JOURNAL OF THE PLYMOUTH INSTITUTION. 
The accepted story of Eoman conquest and sway in Devon and 
Cornwall rests solely upon a mistaken identification, and a forgery. 
The forgery is the Chronicle of Richard of Cirencester ; the false 
identification is the gloss of Geoffrey of Monmouth, or one of his 
editors, upon the narrative of Vespasian's besieging Caer Pensaul- 
coit — " quae Exonia vocatur." 1 
You will bear in mind that from the time of the repulse of Julius 
Csesar until the reign of Claudius the Eomans left Britain unassailed. 2 
Vespasian is then stated to have distinguished himself in the reduc- 
tion of the island, fighting the enemy thirty times, defeating two 
British nations, taking twenty towns, and subjecting the Isle of 
Wight. 3 But where was Vespasian's campaign 1 ? That it was some- 
where in the South of England, and in the neighbourhood of the 
Isle of Wight, is clear ; and if we read tribes for nations, and 
ship). Relics of Roman occupation are abundant at Exeter ; its position is 
that which the Isca of the Iter should occupy ; and if the two are not one a 
leading Roman station is without record. Objection has been made that no 
trace has been found at Exeter of the residence of the Second Legion, said to 
be quartered there ; but this legion was one of those chiefly concerned in 
building the Northern Wall, and its occupation of Exeter must have been 
comparatively late. There was, however, ample room for the legion at 
Exeter, though the reference is probably to the head-quarters — the dep6t. 
1 Precisely the same thing is done by Geoffrey or his editor with regard to 
Hamo's Port, which is identified chiefly on the score of an absurd derivation 
from " a crafty Roman named Hamo " with Southampton, but by which I 
hold that the Hamoaze — the estuary of the Tamar — is intended. Hamo's 
Port is made by Geoffrey " the fitting centre of some of the most stirring scenes 
in the traditional national life, and it is the Hamoaze that best suits the 
reference." The statement that "Maximian, the senator," when invited by 
Caradoc, Duke of Cornwall, to be king of Britain, lands at Hamo's Port, leads 
to the inference that it was on Cornish territory. So the Armoricans sent to 
the help of Arthur land at Hamo's Port, and it is from Hamo's Port that 
Arthur sets sail on his expedition against the Romans — a fabulous story indeed, 
but still helping to indicate the commodiousness and importance of the har- 
bour intended. Whatever Geoffrey may have thought, I cannot resist the 
conclusion that the port of Plymouth was well known, in the troublous times 
that followed the departure of the Romans, to the Armorican Britons as the 
Hamoaze, and it may well have been that the independence retained by the 
Dunmonii during the Roman occupation placed them in a position of leader- 
ship at this later period. 
2 There is a suggestion that a descent was made in the time of Augustus, 
but it rests upon very slender evidence, and at the most could only have been 
a casual inroad. Vide "Roman Devon," J. Brooking Rowe, f.s.a., f.l.s., 
Trans. Plym. Inst. vol. vii. pp. 236-7. 3 Suetonius, Vesp. 
