l88 PROCEEDINGS OF THE COTTESWOLD CLUB 



them. His brother had come home from Oxford, fired 

 with antiquarian ;^eal ; and he said one morning "John, 

 let's come up on to the Camp and have a dig to see if we 

 can find something." 



" Nonsense. You may dig your hfe out, and never 

 find anything there ! " 



"Well — suppose we don't: there's no harm in trving. 

 Come along ! " So they shouldered a spade each, and 

 went up the hill, where they worked away for about an 

 hour, with the result of turning up a piece of black potterv 

 the size of one's hand, and some scores of coins of the 

 Constantine period — say of the Lower Empire : most of 

 them struck at Treves. 



Twenty years after this, the farmer who had the ground 

 ploughed it for the first time since the Roman occupation : 

 for it had been a rough pasture field. In doing so he 

 turned up a pot, with a sherd broken from its side : the 

 very sherd that had been taken off by the spade in the 

 experimental digging just described. About 3,000 coins 

 — say " third brass," were found in it. John Niblett 

 fastened the broken piece on to the pot, and sorted up 

 the coins into the several reigns to which they belonged : 

 perhaps ten in all, beginning, I think, with Constantius 

 Chlorus. I have some of them in my own possession, by 

 favour of Arthur E. Niblett, who has succeeded his uncle 

 in the Haresfield Estate. 



When I asked him how he could account for this large 

 find, all of coins of small value, he said he surmised it 

 might have been on the site of the paymaster's tent. 

 This officer, he thought, might have buried the money in 

 his tent, readv for the pay of the troops ; and then he had 

 gone out and got knocked on the head : so that nobody 

 ever knew anything about it till it turned up thus acci- 

 dentally. 



I have reason to believe that he was unaware, when he 

 said this, that the very sj)Ot on which the coins were 



I 



