3 Camp of Paulus Emylius near London. 
For in the reign of Nero, the tribute 
demanded as due from Britain to 
Rome; and which, by-the-bye, had 
never been regularly paid since the 
time of Claudius; the imperial col- 
lectors could not recover or receive, 
but their authority and force had met 
with contempt from the islanders. 
The Roman treasury formed the de- 
sign, in conjunction with the senate, 
effectually to subjugate the Britains, 
by rooting out from among them the 
only stimulus to public and native 
liberty remaining. Their vengeance 
was directed against religion, and its 
professors, the Druids, who, in their 
admonitions to the people, kept the 
sacred flame alive in them, and in their 
princes. The execution of this bloody 
mandate was confided to Paulus Aimy- 
lius; who, after its execution, and the 
destruction of their sacred groves in 
Mona, that is, Anglesey in Wales, 
hastened to the vicinity of the flourish- 
ing colony of Londinium, to iis re- 
lief; but, before his arrival, the infu- 
riated Boadicea had put all the inhabi- 
tants, as well Romans as Britons, 
and many strangers who had settled 
there for the benefit of its commerce 
and the Roman protection, to the 
amount, as we are told, of 75,000, to 
the most cruel, unheard-of, and igno- 
minious, deaths; and she had consumed 
the colony, their residence, which 
Paulus Aimylius saw smoking in ruins, 
on his arrival to relieve it, which 
place he had been very anxious to pre- 
serve, hastening by forced marches 
from Caernarvonshire. Boadicea and 
her forces had gone to Verulamium, 
to perform the same indiscriminate 
slaughter in that municipium. In the 
mean time Aimylius made good his 
station in the camp above described; 
whilst Boadicea, and her ally, hastened 
hack after the destruction of Verula- 
mium, where she had exhausted the 
remaining portion of the vial of deadly 
wrath, whose effervescence London 
had first experienced. 
She with her ally, and their troops, 
to an immense amount, hastened back 
to Middlesex; their forces overspread 
all the intermediate space between 
Highgate, Hampstead, and the neigh- 
bouring heights, and London, Aimy- 
lius was stationed in his camp in an 
advantageous position, which forms the 
subject of this paper. It need not be 
said that the Britons had brought to 
the field of action their children and 
their wives. in wains, &e. to behold 
[Aug. 1, 
their anticipated victory ; so sanguine 
were their minds in the superiority of 
number in their forces, which, with the 
spectators they had brought into the 
field, are said to have amounted to no 
less than 800,000. With their fate, 
and that of their commander, history 
informs us. But it may behove the 
writer to observe, that he has under- 
stood the sharpest contest occurred on 
the acclivity of that rising ground now 
occupied by Pentonville, contending 
for the adjacent heights, which the 
military judgment of Aumylius had se- 
cured. And that the ford of the river 
Fleet was a scite of the severest action, 
the fleet being then overflowed with the 
purple flood of life, from richest British 
veins; the dead bodies of the numerous 
slain then serving as a bridge to either 
party, to cross the track of the stream ; 
whence, it is probable, it obtained its 
present name from traditional re- 
lations ; that is, Battle-bridge. 
The writer of the above is indebted 
for its chief incidents to his worthy and 
good friend Dr. W. O. Pughe, the 
celebrated Cambrian scholar; to a 
book, comparatively lately brought to 
light, said to have been written by 
Nennius, discovered in the Papal 
library in the Vatican; and to the cele- 
brated tragedy of Boadicea. 
He has one more motive beyond 
those already declared, why he is 
anxious the circumstances above -re- 
lated should have publicity, which is 
for the purpose of affording light to 
the ingenious writers of topograpbical 
and local histories, who have fre- 
quently fell into errors respecting those 
circumstances, they having occurred 
in so dark a period of our history: 
and those descriptions that could be 
understood, were worded in such ge- 
neral terms, and the scite described 
found to be answerable to numerous 
situations, that no local place could be 
fixed upon. Mr. Clutterbuck, in his 
very luminous History of Herts; fell 
into this error, at the time he ingenn- 
ously confessed the dilemma above no- 
ticed, in which writers were placed. 
That gentleman imagining, that, as he 
knew of the contest between Emylius 
and Boadicea took place at about the 
period of her destruction of Verula- 
mium, he conceived it might probably 
have occurred in his district of histori- 
cal recognition; and he was, indeed, 
rather justified in presuming it might 
have occurred in the vicinity of St. 
Alban’s, had not Dr. Pugle, from his 
superior 
