before the division of the Empire into the Eastern and Western Empires under Arcadius and Honorius in A.D. 395. 1 Suffolk at that time, with the exception of the coastline, was a portion of the third province, Flavia Cæsariensis, which included the country between the Humber and the Thames. The province was governed, as to fiscal matters, by a Prases, subject to the Vicar of the Britains -himself one of the six vicarii or deputies of the Proconsul of Africa. The Prætorian Prefect of the Gauls had also a jurisdiction here, which gave him the responsible position of judge in a Court of Final Appeal; and the Count of the Saxon Shore through Britain—a man spectabilis, though not illustris-guarded the Suffolk coast as a portion of the littus Saxonicum, which extended from Brancaster in Norfolk, to the mouth of the Adur, in Suffolk. The Saxons were well known in these parts long before the days of Hengist and Horsa; and if anybody has found a good character for them, except as regards the purity of their women, it will be just as well to let the world have the references, for the passages at present known depict them as pirates of a terribly ferocious nature, and no less skilful seamen than desperate fighters and ruthless victors.2 The earliest notice of them is about A.D. 285, when in conjunction with the Franks they were ravaging the northern coast of France. The noted Carausius was set to look after them, but allowed them to enrich themselves with plunder that they might be the better worth handling afterwards-a piece of management which led to a decree for his execution, and a temporarily successful assumption of the purple by him, as a preferable course.3 In him we see in fact, though not perhaps in title, the first recorded Count of the Saxon 1 'Not. Imp.,' in loc. Paull. Diac., xi. 3; Amm. Marc., ut infra; Claudian, 'Sidon. Apollin.,' viii. 6; Salv. Gab., iv. 14. 3 Eutrop., ix. 13. Shore. We learn from Ammianus Marcellinus of one Nectaridius, Count of the Maritime District, who is killed in a general uprising of the barbarians in A.D. 368, of the defeat of these insurgents in the following year near 'London, an ancient town which men of the latter days have called Augusta,' of a fresh assault of sea-rovers in the year after that on the Count Nannenus, and of their destruction during a truce-perfidious, but excusable in its perfidy, in the historian's opinion-arranged by Severus, Count of the Body-guard to the Emperor Valentinian1. The nature of their keels is so preserved to us as to prove the penetrating power of these flat bottoms, and to suggest to us how often the crushed remnants of the Iceni or the settling military colonists had been wont to plunge themselves into inaccessible woods, and caves in the scrub, when the accursed snake-like head of the pirate craft had been reported as making for the shore. We must say a little about the staff of the Count of the Saxon Shore. That so wide a jurisdiction should have required a lieutenant is only natural. This officer, called Princeps, came from the Count's Chief, who is called the Master of the Foot-guards in the West. The revenueofficers are styled numerarii, or reckoners. From what we can learn from other sources, they were an objectionable set of men, as several of the emperors put forth rescripts to restrain their pride, greediness, fraud, and sloth. If they were suspected of falsifying their accounts, they might be tortured by a kind of rack called the horse, and when their time of office was up they were to wait awhile in their provinces to answer any charges which might be brought against them. Nor does the Superintendent of Prisons (Commentariensis) show up better. He is especially ordered to bring up for trial no abject and base person in place of the real prisoner. Another officer is called the Regerendarius. I can find nothing about him, but suppose from the form of the word that his business was to block out fresh work, arrange expeditions, etc. 1 Amm. Marc., xxvii. 8; xxviii. 5. Another surprise for the general reader will be to find shorthand writers (singulares) on the Count's staff. They were so called from writing each word with one mark, instead of using letters. These marks were called note, and thus the shorthand writers were called notarii as well as singulares. Hence our notary.' The nine stations of the Count of the Saxon Shore were Brannodunum, Gariannonum, Othona, Regulbium, Ritupiæ, Dubri, Lemanni, Anderida, and Portus Adurni, of which only the second, Gariannonum, known as Burgh Castle, is in Suffolk, where a Provost (Præpositus) of Stablesian horse was posted. We find these Africans also at Pelusium, in the Delta of the Nile, and in Scythia and Mosia. They would have a busy time of it, scampering over the country when a small party of pirates appeared, and rearing their turrets and preparing for a siege in case of a more serious irruption. The dimensions of this camp are, internally, 620 feet by 383 feet, and the average height is from 14 to 15 feet, according to measurements made by me September 13, 1886. The question at once arises as to whether Burgh Castle originally had four walls, or was protected on the westnorth-west side by what was then an arm of the sea. To this question Mr. Harrod's labours were largely directed by desire of the late Sir John Boileau, to whose spirit the preservation of this splendid monument is due. The opinion of those who denied the existence of a fourth wall was defended on the ground that the sea would form an adequate protection at the back. No doubt the whole of the marsh might be flooded at an exceptionally high spring tide, or under the influence of a north-westerly gale, or by heavy freshets, or by a combination of these causes; but a dry, still season and the absence of unusual tides would bring about a different state of things; and, indeed, the most unfavourable condition of the marshes would offer no fatal obstacle to the pirates who swarmed up the estuaries and creeks of this part of the country. On this ground there is really no presumption against the hypothesis of a fourth wall. Rather, the existence of a British tumulus on the spot where Norwich (Thorpe) Station now stands, and the salting mound just above the present average water-level in Herringfleet, would favour the idea that there has been but little change in that level since the days of Roman occupation. But Mr. Harrod's excavations went to the extent of affording strong positive evidences as to the fate of the fourth wall. The ragged ends of both north and south walls and the broken bonding courses convinced him that both walls must have been extended beyond their present terminations, and thus he was led, at his first visit in 1850, to make a series of trenches on the low ground to the west, separated by a hedge from the present path leading to the cement works. He began nearly opposite to the Prætorian Gate, but a little further to the north, and worked steadily southward. Very little reward he met with at first-broken mortar, loose flints, and fragments of tiles; but in one place he found a layer of flints placed on the clay, with a thin covering of gravel sifted over them. One of Sir John Boileau's gardeners, James Kettle, drew Mr. Harrod's attention to this, as the same thing had been observed in the foundations of a small building within the walls, to be noticed presently. But this faint indication of the foundation of a wall was soon excelled by that which was found in the trench numbered 3. Here, 4 feet below the surface, a fragment of the wall was reached, which in its fall had retained its continuity. Penetrating a little below this, a number of oak piles about a foot apart were discovered. On these the walls had originally rested, and further investigations in the trench No. I showed the piling precisely in the line of foundation indicated in the other trenches. The piles, Mr. Harrod tells us, 'were about a foot apart, and had clay, chalk stones, mortar, etc., very firmly rammed in between them to the depth of about 18 inches, after penetrating which space black mud was thrown out, speedily followed by the water, which then rose a little above the top of the piling, and, as I judge, to the level of the water in the adjacent drains.' The obvious difficulty of carrying out extensive diggings in such a position as that of the footpath below the camp prevented Mr. Harrod's inquiries from being pushed much further. In one trench, marked 15 on his plan, a solid mass of mortar was found 7 feet below the footpath, but the hole had to be filled up, and from that day to this no further excavation has been made on that special spot. Where, then, is the west wall? Its fragments have doubtless been dispersed over the vicinity of the camp. Some, perhaps, underlie the oozy bed of the Waveney, or even of Breydon. Some may be looked for in the farmbuildings, cottages, or in the walls of the parish church of Burgh Castle. Much, very likely, has been ground to powder on the roads of the Lothingland Hundred. But Mr. Harrod's investigations will carry conviction to most minds that at Burgh Castle, as at Richborough, the camp originally had four walls. The characteristic 'Indurate flint, and brick in ruddy tiers require no notice here; but it may be a question whether the overhanging of the walls is not to a certain extent intentional, and the higher level of the ground inside the camp is to be remarked. Six cylindrical bastions remain, of which one on the west side has fallen, 'Undergnaw'd by years.' The diameter is about 14 feet, and only the upper part is at all bonded with the walls, which circumstance suggests that the bastions were built at a time between the commencement and the completion of the walls. Down the middle of each is a round hollow space, apparently for |