King's Arms Research Articles

Bessie Parkes's Summer Sketches : George Eliot as Poetic Persona

IN 1853 AN HISTORIC GROUP OF LITERARY VICTORIANS GATHERED AT THE KING'S Arms Inn at the foot of Leith Hill for a part of their summer holiday. A vanguard group of three women, Barbara Leigh Smith (later Bodichon), her aunt Julia Smith, and Bessie Rayner Parkes (later Belloc), arrived in the Surrey village of Ockley near the end of June and installed themselves in the snug little inn. After several days, during which they established an active yet restful rural routine, a party arrived from London to expand the group by three women and a man: Marian Evans (eventually George Eliot), Sara Hennell, Susanna Chapman, and her publisher husband John. (1) Most of the group who met at the King's Arms were writers. Leigh Smith completed and published her Brief Summary of the Most Important Laws Concerning Women the following year. Sara Hennell plugged away at her metaphysics and brought out Christianity and Infidelity in 1856 and Thoughts in Aid of Faith in 1859. John Chapman continued writing occasional articles, including, in 1855, an essay on women's rights, and, in 1858, his single independent publication, a seven-page pamphlet on Chloroform and Other Anesthetics. Evans also wrote noteworthy articles, the most important of them for the Westminster Review. (2) By the end of the decade she had become one of England's most respected novelists. And Parkes, although she later found her place in literary London editing feminist periodicals, at the time was writing both prose and poetry, including Summer Sketches, an epistolary narrative poem set largely in the Surrey village she and her friends visited in the summer of 1853. Despite writing four books of poetry containing more than a hundred poems, Parkes's verses, whether about Ockley or her many other subjects, never achieved for her much fame as a poet. (3) Instead, she figures in Victorian history as a women's rights activist, periodical editor, convert to Catholicism, mother of twentieth-century poet Hilaire Belloc, and early friend of Marian Evans/George Eliot. Her MP father Joseph Parkes commissioned Evans' first publication in book form, the translation of D. F. Strauss's Das Leben Jesu, which appeared in 1846. Nine years later, she and Barbara Leigh Smith took the unusual course of failing to ostracize their friend after her scandalous elopement to Germany with George Henry Lewes. Continually, Parkes prodded Evans/Eliot to show more of her feminist side in her writing and her life. The singular poetic achievement of Summer Sketches also proceeds from Parkes's friendship with George Eliot, for in the poem she follows her two sections of narration of events at Ockley with a third part in which she takes the audacious step of creating the future novelist (at the time an important London editor) as her poetic persona. (4) In the early parts of the epistolary poem, the letter writer, (Parkes) describes the creative activities, political discussions, and immediate surroundings of herself, Mistress Clare (Julia Smith), and Ella (Leigh Smith) to her friend Helen (Evans), still hard at work in London. In the third section, supposedly posted from London, the prosaic, moderate voice of Helen most often conforms to usual interpretations of George Eliot's positions, practices, and beliefs as described by her many biographers. (5) To the ongoing George Eliot biographical project in general, this voice contributes a rare and credible portrait of an almost-young Marian Evans/George Eliot as interpreted by a close friend. (6) Moreover, Parkes's plan for her three-part poem creates Evans as a presence well before she hands the narrative over to her, indeed from the opening salutation to Dear Helen. Before Helen/Evans becomes the voice of the third letter, she figures as the addressee of its first two sections. This arrangement implies that Lilian selects her topics to appeal to the interests of Helen, and these choices in turn imply that in 1853 Evans was, like her friends, concerned with theories about social reform, especially women's rights and improved education. …

Rolls of Arms of Kings: Some Recent Discoveries in the British Library

As the intensive study of the medieval rolls of arms continues it is becoming ever more clear that, even in the thirteenth century, the general rolls were drawing material from existing collections—often in blocks of entries. One of the features of many of the general rolls, both in England and on the continent, is a section devoted to the arms of emperors and kings; sometimes with a selection of oriental and African potentates (Appendix I). Such series were also used in decoration; as in the windows formerly in the great hall of the Bishop's Palace at Lincoln, in wood carvings at St Mary's, Barton on Humber, and the early fifteenth-century painted ceiling in St Alban's Abbey. These appear, in most of the rolls, as self-contained units, and vary in number and content. There was, therefore, no single source from which the compilers drew their material. In the present study the author proposes to examine some of the problems and to introduce two newly discovered English medieval rolls of arms relevant to the subject.

Bagshot: The King's Arms Hotel

Bagshot: The King's Arms Hotel Get access Ambrose Heal Ambrose Heal Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Notes and Queries, Volume 174, Issue 15, 9 April 1938, Page 267, https://doi.org/10.1093/nq/174.15.267c Published: 09 April 1938

On a Specimen of Fossil Wood from King's Arms Pit, Tiptree, Essex

An examination of sections of the silicified wood from the King's Arms Pit, Tiptree, revealed at once that the structure was of the Dadoxylon type, and the absence of growth rings strongly suggested affinity with the Palaeozoic woods included in that genus, many of which are allied to Cordaites rather than to the araucarians. Among known silicified woods, a close comparison was possible only with those from the Corley (Enville) Group of the Midlands, now regarded as probably Upper Carboniferous, and not Permian.

The Pliocene Age of the Brain Valley Gravels, Essex

The fragment of silicified tree stem identified in the preceding paper by Mr. W. N. Edwards as a Dadoxylon from the Upper Carboniferous of Warwickshire was found in the gravel pit at Tiptree Heath just west of the King's Arms. This pit is at 269 feet above sea-level on the summit of the ridge that runs from Wickham Bishop, towards Colchester. The gravel is part of an extensive sheet which is shown on the Geological Survey Map (sheet 47) as Glacial Gravel. Dr. A. E. Salter (Proc. Geol. Soc., xix. 1905, p. 31) recorded from this pit Bunter debris, sarsens, radiolarian chert, rhyolite, and the green ash associated with it, and Carboniferous chert, with crinoids.

King's arms in churches

King's arms in churches Get access Everard Home Coleman Everard Home Coleman 171, Brecknock Road Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Notes and Queries, Volume s7-IX, Issue 225, 19 April 1890, Page 317, https://doi.org/10.1093/nq/s7-IX.225.317c Published: 19 April 1890

King's arms in churches

Journal Article King's arms in churches Get access J. Bagnall J. Bagnall 1Water Orton Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Notes and Queries, Volume s7-IX, Issue 225, 19 April 1890, Page 317, https://doi.org/10.1093/nq/s7-IX.225.317d Published: 19 April 1890

King's arms in churches

King's arms in churches

King's arms in churches

King's arms in churches

King's arms in churches

King's arms in churches

“The cock,” alias “king's arms,” tavern, tothill street

Journal Article “The cock,” alias “king's arms,” tavern, tothill street Get access J. Maskell J. Maskell Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Notes and Queries, Volume s7-VIII, Issue 187, 27 July 1889, Page 67, https://doi.org/10.1093/nq/s7-VIII.187.67a Published: 27 July 1889

Mr. Charles White, Hostler at the King's Arms, at Sarum

Journal Article Mr. Charles White, Hostler at the King's Arms, at Sarum Get access S. Y. R. S. Y. R. Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Notes and Queries, Volume s3-VI, Issue 131, 2 July 1864, Page 10, https://doi.org/10.1093/nq/s3-VI.131.10i Published: 02 July 1864