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the workmen’s children from playing about the house and disturbing him with 
their noise, after which they were given to Mr. Pye, surgeon, Bristol, whose pre- 
mature fate we have before recorded,” for the professional aid rendered by him to 
his friend (Mr. White), the only remuneration he would accept of. 
Mr. White seems to have conjectured that the bones ‘‘ might possibly belong 
to ene of Vortigern’s officers or great men, who fled from the defeat at the battle 
of Amesbury, in Wiltshire, and secreted himself for a while in the wood of 
Doward. 
A correspondent of Heath throws a very natural doubt upon the correctness 
of Mr. White’s conjecture. He remarks: ‘‘We well know that Vortigern 
retreated after the massacre at Amesbury into Wales, where he immediately 
built for himself a castle called Kaer Gwortigern, after his name, and in which he 
was destroyed: but that Doward was an asylum for any part of his army after 
that retreat, or that the person here found might have been one of his officers, the 
histories which record the events of that day will not warrant a conclusion. 
Might it not rather be deemed after the battle of Ailsford ?” 
Bishop Usher, in his Ecclesiastical Antiquities, says: ‘‘ Vortigern was burnt 
by Aurelius Ambrosius and his army, by applying fire to the town of Genoreu, 
which lies on the banks of the river Wye, near the town of Monmouth, which still 
retains its name.” The Bishop quotes Geoffrey of Monmouth for his authority. 
The allusion seems to be to book viii. cap. 2, in which Geoffrey says: ‘‘ Ambrosius 
marched with his army into Cambria to the town of Genoreu, whither Vortigern 
had fled for refuge. That town was in the country of Hergin, upon the river 
Gania, in the mountains called Cloarius. * * * * At last, when all other 
attempts failed, they had recourse to fire, which meeting with proper fuel ceased 
not to rage till it had burned down the tower and Vortigern in it.” 
Heath mentions a tradition as still current in his time (1799) that King 
Arthur’s Hall extends underground from thence to New Wear, a distance of more 
than a mile. The present appearance of the cave does not afford any colour for 
this notion. ‘None of the passages which open into the great cavern or hall extend 
more than a few yards, while the researches carried on by Mr. Symonds must have 
laid bare the entrance to any caverns beyond or any passage leading into the 
interior of the hill. 
Heath’s conjecture that ‘‘ the cavern was a mine out of which was produced 
the iron ore for the furnaces adjoining,” the sites of which were at that time 
marked by heaps of cinders from the imperfectly smelted ore, is probably correct 
so far as the limestone from the hill may have furnished the flux for the smelting 
of the ore. But here again the researches of Mr. Symonds show that the cave was 
used by wild animals not only ages before the comparatively late period when man 
discovered the art of reducing iron from the ore, but even before man himself was 
introduced to the earth. 
FLAVELL EDMUNDS. 
