The antiquities of England and Wales . to be true, and utter it with heavinefs, that neither theBritons under the Romans and Saxons, nor yet the Englifti people, under the Danes and Normans,had ever fuch damage of their learned monuments, as we have feen in our time. Our pofterity maywell curfe this wicked fa£t of our age ; this unreafonable fpoil of Englands moft noble antiquities. Vol. I. E e To 106 PREFACE. To conclude, their ftately buildings and magnificent chtSrcheswere ftriking ornaments to the country; the furious zeal withwhich thefe were demolifhed, their fine carvings deftroyed, and
The antiquities of England and Wales . to be true, and utter it with heavinefs, that neither theBritons under the Romans and Saxons, nor yet the Englifti people, under the Danes and Normans,had ever fuch damage of their learned monuments, as we have feen in our time. Our pofterity maywell curfe this wicked fa£t of our age ; this unreafonable fpoil of Englands moft noble antiquities. Vol. I. E e To 106 PREFACE. To conclude, their ftately buildings and magnificent chtSrcheswere ftriking ornaments to the country; the furious zeal withwhich thefe were demolifhed, their fine carvings deftroyed, andtheir beautiful painted windows broken, would almoft tempt oneto imagine, that the perfons who directed thefe depredations,were actuated with an enmity to the fine arts, inftead of a hatredto the popifh fuperftition. & An alphabetical lift of all the religious houfes in England andWales, to whom dedicated, when founded, with their valua-tion at the time of the dhTolution, will be added in the Index,at the conclufion of the ARCHI- PREFACE ARCHITECTURE. M O S T of the writers who mention our ancient buildings, par-ticularly the religious ones, notwithstanding the finking differencein the ftyles of their construction, clafs them all under the com-mon denomination of Gothic : a general appellation by them ap-plied to all buildings not exactly conformable to fome one of thefive orders of architecture. Our modern antiquaries, more accu-rately, divide them into Saxon, Norman and Saracenic ; or thatfpecies vulgarly, though improperly, called Gothic. An opinion has long prevailed, chiefly countenanced by Mr. Som-ner, (a) that the Saxon churches were moftly built with timber;and that the few they had of Hone, confifted only of uprightwalls, without pillars or arches j the conftru£tion of which, it is pre-tended, they were entirely ignorant of. Mr. Somner feems to havefounded his opinion on the authority of Stowe, and a difputable (a) Indeed, it is to be obferved, that before the
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