98 Stonehenge and its Barrows. 



peace and quietness in wliich to build Stonehenge. Even before the 

 Romans left, the Saxons were ravaging the coasts of Britain. There 

 is reason to believe that, during this period, Britain was torn with 

 civil quarrelsj " while its Pictish enemies strengthened themselves by 

 a league with marauders from Ireland (Scots, as they were then 

 called), whose pirate boats were harrying the western coast of the 

 island, and with a yet more formidable race of pirates who had feng 

 been pillaging along the English Channel. These were the English.^' ^ 

 Under any circumstances, as Dr. Thurnam says, it was scarcely con- 

 ceivable that the Romanised Britons would have erected these rude 

 masses of stone, when they had such examples before them of archi- 

 tectural skill and beauty as existed at Bath and other Roman cities 

 in this country ; or, as Dr. Guest puts it, " I would ask the archae- 

 ological reader whether he thinks it comes within the limits of a 

 reasonable probability that men who had for centuries been fam- 

 iliarized with the forms of Roman architecture, could have built 

 Stonehenge ? " ^ 



Had Stonehenge owed its erection to any event connected with 

 the Saxons, we should doubtless have had some mention of it. Dr. 

 Guest ^ says, " It has always appeared to the writer most unreasonable 

 to doubt, that from their first arrival in the island, our ancestors had 

 some mode of registering the events of their history. From these 

 rude memorials were probably formed more perfect registers, which 

 gradually swelled into the chronicles we now possess. The oldest 

 extant copy of the Saxon Chronicle was written shortly before the 

 year 900, or at the close of Alfred^s reign ; but we know that some 

 of its entries were copied, almost verhatim, from chronicles which 

 must have been in existence before the time of Bede, and there are 

 others which may have been written at a time when Hengest and 

 Ambrosius were yet rivals.''^ 



The Saxons would probably have left some record of their con- 

 nection with Stonehenge if they had constructed it, or if any event 



' Green's " History of the English People," p. 6. 

 "Archaeological Journal," 1851, p. 155. 

 ' " On the Early English Settlements in South Britain," — Saliebury Volume 

 of Arch. Institute, p. 46. 



