Page:Lives of British Physicians.djvu/92

 74 BRITISH PHYSICIANS. civil society," says Browne, " at least carry out their dead, and hath exequies, if not interments." The discovery which gave immediate occasion to his Treatise, he relates in the following words : "In a field of old Walsingham, not many months past, were digged up between forty and fifty urns, deposited in a dry and sandy soil not a yard deep, not far from one another ; not all strictly of one figure, but most answering those described ; some containing two pounds of bones, distinguish- able in sculls, ribs, jaws, thigh-bones, and teeth, with fresh impressions of their combustion ; besides the extraneous substances, like pieces of small boxes, combs handsomely wrought, handles of small brass instruments, brazen nippers, and in one, some kind of opale." — p. 6. Coals and cinders were dug up in the neighbourhood, from which he conjectures that this was the place (us- trina) for burning their bodies. The urns them- selves, he supposes to be Roman, and either con- taining the ashes of Romans themselves, or of Romanized natives, who had adopted and observed the customs of their conquerors. The spot was not far from a Roman station or garrison, five miles only from Brancaster, anciently called Brannodu- num. He thinks that Britain was formerly very po- pulous ; and though many Roman habitations are not known, yet that the Romans were at one time in great number in this country, would appear from the fact that 70,000, with their associates, were slain in the battle in which Queen Boadicea com- manded. That Britain was a conquest held in great esteem by the Romans, there can be no doubt ;