According to method I should speak of Londinium here: but because the great deal that may be said thereupon will make a discourse by itself, we content ourselves at present with giving the plan of it, as we suppose it might appear in the times of the Romans; and so continuing our tour into Kent, will finish the whole continuation of the Watling-street with what few memoirs I could pick up at that time.
As Old-street went on the north of London, so the proper Watling-street we have been upon, since High-cross in Warwickshire, went on the south; from Stane-gate ferry across St. George’s fields, so south of the Lock hospital to Deptford and Black heath: a small portion of the ancient way pointing to Westminster abbey is now the common road on this side the nearest turnpike; but the continuation of it is quite lost since the bridge was made, and all roads meet at that centre as so many radii. When London became considerable, the ferry over-against it, from being better attended, rendered that at Stangate almost useless; so passengers went through the city by Canon-street, Watling-street, and Holborn: hence so little appears of it between Tyburn and the Lock hospital; and probably its materials were long since wholly dug away to mend the highways. Upon this way in Southwark many Roman antiquities have been found, particularly a Janus of stone, in possession of Dr. Woodward: but our business shall be to prosecute the end of the second journey and the whole third and fourth of Antoninus.
From Shooters hill the direction of the road is very plain both ways: a mile westward from the bottom of the hill you find vestiges of it just upon the common: some part of the agger is left, made of gravel near at hand: from the top of Shooters hill you see it butts upon Westminster abbey, where it passes the Thames; and this demonstrates its original direction, and that it was begun from the east; for the turn of the river at Greenwich intercepts it, though not observed in maps: so the way is forced to deflect a little southward there, and then recovers its point: beyond that hill it is very strait as far as the ken reaches. On Black heath a vast tumulus, now used as a butt for archers, hereabouts in great request till Henry the VIIIth’s time: and hence the name of Shooters hill.
It is to be noted that in the second journey of Antoninus, Madviacis, Maidstone, and Durobrovis, Rochester, are transposed; therefore in the whole between London and Rochester it is twenty-eight miles, as in both the next journeys called twenty-seven, (but more rightly the former:) so that, as the Watling-street leads directly over Shooters hill between London and Rochester, and seeing the whole distance is answerable to fact, we need be in no pain for finding out the intermediate station, Noviomagus.Noviomagus: doubtless it was about Wellend or Crayford,[106] as Mr. Somner judges, where the respective distances on each side point it out: notwithstanding, as to matters of antiquity, we have nothing to say. So with good reason Dr. Plot settles Pennocrucium at Stretton in Staffordshire, because it is upon this same Watling-street, and answers the distances, though no Roman antiquities are there discovered; and the like must we do of other places. No doubt there were two stations between London and Rochester, though only one mentioned in the Itinerary: Northfleet. Ro. town.Northfleet seems to be the other, where many antiquities are found. I heard much talk of an old town at Plumsted, nearer the Thames, and to which they say the river came up originally: if true, perhaps this was the Noviomagus, and the Trinobantum, or Trenowydh of the Britons, i. e. the town of the Novii or Novantes, of which their old writers make a din, and would affix it to London: they say there are much ruins there. East of Crayford, all along upon the heath, as well as on the other side from Shooters hill, the ridge of the Watling-street is very visible; but beyond Dartford the common road leaves it quite on the south side, which induced me to follow the Roman: it becomes a lane presently, and passes in a very strait line, for five or six miles, through little valleys, woods, and inclosures; and about that distance I lost both it and myself in a wood by Southfleet; which obliged me to endeavour again to recover the great road: by the quantity of ground I went for that purpose, I guess this is a branch of the main road directly to Maidstone, for the convenience of such as intended to go strait to Lemanis by Durolenum. The soil from London to Dartford is gravel, but the highest ground has sand: beyond to Rochester it is chalk full of flints and gravel: the flints lie in strata, very black, and squeezed flat like mortar in the course of a wall; and above the chalk is pure sand.
The river Medway at Rochester is very broad and rapid, foaming most violently: there is a stately bridge built across it: below bridge lie about fifty of our biggest first rate men of war unrigged, such as the Royal Sovereign, Britannia, Barfleur, &c. The Roman city was very strong, being walled about and ditched:[107] near that angle below the bridge, TAB. XXX. 2d Vol.incompassed by the river, is a large piece of Roman building of the wall, made of rubble-stone laid sloping side-ways, here and there Roman bricks: houses are built upon it, and it is broke through for a passage; in the inside much flint. Dr. Thorp has great numbers of antiquities found hereabouts. This city stands in an angle of the river: it seems to have been of a square form, the Watling-street running directly through it: most of the walls still remain, but repaired. TAB. VI.The castle was built out of one angle by William the Conqueror, which together with the cathedral has altered the regular ground-plot of the city, as at Lincoln: the walls of the great tower now left are four yards thick. The body of the cathedral is of the original structure before the Conquest, repaired by bishop Gundulf an architect, who likewise built the castle: the great tower is now called Gundulf’s tower. The chalky cliff under the castle-wall next the river is a romantic sight: the rapidity of the river wastes it away; and then huge tracts of the wall fall down: in some places you see the bottom of the broad foundation, and which in others is carried down to the water. On the north side of the north-west tower of the church is Gundulf’s effigies.[108] The front of the church is of the old work, but a new window put in the middle. The eastern gate of the city was pulled down not long ago: I saw many of the stones distributed among the adjacent buildings, being of a Roman cut.
We must now, according to the Itinerary, leave the Watling-street, and go to Maidstone. The road hither passes by that famous British monument called Kits-coty-house. It cannot be disputed but that Maidstone is the next Roman station. Mædwæg I apprehend signifies the meadows upon the river Vaga, which are here beautiful: whether the Latin word be Madviacis, or Vagniacis, I see no difficulty in forming it from the British.[109] The archbishop of Canterbury had a palace here, founded by John Ufford, finished by Simon Islip: a college or hospital was erected by A. B. Boniface, and a chantry by Thomas Arundel, now the free-school. About 1720, they dug up several canoos, made of hollowed trees, in the marshes of the river Medway above Maidstone: one is used for a boat to this day. I saw, in the hands of Dr. Dodd, a British coin of electrum, found at Addington near Malling, anno 1720, in the foundation of a stone wall: on the concave side a British horse, rude enough; the convex was plain.
From thence the Itinerary leads us to Durolenum. The learned Talbot first guessed it to be Charing; and to me he seems to be in the right. It is upon a spring of the river Len. The present name is derived from the British Caer, as they called all Roman towns in after-times: anciently it was wrote Cering with a Saxon termination, intimating the meadows it stands upon. Roman antiquities are found all about, but nothing I have yet met withal, that particularly fixes the spot the Roman city stood upon. Near is a manor called Broughton; Chart[110] is the name of the hundred, from two little adjoining villages: but at this place the distances answer well, and the roads in many parts appear: that from hence to Canterbury passed by Chilham; so over the river Stour by Sharnford, which retains the British name of a causeway. The archbishops of Canterbury had a castellated palace at Charing, probably given them by some of the first Saxon kings, as a royal demesne of theirs: there are large ruins of it still left. Here was a chantry founded by Sir John Burley. All the ground upon the river Len at the bottom of the great ridge of hills is sand, sometimes exceeding white; between that and the bottom of the hills it is flinty: the hills themselves are pure chalk. All Kent consists of large tracts of ground gradually rising from the east to a western ridge steep that way, so succeeded by another of like manner; but any of these tracts are made up of little hills and short valleys, quite of a different nature from those on the west side of the island: and Mr. Camden has observed this before us, as to the northern part of the island, p. 533. Britannia. We may gather an idea of the natural reason of it from what we spoke at first, of the ground hardening upon the instant of the earth’s rotation.
After we have made this excursion with Antoninus, to take in these two stations, which seems to have been done to conduct travellers the nearest way to the portus Lemanis, we return again to Rochester, that we may finish the progress of the Watling-street.
From Rochester the Watling-street continues very strait to Canterbury, by Feversham, whither I went to visit the remains of the monastery founded by king Stephen, and where he was buried with his family. At present nothing left but TAB. XXVII.two gate-houses, and they of mean structure: the hall was standing intire within this forty year; but now the whole monastery is level with the ground, and converted into orchards, so that I could not so much as guess at the place where the church was. They have a report still, that at the dissolution of abbeys they took up the coffin of lead wherein the king was buried, and sold it: as for his corpse, they threw it into the Thames. Here king Ethelstan enacted laws, anno 903. At Newington.Newington seems to have been another station: many Roman coins and antiquities have been found Ro. town.there. Vide large accounts thereof in Burton’s Itinerary, p. 181. and Casaubon’s translation of Antoninus Philos. Beyond Broughton, which seems to have been another,[111] you come to a very high hill, steep on the west. The Watling-street here first presents the tower of the cathedral in its line, and both together make a fine show:
Canterbury is deservedly famous for religious as well as Roman antiquity, being the place where christianity first made its entrance among our Saxon ancestors. Here are many remains of Roman buildings, many made of TAB. XCVI.Roman materials in the Saxon times: many antiquities found in digging about the hop-grounds; your lordship has quantities of them. The city is strongly walled about, and many lunettes or towers at due intervals; a deep ditch close underneath, and a great rampart of earth within. The original ground-plot here, as in many other cities, is spoiled by churches built in the middle of streets. To the south is an old obscure gate, called TAB. LIV.Worth gate, partly walled up: it is under the castle. This is intirely a Roman work: the semi-circular arch is of Roman brick, beautifully turned; the piers of stone; the thickness of it is three Roman feet. I suppose this the original gate of the Roman city, and from hence went the road which presently divides itself into two: the one goes by Chilham to Durolenum, over the river at Sharnford, as we said; the other goes in a very strait line, by the name of Stone-street, to the port of Lemanis. The castle built here in William the Conqueror’s time, extending its limits beyond this gate, was the occasion of blocking it up; and so Winchup gate was built a little further eastward, to supply its use. The castle is much of the same form as that at Rochester, and the walls of the same thickness. A little further within the walls is a very high mount, called Dungeon hill: a ditch and high bank inclose the area before it: it seems to have been part of the old castle. Opposite to it without the walls is a hill, seeming to have been raised by the Danes when they besieged the city. The top of Dungeon hill is equal to the top of the castle, and has a fine prospect over the city and country. The materials of the city-walls are chiefly flint. Next to this, where the Watling-street comes,[112] is Riding-gate, built by a mayor of the city, but evidently in the place of the Roman one; for there is part of the Roman arch, and the pier of one side, still visible, but much lower than the present gate: and in a yard close by is part of the arch of a postern, or foot-gate, by the side of it: these arches are of Roman brick, and there are in the wall here and there some more fragments of the Roman work. The draught of it I have given in the plate of the city ground-plot, 96. Hence the Watling-street passes directly to Dover, over Barham downs. Next to East-gate is another gate, opposite to what they call St. Ethelbert’s tower: this is the way to the port of TAB. XXV.Rutupium. Here is the famous monastery of St. Augustin, the first metropolitan, built, as they say, near the palace of the converted king Ethelbert: two gates remain next the city, and both very stately: perhaps one belonged to the palace, the other to the monastery, which doubtless as magnificent as richly endowed; and such its ruins demonstrate, and the great compass of ground it took up, incircled with a very high wall. Great vying was ever here between the religious of St. Austin and of Tho. à Becket, both very rich and contentious. At the west end of this church, as I conjecture, were two great towers: half of one is still remaining, called TAB. XXIV.Ethelbert’s tower: all the whole stones and pillars about it are skinned off as far as they can reach; and every year a buttress, a side of an arch, or the like, passes sub hasta. There is part of the other standing, if it can be so said, that is only not fallen; I call it muro torto: it is a vast angular piece of the tower, about thirty foot high, which has been undermined by digging away a course at bottom, in order to be thrown down; but it happened only to disjoint itself from the foundation, and leaping, as it were, a little space, lodged itself in the ground in that inclining state, to the wonderment of the vulgar who do not discern the meaning of it, though the foundation it came from is sufficiently visible: thus happening to be equally poized, it is a sight somewhat dreadful, and forbids a too near approach on any side, with the apprehension of its falling that way. Under St. Ethelbert’s tower is the porch where St. Augustin and his six successors, as Bede tells us, were interred: the arched roof is left, but ready to fall: the pavement is gone, in the middle of which was an altar. The adjacent close is full of religious ruins and foundations, one great part turned into a stable near the almery: all over they are busy in pulling it up, to sell the stones; which generally pays the rent, and yet the tenants of such places thrive never the more. TAB. XXV.In one corner of this field are the walls of a chapel, said to have been a christian temple before St. Augustin’s time, and reconsecrated by him to St. Pancras: a great apple-tree and some plum-trees now grow in it: the lower part of it is really old, and mostly made of Roman brick, and thicker walls than the superstructure: there is an old Roman arch on the south side toward to altar, the top of it about as high as one’s nose; so that the ground has been much raised: the present east window is a pointed arch, though made of Roman brick, later than St. Austin’s time: near it a little room, said to have been king Ethelbert’s pagan chapel: however it be, both these and the wall adjoining are mostly built of Roman brick: the breadth of the mortar is rather more than the brick, and full of pebbles; but the mark of the devil’s claws, there observed by the vulgar, is fantastical. The garden and orchard adjoining seem to lie in their ancient form: there is a large square mount close by the wall, which it equals in height, and gives a prospect into the fields. Your lordship has a huge water-pipe dug up among many other antiquities in a Roman bath discovered at Canterbury: it is five inches and a half diameter at the smaller end, seventeen long, seven in diameter at the broad end: they were fastened into one another with strong terrace cement. The great number of other antiquities of all sorts, found at and about this city, make part of your fine collection.
Eastward of this, and farther out of the city, is the church of St. Martin, said to be the christian place of devotion, where king Ethelbert’s queen used to go, and St. Austin’s first see: it is built, for the most part, of Roman brick: in the middle is a very large old-fashioned font, supposed that where the king was baptised. North of the city is a very small remnant of St. Gregory’s chapel, founded probably by Austin to the honour of his patron.
The cathedral of Canterbury is very stately, but neither in length, breadth, nor height, especially in front, equal to Lincoln, in my judgement: it is intirely vaulted with stone, and of a very pretty model of building, but much too high for its breadth, as all Gothic buildings were. I believe they got this ill taste from building upon the old foundations, the ancient churches being much narrower and lower than in the succeeding times: when greater riches flowed in upon them, they carried their walls and roofs to an unseemly height. The place where Thomas à Becket’s shrine stood, is sufficiently known by the mark of the devoted knees quite around it, which have left deep impressions in the hard coarse marble. The Black Prince has a noble monument of brass: that of Henry IV. is a good tomb, and there is a pretty chapel hard by, to say mass for him. There is an old picture of arch-bishop Becket’s martyrdom, as called; and upon the wall an old painting of the siege of Jerusalem, in our old habits. Here are several monuments of the bishops. The metropolitan chair is of grey marble, standing behind the high altar: the cloysters are pretty good, and a very large chapel near them, called Sermon-house, wainscotted with Irish oak. The reason of the ancient name of this British city seems intimated in this verse of Virgil,
The poor derivation of the commentators thereon ought to be referred to Tuscan original, to which our Celtic is a-kin.
Leaving Canterbury,[113] I journeyed to find out Rutupiæ. At Wingham I saw a very large barrow, of Celtic make, by the road side, called the Mount: upon enquiry I found there were several more in the parish, and that a lane here is called Port-lane; doubtless the Roman road, for here the common road goes more southward. The Roman city and port without peradventure was the place now called Stonar, or Stanar, as they pronounce it, from the stony foundations I chuse to think; over-against Sandwich, or rather half a mile lower upon the river coming from Canterbury, and almost incompassed by it. This river at first discharged itself into the sea by Ebbesflete, north of the Roman city, till the sand, pouring so directly upon it, obliged the stream to slide under the cliff by Richborough castle, and so by Sandwich: then, coming in obliquely by the weight of its waters, it maintains its passage. I conceit the etymology of Rhutupium, about which the learned contend much, is to be sought for in this Ebbesflete; and that this water was originally called Ube, or Tyvi: rhyd tyf or tyvi, is the passage over it: the Saxons called it Reptacester, a contraction only from Rhutupicester: and so our Ebbe at present came from them; Ruptimuth anciently. Hence you see far into the isle of Thanet and Ramsgate cliff, named from the Romans, thrusting its chalky promontory into the sea. This was the chief port for the Roman navy.[114] At present there is only a farm-house or two, standing on an elevation in the marshes: they informed me that here had been a great city, and that they can discover all the streets when the corn is on the ground; and those streets are nothing but pure gravel laid very deep: innumerable stones and foundations have been dug up, but now mostly evacuated; and no doubt Sandwich was built out of it. The river runs close by it, with difficulty preserving its current to the sea; but no doubt originally it was an open beach, or port: perhaps the city itself was an island. The old mouth of the river is now filled up by the astonishing quantity of small pebbles thrown into this bay by the roll of the ocean: you see here a hundred acres of this flat ground covered over with them six or seven foot deep, and looking blue like the water. I fancied the people that lived here, in like danger with those that travel the sandy deserts of Africa, or Arabia. Here are two elevations, where they say two churches stood: upon one, where an elder-tree grows, much rubble and stone is left, but no part of any building; nor is it easy to distinguish what it was originally.
TAB. XCVII.Richborough castle, as now called, was the fort as it were to this city, and station of the garrison, which was to watch and defend the port and sea-coast hereabout; or rather one of those castles built upon the littus Saxonicum, in the time of Theodosius: it is a mile off Stanar and Sandwich, situate upon the highest elevation near hand, and being the only small part of a bold shore in all this bay: the river runs at the foot of it,
It is a most noble remnant of Roman antiquity, where in later times of their empire the Legio II. Aug. was quartered: the walls on three sides are pretty intire, and in some places still about twenty-five or thirty foot high, without any ditch: the side next the sea being upon a kind of cliff, the top of the wall is but level with the ground: beside, at the east angle the wall descends to another slope just upon the river, which seems to have been in the nature of an outwork, or gradual ascent into the castle: the ground on the inside is pretty much raised. In the middle of the north-east side there is a square work jutting out from the wall, which seems to have been an oblique[115] gate to enter at, for those that came from the water side; and it is not unlikely that gap on the north-west side was another gate: it was a square CV. paces one way, CL. the other; according to the Roman method of making camps, a third part longer than their breadth. There is a foundation within, which has caused many words among the Kentish antiquaries; seems to have been a Pharos, or lodging for the commanding officer, a prætorium: there are foundations of several apartments, the walls monstrously thick and strong. It is manifest to any one that seriously contemplates the ruins of the walls in divers places, that this castle was destroyed by great violence and industriously; I guess, by the Saxons immediately after the Romans left the island, when they could more boldly make descénts upon the coast: the reason why, is evident from the intent of these castles: upon the eastern corner, especially, great piles of wall lie one upon another like rocks: in other places cavities are hewn out of its thickness, that would make good lodging-rooms: the manner of the composition of the walls is seven courses of small hewn stone, which take up four Roman feet: then two courses of Roman brick, which are white, like the brick in the isle of Ely. I observe all the brick about Sandwich to be of the same colour, made of whitish clay. The walls are twelve foot thick: the inward body thereof is made of flint and excessive hard mortar. Sandwich bears directly south. Dr. Holland talks of a carved head over one of the gates; but I could find no such thing now. In the way thither, upon an eminence is the carcass of a castrensian Amphitheatreamphitheatre made of turf; I suppose, for the exercise and diversion of the garrison: the soil of it is gravel and sand, and has been long ploughed over,TAB. XXXVI. 2d Vol. that we need not wonder it is so level. There are three Roman tumuli before Sandwich west gate; one a windmill stands on: it is not easy to assign which Contentus was buried under:
South of Sandwich, as we go along upon the sea-shore, are six large and broad Celtic tumuli, equidistant: the second from the town has been dug away, to raise a little fort upon the road: they all stand in a line east and west.[116] This flat coast is fenced against the ocean by the sand-downs, which in Lincolnshire we call meals: but within the memory of man, as they told me, the sea has commenced a new method of guarding against its own violence, by covering the shore, for a great depth and height, with the pebbles afore mentioned; which is an odd mutation in nature; and it is observable that these pebbles come from the south. I rode from Sandwich as far as Hithe, upon the brink of the shore or cliff, in sight of France all the way; and nothing could be more entertaining in this autumnal season, when the weather is generally clear, serene and calm. Much sea tithymal grows here, and a very pretty plant, papaver cornutum flore luteo, rock samphire feeding upon petroleum, a most excellent pickle, and many more.[117] The murmur of the ocean has a noble solemnity in it, as Homer says, when latinised,
More copiously expressed in Virgil,
which is an exact idea of this place. By listening attentively I observed this noise of the ocean is by fits, at short but equal intervals; which I believe gave occasion to that fancy of the ancients, that every tenth wave was the largest; of which Ovid has a distich.
Sandown castle is composed of four lunettes of very thick arched work of stone, with many port-holes for great guns: in the middle is a great round tower, with a cistern at top; underneath an arched cavern, bomb-proof: a foss incompasses the whole, to which there is a passage over a draw-bridge. Deal castle and Walmer castle are of the same nature, all built by Harry VIII. to guard this naked level coast: moreover, lines are drawn along between castle and castle, and at proper intervals round bastions with a ditch and parapet of earth, where cannon may be planted, as in the infancy of fortification. These are what Camden calls Rome’s works, and fancies to be remnants of Cæsar’s ship-camp: the neighbours with as little truth affirm they were thrown up by Oliver Cromwell, for reduction of these castles: one is close by the north side of Deal, and two between Deal castle and Walmer castle. At Walmer castle the cliff begins for about half a mile southward with a gentle rise to a hill, whereon is a tumulus: then the shore is plain again in a valley till you come to Kings-wold, which is half a mile’s space. TAB. XXXVII. 2nd Vol.Between Walmer castle and Deal I take to be the spot where Cæsar landed in his first expedition, because it is the first place where the shore can be ascended north of Dover, and exactly answers his assigned distance of eight miles: probably in his second expedition, when he came with many more ships, and had a perfect knowledge of the country, he went a little farther in the downs, whereabouts now is Deal, a town lately sprung up from the mariners. As for his sea-camps, it is vain to expect a sight of them; they are many ages since absorpt by the ocean, which has so long been exercising its power, and wasting the land away. Even since Harry the VIIIth’s time it has carried off the sea-ward esplanades of the three castles, and one half of two of the three circular forts. Indeed, of late years, the providential ejectment of those pebbles has put a stop to it in some measure; and it is amazing to see how it by degrees fills up these fosses and trenches, and sometimes flies over the banks a good way up into the land, with a power well expressed by the poet,
But of this affair of Cæsar’s I reserve to myself another opportunity of speaking, when I shall expresly treat of his expedition hither. At Deal castle is a very good well, though close by the sea.
Now my journey lay intirely upon the edge of the cliffs, whose precipicious height, with the noble prospect at sea, and most awful roaring of the waves, filled the mind with a sense of Nature’s majesty. About St. Margaret’s on cliff, near the light-houses, I saw in two places a great number of little tumuli, of unequal bulk, close by one another; and the like I found frequently about Barham downs, and between Hardres[118] and Chilham, and other places. I know not that such have ever been taken notice of: the people say they were burying-places of the Danes; probably digging into them might give us some satisfaction. I believe them Celtic, because I saw many sorts of them, and such as appear on Salisbury plain.
Dover is a most romantic situation: it is a great valley, and the only one about this coast where water is admitted inwards of the cliff, here very high; and a running brook discharges itself into the sea:[119] the water formerly came a good way higher up, and made a large port; and they have found anchors above the town. TAB. XXXVIII. 2nd Vol.The Roman city of Dubris was to the south of the river: the Watling-street enters it at Bigin gate, coming very strait from Canterbury over Barham down, where it is very perfect:[120] butting directly upon the great tower of the cathedral, it bears a little more northerly than north-west. This city was an oblong square, and some of the walls are left: the churches are of a very antique make: that of St. Martin is collegiate, founded by Wightred king of Kent; it is a venerable ruin: the east end seems to have terminated in three semi-circular works: it was built in form of a cross, as to its main body. Much remains of the priory, now a farm-house. The maison dieu over-against it is become a store-house: here the knights Hospitallers or Templars lodged, coming into, or going out of, the kingdom. The piers that form the haven, or large bason, are costly and great works: above is a fort with four bastions of modern date. The broad beach which lies at the mouth of this great valley, and was the harbour in Cæsar’s time, is very delightful: it is no little part of the diversion, in walking there, to observe the odd produce of the ocean thrown up under your feet, and the sea-plants that grow there; theTAB. XXXIX. XL. 2d Vol. umbelli, star-fishes, many curious fossils and shells; the eringo, sea-lungs, sea-weed, or ood as called, &c. One long street here is named Snare-gate, from the most tremendous rocks of chalk hanging directly over the houses; as Cnarsborough in Yorkshire, says Mr. Camden, p. 715.
The castle is the strongest place in the world, of old fortification; it takes up thirty acres of ground: it is an amazing congeries of walls, ditches, arches, embattlements, mounts, and all imaginable contrivances to render it impregnable after the old mode: but with highest regret I beheld this most noble and memorable fortress, once thought the key of Britain, and that has divers times had the honour to save the kingdom from conquest and slavery, now become a common prey to the people that belong to it: in the late wars with France they kept 1500 prisoners in the great castle; but within this twelvemonth they have carried away the timbers and floors, disabling it even for that use. Thus much I think out of gratitude is its due; let it stand a monument of antiquity, or sink slowly by its own ruin. The brass gun called Queen Elizabeth’s Pocket-pistol is a great curiosity, twenty-two foot long: it requires fifteen pound of powder, and carries a ball seven miles (as the gunner told me;) it is excellently well wrought. I saw two very old keys, and a brass horn, which seem to be the ensigns of authority belonging to the constable of the castle, or lord warden of the cinque ports. One part of the fortifications consists of a large circular work, in which stands the old church, said to have been built by Lucius, an ancient king of the Britons, and first christian. Bishop Stillingfleet thinks he is no romantic person, but reigned in Kent and Sussex: however that be, I believe this church is as ancient as the time assigned him. There is not much doubt to be made, that upon this hill was a castrum of the Romans, like that at Richborough, to guard this haven. It is somewhat surprizing that our Saxon ancestors should take great pains to demolish Roman works, though they wanted such in the same places, and were forced to build them again. I look upon it as an argument that they had no thoughts of conquering the island at first, and destroyed these bulwarks, that such might not hinder their depredations; but espying the nakedness of the land, thoroughly evacuated of its youth and men of arms by the Romans, they found a conquest practicable: then were they obliged to repair these castles. The church we are speaking of was built, in the first times of christianity, out of part of the Roman ruins, whence there are huge quantities of Roman bricks laid into the work: the arches are intirely turned with them; the corners and many parts, both within and without, are built up therewith; and the remainder is of stone originally cut by the Romans: it is in form of a cross, and has a square tower in the middle. I have represented the drawing of it in TAB. XLVIII.plate 48. The stone windows of this church are of later date than the building; they have been put in long since: but the greatest curiosity here is the Roman. Pharos.Pharos, or Roman watch-tower, standing at the west end of the church: notwithstanding it is so much disfigured by new daubing with mortar, casing and mending, I discovered its primary intention the first minute I saw it; and sent the three prints of it, which I here present the reader, to monsieur Montfaucon, at the instances of my most honoured lord, the archbishop of Canterbury. I was in hopes they would have been more useful to that celebrated author; for therein at least he might have found, that the building which he first took for a Pharos, and whereof he gives us four views, is only the tower of the church we were talking of. The description of this curious work, which I believe the most perfect of any left, in short is thus.