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the art of lead-working, rather than to promote mere agricultural colonisation. The Romans substituted straight and sometimes paved highways for the devious native tracks, preserving their old direction and purpose, for it is evident that the five streets were not originally planned as means of communication between important military stations. The great garrison towns of Chester, York, and Silchester, for instance, lay off the line of these main arteries of traffic, and were evidently constructed at a subsequent date, with the object of protecting districts which are to this day centres of mineral industry, and of commanding and keeping open the routes that lead to these districts. An examination of the course of the streets, as hereafter indicated, has led me to the conclusion that the two great inland entrepôts of British trade during the Roman occupation were Lincoln and Cirencester. To the former the Ermine Street may have brought Cleveland iron and Cumberland lead from the north, and the merchandise of Kentish ports from the south, while the Ryckneld and Fosseway conveyed to it the mineral wealth of Wales, tin from Cornwall, and copper from the Mendip Hills. Cirencester must have been a still greater centre of exchange. Iron from South Wales and the Forest of Dean could travel to it by a well-defined Roman road leading through Gloucester, the wares of the eastern merchants by the Ikening, the traffic of Gaul by the Ryckneld, and the commerce of North Wales and Kent by the Watling Street. Finally, these great highways were so interlaced and connected by transverse routes that they formed a complete network of communication, both for civil and military purposes, between all parts of the island.

But what extrinsic evidence have we of the existence in early times of this alleged traffic in British minerals? We know that Britain was one of the few countries known to the ancients as producing tin, and vast quantities of that metal must have been annually consumed by the continent of Europe in the manufacture of bronze armour, weapons, and other utensils.

Herodotus, writing four centuries and a half before the invasion of Britain by Julius Cæsar, mentions rumours of a river called Eridanus (perhaps the Rhine) emptying itself into the Northern Sea, whence amber was procured; and of tin islands, from which came the metal used by the Greeks; and he hints that tin came "from the very ends of the earth" by the same road as did the amber (Book iii. 115). Now Pliny tells us explicitly how amber reached the Mediterranean, viz.:"Overland from the shores of Northern Germany to Pannonia. The people of that province passed it on to the Veneti, who lived at the head of the Adriatic Gulf, and they, in turn, con

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veyed it southward into Italy" (Book xxxvii. 11). Strabo, a writer of the Augustan age, describes the commerce between Britain and the Continent at a period, be it observed, anterior to the Roman occupation. The usual sea passages from the Continent to Britain, he tells us, were those from the mouths of the Rhine, Seine, Loire, and Garonne, besides that from Wissant, which Julius Cæsar had used. The exports were corn, cattle, gold, silver, iron, skins, slaves, and trained hounds (which the Gauls used for purposes of war); while the imports were ivory bracelets and necklaces, amber, glass vessels, and small wares (Book iv. 5). Diodorus, the Sicilian, a contemporary of the last writer, informs us that great quantities of tin were exported from Britain (which, by the way, he carefully distinguishes from the Cassiterides), and that the people of Cornwall made the tin into pigs of a knucklebone shape, and carried them on waggons to an island called Ictis, which Mr. Tylor identifies with Bembridge, in the Isle of Wight, and Mr. Elton with Thanet. At Ictis merchants bought the tin, and carried it to the opposite coast of Gaul, whence it was transported overland on pack-horses, a thirty days' journey, to Marseilles, Narbonne, and the mouth of the Rhone (Book v. 22 and 38).

The Museum in Jermyn Street contains a model of an ancient block of tin, measuring 2 feet 11 inches long and 11 inches broad. It roughly answers the description of a knucklebone, although it bears a much stronger resemblance to one of those common objects of the sea-shore called "sailors' purses," the four projecting arms serving as a means of carrying it, or lashing it to a pack-saddle. The overland route through Gaul, which is believed to have been established three centuries previously, by the enterprise of Pytheas, a Greek of Marseilles, had, so far as Rome was concerned, superseded the more ancient and circuitous passage from the eastern parts of Britain to the mouths of the Elbe and the Vistula, and the caravan journey across Germany. Besides sundry references by Greek and Latin authors to early British trade, there is a great body of circumstantial evidence, based upon the discoveries of antiquaries, which all tends to prove the acquaintance of the Britons with commerce. Lastly, it may be asked, who undertook the transit of minerals by sea, from Britain to the coast of Germany, for the Britons, so far as we know, had no great skill in seamanship? It is a remarkable fact that, towards the end of the fourth century, all the coast of Britain, from the Wash to the Isle of Wight, was known to the Romans as "The Saxon Shore," and it may be reasonably inferred that it was so called because it included those ports from which Saxon

ships had long been in the habit of conveying cargoes to the Baltic and German coasts.

And now we will examine more particularly the five great channels by which the natural productions of our island reached the Saxon shore. The first in order is the Watling Street. Roger de Hoveden, a chronicler of the twelfth century, tells us that it was made by the Watlings, or sons of King Wætla, and treats it as a sort of equatorial line, dividing north from south, for he distinguishes the Northumbrians and others, who lived on that side of it, from the "Southerners," who dwelt on the other. A treaty of King Alfred's reign also recognised it as the boundary between the Saxons and Danes. The true etymology of its name is to be sought in that of the Gwyddelins, or "men of the woods," a Celtic people who inhabited Wales and Ireland, and the Saxons called the road "Gwatling Street," because it led towards those countries. Chaucer has a curious application of the epithet in his "House of Fame": :

See yonder, lo! the Galaxy

The which men clepe the milky way,
For it is white and some parfay

Y-callen it han Watling Street.

It has been somewhat fancifully suggested that Watling Street has been constructed on lines parallel to the direction of the Galaxy, and that in the dim ages of the past, long before our Watling Street was dreamed of, the primitive Gael steered his course over sea and land to Wales and Ireland by that of the Milky Way in the heavens above him. In order to trace the course of Watling Street, we must leave Dover by the high road to Canterbury, entering that city by a street which still bears the ancient name. Several roads converged on Canterbury from Roman ports in Kent: that on the right leading from Richborough, famous for its oysters; that on the left, "Stone Street," from Lympne, near Hythe; while a third communicated with Reculver and Thanet. Canterbury was thus the key to all the south-eastern ports. Continuing our journey towards London, we cross the Medway at Rochester, Blackheath, behind Greenwich Park, and following the Old Kent Road, near which the remains of a Roman villa have been discovered, arrive at London Bridge. In the early days of the Roman occupation all the low-lying ground on the Surrey side of the river was a great tract of marsh, covered at every high tide with shallow water, so that the street must here have been carried on a high causeway, while a ferry gave access to the ancient Londinium, which at that date is supposed to have occupied a site to the east of Gracechurch Street. The road we are endeavouring

to trace next followed the direction of the Watling Street familiar to every Cockney, until it reached Battle Bridge, in Maiden Lane (now York Road). There is a tradition that at this bridge, which crossed the Fleet River, was fought the decisive battle between the Romans and Boadicea, queen of the Iceni. It is curious to observe, by the way, that there is another Roman thoroughfare called "Maiden Way"-i.e., mai-dun, great ridge-in the North of England. Watling Street next crossed the wilds of Hampstead Heath into the present Edgware Road, which it followed to St. Albans (the Verulam of the Britons) and Dunstable, where it intersected Ikening Street. From Dunstable the Via Guethelinga, as it is called by Richard of Cirencester, carries us through Fenny Stratford and Stoney Stratford (both in Bucks), whose names attest its antiquity, and continues its course through Northants, via Towcester and Weedon-on-the-Street. It next forms the boundary between the counties of Warwick and Leicester, and crosses the Fosseway at High Cross (which signifies the meeting-place of two high or raised streets). From Atherstone it cuts across the counties of Warwick and Stafford to Crackley Bank, on the borders of Shropshire, and continues almost due west to Wroxeter-on-Severn, and so through Wattlesborough into Wales.

We will now pass to Ermine Street, which ran from London to the Humber. The name has been a puzzle to etymologists. Some consider it to be Here-man Street, "the warrior's way," because it was used for military purposes; others that it is Herman's Street, because it was dedicated to the great Teutonic "war-man" (known to the Romans as Arminius), who defeated that people in battle about the commencement of the Christian era. We find the identical appellation in St. Ermin's Hill, a locality near Tothill Street, Westminster. It is in that case undoubtedly a proper name, though the addition of "St." is possibly some pious Christian's work of supererogation.

Ermine Street went northward along the line of the present great road from London Bridge to Ware. In Middlesex it passed Stamford Hill. From Ware it led to Royston, having traversed the Hundred of Edwinstree, Herts. A suggestion has been made that that name is a corruption of Ermine Street. Similarly, Elstree, on the Watling way, may be a corruption of Old Street. At Royston the great north road intersected Ikening Street, and entered the Ermingford Hundred of the county of Cambridge. Next we come to Arrington, in the same county (the Ærningtun of Doomsday Book), arne-weg and arning, meaning a great street or course. We continue our journey to Godmanchester and Huntingdon by the main road, which, through

out its course in Hunts, retains its old name. At Chesterton (Hunts) it leaves the present line of route, and strikes across the river Nen into Northants, at Caistor, close to Peterborough. At Southorpe, in the same county, the ground along the sides of the roads has been often opened to extract the stone with which the way is formed, and many Roman antiquities, and coins of various dates, besides a great quantity of ashes and fragments of funeral urns, have been discovered. The garrison of Caistor, probably, buried their dead here at the wayside, as was the custom of the Romans (Arch. i. 61). The Ermine Street next runs to Walcote, where it is locally known as the "Forty-foot Way," and making a sharp turn to avoid a hill, crosses the Welland into Rutland, near Stamford. After leaving that town it follows the "Horne Lane" through Great Casterton and Stretton, and enters Lincolnshire at Witham, and so, by way of Colsterworth and Ancaster, it arrives at Lincoln. North of that city it follows the western side of the Ancholme Valley, and never swerves from a straight line in the thirty miles between Lincoln and the Humber. At Winteringham the estuary was crossed by a ferry, and access obtained to Yorkshire.

The Fosseway derives its name from the fosse, or ditch, by which it was flanked on either side. It probably commenced at Exeter, and ran along the present highway to Taunton, passing Forcehayes (which suggests its vicinity) to Street, near Glastonbury. It continued via Stratton-on-the-Fosse to Bath. Leaving that city, it crosses Wilts, the local names of Foss-gate and Foss-house being sufficient to identify its course, until it reaches Cirencester, in Gloucestershire. In that county it passes Foss-cross and Fossbridge, and in Warwickshire Stretton-on-the-Fosse, Stretton-onDunsmore, and Stretton-under-Fosse. At High Cross it cuts across Watling Street and goes straight to Leicester. Then it went on "through the wastes," as an old writer says, to Willoughby-in-theWolds, and across Notts to Newark. From the latter town it reached its terminus at Lincoln, where it joined the Ermine Street.

Ikening or Ickneld Street was so called because it led from Cirencester to the country of a powerful British tribe inhabiting the Eastern Counties, and known to the Romans as Iceni. The name of this people appears on the native coins as Ecen, and the Saxons, adding their inevitable suffix, called them Ikenings. The road started from Yarmouth, ran inland to Caistor-St.-Edmunds (Venta Icenorum), and turning southward through Long Stanton, crossed the Waveney, near Dis, into Suffolk. Its route then lay through Ixworth and Icklingham (near Bury), at both of which places Roman villas

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