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He is not only said to have been King of this country, but also 

 to have been a Christian — one of the earliest British Christians. 

 Bigland, the county historian, tells us that in this very parish, 

 within a mile of this Eoman ViUa, about the year 1760, the 

 vestiges of a Roman bath were discovered at Listercomb-bottom; 

 there was a spring and other necessary appendages. Most of 

 the bricks of which it was built were legibly marked AEYIEI, 

 describing probably, says Bigland, by connected initials, the 

 titles of the legion which was stationed here. But as I cannot 

 discover in these letters any Eoman legion, in Britain or 

 elsewhere, in any way corresponding with them, and as they do 

 form the very legend upon the coins attributed to Arviragus, I 

 was most anxious, on the discovery of this interesting Villa, to 

 ascertain whether any other evidences might be found connecting 

 this place with the traditionary British King, which might in 

 any way confirm the story of his Chi'istianity. 



From our early chroniclers we leam that the Emperor Claudius 

 made friends of some of the British princes, and left them in 

 charge of the governments they had previously held, as the 

 Kings of Oude and Delhi, and other Eajahs, have been left 

 by our Government in India. This view is confirmed by the 

 Eoman historians Tacitus and Xiphilinus ; and we read in 

 Juvenal that Arviragus was stiU at his government in the reign 

 of Domitian, in which there is nothing inconsistent, considering 

 the great length attributed to his reign by all the chroniclers. 

 Arviragus, then, being King of the Dobuni, of which Corinium 

 (Cirencester) was the capital, one is not surprised to find the 

 bricks discovered at that city also inscribed with the same 

 mark of AEVIEI. Several of these exist in the Cirencester 

 museum. Whether or not that Sovereign had at so early a 

 period exacted a tax on bricks, and had them stamped with 

 his legend, we cannot now say. They must have got their 

 revenue from something, and therefore such a suggestion has 

 nothing impossible or improbable that I am aware of in it. 

 That both the Eomans and Britons imposed taxes upon their 

 people is unquestionable. The British coins marked "taxio" 

 have been considered by some writers as signifying that they 



