ROMANO-BRITISH LONDON skeleton was found nearly perfect, with bronze armlets and a finger-ring which had a square bezel surmounted by a crescent ; while Wren records a pottery lamp, bearing two palm-branches, that may well be of Christian origin. Such relics are particularly rare in this country, but a lamp of this kind is in the Royal Museum at Canterbury and was found in the neighbour- hood ; and another, perhaps from London,"*^ is here illustrated (Fig. lo) with the Christian monogram. The other recorded by Wren^"* from St. Paul's, is here reproduced from an old drawing (Fig. 9), and represents two men fishing in a harbour. The figure on the bank is really handling a net, and is not a soul waiting to be ferried over the Styx by Charon. The discovery below the portico of St. Martin's-in-the-Fields is recalled by that of two skeletons in a vault 1 4 ft. deep formed of equilateral Roman bricks on the site of St. Botolph's Bishopsgate (Plan A, 50) during the rebuilding of the church about 1725.^°^ A Roman cist burial found on this site in 1726 has already been no- ticed, and a small urn containing a little thigh bone found under the street adjoining was no doubt Roman, though whether the body had been cre- mated or not is un- certain. Somedoubt, however, is thrown on the contempo- rary character of the finds here by the mention of ' a wooden cross plated with tin and false stones, supposed to have been nailed on a coffin,' and an enamelled glass cross, both of which may be mediaeval or later. A silver coin of Antoninus Pius (138—61) and a red-ware fragment stamped Macrinus (Rutenian potter, late first century) are further evidence that the ground was opened in Roman times. Following the line of the Wall eastward we may notice an inhumation, of which the skull and some bones remained, found during 1707 in Camomile Street (Plan A, 62) adjoining Bishopsgate, and situated between the Wall and a tessellated pavement below which several cinerary urns were discovered."* In 1843 Mansell Street (Plan A, 63) yielded, among other burials already discussed, a number of skeletons on the same level Fig. 9. — Pottery Lamp found on Site of St. Paul's (^) Fig. 10. — Christian Lamp of Pottery (Guildhall Museum) (§) '"= Guildhall Museum, with another sitnilar. One from Colchester is mentioned in Joiirn. Brit. Arch. Assoc. X, 91 ; and another at Newcastle is noticed by Hubner, Inscr. Brit. Christ. 8l, No. 228. ""*■ Parentalia, 267, 303 ; Sam. Knight, Life of Erasmus, 301 ; Knight, London, i, 34. '"'Cough's Add. to Camden, ii, 17. '"'Leland, I tin. (Hearne), viii, 14. I 25 4
