Synopsis
Excerpt from Luton Church: Historical and Descriptive
Yet modern writers have in general, with a singular disregard of both etymological and historical intimations, attributed well nigh all that is recorded of its earliest history to some town or village not heard of till generations later, whilst even the tradition of those more recent events and persons which are plainly and rightly accredited to it in well-known records, has, for the most part, died out of the memory of its present population.
Yet Luton, as has played its part, and a not inglorious or altogether unimportant part, from the very earliest times, in the story of the nation. It possesses one site, at least, within its borders of more than ordinary, it may be of unique interest, and two or more manors of perhaps little less historical consideration. It can claim among the lords of its chief manor, besides a long succession of worthy kings, some of the foremost champions of liberty and men of the most noble character, and it has seen in its streets or heard in its fanes many of the notables of both mediaeval and modern times; whilst it can show in the history and present aspect of its venerable parish church, with its well-authenticated succession of clergy dating from Saxon times to the present hour, an evidence as well of the continuity of the National Church, alike through changes of race and dynasty, of policies and creed, as of the still-existent beauty of one at least of her mediaeval fanes, notwithstanding both royal and fanatical despoilers.
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Product Description
Excerpt from Luton Church: Historical and Descriptive More than seven centuries ago a Norman rhymer, Geoffrey Gaimar, recording the capture of a British town which had taken place wellnigh six hundred years before his day, assigned to it the name and title of "la cite de Luitune." Like the old Saxon chronicler, when relating this same event (c. 571), he, no doubt, meant to give, not the native name of the British camp, which seemingly perished from memory along with the structure itself, but that of the fort or town which arose on its ruins, or in their immediate neighbourhood. The earlier writer named it, as styled in his day, "Lygean-burh," "the fort upon the Lea;" the later, three hundred years afterwards, designated it by the name of the township and parish in which it was by this time included, and of the well-known town which had taken its place, Luton. Gaimar's name for it, therefore, is a plain index of the survival to his day of the tradition as to where in the Midlands that fatal struggle took place, whilst the accompanying title bears witness to the ancient renown of the township of Luton, as having, in days of yore, contained a "city," even "a royal city," as both Saxon and Norman historian, the Ealdorman Ethelweard and Henry of Huntingdon, assert the British town to have been. "A royal city," eventually, in consequence, a "royal manor," "of ancient demesne," even in the days of the Norman Conqueror, with a history commencing conterminously with the first recorded struggle in the Midlands between Saxon and Briton - its name the only one to be met with, besides that of Bedford, in the history of the shire for the first three hundred and fifty years of Anglian rule - Luton is not an upstart of to-day. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally recon
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