supposed by some that this encounter took place in the neighbourhood of Epping Forest, but by modern authorities it is thought that a site nearer Colchester is more probable.

The Roman supremacy in the island was thus re-established at a single stroke; but at what a terrible sacrifice of human lives! In this one fight some 80,000 Britons perished. Adding to this number the 90,000 Romans and allies who had been massacred by the natives, we have an amount of bloodshed produced by this outbreak which has surely never been equalled in the history of this country.

Soon after peace was restored, Camulodunum was re-occupied by the Romans, but this time, mindful of the lesson they had been taught, they fortified the place. Though it became a prosperous town, it ceased from thenceforth to be the military capital of the province, and disappears from history until the beginning of the tenth century. But the Romans left behind them something more tangible than history. walls with which they surrounded the town remain to the present day, almost intact, and the Roman relics discovered in the locality form a collection unrivalled in England.

The

Geoffrey of Monmouth, that ingenious fabricator of history, asserts that Colchester was the birthplace of the empress-saint Helena; her father, Coel, the "Old King Cole" of the popular song --was king of Colchester, and surrendered to the Roman power, represented by Constantius; on the death of her father without male issue, Helena was married by Constantius, and the two reigned at Colchester, where Constantine the Great, their son, was born. Such, in brief, is the story, which, though entirely legendary, was implicitly believed by the good folk of Colchester in the middle. ages. Helena became the patron saint of the town, and a chapel was dedicated to her. The arms of the borough, a cross and three crowns, commemorate her" Invention of the Cross," evidently not the only invention connected with her name. York, Trèves, and Bithynia, each claim to be the birthplace of Helena, but it is now known that she was a native of Naissus in Moesia, where Constantine was born long before his father came to Britain.

Discarding, therefore, this legend, we have, after Boadicea's revolt in A.D. 62, a break of about

*The famous " Holy Coat of Trèves " is said to have been discovered by Helena at Jerusalem, and presented by her to the town.

850 years in the history of Colchester. That the Saxon invasion and occupation of Essex took place soon after the Roman evacuation in 410 seems certain, but there is no record of the events. The name which the Saxons gave to the town shows that when they came the Roman Colonia had not been forgotten. Colonia they abbreviated into Colne,* and added to it ceaster, the term by which they described the Roman fortified towns. It was their ignorance of this derivation which led Geoffrey of Monmouth, Robert of Gloucester, and other writers of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries to connect the first syllable of "Colneceaster" with the name of the legendary Coel.

It is not until the year 921, when the Danes had taken the place of the early Saxon settlers, that we have any definite information about Colchester. It had then been for some time occupied as one of their chief fortresses by the Danes, who, unlike the Saxons, appreciated walled towns. But the same year saw them driven out by the people of Kent, Surrey, and Essex, who took Colchester, though not without

* Cologne (German Köln), whose Roman name was Colonia Agrippina, obtained its present appellation by exactly the same

process.

G

severely damaging its fortifications. The capture of this stronghold seems to have been the deathblow to the Danish power. Before long King Eadward with his army came to Colchester, repaired and rebuilt the town, and received the submission of the East Saxons. Ten years later, Æthalstan held a Witanagemót here.

In the time of William I., we find Colchester under the rule of one of the Conqueror's special favourites, Eudo of Rie, the Dapifer or Seneschal of Normandy. The king conferred upon him all the Crown properties and revenues of the town, to which William Rufus added an estate in Greensted, across the river. Besides this he held over sixty manors, of which twenty-five were in Essex. Eudo was greatly beloved and respected by the townspeople for his justice and generosity. Colchester Castle, whose ruined keep still stands, a monument of his greatness, was built by him about the year 1076; twenty years later he founded the Benedictine monastery of St. John, outside the walls on the south of the town. He also built a hospital for lepers. On his death in 1120 at his castle of Préaux in Normandy, his body was brought over to Colchester, and buried in St. John's Abbey.

Soon after the foundation of the abbey, St. Botolph's Priory was built near it by one Ernulf, for the Order of Canons Regular of St. Augustine. This was not only the first monastery of the Order in England, but it received authority from the Pope over all the other English houses of the same class. The presence of the Abbey and the Priory, besides Eudo's great establishment at the Castle, naturally gave an impetus to the prosperity of the town, which continued until the Reformation. The grants made to Eudo appear to have been only for his lifetime, for when he died his possessions in Colchester, including the Castle, were appropriated by the king. But though it had lost its great benefactor, Colchester continued to thrive. St. John's Abbey became one of the most powerful in East Anglia. It was free from all outside jurisdiction, and was granted many special privileges and immunities. Its abbot was one of the twenty-eight in England entitled to wear a mitre.

In 1189 Richard I. gave the borough its first charter, by which it gained many advantages. In the next reign it attained considerable import ance on account of its great Castle. William de