84 Stonehenge and its Barrows. 



Earl of Pembroke (Lord Chamberlain to King Charles I.) did say 

 '' that an altar-stone was found in the middle of the area here, and 

 that it was cai-ried away to St. James' /•* ^ 



Stukeley mentions that " Mr. Thomas Hay ward, late owner of 

 Stonehenge, dug about it, as he acquainted Lord Winchelsea and 

 myself. He found heads of oxen and other beasts bones and nothing 

 else.'' Again he says, " July 5, 1723. By Lord Pembroke's di- 

 rection, I dug on the inside of the altar about the middle : 4 foot 

 along the edge of the stone, 6 foot forward toward the middle of the 

 adytum. At a foot deep, we came to the solid chalk mix'd with 

 flints, which had never been stir'd. The altar was exactly a cubit 

 thick, 20 inches and 4"; ^^^^ broken in two or three pieces by the 

 ponderous mass of the impost and one upright stone of that trilithon 

 which stood at the upper end of the adytum, being fallen upon it. 

 Hence appears the comraodiousness of the foundation for this huge 

 work. They dug holes in the solid chalk, which would of itself keep 

 up the stones, as firm as if a wall was built round them. And no 

 doubt they ramm'd up the interstices with flints. But I had too 

 much regard to the work to dig anywhere near the stones. I took 

 up an oxe's tooth, above ground, without the adytum on the right 

 hand of the lowermost trilithon, northward. And this is all the 

 account of what has been found by digging at Stonehenge, which I 

 can give." ' 



Mr. Cunnington dug so completely under the large prostrate stone 



1 Mr. Cunnington, in the Wilts Mag,, vol. li., p. 349, says " as to the stone 

 said to have been carried away to St. James', in the time of Charles I., we 

 have made some enquiries at St. James' Palace, and are informed on authority 

 of the clerk of the works, that no such stone now exists there." It is very 

 improbable that, if such a stone were removed, it was taken " from the 

 middle of the area " of Stonehenge. Inigo Jones would have seen it, and laid 

 it down upon his plan, had it been in that position, when he drew up his account 

 of Stonehenge " by direction of King James, I., in the year 1620.' 



The " Antiquities of Stoneheng on Salisbury Plain restored" was first pub- 

 lished by Mr. John "Webb, of Butleigh, Somerset, (who " married Inigo Jones' 

 kinswoman,") in a small folio, in 1655 ; but few copies were originally printed, 

 and the greater part of the impression was consumed in the fire of London. 

 Inigo Jones died either in 1651 or 1652. 



*Stukeley'B "Stonehenge," page 32, reprint. 



