272 



Inaugural Address of the 



In the selection of problems for discussion, a President of a 

 County Society must be guided by the locality in which he finds 

 himself. You are a Wiltshire Society ; and as in private duty 

 bound, you think there is no part of the kingdom so interesting 

 from an archaeological point of view as your own county. The 

 county which holds Stonehenge and Avebury has some claim to 

 that opinion. 



This year you specially visit the north part of the county, and 

 I think we can show you that few, if any, archaeological interests 

 are greater than those which gather in the earliest times around 

 Malmesbury. The consideration of my first problem will take us 

 into that dim period of the past when the Briton was still holding 

 out in some of the old fastnesses against the Saxon and the Angle ; 

 when the foreign and the native Church were agreeing to differ, 

 while the pagan Saxons remained rooted in their idolatry. 



We find ourselves to-day on a site remarkable by its position 

 and by its history. You very seldom see in any non-mountainous 

 part a place so well marked out by nature as Malmesbury is for a 

 place of strength. The streets and houses to a considerable extent 

 obscure the fact ; but if, as you walked about this afternoon, you 

 had this in your mind, you would perpetually see what Malmesbury 

 must have been in the time of bows and arrows and javelins. And 

 if this is so now that the encircling streams have dwindled down 

 to modest proportions, and are fairly confined within their rich 

 grassy banks, it must have been much more markedly true when 

 those two rivers were great spreading swamps and morasses, choked 

 with the debris of impenetrable forests, leaving the promontory of 

 Malmesbury to stand out with its own natural abruptness from an 

 impassable marsh, with approach only at one narrow neck flanked 

 by precipitous sides. The British fortress on the heights of 

 Malmesbury was one of their strongest places of defence ; and 

 history seems to show that no other place held out in full force 

 against the surrounding Saxons as this did. No other British 

 place remained undisturbed, with its complete British life and 

 work, right out among the Saxons geographically, right on into 

 Saxon history, as Malmesbury did. The tradition is that this 



