Preface: ‘A phoenix in flames’

Summary

The arms of the town are said to be a Phoenix in Flames … alluding to the old town having been burnt by sparrows, and this rising out of its ashes, as the young Phoenix is fabled to proceed from the ashes of the old one.

Samuel Rudder, The History of the Town of Cirencester (Cirencester, 1800), 222

Once upon a time, long ago, one Gormund, an invading Dane, frustrated by the stubborn resistance of the Saxons of Cirencester, promised an earldom to any who could put an end to it. A ‘heathen knight’ stepped forward. He ordered his followers to net hundreds of sparrows and collect nut-shells from the neighbouring forest. He filled the nut-shells with burning tinder and tied them to the feet of the sparrows. ‘The sparrows took their flight, and flew to their holes over the burgh, where they ere were inhabiting … Anon, as the fire was hot, as the sparrows inner crept, the wind came with the night, and the fire kindled, and the burgh … [be]gan her to burn.’ The Saxons ‘leapt out of the walls and [Gormund's] men slew them all’. Another authority traced the story even further back, attributing the stratagem to the Anglo-Saxon king Ceawlin, ‘who lived in the sixth century’.