Mary and Oswald, and refers to St. Oswald, the patron of Worcester, as if struck by Wolstan, bishop of that see about 1088."

LOWER EATINGTON is ornamented by the ancient family seat of Evelyn John Shirley, Esq.

At COMPTON-SCORFEN, on the north-west border of the divi sion, was born, according to Antony Wood, Sir Thomas Overbury, familiar to the student of history from his melancholy end in the time of James I. But Bigland makes him a native of Bourton-on-the-Hill, Gloucestershire.* It is at any rate clear that he was educated in this neighbourhood, among the relatives. of his mother, who was a daughter of the Palmers, a family long possessed of the manorial rights of Compton Scorfen.

The small village of ATHERSTONE-UPON-STOUR is seated near the bank of the river from which it acquires a designation, at the distance of three miles from Stratford-on-Avon. This village has been confounded by some topographers with the markettown of Atherstone, in the northern part of Warwickshire. The place under consideration attracts notice only from the circumstance of having afforded a residence to Dr. Thomas, the continuator of Dugdale's Antiquities, who possessed some property in the neighbourhood, in right of his wife, Elizabeth, the daughter of George Carter, Esq. of Brill, in Buckinghamshire.

WARWICK DIVISION,

exclusively of the town of Warwick, which has a separate jurisdiction, contains the following parishes:-Barford; Bishop'sTachbrook; Charlecote; Chesterton, and Kington, otherwise Little Chesterton; Lapworth; Moreton-Morrell; NewboldPacey, and Ashorn; Packwood; Tanworth; Wasperton; Wellsbourne-Hastings; Wellsbourne-Mountford.

THE

On the authority of which writer he is claimed as a native of Bourton in the volume of this work including Gloucestershire, p. 648.

THE TOWN OF WARWICK

is situate near the centre of the county to which it imparts a name, and is watered by the river Avon. This fair and pleasing town, enriched by a castle of stupendous grandeur, adorned by a chapel of exquisite workmanship, and furnished with public buildings, decorous, substantial, and well-suited, wants not the aid of monkish legend or flattering conjecture to render it attrac tive. But it has met, in Sir William Dugdale, with an historian, whose partiality, as we must believe, rather than a defect of judg ment, has induced him to lend the sanction of his name to strange tales and crude opinions, which the present age will certainly feel inclined to reject with a smile. We shall only occasionally advert to such particulars as appear fantastical and imaginary s and shall endeavour to trace, as fully as our limits will allow, the history of the town and castle, on solid ground.

We cannot discover any reasons for believing that Warwick was a Roman station. Camden is disposed to think that this place was the præsidium of the Romans. But his arguments are entirely of a conjectural character; and subsequent writers, who have made the connection of the Romans with this island their particular study, advance better reasons for placing the prosidium either at Patrington, in Yorkshire; at Broughton; or in Hebberstow Felds on the grand military way now called High Street, which runs from Humber to Lincoln. Since we find that the locality of the præsidium is so indeterminate in the opinious of the learned, we look for the aid of corroborative circumstances to render plausible a particular conjecture. Not any occur in regard to the town of Warwick. No tangible vestiges of the Romans have been here discovered.* Dugdale says that, at any

Inserted in the chimney-ornaments of an upper room at Warwick Castle, are many marbles, bearing Roman inscriptions. These are popularly said to have been dug up from a court attached to the castle. But, by the condescension

any rate, we cannot doubt but this was one of the forts and garrisons raised on the banks of the river Avon by P. Ostorius." Considering that the Romans had a large camp so near as Chesterton, about five miles distant on the opposite side of the river, we, however, think even this far from probable.

It appears likely that the place is of Saxon original; and, according to some early writers, it gained a distinguished accession of consequence from the patronage of Ethelfleda, the celebrated daughter of King Alfred, and Lady of the Mercians, who in the year 915, constructed here a fortified dwelling, suited to the ferocious temper of the age, and termed the Dungeon. This building is believed to have been erected on the artificial mount still remaining on the west side of the castle; and, under such a protection, the town speedily advanced in population and repute.

In the Norman Survey Warwick is deemed a borough, and is there stated to contain two hundred and sixty-one houses of which one hundred and thirty were possessed by the king; one hundred and twelve by certain of his barons; and nineteen were the property of so many burgesses, who enjoyed them with Soc and Sac, and all customs,* as in the days of Edward the Confessor. The Norman Conquest appears to have been a propitious era for the town of Warwick. Previous to this epoch, the titular Earls of Warwick were really no more than either fiduciary vicecomites, or substitutes to the Earls of Mercia, or immediate officers to the king; and did not in their own right possess the castle

condescension of the Earl of Warwick, we are enabled to state that it is not known in the family by what means they came into the possession of his lordship's late noble father. As they were introduced to the castle in the time of the late Earl, it is unlikely that a circumstance of such high interest as the digging up of many Roman vestigia should not have lived in the memory of some persons employed on the occasion. But the repeated investigations of many antiquaries, and other persons of literary curiosity, have failed in eliciting any resemblance of matter to render it likely that the popular assertion is creditable.

• That is with the entire jurisdiction.