He marches through Wiltshire to Ilchester.
Position of Ilchester. waste like the City of the Legions;[1] it had risen again as an English town to share with the City of the Legions in the two chief glories of the days of the peaceful Eadgar. If Chester saw his triumph,[2] Bath had seen his crowning. And now the hand of the Norman, not the Norman Conqueror but the Norman rebel, fell as heavily on the English borough as the hand of the West-Saxon invader had fallen five hundred years before. Bath was a king's town; as such it drew on itself the special wrath of the rebels; the whole town was destroyed by fire, to rise again presently in another character.[3] From Bath, the greatest town of Somerset, but which, as placed in a corner of the land, has never claimed to be one of its administrative centres, the destroyer passed on to another town of Roman origin, which once did aspire to be the head of the Sumorsætan, but from which all traces of greatness have passed away. From Bath Robert first marched into Wiltshire, most likely following the line of the Avon; he there wrought much slaughter and took great spoil. He then turned to the south-west along the high ground of Wiltshire; he made his way into the mid parts of Somerset, and laid siege to the King's town of Givelceaster, Ivelchester, Ilchester, the Ischalis of a by-gone day.[4] The town lay at the foot of the most central range of the hills of Somerset,deprædata, transivit in Wiltusciram, villasque depopulans, multorumque hominum strage facta, tandem adiit Givelceastram, obsedit, et expugnare disposuit."]
- ↑ Mr. Earle has, I think, made it morally certain that the Old-English poem on a ruined city in the Codex Exoniensis refers to Bath. It is a pity that his account is hidden in the Proceedings of the Bath Natural History and Antiquarian Field Club, vol. ii. no. 3, 1872.
- ↑ See N. C. vol. iv. p. 310.
- ↑ Chron. Petrib. 1088. "And syððon foron út of þam castele and hergodon Baðon, and eall þæt land þær abutan." Florence adds the burning; "Rotbertus . . . congregato exercitu invasit Bathoniam, civitatem regiam, eamque igne succendit."
- ↑ Flor. Wig. 1088. "Illa [Bathonia
