Transcriber’s Notes:

• A table of contents has been added.
• Blank pages have been removed.
• Obvious typographical errors have been silently corrected.
• Font 'Old English Text MT' is recommended to view blackletter text.
• Some illustrations with internal text have "See transcription" links to the text at the end of the book.
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• Errata from Vol. II. have been applied.
• There is no plate #56.

Stukeley delin.

Itinerarivm. Cvriosvm.
Centvria. i.

ITINERARIUM CURIOSUM:
OR,
AN ACCOUNT OF THE
ANTIQUITIES,
AND REMARKABLE
CURIOSITIES
IN
NATURE OR ART,
OBSERVED IN TRAVELS THROUGH
GREAT BRITAIN.

ILLUSTRATED WITH COPPER PLATES.

CENTURIA I.

THE SECOND EDITION,
WITH LARGE ADDITIONS.

By WILLIAM STUKELEY, M.D. F.R. & A.S.

O Patria, O Divûm domus, Albion, inclyta bello!

O quam te memorem, quantum juvat usque morari

Mirarique tuæ spectacula plurima terræ!

LONDON:
Printed for Messrs. Baker and Leigh, in York-Street, Covent-Garden.
M.DCC.LXXVI.

Table of Contents.

• [PREFACE]
• [ITER DOMESTICUM. I.]
• [ITER OXONIENSE. II.]
• [ITER CIMBRICUM. III.]
• [ITER SABRINIUM. IV.]
• [ITER ROMANUM. V.]
• [ITER DUMNONIENSE. VI.]
• [ITER SEPTIMUM ANTONINI AUG. VII.]
• [THE PLATES]
• [INDEX]

PREFACE.

THE intent of this Treatise is to oblige the curious in the Antiquities of Britain: it is an account of places and things from inspection, not compiled from others’ labours, or travels in one’s study. I own it is a work crude and hasty, like the notes of a traveller that stays not long in a place; and such it was in reality. Many matters I threw in only as hints for further scrutiny, and memorandums for myself or others: above all, I avoided prejudice, never carrying any author along with me, but taking things in the natural order and manner they presented themselves: and if my sentiments of Roman stations, and other matters, happen not to coincide with what has been wrote before me; it was not that I differ from them, but things did not so appear to me. The prints, beside their use in illustrating the discourses, are ranged in such a manner as to become an index of inquiries for those that travel, or for a British Antiquary. I shall probably continue this method at reasonable intervals. The whole is to invite Gentlemen and others in the country, to make researches of this nature, and to acquaint the world with them: they may be assured, that whatever accounts of this sort they please to communicate to me, they shall be applied to proper use, and all due honour paid to the names of those that favour me with a correspondence so much to the glory and benefit of our country, which is my sole aim therein.

It is evident how proper engravings are to preserve the memory of things, and how much better an idea they convey to the mind than written descriptions, which often not at all, oftener not sufficiently, explain them: beside, they present us with the pleasure of observing the various changes in the face of nature, of countries, and the like, through the current of time and vicissitude of things. These embellishments are the chief desiderata of the excellent Mr. Camden’s Britannia, and other writers of this sort, whose pens were not so ready to deliver their sentiments in lines as letters: and how hard it is for common artificers to draw from mere description, or to express well what they understand not, is obvious from our engravings in all sciences. I am sensible enough, that large allowances must be made for my own performances in this kind, and some for the artificers parts therein, who, for want of more practice in such works, cannot equal others abroad. I know not whether it will be an excuse, or a fault, if I should plead the expedition I used in the drawing part; but I may urge, that a private person, and a moderate fortune, may want many useful assistants and conveniences for that purpose. It is enough for me to point them out; to show things that are fine in themselves, and want little art to render them more agreeable, or that deserve to be better done; or any way to contribute toward retrieving the noble monuments of our ancestors; in which case only, we are behind other the learned nations in Europe. It is not that we have a less fund of curiosities than they, were the description of them attempted by an abler hand, and more adequate experience.

Two or three of the plates are inserted only as heads, being not referred to in the discourse, as Tab. VIII. the ground-plot of the ruins of Whitehall. I myself never saw the palace, but was pleased that I chanced to take this draught of its ruinous ichnography, but the very week before totally destroyed. Thus much I thought owing to the venerable memory of that name, which is ever the word at sea with British ships, and which makes the whole world tremble. Tab. X. is an ancient seal of the bishops of Norwich.[1] This plate the learned and curious Mr. le Neve, Norroy king at arms, lent me out of his good will to promote the work: the seal is remarkable for having letters upon the edge, represented in the empty ringlet; the manner of it is like our milled money; but how it was performed in wax, is not easy to say. Tab. XV. was likewise lent me by Mr. Norroy abovesaid. I design always, in these collections of mine, to insert one plate in a hundred, of some person’s effigies that has deserved well of the antiquities of Britain: it is but a just piece of gratitude to their memory. Tab. XL. (the Greek view at Athens) I took from an original drawing in Mr. Talman’s collection. I have some more of that sort: though they relate not to Britain, I do not fear the reader will be displeased with me on that account. How much rather ought we to lament the scarcity of such! What noble monuments of Greece are sunk into eternal oblivion, through want of Drawing in travellers that have been there in great numbers, or for want of encouragement to those that are able! With what regret do I mention that most beautiful temple of Minerva in the citadel of Athens, without dispute the finest building upon the globe, anno 1694! that year it was casually blown up with gunpowder, and not a drawing of it preserved.

15

Guil: Faithorne Sculp:

HENRICUS SPELMANNUS.
Eques Auratus.

8

Palaces.

Stukeley del.

JV^der Gucht Sculp

The Groundplot of the Ruins of Whitehall June 14. 1718.

10

I. Harris sculp^t.

Ex autographo penes Maiorem et Com̃unitat.
Villæ Lenne Regis in Com Norff.

40

A View at Athens.

Stukeley del.

I. Harris sculp

Ex collectionᵉ Johis Talman Ar.

101·2^d.

A View of the Temple of the Winds at Athens. A Lyon Cast in brass standing by y^e Port of Athens.

102. 2^d.

The Temple of Minerva at Syracuse.

The Ichnography of the same Temple.

Stukeley del.

100

Insignis Synodus quinq, Planetarum Anno 1722, Mense Decembrifacta ad ho:7 .matutinas.
Gradus Sigittary.

Celeberrimo Hallejo Astronomo Regio tabulam reddit L. M. W^s. Stukeley.

The last plate, of the great conjunction of the five planets, I added as an æra of my book. This memorable appearance, because it affected not the vulgar like a solar eclipse, was almost neglected by the learned. I had a mind to do it justice by printing the type of it from the diagram sent me by the great Dr. Halley. For my part, I congratulate myself for living in an age fruitful of these grand phænomena of the celestial bodies, and am pleased, that beside the total eclipse 1715, we have in the space of two years this great conjunction, a transit of Mercury across the sun, a comet, the last eclipse of the sun, and in March next another great conjunction.

The numerous plates I have given the reader, of ground-plots and prospects of Roman cities, I thought contributed much towards fixing their site, and preserving their memory: they may be useful to curious inhabitants, in marking the places where antiquities are found from time to time, and in other respects. There are some few errors of the press escaped me, notwithstanding all my care; but none, I think, of any consequence. I have taken care to make the Index as instructing as I could. The title of Roman roads belongs to such as are anonymous, or not commonly taken notice of: that of Roman coins points to such places as are not Roman towns, or particularly described. Etymology includes only such words as are scattered casually in the work, or matters that are not comprehended under any other head; and so of the rest.

One general observation I have made within the short space of time my travels were limited to, that husbandry, grazing, cultivation of waste lands, all sorts of trades and manufactures, towns and cities, are hugely improved; and especially the multitude of inhabitants is increased to a high proportion: the reason of it is not difficult to be guessed at.

What I shall next trouble the reader withall, will be my intended work, of the history of the ancient Celts, particularly the first inhabitants of Great Britain, which for the most part is now finished. By what I can judge at present, it will consist of four books in folio. I. The history of the origin and passage of the Celts from Asia into the west of Europe, particularly into Britain; of their manners, language, &c. II. Of the religion, deities, priests, temples, and sacred rites, of the Celts. III. Of the great Celtic temple at Abury in Wiltshire, and others of that sort. IV. Of the celebrated Stonehenge. There will be above 300 copper plates of a folio size, many of which are already engraven; and many will be of much larger dimensions. Upon account, therefore, of the vast expence attending this work, I shall print no more than are subscribed for; the money to be paid to me only. Thus much I thought fit to advertise the friendly reader.

Ormond-street, 26 Dec. 1724.

GULIELMO STUKELEY, M. D.
Amicus Amico, &c.

LUbrica Romani dum Tu monumenta pererras

Nominis, & tacito saecula lapsa pede:

Docte opifex, variis seu vim sermonibus addas,

Seu placet artifici pagina picta manu;

Quanta vetustatis summae miracula promis,

Obrutaque indigno moenia celsa situ!

Vindice Te, fossas video procedere longas.

Per loca constratum devia ducit iter.

Nunc via sublimi conscendit vertice montes,

Flumina declivis nunc per aperta ruit.

Castra quot immenso retegis constructa labore?

Et tua non sinit ars oppida posse mori.

Hic mira antiquae pendent compagine portae,

Hic tremulo fulget lumine grata pharos.

Celsior exsurgit chartis Romana potestas

Clara tuis; ultro est fassa ruina decus.

Ecce iterum ingenti pandunt curvamine sedes,

Et plausu resonant amphitheatra novo.

Roma triumphato jamdudum languida mundo

Nequicquam invictam se superesse dolet.

Nec te dira cohors morborum sola tremiscit,

Ast tempus medicas sentit inerme manus.

Quantum Roma tibi, quantum Brittannia debet.

O ingens patriae, Romulidumque decus!

Accipe Phoebea merito dignissime lauro,

Sint, quæ das aliis, saecula sera tibi.

I. S.

GULIELMO STUKELEY, M. D. &c.

NEC sola est medicina Tui, sed Apolline dignam

Artem omnem recolis, mente, manuque potens.

Non modo restituis senio morbisque gravatos,

Ad vitam reddis sæcla sepulta diu.

Te Lindensis ager gestit celebrare nepotem,

Quæque dedit, patriæ lumina grate refers.

GEOR. LYNN, Interior. Templ. Soc.

In Itinerarium Curiosum amici sui charissima viri doctissimi & Cl. Domini Gulielmi Stukeleii M. D. CML. SRS. & Antiquar. Secretar.

O Jane bifrons! Temporis inclyte

Vindex remoti, de superis videns

Post terga solus, nunc adesto et

Egregium tueare amicum

Opusque. templi janua sit tui

Serata, dum ex bis nostra quietior

Discat juventus, quid avorum

Indomitæ potuere dextræ.

Quicquid Britannus ferre recusans

Servile collo Romulidum jugum,

Terra sua contentus egit,

Artibus ingenitis beatus.

Quicquid Quirites gentibus asperis

Cultu renidens tradere providi:

Victoriam, Musasque & artes,

Arma simul rapiente dextra.

Nec vestra omittit pagina Saxonem

Sicâ timendum, relligionibus

Valde revinctum: bellicosis

Horribilemve Dacum carinis.

Nec tu recondis facta silentio

Præclara Normanni immemor inclyti;

Quorum omnium est imbutus Anglus

Sanguine, moribus, & vigore.

Quæ mira doctus condidit artifex

Excelsa prisci mœnia seculi,

Quæ strata, pontes, templa, castra,

Amphitheatra, asarota, turres!

Plaudit sibi jam magna Britannia

Antiqua splendet gloria denuo.

Chartis resurgit Stivecleji

Celsa canens iterum triumphos.

MAUR. JOHNSON, J. C.
Interioris Templi Soc. MDCCXXIV.

In Stukelejanas Antiquitates.

DEperditorum restitutor Temporum

Et veritatis in tenebris abditæ

Scrutator eruditus, arte quâ mirâ valet!

Retegit vetustum quicquid obscuro sinu

Abscondit Ævum. Tempus, hic aciem tuæ

Falcis retundit invidam: frustra omnia

Comples ruinis. jam tuæ pereunt minæ.

Ipsæ perire nam ruinæ nesciunt. M. M.

Ad Itinerarii Curiosi auctorem.

QUantum Roma tibi, et Romana Britannia debet,

Ingenui Vates, Vir celebrande, canant.

Me nec Roma modos suaves, nec Celtica tellus

Argutæ docuit stringere fila lyræ.

Muneris hoc igitur vani cur hybrida tentem

Normannus, Cimber, Saxo, Britannus ego?

Musa negat, Natura negat, sed suggerit unus

Qualiacunque potest carmina noster Amor.

Gratulor inceptum tibi nobile, gratulor illis,

Inter quos nomen glorior esse meum:

Qui patriæ priscas arteis, loca, nomina, & ipsas

Relliquias sancta relligione colunt;

Quo brevis ostendis conclusus limite campi,

Limite quam nullo clauditur ingenium.

Quòque tuos sensus permulcet amore Vetustas,

Qui nullos casus, ardua nulla fugis.

Per salebras asp’ras, per tortas ambitiones,

Et cæcos calles, improbe, carpis Iter.

Stagna lacúsque inter, limosáque pascua Lindi,

Romanæ explorans avia strata viæ.

Hic ubi sorte dolens, pelagi tot jugera rector

Æquoris herbosi non sua, rapta tenet.

Plura quidem tenuit, sed jussit Jupiter acres

Martigenas patrui vim cohibere sui.

Haud secus ac jussi faciunt, partémque receptam

Terreni, ut par est, æquoris esse jubent.

Cætera raptori quæ nunc manet Ennosigæo,

Si quibus est armis, est repetenda tuis.

Qui terræ pelagíque adeo declivia monstras,

Et quò præcipites Nereus urget equos;

Tanta mathematicis se tollit gloria vestra

Artibus; at numeris grandior illa meis.

Me rapit addictum veterum admiratio rerum,

Plenáque deliciis pagina quæque suis.

Tu monumenta pius, monumentis adstruis ipsis,

Perdita quæ fuerant, posse perire vetans.

Quid referam quantum tibi debet Classicus auctor,

Qui priscas urbes, castrà que prisca doces?

Mercator siccis quærens adamantas in oris,

Non tam conductam versat avarus humum,

Quam tu cum nummos, urnas, & cætera signa

Antiquæ effodias indubitata notæ.

Nomina, quæ fuerant olim, Romana reducis,

Perdita restituens, obsolefacta novans.

Nec te, antiquarum tam mira peritia vocum est,

Fallunt Teutonici, barbaricique soni.

Historiam quantum decoras, si dicere vellem,

Historiam videar scribere, non literas.

Tu das præteritis veluti præsentibus uti,

Et redeunt scriptis secula lapsa tuis.

Detrahis ancipiti Jano mirabile monstrum,

Et recta facie cernere cuncta jubes.

Sed dum commendo tua, carmine digna Maronis.

Ingenii culpâ detero, scripta, mei.

Macte tua virtute esto, patriamque quotannis

Quo pede cæpisti demereare. Vale.

R. AINSWORTH.

To Dr. Stukeley, upon his Itinerarium Curiosum.

HAIL, Baxter lives! in each descriptive page

Are seen the labours of the Roman age:

What ere the sons of Rome or Albion knew,

We here discern at one compendious view.

Thus taught we pass the Caledonian flood,

Or fertile plains that smile from Cimbric blood:

Where Vaga’s streams glide murmuring near the tomb,}

(Darksome recess) where mighty Chiefs of Rome

Have slumber’d ages in its silent gloom:

Where airy lamps the distant sailor guide,

Or where the labour’d arch deceives the tide:

Where Geta kept the Belgic youth in awe,

Or where Papinian gave the Roman law.

Pleas’d I behold Sabrina’s silver stream,

Or hear the murmurs of the doubtful Teme.

With you, methinks, from Cred’nil I survey

Th’ important conflict of the furious day:

See, see! Frontinus fierce in armour shine,

Where the war burns upon the vale of Eigne.

Here on the plains of Aricon we learn

Life’s various period from the peaceful urn.

Yon hoary Druids pray celestial aid,

Where sacred oaks diffuse a solemn shade;

Each branch aspiring to the blest abode

Lifts up the vows of Britain to the God.

Go on, my friend! the curious theme pursue,}

The mystic scenes of early time review,

And tell Britannia, Baxter lives in you.

JAMES HILL, J. C.
Middle-Temple, London, Dec. 1. 1724.

[See transcription]

ITINERARIUM CURIOSUM, &c.

ITER DOMESTICUM. I.

I, fuge, sed poteras tutior esse domi. Mart.

To MAURICE JOHNSON, Jun. Esq.
Barrister at Law of the Inner-Temple.

THE amity that long subsisted between our families giving birth to an early acquaintance, a certain sameness of disposition, particularly a love to antient learning, advanced our friendship into that confidence, which induces me to prefix your name to this little summary of what has occurred to me worth mentioning in our native country, HOLLAND, in Lincolnshire; but chiefly intended to provoke you to pursue a full history thereof, who have so large a fund of valuable papers and collections relating thereto, and every qualification necessary for the work. That these memoirs of mine are so short, is because scarce more time than that of childhood I there spent, and when I but began to have an inclination for such enquiries: that the rest which follow are grown to such a bulk as to become the present volume, is owing to my residence at London. Great as are the advantages of this capital, for opportunities of study, or for the best conversation in the world, yet I should think a confinement to it insupportable, and cry out with the poet,

Invideo vobis agros, formosaque prata. Virg.

I envy you your fields and pastures fair.

which engages me to make an excursion now and then into the country: and this is properly taking a review of pure nature; for life here may be called only artificial, especially when fixed down to it; like the gaudy entries upon a theatre, where a pompous character is supported for a little while, and then makes an exit soon forgotten. My ancestors, both paternal and maternal, having lived, from times immemorial, in or upon the edges of our marshy level, perhaps gave me that melancholic disposition, which renders the bustlings of an active and showy life disagreeable. The fair allurements of the business of a profession, which have been in my road, cannot induce me wholly to forsake the sweet recesses of contemplation, that real life, that tranquillity of mind, only to be met with in proper solitude; where I might make the most of the pittance of time allotted by Fate, and if possible doubly over enjoy its fleeting space. I own a man is born for his country and his friends, and that he ought to serve them in his best capacity; yet he confessedly claims a share in himself: and that, in my opinion, is enjoying one’s self; not, as the vulgar think, in heaping up immoderate riches, titles of honour, or in empty, irrational pleasures, but in storing the mind with the valuable treasures of the knowledge of divine and human things. And this may in a very proper sense be called the study of Antiquities.

Of the study of Antiquities.

I need not make an apology to you for that which some people of terrestrial minds think to be a meagre and useless matter; for truly what is this study, but searching into the fountain-head of all learning and truth? Some antient philosophers have thought that knowledge is only reminiscence. If we extend this notion no further than as to what has been said and done before us, we shall not be mistaken in asserting that the past ages bore men of as good parts as we: enquiry into their thoughts and actions is learning; and happy for us if we can improve upon them, and find out things they did not know, by help of their own clue. All things upon this voluble globe are but a succession, like the stream of a river: the higher you go, the purer the fluid, less tainted with corruptions of prejudice or craft, with the mud and soil of ignorance. Here are the things themselves to study upon; not words only, wherein too much of learning has consisted. If we examine into the antiquities of nations that had no writing among them, here are their monuments: these we are to explore, to strike out their latent meaning; and the more we reason upon them, the more reason shall we find to admire the vast size of the gigantic minds of our predecessors, the great and simple majesty of their works, and wherein mainly lies the beauty and the excellence of matters of antiquity. But more especially it is not without a happy omen, that the moderns have exerted themselves in earnest, to rake up every dust of past times, moved by the evident advantages therefrom accruing, in the understanding their invaluable writings, which have escaped the common shipwreck of time. It is from this method we must obtain an accurate intelligence of those principles of learning and foundations of all science: it is from them we advance our minds immediately to the state of manhood, and without them the world 5000 years old would but begin to think like a child. Nothing more illustrates this than looking into the comments that were wrote upon them 200 years ago, voluminous enough, but barbarous, poor, and impertinent, when compared to the solid performances of learned men since, whose heads were enriched with an exact search into the customs, manners and monuments of the writers. Hence it is, that history, geography, mathematics, philosophy, the learned professions, law, divinity, our own faculty, and the muses in general, flourish like a fresh garden richly watered and cultivated, weeded from rubbish of logomachy and barren mushrooms, gay with thriving and beautiful plants of true erudition, inoculated upon the stocks of the antients.

Of Britain.

If ruminating upon antiquities at home be commendable, travelling at home for that purpose can want no defence; it is still coming nearer the lucid springs of truth. The satisfaction of viewing realities has led infinite numbers of its admirers through the labours and dangers of strange countries, through oceans, immoderate heats and colds, over rugged mountains, barren sands and deserts, savage inhabitants, and a million of perils; and the world is filled with accounts of them. We export yearly our own treasures into foreign parts, by the genteel and fashionable tours of France and Italy, and import ship-loads of books relating to their antiquities and history (it is well if we bring back nothing worse) whilst our own country lies like a neglected province. Like untoward children, we look back with contempt upon our own mother. The antient Albion, the valiant Britain, the renowned England, big with all the blessings of indulgent nature, fruitful in strengths of genius, in the great, the wise, the magnanimous, the learned and the fair, is postponed to all nations. Her immense wealth, traffic, industry; her flowing streams, her fertile plains, her delightful elevations, pleasant prospects, curious antiquities, flourishing cities, commodious inns, courteous inhabitants, her temperate air, her glorious show of liberty, every gift of providence that can make her the envy and the desirable mistress of the whole earth, is slighted and disregarded.

You, Sir, to whom I pretend not to talk in this manner, well know that I had a desire by this present work, however mean, to rouse up the spirit of the Curious among us, to look about them and admire their native furniture: to show them we have rarities of domestic growth. What I offer them is an account of my journeyings hitherto, but little indeed, and with expedition enough, with accuracy no more than may be expected from a traveller; for truth in every particular, I can vouch only for my own share, strangers must owe somewhat to informations. I can assure you I endeavoured as much as possible not to be deceived, nor to deceive the reader. It was ever my opinion that a more intimate knowledge of Britain more becomes us, is more useful and as worthy a part of education for our young nobility and gentry as the view of any transmarine parts. And if I have learnt by seeing some places, men and manners, or have any judgment in things, it is not impossible to make a classic journey on this side the streights of Dover.

Thus much at least I thought fit to premise in favour of the study of antiquities. And with particular deference to the society of British Antiquaries in London, to whom I remember with pleasure you first introduced me: since for some time I have had the honour of being their secretary; to them I beg leave to consecrate the following work. To the right honourable the Earl of Hartford the illustrious and worthy President, the right honourable the Earl of Winchelsea, Peter le Neve, esq; Roger Gale, esq; the illustrious and worthy Vice-presidents, and to the learned Members thereof. Then, lest I should fall under my own censure passed upon others, that know least of things nearest them, I shall deliver my thoughts about the history of Holland before mentioned, which may serve as a short comment upon the map of this country which I published last year, with a purpose of assisting the gentlemen that are commissioners of sewers there, though it is of such a bulk as cannot conveniently be inserted into this volume.

If we cast our eyes upon the geography of England, we must observe that much of the eastern shore is flat, low ground, whilst the western is steep and rocky. This holds generally true throughout the globe as to its great parts, countries or islands, and likewise particularly as to its little ones, mountains and plains. I mean, that mountains are steep and abrupt to the west,[2] especially the north-west, and have a gentle declivity eastward or to the south-east, and that plains ever descend eastward. I wonder very much that this remark has never been made. I took notice of it in our own country, almost before I had ever been out of it, in the universal declivity of that level eastward, in those parts where it did not by that means regard the ocean; particularly in South Holland, or the wapentake of Elho: the natural descent of water therein is not to the sea, as the rivers run, but directly eastward, and that very considerable. Beside, the current of every river is lower as more eastward: thus the Welland is higher in level than the Nen, the Nen than the Ouse; and probably at first both emptied themselves by the Ouse or Lyn river as most eastward. I observed in June 1732, that the Peterborough river Nen would willingly discharge itself into Whitlesea mere, and so to the Ouse at Lyn, if it were not hindered by the sluice at Horsey bridge by the river Nen. I see no difficulty to attribute the reason of it to the rotation of the globe. Those that have gone about to demonstrate to us that famous problem of the earth’s motion, have found out many mathematical and abstracted proofs for that purpose, but neglected this which is most sensible and before our eyes every minute. It is a property of matter, that when whirled round upon an axis, it endeavours to fly from the axis, as we see in the motion of a wheel, the dirt and loose parts are thrown the contrary way in a tangent line. This is owing to the natural inactivity of matter, which is not easily susceptible of motion. Now at the time that the body of the earth was in a mixt state between solid and fluid, before its present form of land and sea was perfectly determined, the almighty Artist gave it its great diurnal motion. By this means the elevated parts or mountainous tracts, as they consolidated whilst yet soft and yielding, flew somewhat westward, and spread forth a long declivity to the east: the same is to be said of the plains, their natural descent tending that way, and, as I doubt not, of the superfice of the earth below the ocean. This critical minute is sublimely described by the admirable poet and observer of nature,

Namque canebat, uti magnum per inane coacta

Semina terrarumque, animæque, marisque fuissent,

Et liquidi simul ignis. Ut his exordia primis

Omnia, & ipse tener mundi concreverit orbis.

Tum durare solum & discludere nerea ponto

CÅ“perit, & rerum paulatim sumere formas. Virg. Ecl. VI.

which may thus be englished.

He sang, how from the mighty void, in one

Large space, collected were the fluid seeds

Of earth, air, sea and fire; from these came all.

The callow world became one massive globe;

The ocean by the hard’ning ground disjoin’d,

New forms surpris’d the beauteous face of things.

The truth of this observation I have seen universally confirmed in all my travels, and innumerable instances of it will occur to the reader throughout these discourses. I design another time professedly to treat of it in a philosophical way. But consequent to this doctrine it is that we have so large a quantity of this marshland in the middle of the eastern shore of England, seeming as if made by the washings and eluvies of the many rivers that fall that way, such as the Welland, the Witham, the Nen, the Ouse great and little, together with many other streams of inferior note. These all empty themselves into the great bay formed between the Lincolnshire wolds and cliffs of Norfolk, called by Ptolemy Mentaris æstuarium, as rightly corrected by Mr. Baxter, seeing it is composed of the mouths of so many rivers; Ment, or Mant, signifying ostium in the British language. Beside the great quantity of high and inland country that discharges its waters this way, even as far as Fritwell in Oxfordshire; all the level country lies before it, extending itself from within some few miles of Cambridge south, to Keal hills near Bolingbroke in Lincolnshire north, about sixty miles long, known by the names of the Isle of Ely, Holland and Marshland. This country, since the flood, I believe was much in the same state as at present, and for its bulk the richest spot of ground in the kingdom; once well inhabited by gentry, especially the religious. I apprehend the more inland part of it, the Isle of Ely, Deeping Fen, &c. was not in distant ages in so bad a condition as now, because the natural drainage of it was better, before the sea had by degrees added so much solid ground upon the coasts.

Holland, its name.

In this country I have observed abundance of old Welsh words left among us; and I am persuaded that the name of Holland is derived from that language, though now terminated by a later word, as is frequent enough. It signifies no more than salt or marsh land, such as is gained from the sea; and to this day we call the marshes adjoining to, and sometime overflowed by the sea, salt marshes. Likewise upon the sea shore they formerly made salt in great abundance. The hills all along upon the sea bank, the remains of such works, are still called salt hills: such are at Fleet, Holbech, Gosberton, Wainflet,[3] &c. Many names of rivers and roads, thence derived, remain still, such as Salters Lode, Salteney Gate, &c. Hallt in the British is salsus, salt, as ἅλς in the Greek is mare, the sea; and most evidently borrowed from the British, because of its most notorious quality. The adjoining part of this country in Norfolk, is called marsh land, in the very same sense: so is Zeland and Holland at the mouth of the Rhine, where our Cimbric ancestors once lived. In the Cimbric Chersoness, now Denmark, is Halland, a division of the country by the Saxons called Halgo land. Vid. Spelman’s Glassary, voce Sciringes heal. Holsatia, Holstein, &c. and our Holderness in Yorkshire, must thus be understood. Hence the isle of Ely too is denominated, the very word heli being salsugo in the British. This, in the most antient British times, was as much marsh land as our wapentake of Elho is now, which acknowledges the same original; hoe signifying a parcel of high ground.

First Inhabitants the Britons.

We may be assured that this whole country was well inhabited by the antient Britons, and that as far as the sea coasts, especially the islets and higher parts more free from ordinary inundations of the rivers, or though not imbanked above the reach of the spring tides; for the nature of this place perfectly answered their gusto, both as affording abundant pasturage for their cattle, wherein their chief sustenance and employment consisted, and in being so very secure from incursion and depredations of war and troublesome neighbours, by the difficult fens upon the edge of the high country. Here I have not been able to meet with any remains of them, except it be the great quantity of tumuli, or barrows, in all these parts; scarce a parish without one or more of them. They are generally of a very considerable bulk, much too large for Roman; nor has any thing Roman been discovered in cutting them through; though, a few years ago, two or three were dug quite away near Boston, and another at Frampton, to make brick of, or to mend the highways. I guess these were the high places of worship among our Cimbrian predecessors, purposely cast up, because there are no natural hills in these parts; and we know antiquity affected places of elevation for religious rites. No doubt, some are places of sepulture, especially such as are very frequent upon the edges of the high countries all around, looking down upon the fens. Hither seem to have been carried the remains of great men, whose habitations were in the marshy grounds, who chose to be buried upon higher ground than where they lived; as is the case all over England; for the tumuli are commonly placed upon the brink of hills hanging over a valley, where doubtless their dwellings were.

Romans.

But when the Romans had made considerable progress in reducing this island into the regular form of a province, and began the mighty work of laying down the great military ways; then I suppose it was, that they cast their eyes upon this fertile and wide-extended plain, and projected the draining it. The Hermen Street.In the reign of Nero, in all probability, they made the Hermen Street,[4] as now called by a Saxon word equivalent to the Latin via militaris. That this was the first, seems intimated by the name, in that it has retained κατ’ εξοχην, what is but a common appellative of such roads. TAB. LVI.This noble work, taking in the whole of it, was intended to be a meridian line running from the southern ocean, through London, to the utmost bounds of Scotland. This may be inferred from the main of it, which runs directly north and south. And another argument of its early date, drawn from three remarkable particularities, I have observed in travelling upon it, and which show it was begun before that notable people had a thorough knowledge of the geography of the island. One is, its deviation westward as it advances towards these fens from London: another is, the new branch, drawn a little beyond Lincoln westward into Yorkshire, out of the principal stem going to the Humber: a third is, that it is double in Lincolnshire. Of these I shall speak again when we come to the following Iter Romanum. Now we will only consider such part of it as has relation to the country we are upon; and that is the road going from Caster by Peterburgh to Sleford in this county, which is undoubtedly Roman, and which first occasioned the draining this fenny tract, and surely more antient than that which goes above Stanford, and along the heathy part of the county to Lincoln. My reasoning depends upon the manner of the road itself, and upon that other great work which accompanies it, called the Cardike, equally to be ascribed to the same authors. This road is nearer the first intention of a meridian line than the other: but, when they found it carried them through a low country, where it perpetually needed reparation, and that they must necessarily decline westward to reach Lincoln, they quitted it, and struck out a new one, more westerly, that should run altogether upon better ground. This, if we have leave to guess, was done after the time of Lollius Urbicus, lieutenant under Antoninus Pius, who with great industry and courage had extended and secured the whole province as far as Edinburgh. Then it was they had time and opportunity to complete the work in the best manner, being perfect masters of the country, and of its geography: and this road was for the ready march of their armies and provisions to succour those northern frontiers. But it seems as if they had long before that time brought the Hermen Street as far as Lincolnshire,[5] especially that eastern branch, or original stem, of which we are treating, and that as early as the reign of Nero, and at the same time made the Cardike. I shall give you my further reasons for this conjecture, and nothing more than conjecture can be expected in such matters.

42·2^d.

Old Hermen Street.

The road which we suppose the original stem of the Hermen Street goes in a direct line, and full north and south from Durobrivæ, or Caster, to Sleford; and there, for aught I know, it terminates. It is manifest, that if it had been carried further in that direction, it would have passed below Lincoln heath, and arrive at the river where it is not fordable. It parts from the present and real Hermen Street at Upton, a mile north of Caster; but this is continued in a strait line, which demonstrates that it is the original one: the other goes from it with an angular branching. This traverses the river Welland at Westdeeping, and is carried in a high bank across the watery meadows of Lolham bridges.[6] These are numerous and large arches made upon the road, to let the waters pass through, taken notice of by the great Camden as of antiquity; and no doubt originally Roman: then it crosses the Glen at Catebridge, (whereabouts it is now called King’sgate, via regia) to Bourn, (where Roman coins are often found, many in possession of Jos. Banks, jun. esq.) so to Fokingham and Sleaford. It is now called Longdike. All along parallel to this road runs a famous old drain, called The Cardike. Cardike.[7] Mr. Morton has been very curious in tracing it out through his county, Northamptonshire. I am sorry I have not yet had opportunity to pursue his laudable example, in finishing the course of it through Lincolnshire: but as far as I have observed it, it is marked in the map. This is a vast artificial canal drawn north and south upon the edge of the fens, from Peterburgh river to Lincoln river, about fifty mile long, and by the Romans without all peradventure. It is taken notice of by serjeant Callis, our countryman, in his readings on the sewers. That wise people, with a greatness of thought peculiar to themselves, observed the great use of such a channel, that by water carriage should open an inland traffic between their two great colonies of Durobrivæ and Lindum, or Lincoln, without going round the hazardous voyage of the Estuary: just such was the policy of Corbulo in Tacitus, Annal. xi. Ne tamen miles otium indueret inter Mosam Rhenumque trium & viginti millium spatio fossam produxit, qua incerta oceani evitarentur. And lest the soldiery should be idle, he drew a dike for the space of three and twenty miles between the Maese and the Rhine, whereby the dangers of the ocean are avoided; which is exactly a parallel case with ours. Besides, it is plain that by intercepting all the little streams coming down from the high country, and naturally overflowing our levels, it would much facilitate the draining thereof, which at this time they must have had in view. This canal enters Lincolnshire at Eastdeeping, proceeding upon an exact level, which it takes industriously between the high and low grounds all the way, by Langtoft and Baston: passing the river Glen at Highbridge, it runs in an uninterrupted course as far as Kyme: beyond that I have not yet followed it; but I suppose it meets Lincoln river near Washenburgh, and where probably they had a fort to secure the navigation, as upon other proper intermediate places, such as Walcot, Garick, Billingborough, Waldram-hall, Narborough, Eye antiently Ege, agger; and I imagine St. Peter’s de Burgo hence owes its original: and a place called Low there, a camp ditched about, just where the Cardike begins on one side the river: another such fortification at Horsey bridge on the other side the river: all these names point out some antient works. It is all the way threescore foot broad, having a large flat bank, on both sides, for the horses that drew their boats. Roman coins are frequently found through its whole length, as you well know, who are possessed of many of them of different emperors. Now it seems to me highly probable that Catus Decianus, the procurator in Nero’s time, was the projector both of this road and this canal, two notable examples in different kinds of Roman industry and judgment; and the memorial of the author of so great a benefit to the country is handed down to us in several particulars; as that of Catesbridge before mentioned upon the road, and of Catwater, a stream derived from this artificial channel, at the very place where it begins, to the Nen at Dovesdale bar: likewise at Dovesdale bar comes in another stream from the north, from a place by Shephey bank, called Catscove corner; and this was first hinted to me by our deceased friend, the learned and reverend Mr. John Britain, late schoolmaster of Holbech: to which we may add Catley, a town near Walcot upon the Cardike beyond Kyme; and Catthorp, a village near Stanfield, upon the road. We may likewise upon the same grounds conjecture that Lollius Urbicus repaired this work; whence it seems that his name, though corrupted, is preserved in Lolham bridges; for there is no town of that kind near it. Vid. Gale’s Itinerar. pag. 28. Lowlsworth upon the Hermen Street without Bishops-Gate, in Spittle-Fields. Certainly this is a good hint for our imitation, had we a like public spirit. Now this road thus accompanying the canal, was of great service to the traders, who might have an eye upon their vessels all the while. And even after the projection of the other branch which goes to Lincoln upon the higher ground, the navigation here was undoubtedly continued in full perfection, till the Romans left the island; for such is its advantage of situation, that it could never want water, nor ever overflow: that stream of Catwater seems to be cut on purpose, at least scoured up, to preserve these uses in drawing off the floods of Peterburgh river into the Nen, if its proper channel was not sufficient. The meaning of the word Cardike is no more than Fendike: we use the word still in this country, to signify watery, boggy places: it is of British original.

I doubt not but that the Romans likewise made that other cut, between Lincoln river and the Trent, called the Foss: the name seems to indicate it, as well as the thing itself; for it is but a consequent of the Cardike, and formed on the same idea: so that I suppose it was not originally cut, but scoured by Henry I. as Hoveden mentions: then the navigation was continued by land from Peterborough quite to York, and this was very useful to the Romans in their northern wars. The other way they might come from Huntingdon.

The 20th of October, 1726, I traced the Cardike round the out-skirts of Sir William Ellys’s park of Nockton: it runs near the site of the old priory, whose ruins are just visible: it bounds the park entirely on the fen side, and is very perfect thereabouts; the high-country streams from Dunston, and others, running along it. We saw where it crossed a marshy valley, and reached the opposite high ground in its course to Washenburgh. A well of the old priory is well preserved, remarkably good water.

That part of the Cardike between Lincoln and the Trent was begun to be cleansed by bishop Atwater, but he died before completed. It is highly probable that the Romans called our Cardike Fossa, which happens to be preserved only on that part between Lincoln and the Trent.

The Fossdike in being in Edward the Confessor’s time. Vide Camden, Nottingham.

Cardike runs close by Thurlby town end.

The marquis of Lindsey gave me an exceeding fair Maximinus; the reverse, GENIO POP. ROM. found at Grimsthorp.

Mrs. Tichmus of Stamford told me she once had many Roman coins, from a great parcel found at or near Sleford.

The 18th of October, 1728, I travelled on the Roman road, the eastern branch of the Hermen Street from Sleford, for about three miles southward. I observed that it went not to Sleford town directly, but to the old house of Sir Robert Carr’s, formerly Lord Hussey’s (attainted for treason in time of Henry VIII.) called Old Place. We saw by the way, on the east side the road, a mile or more south of Sleford, an old work, square, ditched about, large, with an entry from the road; the earth of the vallum thrown on both sides.

But it was not enough for the Romans thus to provide for commerce and travelling, without they set proper stations or mansions for the reception of negociators and the like. Accordingly we find the distance between Caster and Lincoln, about 40 miles, has two towns upon it at proper intervals for lodging; these are Sleaford and Stanfield: the original names of them are in irrecoverable silence, but the eternity of the Romans is inherent. Sleaford Ro. town.At Sleaford they have found many Roman coins, especially of the Constantine family and their wives, about the castle and the spring-head a little above the town. It is probable that Alexander, the bishop of Lincoln, built his work upon the site of a Roman citadel. Beside, at Sleaford comes in the other Roman road from the fen country by Brig-end causeway, and at the intersection of these two roads the old town stood. At Stanfield,Stanfield Ro. town. which is a little village near Burn, they find daily the foundations of buildings, innumerable coins and other antiquities, of which yourself and our friend Mr. John Hardy have a good quantity. These are chiefly dug up in a close called Blackfield, from the extraordinary richness of the ground. It stands half a mile off the road upon elevated ground, whence you may see Spalding, Boston, and the whole level: it is now only of some note for a good chalybeat spring.

I shall rehearse a few things I have noted hereabouts, and then we will descend into Holland. The following antient part of the genealogy of the inheritors of Brun, or Bourn, contains several antiquities hereabouts. The spring-head at Bourn, near the castle belonging to them, is remarkable for its largeness and quickness.

[See transcription]

There were other collateral branches of this family about 1244. such as Thomas Wake, who held lands in Stoke and Irthingbure under the abbot of Peterburgh. Wydo Wac held half a knight’s fee in Deping, Beresham and Stow, of the heirs of Hugh Wake the same year. Hugo Wac, Roger Wac, witnesses to a charter 1152. Rymer’s Fœdera, I. p. 12. From Sir Tho. Wake, that married the daughter of Sir John Pateshul, is descended his grace the present archbishop of Canterbury.

Not long since some British instruments of brass called celts, arrow-heads, and bits of bridles of the same metal, were found at Aye near the Cardike. The 19th of November, 1731, I saw four celts and a brass spear-head found at Ege, or Aye: the celts were of the female or recipient kind: they were bought by bishop Kennet, and are now in the gentlemen’s society at Peterborough. The Druids buried them there, when the Romans drove them northward: there has been some great work of the Druids there, as I take it. At Jernham was found an old brass seal, a man blowing a horn, the legend John de Sodeburi, now in the hands of Mr. Richards of Stanford. At Edenham was a stone cross now demolished: the inscription on it I have inserted in the TAB. XI.Plate of Crosses: I saw the stump of it remaining not long since: hard by has been an old castle at Bitham. Grimsthorp, the pleasant seat of the Duke of Ancaster: the park is very large and beautiful; in the middle of it stood Vaudy abbey in a vale, founded by Wil. de Albemarle 1147. some small ruins of it are left: the lawn there, whereon is an annual horse-race, is extremely delightful.[13] In Hakunby church upon a stone I read this inscription,

Iste fuit Rector Thomas de Brunn vocitatus.

Sempringham abbey founded by St. Gilbert lord of the place, and author of the Gilbertin order, where men and women lived together in holy community: now an old ruinous seat of the earls of Lincoln.

Trekingham, so called, as some will have it, from a fanciful story of three Danish kings there buried: round the font in the church is this inscription, + Ave maria gratia p. d. t. Upon a tombstone in the church-yard this,

HIC INTVMVLATVR JOHANNES

QVONDAM DNÌ…S DE TRIKINGHAM.

St. Saviour’s chapel at the end of Brig-end causeway is still left, turned into a mansion house, founded by George of Lincoln, endowed with lands to maintain the causeway: a legacy highly to be commended. At Ranceby near Sleford on a hill, many Roman antiquities found, of which an account in Leland’s Itinerar. Hale Parva, Hale Magna, so called from the hall or seat of the lord of the manor: in the former is Helpringham, which I suppose no more than Hale parva ingham, the termination being very common in towns hereabouts.

Holland imbanked by the Romans.

Having given an account of the preparation made by the Romans towards gaining this vast tract of fen-land, the Lincolnshire levels, by securing it from the fresh water of the high countries in that noble cut called Cardike; we must imagine their next care was to render it safe from the flux of the Ocean, by making a great bank all along upon the sea coasts: this was done as to the wapentake of Elho by what we call the Old Sea-dike, which by the people at this day is said to be made by Julius Cæsar and his soldiers; as if they had knowledge of its being a Roman work: at the mouths of all the rivers no doubt they made gotes and sluices as at present, which was an invention of Osiris, the great king of Egypt, as Diodorus Siculus tells us, I. 19. We may well suppose it was performed after the time of Lollius Urbicus, scarce fully accomplished before: possibly in Severus his time, which seems not obscurely hinted at by Herodian, III. Sed in primis curæ habuit pontibus occupare paludes, ut stare in tuto milites possint atque in solido præliari. Siquidem Britanniæ pleraque loca frequentibus oceani alluvionibus paludescunt. Per eas igitur paludes barbari ipsi natant excursantque ad ilia usque demersi. But he had it in his particular care to make passes over the fens, that the soldiers might stand firm and fight upon hard ground; for many places in Britain are marshy through the frequent overflowings of the ocean, over which the inhabitants will swim, and walk though up to the middle in water. To which description no place so well corresponds.

That the Romans thoroughly inhabited this fertile plain, the following instances will sufficiently evince. About 1713, at Elm near Wisbech, an urn full of Roman brass money was taken up, not far from a tumulus of which the common people have strange notions, affirming that they frequently see a light upon it in dark winter nights. Dr. Massey has many of the coins; they are of the later empire. There is another piece of high ground near it, where have been buildings. Dr. Massey says there is a Roman altar in a wall there. At Gedney hill several Roman coins have been found; some of Antoninus are in your collection. In the same hamlet, about two mile north of Southea bank, is a pasture called the High Doles, being a square doubly moted, where ancient foundations have been dug up, and some Roman coins. Another like square so moted is in the parish of St. Edmund’s, about the same distance from the said bank, where the like matters have been discovered. Aswic grange in Whaplodedrove parish is a high piece of ground, square and moted about: in this and near it many Roman coins have been dug up, and urns, which I have seen; some coins in your collection. This is near Catscove corner; and it was Mr. Britain’s notion that Catus made this work among many others as castella to secure the possession of the country: these lie as it were in a line, on the most southerly part of Elho. In the parish of Fleet near Ravensclow, about 1698,[14] upon a piece of high ground where buildings have been, Mr. Edward Lenton dug up a large urn with letters round it, full of Roman coins,[15] about the quantity of three pecks, covered with an oak board: the urn he broke in pieces: they were of brass piled edgeways, mostly about the time of Gallienus and the thirty tyrants as called, Tetricus, Claudius Gothicus, Victorinus, Carausius, Alectus, &c. I have seen vast numbers of them, and have some by me: many are in your collection. Near this place runs a low channel, quite to Fleet haven, which probably then was the chief outlet of the waters into the sea. Mr. Lenton found some ship-timber upon it with rusty nails, probably of some Roman barge. None of these coins were lower than the Tetrici, which proves the imbankation was made before their time. In the same latitude, and in the next parish, Holbech,[16] in a pasture called Anytofts, in my tenure, is a like square of high ground, where rubbish of buildings and coins have been found; it is moted likewise: not long since a labourer, scouring up a pit in the mote, took up an urn now in my possession. At Giggleshurn, in casting up a ditch, were many Roman coins found: we may reasonably conjecture Moulton hall was such another place originally: and in a Held not far from thence, called Woods, near Ravens-bank, three mile south of Moulton church, upon plowing, several Roman urns and vessels were found, of fine white and red earth; some of them were brought to Mr. Hardy. At Spalding, Roman antiquities have been found, particularly cisterns; of which some accounts in the Acts of the Royal Soc. N^o 279. and there was a Roman castle there, as I conjecture, on the north side of the town, not far from the river on the right hand of the great road to Bolton, the square form of the ditch yet remaining. These places, with some other of like nature, make another line of fortresses through the middle of the country, parallel to the present towns. I have been told that at Theophilus Grant’s house in Whaplode, near Gorham’s holt, aqueducts of clay, one let into another, have been dug up;[17] and that in the seadike bank, between Fleet and Gedney, a brass sword was lately found, which seem to be Roman. Thus far in South Holland. At Boston, about 1716, they dug up an old Roman foundation beyond the school-house: near it some hewn stones formed a cavity, in which was an urn with ashes, another little pot with an ear, and an iron key of an odd figure, in my possession. Some time before then, in Mr. Brown’s garden at the Green poles, they dug up an urn lined with thin lead full of red earth and bones. A like one I have seen now in Sir Hans Sloan’s museum, unquestionably Roman.

Roman roads there.

As the Romans had thus intirely taken in and inhabited the country, no doubt but according to their custom they drew several roads across it: but I fear it will be very difficult to give an exact account of them: such is the nature of the ground, having no solid materials, that they would be presently wore away without more constant reparations than the inhabitants practise: yet I have little doubt in supposing one of their ways was drawn from the northern high country about Bolingbroke by Stickford, Stickney, Sibsey, and so to Boston river about Redstonegote, where it passed it by a ferry. I have fancied to myself that several parcels of it are plainly Roman, by the straitness and by the gravelly bottom: from thence to Kirkton it is indubitably so, being laid with a very large bed of gravel: and just a mile from the river is a stone, now called the Mile-stone, standing in a quadrivium; it is a large round stone like the frustum of a pillar, and very properly a lapis milliaris. From Kirkton I imagine the road went to Donington, where it met the great and principal road of the country, which is drawn from Ely to Sleaford in a line not much different from a strait one. It is certain that there is such a road from Grantchester, which was a Roman town a mile above Cambridge, to Ely by Stretham: thence another goes across the depth of the fens by Upwell and Elme towards Wisbech; and it was near this road that the urn with coins first mentioned was found: and anno 1730 a Roman urn full of coins was found at the same place; they were of silver, and very fair. Mr. Beaupre Bell, a curious gentleman, has many Roman coins found near this Roman road by Emney; several of Carausius undescribed. Wisbech probably was a Roman station, and their castle founded upon an older foundation. I suppose this road passed over Wisbech river above the town towards Guyhurn chapel, then went to Trokenholt and Clowscross, there entering our country: from thence that it went in a strait line to Spalding, by which means most of those square forts we have mentioned in Elho, where Roman antiquities were discovered, together with most of the southern hamlets, will be found to be situate near or upon it; such as St. Edmund’s chapel, the moted place there, Gedneyhill chapel, Highdoles there, Holbech chapel, Whaplodedrove chapel, Aswic grange, St. Katherine’s, and Moulton chapel: whether any traces of it can now be found or no, I cannot say; but the villages thereabouts seem strongly to favour the conjecture. Supposing it fact, I should not be surprised if it now be laid perfectly level with the surface of this fenny soil, seeing I have observed the like appearance of a Roman road when carried across a meadow in the high countries, and which was composed of a bed of gravel 100 foot broad, particularly at the Roman city of Alauna by Bicester, of which I shall in a following page give an account: and this of ours I suppose only made of the earth of the country thrown into a bank, because it was impossible to get more durable materials.

From Spalding, according to my sentiments, this road went towards Herring bridge (the word retaining some semblance of antiquity) upon Surflet river, so along the division between the wapentakes of Kirton and Aveland, near Wrigbolt and Cressy-hall, to the end of Brig-end causeway at Donington. Here, Holland brig or Brig-end causeway has all the requisites that can ascertain it to be a Roman work, being strait and laid with a solid bed of stone: the present indeed is repaired every year, but we have much reason to think the first projection of it through this broad morass was no less than Roman. From thence it went to Sleford; then it seems to have gone across the heath, and to have fallen in with the great Hermen street at a remarkable place called Biard’s leap: from thence possibly it was carried, or was designed to be, by Stretleythorp and Brentbroughton over the Witham to Crocolana upon the foss-way; then over the Trent into Nottinghamshire, where it answers in a line with the road to Tuxford and Worksop; and so on perhaps to the Irish sea, whereby it would become a great parallel to the Watling street running across the kingdom, as it does, from south-east to north-west. At Sleaford I am inclinable to think another road came from Banovallum, or Horn castle, to the east of the river Bane southward by les Yates, and so crossed the Witham by Chapelhill and the Cardike somewhere about Kyme: or else crossed the Witham at the Hermitage, so went by Swinshed north end to Donington: this principal road we speak of on the other end seems to go from Ely by Soham and Bury to the German ocean. I am not ashamed to offer my conjecture to the curious, however slender its foundation may be, if only as a hint for a future search: but it seems to me very probable, that if it was not fully executed by the Romans, they intended it, and have in part manifestly done it. I conceit it crosses the Icening street at Ikesworth near Bury, then goes to Bretenham, the Combretonium; but with that country of Suffolk I am at present perfectly unacquainted. Return we to Holland.

Besides this great road, I think we need not scruple to assert that now called Ravensbank to be another, going east and west, through the heart of the country, from Tid St. Mary’s to Cowbit. I have rode some miles upon it, where it is now extremely strait and broad. We have been informed that it is actually in some old writings called Romans Bank: it is well known the Welsh pronounced Roman Rhuffain, and our English word ruffian is from this fountain. Among the Welsh the letters m and v are equivalent, to which f is perfectly alike: maur and vaur is great, and many more: so that Roman, raven, and ruffen, is the same word; and hence no doubt came rambling, roving, and roming, as an ignominious appellative of such as thought every country better than their own; for such to our ancestors seemed the Romans, that scarce left any corner of the known world impervious to their all-conquering eagles, carrying arts and arms along with them as an impetuous torrent, with a most glorious and invincible perseverance. Further, it is not unlikely that the upper road running east and west nearer the sea bank, now called Old Spalding gate, is originally Roman: in some places, as about Fleet, it retains the name of Haregate, which is equivalent to via militaris when spoken by our Saxon progenitors. Thus the main road and these two lesser ones seem sufficiently to answer this purpose as to Elho: it seems to me, that when the Romans made the many forts all along the eastern shore, to guard against the Saxons, that this bay was provided for by five, two upon the edges of the high country, and three upon the rivers; Brancaster in Norfolk, Burgh on Lincolnshire side; Wisbech,[18] Spalding, and Boston, upon each river of the fenny tract.

Having given you then all the authentic or conjectural memoirs that have in general occurred to my reflection upon the most ancient state of this country, I shall proceed to other particularities, nearer our own times, through every parish; only first take notice in short of a wonderful appearance in nature all over this country, and which is common to all such like upon the globe, as far as my informations reach: that is, Antediluvian trees.the infinite quantities of subterraneous trees, lying three or four foot deep, of vast bulk and different species, chiefly fir and oak, exceeding hard, heavy and black: many times the branches reach so near day as to break their ploughs, for so I have heard them complain about Crowland: about Kyme and Billingay they have dug up some boats or canoos made of hollowed trunks of trees.[19] Many people will think that this is nothing but the effect of particular floods, and that this country was once a forest, and not long since disafforested. This country was once taken into the forest of Kesteven by the Norman kings, (as you have told me) only with a political view of extending their power, and disafforested soon after at the instance of the prior of Spalding: yet it is true of Nassaburg hundred only, in Northamptonshire. But in my apprehension, as to the matter before us, such confine their notions to very scanty bounds: an universal phænomenon requires a more dilated solution, and no less than that of the Noachian deluge. But upon this I hope for an occasion to be more copious another time: at present I remember a passage in Pausanias’s Attics toward the end; speaking of an ebeny statue of Archigetes, “I have heard, (says he) from a man of Cyprus very skilful in medicinal herbs, that ebeny bears no leaves, no fruit, nor has it any stock exposed to the sun, only roots in the earth, which the Ethiopians dig up. Some of them are particularly skilful in finding them out.� I doubt not but our author speaks of subterranean trees, and that our people might use this timber to better use than burning it.

Most writers, and particularly Mr. Camden, and most strangers, have an injurious opinion of this country, and apply that to the whole which is true but of part of it: for in the main the land is admirably good, hard, and dry; produces excellent corn and grass; feeds innumerable sheep and oxen of a very large size, and good flesh and wool; bears wood extremely well, has several large woods in it, some intirely of oak of considerable size; is full of hedge-rows and quicksets, and in summer time looks like the garden of Eden: it is level, and most delightful to travellers, whether on horseback, or in a coach. The air indeed is moist, as being near the sea, and bordering upon the fens of the isle of Ely: as to the first, it is the same upon every sea coast; as to the latter, they are chiefly on the south side, whence the sun for the most part draws off the vapours from this country. Indeed this inconvenience accrues from such vicinity, the production of gnats; to which Angelus Politianus has done so much honour in that beautiful Greek epigram you showed me; and is well guarded against by the gentry in the use of netted canopies hung round their beds, which was an invention of the Ægyptians living in a like country. Vide Brown’s Garden of Cyrus, p. 30. But all things necessary for the comfort of life are here in great plenty; and visitants ever go away with a better opinion of it than they bring. That great soul king Charles I. himself undertaking the glorious talk, and others under him, had projected and made such stately works of sewers, as would have rendered this country before now, for trade and beauty, the rival of its name-sake beyond sea; but the licentious times that succeeded, gave the unthinking mob (incited by his avowed adversary in all things, Cromwell) an opportunity to destroy them. I have often considered and admired the length, breadth, and depth of their canals, the vastness of their gotes and sluices: indeed I think they made many more than were useful, and might have laid out the whole in a better manner. I would not, like the Trojan Prophetess, prognosticate ill to my own country; but it is not difficult to foresee, that unless some project be taken in hand, like that which my friend Mr. Kinderley published some time ago, this vast and rich tract must be abandoned to eels and wild ducks. A thing of this nature is not to be done but by the senate of the kingdom taking the matter intirely into their own hands; and if I have any judgement, whatever new works are made, ought always to be carried eastward only, for reasons I inculcated before: therefore, instead of deriving the Welland into the Witham, as was his notion, I would have it brought to the Nen, and both into the Ouse at Lynn, as it was in its original and natural state.

Since the time of the Romans, beyond their first bank have been many intakes, by successive banks, of the best ground in the world left by the sea, which contracts its own limits by throwing up banks of sand out of the estuary: so that, from time to time, the land-owners upon these frontiers gain several thousands of acres. It is observed, the land so imbanked is ever higher in level than that left behind it; and I doubt not but some time the whole bay between Lincolnshire and Norfolk (being one of our great sovereign’s noblest chambers in his British dominions over the sea, vide Seld. Mar. claus.) will become dry land. By this means the parishes hereabouts increase to a huge bulk. Holbech from Dovesdale bar, where it joins to Cambridgeshire, to the limits of the salt marshes, is near twenty miles long. The cattle bred on this ground are very large; the sheep never have horns. Smithfield market, as now much supported, was chiefly set up by the inhabitants here, as I have been told, particularly by Mr. William Hobson, brother to the famous Cambridge carrier, and Mr. Cust; the London butchers, before then, commonly going into the country to buy cattle.

In every parish formerly were many chapels, it being impracticable for people to come so far to one church, though now most of them are demolished, at what time I cannot imagine. No part of England boasts of so many beautiful churches, having generally lofty spires of fine squared stone, fetched from Barneck pits, which are a coarse rag full of petrified shells of all kinds of small fish, and not, as some think, from Norway. And in no very distant times, not a parish without great numbers of gentry, lords, knights, and great families, who made a figure in the world: now scarce any remains of them, but the site of their houses moted round, their tombs in the churches, their arms in the painted windows, where they have by chance escaped the fury of fanatic zeal. Many religious houses formerly there; and nearly the whole country was got into their hands, as appears by the old terriers, or town-books. The only houses of note are at present Dunton hall, in Tyd St. Mary’s parish, lately rebuilt magnificently by Sigismund Trafford, esq. who has likewise inclosed a considerable park with a brick wall; and Cressy hall in Surflet parish, the seat of Henry Heron, esq. in which the lady Margaret, mother to Hen. VII. was once entertained. The house was handsomely rebuilt by the present possessor’s father, Sir Henry Heron, knight of the Bath; but the chapel is old, built, or licensed at least, anno 1309, as an inscription over the door tells us. In it is an old brass eagle with an inscription round it.[20]

Formerly, there is reason to suppose, the gentry had many parks near their seats. Records in your possession show that the prior of Spalding, about 1265, compelled Thomas lord Moulton to compound with him for the venison in his park at Moulton; and in Holbech, about a mile south of the church, are lands in my tenure, called the Park. That fish and fowl is here plentiful, no one will wonder; but particularly the pigeons are noted for large and fine.

Decoys.

TAB. II.

In the out-skirts of it are great numbers of decoys, places so called where they take an incredible quantity of wild ducks,[21] mostly sent up to London: they are large pits dug in the fens, with five canals shooting from them, each ending in a point after one angle made, well planted with willows, fallows, osiers, and such underwood. I have given a drawing of one. The method of catching fowl in short is this: the decoy-man coming down to the angle of the pipe, or canal, which is covered with nets and over-shadowed with trees, peeps through the holes in the reedy sheds, disposed like the scenes at the play-house, and joined by the others with holes at the bottom, about as high as a man’s breast: when he sees a sufficient quantity of wild ducks in the mouth of the great pond, by whistling softly, the tame ducks wing-stocked, and brought up for that purpose, swim into the pipe covered with the nets, to feed upon the corn he throws over the sheds into the water: this tempts the wild ducks in to partake of the bait: in the mean time a dog they teach runs round the half-sheds, in and out at the holes in the bottom, which amuses the fowl so that they apprehend no danger: when he has brought them far enough into the pipe, stooping he goes along the scenes, till he is got beyond the ducks, and rising up shows himself at the half-scenes, which frightens the wild ducks only, the opposite way into the narrow end of the pipe, which terminates in a fatal net: and all this is done without any noise or knowledge of the rest of the wild ducks in the great pond; so that the decoy-man having dispatched one pipe, goes round to execute the same game at all the rest, whereby infinite quantities are catched in a year’s time at one of these places only.

2

The Form of the Decoys in Lincolnshire.

Richardo M. Masfey M.D.
tabulam d.d. WË¢. Stukeley

In running over what few remarkables I have observed in this country, I shall exclude Marsh-land, because in Norfolk, observing only that their churches are very beautiful, numerous, large, and stately; that here are, too, many such of the tumuli. You will indulge me the liberty of giving the etymology of places all along: Cicero likes that method; Acad. Quæst. 1. 8. verborum explicatio probatur, i. e. qua de causa quæque essent ita nominata quam etymologiam appellabant: and though there be often more of pleasant subtlety than reality in such matters, yet it serves to find out and preserve some old words in a language that otherwise are in danger of oblivion. The Washes. I shall begin with the Washes so much talked of, and so terrible to strangers, though without much reason; if they take a guide, which is highly adviseable. The meaning is this: they are the mouths of the river Welland, called Fossdike Wash, and the river Ouse, called Cross-Keys Wash, running into the sea, and inclosing this country almost round. Wase Sax. lutum, oose. Twice in a day, six hours each time during the recess of the tide, they are fordable and easy to be passed over: the intermediate six hours they are covered with the flux of the ocean. Mr. Merret, of Boston, son to Dr. Merret, has given a table in the Philos. Trans. which I improved for the benefit of travellers, and is graven on a handsome copperplate by my friend, Mr. John Redman: but I would have passengers not to trust too far to the minutes in the table, because at some times of the year the tides will anticipate a few minutes, at others will be retarded, and at all times (not to say any thing of the difference of clocks and watches) south-east winds make the tides flow earlier than ordinary, north-west protract them; so that a wise traveller, in this and all other cases, will take time and tide by the forelock. Formerly people travelled what they call the Long Wash, between Lynn and Boston, intirely upon the sands or skirts of the ocean, but now quite disused and impracticable: there it was, that king John lost all his carriages among the creeks and quicksands. The memory of it is retained to this day, by the corner of a bank between Cross-Keys Wash and Lynn, called now King’s Corner.

Lutton.

In Lutton was born the famous Dr. Busby, master of Westminster school, who has beautified the church, and founded a school there: he owes his education to the Welbys, an ancient family in this country. I suppose the town has its name from the general drainage of the country, which was here in one channel united: they call such Lades, or Lodes, to this day: this probably is as ancient as any town in Holland. South from it (and therefore)Sutton. Sutton church is of an ancient make, especially the stone work of the steeple: the upper part of the church has been built of brick in the memory of man. John of Gaunt owned Sutton, and other vast manors and townships in this country. At Tyd St. Giles, Nicholas Breakspear was curate, who afterwards became pope Adrian IV. St. James’s chapel is built of a large sort of brick, such as I have seen no where else; not Roman.TAB. XI. Near it is Ivy-Cross, of stone, in a quadrivium; a curious piece, upon Ravensbank.

Gedney.

Gedney church is very beautiful, built, I believe, chiefly by the abbots of Croyland, who had a house, no doubt, very stately, on the north side of the church, and large possessions in the parish: the upper part of the tower is of the same date with the church, built upon older work; probably both the work of the abbots, together with contributions of the rich families that formerly lived here. In the chancel window a religious in his habit. There is an old monument of the Welbys, and upon the south door is this inscription:

PAX XPISIT HUIC DOMUI

ET OMNIBUS HABITANTIBUS

IN EA HIC REQUIES NOSTRA.

The town seems to be derived from Gaden-ea, aqua ad viam: Ea is a watering place properly for cattle, and roads we still call gates in this country.

Fleet.

The next parish, Fleet, from the Anglo-Saxonic Fleot, æstuarium, fluxus, still called Fleet-Haven, is remarkable for the steeple standing at a distance from the church: from this place the family of the Fletes come, who have made a considerable figure in the country ever since we have any written memorials.

Holbech.

Holbech (the Salt-Beech) church is very large, and well built, a strong tower and lofty steeple, dedicate to all saints: formerly there were organs and fine painted glass, with many coats of arms, but none left except the Holbeches: Vert, six escallops argent, three, two, one.TAB. XXI. There is a fine monument of the Littleburys, an ancient and flourishing family in these parts:TAB. I. 2d Vol. upon his shield is his coat, Argent, two lions passant gardant gules: there is a brass inscription of a lady of the Welby family, wife to Sir Richard Leake, knight. Orate pro anima Johanne Welby quondam filiae Richardi Leake militis nuper uxoris Littlebury que obiit xviii die mensis decembris anno domini mccclxxxviii. cujus anime propitietur deus Amen. Here was born Henry Rands, alias de Holbech, bishop of Lincoln, who was one of the compilers of the Liturgy: here formerly flourished the ancient families of Fleet, Dacres, Harrington, Barrington, Welby, Multon.

In the year 1696, in digging at Mr. Adlard Stukeley’s gardens, they found an old brass seal, which I gave to Sir Hans Sloan; a man in long robes, with two escutcheons, on one three cocks, on the other a portcullis; the legend, +SOVRABLA DEUS OLER. In the year 1698, an iron spur with a very long shank was found: in my possession. A remarkable rarity in nature I met withal, an admirable ossification in the omentum of a sheep, white and solid as ivory. Mr. Cheselden has printed a cut of it in the second edition of his Anatomy. I gave it to Dr. Mead.

From the ancient churchwardens’ accounts, before the time of the Reformation, from anno 1453, many curious remarks may be made, in relation to prices of things, wages, superstitious customs, old families, and the like: a specimen whereof I have here annexed.

ss. A Boake of the Stuffe in the Cheyrche of Holbeche sowld by Chyrchewardyns of the same according to the injunctyons of the Kynges Magyste.

A. D. m. ccccc xlvii.

21

Ecclesiam de HOLBECH in Agro Linc. Lucio
Henrico Hibbins Arm. d.d. W. Stukeley 1722

Stukeley delin.

I. Harris sculp

1·2^d.

Littlebury in Holbech Church

More superstitious ornaments of the church were sold in queen Elizabeth’s time, 1560.

From this book I extracted the following catalogue of the Ministers
of the parish.

In 1529, a new organ cost 3l. 6s. 8d. The organ in the church was taken down 1568. Anno 1453, Wm. Enot, of Lynn, epi. and Henry Nele of Holbech, gave the saints bell. Another guild of St. Thomas; another of our Lady. The vestry on the south side of the choir was taken down 1567. There was formerly a chapel dedicated to the Virgin Mary at Holbech hurn, near the ancient seat of the Littleburys; standing 1515: another chapel thereabouts, dedicated to St. Nicholas: another in Wignal’s gate, near Holbech hall, by the river side, dedicated to St. Peter. About 1719, I saw many corpses dug up in the yard at making a ditch there. Another in the fen ends. An ancient guild of Corpus Christi stood near Barney pit, where is now a house once belonging to Moses Stukeley, who owned the estate thereof. An hospital founded by John de Kirkton, in his own messuage, by licence of king Ed. III dat. Nov. 16, for a warden, chaplain, and fifteen poor people: he endowed it with several lands in Holbech, which he held of the abbot of Croyland, who by licence permitted the same to be annexed to this hospital of All Saints in Holbech, for which he paid 20l. This stood, as I imagine, where now is the Chequer inn, over against the church. I remember the old stone-work arched doors and windows with mullions, pulled down when rebuilt by my father, and many of the carved stones were laid in the foundation of the houses he built by the river side at the bridge. See Dugdale’s Monasticon. A free-school was founded here, about 1669, by George Farmer, esq. who endowed it with lands, which with others since given are now worth about 50l. per annum; which I am bound in gratitude not to forget. A. D. 1699, there were belonging to the fifty-four bounds of this parish, paying rates, acres 6234; in the marsh, acres 6532; and since added for the last intake, acres 170. The old cross in the market-place was pulled down 1683. 1253, Thomas de Multon, lord Egremont, obtained a market and fair toTAB II. 2d Vol. Holbech, 31 Oct. 37 Hen. III. at Windsor, and probably built that cross.

2·2^d.

Holbech Cross Lincolnshire

Ob amorem erga Solum Natale, Temporum Ignorantia direptam restituit W^s. Stukeley 1722

Whaplode.

Quaplode, called anciently Capellade, i. e. Capella ad Ladam s. fluvium, has a very ancient church, founded by the abbots of Croyland: the tower stands on the south side. In the upper and south windows are these coats of arms. Barry of six azure and argent; Azure, a bend gules, charged with three roses argent; Argent, two lions passant gardant gules, Littlebury. In the east window of the north chapel, Littlebury, and Or, a fesse between two chevronels gules; and Sable, a fret argent, Harrington: Azure, on a bend gules, three roses argent, as before. I have a copy of the foundation of this church. Here is a large monument of the Irbys.

GENEALOGY of MOULTON.

[See transcription]

Moulton.

Moulton, or Multon, probably has its name from a mill, which anciently, perhaps, were not so common as now. There is a good church, and very fine spire; as also a good free-school of near 100l. per ann. value in lands. Moulton hall, whose last ruins I have seen, was the seat of Thomas de Multon, lord Egremont, a great man in these parts. His hand is among the barons at Magna Charta. Between these two parishes, in a green lane northwards, stands a little stone called Elho stone, whence the name of this hundred is derived: it is about the middle thereof, and was formerly the main road across the country, now called Old Spalding Gate. Old men tell us, here was kept in ancient times an annual court; I suppose a convention, sub dio, of the adjacent parts, to treat of their general affairs. A wood hard by is called Elhostone wood.

Weston.

Weston, because west from the last town. Here is the stately chapel of Wykeham, the villa of the rich priors of Spalding, built by Clement de Hatfield, prior, who died anno 1318. In 1051, Spalding priory made by Thorold, sheriff of Lincoln, out of his own manor-house. Many places near the old sea-bank are called hurns, signifying an angle. Here is a little leam called the Wik: Mr. Camden, in Bucks, says it signifies the winding of a river, as Cowhurn hard by.

Spalding.

Spalding has been famous for its ancient and rich priory founded before the Conquest, and for the residence of Ivo Tailbois, the lord of this country, by gift of William the Conqueror, the site of whose castle is on the north-east part of the town. The town-hall was built by William Hobson. But of this place we expect from you, sir, a more particular account.

Pynchbek.

In Pynchbek church-windows are the arms of Ogle, of Fleet; Argent, on two bars sable, six escallops of the first, empaled with De la Launde. Pyncebeck seems to come from the Cimbrian pinken, lucere, from the clearness of its water.

Many towns, on both sides Deeping Fen, end in ington, ingham, as lying upon the Mead. Donington.Donington is very hilly, full of elevations or dunes. Thomas Cowley, esq. of Donington, who died about 1718, left all his estate, which was considerable, to the poor of every parish where it lay, whereof 400l. per ann. to Donington, where he built a school-house, and endowed it.

Algarkirk.

Algarkirk has a fine church, in which are some water-bougets carved on the oak seats in escutcheons. They say here lived the famous count Algar,[23] commander of the Holland men in many battles against the Danes, of whom they show an image in stone in the church-yard. I found there this inscription,

Sis testis Xpe, quod non jacet hic lapis iste

Quisquis es si transeas sta perlege plora

Corpus ut ornetur sit lapis ut memoretur.

Sum quod eris fueramque quod es pro me precor ora.

Wiberton.

Wiberton, they say, has its name from Guibertus, a great man here formerly. There is a place called Multon hall, which belonged to the aforementioned Thomas de Multon. Here is likewise Titton hall: the chapel is now converted into a stable.

Frampton.

Hard by is Frampton, probably from the Anglo-Saxonic Faran, trajicere: for here they passed over the river in a ferry, before Boston bridge was built; as at Framton, in Gloucestershire, upon the Severn, and Framilode passage. Farnton by Newark, where now is the ferry over the Trent. Gosberton, from Gosbèrt, or Gosbright, I suppose lord of the town before the Conquest. Fossdike seems to be Fordsdike, where we pass over the Washes.

Skirbeck.

Skirebec doubtless has its name from the Saxon, scire, division, because here the river parts the hundreds. Here was an hospital of knights of St. John of Jerusalem, now intirely demolished, though the church was standing within memory of man. There was another religious house near the church: the remains of it is now the parsonage-house. Such names of towns as Fishtoft, Butterwick, Swineshead, Cowbyte, and the like, seem easy enough.

Sibsey.

Sibsey church has very handsome pillars and circular arches, somewhat after the Roman mode. The top of the steeple is added upon the old work; perhaps from its watery situation; sipan, to steep. Leverton.Leverton, Leofrici oppidum: he was a potent man thereabouts at the time of the Normans coming, and gave to the town much common: his deed of gift is now in possession of the reverend and worthy vicar, Mr. William Falkner, which I have seen.

Frieston.

Frieston, a frith, æstuarium; so Ald Friston in Sussex, near Cuckmere haven. Here was an opulent monastery founded by Guy de Croun, whose genealogy I shall not think much to recite, because it relates to the antiquities of this country, and in some measure shows the reason of what my friend Mr. Becket, surgeon, much wondered at when he searched the old repository of wills at the Prerogative Office in London, where he observed more of this country than any other in England.

The GENEALOGY

Of the Craons, Credon, Crodon, Croun, the most illustrious family of Anjou, and one of the most illustrious in France, which came into England with William the Conqueror. The barony of Craon is the first and most considerable in Anjou: it is a small city in that province upon the river Oudon near Bretagne, encompassed with walls.[24]

A. D. 940.

[See transcription]

The site of Roushall, where the barons Ros lived, is in the parish of Fishtoft.

Vainona.

In Wainfleet church, the bishop of Winchester, whose name was Patten, founder of Magdalen college, Oxford, erected a marble monument for his father, where are his coats of arms in the windows. In the town he built a handsome chapel of brick, and endowed it with a pretty good revenue, to pray for his and his ancestors souls. Now it is made a free-school house. This place still retains its ancient name; for I am certain it is the Vainona mentioned by the famous author of Ravenna, who has happily preserved so many of our old British cities. The learned Mr. Baxter, in his Glossary of British Antiquities, with a sagacity peculiar to himself, has corrected this from Navione. The sea has added much ground to this place since the Roman times, and then their city stood higher up by the churches, which is a mile off the present town. The haven was near St. Thomas church, now called North-holm: it is still very deep thereabouts, and appears to have been broad, being a pretty good river, whilst the waters of the east fen ran through it, and kept it open: it was thirty foot wide a mile above the churches, as appears by the old cloughs there; for they had wisely contrived by that means to keep out the salt water and heighten the fresh, which no doubt would have preserved the haven to this day, had they not foolishly suffered the east-fen water to be carried to Boston. It is apparent the natural course of water here (as we before observed of other parts of the level) is eastward: the east fen is lower than the west fen. At Nordike bridge anciently were four arches: the edge of the piers which cut the water was westward; which shows that the water originally run eastward, and the whole level was drained that way, though now most currents run to Boston. The inhabitants have a constant tradition, that this was a great town; but when the haven was filled up, Boston became the sea-port: likewise they say there is a road across the east fen, called Salter’s road, which probably was the Roman road; and there are people now alive who knew such as had remembered it. Doubtless this was a place where the Romans made their salt of the sea water, to supply all this province; and it is not improbable that this road led to Banovallum, Lindum, &c. Many salt hills are visible from Wainfleet to Friskney. The king is still lord of the soil of this old Roman city.

Burgh, a Ro. fort.

Three miles north, and as much from Skegness and the sea, is Burgh, a market-town, whose name drew my attention. I found it to be a Roman castrum to guard the sea-coasts, probably against the Saxon rovers: it is a piece of very high ground, partly natural, partly raised by Roman labour, overlooking the wide extended marshes, perhaps in those times covered with salt water, at least in spring tides. There are two artificial tumuli, one very high, called Cock-hill. In St. Mary’s church-yard, now demolished, Roman coins have been found. I saw a very fair and large Antoninus Pius in brass, cos. iiii. in possession of Tho. Linny. In the yards and gardens about the town they frequently dig up bodies. St. Peter’s church is large and good. There appear no Roman ways, vallum, or ditch, to inclose the town, which is a sort of knoll, or rising ground.

I was told of a Roman aqueduct of earth, found at Spilsby. In Halton church hard by is this inscription on a flat stone. + SIRE WATER BER GIST ICY DE SA ALME DEUS EIT MERCI. Another, a cross-legged knight: on his shield a lion rampant. At Hagnaby, a religious house founded by Agnes de Orreby. Well, by Ralf de Hauvile. Near Well, on a chalky heath, are three curious Celtic barrows contiguous and joined one into another, composed of chalk: the chalk in Lincolnshire by Alford answers to that in Norfolk. Tateshall collegiate church founded by Ralf Cromwell. Many tumuli hereabouts, as at Hagnaby and other places, but none so remarkable a curiosity as those by the broad road upon the descent of the high country, overlooking the vast level towards Boston. At Revesby, by the seat of Joseph Banks, esq; there is an oval inclosed with a broad ditch: the longest diameter, which is somewhat above 300 foot, is precisely east and west; the other a little above 100: the entrance to it is on the middle of the south side: within, at each end of the length, is a large tumulus 100 foot in diameter: they are equal in shape and similar positure, a large vacuum of 100 foot lying between: it is very regularly formed: the length of the oval ditch that incloses the two tumuli is equal to thrice the breadth: the tumuli are large and high: that rising on the north side, without the ditch, is of an odd figure, but similar. It seems to have been a place of sepulture; perhaps two British kings were there buried; and the height on the north side was the place whereon they sacrificed horses, or the like, to the manes of the deceased. Or is it a place of religious worship among the old Britons? and the two hills may possibly be the temples of the Sun and Moon. I am inclined to think it ancient, because of the measure: the breadth is equal to 100 Celtic feet, as I call them; the length to 300.

Banovallum.

Horncastle was undoubtedly the Banovallum in Ravennas: the latter part of the word is Latin, so that it signifies the fortification upon the river Bane. TAB. LXXXIX.It is of a low situation, placed in the angle of the two brooks meeting here, the Bane and Waring; whence the modern name Horncastle, which signifies an angle, all this country over, as you know in your neighbouring Cow-hurn, Holbech-hurn, Guy-hurn, &c. I will not venture to conceit it came from the ancient way of painting rivers horned, from their windings and turnings; of which we may find a hint in Burton’s Comment. on Antoninus’s Itinerary, pag. 56. and they that please may consult Bochart’s Phaleg, II. 22. where are many proofs of the ancients expressing an angle by the term horn. Skinner in his Etymologicon rightly affirms it comes from the Saxon word hyrn; and Ælfricus expounds it by the word cornu. It is probable the Romans were induced to make a station here at first from its convenient situation, easily rendered defensible by a vallum drawn across the aperture from one river to the other; and thence came the Roman name. Afterwards they built the indissoluble stone wall, whole vestigia are manifest the whole compass round, and in some places pretty high, as three or four yards, and four yards thick. It serves for sides of gardens, cellars, out-houses, &c. as chance offers, inclosing the market-place, church, and good part of the town. It is a perfect parallelogram, composed of two squares: at the angles have been square towers, as they report: the gates were in the middle of three sides, and I suppose a postern into the meadows called the Holmes at the union of the two rivulets. I suspect originally the river Bane ran nearer to the wall in that part, and behind the manor-house: the garden there has been heightened, and the river pushed farther off, and turned with a larger bow to favour the people who live in Far-street, and especially the tanners, who are very numerous there: both rivers probably were wider and deeper than now, as the Celtic name of Bane altus intimates, which at present is conformable to reality lower down. Some do not scruple to affirm it was a sea-port, that is, navigable. The Waring arises but a mile or two off. The field across it south of the town is called the Thowng and Cagthorp, and probably was its pomæria, from the Saxon word pang, campus, ager. Here they find a great number of Roman coins. I saw a brass coin of Vespasian; reverse, an eagle, CONSECRATIO; dug up from under the walls of Banovallum: Mr. Hograve of the place has it now: but Horncastle was not built in the time of Vespasian. I saw, in possession of Mr. Terry of Lincoln, a silver Vespasian found here; reverse, a sitting Genius with a sympulum in her hand, and DN. MA. In 1734, a girl digging sand by the road side going from Les Yates to Horncastle, and near Horncastle, dug up an earthen urn full of Roman coins, rings, &c. Mr. Terry collector gave me some of them. Near the walls upon digging cellars they sometimes find bodies buried. A rivulet called Temsford runs into the Bane. The school lands were given by private persons, and it was incorporated by queen Elizabeth: their seal is a castle and hunting-horn: and a horn is the brand for the town cattle upon the common. It is dubious whether Bowbridge has its name from the arch of the bridge, or from its being the entrance into the town from Lindum through the gate called formerly a Bow. This way is the maypole-hill, where probably stood an Hermes in Roman times. The boys annually keep up the festival of the Floralia on May day, making a procession to this hill with May gads (as they call them) in their hands: this is a white willow wand, the bark peeled off, tied round with cowslips, a thyrsus of the Bacchanals: at night they have a bonfire and other merriment; which is really a sacrifice, or religious festival. The king formerly had this whole town in his possession, until it was bestowed on the bishop of Carlisle. Near the conflux of the two brooks was lately a pleasant garden, and a place called Julian’s Bower, much talked of.

89

Banovallum.
Sept. 1. 1722.

Josepho Banks de Revesby Ar. Romanorum hæc Vestigia d.d. W. Stukeley.

Stukeley. Del.

19

Amicissimo Henrico Pacey Ar.
Prospectum Bostoniæ Suæ d.d. W. Stukeley
Aug. 29. 1722.

Leak signifies a watery marshy place. Wrangle an ab A. S. Wear lacus, and hangel arundo, lacus arundinibus obsita? Return we toBoston. Boston, Fanum Sti. Botulphi, the saint of sea-faring men. St. Botulf (the bishop) his body lay in St. Edmund’s monastery at Bury. Wm. Malmsb. p. 137. This seems to have been the last bounds northward of the Iceni in most antient times; therefore its old name was Icanhoe, or Icenorum munimentum, as Mr. Baxter interprets it in his Glossary. I guess the first monastery founded here was on the south of the present church; for I saw vast stone walls dug up there, and a plain leaden cross taken up; in my possession. Many were the religious houses here in superstitious times, whose lands were given to the corporation by Hen. VIII. as likewise the estate of the lord Hussey, beheaded then at Lincoln for rebellion: he lived in one of the houses where is a great square tower of brick, called now Hussey tower. There are many such in this country, as that now called Rochford and sometimes Richmond tower, which is very high. Queen Mary was a great benefactress to this corporation, and gave them lands called Erection-lands, to pay a vicar, a lecturer, and two school-masters: they have now a revenue of a thousand pounds per annum. In the parsonage-house is a scutcheon with a pastoral staff behind it thus: a fess charged with a fish and two annulets between three plates, each charged with a cross fitché. TAB. XIX.The church, I think, is the largest parish church (without cross ailes) in the world: it is a hundred foot wide and three hundred foot long within the walls: the roof is handsomely cieled with Irish oak supported by four and twenty tall and slender pillars: many remains of fine brasses in the church, none so perfect as this in the south aile. Under the figures of the man and woman this inscription,

Ecce sub hoc lapide henricus Mete sistit humatus

vi mortis rapida generosus semper vocitatus

hic quisquis veneris ipsum precibus memoraris.

sponsam defunctam simul aliciam sibi junctam

anno mil C quater quadragenoque deno

marcia quarto dies, extat ei Requies.

The tower is the highest (100 yards) and noblest in Europe, flattering a weary traveller with its astonishing aspect even at ten miles distance. It is easily seen forty mile round this level country, and farther by sea: the lantern at top is very beautiful, and the thinness of the stone-work is admirable. There was a prodigious clock-bell, which could be heard six or seven miles round, with many old verses round it: about the year 1710 they knocked it in pieces, without taking the inscription. Twenty yards from the foundation of this tower runs the rapid Witham, through a bridge of wood. On the south side of the church-yard was, some few years ago, a curious monument[25] (as they say) of one of the builders of the church, in stone, of arched work, but now intirely demolished; and in the market place in my memory was an old and large cross, with a vault underneath, TAB. III. 2d vol.steps all around it, and at top a stone pyramid of thirty foot high, but at this time quite destroyed. I found here an old brass seal of William Chetwynd, with his coat of arms, A fesse lozengé between three mullets, which I gave to the honourable gentleman of that name. Several frieries here, black, white and grey; of which little remains. Oliver Cromwell, then a colonel, lay in Boston the night before he fought the battle of Winceby near Horncastle, Oct. 5. 1643. In North Holland they have a custom of pulling geese twice a year; which has not escaped Pliny’s notice, X. 22. There is nothing left of the adjacent Swineshed abbey, founded by Rob. Greisly, but a yew-tree and a knightly tomb fixed in the wall of the new house. Here king John sickened in his journey to Sleeford castle and Newark castle, where he died.

East of Boston was a chapel called Hiptoft, and in the town a church dedicated to St. John, but demolished. Here was a staple for wool and several other commodities, and a vast foreign trade: the hall was pulled down in my time. The great hall of St. Mary’s Guild is now the place of meeting for the corporation and sessions, &c. Here was born the learned John Fox the martyrologist. Queen Elizabeth gave the corporation a court of admiralty all over the sea-coast hereabouts.

Abundance of rare sea-plants grow near this coast: many species of sea-wormwoods, scurvy-grass, crithmum marinum, atriplex marinum, &c. of which we may expect a good account from Dr. Blair of Boston; as also of many rare fishes caught hereabouts, Raja, needle-fish, star-fish, &c. and of the stickle-back oil is made in very large quantities, the invention of the Ichtyophagi, Pliny XV. 7. Carum vulgare, Caraway, grows plentifully in the pastures all about Boston. Sambucus foliis variegatis baccis albis, Elder-tree with gilded leaves and white berries, in Boston Fen-ends: a gilded ivy in Mr. Pacey’s garden. Apium palustre Italicum, Selery vulgo dictum, in all the ditches of Holland. Paronychia folio rutaceo, Rue-leaved whitlow-grass, on the north side of walls and houses. A barberry-tree without stones, in Alderchurch parish. Asparagus sylvestris, wild asparagus, in Gorham wood, Whaplode. Many rare plants in the east fen, such as stratiotes azoides, fresh water fengreen. In the boggy grounds about Tattersall, Trifolium palustre, ros solis, virga aurea, myrtus brabantica, pinguicula, asphodelus, adianthum aureum. In the park, androsæmum, tutsan: in the ditches hard by, valeriana sylvestris: in the heaths, many sorts of erica: solanum lethale about Cowhurn.

Kirton.

Pass we from Boston by Kirkton, famous for apples, denominated from its fair church built by Alexander, that magnificent bishop of Lincoln, after the manner of a cathedral with a transept. It has a handsome tower standing upon four pillars in the middle of the cross, with a noble ring of five large bells. I observe, this building is set upon the ruins of a former church, part whereof is visible at the west end: and in most of the churches in this country the same may be discovered, from the different manner of the architecture; the most ancient having small windows arched semicircularly; what is additional, to be known by the pointed Gothic arches. This church is very neat both within and without: upon the font is this inscription:

+ Orate pro anima alani burton qui fontem istum fieri fec. a. d. mccccii.

Against the north wall is the monument of a person in armour, and round it this inscription,

+ Orate pro anima Iohannis de Meres.

The family of the Meres has flourished much hereabouts.

3·2^d.

Boston Cross

Stukeley del.

I Harris Sculp

4·2^d.

The Remains of Crowland Abby. 14. July. 1724.

Stukeley del

I Harris Sculp

Upon the edge of Lincolnshire, in the middle of a vast fenny level, Crowland.Crowland is situate, memorable for its early religion and the ruins of an opulent monastery, which still makes a considerable prospect. The abbey presents a majestic view of ruins; founded a thousand years ago, by Athelbald king of the Mercians, in a horrid silence of bogs and thorns;TAB. IV. made eminent for the holy retirement of his chaplain Guthlac, who changed the gaieties of the court for the severities of an anchorite. The king endowed it with a profuse hand, and all the land for several miles round the church belonged to it. The foundation is laid on piles of wood drove into the ground with gravel and sand, and they have found several of them in tearing up the ruins of the eastern part of the church; for what remains now is only part of the west end; and of that only one corner in tolerable repair, which is their parish-church at present. It is not difficult at this time to distinguish part of the very first building of this church, from that which was built by Ingulphus.[26] In the middle of the cross stood once a lofty tower and a remarkably fine ring of bells, of which there is a proverb in this country still remaining: one prodigiously great bell was sacred to Guthlac: they are said to have been the first peal of bells in the county, perhaps England.[27] From the foundation of this tower to the west end, is somewhat left, but only the walls, pillars, with passages or galleries at top, and stair-cases at the corners. The roof, which was of Irish oak finely carved and gilt, fell down about twenty years ago: you see pieces of it in every house. The pavement is covered with shrubs for brass inscriptions, and people now at pleasure dig up the monumental stones, and divide the holy shipwreck for their private uses; so that, instead of one, most of the houses in the town are become religious. The painted glass was broke by the soldiers in the rebellion, for they made a garrison of the place. All the eastern part of the body of the church is intirely razed to the foundation; and the ashes as well as tombs of an infinite number of illustrious personages, kings, abbots, lords, knights, &c. there hoping for repose, are dispersed, to the irreparable damage of English history. The great Waltheof, earl of Northumberland and Huntingdon, was one of the saints here: he was beheaded by the Norman conqueror. The monastic buildings, cloysters, hall, abbot’s lodgings,[28] and the like, which no doubt were very fine, are absolutely demolished; no trace thereof left, whereby their extent might be guessed at. In the north-west corner of the church stands a strong tower with a very obtuse spire, and a pleasant ring of small bells. Over the west gate are the images of divers kings, abbots, &c. among the rest St. Guthlac with a whip and knife, as always painted: they were cut in a soft kind of stone, and drawn over in oil colour with gilding.

Not far off the abbey eastward, upon a hillock, is the remnant of a little stone cottage, called Anchor Church-house: here was a chapel over the place where St. Guthlac lived a hermit, and where he was buried.[29] Over-against the TAB. VII.west end of the abbey is the famous triangular bridge: it is too steep to be commonly rode over; horses and carriages go under it: it is formed upon three segments of a circle meeting in one point; they say each base stands in a different county. The rivers Nyne and Welland here meet. On one side sits an image of king Athelbald with a globe in his hand. St. Guthlake’s cross, between Spalding and Crowland, near Brother-house and Cloot-bar, stands upon the side of the bank, almost buried under earth: it is a boundary of the church lands: TAB. XI.of great antiquity.[30]

ITER OXONIENSE. II.

Sed prior hæc hominis cura est cognoscere terram. Virg.

To Mr. JOHN HARDY of Nottingham.

IT is commonly remarked, that impressions of any sort made upon youthful minds last long; and, like a cut in the bark of tender sprigs, grow deeper and more apparent with advancing years.

Crescent illæ crescetis amores. Virg.

The many hours I have spent with you when I first began to cast my eyes upon the scenes of the world, and consider things about me, recur to my mind with pleasure. I should be ungrateful then, (to which my temper is most abhorrent) and I should deny myself a particular satisfaction, did I not acknowledge the remembrance of a friendship now mature: therefore to you I offer the earliest fruits of it, this small account of the first pleasurable journey I can reckon to myself, where I had opportunity for satisfying my growing curiosity. It is no wonder that your learning, your taste of antiquities, and all endearing qualities, made me fond of cultivating your acquaintance; and perhaps to you in great measure do I owe what may not be discommendable in amusements of the following kind, since our converse and our journeying sometimes together, to visit the remains of venerable antiquity, in my first years, gave me the love and incitement to such pursuits. I am not concerned to make an excuse for the meanness of this present: were it not juvenile, it would not be genuine. As when first with you, so since it has been my method, to put into writing what little remarks I made in travelling: at length I had collected so much, that with some drawings of places and things taken at the same time, it was judged not unworthy of publication: my consent was grounded upon hopes that by this means I might give some account of every part of my time, and that my own pleasures might not be altogether unuseful; especially thinking it was no hard task to equal somewhat of this sort lately done, and well received of the public. It is to be wished this branch of learning should revive among us, which has lain dormant since the great Camden; so that either in discoursing on it, or journeying, we might find some entertainment worthy of men of letters.

7

Croyland Bridge Lincolnshire.

W. Stukeley f. 1721. & Jonathan Sisson Mathematico, Conterraneo suo ut Amicitice pignus offert.

Stanford.

Passing the fenny counterscarps of Holland, we begin our journey at Stanford, which stands in a mild air and pleasant country abounding with noblemen’s seats. Many religious houses have been at Stanford, and once a college founded there, of which they boast much; but of all these things we expect shortly an exact and full account from the reverend Mr. Peck. About 1708, a brass seal was dug up, in the castle at Stanford, of Thomas bishop of Elphin in Ireland; in possession of Ralf Madyson, esq. Burghley, the earl of Exeter’s, is worth a traveller’s view: the rooms are finely painted by Seignior Varrio: abundance of curious pictures from Italy, collected by my lord’s grandfather. At St. Martin’s church are the monuments of that noble family.

Foderinghay.

Through a pleasant and woody country, we went to Foderinghay castle, situate on a branch of the river Nyne, overlooking the adjacent country and wide-extended meadows. The castle seems to have been very strong: there was a high mount, or keep, environed with a deep ditch: the space around it is guarded by a wall, double ditch, and the river: it is mostly demolished, and all the materials carried off. They pretend to show the ruins of the hall where Mary queen of Scots was beheaded. Some say king James I. ordered this fortress to be destroyed out of indignation: it was the seat of Edmund of Langley, duke of York, buried in the collegiate church here, a very neat building, founded by Edward duke of York, and here likewise interred: their monuments in the chancel (which was intirely demolished at the suppression) were restored by queen Elizabeth: the windows of the church are filled with very handsome painted glass, representing the images of cardinals, arch-bishops, abbots, &c. such as St. Denis with his head in his hand, St. Guthlac of Croyland, Richard Scrope arch-bishop of Canterbury, &c. these were saved in the late civil war, by the then minister of the parish, with a little money given to the soldiers that came to execute the harmless saints. We met with these uncouth verses upon the wall, showing the poetry of those times:

In festo Martyrii processus Martiniani,

Ecclesiæ prima fuit hujus petra locata,

Anno Christi primum centum ac mille

Cum deca quinta H. V. tunc imminente 2^da.

On the north side of the church are the remains of the college, and the meadow under it retains its name: the steeple has an octagonal tower at the top, somewhat like that of Boston; at the bases of which are the images of bears and ragged staffs, cognisances (I suppose) of the founders; as the falcon and fetterlock often painted in the glass. They have a very ancient MS. book here, of the affairs of the parish. There is a school in the town, erected by Hen. VII. worth about 30l. per ann. over the door is wrote, Disce aut discede. A stone bridge over the river was built by queen Elizabeth anno 1555. shown by an inscription on the wall, a monument of the spite of the soldiers, who cut out with their swords, as they passed by, one line of it, God save the queen.

Oundale.

Oundale, or Avondale, is remarkable for a drumming well, much talked of by the superstitious vulgar: no doubt it is owing to the passage of the water, and air upon certain conditions, through the subterraneous chinks; for, as Virgil says, in his fine poem called Ætna,

Secta est omnis humus penitusque cavata latebris, &c.

and that it is done by intervals or pulses as it were, is but consentaneous to many of Nature’s operations. Here are two long bridges of stone. Louick church, on the side of a hill, is very fine, founded by John de Drayton, anno 1125: the windows are full of coats of arms. There is a picture of the founder in armour, on his knees, presenting his church to God: here is his monument, of the Veres too, and Staffords earls of Wiltshire, and others who intermarried with his family: there is a modern one of the late Dutchess of Norfolk, who was married, after her divorcement, to the present owner of the family seat, called Drayton house, Sir John Germayn, who has for the most part new-built it.

Boughton.

From hence we went to Boughton, the seat of the duke of Montagu, magnificent for building, painting and gardens: the stables are large and stately, well calculated for the designed grandeur of the house; for it is not yet finished: the hall is a very noble room: on the cieling is a convocation of the gods admirably painted, as are many suites of rooms and apartments, stair-cases, galleries, &c. beside the great numbers of portraits and other curious pictures, part of the furniture: the gardens contain fourscore and ten acres of ground, adorned with statues, flower-pots, urns of marble and metal, many very large basons, with variety of fountains playing, aviaries, reservoirs, fish-ponds, canals, admirable greens, wildernesses, terraces, &c. the cascade is very fine: a whole river, running through the length of the gardens, is diversified very agreeably to complete its beauty.

Geddington.

A mile off is Geddington, where in a trivium stands one of the stone crosses[31] built by king Edward I. in memory of his queen Eleanor, who died at Hareby near Bolingbroke, in Lincolnshire, 1291. It is formed upon a triangular model, of pretty Gothic architecture to suit its station. Her bowels were buried by the high altar in the Lady’s chapel of Lincoln minster; and in her journey thence to Westminster, where ever her herse rested, the king erected one of these magnificent crosses, as a monument of his great love: upon them are the arms of England, Castile, Leon and Poictou. These are the places, as far as I am at present informed, Lincoln, Grantham, Stamford,[32] Geddington, Northampton, Stony Stratford, Dunstable, St. Alban’s, Waltham, Cheapside over against Wood-street, Charing-cross. Near this place is Boughton, having a petrifying spring, which forms itself a canal of stone as it runs, consolidating the twigs, moss, and all adventitious bodies. We saw near the road a spring-head, with a statue of Moses in the middle of the water, belonging to Boughton house.

12

The West View of Waltham Cross 11 Jul. 1721.

Petro Le Neve Ar.
Norroy. tab. d.d.
W^s. Stukeley

Stukeley delin.

J. Harris Sculp.

Eltabona.Through Kettering we went to Northampton, the most elegant town in England: which, being wholly burnt down, is rebuilt with great regularity and beauty. There is a spacious square market-place, a fine assize-house of Corinthian architecture. Allhallow’s church is built after a pretty model, with a cupola and a noble portico before it of eight lofty Ionic columns: upon the balustrade a statue of king Charles II. There is an inscription of John Bailes, aged above 126: his sight, hearing and memory, intire; buried 1706. One of the old churches, St. Sepulchre’s, seems to have belonged to the Knights Hospitalers of St. John of Jerusalem, of a circular form: there has been another tacked to it of later date, with a choir and steeple, as to that at Cambridge of the same name and figure: another such I am told is at Guildford, which are all of this sort that I know of in England. I suspect these are the most ancient churches in England, and probably built in the later times of the Romans for Christian service, at least in the early Saxon reigns. Westward are the ruins of the castle, by the river side, built by Simon Silvanect I. earl of Northampton, who founded here likewise St. Andrew’s abbey: his son Simon Silvanect II. earl of Northampton and Huntingdon, founded St. Mary de Près abbey here about 1150. This probably is a Roman town arising from one of the forts built upon this river, as that great people proceeded northward in the conquest of the island; and being mentioned by Ravennas between Leicester and Stoney Stratford, it is very likely the Eltabona there, meaning ael, supercilium, and Avon, the river. Roman coins have been found on the other side the river: there are likewise the footsteps of the fortifications round the town, thrown up with bastions in the time of the civil wars. Under those on the south side, descending into a stone quarry which has abundance of intricate turnings, I saw a piece of oak wood, as big as both one’s hands, lie between the strata of solid stone: though petrified, the ligneous fibres when split would burn in a candle. I suppose it to have been lodged there in the deluge. A little way from the town, about Sprotton, are the pits where they dig up tobacco-pipe clay. Near Billing, about three miles from Northampton, not far from the earl of Twomond’s seat, was lately found a mine of copper, and coal, and marble, as they told me.

From Northampton, over the river, by a large stone bridge where is an old religious house, half a mile off in the London road, is another of queen Eleanor’s stone crosses, called Queen’s cross, with her images and arms. It stands on a hill in the open country upon eight steps, in form much like that of Waltham, of which I have given a print.TAB. XII. On the other side of the town, about three miles distance, is Holdenby house, which lies in noble ruins: here king Charles I. was kept prisoner. A little way off is Naseby,[33] where the bloody and fatal battle happened between his forces and those of the parliament, upon a fine plain where at present stands a windmill: the marks of several great holes appear, where the slain were buried. This town, as near as may be, is the navel of England. Near isGuildsborough. Roman Camp. Guildsborough, so named from a Roman camp of a square form, and deep ditch, called the Burrows. I was told of several more thereabouts, which I suppose those made in the time of Ostorius about the heads of the rivers here; which all together made a sort of fortification between the north and south parts of the kingdom, especially between the Avon and Severn. A long barrow at Pesford, called Longman’s hill. We saw Althorp, a curious seat of the earl of Sunderland’s, elegantly furnished: there is a fine gallery adorned with good pictures, and a noble library.

Eston.

My lord Lemster’s seat, now earl of Pomfret, near Towcester, is a stately building, and stands pleasantly, encompassed with good plantations of wood, visto’s and agreeable prospects. In the grand view to the back front, beyond the garden, is a large and long canal: in the house are several curious pictures; an original, of Sir Paul Ricot; of a pillar of Persepolis, one of those sixty foot high; Perseus loosing Andromeda, by Gioseppi Cari; a copy of Galatea, from Raphael: but what highly inhances the glory of this seat, is the vast number of Roman and Greek marbles, statues, busto’s, bas reliefs, &c. part of the most noble collection of the great earl of Arundel. My lord has it in his thoughts to build a large room, or gallery, to receive this invaluable treasure; at present they are for the most part exposed to the weather in the garden. I shall cursorily name them all with the haste of a traveller, though each single piece merits a serious view, and a long description.

At the end of the side terrace in the garden, and near the house, stands an intire column of marble in two pieces, fluted, taken from among the ruins of the temple of Apollo at the isle of Delos, where many now lie: this is set upon a proper base and pedestal made purposely for it: the capital is unusual, but very beautiful, and seems perfectly to answer that description which Vitruvius gives us, IV. 1. of the origin of the Corinthian capital from the conceit of Callimachus, who was pleased with the appearance of a basket covered with a tile, and luckily set upon the middle of a root of acanthus, or brank ursin, which shot up its curled leaves around it in a delicate and tender manner: upon it stands a statue, the upper part naked. In the niches of that wall along the walk are several broken statues of goddesses, naked or in fine drapery, where the mind is divided between the pleasure of seeing what remains and the grief for what is lost. Upon the stairs that descend into the garden are a great many whole and broken statues, pieces of basso relievo, altars, urns, tombs, &c. such as the destruction of Troy, represented in the Trojan horse, the merriment of the Trojans, the slaughter of Priamus, Achilles driving his chariot with Hector tied to it: there is another bas-relief of a battle; a figure recumbent at dinner; two figures in procession, but covered over with moss; four figures, two with Phrygian bonnets; good pieces of cornice-work, with mouldings of ovolo’s, bead-moulds, &c. a tomb, the husband and wife with the son between; a piece of Bacchanalians; the end of a tomb, or vase; a mask and revelling figures; an horseman and footman engaging. Most of these antiquities seem of the highest Greek times. Before the steps upon pedestals are two Egyptian sphynges mitred, and two Muses sitting: other things thereabouts are a sea-horse in basso; a man carrying another; a capital of a pillar made of a horse’s head, with branches coming out of his mouth like them at Persepolis, a dog’s head on one angle, and lions on the other: upon it are busts and heads: over that is a portal of a monumental stone, with a woman and two children, the tomb of some player, with fine bassos of masks, the busto of the deceased; four Genii; two lions devouring horses, finely cut: over it a priestess by the side of a temple: eight round altars or pedestals adorned with bulls heads, festoons, &c. which stand upon the piers of the stairs: upon and about them are other antiquities, such as the bottom part of Scylla; three monsters like dogs devouring three men; a receiver for an urn. Cupid asleep lies upon this.

On the north side the front of the house, a tomb; another capital of a horse’s head, &c. over it a basso of Venus riding on a sea-horse, a Cupid driving; a lion over it; two Cupids, alto relievo: some busts over the windows; a young Nero, Faunus, &c.

At the south end of the house, on the ground, an old headless statue; upon the basement, a tomb of a boy wrought in channel-work, his busto in basso upon it: over the windows a small statue; a woman with a child in her arms; a tomb; another capital from the temple of Apollo at Delos; a Greek mask.

Next let us descend into the garden along the middle walk. In the parterres about the fountain stand four Greek statues very intire, bigger than the life, of most admirable art: they are dressed in matron-like robes, or outer garments, in most comely folds, yet cut so exquisitely, that the folds of the inner drapery appear, and the whole shape of the body, as if transparent: they cannot be sufficiently commended. Between them and the house on the south side, is that celebrated statue of Cicero intire, with his sudarium in his right, and a scroll in his left hand: the sight of the eyes is cut hollow. I could not possibly excuse my self half a quarter of an hour’s serious view of this master-piece, frequently going round it: where so much seeming simplicity of the carver, has called forth all the fire of that divine genius that could make statues hear, as this artist has made them speak, and left an eternal monument of contention between him and the great orator: it grieved me to think it should stand a day longer in the open air. Answering to this on the left, is another statue of more robust shape and workmanship: his left hand holds a scroll, his right is laid in a passionate manner upon his breast: if sinewy muscles denote one that worked on the anvil, it may possibly be Demosthenes. The two next that correspond beyond the fountain, are Scipio Africanus and Asiaticus, in an heroic dress. Beyond, on each side the steps going down to the lower garden, are two colossi, Fabius Maximus the cunctator, and Archimides with a square in his hand. At each end of this cross-walk, or terrace, which terminates the middle or principal one, is built a handsome stone-work with niches and pediment supported with pilasters, contrived on purpose to receive other pieces: in that on the left hand, or north side, is the tomb of the famous Germanicus, adorned with carving of bas-relief: upon it two admirable busts of him and Agrippina his wife. Between these upon the tomb stands an altar-like pedestal with a small and ancient statue of Jupiter sitting. In the pediment over the arch is a curious piece of marble, whereon is raised the upper part of a man with his arms and hands extended, and the impression likewise of a foot: this I suppose the original standard of the Greek measure. Upon the apex of the pediment is a fine statue of Apollo with the right arm naked, the other covered with a mantle: below the hips it ends in a terminus; so that it is an Hermapollon. In two niches here, are two large and curious trunks, as fine as the loquacious Pasquin or Marforio at Rome. Upon the two outermost pilasters are two other beautiful trunks. At the corner of this terrace is an altar. At the other end of this cross walk, under the stone-work is a marble chair with an inscription on the back of it, denoting that it belonged to the high-priest of Isis, as said; for it is obliterated: it is remarkably easy to sit on: the sides are embossed with winged sphynges. On each side of it are two sitting fragments. Upon the top of this stone-work is a very large and curious Greek statue of Pallas, coloss proportion, naked arms, a plumed helmet on her head, the Gorgonian Ægis on her breast: the very marble is not without its terror.

We shall now pass through the house. The hall is a fine lofty room: in the niches are several statues; a Greek lady with her arms folded under the drapery, which with that of the under garment are perfectly seen through the robe; Caius Marius in a senatorial habit; Cupid asleep, leaning on his torch: M. Antony, a naked figure; all these as big as the life: over the chimney-piece, a little Hercules tearing the lion; seven bustos, an excellent one of Pindar; one said to be of Olympias, I fancied it Lucretia. By the great stairs, painted in fresco by Sir James Thornhill, two bustos, one of the Grecian Venus. In niches upon the stairs, six statues as big as the life: Diana in a hunting-habit, a tuck’d-up coat, buskins of skins; a lady in Greek drapery; the Venus de Medicis; Paris with a mantle, the Phrygian bonnet, and odd stockings of the Dacian mode; (this is a statue of great antiquity;) a nymph with a long flowing garment tied under the breast, a fine turn of the body; a man, the right shoulder naked. In the little dining-room, over the chimney, an antique marble vase. In the green-house I saw these following: a Flora, the upper part lost; most inimitable drapery to show the naked, like the celebrated one at Rome: a coloss head of Apollo, from the collar bone to the crown of the head three foot; the body is said to lie among many more under Arundel house in London: the trunk of Camilla, both arms: a young Bacchus.

Towcester Roman.

Towcester is a pretty town, of Roman antiquity: through it in a strait line runs the Watling-street. Edward the elder built the mount called Berry hill when he fortified the town against the Danes. Roman coins have been oft found at this place.[34] The inhabitants here, both old and young, are very busy in a silken manufacture, and making of lace. This town has been ditched about on the west side; every where else guarded by the rivers.

Buckingham.

From hence we went through spacious woods to Buckingham. There was a castle before the Conquest, but now scarce to be known. The church is well built, particularly the chancel: they showed us a place called St. Rumbald’s shrine, where his coffin was taken up. St. John Baptist’s chapel, built, as said, by archbishop Becket, is now a free school. From this place we travelled upon a Roman road.

Alauna.

Entering Oxfordshire, we saw on our right the park called Caversfield, which antiquaries say was the place where Allectus slew Carausius. TAB. V. VI. 2d Vol.This is near Bicester, which I visited big with expectation of finding somewhat considerable from a conflux of towns’ names that promised much. I observed Lawnton hard by, which seemed to confirm Mr. Baxter’s conjecture of Alauna hereabouts. Chesterton, Aldchester, and Wandlebury, were specious marks for enquiry; but I find they all depend upon Aldchester, where was the undoubted Alauna of Ravennas, mentioned thus in that valuable author. Next to London, Tamese, Branavis, Alauna; of all which I shall give an account in this journey.

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Prospect of Aldchester near Bicester. Alauna.

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Alavna.

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Akeman-street.South of Bicester about a mile, two Roman roads cross one another at right angles, in the middle of a large and beautiful meadow; the Akeman-street running east and west, and another directly north and south: the first comes out of Buckinghamshire, I imagine from Fenny Stratford through Winslow; passes by here at Longford, over Bicester river, under the north side of Gravenhall hill; so proceeds by Aldchester, Kirklington, to Woodstock park, and so to Cirencester: the other crosses it at Aldchester, running directly through the middle of the city; then through the southern meadow belonging to Wandlebury, where it is visible enough to a nice eye, the grass being poor, and much abates of the verdure for its whole breadth: then entering a pasture, it is very plain, being elevated into a ridge of a hundred foot breadth, and two little ditches all along the sides: it leaves Marton on the east and Fencot, making fords over the brooks, paved with great broad stones its whole breadth; then proceeds the length of Ottmore, a spacious level, marsh or meadow, two or three miles together, where its ridge is plain, though broken by many sloughs; then through Beckly by the park wall; then under Shotover hill, and so, I suppose, passes the Thames at Sandford below Oxford. Northward from Alauna it proceeds through the northern meadow belonging to Chesterton and Bicester, where the stones it is composed of may be seen in the little ditches they have dug upon each side; then it enters the lane, and goes on the west side of Bicester town, at some little distance, and strait forwards on the east of Caverfield park by Stretton Audley, where many Roman coins have been found; and so to Radley by Buckingham, being now the great high road between the two towns, of which we may say, in the poet’s words,

Scilicet hæc ævi stravit longinqua vetustas,

Heu nimis ex vero nunc ea strata jacent!

The city called now Aldchester is a parcel of ploughed field, on the south side of the Akeman way, a mile at least south of Bicester: it stands in the middle of the meadow, which is very level, more especially stretching itself north and south of the city. I know not whether the ground which is the site of the city be naturally higher, or raised by the ruins and rubbish thereof: but, if any, this deserves to be called urbs pratensis. I can scarce believe that this meadow was so subject to inundations as now, at the time of setting the city here; and I never observed the like position elsewhere, when there is higher ground near enough: it may be thought rather a city of pleasure than strength. A very little way off to the east is Gravenhall hill, a copped hill curiously covered with wood and hedge-rows: beyond it is Berry hill, or vulgarly the Brill, guarded at top with one of their camps. A little brook comes from Chesterton, a mile off, and runs on the south side of the city; for between that and the Akeman way is it placed. When I came upon the spot, I soon found it by the prodigious blackness and richness of the earth, as they were ploughing; and this shows it to have been once in a very flourishing condition and populous; for the fund of nitrous particles and animal salts lodged in this earth are inexhaustible. The site of this city is a common, belonging to the inhabitants of Wandlebury, and every one has a certain little portion of it to plough up; whence we may well imagine the land is racked to the last extremity, and no great care taken in the management of it: yet it bears very good crops of wheat. As I traversed the spot, at every step I saw pieces of pots and vessels, of all sorts of coloured earth,[35] red, green, and some perfectly of blue clay, that came from Aynhoe: I picked up several parcels, thinking to have carried them away, till I perceived them strown very thick over the whole field, together with bits of bricks of all sorts: the husbandmen told me they frequently break their ploughs against foundations of hewn stone and brick; and we saw upon the spot many paving stones with a smooth face, and laid in a very good bed of gravel, till they draw them all up by degrees, when the plough chances to go a little deeper than ordinary. Infinite numbers of coins have been found, and dispersed over the adjacent villages without any regard; and after a shower of rain now, they say, sometimes they find them: I got two or three of Tetricus jun. &c. A good while ago, they dug up a glass urn full of ashes, laid in a cavity cut out of a stone: I went to see the stone, used as a pig-trough, at Wandlebury, in which office it has served ever since Dr. Plot’s time; for I find he mentions it, page 329: it is squarish, the cavity is roundish, nine inches deep, and a foot diameter; but the urn was broke and lost. I heard likewise, by enquiry, that they have found brass images, lares, and all sorts of antiquities, which I encouraged them to preserve for the future. This city was fenced with a bank and ditch quite round: it is a square of one thousand foot each side, standing upon the four cardinal points: the vallum and ditch are sufficiently visible, though both have met with equal change; the vallum, from the plough, which levels it to a certain quantity every year; and the inundation of the meadow raises the ditch: these are most easily discernible at the corners, for there they are still pretty perfect, and so notoriously, that the country people tell you in those places were four towers to defend the city. This little brook, that runs on the southern ditch, encompassed the city quite round originally: the track of the way that passes the city in the middle from south to north, is still very high raised, and another street crossed it the contrary way in the middle, and so went eastward, meeting the Akeman in its way to Langford: these were the two principal streets, and doubtless there were others; and great foundations are known to be all around in the meadows, especially northward and eastward upon both sides the Akeman. On the west side of the city, a little distance from the ditch, is an artificial hill in the very middle of the meadow which they call the Castle hill, and is full of Roman bricks, stone, and foundations. I attentively considered this place: the circuit of it is very plain and definable; it was a square of two hundred foot: I guess it originally to have been some considerable building in the middle of an area, or court; whether a pretorium, or a temple, might probably be ascertained upon digging: the edge of the area is very distinct upon the meadow, by the difference in the colour of the grass, the one gray, the other green; but the main body of the building reached not so far, but lies in a great heap of rubbish, much elevated, and of much less extent: before it, to the south, has been another area, paved with a bed of gravel, at least above a hundred foot broad: I doubt not but a curious person, that will be at the expence of digging this plot, would find it well worth his while. This is the sum of what I observed at the place: whether the present name be Alcester, as retaining any thing of the Latin, or Aldcester, signifying the old city, I dispute not; but think it has no manner of relation to Allectus that slew the brave Carausius. The name of Akeman way I am fit to think a vulgar error, as commonly imagined from going to the Bath:[36] more probably it is ag maen, the stony agger, or ridge; this is confirmed by the people calling the other road too, that goes north and south, by the same name, Akeman-street. There has been a religious house at Bicester near the church, a priory of St. Eadburg, founded by Gilbert Basset. This town is famous for excellent malt liquor, of a delicate taste and colour.

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Prospect of Tame. Tamese. 14 Sept. 1724.

From hence we journeyed by Aynhoe, where is a vein of stiff clay, exceeding blue: at Souldern is a curious barrow, neatly turned like a bell, small and high; I believe it Celtic. Then climbing for a long while together, we ascended Bury-hill Ro. camp.Bury hill, a village upon the highest copped mountain in the country: it is vulgarly called the Brill, as Mr. Camden takes notice: this has a vast prospect over Bernwood, Ottmore, and the whole country, bounded only by the superior Chiltern, seven miles off, which hence has a most notable aspect, and ends insensibly at the eastern and western horizon, diminishing regularly all the way: at the top of the Brill, by the church, I saw parcels of the old Roman camp, which has been modernised with additional bastions in the civil wars. Before the Conquest, here was a palace of Edward the Confessor. Much Roman coin has been found hereabout.

Tamese.

TAB. VII. 2d Vol.

Below here, two or three miles off, stands Tamese, now Tame, upon the side of a meadow; a pleasant town, consisting of one long and broad street, running north-east and south-west: behind lie the smiling arable fields: it is almost encompassed with rivulets. This was called a burg in the time of Edward the elder, anno 921, who besieged the Danes here, and took the burg, or castle. I saw infinite quantities of the cornu ammonis, a foot and half or two foot diameter, laid in the roads among rubble stone to mend them: all the quarries hereabouts abound with them of all dimensions. Here is a fine large church in form of a cross: in it many brasses and old monuments: some I transcribed.

Thome de Grey filii Roberti dni. de Grey Retherfeld militis obiit anno dni. millesimo ccc. Another thus.

O certyn deth that now hast overthrowe

Richard Quatremayns squier and Sibil his wyf that ly her now full lowe

That with rial prinses of councel was true and wise famed

To Richard duke of Yorke and after with his sone king Edward IIII named

That founded in the chyrche of Tame a chantrye six pore men and a fraternity

In the worship of St. Christofere to be relieved in perpetuitye

They that of their almys for their sowles a pater noster and ave devoutly wul seye

Of holy fadurs is granted them pardun of days xl alway.

Which Richard and Sibil out of this world passed in the yer of our lord M. cccclx. upon their sowles jhu have mercy amen. Another thus.

Orate pro animabus Galfredi Dormer mercatoris Stapile ville Calis & Margere & Alicie uxoris ejus qui quidem Galfridus ob. 9 Mar. 1502. quorum animabus propicietur deus amen. There are the images of twenty-five children upon this stone.

John lord Williams of Tame baronet, baron of Tame, ob. 14 Oct. 1559.

Here lyeth Sir John Clerk of Northweston knight which tuke Lovys of Orleance duke of Longuevill and marquis of Rotelin prysoner at the journy of Bomy by Tyrvain the xvi day of August in the v yer of the reign of the noble and victorious king Henry viii. which John decesed the v day of April 1539.

There is an abbot (I suppose) in stone in the church wall of the south transept within side: near the church are the ruins of a priory built by Alexander bishop of Lincoln. At Notely, not far off, is another. A pot of Roman money was found at Sherburn in this neighbourhood last year.

Islip.

Islip is memorable for the birth of Edward the Confessor. The font which stood in the king’s chapel, as still called, where he was baptised, is removed: but that font in Dr. Plot seems not of such antiquity. There are some remains of an ancient palace.

Oxford.

Oxford requires a more elaborate description than a stranger can possibly give; and indeed so numerous are the colleges and halls, that one can scarce get a tolerable idea of them in the three days I staid here. The prospect of this place from Shotover hill is very inviting, nor is our expectation frustrated when in the place. The bridge over the Cherwel is a stately work, twice as broad as London bridge. Magdalen college, the legacy of our countryman, William of Wainflet, which he endowed with a princely hand, deservedly is thought one of the noblest foundations in Europe: the old oak is still left, nigh which he ordered it to be built. A vast tract of ground is inclosed with a castellated wall for gardens. On the other side the river is a park too, with long shady walks, but too near the water, wherein likewise more resembling those of Academus by Athens. The chapel is large and magnificent: the tower is a lofty strong work, in it a fine ring of bells: the whimsical figures in the quadrangle, over the buttresses, amuse the vulgar; they are the licentious inventions of the mason. Over-against this is the physic garden, whose curiosities Mr. Bobart showed us, and his own: since his death, its purpose is not so well executed. Here are remarkably fine greens in all the gardens at Oxford, especially in yew: the two piers here, with flower-pots on them, are thought to exceed; but the two yew men (as one waggishly called them) that guard the door, are ridiculous; the architecture of these gates is, I suppose, of Inigo Jones: two sphynges at the entrance are properly placed: these are without the city walls. University college has a new quadrangle built by legacy of Dr. Radcliffe; but I think uniformity, in this and other structures in the university, no sufficient reason for using the old manner of building. Queen’s college over-against it is of a good taste, improved to its present splendor under the auspices, and in great degree at the charge, of the late Dr. Lancaster. The library, the hall, and chapel, are beautiful. The old gatehouse has a pretty cieling over it of stone; they say it was the chamber of Harry the Vth’s uncle and tutor. Behind it is New college; a large chapel, a good visto to the garden, in which is a pleasant mount: this was the foundation of William of Wickham, bishop of Winchester: it stands in an angle of the old city walls. At All Souls a new court is building, but in the anachronism of the Gothic degenerate taste: the new library is a spacious room, the legacy of colonel Coddrington: the chapel is very elegant; the altar, entirely of marble, was made at the charge of George Clark, esq. one of the fellows. Christ church, the magnificent work of cardinal Wolsey: the stone cieling over the entrance to the hall is very pretty; the new quadrangle, designed by the learned Dr. Aldrich, is beautiful. St. John’s college has two handsome quadrangles, the portico’s built by archbishop Laud: two fine statues, in brass, of king Charles I. and his queen, probably designed by Inigo Jones. But it is impossible for me to run through the whole of this splendid university, which I leave as a fitter task for some of her own learned sons. The school is a large building: the Bodleian library, an immense store-house of most valuable books and manuscripts, the donation of archbishop Laud, the earl of Pembroke, O. Cromwell, Selden, Digby, Bodley, and other great names: over it is a spacious gallery, adorned with pictures of founders, benefactors, and others, and with the antique marbles which were the learned part of the inexhaustible collection of the earl of Arundel: these have been illustrated with the accurate comments of Selden and Prideaux. Here are some of the most valuable Greek monuments now in the world. Over the porch, upon a handsome pedestal of black marble, stands the brass effigies of the earl of Pembroke, their noble and generous chancellor, given by the present earl: this was moulded by Rubens. Here is likewise a very large collection of Greek, Roman, British, Saxon, English, and other coins, presented by several hands. The divinity schools, finished by Humphry the good duke of Gloucester, have a very curious stone roof. The Ashmolean repository, beside some good books, papers and MSS. of the founder, has a large collection of rarities in antiquity, nature and art, &c. such as original pictures of famous men, marbles of old Egyptian carving in figures and hieroglyphics, a fine marble inscription in Arabic, which was over the door of a school at Tangier; an Egyptian mummy, being a man dressed like orus Apollo; the cradle of Henry VI. the hat of Bradshaw plaited with steel within, under which he sat in judgment upon king Charles I. a vast fund of precious and other stones, &c. which it is impossible to enumerate. Here is, beside, a choice apparatus of instruments for chymistry and experimental philosophy under the direction of Mr. Whiteside. The printing-house is a good building with a bold portico, but next the schools disgraced with a wretched statue of my lord Clarendon. Between these two last and the schools stands the Sheldonian theatre, the first piece of architecture of Sir Christopher Wren, a spacious and well-proportioned room: it is worth while to go upon the top of it, to see the carpentry of the roof, and the fine prospect of the city and country thence. Before Baliol college they showed us the stone in the street which marks the place of the barbarous martyrdom of the venerable archbishop Cranmer and bishop Ridley, then upon the banks of the ditch without the walls of the city, which went along where the theatre now stands. Beyond the river, amongst meadows encompassed with rivulets, stood Oseney abbey, founded by Robert D’oyley 1129.[37] upon the bridge is a tower called Friar Bacon’s Study, from that famous and learned monk, who in dark ages had penetrated so far into the secrets of nature. Oxford, no doubt, means no more than the passage over the river Ox, Ouse, or Isis, which are equivalents. Over another bridge of the Isis we went to see Ruleigh abbey, where some ruins and parcels still remain, turned to a common brew-house: a disjointed stone in a partition wall preserves this monumental inscription, Elae de Warwik comitissae viscera sunt hic. This Ela was daughter of Wil. Longspee earl of Salisbury, and wife of Thomas de Newburgh the last earl of Warwick of that name: she died on Sunday the fifth of the ides of February, 26 Ed. I. 1297. she gave lands to this abbey, and founded a chapel here, as appears by an inscription dug up 1705. her body was buried before the high altar at Oseney, her heart in this place. Of the castle there is a square high tower remaining by the river side, and a lofty mount or keep walled at top, with a stair-case going downward: this seems to have been a very strong place, built by Robert de Oili in the time of William the Conqueror. If there was a town here in Roman times, it seems to have been in this quarter. The White-friars was a royal palace; and near a green called Beaumonds, they showed us the bottom of a tower upon the ground where the valiant Richard I. Cœur de lion, was born. Without the town on all sides may be seen the remains of the fortifications raised in the time of the civil wars. It is in vain to pretend in this paper to enumerate the particular remarkables of every college, which are eighteen in number, and seven halls: these for beauty, grandeur, and endowment, no doubt, exceed any thing: their chapels, halls, libraries, quadrangles, piazzas; their gardens, walks, groves, and every thing, contribute to make the first university in the world. As to the city, though the colleges make up two thirds of it, and are continually eating it away, in buying whole streets for enlargement; yet it is large, regular, and crouds itself out proportionably: the streets are spacious, handsome, clean, and strait; the whole place pleasant and healthful; the inhabitants genteel and courteous: the churches are many and elegant enough, especially Allhallows, a neat fabric of modern architecture, with a very handsome spire. St. Peter’s in the east is venerable for its antiquity: the east end by its fabric appears prior to the time of the Conquest.

Leaving this famous repository of learning, we saw on our left hand, on the other side of the river, the last ruins of Godstow nunnery, placed among the sweet meadows: here fair Rosamond, the beloved mistress of Henry II. had a tomb remarkably fine; but before the dissolution, scarce could her ashes rest, whose beauty was thought guilty even after death.

Woodstock.

At Woodstock we saw part of the old palace, and her famous labyrinth, which is since destroyed: her bathing-place, or well (as called) is left, a quadrangular receptacle of most pure water, immediately flowing from a little spring under the hill, and over-shadowed with trees: near it some few ruins of walls and arches. King Ethelred called a parliament here; it has been a royal seat from most ancient times: Henry I. inclosed the park. A-cross this valley was a remarkably fine echo, that would repeat a whole hexameter, but impaired by the removal of these buildings. A stately bridge from hence now leads along the grand approach to the present castle: one arch is above a hundred foot diameter: a cascade of water falls from a great lake down some stone steps into the canal that runs under it.

The new palace is a vast and magnificent pile of building; a royal gift to the high merit of the invincible duke of Marlborough; the lofty hall is painted by Sir James Thornhill; the salon by la Guerre: the rooms are finely enriched with marble chimney-pieces and furniture, but more by the incomparable paintings: many of Rubens’s best and largest pieces; that celebrated one of himself, his wife, and child, among others; Vandyke’s king Charles I. upon a dun horse, of great value; and the famous loves of the Gods, by Titian, a present from the king of Sardinia. The gallery I admired beyond any thing I have seen, lined with marble pilasters and whole pillars of one piece, supporting a most costly and beautiful entablature, excellent for matter and workmanship: the window frames of the same, and a basement of black marble quite round. Before it is stretched out a most agreeable prospect of the fine woods beyond the great valley: it is indeed of an admirable model: this, and what is of the most elegant taste in the whole house, is of the duchess’s own designing. The chapel is not yet finished, and which I doubt not will be equal to the rest. The garden is a large plot of ground taken out of the park, and may still be said to be part of it; well contrived by sinking the outer wall into a foss, to give one a view quite round, and take off the odious appearance of confinement and limitation to the eye, and which quite spoils the pleasure and intention of a garden: within, it is well adorned with walks, greens, espaliers, and visto’s to diremarkable objects that offer themselves in the circumjacent country. Over the pediment of this front of the house is a curious busto in marble of the French king, bigger than life, taken from the gate of the citadel of Tournay. The orangery is a pretty room. At the entrance hither from the town, her grace has erected a noble triumphal arch to the memory of the duke, and has projected a vast obelisk to be set in the principal avenue in the park, whereon is to be inscribed an account of his great actions and ability in council, and in war. Near the gate is the house where our famous Chaucer was born: methinks there was somewhat poetical in the ground that first gave him birth, and produced these verses, which I ask pardon for inserting, upon a subject which his genius only could be equal to:

Fame, like the optic artist, wont to swell

The object larger to the armed eye,

Sing on, and mighty Marlborough’s actions tell:

Secure from flattery in words abound,

And let thy trumpet diapasons sound;

Speak but enough of him, ’tis all reality.

Through the park we crossed again the Akeman-street, which runs all along with a perfect ridge made of stone, dug every where near the surface: it bears between north-east and east: it is a foot-path still through the park with a stile, and a road beyond it by which it passes to Stunsfield, Ro. town.Stunsfield, where are marks of an intrenched work, once a Roman station: and in the place they found (the 25th Jan. 1712.) a most curious tesselated pavement, for bulk and beauty the most considerable one we know of: it was a parallelogram of thirty-five foot long and twenty foot wide, a noble room, and no doubt designed for feasting and jollity: in one of the circular works was Bacchus represented in stones properly coloured, with a tiger, a thyrsus in his hand enwrapped with vine leaves. This admirable curiosity deserved a better owner; for the landlord and tenant quarreling about sharing the profits of showing it, the latter maliciously tore it in pieces. When the earth was first laid open upon its discovery, they found it covered a foot thick with burnt wheat, barley and pease: so that we may guess upon some enemy’s approach it was covered with those matters to prevent its being injured, or was turned into a barn and burnt.

We crossed a foss called Grimesditch, the vallum eastward: it goes by Ditchley wood and house, which takes its name from it. Dr. Plot does not sufficiently distinguish this from a Roman road: it was doubtless some division of the ancient Britons: the country is all a rock of rag-stone. Many good seats of the nobility hereabouts; Cornbury lord Clarendon’s, Ditchley lord Litchfield’s, duke of Shrewsbury’s at Hathorp, new built of stone very beautiful. Juniper grows plentifully hereabouts. At Chadlington is a square Roman camp. At Enston is a pretty curiosity in water-works, cascades falling down artificial rocks overgrown with waterplants, chirping of birds imitated, many pipes of water, secretly to dash the spectators, and fancies of that kind.

Chipping-norton.

Chipping-Norton must have been a great trading town by the number of merchants, as they are there called, buried in the church under brasses and inscriptions: others of alabaster: and the name of the place signifies it, as our Cheapside, equivalent to market, to buying or cheapening. There are marks of a castle by the church, which probably was demolished in the time of king Stephen. Lord Arundel, beheaded in the barons wars, lived in it: a place called the Vineyards near it. Roman coins are frequently found here. The church is a good building of a curious model, the south porch hexagonal, and a little roof over it supported by a stone arch: under the choir is a charnel-house full of the ruined rafters of mortality. A priory was here near Chapel on the heath: the Talbot inn was religious: stories of subterraneous passages thence to the priory. A well lately found in the ploughed fields at Woodstock hill, a mile south of this place, and more such like in the fields. Hereabouts they call camps barrows, meaning boroughs.

Rowldrich. Br. temple.

Hence we rode to see Rowldrich stones, a very noble monument; the first antiquity of this sort that I had seen, and from which I concluded these works to be temples of the ancient Britons. I crave leave to reserve its description for another work. In the clay upon these hills they dig out cornua ammonis, small, but very prettily notched: they are nothing but clay hardened in the shell. Further on, in Tadmerton parish, we rode through a large round camp on the top of a hill doubly intrenched, able to contain a great army. Bloxham has a very fine church, the steeple of an odd make, but pretty enough. At Broughton near Banbury is the seat of the lord Say and Seal.

Branavis.

TAB. VIII. 2d Vol.

Banbury was a Roman station, called Branavis. That master builder the bishop of Lincoln, Alexander, built the castle anno 1125, I doubt not but upon the Roman fortification: he enlarged it and built it after the mode of those times, taking in a huge space of ground with a wall, towers and ditch: within he made another work upon one side, where were the lodgings, chapel, &c. A small part of the wall of this is only now left, of good hewn stone; but the ditch went along the middle of the adjacent street, and houses are built by the side of it, out of its ruins, as people now alive remember: in the civil wars it received new additional works, for there are plain remains of four bastions; a brook running without them. Many Roman coins and antiquities have been found here. There is an inn called the Altarstone inn, from an altar which stood in a nich under the sign: this had a ram and fire carved on it, as they say: part of the stone is still left: I imagine this was originally a Roman altar: they tell us William the Conqueror lay at this inn. The town is a large straggling place and dirty, though on a rock with sufficient descent: one would think it was walled about in most ancient times. Here are three gates, though of later make. The tower of the church, they say, was much higher than at present: the church is of great compass: three rows of pillars, but of too slender a manner, which makes them all lean awry, and different ways: many additions have been made to it: a touch-stone monument of the family of Cope: other old monuments ruined. The bridge is long, consisting of many arches. Branau supercilium aquæ seems well to answer the etymology of the Roman name, as Mr. Baxter has it: The stone of this country is mixed with sand. Black gloves is a great manufacture here. Kenric the West-Saxon king, anno 540, routed the Britons at this place.

8·2^d.

Prospect of Banbury. Branavis. 13. Sept. 1724.

Stukeley delin.

E. Kirkall sculp.

9·2^d.

Prospect of Warwick July 7^th. 1725

Stukeley del.

Fletcher Sculp.

PRAESIDIUM

We went over the vale of Red-horse and Edghill, which presents us with a most extensive prospect, steep to the north: on the top of it, at Warmleighton, is a large and strong intrenchment of a circular but irregular form, said to be Danish by the inhabitants, but seemingly more ancient and British. Descending the hill for a mile, we rode through Radway, and over the field between it and Kyneton, where the famous battle of Edghill was fought: we were shown some of the graves of the slain. At Tellisford we crossed the Foss-way.

Præsidium. Warwick.

Warwick is situate on a rock, a fine new-built town, having been almost wholly burnt down in 1694. The church and lofty tower is new built, except the east end, which is old and very good work: there are a many fine brass monuments of the earls of Warwick and others, as the earl of Essex; TAB. IX. 2d Vol.many chapels and confessionaries, with other remains of ancient superstition: in the chapter-house on the north side is a tomb of the lord Brook. The castle stands upon the river Avon, over which is a stone bridge with a dozen arches: across is a large stone-work dam, where the water falls over it as a cascade, under the castle wall, which is built on a rock forty foot above the water. It overlooks the whole town and country, being delicately situate for pleasure and strength, fenced with a deep mound and strong embattled double walls and lofty towers: there are good apartments and lodgings next the river, the residence of the lord Brook: on one side of the area is a very high mount: we were shown the sword and other gigantic reliques of Guy the famous earl of Warwick. The priory on the north-east side of the town overlooks a pleasant woody vale: there are a great many curious original pictures, by Vandike and other good hands, of kings, queens, famous statesmen, persons of learning both at home and abroad. A mile out of town, on the side of a hill, is a pretty retired cell, called Guy-cliffe: in an old chapel there is a statue of Guy eight foot high: the fence of the court is intire rock, in which are cut stables and out-houses. We saw the rough cave where they say Guy died a hermit.

Coventry.

Coventry is a large old city: it was walled about: the gates are yet standing. It is adorned with a fine and very large church and beautiful spire a hundred yards high. There is another good church in the same yard. The cross is a beautiful Gothic work, sixty six foot high: in niches are the statues of the English kings. At the south end of the town stands a tall spire by itself, part of the Grey Friers’ conventual church. The town-house is worth seeing: the windows filled with painted glass of the images of the old earls, kings, &c. who have been benefactors to the town. Here the famous lady Godiva redeemed the privileges thereof almost at the expence of her modesty, the memory whereof is preserved by an annual cavalcade. These verses are wrote in the town-house.

Auxiliis olim stetit alma Coventria regum

Dum fortuna fuit. Magnos colit hinc Edoardos

Henricosque suos, urbs non ingrata patronos.

Jamque adeo afflictis crescit spes altera rebus

Elizabetha tuis princeps mitissima sceptris.

Lætior illuxit nullo pax rege Britannis.

Ergo age diva tuis sis fœlix civibus usque,

Exuperans patrias & avitas æmula laudes.

Princeps ille niger (niveis cui vertice pennis

Crista minax, victi regis cæsique Bohæmi

Exuviis) heros Edoardus magnus in armis,

Hic sedem posuit. Sic dicta est principis aula.

Hoc authore fuit libertas civibus aucta,

Muneribusque ornata suis, res publica crevit.

Hinc depicta, vides, passim sua penna per urbem

Testatur magni monumentum & pignus amoris.

Labentes fatis (quid enim perdurat in ævum?)

Fortunas urbis tandem miseratus agrorum

Extendit fines, Northumbrius ille Johannes.

Cumque fuit bello dux invictissimus, armis

In mediis coluit pacis, vir providus, artes;

Exemploque suum vocat ad pia facta Robertum.

Non tantum meruit Leofricus Cestrius olim

Nec conjux Godiva, pii dux fœmina facti.

Godiva ab turpi quæ lege coacta mariti

Fertur equo, diffusa comas nudata per urbem.

Asseruitque suos, culpent utcunque minores!

Vicit amor patriæ libertatisque cupido:

Quantum hodie patrem referens Leicestrius heros

Retro sublapsam qui nostram restituit rem,

Sustinet in pejus ruituram urbisque salutem.

I modo quo virtus te fert, sic itur ad astra.

Et quibus insistis fœlix, procede paternis

Auspiciis, maneatque tuos hæc cura nepotes.

Holbech, May 1712.

ITER CIMBRICUM. III.

———quid virtus & quid sapientia possit

Utile proposuit nobis exemplar Ulyssem.

Qui domitor Trojæ, multorum providus urbes

Et mores hominum inspexit——— Hor.

To RICHARD MYDDLETON MASSEY
of Wisbech, M. D.

TO you of right I inscribe this journey, to which your company and my inclination to see somewhat of the world allured me. I had conceived great notions of the old Britons betimes, and longed to hear at least a language spoke soon after the deluge; and I then prided myself as much as Cæsar formerly in making this small inroad into their country. I willingly take this occasion of recognizing how I ought to esteem it a happiness, that you chanced to be seated in a place so near that of my nativity, and presented to me a subject of imitation, in all the commendable qualifications that may conduce to the felicity and ornament of life. Your deep insight into the materia medica, the theory and practice of physic, your great knowledge of antiquities, natural history, and all polite learning, and the excellence of your hand in designing, were as so many spurs to me in my young years, when we are most apt at imitation: and that the latter exercise of the pen is of importance to all the others, is too notorious, and universally allowed by all, to need any solemn proof. Who sees not that the defeats and confusion in anatomy and botany, and every part of philosophy, is owing to the want of drawing? when the innumerable labours of so many ages are either lost to posterity, or imperfectly transmitted, for that reason. How well does this range and distinguish ideas, and imprint them in one’s own mind, as well as make them known to others? It is not to be disputed but a person that understands it, sees much farther into things than others: the beauties of art and nature are open to him. Indeed every body is pleased with perfection and beauty, though they know not why: as suppose that of a fine statue, they are hugely delighted with it, though they understand not that it is owing to the proper disposition and contrast of the limbs, to the attitude, the grace of the posture, the expression of the action, the light and shade, and a thousand other requisites, as well as the particular delicacy and outline of the parts and members: and these things are only to be learnt and gathered from Nature’s self, from copying and observing it; for she is the grand exemplar of all fine strokes in drawing; as Aristotle formed his Art of Poetry from the great genius of Homer, and he from the force of Nature.

Grantham.

Grantham was certainly a Roman town. Burton in his Commentaries on Antoninus’s Itinerary relates, that a great stone trough, covered with a stone, was dug up there, full of Roman coins, p. 216.[38] The street that runs on the east of the church is called Castle-street: between it and the river have been dug up foundations of a castle, as they say.[39] I have a piece of glass with enamel upon it, ground with an engine; which is curious, and I take it for Roman: it was found in the Grange garden. Here is a spacious church and fine spire, much noted: it is a hundred yards high, equalled by another in this county, Louth, besides the tower of Boston: under the south wall of this church are two tomb-stones, said to be of the founders; one in old French, the date only legible, 1362; the other, hic jacent ricard de calceby et margareta vx ejus m ccclxii. On a stone in a wall in Church-lane this inscription (the orate pro anima seems to have been cut out by order of some zealot) Iohis Goldsmyth mercatoris de Grantham, a coat of arms, quarterly; in the sinister upper quarter a mullet. There were many religious houses here, some reliques of them left: in one just by the market-place is a very pretty little chapel, or oratory, adorned with imagery. The Angel inn was once a commandery. Here is a good free-school, erected by Richard Fox bishop of Winchester, where Sir Isaac Newton received the first principles of literature, under the famous William Walker then school-master.[40] Belvoir, the seat of the dukes of Rutland, stands on a high hill with a very fine prospect: you may see Nottingham castle and Lincoln minster, and all around you, below, many towns and lordships the demesnes of this noble family. Here is a perfect pattern of the true old English hospitality. In the fine gallery are many ancient and modern family pictures and others; the original one of king Charles I. as he sat at his trial. This place was the possession of Robert de Totney,[41] a great man who came in with William the Conqueror: he built a priory near it. I imagine originally here was a Roman camp; for coins have been found about it.[42] Upon the edge of Lincolnshire we visited the tombs of the duke of Rutland’s family at Bottesworth, which are worth seeing.

Nottingham.

Nottingham we arrived at after crossing the Roman road called Foss: it is a pleasant and beautiful town. They have a great manufacture here for stockings, which they weave in looms from the invention of a neighbouring clergyman. Their ale is highly valued for softness and pleasant taste: the cellars in the town are hewn out of the rock two or three story deep, to fourscore steps sometimes. The castle is a goodly building on a high perpendicular rock; seems to have been modelled after some of Inigo Jones’s draughts: many good pictures there: it commands a vast prospect. The south side of the rock is altogether inaccessible: a winding stair-case along it to the bottom, which they call Mortimer’s hole: there are vast subterraneous grottos cut underneath. St. Mary’s church is a fine old lightsome building, with a good ring of eight bells. We saw Mr. Hurst’s gardens, late Pierpoint’s, which are very pretty; in the middle a copy of the Dalmatian slave in metal. One may easily guess Nottingham to have been an ancient town of the Britons: as soon as they had proper tools they fell to work upon the rocks, which every where offer themselves so commodiously to make houses in; and I doubt not that here was a considerable collection of colonies of this sort: that which I have described in [Plate 39].TAB. XXXIX. will give us an idea of them; it is in the duke of Newcastle’s park. What is visible at present is not of so old a date as their time; yet I see no doubt but that it is formed upon theirs: this is a ledge of perpendicular rock hewn out into a church, houses, chambers, dove-houses, &c. The church is like those in the rocks at Bethlehem and other places in the Holy Land: the altar is natural rock, and there has been painting upon the wall; a steeple, I suppose, where a bell hung, and regular pillars. The river here winding about makes a fortification to it; for it comes to both ends of the cliff, leaving a plain before the middle. The way to it was by gates cut out of the rock, and with oblique entrance for more safety. Without is a plain with three niches, which I fancy their place of judicature, or the like: there is regularity in it, and seems to resemble that square called the Temple in the Pictish castle, [Plate 38].TAB. XXXVIII. in Scotland. The wild cherry-tree grows upon this place, and many curious plants, liver-worts, lychnis sylvester. 9. clus. ruta muraria, rosa pimpinellæ folio odorata, capillus veneris, umbilicus veneris. Between this and the castle is an hermitage of like workmanship. The butchers shambles is an old edifice built for a granary. Clifton near here is a good seat, with pretty gardens and a noble prospect: in the church are many old brasses of the family of this name. Three miles from Nottingham is Woolaton hall, the seat of my lord Middleton; which is a good piece of old building: there is a pretty summer-house panelled and cieled with looking-glass, which produces a pleasant effect: underneath is a water-house with grotesque work of shells, &c. A little beyond, in the road, upon the brow of the hill, is a high rugged piece of rock, called Hemlock-stone, seen at a good distance: probably it is the remains of a quarry dug from around it. Beyond this we entered Derbyshire. There are some few ruins of Dale abbey seated in a valley, and the east end of the choir over-grown with ivy: the mullions of the windows are knocked out (I suppose for sake of the iron:) it is overlooked by a near and high hill covered with oaks. In the ascent, out of the rock is cut a cell, or little oratory, called the Hermitage:TAB. XIV. on one side the door and windows, at the east end, a square altar and a step up to it of the same quarry, little niches cut in the wall, and a bench to sit on all round.

39

BRYTTISH.

Illus trissimo Principi
Iohi Duci de Novo Castro &c.
Antiquitatis in Vivario Suo
Juxta Nottingham Tabula Sacra.

Rudera Coloniæ Troglodyticæ juxta. Nottingham.

38

Pictish

Caves of Hawthornden, Scotland.

Stukeley delin.

I. Harris sculp.

DerbyDerby. has five churches; the tower of one is very fine. The new-erected silk manufacture is a remarkable curiosity: the house is of a vast bulk, five or six stories high: the whole furniture is one machine turned by a single water-wheel, which communicates its power through the whole, and actuates no less than 97–746 several wheels or motions, and still employs three or four hundred hands to over-look and act in concert with it. Mr. Loom the owner brought the design of it from Italy.[43] The waters that run here, whether from the lead mines or coal, are apt to cause the bronchocele in the fair sex.

Burton.

Beyond Derby, along the Ricning way is Burton upon the Trent, where is a bridge of thirty-seven arches. Here was an old abbey: they are pulling down the ruins to build a new church.

Derventio.

TAB. LXXXVI.

A mile below Derby, upon the river Derwent, stood the old Roman city Derventio, now called Little Chester. I traced the track of the wall quite round, and in some places saw under ground the foundation of it in the pastures, and some vaults along the side of it: they dig it up daily to mend the ways with. Mr. Lord’s cellar is built on one side of the wall three yards thick: it is of a square form, standing between the Roman way called the Ricning street and the river. Within the walls are foundations of houses in all the pastures; and in the fields round the castle (as they call it) you may see the tracks of the streets laid with gravel: in a dry summer the grass over them is very bare. Divers wells are found, some still remaining, square, curbed with good stone. Brass, silver, and gold Roman coins have been found in great abundance; earthen pipes, aqueducts, and all kinds of antiquities. Towards the river they have dug up human bones, brass rings, and the like. There was a bridge over the river, for it was too deep and rapid for a ford: they can feel the foundations of it with a staff. In Mr. Hodgkin’s cellar a stag’s head with horns was dug up; probably a temple thereabouts: a square well in his garden three foot and a half one way, and four another.

Ricning-way.

A little further northward upon the Ricning street,[44] which seems to take its name from the Saxon rige, dorsum, is Horreston castle, whose ruins on a hoary rock are nearly obliterated; and out of it they cut great quantities of rubstones to whet scythes withal. We are now got into the very Peak of Derbyshire, the British Alps, where the odd prospects afford some entertainment to a traveller, and relieve the fatigue of so tedious a road. Now you pass over barren moors, in perpetual danger of slipping into coal-pits and lead-mines; or ride for miles together, on the edge of a steep hill, on solid slippery rock or loose stones, with a valley underneath, where you can scarce discover the bottom with your eye; which brought into my mind that beautiful in Virgil,

Saxa per & scopulos & depressas convalles.

Instead of trees and hedges, they fence in their poor meadow or arable with walls of loose stones picked up from beneath their feet. The extended sides of the mountains are generally powdered over as it were with rocks, streams of water dribbling down every where; and now bolder cataracts diversify the romantic scene.

At the smelting-mills they melt down the lead ore, and run it into a mould, whence it becomes pigs as they call it: the bellows continually are kept in motion by running water. We were complemented to be let down two hundred yards deep into the mines, if we pleased. We came to a monstrous parcel of gigantic rocks, seemingly piled one a-top of another as in the wars of the gods, called the Torr: there were a few inhabitants at bottom, in little cottages, who durst trust themselves under so ruinous a shelter: it was fitly represented by those verses of the poet,

Stabat acuta silex, præcisis undique saxis,

Speluncæ dorso insurgens, altissima visu.

Dirarum nidis domus opportuna volucrum! Virg. viii. Æn.

86

DERVENTIO
31 Sept. 1721.

Simon Degg Ar. Castrum Romanum jam suum d.d. W. Stukeley

I took the pains to clamber on hands and knees almost to the top, and entered another hermit’s cell, who had a mind, if possible, to get quite out of the world: it is hewn in the rock, with a most dreary prospect before it: on one end is a crucifix and a little niche, where I suppose the mistaken zeal of the starved anchorite placed his saint, or such trinket. Over-against it, about half a mile off, is another such cliff; but by the care of a gentleman that lives underneath (Mr. Ashe) it is reduced into a more agreeable form: there is an easy ascent up to it by steps hewn out of the rock, and abundance of alcoves, grots, summer-houses, cellars, pinacles, dials, balustrades, urns, &c. all of the same materials: earth is carried to the top, and fine grassy walks with greens planted along them, upon this hanging terrace, whence you have a free view over many a craggy mountain. I was highly pleased with so elegant a composure, where Art and industry had so well played its part against rugged Nature.

Chatsworth.

We went through Wirksworth, and over the rapid Derwent, whilst on a sudden (like the advantageous change of a scene) we were surprised at the sight of Chatsworth, the famous seat of the duke of Devonshire, deservedly reckoned one of the wonders of the Peak, as remarkable for its situation in so wild a place as its curious fabric and ornaments. The river here for a while puts on a smooth aspect, and glides gently by, as unwilling to leave so glorious a place: between it and the house is a fine venerable walk of trees, retaining the name of that great philosopher Hobbes, who studied frequently under its shade. A noble piece of iron-work gates and balusters exposes the front of the house and court, terminated at the corners next the road with two large stone pedestals of Attic work, curiously adorned with trophies of war, and utensils of all the sciences, cut in basso relievo. This face of the building is Ionic, the whole being a square of a single order, but every side of a different model: a court in the middle, with a piazza of Doric columns of one stone each overlaid with prodigious architraves. The stone is of an excellent sort, veined like marble, hewn out of the neighbouring quarries, and tumbled down the adjacent hill: it is introduced into the work in very large sizes, finely jointed. In the anti-room to the hall are flat stones, of fourteen foot square, laid upon the heads of four pillars, and so throughout: in the hall stairs the landing or resting steps of the same dimension: the doors, chimneys, window-cases, stairs, &c. of marble; the sashes very large, gilt; the squares two foot broad: the cielings and walls of all the apartments charged with rare painting of Varrio and other famous hands: the bath-room all of marble curiously wrought. The chapel is a most ravishing place: the altar-end and floor marble, the seats and gallery cedar, the rest of the wall and cieling painted. The gardens abound with green-houses, summer-houses, walks, wildernesses, orangeries, with all the furniture of statues, urns, greens, &c. with canals, basons and water-works of various forms and contrivance, sea-horses, drakes, dolphins, and other fountains that throw up the water: an artificial willow-tree of copper spouts and drops water from every leaf: a wonderful cascade, where, from a neat house of stone like a temple, out of the mouths of beasts, pipes, urns, &c. a whole river descends the slope of a hill, a quarter of a mile in length, over steps, with a terrible noise and broken appearance, till it is lost under ground. Beyond the garden, upon the hills, is a park, and that overlooked by a very high and rocky mountain: here are some statues and other antiquities.

Buxton.

Hence we went by Bakewel, and left Haddon-house belonging to the duke of Rutland on our left hand, in a pleasant and fruitful valley. We travelled ten miles over a perfect desert to Buxton, encompassed with waste and boggy mountains and naked cliffs: the tops of the hills hereabouts are quagmires, or springs, furnishing numerous rivers running hence all manner of ways. Nature seems to have thrown these precipicious heights into the middle of the island on purpose for her limbeck, to distil the liquid sources of springs by some unknown power. The valleys are the firmest ground, made of the gritty washings of the mountains: we were every moment diverted with the appearance of curious plants, but no tree to be seen. At Buxton are the admirable warm springs, which invite numbers of strangers yearly, especially from the northern countries. The duke of Devonshire has built a large and convenient house for their reception: the bath-room is arched over head, and the whole made handsome, convenient, and delightful. This collection of tepid waters, exceeding clear, will receive twenty people at a time to walk and swim in: the temper thereof, equal to new milk, or that of one’s own blood, procures a moderate perspiration: its effect is remarkable for giving that gentle relaxation of the solids, which takes off the weariness and fatigue of a journey, and refreshes immediately: it is useful physically in many cases, and may be indulged more than the hot baths of Somersetshire, which frequently do harm for that reason, through an imprudent use. Such a one as this was imitated by the sumptuous bagnios of the Roman emperors. Sir Tho. Delves, who received a cure here, gave the pump and a pretty stone alcove over the drinking-spring in the yard: the water may be raised to what height you please. Philosophers have long sought for a solution of the cause of these hot springs: the chymists know many mixtures will produce a flame and effervescence, particularly steel filings and sulphur, when water is poured thereon; but that these could continue the same course and quantity of water, and this regular heat, through all ages and seasons, is worthy of admiration. Indulgent Nature indeed has made some amends to the inhabitants of this barren region by this inestimable gift. We found in one of the rooms these verses, wrote upon the wall by a physician that formerly frequented the place:

Corpore debilior Grani se proluit undis,

Quærit aquas Aponi, quem febris atra necat.

Ut penitus renem purget cur Psaulia tanti,

Vel quæ Lucinæ gaudia, Calderiæ?

Sola mihi Buxtona placet, Buxtona Britannis

Undæ Grani, Aponus, Psaulia, Calderiæ.

About half a mile off is that stupendous cavern called Pool’s Hole, under a great mountain: the entrance at the foot thereof is very low and narrow, so that you must stoop to get in: but immediately it dilates into a wide and lofty concavity, which reaches above a quarter of a mile end-wise and farther, as they tell us: some old women with lighted candles are guides in this Cimmerian obscurity: water drops from the roof every where, and incrusts all the stones with long crystals and fluors: whence a thousand imaginary figures are shown you, by the name of lions, fonts, lanterns, organs, flitch of bacon, &c. At length you come to the Queen of Scots pillar, as a terminus of most people’s curiosity. A stream of water runs along the middle, among the fallen rocks, with a hideous noise, re-echoed from all sides of the horrid concave: on the left hand is a sort of chamber, where they say Pool, a famous robber, lived. We may very well apply these verses to the place:

At specus & Caci detecta apparuit ingens

Regia, & umbrosæ penitus patuere cavernæ:

Non secus ac si qua penitus vi terræ dehiscens

Infernas reseret sedes & regna recludat

Pallida, diis invisa, superque immane barathrum

Cernatur—— Virg. Æn. viii.

Within appears old Pool’s tremendous cave,

With glimmering lights redoubled horror shown;

Yawning, as earth by strong convulsions torn

Opens the caverns of the Stygian king

Dire, hateful to the gods, and the black pit

Discloses wide——

We entered the pleasanter country of Cheshire at Lyme, the seat of Mr. Leigh: here are curious gardens, lakes, cascades, fountains, summer-houses. This is a fine level, woody, and rich county, abounding with lakes of water called meres: the towns stand but thin, and it being mostly inclosure, there are paved causeways for horses along the clayey roads: many ancient seats and parks, but most ruinous and decayed. We were entertained by the worthy Sir Francis Leycester at his seat, Nether Tabley, by Knutsford, upon the Roman way from Mancunium to Deva: this house stands in the midst of a mere: here is a good library completed by the curious possessor, with a vast addition to his ancestors’ store, of all the English history especially. In cleansing this mote some time since they found an old British axe, or some such thing, made of large flint, neatly ground into an edge, with a hole in the middle to fasten into a handle: it would serve for a battle-axe. Rotherston church stands upon a hill, and commands a lovely prospect across a mere, a mile and half in length and a mile over, where amongst great variety of fish are smelts found, properly inhabitants of the sea. There is a floating island, formed from turf, sustained by implication of the roots of alnus nigra baccifera growing on it, which the wind wafts over from one side to the other. On the south side of the steeple is this inscription:

Orate pro anima domini willmi hardwicke vicarii istius ecclesiae
et pro animabus omnium parochianorum qui hoc sculpt.

Out of the church-yard you see to the Yorkshire hills beyond Manchester. By the church-porch were lately dug up three large stone coffins. In the church are abundance of coats of arms. Among other curious plants grow hereabouts calamus aromaticus and ros solis. The Roman road from Manchester to Chester passes the Mersey river at Stretford, through Altringham, to the north of Rotherston mere; then by Chapel in the street, by Winingham, to Northwich; then by Sandy way, the Chamber or Edesbury, it passes the river at Stanford, so called from the stony ford, to Chester.

Condate.

We were at Northwich, which I take to be Condate, as all distances persuade me. It is still, among others hereabouts, famous for brine-springs, whence they make great quantities of finest salt, by boiling the water in large iron pans of small depth: as fast as the salt crystallises, they rake it out and dry it in conic wicker baskets: the duty paid by it amounts to a great sum of money. About thirty years ago on the south side of the town they discovered immense mines of rock salt, which they continually dig up, and send in great lumps to the maritime parts, where it is dissolved and made into eating-salt. We were let down by a bucket a hundred and fifty foot deep to the bottom of the salt quarry, a most pleasant subterraneous prospect: it looks like a large cathedral, supported by rows of pillars and roof of crystal, all of the same rock, transparent and glittering from the numerous candles of the workmen, labouring with their steel pick-axes in digging it away: this rock-work of salt extends to several acres of ground. There is a very good church in the town: the end of the choir is semicircular: the roof of the church is very fine, whereon are carved several of the wicker baskets before mentioned; whence they report it was built out of the profits of the salt works. At Lawton Yates they bore for the salt spring to sixty yards deep; lower down, at Hassal, it is forty seven; at Wheeloc, eighteen; about Middlewich it is less; at Northwich it arises to open day; which seems to intimate that the salt spring runs between layers of the earth in an horizontal line: upon boring, it rises with great impetuosity, so that the workmen have scarce time to get out of the wells. This is all along the side of a brook that comes from a remarkable hill called Mawcop, upon the edge of Staffordshire, so that the ground rises above the true level in the mentioned proportion.

Mancunium.

Manchester, in Lancashire, is the Mancunium of the Romans, the largest, most rich, populous, and busy village in England. There are about two thousand four hundred families. The site of the Roman castrum, between Sir John Bland’s and Manchester, is now called Knock Castle. They have a fabulous report of Turquin a giant living there, killed by Sir Lancelot de Lake, a knight of king Arthur’s: in it was found a Saxon ring, mentioned in Hickes’s Thesaurus, now in possession of Sir Hans Sloan. A Roman altar dug up here, described by Dr. Lister, Philos. Trans. N. 155. p. 457. and a large gold Roman ring. The Castle field, as sometime called, is about as big as Lincoln’s-Inn square, the foundation of the wall and ditch remaining. Some call it Man-castle: its name comes from the British maen, lapis, meaning its rocky soil. The old church, though very large, having three rows of neat pillars, was not capable of containing the people at divine service; whence they raised, by voluntary subscriptions, a new edifice after the London models, finished last year: the choir is alcove-fashion, and the pilasters painted of lapis-lazuli colour. There is a fine new street built to the north. Their trade, which is incredibly large, consists much in fustians, girth-web, tickings, tapes, &c. which is dispersed all over the kingdom, and to foreign parts: they have looms that work twenty-four laces at a time, which was stolen from the Dutch. The college has a good library for public use, endowed with 116l. per ann. to buy more books, and a salary for the librarian. There is a free-school maintained by a mill upon the river, which raises 300l. per annum. On the same river, for the space of three miles upwards, there are no less than sixty water-mills. The town stands chiefly on a rock; and across the river is another large town, called Salthorp. Dr. Yarburgh, son to him late of Newark, showed me a great collection of old Greek, Persian, Tartarian, and Punic coins brought from Asia. About a mile off, at the seat of Sir John Bland, is a Roman altar, lately dug up thereabouts: in the mosses, as they call them in this country, they often find reliques of antiquity, such as arrow-heads, celts, pick-axes, kettles, &c. of brass; many are in the repository of the library: likewise subterraneous fir-trees, as in most other countries in the like sort of ground. French wheat grows commonly hereabouts, much used among the poor people, of very different species from ours: they have likewise wheat with long beards like barley, and barley with four rows of grain on an ear, and great plenty of potatoes.

We passed through Delamere forest, upon the Roman road, in our way to Chester. They say here was formerly an old city, now called the Chamber on the Forest; I suppose, some fort or camp to secure the road. From hence you have a fine prospect to the Welsh mountains, such a noble scene of nature as I never beheld before. Beeston castle is on our left, built upon a rocky precipice.Deva. Chester is a fine old city, and colony of the Romans, the residence some time of the legio vicesima victrix: a hypocaust was lately found, lined with bricks made by that legion. I need not repeat what other authors say of the antiquities at this place. The rows or piazzas are singular, through the whole town giving shelter to foot people. I fancied it a remain of the Roman porticos. Four churches beside the cathedral, which is a pile venerable indeed for age and almost ruin: there are shadows of many pictures on the walls, madonnas, saints, bishops, &c. but defaced. At the west end are some images of the earls Palatine of Chester in niches. The adjoining abbey is quite ruined. The walls round the city are kept in very good repair at the charge of the corporation, and serve for a pleasant airy walk. The Exchange is a neat building, supported by columns, thirteen foot high, of one stone each: over it is the city-hall, a well-contrived court of judicature. The castle was formerly the palace, and where the earls assembled their parliaments, and enacted laws independent of the kings of England, and determined all judicial trials themselves. Abundance of Roman and British antiquities are found hereabouts. At Stretton, Roman coins, and a camp-kettle of copper dug up at Codington: near it divers other antiquities. The old Watling-street way from Dover came originally hither through Stretton and Aldford; though I suppose in after-times of the Romans they turned it off more southward into Wales, for sake of the many towns seated on the Severn.

Wales.

Next we entered Wales, and came to Wrexham in Flintshire. Here is a good church, and the finest tower-steeple I ever saw, except Boston: it is adorned with abundance of images. There is a new town-house built like that at Chester. The common people speak the Welsh. The gentry are well-bred, hospitable, generous and open-hearted: the females are generally handsome. I took a great deal of pleasure in hearing the natives talk in their own language, and remarked a great many words among them still retained in our country of Lincolnshire Holland: it is probable enough that our fens and morasses might be a long security to us against the Saxons, as it had been to them against the Romans. I shall give instances of a few words. When we put oatmeal into water-gruel or milk, we call it lithing the pot: the same is signified by the Welsh word llith. Davis thinks the English slide comes from the British llithro, labi: we call it slither. A bull-beggar, or boggleboe, is manifestly the British bwbach, with all its synonymes. A top we call a whirligig, purely British. We say a whisking fellow, dexterous, ready: British gwisgi, To whyne; British gwynio. Very many such like occur in Dr. Skinner’s Etymologicum, which he would fain persuade us the Welsh learnt from the Saxons, Bonium.but without reason. We passed by the valley upon the river Dee, where was the famous British monastery in early times, whereof Pelagius was abbot, whose British name was Morgan; but no remains discernible. What some talk concerning it, probably the vestiges of the Roman city; for many foundations, coins, and antiquities have been dug up; and not long since two gates of the city were left. We entered Shropshire, passing by Ellsmere and Wem to Newport, where is a noble foundation for a school well endowed by William Adams esq; to the value of 7000l. over the door is this distich, in fundatorem:

Scripsisti heredem patriam tibi quæ dedit ortum,

Scriberis ergo tuæ, jure, pater patriæ.

he gave 550l. towards building the town-house.

Presently entering Staffordshire, we came into the Watling-street, laid very broad and deep with gravel not yet worn out, where it goes over commons and moors. It is raised a good height above the soil, and so strait, that upon an eminence you may see it ten or twenty miles before you, and as much behind, over many hill-tops answering one the other as a visto of trees. Here and there, between one Roman town and another, you meet with the remains of an old fort or guard-place. We lodged at an inn called Ivesey bank, on the borders between Staffordshire and Shropshire. About a mile off, in a large wood, stands Boscobel house, where the Pendrils lived, who preserved king Charles II. after Worcester fight, and famous for the Royal Oak.Royal Oak. The grand-daughter of that William Pendril still lives in the house. The floor of the garret (which is a popish chapel) being matted, prevents any suspicion of a little cavity with a trap-door over the stair-case, where the king was hid: his bed was artfully placed behind some wainscot that shut up very close. A bow-shot from the house, just by a horse-track passing through the wood, stood the Royal Oak into which the king, and his companion colonel Carlos, climbed by means of the hen-roost ladder, when they judged it no longer safe to stay in the house; the family reaching them victuals with the nut-hook. It happened (as they related it to us) that whilst these two were in the tree, a party of the enemy’s horse, sent to search the house, came whistling and talking along this road: when they were just under the tree, an owl flew out of a neighbouring tree, and hovered along the ground as if her wings were broke, which the soldiers merrily pursued without any circumspection. The tree is now inclosed within a brick wall, the inside whereof is covered with laurel; of which we may say, as Ovid did of that before the Augustan palace, mediamque tuebere quercum. The oak is, in the middle, almost cut away by travellers whose curiosity leads them to see it: close by the side grows a young thriving plant from one of its acorns. The king, after the restoration, reviewing the place, carried some of the acorns, and set them in St. James’s park, or garden, and used to water them himself: he gave this Pendril an estate of about 200l. per annum, which still remains among them. Over the door of the inclosure I took this inscription cut in marble.

Felicissimam arborem quam in asylum

potentissimi regis Caroli II. Deus O. M.

per quem reges regnant hic crescere

voluit, tam in perpetuam rei tantæ memoriam,

quam specimen firmæ in reges

fidei, muro cinctam posteris commendant

Basilius & Jana Fitzherbert.

Quercus amica Jovi.

Entering Staffordshire, we went along the Watling-street by Stretton and Water-Eaton: where a brook crosses the road was the Pennocrucium.Pennocrucium of the Romans, as mentioned in the Itinerary of Antoninus. A little way off is Penkridge, which no doubt retains somewhat of the ancient name.

Litchfield.

Litchfield is a city neat enough. The cathedral is a very handsome pile, with numerous statues in niches at the front, which appears very majestic half a mile off, there being two high spires, and another higher in the middle of the cross. The rebels intirely ruined all the ornament of the inside, with the brass inscriptions, tombs, &c. and were going to pull down the whole fabric for sale. It is built in the middle of a bog for security, and held out some fierce attacks for king Charles I. This was made a metropolitical see by the potent king Offa. St. Ceadda lived an eremitical life here by the spring near Stow church. This town arose from the ruin of the Roman Etocetum.Etocetum, a mile off, where the Rickning and Watling streets cross, now called Chesterfield wall, from some reliques of its fortifications: it stands high: the Rickning street is very visible southward, passing within a mile of Fotherby, and so to a park in Sutton Colfield, Warwickshire; thence to Bromicham. Castle hill, two miles hence above Stone hall, is a camp, the port eastward. A mile and half from Wall is West-wall, a camp; and Knaves-castle, near the Watling-street, probably a guard upon the road: it is a circle of twenty yards diameter, with a square in the middle, three or four yards broad, with a breast-work about it: the whole is inclosed with three ditches: it stands in a large common. This Rickning is all along called by Dr. Plot Icknilway, but injuriously, and tends only to the confusion of things; I suppose, to favour his Iceni in this country; which notion is but chimerical. We passed through Tamworth, pleasantly situated in a plain watered by the river Tame, which divides it into two counties: it was the residence of the Mercian kings, and has been secured by a vallum and ditch quite round. Here died the noble lady Elfleda, daughter of king Alfred, queen of the Mercian kingdom, anno 919. This town, by William the Conqueror, was given to the Marmyons, who built the castle here, hereditary champions to the kings of England; from whom that office descended to the Dymokes of Lincolnshire. We went through Bosworth over the field where Henry VII. won the kingdom by a bold and well-timed battle.

Boston, Dec. 1713.

ITER SABRINIUM. IV.

O mitte mirari beatæ

Fumum, & opes, strepitumque Romæ. Hor.

To TANCRED ROBINSON, M. D. &c.

TO you, Sir, that have visited the boasted remains of Italy, and other transmarine parts, it would seem presumptuous to offer the trifle of the following letter, were I not sufficiently apprized of your great humanity and candour, which prompts you to encourage even the blossoms of commendable studies. You, that have made an intimate search, and happily obtained a thorough insight into Nature, consider that she proceeds regularly by successive gradations from little things to greater. The acquisition of any part of science is owing to a conversation with its elements and first principles, whose very simplicity renders them not disagreeable.

These pages were memoradums I took in a summer’s journey with our friend Mr. Roger Gale. This being my first expedition since I came to live at London, I design as early as possible to commemorate the felicity I enjoyed thereby of your acquaintance, and the opportunity of observing the noble character you sustain, of possessing all the wisdom that ancient or modern learning can give us without vanity, and that the physician, the scholar, and the gentleman, meet in you.

Bibroci.

I observe, in Berkshire, a river called Ock, running in the north side of the county by Abingdon into the Thames, which in the Celtic language signifies sharp or swift, or perhaps water in general: this is in Oke hundred. In the south side of the county is the town of Okeingham. These seem plainly remnants of the old name of the inhabitants of this country, Bibroci, not yet observed. Near Reading is Laurence-Waltham, which has been Roman: there is a field called Castle-field, and vast numbers of coins found. By it is Sunning, once an episcopal see. From London to Maidenhead it is a gravelly soil; then a marly chalk begins.

Reading.

Reading is a large and populous town upon the fall of the Kennet into the Thames; in the angle of which it stands upon a rising ground, overlooking the meadows, which have a fine appearance all along the rivers. There are three churches, built of flint and square stone in the quincunx fashion, with tall towers of the same. Arch-bishop Laud was born here. The abbey stood in a charming situation: large ruins of it still visible, built of flint; the walls about eight foot thick at present, though the stone that faced them be pillaged away: the remainder is so hard cemented, that it is not worth while to separate them: many remnants of arched vaults a good height above ground, whereon stood, as I suppose, the hall, lodgings, &c. there is one large room about sixteen yards broad, and twenty-eight long, semi-circular towards the east end, with five narrow windows, three doors towards the west, and three windows over them: it was arched over, and seems to have supported a chapel, in which we fancy king Henry I. was buried with his queen: he founded this abbey upon an old one, that had been formerly erected by a TAB. XXVI.Saxon lady. There are the remains of bastions, part of the fortifications, when garrisoned by the parliament army in the civil wars: TAB. XXIII.the abbey gate-house is yet pretty intire. Here was a famous old castle, but long since demolished, perhaps originally Roman. Near the trench the Danes made between the river Kennet and the Thames, is Catsgrove hill, a mile off Reading: in digging there they find first a red gravel, clay, chalk, flints, and then a bed of huge petrified oysters five yards thick, twenty foot below the surface: these shells are full of sea sand.[45] Dr. Plot, in Oxfordshire, p. 119. who supposes these appearances only the sports of Nature, solves this matter after a way that will induce one to think his cause reduced to extremity. On the right hand, just beyond Theal, is Inglefield, where king Ethelwolf routed the Danes.

26

Ruins of Reding Abby Aug^t. 14. 1721.
Neustrius Henricus situs hic, Inglorius urna
nunc jacet ejectus, tumulum novus advena quærit
Frustra——

I. V^der. Gucht Sculp.

Stukeley delin.

23

GATEHOUSES

Reading Abby Gatehouse. 14 Aug 1721

The College Gate at Worcester. 30 Aug 1721

Stukeley delin.

I. Harris sculp.

60

Ad SPINAS

1. Icening Street.
2. Donington Castle.
3. Way to Winchester.
4. Speen.

Prospect of Newberry from the South between Winchester and Silchester Road
Iun. 28, 1723. Stukeley del:

10·2^d.

Spinae
Iun 28 1723

Stukeley delin.

Parker Sculp^t.

62

Cunetio
Castrum
6 July. 1723.
Algernonio Com de Hartford d.d. W. Stukeley.

Stukeley delin.

63

Prospect of Marlborough from the South. 29 Iun 1723.CVNETIO.

A. Marlborough Mount. B. the Road to Kennet. C. the Castle. D. S^t. Peters Church. E. S^t. Marys. F. the Road to Ramsbury. G. the Kennet. H. the remains of the Roman Castrum. I. Lady Winchilseas. K. Preshute.

Stukeley, del.

11·2^d.

Cunetio
29 Iun. 1723

Stukeley delin.

Parker Sculp^t.

A little west of NewberryAd Spinam. is a village called Speen; which has given antiquarians a reasonable hint of looking for the town, in Antoninus called TAB. LX.ad Spinas, hereabouts; and doubtless it was where now stands the north part of the town of Newberry, still called Spinham.TAB. X. 2d Vol. At this place the great Icening-street road, coming from the Thames at Goring, and another Roman road running hence through Speen to Hungerford, and so to Marlborough, crosses the Kennet river. Newberry has derived itself and name from the ruins of the old one; and the grounds thereabouts are called Spinham lands. Dunington castle was once in the possession of Geffrey Chaucer. A remarkable large oak, venerable through many ages, because it bore his name, was felled in the civil wars. The Kennet, still called by the country people Cunnet, near Hungerford, parts the soil, that on the north side being a red clay gravel, that on the south a chalk. I have often wished that a map of soils was accurately made, promising to myself that such a curiosity would furnish us with some new notions of geography, and of the theory of the earth, which has only hitherto been made from hypotheses. This brings into my mind a remarkable passage in Sir Robert Atkins’s Glocestershire: “Lay a line (says he) from the mouth of the Severn to Newcastle, and so quite round the terrestrial globe, and coal is to be found every where near that line, and scarce any where else.�[46]

Cunetio.

From Newberry the Roman road (I believe coming from Silchester) passes east and west to Marlborough, the RomanTAB. LXII. LXIII. Cunetio,[47] named from the river. This town consists chiefly of one broad and strait street, and for the most part upon the original ground-plot; nor does it seem unlikely that the narrow piazzaTAB. XI. 2d vol. continued all along the sides of the houses is in imitation of them: the square about the church in the eastern part one may imagine the site of a temple fronting this street: to the south are some reliques of a priory: the gate-house is left: on the north has been another religious house, whereof the chapel remains, now turned into a dwelling-house. Where now is the seat of my lord Hartford was the site of the Roman castrum, for they find foundations and Roman coins; I saw one of Titus in large brass: but towards the river, and without my lord’s garden-walls, is one angle of it left very manifestly, the rampart and ditch intire: the road going over the bridge cuts it off from the limits of the present castle: the ditch is still twenty foot broad in some part: it passed originally on the south of the summer-house, and so along the garden-wall, where it makes the fence, to the turn of the corner: the mark of it is still apparent broader than the ditch, which has been repaired since, but of narrower dimension: then I suppose it went through the garden by the southern foot of the mount, and round the house through the court-yard, where I have marked the track thereof with pricked lines in [Plate 62]. There is a spring in the ditch, so that the foss of the castrum was always full of water. I suppose it to have been five hundred Roman feet square within, and the Roman road through the present street of Marlborough went by the side of it. Afterward, in Saxon or Norman times, they built a larger castle, upon the same ground, after their model, and took in more compass for the mount; which obliged the road to go round it with a turn, till it falls in again on the west side of the mount at the bounds of Preshute parish. Roman coins have been found in shaping the mount; which was the keep of the later castle, and now converted into a pretty spiral walk, on the top of which is an octagonal summer-house representedTAB. I. Tab. I. This neighbouring village, Preshute, has its name from the meadows the church stands in, which are very low: in the windows upon a piece of glass is written, DNS RICHARDUS HIC VICARIUS, who I believe lived formerly in a little house at Marlborough, over-against the castle, now an ale-house, where his name is cut in wood in the same old letters over the door.

Leucomagus.

Great Bedwin I take to be the Leucomagus of Ravennas; for that and the present name signify the same thing, viz. the white town, the soil being chalk: he there places it just before Marlborough, cunetzione. We saw near it the continuation of Wansdike.TAB. LXIV. This town is an old corporation: in it the famous Dr. Tho. Willis, the ornament of our faculty, was born. In the church lies the monument of a knight cross-legged; on his shield, barry of six argent and gules, an orle of martlets sable; over all three escallops of the first on a bend of the third. Upon a stone in brass in the choir,

Bellocampus eram graja genetrice semerus

Tres habui natos, est quibus una soror.

Here lyeth the body of John Seymour, son and heyre of Sir John Seymour and of Margery oon of the doughters of Henry Wentworth knyght, which decesed the xv day of July the yer of our lord M. D. X. on whose soul Ihu have mercy, and of your charity say a pater nostr and a ave.

Hic jacet dns Thomas Dageson quondam vicarius istius ecclesie qui obiit 7. die Decemb. A^o dni. M.D.I. cujus anime propitietur deus amen. on a brass in the middle aile.

Roger de Stocre chev. ici gycht deu de sa alme eyt merci. in the south transept.

The town arms are, a man standing in a castle, with a sword in his hand. Castle copse, south-east from the town about half a mile, as much from Wansdike, containing about fourteen acres, seems the old Roman castle. Howisdike I suppose a camp upon an eminence and in an angle made by the Wansdike. They showed us a brass town gallon, from the Winchester standard, given by my lord Nottingham. In the east window of this church some time since was the picture of a priest with two crutches, a cup in his hand, and a cann standing by him, with this inscription, which Mr. le Neve Norroy gave me: he transcribed it out of an old MS. now in the library of Holkham in Norfolk, formerly Sir Ed. Coke’s book; and for its antiquity I think it not unworthy of mentioning.

1

Rural Curiosity.

Marlborough Mount

Cascade at Wilton.

Dedicated to the Right Honorable the Lady Hartford.

3

B. S^t. Peters.

A. the scite of the Roman Castrum

View of Lord Hartfords House at Marlborough 29 Iun. 1723.

Stukeley del:

64

View of Great Bedwin & Wansdike 2 Iuly. 1723. Leucomagus.

Stukeley del.

G SU PERIS APELE VIKERE DE SET EGLISE

SU MA POTENTE SU APUE TOT EN TELE GYSE

MON HANAP AY EN POYNE E BEVEREI SANS FEINTISE

MON POT A MON DERER MISS E LA NOVELE GYISE

DE MON POT E MON HANAP SEREY JUSTICE

KE NUL NI BEYVE SANS NE Y AY M ATENTE MISE.

G su Peris apele vikere de set eglise

Su ma potente su apue tot en tele gyse

Mon hanap ay en poyne e beverei sans feintise

Mon pot a mon derer miss e la novele gyise

De mon pot e mon hanap serey justice

Ke nul ni beyve sans ne y ay m atente mise.

In modern French,

Je suis Peris appellé vicaire de cette eglise

Sur ma potence suis appuié tout en tell guise

Mon hanap enpoigne & boirai sans feintise

Mon pot a mon derriere mis a la nouvelle guise

De mon pot & mon hanap serai justice

Que nul ne boive sans que n’y ai m’autant mis.

In English,

I am Peris call’d, vicar of this church,

Upon my crutches leaning just in this wise;

My pouch in my fist, and I’ll drink without guile;

My pot at my back set after the new mode:

To my pot and my pouch I will have justice done,

For none shall drink without putting in as much again.

We were entertained at Wilton, the noble seat of the great earl of Pembroke; and deservedly may I style it the School of Athens. The glories of this place I shall endeavour to rehearse in a separate discourse.

Crekelade, probably a Roman town upon the Thames; for from this a very plain Roman road runs to Cirencester. Much has been the dispute formerly about a fancied university in this place, and the little town in its neighbourhood Latin, which it would be senseless only to repeat. The word Crekelade is derived from the cray-fishes in the river: Lade is no more than a water-course, but more especially such a one as is made by art;[48] and we here find the river pent up for a long way together by factitious banks, in order the better to supply their mills: so Latin is no more than ladeings, or the meadows where these channels run. Ledencourt, near Newent, Glocestershire, I suppose, acknowledges the like original; and many more. The town of Lechelade falls under the same predicament: leche signifies a watery place subject to inundations; as Leach, a town near Boston before mentioned, anciently written Leche: as Camden says of Northleach, p. 240. and Litchfield hence fetches its etymology from the marshy bog that environs the church, rather than the superstitious notion there current. Not far hence are two towns called Sarney and Sarncote, from the Roman causeway; sarn in Welsh importing a paved way. There is another upon the same road between Cirencester and Glocester.

Corinium. Dobunorum

Cirencester was anciently the Corinium of the Romans, a great and populous city, built upon the intersection of this road we have been traveling, and the great Foss road going to the Bath: it was inclosed with walls and a ditch of a vast compass, which I traced quite round. Under the north-east side of the wall runs the river Churn, whence the names of the town: the foundation of the wall is all along visible; the ditch is so where that is quite erased.

————sic omnia fatis

In pejus ruere ac retro sublapsa referri.Virg. G. i.

A great part of the ground comprehended within this circuit is now pasture, corn-fields, or converted into gardens, beside the site of the present town. Here they dig up antiquities every day, especially in the gardens; and in the plain fields, the track of foundations of houses and streets are evident enough. Here are found many Mosaic pavements, rings, intaglia’s, and coins innumerable, especially in one great garden called lewis grounds, which signifies in British a palace, llys. I suppose it was the prætorium, or head magistrate’s quarters. Large quantities of carved stones are carried off yearly in carts, to mend the highways, besides what are useful in building. A fine Mosaic pavement dug up here Sept. 1723. with many coins. I bought a little head which has been broke off from a basso relievo, and seems by the tiara, of a very odd shape, like fortification work, to have been the genius of a city, or some of the deæ matres, which are in old inscriptions, such like in Gruter, p. 92. The gardener told me he had lately found a fine little brass image, I suppose one of the lares; but, upon a diligent scrutiny, his children had played it away. Mr. Richard Bishop, owner of the garden, on a hillock near his house, dug up a vault sixteen foot long and twelve broad, supported with square pillars of Roman brick three foot and a half high; on it a strong floor of terras: there are now several more vaults near it, on which grow cherry-trees like the hanging gardens of Babylon. I suppose these the foundations of a temple; for in the same place they found several stones of the shafts of pillars six foot long, and bases of stone near as big in compass as his summer-house adjoining (as he expressed himself): these, with cornices very handsomely moulded and carved with modilions, and the like ornaments, were converted into swine-troughs: some of the stones of the bases were fastened together with cramps of iron, so that they were forced to employ horses to draw them asunder; and they now lie before the door of his house as a pavement: capitals of these pillars were likewise found, and a crooked cramp of iron ten or twelve foot long, which probably was for the architraves of a circular portico. A Mosaic pavement near it, and intire, is now the floor of his privy vault. Mr. Aubury in his MS. coll. says an hypocaust was here discovered; and Mr. Tho. Pigot, fellow of Wadham, wrote a description thereof. Sometimes they dig up little stones, as big as a shilling, with stamps on them: I conjecture they are counterfeit dies to cast money in.

32

The White Fryers in Glocester Aug. 24. 1721.

Stukeley delin.

E. Kirkall sculp:

Browne Willys Ar. Reliquias sacras d. d. W^s. Stukeley.

12·2^d.

Glevvm

We saw a monumental inscription upon a stone at Mr. Isaac Tibbot’s, in Castle-street, in very large letters four inches long:

D

M
IVLIAE CASTAE
CONIVGI

VIX
ANN

XXXIII.

It was found at a place half a mile west of the town, upon the north side of the Foss road, called Quern from the quarries of stone thereabouts. Five such stones lay flatwise upon two walls in a row, end to end; and underneath were the corpses of that family, as we may suppose. He keeps Julia Casta’s skull in his summer-house; but people have stole all her teeth out for amulets against the ague. Another of the stones serves for a table in his garden: it is handsomely squared, five foot long and three and a half broad, without an inscription. Another of them is laid for a bridge over a channel near the cross in Castle-street. There were but two of them which had inscriptions: the other inscription perished, being unluckily exposed to the wet in a frosty season: probably, of her husband. Several urns have been found thereabouts, being a common burying place: I suppose them buried here after christianity. In the church, which is a very handsome building of the style of St. Mary’s at Cambridge, are a great many ancient brass inscriptions and figures: the windows are full of good painted glass: there is a fine lofty tower. Little of the abbey is now left, beside two old gate-houses neither large nor good: the circuit of it is bounded for a good way by the city walls. East of the town about a a quarter of a mile, is a mount or barrow called Starbury, where several gold Roman coins have been dug up, of about the time of Julian, which we saw: some people ploughing in the field between it and the town, south of the hill, took up a stone coffin with a body in it covered with another stone. West of the town, behind my lord Bathurst’s garden, is another mount, called Grismunds or Gurmonds, of which several fables are told: probably raised by the Danes when they laid siege to this place.

Glevum.

Hence our journey lay by Stretton over the continuation of the Roman road from Crekelade, which appears with a very high ridge and very strait for eight miles, to Birdlip hill, prodigiously steep and rocky to the north-west, till we came to Glocester, a colony of the Romans. The old proverb, TAB XXXII.“As sure as God’s at Glocester,� surely meant the vast number of churches and religious foundations here; for you can scarce walk past ten doors but somewhat of that sort occurs. TAB. XII. 2d Vol.The western part of the cathedral is old and mean; but from the tower, which is very handsome, you have a most glorious prospect eastward through the choir finely vaulted at top, and the Lady’s chapel, to the east window, which is very magnificent: here, on the north side, lies that unfortunate king, Edward II. and out of the abundance of pious offerings to his remains, the religious built this choir: before the high altar in the middle thereof lies the equally unfortunate prince Robert, eldest son of William the Conqueror, after a miserable life: but he rests quietly in his grave; which cannot be said of his younger brother, Henry I. before spoken of at Reading abbey: he has a wooden tomb over him, painted with his coats of arms, and upon it his effigies, in Irish oak, cross-legged like a Jerusalem knight. The cloysters in this cathedral are beautiful, beyond any thing I ever saw, in the style of King’s-college chapel in Cambridge. Nothing could ever have made me so much in love with Gothic architecture (as called); and I judge, for a gallery, library, or the like, it is the best manner of building; because the idea of it is taken from a walk of trees, whose branching heads are curiously imitated by the roof. There are large remains of several abbeys of black and white friers, &c. I saw this distich cut in wood over an old door of a house:

Cum ruinosa domus quondam quam tunc renovavit

Monachus Urbanus Osborn John rite vocavit.

This city abounds much with crosses and statues of the kings of England, and has a handsome prospect of steeples, some without a church. Here are several market-houses supported with pillars; among the rest a very old one of stone, Gothic architecture, uncommon and ancient, now turned into a cistern for water. A mile or two distant from the city is a very pleasant hill, called Robin Hood’s: I suppose it may have been the rendezvous of youth formerly to exercise themselves in archery upon festivals, as now a walk for the citizens. By this city, the Glevum of the Romans, the Ricning-street way runs from the mouth of the Severn into Yorkshire. I have nothing new as to its Roman antiquities; and since that is out of dispute, I hasten to Worcester.

Branonium.

It was anciently called Branonium, which the Welsh corrupted into Wrangon, prefixing Caer, as was their method; and thence our Worcester: it signifies the city ad frontem aquæ. The commandery here, formerly belonging to St. John’s of Jerusalem, is now possessed by the hospitable My. Wylde: it is a fine old house of timber in the form of a court: the hall makes one side thereof, roofed with Irish oak: the windows adorned with imagery and coats armorial of stained glass: built for the reception of pilgrims: it stands just without the south gate of the city in the London road, where the heat of the famous battle happened between king Charles II. and Oliver Cromwell. Digging in the garden they frequently find the bones of the slain. Above, in the park, is to be seen a great work, of four bastions, called the Royal Mount, whence a vallum and ditch runs both ways to encompass this side of the city. Here I suppose the storm began, when the Royalists were driven back into the city with great slaughter; and the king escaped being made a prisoner in the narrow street at this gate (as they say) by a loaded cart of hay purposely overthrown; by that means he had time to retire at the opposite gate to an old house called White Ladys, being formerly a nunnery in possession of the family of Cookseys, where he left his gloves and garters, which a descendant of that family, of the same name, now keeps. The chapel of this nunnery is standing, and has some painted saints upon the wall of one end. A mile and half above the south gate, on the top of the hill, is the celebrated Perry wood, where Oliver Cromwell’s army lay.

TAB. XVIII.

The collegiate church is stately enough: in it is buried the restless king John; not where now his monument stands in the choir before the high altar, but under a little stone before the altar of the eastermost wall of the church; on each side him, upon the ground, lie the effigies of the two holy bishops and his chief saints Wolstan and Oswald, from whose vicinity he hoped to be safe from harm: the image of the king likewise I suppose formerly lay here upon the ground, now elevated upon a tomb in the choir as aforesaid. There is a large and handsome stone chapel over the monument of prince Arthur, son of Henry VII. on the south side of the high altar. The cloysters are very perfect, and the chapter-house is large, supported, as to its arched roof, with one umbilical pillar: it is now become a library well furnished, and has a good many old manuscripts. There is a large old gate-house standing, and near it the castle, with a very high artificial mount or keep nigh the river. We met here with an odd instance of a prodigious memory, in a person the powers of whose soul are run out (as we may speak) intirely into that one; for otherwise his capacity is very weak: if we name any passage in the whole Bible, he will immediately tell you what book, chapter, and verse, it is in; a truly living concordance. Here are a great many churches, and in good repair: one steeple is octangular, another is remarkable for its lofty spire. A large bridge of six arches over the beautiful Severn, enriched on both sides with pleasant meadows. This is a large city, very populous and busy, and affords several fine prospects, particularly from Perry wood. No doubt but this was a Roman city; yet we could find no remains, but a place in it called Sidbury, which seems to retain from its name some memorial of that sort.

18

King Johns Monument before the Altar in Worcester Choir.

Præhonorabili D^no. Eduardo
cultori & fautori

D^no. Harley bonarum Artium
Tabula votiva.

J. Pine sculp.

W. Stukeley designat

85

ARICONIVM
9^th. Sept. 1721.

Tempus edax Rerum Tuq_ue Invidiosa Vetustas
Omnia destruitis. Vitiataq_ue dentibus Ævi
Paulatim lenta consumitis Omnia Morte.
Ov.

Kenchester.

The City contains 21 Acres.

Jacobo Hill Ar. J. C. Vicinæ Civitatis formam consecrat W. Stukeley.

Stukeley delin.

A Roman road goes hence along the river to Upton, where antiquities are dug up, (I take it for Ypocessa.Ypocessa of Ravennas) and so to Tewksbury, where it meets with the Ricning-street way. A little below Worcester a river called Teme falls into the Severn; and many other synonymous rivers there are in England, beside the great Thames, which shows it a common name to rivers in the old Celtic language, and the same with the Greek Ποταμος, the first syllable cut off. A little above, a river called Saltwarp falls into the Severn from Droitwich, a Roman town, which occurs too in Ravennas under the name of Salinis.Salinis; and they still make salt at the place. From hence I made an excursion to Malvern.Great Malvern, a considerable priory at the bottom of a prodigious hill of that name: the church is very large and beautiful, with admirable painted glass in all the windows, and several old monuments: upon a stone now in the body of the church, but taken from without the south side in a garden, which was anciently the south wing, this.

PHILOSOPHVS DIGNVS BONVS ASTROLOGVS LOTHERING,

VIR PIVS AC HVMILIS MONACHVS PRIOR HVIVS OVILIS

HAC IACET IN CISTA GEOMETRICVS AC ABACISTA

DOCTOR WALCHERVS FLET PLEBS DOLET VNDIQ. CLERVS

HVIC LVX PRIMA MORI DEDIT OCTOBRIS SENIORI

VIVAT UT IN CELIS EXORET QVISQ. FIDELIS M. C. XXXV.[49]

there is a carved stone image, by the south wall of the choir, of very rude and ancient workmanship: it is a knight covered with mail and his surcoat; in his right hand a halbert like a pick-axe, in his left a round target. Here are many coats of arms and cognizances upon a glazed sort of brick; such I have seen at other places. A handsome gate-house is left, and from the houses in the town you command a very noble prospect over Worcester, as far as Edghill, as they tell us: it is thought the Malvern has metals in its bowels. We diverted ourselves, as we rode through Dean forest, with a house after the primitive style, built round an oak tree, whose branches are still green with leaves. Vide Vitruv. L. II. C. I. Two thousand years ago, one would have suspected it to be a Druid’s.

The city of Hereford probably sprung up from the ruin of the Roman Ariconium.Ariconium, now Kenchester, three miles off, higher up the river Wye, but not very near it; which may be a reason for its decay. TAB. LXXXV.Ariconium stands upon a little brook called the Ine, which thence encompassing the walls of Hereford falls into the Wye. Two great Roman ways here cross each other: one called the Port-way comes from Bullæum, now Buelt, in Radnorshire; passing eastward by Kenchester, through Stretton, over the river Lug, to Stretton Grantham upon the Frome, it goes to Worcester: the other road comes from the south, and Abergavenny, Gobannium, by Old town formerly Blescium; so by Dowre a-cross the Golden vale and Archenfield to the river Wye, which it passes at Eaton, where is a Roman camp for security, and a bridge for convenience of the passage: thence it goes to Kenchester, so northwards by Stretford: this Archenfield seems to retain the name of Ariconium. Nothing remaining of its splendour, but a piece of a temple probably, with a niche which is five foot high and three broad within, built of Roman brick, stone, and indissoluble mortar: the figure of it is in the fore-mentioned plate. There are many large foundations near it. A very fine Mosaic floor a few years ago was found intire, soon torn to pieces by the ignorant vulgar. I took up some remaining stones of different colours, and several bits of fine potters ware of red earth. Mr. Aubury in his manuscript notes says, anno 1670, old Roman buildings of brick were discovered under-ground, on which oaks grew: the bricks are of two sorts; some equilaterally square, seven or eight inches, and one inch thick; some two foot square, and three inches thick. A bath was here found by Sir John Hoskyns about seven foot square: the pipes of lead intire; those of brick were a foot long, three inches square, let artificially one into another: over these I suppose was a pavement. This is an excellent invention for heating a room, and might well be introduced among us in winter time. In another place is a hollow, where burnt wheat has been taken up: some time since colonel Dantsey sent a little box full of it to the Antiquarian Society. All around the city you may easily trace the walls, some stones being left every where, though overgrown by hedges and timber trees. The ground of the city is higher than the level of the circumjacent country. There appears no sign of a foss or ditch around it. The site of the place is a gentle eminence of a squarish form; the earth black and rich, overgrown with brambles, oak trees, full of stones, foundations, and cavities where they have been digging. Many coins and the like have been found. Mr. Ja. Hill, J. C. has many coins found here, some of which he gave to the said society. Colonel Dantsey has paved a cellar with square bricks dug up here: my lord Coningsby has judiciously adorned the floor of his evidence-room with them. This city is overlooked and sheltered towards the north with a Credonhill. Br. camp.prodigious mountain of steep ascent crowned at the top with a vast camp, which ingirdles its whole apex with works altogether inaccessible: it is called Credon hill, seemingly British: if you will take the pains to climb it, you are presented with a most glorious and extensive prospect, as far as St. Michael’s mount in Monmouthshire; bipartite at top, Parnassus-like, and of especial fame and resort among the zealots of the Roman creed, who think this holy hill was sent hither by St. Patrick out of Ireland, and has wonderful efficacy in several cases. On the other hand you see the vast black mountain separating Brecknockshire from this county: the city Ariconium underneath appears like a little copse. On the other side of the Wye you see Dinder hill, whereon is a Roman camp: and upon the Lug are Sutton walls. Ro. camp.Sutton walls, another vast Roman camp upon a hill overtopping a beautiful vale, the royal mansion of the most potent king Offa, but most notorious for the execrable murder of young king Ethelbert, allured thither under pretext of courting his daughter, and buried in the adjacent church of Marden, situate in a marsh by the river side: hence his body was afterwards conveyed to Hereford and enshrined; but the particular place we cannot find. I suppose this martyr’s merits were obliterated by the succeeding saint, Cantilupe, the great miracle-monger on this side the kingdom, as his tutor and namesake Thomas Becket was in Kent.

Hereford.

In the north wing of the cathedral of Hereford is the shrine where Cantilupe was buried, and which wing he himself built: his picture is painted on the wall: all around are the marks of hooks where the banners, lamps, reliques, and the like presents, were hung up in his honour; and, no doubt, vast were the riches and splendor which filled this place; and it is well guarded and barricadoed to prevent thieves from making free with his superfluities: the shrine is of stone, carved round with knights in armour; for what reason I know not, unless they were his life-guard. I saw a book, printed at St. Omar’s, of no little bulk, which contained an account of his miracles. The church is very old and stately, the roof, ailes, and chapel, have been added to the more ancient part by succeeding bishops, as also the towers, cloysters, &c. The most beautiful chapter-house of a decagonal form, and having an umbilical pillar, was destroyed in the civil wars. I saw its poor remains, whence I endeavoured to restore the whole in drawing as well as I could, from the symmetry and manner of the fabric, which I guess to be about Henry the Sixth’s time: there are about four windows now standing, and the springing of the stone arches between, of fine rib-work, which composed the roof; of that sort of architecture wherewith King’s-college chapel at Cambridge is built: two windows were pulled down, a very little while ago, by bishop Bisse, which he used in new fitting up the episcopal palace: under the windows in every compartment was painted a king, bishop, saint, virgin, or the like; some I found distinct enough, though so long exposed to the weather. Here are the greatest number of monuments of the bishops I ever saw, many valuable brasses and tombs, one of Sir Richard Penbrug, knight of the garter, which I drew out for Mr. Anstis: in our Lady’s chapel, now the library, a fine brass of Isabella the wife of Richard Delamare, ob. 1421. Between the cathedral and episcopal palace is a most venerable pile, exceeding it in date, as I conjecture from its manner of composure; built intirely of stone, roofed with stone: it consists of two chapels, one above the other: the ground-plot is a perfect square, beside the portico and choir: four pillars in the middle, with arches every way, form the whole: the portico seems to have a grandeur in imitation of Roman works, made of many arches retiring inwards: two pillars on each side consist of single stones: the lowermost chapel, which is some steps under ground, is dedicated to St. Catharine, the upper to St. Magdalen, and has several pillars against the wall, made of single stones, and an odd eight-square cupola upon the four middle pillars: there have been much paintings upon the walls: the arched roof is turned very artfully, and seems to have a taste of that kind of architecture used in the declension of the Roman empire.

The city of Hereford stands upon a fine gravel, encompassed with springs and rivulets, as well as strong walls, towers, and lunettes; all which, with the embattlements, are pretty perfect, and enabled them to withstand a most vigorous siege of the Scots army under general Lesley. The castle was a noble work, built by one of the Edwards before the Conquest, strongly walled about, and ditched: there is a very lofty artificial keep, walled once at top, having a well in it faced with good stone: by the side of the ditch arose a spring, which superstition consecrated to St. Ethelbert: there is a handsome old stone arch erected over it. Without the walls are the ruins of Black Friers monastery, and a pretty stone cross intire; round which originally were the cloysters built, as now the cloysters of the cathedral inclose another such. These crosses were in the nature of a pulpit, whence a monk preached to the people sub dio, as is now practised once a year in the cloysters of some colleges in the universities; and I suppose Paul’s cross in London was somewhat of this sort. There was likewise an opulent priory, dedicated to our country saint, Guthlac of Crowland, now intirely ruined: the situation of it in a marshy place best suited him. White Friers on the other side the town is intirely ruined: a gate-house and several other parts were seen by many now living. All these religious conventions (as tradition goes) had subterraneous passages into the city under the ditch, that the holy fraternities might retire from the fury of war, upon occasion.

In our way from Hereford to Leominster we ascended with some difficulty the mighty Dynmaur hill, the meaning of which appellation is the great hill: it makes us some amends for the tediousness of climbing, by the extensive and pleasant prospect it affords us from its woody crest commanding a vast horizon.

Leominster.

Leominster is a town of brisk trade in manufactures of their admirable wool, in hat-making, leather, and many others; it lies in a valley luxuriant above measure. Three rivers of very swift current go through the town, besides others very near: nor will the industrious inhabitants suffer the water-nymphs that preside over the streams to be idle: for with mills, and machinery of various contrivance, they make them subservient to many uses in the way of their trades. Here was a considerable priory on the north-side of the church, two ailes of which are very ancient, and I suppose belonged to the priory: two other ailes of more lightsome work have been added. The mayor, who invited us to attend him thither, had a long black caduceus to walk withall, tipped with silver. TAB. XXII.There are some poor remains of the priory, chiefly a little chapel, which I imagine belonged to the prior’s family: underneath it runs a pretty rivulet, which used to grind his corn, now converted to a fulling-mill: near are very large ponds for fish, to furnish the monks on fasting days. There was a fine gate-house, pulled down not long since, near the Ambry close, denominated from the place (Almery) in which they gave their scraps away to poor people at the gate, as I have observed at several other religious houses: this is reckoned a great argument of their charity, whilst idle folks lost their time in waiting for it. Round the cross built of timber I saw this inscription, Vive deo gratus, toti mundo tumulatus, crimine mundatus, semper transire paratus, and some more stuff of that sort. In this town the soil is luxuriant above measure: trees of all sorts flourish prodigiously: we were surprised at the extravagant bulk of plants, leaves of dock as big as an ordinary tea-table, comfry leaves as long as my arm. Mr. Gale and I disputed a good while about borage quite grown out of cognizance.

We were entertained by my lord Coningsby at his seat of Hampton-court, three miles off: at dinner time, one of the ancient bards in an adjacent room played to us upon the harp, and at proper intervals threw in many notes of his voice, with a swelling thrill, after a surprising manner, much in the tone of a flute. This is a fine seat, built by our countryman Harry of Bolingbroke, afterwards Henry the Fourth: it is, castle like, situate in a valley, upon a rapid river under coverture of Dynmaur: the gardens very pleasant, (the finest greens I ever saw) terminated by vast woods covering all the sloping side of the hill; whose wavy tops, when agitated by the wind, entertain the eye with a most agreeable spectacle, and verdant theatric concavity, as high, and as far, as you can well see. Here is a great command of water, on all sides of the house, for fountains, basons, canals: within are excellent pictures of the earl’s ancestors, and others, by the best hands; Holbein, Dobson, Van Dyke, Sir P. Lely, &c. there is an original of the founder, Henry the Fourth, of queen Elizabeth, of the duchess of Portsmouth, &c. The windows of the chapel are well painted, some images of the Coningsbys: here are two new stone stair-cases after a geometrical method, with a view, I suppose, of security from fire: the record-room is at top of a tower arched with stone, paved with Roman brick; an iron door. From the top of the house goes a stair-case, which they say has a subterraneous conveyance into Dynmaur wood; which was the method of ancient times to escape the last extremity of a siege. After dinner my lord did us the honour to ride out with us into the park, which for beauty, diversity, and use, is very fine: it is eight miles in circumference, and has all the variety of scenes you can imagine; about 1200 head of deer in it: there are extensive prospects, on one side reaching into Wiltshire; on another, over the Welsh mountains; lawns, groves, canals, hills and plains. There is a pool three quarters of a mile long, very broad, included between two great woods: the dam that forms it across a valley, cost 800l. and was made in a fortnight by 200 hands. There is a new river cut quite through the park, the channel of which for a long way together is hewn out of the rock: this stream enriches with derivative channels vast tracts of land that before was barren. Here are new gardens and canals laid out, and new plantations of timber in proper places to complete its pleasures; warrens, decoys, sheep-walks, pastures for cattle, and the like, intirely supply the house with all necessaries and conveniences, without recourse to a market. His lordship showed us in his study four or five vast books in manuscript, being transcripts out of the record-offices, relating to his manors, royalties, estates and muniments, which cost him 500l. in writing and fees: many of his galleries and passages are adorned with the genealogy of his family, their pictures, arms, grants, history, &c. The Roman road from Ariconium to Uriconium lies west of Lemster by Stretford; then passes over the Arrow, the Oney, the Lug; so through Biriton, two miles north of Lemster, where they dig up the pavement of it, as it runs through the grounds, made of squarish rag-stone.

22

Religious Ruins

Remnant of the Priory of Leominster Sep. 14. 1722.

Black Fryers in Glocester.
Aug. 24. 1721.

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E. Kirkall sculp.

& Nobilissimo Thomæ Comiti de Coningsby DD.

Ludlow.Our next expedition was to Ludlow, a place of fame and antiquity, the residence of the lords presidents of Wales under the prince. In the way hither we found the euonymus pannonicus in the hedges. This town is walled quite round, and pretty strong, having five gates, situate upon a hill-top, running from south-east with an ascent towards north-west, on which, precipitous to the north and west, stands the castle. On the south side runs the Teme, fettered with numerous dams across, in nature of cataracts; by which means abundance of mills are turned: the superfluous water pours over them, cascade-like, with a mighty noise. Here is a very good church and handsome tower, with a pleasant ring of six bells in the cross thereof: the windows are full of painted glass pretty intire: there are some old monuments of the lords presidents, &c. and an inscription upon the north wall of the choir relating to prince Arthur, who died here: his bowels were buried in this place: one told me they took up his heart not long since in a leaden box. In the eastern angle of the choir is a closet, anciently called the God-house, where the priests locked up their roods, wafers, and such things: it has a window strongly barred outward. This church is consecrated to St Laurence: and in the market-place is an hexagonal cistern, or conduit, like a cross; on the top of which is a long stone cross, bearing a niche with an image of that saint in it. West of the church was a college, now converted to a dwelling-house, whose owner showed us a pretty collection of pictures, one by Holben. There was a rich priory out of the town on the north side; small ruins now to be seen, except a little adjoining church once belonging to it: about the same place an arched gate-way went cross the street, but now demolished. The TAB. IV. V.greatest rarity of Ludlow is the noble and strong castle and palace, placed on the north-west angle of the town upon a rock, commanding a delightful prospect northward; but on the west, where runs the river, it is overlooked by a high hill. It is strongly environed by embattled walls of great height and thickness, with towers at convenient distances: that half which is within the walls of the town is secured moreover with a deep ditch; the other founded on the solid rock. It is divided into two separate parts; the castle, properly so speaking, wherein the palace and lodgings; and the green, or out-work, what I suppose they call the Barbican: the first is in the strongest or north-west corner, and has likewise walls and ditch hewn out of the rock towards the green: this was the residence of the lords presidents: it was a noble structure, but now, alas! only groans out with its last breath the glories of its ancient state. A chapel here has abundance of coats of arms upon the panels; so has the hall, together with lances, spears, firelocks and old armour; but the present inhabitants live upon the sale of the timber, stone, iron, and other materials and furniture, which dwindles away insensibly. Here died prince Arthur. The green takes in a large compass of ground, wherein was formerly the court of judicature and records, the stables, garden, bowling-green and other offices; all which now lie in ruins, or are let out at rack-rents to those that pilfer what they can: over several of the stable-doors are queen Elizabeth’s arms, the earls of Pembroke’s, and others.

Hence we went along the river Teme to Tenbury. In a niche in the chancel is a stone, a yard long, of a child of lord Arundel’s of Sutton-house, as they say, dressed like a knight, cross-legged: another knight cross-legged under the south wall of the church; on his shield a chevron between three stars pierced. In the meadow, upon the river, a tumulus covered with old oaks, called Castle-mead bower, or burrow.

Bewdley.

Bewdley is a pleasant town by sweet meadows upon the Severn, which is the most delightful river I have seen. Here, upon a hill over-looking the town, is Tickenhall, built by Henry VII. for his son prince Arthur; part of the old palace is standing, of timber-work: here was a park too, part of Wire forest. This is a thriving town. A mile off is Ribsford, the seat of the lord Herbert of Cherbury, pleasantly encompassed with woods. Here is a good picture of William I. earl of Pembroke: the ends of the hills toward the river are generally rocks. Blackston hill has an hermitage cut out of it, TAB. XIII. XIV.with a chapel and several apartments, which I have represented in prospect and ground-plot: near it is a pretty rock upon the edge of the water, covered with Nature’s beautiful canopy of oaks and many curious plants: near the water, upon the rock, liver-wort grows plentifully. They dig up coal hereabouts, about twelve yards under ground. Kederminster is but two miles off: in the church a cross-legged monument of Sir Tho. Acton. In Wulverhampton church are several old monuments; a brass statue of Sir Richard Leveson, who fought the Spaniards under Sir Francis Drake: there is a very old stone pulpit, and a very old stone cross in the church-yard. Was I to chuse a country residence for health and pleasure, it would be undoubtedly on the west side of the island, not far from this river, and where it is most distant from the sea; for natural reasons, which I need not mention to you.

Bewdley, 17 Sept. 1721.

4

The North Prospect of Ludlow Castle.

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I. Harris Sculp.

The Ichnography of Ludlow Castle.

5

The West prospect of Ludlow Castle. Sep. 16. 1721.

Robto Cornwall Barr^tto. d.d. W. Stukeley

13

View of Blackston Cave. River Severn & L^d. Herberts house near Bewdley Sep. 23. 1721.

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14

HERMITAGES.

The Groundplot & Section of an Hermitage near Bervdley.

W Stukeley Del

The Hermitage at Dale Abby

ITER ROMANUM. V.

Salve magna parens frugum Britanica tellus,

Magna virum! tibi res antiquæ laudis & artis

Ingredior. Sanctos ausus recludere fontes,

Antiquum repeto Romana per oppida cursum. Virg.

Nam quid Britannum cœlum differre putamus. Lucret. vi.

To my Lord WINCHELSEA.

THE journey I here present your lordship is intirely Roman; for I went from London full northward to the banks of the Humber, upon the famous Hermen-street road, passing through Lincoln: then coasting about a little, at Lincoln again I took the Foss way to its intersection of the Watling-street in Warwickshire: upon that I returned back to London, and pursued it to the sea-coasts of Kent: likewise some part of the Icening-street, as it crosses the others, where it lay not too far out of my main route, was the subject of my enquiry: so that in this account is somewhat of all these four great roads of Britain, which our old monkish writers make a considerable harangue about, but are scarce able fully to distinguish them, and of the reason of their names say but little to our satisfaction: but the ways themselves, as drawn quite a-cross the island in different directions, are sufficiently manifest to a traveller of common sagacity. Though my discoveries herein are mean enough, yet I reckon this an happy æra of my life, because, the very day before I undertook it, I had the good fortune to be known to your lordship, and at the end of it enjoyed the pleasurable repose of your delightful seat at Eastwel, but what is more, your own conversation: since then your many favours, like all other felicities in life, give me uneasiness in the midst of joy, as sensible of my own little merit. I have no hope indeed of retaliating; and I know that great minds like yours imitate Providence, expecting no return from its beneficiaries: but it is consentaneous to human nature to endeavour at it, and offer tokens of gratitude, however unequal. The delight you take in rescuing the monuments of our ancestors, your indefatigable zeal in collecting them, your exquisite knowledge in the Greek, Roman, and British antiquities, and especially your great love for those of your own country, which you continually commit to writing in your private commentaries, add a reputation to these studies, and make the Muses hope for a sunshine, when men of your lordship’s noble birth entertain them with that familiarity and condescension which was one great glory of the Augustan age.

Roman roads.

For arts military and civil, that became a most wise government, the Romans beyond compare exceeded all nations; but in their roads they have exceeded themselves: nothing but the highest pitch of good sense and public spirit could prompt them to so immense a labour: it is altogether astonishing to consider how they begirt the whole globe,[50] as it were, with new meridians and great circles all manner of ways; as one says,

Magnorum fuerat solers hæc cura Quiritum

Constratas passim concelebrare vias.

As well as use, they studied eternity in all their works, just opposite to our present narrow souls, who say, It will serve our time well enough. For this reason they made few bridges, as liable to decay; but fords were laid with great skill and labour, many of which remain firm to this day without any reparation. No doubt but the Romans gave names to these roads from the commanders under whose government and direction they were laid out, as was their custom elsewhere: but because they generally held their posts here but for a short time, and perhaps scarce any finished one road intirely; therefore, whilst each endeavoured to stamp his own name upon them, so it fell out that they were all forgotten. The present appellatives seem to be derived either from the British or Saxon: William the Conqueror calls them Chemini majores in confirming the laws of St. Edward about these four ways. All misdemeanours committed upon them were decided by the king himself. Though there was no need of paving or raising a bank in some places, yet it was done for a perpetual direction; and every where I suppose stones were set at a mile’s distance, many of which are still left. Of these four celebrated ways, the Foss and Icening-street traverse the kingdom from south-west to north-east, parallel to one another: the Watling-street crossed them quite the contrary way, with an equal obliquity: the Hermen-street passed directly north and south: and besides these are very many more. I purpose not to give a full history of them here, any farther than I travel upon them, reserving that till I am better able.

Hermen-street.

Somewhat on the Hermen-street is said already in my first letter about Lincolnshire, where it divides itself into two, which we may call the old and the new branch. TAB. LVI.Here I design to search it up to its fountain-head. As to its name, we have no reason to seek any farther than the Saxon language, where Here signifies an army; Hereman, a soldier or warriour:[51] the Hermen-street then is the military street, in the same propriety the Romans used it. It begins at Newhaven, at the mouth of the river Ouse in Sussex, and passes on the west side the river through Radmil, probably taking its name thence; so through Lewis by Isfield: then it seems to pass over the river at Sharnbridge, as we may guess by its name, and so proceeds to East Grinsted, but I suppose lost in passing through the great woods: then through Surrey it goes by Stane-street, Croydon, Stretham, and, by its pointing, we may suppose was designed originally to pass the Thames at the ferry called Stangate by Lambeth, where it coincides with the Watling-street. Of this I can say nothing yet, having not travelled it. There I apprehend the road went before London became very considerable; but when the majesty of the place suddenly arose to great height, this road, and all others directed this way, deflected a little from their primitive intention, to salute the Augusta of Britain, destined to be the altera Roma; and this has rendered them all obscure near the city. It is generally thought the Hermen-street goes hence through Bishopsgate, and along the northern road; but I apprehend that to be of much later standing than the original one, which goes more on the west. By the quotation I mentioned in my first letter, when upon this road, out of Mr. Gale’s Itinerary, of Lowlsworth near Bishopsgate, it seems as if it was done in Lollius Urbicus his time. The original one perhaps passes through unfrequented ways near Enfield and Hermen-street, seeming to retain the old name: on the eastern side of Enfield chace, by Bush hill, is a circular Br. camp.British camp upon an eminence declining south-west; but our ancient road appears upon a common on this side of Hertford by Ball’s park, and so passes the river below Hertford; then goes through Ware park, and falls into the present road on this side Wadesmill,[52] and so to Royston. Here must have been several stations upon it, but I see no hope of ever retrieving their names: that Hertford is one is reasonable to think, it having been ever in the royal demesne, and passing a river at a proper distance from London: but in the assignment of Durocobrovis here, I take leave to dissent from Camden and other learned men; it by no means answers the distances in the Itinerary, or the import of the name; the Red Ford, or the Ford of Harts, are fancies without foundation: either trajectus militaris is the meaning, or it is the passage of the river Ard, now the Beane: Ardley at the spring-head of it: ardh in British is altus.

Icening-street.

At Royston the Icening-street crosses the Hermen-street, coming from Dunstable going into Suffolk: this about Baldock appears but like a fieldway, and scarce the breadth of a coach, the farmers on both sides industriously ploughing it up: between Baldock and Icleford it goes through an intrenchment, taking in the top of a hill of good compass, but of no great elevation: it consists of a vallum only, and such a thing as I take to be properly the remains of a British oppidum: it is called Wilbury. Br.Wilbury hill, and is said to have been woody not intirely beyond memory: this street, quite to the Thames in Oxfordshire, goes at the bottom of a continued ridge of hills called the Chiltern, being chalk, the natural as well as civil boundaries between the counties of Hertford and Bedford, very steep northward. Ickleford retains the name of the street, which at this place passes a rivulet with a stoney ford wanting reparation. Near Periton church has been a castle of Saxon or Norman times, with a keep. These high chalk hills, having a fine prospect northward, are covered with a beautiful turf like the Wiltshire downs, and have such like barrows here and there, and indeed are but a continuation of them quite a-cross the kingdom. Near Hexton is a square Ro. camp.Roman camp upon a lingula, or promontory, just big enough for the purpose: it is very steep quite round, except at a narrow slip where the entrance is; double ditched, and very strong, but land-locked with hills every way, except to the north-east, and that way has a good prospect: under it is a fine spring: it seems made by the Romans when they were masters of all the country on this side, and extending their arms northward. On High downs is a pleasant house by a wood, where is a place called Chapel close: in this wood are barrows and dikes, perhaps of British original. Liliho is a fine plot of ground upon a hill steep to the north-west, where a horse-race is kept: from under it goes the Icening-street by Stretley to Dunstable. North of Baldoc we visited the camp by Ashwel, taken notice of in Camden, called Harbury Banks. Br.Harbury banks: it is of a theatrical form, consisting wholly of an agger: though Roman coins have been found in it, I am inclinable to think it is earlier than their times. Between Calcot and Henxworth, two miles off, several Roman antiquities have been dug up this year; many in the custody of my friend Simon Degg, esq; he gave me this account of it: some workmen, digging gravel for the repair of the great northern road, struck upon some earthen vessels, or large urns, full of burnt bones and ashes, but rotten: near them a human skeleton, with the head towards the south-east, the feet north-west: several bodies were found in this manner not above a foot under the surface of the earth, and with urns great or small near them, and pateras of fine red earth, some with the impression of the maker on the bottom: there were likewise glass lachrymatories, ampullas, a fibula of brass, six small glass rings, two long glass beads of a green colour, and other fragments.

Salinæ.

Northward still upon a high sandy hill, by the bank of the river Ivel, is a Roman camp called Chesterton: under it lies the town called Sandy, or Salndy, the Salinæ of the Romans in Ptolemy, where great quantities of Roman and British antiquities have been found, and immense numbers of coins, once a brass Otho, vases, urns, lachrymatories, lamps. Mr. Degg has a cornelian intaglia, and a British gold coin dug up here, Tascio upon it. Thomas Bromsal esq. has a fine silver Cunobelin found here, of elegant work; others of Titus, Agrippina, Trajan, Hadrian, Augustus, Antoninus Pius, Faustina, Constantius Chlorus, Constantinus Magnus, Carausius, Alectus, Tetricus, and many more.[53] His great grandfather, high-sheriff of this county, preserved the invaluable Cottonian library from plunder in the time of the commonwealth, whilst it was at Stratton in this county, about anno 1650. The soil here is sand, perfectly like that on the sea shore. I imagine a Roman road passed by this place westward from Grantchester by Cambridge.

Return we to Royston again. Going upon the Icening-street the other way, just upon the edge of Cambridgeshire, we come to Chesterford upon the river going to Cambridge, near Icleton and Strethal. Camboritum.In July, 1719, I discovered the vestigia of a Roman city here: the foundation of the walls is very apparent quite round, though level with the ground, including a space of about fifty acres: TAB. LIX.great part of it serves for a causeway to the public Cambridge road from London: the Crown inn is built upon it:[54] the rest is made use of by the countrymen for their carriages to and fro in the fields: the earth is still high on both sides of it: in one part they have been long digging this wall up for materials in building and mending the roads: there I measured its breadth twelve foot, and remarked its composition of rag stone, flints and Roman brick: in a little cottage hard by, the parlour is paved with bricks; they are fourteen inches and an half long, and nine broad. In the north-west end of the city,[55] the people promised to show me a wonderful thing in the corn, which they observed every year with some sort of superstition. I found it to be the foundation of a Roman temple very apparent, it being almost harvest time: here the poverty of the corn growing where the walls stood, defines it to such a nicety, that I was able to measure it with exactness enough: the dimensions of the cell, or naos, were fifteen foot in breadth, forty in length; the pronaos, where the steps were, appeared at both ends, and the wall of the portico around, whereon stood the pillars. I remarked that the city was just a thousand Roman feet in breadth, and that the breadth to the length was as three to five, of the same proportion as they make their bricks: it is posited obliquely to the cardinal points, its length from north-west to south-east; whereby wholesomeness is so well provided for, according to the direction of Vitruvius. The river Cam runs under the wall, whence its name; for I have no scruple to think this was the Camboritum of Antoninus, meaning the ford over this river, or the crooked ford: in Lincolnshire we called a crooked stick, the butchers use, a cambril.[56] They have found many Roman coins in the city or Borough field, as they call it: I saw divers of them. In this parish, they say, has been a royal manor: not far off, by Audlenhouse, upon an eminence is a great Roman camp.Roman camp called Ringhill; a hunting tower of brick now stands upon it. Beyond this the Icening-street goes toward Icleworth in Suffolk, TAB. XLV.parting the counties of Cambridge and Essex all the way; and almost parallel to it runs a great ditch, viz. from Royston to Balsham, called Brentditch, where it turns and goes to the river below Cambridge, there called Flightditch. I imagine these to be ancient boundaries of the Britons, and before the Roman road was made, which naturally enough would have served for a distinction by the Saxons, as at other places, had their limits lain hereabouts. Two miles both ways of Royston is chalky soil:[57] about Puckeridge it is gravelly. On Bartlow hills there is a camp too, castle camps, and Roman antiquities found: I am told of three remarkable barrows thereabouts, where bones have been dug out. At Hadstok they talk of the skin of a Danish king nailed upon the church-doors.

59

Camboritvm.
21. Aug. 1722.

Thomæ Bawtre Conterraneo Suo Tabula votiva.

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45

The Hunting Tower in the Ro. Camp near Littlebury Aug. 21. 1722.

View of Silchester Walls from the N.E. corner Aug. 5. 1722. Ro. Brick & Flint.

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E. Kirkall sculp:

& Amico Peregrino Bertie Ar. vovet.

Now we shall take along with us the Itinerary of Antoninus in his fifth journey; for after he has gone from London toward Colchester, and part of Suffolk, he turns into this Icening-street at Icianis, which seems to be Icesworth beyond St. Edmundsbury; from whence to this Camboritum is thirty-five miles: from thence to Huntingdon is just twenty-five, as they are noted; but it is to be supposed that the Itinerary went along the Icening-street to Royston, then took the Hermen-street; for so the miles exactly quadrate.

Royston. Ro. town.

Royston, as being seated upon the intersection of these two roads, no doubt was a Roman town[58] before Roisia[59] built her religious house here, and perpetuated her own name upon the Roman, which is now lost; and this very year they found Roman coins near there: but there seems to be the stump of her cross still remaining at the corner of the inn just where the two roads meet. The Hermen-street now coincides all the way with the common northern road. At Arminton, denominated from it, passes another branch of the river going to Cambridge in Armingford hundred; so by Caxton, which was probably a baiting-place: there are some old works without the town. A red clay begins now. Anno 1721, near this road my lord Oxford, digging canals at Wimpole, found many bodies, and pieces of iron rusty, the remains of some battle. Wimpole is now improved and honoured with his residence, and the noble Harleian library.

Durocinonte.

At Godmanchester, or Gormanchester, on this side Huntingdon river, the name chester ascertains the Roman castrum to have been; nor is there any dispute of it, however critics vary about its name, whether Durosiponte or Durocinonte; whether there was a bridge, a ferry, or a ford, in most ancient times: no doubt but the Romans inhabited both sides of the river, and probably rather at Huntingdon, being a much better situation; therefore, as to antiquities here found, I hold myself more excusable if at present I have nothing to say. Mr. Camden tells us Roman coins have been frequently ploughed up at Gormanchester, and Henry of Huntingdon says it has been a noble city: but I took notice of a wooden bridge over a rivulet between the two towns, which ought not to be forgot, as a grateful and public charity, having this inscription.

ROBTUS COOK EMERGENS AQUIS HOC VIATORIBUS
SACRUM DD. 1636.