Page:History of the Fylde of Lancashire (IA historyoffyldeof00portiala).pdf/17

 through the agency of the Druids, immolate human victims as an atonement for slaughtered enemies, believing that unless man's life were given for man's life, the divine anger of the immortal Gods could not be appeased. There were other sacrifices of the same kind instituted at regularly appointed seasons and on special occasions. The Setantii also believed in an immortal soul, but seem to have had no idea of a higher state, as their priests inculcated the doctrine that after death the soul was transported to another body, "imagining that by this the men were more effectually roused to valour, the fear of death being taken away." Ornaments called "Druids' eggs," and worn only by these priests, have been found in the Fylde.

How Cæsar, in B.C. 54 and 55, invaded Britain a first and a second time, achieving at best an empty conquest, and how, after his death, the emperor Claudius sent over an army with a determination to exterminate the Druids, and after thirty pitched battles, subdued province after province, is beyond the limits of this work to state, but as a connecting link of the history of the country with that of our own county, and that portion of it especially under examination, it may be stated that Britain was finally conquered by the Romans under Julius Agricola, and that the best investigation of the subject leads to the opinion that the district which we call Lancashire, was brought into subjection to the Roman conqueror in A.D. 79. A vigorous resistance was for long offered to the army of invaders in the territory of the Setantii by the natives under the Brigantine chief Venutius, but the well drilled legions of the Romans, when commanded by Agricola, proved too formidable to be checked or broken by the wild, undisciplined valour of the Setantii. Tacitus, the son-in-law of the general, informs us that early in the summer of A.D. 79, Agricola personally inspected his soldiers, and marked out many of the stations, one of which, either made at that time or later by the same people, was situated at Kirkham, on the line of the Roman road running from the mouth of Wyre, which will be described hereafter. He explored the estuaries and woods along the western coast of Lancashire, and harassed the enemy by sudden and frequent incursions. When the Brigantes and