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Roman Silver in Northumberland

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 September 2012

Haverfield
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Extract

In the first half of the eighteenth century, five pieces of Roman silver plate were discovered in south Northumberland under circumstances which suggest that they belonged to some service or hoard. The proof that they are thus connected together, though very strong, is not absolutely conclusive, and the service or hoard which (if the proof be accepted) they comprised is of no great magnificence; it cannot be set beside the 66 pieces found in 1830 at Bernay near Berthouville, in Normandy, or the 70 pieces found just outside Hildesheim, near Hannover, in 1868, or the 108 pieces dug up at Boscoreale, near Pompeii, in 1895, or the vessels weighing some 2,700 ounces discovered at Trier about 1628, or even the 39 pieces found at Chaourse, near Troyes, in 1883.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Roman Studies , Volume 4 , November 1914 , pp. 1 - 12
Copyright
Copyright ©Haverfield 1914. Exclusive Licence to Publish: The Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies

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References

page 1 note 1 History of Northumberland (Newcastle, 1914), x, 516–520Google Scholar. My remarks form part of a longish account of the Roman remains of the Corbridge district (pp. 455–522), written from the historical, not the archaeological, point of view.

page 1 note 2 This is not the Roman bridge, to be mentioned presently, but a different bridge at a different spot lower down the Tyne, first erected in the Middle Ages, apparently in 1235, and since rebuilt (Hist. of Northumberland, x, 64, 229).

page 2 note 1 Hist, of Northumberland, x, 478.

page 3 note 1 See the quotation in Hist. of Northumberland, x, 517, and the note of Robert Cay printed in Hutchinson's, Northumberland, i, 148Google Scholar.

page 3 note 2 Hist. of Northumberland, x, 517. For the monk see Hodgson's, Northumberland, II, ii, 477Google Scholar.

page 3 note 3 For the circumstances of the actual finding I may refer to the Hist. of Northumberland, x, 517, where the story is told more fully than in any previous account.

page 5 note 1 MS. minutes of the London Soc. of Antiq. for 14th and 28th Oct. 1736 (pp. 231, 234); copy of the same, with additions by Cay, in Gough's papers in the Bodleian Library. See also Gough's Camden, iii, p. 509; Hodgson's, Northumberland, iii, p. 246Google Scholar; Lapidarium Sept. no. 653; Corp. Inscr. Latin, vii, 1350a; Hist. of Northumberland (1914), x, p. 519Google Scholar.

page 6 note 1 Newcastle Courant, 21st June, 1760 (brief notice); Wallis, John, Hist. of Northumberland (1769), ii, 152Google Scholar; Brand, John, Hist. of Newcastle (1789), i, 608zGoogle Scholar:, with fig. here reproduced; Hutchinson, , Hist. of Northumberland, i, 134, 146Google Scholar, and Cumberland, ii, 274; Gough's Camden, iii, 510; Lapid. Sept. no. 651; Corp. Inscr. Latin. vii, 1287.

page 6 note 2 For references see p. 12, note.

page 8 note 1 The action in detinue was for the thing or its value, the value to be assessed if the defendant lost, and refused to give up the object. In trover, the action was brought in the first instance for the value, or rather for damages; if the defendant lost, he might get the damages reduced to a nominal sum by surrendering the object. The two forms of action were almost identical in result, though each had some procedural advantages.

page 8 note 2 Prof. Geldart calls my attention to words used sixty years later, by Lord Chancellor Loughborough, in the case of Fells v. Read (1796), about a silver tobacco box : “The value I cannot measure. The Pusey horn, the patera of the Duke of Somerset, were things of that sort of value, that a jury might not give twopence beyond the weight. It was not to be cast to the estimation of people who have not those feelings.… It would be great injustice, if the individual cannot have his property without being liable to the estimate of people who have not his feelings upon it” (3 Vesey, 70).

page 8 note 3 The law-report of Talbot's decision (Peere Williams, iii, 390) describes the Lanx as “an old altar-piece, remarkable for a Greek inscription and dedication to Hercules.” Cookson might almost have replied that he held no such piece. The Duke's counsel, as reported, seems to have used much the same arguments as those in note 2.

page 8 note 4 Since the above was in type, a short account of Cookson has appeared in the new volume of Archaeologia Aeliana (xi, 1914, p. 75Google Scholar). He seems already in 1735 to have been a person of very good standing in Newcastle; the Newcastle Courant of 24th August, 1754, noticing his death, calls him not only “a tradesman of considerable note,” but a man of “strict integrity and honour, of a peaceable and inoffensive temper and conduct, of great sobriety and temperance, and of a very benevolent, generous disposition.”

page 8 note 5 The Duke of Northumberland has been kind enough to allow me to examine the Lanx and to have photographs taken.

page 9 note 1 According to C. W. King (in Lap. Sept.) the two figures are Pythia (seated) and Themis (with the sceptre); according to M. S. Reinach, the first foreign scholar to pronounce on the piece, they are Demeter (seated) and Persephone : Répertoire des reliefs (Paris, 1912), ii, 436Google Scholar. For other views see below.

page 9 note 2 The idea, quoted and accepted by Bruce, that the stag is so laid out as to add to the whole relief a phallic emblem, and so ward off the evil eye, seems both far-fetched and needless.

page 10 note 1 Bonner Jahrbücher, cxviii, 176–235Google Scholar.

page 11 note 1 Some of these explanations are due to Dr. Farnell, Rector of Exeter College, Oxford.

page 11 note 2 Since I wrote the text above, Miss Jane Harrison independently made to me the same suggestion. It was actually made in print some years ago, by Mr. Cadwallader Bates, in his History of Northumberland (1895, p. 27), though in slightly different form. But the explanation of the details on which he grounded it is altogether improbable. It will be remembered that Mrs. Strong in this Journal (i, 43) suggests that the Lanx showed some early design adapted in later times.

page 12 note 1 The literature of the Lanx is large; the following seem the most important items. The first notices appeared in the Newcastle Courant (cutting in the Bodleian library; Gough Maps, 25, fo. 73), and in the London Journal of 5th April, 1735; and the first illustration was by Vertue (publ. Shafto), repeated by Hutchinson, , Northumberland, vol. i, pp. 145–151Google Scholar, and others. Correspondence of Roger Gale and his friends soon after the find is printed by Hutchinson, vol. i, p. 173, and in Stukeley's Diaries, etc. (Surtees Soc. iii, p. 113)Google Scholar. For later accounts and attempts at interpretation see Wallis, Northumberland, 1769, vol ii, p. 121Google Scholar; Hutchinson (as above); Hodgson, iii, p. 245; Halliwell, Archaeologist, 1842, vol. i, p. 128Google Scholar; Way, Arch. Journ. 1860, vol. xvii, p. 261Google Scholar; Way, Arch. Ael. 1860, vol. v, p. 166Google Scholar; Lord Ravensworth, vol.vi, p.109; C. W. King, quoted in L.S. 652; Bruce, Alnwick Catalogue, no. 745; Jackson, C. J., History of English Plate, 1911, vol. i, p. 40, fig. 53Google Scholar; MrsStrong, , Journal of Roman Studies, 1912, vol. 1Google Scholar. For legal matters see especially Wm. Peere Williams, Chancery Reports, vol. iii, p. 391Google Scholar; and Fenwick, John, Treasure-Trove in Northumberland, Newcastle, 1851Google Scholar. For the inscription see especially L.S. 652; C.I.L. 1286; Eph. ix, p. 659. By the kindness of Mr. Scargill Bird, I have examined the Record Office papers relating to the suit (Chancery Pleadings, 1714–1758, no. 796; 1734, A 463 and 539; 1735, A 509). My Oxford colleague, the Vinerian Professor of English Law, Professor W. M. Geldart, has helped me over some legal hedges.