FROM THE REGISTER (BAPTISMS, MARRIAGES, BURIALS), 1702—1802. First fly-leaf.

"An account of what money has been collected upon Breifs read in ye Parish Church of Langley Burrel according to an Act of Parliament lately made on that behalf

Impr for loss by fire in Shire lane Lond., Octo ye 12 1707 Collected 0:1:2

"Much sympathy was felt throughout England for the Protestants in the Principality of Orange, which had been invaded in 1697 by Louis XIV. In 1703 Besides this

a Brief 'for the persecuted Protestants of Orange'

a Brief was granted by Queen Anne in 1707 for building a Church in Oberbarmen in the Duchy of Berg." Trans. East Riding Ant. Soc., vii., 93.

In a volume of sermons by Gilbert Burnet, Bishop of Salisbury, in the Society's Library at Devizes, is one entitled "A Sermon preach'd at St. James's Church upon the reading the Brief for the Persecuted Exiles of the Principality of Orange." London. 1704.

2 This was the great storm of November 27th, 1703, when 11 men-of-war and 200 merchant vessels were wrecked, and the Bishop of Bath and Wells was killed in his Palace at Wells.

NOTES ON THE ROMAN ANTIQUITIES IN THE WESTBURY COLLECTION AT THE MUSEUM, DEVIZES.

By MRS. M. E. CUNNINGTON.

THE Westbury Collection in the Society's Museum at Devizes consists of a large and interesting series of objects found on the site of a Romano-British settlement at Westbury, and generously placed in the Museum by the Westbury Iron Company.

The discoveries were made from time to time during the years 1877-82 in the course of digging for iron ore close to the iron works.1

Unfortunately nothing more than this is known of the conditions under which the various objects were found. It is only possible to infer from the number and nature of the objects themselves that the place must have been the site of a fairly well-to-do settlement during the Roman period. It is therefore curious that, with the exception of a single circular brick, such as were used to build the pillars of hypocausts, no remains of buildings were preserved. It seems probable from this that the buildings of the settlement were not of a very substantial character, and were not built of any lasting material, such as brick or stone. The buildings of the Romano-British settlements in South Wilts and in Dorsetshire examined by the late General Pitt-Rivers, it will

The site is marked "British Settlement" on the 6-inch Ordnance Map, Wiltshire, Sheet XLIV., N.E.

2 The Wilts Arch. Mag. contains short and incidental references to the discoveries in vol. xxi., pp. 3, 268, 272.

Some of the objects in the collection were described and illustrated by the Rev. E. H. Goddard in the Reliquary, July, 1909.

3 The site is in the list of "British Settlements" given by Sir Richard Colt Hoare. He speaks of "A large unenclosed common field known by the name of Ham" and of "British and Roman antiquities" found there. He also speaks of foundations of buildings and tesselated pavement found on or near "Compton's Plot." "Ancient Wilts," South, p. 53. There is some evidence that a Roman road ran through the neighbourhood. Wilts Arch. Mag., vol. xxv., p. 35—36.

Notes on the Roman Antiquities in the Westbury Collection. 465

be remembered, seem to have been of the same unsubstantial character, and to have left few lasting remains behind them.

One of the wells that must have supplied the settlement with water was discovered in 1879, and opened by Mr.Henry Cunnington, when a considerable quantity of broken pottery and other objects were found in the mud at the bottom. Among the bones of animals thus found is a well-preserved and complete skull of the Bos longifrons: and the skull of a horse also complete, with a hole. pierced in the cheek bone, that appears to have been caused during life by a thrust from a small spear, or an arrow.

Parts of four human skulls were also found at the bottom of this well, and as they are scarcely likely to have got into the well in the ordinary course of things, they perhaps bear evidence to a violent and tragic end to the settlement, such as so often seems to have been the fate of habitations at the end of the Romano-British period.

Considering the casual way in which the discoveries were made it is indeed fortunate that such a large collection of fragile pottery and delicate metal objects was safely brought together. Pottery naturally forms the bulk of the collection, and happily quite a good proportion of the vessels have survived, more or less intact, the vicissitudes of their burial and resuscitation.

Perhaps the most interesting and important, from an historical point of view, is the series of red glazed Gaulish pottery, generally known as Samian ware.

Thanks to recent archæological research it is now known that this pottery was made at several centres in Roman Gaul, notably at La Graufesenque and Lezoux, in what is now France, and at Rheinzabern and Westerndorff in Germany.1 It is believed that the manufacture began about 30 A.D. and continued on to about 250-260 A.D.2

The systematic study of the types of decoration, and forms of vessels, has made it possible to date approximately the various

1 See the works of Dragendorff and Déchelette; also Catalogue of Roman Pottery in the British Museum, 1908.

2 Catalogue of Roman Pottery, p. xxvi.