Itinerarium curiosum (centuria II) : $b or, an account of the antiquities, and remarkable curiosities in nature or art, observed in travels through Great Britain. To which is added, the Itinerary of Richard of Cirencester, monk of Westminster. With an account of that author and his workStukeley, William
History
Itinerarium curiosum (centuria II) : $b or, an account of the antiquities, and remarkable curiosities in nature or art, observed in travels through Great Britain. To which is added, the Itinerary of Richard of Cirencester, monk of Westminster. With an account of that author and his work
Stukeley, William
Great Britain -- Antiquities -- Early works to 1800; Great Britain -- Description and travel -- Early works to 1800
A third road is the Hermen-street from the sea-side in Sussex to
Scotland: it went by Bishops-gate, but on the eastern and outside
of the city, till its enlargement; and that enlargement was done
by Constantine the Great, or by his mother the empress Helena, our
country-woman: and we may well credit the reports of the Britons
concerning this matter. Then it acquired the title of _Londinium
Augusta_: then it was that the Tower was built; an _armamentarium_, as
the castle of Colchester, of the same manner and model of building,
Roman brick and stone; a chapel with a semicircular window, as
Colchester, and dedicated to St. Helena. This in after-times; but in
regard to the age we are treating on, that of Cæsar and our aboriginal
Britons, it is a just enquiry, after we have given the plan of
primitive London of the _Novantes_, Where may we suppose their temple
to have been? for assuredly we must pronounce, that, whenever the
ancients built a city, they certainly took care to erect a temple for
divine worship.
In answer to this enquiry, we are to reflect, that the Britons
were under the ecclesiastic regimen of the Druids, who were of the
patriarchal religion, the religion indeed of ABRAHAM: for they came
from him. We find in sacred writ, wherever he removed from one country
to another, “there builded he an altar to Jehovah, and invoked in
the name of Jehovah,” who sometimes personally appeared to him:
consequently we must infer _Jehovah_ to be the Messiah, or Son of God,
in an angelic form.
Other times ABRAHAM removed into a country abounding with groves of
oak; sometimes he planted a grove of oak for religious purposes, as a
temple. All these things the Druids did; they built such open temples
as the great patriarch; they used oak-groves, or planted oak-groves as
temples: we cannot say that Jehovah appeared personally to them; yet we
may well think they were sometimes vouchsafed the spirit of prophecy,
and particularly in regard to Messiah, who they knew was to be born of
a virgin, and likewise was to be born at the winter solstice, whence
their famous misleto solemnity.
Moreover, at Chartres in France, which was the place of the principal
meeting of the Gaulish Druids, there is now a magnificent church, built
upon the spot where then was that most celebrated open temple: for the
Druids very easily passed over into christianity; the transition was
but natural. This church is dedicated to the Mother of God, as they
there style the virgin Mary: there is under it a chapel cut in the
rock, with a flight of stairs descending to it: on the door of the
frontispiece is this inscription in Latin,
“To the Virgin who bears the Child.”
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