Chapter V: Preface (5)

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

[Sidenote: +Ricning-way.+]

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

_Saxa per & scopulos & depressas convalles._

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

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

_Stabat acuta silex, præcisis undique saxis,
Speluncæ dorso insurgens, altissima visu.
Dirarum nidis domus opportuna volucrum!_ +Virg.+ viii. Æn.

Simon Degg Ar. _Castrum Romanum jam suum d.d. W. Stukeley_]

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

[Sidenote: +Chatsworth.+]

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

[Sidenote: +Buxton.+]

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

_Corpore debilior Grani se proluit undis,
Quærit aquas Aponi, quem febris atra necat.
Ut penitus renem purget cur Psaulia tanti,
Vel quæ Lucinæ gaudia, Calderiæ?
Sola mihi Buxtona placet, Buxtona Britannis
Undæ Grani, Aponus, Psaulia, Calderiæ._

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

_At specus & Caci detecta apparuit ingens
Regia, & umbrosæ penitus patuere cavernæ:
Non secus ac si qua penitus vi terræ dehiscens
Infernas reseret sedes & regna recludat
Pallida, diis invisa, superque immane barathrum
Cernatur——_ +Virg.+ Æn. viii.

Within appears old Pool’s tremendous cave,
With glimmering lights redoubled horror shown;
Yawning, as earth by strong convulsions torn
Opens the caverns of the Stygian king
Dire, hateful to the gods, and the black pit
Discloses wide——

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

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

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

[Sidenote: +Condate.+]

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

[Sidenote: +Mancunium.+]

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

[Sidenote: +Deva.+]

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

[Sidenote: +Wales.+]

[Sidenote: +Bonium.+]

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

_Scripsisti heredem patriam tibi quæ dedit ortum,
Scriberis ergo tuæ, jure, pater patriæ._

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

[Sidenote: +Royal Oak.+]

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

_Felicissimam arborem quam in asylum
potentissimi regis Caroli II. Deus O. M.
per quem reges regnant hic crescere
voluit, tam in perpetuam rei tantæ memoriam,
quam specimen firmæ in reges
fidei, muro cinctam posteris commendant
Basilius & Jana Fitzherbert.
Quercus amica Jovi._

[Sidenote: +Pennocrucium.+]

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

[Sidenote: +Litchfield.+]

[Sidenote: +Etocetum.+]

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

Boston, Dec. 1713.

ITER SABRINIUM. IV.

_O mitte mirari beatæ
Fumum, & opes, strepitumque Romæ._ +Hor.+

_To_ TANCRED ROBINSON, _M. D._ &c.

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

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

[Sidenote: +Bibroci.+]

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

[Sidenote: +Reading.+]

[Sidenote: TAB. XXVI.]

[Sidenote: TAB. XXIII.]

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

_Neustrius Henricus situs hic, Inglorius urna nunc jacet ejectus,
tumulum novus advena quærit Frustra_——]

_Reading Abby Gatehouse. 14 Aug 1721_

_The College Gate at Worcester. 30 Aug 1721_

_Stukeley delin._ _I Harris Sculp._]

_Prospect of_ Newberry _from the South between_ Winchester _and_
Silchester _Road_
_Iun. 28, 1723. Stukeley del_:

_A._ _Icening Street._
_B._ _Donington Castle._
_C._ _Way to Winchester._
_D._ _Speen._]

_Stukeley delin._ _Parker Sculpᵗ._]

_Cunetio_
_Castrum_
_6 July. 1723_
_Algernonio Com de Hartford d.d. W. Stukeley._

_Stukeley delin._]

A. _Marlborough Mount._ B. _the Road to Kennet._ C. _the Castle._ D.
_Sᵗ. Peters Church._ E. _Sᵗ. Marys._ F. _the Road to Ramsbury._ G.
_the Kennet._ H. _the remains of the Roman Castrum._ I. _Lady
Winchilseas._ K. _Preshute._

_Stukeley, del._]

_Stukeley delin._ _Parker Sculpᵗ._]

[Sidenote: +Ad Spinam.+]

[Sidenote: TAB. LX.]

[Sidenote: TAB. X. 2d Vol.]

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

[Sidenote: +Cunetio.+]

[Sidenote: TAB. LXII. LXIII.]

[Sidenote: TAB. XI. 2d vol.]

[Sidenote: TAB. I.]

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

[Sidenote: +Leucomagus.+]

[Sidenote: TAB. LXIV.]

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

_Bellocampus eram graja genetrice semerus
Tres habui natos, est quibus una soror._

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

_Hic jacet dns Thomas Dageson quondam vicarius istius ecclesie qui obiit 7. die Decemb. Aᵒ dni._ M.D.I. _cujus anime propitietur deus amen_. on a brass in the middle aile.

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

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

_Marlborough Mount_

_Cascade at Wilton._

_Dedicated to the Right Honorable the Lady Hartford._]

_Stukeley del_:]

_Stukeley del._]

*G SU PERIS APELE VIKERE DE SET EGLISE
SU MA POTENTE SU APUE TOT EN TELE GYSE
MON HANAP AY EN POYNE E BEVEREI SANS FEINTISE
MON POT A MON DERER MISS E LA NOVELE GYISE
DE MON POT E MON HANAP SEREY JUSTICE
KE NUL NI BEYVE SANS NE Y AY M ATENTE MISE.*

_G su Peris apele vikere de set eglise
Su ma potente su apue tot en tele gyse
Mon hanap ay en poyne e beverei sans feintise
Mon pot a mon derer miss e la novele gyise
De mon pot e mon hanap serey justice
Ke nul ni beyve sans ne y ay m atente mise._

In modern French,

_Je suis Peris appellé vicaire de cette eglise
Sur ma potence suis appuié tout en tell guise
Mon hanap enpoigne & boirai sans feintise
Mon pot a mon derriere mis a la nouvelle guise
De mon pot & mon hanap serai justice
Que nul ne boive sans que n’y ai m’autant mis._

In English,

I am Peris call’d, vicar of this church,
Upon my crutches leaning just in this wise;
My pouch in my fist, and I’ll drink without guile;
My pot at my back set after the new mode:
To my pot and my pouch I will have justice done,
For none shall drink without putting in as much again.

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

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

[Sidenote: +Corinium.+ Dobunorum]

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

————_sic omnia fatis
In pejus ruere ac retro sublapsa referri._ +Virg. G. i.+

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

Browne Willys _Ar. Reliquias sacras d. d. Wˢ. Stukeley_.

_Stukeley delin._ _E. Kirkall sculp:_]

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

D — M
IVLIAE CASTAE
CONIVGI — VIX
ANN — XXXIII.

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

[Sidenote: +Glevum.+]

[Sidenote: TAB XXXII.]

[Sidenote: TAB. XII. 2d Vol.]

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

*Cum ruinosa domus quondam quam tunc renovavit
Monachus Urbanus Osborn John rite vocavit.*

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

[Sidenote: +Branonium.+]

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

[Sidenote: TAB. XVIII.]