the insertion of the centre timber of a temporary wooden turret, to be raised in case of an attack upon the camp.

Adjoining the west wall was a room, 16 feet 6 inches. square, the foundation resting on a layer of flints with fine gravel sifted over them, as described above. The flue formed by the usual flanged tiles was found, with some indications of a furnace.

On each side of the Prætorian Gate the remains of a wall were discovered, turning inwards at right angles to the main wall. Mr. Harrod conjectures this to be merely intended to keep the roadway clear of earth. No other discoveries were made hereabouts, save a narrow trench just within the gate, apparently for the reception of a wooden threshold; but Mr. Harrod expressed his conviction that he was wrong in not digging to a greater depth, and in adhering too closely to a straight line.

Roman roads not recorded are of course more hypothetical than those of which we have treated, but as two centuries elapsed between Antonine's Itinerary and the recall of the legions, much development of traffic must have taken place during that period. From Stoke Ash a gravel road goes northward by Scole, Dickleburgh and Long Stratton to the great camp Ad Taum at Caistor, near Norwich. Those who work at the pick and shovel on this road say that there is a great difference in its character north and south of Stoke White Horse. The road from this point to Eye, connecting two villas, can hardly escape being Roman. The roads from Norwich to Felixstowe; from Woodbridge to Debenham by Burgh; from Stratford St. Mary by Hadleigh, another, to Ixworth and Thetford; 'Stone Street'; from Thetford by Barton Mills to Newmarket, the old coachroad; from Brandon to Mildenhall, and thence into Cambridgeshire; from Bury St. Edmunds- which, though forbidden to be Villa Faustini by the measurements, must still have been an important centre before it was Beodricesworth-to Stowmarket and to Sudbury; and pieces of coast road-these and others suggest their

origin, but this is all that we can expect of them. We have notes of villas at Eye, Great Thurlow, Coddenham, West Row in Mildenhall; hoards of coins at Undley in the parish of Lakenheath, at Cardale Head in the parish of Eriswell, at Stowlangtoft, Ickworth, Felixstowe and a great many other places; strigils at Covehithe and Great Thurlow; bronze ornaments at Icklingham, where the discoveries are more than we can here record; and surveyors' shafts at Felixstowe and Covehithe. Roman Suffolk, however, would require a treatise by itself, in spite of the poverty of the county in inscriptions.

FR

CHAPTER IV.

EARLIER SAXON TIMES.

ROM the recall of the legions to the foundation of the kingdom of East Anglia, we are left much to the guidance of that alluring but untrustworthy companion -Imagination.

The country could hardly have been deserted of man for more than a century and a half. Yet the discovered hoards of coin tell of those who neither returned nor told others of these treasures in earthen vessels. It may be that the remnants of British blood and the numerous half-breeds began to occupy places abandoned by the rulers of the world; wheat, so long known to Suffolk, even from prehistoric times, when looked after, grew as kindly for them as for their predecessors; to cattle it recked nought for whom they grazed and were slaughtered; and the sports of the chase do not diminish as civilization retires. A hardy, sparse population would manage to pick up a living. Enough justice to prevent mutual destruction would be meted out in an irregularly patriarchal form. Pottery deteriorated, roads fell into a bad way; but the Numerarius had disappeared, and the struggle for existence against the wild powers of nature was not so much embittered by the visits of the man with the ink-horn, or the summons to send vectigalia to Villa Faustini or Combretonium. Whatever may have been the condition of our predecessors at that time, we find no

trace of any resistance offered by them to the formation of the kingdom of East Anglia by the second Uffa circa A.D. 575.

Uffa and his son Tytil are mere names to us. Redwald, next in succession, certainly permitted the preaching of Christ within his realm, but his personal convictions were not to be depended upon. He was baptized at Canterbury under the eye of Ethelbert of Kent; but, according to Bede,1 he resembled the Samaritans of old,2 in attempting to unite the worship of Christ with that of his old gods. His sons, Erpenwald and Sigebert, come before us as earnest propagators of the Faith. The former was assassinated by a pagan named Richbert, after three years' reign; but the latter, undaunted by his half-brother's fate, as soon as he became King, invited to his kingdom the great apostle of the East Angles, St. Felix the Burgundian. During the three years' interregnum ensuing on Erpenwald's murder, Sigebert had sojourned in Burgundy, where he had been instructed and baptized, and whence he summoned one of the most eminent of his teachers to grapple with the work of Christianizing his people.

His

The arrival of the Burgundian apostle was followed, after a lapse of at least four years, by his consecration at the hands of Honorius, Archbishop of Canterbury. labours, arduous as they must have been, included the organization of a school, probably at Dunwich, which he furnished with masters and teachers after the manner of Kent, whence he had lately come. The church at Babingley, close to Sandringham, is dedicated to him. Here the Christian hills' are by tradition associated with his preaching. The two Flixtons and Felixstowe still preserve his name. The German Ocean has, indeed, swallowed up all material evidence of his life at Dunwich, his see; but one venerable structure remains-the 'Old Minster,' as it is called, close to South Elmham Hall, not

to be passed over in connection with the first East Anglian Bishop.

Deeply imbedded in foliage, and only to be reached through byways, in one of the remotest corners of Suffolk, stands that remarkable mass of rubble which represents the toil and hardship of these early preachers of the Word. As elsewhere, whether in the county or out of it; whether at Combretonium, Burgh, near Woodbridge, and Ilketshall St. Laurence; at Delgovicia, Goodmanham in the East Riding, Porchester, Dover, or many other places, the enclosure, which apparently dates from the Roman period, to judge from its rectangular form, consisting of a low mound and shallow foss, becomes the Llan, the Téμevos, the God's Acre, as we regard it from a Keltic, Greek, or Teutonic point of view. In this spot, to which allusion has already been made, may be seen the 'Old Minster,' 104 feet long and 33 feet wide, with its semicircular apse, and that most rare feature in church remains, the narthex. Entering the building by the west doorway, the visitor finds himself confronted by a wall only occupying the middle of the building, and leaving access by wide openings into the nave on the north and south. In larger and more stately buildings there was an ante-temple or outward narthex, where lustrations were performed, emblematical of that purity of soul without which no worship is acceptable, where also the dead were often interred. The word narthex, which, like canon, signifies a reed, became used for any oblong space,1 and in particular for that space at the entrance of a church which was reserved for hearers who were allowed to stand and listen to the psalms, lessons, and sermon, and then dismissed without joining in the prayers or receiving the benediction. The openings into the nave are called by later Greek writers the beautiful and the royal gates.

With regard to the apse or bow at the east end, it seems to have become a feature in churches after so many basilicas, partly temple, partly law-court, partly exchange,

1 See note in Bingham, Antiq.,' book viii., chap. iv.