then is interesting matter for contemplation. These Roman remains of iron give some solidity to an assumption only feebly maintained before, that the legionaries of Coccium may have planted an outpost, or outlook on Castle hill. The tale too of the subterranean passage also beneath the river is accounted for: the truth is extracted out of the mist of ages. The interchange of communication between the Roman sentinels on Castle hill and Tulketh speculæ, and afterwards by the ford and Norman * ferry here, originated this wide spread tradition.

The light of history now begins to dawn upon us. Preston, after the fall of the enfeebled Roman provincials, had risen on the ruins of Coccium, which city, although, as Lappenberg says,-it had the right of Latium, yet bequeathed nothing of its ancient glory to the founders of the "tun " and "ham," except its Breton laws, which governed the whole of Amounderness to the reign of the first Edward. Alchfrid also had granted his lands, near the Ribble, to Eata, the Culdee; but had soon afterwards revoked his gift in favour of Wilfrid; and the ships of the Angles and Vi-kings had floated past Penwortham to Walton and Cuerdale. The heights of Castle hill therefore could not have been overlooked. We read that its ancient British name had assumed a Saxon garb, and that both it and the neighbouring parish of Leyland were royal and superior manors in the time of the Confessor; này, more, I trust to be able to shew that the ruins at Castle hill were those of the "aula regis," the "haia," or "ham,” the German ein heim of that king's representative; in fact the palace of the parish, as well as its court house.

Tacitus in his account of the Germans, Teutonics like the Saxons, says "The Germans were accustomed to dig subterraneous caverns and then to cover them with much loose mould, forming a refuge from the winter storms." Hasted, the topographer of Kent, describes many such in the heaths, fields, and woods near Crayford. Even in Wallachia at this day, the gypsies scoop out a den in a sunny hill, cross some sticks over the roof and pass the winter there. Some such an abode, or one whose outer wall had been backed up and concealed with earth, I conceived that of Castle hill to have been.

However this may be, facts seem to demonstrate that the dwelling was a

Mandate to the Escheator for land in Penwortham, seized for withdrawing of the service of a boat over the river Ribble. Anno 10mo Ducatus Hep. Lanc. The Roman trajectus was near Walton bridge.

structure of the Saxons; for they too built their houses with wood, as is evident from the use of the verb "timbrian," to express the act of building, and in the examples of Greenstead church we have their peculiar method. It is composed of the trunks of large oaks, split and roughly hewn: they are set upright and close to each other, being let into a sill at the bottom and a plate at the top, where they are fastened with wooden pins. The houses, which William of Malmesbury contrasts with the stately edifices afterwards erected by the Normans, were much inferior, being rudely constructed with piles. Bede describing the monastery built by St. Cuthbert remarks, "Within the walls he raised two houses and a chapel, together with a room for common uses. The roof was made of unhewn timber and thatched." And how can we expect them to be anything else than rude and mean, when they were the workmanship of the ceorls and slaves of the manor? In the adjoining parish of Leyland an easier tenure than usual was allowed,— "The freemen did not work as customary ad aula regis," "they only made a haia in the wood "-a hay, or wicker fence enclosure for the protection of the houses and cattle stalls of the lord's neatherd, swineherd, &c. It cannot mean merely a "fence," for "stabuli turæ" are frequently in connection with it; and in the midst of the great common of Layton and Lytham Hawes, a small rural village is still called the Hag, or Hay houses, the ancient homes of the tenters and grazers of the cattle, belonging to the lord and freemen of the manor and Saxon mark.

But did the Confessor's representative at Penwortham occupy so fragile and mean a dwelling as the ruins of that on Castle hill manifest? Antiquaries record the existence of a castle during the supremacy of the Saxons It is high time to demolish so palpable a mistake, as well as that the thane of all the surrounding parishes resided therein. The Doomsday survey itself will accomplish this. "Rex. E. tenuit Peneverdant. Ibi. ii. car. træ, 7 reddb. X. den. Modo. e ibi castellu, &c." You perceive when it speaks of the Confessor's time, it is in the past tense; but of the Conqueror's in the present. The change is made after a similar manner almost through the whole survey, however translators may have mangled the original, or misunderstood the meaning of terms, "Modo e ibi castellu," must signify, "of late, or just now there is a castle."

"But surely," I hear you exclaim, "a great king's representative, resident in a superior manor, like that of Penwortham, would not issue his laws and regulations from a thatched hut of wicker work, little better than

a dog kennel? Look at king's palaces. Alfred invented the horn lantern to protect his candles, by which he marked the progress of time, from the blasts of wind that blew through the crannies of his dwelling and swealed the wax. The address delivered to Edwin, king of Northumbria, on his reception of Christianity exhibits a similar picture. The state of man is compared to the entrance and departure of a swallow. Behold the king and his suite seated round the fire in the midst of the apartment, whence the smoke escaped as best it might, and yet all so open that a bird had free inlet and outlet during the storm.

But I must proceed to investigate other marks of Anglo-Saxon residence on Castle hill, and they shall be tested by the food on which its occupiers mainly subsisted. The Saxons were a gross people; great drinkers, and vigorous feeders. Quantity more than quality was the object of their solicitude. Edmund and Hardicanute were types of the nation. The first was assassinated at his table, when his nobles and servants were too drunk to defend him, and the other, after a life of gluttony, died of an over-abundant dinner. Now it may be fairly assumed that the banqueters were Saxons, from the very great number of the jaws and other bones of the boar we picked up, both within and without the edifice. These were vastly predominant over the ossiferous remains of other animals. Pork was the usual food on which this people battened: they even believed, that they should not be deprived of it in another world, so dearly they prized it: nay that their hero gods daily feasted on the famous boar, which was revivified for their pleasure, only to be killed and devoured again Next to pork they loved to feed upon eels. And both were plentiful: the fruit of the oak and beech fattened the one, whilst the river supplied the other abundantly; especially after St. Wilfred had instructed his people of Preston and Fishwick, as he did those of Rippon, in a better mode of fishing. Pork and eels, however, did not alone satisfy the appetite of the chief of the hill; the bones of the red-deer, the long and broad faced ox, of the hare, fowls, &c., were pretty numerous, though by no means so much so, as those of the boar and more especially of their jaws. Singular enough none of the goat, or sheep were met with: they, by the Saxons, were chiefly prized for their wool; whilst the Normans dined on mutton : indeed the new nomenclature imposed upon articles of diet is significant.

Penwortham had half a fishery at the Domesday Survey.

The cow, the calf, the deer, the fowl, &c., whilst feeding and rearing, retained their Saxon names, but on the table they became beef, veal, venison, pullet; yet bacon remained unaltered, as if the conquerors were too proud and dainty to meddle with such fare, therefore had left it untouched, as only fitted for a vanquished Saxon.

The chief of the hill also exhibited another trait of his nation: his habits were not over cleanly, he paid no regard to the sweeping of his dining room floor. Think of two feet six inches depth of festering matter in the apartment, where you ate and slept. The thane gnawed a bone and cast it on the carpet of rushes that covered the pavement, and his guest and retainer threw their morsels on the heap near them. One of their archbishops was brained by the Danes after dinner with weapons hastily snatched from such collections. Our medieval ancestors however, had not learned much nicer habits of cleanliness. Erasmus complains of the sluttishness of his times,—“ Beneath the rushes, strewed on the floor, lay unmolested an ancient collection of beer, grease, fragments, bones, spittle, excrements of dogs and cats, and everything nasty." "A hall, a hall" was the summons for the rake and broom to clear a space for the dancers, and the nobleman was often compelled to seek another residence until the lately occupied one was sweetened; whilst the prudent cry of— "'Haud your honde" and "Who wants me?" was nightly heard in the

streets.

The presence of such an extraordinary quantity of swine bones seems to prove the occupants of Castle hill to have been Saxons, and their intermixture with the remains of other beasts of the chase, loudly proclaim, that the severe forest laws of the Norman had not been introduced, when the dwelling was tenanted. Let me now examine whether any of the articles discovered corroborate my assumption. Some of them, I cannot appropriate, such as the hazel loop, fig. 2, pl. iii, a few finely polished stones, and that curious bright bronze instrument figured 7 in pl. iv. You perceive it is ribbed on one side, as if for ornament, and takes a v like shape, the bends at the top being each drilled with a hole to insert a pin. Judges pronounce these to be Saxon; but I must hesitate, since I cannot recognise their use. The hand paddle, figured in plate iii, I will, however, declare to be so, as well as most probably the leaden weights and bone amulet, the sole of a shoe with a piece of the welt neatly attached to it, the half of a knife haft with the marks of more than one instrument upon it and made of

a red deer's bone, as well as a foreign madrepore, which may have been venerated as an amulet. Nor need we wonder how the Saxons became possessed of such a one; when Alfred's sailors, Octher and Wulstan, had made voyages of discovery towards the Arctic Circle; his priest Sigelin relieved, as we are told, the distressed Christians of St. Thomas in the East Indies, and the Danes had carried Cufic coins up the Ribble to Cuerdale.

Such are the proofs of Anglo-Saxon residence at Penwortham, and so satisfactory are they to my mind, that I should have pronounced the ruins wholly so; could I believe that the Roman remains discovered there had been found and brought from Walton, or that more would not have been exhumed by further excavations. I never hoped for the production of many Roman coins; for the sentinel of an outlook would not have his purse overstocked with denarii, nor yet of many Saxon valuables; because on the first approach of his Norman successor, the thane would flee with them into the recesses of the surrounding woods, or if seized unawares, his dwelling would be plundered before it was consigned to destruction. This Ham, however, on Castle hill, whether the habitation of a single family or the "plurium conjunctiones," changed and corrupted the British name of Peneverdant into Penwortham, which name it still retains.

The question now arises, who destroyed the Ham and elevated and fashioned Castle hill to its present conical shape? Here is the book, which relates the whole history, if rightly read. The iron spur, figured 8 in plate iii, was taken from the ruins of Castle hill. It is of an elegant shape and workmanship, having the two rivets, that secured the strap, still sharply defined and free from corrosion. What, however, characterizes it is its spear-shaped spike. "The British Museum,”—says Mr. Hardwick, -"possesses no perfect specimen, nor any fragment that has been moulded with such symmetry of form." Whether this Penwortham “pryck spur" be of the late Saxon, or early Norman period is considered doubtful. Mr. Roach Smith referred my friend to his report on the excavations of the Roman Castrum of Lymne, where that antiquary seems to suppose they belonged to the former. It says,-"A penny of Eadgar found at the depth of two feet and also some iron prick spurs suggest, that the castrum may have been partially tenanted for some centuries after the Romans had abandoned it." Planche moreover records that they appear in the Saxon illuminations of the 8th to the 10th century. The Castle hill spur may