WAREHAM I ITS INVASIONS AND BATTLES. 85 



surrounded by three ramparts and ditches, its area being about 

 five acres. It has two entrances, one on the S.-E. and the other on 

 the S.-W. The ramparts are very slight on the S. next the sea, 

 where the cliff is almost perpendicular. Its shape is an oblong 

 square . . . Mr. Aubrey calls it a British camp." This theory 

 is supported by Lewis, who, writing of the discoveries in that 

 neighbourhood, mentions the " rude urns, trinkets, &c., supposed 

 to be British from the coarseness of the urns and the absence of all 

 Roman relics. The Nine Barrows near Corfe are supposed by 

 Hutchins to belong to the British period ; also the Hselig-Stan or 

 rock altar \ and the pits found in Dorset, for instance Piddleton 

 Heath : these he supposes to have been places of sacrifices. The 

 pits might, however, have been used for storing treasures from the 

 enemy and also as places of imprisonment. It is stated on the 

 authority of Diodorus Siculus "that criminals were kept under- 

 ground for five years, and then offered up as sacrifices to the gods 

 by being impaled and burned in great fires along with quantities of 

 other offerings." In Corfe Castle, p. 81, there is a full description 

 of a sacrifice offered on the Hselig-Stan. The British had great 

 regard for the eagle. Readers of Shakespeare will have found in 

 his Cymbeline, Act v., Scene 4. that Jupiter is made to descend 

 sitting upon an eagle ; and this royal bird is also mentioned in the 

 prophecy relating to Cymbeline, King of Britain. The oldest town 

 in Dorset appears to be { Sceaftsbyri,' or Shaftesbury. In Dray- 

 ton's Polyobion there is a remarkable prophecy, said to have been 

 uttered by an eagle at the foundation of Shaftesbury. " This 

 eagle, whose prophecies were as famous among the Britons as the 

 sibylline among the Romans, foretold of a reverting of the crown, 

 after the Britons, Saxons, and Normans to the first again, which 

 was fulfilled in Henry VII., son of Owen Tudor." " The origin 

 and derivation of the name of this town has given rise to much 

 conjecture ; it being supposed by some to have had an existence 

 even prior to the birth of Christ, and to have been called { Caer 

 Palladur' by the Britons." Mr. Barnes, the Dorsetshire Poet, 

 wrote of Paladore and the Stour, to which river Drayton also refers. 



