Page:History of Manchester (1771), Volume 1, by John Whitaker.djvu/407

 372 THE HISTORY Book I. a regular alphabet away with them to the places of their vari- ous difperfions. This raoft of them afterwards forgot. They muft firft have negledted and loft the code of divine laws and divine promifes, as wiftiing not to be controuled by the difci- pline of the one, and having no longer therefore any fatisfadtion in the hope of the other. And they muft afterwards have gra- dually forgot the letters which had been taught to their fathers entirely for tliofe ends, and the knowledge of which had been preferved among them entirely by thofe writings. The Gauls in particular had afluredly loft the ufe of their original alphabet, and in the days of Caefar had adopted the Graecian from the neighbouring Greeks of Marfeilles 2. The Britons alfo had for- got the knowledge of their original characters, and in the days of Tiberius had borrowed the Roman alphabet from the neigh- bouring Romans of Gaul. That the Britons were for ages be- fore the invafion of Claudius not poflefled of any Britilh alpha- bet at all, we need no other argument to fhow, than that even hi the days of Cunobeline and before the firft fettlement of the Romans among them the Britifli coins exhibit conftantly a fo- reign alphabet and prefent us perpetually with Italian charac- ters. In the flourifhing ftate of the Britifti commerce during the reigns of Auguftus and Tiberius, and in the frequent inter- courfe of the Britons with the Romans and Romanized natives of Gaul, the former adopted the letters which they found uni- verfal among the latter, and firft introduced the Roman alpha- bet amongft us. This was the firft perhaps that had ever been brought into the ifland* This was afluredly the firft that had ever been introduced into Lancafhire* And this ufeful inven- tion which embodied thought and perfonified matter was in- ftantly carried over the ifland, and appears from the coins of Durinum Eburo and Eifu to have reached into the region of the Durotriges in the weft, and into the dominions of the Brigantes in the north, before the vi&ories of Vefpafian in the one and the conquefts of Agricola in the other. We find even the moft northerly ftates of Caledonia a little afterwards pofleft of aa alphabet, and the celebrated Offian in the third century making uife l