ERRATA AND CORRIGENDA. Page 63, lines 13-15, read "seven other kings;" and add "Eadbert" immedi Page 85, line 9, add marginal reference to charter, "A.D. 863, Cod. 288." Page 105, line 4, read "Forest." Page 116, last marginal reference, read "Westminst." Page 152, note*, read "long the residence." Page 156, line 13, read "Kelham." Page 157, line 25, read "service." Page 204, line 28, read "Sanling." Page 230, lines 2-5, "Lydden" should be added, making the number five. Page 231, last line but one, "Belice" also occurs, giving a sixth variation. Page 301, line 27, read "by these presents." Page 329, line 8, read "2nd Feb., 1141," for 23rd Feb., 1143. Page 346, last line, read "1176" for 1177, and " Northampton" for Nottingham. Page 400, line 1, read "Robert de Turnham." PREFACE. THE original promoters of a Railway from London to the Continent, were compelled by a strong opposition, in the year 1836, to abandon the line they had set out, which took much the same course as the first military road of our Roman invaders; but they eventually gained the support of the late Mr. T. L. Hodges, M.P., Sir Edward C. Dering, Bart., Sir William P. Geary, Bart., and other neighbouring landed proprietors of the Weald of Kent, and thus, this once almost impenetrable district, with some of the worst roads in the kingdom, ultimately yielded forty miles of an admirably constructed railway-called, indeed, the Railway Race-course of England. Previously, almost the only travellers who passed through it, kept to the old stage-coachroad from London to Tunbridge Wells and Hastings; and though they naturally spoke of the beauty of its extensive parks and woods, the magnificence of its timber, the quaintness and old-world look of its towns, its massive churches, and scattered villages, with their substantial timber houses; yet for all this, it was pronounced the most uninteresting portion of the county, promising but little attraction for the antiquary and historian. The Weald of Kent was formerly so little known that Lambarde, our earliest topographer, mentions only five places within it, although the number of parishes and places, either wholly or partially comprised therein, amounted to more than eighty; whilst one of our modern writers, the late highly gifted Anglo-Saxon scholar, Mr. Kemble, instead of treating it, first as the common forest of the kingdom of Kent, and afterwards of the shire, was impressed with the idea that it was originally "a Mark district." His intimate friend, the late Rev. Lambert B. Larking (ever ready to communicate to others what he himself had acquired with so much labour and perseverance), had entrusted him with Sir Roger Twysden's Journal; and here Mr. Kemble imagined he had discovered a "striking example of the Mark jurisdiction," to which he devoted many pages in his valuable work on "The Saxons in England," in the case of the "denes" belonging to the manor of Aldington. He speaks of the "Mark Court," and "Court of Dens," without the slightest authority, as it appears to me, for doing so. I, who have been Steward of the Manor for nearly forty years, certainly never before heard of such a Court. The Mark Court, he says, gradually became a Lord's Court, "when the head markman succeeded in raising himself at the expense of his fellows; a court of little marks, marches, or pastures, in Kent, long after the meaning of such marks, marches, or pastures had been forgotten." All this is merely an ingenious speculation. The simple facts are, that Sir Roger Twysden (supposed to be then a tenant of the Manor) was summoned to the Court, and attended it on several occasions between 1655 and 1664, and, according to custom, was appointed the Reeve, or Collector of the Lord's rents, in the thirty-two dens; but Sir Roger very naturally declined either to serve the office, or to pay the quit-rent, because the Steward could not identify the land to his satisfaction. This controversy, the counterpart of one that has been |