The great antiquity of Winchester would make its possession of such a relic, if genuine, quite possible. The ancient capital of England was possessed by the Romans, who erected the massive walls and temples of which it justly boasts. Some authorities declare that the first Christian church was erected in Winchester about the year 169, three centuries or more before King Arthur’s time, and that it was converted into a temple of Dagon, or Woden, by the Saxons late in the fifth century. Portion of Winchester was called by the Romans “Gwent,” or the Hollow, and this name being confused with the Gwent in Monmouthshire probably led to the transference of the scenes of the Arthurian legend to the famous capital. This class of error, as has been already pointed out, has not been infrequently met with in old chronicles. It was owing to some such confusion of ideas in the mind of King Henry VII that he named his son, born in Winchester Castle, after the Arthur of romance. Winchester, in fact, plays no mean part in the Arthurian drama. It was at times confused with Camelot, and given as the alternative name of that place. But there is no substance in the claim that the Round Table now to be seen in Winchester is really Arthurian. Even Defoe in his eighteenth-century chronicle of a journey from London to Land’s End talks contemptuously of the pretence to pass off the relic as “a piece of antiquity to the tune of twelve hundred years,” and he threw absolute discredit upon the whole story. Caerleon-on-Usk, the historic capital of King Arthur’s realm, claims (as we have related) also to possess the Round Table, but in this instance the visitor is taken to a field, still bearing the name of the Round Table Field, in which a circular cavity probably marks the site of a Roman encampment. The local legend is that beneath this field King Arthur and his knights sleep entranced, and await the summons to come forth and save England from peril. On the top of Cadbury Hill, Somerset, at a spot known as Cadbury Camp, a vast artificial circle, which is doubtless also of Roman origin, is designated the Round Table; and about half a mile from Penrith in Scotland a circular intrenchment, eighty-seven feet in diameter, is popularly known by the same name. Scott mentions “Penrith’s Table Round” in his _Bridal of Triermain_, and one of Lockhart’s notes explains that the circle within the ditch is about one hundred and sixty paces in circumference, with openings, or approaches, directly opposite each other. “As the ditch is on the inner side it could not be intended for the purpose of defence, and it has been reasonably conjectured that the enclosure was designed for the solemn exercise of feats of chivalry, and the embankment around for the convenience of spectators.” This Scotch reference has a significance of its own, but, standing alone, and combated by other claims, it cannot be deemed of very high importance.