Chap. 11 J. ANGLO SAXON.

167
of rotten hoards." The taste, liowever, of the Anglo-Saxons was not indulged in mag-
nllicent buildings
;
and the incursions of tlie Danes, wlio destroyed wherever tliey came,
togetlier with the unsettled state of the country, may account for their revenues being ex-
pended on mean and inconvenient houses.
387. Under the circumstances mentioned, it may be safely inferred that the art was not
in a very flourisliing state in the other parts of the island. Indeed, the ancient Britons,
after retiring to the mountains of Wales, appear to have lost it altogether
; and, as the
Honourable Daines Barrington ( Ai c/ucoloffia) has thought, it is very probable that ihw, if
any, stone buildings existed in Wales previous to the time of Edward I. 'I'he chief palace,
called the White Palace, of the kings of Wales, was constructed with white wands, whose
bark was peeled otf, whence its name was derived
;
and the price or penalty, by tlie laws of
the comitry, for destroying the king's hall or palace, with its adjacent dormitory, kitchen,
chapel, granary, bakehouse, storehouse, stable, and doghouse, was five pounds and eighty
l)ence, e(|iial, in ([uantity of silver, to sixteen pounds of our money, or 1 GO/. Tlie castles
apjiear also to have been built of timber ; for the vassals, ujion whoin fell the labour of
building them, were required to bring with them no other tool than an axe.
.S88. Neither do the arts of building appear to have been better understood in Scotland
at the former part of the period whereof we are speaking. The churcli built at Lindis-
farne by its second bishop, Finan, in 652, was of wood,

more rcntoruni ; and it has already

been mentioned that, for the stone church which Naltan, king of the Picts, built in 710, he
was under the necessity of procuring his masons from Nortliumberland. In Scotland, there
are still to be seen some stone buildings of very high anti(juity, which Dr. Henry seems
inclined to attribute to this period
;
we, however, are inclined to place them in an a^e far
anterior, later (hut not much so) than Stonehenge. We have never seen them, and there-
fore form our opinion from the description given in Gordon's Itinerariuni
Sepientriona/e.
These buildings are all circular, though of two diHerent kinds, so different from each other
that they seem to be the works of different ages and of different nations. The four prin-
cipal ones are in a valley, called Glenbeg. Of a different period, too, we consider tlie
circular towers which are found as well in Scotland as in Ireland. It is true that in both
countries these are found in the neighbourhood of churches ; but that does not the more
convince lis that they were coiniected with them.
389. Ducarel, in his Norman Ant'upih'us, enumerates some of the churches in England
wh.ich belong to the ages anterior to the Norman conquest. Among them are those of
Stukely in Buckingham-
shire, Barfreston
{Jjg.
1 80.
)
in Kent, and Avington in
Berkshire. Other exam-
ples may be cited as at
Waltham Abbey; the tran-
sept arches at Southwell,
Notiingliamsliire; the nave
of tiie abliey cliurch at St.
Alban's, Herts; tower at
Clapham, Beds, &c. The
Anglo-Saxon a;ra, tliougli
it, perhaps, properly com-
prised the time between
A. D. 600 to A. n. 1066
;
that is froin the conversion
of the Saxons to the Nor-
man conquest, is not known
with any thing apjjroaching
to certainty, from the reign
of Edgar in 980 to the last-
named event ; immediately
lirevious to which Edward
the Confessor had, during
his lifetime, completed
Westminster Ahliey in a
style then prevalent in Nor-
mandy, and with a inagni-
ficenee far exceeding any
other then extant. No le;is
than eighteen of the larger
monasteries, all ofthem 15e-
nedictine, had been founded
by the Saxon kings in