479 
if they were not raendable in a very easy manner, laid them 
aside, and waited till the periodical visit of men professing 
to make the repairs they required. 
There are curious facts illustrating this practice connected 
with the immediate subject on which I am treating. In 
various places in England, especially in the eastern and 
south-eastern districts, and under circumstances which leave 
no doubt in my mind of their belonging to the Roman period, 
are found not unfrequently the remains of the working stock 
of people who evidently went about, in the manner just 
described, to make implements of bronze, and these articles 
were the bronze celts and leaf-shaped swords. Thus, in 
1845, a quantity of bronze celts, with punches, gouges, and 
other instruments of the same material, as well as several 
pieces of unused metal, one of which appeared to be the 
residuum left in the melting pot, were found at a village near 
Attleborough, in Norfolk. No less than seventy of the 
celts, and ten spear heads of bronze, were found together 
in a meadow near Stibbard, in the same county. A similar 
collection of bronze chisels, &c, with portions of a leaf- 
shaped sword, was found at Sittingbourne, in Kent. At 
Westow, in Yorkshire, a collection of sixty such implements, 
together with a piece of a broken sword, with a piece of 
bronze which appeared to be the residuum from melting, was 
found in an earthen jar or vase. I have myself seen some 
of a collection of whole and broken celts, gouges, &c, found 
under similar circumstances at the foot of the Wrekin in 
Shropshire, not far from the Roman town of Uriconium. I 
might easily extend the list of such discoveries which have been 
made at different times in our island ; and similar discoveries 
have been made also in various parts of Germany, in Switzer- 
land, and in France. Leland, writing in the time of Henry 
VIII., and speaking of Cornwall, tells us, " There was found 
of late yeres spere heddes, axis for warre, and swerdes of 
