A HISTORY OF DERBYSHIRE 



It is an attractive theory. But on the evidence before us it must 

 be pronounced wrong. In the first place it contradicts all the indications 

 of date that can be deduced from the objects found in the caves. For 

 those indications point to the second and third centuries, and in some 

 degree perhaps to the first century. Hardly a trace occurs of any- 

 thing later. Two or three isolated coins in the west country belong 

 to the end of the fourth century. One Yorkshire cave has yielded 

 coins of the early fourth century. The vast majority of the coins are 

 earlier. So, too, though we cannot date them precisely, the fibulas. 

 No type meets us which can be called characteristic of the late third 

 or the fourth century. Yet fourth and fifth century objects ought 

 unquestionably to occur among the relics of fifth or sixth century 

 life, and second and third century objects ought to be comparatively 

 uncommon. 



Secondly, the remains imply for the more important caves a tolerably 

 long occupation. The number of fibulae and other small objects, and the 

 accumulations of bones and charcoal and cooking refuse, agree in requiring 

 us to assume a period extending over many years. Whatever extension 

 be given to the life of the fugitives, it can hardly have lasted long enough 

 to satisfy the conditions before us. And, further, the history of the 

 English conquest, so far as we know it, seems to fit in badly with the 

 theory before us, at least in respect to Derbyshire and Yorkshire. It is 

 very unlikely that the invaders had driven the natives into the Derby- 

 shire hills, and not only into the hills but into the caves, so early as the 

 fifth or sixth century. Chester, in the western plain, was not taken till 

 617. Elmet, which covered the lowlands on the east, was subdued about 

 the same time. 1 Before that time no Briton is likely to have fled for 

 shelter to the Yorkshire or Derbyshire caves. 



It seems, therefore, that we must reject the theory of refugees. 

 Instead, we may suppose that to some extent and in some hill districts of 

 Derbyshire and Yorkshire, cave-life formed a feature of Romano-British 

 civilization. Caves may not be comfortable residences, but they have 

 often been inhabited even in civilized ages. Plot, the historian of 

 Staffordshire, observes that in his day about 1680 Thurse House cave 

 at Alveton was definitely occupied, and many parallels could be cited 

 from even later ages. Much the same may have happened in Romano- 

 British times. Some caves may have given chance shelter to stray 

 shepherds or miners or homeless families. Others may have had per- 

 manent residents. Here, we may think, dwelt some of the poorest and 

 wildest among the hillmen of the Pennine Range, living (it may be) 

 largely on robbery, doubtless suspected by their neighbours, but seldom 

 caught. Such households exist even in our crowded modern life, though 

 they do not occupy natural caves. We need not wonder at their pro- 

 totypes in the past. 



1 Nennius, Appendix (ed. Mommsen), p. 206; Bede, Hist. EccL iv. 25 ; Lappenberg, i. 154.. 

 Elmet did not apparently include the Derbyshire hills, at least Pecsetna and Elmedsetna occur as distinct 

 in later documents (Kemble, Saxons in England, p. 81). 



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