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The new continuous city-wall began at the river below the Aventine, and included that hill, on which there have been brought to light recently at two different places, the one on the western slope towards the river, the other on the opposite eastern slope, colossal remains of those primitive fortifications portions of wall as high as the walls of Alatri and Ferentino, built of large square hewn blocks of tufo in courses of unequal height emerging as it were from the tomb to testify to the might of an epoch, whose buildings subsist imperishably in these walls of rock, and whose intellectual achievements will continue to exercise an influence more lasting even than these.
My own impression is that he found the Saracens more just and trustworthy than the Christians; but it is proper to remember the allegations of the Church against the whole Suabian family; namely, that Manfred had smothered his father Frederick under cushions at Ferentino; and that, of Frederick's sons, Conrad had poisoned Henry, and Manfred had poisoned Conrad.
"You could not apply to any one better able to inform you on all these points, for I knew him when he was a child, and one day that I fell into his hands, going from Ferentino to Alatri, he, fortunately for me, recollected me, and set me free, not only without ransom, but made me a present of a very splendid watch, and related his history to me." "Let us see the watch," said Albert.
These Alatri remains are wonderful more so than many of the sites which old Ramage so diligently explored. Why did he fail to "satisfy his curiosity" in regard to them? He utters not a word about Alatri. Yet he stayed at the neighbouring Frosinone and makes some good observations about the place; he stayed at the neighbouring Ferentino and does the same. Was he more "pressed for time" than usual?
Within the space of our Oxford term from that day, namely, on the 13th of December in the same year, 1250, died, at Ferentino, in Apulia, the second Frederick, Emperor of Germany; the second also of the two great lights which in his lifetime, according to Dante's astronomy, ruled the world, whose light being quenched, "the land which was once the residence of courtesy and valour, became the haunt of all men who are ashamed to be near the good, or to speak to them."
Be that as it may, John de Ferentino had two sons, Peter and Richard, and it appears that their father, not content with such education as Oxford or Cambridge could afford though at this time Oxford was one of the most renowned universities in Europe sent his sons to Rome, having an eye to their future advancement; for in King Henry's days a young man that had friends at Rome was much more likely to get on in the world than he who had only friends in the King's Court, and he who wished to push his interests in the Church must look to the Pope, and not to the King of England, as his main support.
Have you room for one more dog story, which resembles one lately reported in a French journal? A few years since I was sitting inside the door of a shop to escape from the rain while waiting for a trap to take me to the railway station in the old Etruscan city of Ferentino.
I gave the requisite permission, and the dear animal seized the loaf and disappeared with it in his mouth, and did not again make his appearance before I left the city. "He always does like this," said the standers-by, "whenever he sees a stranger in Ferentino."
Our friend at Rougham may have been, and probably was, some kinsman of the archdeacon, and it is just possible that Archdeacon Middleton, who, you remember, bought the Lyng House, may have had, as his predecessor in it, another archdeacon, this John de Ferentino, whose nephew or brother, James, married Miss Isabella de Rucham, and settled down among his wife's kindred.
They were both the sons of Rougham people, and it will be necessary to pursue the history of each of them to make you understand how things went in those "good old times." First let me deal with Peter the Roman. He was the son of a Rougham lady named Isabella, by an Italian gentleman named lacomo de Ferentino, or if you like to translate it into English, James of Ferentinum.
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