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BELONGING TO THE MAYOR AND CORPORATION OF DORCHESTER. 



By H. J. MOULB, M.A. 



HE most ancient of tourists wrote of Egypt that it 

 is a gift of the river.* So we may, in a figure 

 say that the History of Dorset is a gift of the 

 river the alluvium of the Stream of Time. And 

 a thin bed of soil it is when all is said and done. 

 The stream, at least that portion of it which 

 affects and concerns Dorset, is a small one, and brings down but 

 small particles of drift and in no great numbers. I find only about 

 15 mentions of Dorset in the Saxon Chronicle, and often wish that 

 some monk, or rather series of monks, of Cerne or Shaftesbury had 

 kept that chronicle rather than they of Peterborough. Then we 

 should doubtless know, what is unknown, how the Gewissas at last 

 won this shire, and all about their great catastrophe at Badbury 

 Rings, as Dr. Guest hath it. Well, the fewness of bits of history 

 bearing on our county lends an added value to any item, however 

 small, any particle that has been washed down to us by the Stream 

 of the Ages, which may give us some insight into points connected 

 with the past in Dorset. The old book which I have taken in 

 hand to speak of may, perhaps, yield a particle or two of this kind. 

 * Herodotus. Enterpe 5. 



