312 



On Devizes Castle. 



a marsh on the other, whilst far off were the bleak and breezy downs, 

 when the Roman legions came upon the scene. We know that 

 Vespasian, accompanied by his son Titus, after subduing" the Attre- 

 battii pursued his way westward to encounter the Belgse and the 

 Durotriges, whose territory lay between his troops and the coveted 

 land of tin — in the country of the Damnoni. We have a picture of 

 him and his troops struggling through the tangled forest, harrassed 

 now by petty skirmishes as well as by the difficulties of the country. 



We know that when he emerged from these difficulties he found 

 a broad open expansive country — a rolling grassy country — inter- 

 sected by deep valleys. The hills bristled with earthworks, of the 

 most formidable kind, and there are evidences that many of these 

 had to be stormed ere the Roman legions could pursue their vic- 

 torious march westwards. We may fairly surmise that during this 

 march he came across the great oppidum of Devizes, and from the 

 remains found, it would appear that the soldiers of the Empire over 

 which he and his son afterwards ruled occupied this spot, and for 

 more than four hundred years it remained in their possession — a 

 strong and defensive post. This occupation of a British post was 

 not uncommon. We find a Roman castrum in a corner of Hodhill in 

 Dorsetshire. The camp at Oldbury on the Watling street-way has 

 been transformed into a Roman summer camp, and a score of other 

 instances might be adduced. During the subsequent time the forests 

 which impeded the Roman legions disappeared. They had sheltered 

 Alfred, and the chalky cliffs which had witnessed his crowning 

 victory, instead of being the boundary of the wild woodland, now 

 fringe smiling cornfields, fertile pastures and clustering orchards, 

 whilst bearing on their proud and heaving bosoms the insignia under 

 which he fought and conquered. For five hundred long years the 

 history of Devizes and its castle is a blank. A few pieces of black 

 pottery, a buckle or two, and a vague rumour that a fortress was 

 still maintained on the heights is all we know. The Saxon had 

 conquered the Romano-British, and in their turn they had to fight 

 for the land they had won and made their own. There are no out- 

 ward signs visible of Saxon occupation ; no little causeway of herring- 

 bone work such as Ethelfleda left behind her when she fortified the 



