Letter to Dawson Turner, Esq. : with proofs that Norwich and not Caistor was the Venta Icenorum / [Anon].

  • Hudson Gurney
Date:
[1847]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Letter to Dawson Turner, Esq. : with proofs that Norwich and not Caistor was the Venta Icenorum / [Anon]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    19/24 page 11
    the Conqueror’s niece, to close custody. And here we come to some coincidences between Norwich and Winchester, so remarkable, that it may be difficult to determine in which the imprisonment and execution of Waltheof took place. Ordericus Yitalis states that Waltheof was imprisoned in “ Guenta,” that the Normans greatly feared his escape, and that he was taken out to execution in the morning, whilst the inhabitants were still sleeping, “ extra Urbem Gwentam,” to a hill over against it, where the Church of St. Giles “ nunc constructa est.” This perfectly answers to the position of our St. Giles’s, out of the then city, inhabited by the English, on a rising ground, by the new borough, inhabited by the French, and where the church of St. Giles appears to have been built in the time of the Conqueror. After the execution, the body of Waltheof was buried in the crossways on the hill of St. Giles; but was afterwards transferred to Croyland, where it was deposited in a tomb near the high altar, and wrought many miracles. On the whole, however, I should think that the probability may be, that the execution of Waltheof took place at Winchester. On the accession of William Rufus, the Castle of Norwich was seized by Roger Bygod, and for some time held by him for Robert Curthose. Knighton, in his Chronicle, mentions the Castle of Norwich amongst the many castles which he
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