THE PRESIDENT'S ADDRESS. 
15 
" camps " for towns, and take as some measure of the magnitude of 
his operations the prominence assigned to his achievements in the 
Isle of Wight, we may fairly conclude that his conquests were less 
extensive than compact. There is no ground for the belief that 
they extended much beyond the counties of Hampshire and Wilts, 
nor could he have made a successful inroad into Devon without 
having had a much larger number of " nations " to encounter and 
defeat than the two over whom he proved victorious. 
There is no suggestion that Vespasian fought in Devon outside 
the statement of Geoffrey of Monmouth, that he landed on the coast 
of Totnes, and thence marched to besiege Caer Pensaulcoit. The 
assumption that the ancient Totnes and the modern are identical 
led to the inference that Caer Pensaulcoit was Exeter ; and the per- 
sistent misinterpretation of the old village " camps " as relics of 
warfare seemed to give countenance to an idea that had really no 
foundation. Caer Pensaulcoit, as Mr. T. Kerslake has well pointed 
out, 1 is still extant in name in the modern Penselwood, among the 
heights of the Wilts and Somerset borderland above Wincanton, 
where there are abundant traces of the presence of an extensive 
community. 2 It has already been stated that Totnes in the old 
chronicles is the name of a district, and not of a town. 3 But there 
is conclusive evidence that the campaign of Vespasian was not waged 
upon Dunmonian ground, in the statement of Tacitus 4 that, later in 
the reign of Claudius, Ostorius Scapula drew a chain of forts 
between the Anton (the modern Test at Southampton) and the 
Severn as a barrier against the malcontent Britons. If this was the 
effective Claudian frontier years after the conquests of Vespasian, 
it is against all evidence to suppose that he could have been the 
conqueror of the Dunmonii. 
Were the Dunmonii ever conquered by the Eomans 1 History 
returns no direct reply ; but such testimony as we have points in 
the direction rather of practical independence and friendly inter- 
1 Primceval British Metropolis. 
2 Whether the Pen Pits are the remains of ancient habitations, or pits for 
mining or quarrying, they equally indicate a large resident population, and 
there is an important "camp" close by. 
3 See ante, p. 21. It does not appear, as Mr. Kerslake has shown, in the 
Welsh Bruts. He suggests "Talnas" as the earliest form, and the mouth 
of Ptolemy's Alaunus, Christchurch Haven, as the landing-place. 
4 Annals, xii. 31. 
