VOL. XXVI.] PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. 511 



Abstract of a Letter from Mr. Tho. Hearne* M.A. of Oxford, to Mr, Ralph 

 Thoresby, F.R.S. occasioned by some Antiquities lately discovered near 

 Bramham-Moor in Yorkshire. N° 322, p. 395. 



From the great variety of ancient monuments continually found in these 

 islands, it is plain that vast improvements might be made to the accounts that 

 have been hitherto given of the British antiquities. 



From the vast number of coins dug up among us, divers places that were of 

 note in the times of the Romans, but are now quite destroyed, have been 

 discovered, and the antiquity of some other towns may, by these helps, be 

 carried much higher than Mr. Cambden has done ; and particularly Witney, 

 within 7 miles of Oxford, appears to have been of note long before Edward 

 the Confessor's time, as I gather from Roman coins lately found there. The 

 best of which is one of impure silver, according to the custom of that time, 

 in honour of Julia Mammaea, mother of Alexander Severus. 



From your relation of the brass instruments, it is plain that they are exactly 

 like that in the repository adjoining to the Bodleian library at Oxford. This 

 has been kept there for several years ; but where it was discovered, there is not 

 the least memorial to inform us. The figures of the heads of the spears of 

 the ancient Britons, both before and after they were civilised, represented by 

 Speed, are quite different from those we are now considering, being exactly of 

 the same make with those we find in the Columna Trajana, and the books that 

 represent the military instruments of the old Romans and Greeks, &c. But 

 had they been of some resemblance, yet I cannot see that those. figures in Speed 

 are of any authority : for though you guess that they were copied from old 

 MSS. I could never yet meet with any MSS. of our British history, that 

 have any such figures. Hence I am inclined to think that these figures are 

 modern, and owing to Mr. Speed himself; and it is what he insinuates in 

 the same chapter, acknowledging that they were adapted to the descriptions 

 given of the Britons in ancient authentic authors. But not to examine other 

 particulars, the shape of the spears in their hands is not countenanced by any 

 authority of note : for though Herodian has acquainted us that they used short 



* This learned antiquary was born at White-Waltham, Berkshire, in 168O, He was early 

 patronized by Mr. Cherry, of Shottesbrooke, who gave him a liberal education. In 1695, he entered 

 of Edraund-hall, Oxford, where he applied himself wholly to the study of antiquities. In 1703 he 

 took the degree of M. A. and in 1714 he was appointed archetypographus of that university, where 

 he died in 1735. Mr. Hearne published a great many ancient manuscripts, and editions of curious 

 old books 5 as, the Life of Alfred by Sir John Spelman ; Leland's Itinerary, in 9 vols. 8vo 5 a 

 Collection of Curious Discourses, written by eminent antiquaries, &c. ■ f" 



