bricks, &c. As the bakers get a larger profit, upon them than on quartern and other loaves, the additional quantity of them that would be confused, might enable them to make the houfhold bread without diminishing their predent gains.

Bread made of disterent kinds of grain, is better than what is made of four only. Two parts of wheat flour, and one of rye, makes excellent bread. As a fub titute for bread, the author recommends boiled grain and roots, peafe, beans, barley, cats, potatoes, parinips, &c. The people of England, he obferves, are but little accustomed to the use of boiled grain, though, in many countries, it is eaten as a luxury. Boiled barley is a great favourite with the Dutch, who, in general, are both healthy and robuft. It is caten with milk, butter, or melafles. It is one of the best ingredients in foups, thickening it better than any other grain,

Oatmeal, made into hafty-pudding, and eaten with milk, is very nourishing. The pealants, in many parts of Britain, make two meals a day of it, and their children almost wholly fubfift upon it; and it is well known, he adds, that young and oid, who are thus fed, are healthy and robuft. The potatoe is by far the moft productive, falubrious, and nourishing, among the efculent roots; it is only inferior in the latter quality to corn. The author reprobates the custom of making bread with potatoes mixed with flour; it is marring both. Simple boil. ing, or roafting, is all that is required to make them a proper fubftitute for bread. Stewed with mutton, they make a nou. rithing and pleafing diet; but they fhould be boiled firit, and the water thrown away, as it contains fomething of a deleterious quality.

"April 22, 1784. "I SEND you herewith a bill for ten louis d'ers. I do not pretend to give fuch a fum. I only lend it to you. When you fhall return to your country, you cannot fail of getting into fome buinels that will in time enable you to pay all your debts. In that cafe, when you meet with another honeft man in fimilar diftrefs, you must pay me by lending this fum to him, enjoining him to

difcharge the debt by a like operation, when he shall be able, and shall meet with fuch another opportunity. I hope it may thus go through many hands be fore it meet with a knave to top its progrefs. This is a trick of mine for doing a deal of good with a little money. I am not rich enough to afford much in good works, and fo am obliged to be cunning and make the most of a little."

The following cures may be fufficient to induce thofe afflicted to make the experiment.

A man having violent rheumatic pains in his arms and fhoulders, by thus rubbing twice a day, was perfectly cured in a fortnight. In about the fame time, a

young man was cured of a white swelling

in his knee.

A woman having a large tumour on the fore-part of her neck, which role fuddenly (in a night's time), by rubbing it with the bottle, in about a week's time it difappeared.

N. B. The larger the bottle is, the longer it will keep warm. The power of attraction is affo greater in a larger bottle, than in one leis.

There is great reafon to believe, that it will cure the gout, when the parts affected can bear the operation. G.

THE

IN

thofe days of monaftic grandeur when the privileges annexed to religious establishments, the magnificence of the church, and the fplendor of the higher order of the clergy, were carried to an excefs which was, perhaps, ultimately one of the caufes which produced the abolition of the whole Romish eftablishment, the Benedictine Convent dedicated to St. Peter at Westminster was governed by a long series of Abbots, who made, in their turns, a confiderable figure both as members of the Church and of the State. The lives of many of them have been recorded; the memory of others has, by actions which reflected honour upon their genius and their characters, been both fcriptorally and traditionally preferved long after their epitaphs, though engraved in brafs or marble, have been totally obliterated.

Among the many perfons who, for their mental faculties, liberality, and benevolence, deferve to have their names refcued from oblivion, Cardinal Langham ftands upon the foremost ground; and exhibits, in the records of the Abbey, a character which, laying afide religious prejudices, may at all times be confidered as worthy of imitation for its learning and virtue but as thefe pleafing and prominent traits will expand themfelves, and prefs upon the reader's mind, in the fubfequent lines, I fhall no longer detain him with an exordium, but proceed to recite the life of this once celebrated man, as I have been able to extract it from authorities, and corroborate thofe with documents, whose authenticity is not to be doubted.

SIMON DE LANGHAM was, as we may conjecture by his name, and by a legacy which he left to the church of Langham in Rutlandfhire, born in that place. The date of his birth does not appear,

but he became a Monk of St. Peter, Westminster, in the year 1335 t. He foon attained to a confiderable degree of eminence among his brotherhood, and in 1346 officiated at the triennial chapter of the Benedictines, held at Northamp ton, for Simon de Byrchefton, the then Abbot . In this chapter his abilities fo fully difplayed themselves, that the reverence and efteem which the Monks had before profeffed for him were confiderably increased: it is, therefore, not to be wondered, that upon the vacancy which happened in April 1349, he should be elected Prior; nor that, within two months after this elevation, he should afcend to the fummit of monaftic grandeur, by being alfo elected to fucceed Byrchefton §, who with twenty-fix of his Monks died of the plague ||, of which our civic hiftorians give fo dreadful an

account.

Soon after his fucceffion to the dignity of Abbot, Langham alfo officiated at a great Council holden at Weftminster, in which the King (Edward the Third), "by the advice of his Lords, and with the confent of fome Bifhops, took pɔffeffion of all the revenues in England enjoyed by alien Cardinals and other Ecclefiaftics, particularly those of the French Nation ¶."

That vifitation of Providence which produced the death of Byrchefton was a circumftance which may be deemed fortunate for the revenue of his Monaftery, as that Abbot, by being of an extravagant turn himfelf, and encouraging idle and voluptuous perfons to become his affociates, had exceedingly wafted and diminished it.

The first object,

therefore, to which the new Abbot directed his attention, was to introduce œconomy into the cloifters. To effect this, he availed himself less of his power

Rymer's Fœd. tom. v. p. 490.

VOL. XXXII. SEPT. 1797.

X

to enforce, than of his eloquence to perfuade, and his example to stimulate. In this puruit he was fo fuccefsful, that he was foon in a capacity not only to pay the debts of his predeceffor Byrcheflon, but allo thofe of Henly, the former Abbot *. It has been ftated by the Author whom I have quoted in the note, that he was enabled to do this from his favings while a Monk; but a flight examination will ferve to fhew the futility of fuch an affertion. By the rule of their Order, the Benedictine Monks could not hold any private property; and although the Monaftery of St. Peter at Weftminster was, in fome degree, an exception to this rule, by dividing the furplus of a large ettate given in remembrance of Queen Elinor † among the brotherhood; yet this, with respect to Langham, could not (even if he had not had any benevolent claims upon it) have amounted to any large fum; for he was a Monk but a few years, and Prior ftill fewer weeks. Flete is the author that has been quoted upon this occafion; but the words of another, if they are rightly understood, perhaps ftate the matter more truly ; for it is certain that the Abbots of thofe antient, like the Deans of thefe modern times had a large portion of the revenue of the Ab. bey alligned to them for their particular fhare.

It is therefore by no means extraordinary, that a man who was in his private anairs of fo frugal a turn as Langham fhould retrieve thote of the Monattery, which had gone to ruin by neglect, and even pay the debts of his predecetiors.

We have not in the prefent, many veftiges which denote the fale of places in former age; yet there is one which occurs in Flete, which appears curious from its fingularity. This author ftates, "That the Abbɔt purcbafest the place of Sergeant of the Cellar, which was to become a thing of inheritance to the

brotherhood, for the purpofe of its being gratuitoufly difpofed of in future." He likewife prefented to the Convent, from his own portion, a garden fomewhere within the clofe called the Bourgoigne §.

When he began a reformation of the abufes which had crept into the cloifter, he (knowing the difpofition of his fraternity) thought that those which refpected the articles of provifion were of the first importance. He therefore took care that their mifericordia, or better than ordinary difles, and thofe dinners which were fomewhat fimilar to what in our Univerfities have obtained the names of Exceedings and Gaudy-day:,' fhould be common to the whole fociety; and not, as had formerly been the practice, confined to a few, to the extreme mortification of the reft. To effect this purpose, he relinquished the prefents which it had been ufual for preceding Abbots, at certain times, to accept.

When he had by thefe means gained the love and efteem of the major part of the brotherhood, he carried the work of reformation to matters of more public, and confequently of far greater importance. He formed a code of laws upon more liberal principles than thofe by which the monaftic orders were in general governed; and although, like all legiflators, or (as they are fometimes termed) innovators, he met with confiderable difficulty and oppofition in their promulgation, yet he ultimately triumphed. He repreffed the infolent, reduced the refractory, punished the wicked, and in a fhort time not only established order in a place which had been theretofore the fcene of confusion, but had fo entirely gained the good opinion of the fociety, that, as Flete obferves, his character was, "even by the old Monks who had been his enemies, thought equal to that of the founder ."

As, by the vicinity of the abbey to the palace of his Monarch, Langham

Edward the Confeffor.

I

had

had in fome degree acted under his infpection, Edward the Third had too much fagacity not to difcern, and too much liberality to fuffer talents like his to be confined to the narrow limits of a cloister, or even to find their remuneration in the revenue of a mitred Abbot. He was therefore, in March 1360, promoted to the place of Lord Treaturer; a fituation of comparatively greater importance in thofe days than that of Firit Lord of the Treasury is in the prefent, as he not only executed the whole bufinefs of the Board of Commiffioners, but had the management of the fifcal concerns of the Empire, and alfo pretided in the Court of Exchequer, where he took place of the Chancellor, Barons, &c.†.

It is to be in fome refpect lamented, that the writers of the lives of Abbots, and indeed all other historians and biographers in former times, were Monks, as, in general, their remarks are circumfcribed within the narrow limits of their Monafteries; or, if they occasionally take a fight beyond the pale of the church, it is feldom for any other purpofe than to describe some advantage which it has derived from the excurfion. Accordingly I muft obferve, that the care of Langham in the management of the national revenue, in times of confiderable difficulty, is paffed over in filence, while his merit in obtaining of the King, for the ufe of his Convent, two ftags yearly from Wind for foreft in addition to the eight bucks given by Henry the Third, has defcended to us through the medium of feveral ecclefiaftical hiftorians. He alfo, they further ftate, in 1355, prevailed on the Monarch to pretent to the Monaftery the head of St. Benedict ; and whilit he was Lord Treaturer, namely in 1362, he obtained for the Sacrifty the gift of the faered veftiments in which St. Peter used to officiate .

When the tide of a man's affairs fets toward honour and riches, the current

which wafts thofe pleafing appendages has feldom been known to have been retrained until it rifes to a flood. It has then indeed fometimes rushed on with fuch impetuofity as to break its banks, and fweep the perfon who was failing, as he thought fecurely, upon its furface into its vertex. The latter part of this obfervation does by no means apply to Langham: the ftream of his profperity flowed in a gentle and regular coufe. In the year 1361 he was elected to the bithopric of London; but the fee of Ely becoming vacant at the fame time, he chofe the latter, and was confecrated March 20, 1361-2.

His motive for making this election it is now impoffible even to guefs. No man is without enemies, who are the more numerous the more elevated his ftation. Those enemies of the new Bifhop faid, that he had defired a tranflation for a reason that has fometimes operated upon the human mind, namely, because the fee of Ely had a larger revenue annexed to it than that of London. Leaving this to conjecture, it is certain that no man ever employed a large revenue to better purposes; or, in the diftribution of it, thewed ftronger fymptoms of an exalted mind, extending its benevolence and liberality to the advancement of religion, the encouragement of learning, the relief of public calamity and private diftrefs, than did Simon de Langham,

As his character expanded, and was by his eminent ftation brought more forward upon the canvas, fo much was his Monarch ftruck with the ftrong traits of wisdom and ability which it exhibited, that on the 19th of Feb. 1363-4, he thought proper to remove him from the pot of Lord Treafurer to that of Chanceller; and in July 1366 he was, by papal provifion, but at the express defire of the King, tranflated from the fee of Ely to the apex of epifcopal dignity in this kingdom, that of Canterbury.

Walfingham Hift. Angl. p. 171, &c.

Walfingham Hift. Ang. p. 171.