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By this or other conveyances Cockermouth may easily be visited, as well as Whitehaven, Maryport, etc. COCKERMOUTH is a neat market-town, and sends two members to Parliament. The ancient castle was a fortress of great strength, but since the Civil Wars it has lain in ruins. Traces of a Roman castrum, with other antique remains, are to be seen in the neighbourhood.
The most important of the coast towns were furnished with Roman colonies: Pyrgi the seaport of Caere, the colonization of which probably falls within this period; along the west coast, Antium in 415, Tarracina in 425, the island of Pontia in 441, so that, as Ardea and Circeii had previously received colonists, all the Latin seaports of consequence in the territory of the Rutuli and Volsci had now become Latin or burgess colonies; further, in the territory of the Aurunci, Minturnae and Sinuessa in 459; in that of the Lucanians, Paestum and Cosa in 481; and, on the coast of the Adriatic, Sena Gallica and Castrum Novum about 471, and Ariminum in 486; to which falls to be added the occupation of Brundisium, which took place immediately after the close of the Pyrrhic war.
Thus at Norwich the castle dominated the town, and required for its erection the destruction of over a hundred houses. At Lincoln the Conqueror destroyed 166 houses in order to construct a strong motte at the south-west corner of the old castrum in order to overawe the city. Sometimes castles were erected to protect the land from foreign foes.
The Pictish maidens of the blood-royal were kept in Edinburgh Castle, thence called Castrum Puellarum." "A childish legend," said Oldbuck, "invented to give consequence to trumpery womankind. It was called the Maiden Castle, quasi lucus a non lucendo, because it resisted every attack, and women never do."
But it may confound the rash adopters of the more obvious etymological derivations, to learn that the couch-grass or dog-grass, or, to speak scientifically, the Triticum repens of Linnaeus, does not grow within a quarter of a mile of this castrum or hill-fort, whose ramparts are uniformly clothed with short verdant turf; and that we must seek a bog or palus at a still greater distance, the nearest being that of Gird-the-mear, a full half-mile distant.
Strange to say, they all surrendered without shedding of blood on the first day of the siege. Our chronicle calls the place Argentses, which Florence of Worcester translates by Argentinum castrum. The name looks like Argences, much nearer to Caen than Argentan. But one doubts whether Argences could ever have been a fortress of such importance, perhaps whether it was a fortress at all.
There are definite laws governing the changes of language. You know how the Latin castrum became in English ciaster and then chester; the change was governed by law. The same law makes our present-day vulgar say cyar for car; that word, in the American of the future, will be something like chair.
The fortified citadel of the seigneury was built on the site of a Gallo-Roman camp, or castrum, the castrum on that of a Gallic oppidum. The once warlike, grim little place, that often defied its enemies in the seigneurial wars, is now the most dead-alive, sleepy little provincial place imaginable.
The Viennese of the twelfth century sought, with pardonable vanity, to invest their town with the sacredness of antiquity. But we can scarcely allow their claims. On the contrary, we must deny all continuity between the Vindobona of the fourth and the Wien of the twelfth century. The Roman castrum disappeared, the Babenberg capital appeared, but between the two there is an unexplored gulf.
At the present time there is nothing to be seen older than the house whose foundations were dug in 1774. While the building operations were in progress, however, a Roman inscribed stone, now in Whitby Museum, was unearthed. It states that the 'Castrum' was built by two prefects whose names are given.
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