Adde tot egregias urbes, operumque laborem.
Tot congesta manu præruptis oppida saxis,
Fluminaque antiquos subterlabentia muros. Virg. Geor. II.
To ROGER GALE, Esq;
THE reasons I have to address the following journey to you, are both general and particular: of the first sort, the title affixed to it could not but put me in mind of your claim to these kind of disquisitions from any hand, whose excellent commentary on Antoninus’s Itinerary has deservedly given you the palm of ancient learning, and rendered your character classic among the chief restorers of the Roman Britain. But I am apprehensive it will be easier to make these papers of mine acceptable to the world, than to yourself, both as the most valuable part of them is your own, and as I purpose by it to remind you of favouring the public with a new edition of that work, to which I know you have made great additions; and in this I am sure they will join with me. The honour you have indulged me of a long friendship, the pleasure and advantage I have reaped in travelling with you, and especially a great part of this journey, are particular reasons, or rather a debt from myself and the world, if any thing of antique inquiries I can produce that are not illaudable, if what time I spend in travelling, may not be wholly a hunting after fresh air with the vulgar citizens, but an examination into the works of nature, and of past ages. I have no fears, that aught here will be less acceptable to you, because perhaps in some things I may differ from your sentiments: the sweetness of your disposition, and your great judgement, I know, will discern and applaud what is really just, and excuse the errors: difference of opinions, though false, is often of great service in furthering a discovery of the truth: to think for one’s self is the prerogative of learning; and no one, but a tyrant in books, will persecute another for it. It is certain, Antoninus his Itinerary is an endless fund of inquiry. I doubt not but in future researches I shall be induced as much to vary from myself as now from others; and, after our best endeavours, succeeding writers will correct us all.
Via Trinovantica.
The last summer I travelled this whole Seventh Journey, and in the order of the Itinerary; but I took in several other places by the way, which relate to the clearing some parts of other journeys. Parallel to the great Icening-street, runs another Roman road from south-west to north-east, through London, beginning at the sea-coast in Hampshire by Rumsey, and ending at the sea-coast in Suffolk about Aldborough. The name of it is utterly lost: if I might have the liberty of assigning one, it should be via Trinovantica, as it tends to the country of those people; and names are necessary to avoid confusion. The lower part of it, or that comprehended between London and Ringwood upon the edge of Dorsetshire, is the subject of this journey; but because I have already given an account of several towns that relate to the XIIIth and XIVth journeys of Antoninus, which have some connexion with this, and that I conceive they are considerably faulty in the original, I shall run through some few more I had opportunity to see, and offer my conjectures towards the restitution of those journeys.
Upon the great moor between Bagshot and Okingham, near East-Hamsted park, we saw a large camp upon a hill doubly ditched, commonly called Cæsar’s camp, as many more without any reason: there has been a well in it, and both Roman and British coins have been found there, one of Cunobelin in silver: its figure is not regular, but conformable to the top of the hill: near it are two large barrows, Ambury and Edgebury. At Berkham by Okingham I bought a very elegant British coin of gold, dug up by a woman in her garden: it is of the most ancient kind, and without letters. I saw a British gold coin found near Old Windsor; another dug up, 1719, at Hanmer hill, between Guildford and Farnham.