Mr. Gutch observes that "this song, and its tune, as the editor is informed by his ingenious friend Edward Williams, the Welsh bard, are well known in South Wales by the name of Marchog glas, i.e., Green knight. Though apparently ancient, it is not known to exist in black letter, nor has any better authority been met with than the common collection of Aldermary churchyard. -Ritson."

BELBROUGHTON.

In the year 1833, a Roman jar, containing more than one hundred coins of the early emperors, was found upon the Fern estate, near Farfield or Forfield in this parish. Mr. John Amphlett has in his possession several of the coins of Adrian and Antoninus Pius, one of Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, and several of the Gordians and Philip, all which I have seen. Dr. Nash, in Vol. i., p. 56, of his "History," says Belbroughton was anciently called Belm, Belne, Beolne, and Balne Bereton. It is spelled Beolne in Heming's "Cartulary," p. 261, and Bellem in Domesday Book.

"Here was formerly a wood five miles in extent, and in Norman times the manor of Forfield*, or Fairfield, formed a part of the great forest of Feckenham, at which place the lords justices of the king's forest on this side Trent held their courts to determine causes concerning the breach of the forest laws f."

CLENT.

This parish, lately a detached part of Staffordshire, was, till the reign of King Edward III., part of Worcestershire, and has been re-annexed to it by the Reform Bill. For the following facts respecting the antiquities of Clent, I am indebted to Mr. Timings, of that place.

In or about the year 1790, a large jar, filled with Roman gold and silver coins, was discovered by a labourer of the name of Benjamin Phillips, as he was making a new pool on Clent Heath,

Forfield is mentioned in the "Codex Dip.," No. 212.

+ See the "Rambler in Worcestershire," pub. 1851, p. 225.

a little below where the battle between the Romans and Britons was fought. In 1792, some silver coins were found in a meadow at Old Mill. In another meadow lying east of this, a jar of gold and another of silver coins were found by labourers; and about the same date, upon pulling down an old wall in Rowley Regis parish, there was discovered a jar containing a great number of Roman coins.

Mr. Timings, in his "Guide to the Clent Hills," gives a full description of the position of the Roman and British armies, and the battles of Walton, Clatter-Batch, and Clent Heath, and particularises the ancient trenches on Walton Hills, the rampart on Clent Hill, tumuli, urns, bones, coins, and skeletons; he also describes Bar Beacon, and other ancient relics.

In his "History of the Antiquities of St. Kenelms," he describes the barbarous murder of the young Mercian King Kenelm, in the year 819, by his unnatural sister Quendreda and Ascobert; his first burial at St. Kenelms, and removal to Winchcomb Abbey; and the discovery of several Roman and Saxon coins at different times at St. Kenelms, which place is situated at the east end of the Clent Hills, one mile from Clent village. This murder is likewise recorded by Dr. Nash, in his History, at considerable length.

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HAGLEY.

Dr. Nash, in mentioning this place (Vol. i., pp. 485, 486), says: "In 'Domesday Book' it is written Hageleia, from the Saxon Haga, domus, and Leag, or Lega*, locus, being probably the chief residence of a great Saxon lord, and styled by way of eminence The Manor Place.'" Hagley affords some considerable remains of Roman antiquity: a large camp on Wichbury Hill, having on the south side a double agger, or deep ditch, now covered with wood. Several coins of the lower empire have been found in the adjoining fields, and particularly an earthern pot filled with them was taken out of a pool on the side of the hill not

*

Leag is not locus, a place, but it is a lea or ley. See "Abberley."

+ There is also a hill called the Round Hill, by Wichbury Hill.

many years since. In 1738, a farmer, stubbing up an old tree which grew on the hill very near Wichbury Camp, discovered an iron chain almost rotten with age and rust, in which hung, as in a sling, a large round stone about the size of a man's head, a groove being cut quite round the stone the more commodiously to receive the chain. I have no doubt but this was a military weapon used by the Romans, though it is not exactly described by Vegetius, or any other ancient writer*.

Two others have been since

"On Clent Heath, about a mile and a half below Wichbury, are five barrows or lows, which were perhaps thrown up by the Romans, the constant tradition of the inhabitants assigning them to those people; and one which I caused to be opened several years ago affording a considerable quantity of burnt wood and ashes at the depth of fourteen feet. opened, in one of which, at about the depth of two feet, exactly in the centre, was discovered an urn filled with small human bones, very white, to the quantity of two quarts. The urn was broken all to pieces by the workman's spade, and appeared to be of very coarse ill-burnt clay. At about the depth of two feet lower, on the west side of the tumulus, was found a pretty large quantity of bones, ashes, and burnt wood, lying promiscuously together. The last that we opened contained no urn; but at the depth of two yards, exactly in the centre, was a circular cavity of about a foot diameter, and pretty nearly of that depth, filled wholly with human bones and burnt wood. I am of opinion that the Roman general or chief was honoured with an urn for his bones in the former of these two last-described lows or tumuli, and perhaps the bones of his principal officers are those which lay in

"Hearne's Glossary to Robert of Gloucester.-Mangonel, tormentum, catapulta bellica, mangonel ingin. ;-an old-fashioned sling (saith Cotgrave v. mangonneau,) or engine, whereout stones, old iron, &c., were violently darted. Some of the most ancient military weapons were slings. Our ancestors the Britons were expert at them. After slings, catapults, battering rams, and other engines."

+ Or more probably by the ancient Britons; see pp. 35, 36, as to Lowes

moor.

The character of the pottery tends to prove that the lows were ancient British.

the same low heaped together, but that the last-mentioned low contained the bones of the common soldiers, or some of them at least, who fell in the action.

The inhabitants of Clent and Hagley talk of an engagement which happened on this spot between the Romans and Britons, and say the former were encamped on Wichbury and the latter on Clent Hill before the battle was fought. Harborow, which is the name of the lands and farm adjoining to the lows, carries in it something military, being a Saxon compound of here (here) exercitus, and Berje (Berie) campus, i.e., a plain where an army is assembled. Thus Mr. Hearne etymologises Harborough in Leicestershire.

"Probably a neighbouring stream, called Horestone Brook, was so denominated from a stone or rude pillar erected near it by the victorious Britons, it not being the practice of the Romans to erect such pillars; and hence the learned Dr. Plott conjectures that Baston, in the neighbouring parish of Kenvaur, is a British monument of a victory there obtained. A Roman road passes through part of Hagley Common, and is now called the King's Headland; but I have some suspicion it was more anciently called the Portway, a name common to the Roman military highways; for in a court roll of the manor of Clent, temp. Elizabeth, mention is made of a road styled the Portway, on the Lord's Waste, which could be no other than Clent Heath, adjoining to Hagley. A very rare and singular piece of antiquity, a small image of stone, about two inches in length, was found in 1752, at a considerable depth within a ragstone quarry, in Hagley Park. It is a very rude figure of a man, but ending in a term. The ablest antiquaries, to whose inspection it has been submitted, have all pronounced it Phoenician, being too rude for the work of a Roman artist: British it could not be, as the ancient Britons allowed of no effigiated idol. This image agrees in all respects with the teraphim mentioned in Scripture."

I have extracted the whole of the above passage, because it strongly bears upon our ancient British antiquities, which I have described in the account of the hills. I have been informed by Mr. Timings, of Holy Cross House, Clent, that near Wichbury

Hill, round hewn stones are frequently found, supposed to have been used by the Roman slingers in their battles.

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There is a piece of land called Harbourough Ash, in Chaddesley Corbett; Harbour Hill, in Claines, near Worcester; Harbour's Hill Piece, in Stoke Prior; Harborough Hill*, in Shelsley Beauchamp, and Cold Harborough, or Cold Harbour, in Hindlip or Inlip. The latter name, with its aliàs, may tend to throw some light upon the etymology of the names of many places called Cold Harbour, noticed in the "Archæologia," 1849, No. 1, Vol. xxxiii., p. 125, &c. The writer of that paper in the Archæologia" endeavours to prove that, as the name Cold Harbour very frequently occurs at the angles or turns, and also at the junctions of Roman or more ancient roads, such places may have been so called by the Romans and Anglo-Romans, after the significant tortuosities of the coluber; and that the term coluber may have been a vestige of the once almost universal ophite or serpent worship. He also refers to the opinion of some antiquaries, that the word "Harbour” means a port, and that the prefix "Cold" comes from the word col, kohle, carbo. He likewise mentions various other conjectures; for instance, that the prefix refers to the bleak or exposed situation of the places in question; that the name Harbour comes from the Saxon hereberga, a post-watch on a hill, statio militaris; that both the names come from the Latin caula-arva (British cobail-arbar), meaning enclosed or cleared spaces for cultivation among the woods and forests which formerly covered England.

In "Notes and Queries" it is suggested by one writer that here-burh is an inland station for an army, in the same sense as a harbour for ships on the coast; that Cold is a corruption for

There is Harbourne Meadow, in Northfield; but this name most probably means "Hoar-bourne; i.e. Hoar a bound, and Bourn a rivulet, from the Anglo-Saxon Burne.- See "Hoar Stones," Chap. IV. thereon. There is a parish called Harborne, or Harbourn, in Staffordshire, which is bounded by Bourn Brook on the south side of it, where Staffordshire and Worcestershire unite.

+ Captain W. H. Smyth, R.N., Director of the Society of Antiquaries of London.

Vol. ii., No. 51, Oct. 19, 1850, p. 341.