advantages of this privilege it no longer enjoys. It has also been recorded, that a castle existed at Hope in the time of Edward the First; and that John, Earl of Warren and Surry, was made governor in the twentieth of that reign.

"The moors of HOPE parish afford an extraordinary instance of the preservation of human bodies interred in them. One Barber, a grazier, and his maid servant, going to Ireland in the year 1674, were lost in the snow, and remained covered with it from January to May, when they were so offensive, that the coroner ordered them to be buried on the spot. About twenty-nine years afterwards, some countrymen, probably having observed the extraordinary property of this soil in preserving dead bodies, had the curiosity to open the ground, and found them no way altered; the color of the skin being fair and natural, and their flesh as soft as that of persons newly dead. They were exposed for a sight during the course of twenty years following, though they were much changed in that time by being so often uncovered, In 1716, Dr. Henry Bourn, M. B. of Chesterfield, saw the man perfect, his beard strong, and about a quarter of an inch long: the hair of his head short; his skin hard, and of a tanned leather color, pretty much the same as the liquor and earth they lay in: be had on a broad cloth, of which the doctor in vain tried to tear off a skirt. The woman was more decayed, having been taken out of the ground, and rudely handled; her flesh particularly decayed, her hair long and spongy, like that of a living person. Mr. Barber of Rotheram, the man's grandson, had both bodies buried in Hope Church, and, upon looking into the grave some time afterwards, it was found they were entirely consumed. Mr. Wermald, the minister of Hope, was present at their removal: he observed, that they lay about a yard deep, in moist soil, or moss, but no water stood in the place. He saw their stockings drawn off, and the man's legs, which had never been uncovered before, were quite fair: the flesh, when pressed by his finger, pittied a little; and the joints played freely, and without the least stiffness: the other parts were much decayed. What was left of

their cloaths, not cut off for curiosity, was firm and good; and the woman had on a piece of new serge, which seemed never the worse."

BROUGH, a small hamlet in Hope parish, was unquestionably a Roman station, though no mention appears to have been made of it in ancient writings. The camp was at the place, called the Castle, near the junction of two small streams, named the Nooe, and the Bradwell Water. The inclosed area was of a square form, measuring 310 feet from south to north, and 270 from east to west. Mr. Bray observes, that many foundations of buildings, lying on every side of this spot, have been turned up by the plough; and that between the castle and the river bricks have been taken up; and on the other side the water, urns have been found. On some of the bricks Roman letters were impressed: and on the rim of an urn was this inscription, in three lines: VIT.. VIV.. TR. the two last letters being smaller than the others. Pieces of swords, spears, bridle-bits and coins, have also been found here: and a few years ago, a halfJength figure of a woman, with her arms folded across her breast cut in a rough grit-stone, was turned up by the plough; and afterwards sold to a gentleman near Bakewell.+

The Rev. Mr. Pegge, who visited this station in the year 1761, mentions a rude bust of Apollo, and of some other Deity, which had been found in the fields. He likewise remarked the vestiges of an oblong square building, where a coarse pavement, composed of pieces of tiles and cement, was discovered; and in searching among the rubbish, he met with the fragment of a tile, on which part of the word Cohors was impressed. At Brough-Mill a gold coin of Vespasian has been found in good preservation.‡

In the neighbourhood of Hope and Castleton, on the range of hills which terminate at Mam Tor, are two conspicuous points called

Gough's Additions to the Britannia, as detailed from the Philosophical

Transactions.

+Tour in Derbyshire, p. 211, 212.

Essay, &c, through the Country of the Coritani, p. 39, 40.

called Win-Hill and Loose-Hill, from the event of a battle which, according to tradition, was fought near them, between two armies who had previously encamped on these eminences. Under a large heap of stones, a little distance to the eastward of Winhill-Pike, about the year 1778 or 1779, an urn was discovered, made of clay, badly baked, and of very rude workmanship.

On a dreary moor, named Mill-Stone Edge, between Castleton and Hathersage, is a fortification called The Carle's Work, which Mr. Bray has thus described, with some other antiquities. To what age or people it may be referred is not known. "It may seem to have some resemblance of the huge and shapeless structure of stones mentioned by Tacitus to have been raised by Caractacus, when he headed the Silures against the Romans. On its first appearance, a stone wall, of eight or nine feet high, seeming to be pretty regularly made, is seen crossing a neck of land, lying higher than the adjoining part of the moor, and which is full of loose stones. On coming to it, the stones which compose the wall, are found to be very large, but regularly piled, and covered at the back with a sloping bank of earth. Keeping to the right hand, the ground is of an irregular shape, inclosed by a fence af stones rudely placed. Sometimes a great stone, in its natural position, forms the defence; in other places, smaller ones are piled between, or on large ones. In the side which looks towards Chatsworth, is an entrance, or gateway, opening inwards with two flanks."

HATHERSAGE is a small village, built on the sharp descent of a hill, and surrounded by mountainous tracts, whose barren summits, and dark declivities, agreeably contrast with the verdure of the smiling vale they envelope. A few of the inhabitants obtain sup port from the manufacture of metal buttons. The Church is tolerably handsome, with a spire. The earth here seems to possess some very peculiar properties, as will appear from the following extraor dinary relation, chiefly extracted from a letter written by a clerk of Hathersage, but corroborated by enquiries made among other persons who were acquainted with the fact.

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On opening a grave for the interment of a female, on the thirtyfirst of May, 1781, the body of a Mr. Benjamin Ashton, who was buried on the Twenty-ninth of December, 1725, was taken up,

congealed as hard as fint. His breast, belly, and face, were swarthy; but, when turned over, his back, and all the parts that lay under, were nearly the same color as when put into the coffin." The coffin was of oak boards, inch and half thick, and as sound as when first deposited in the grave, which was so extremely wet, that men were employed to lade out the water, that the coffin might be kept from floating, till the body was returned to it. The face was partly decayed; conveying the idea, that the putrefactive process had commenced previously to that which had hardened the flesh into stone. The head was broke of in removing the body from the coffin; but was replaced in its first position when again interred. Mr. Ashton was a very corpulent man, and died in the forty-second year of his age.

Above the church, at a place called Camp-Green, is a circular area, 144 feet in diameter, encompassed with a high and pretty large mound of earth, round which is a deep ditch. A road has been carried across the area from west to east; and an outlet and path has also been formed on the south side. In the church-yard are two stones, which, according to tradition, mark the spot where Little John, the famous companion of Robin Hood, was buried. The distance of these stones from each other is thirteen feet, four inches; and this, you are informed, was the height of this bold adventurer. A thigh bone measuring twenty-nine inches and a half, is asserted by Mr. Pilkington to have been met with in this grave at the depth of two yards.

In the eighth volume of the Archæologia, is an account, by Mr. Hayman Rooke, of some ancient remains on Hathersage Moor, particularly of a Rocking-stone, twenty-nine feet in circumference; and near it, a large stone, with a rock bason, and many tumuli, in which urns, beads, and rings, have been found. At a little distance he mentions observing another remarkable stone, thirteen feet, six inches in length, which appeared to have been placed by

art

art on the brow of a precipice, and supported by two small stones. On the top is a large rock bason, four feet three inches in diame ter; and close to this, on the south side, a hollow, cut like a chair, with a step to rest the feet upon. This, in the traditions of the country, is called Cair's Chair. Not far from this spot are also some Rocking-stones, "and of such a kind as seems plainly to indicate, that the first idea of forming Rocking-stones at all, was the appearance of certain stupendous masses, left by natural causes in such a singular situation, as to be even prepared, as it were, by the hand of Nature, to exhibit such a curious kind of equipoise."*

The small village of EYAM is mentioned in Dr. Mead's narra tive of the Great Plague of London, from the singular circumstance of that dreadful disease having been communicated to the inhabitants, through a box of materials that was sent to a taylor who resided here, The servant who opened the box, observed that the goods were damp; and being ordered to dry them at the fire, was seized with the plague, and died; as was likewise the fate of the whole family, excepting one person. Hence the distemper spread through the parish, and destroyed no fewer than two hundred and fifty-nine persons. The infection was prevented spreading by the prudent measures of the Rev. William Mompesson, by whose advice the sick were removed into huts and barracks built upon the Common, where provisions were furnished them by the interest of the then Earl of Devonshire; and care being taken that no person should leave the parish, the neighbourhood escaped the contagion. The bodies of the dead were interred on the Common, where the graves are yet visible.

In the lead mines at Eyam Edge, the percussions of the earthquake which destroyed Lisbon, on the First of November, 1755, were very distinctly felt; the soil fell from the joints, or fissures of the rocks, and violent explosions, as if of cannon, were heard by the

Munimenta Antiqua, Vol. I.