Page:History of Manchester (1771), Volume 1, by John Whitaker.djvu/21

 4 THE HISTORY Book I. together, as Londinium Augufta ; there the origin of the fort is evinced to be absolutely Celtic. And to this rule there are only two poflible exceptions, the one pofitive, and the other nega- tive ; the one refpetting the Britifh names of fuch ftations as are within five or fix miles of each other, of which the fortrefles that range along the line of Sevcrus's wall are particular in- ftances ; and the other refpe&ing the Gallic and Britifh names of fuch ftations as are wholly denominated from the rivers upon which they ftand, as Iliberis and Rhufeinum in Gaul, or as Ifca Silurum and Ifca Damnoniorum, Alauna and Ad Alaunam, Tuaefis and Ad Tuaefim, Tamefis and Ad Sturium, in Britain* In the m former feries of names, many of the forts cannot have been originally the fortrefles of the primaeval Britons; and their names are therefore to be referred to another caufe, as will be more fully explained hereafter In the latter, none can fairly. be reckoned for the fites of fuch fortrefles, except there be fbme greater evidence of the fa& than the mere report of the Britifh name. And, under thefe two reftri&ions, this is a criterion as fimple as it is decifive, which has been never attended to by the antiquarian critick, but which rauft neceffarily prove of confi- derable afliftance to him, and is generally the only afliftance that he can have, in his enquiries into the firft and original com- mencement of our towns. In the prefent Caftle-field then, the fite of the Roman Caftrum, but before the conftru&ion of the Caftrum upon it, was the BHtifh town of Mancunium, all built upon the rocky height that forms the northern bank of the Medlock, and diftinguifhed among the Britons of this region by the general appellatioii of man-cenion .or The Place of Tents 7. The Angular nature of our towns in Lancashire before the enterance of the Romans into it was the neceflary refult of that life of hunting and grazing, which is the natural employ of map in the infancy of fociety, and which in all the northern re- gions of the ifland, where the arts of agriculture were totally unpra&ifed, was peculiarly the employ of the natives'. The towns of the Britons were not their places of perpetual and general