CASTLE HILL, CRANBORNE. 155 



other places belonging to the Archbishop, and Bishops, and others. 

 (Note to W. of M.). 



The Conqueror's policy seems to have been the extermination of 

 his foes. 



Very little more can be told of the brothers, Edwin and Morcar. 

 The last notice we have of them is in the Saxon Chronicle A. 1071. 

 "This year E. and M. wandered through the woods and fields." 

 Fugitives and outcasts they fled to Ely, then the refuge of the 

 lawless Danes, where Edwin is said to have been slain by the 

 treachery of his own followers.* To me it is an interesting fact 

 that two places comparatively so obscure, as Cranborne and 

 Laughton-en-le-Morthen, and far apart as are Yorkshire and Dorset, 

 should each possess an ancient earthwork, alike in form and con- 

 struction memorials at once of a great Dynastic revolution and of 

 *ts fatal issues to the owners, who were the last of a wealthy, 

 powerful, and royal race of Saxon Nobility. 



THE MOOT, DOWNTON, WILTS. 



In the Journal of the Archseol. Institute, vol. 32, p. 291, 1875, 

 there is an able 'paper by G. T. Clark, Esq., F.S.A., "On the 

 Earthworks of the Wiltshire Avon." He has selected, he says, 

 Old Sarum and " The Moot " to represent the British and the 

 English (Anglo-Saxon) types, Downton being wholly of the latter 

 class, being thrown up probably "as the chief seat of some great 

 English (Saxon) leader ; recently won by the sword and held by 

 his followers, to be the centre of a large private estate, and also to 

 serve as the base of further acquisitions." Downton, he says, 

 has a recorded Saxon history. Here, or in the vicinity, was 

 probably a great fight between the Britons and Saxons, when 

 Cerdic and Cynric, in A. 519, crossed the Avon at Cerdicsford, or 

 Charford, a little below Downton, in their way from the Isle of 



*W. of Malmesb., B.iii., A.D. 1103, states that the brothers, after 

 Harold's death, fled to their territories and disturbed the peace of William 

 for several years, infesting the woods with secret robheries, and never 

 coming to an open engagement ; often taken captive, and often released, 

 The fate of Morcar is not clearly stated. 



