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Just as the five cities of Colchester, Lincoln, York, Gloucester, and St. Albans, stand on the sites and in some fragmentary measure bear the names of five Roman municipalities, so Isca Dumnoniorum, now Exeter, appears to have been a cantonal capital developed out of one of the great market centres of the Celtic tribes, and as such it was the most westerly of the larger Romano-British towns.
The hill of Vindinum, Suindinum, Subdinnum, whichever form we are to choose, therein differing from the hill of Isca, was not at all suited for the laying out of a city according to the familiar type of a Roman chester.
In the west country, to this day, ask always becomes ax, or rather remains so, for that provincial form was the King's English at the court of Alfred; and so Isca became on Devonian lips Exan ceaster, after the West Saxon conquest. Thence it passed rapidly through the stages of Exe ceaster and Exe cester till it finally settled down into Exeter.
I was easier when I saw him mount and ride away, but I was ill content until the morning came and brought him back with tidings that all was well, and that Owen would be on his guard. Also, the franklin was to tell me that Gerent's court went to Isca, which we call Exeter, in two days' time, and that Owen would fain see me before he went westward, if I could come to him.
But ere another summer had passed Celticus was dead, for he was flayed alive by the pirates and his skin nailed upon the door of a church near Caistor. Regnus, too, was dead, for he was tied to a tree and shot with arrows when the painted men came to the sacking of Isca.
Now the older women, experienced in treatment of wounds, busied themselves with the white warriors, while the younger ones fetched water and pieces of isca a natural styptic made by ants or made up pads of poultices of healing herbs.
The highest in army rank was Sextius Baculus of Isca, a native of Britain and lineally descended, through an original colonist of Isca, from the celebrated sergeant-major of the Divine Julius. He had been twelfth in rank in the Sixth Legion, being second centurion of its second cohort.
At least three such cases undoubtedly occur one at Deva or Chester; one at Ratæ or Leicester; and one at Isca Silurum or Caerleon-upon-Usk. In each case the modernisation has taken a very different form.
With the coming of the Saxons, the river, the Roman Isca, became the Exa, and the city was called Exanceaster, modified in due course to Exeter.
Isca makes its appearance in the Roman records without giving the date of its capture, while it is also uncertain when the Saxons superseded the Romans and developed its name into Exanceaster. They enclosed its hill of Rougemont, however, with a wall of masonry, and encircled the city with ramparts built of square stones and strengthened by towers.
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