book 7, chapter 2, section 3.

COFAN, The.

See AMERICAN ABORIGINES: ANDESIANS.

COGNOMEN, NOMEN, PRÆNOMEN.

See GENS, ROMAN.

COHORTS.

See LEGION, ROMAN.

COIMBRA: Early history.

See PORTUGAL: EARLY HISTORY.

COLBERT, The System of. Colbertism.

See TARIFF LEGISLATION: A. D. 1664-1667 (FRANCE).

Also, FRANCE: A. D. 1661-1683.

COLCHESTER, Origin of.

When Cæsar first opened to the Romans some knowledge of Britain, the site of modern Colchester was occupied by an "oppidum," or fastness of the Trinobantes, which the Romans called Camulodunum. A little later, Camulodunum acquired some renown as the royal town of the Trinobantine king, or prince, Cunobelin,--the Cymbeline of Shakespeare. It was after the death of Cunobelin, and when his son Caractacus was king, during the reign of the emperor Claudius, that the Romans began their actual conquest of Britain. Claudius was present, in person, when Camulodunum was taken, and he founded there the first Roman colony in the island, calling it Claudiana Victricensis. That name was too cumbrous to be preserved; but the colonial character of the town caused it to be called Colonia-ceaster, the Colonia fortress,--abbreviated, in time, to Colne-ceaster, and, finally, to Colchester. The colony was destroyed by the Iceni, at the time of their rising, under Boadicea, but was reconstituted and grew into an important Roman town.

_C. L. Cutts, Colchester, ch, 1-6._

COLCHESTER: A. D. 1648. The Roundhead siege and capture.

On the collapse of the Royalist rising of 1648, which produced what is called the Second Civil War of the Puritan revolutionary period, Colchester received the "wreck of the insurrection," so far as London and the surrounding country had lately been threatened by it. Troops of cavaliers, under Sir Charles Lucas and Lord Capel, having collected in the town, were surrounded and beleaguered there by Fairfax, and held out against their besiegers from June until late in August. "After two months of the most desperate resistance, Colchester, conquered by famine and sedition, at last surrendered (Aug. 27); and the next day a court-martial condemned to death three of its bravest, defenders, Sir Charles Lucas, Sir George Lisle, and Sir Bernard Gascoign, as an example, it was said, to future rebels who might be tempted to imitate them. In vain did the other prisoners, Lord Capel at their head, entreat Fairfax to suspend the execution of the sentence, or at least that they should all undergo it, since all were alike guilty of the offence of these three. Fairfax, excited by the long struggle, or rather intimidated by Ireton, made no answer, and the condemned officers were ordered to be shot on the spot." Gascoign, however, was reprieved at the last moment.

_F. P. Guizot, History of the English Revolution, book 8._

ALSO IN: _C. R. Markham, Life of the Great Lord Fairfax, chapter 26-27._

COLCHESTER: End----------

COLCHIANS, The.

"The Colchians appear to have been in part independent, in part subject to Persia. Their true home was evidently that tract of country [on the Euxine] about the river Phasis. ... Here they first became known to the commercial Greeks, whose early dealings in this quarter seem to have given rise to the poetic legend of the Argonauts. The limits of Colchis varied at different times, but the natural bounds were never greatly departed from. They were the Euxine on the east, the Caucasus on the north, the mountain range which forms the watershed between the Phasis (Rion) and the Cyrus (Kur) on the west, and the high ground between Batoum and Kars (the Moschian mountains) on the south. ... The most interesting question connected with the Colchians is that connected with their nationality. They were a black race dwelling in the midst of whites, and in a country which does not tend to make its inhabitants dark complexioned. That they were comparatively recent immigrants from a hotter climate seems therefore to be certain. The notion entertained by Herodotus of their Egyptian extraction appears to have been a conjecture of his own. ... Perhaps the modern theory that the Colchians were immigrants from India is entitled to some share of our attention. ... If the true Colchi were a colony of blacks, they must have become gradually absorbed in the white population proper to the country."

_G. Rawlinson, History of Herodotus,