20 Stonehenge and its Barrows. 



In Polydore Vergil's ' English History (edited by Sir Henry Ellis 

 for tlie Camden Society, 1846), is the following: "The Englishmenne 

 after this [defeat of the Saxons and death of Ambrosius, King of 

 the Britons] hadd quietnes, nothinge againste their wills, within vj. 

 monethes having vj. hundred diseommoditees ; the Britons, never- 

 theles, intentive to nothinge, and the lesse readie to annoye them 

 throwghe there death of there kinge, for whome, in the meane time, 

 in that hee hadde well deserved of the common wealthe, thei erected 

 a rioll sepulcher in the fashion of a crowne of great square stones, 

 even in that place wheare in skirmished hee receaved his fatall stroke. 

 The tumbe is as yet extante in the diocesse of Sarisburie, neare to 

 the village, called Aumsburie/' 



" Polydori Vergilii Anglicse historiae libri xxvii. fol. Basilese, 1557. 

 Angli secundum hsec, non inviti quievere, sexcentis intra paucos 

 menses aflPecti incommodis, Britanno presertim nihil moliente, et ob 

 mortem sui ducis, minus in malis parato, qui interea duci suo Am- 

 brosio de Republiea bene merito magnificum posuit sepulchrum, 

 factum ad formam coronse, ex magnis quadratis lapidibus, eo loci, 

 ubi pugnando ceciderat, ut tanti ducis virtus ne oblivione eorum, 

 qui tunc erant, aut reticentia posterorum insepulta esset. Extat 

 etiam nunc id monimentum in dicecesi Sarisberiensi prope pagum, 

 quam Amisberiam vocant." 



In the first edition of Camden's ^ " Britannia " (1586), is the 

 following account of Stonehenge : " Septentriones versus ad vi. plus 



' Polydore Vergil, described by H. Wharton, in his " Anglia Saora," as " vir 

 Tindequaque doctissimus, et Anglicanse Historise peritissimus," was born at 

 TJrbino in Italy, in the latter half of the fifteenth century, and died 1555. He 

 was Archdeacon of Wells in 1508, and was employed by Henry VII. to write a 

 history of England. " His attainments went far beyond the common learning 

 of his age. The earlier part of his history interfered with the prejudices of the 

 English. He discarded Brute as an unreal personage ; and considered Geoffrey 

 of Monmouth's history an heterogeneous mixture of fact and fable, furnishing 

 comparatively little which could be safely relied upon as history " (Sir H.Ellis). 

 Hence the abuse of Vergil by Leland, Sir H. Savile, Paulus Jovius, Humphrey 

 Lluyd, Caius, and others, as a disparager of the British Antiquities, a destroyer 

 of manuscripts, &c. 



' Camden was born in London in 1551, and died in 1623. He was buried in 

 Westminster Abbey. 



