Page:History of Manchester (1771), Volume 1, by John Whitaker.djvu/339

 3 o8 ~ THE HISTORY Book I. and of an hypocauft in one part below plainly proved to have been the a&ual praetorium of the ftation*. But a much larger piece was difcoyered about fixty years ago atEbchefter in the cdunty of Durham, fome vairr fearchers after other fort of treafure dig- ging into the bank of the caftrum, and lighting upon a conff- deraWe quantity of a melted- metal* which at firft they naturally fuppofed to be filver, but which they afterward* found to be pewter * The metals that were mixed together in the com- petition of the Roman pewter at firft were either brafs and tin, or tin and lead ; as the proportion in which they were mixed was one third of brafs to the tin* and one half or one third of tin to the lead* 6. And this factious metal was fold at Rome foon after its firft appearance at the rate of four (hillings and ten pence a pound * 6 . But this was only the common rate of the tin at Rome; and even the lead was fold at two ihillings and feven pence a pound*-. And all the three mttals muft have been eonfiderably cheaper in Britain, afc Britain was the ftaple of the two principal conftituents of the Roman pewter, tin and lead, and as the expences of the long carriage from Britain to Rontje muft have greatly enhanced the. original price.. ; bus undique generum pollet venis locupletibus.— -* Diodorus pw 351. — * See Bulengerius c. xxix.111 torn*. 12. Grevius. — 4 Pliny- lib, viii. c* 48. The beds of ,the Ropian geotry at this period were generally filled with feathers, and the beds of the inns with the foft down of reeds* pro plum& ftrata cauponarum replet, Pliny lib. xvL c. 36* — s See book I. c. &. C 2.. and the notes for the kings of Wales ufing ft raw -beds in the tenth century and the kings of England in the thirteenth..— 6 Gpnefis c. xlix. and Bede lib. iii. c 27.—. 7 Diodorus p. 35 1*-— 8, Howel lib. ii. c 1. a. 6> r Diodorus p.. 351 — '° Ibid.—* 11 Dr. Richardfon's Letter in In- land vol. ix. and Saxon Chron.— ,a Our moors of Turbary are par- ticularly mentioned in a record of 1322, and are declared to l»e jwptejr Urgitatem et diyqrfitatejn entirely unmeafured. And the
 * Sotinus c; xxiu metallorum largam vatiamque copiam quit-