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in 1886, the vicinity of the Marine Hotel was the scene of the unearthing of skeletons.-South Wales Daily News, Oct. 26, 1887.

THE AURIFEROUS WEALTH OF WALES.-"The occurrence of gold in North Wales formed the subject of a very interesting paper by Mr. T. A. Readwin, F.G.S., read before the Geologists' Association, at University College, London. The occurrence of gold has, said the author, been known as a fact to geologists for nearly half a century. And it is quite certain that the well-to-do of the ancient Britons indulged rather extravagantly in gold ornaments. They wore torques made of thick gold wire curiously twisted; also wreaths, armlets, leglets, and signet-rings of gold. They also used golden corslets, shields, weapons, and spurs; luxuriated in the possession of golden harps with golden wires'; and pledged one another in bull-horn drinking-cups tipped with solid gold.

"A celebrated Triad makes three Welsh chieftains the enviable possessors of golden cars; and Meyrick, the historian, not unreasonably infers from this that gold mines were wrought somehow by the Welsh at a very early period. It must be said that the style of the golden weapons, torques, etc, that have been found at various times, is very simple, and quite unlike the style of ornamentation of the early Christian period, and it is therefore probable that they belong to a time long anterior to that. That the ornaments mentioned were made of Welsh gold goes almost without saying. I may be allowed to refer here to one of them, which seems to have received but scanty attention. I mean a gold corselet (or breast-plate) to be seen amongst the antiquities of the British Museum, which was found in Flintshire in 1830, and described and illustrated in Archeologia in 1835.

"It is thought by some that Julius Cæsar invaded these islands more for the acquisition of supposed riches than the conquest of a barbarous people. This thought may have originated in an expression put into the mouth of Galgacus, whilst attacking the Caledonians, namely, Britain produces gold, silver, and other metals the booty of victory.' It is more than probable that the Romans actually discovered gold in Wales on their own account, and wrought it, too; for, independently of the statement of Tacitus, just quoted, there are evidences of plenty of Roman mine-works, where gold must have been the principal, if not the sole, object of their search.

"One of the most remarkable is Gogofau, near Pumpsant, in Carmarthenshire. This gold mine is situate on the banks of the Cothy. Here a quartz lode has been worked, 'opened to the day', and a level driven nearly 200 feet through slate rock. The officers of the Geological Survey discovered gold here, and also what may fairly be called a metallurgical workshop; amongst the things found at the time was a beautiful gold necklace. But, to come nearer our own time, it may be well to notice that, between

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the years 1631 and 1645, Thomas Bushell rented royal mines of King Charles I, both in Merionethshire and Cardiganshire; those in Merioneth being described as 'situate near Barmouth', which is a fact of some significance in the Welsh gold inquiry, and I may be excused for saying a word or two more about it on this occasion. The unfortunate Charles appears to have been nearly always afflicted by chronic impecuniosity, a disorder attended by many and varied inconveniences, particularly to a rather quarrelsome and very unpopular king.

It is

"At one time, it is said, Charles's exigencies were so extreme that his queen had to dispose of her silver toilet-service in order to supply immediate food for the royal household. In 1636, Bushell was allowed by the King to erect a mint at the Castle of Aberystwith, ostensibly for the purpose of coining his Cardiganshire silver for the convenience of paying miners and other workpeople of his own. He struck coin of the value of halfpenny, penny, two, three, four, six, and twelve pence, and a half-crown. a fact unquestioned that Bushell gave and lent his royal master altogether treasure equivalent to quite two millions of our money. It is also a fact that the King could not have stood the racket of the Great Rebellion without the pecuniary aid afforded by Thomas Bushell. It is also a fact that Cromwell had closed the Mint at the Tower against the King, and rendered it impossible for him to get monetary supplies from that quarter. It is also certain that Bushell could not have imported gold into Wales, where he resided mostly, for he was hemmed in by the Parliamentary forces, and royal escorts were continually robbed by them.

"My firm impression is, that this very astute gentleman, Bushell, paid more attention to gold coinage than to the coinage of silver, of which he only accounts for about £13,000 worth! In any case (according to Ruding), Bushell was considered the 'chief dealer' in the precious metals in Wales during the rebellion; and the fact of his coining at extemporised mints and 'transported dies' must be allowed to count for much as regards the supposition that Bushell was master of the situation in Wales as to the matter of the coinage, whether exurgat money', 'blacksmith's money', 'siege-pieces', or otherwise. As Mrs. Glass would have put it, Bushell must have caught his gold before he struck the threepound and other gold pieces; and it is equally certain that he did not dig his gold in Cardiganshire, for that county was celebrated for its lead and silver only.

"The charming Dolgelly district of Merionethshire, owing to comparatively recent gold discoveries, holds up its hand for the honour of having furnished the gold in loyal support of, perhaps, the most unfortunate monarch of these realms.

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Contrary proof wanting, I maintain the theory that this must have been the case, for I have found nearly a hundred silver and gold coins bearing the plume of feathers as mint-mark on the obverse, and frequently the plume in triplicate on the reverse, of

the coins. This mint-mark was agreed on previously, in order to indicate the Welsh origin of the metals; and it is rather a curious fact that this plume has been frequently mistaken for the fleur-delis. That Bushell got the whole of his gold from the beautiful valley of the Mawddach and its adjacent mountains, I have not the slightest doubt. I am the fortunate possessor of one of Bushell's three-pound pieces of the 'exurgat money', bearing date 1644; and also casts of others, dated respectively 1642 and 1643. That history is comparatively silent on this subject may be accounted for in this way. Bushell paid his royal master one-tenth royalty on his gold, and lent him the remaining nine-tenths. The King got all he could get, and it was not at all to the interest of either to say anything about it. There were no accounts to keep. But these coins that remain fill the historical gap.

"The 1644 piece is alleged to have been struck at Oxford; but this could hardly have been the case, for at Oxford the King had chopped into bits of all sizes and values nearly all the silver plate belonging to the colleges, promising to repay its value at five shillings per ounce, 'whenever God should please', with eight per cent. interest thereon. The colleges certainly had no gold plate or bullion, and very little silver. There was no gold in the mint at Oxford, and Bushell was not there at the time. The three-pound pieces, therefore, I think, must have been all struck in Wales without interference, and the gold got out of Merionethshire. I may mention here that Lord Bacon's new plan of mining was by driving deep levels for drainage. Bushell was his devoted pupil, and, as I read it, the first man who ever attempted to carry out the Baconian grand and novel design. This makes me think that some of the Welsh excavations attributed to the Romans (those having levels) in all probability were the work of Thomas Bushell and his friends at the time when everybody was allowed by law to dig for gold and silver wherever they thought to find it."-Industrial Review, Jan. 7, 1888.

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Reviews and Notices of Books.

A BOOKE OF GLAMORGANSHIRE ANTIQUITIES. By RICE MERRICK, Esq. 1578. Edited by JAMES ANDREW CORBETT. London: J. Davy and Sons. 1887. Small 4to., 159 pages.

THAT Glamorganshire, one of the largest and most important districts in Wales, should be without a county history is certainly not from lack of material from which to deduce a consistent account of the progress of the inhabitants of this part of the country from the barbarism of the stone age to the high civilisation of the nineteenth century. The less cultivated districts on the mountains are rich in prehistoric remains; the early Christian inscribed monuments bear witness to the existence of a British church whilst Saxon England was still pagan; and the medieval castles tell the story of the conquest of Wales by the Normans. As no single individual capable of welding the vast amount of facts bearing on the subject into a logical whole has yet been found, the task of the future county historian might be greatly simplified by the formation of an Archæological and Historical Society for Glamorganshire, by which means all the structures, monuments, and objects discovered in association with them might be systematically described and classified, and all documents existing in the publie archives might be collected and published. Mr. James A. Corbett has forestalled the work of such a society by reprinting Rice Merrick's Morganic Archaiographia, with notes, under the title of A Booke of Glamorganshire Antiquities. The only previous edition was privately printed by Sir Thomas Phillipps at Middle Hill in 1825, and copies are now very difficult to obtain. Rice Merrick was said to have lived at Cottrell, and was Clerk of the Peace for the county. He wrote his book in 1578, but the only MS. now in existence is a copy written 1660 to 1680, in the possession of Queen's College, Oxford. Mr. Corbett's edition is a reprint from Sir Thomas Phillipps' book, which was taken from a copy of the Queen's College MS. made by the late Rev. J. M. Traherne. In order, therefore, to correct any mistakes which may have crept in, the present edition has been carefully collated with the Queen's College MS.

The first 120 pages of Mr. Corbett's volume are devoted to Rice Merrick's Morgania Archaiographia, and the remaining 59 pages contain the portion of Leland's Itinerary relating to Glamorganshire; extracts from the Annales Cambria and the Brut y Tywysogion; notes by the author on the text; and last, but not least, a copious index. Great care has evidently been bestowed by both Editor

and publisher on the preparation of the book, in order to ensure good binding, good paper, and good printing. In these days of competition and cheap bad work, it is an unalloyed pleasure to turn over the pages of a volume such as is now before us, rejoicing in broad margins and bright clear type standing out crisply against a background of delicately toned paper. It recalls to one's memory the amiable enthusiast described in Hill Burton's Book-Hunter, who used to be so well satisfied with the exteriors of his literary treasures that he would have considered it the worst possible taste to examine their contents. However, not having reached this extreme stage of bibliomania, we may be permitted to read Rice Merrick before placing him on our shelves, even at the risk of shocking the collector pure and simple. Not the least interesting feature in the Booke of Glamorganshire Antiquities is the reproduction of the quaint phraseology, spelling, and it may be added bad grammar of the original, as, for instance, the following sentence, which catches the eye on the first page: "And as the memory of things done in former Ages by our Predecessors are (sic) partly buryed in oblivion," etc. Rice Merrick begins by explaining the necessity for the existence of historians by observing that if our ancestors had committed to writing the things which came under their personal observation, many things worthy of remembrance would not have been forgotten. He goes on to give reasons why history should be read. "For like as a man, by a certaine instinct of nature, is desirous of Novelties, soe is hee of the knowledge of things past; whereby not only necessary and pleasant remembrance is attayned, but alsoe good example to the Amendment of life."

Morganic Archaiographia is made up partly of the history of Glamorganshire from the earliest times, and partly of descriptions of the state of the county at the end of the sixteenth century. The historical portion appears to have been derived chiefly from a Welsh MS. called Cwtta Cyfarwydd, a short, stumpy volume written about 1445, and now preserved in the Peniarth Library. He also consulted certain "old Bookes and pamphletts in the Brittaine tongue", and the Register of Neath Abbey, now no longer in existence. Mr. Corbett thinks that not much weight can be attached to Rice Merrick's history, and points out that the personal details as to Jestyn and Rhys ap Tudor are undoubtedly fabulous,

On page 5 will be found a most amusing illustration of the way in which an inscription may be misread when a false assumption has once been made as to its language and true character. Merrick here tells us that " Morgan, Duke of Albania (now named Scotland), was slain by Cunedagius, his cousen German, in a battell between them, fought neere to a place called Eglwys uvunyd, and there buryed, with a square rough hard stone layd over him (which I have viewed and seene), with this superscription in the brytane Language engraved therein: Pymp lys vy kar ym tokkwys; as much to say in English my Cousen's five fingers overtopped me', which place, in this Remembrance of his death, is called

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