Volume 1

The works of Sir Thomas Browne / edited by Simon Wilkin.

  • Thomas Browne
Date:
1890-1893
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The works of Sir Thomas Browne / edited by Simon Wilkin. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by Royal College of Physicians, London. The original may be consulted at Royal College of Physicians, London.

    28/608 page 16
    Besides the Norman, Saxon, and Danisli pieces of Cuthred, Canutus, William, Matilda,* and others, some British coins of gold have heen dispersedly found, and no small number of silver pieces near Norwich,t with a rude head upon the obverse, and an ill-formed horse on the reverse, with inscrip- tions Ic. jDuro. T.; whether implying Iceni, Durotriges, Tascia, or Trinobantes, we leave to higher conjecture. Vulgar chronology will have Norwich Castle as old as Julius Caesar; but his distance from these parts, and its gothick form of structure, abridgeth such antiquity. The British coins afford conjecture of early habitation in these parts, though the city of Norwich arose from the ruins of Venta; and though, perhaps, not without some habitation before, was enlarged, builded, and nominated by the Saxons. lu what bulk or populosity it stood in the old East-Angle monarchy tradition and history are silent. Considerable it was in the Danish eruptions, when Sueno burnt Thetford and Norwich,]; and Ulfketel, the governor thereof, was able to make some resistance, and after endeavoured to burn the Danish navy. How the Romans left so many coins in countries of their conquests seems of hard resolution; except we consider how they buried them under ground when, iipon barbarous inva- sions, they were fain to desert their habitations in most part of their empire, and the strictness of their laws forbidding to transfer them to any other uses: wherein the Spartans § were singular, who, to make their copper money useless, contempered it ■ndth vinegar. That the Britons left any, some wonder, since their money was iron and iron rings before Cajsar; and those of after-stamp by permission, and but small in bulk and bigness. That so few of the Saxons remain, because, overcome by succeeding conquerors upon the place, their coins, by degrees, passed into other stamps and the marks of after-ages. Than the time of these urns deposited, or precise antiquity of these relicks, nothing of more uncertainty ; for since the lieutenant of Claudius seems to have made the first progress * A piece of Maud, the empress, said to be found iu Bucks aham Castle, with this inscription,—Elle n' a elle. + At Thorpe. J Bramptm Abbas JovmaUenais. § Plut. in vitd Lycurg.
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