DISCOVERIES AT ST. CANICE'S CATHEDRAL, KILKENNY.

WE learn from the "Kilkenny Moderator" of the 14th of September, that the Dean and Chapter of St. Canice's had ordered the removal of the internal fittings of the choir of the cathedral, previous to deciding with the architect, Mr. Deane, as to the future arrangements for the sittings for the congregation, as well as for the dignitaries, and the position of the communion-table, pulpit, &c. It was to be expected that the work of removing the old woodwork would bring to light some interesting features of the original structure hitherto concealed from view, and such has been the result, although the expectation that some ancient mural monuments might be discovered behind the oak panelling has been disappointed. It is not improbable, however, that some ancient floor-tombs may be lighted on when the plank-flooring of the eastern part of the choir comes to be cleared away to the old level.

The most noticeable features which the progress of the operations has exposed, are the recess in which originally the sedilia had stood, a large tomb-niche, the remains of an aumbry on the north side of the ancient altar, and though last not least in point of interest, the discovery in the east wall, beneath the great window, and at the back of where the communiontable recently stood-the old altar-site-of a small square niche, not ornamented with any mouldings, and closed up by old masonry, as if built at the time of the erection of the wall itself. On the opening of this niche, some bones were found laid in without any arrangement, and not comprising more than about the eighth or tenth part of a human skeleton. They have all the appearance of being relics. The Dean of Ossory prevented the contents of the niche from being removed, and caused it to be temporarily closed, in order to their preservation.

Of the sedilia, we are sorry to say, nothing is likely to be found but the mere recess in which the carved stones of which they were formed originally were erected. The outline of the arches of the triple recess is plain enough, but all the stone carving seems to have been torn down. It had been built up with brickwork, which is but partially removed as yet, but all the indications go to shew that everywhere the features of this important piece of ancient ecclesiastical furniture have been defaced, in order to allow of the modern wooden panelling being placed close to the wall. The position of the sedilia was exactly behind the modern throne of the Bishop, on the left of the altar, but rather further from the east wall than is usual in ancient churches, so far as our experience goes.

The tomb-niche discovered, and which had also been filled in with brickwork, has an ogee head originally having a hood-moulding round t, whi h has been hammered away to allow the panelling to lie flat to the wall. The niche is about 3 ft. from the original floor, 6 ft. high from the place of the tomb to the point of the arch. The tomb had been removed. Three bishops are recorded to have had monuments erected to them in the cathedral, viz. Hugh Mapelton, Geoffry St. Leger, and Roger Wexford. The style of the sculpture best suits the period of the last, who died in 1289. There is an inscription, in fresco, on the plaster at the back of the niche, but it has been

so covered over with plaster harder than that upon which it was worked, that it can scarcely be brought to light in such a way as to be deciphered, or at all uncovered, to any extent, without destroying it. A succession of parallel lines, in red, about 3 in. apart, was carried across the white face of the wall, like the ruling of a child's copybook, and in each alternate space, the inscription, of which a few letters of three or four lines are visible, runs in black letters; one word, "quievit," seems tolerably plain. Of course every possible care and exertion will be used to try and make the nature of this inscription apparent.

The aumbry in the north wall was double, but the heads, which appear to have been arched, are destroyed. The sides are plainly chamfered, and it was intended to be shut up by a timber door, the two lower iron hinges of which remain. The arches which originally connected the side chapels with the choir—an account of the discovery of which we gave at the time when Mr. Deane was examining the structure previous to making out his plans for the general restoration seem to have at a remote period been walled up, and doors were substituted, as they appear on Harris's ground-plan of the cathedral. The arch and casing of the door on the south side are perfect, but those on the north were removed, and the orifice bricked up. A broad stringcourse appears to have run all round the choir, at the height of the base of the great windows. This has everywhere been either hammered away, or altogether removed out of the wall; but some of the fragments found, which had been made use of as filling stones in stopping up the aumbry, will serve to indicate the mouldings for a restoration.

A discovery was also made of an ancient vault of the Butler family, all recollection of the position of which had been lost. The entrance to the old vault was found on the south side of the communion-table. It is eight feet square; the arched roof having been turned on basket-work, which shews the antiquity of its construction. The contents were ten coffins, the escutcheons on one of which apparently shew the arms of the Mountgarret branch of the Butler family. One coffin had fallen to pieces, and the remains were exposed, shewing a skull so small as to seem to be that of a female. Another coffin, partially decayed, shewed the remains of humanity within, preserved by embalming. In one corner of the vault was a leaden coffer or casket, shaped like an urn. The first impression formed on beholding it was that it might be the receptacle of the heart of James, the ninth Earl of Ormonde, who, having died of poison treacherously administered to him whilst at a banquet at Ely House, Holborn, in the year 1564, his body was interred in London, by his directions, but his heart was conveyed to the cathedral of St. Canice. However, on the top of the urn is engraved an escutcheon bearing the arms of the family of Howard. Of this the crest— on a chapeau, a lion statant gardant, his tail extended, gorged with a ducal coronet-would leave no room for doubt, but the escutcheon also confirms it. It bears on the dexter side, quarterly: 1st, on a bend between three crosscrosslets fitchée an escutcheon charged with a demi-lion rampant; 2nd, three lions passant gardant, in pale a label of three points; 3rd, chequy; 4th, a lion rampant. These are exactly the arms borne by the Duke of Norfolk at the present day, the second, third, and fourth quarterings representing old inter

AGENT. MAG., April, 1863, p. 411.

marriages with the families of Brotherton, Warren, and Mowbray. But on the sinister side of the shield there is an impalement of the Butler arms, which serves to account for the coffer being found in the vault, viz. 1st and 4th, a chief indented; 2nd and 3rd, three covered cups. The presence of this urn in the Mountgarret vault may be accounted for by the marriage of Mary, daughter of George Buller, Esq., of Ballyragget, grandson of Edmund, fourth Viscount Mountgarret, to Ralph Standish Howard, Esq., only son of Ralph Standish, Esq., of Standish Hall, in Lancashire, who died of small-pox at Kilkenny, in April, 1735. His body was probably embalmed for removal to the family burial-place, and the heart and viscera deposited in the vault of his wife's family.

On the opposite side of the communion-table the entrance of another similar vault was subsequently found, but to what family belonging is not known, as the contents did not serve to identify the occupants. There were some wooden coffins, almost decayed away, and not having mountings, at least at present existing. But along the floor, in the centre of the vault, lay a leaden coffin, exactly shaped to the proportions of the human body, with features regularly formed, &c. The indications convey that it contained a female, but there is no inscription or armorial bearings. It is 6 ft. 8 in. long, and measures 15 in. across the shoulders, and 17 in. at the feet.

This vault may have belonged to the Ormonde family. Indeed the voice of the labourers engaged in opening the vault—if their evidence were worth anything—would go to support this view, for at once on discovering the curious leaden coffin shaped to the proportions of the female figure, they with one consent proclaimed that they had found Mairgread Gearoid, the Irish familiar appellation of the celebrated Margaret Fitzgerald, daughter to the Earl of Kildare, and wife to Piers, the eighth Earl of Ormonde. But if this was the Ormonde tomb, we should have expected to find traces of many other interments in it, whereas it was nearly empty. The curious leaden coffin lay in the centre, and there were the remains of four wooden coffins, two at either side, which had mouldered away, and lay in a heap of rotting fragments intermixed with the human remains which they had once enclosed. If the leaden coffin be that of the Countess Margaret, where is that of her lord, who only preceded her to the tomb by a couple of years? We should expect to find an equally safe and costly receptacle provided for holding his as his wife's remains in the family vault. Carte states of Earl Peter that he “was buried in the chancel of St. Kenny's church," but does not particularize the position of his tomb. The monument remaining in the cathedral, on which the effigies of the earl and countess are carved, is not in its original position, and its site has been often changed.

However, we shall leave the determination of these questions to the local Archæological Society.

Antiquarian and Literary Entelligence.'

[Correspondents are requested to append their Addresses, not, unless agreeable, for publication, but in order that a copy of the GENTLEMAN'S Magazine containing their Communications may be forwarded to them.]

ARCHEOLOGICAL INSTITUTE.

WARWICK MEETING, JULY 26—August 2.

(Continued from p. 316.)

July 26. Sir John Boileau, Bart., F.S.A., presided at the Evening Meeting, at which papers by Mr. M. H. Bloxam and the Rev. J. R. Green were read, "On Warwickshire Sepulchral Monuments," and "On the Siege of Kenilworth." These we shall print hereafter.

July 27. VISIT TO WARWICK CASTLE, STONELEIGH and Kenilworth. The Historical Section met at the Court-house under the presidency of Mr. Beresford Hope, when papers "On the Parliament of Kenilworth" by the Rev. C. H. Hartshorne, and "On the Domesday Book for Warwickshire," by Mr. Charles Twamley, were read.

The gates of Warwick Castle were thrown open at eleven o'clock, at which hour a large number of visitors was admitted. Passing under the archway, some of them turned aside to inspect the curiosities exhibited in connection with the famous Guy, to which reference was subsequently made by Mr. Bloxam; but the majority proceeded onwards by the winding road cut through the rock to the inner court, where the Rev. C. H. Hartshorne delivered a discourse on the archæology and architecture of the castle.

Often as he had had the honour of addressing the associates of the Archæological Institute, he said he never recollected being so embarrassed as to where to begin. The richness of the corbels of the machicolated towers could not fail to excite the admiration of the beholder as he approached, and now they were inside the double gateway, they were quite in the midst of an embarras des richesses. For the present, he had only to do with its archæology, however, and he would at once refer to the early date at which a castle was first erected on the site of the present buildings. The first mention made of Warwick Castle was found in a very trustworthy document-one of the rolls commonly called "pipe rolls" of the office of the Exchequer. In the roll to which he referred, Warwick Castle was mentioned as provisioned and garrisoned at an expense of about ten pounds (which would be equivalent to £200 in the present day), in the nineteenth year of the reign of Henry II., for the King's forces to hold it against his rebellious son. There was a still larger outlay upon it in the nineteenth year of that monarch's reign, a sum equivalent to £500 of our money being expended, and the garrison held by soldiers. Some repairs had to be effected in the twenty-first year of his reign, £50 being

spent upon that and a still larger sum upon the soldiers who were kept to hold it. The next entry in reference to the castle was made in the third year of the reign of Richard I., when it again underwent repairs, but to no very great extent. In the seventh year of the reign of King John, the castle, which still belonged to the Crown, was placed in a state of siege, which continued for fifty-three days, the soldiers being paid at the rate of 2d. per day. In the forty-eighth year of the reign of Henry III., it had come into the possession of William Mauduit, one of the early bearers of the title of its present possessor, viz. Lord Warwick. He was surprised in his own fortress by John Giffard, the governor of Kenilworth Castle, one of the barons waging war against their King on the throne. The Earl and his Countess were carried prisoners to Kenilworth, and the walls of the castle were almost entirely thrown down and destroyed. So completely ruined was it by the devastation, that in 1315 all that could be returned in an inquisition of its value was "herbage 6s. 8d." It was not until the tenth year of the reign of Edward III. that any portion of the structure was built which had been preserved till modern times. In that year, 1337, a new structure had been commenced in pursuance of a royal licence to found and consecrate a chapel for the earl. Of the rebuilding of the castle itself, there was not, unfortunately, any specific evidence from documents, and they could not fix the year when it was either begun or finished; but he believed that Thomas Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick, commenced its reconstruction, and it was probably completed about 1380. He regretted that it was beyond his power to say positively when the work commenced, and he could not be more definite than to say that he did think it was about 1330, but there was a blank of half a century without a single document to fill it up. In such an unsatisfactory state of uncertainty as they necessarily were on this point, any fact, however slender, derived importance in the eyes of the archæologist, from the interest with which the subject was invested, and he might mention a discovery he had some time ago made which seemed to afford the only clue to the date required. On the summit of Cæsar's Tower he had found the following letters and figures, viz. R. E. 30. 3, which he interpreted to mean Rex Edwardus, or King Edward III., and the thirtieth year of his reign, which would give 1357 as the period when that venerable structure was completed. He admitted that this was a very loose way of arriving at the year when the castle was rebuilt, and only regretted more satisfactory evidence of the date could not be found. Of the building of Guy's Tower he was glad to say there was unquestionable evidence which fixed the date of its being built in 1394. It cost £394 5s. 2d. This information was derived from the Warwickshire antiquary Sir William Dugdale, and he stated the fact solely upon his authority.

In the reign of King James I., Sir Fulke Greville was possessor of this beautiful demesne, the castle then being devoted to the purposes of a county gaol. He was subsequently created Lord Broke, and spent £20,000 upon bringing the castle into an approach to its present condition-somewhat approaching that in which they saw it now, but still susceptible of wonderful improvement; and he was glad to be able to state that the present Lord Warwick had had the good taste to employ Mr. Salvin to render habitable a portion of the castle in the south-east corner, which had previously been utterly useless.