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.
[Illustration: 26 _Ruins of Reding Abby Augᵗ. 14. 1721._
_Neustrius Henricus situs hic, Inglorius urna nunc jacet ejectus,
tumulum novus advena quærit Frustra_——]
[Illustration: 23 GATEHOUSES
_Reading Abby Gatehouse. 14 Aug 1721_
_The College Gate at Worcester. 30 Aug 1721_
_Stukeley delin._ _I Harris Sculp._]
[Illustration: 60 Ad SPINAS
_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._]
[Illustration: 10·2ᵈ. +Spinae+
_Iun 28 1723_
_Stukeley delin._ _Parker Sculpᵗ._]
[Illustration: 62
_Cunetio_
_Castrum_
_6 July. 1723_
_Algernonio Com de Hartford d.d. W. Stukeley._
_Stukeley delin._]
[Illustration: 63 _Prospect of_ Marlborough _from the South. 29 Iun
1723._ CVNETIO.
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._]
[Illustration: 11·2ᵈ. +Cunetio+
_29 Iun. 1723_
_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.
[Illustration: 1 Rural Curiosity.
_Marlborough Mount_
_Cascade at Wilton._
_Dedicated to the Right Honorable the Lady Hartford._]
[Illustration: 3 _View of Lord_ Hartfords House _at_ Marlborough _29
Iun. 1723._ A. _the scite of the Roman Castrum_ B. _Sᵗ. Peters._
_Stukeley del_:]
[Illustration: 64 _View of_ Great Bedwin & Wansdike _2 Iuly. 1723._
+Leucomagus.+
_Stukeley del._]
*G SU PERIS APELE VIKERE DE SET EGLISE
SU MA POTENTE SU APUE TOT EN TELE GYSE
MON HANAP AY EN POYNE E BEVEREI SANS FEINTISE
MON POT A MON DERER MISS E LA NOVELE GYISE
DE MON POT E MON HANAP SEREY JUSTICE
KE NUL NI BEYVE SANS NE Y AY M ATENTE MISE.*
_G su Peris apele vikere de set eglise
Su ma potente su apue tot en tele gyse
Mon hanap ay en poyne e beverei sans feintise
Mon pot a mon derer miss e la novele gyise
De mon pot e mon hanap serey justice
Ke nul ni beyve sans ne y ay m atente mise._
In modern French,
_Je suis Peris appellé vicaire de cette eglise
Sur ma potence suis appuié tout en tell guise
Mon hanap enpoigne & boirai sans feintise
Mon pot a mon derriere mis a la nouvelle guise
De mon pot & mon hanap serai justice
Que nul ne boive sans que n’y ai m’autant mis._
In English,
I am Peris call’d, vicar of this church,
Upon my crutches leaning just in this wise;
My pouch in my fist, and I’ll drink without guile;
My pot at my back set after the new mode:
To my pot and my pouch I will have justice done,
For none shall drink without putting in as much again.
We were entertained at Wilton, the noble seat of the great earl of
Pembroke; and deservedly may I style it the School of Athens. The
glories of this place I shall endeavour to rehearse in a separate
discourse.
Crekelade, probably a Roman town upon the Thames; for from this a
very plain Roman road runs to Cirencester. Much has been the dispute
formerly about a fancied university in this place, and the little town
in its neighbourhood _Latin_, which it would be senseless only to
repeat. The word _Crekelade_ is derived from the cray-fishes in the
river: _Lade_ is no more than a water-course, but more especially such
a one as is made by art;[48] and we here find the river pent up for a
long way together by factitious banks, in order the better to supply
their mills: so _Latin_ is no more than _ladeings_, or the meadows
where these channels run. Ledencourt, near Newent, Glocestershire, I
suppose, acknowledges the like original; and many more. The town of
Lechelade falls under the same predicament: _leche_ signifies a watery
place subject to inundations; as Leach, a town near Boston before
mentioned, anciently written _Leche_: as Camden says of Northleach, p.
240. and Litchfield hence fetches its etymology from the marshy bog
that environs the church, rather than the superstitious notion there
current. Not far hence are two towns called Sarney and Sarncote, from
the Roman causeway; _sarn_ in Welsh importing a paved way. There is
another upon the same road between Cirencester and Glocester.
[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.
[Illustration: 32 _The White Fryers in_ Glocester _Aug. 24. 1721._
Browne Willys _Ar. Reliquias sacras d. d. Wˢ. Stukeley_.
_Stukeley delin._ _E. Kirkall sculp:_]
[Illustration: 12·2ᵈ. +Glevvm+]
We saw a monumental inscription upon a stone at Mr. Isaac Tibbot’s, in
Castle-street, in very large letters four inches long:
D — M
IVLIAE CASTAE
CONIVGI — VIX
ANN — XXXIII.
It was found at a place half a mile west of the town, upon the north
side of the Foss road, called _Quern_ from the quarries of stone
thereabouts. Five such stones lay flatwise upon two walls in a row,
end to end; and underneath were the corpses of that family, as we may
suppose. He keeps Julia Casta’s skull in his summer-house; but people
have stole all her teeth out for _amulets_ against the ague. Another of
the stones serves for a table in his garden: it is handsomely squared,
five foot long and three and a half broad, without an inscription.
Another of them is laid for a bridge over a channel near the cross in
Castle-street. There were but two of them which had inscriptions: the
other inscription perished, being unluckily exposed to the wet in a
frosty season: probably, of her husband. Several urns have been found
thereabouts, being a common burying place: I suppose them buried here
after christianity. In the church, which is a very handsome building
of the style of St. Mary’s at Cambridge, are a great many ancient
brass inscriptions and figures: the windows are full of good painted
glass: there is a fine lofty tower. Little of the abbey is now left,
beside two old gate-houses neither large nor good: the circuit of it is
bounded for a good way by the city walls. East of the town about a a
quarter of a mile, is a mount or barrow called Starbury, where several
gold Roman coins have been dug up, of about the time of Julian, which
we saw: some people ploughing in the field between it and the town,
south of the hill, took up a stone coffin with a body in it covered
with another stone. West of the town, behind my lord Bathurst’s garden,
is another mount, called Grismunds or Gurmonds, of which several fables
are told: probably raised by the Danes when they laid siege to this
place.
[Sidenote: +Glevum.+]
[Sidenote: TAB XXXII.]
[Sidenote: TAB. XII. 2d Vol.]