Through East Anglia in a Motor CarVincent, James Edmund
General
Through East Anglia in a Motor Car
Vincent, James Edmund
Norfolk (England) -- Description and travel; Suffolk (England) -- Description and travel
Colchester is rich in Roman relics also, to be found stored in museums, and
in the form of Roman bricks and tiles built into the walls of the Norman
keep to the north of the High Street, and into the ruined walls of St.
Botolph's Priory Church, to the south-east of the town. This same keep, the
largest in England, was probably built by Eudo, high steward to William the
Conqueror, possibly on the site of the temple of Claudius, but as to that
there can be no assurance. What is certain is that much Roman material was
incorporated in the rubble of which the very solid walls are made; and this
is natural enough when we reflect that Colchester was a real Roman colony
for nearly 350 years. The most interesting objects in the Museum, which is
housed in the ancient chapel of the castle, are a curious sphinx, two feet
high, with the wings of a bird, the breasts of a bitch, the head of a
woman, and the paws of a lion, squatting over the lacerated carcase of its
human prey; the famous Colchester vase and a bust of Caligula, and there
have been a number of smaller "finds." Colchester is no doubt derived from
_Colonia_ and _castrum_, but it has a legendary connection with King Cole
of happy memory, and the principal bastion in Balcon Lane is still known as
Colking's Castle. The theory of the Britons, to summarize first and to
quote later a _Quarterly_ Reviewer, was that the descendants of Cunobelin
continued in Colchester under the Romans, and that one of them was Coilus,
_alias_ Cole, the same music and liquor-loving potentate who called for his
pipe a good many centuries before the uses of the soothing herb were known
in this country; of course, his pipe may have been an instrument of
so-called music. After the usurpation of Carausius and his successor, Cole
or Coel, Duke of Kaer-Coloin (Colchester), surrendered the island to the
Romans, "in return for which service he was allowed to retain the nominal
sovereignty in Britain, and has become renowned as the 'Old King Cole' of
popular song. On his dying soon afterwards, the British legends went on to
declare that Constantius the Senator, the representative of the Roman power
on the island, received the crown of Coel, but only in virtue of marriage
with his daughter Helena; and Colchester has hence enjoyed the reputation
of giving birth to Constantine, the first Christian Emperor. There is no
trace, however, of Constantius having been in Britain at all before the
year 296, at which time his son was twenty-four years old; and the most
credible writers assert that his consort was not a Briton, but a Bithynian.
We leave the good citizens of Colchester in possession of their arms 'a
cross intagled between four crowns,' in token of Helena's invention of the
Cross of Christ; but we cannot allow that they have any historical title to
them."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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