586 EXCAVATIONS IN AN ANCIENT 



chemical change, the metallic lead having been changed both on 

 their exterior and throughout their substance into the red oxide 

 and carbonate, whereby they have suiFered great loss of plasticity 

 and flexibility. Each of them possessed a lid, which appears to 

 have been simply laid upon the top of the rectangular coffin proper 

 without any soldering. Large nails with square heads were found 

 in relation with the coffin, and as woody fibre, shown by micro- 

 scopic examination to be probably oaken, is still plainly enough to 

 be detected upon the urn, even with the naked eye, it would seem 

 that the leaden coffin had been surrounded by a wooden one ^. An 

 analysis of the substance of these coffins, which I owe to the kind- 

 ness of Heathcote Wyndham, Esq., M.A., Fellow of Merton Col- 

 lege, shows that it contains 3-38 per cent, of tin, and that the 

 coffins resemble in this, as in other particulars, those described by 

 the Abb6 Cochet in his 'Normandie Souterraine/ pp. ^^8-31, as 

 characteristic of the Gallo-Roman period in France. In each of 

 these coffins was found the skeleton of a strong man, who was at 

 the time of his death considerably past the middle period of life. 

 Of the anatomical characters of these skeletons I shall have to 

 speak in detail later ; it is sufficient to say here that they show 

 that the individuals to whom these bones belonged were strong men, 

 in the possession of the means for culture and comfort which those 

 days could affi)rd, but who had also suffered much from the physical 

 and other inclemencies which we know to be the natural incidents 

 of the life of the soldier. In one of these coffins five coins were 

 found, of which one was a coin of Constantine the Younger^ 

 another of Valens, and a third, which, like the first, was a third- 

 brass specimen, was a coin of Gratian. By means of this last coin 

 we are enabled to say that this interment took place, in all proba- 

 bility, within the short but eventful period which elapsed between 

 the accession of Gratian and the evacuation of Britain by the 



^ This conclusion almost rises to certainty when we read the account given by Ralph 

 Thoresby, 'Phil. Trans.' 1705, No. 296, p. 1864, of the excavation of a coffin, 'pro- 

 bably interred 1 500 years ago/ which was seven feet long, and was ' inclosed in a 

 prodigious strong one made of oak planks, about two inches and a half thick, which, 

 beside the riveting, were tacked together with brags and great iron nails . . . they are 

 four inches long, the head not diewise, as the large nails now are, but perfectly flat 

 and an inch broad.' The length of the Frilford nails is four and a half inches, and 

 the breadth of their heads one inch and a quarter. See also L'Abb^ Cochet, ' Nor- 

 mandie Souterraine,' ed. i. p. 33; ' Archaeologia,' vii. 376, 381; Bloxham's ' Frag- 

 menta Sepidchralia,' p. 39. 



