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MAPPA BRITTANIÆ FACIE^I ROMANÆ SECVNDVM FIDEM MONVMENTORVM PERVETERVM DEPICTA

Tabulam hanc Geographicam Antiquitatis Patriæ Cimelium celeberrimo viro Gulielmo Stukeley M.D., C.L.M., F.R.S. cet observantiæ testandæ ergo D. D. Carolus Bertramus 1755.

C. Bertramus ipse delin: ab Orig: & sculpsit.

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 II.

TO WHICH IS ADDED,
The Itinerary of Richard of Cirencester,
MONK of WESTMINSTER.
With an ACCOUNT of that AUTHOR and his WORK.

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.

• [ADVERTISEMENT]
• [The BRILL, Cæsar’s Camp at Pancras.]
• [ITER BOREALE.]
• [RICARDI MONACHI LIBER PRIMUS.]
• [RICARDI MONACHI LIBER SECUNDUS.]
• [RICHARD OF CIRENCESTER I.]
• [RICHARD OF CIRENCESTER II.]
• [RICHARD OF CIRENCESTER III.]
• [NOTÆ in CAP. I. et II. LIBRI PRIMI.]
• [THE WEDDINGS.]
• [INDEX]
• [INDEX COMMENTARIOLUM GEOGRAPHICUM]
• [THE PLATES]

ADVERTISEMENT.

THAT Dr. Stukeley had altered the plan of his intended History of the antient Celts, &c. mentioned in the Preface of the former part of this work, plainly appears by his publishing Stonehenge and Abury separately: but, as many of the Plates he left unpublished were undoubtedly intended for that Work, and others for a Second Volume of the Itinerarium, neither of which were ever completed; the Editor hopes it will give pleasure to the Learned to see those Plates, together with such of his Tracts as relate to them, collected into one Volume, and that they will be found not altogether unworthy of their attention;—sensible however that the many defects which must unavoidably happen in publishing a Posthumous Collection from loose papers, and notes carelessly thrown together, will stand in need of their candid indulgence.

The Itinerary of Richard of Cirencester, together with Dr. Stukeley’s Account of, and Observations upon it, were thought by some Friends of the Doctor a very proper addition. It is a tract truly valuable for the new light it has thrown on the study of British Antiquities, and being out of print is now become very scarce.

It may be expected that some account should in this place be given of the Author, and his Works. A Catalogue of those which have appeared in print we subjoin; and for his Life we refer the reader to Mr. Masters’s History of Benet College, Cambridge, printed in quarto, 1753; adding only, that he died March 3d, 1765, in his 78th year, and was buried in the church-yard of East-Ham in Essex, having ordered by his will that no memorial of him should be erected there.

He was also engaged, at the time of his death, in a work entitled the Medallic History of the antient Kings of Britain; and had engraved 23 Plates of their Coins, which were published by his Executor; but the Manuscript was too imperfect to be given to the Public.

61·2⁠^d. CAESAR’S Camp called the Brill at PANCRAS. Stukely desig. dec 1758

The BRILL, Cæsar’s Camp at Pancras.

October 1758.

MANY and large volumes have been written on the celebrated city of London, which now, beyond doubt, for magnitude, splendor, riches, and traffic, exceeds every city upon the globe: the famous Pekin of China only boasts itself to be larger. London, then called Trinobantum, was a considerable trading emporium in British times, and before Cæsar’s arrival here. But the greatest curiosity of London, and what renders it highly illustrious, has never been observed by any writer: to give some account of it, is the purpose of this paper.

When I resided in London in the former part of my life, I proposed to myself, as a subject of inquiry, for my excursions now and then on horseback round the circuit of the metropolis, to trace out the journeyings of Cæsar in his British expeditions. This I account the æra from whence we derive the certain intelligence of the state and affairs of our native country. I was pretty successful therein, and made many drawings of his camps, and mansions; several of which I then engraved with a design of printing the copious memoirs I had wrote concerning them.

No subject concerning our own country antiquities could be more noble. But what I mean to speak of at this time, is a camp of his, which I have long since observed no farther off than Pancras church.

In all my former travels, I ever proposed an entertainment of the mind, in inquiries into matters of antiquity, a former state of things in my own country: and now it is easy to imagine the pleasure to be found in an agreeable walk from my situation in Queen’s Square, through the fields that lead me to the footsteps of Cæsar, when, without going to foreign parts, I can tread the ground which he trod. By finding out several of his camps, I was enabled, off-hand, to distinguish them; and they are very different from all others we meet withal.

It was the method of Roman discipline, to make a camp every night, though they marched the next morning; but in an expedition like Cæsar’s, in a new and unknown country, he was to trust to his own head, and the arms of his troops, more than to banks and ditches: yet, for the sake of discipline, a camp must be made every night; it was their mansion, and as an home; where was the prætorium, or general’s tent, and the Prætorian cohorts, as his guards; it was the residence of the majesty of the Roman genius, in the person of the commander; it was as a fixed point, subservient to order and regular discipline military; where and whence every portion and subdivision of an army knew their regular appointment and action.

This camp was very small; designed but for a night’s abode, unless the exigence of affairs required some stay: but the third part of the army lying under arms every night, prevented the danger of a surprise.

Cæsar, led on by divine Providence, entered our country in the year before the vulgar æra of Christ 54. the second time, about the middle of the month of July, as we now reckon, in his own Julian kalendar. I shall not recapitulate what I have observed of the footsteps of this great man in Kent; I hesitate not in believing that Carvilius, one of the four kings, as called, who attacked his camp while he was on this side the Thames, lived at Guildford; the name of the place shows it; the river was called Villy, or Willy, a common British name for rivers; so that Carvilius was a local title of honour, as was the British custom, like that of our present nobility: so Casvelhan, Cæsar’s opponent, was king of the Cassii, Cogidubnus of the Dobuni, Togodumnus of the Dumnonii, Taeog being Dux in British. It was the method of the British princes thus to take the names of towns, and of people, as it was the method of their ancestors the Midianites; of which we find an instance in Josephus, Antiq. IV. 7. Rekam, a king there, of the same name as his city, the capital of all Arabia; now Petra.

Cæsar passed the Thames at Coway stakes, notwithstanding the stakes: the town of Chertsey preserves a memorial of his name, as Cherburg in France: he pursued the Britons along the bank of the Thames as far as Sheperton, where the stakes were placed, and there pitched his camp with the back of it upon the Thames. At his camp on Greenfield common, near Staines, a splendid embassy came to him from the Londoners; desiring his alliance and protection, and that he would restore their prince Mandubrace, who was then in his retinue. To his little camp, or prætorium, on this account he orders another to be drawn round it, for reception of these ambassadors, and their prince, together with forty hostages which he demanded, and corn for his army.

Upon this, ambassadors came to him from the Cenimani, people of Cambridgeshire; the Segontiaci, Hampshire; Ancalites, Buckinghamshire; Bibroci, about Berkshire; and Cassii, of Hertfordshire; submitting themselves to him. For them he orders another appendix to his camp, to receive them.

When business was done with them, he moves forward to attack Casvelhan, who was retreated into his fortified town at Watford. One of his camps thitherward, is to be seen very fair on Hounslow heath, in the way to Longford; which I showed to lord Hertford then president, and to lord Winchelsea vice-president, of the Antiquarian Society, in April, 1723; who measured it, and expressed the greatest pleasure at the sight.

His next camp was at Kingsbury: it is now the church-yard, and still visible enough: its situation is high, and near the river Brent: the church stands in the middle of it.

From hence he went, and forced Casvelhan’s military oppidum at Watford, and Rickmansworth; a gravelly island of high ground, sylvis paludibusque munitum, as he expresses it; and by this he brought Casvelhan to submit. It is not my present purpose to speak largely on these particulars; but from hence he advanced towards London, effectually to settle his friend and ally Mandubrace, whose protection he had undertaken, in the kingdom of the Trinobantes; and reconcile him to his subjects, and to his uncle Casvelhan. Mandubrace was the son of Immanuence, commonly called Lud in the British story, which signifies the brown; who was killed by his ambitious brother Casvelhan, too near a neighbour to London; his residence being at Harrow on the hill, and Edgeware called Suellaniacis from him: he likewise forced Mandubrace to fly to Cæsar in Gaul, to implore his aid: the great Roman was not averse to so favourable an opportunity of advancing his glory, by invading Britain, a new world.

58·2⁠^d.

Stukeley delin.

Toms Sculp.

Prospect of Cæsars Camp at Sheparton Oct: 28 1723

A. Way to Domsday bushes & Chertsey B. Way to Littleton & Greenfield Common C. Lords bridge DD. Plain Works of the Outer Ditch EE. of the Inner F. a Canal dug this year G. the Antient Course of Ashford Brook

60·2⁠^d. CAESARS Camp on Hounslow heath. 18 Apr. 1723.

62·2⁠^d.

W Stukeley delin 20 Sept 1767

CAESAR’S Camp at Kingsbury, the Church built of Roman Bricks from the City of VERULAM.

63·2⁠^d. Ravensbury a Roman Camp near Hexton Bedf^r. 10 Iuly 1724.

Stukeley delin.

E. Kirkall Sculp.

Simoni Degg Ar. d.d. W. Stukeley

It was not suitable to his honour, or his security, to quarter in the city of London; but he pitched his camp, where now is Pancras church: his prætorium is still very plain, overagainst the church, in the foot-path, on the west side of the brook; the vallum and the ditch visible: its breadth from east to west forty paces; its length from north to south sixty paces.

This was his prætorium, where his own tent was pitched in the centre; the prætorian cohorts around it. There was no great magnificence in Cæsar’s tent, here placed; it was not his manner. L. Aurunculeius Cotta, who was here present, in his commentaries writes, when Cæsar was in Britain, although he had acquired the highest fame by his great actions, yet was he so temperate in his manner of life, such a stranger to pomp, that he had only three servants in his tent. Cotta was killed the next year in Gaul. When I came attentively to consider the situation of it, and the circumjacent ground, I easily discerned the traces of his whole camp: a great many ditches, or divisions of the pastures, retain footsteps of the plan of the camp; agreeable to their usual form, as in the plate engraved: and whenever I take a walk thither, I enjoy a visionary scene of the whole camp of Cæsar, as described in the Plate before us; a scene as just as if beheld, and Cæsar present.

His army consisted of about 40,000 men, four legions with their horse. After long debate of authors concerning the quantity of a Roman legion, I infer, from Josephus so very often using the expression of ten thousand, many ten thousands, and the like, that the usual and general number of soldiers in a legion was ten thousand.

Authors generally state a legion at 6666 men; but they must mean strictly the soldiery, without officers or horse: so that I conclude a complete legion of foot and horse to be 10,000. Polibius, Vol. 2. book iii. writes, in the war of Hannibal, each legion consisted of 5000, besides the auxiliaries, together with 900 horse; and therefore we may well judge, a legion with its officers should be reckoned 10,000.

Strabo writes, the Romans generally had their horses from Gaul.

Cæsar had now no apparent enemy; he had leisure to repose his men, after their military toil. He was in the territory of a friend and ally of the Roman state, whom he had highly obliged in restoring him to his paternal kingdom: nor was it his purpose to abide here for any time: he therefore did not fortify his whole camp with a broad ditch and vallum for security; but the army was disposed in its ordinary form and manner: it might be bounded by a slight ditch and bank, as that of the whole length of the camp on the west side, (the foot-path from the bowling-green accompanying; or it might be staked out with pallisado’s called valli) which returns again on part of the north side, at the porta decumana, till it meets the ditch that passes on the west of Cæsar’s prætorium, and so continued downward, to the houses at the Brill.

This last-mentioned ditch runs on the line that separated the column of the horse from the Triarii, on the west side of the camp; the foot-way from the Brill accompanying it all the way. The porta decumana is left open in the back of the camp. The same of the porta prætoria; but the bounds of the camp here at the south-west corner are visible in two parallel banks remaining; the upper surface of the earth between them, has been dug away for making bricks.

The oddness of the present division of the north-west pasture, inclosed by that of the postica castrorum, preserves evident tokens of the camp: the elbow to the west, concurring with a ditch on the eastern border of the whole camp, preserves the track of the via sagularis; here the baggage and carriages were placed: it extended itself behind the prætorium. Pancras church stands upon this way.

The north-west field before specified is bounded by a ditch, which marks out the street, that runs along the front of the prætorium; along which were set the tents of the officers, the præfecti of the horse, and tribunes of the foot; along with the ensigns and standards of the horse and foot, which were pitched in a line in the ground.

On the west side of the prætorium, in this pasture, was the open place, a square area, comprehended between the via principalis, or principia, and the via sagularis, called the questorium: this was the quarters of the quæstor, M. Crassus; a promising young man, who afterwards fell with his father, the triumvir, in Parthia. Pompey married his widow. Hither the soldiers repaired to receive their allowance of pay and provision: on the west side of it was the quæstor’s tent, the military chest, the stores: just beyond, northward was the station of Comius of Arras, auxiliary to Cæsar, with the Gaulish troops under his command; likewise the tents of the Gaulish princes, which Cæsar brought over with him to prevent their revolting in his absence; among whom was the son of Indutiomarus prince of the Treviri.

Come we to the via prætoria, or principal street of the camp, extending along the middle line from the prætorium to the houses at the Brill; where is the porta prætoria at the frons castrorum. The gate between the two houses at the Brill, leading into the pasture there, which pasture was the station of the horse, is in the very line of the via prætoria. The front of the camp is bounded by a spring with a little current of water, running from the west, across the Brill, into the Fleet brook: the lane out of the great road, along this spring, terminates in the frons castrorum, as an avenue to it; and may be ancienter than the road along the valley, where the river runs, to Pancras. This Brill was the occasion of the road directly from the city originally going along the side of the brook by Bagnigge; the way to Highgate being at first by Copenhagen house, which is the strait road thither from Gray’s-inn lane, and before that of the valley to Pancras, called Longwich in Norden’s Speculum.

It is not a little remarkable, that the name of Brill should through so many ages preserve the sure memorial of this most respectable monument of Julius Cæsar’s camp. Camden, the Pausanias of Britain, a genius great in his way as Julius Cæsar, takes notice, in Buckinghamshire, “of the ancient Roman burgh, where much Roman money is found, called the Brill; which was afterward a royal village of Edward the Confessor’s; and, instead of Bury-hill, is by contraction called Brill.”

In the additions to Camden’s Britannia, Sussex, thus we read: “Hard by Chichester, toward the west, there has been a large Roman camp, called the Brile, of an oblong form, four furlongs and two perches in length, two furlongs in breadth: it lies in a flat low ground, with a great rampire and single graff; probably Vespasian’s camp, after his landing.” And the like must be said of the Brill in the Netherlands, probably too one of Cæsar’s camps.

This camp at Pancras has the brook running quite through the middle of it: it arises from seven springs on the south side of the hill between Hampstead and Highgate, by Caen wood: there it forms several large ponds, passes by here, by the name of Fleet, washes the west side of the city of London, and gives name to Fleet-street. This brook was formerly called the River of Wells, from the many springs above, which our ancestors called Wells: and it may be thought to have been more considerable in former times, than at present; for now the major part of its water is carried off in pipes, to furnish Kentish-town, Pancras, and Tottenham court: but even now, in great rains, the valley is covered over with water. Go a quarter of a mile higher toward Kentish-town, and you may have a just notion of its appearance at that time, only with this difference, that it is there broader and deeper from the current of so many years. It must further be considered, that the channel of this brook, through so many centuries, and by its being made the public north road from London to Highgate, is very much lowered and widened since Cæsar’s time. It was then no sort of embarrassment to the camp, but an admirable convenience for watering, being contained in narrow banks, not deep: the breadth and depth is made by long tract of time. The ancient road by Copenhagen, wanting repair, induced passengers to take this gravelly valley, become much larger than in Cæsar’s time. The old division runs along that road between Finsbury and Holborn division, going in a strait line from Gray’s-inn lane to Highgate: its antiquity is shown it its name, Madan-lane.

Let us pass the brook, and consider the eastern half of the camp; only remarking, that a ditch at present dividing the two pastures, which was the station of the horse, is continued across the brook and road, to that eastern half of the camp, and marks, when properly continued, the two gates on the west and east side of the camp, called porta quæstoria and porta principalis sinistra: below it is the other cross road of the camp, called via Quintana.

To the east of the prætorium was a square plot, analogous to the questorium: this was called the forum; this at present includes the church-yard to its eastern fence, with the houses, the grove and kitchen garden precisely. To the east of the forum was the quarter of the legates. Sulpitius Rufus, whose coin I have given above, we may justly suppose one of them: he is mentioned by Cæsar as his legate in the civil war; all the time with him in Gaul: and we can have no scruple in thinking he was with him in Britain too. The coin is in Goltzius’s Julius Cæsar, but reversed, Tab. ix. 1. he gives no explication of it: it is in gold, but imperfect, here supplied. Publius Sulpitius Rufus, mint-master to Cæsar, here celebrates a naval expedition of the emperor’s; and not unlikely his British. Cæsar on a galley with the eagle in his hand: the Genius of Rome follows him. It is said, he was the first of the Romans that leaped on the British shore: finding the soldiers slack in landing, he took a standard in his hand, and went before them. Cæsar himself says the standard-bearer of the tenth legion did so.

The coin was struck by him, when governor of some province under Cæsar, probably Spain, where at Carthagena, in the Franciscan monastery, remains his monument, thus in Gruter. MCCCCXXIII.

P. SVLPICIVS Q. F. Q. N. COL.

HIC SITVS EST ILLE PROBATVS

IVDICIEIS MVLTEIS COGNATIS

ATQVE PRIVIGNEIS.

C. Trebonius was another legate, a commander of horse, mentioned B. G. V. 17.

North of the church-yard is a square moted about, in length north and south forty paces, in breadth east and west thirty; the entrance to the west: it was originally the prætorium of Mandubrace, king of London, and of the Trinobantes. The ditches have been dug deep to make a kitchen-garden for the rector of the church, from whom I suppose in after-times it has been alienated. All the ground of the camp beyond the via sagularis was ever allotted to auxiliary troops, and allies.

This honour of a prætorium was allotted to Mandubrace, now confirmed in his kingdom, an associate of Cæsar’s, and friend declared to the Roman commonwealth; and to give him more authority with his own people.

Hither Casvelhan was sent for, and reconciled to his nephew, enjoined not to injure him, as an ally of Rome; assigned what tribute he should annually pay, what number of hostages he should send to him into Gaul: for now he was upon returning, having accomplished all that he proposed, and the time of the autumnal equinox approaching. It was now September, and 54 years before the vulgar Christian æra.

To the north of the eastern half of the camp, a bank and ditch marks the outward bound there, in a strait line, and becomes crooked as it goes eastward, just where ends the original northern bound of the camp. To the south, where was the frons castrorum at the houses of the Brill, one would reasonably suppose, there might formerly remain much more evident marks of the camp, as it is so far distant from the prætorium: there might have been a more considerable vallum and ditch quite around the camp, than now any where appears; and then it is natural to think, the name of the camp, as called by our Saxon ancestors, the Brill, would be fixed to the habitable part, the houses, as now.

In the first field of the duke of Bedford’s, by Southampton row, the vallum and ditch runs, which was drawn quite round London and Southwark in the civil wars: they afterwards levelled it, and it is now scarce discernible, which is but 100 years ago; Cæsar’s 1800.

54·2⁠^d. Cæsars passage over the Stour by Chilham and Julabers grave. drawn 10 Oct 1722.

W. Stukeley delin.

E. Kirkall Sculp.

55·2⁠^d. View from a Roman tumulus upon the Watlin street by the Mill on Barham downs. 10. Oct. 1722.

W. Stukeley delin.

E. Kirkall Sculp.

56·2⁠^d. Prospect of Iulabers grave 11 Oct 1724.

Stukeley delin.

E. Kirkall Sculp.

57·2⁠^d.

Stukeley delin.

E. Kirkall Sculp.

Prospect of Julabers grave from Chilham. May 24. 1725.
This drawing is taken from the Woolpack Inn.
A. Julabers grave.

59·2⁠^d.

Cæsars Camp on Greenfield Common, between Ashford and Lalam, near Stanes. Oct. 27. 1723. Lalam Church bears 10^d. W. of South, a Brook to the East, but farther off than here exprest. This Brook runs into y^e Thames by his Camp at Sheperton.

Cæsar in his Commentaries, B. Gall. iv. 27. writes, the Britons, in asking peace after being vanquished, brought some hostages according to Cæsar’s command, and promised to bring the rest in a few days, as to be fetched from more distant parts: in the mean time they disbanded their armies; the princes of the country came from all quarters, recommending themselves and their principalities to Cæsar. Hence it is obvious, he staid here many days.

A bank is visible in the pasture between the Brill and end of Copenhagen road, in the south-east pasture, the boundary of the camp: we may discern, it is somewhat oblique, not in a true line with the rest of the frons castrorum; but I suppose this owing to the curve of the river eastward to Battle-bridge: they therefore made this bank in a square to the river.

We may observe a portion still visible of the original boundary of the camp eastward, in that part called latera prætoria, being at present a watery ditch; and further downward, the foot-path between two banks observes the like direction; and the ground of the porta principalis, between them, is open and unfenced.

I judge, I have performed my promise, in giving an account of this greatest curiosity of the renowned city of London; so illustrious a monument of the greatest of the Roman generals, which has withstood the waste of time for more than eighteen centuries, and passed unnoticed, but half a mile off the metropolis. I shall only add this observation, that when I came to survey this plot of ground, to make a map of it, by pacing, I found every where even and great numbers, and what I have often formerly observed in Roman works: whence we may safely affirm, the Roman camp-master laid out his works by pacing. To give some particulars.

The measure is taken from the inside of the ditch, or the line between the vallum and the ditch: the space of ground, which the camp-master paces, the workmen throw inward to compose the vallum.

The camp on Barham downs contains in breadth thirty paces, length sixty. The camp at Wrotham, in breadth thirty paces, in length forty. At Walton by the Thames, it is a square of fifty paces. The foss here is converted into a mote, as here the prætorium of Mandubrace: so the camp at Sheperton is a square of the same dimensions, and the foss turned into a mote, and made an orchard: we observe here at Sheperton the prætorium is made on the bank of the river Thames; the postica castrorum, beyond the via sagularis, neglected. While Cæsar was pitched here, the turn of the auxiliaries to be in arms all night, with the other part of the troops, whose duty it was, came on: and the general’s intention was but to stay one night in this place; so there was no need to mark out their places in the camp. The stakes placed here in the river, by the Britons against Cæsar, were now a sufficient security behind him. Cæsar practised the same method when he fought the Belgæ: passing the river Axona, he placed his camp with the river behind him, that he might not be attacked from that quarter.

Cæsar’s camp on Greenfield common is forty paces broad, sixty long. Here he received the ambassadors of the Trinobantes, desiring their prince Mandubrace to be restored: they bring forty hostages and bread-corn for the army. For their reception another camp is made around this, which is 80 paces broad, 100 long. Another day came in ambassadors from the Cenimani, Segontiaci, Ancalites, Bibroci, and Cassii. This obliged the camp-master to add the appendix to the camps, which was of the breadth of 100 paces, equal to the length of the last; 130 in length, stretching out to the east: but in the ground-plot of that camp we see an egregious proof of my position, that they went by paces in marking out their camps; and sometimes by guess-work, in the square; which obliged the camp-master to carry his 130 paces beyond the angle of the former camp. Concerning the method of adding new occasional works to a former camp, we observe a like instance in that camp of Chlorus’s between Clarendon palace and Old Sarum; made, we may well presume, on the states of Britain sending their ambassadors hither to him, with submission to his government after the destruction of Allectus.

Cæsar’s camp on Hounslow heath is very perfect, sixty paces square. His camp at Kingsbury is thirty paces broad, and forty in length.

Come we now to our work at Pancras. The prætorium is forty paces broad from east to west, fifty paces long from north to south: the prætorium of Mandubrace is thirty paces long from east to west, forty from north to south: thereby it accommodated itself to that part of the camp, that was called retentura.

The breadth of the whole camp was 400 paces, not reckoning the valley of the brook: the length of the whole is 500 paces. Examine the intermediate parts, they fall into whole numbers: the breadth of the pasture, comprehending the station of the Hastati and Triarii, on the west side of the camp, is 150 paces: that of the horse is forty broad: the correspondent, or eastern part of the camp, is likewise 150 paces broad, comprehending the station of the Triarii and Hastati; so that, subducting the space of the valley where the brook runs, the whole breadth of the camp, where the tents are pitched, contains 340 paces: a space beyond, on each side, of thirty paces wide, is supposed to be left between the tents and the vallum, where a camp is fortified: and then the camp contains just 400 paces broad.

The camp is in length 500 paces: the thirty paces beyond, for the way between the tents and vallum, (where a vallum is made) amounts to 560; so that the proportion of length to breadth is as 3 to 2; where strength and convenience is well adjusted, and is often the proportion of Roman cities. This space of ground was sufficient for Cæsar’s army, according to Roman discipline; for, if he had 40,000 men, a third part of them were upon guard.

The recovery of this most noble antiquity will give pleasure to a British antiquary; especially an inhabitant of London, whereof it is a singular glory: it renders the walk over the beautiful fields to the Brill doubly agreeable, when, at half a mile distance, we can tread in the very steps of the Roman camp-master, and of the greatest of the Roman generals.

We need not wonder that the traces of this camp, so near the metropolis, are so nearly worn out: we may rather wonder, that so much is left, when a proper sagacity in these matters may discern them; and be assured, that somewhat more than three or four sorry houses, is commemorated under the name of the Brill: nor is it unworthy of remark, as an evident confirmation of our system, that all the ditches and fences now upon the ground, have a manifest respect to the principal members of the original plan of the camp.

In this camp at Pancras, Cæsar made the two British kings friends; Casvelhan, and his nephew Mandubrace: the latter, I suppose, presented him with that corslet of pearls, which he gave to Venus in the temple at Rome, which he built to her, as the foundress of his family.—Pliny and Solinus.

Mr. White of Newgate-street has a gold British coin, found in an urn in Oxfordshire, together with a gold ring set with a pearl.

When Cæsar returned, he found letters to him, acquainting him with his daughter Julia’s death. Plutarch.

I shall conclude with this observation, that on Cæsar’s return to the continent, the Morini, inhabiting the opposite shore, lay in wait for his men, hoping to obtain great spoils. This was in his first expedition: it shows Britain was not so despicable a country as authors generally make it: much more might they have expected it in return from his second expedition, when the nations of the Cattichlani, Bibroci, Ancalites, Trinobantes, Cenimani, Segontiaci, sent ambassadors to him, seeking his favour; all charged with magnificent gifts: and, beyond doubt, the Londoners were not slack, for so great a favour as protecting them from the insults of Casvelhan, and restoring to them their king Mandubrace.

Cæsar, having accomplished his purposes here, returned by Smallbury green, in order to pass the Thames again at Chertsey. Smallbury green was then an open place as now, and has its name from his prætorium, like this at the Brill: the road lately went round it on the north side; and gravel had long been dug from it, to mend the road; yet I could discern part of it, till, three years ago, they made a new road across the green, and totally ruined the prætorium. There is a spring arises at the place.

It is fit we should say somewhat of the city of London, the glory of Britain. Cæsar calls the inhabitants of this country Trinobantes: it comprehends Middlesex and Essex on this side the river; Surry on the other. The name of Trinobantes is derived from Trinobantum, the most ancient name of London: it signifies the city of the Novii, or Novantes, the original name of the people called Trinobantes by Cæsar. Tri, or Tre, in the very old British dialect, imports a fortified city. Many names of this kind still remain, in Cornwall especially.

Noviomagus most certainly is Croydon in Surry. Magus in British signifies a city on a down, or heath. Newington on the South of London, and Newington on the north, retain evident remains of the name of the Novantes.

In many coins of the great king Cunobeline, nephew of our prince Mandubrace, we have inscribed TASCIO NOVANTVM, meaning the tribute of the Londoners, and of the people Novantes, dependent on them, called by Cæsar Trinobantes.

The Novii, or Novantes, the original people of this country, knew how to take the proper advantage of the noble river Thames, and built this their fortified city of Trinobantum upon a most convenient situation, celebrated by all writers. The inhabitants of this potent city carried on a very considerable trade with the continent, and were rich and flourishing, as those numerous coins of Cunobeline are evidences beyond all exception. Londinium copia negotiatorum & commeatuum maxime celebre, says Tacitus. These coins are in gold, silver, copper: I have engraved twenty-three plates of them. Nor, in my opinion, have we reason to doubt of Billings-gate being built by him, as his royal custom-house; and why Ludgate should not take name from Immanuence Lud, father of our prince Mandubrace, I see not. The business of a society of antiquaries is to separate truth from fable, by evidence, by reason, and judgement. Authors are certainly mistaken in thinking our British ancestors a rude and barbarous people. Need we a further testimony of our continental trade, Cæsar speaks of the Gaulish merchants who traded hither: he convened them together to inquire concerning the nature of the country; and I have the strongest reasons in the world to induce me to believe, that Britain was peopled before the opposite continent, by a great and polite nation; and that our British coins are the oldest of any in Europe.

Cunobeline, very young, was carried to Rome by his uncle Mandubrace, four years after Cæsar’s expedition here, and his restitution to the kingdom of the Trinobantes. Cunobeline became well acquainted, and even intimate with Augustus, in the dawning of his power; being about the same age. Augustus entertained a great kindness for him; and he bore a share in his warfare, being præfect of a Roman legion, the XX. VV. called Cretica, as Richard of Cirencester informs us; which is the reason that he so often struck the figure of a boar on his British coins, that being the ensign and cognisance of the legion. After he returned, and was king of Britain, he kept up a friendship and correspondence with Augustus, during his whole, and that a very long life. He struck many coins in honour of Augustus, and the plainest imitations of the coins of Augustus. He sent him magnificent presents, paid a tribute to him, built the city Cæsaromagus in compliment to him. He celebrated the Actiac games like those done by Agrippa at Rome, by Herod at Cæsarea, and many other states of the Roman empire. By these means he staved off, for his life, an actual subjection of Britain to the Romans.

I cannot agree with my late learned friend Mr. Baxter in his derivation of Trinobantum, that it is of Belgic original. The word Tri or Tre of the old Cornish, prefixed, sufficiently confutes the notion: here is none of the Belgic pronunciation, as in the west of England. Cæsar’s assertion of the supereminent power of the Trinobantes, shows they were an aboriginal people: they had indeed been under some sort of subjection to the Cassii, or Cattichleuni; but that may have been recent, when Casvelhan invaded them, and slew their king, his brother Immanuence, father to our Mandubrace, as Cæsar tells us.

The very name of their neighbours, Cattichleuni, confirms our opinion; signifying the clan of the Cassii; a most ancient word of the Britons, equivalent to the Latin civitas, used by Cæsar; still in use in Scotland. Baxter owns the Cassii to be of Frisian, or British origin.

This word Frisian puts us in mind of the British stories of Trinobantum being Troja nova, built by the wandering Trojans: so deep rooted among our ancestors is the notion of a Trojan original. I know several foundations that may be assigned for this notion: one seems to come from the utmost source of antiquity, the founder of the British nation, APHER, grandson of ABRAHAM: for which I can bring very large proofs, not so much pertaining to this place. He is the Greek Phryxus, a near relation to Melicerta or Melcartus, the Tyrian Hercules: he founded the Phrygians; he gave name to Africa, and Britain; so that Phrygii, Frisones, and Bryges, Britones, Brigantes, are all words in different pronunciation meaning the same. Of it I say no more at present, than that it further illustrates my opinion of the Trinobantes being most ancient, an aboriginal people here; and that their city was fenced about, whether with a wall, or with a vallum, and ditch, I cannot pretend to say, any more than when it was first called Londinium: and it is not my humour to carry conjectures beyond what they will reasonably bear. But I think I am not distant from truth, when I judge the Novii to be the same as the Nubæ of Africa, on the west side the Nile; neighbour to the Troglodites, says Strabo: these were neighbours too to the Arabians; the Red sea between them: natural navigators they must needs be. And Josephus makes the children of ABRAHAM by Keturah to be settled by him in Trogloditis, and Arabia the Happy, upon the Red sea. Antiq. i. 15. The colony of these people at Cadiz is always said to come from the Red sea. Pliny mentions the Nubæi, a people of Arabia Deserta.

Further, Novantæ are a people in the west of Scotland, now Galloway. Novantum promontorium, the Mull, Chersonesus, and Novaritæ; and the city Novantia, north of Severus’s wall. The river Nid, in Scotland, is called Novius. No reason to think either one or the other of Belgic original, but undoubtedly a colony of our Trinobantes.

Josephus, in his xiv. of the antiquities of the Jews, gives us the decree of the senate and people of Pergamus, in favour of the Jews; setting forth, “Since the Romans, following the conduct of their ancestors, undertake dangers for the common safety of mankind, and are ambitious to settle their confederates and friends in happiness, and in firm peace—”

The decree proceeds as at large set forth by Josephus, and well worthy perusal; concluding, “That the Jews would remember, their ancestors were friendly to the Jews, even in the days of ABRAHAM, who was the father of the Hebrews; as we have also found it set down in our public records.” Many useful observations may be made from this testimony.

1. We learn hence, mankind at that time, which was but about forty years before the vulgar Christian æra, had the same notion of the Romans, as I have enlarged upon in chap. 1. of the Medallic History of Carausius. The Romans, for their valour, virtue, fortitude and temperance, were the nation chosen by divine Providence to conquer, polish, and set free, all the world, to prepare for the advent of Messiah.

2. These Phrygians were a colony of the defendants of ABRAHAM by Keturah. At Pergamus the ancient and famous physician Æsculapius had a shop, and practised physic, as Lucian testifies. Midian, the father of Phryxus, APHER, was a great physician, and no other than the Greek Chiron; as I have shown elsewhere: so our Druids, the people of APHER, were famous for medicine. The Genius of physic remained at the place: the famous Galen was born here.

3. These people assert, what they say is written in their public records; so that they had an early use of letters, from the Abrahamic family: our Druids likewise had the use of letters from the same fountain.

4. What they say is confirmed by the Lacedemonians claiming like kindred to the Jews; as we read in Maccabees, xii. 19. 23. and Josephus, xii. 4. 10. Mr. Whiston mentions, on this occasion, the testimony of the Armenian writer, Moses Chorenensis; affirming that Arsaces, founder of the Parthian empire, was of the seed of ABRAHAM, by Keturah: and thus we find this posterity of the great patriarch, from Britain by sea, to Parthia by land; the extent of the habitable world: and Josephus often mentions his countrymen the Jews exceeding numerous, in after-times, in every country and city throughout the habitable world; which is true to this very day, both in respect to Jews, properly speaking, by Sarah, as well as the Arabians by Hagar, and Keturah: for by these latter all Asia and Africa are at this day peopled: the signal favour of God to the greatest of all men, ABRAHAM.

Return we to the city of Trinobantum. I shall mark out the original form, which we may conceive it to have been of, in the time we are writing of. If we look on the plan of London, which I engraved long ago in my Itiner. Cur. we discern, the original ground-plot of the oldest part of the city is comprehended, in length, from Ludgate to the present Walbroke; in breadth, from Maiden-lane, Lad-lane, Cateaton-street, to the Thames. This makes an oblong square, in proportion as 2 to 3: I have there made it to be composed of two principal streets, crossing two other principal streets; which makes nine principal quadrangular spaces, for the habitations, area’s, and public buildings.

I have reason still to acquiesce in this disposition of the most ancient city of London; as we must suppose it in the time of Immanuence, father to Cæsar’s ally Mandubrace, whom he now resettled therein. I am very much confirmed in my opinion, by the ground-plot I have lately made of Cæsaromagus, now Chelmsford, built by Mandubrace’s nephew, the great king Cunobeline, to the honour of Augustus, his great friend and ally; for that city was exactly of the same form and disposition.

Hence then we gather, the oldest London was bounded on the west by Ludgate, and the wall there; on the east, by the current or rivulet called Walbroke, coming from the morass of Moorfields; which morassy ground extended to Smithfield, and guarded the whole north side of the city; as the Thames on the south: it is well known, that the Mansion-house stands on a great and deep morassy ditch; that the foundation of it cost a very great sum, in driving piles, and the like, to set the building upon. The city of London is situate much as Alexander projected for Alexandria, between a morass and the sea.

Here was a natural and good boundary on all sides. To the west was a steep cliff hanging over the rivulet of Fleet: its steepness is very considerable now, as may be seen about the Old Bailey, where is at present a flight of steps, through the old wall: in former days it was much more considerable: the other sides had the river and water; so that the spot pitched upon for the city must be reckoned very judicious: the soil a hard and dry gravel.

There is the strongest confirmation for this assignment, deducible from observing three principal roads leading from the gate of Walbroke, at the end of the Poultry, at Stocks market, or the Mansion-house: Cornhill was the great road directly into Essex: Lombard-street conducted to Cunobeline’s custom-house, Billingsgate: Threadneedle-street and Broad-street went obliquely toward the north-east, and the present Bishops-gate, and so in later times to the great Roman road called Hermen-street, crossing the Thames where London bridge now is; making a meridian line through the length of the island.

By collating several old plans of London, I discern there were four principal streets running from west to east. 1. The Watling-street, from Ludgate. 2. Thames-street, the boundary toward the river: this on the right hand of Watling-street. 3. On the left hand, Cheapside, Pater-noster row being originally part thereof: at the end of it, beyond the Poultry was the eastern gate of the city. 4. That called Maiden-lane, and Cateaton-street, which was the northern boundary of the city, and running along the original wall of it.

47·2⁠^d. Caesaromagus Chelmsford built by King Cunobeline

P. Benazech Sculp.

48·2⁠^d. CAMVLODVNVM
Colonia.

49·2⁠^d.

G. V.ᵈʳ Gucht Scul.
C. JVLIVS CAESAR.
In marmore penes Cl. Ric Mead M.D. sui tabulam dicat W^m. Stukeley. 1722.

50·2⁠^d. The Carpentry of Cæsars bridg over the Rhine.

Stukeley delin.

51·2⁠^d. The Side view of Cæsars bridg.

Stukeley delin.

52·2⁠^d.

Cæsars camp at Deal, in his first Expedition into Britain.
Illustrissimo Heneagio Comiti Winchilsea Militiæ Cæsareæ Specimen d. d.
Guliel. Stukeley

Stukeley design.

Toms Sculp.

53·2⁠^d. Cæsars Camp upon Barham Down. drawn 10. Oct. 1722.

W. Stukeley delin.

E. Kirkall sculp.

This being the first form of the city, its proportion of length to breadth was as 3 to 2. Now, for the cross streets, I conceive one to have been that of St. Martin’s lane from Aldersgate continued downward to Paul’s wharf; the next was from Aldermanbury and Bow-lane, to Queenhithe: the other, Walbroke to Dowgate, or Watergate, being the outfall of the rivulet; boundary of the eastern wall of the original city, as in in the time of Mandubrace. The street which accompanied the western wall, on the inside Ludgate, is quite absorbed by houses at present.

There might then have been many lesser cross streets both ways, of which we cannot now take any account, our purpose being to consider it only in the great; but there are many collateral indications of the justness of our assignment: it would be a trifling minuteness to push conjectures farther, than to observe the gate on the south side was at Queen-hithe.

Thus we see a great conformity between old London and Cunobeline’s Cæsaromagus, especially as to the general distribution and design; the four gates of the sides corresponding to different streets obliquely.

Afterwards, when the Romans became possessed of the island, and made the great roads across the kingdom, three of them had respect to this metropolis, but none went precisely through it; and such was often their method. The Watling-street, from Chester to Dover, came by Tyburn, crossed the Thames at Stanegate, by Lambeth, and so to Shooters’ hill: this is crossed at Tyburn by another equally strait, but unnoticed by any writer, reaching across the kingdom from Chichester to Dunwich in Suffolk: I call it via Iceniana: it goes by Old-street north of the city, and is the high road of Essex to Colchester; but, when the Romans found it useful to enlarge this city by a new wall, they made a branch to proceed from St. Giles’s, which we call Holborn, and so built a gate at Newgate, and continued the road to Cheapside.

A third road is the Hermen-street from the sea-side in Sussex to Scotland: it went by Bishops-gate, but on the eastern and outside of the city, till its enlargement; and that enlargement was done by Constantine the Great, or by his mother the empress Helena, our country-woman: and we may well credit the reports of the Britons concerning this matter. Then it acquired the title of Londinium Augusta: then it was that the Tower was built; an armamentarium, as the castle of Colchester, of the same manner and model of building, Roman brick and stone; a chapel with a semicircular window, as Colchester, and dedicated to St. Helena. This in after-times; but in regard to the age we are treating on, that of Cæsar and our aboriginal Britons, it is a just enquiry, after we have given the plan of primitive London of the Novantes, Where may we suppose their temple to have been? for assuredly we must pronounce, that, whenever the ancients built a city, they certainly took care to erect a temple for divine worship.

In answer to this enquiry, we are to reflect, that the Britons were under the ecclesiastic regimen of the Druids, who were of the patriarchal religion, the religion indeed of ABRAHAM: for they came from him. We find in sacred writ, wherever he removed from one country to another, “there builded he an altar to Jehovah, and invoked in the name of Jehovah,” who sometimes personally appeared to him: consequently we must infer Jehovah to be the Messiah, or Son of God, in an angelic form.

Other times ABRAHAM removed into a country abounding with groves of oak; sometimes he planted a grove of oak for religious purposes, as a temple. All these things the Druids did; they built such open temples as the great patriarch; they used oak-groves, or planted oak-groves as temples: we cannot say that Jehovah appeared personally to them; yet we may well think they were sometimes vouchsafed the spirit of prophecy, and particularly in regard to Messiah, who they knew was to be born of a virgin, and likewise was to be born at the winter solstice, whence their famous misleto solemnity.

Moreover, at Chartres in France, which was the place of the principal meeting of the Gaulish Druids, there is now a magnificent church, built upon the spot where then was that most celebrated open temple: for the Druids very easily passed over into christianity; the transition was but natural. This church is dedicated to the Mother of God, as they there style the virgin Mary: there is under it a chapel cut in the rock, with a flight of stairs descending to it: on the door of the frontispiece is this inscription in Latin,

“To the Virgin who bears the Child.”

I apprehend this to be analogous to the caves of Mithras in Persia; for Mithras is Mediator, or Messiah; and they say there, that Mithras was born in such a rocky cave; and they worship him therein. Both the ancient Persians and the Druids, who were of the same patriarchal religion, had the same notion of the Messiah to be born in the rocky stable at Bethlehem.

We have many instances of Druid men and women endowed with the spirit of prophecy. I shall mention but one, out of Josephus, Antiq. xviii. The Jewish Agrippa fell into the displeasure of Tiberius, who put him in bonds. As he stood leaning against a tree before the palace, an owl perched upon that tree: a German Druid, one of the emperor’s guards, spoke to him to be of good cheer, for he should be released from those bonds, and arrive at great dignity and power; but bid him remember, that when he saw that bird again, he should live but five days. All this came to pass: he was made king by Caligula; St. Paul preached before him: Josephus speaks of his death, agreeable to the prediction. But concerning the Druids, I have before now opened my mind largely, in some papers read at the Antiquarian Society; wherein I have sufficiently vindicated them from the imputation of paganism and idolatry.

As to the temple belonging to the city of Trinobantum, or London, we may be assured, they erected no temple within the city. When the Romans became masters here, they built a temple of their own form, to Diana, where now St. Paul’s stands: they placed it in the open space, then the forum; but the British temple, appropriate to the city, was upon the open rising ground to the west, where now is Knave’s-acre. The name of the place both gives a very good foundation to my opinion, and also at the same time acquaints us with the particular form of the temple: for the Druids, as I have shown, had three kinds of temples, of the patriarchal mode. 1. The round, or circular work of upright stones, innumerable to be seen. 2. The serpentine temple, or a snake transmitted through a circle; as those of Abury and Shap. 3. The alate, or winged temple, composed of a circle and wings: and this was the sort of temple here placed; of which the name of Knaves-acre is a sure memorial. This was made only of mounds of earth, in Latin agger, thrown out of the ditch camp-fashion: this word is corrupted into acre. The word knave is oriental, canaph, volavit; the Kneph of the Egyptians; by which they meant the Deity, in the most ancient times, before idolatry prevailed.

The form of our alate temple here exactly corresponds with that now to be seen on Navestock common, Epping forest; which name of Navestock preserves its memorial, meaning the sacred tree by the alate temple: it is composed of mounds of earth and ditch; as ours was at Knaves-acre.

Observe, the word agger remains at Edgeware, the Suellanacis of our king Casvelhan, uncle to Mandubrace: it is the Roman road called Watling-street. Egham by Stanes acknowledges the like derivation, being upon the via Trinobantica at Stanes, the Ad Pontes of the Romans. Many more like instances I could give.

These sort of temples were properly dedicated to the Divine Spirit, the author of motion, which moved upon the face of the new-created matter, as Moses writes, and were more particularly assigned to the religious festivity celebrated at the summer solstice, when the pigeon was the first and peculiar sacrifice of the season. I shall not speak more about them here: but besides this temple, the Britons had a magnificent cursus, or place for sports and races on foot, in chariots, on horseback, when they celebrated their public sacrifices and religious observances on the solstices and equinoxes.

These cursus’s were likewise made of mounds of earth thrown up in two parallel lines: such a one is that at Leicester in the meadow near the river; it is called Rawdikes, from the ancient name of the city, Ratæ, capital of the Coritani; such another there is, called Dyke-hills, in the meadow of Dorchester, Oxfordshire, where the Tame and the Isis unite; Dobuni.

Exactly such another, belonging to our Trinobantum, is that we call Long-acre, or agger; which, we may be confident, was originally two parallel banks, the whole length of that street, and breadth: it has the same gentle sweep, or curve, as those other cursus’s: it then commanded a beautiful prospect over the present Covent-garden to the Thames, and an extensive view, both upward and downward, of the river, and into Surrey. The banks were designed for the spectators, and admirably well adapted to the purpose.

So that we may justly conclude, Knave’s-acre was the proper temple to the city of Trinobantum, and Long-acre their solemn place of races, accompanying the religious celebrations of the ancient citizens here, in the time of Cæsar. Long-acre is 1400 English feet in length, which is exactly 800 Druid cubits, two furlongs of the east, two stadia.

Give me leave to mention my fancy or conjecture of the founder of this alate temple and cursus, viz. ELI, father of Immanuence, and of Casvelhan: there was his tumulus on Windmill-street edge, at the end of Piccadilly: a windmill was erected on it in after-times. From it descends the street called Hedge-lane, from agger, the tumulus. I suppose the name of Piccadilly may be from its elevation, a Hybrid word composed from peak cad Eli, the tumulus ducis Eli. Cad is a common name of the Welsh kings.

Westminster, in Druid times, was a great wood, called afterward Thorney-isle, where they celebrated the autumnal Panegyre. Mr. Denman, a brass-founder, told me of three brass Celts dug up very low in the foundation of the Sanctuary at Westminster, which he melted; they were of whitish metal: also two more of the like, dug up in the bottom of the Thames, on digging the foundation of Westminster bridge, which he melted.

I shall only add a few observations, more than what is already done, concerning the plan of the oldest city of London. Where now is St. Paul’s was the forum, or market-place, comprehending the square area between Cheapside, the Old ’Change, Watling-street, and where now is the west end of St. Paul’s. The highest end of the city was the north-west corner, guarded by a steep precipice, where Madan-lane is, which imports as much. The north side of the city had a deep ditch, always filled with water from the morass of Moorfields and Smeethfield, now Smithfield. From hence the name of Lade-lane; for lade, in Saxon, is an artificial ditch, or drain: and this discharges the vulgar opinion of Ludgate taking its name from the river Flete, as if porta flumentana. Now we may well assert Dowgate to be truly such, the water-gate.

Our Saxon ancestors had some remembrance of the enlargement of London walls, by their naming of Aldgate, and Aldersgate, as sensible of the priority of one in date. It was A. D. 450, that they beat the Scots at Stamford, which is but little more than 100 years from the time of Constantine the Great, when these walls were built, and the title of Londinium Augusta commenced. That the city-walls were made by the empress Helena, is strongly confirmed by the history of the recovery of Britain to the Roman empire by Constantius Chlorus: for Asclepiodotus his general fought the Britons under the dominion of Allectus, under the old walls of London, at Walbrook, then the eastern boundary of the city, as historians particularly recite; and we may easily believe Cornhill to have been originally without the city, where the waggons stood that brought it. The historians likewise tell us, that the first palace of the British kings was in the south-west corner of the city, where afterwards Baynard’s castle stood, which likewise became a palace of our kings, before Bridewell was built: but when the empress Helena built the walls of the enlarged city, which walls for the most part now remain, the palace was then the present tower. Lastly, I apprehend, the oldest city which we are describing was walled about; for I cannot allow the Britons to be any wise inferior to the Gauls in art, either military or civil. When the city was enlarged and incompassed with new walls, the three roads beyond the east gate were converted into streets, as at present, Threadneedle-street, Cornhill and Lombard-street; as well as the Roman road, Gracechurch-street.

ITER BOREALE.

IN the year 1725, I travelled over the western and northern parts of England, in company of Mr. Roger Gale, a gentleman well known to the learned world; as his father, Dr. Thomas Gale, dean of York. I was requested, by some lovers of antiquity, to transcribe those notes which I wrote day by day during our journey; and though I had visited several of the places, through which we passed, in my former journeys, yet a second view (especially in company of a person so well versed in antiquities) gave me an opportunity of making some farther remarks, which I flatter myself may be of use to those who are fond of studying the antiquities of our own country.

I shall begin with Dunstable, the MAGIOVINIVM of the Romans. Many large brass coins, and many silver, are found in ploughing the fields here, and when digging in the ruins of the old priory by the church: I got a Nero of Corinthian brass, and a Faustina. The downs here are but a rib or narrow ridge of chalk; or northward is sand or clay.

Madan castle is circular, perhaps oval: the space within is a fine plain: the vallum is small, and the ditch much smaller; so that I am persuaded it was made rather for spectacle than defence. Tethill castle is a little further westward, a strong little camp upon one of the many north-west precipices of chalk exceeding steep: a village underneath, and springs of water: it is a double camp, both square; in one a round keep, or large tumulus ditched about, which shows it is a Saxon work.

The prospect all along the steep northern sides of the Chiltern hills is lovely; the Icening-street goes at the bottom; it is corn-field for the most part. These hills are all steep westward and northward.

Brick hill, or more properly Brink hill, stands on a very high sandy hill, steep north-west: the Watling-street, just before it arrives here, winds a little eastward, to avoid a deep valley, and passes above it.

Stone begins beyond Brick hill; and we enter a country of long-extended ridges, with large valleys and rivulets at bottom.

DAVENTRY.

The country here, which is probably the highest in England, is a quarry of reddish stone, in small strata; the uppermost very full of shells, especially belemnites. The air must needs be exceeding good, as in the centre of England; the soil is a reddish clay. This is a neat pleasant town, well situate: two springs of the Avon run close by it. Eastward the great hill whereon is Borough-hill camp: a very pretty spring arises in the inner ditch, probably the highest in England; it is on the north-east side, which way the hill declines. This camp is on that end of the hill which it fills up, and conforms to its shape; double ditched, but toward the entrance the ditches separate, and meet at the entrance obliquely, after a manner I have not seen elsewhere. All round the mid-way of the hill it is boggy and springy: the whole hill is stone. Upon it are many more works of great compass; I suppose, some later camps of the Danes, Saxons, or Britons against them: there seem to have been some entrenchments round that part of Daventry town where the church stands: the inner ditch of the first-mentioned camp is very broad, and the vallum proportionable. Spellwell is the name of the spring on Borough hill; it looks blue: they say it is good for sore eyes, and is a great dryer.

It is a stony and clayey soil all the way from Daventry to Warwick: the country is open and full of corn-fields. The river divides countries of different nature; for on the other side it is a very good sort of large rocks: the country is very woody.

PRAESIDIVM. Warwick.

There seem to be signs of a camp on the east side of the river, over-against the castle, in a close where is an old chapel now become a barn: a spring riles a little above it: if so, then this was the garrison before the Romans built the city on the west side. Warwick is a very neat and beautiful town; many fine houses and public buildings of good stone, dug up at hand. The old castle is very perfect, and a noble seat: many fine pictures of the Greville family, and others, particularly an original of Sir Philip Sidney: the whole length of the place is one suite of rooms very magnificent; one wainscotted with cedar: they all look over the river. One may see here much of the ancient manner of fortification: their methods of defence, two gates, two portcullices at the entrance; with hole to drop down poles, and an immense strength of stone-work: before the towers at the gates are iron hooks fastened into the wall, which they told us were for hanging wool-sacks on in a siege: a tower in the corner of each wing, very high; that at the corner next the river they call Cæsar’s tower, made of three circular segments; that at the corner next the town is twelve-angled, called Guy’s tower: the keep is very high, now made with a circular walk to the top. At the priory, in two galleries which seem to be part of the first building, are some paintings on glass, of religious stories. The chapel at Guy’s cliff is double, having two arches within, that divide its length into two ailes or chapels. Under the castle-walls, by the river side, upon the rock grows much liver-wort, thriving in so agreeable a place. I observed the lowermost rocks are perpetually dripping, which gathering together in a channel underneath, makes a small rivulet. This seems to indicate, that fountains are the effect of exudation from the most elevated protuberances into some internal cavity; which though by drops only, yet the sum amounts to enough to make a spring run perpetually; as the alembic distills the vapors. Now the tops of the hills are kept always moist by the natural ascent of the water below. I know nothing against this doctrine, but springs arising in very large quantity from narrow apexes, and where no other higher ground is near, if any such springs there be: but we want sufficient number of instances and data to determine this great question. People since the creation have been very negligent, or very injudicious, in making observations for this purpose. This is not an useless inquiry; for if we found out Nature’s method in this affair, it would assist in making artificial springs, or finding out natural ones, to the great enrichment of barren lands, and watering all in a dry season; water being the universal instrument of all increase and nutrition.

Warwick bridge has twelve arches. The potamogeiton majus grows in the river; a large yellow flower, tripetalous, with an apple like the Egyptian lotus.

COVENTRY.

Dr. Philemon Holland, who translated Camden’s Britannia, is buried in the choir of Trinity church. In the window is a piece of painted glass of Leofric earl of Chester, lord of this place, and Godiva his wife: he holds a charter in his hand with this writing, I Luryche for love of thee grawnte Covetre tol fre. Stichell, a mile south of Coventry, has its name from the clays. The road here is paved very broad for a great length. St. Michael’s church is a very stately and magnificent building: the spire is very fine, and the highest of any I have seen for its base, but built of a mouldering stone. Over-against it is the town-house, a large stone building, and old, like a church: a very old wooden chair there, said to be that wherein king John was crowned; much old rusty armour; pictures of several kings of England, and other benefactors; and many inscriptions, Latin and English, relating to them. A vintner bought some ground north of St. Michael’s, and built a house upon it: he dug up great ruins of the old convent, and many coffins, and among the rest (as they say) that of Leofric and Godiva. This is a very large and populous city, but narrow irregular streets; and the houses chiefly of wood, and very old, hanging over the streets. The gates are many and stately: no doubt the walls were answerable, but now demolished for the most part, after the rebellion: in some places, where parcels are left, it is very thick, and so strong, that they only undermined it, and threw it down flat; as particularly in the meadows north of St. Michael’s, where it passed over the brook by an arch. Between that and the church stood the priory, founded by Leofric before the Conquest: some old walls of it remain. Here have been many elegant brasses in the churches, but broke up. The famous Cross is of a pretty model, but of perishing stone. The basis of St. Michael’s steeple is but twelve yards from outside to outside of the buttresses. Every road hence is paved with a broad high-raised causeway, from every gate a mile.

Griff coal-works here, forty ells deep, of vast compass. No sort of fossils found in them. Griff, from grave, grooff, digging. The soil sandy from Coventry hither, then black earth. The coal-mine runs from Coventry to Tamworth in a line: here are such breaches that intercept the strata, and such trapping and dipping as in Somersetshire: the fissures, upon breaking the track and parallelism of the strata, make them diverge generally. Great old toads are often found in the solid coal, leaving a cavity of their own shape. They draw away the water from the mines by an invention originally of the earl of Worcester, improved by Captain Savery and others: it works with a vast power from the atmosphere pressing into a receiver exhausted of air, by vapor, and then condensed. I saw the ruined chapel of Nuneaton. Many religious houses thereabouts, and remains of camps, castles, &c. and nothing else can make amends for the badness of the roads.

MANDVESSEDVM.

Dugdale says, divers Roman coins of brass and silver have been found here. It stands on the river Anker. The first syllable of the name remains, Man-castle or ’cester. At Oldbury a square fort of thirty acres, with very high rampires, situate on an eminence: this, no doubt, was a camp: to the north of it have been found frequently flint axes of the old Britons, about four inches and a half broad, ground to an edge: there are no flints within forty miles of the place. Either our maps are wrong, or the Roman road goes very much winding, perhaps to avoid the great Arduen forest. The name of this forest left in divers places, Weston in Arden, Henly in Arden, Ardbury, &c.

I called on Mr. Henry Beighton, an ingenious gentleman, who is making a map of this county; and we visited this station. South a little of the bridge, under which the Anker passes the Watling-street, I found the old city: it lies on both sides the road, and is of a square form: the road passes exactly through the middle of its length, which is 600 foot, its breadth 200, on each side the road. The field in Leicestershire is called Old-field banks; that in Warwickshire, Castle banks. The ditch is very perfect quite round, and the bank whereon stood the wall. The people know of great stones, and mortar work exceeding strong, being dug up; much Roman brick, iron, and great numbers of coins brass and silver, and some gold: in sinking wells the like things found. Several vaults go quite through, and cattle have sometimes dropt into them. A spring at the north-east gate. Oldbury is a great camp upon a high hill, west of the place; whence a most delightful prospect. The hill whereon stands the church of Mancester, which is a field or two off the bridge, seems to have been a camp too: it is intrenched very deeply, but I cannot say with so much regularity, as to its present appearance, that will ascertain it to the Romans: it is in the way to Oldbury. The houses reached from the castle to the bridge; for in the ploughed piece between, called the Furlong, foundations have been discovered, and many bridges. A great family has lived at Mancester, and of that name, who probably made, or altered, the ditches there. Geo. Astley esq. of Wolvey, near High-cross, has a great collection of coins found at High-cross, and all the neighbouring places; as Monks Kirby, where urns and ashes have been often found. The prospect from Oldbury is exceeding extensive all over the country; the camps of Shugbury, Arbury, and Borough, all in view, and the country that way, where the Watling-street runs, as far as Watford gap; so all into Nottinghamshire, and westward to a great distance. Withersley, and several villages round, parish to Mancester as their mother-church. The church there is a pretty large building with a tower-steeple. The country there is all a rock, and abounds with springs: the rock is of very hard stone, and dips westward, as the adjacent coal-mines. Mancester stands on much higher ground than the road and old city. More coal-mines about Dudley, Wolverhampton in Staffordshire. Sometimes the ends of the coal at those breaches bend the contrary way: this shows the breaches were made before the coal was perfectly hardened. When the damps exanimate a man at these coal-pits, they draw him up instantly, and make a round hole in the earth, put his head in, and cover it with fresh mold, which infallibly restores him. Between Wormleighton and Stanton they found, in a pit, a trunk of a tree hewn into a coffin, with bones in it; and many coins, particularly of Constantine. At Wolfencote, upon the Leam, in sinking a well they came to a vault with urns and coins: in digging at the priory at Coventry they found the old cloysters, with many grave-stones of monks; and in the old walls, which were very thick, bones and skulls with teeth, &c. were laid in, as fillings-up, from ruins of the older monastery.

BIRMINGHAM.

A large rich town, the very shop of Vulcan. The vicinity of the coal-mines has made it the chief place in England for all sorts of iron work, sent hence throughout the whole world, in great abundance: it is a pleasant, woody, plentiful country hereabouts: they have repaired an old church, and built a new one: the streets are large and good buildings: there is a pretty square, inclosed and planted like Soho: the town lies on a declivity. In the old church are tombs, in alabaster, of a Jerusalem knight, two other knights, and some others. Deritend chapel built of timber, 5 R. II. by the river side. Here is a large school-house founded by Edward VI. not long since rebuilt: they have marked out large tracts of ground on the hill round the new church for buildings.

I find the Rigning-street way comes from Alcester, directly north and south, by Moseley, over a heath where the road appears now very broad, on the east side of the rivulet Rea: it descends Camp hill, and passes the river by the present bridge, and the valley where the low and old part of the town stood: it makes an angle in order to pass this broad meadow, directly as the Icening-street does at Newbury, or ad Spinas. No doubt but here was a station in the time of the Romans, because a convenient distance, ten miles from Etocetum: but of its name I know no footsteps. I imagine the present name derived from the great quantity of broom growing all round. Ingham signifies the dwelling upon the meadows; for the town has advanced itself but by degrees up the hill. When the Roman road has passed the valley, it turns up the first street on the right hand (Park street) to take the most convenient rise up hill, and at the end of the town falls into the present road, with its former direction to Etocetum. Probably upon Camp hill has been a camp, being by the road side, and having a fine prospect: what with the deep roads to Coventry and Warwick, here meeting the Ricning; and the inclosures, and digging for brick and tile, I could discern no signs of it. At this town is a considerable manufacture for thread. Beyond Birmingham, the Rigning-way runs upon the division between the counties of Stafford and Warwick, by Aldston.

In the forges here, three men beat together with successive strokes; which brought into my mind Virgil’s

Brontesque, Steropesque, ac nudus membra Pyracmon.

ETOCETVM.

A little to the west of where the Rigning crosses the Watling-street, south-west of Litchfield stands a little village, called Wall; south of that a quarter of a mile is Chesterfield. This is said to be the oldest city in England, by the inhabitants; and the Watling-street the oldest road. The Itinerary of Antoninus sufficiently evinces the place to be Etocetum. Part of the Rigning-way, northward hence, is very fair, with a high strait bank; part very mirey and bad. The country is sandy, clay, and full of round coggles, of which the road was composed. The Watling-street eastward hence about half a mile is inclosed in fields; but westward it appears very strait and broad. They call the Rigning the Hickling street at this place; and likewise Port-lane: it goes to Burton upon Trent. Many Roman coins found here, both great and small. Mr. Quintin, living here, has many: he owns the field called the Butts, where I saw great ruins of walls equidistant twelve foot, and twelve high, like square cellars. I saw bits of pavement there, Irish slate, Roman bricks, some pieces thus marked

. The walls are a yard thick, of strong mortar, rubble stone, &c. The Watling-street parts the two villages, Chesterfield south, and Wall north. By the side of a road going northward thence to Pipe hill, I immediately espied the Roman walls, notorious by the manner of their structure; of rag-stone, a course laid sloping this way, a course that way, with very strong and white mortar: this lies under a hedge, and the roots of old oak-trees for the length of a hundred yards, till intercepted by a dwelling-house. They say the building in Butt’s close was a temple; and probably they are not mistaken. The Watling-street at this old city goes precisely east and west: some mile-stones found by the brook running west of the city: a pretty spring there; ruins upon digging all the fields round: the brook has a broad marsh along it westward. A little below the temple, we saw the crown of a subterraneous arch in the hedge. They showed me where the Rigning-way went through a corn-field south of the castle, and passed the river west of Shenston: it is a field way still southward, and an open road north. The castle stood in the north-west angle, between the Watling and another road, going to Litchfield, upon a gentle southern declivity: the old walls are founded upon the solid rock, and much more of them was left within memory: now they pull them down to build withal. There is a gate crosses the Watling-street at the castle end, by the side of the other road. That called the Temple is upon the western declivity, much lower in elevation than the castle, which is upon the highest ground in the neighbourhood, and somewhat raised above the common level, by heaps of rubbish, and foundations, which I could discern above ground in the orchard. The place of this old city is an elevation, and has a good prospect, especially southward: Oldbury castle and Mancester are in view. Wm. Milner, at the Swan, is an antiquary, and knows the old name of the place: he showed me a Roman wall in his cellar, and says it goes far backward by the garden. No doubt there were houses all the way, on both sides the road, from the castle to the brook, which is a sweet descent westward. There was a Roman coin of gold found near Hales-Owen. Many floors, pots, and other antiquities, found on the south side the Watling-street, in the ploughed fields called Chesterfield Crofts; and a very fine red earthen ware, with figures of bucks upon them. The circumference of the castle is hardly to be found; the ground has not been dug in the yards hereabouts. The Rigning-way goes by Lyn-lane, and so passes the river west of Shenston, at Shenston nether town. This country lies upon a rock here and there interspersed, but not a good stone; but there is a quarry of good free-stone, of a brown colour, by Swinfield. I saw a Nero of Corinthian brass, and some square Roman pavements found there.

The Rigning runs on the east side of an eminence called Mawcop hill, as it passes northward hence. The building in Butts close is level at top with the pasture, except toward the declivity, where they have dug away the earth, and the great wall that ran along it. Two miles beyond Etocetum, on the top of a hill is Knave’s castle, on the south side the Watling-street: it is a large tumulus inclosed within three ditches; an entrance on the south side: it has been hollowed at top. This is in a vast moor, or common full of heath, as the nature of the soil is all the way. The Watling is very fair and strait, and in many places the ridge is perfect for a great length. A little west of the bridge, under which the river Penk crosses the Watling, are a few houses belonging to Stretton, upon an eminence. This is thought to be the

PENNOCRVCIVM.

And, no doubt, it was hereabouts, to answer the miles in the Itinerary. The village of Stretton lies a little to the north of the road; and a mile south is Brewood, another village, which they say has been an old city: it lies upon the Penk. Upon ploughing the fields they find Roman coins frequently, and much other antiquities. In that great old city, king John kept his court. A little brook runs a pasture or two below the road, and parallel to it, into the Penk, called Horse brook: it is a very full river, and the bridge is broad it runs through. The Watling-street is here east and west. Three large stone bridges cross the river in two miles. The old Roman city, no doubt, was by the road-side somewhere near here, and perhaps by Horse brook. Brewood may have been a Roman town, but it is too far out of the road for the convenience of travellers; and Penkridge is two miles and a half off, so that it can put in no claim. This town must have borrowed its name from the river, as that from the Roman city. Penkridge stands by the side of a large marsh made by the river: the church is built of good stone; a remarkable stone cross in the street. The healthiness of this country favours Mr. Baxter’s conjecture of the derivation of Pennocrucium.

The prospect hence southward is noble, and very comprehensive. Dudley castle, and many of the steep summits of the hills in Worcestershire, are in view; together with the mighty height of the Wrekin, which, from a plain, rises like a sugar-loaf to a narrow tip, and of very difficult ascent. The Watling-street runs under it. It is good land here, warm and woody, being just beyond the moor.

STAFFORD.

The castle here to the north west, a mile and half off, stands on a tip of rising ground very steep to the north-west; on which they have raised a keep, or high mount of earth: on that stood a square tower of stone, part of which remains. Here is the most magnificent prospect quite round, that one can imagine; the Malvern, the Wrekin, and many Welsh mountains, lift up their narrow heads beyond the utmost horizon, and above the clouds, as it seems. To the eastward is room for the castle, fenced too with a deep ditch. This was the work of Edward the elder, in the Saxon times; or rather his sister, the virago Elfleda, A. D. 913. A little church stands near the castle, called the Castle church, with a house or two near it. The situation of Stafford is low, in a broad marshy vale, where several rivers meet; and it has been fortified quite round, the waters of the rivers favouring that purpose. Two miles directly eastward is Beacon hill, a large parcel of rocks laid upon a level eminence, and covered with grass, having a steep ascent on every side, like a camp: it has a very pleasant prospect. The town-house here is a handsome large building. Upon St. Amor heath, under Beacon hill, a battle was fought in the civil wars.

We passed through Uttoxeter, where I could find nothing Roman, notwithstanding its name, cester; only heard of three gold coins found by the river side, not far off, some time since: it stands in a very fine country, watered by the Dove, a fruitful river, running through large meadows. Thence, in our way to Derby, we saw several large, flat Celtic barrows, upon a common at Sidbury. We rode over the meadows under Tutbury castle, famous for the bull-running on Aug. 10. where the people of two counties meet according to ancient usage, and contend for the honour of their counties, sometimes to bloodshed. The castle, once the seat of the dukes of Lancaster, stands on a very high precipice, looking north and west, strong by nature and art; very probably a Roman camp originally, as its name, bury, imports: it is not far from the Rigning-way. Tot signifies an eminence. Underneath it we went through Hilton. The lord of the manor there held of the dukes, by a ridiculous appearance before him, on the day after Christmas, whilst Jack of Hilton blowed the fire. Of this, of the king of the fidlers, of the bull-running, &c. see a large account in Dr. Plot. Mr. Gale says, this Jack of Hilton was a Saxon idol, called Pouster: it was made of brass, hollow, with a little hole, which when filled with water, and set before the fire, as an æolipile, vented its contents in vapor, rarified with great force. This was a good philosophical trick to delude the vulgar, and would appear like magic to them, ignorant of the cause.

Mr. Prescot of Chester showed us the impression of an intaglia found at Uttoxeter.

A mile and half off Derby we fell into the Rigning-street coming from Burton; which, leaving Derby a little on the east, passes over Nun-green to Derventio: there it crossed the river on a bridge, and thence went to Chesterfield.

DERVENTIO.

I find the Rigning proceeds over the common, by the mill and brook at the west end of Derby, and falls into a valley, which gives a gentle descent to the river side, every where else steep, over-against the old city: this, no doubt, is the reason why the Romans placed it in that very spot. The river is very broad and deep, equal to the Medway at Maidstone; the sides steep, so that a ford was not at all practicable: it is six or seven foot deep here at least. Darley slade is the name of the valley where the descent of the road is: they call the road the Foss hereabouts; which shows that no more is meant by the name, than that it is an artificial work: the Foss and Rigning therefore are but synonymous terms. A little up the river, beyond the city, was the bridge: in time of a frost, when there is clear ice, they can see the foundation of the piers very plainly, and a piece of one is still left. Thence the road proceeds over the pasture, where, after a fortnight’s dry weather in summer, they can distinguish it by the parched grass: it goes up the valley north of Bradsal, by Priory Hall, so to Chesterfield. Another such way, they say, went up the hill directly from the street of the city by Chadsden: part of it has been dug up near the town by the Crown ale-house, and its ridge is still visible. In the pasture over-against the house two square Roman wells were opened by a violent flood in Sir Simon Degg’s time: they were made of very broad flat stones, let into one another, and were paved at bottom with bricks set edge-wise, as they tell me. Roman coins are found in every road, foot-path, and ditch, about the town: they never dig in the gardens, or pastures, but they find them, together with rings and other antiquities. A man who kept the Duke’s-head ale-house found seven score at a time in digging a hole to set a post in but they are all dispersed. The city of Derventio is in possession of the deanery of Lincoln: the city walls were dug up in great quantities to mend the ways with but they were so strong, they were forced to blow them up with gunpowder. There is much painted glass in Morley church, a mile beyond Bradsal, and tombs of the Sacheverels. A piece of the wall of Derventio is left under Mr. Hodgkinson’s garden-house. I saw a piece of a vase of coral-coloured earth found there, also several pieces of pillars; and they meet with foundations wherever they dig. Mrs. Hodgkinson showed us a gold Anastasius, victoria aug. g. g. said to be found near Leicester and a silver Arcadius. I saw a large brass coin, found at Derventio, Diva Faustina. I find this city is exactly of the same dimensions as Manduessedum, 120 paces long, 80 broad.

I rode to the hill south of Littleover, upon the Rigning-way, which lies in a strait line under the eye as far as Etocetum, and the hills beyond it. Litchfield cathedral appears a little to the west of it. The valley of the Trent, by Burton, is bounded on each hand by great heights. Repton, the burial-place of Ethelbald and other Mercian kings, is in view. From the other side of the hill, north of Littleover, the road butts upon the valley of Bradsal, by Priory hall, directly over Derventio. The Rigning is the common road from Burton to Derby, till a little north of Littleover it descends the hill to the left of the common road, which there is drawn to the right on account of Derby. I saw a great number of coins found here; Trajan, Carausius, pax aug. Victorinus, Magnentius, Dioclesian, Valens, &c. Mr. Hodgkinson gave me a Constantine, soli invicto comiti, struck at London. I measured the castrum with exactness: it is 600 foot long, 500 broad. We saw the wall on the outside Mr. Lord’s house: the mortar is full of pebbles as big as nuts, but excessively hard. Darley Slade is a fine descent for the road. We saw the admirable silk-looms again: there is a large additional building to them. The five churches here have all tower-steeples: the new one, a spacious and neat pile; the tower belonging to it, of old work, is stately. There is an old chapel on the bridge. A weak chalybeat water was found out lately, two miles off. The market-place is a pretty square.

Entering the Peak country, where the rocks begin, we saw two tumuli on the edges of two opposite hills. We came by the great rock called Radcliff, where the hermitage is: these and the neighbouring rocks have a frightful appearance: on the back of them are some stones set upright, two and two, as if the remains of a Celtic avenue. All around, the hills are big with lead ore. The cattle drinking the water here are liable to a distemper called the belon: it is owing to the mercury that falls in the smoak of the smelting-mills: they become asthmatic, and frequently run mad. Cats, dogs, and poultry, are seized with it.

BAKEWELL.

This town seems to be Roman, and possibly its name was Braciaca, because of the inscription found near here in Camden, DEO MARTI BRACIACAE. There is a large tall stone in the church-yard, raised on a pedestal, as a cross, with engravings, very ancient, of George and the dragon, a crucifix and other things, with flower-work: it is eight foot high, besides the pedestal. The church is a large handsome building, but in very bad repair; a spire-steeple upon an octagonal tower, and that set on a square one; the whole in the middle of the church; the choir large: an alabaster tomb before the altar, of one of the family of Vernon: the south transept has, in a large chapel, many tombs of the Vernons, and Manners’s, ancestors of the duke of Rutland, but in a ruinous condition: many other old tombs; a knightly one of Colepepper, one of Foljamb, &c. a very ancient font with images, as rudely cut as those on the cross. The church stands much higher than the town. The Wye is a very rapid river; it never overflows, so great is the descent from it. The castle is a square plot of high ground, with a large tumulus hollow at top. I cannot affirm there is any thing Roman. This town stands in a flat valley, where the river passes in meanders; and the prospect every way is very romantic. A cold bath at the Angel inn, arched over, and made very convenient. Derbyshire marble wrought here, very beautiful, bears a good polish, full of belemnites and other curious shells petrified together.

CHATSWORTH.

We reviewed this noble seat of the duke of Devonshire’s. The front of the house is a fine design; the colour of the stone agreeably overcast with a faint redness. Several antique marbles: upon the pedestal of a busto this inscription, P. Ælius Aug. libertus. Lycus fecit Solusæ libertæ suæ. a sepulchral urn.

Another, Dis manibus Ti. Claudi thalliani Vix. Ann. XX. dieb. XX. Claudia felicula Mater filio piissimo.

The canal hewn out of the rock is made where a great hill was: now it opens a beautiful prospect towards Winster: it is 325 yards long, 25 broad: the hill was 44 foot high: the cascade is 212 yards long, with 23 breaks. There is an admirable antique Plato in the duke’s library, like that at Wilton; and a cast of Hobbes from the life: also an antique ram’s head. The painting about the house is by Verrio, la Guerre, Thornhill: the gallery is a curious room, painted by Cheron. Vast quantities of Derbyshire marble, of all colours, and beautiful.

BUXTON.

Just before we come to this place, on the right hand is a square vallum, ditch inward; both small, about fifty feet each side: eastward adjoins a roundish space, marked out in the same manner. There are barrows upon the tips of the hills hereabouts. We found infinite quantities of shells among the stone: but the belemnites are most frequent; they are dropped as it were into the superficies of the stone, while soft, with the points downwards. The soil of this country is sandy and rock: the whole superficies of it is a rock, whose strata lie every where parallel to the declivity of the ground: it is lime-stone, like that at Bath; but the layers of it are much thicker. One may guess hence, that this sort of stone by some means procures the warmth of the waters.

We saw Mam Torr from hence seven miles; a steep huge rock elevated above the hills. There is a great yawning between two rocks split as it were from top to bottom: on the precipice of one jaw is an old castle, whence the adjacent town Castleton. Between it is the great cavern called the Devil’s Arse. A few little houses under the very rock. This country is fruitful in what we may call the magnalia naturæ. By these wonders of the Peak, and the warm waters, people are tempted to visit these wild wastes. At a place called Hope I learnt there are some stones, called Marvel-stones, which cannot be numbered: I guess them to be a Celtic temple. I could not hear of those at Chelmerton, though I fancy there must be such, because of some barrows on the hills looking that way: it requires some time, labour, and hazard, to hunt them out, by reason of the rockiness of the country. The sides of the hills, where the villages are, are divided into closes by stone walls, as in other places by hedges.

We went into Pool’s Hole again. This cavern rises, as we go farther in, with the hill: the stones within are covered over with petrifaction, from the water distilling down: some of the icicles are three or four yards long, hanging from the roof; the slow accretion of ages: the springs dribble down every where, as draining through the strata into this cavity. I fancy there are such in most rocky hills, and they cause springs: for we may conceive that after the harder shell of a hill was condensed, and first, as being outermost and more exposed to the external heat, in the infant globe; the internal parts, when they came to harden afterwards, by attraction of so much solidity, cracked and shrunk (as we see clay does in the open air) and so left casual fissures every where: the water then by degrees found or made an outlet from many meeting together; and this created fountains, most commonly toward the bottom of hills. This reasoning is strengthened by springs running in less quantity in summer than winter, because the sun exhales the dew and moisture, not suffering it so freely to sink down into the earth.

Escaped from this Stygian cave, I revisited the antiquity called the Round Fold, by the road side from Chelmerton hither, at Stadon; and under the hill called Stadon Hoe. I take it to be a curious Celtic antiquity, much of the nature of those which in Anglesey and Wiltshire we call Druids houses: so in Dorsetshire circles of stones they call Folds. The country people say it was cast up in war-time long since. It consists of a square vallum, 100 feet each side: the ditch whence it came is on the inside: eastward from this is a circle of 160 feet diameter, of like manner: the whole stands on an open plain, which declines northward: the square is upon a level; but the circular part declines gently from thence: on that point of the circle farthest from the square is a little semicircular cove of earth, like the place of a tabernacle. It is hard to say whether it was for a private use, or for judicature, or religious affairs; but in the pasture behind it is a barrow, and several more barrows in view, on the hill-tops. At Stadon I saw a large square intrenchment, now divided into pastures; and upon the top of the hoe, where the hawthorn stands, seem to have been some works. This circle of ours, by sinking the ditch within, seems well contrived for shows: five or six tire of people may stand commodiously round it, and look over one another’s heads. Both vallum and ditch are but small, much inferior to that of a camp.

In the field by the garden at Buxton are two springs close together, one hot, the other cold. Little flint arrow-heads of the ancient Britons, called Elfs arrows, are frequently ploughed up here. Roman plaster found here, mentioned in Thoresby’s Ducat. Leodiens. p. 558. A Roman road is said to go hence to Burgh, beyond Elden park.

Journeying hence over the remainder of these Alpine regions, we come to Goyt house, in the very centre of desolation. The most western of these hills are more barren and difficult than the others, and fuller of springs. At length we entered the pleasant country of Cheshire, as into a new world; wondering that people are found who can content themselves with the poverty and horror of the Peak, so near riches and delight.

MACCLESFIELD

Is a pretty large and pleasant town, sheltering itself from eastern blasts by its vicinity to these high hills: it stands upon an eminence, and is famous for manufactures of silk twisting, mohair, making buttons, &c. The church is placed upon the edge of the hill. South is a large chapel of the ancient family of Rivers (Ripariis) another of the Leighs, where, for saying a small number of Ave-marys and Paternosters, we obtain 26,000 years and odd days of pardon: to such a degree of extravagance was the superstitious folly of our ancestors advanced!

Stockport is built on a hill of rock. The church is spacious. A place called the Castle-yard, walled in. The Tame, Mersey, and other rivers, meet here, falling from the Derbyshire hills: united they pass swiftly through a rocky channel under a bridge of a single arch, large and well turned: they cut themselves houses in the rock here, as at Nottingham. Sometimes the floods reach the top of the bridge.

MANCVNIVM.

The Roman castrum was on the west side of the Roman road going from Chester, by Stretford, and on the northern bank of the river Medloc. It is a small piece of level ground, somewhat higher than that around it: it does not cover the whole piece, but is a square, 500 foot one way, 400 the other: nor can it well be said to be ditched about; but the ground near it, for some distance, is manifestly removed into the castle, and spread along its verge, not as a regular vallum, but sloping inward: by this means the area of it is higher on the sides than middle, and the external ground is lowered all around, to the foot of the castle, which is steep like the side of a vallum. Upon this edge there has been a wall quite round: the foundations of it are to be discerned almost every where; in some places large parcels of it left, but not above ground. Now they call it the Castle croft. The river Medloc runs near it, but is no security to it, as being not close enough: nor are its banks steep hereabouts, though its channel is rock, as is the whole country near. This is a quarter of a mile from the present town of Manchester. The Irwell river, coming through the town, runs on the west side the castle, and there the Medloc joins it. I look upon Manchester to be no ancient town; and even the hundred is denominated from Saltford, the village on the other side the bridge, therefore older: but Manchester is a much better situation, as higher; placed too between two rivers, having rocky and precipicious banks, with a good prospect: it is a very pleasant, large, populous, and thriving town; new buildings added every day: the roads are mending about it, and the river is making navigable; which will still contribute to its prosperity. The old church is very spacious and handsome, and enlarged still with numbers of large chapels and oratories; but the monuments, which were many, are destroyed and obliterated: a priest, of the name of Huntingdon, lies before the altar. It is a collegiate church, and the stalls in the choir are of very good carved work in the old manner.

This country is very woody, and affords a fine prospect every where, bounded by high and distant hills. A conflux of the many roads at this place gave origin to the town. Saltford is a large town; a broad and very strait street leading to Warington, probably Roman: a very good bridge over the river. Ten yards west from the castle is a natural precipice, which the Romans disregarded, trusting to their walls, but more to their own valour. A cavity cut in the rock by the river, under the south-west angle. The natural track of this road is north-east, but towards Manchester it trends a little more northward; I suppose, with an intent to come to the bridge, where it met the road from Veratinum.

I saw the altar at Holm house, lady Bland’s: it is 16 Roman inches broad, one front; a foot on the sides; 28 inches high: it is now removed out of the garden into coverture. They call the castle the Giant’s castle. Probably there was a town at the river Medloc in Roman times: an annual fair is still kept there. The castle stands parallel to the road. The river Irke comes in here under the college-walls: the castle-walls were pulled up to mend and build the churches and bridges.

I find the Roman road went across the church-yard originally, and so by the common street to the bridge over the Irke, called Scotland bridge: then it ascends the hill, and proceeds with its original direction north-east to Rochdale, which way the old Coccium was. Edward the elder by our monkish authors is said to have built a castle here, which probably was by the church and college; and the church may be founded on its ruins: this drew the town that way: the meeting of the two rivers there, and the steep rocks upon them, rendered it a convenient situation for such a work.

The college founded by Chetham, a tradesman, has a very good library, and good salary: here are about fifty boys maintained.

Mr. Prescot of Chester has a gold Otho found here. I saw a Celt found in the mosses.

CONDATE.

We rode all the way upon the Roman road from Manchester to this place: it is the common road throughout, except a little near Altringham: that market-town has caused it to be left, by a common; but we recover it again at Bowden hill, whence we had the prospect of it a long way before us, in a strait line: it leaves Altringham a little to the east, passes west of Rotherston mere, close on the west of North Tabley house, and so directly to Northwich, which therefore must be of necessity the Condate of Antoninus. The Britons called these wiches, or places of salt-works, Hellath, from heli, salsugo: the last syllable seems to be in Condate: then it will signify the principal salt-work, cond, caput. Part of the road hither, by the Bollin river, they call Wash-way, from its wateriness; which shows the derivation of our country washes. This town stands in an angle made by the Weaver river and the Dane, both which are passed by bridges, sometimes overflow with great fury. South of the bridge, upon the high ground by the Chester road, is a great tumulus, or keep, of Saxon work, called the Castle. This is a pretty large town, but meanly built, depending intirely upon the salt trade: here are the strongest springs of brine, and the wonderful mines or rocks of salt, 60 yards under ground, which they work like coal-mines: how far they extend, is not known. I doubt not but there are many more all over this country: these are found out by chance, not many years since: they carry it into Ireland, Wales, and other places; and boil it up afresh with seawater. It is a most liberal gift of Nature, a compendious way of making salt; these springs being stronger than the ocean: the rock salt stronger than they; for it is perfect salt, transparent like crystal: it lies not in veins, or strata, as other minerals, or metals; but a solid rock, of unknown dimensions, which they hew away with steeled pick-axes, leaving pillars and spaces, as big as a cathedral. Poplar-trees are plentiful in this country: they all lean eastward, as continually pressed by the west winds from the sea.

The country from Northwich to Chester is intirely sand, and very deep: a barren view; once a forest. They dig up the turf every where for fewel; which prevents for ever its being capable of cultivation, otherwise not impracticable: the oaks are all gone. Mid-way is the Chamber in the forest, as called, upon a very high hill of sandy stone. Here they say Edelfleda, the great Mercian princess, built a city; I rather believe, a fortress, and that probably one of the Romans originally, to guard this road. We can scarce affirm any thing of the Roman way is visible, except at first setting out from Northwich, and near Chester, where it falls into the original Watling-street, half a mile off the city, by the river side: but there can be no manner of doubt but that a Roman way was drawn here, to that we rode on before: how it was done by that people, I cannot guess; for it was impracticable to raise a bank; and it would be wholly vain in this sand, unless they dug it away to the bottom, which is impossible: I suppose it was by stones set on both sides at proper distances, for a direction only, which are since carried away, or buried by the sands; for now and then we saw a stone seeming to be milliary. There is a horse-race, with a very good course; which shows the turf is well consolidated, where not skimmed off for the purposes aforesaid. When we draw near to Chester, we see on the left the Welsh mountains: on one, which is a very steep precipice on all sides, stands Beeston castle: before us, they rise one above another, and leave the clouds below their summits. Mr. Gale gives us several instances of Condate, and the like words, signifying a place where is the union of some rivers: and such is the situation of Northwich, where the Dane and the Weaver meet at the town; and the Pever a little below it, by the salt-rock. At Tarvin, where the road passes over a river approaching to Chester, is Stanford, so called from it.

DEVA. Chester.

This is a noble old city, the work of the victorious 20th Legion, the conquerors of these western regions. It is manifest at first sight, that they regarded, in the plan of it, the known form of their camps: it is a parallelogram set to the four quarters of the heavens; the longest side north and south: suburbs are extended eastward, and a new gate called the bars, where the Watling-street, and the road from Condate, enters: the Roman walls take in exactly the space of 10,000 foot, or two miles. The soil is sandy, upon rock of a red colour and sandy composure, with small pebbles intermixed. The soil has been more or less sandy ever since we left the Chiltern hills at Dunstable.

65·2⁠^d. The outside Front of the Roman Gate of the Watling-street call’d East Gate
at Chester, as standing 2. Aug. 1725.

The Ichnography.

Stukeley delin.

Sturt sc.

[TAB. LXV.]Riding under the gate where the Watling-street enters, I observed immediately two arches of Roman work. I was overjoyed at sight of so noble an antiquity, which has never been mentioned. It was a square of twenty foot within; for so far are they distant from each other, and of so much diameter: they are exactly of the same manner as those at Lincoln; the stones not quite so large, nor so good: the breadth is 2½ foot. On each side was a portal, of a lesser arch, and lower, for foot-passengers; for part of the arch is left, and people now alive remember them open quite through; though now both these, and part of the great arch, are taken up by little paltry shops: or, rather, the lesser ones are quite pulled down, and even the great ones are in the utmost danger of falling; for the occupants of those places cut away part of the bottom of the semicircle to enlarge their shops. The portals answered to the Rows (as they call them) so remarkable in this city, being portico’s quite through on both sides the streets, undoubtedly continued in a manner from the Roman times. It is admirable that these vast arches, made of stones of so large dimensions, and laid without mortar, can stand at all when their proper butment is destroyed: that which regards the city has a key-stone: in both, below the lowest stone of the arch, the two next courses downward project a little inward, in nature of imposts; and over the crown of the arches runs a course of projecting stones moulded a little, but coarsely: the stones are artfully, though rudely cut; to which it is owing that they are not fallen, as depending wholly on their own principles, and the manner of their masonry, or geometry. Here terminates the famous Watling-street, whose beginning in Dover valley I walked over in May last. The road is here preserved, going by the river side to Aldford.

The ancient subterraneous canals are perfect still; their outlets into the river under the city-walls are visible; and they say that they are so high, that a man may walk upright their whole length. Wherever they dig, they find subterraneous vaults and arches, and all manner of antiquities; many of which were collected by the late Mr. Prescot, prebend of the cathedral here, and now remain in the hands of his son.

The city is commodiously placed in an angle of the river, which washes and protects two sides of it. As I said, it is an oblong square, 600 paces one way, 400 the other; that is, 3000 feet by 2000. Two principal streets run its length at equal distances from the walls and each other: one may be called Principium, having the gates at each end; the other is Quintana: they are crossed in the middle by the via prætoria, where are the gates Decumana and Prætoria. Another principal street runs on each side it, equidistant from it, and the walls of the ends: these may be called strigæ. Other lesser streets, or hemistrigæ, subdivide some of the squares made by the principals. Thus must the original scheme be understood, when the military and civil citizens first founded and inhabited the place. The little difference now is caused by the cathedral and the castle: the castle, the seat of Hugh Lupus, count palatine, and his successors, is built, for the most part, beyond the limits of the Roman walls, in that angle next the flexure of the river; consisting of a great court, and keep, strongly walled, and fenced with a ditch: the city-wall carried still round without it. To the north of the castle is some small remnant of a nunnery. The meadow between the walls and the river here is called Rood-eye, from a cross there, the stump whereof remains: upon this they keep a horse-race. The city-walls are carefully repaired by the corporation, and make an agreeable walk quite round: they are founded intirely on the rock. The churches have every where, as in other places, deformed the streets, which are originally the most noble and spacious I have seen. The whole city has a descent every way from the centre. The castle is rendered strong as the nature of the place will allow of: here the earls called their courts of parliament, and administered all affairs of state and judicature with regality.

Last year, digging in the chapter-house, they found the bodies of some of the old earls palatine, wrapped up in leather sewed; but within that, they were laid in woolen, like what we call wadding: the bones are pretty perfect, but the flesh is gone. They showed us one, thought to be Randulf Demeschin, the last earl, laid in a stone coffin; a place left for his head: he lies on the right hand of Hugh Lupus, the first earl.

They have built a large handsome exchange over-against the front of the cathedral, with pillars of one stone. The city is not set precisely east and west, though pretty near it. The ancient Roman gate at the Watling-street was larger than the rest, because of the entrance of the Roman ways there from Condate, Bonium, and the greatest part of the kingdom; likewise for readier passage of the soldiers upon occasion, most requisite that way; two of the other gates being fenced by the river: therefore this extends in front to 80 foot. This city in Roman times must have appeared admirably beautiful, with such spacious streets: the tradesmens shops and houses I suppose then to have been next the piazza’s of the streets; the soldiers tenements backwards, with gardens into the squares, as it is at present. The river, which once washed the city-walls, is now thrown off to some considerable distance by salt-marshes: a dam too is made across it by the bridge, for the sake of the mill; and by other mismanagements it grows worse every day, so that ships cannot come up near the place; whence the only little trade they have accruing from the passage into Ireland, is in danger.

[TAB. LXVI.]I saw at Mr. Prescot’s the Roman altar of Flavius Longus: it is very intire, and very prettily ornamented. On the top where the discus usually is, is cut the head of a Genius within a garland: on one side is a Genius with a cornucopia; on the other, a flower-pot with leaves of brank-ursin. It was found under a house by east-gate. He has more fragments of antiquity; Roman bricks, square for paving, a foot each side ; some marked LEG. XX. V. two inches and an eighth high; some hollow bricks with a double cavity for hypocausts. He has likewise a curious statue of the god Mithras with the Phrygian bonnet, and a torch in his hands, standing cross-legged: it was found under a niche of the wall, between east-gate and the river. Some of the bricks are thus marked, LEG. XX. V. V. which demonstrates they mean the legio vicesima valeria victrix. The altar has a square pedestal of one stone, which it stood on: the back of the altar is carved with drapery, and a festoon. Along with it was found a little earthen pot like a lamp; a brass winged Genius, small; two brass fibula’s; all in Mr. Prescot’s possession: he has likewise a brass camp-kettle, with two rings, 21 Roman inches high, found near here. The other inscription, which his father had, of PRAESENGVNTA, is sent to Oxford. He has also a very large collection of coins, brass, silver, and gold, most found at Chester. A golden British bracelet weighing 19 guineas, found lately in Wales, was melted down by a goldsmith here.