A History of Devonshire
by Richard Nicholls Worth (9780217159906)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER II. EXETER. Those who believe that this island derives its name from Brutus, the Trojan, will have no difficulty in accepting the allied legend that before Brute built London he founded Exeter. But as these once popular articles of faith are sadly at a discount, we may dismiss them without further concern. The origin of the city is really unknown. The hill round which the Exe flowed long ages since, as it flows still, was chosen by the Kelts for the site of one of their towns, and it may have had a yet earlier appropriation. When the Romans made the castrum of the Exe the headquarters of a legion and the chief seat of their power in the extreme West of England, Exeter was already a place of importance and antiquity; and that is all we really know. It may have been one of the marts where the ancient Briton trafficked with the merchants of Phoenicia, but the authority for saying so is very small. Palgrave held that the city was a free republic before the reduction of the inhabitants of West Britain, and that it enjoyed franchises and liberties ' before any Anglo-Saxon king had a crown upon his head or a sceptre in his hand.' At whatever date, then, the first hut was built in the forest on the ' red hill' above the marshes of the Exe, Exeter flashes into history already a great town. Each race dominantin England has made it a stronghold?Kelt, Roman, Saxon, Dane, and Norman. Hardly a great party in the State, though its proud motto is Semper fidelis, but has ruled therein in turn. A few feet beneath the modern city lie remains which show that Exeter was no Roman station in name only. Its claims to be the Isca, Dunmoniorum have been seriously, but fruitlessly, questioned. Roman coins by the thousand, with pottery and other articles of kindred origin, have been fou...

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