REPORT ON THE STAPENHILL EXPLORATIONS. 193 
Sussex, and at Stapenhill and Repton in Derbyshire, and else- 
where. There are various reasons why new or Christian church- 
yards should be placed on the sites of old Pagan ones. One of 
the first principles impressed upon the Roman missionaries to 
Britain in the sixth century was, to take advantage wherever they 
could of the ‘‘ veligio loci.” Pope Gregory distinctly ordered 
Augustine not to destroy the heathen temples, but to consecrate 
and devote them to the service of the true God, hence if they 
consecrated the heathen temples there is no reason why they 
should not also consecrate their cemeteries. 
In conclusion the exploration of Anglo-Saxon _burial-places 
proves to us most conclusively that the conquest of Britain by the 
Saxons and the English was a very slow but sure one ; that it was 
an exterminative one in the sense that the Britons were driven 
off the soil, not slaughtered on it, except where they offered 
determined resistance ; that the invaders did not all come over in 
a body, but in small clans or tribes, at frequent intervals, and that 
they were all Pagans; that various funeral observances were 
peculiar to and characteristic of different tribes. That they were 
far removed from savagery, and almost from barbarism, we have 
ample proof, for we can trace true art and beauty in their ornaments 
of gold and bronze; we see the high degree of skill to which the 
worker in glass had attained, and we recognise the economy of 
force and power in their weapons of iron, skilfully forged by their 
cunning blacksmiths. It is only in their sepulchral pottery that 
we find traces of rudeness, and which is the only vestige of the 
savagery from which our ancestors had sprung. 
BEMROSE AND SONS, PRINTERS, DERBY AND LONDON. 
