14

CEMETERIES.

coffins of hollowed stones; beneath them had been the bodies of the Britons, placed in rows. Abundance of ivory and boxen pins, about six inches long, marked where the latter had been deposited. These are supposed to have fastened the shrouds in which the bodies were wrapped.* These perishing, left the pins entire. In the same row, but deeper, were Roman urns intermixed, lamps, lacrymatories; fragments of sacrificial vessels were also discovered, in digging towards the north-east corner; and in 1675, not far from the east corner, at a considerable depth, beneath some flinty pavement, were found numbers of vessels of earthen ware, and of glass, of most exquisite colors and beauty, some inscribed with the names of deities, heroes, or men of rank. Others ornamented with a variety of figures in bas relief, of animals and of rose-trees. Tesserula of jasper, porphyry, or marble, such as form the pavement we so often see, were also discovered. Also glass beads and rings, large pins of ivory and bone, tusks of boars, and horns of deer sawn through. Also coins of different emperors, among them some of Constantine; which at once destroys the conjecture of Mr. Maitland, who supposes that this collection was flung together at the sacking of London by our injured Boadicea.

Parentalia, p. 266.

CEMETERIES.

IN 1711, another cœmetery was discovered, in Camomile-street, adjoining to Bishopsgate. It lay beneath a handsome tessellated pavement, and contained numbers of urns filled with ashes and cinders of burnt bones; with them were beads, rings, a lacrymatory, a fibula, and a coin of Antoninus.

FIELDS.

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IN Spittlefields was another Roman burying- IN SPITtleplace, of which many curious particulars are mentioned by old Stow, in p. 323 of his Survey of London: and Camden gives a brief account of another, discovered in Goodman's fields. Among the antiquities found in Spittlefields, was a great ossuary made of glass, encompassed with five parallel circles, and containing a gallon and a half: it had a handle, a very short neck, and wide mouth of a whiter metal. This was presented to Sir Christopher Wren, who lodged it in the Museum of the Royal Society.* I point out these as means of discovering the antient Roman precincts of the city. The cœmeteries must have been without the walls: it being a wise and express law of the XII Tables, that no one should be buried within the walls. I cannot think that the urns found near St. Paul's were funereal; if they were so, the Roman walls must have been much farther to the east than they are generally sup

Parentalia, p. 267, Grew's Museum, 380.

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ANTIQUITIES.

posed to have been placed; which by no means appears to have been the fact.

I WILL only mention one other antiquity found here very few indeed have been preserved, out of the multitude which must have been discovered in a place of such importance, and the capital of the Roman empire in Britain. That which I shall speak of is a sepulchral monument, in memory of Vivius Marcianus, (a Roman soldier of the second legion, quartered here,) erected

his wife Januaria Matrina. It represents him as a British soldier, probably of the Cohors Britonum, dressed and armed after the manner of the country, with long hair, a short lower garment fastened round the waist by a girdle and fibula, a long Sagum or plaid flung over his breast and one arm, ready to be cast off in time of action, naked legs, and in his right hand a sword of vast length, like the claymore of the later Highlanders; the point is represented resting on the ground: in his left hand is a short instrument, with the end seemingly broken off. This sculpture was found in digging among the ruins, after the fire in 1666, in the vallum of the Prætorian camp near Ludgate. The soldiers were always buried in the Vallum; the citizens in the Pomarium, without the gates. It is very

Parentalia, p. 266.-The Pomarium was a space on the outside of fortified towns, on which all buildings were prohibited.

SAXON INVASION.

differently and faultily represented by Mr. Gale. The hair in his figure is short, the sword also short, and held with the left hand across his body, the instrument is placed in the left hand, and resembles an exact Baton: the dress also differs. I give the preference to the figure given by Mr. Horsely, which he corrected after that given by Dr. Prideaux, from the Arundelian marbles. But Mr. Horsely fairly confesses that the representation is far more elegant than in the mutilated original.

AFTER the Romans deserted Britain, a new and fierce race succeeded. The warlike Sarons, under their leaders Hengest and Horsa, landed in 448, at Upwines fleot, the present Ebbsflete, in the isle of Thanet. The Britons remained masters of London at lest nine years after that event; for, receiving a defeat in 457, at Creccanford, (Crayford) they evacuated Kent, and fled with great fear to the capital. By the year 604, it seems to have recovered from the ravages of the invaders. It became the chief town of the kingdom of Essex. Sebert was the first Christian king; and his maternal uncle Ethelbert, king of Kent, founded here a church dedicated to St. Paul. At this time Bede informs us that it was an emporium

• Gale's Iter Anton. 68. Britannia Romana, 331. tab. 75. ↑ Sax. Chron.

C

SAXON INVASION.

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18

NORMAN CONQUEST.

NORMAN CONQUEST.

of a vast number of nations, who resorted thither by sea and by land.

In the reign of that great prince ALFRED, London, or, to use the Saron name, Lundenburg, was made by him the capital of all England. In consequence of a vow he had made, he sent Sighelm, bishop of Sherbourn, first to Rome, and from thence to India, with alms to the Christians of the town of St. Thomas, now called Bekkeri, or Meliapour: who returned with various rich gems, some of which were to be seen in the church of Sherbourn, in the days of William of Malmesbury.* It must not be omitted that he was the first who, from this island, had any commerce with that distant country. Our commerce by sea, even in the next century, was not very extensive, the wise monarch Athelstan being obliged, for the encouragement of navi gation, to promise patents of gentility to every merchant, who should, on his own bottom, make three voyages to the Mediterranean.

THE Succeeding ravages of the Danes reduced London, and its commerce, to a low ebb: yet it seems in some measure to have recovered before the Conquest. We are wonderfully in the dark respecting the state of its government, both

* Sax. Chron. 86. Will. Malmsb. lib. ii. 248.