilts, Sir Henry Green, and Sir John Busbie, who were within its walls, should be delivered into the hands of the duke of Lancaster. In Shakespeare s Richard II. is a scene wherein Bolingbroke denounces these minions of the falling cause, and orders Lord Northumberland to see them de spatched. They were beheaded in the centre of the town, where then stood the high cross. Only a few years since an unsuccessful attempt was made in the House of Lords to revive the peerage of Wilts, which included the right to wear a kingly crown in the Isle of Man, that peerage having been dormant from the time Sir William Scrope here lost his head. In 1408 Lord Spencer, another adherent of the ruined dynasty, was also executed at the same spot.

By a charter of Henry VI. the town of Bristol, with its gates, ditches, walls, and markets, was farmed to the mayor and burgesses for sixty years at the annual rent of 102, 15s. 6d. to the king s household, and 57, 4s. 6d. to the abbot of Tewkesbury and to the castle. This yearly fine of 160 was granted by Edward IV. to Elizabeth his queen consort Richard III. released 60 of this rent, and the remainder was redeemed in the reign of Charles I.

The doctrines of the Reformation were preached here by

Tyndale, Cranmer, and Latimer. The issue of the dissolu tion of religious houses, of which thirteen encircled the outer walls of the city, was the erection here of a bishopric (1542) by the conversion of the abbey church of Austin canons into a cathedral. It has singularly escaped the notice of every writer that the episcopate was refounded in 1551, by power of letters apostolic directed by Pope Paul IV. to Cardinal Pole ; a MS. copy of the original Bull is in the Bristol Museum. The transitional epoch from

the Papal to the Protestant faith was stained here by the

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1. Arch. Insl. Junr. } vol. xviii. H5ft.