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stedfastly on the face of the possessed the demon then, by some irresistible mode, turned away her face from my observation, and after that I had urged him by most powerful commands, broke out into these words, 'See what a devil is this! I remained concealed in the hair of this wench, but thou art so skilful, that by thy cunning thou hast forced me to discover myself!"* at which speech the bystanders broke out into exclamations and laughter."

"In the year 1575 I was passing some time in the city of Reggio,† when a noble lady, a widow, was so heavily oppressed by evil spirits that she fell into a deep and incurable malady; she called to her assistance her excellent physician, whose name was Hieronymus Arlotus, and related to him her infirmity; but he, finding that after the application of all kinds of medicines, he could make no progress towards a cure, and that the lady seemed

to be at the point of death, fearing she was under the influence of sorcery, consulted me and brought me to her house. And although the physician was of a different opinion, (according to the custom of physicians,) yet by my advice he ordered the bed to be examined, and there, among other instruments of sorcery, was found a figure made of feathers in the shape of a man, with head, arms, hands, legs, feet and other limbs, which occasioned great surprise to those who witnessed it. A wonderful event then took place; the lady (who was in so desperate a state that the question was no longer of remedies for the body but of extreme unction,) after the instruments of sorcery had been burnt and spiritual remedies applied, was almost immediately restored to health, to the admiation of the physicians and all her houshold."

MR. URBAN,

Feb. 6. IN your Magazine for January, 1831, is an account of the foundation of Hurley Priory, with notices of its several possessors since the Dissolution; but there is no description of the church, or the memorials of the Lovelaces therein, or the mansion erected by them upon the site of the conventual buildings; and as the learned writer of the account alluded to is now deceased, the following, I trust, will not be deemed an unwelcome supplement to his previous communication.

I venture, therefore, to furnish you with a somewhat detailed description of the church as it now exists, with a few incidental observations on its an

cient form, and certain of its rites; but shall avoid speaking much further of the mansion, which has already been the

except

subject of your recent pages, to mention some particulars concerning its remains; and shall conclude by briefly explaining the former alliance of the Lovelace family with that of Baron King, for whom the Lovelace title has been lately revived.

To treat, however, at once, of all these matters, would extend this paper to a length unsuitable to your Miscellany. I must, therefore, here confine myself to a description of the exterior of the church, explanatory of the accompanying Plate, and reserve for a subsequent contribution the description of its interior, and the other subjects above proposed.

HERLEI Church is mentioned in Domesday Book as part of the manor of the Norman Baron "Goisfridus de

Mannevile, in Benes hundred in Berke

+ Civitate Regii.

GENT. MAG. VOL. XI.

1831, p. 9.

2 L

sir;" and was therefore, probably, a parish or manorial church endowed with land. It was then, as until very lately, in the diocese of Sarum, but is now in the diocese of Oxford, though still in the deanery of Reading, in the archdeaconry of Berks; and is a discharged vicarage, with a net yearly income of 1637. in the patronage of the eldest son of Viscount Ashbrook, who is also impropriator of the rectory. The church will contain 350, of a population of nearly 1,200, chiefly agricultural, and consisting of about 200 families residing in as many houses. It is situated near the Thames, about half way from Henley to Marlow, in one of those luxuriantly wooded pastoral localities, so generally chosen for religious houses, it having been the chapel of a Priory there founded and endowed by the above named Goisfridus de Magnavilla, through the persuasion of his wife Lecelina, A. D. 1086, and dedicated to the Virgin Mary, by the celebrated St. Osmund, as more particularly stated in the paper of your deceased correspondent.

This church is constructed with large rough masses of indigenous chalk and flint, irregularly cemented together with coarse mortar. The quoins and dressings of the ancient door and windows of the side walls are mostly of a greyish stone, perhaps also found in the neighbourhood, but some are of Oxfordshire yellow oolite, those of the west-end being of a different kind, the fine freestone from Caen in Normandy. The walls, yet perfectly upright, are almost four feet thick, and have, without the aid of any buttresses, for several centuries sustained the thrust of a heavy tiled roof, although probably intended only to support a lighter roof of shingles or of straw, with which the roofs in this sylvan cultivated district would naturally be made. Certes, our Saxon and early Norman architects were ultra-observers of the builder's adage, "stronger than enough."

Hurley church consists merely of a chancel and a nave, with a modern south porch, and is of that peculiarly long oblong form attributed to Saxon churches; its interior measurement being 19 feet 9 inches, by 95 fect 2 inches, almost 5 squares in length. Its

ends are placed toward the east and west, as common to all churches, unless when the nature of their sites prevented such position. It has no interior columns or arches, being of one pace, that is, without ailes. The nave and chancel are coequal both in breadth and height; but we have reason to believe, from certain appearances in the south wall, that the chancel had a semi-hexagonal east end, and extended nearly 12 feet further eastward. Its present termination is a straight blank wall, perhaps erected at the building of the mansion after the Reformation, when the porch was also probably added.

From the preceding general description, we presume that this church existed before the Norman survey, and that it was adapted to the purposes of the Priory by the reparation of its dilapidated parts and the addition of a west-end, in which opinion we hope to be borne out by our subsequent description and remarks.

In the upper portion of the western gable, and on the adjoining ridge of the roof, is a square belfrey turret of weather boarding, and luffer boarded openings. It is provided with a large sun-dial, and surmounted by a low pyramidal tiled spire, finished with a rude wooden cross. The western wall, as seen in our plate, is strengthened at its angles by large square - set sloped-headed buttresses, an argument for its more recent date than that of the side walls, which have none; Saxon buttresses, if so they may be called, being merely ornamental narrow stripes of stone, like those upon St. Peter's Church at Barton in Lincolnshire, and on St. John's sub Castro at Lewes, the refuge place of Harold after his defeat at Hastings. The buttresses against this western wall being, however, purely constructional, the architect had surely some good reason for thus strengthening it. It is, therefore, not improbable, that formerly the gable was surmounted either with a bell turret of heavy masonry, or that the bell or bells were hung in one of those pierced secondary gables which overtop a roof like chimney stacks, and which we sometimes see in Normandy and various parts of England.

The western doorway is a wide low

semicircularly headed triple arch, but its proportions have been much altered by the elevation of the ground about it, and by its being blocked up with a brick and rubble wall, so that only the face of the superior archway is now visible. This, however, is in good condition, and is decorated with a bold zig-zag bead, coticed on each side by two zig-zag conjoined fillets studded with closely placed square stunted pyramids, somewhat like the Early English tooth ornament; above and below which is a concentric large bead, the whole being under a bold dripstone originally corbelled, and resting on the outward ends of narrow moulded imposts. Beneath these imposts are broad pilaster-like jambs, having in hollow chamfer at the inward edge a cylindrical edge shaft, with a small singly cleft cushion capital, the abacus of which is a continuation of the impost; but the base of this column must be much under ground, its capital now being only about four feet above its surface. Interiorly, this arch has been cut rudely upwards, so that only part of its original soffit remains. It has plain sloped jambs, having also, in hollow chamfered edges, a shaft similar to the exterior shafts, and which, like them, has its base hidden. But as the interior shafts are visible two or three feet lower than the exterior shafts, it is very probable that, similarly to other Saxon churches, the floor was originally lower than the ancient door-sill and natural level of the ground.

Through the before-mentioned wall, now blocking up the western doorway, is a modern door. But this was evidently never made for its present purpose, being too short to reach the highest part of the arch above, and therefore stuck in at one side of it, and is altogether so unbecoming to its station, that the putting up of this deformity should, doubtlessly, have been presented by the Rural Dean. We often think that to every diocese should be attached an Architect well versed in the practice of Gothic architecture, to design any necessary reparation, enlargement, or rebuilding of the churches, parsonages, schools, and every other parochial building in the

said diocese ; and, moreover, that all candidates for holy orders should possess a competent knowledge of the principles of ecclesiastical architecture, to enable them to superintend the execution of such design of the Architect in their respective parishes.

In the lower portion of the gable, and immediately above the door-way, and very like it as to plan and decoration, is the western window. This is a semicircularly headed double arch, under a small dripstone, which has had a cable moulding and corbel, the edge of the upper arch resting on the abacus of a cushion capital of a slender edgeshaft. The faces of these arches are adorned with a compound zig-zag, in excellent preservation, consisting of three beads and a cavetto, the soffit of the upper arch having a simpler zigzag of one small and one large bead conjoined. The face of the sub-arch is almost similar to that of the upper arch, but has a hollow chamfered edge containing a bold bead. These arches sprung formerly from imposts, of which one only now remains. This, being the only western window, is larger than the Norman windows generally are, though of itself it is in good proportion, being about two squares in height, inclusive of its head and sides. The glazed part, the wind door, which, before the use of window glass in the seventh century, church windows literally were, has been much shortened, and is now divided by a large wellmoulded mullion, evidently, however, a mere adventitious support of the incumbent architrave, although evincing, at the same time, a praiseworthy elegance, in which our modern churchwarden reparations are so lamentably deficient. The glass quarries are set lozenge ways, some few being stained with diaper work, and their leaden frame is inserted, as that of very ancient windows always is, directly into the stone sides of the archway. It is also attached to iron stanchions, which are, here, continued to the soffit of the arch, and help the mullion to uphold this interesting and now rare specimen of a Norman west window. Above this window, irregularly imbedded in the wall, are two small corbel heads. Another is in its original situation, perhaps, as one of a corbelled tablet

still discernible at the base of the bell-turret, and another occupies the summit of the dripstone.

The south wall has seven windows; three of them being of Saxon character, like those in the north wall, hereafter to be described, and four are insertions which have taken place at various dates. The eastward one is of the former class, having been merely lengthened at the bottom, but has chamfered edged jambs. The second is in the style of the fourteenth century, of large dimensions, good design, and excellent execution, consisting of two boldly trefoliated ogee lights, under a large quaterfoliated ogeed central spandrel, and pierced lateral spandrels similarly foliated to the central one, which itself has also other small pierced spandrels. The general architrave of this window has pointed deeply-under-cut mouldings, and a boldly moulded corbelled dripstone, the jambs being handsomely moulded, as is also the mullion, out of which flows the tracery of the head. The third window is of two plain square-headed lights, its general architrave and mullion being merely a bold semi-cylinder. The fourth is of two lofty sharp-headed lights between a large pointed central spandrel, the mullion, the arch heads, and general architrave being moulded. The fifth is one of the Saxon windows much lengthened, retaining its original square jambs, and, possibly, also its lozengy-quarried glass. The sixth, the head of which occupies the lower part of another of the Saxon windows, is of two cinquefoliated pointed lights, under a horizontal moulded head, with small plain spandrels, handsomely moulded jambs, and ramified mullion, of which the central moulding is continued up to the head. The seventh is another of the Saxon windows, perhaps in its original state, having a semicircular head and straight sides. This is about three diameters in height, being nineteen inches wide, but internally the sides slope to a width of nearly three feet. On the roof, almost above the sixth window, is a modern dormer window of two lights, with figured scalloped wooden gable.

Under the second window from the east is a shallow square-headed recess, in which is an ogee-headed pierced spandrelled pannel. What this was is

difficult to say it is too near the ground to have been a stoup, and is too small for the doorway to a crypt, being only two and twenty inches wide and thirty-four in height. It may, however, have been the window of a crypt, or an opening through which to view and worship from the churchyard the reliques of some saint immured within the chancel; to which latter opinion we are most inclined, on account of there being also a monumental recess in the interior south wall, corresponding in situation with this exterior recess.

A little further eastward, under a pointed arch, is the chancel doorway, originally in the elegant style of the fourteenth century, but its head is now occupied by two plain pointed couped lights and an oblong richly moulded sexfoil, now blank, with which, no doubt, the heads c: the lights accorded before their tracery was cut off for the insertion of this other deformity to which Hurley Church has been subjected, the door itself being squareheaded, mean, and disproportional.

The south doorway of the nave is an insertion, of the twelfth century, into the old Saxon wall. It is a triple archway, but we shall here only notice its exterior arch, which is pointed, and has a continuous cylindrical moulding set in a hollowed edge, and, although without a dripstone, there is no appearance of its having had an ancient porch. The present porch is comparatively modern, and was probably intended for a school or parish vestry room, being unusually spacious, and furnished with a brick boarded bench on either side, and an old fashioned table. Its front has a pointed door and two small pointed windows under a boldly scalloped gable.

The north side is but little better than a blank wall, and being now almost deprived of its plaster coating, its various materials and irregular courses are very visible. The doorway and the windows are all stopped up, the latter flush with the wall. The doorway is a double semicircularly-headed low archway of grey free stone. The faces of its arches are plain, and spring from abacus-like imposts, the whole, excepting a concentric dripstone, which is a chalk fillet