THE HISTORY OF WALLINGFORD. CHAPTER I. ROMAN PERIOD. HISTORICAL notice of the town of Wallingford, in the county of Berks, prior to the Norman Conquest, is scanty, and, taken alone, is not sufficiently decisive to warrant a classification of either town or castle (applying the term as a stronghold) among acknowledged Roman works; but when aided by the light of more recent research and discovery, there exists evidence sufficient to show, almost to a certainty, that in the time of the Romans the town was a place of note, strongly entrenched, and probably a military station. On this point a preponderance, more or less, of authoritative opinion prevails, although there are some modern historians who, arraying themselves against Leland, Camden, Burton, Speed, Baxter, Kennett, Milner, Plot, Lyson, Guest, and other antiquaries, not only ignore the conclusions at which most of our early historians have arrived, but, disregarding the confirmatory light thrown on those conclusions by more recent investigation, tell us that Wallingford has no Roman remains, no Roman tradition of any kind, and that the rectangular entrenchment which still exists may be said to be a Roman work wrought after the Romans were gone. Some have gone so far as to exclude the town from all connection with the Roman period, and one author has remitted a Roman origin to the category of the impossible. Now, the fallacy of very much of this will be indisputably shown, and the surprise is that men of so much learning and erudition should have given so easy a mark for criticism and refutation. Is it that the sophism of the present day seeks to reject, as unsound, the opinions of our earlier historians, in favour of some favourite and substituted theory, in which possibly it may be thought a greater amount of speculation enters than in the doctrine attempted to be subverted? To some extent this certainly appears to have been the case as respects Wallingford, which for many a century held as foremost a place in the annals of our earlier history as it unquestionably did in more recent times. But of late years no one has kept alive the interest attaching to the place, the theorist has met with no opposing voice, and a glorious history has in consequence well-nigh faded away. Let us endeavour to awaken an interest in the royal borough and its surroundings, by putting in a readable shape many historical facts which much research has secured, and by taking a calm review of some of the reasons which have been employed for consigning this "citie of note in the tyme of the Romans "almost to oblivion. Whether the town ever possessed the famous ford that scaled the fate of the British chieftain is a question it would be difficult to answer in the affirmative; with much more probability it may be assumed that the Roman soldiers under Aulus Plautius crossed the Thames here, and fought a decisive battle on the river-bank. On these and such like points, and that involving the question of a lengthened military occupation, and whether Comius made the place his royal seat, there is ample room for discussion; but to strike at the keystone of accumulated opinion, which for centuries past has associated Wallingford with Roman times, for the purpose of building up something new, appears, in my humble judg ment, to be due more to the innovating tendency of the age than to a fair and unbiassed consideration of the subject. My endeavour in the following four or five chapters will be to show not only the Roman connection, but that strong grounds exist for identifying the town with "Calleva Atrebatum" of the Itineraries. The absence of any certain knowledge as to the ancient and precise name of the town has furnished the chief ground for argument; few places, in this respect, have given rise * Manuscript in the Herald's College. |