Page:VCH Derbyshire 1.djvu/322

 A HISTORY OF DERBYSHIRE It is an attractive theory. But on the evidence before us it must be pronounced wrong. In the first place it contradicts all the indications of date that can be deduced from the objects found in the caves. For those indications point to the second and third centuries, and in some degree perhaps to the first century. Hardly a trace occurs of any- thing later. Two or three isolated coins in the west country belong to the end of the fourth century. One Yorkshire cave has yielded coins of the early fourth century. The vast majority of the coins are earlier. So, too, though we cannot date them precisely, the fibulas. No type meets us which can be called characteristic of the late third or the fourth century. Yet fourth and fifth century objects ought unquestionably to occur among the relics of fifth or sixth century life, and second and third century objects ought to be comparatively uncommon. Secondly, the remains imply for the more important caves a tolerably long occupation. The number of fibulae and other small objects, and the accumulations of bones and charcoal and cooking refuse, agree in requiring us to assume a period extending over many years. Whatever extension be given to the life of the fugitives, it can hardly have lasted long enough to satisfy the conditions before us. And, further, the history of the English conquest, so far as we know it, seems to fit in badly with the theory before us, at least in respect to Derbyshire and Yorkshire. It is very unlikely that the invaders had driven the natives into the Derby- shire hills, and not only into the hills but into the caves, so early as the fifth or sixth century. Chester, in the western plain, was not taken till 617. Elmet, which covered the lowlands on the east, was subdued about the same time. 1 Before that time no Briton is likely to have fled for shelter to the Yorkshire or Derbyshire caves. It seems, therefore, that we must reject the theory of refugees. Instead, we may suppose that to some extent and in some hill districts of Derbyshire and Yorkshire, cave-life formed a feature of Romano-British civilization. Caves may not be comfortable residences, but they have often been inhabited even in civilized ages. Plot, the historian of Staffordshire, observes that in his day about 1680 Thurse House cave at Alveton was definitely occupied, and many parallels could be cited from even later ages. Much the same may have happened in Romano- British times. Some caves may have given chance shelter to stray shepherds or miners or homeless families. Others may have had per- manent residents. Here, we may think, dwelt some of the poorest and wildest among the hillmen of the Pennine Range, living (it may be) largely on robbery, doubtless suspected by their neighbours, but seldom caught. Such households exist even in our crowded modern life, though they do not occupy natural caves. We need not wonder at their pro- totypes in the past. 1 Nennius, Appendix (ed. Mommsen), p. 206; Bede, Hist. EccL iv. 25 ; Lappenberg, i. 154.. Elmet did not apparently include the Derbyshire hills, at least Pecsetna and Elmedsetna occur as distinct in later documents (Kemble, Saxons in England, p. 81). 242