370 THE ST. HILARY INSCRIBED STONE. 



some few found standing where they were originally placed. It 

 is indeed only owing to the protection of the letters, in this in- 

 stance, by the stone having been placed with its face downwards 

 in the foundation of the wall of the church, that they have not 

 been obliterated long since.* There is no evidence as to whence 

 the stone was taken ; but there can be little doubt that it stood 

 originally by a Eoman road close at hand ; and it was not 

 treated with the respect shown elsewhere, as at Tregoney and 

 Cubert, to the sepulchral stones of the Romanised Britons, which 

 have been securely built into the walls of the sacred edifice, so 

 as to exhibit their inscribed faces, as mural monuments, to be read 

 of all. It has been conjectured, with some probability, that 

 there was at St. Hilary a church or chapel of very early date, 

 ° possibly of the fifth century, and if this stone had formed part 

 of that structure the letters would be still in good preservation ; 

 but the church, in whose walls this stone was found, was built in 

 the fourteenth century ; and the wear and tear of a thousand 

 years had ah^eady brought the inscription nearly to its present 

 state, when it would attract no notice from the unlettered builder 

 of the day, or would not certainly be regarded with an archaeol- 

 ogist's reverence. If other such miliary stones are discovered, 

 it is probable enough that they will have received like protection 

 with this one, through being turned to account as handy and 

 ready- worked material for the foundation of some early structure, 

 ecclesiastical or secular. 



At Bosence, on the east of St. Hilary, are the remains, in 

 process of gradual obliteration, of a camp of generally rectangular 

 form, about 50 yards long and 45 broad, more distinctly Roman 

 in its character than any other in the west. Within its enclos- 

 ure a well was discovered, about a century since, 36 feet deep, 

 in which were found two Roman vases — one inscribed by the 

 maker to the god Mars — a large jug (both the latter deposited 

 in the Ashmolean Museum), a millstone, and two stone weights. 

 This camp was, no doubt, regularly occupied, especially in 

 summer, and, with numerous finds of Roman coins in the same 

 neighbourhood, serves to corroborate the conclusion that the 

 miliary stone was placed on a great western road, and that the 



* The interval of fourteen years between the first and second of our rub- 

 bings had, I think, distinctly, if slightly, lessened the clearness of the letters. 



