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ON THE REMAINS FOUND IN AN ANGLO- SAXON TUMULUS AT TAPLOW, BUCKS. BY DR. JOSEPH STEVENS. (Read Jan. 16, 1884.) The fine tumulus which has recently been explored, and which, since its exploration, has been restored to its former dimensions, has from time immemorial occupied a conspicuous site in the old churchyard at Taplow, and has often, probably, excited in the curious a desire to know under Avhat circumstances it was brought there, and what were the nature of its contents. Its lofty out- look embraces a view of Her Majesty's Castle at Windsor, and a lengthened sheet of the grandly wooded Thames valley extends away on the east and west below ; while its contiguity to the Thames as the great water-passage along which Romans, Saxons, and Danes, pushed their way westward during their military operations, rendered it likely, in the event it turned out to be a burial-place, to furnish remains of more than ordinary interest. At the time of the exploration the crest of the tumu- lus was occupied by a dismantled yew-tree, which from its stature (its circumference being not less than 21 feet) had stood the wear and tear of several centuries, it having probably been planted there at the consecration of the old church. The old church itself was removed about the year 1855, when the churchyard was closed for burial purposes, save in the case of some families, such as the Orkneys, who formerly lived at Taplow Court, close by, and whose mausoleum occupies a site in the enclosure ; and it should be noticed here that, according to a statement made to me by Mr. Walter Money, F.S.A., the graveyard contains the bones of the mother of John Milton. The dimensions of the tumulus were, 15 feet in height at the centre, its circumference being 240 feet; and it was somewhat bell-shaped, apparently owing to

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REMAINS FOUND IN AN ANGLO-SAXON TUMULUS AT TAPLOW, BUCKS 63 the flattening of its base, particularly on the east side, from the introduction of recent burials. Portions of an earthwork, consisting of a vallum and ditch, are traceable on the brow of the hill over the Thames valley ; and well wrought flint implements and flakes are found in the soil of the churchyard, suggesting that the place was one of very early occupation ; if, indeed, it was not a British Oppidum. There are also evidences in their ruder as well as in their finer fictile ware, that the Romano-Britons later became occupants of the hill ; and signs of parcelling out, in the shape of parallel strips of land divided by " balks", traceable in the pasture-fields on the east slope of the hill, point to what appear to have been small allotments of Saxon settlers. The definition of the word Taplow appears to be simply and sufficiently met by the Anglo-Saxon hlcew, a mound, and tap or top) (the a being the equivalent of the o), the mound on the crest of the hill. To the energy and perseverance of Mr. Rutland, the Honorary Secretary of the Berks Archaeological and Architectural Society, we are indebted for the exploration of the mound ; an exploration which was attended with considerable difficulty on account of the necessity of conducting much of the work in a gallery underneath the yew-tree. With the permission of the Rector (the Rev. Charles Whately), and with the knowledge and approbation of W. H. Grenfel, Esq., the lord of the manor, the work was commenced on Monday, October 15th, Major Cooper King of the Royal Military College, Sandhurst; Walter Money, Esq., F.S.A. ; and myself, being present by invitation. A horizontal shaft, 6 feet in width, was opened on the south side, a few feet above the level of the graveyard, in order to avoid a grave, and carried north to the centre of the mound, when a downward shaft was made till the level of the churchyard was reached, without meeting with any indications of an early interment. On October 16th a downward cutting was carried on the north side, in order to make a connection with the south cutting ; and on October 17th a similar shaft was opened down- wards from the west crest of the mound. The materials of the three shafts consisted chiefly of loose gravel, such

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as is found forming the subsoil of the churchyard, with occasional patches of dark mould; the east side differing in being made up of diagonal layers of gravel and mould disposed in a rude and irregular fashion. Intermingled with the gravel and earth from all the shafts were flint scrapers, cores (Plate 1, fig. 13), and flakes of various kincls in great abundance, together with wrought bones, one piece resembling an awl (Plate 1, fig. 14), and bones of animals which had been used for food. And associated with the flint implements were crocks of Romano-British vessels of various types, but chiefly of the ruder kinds, and such as implied that Roman art, at the time of their manufacture, had made but small impression on the British people. These relics were found in larger measure at the top of the mound, but were at no time absent : indeed, I myself removed a scrap of figured Samian from the base of the tumulus, quite disposing of any idea that might have been entertained regarding any interment of the Celtic period. It was evident that a mound which contained so many vestiges of the later Romans could not have been erected by the earlier Celts. With the knowledge that the grave was Anglo-Saxon, it became clear that the materials which had been used to construct the mound had contained remains of earlier peoples of which the Saxons were not cognisant, and that the upper stratifications of the mound, in which the relics were more abundant, being thrown up last, had come from lower levels than the materials which formed its base. The work was discontinued for a few days on account of a slight accident to Mr. Rutland from the falling in of some earth from underneath the yew-tree ; but on the introduction of horizontal slabs and side-posts, the digging was carried down to the depth of 20 feet. This includes the removal of a mass of dark mould, 5 feet in depth, which occupied the grave proper, which was found to be altogether below the base of the tumulus. The turning up, at this level, of scraps of gold fringe by Mr. Rutland was followed by the discovery of a male Anglo-Saxon interment. Opportunity was sufficiently afforded to take an accurate survey of the contents of the grave, and to remove those articles which were in situ,

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REMAINS FOUND IN AN ANGLO-SAXON TUMULUS AT TAPLOW, BUCKS. when the yew-tree sank into the excavation, carrying the bolsters with it, which necessitated the delay of some days before the grave could be completely cleared of its contents. The time occupied in the completion of the work was about three weeks. The whole of the remains were removed to Mr. Rutland's house, where they were courteously exhibited during the time they were in his possession. The relics were subsequently offered to the Trustees of the British Museum by the Rev. Charles Whately, as the custodian of the churchyard, and being accepted, were removed under the direction of Mr. Franks, F.S.A., and have found therein a satisfactory resting place. Before furnishing some particulars regarding the arrangement of the objects in the grave, it has occurred to me that a tabulation of the various articles, with some references to such as, from their dilapidated condition, were not easy of recognition, might be the means of avoiding some confusion ; they may, therefore, be stated as consisting of the following: 1. An iron sword, 30 inches in length, 2|ins. in width ; wooden sheath barely traceable in the grave. (Plate 1, fig. 1.) 2. Two iron bosses (umbones) of shields, 5 ins. in width, 3^ ins. in height. (Plate 2, fig. 1.) 3. An iron link, an iron ring, large iron boss-nails, and some finer wrought studs which might have belonged to the shields. 4. An iron spear-head of Angon type, 26 ins. in length. (Plate 1, fig. 2.) 5. Two smaller spear-heads. 6. Iron; thought to be a knife (seax). 7. A large cauldron (tub), of 2 ft. diameter, crushed; had been lined with plain bronze. 8. Two buckets of staves of wood with figured bronze bands. Sketch of fragment of one (Plate 1, fig. 3). 9. A twelve-sided, footed, bronze bowl with two handles; the foot loaded with lead ; crushed. Conjectured restoration (Plate 1, fig. 4), 12 ins. in height, 16 ins. in diameter at the rim. 10. Four drinking glasses of remarkable character, crushed, sage-green in colour, decorated with raised lines

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and side-ornaments. (See No. 3, restored glass, and Plate 2, fig. 3.) 11. Two large drinking horns, crushed, with metal mounts; supposed to be gilded silver. (Plate 1, fig. 5, diagram of restored horn; about 18 ins. in length; lip, 4^ ins. in diameter.) 12. Remains of four smaller horns or cups (Plate 2, fig. 2), and broken mounts, thought to be of silver (Plate 1, figs. 6, 7, 8). . • 13. Shreds of gold, supposed to have formed a fringe or tissue. In the grave it extended for about 2 yards. Differed in character and width, some portions being l£ in. in width ; another portion, five-eighths of an inch. The narrower appeared to be patterned, and there was what looked like a slip of braid. (Plate 1, fig. 9.) 14. A gold buckle, 4 ins. in length, 4 ozs. in weight, containing garnets, and what appeared to be coloured glass and pastes. This buckle probably fastened the gold tissue at the throat. (P. No. 1.) 15. Two pairs of metal clasps, thought to be of gold, and supposed to have been clasps to the girdle. (P. No. 2.) 16. Acrescentic metal ornament about 6 ins. in length. (Plate 1, fig. 10.) 17. A number of bone draughtsmen with ends secured with metal pins. Height, about 1 in. (Plate 1, figs. 11, 12. Natural size and section.) It is not easy to determine the position of articles buried with the dead, or of the relative position of all the parts of the body after lengthened interment, considerable displacement usually accruing from the unequal falling in of the earth to fill the intervals where shrinkage has occurred from decay. In the case before us many of the articles had evidently been forced away from their original resting-places. The grave had been made of the dimensions of 12 ft. by 8 ft., its long axis lying east and west, and it had been floored with fine gravel. The direction of the body in the grave could only be determined by the bones ; and it is not uncommon to find all traces of the bones gone in Saxon graves. In the Taplow tumulus the porous nature of the gravel, increased by the loosening of the soil by the roots of the large yew-tree,

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REMAINS FOUND IN AN ANGLO-SAXON TUMULUS AT TAPLOW, BUCKS. had disposed of all traces of the teeth and denser portions of the skull, usually among the last to decay. The only discovered evidences rested in a thigh-bone, of which about 10 inches were plainly traceable, lying on the left of the large tub, which at that time was believed to be a shield ; and a good many fragments of vertebral bones, of which two bore the articulating processes by which they had been united to corresponding vertebrae. As these lay at about 3 ft. east of the femur, it is clear that the body had been placed east and west. The only persons who made an accurate survey of the contents of the grave at the crucial moment when all the relics were intact, were Mr. Rutland, Major Cooper King, and myself, and there was a general concurrence in opinion. Taking, therefore, this as the line of the body, the contents of the grave lay in the following order. At about 3 ft. east of the femur, and -a little on the left of the line of the spinal column, was found the large buckle. Still on the left, and parallel with the middle line of the body, lay the belt-clasps. They were adherent to the under side of some rotten wood, which led to the opinion that a plank had been placed across the body. The large tub and one of the buckets were crushed together, and the tub had been thrust in on the thighs, for it could hardly have originally been placed in that position. In the tub were found the two large drinking horns and two glass vessels. The shields were nearer the head of the grave, on the right, and not on the body, which is their usual position. The spears were on the right ; but the larger weapon was found sticking in the gravel, at about 8 ins. above the level of the tub, showing that it had not sunk in the same ratio as the other things. On the left, but hardly in a line with the body, was discovered the sword, with traces of its wood scabbard ; and still on the same side, but nearer the head of the grave, a second bucket, a drinking glass, a small horn, and the twelve- sided bronze vase ; and at the extreme west, the foot of the grave, were found the draughtsmen, a fourth glass vessel, a small drinking horn, and the semi-lunar ornament. I had almost omitted the gold fringe, which was one of the most striking objects of the interment. It ex-

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tended in a wavy manner from the direction of the large buckle, and looked as if it had been left after the decay of some garment to which it had formed a trimming. Shreds of some article of dress were also present, which, on examination in a microscope, were found to be woollen. Opinions have been stated, from the multiplicity of objects, and especially from the presence of two shields, that the grave might have contained more than one interment. But it should be considered that here every- thing was on a grand scale. All the concomitants were unusually multiplied. It was doubtless the burial place of a great man. And as to a shield or a spear more or less, it is not beyond one's apprehension that some com- rade-at-arms might, in those heroic times, have cast his spear or shield into the grave at the moment of parting from his military companion. It is impossible to assign any exact period to the interment, but it may be approximately arrived at. Views have been entertained that the interment is Viking, and doubtless some reasons could be assigned for such opinions, looking at the contiguity of the tumulus to the Thames river, and the Scandinavian character of some of the relics. Mr. Warsaae writes that the Vikings had not extended their excursions beyond the coast of Scandinavia till a period later than a.d. 700. But after the date a.d. 787, the time at which, according to the Anglo- Saxon Chronicle, 1 the Danes first set foot in England, hordes of Norse rovers penetrated up the Thames. The Saxons had, however, occupied the districts along the Thames for one hundred and fifty years anterior to the advent of the Danes. The Taplow remains contain a strongly marked Gothic element ; but the same may be said of many of the objects taken from Anglo-Saxon interments, as from the graves of Kent and South Hampshire. And there is nothing remarkable in this, when it is considered that the Jutes took possession of these parts in the fifth century ; and they were Goths from Jutland, which country was still, in the ninth century, called by the Anglo-Saxons Gotland. 2 It may equally be affirmed 1 Ecclesiastical History, Bede, p. 341. 2 Primaeval Antiquities, Warsaae, p. 1-14.

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REMAINS FOUND IN AN ANGLO-SAXON TUMULUS AT TAPLOW, BUCKS. that Roman characteristics are observable, as in the case of the twelve-sided bronze vase. There is certainly nothing nautical about them ; and the articles, in their general agreement with objects of a similar type, which have been exhumed from burial places in the east, west, and the south of England, leave little to warrant that they are other than Anglo-Saxon. The large gold buckle, in so far as I have been able to find, is unique ; but the girdle clasps are of the same type to a buckle taken from a tumulus at Chatham ;* and a similar buckle of gilt bronze was found in a tumulus on Breach Down, by Lord Albert Coningham. 2 A glass vessel of similar shape to those exhumed at Taplow, but with different side ornamentation, was taken from a barrow at Chessell, Isle of Wight. 3 Similar forms may be seen in the British Museum ; and Mr. Charles Wright furnishes a representation of a drinking glass with side-knobs, found at Reculver, Kent. 4 Buckets are more usually found in the graves of women, or in male graves where both husband and wife are buried together. The Marlborough bucket, 5 taken from a tumulus near that town by Sir R. C. Hoare, and now in the Devizes Museum, is remarkable in bearing on its hoops designs of horses, typical probably in the same way as the horse-shoe symbols on the Taplow bucket, of Pagan worship of the White Horse among the Teutonic peoples, as observed on by Grimm. 6 It is probable also that the solar symbols on the rims of the drinking horns have a Pagan signification. The Taplow draughtsmen have their representatives in a set of twenty-five taken by Mr. Bateman from a barrow at Cold Eaton, Derbyshire ; and a set may be seen at South Kensington, obtained from Kent, and manufactured apparently from ox molars. The Derbyshire specimens are oval, with dice-like dots imprinted on their facets. The drinking horns are quite Norse; but ox horns, either flexed or as cups, were universal in the homes of both the North and South Teutons ; whence rose the saying that "the heroes in Walhalla should drink mead from horns". 1 Nasnia Brit. Vig., p. 53. 2 Akenrtau's Index, p. 189. 3 Journ. of Brit. Arch. Assoc, vol. ii, p. 52. 4 The Celt, the Roman, and the Saxon, p. 424. 5 Ancient Wilts (Sir U, C. Hoare), vol. ii, Plate VI. 6 Deutsche Mythohgie, p. 626, eel. L844.

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Horns of gold have been found in Scandinavia; 1 indeed, borns have been utilised for all soils of purposes from Saxon down to mediaeval times. They were drunk out of as cups, and Mown into as instruments of alarm by the Saxons. Later, they became horns of tenure, or to contain gunpowder, or snuff, or they were drunk out of as flasks. The present brass bugle received its name from an ox or wild bull. Bugle is still a provincial name in North Hampshire and the Isle of Wight, and it is not uncommon in the Island to meet with " The Bugle" as an inn sign. 2 It is an old English word, and is used by Sir John Mandeville : — "homes of grete oxen, or of bugles, or of kygn." From the horns of this animal bugle horns were manufactured. In France the word bugle is still preserved in the verb beugler, the common French w T ord for the lowing of cattle. It is believed that the highly finished articles in gold and jewels in use among the Saxons were manufactured at Byzantium (Constantinople). But Mr. Akerman, in commenting on this question, expresses the opinion that unless we can be assured "that the goldsmiths of the capital of the Eastern Empire wrought these fibulas for export to other countries, we must seek some other city as the place of their manufacture", and he considers, " in all probability that place was Paris". 3 In making these remarks Mr. Akerman lays stress on the manufacture as applying to buckles studded with pastes and precious stones, ornaments evidently of the same class as the Taplow buckle. In further reference to France as the place where they w r ere wrought, he says that " in Mero- vingian places of sepulture which have been explored in Fiance, though some of the relics found there differ from those found in Anglo-Saxon graves, some of the buckles are identically the same". 4 A great reason for believing that the Saxons did not make their own costly and better finished articles is that all their gold work in coins, excepting some exceptions which are known to have been executed abroad, is so extremely rude as to render 1 Primaeval Antiquities of Denmark, Worsaae, p. 63. 2 History of Sign- Boards (F. G. Hotten), p L88. 3 Akerraan's Archaeological Index, p. 126. Ibid., p. L27

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REMAINS FOUND IN AN ANGLO-SAXON TUMULUS AT TAPLOW, BUCKS it impossible that such fine work could have been exe- cuted by native artists. Quoting again from Mr. Akerman, he says that " Asser, in his life of the Great Alfred, informs us that the king brought over cunning artificers in goldsmiths' work. The artificers of this description were in such repute among the Franks that, by their law, the wer-gyld for a slave, who was a good worker in gold, was higher than that of a free person of humble rank. We find nothing of the kind in the Anglo-Saxon laws ; and the natural inference is that the more costly articles of personal ornament were generally imported." 1 With regard to the chieftain — for it seems impossible that he could have been other than a great chief — whose funeral inventory has just been reviewed, it appears unlikely that he could have lived at a time when Christianity had made much way in Saxon England. The great size of the tumulus, the quantity of the relics, which is collectively greater than any series of the Saxon period hitherto found in this country, and the profuseness of the ornamentation, all point to a Pagan interment of early date. When we consider, however, the reverence, or rather perhaps the fondness, felt by people of all countries for ancient usages, and that Christianity made very unequal progress in England, we need not feel surprise at finding that the interment appertained to any Pagan period. I have not been able to find any notice of the tumulus in the Anglo-Saxon Charters, as a boundary mark or other, a purpose to which such conspicuous objects were frequently applied. Mr. Akerman dates these tumuli from the period of the arrival of the Saxons in Britain to the middle of the eighth century, when Christian sepulture was introduced. This comprehends a very wide margin. There is no doubt that the tumulus contained an Anglo-Saxon ; and as Buckinghamshire, in which Taplow is situated, formed part of Mercia at the time of the Octarchy, it is not beyond the bounds of probability that he was a Mercian Angle of distinction. In a short paper in a local journal, Mr. Walter Money, F.S.A., expresses his accordance as to the interment 1 Akerman's Index, p. 128.

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being Anglo-Saxon; and states that "he thinks it is very probable that the tumulus represents the burial place of some Saxon chieftain or leader slain in one of the many conflicts with the Danish men along the valley of the Thames, which are fully narrated in the Saxon Chronicle by Gaimar, and our other early historians". He then goes on to say that he desires to point out " as correlative to the subject, that at Chippenham, not far from Taplow, stood a royal residence of the Kings of Mercia, which was in later times occasionally occupied by the Kings of England of the Norman line, as is shown by the foundation charter of Burnham Abbey being dated at this place". There is no doubt that the im- portance of the remains, as essential to early Saxon history, will be the means of maintaining a living in- terest, which may in the future result in bringing to light more conclusive evidence regarding the occupant of the tumulus. The thanks of all who are interested in the preserva- tion of early relics are due to Mr. Rutland for the efforts made by him to secure such a valuable antiquarian acquisition; and to Major Cooper King, also, thanks should be accorded for his able assistance during the entire period of the excavations, and for the light which he has thrown on the discovered remains.