16 Stonehenge and its Barrows. 



Britones nullum falsum cogitantes, constituerunt diem amoris in 

 civitate Ambri, ubi nunc est le Stonehenge ; " how they were 

 treacherously slain, and how Aurelius Ambrosius (pp. 302, 303) 

 volens honorare sepulturse locum ubi proceres Britonum Engystus ' 

 dolo ceciderat, misit propter choream Gigantum in Hiberniam qui 

 earn per artem Merlini attulit, et circa sepulchrum nobilium occis- 

 orum statuit choream predictam, quae nunc vocatur Lapis pendens 



* Dr. RoUeston, in a paper on " The modes of sepulture observable in 4ate 

 Romano-British and early Anglo-Saxon times in this country," points out, 

 from the fact that Anglo-Saxon urns, indicating cremation, had been found in 

 as many as fifteen counties in England, and that this practice could only have 

 been prevalent during the 150 years intervening between the comings of Hengist 

 and of St. Augustine, that we have here a clear proof that the Anglo-Saxons came 

 over in great numbers. He says, "It is the fashion to consider Hengist a 

 mythical person, and to disregard alike the story of his landing in Kent, and 

 gf his being executed at Conisborough, in South Yorkshire. But these 

 urns show that men, such as Hengist was, did spread themselves over the very 

 area which he is said to have overrun ; possibly not in so short a period as the 

 forty years assigned for his exploits, but, what is of greater consequence, 

 without giving up the manners and customs and creed of the country whence 

 they came, and in which at the present day (see Kemble'sHorse Ferales, pi. xxx . 

 et passim) we find similar relics to those of which we have been here speaking." 

 Dr. RoUeston also argues from this prevalence of Anglo-Saxon urn burial over 

 such an area and for such a period that the influence of the clergy, and of the 

 Christian religion, which has always resolutely fought against cremation, must 

 have been destroyed. As there is a disposition in some quarters to look favorably 

 upon the revival of cremation, it may be as well to give the following references 

 quoted by Dr. RoUeston, " TertuUian, A.D. 197, cit. Grimm, Berlin, Abhand, 

 1849, p. 207, ' Christianus cui cremare not licuit' ; see also History of Estho- 

 nians, as lately as 1210, A.D. ; Grimm, ibid, p. 247 ; Pusey, Minor Prophets, 

 Amos, vi., 10, ibique citata ; Kemble * Horse Ferales,' p. 95, ' Wherever 

 Christianity set foot, cremation was to cease.' " The results of the Teutonic 

 invasion of Britain upon its Christianity are forcibly set forth by Dean 

 Milman, in his " Latin Christianity " Book, iv., o. 3, " Britain was the only 

 country in which the conquest by the Northern barbarians had been followed by 

 the extinction of Christianity." . . . " The Saxons and the Anglians, in their 

 religion unreclaimed idolaters, knew nothing of Christianity but as the religion 

 of that abject people whom they were driving before them into their mountains 

 and fastnesses. Their conquest was not the settlement of armed conquerors 

 amidst a subject people, but the gradnal expulsion — it might almost seem, at 

 length, the total extirpation— of the British and Roman- British inhabitants. 

 Christianity receded with the conquered Britons into the mountains of Wales, 

 or towards the borders of Scotland, or took refuge among the peaceful and 

 flourishing monasteries of Ireland.' ' 



