Imagens da página
PDF
ePub

same degree of care, though, being a smaller place, only by a hundred and fifty men, under a chief governor. The same is done with regard to a third place, called Hammes, situated between the two former, and thought to be of equal importance, the waters which inundate the country being collected around."*

When Henry the Eighth came to Calais in 1532, it was calculated that the town furnished in lodging 2,400 beds, and stabling for 2,000 horses.† The circumstances attendant upon the recovery of the town by the French in the year 1558, were described the same year in a Latin treatise written by Guillaume Paradin, dean of Baieux.‡

In 1596 Calais was destined to submit a second time to a conqueror, being taken by the Spaniards after a destructive siege. Paul Hentzner, who visited the place in 1598, just after it had been restored to the French, describes the castle of Rysebank ("Richehan") as then destroyed, having been seized by the Spaniards in their first attack, and made the means of assaulting the town. The town walls were still partly in ruins, but Henri IV. was then sedulously engaged in repairing them.§

The external appearance of Calais at the period to which this volume relates is admirably illustrated by the contemporary view represented in the annexed lithographic fac-simile,|| which exhibits the whole extent of the quay, and the line of walls from Beauchamp's bulwark to the castle; and, in front, Rys bank," with its fort and tower. The principal buildings which erect their heads above the houses, are St. Mary's church, the halls of the town and the staple, and the church of St. Nicholas.

[ocr errors]

* Report of signor Giovanni Michele to the doge and senate of Venice, as translated in Ellis's Original Letters, Second Series, vol. ii. p. 226.

"The towne of Calais had at this season 24 C. beds, and stabling for 2,000 horses, besides the villages about."-Stowe's Chronicle.

"De Motibus Galliæ, et expugnato receptoque Itio Caletorum, anno M.D. LVIII. Per Gulielmum Paradinum Bellijoci Decanum. Lugduni, M.D.LVIII." 4to, pp. 45. § P. Hentzneri Itinerarium, Noriberga, 1629, p. 241.

From the MS. Cotton. Aug. I. ii. 70. The lithograph is of the scale of the original, which comprises, however, a more extended view, reaching from Ow church and castle to Newnhambridge. A reduced copy of the same view was engraved in 1827, for Sir Henry Ellis's Original Letters, and has been since republished in the volume entitled "Chronicles of the White Rose."

The castle of Rysebank is drawn on a large scale, and with great apparent care, in the view of the harbour of Calais, MS. Cotton. Aug. I. ii. 57 c.

[graphic][subsumed][merged small][merged small]
[graphic]
[ocr errors]

J.Netherclift Lichog:

time of Henry VIII.

« AnteriorContinuar »