'a sea in breadth three miles, which is called Solvent; in which, namely the sea, two tides of the ocean, which boil around Britain from the boundless Northern Sea, meet together in daily strife, and, the conflict being ended, return to the ocean whence they come.'

Such was the early explanation of the tides, for the force of which the Solent of to-day is celebrated. Drayton, in his rugged verse, describes the same natural features:

'betwixt the foreland and the firme,

She hath that narrow sea, which we the Solent tearme,
Where the rough ireful tides, as in their straits they meet
With boystrous shocks and rores each other rudely greet,
Which fiercelie when they charge, and sadlie make retreat,
Upon the bulwark't forts of Hurst and Calsheat beat,
Then to Southampton runne.'

The Isle of Wight, so say the Triads, was first settled by a fugitive Belgic tribe which came from Galedin-a country that Celtic scholars identify with The Netherlands. The island was then a primeval forest, for the most part wild scrub or swamp, with here and there a rising ground which could be cleared, cultivated, or pastured. Then, as now, on the east and on the north-west of the island the two Yars wound their sluggish ways to the sea, and the name of the streams is the same Celtic root which survives in the Garonne. The Lugley brook, which flows through the Vale of Bowcombe by Carisbrooke to Newport, has the same Celtic root as the Lug in Herefordshire. The Medina, which rises in the northern foot of St. Catharine's Down, and divides. the island into the East and West Medene, is the Mede, or the Medway, or the Mayenne. Of the early settlers, vestiges remain in other quarters than in place-names. The substructure of Carisbrooke is the vallation of a Celtic entrenchment; burrows and cairns along the lines of the Downs. indicate the resting-places of their dead; their excavated, wattle-covered wigwams still survive in the shallow pits which clustered round the Gallibury thorn, that only disappeared within the last thirty years; the men-hir, or long stone, of Mottistone, which, as local tradition asserts, was hurled from St. Catharine's in a trial of strength between the devil and an angel, marks a boundary of the primitive settlers.

Vespasian conquered the island before the close of the first half-century of the Christian era. The conquest was easily made and easily maintained. In spite of the name of Puckaster, no sign is found of any Roman camp; no military station

was allotted to the island; no place-name records any military engagement. Even the Roman road seemed unnecessary, though a portion of one runs near Carisbrooke, only to be lost on the Downs. It is also possible-though the local use of the word 'street' impairs the strength of the argument that a Roman road ran from the landing-place at Gurnard, which corresponds to Leap, on the opposite coast, through Carisbrooke, and there radiated south and east. One road ran through Gatcombe southwards to Niton, the traditional route of the tin-merchants. Another ran eastwards to a wharf or quay on the river Yar, near Brading harbour. Portions of this latter road-if it be indeed a via vicinalis— are still known by the name of the old road,' and the line is perhaps indicated by the Rue Street, Arreton Street, and Street End, which unite Gurnard and Carisbrooke and Brading. Such a road is, however, conjectural. More undeniable proof of occupation is afforded by the Roman villas of Gurnard, Carisbrooke, and Brading. The first-named marks the site of a landing-place, the second of an official residence, while the warm climate, sunny aspect, and sea-bathing of Brading designated the third to be the villa rustica' of a wealthy Italian noble on the shores of a British Baiæ. is a remarkable circumstance that a farm close to Morton, where the Brading villa was discovered, has been from time immemorial called Romans,' and that a neighbouring copse bears the name of Centurion's Copse,' though the designation is probably a corruption of St. Urien, to whom a chapel hard by was dedicated.

No record survives of the Roman departure from the island. Nor is the evidence much fuller which can be derived from early chroniclers respecting the coming of the Jutes and Saxons. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (530 a.d.) states that Cerdic and Cynric conquered the Isle of Wight after a battle, or massacre, at Wiht-garas-burh (Carisbrooke), and (534 A.D.) gave the conquered lands to their nephews, Stuf and Wihtgar. Long after Winchester had become a Christian city the Jutish islanders worshipped Thor and Woden. It was not till 685 that the country was christianised, through the agency of Wilfrid, the Star of the AngloSaxon Church,' then an exile in the courts of Southern potentates. In that year Cadwalla, king of the West. Saxons, vowed that, if he conquered the island, he would bestow a fourth part of the land and of the booty on Bishop Wilfrid. At the hour of victory he was mindful of his vow. And Wilfrid committed the part which he received to his

nephew Berwin, and Hiddila, the priest, who should 'minister the fount and laver of life to such as desired 'to be saved.' The traditional cell of the priest was at Brading; there the first Christian church was built, of wood and wattle, and there the first convert was baptised. Nor was Wilfrid mindful only of the souls of the islanders, since he also taught them-so says Sir John Oglander-to fish with hooks and with nets. With the conversion of the island is connected a pathetic episode. Two royal youths, brothers of Arvald, the last tribal king of the island, whose burial-place was discovered at Shalcombe Down, escaped from the sword of Cadwalla to the mainland. But their hiding-place at Stoneham was discovered, and orders were given for their execution. Then went Cynibert, abbot of the neighbouring monastery of Redbridge, and begged of the king that, if it were necessary for the youths to die, he might first administer to them the sacraments of the Christian faith. The king agreed; and he, as Bede tells us

'having instructed them in the word of truth, and washed them in the fountain of salvation, rendered them sure of ingress into the Kingdom of heaven. And presently they, when the executioner approached, joyfully met a temporal death, by which they doubted not that they would pass to an eternal life of the soul.'

As time advances the history of the island grows fuller. Christianity first brought it within the sphere of national life. After the missionary came the administrator. Under the supervision of Bishop Daniel (sixth Bishop of Winchester, 705-44) the island became part of the see of Winchester; settlements were chosen, the woodland was cleared, and the timber churches were raised, surrounded by the huts and cells of religious communities. The earliest of the island muniments are the charters by which King Egbert granted Shalfleet and Calburne to the episcopal see. The coasts of the island were ravaged by the Danes; the Raven fluttered from the ash-wood galleys which rode in its sheltered waters; an encampment on Castle Hill, near Mottistone, probably marks the presence of the Northmen, who made its shores a rendezvous; and Bloodstone Well, near Firestone Copse, is popularly supposed to indicate a sanguinary struggle between the Saxon and the Dane. It was to the island that Ethelred the Unready fled for refuge, and to secure the safe passage of his wife to France. On its shores Tostig descended before he finally landed in the North; and here, all the summer and harvest of 1066, Harold,

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with his fleet, watched for the coming of William the Conqueror.

Of the Saxon period numerous vestiges remain. Great cemeteries of Saxon dead have been discovered in various spots, and especially on Arreton and Chessel Downs. Here, from time to time, have been disinterred the articles that are most commonly found in Saxon graves-swords, spearheads, rings and buckles of brass and iron, beads of glass and amber, urns and ornaments in bronze and bone, silver and gold. The patterns of many of these ornaments correspond to those of similar objects that have been discovered in Kent, and these common peculiarities, coupled with the similarity of accent, confirm the historical account' of the British origin of the settlers in Kent and in the Isle of Wight.

When, after the battle of Hastings, the throne changed its master, the Isle of Wight entered upon a new stage of existence. In the centuries that follow three periods may be distinguished. In the first (1066-1293), the lordship of the island was vested in the great family, first, of Fitz Osborn, then of Redvers, and the Crown had no claim upon the personal services of the inhabitants, except through the lord of the island, who discharged them by a fixed money payment. The second period (1293-1483) is a period of transition; during the first part the Crown kept the lordship in its own hands, appointing wardens, removable at pleasure, and sometimes popularly elected; during the second part the Crown reverted to the older practice, and granted away the lordship in estate tail to great families. During the third period (1483-1892) the Crown has been represented by captains, or, since 1588, when the existing title was assumed on the approach of the Spanish Armada, by captains and governors, appointed sometimes for life, sometimes at the will of the sovereign, but always deprived of any feudal, territorial, or hereditary dignity.

The first period opens with the grants of the island to William Fitz Osborn, Earl of Hereford. To secure his new possession he fortified the keep of the Castle of Carisbrooke, and to earn the favour of the Church he is said to have founded the Priory of Carisbrooke, and granted to the Abbey of Lyra the churches of Whippingham, Niton, Newchurch, Godshill, Freshwater, and Brading. He enjoyed his honours for but a brief period. In 1070 he died, and the island passed to his youngest son, Roger. Eight years later it was forfeited to the Crown by the conspiracy in which

Roger and Earl Waltheof were engaged. Without civil or military government, the island became the gathering-place of all the disaffected of the realm. Here Odo, Bishop of Bayeux and Earl of Kent, collected his troops for that expedition to Italy by which he proposed, it was said, to gain the Papacy. It was probably in the Great Hall of the Priory at Carisbrooke that the turbulent and ambitious prelate was arrested by his brother, William the Conqueror. None of the Council dared, in spite of the king's order, to lay hands on a consecrated bishop. It was William himself who advanced and seized him by the robe, with the words: "It is not a clerk, nor a high priest, that I condemn; but my ' own earl whom I myself set over my kingdom.'

From the beginning of the twelfth to the close of the thirteenth century the island was in the hands of the family of Redvers, Earls of Devon. To Richard de Redvers the island was granted by Henry I., and for two centuries it remained in the hands of his descendants. Nothing mean, profligate, or unknightly is recorded of a family which, from generation to generation, held the lordship of the Isle of Wight. The Earls of Devon fulfilled the duties and deserved the honours of chivalry. Under their firm rule the Castle of Carisbrooke was strengthened, and the famous well was sunk, to supply the place of the shallower receptacle which had failed Baldwin de Redvers in his hour of need. Under the shadow of the great feudal fortress grew up the town of Newport, to which Richard de Redvers granted a charter of incorporation, and where he built a church dedicated to St. Thomas à Becket, whose murder and subsequent canonisation were the events of the day. Many churches were built by the liberality of the lords of the island. By them also the Abbey of Quarr was founded and endowed; there Baldwin de Redvers and his wife Adeliza were buried, and there William de Redvers, wearied with thirtythree years of power, retired to pass the remaining years of his life.

But the romance of the family centres round the last survivor, Isabella de Fortibus. In 1262 the brother of Isabella, Baldwin de Insula, Earl of Devon and Lord of the Isle of Wight, was poisoned at the table of his wife's brother, Peter de Savoy. His heir was his sister Isabella, born in 1287, the widow of William de Fortibus, Earl of Albemarle. On the death of her brother Isabella, Countess of Albemarle, became Countess of Devon and Lady of the Tale of Wight. She was, as Gibbon calls her, a famous and