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effect of atmospherical refraction once witnessed by myself at Newton. The white fleecy clouds which had prevailed during the morning were rolling away, or becoming absorbed down channel, after a mild and rather close day, at about four o'clock in the afternoon of the 4th of June, though they still lay like blankets folding round the base of the hills. Looking from the window of the coved room at the eastern end of Newton House, my attention was attracted by the unusual height of the vessels in the open space where the mass of cloud and fog had parted. I examined them carefully with a good portable telescope as they were standing off the Ruger Sands, some about five miles off, some more than double that distance from the place where I then stood, which was from sixty to eighty feet above high water mark. Their perplexing height and large loom appeared most clearly to be occasioned by a complete image of several of the brigs and schooners being suspended above the topmast in an inverted position. There was the vessel itself, and directly above it the inverted representation, the hull being upwards in the image, and the masts hanging downwards. In no small wonder I ran for my younger sister, and begged her to examine the strange appearance, then to look through the telescope, and set me right, if wrong. She immediately saw and described the appearances, in each instance, as seen by myself.1 Some of these extraordinary images were only partially

1 Professor Robertson, whom I met in Oxford, at Dr. M. Wall's hospitable house, told me that the different refractive power of the strata of air might be illustrated in a simple manner, and referred me to Dr. Vince's Observations, in the Philosophical Transactions, 1799. The usual experiment is, to mix very gradually the surfaces of two transparent fluids, such as spirits of wine and water, or syrup and water, in a square phial, then hold a card with a row of angles, say V's, opposite the junction of the fluids, and the effect will be that of a row of small rhombs, or diamond-like figures, the original object being seen, and also at the same time its inverted representation, close above it. Dr. Woollaston also illustrated this by the effect of looking along a red-hot poker at a distant object, when two images are seen, one erect and the other inverted, in consequence of the change produced by heat in the density of the air.

formed, that is, two or three sails were shown doubled just over the real sails, and we noticed some sloops hull down on the edge of the horizon, and yet the topsails and mainsails were redoubled as before, but a little higher up above the reality. Several vessels were placed at

such a favourable distance that the variation in the density of the different strata of air caused the refracted image to join on exactly with the real vessel. There was the slope of the jib and foresail, and the rise of the bowsprit, exactly answering, sail for sail, and spar for spar, only the image was inverted, and vertically above its original type.2

There was yet another most perplexing phenomenon, but not so lasting. Although the low clouds had opened down channel right and left, still they overhung Swansea Bay on one hand, and the coast of Devon on the other. All direct view of the opposite shore was wholly intercepted. About this time, under the intervening cloud or fog, there was an appearance of rock and land in the sea, over the west end of the Nash Sands, and nearer the

2 Captain Scoresby describes his having seen his father's ship, for which he was anxiously looking out, suspended in the air one evening in an inverted position, traced in the clearest colours, and most distinctly. He sailed in the direction indicated, and found the vessel at such a distance, that she could not possibly have been seen but by this extraordinary refraction which raised her image, above intervening icebergs, several degrees in the air. The portents said by Dion Cassius to have been seen on the banks of the Thames, in the time of Boadicea, may have been similar to the appearances here described— objects reflected from the water after undergoing unusual refraction.

Welsh shore, where it was never known to ebb dry. Here the defining powers of the glass did not help, and I was quite at a loss, until it struck me that the cliffs of the Foreland, (often narrowly examined by me, because one of them in the evening had a sort of buttress through a fissure of which the light passed,) were imaged on the smooth water by rays passing under the fog bank, and so bent, as to produce the striking effect of the sea apparently turned into dry land, or at least accurately mirroring it.

Professor Vince, at Ramsgate, 1st August, 1798, saw vessels seemingly lifted into the air, just as we did, but the image of the cliffs of Calais was, he says, (Philosophical Transactions, July, 1799,) thrown above the cliffs themselves, whilst those of North Devon had their image thrown below the cliffs themselves, like the remarkable spectacle at the Pharo of Messina, between Sicily and Italy.

FEUDAL TIMES.

Leaving, however, these interesting reminiscences, let us now hasten to trace through the mists of antiquity, first, the original grant of the Lords of Glamorgan; next, the foundation of the church and curious well; thirdly, the succession of proprietors until Henry VIII.

I.-Those who passed their earlier years at Newton Nottage may remember considerably more brushwood fringing the border of the Down. Not only have the clear pools and moss-covered valleys, formerly so frequent in the Sands, disappeared-the one levelled and denuded, the other choked up, and often deeply buried--but the little coppices in the upper lengths of the fields, with their anemones, arums and wood sorrel, and the blue gleam of their banks of harebells, have well nigh vanished before the genius of thrifty agriculture, or a rooted antipathy to trees. From Margam, by Ballas, along the brink of the Down, to Grove and the Brockholts, or haunts of the badger-now woodland only in nametrees and underwood seem formerly to have extended,

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and hence in the early grant by the Norman Conquerors of Glamorgan, Newton is said to be "parcel of Margam forest."-(Morganiæ Archaiographia, MS. Queen's Coll., Oxford.)

Newton Nottage, together with the lordship of Glamorgan and Morganwg, of which it formed a minute portion, having been won from Iestyn ap Gwrgan by Fitzhamon, was transmitted through Mabel, his eldest daughter, married to Robert, the brave Earl of Gloucester, illegitimate son of King Henry I. William, their son, made large feoffments out of it, as appears by the Black Book of the Exchequer. Ultimately the lordship was transmitted, through the Earl's daughter Amicia, to the line of De Clare. Of this distinguished family, Gilbert her son, (made Earl of Gloucester by Henry III.) Richard, Gilbert, the "Red Earl," (who married Joan of Acre, daughter of Edward I.,) follow in succession. The direct line was broken by the untimely slaughter of Gilbert the fourth De Clare, Earl of Gloucester, who fell at Bannockburn, 24th June, 1314, leaving his three sisters to succeed to his vast possessions. The grasping Sir Hugh Le Despencer claimed Glamorgan and Morganwg in right of Eleanor his wife, the eldest sister, and accompanying Edward II. in his retreat, was captured near Neath, and executed at Hereford, 20th November, 1326. Strong in the royal alliance and in personal valour, the Despencer family rose from their mournful downfall. They recovered possession of the lordship, till Henry Beauchamp, Duke of Warwick, son of Isabella Despencer, left it to his sister and heiress, Ann Beauchamp. Ann Neville, her daughter, by the king-making Earl of Warwick and Salisbury, was espoused, first, to Edward Prince of Wales, killed at Tewkesbury, and secondly, married to Richard III. After the battle of Bosworth, A.D. 1485, Henry VII. granted the lordship of Glamorgan to his uncle Jasper, Duke of Bedford, on whose demise, in 1495, it reverted to the crown. In the 27th of Henry VIII. the jura regalia of the Lords Marchers in Wales were taken

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away, but Edward VI., in the fourth year of his reign, granted large estates in Glamorgan, including "Cardiff, Caerphilly, Kenfig and Avon Castles," and numerous manors, including that of "Newton Nottage," to Sir William Herbert, afterwards Earl of Pembroke; and from that family, who sold the manor in 1715, this portion has been designated "The Pembroke Manor.'

GRANT TO DE CARDIFFE.

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We return to the early grant of a portion of land which in process of time constituted another manor, and which was made before the statute " Quia Emptores" had taken away these subinfendations.

As the "Dux Limitaneus" of the Roman system was, in the middle ages, represented by the powerful Lord Marcher, so the services of the "Milites Castellani or Burgarii," who held their lands by defending some fortified post, or rampart, or stronghold, were represented by the ancient tenure of "Castle Guard." Thus was the skill of the veteran still pledged for the defence of those territories which his valour had aided to acquire. Accordingly we find it recorded in Meyric's Morganiæ Archaiographia, from the Registrum de Nith, that William Earl of Gloucester granted out to Sir Richard de Cardiffe "thirty librate of land," to hold by the fourth part of a knight's fee, and, as subsequent documents prove, by the service of castle guard at Cardiff Castle.

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The arms of De Cardiff, as given in Lord Cawdor's valuable MS. are—“ Azure 3 piles in point, Or.” The same authority makes Sir Richard, the grantee, son of a Richard, and brother of Sir William, de Cardiff, of Walton Cardiff, near Tewkesbury, who married a daughter of Sir Thomas Basset, of Wooton Basset. From the charter of William Earl of Gloucester, founding Keynsham Priory, it appears that Sir R. de Cardiff held the important office of "Dapifer," or steward, to the Earl, and in this capacity, the writ conceding to the burgesses of Neath the same privileges as were enjoyed

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