Page:VCH Northamptonshire 1.djvu/199

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EARLY MAN Camp in the parish of Newbottle, near King's Sutton, and the earth- work called by Morton Castle Yard. This lies a few hundred yards to the south of the remains of the Saxon burh, now called Castle Dykes, in Farthingstone parish. Morton mentions ' lumps of cinder ' as being found here. Since Morton's date several hundredweight of scoriae of iron have been found, also the iron ' socket of a spear ' and an iron object like a flat spoon with a long handle. Both the spoon-like article and the scoriae of iron have their analogues in the finds from Hunsbury Camp. So far as the writer has been able to learn, no Roman remains have been discovered at this spot. On Borough Hill near Daventry is a very large camp, rather oval in shape. Morton considered this a Roman camp afterwards used by the Saxons, but, like Rainsborough Camp, it was probably pre-Roman in construction. There is also a small camp in Thenford parish called Arbury Hill. Like Hunsbury it lies at the side of the Banbury Lane which follows the old British trackway, but until researches are made into these camps the exact period to which they belong can only be conjectured. Some very slight evidence in regard to Rainsborough is forthcoming, for in the neighbourhood, the hamlet of Charlton, in which the camp is situ- ated, was found in 1842 a bronze article of unknown use bearing Late Celtic designs ; and Morton in his account of Rainsborough quotes from some MSS. of Anthony A. Wood, preserved in Mr. Ashmole's museum, as follows : ' Within the Memory of Man the Land within the inward Fortification together with the inward Fortification itself hath been plow'd up by several persons, each having his lot allow'd him, and a certain Person of Charlton who had the middle Part allow'd him, did not plow the middle part, but levelled the inward Fortification so far as his share went as in here shewed. In digging down the said Apartment or Allotment, there were discovered several Iron Pots, Glasses, Ashes.' It has been already stated that it was during this period that coinage was first introduced into Britain. There are two kinds of British coins, uninscribed and inscribed. The earliest coins found in Britain are those called uninscribed, on account of their not bearing any trace of letters. They were copied from the coins of the nearest Gaulish tribes. Sir John Evans in his work on ancient British coins says that in the reign of Philip II., King of Macedon, the father of Alexander the Great, he acquired certain gold mines at Crenides (the Philippi of the Bible) which yielded about >r250,ooo worth of gold per annum, and a large number of gold staters of Philip were struck. These bore on the obverse the head of Apollo with a laurel wreath, and on the reverse a man driving a two-horsed chariot, with the name of Philip underneath. At this time Marseilles was the centre of a colony of Greeks (who were then the great traders of the Mediterranean), among whom many of the gold staters were current. These coins of the Greeks were copied by the Gauls in the neighbourhood of Marseilles, or of Massilia as it was called ; these in turn were imitated 153