155 



£t total length of forty-five feet, and collected some further 

 details in reference to it, I hope to produce tolerably clear proof 

 that it is really a portion of the Roman wall of Gloucester. 



(To enable the reader more readily to follow the details, our 

 colleague, J. P. Moore, has kindly made the accompanying 

 sketches.) 



That so little of the wall remains at the present day in any 

 part of the city, is readily accounted for from the fact that 

 Charles II. issued an order permitting all comers to cart away 

 the stone for private uses, with a view of ensui-ing the destruction 

 of the fortifications which had been used to withstand his 

 father's forces during the siege. With such a valuable quarry 

 at everybody's disposal, the only chance that could preserve any 

 portion of the structure was, that, here and there other buildings 

 were connected with it in such a way as to make the removal of 

 these parts impossible. The Castle at the East Gate, and its 

 adjoining premises belonged, until long after Charles the 

 Second's time, to the Corporation, who used it as a House of 

 Detention ; and it is probable that to this circumstance we owe 

 the preservation of this part of the wall. 



That Gloucester was strongly walled during the Roman occu- 

 pation of Britain, its status as a Colony would alone prove ; 

 all the Colonies having been thus fortified after the massacre 

 of the ninth legion at Camalodunum by Boadicea. 



That Gloucester was a Colony, is known from the inscription 

 found at Bath, commemorative of a Decurion of "Coloktia 

 Glevum." Similar inscriptions of soldiers of the sixth legion, 

 speak of York as a Colony ; and one, connected with the second 

 legion, indicates the same of Caerleon. 



It is generally admitted that the Saxons made no change in 

 the Eoman Cities, but handed them over to the Normans, 

 in the state in which they found them. When we consider 

 the tens of thousands of tons of stone required to surround 

 the city with a wall, from 5 to 9 feet in thickness, and five and 

 twenty feet in height, it is scarcely necessary to ask whether 

 it is likely that all this mass would have been cleared away 

 bv either Saxon or Norman, for the simple purpose of re-building 



