Tamerton, Tavistock, Tamerton Foliot, Saltash, and Kings Tamerton, to the Tamarworth assumed to have occupied in part at least the site of modern Plymouth. The question was how to decide between them.

Naturally the first suggestion was to seek Tamare on the line of some well-recognized means of communication, and here the hypothesis that the town of Totnes was connected with the Fosseway, appeared to indicate a continuation of that great road through South Devon to some point near the mouth of the Tamar. No doubt this was the reason that led our revered friend, the late Mr. R. J. King, to find Tamare in King's Tamerton, at the point where the Hamoaze draws in to its narrowest limits; and the conclusion was one that naturally, in the absence of close investigation, obtained general acceptance.

But enquiry produced no arguments in its favour. Kings Tamerton has no traces of antiquity. There is no evidence in the South Hams of the existence of any such road as the Fosseway must have been. The occurrence of the name Ridgeway, at Plympton, has been cited in support of the hypothesis of a Roman road; but "Ridge Roads" are even more common than " Hollow Ways," and it so happens that there is a Ridge Road on the crest of the hill immediately beyond Plympton, to the south of Ridgeway; so that there is here quite as good proof of the existence of two Roman roads in the district as of one. That the South Hams are traversed by many very ancient trackways is unquestionable, but there is none to which we could assign a Fosseway preeminence.

While considering this special point, it occurred to me as at least possible that some clue to the ancient roads of the county might be derived from Domesday. It seemed reasonable to suppose that manors would be taken, to some extent at least, in their line of access. Order of some kind it is certain there must have been, and some topographical arrangement is evident, if incomplete. Of course, in entering upon this enquiry, we are at once confronted with the fact that the primal order of classification is that of ownership. But this simply limits our range. The information which we seek may not appear in the case of holders of few manors; but if it is to be gained at all it will be found in the list of the possessions of the greater feudal lords, and here I think it is plainly discernible, so far as South Devon is concerned.

For example, in the Earl of Moreton's manors we have in

succession those of Mortberie, Tori, Harestane, Spredelestone, and Wederige, which lie either on, or immediately continguous to (and precisely in the order named), the present road from Dartmouth to Plymouth, but branching therefrom at Brixton, over Staddiscombe, in a direct line to Plymouth Sound.

So in those of Judhel of Totnes, there occur in succession, following the adjacent group of Sireford, Chichelesberie, and Ulueveton-Brisestone, Done, Stotescome, and Staddon, precisely on the same course.

Again we find Judhel-though the arrangement of his manors in the Kingsbridge promontory suggests a series of traverses, inevitable since no main road could pass through it-holding in order the manors of Cortescanole, Bradelie, and Huish, which lie in this very fashion, but with the intervention of some manors of other lords, on the existing cross road following the valley of the Avon.

There are several features in Judhel's list that seem to suggest also the starting from Totnes as a centre in various directions. One set of manors begins with Hamestone, another with Cornworthy, and another with Foletone. They afford, however, little information beyond the main fact that the order of succession wherever there is no return, here as elsewhere, is almost always, though not quite invariably, from the east.

We have a cross-road indicated in the succession of the king's manors-Diptford, Ferlie, and Alvington.

I do not desire to press these conclusions too far; but I think there are fair grounds for considering that Domesday does indicate the existence of a road through South Devon, from Dartmouth Haven to Plymouth Sound, with certain cross tracks chiefly based upon the river valleys, the main line passing through Morleigh, Modbury, and Brixton. There also seems to me some evidence, though not so clear as one could wish, of a road from Totnes through Harberton, Diptford, and Ugborough. There is, however, no clear proof to be derived from this source of the existence of such a main artery as that on which Ridgeway is commonly assumed to stand, nor is any succession of manors indicated in the vicinity of which it would form a part. Moreover, as I have said, the old Ridge Road lies to the south of Plympton Earle, and parallel to the more modern Ridgeway.

If we come nearer to the presumed Tamare, and take Plympton as a starting-point, we find two ancient road

systems going in a westerly, or north-westerly, direction. The one runs by Plym Bridge, and forms a fairly direct road to Buckland and Tavistock.

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The other system leads to the passage of the Tamar at Saltash. That this is a very old route is proved by the name of the manor on the opposite side of the PlymEfford Ebb-ford. The modern road is conducted by an artificial causeway, still called Long Bridge, from a structure erected in the seventeenth century. In the reign of Elizabeth this road lay over-marshes, since reclaimed, and even then was only passable at favourable states of the tide. Domesday here affords us some fairly definite information.

Efford, the manor immediately west of the Plym, is set down as the property of Robert Bastard, but then fortunately we have a whole group of the possessions of Judhel-Bocheland, Modlei, Leuricestone, Westone, Bureton, Manedone, Witelie, Colrige, Contone. Now these embrace the direct route from the passage of the Plym to the manor of Kings Tamerton, next the Tamar-the assumed Tamare-with a return to the starting-point at Efford. Kings Tamerton belonged to the Royal demesne. We have similar indications in the succession of the manors of Robert of Albemarle— Stoches, Wide, Witelie; in that of Alured the BritonBucheside, Tanbretone; of Robert the Bastard—Elforde, Stanehvs; of the Count of Moreton-Hanechelole, Lesiston.

Perhaps the finest example of an old pack-horse road in South Devon (worn deep into the rock by the traffic of many centuries) is that which passes round the flank of the hill to the north of Efford, in the direction of Egg Buckland; and it is a fact not without much significance and value, that on the highest point of the old and direct road-with which this was probably associated, perhaps a branch for Plymouthfrom Plympton to Saltash Passage, at Tor, a hoard of bronze celts, &c., was found. It is also noteworthy that the return route indicated in the Judhel order corresponds very closely with another ancient road leading between the same two points, by what is now the village of St. Budeaux. Nor do I think it possible to resist the conclusion that both these roads existed as trackways, over the unenclosed grounds, at the time the Great Survey was made. There must of course have been times when the fording of the Plym at Marsh Mills would be attended with great difficulty, and even danger. Then no doubt the higher ford by what is now Plym Bridge was taken. Another old road leads thence by

Egg Buckland and St. Budeaux to the Tamar; and the packhorse road already noted would be available as part of this system for connection with Plymouth. The whole district indeed is full of deep-set lanes, and traces of disused roads which show their high antiquity; but it is possibly not without its meaning that we have no such Domesday evidence of the Plym Bridge route as we have of the Marsh Mill; and here also there is no indication of what would be called a main thoroughfare.

I naturally turned from Domesday and the existing traces of ancient ways to see what light could be thrown upon the enquiry by the records of old visits to the West. As a rule, few things were so persistent until the introduction of the railroad system as accustomed routes of travel. Now William of Worcester has left materials enough to show that the main roads through Devon into Cornwall in the fifteenth century followed much the same lines that they did at the beginning of the nineteenth. He indicates a northern road by Stratton, Boscastle, Tintagel, Wadebridge, St. Columb, Redruth, Lelant, to St. Ives; another from Exeter by Crockernwell, Zeal, Sticklepath, Okehampton, Launceston, Bodmin, Michell, and Redruth, to St. Michael's Mount; a third by Tavistock, Liskeard, Lostwithiel, St. Austell, Grampound, Truro, and Helston, to Marazion. The lowest bridge on the Tamar and the lowest continuous route therefore was then Horse, or, as he calls it, Hautes, or Hawtys Bridge.

There is not much help to be derived from Leland. He went into Cornwall by the northern route, and returned through Plymouth, taking the road out of Cornwall by Liskeard, Menheniot, St. Germans, and Saltash. From Plymouth he went through Plympton, crossing the river Plym at the ancient "ebb-ford"-"I crossed over Plym Ryver at the Ebbe "-near the confluence of the Torry. He mentions Plym and Bickleigh bridges. His route to Exeter took him through Totnes; but he expressly states, "Estbrenton (Ashburton) is in the Highway betwixt Plymmouth and Excestre." Tavistock New Bridge at Gunnislake had been built between the visit of William of Worcester and Leland's coming into the West.

There are several references to the routes usually taken between Plymouth and Exeter in the latter part of the seventeenth century, to be found in the MS. memoirs of Dr. James Yonge, in the library of the Plymouth Institution; and they show clearly enough that, unless there was occasion

to visit Totnes itself, that town was left on one side. The customary road from Exeter to Plymouth was over Haldon to Chudleigh, and thence by Ashburton, Brent, Ivybridge, and Ridgeway. Occasionally a more southern road was taken, through Newton Bushel, Dartmouth, and Modbury. The Ashburton road must have been an open one; for on one occasion Yonge lost his way between Ashburton and Plymouth during the night, and wandered on the Moor. In 1697 there was a stage-coach to Exeter which went by Okehampton. The direct road from Plymouth to Barnstaple was by Horrabridge, Lane Head, Five Oaks, Hatherleigh, and Torrington.

There is nothing in all this to encourage the belief in a main road into Cornwall through the South Hams via Totnes; indeed, the plain inference is quite the other way. The next step therefore was to inquire whether there could possibly be any mistake in the association of Totnes with this ancient Now so far back as 1880* I expressed my opinion that in all the early references the word Totnes is used "as the name of a district, and not that of a town," and suggested that “what we may call the older Totnes is really the ancient name for the south-western promontory of England." And it is evident that in effect this was the case. Totnes occurs on coins of Æðelred, but is not otherwise mentioned as a town in any document earlier than Domesday; nor does the name appear elsewhere before the Conquest save in the so-called Chronicle of Nennius (perhaps originally written by Gildas, and to be ascribed to the sixth century). And here it is abundantly clear that the allusion is not to Totnes town; for the single passage in which the name occurs is that in which Britain is spoken of as extending "from the sea to the sea; that is from Totnes to Caithness -“a mari usque ad mare, id est a Totenes usque ad Catenes." What we are really concerned with here is the original statement, not the interpretations put thereon by long subsequent writers, when Totnes town had risen into fame. But we cannot pass over the earliest gloss upon the words of Nennius-that of Henry of Huntingdon, who wrote in the twelfth century, and who, speaking of the four chief highways of Britain, says the fourth or Fosseway" begins in Caithness and ends in Totnes; that is to say, from the beginning of Cornwall to the end of Scotland' (( incipit in Catenes et desinit in Totenes, scilicet a Trans. Devon. Assoc. "The Myth of Brutus the Trojan," vol. xii. pp. 560-571.