Here might be said, with the same poet,
Et regis cineres extructo monte quiescunt. Lucan.
’Till in the month of March, 1723, Mr. Halford order’d some trees to be planted on this hill, in the middle of the noble plain or area at the top, which is 60 cubits diameter. The workmen dug up the body of the great king there buried in the center, very little below the surface. The bones extremely rotten, so that they crumbled them in pieces with their fingers. The soil was altogether chalk, dug from the side of the hill below, of which the whole barrow is made. Six weeks after, I came luckily to rescue a great curiosity which they took up there; an iron chain, as they called it, which I bought of John Fowler, one of the workmen: it was the bridle buried along with this monarch, being only a solid body of rust. I immerg’d it in limner’s drying oil, and dried it carefully, keeping it ever since very dry. It is now as fair and entire as when the workmen took it up. I have given a sketch of it in [plate XXXVI]. There were deers’ horns, an iron knife with a bone handle too, all excessively rotten, taken up along with it.
Pausanias, in Eliacis, writes, how in his time, a roman senator conquer’d at the olympic games. He had a mind to leave a monument of his victory, being a brazen statue with an inscription. Digging for the foundation, just by the pillar of Oenomaus, they took up fragments of a shield, a bridle and armilla, which he saw.
Our bridle belong’d to the harness of a british chariot, and brings into our thoughts the horses and chariots of Egypt, mention’d in earliest days. The Tyrian Hercules, who, I suppose, might bring the first oriental colony hither, was a king in Egypt. In scripture, when Joseph was prime minister there, we find chariots frequently mention’d, both for civil and military use. In Joshua’s time, xvii. 16, 18. the Canaanites, Rephaim or giants, (Titans) and Perizzites had them. So the Philistines. Our ancestors the Britons coming both from Egypt and Canaan, brought hither the use of chariots; and they remain’d, in a manner, singular and proper to our island, to the time that the romans peopled it. And it was fashionable for the romans at Rome, in the height of their luxury, to have british chariots, as we now berlins, landaus, and the like.
Esseda cælatis siste Britanna jugis.
Philostratus, vit. sophist. xxv. Polemon, remarks the enameling and ornament of phrygian and celtic bridles, as being very curiously wrought. Ours is perfectly plain and rude; an argument of its great antiquity.
[Silbury] is the name of the hill given by our saxon ancestors, meaning the great or marvellous hill. So Silchester, the Vindoma of the Romans, means the great Chester. It cannot help us to the name of the monarch there buried. When I consider this hill standing at the fountain of the Kennet Cunetio, still call’d Cunnet by the country people, and that among the most ancient Britons the name of Cunedha is very famous, that they talk much of a great king of this name, it would tempt one to conjecture, this is the very man. This conjecture receives some strength from what my old friend Mr. Baxter writes about Cunetio or Marlborough, which the river first visits. He thinks it had its name from a famous king, Cunedha, who lived at Marlborough, called Kynyd Kynüidion, which we may english, Cunedha of Marlborough, which name is mention’d in the ancient british genealogies before the grandfather of king Arthur; tho’ we scarce imagine their genealogies can truly reach the founder we are thinking of. But Cyngetorix, a king in Britain, who fought Julius Cæsar, and Cunobelin, king of the island in Augustus’s time, may be descendants of this man, at least their names have some relation. And in Cæsar’s Comment. B. G. VII. Conetodunus a gaulish prince, is the same name.
We may remember too, that Merlin the magician, who is said to have made Stonehenge by his magic, is affirm’d to have been buried at Marlborough. Mr. Camden recites it from Alexander Necham. Doubtless Stonehenge, much more Abury, are incomparably older than Merlin’s time. But the oldest reports we can expect to have of these affairs, must be from the Britons, the oldest inhabitants left. And ’tis natural for them to affix old traditions vastly beyond their knowledge, to the last famous persons they have any account of; so that we may well judge some truths are generally latent in these old reports. It is likely our king Kunedha lived at Marlborough, was buried in Silbury, was the founder of Abury. And the archdruid, who with him was the projector and executor of the stupendous work of Abury, was buried at Marlborough. For Marlborough is in sight of that part of the temple which is the Hakpen, or snake’s head, on Overton-hill.
TAB. XXII.
P. 42.