87 



Dotes on it !*om;m CrossJtofo, fit., founir 

 at £«j%wfre (farm, §tir%e. 



By the Eev. E. H. Goddaed. 



^f^jHESE interesting relics were fonnd in the summer of 1893, 

 anc [ were exhibited at the Warminster Meeting of the 

 Society. Mr. S. H. Grauntlett, the tenant of Southgrove Earm, 

 writes as follows of the cirenmstances of their discovery : — " The 

 remains were fonnd in Burbage parish, at the top of the chalk road 

 leading from this farm on to the down, when the men were cutting 

 away a -piece of the down to make the road wider. The skeleton 

 was lying in the hard chalk — the face downwards and the body 

 twisted. The head was only abont 3in. underground, but the feet 

 were about 3ft. There was a little rising over the spot, but no 

 stones. The teeth were all perfect and not decayed. The bones 

 were very large, and the man must have been decidedly over 6ft. 

 Nothing else (besides the articles here described) v/as found at the 

 time, and no further search at the spot has been made." 



The relics were sent to Mr. C. H. Read, of the British Museum, 

 who pronounced them to be Roman or Romano-British, and identi- 

 fied the object figured as No. 5 as the catch of a cross-bow, two or 

 three similar catches of Roman date, which have been found in 

 London, existing in the collections of the British Museum. This 

 makes the discovery interesting, as the cross-bow has been sometimes 

 supposed to be purely a mediaeval weapon. 



Boutell, in his Arms and Armour, p. 138, says : — 



" For a while during the twelfth century, as the long-bow in the fourteenth, 

 the cross-bow had the reputation of being a weapon terrible beyond all others. 

 At that time probably it was a novelty. It does not appear at all in the Bayeux 

 Tapestry, nor in any other monument of the eleventh century. It is remarkable, 

 also, that when the cross-bow was first introduced it was forbidden to be employed 

 by Christians in warfare with one another, as being too murderous a weapon ; 

 this was at the second Council of Lateran, held in the year 1139; and it was 

 only new inventions, or early ones revived, that were interdicted in such a manner 

 as the cross-bow was at that time." 



