found at Belton, Grundisburgh, Botesdale and Kesgrave.1 I have a scraper, piercer and lance-head found at Corton some years ago by Mr. William West, of Great Yarmouth. It is impossible to be definite, save at the expense of truth, in distinguishing these handiworks into different epochs of time, though generally the advance in skill from the mere chipped and unground work of the old stone period to that of the neolithic, new or surface stone, work, cannot fail to impress the observer. The older men worked on stone by means of stone only, generally flint. Later on other substances than flint were used as tools, and the edges and surfaces were ground.

In no particular is progress more observable than in arrow-heads. They seem to have been treasured up, used as personal souvenirs or as charms, and sometimes may show themselves among fragments of Roman pottery in an unearthed dust-heap.

Though forming part of the slender personalty of earlier tribes, these objects and the like were also precious in the eyes of the first people in the district of whom written record exists. Their name, according to coins, is the Eceni, according to a doubtful place in Cæsar's 'Commentaries' the Cenimagni, according to general acceptation the Iceni.

Of the barrows now existing, most are of the round character, and may be assigned without much risk to this tribe. On Barnham Common may be found the imperfect remains of an important exception, a group of three long barrows, generally referred to the dolichocephalous or long-headed men, of a race earlier than these Britons.

In this neighbourhood are many of the round character on both sides of the Little Ouse, as well as further west. They occur generally near the existing main roads, the high antiquity of which as trackways is suggested by this fact. Gough records the cutting through one of these barrows, and the exposure of human bones, in making the turnpike 1 'Ancient Stone Implements of Great Britain,' p. 91, note.

road from Bury to Newmarket.1 Thus also 'Seven Hills is on the Thetford side of Ingham, on the road to Bury; 'Jennet's Hill,' not far from North Stow, between Bury and Brandon; another fine barrow is near by, between West Stow and Ingham; another, where I am informed beads have been found, is between Mildenhall and Brandon, on the left just as you pass from the open heath into the plantations; two occupy conspicuous positions in the parishes of Lakenheath and Barton Mills. Of this pair, the first is on Maid's Cross' Hill, and bears still the remains of a medieval cross. A little group of ragged old fir-trees marks it in that dreary neighbourhood. The other takes the highest point on the chalk, and, though very little elevated, may be seen many a mile across the Cambridgeshire country. It is easily discernible from the tower of Ely Cathedral.

Little excavation has been attempted, but one instance I feel bound to record.

In the parish of Mildenhall, near the Icklingham border, there is a group of mounds, called the Three Hills, formed in part from an excavated pit amongst them, a place where by tradition 'Oliver Cromwell' is reported to have hidden some chests of silver.

Here in the spring of 1866 some labourers, digging gravel, came upon a skeleton with horns, probably of the Bos longifrons, laid across his chest, a preservation from soil pressure. I was at Mildenhall at the time, and these remains were shown to me.

At Nacton, in Colneis Hundred, is a place called the 'Seven Hills,' and there appear to have been other barrows in that neighbourhood.

1 'In the parish of Barrow.'-'Suffolk Traveller,' p. 200.

IN

CHAPTER II.

THE ROMAN OCCUPATION-EARLIER SECTION.

N order that the small contribution to the history of the Roman occupation of Great Britain which is allowed in this work may have any value, it is necessary that its sources should be indicated and their reliability estimated.

The Commentaries' of Julius Cæsar bear the impress of truth, as plain, straightforward relations of fact, destitute of those literary attractions which give liveliness and take trustworthiness from a narrative.

The historian Tacitus was the son-in-law of the great commander Julius Agricola, and had access to sources of information which were closed to others.

Dion Cassius, who was twice Consul, was the friend of the learned and virtuous Emperor Alexander Severus. He unselfishly retired comparatively early from public life, to compile those annals which bear his name; and though much of his work has perished, fortunately we have the summaries of Xiphilinus, Patriarch of Constantinople, one of the great band of scholars in that city about the time of the Norman Conquest.

The geographical notes of Ptolemy, misinformed as he was in many points, will give some valuable hints.

Of the work called 'Antonine's Itinerary' it is difficult to speak shortly. It is not all of a piece, nor all of a time, nor does it pretend to absolute accuracy in its road

measurements. The portion with which we have to deal seems to belong to that great survey which was made circa 200 by the Emperor Septimius Severus, who united with his own name that of his son Antoninus, better known to the ordinary reader by the name Caracalla.

The last of our great documentary authorities is the Survey of the Roman Empire made shortly before its final division into the East and the West, under Arcadius and Honorius, A.D. 395. It is generally called 'Notitia Imperii,' was published by Frobenius in 1552, and contains details which we should seek in vain elsewhere.

But beyond history there is the great unwieldy mass of unwritten testimony-coins and medals, pottery, traces of domestic life and colonization, roads and fords, and arguments fairly deducible from the nature of the soil and the set of the country. Inscriptions are not as yet discovered within our limits.

In endeavouring to deal with some of this matter, reducing it from a heap to a pile, it is inevitable that conflicts of opinion should arise. Finality is often denied to us in archæology, as in other matters; but, on the other hand, established views have a certain presumption in their favour, if only they date far enough back. Our medieval ancestors troubled themselves little about these things, and left a scanty legacy to their followers, the great Elizabethan labourers. These, again, were beset by difficulties of travel, preventing access to original documents and examination of localities, and often by false derivations, arising partly from the mangled form in which names of road-stations and camps were presented to them, and partly from the condition of philology in their time.

Such conclusions as we of the later days may adopt will be the more trustworthy the less they are dogmatic.

Julius Cæsar, although his operations did not extend. into the East of England, has devoted three chapters1 to ''De Bello Gallico,' v. 12-14. If we are to follow Cæsar, we must

a general description of the island. He distinguishes the aboriginal population of the interior from the settlers of Belgic extraction on the sea-board, turned from searovers into agriculturists. He says of them that they generally retained the names of the states from which they had migrated. This is traceable in the Belgæ and Atrebates of South England. The island he describes as triangular, with sides facing south, west, and north respectively, the last, of course, being the coast with which we are concerned, estimated by him at 800 miles in length.

But we are confronted with this difficulty:

Kent, 'the civil'st part of all this isle,' must have been a Belgic settlement. In another place in the 'Commentaries' he speaks of the Gauls or Celts as differing from the Belgæ in language, customs, and laws. Here he says that the inhabitants of Kent differ little from Gallic custom, and he notes their numerous houses as very like those of the Gauls, without distinguishing the men of the coast from those of the interior, about whom he had information which he regarded as trustworthy. Taking into account the second-hand character of his knowledge of our coast, and the varying nature of the soil, I am inclined to infer that there were more races than one in East Anglia, these Belgic immigrants, of whatever race they might be-Teutonic, Celtic, or mixed-holding the lighter and more easily-cleared soil bordering on the sea, and those of earlier standing, analogous to Cæsar's interior aboriginals, being driven to the dense forests on the clay, or to the almost inaccessible fishing and fowling mounds in the fens and marshes.

It is to be observed that no writer of antiquity calls the inhabitants of these islands Gauls or Celts, but Britons.1 Our subject excludes Cæsar's campaign, for Cassivel

regard the Belgæ on the other side of the Channel as more purely Teutonic than those on British soil.

1 Pomponius Leta ('Compend. Hist. Rom.,' ii.) says that they were first called Britanni, and afterwards Britones.