sr 
—" 
19 
On the Bistory of Chippenham. 
I wave chosen the History of Chippenham for a paper upon this 
occasion for two reasons: first, because the Wiltshire Archzologists 
have done the town the honour of chusing it for their Annual 
Meeting; and next, because as a topographical subject, it has not 
been much investigated before. Though it may not contain much 
that is curious or remarkable, still the place has a history. The 
difficulty has been where to find it; for, in most of our more 
ancient authorities, local memoranda are excessively rare. A short 
reference to ancient times will be necessary ; but only so far as to 
enable you the better to understand the original condition of this 
neighbourhood, without which it is impossible to throw a proper 
light upon the early history of the town itself. 
Every one knows that Britain, as our island was at first called, 
was visited in turn, by what an old writer calls four scourges ;! the 
Romans, the Saxons, the Danes, and the Normans. 
Tue Brirons. 
Of the primitive state of this part of Wiltshire before the first 
scourge fell upon it, there can be very little doubt. It was covered 
with forest, cleared here and there by a scanty population, and 
affording the finest hunting ground—not for fox-hunting, which, 
in its present style at least, is a modern invention—but deer hunting. 
If any body could have been found to follow him so far, a stag 
might have run, almost without leaving shelter, from North Wilts 
to the lower part of Hampshire. Of this long, and as it must have 
been, beautiful range of open forest scenery, the names and traces 
are still left in the forests of Braden, (which came down as low as 
1 Henry of Huntingdon. 
pn 2 
