By the Bev. W. C. P lender leath. 



59 



and, as his faithful chronicler informs us, " rode to the stone 

 JSgbryhta, which is the eastern part of the forest that is called 

 Selwood, but in Latin Petra Magna, in British Coit-maur." 



And now comes the difficulty. We have accepted the cakes, but 

 some of our greatest authorities find it difficult to digest the stone, 

 or at any rate to convert it into such good honest historical pabulum 

 as to be able to say exactly where it stood, or perhaps still stands. 

 For a long time it was largely believed that the name of Brixton 

 Deverell indicated its position, Brixton seeming a very probable 

 corruption of Ecbyrt's stone. But, as all philologers know, there 

 is no such conclusive argument against a derivation as its prima facie 

 probability, even as you know that the one thimble upon the race- 

 course table under which the pea is not, is the one under which you 

 thought that with your own eyes you saw it placed ! And a learned 

 member of this Society, in an article published in the Wiltshire 

 ArchcBological Magazine some fifteen years ago, 1 suggested as a more 

 probable site for this Petra Ecbiyghti that whereupon stands an 

 ancient stone called in Andrews and Dury's Map of Wilts " Redbridge 

 Stone/' on the Fairford estate. This stone may be seen in a small 

 plantation on the left hand of the railway cutting, about a mile 

 from the Westbury Station, on the way towards Frome,and projecting 

 somewhere about two or three feet from the ground. 



After describing the enthusiasm with which King Alfred was 

 received at this trysting-place, the Chronicle proceeds to tell us that 

 he there encamped for one night : then went on at dawn of the 

 next day to a place called iEcglea, where he spent another night. 



Now where was iEcglea ? It has been variously conjectured to 

 have been either Cley Hill, or else Buckley (now generally spelled 

 Bugley) , which are respectively a mile and a half and one mile to 

 the west of Warminster ; or, on the other hand, to have been 

 somewhere on the borders of Berkshire, in a place subsequently 

 known as the Hundred of iEcglei, some thirty miles from Westbury, 

 And it has been suggested as against the claims of the two former 

 sites that they are too near to the place of encampment of the pre- 



1 Yol. xiii., pp. 108, 9. 



