By the Rev. Canon J. E. Jackson. 39 



as then much decayed. But some parts seem to have been left 

 that were to a certain extent defensible : for in the Civil Wars it 

 was held for the King by Sir Charles Lloyd, until Cromwell's 

 artillery in the Market-place threatened to put the finishing stroke ; 

 to prevent which, the governor, not being succoured, surrendered 

 on honourable terms. This was on the ^4th of September, 1645, 

 and in the course of 3 or 4 years after it seems to have been utterly 

 demolished. The foundations however are supposed to be suffi- 

 ciently perfect to show the form of it, if they were properly cleared. 

 Hubert de Burgh and the other unfortunates caged from time to 

 time within its walls, probably passed their solitary nights in 

 dreaming of many strange things ; but in the most fantastic of 

 their visions they never beheld that which is now, or soon will be, 

 to us a common-place reality. They never dreamt that through 

 the green-sand hill below the very floor of their dungeon would 

 one day run a tunnel ; through that tunnel an iron highway ; 

 along which iron way the peaceful burgesses of Devizes, their 

 wives and their children, would glide, without horses, at 30 miles 

 an hour, eastward to picnic in a Crystal Palace, westward to trip 

 across the chasm at Clifton on a bridge suspended in the air ! 



One relic connected with the castle still remains in the town in 

 the peculiar name of one of its streets, the Brittox. It is a very 

 singular name and there has been occasionally doubt about its 

 origin. But there is none. An old French word bretesque, va. 

 mediaeval Latin hretechia, was the name used for a wooden tower 

 placed over a drawbridge at the entrance of a castle. Here, we 

 may presume, there was a tower of this kind, the street leading to 

 it might be called the Bretesk Street ; and the word street has 

 been dropped. In the word Bretesk the s comes before the k ; but 

 the people have found it more convenient to put the k before the s ; 

 and just as they have changed ask into ax, wasp into wapse and 

 hasp into hapse, so BretesA; has become Brete/cs, and hence, 

 Brittox. 



It may now perhaps not be out of place if I take this oppor- 

 tunity of saying a few words as to the meaning of the name of 

 Devizes itself. Several interpretations of it have been given, but 



