Part 12

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.

*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.

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.]

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

[Sidenote: +Ypocessa.+]

[Sidenote: +Salinis.+]

[Sidenote: +Malvern.+]

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

PHILOSOPHVS DIGNVS BONVS ASTROLOGVS LOTHERING, VIR PIVS AC HVMILIS MONACHVS PRIOR HVIVS OVILIS HAC IACET IN CISTA GEOMETRICVS AC ABACISTA DOCTOR WALCHERVS FLET PLEBS DOLET VNDIQ. CLERVS HVIC LVX PRIMA MORI DEDIT OCTOBRIS SENIORI VIVAT UT IN CELIS EXORET QVISQ. FIDELIS M. C. XXXV.[49]

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

[Sidenote: +Ariconium.+]

[Sidenote: TAB. LXXXV.]

[Sidenote: +Credonhill.+ Br. _camp_.]

[Sidenote: +Sutton walls.+ Ro. _camp_.]