It

to the DANE 8.

For, first, our most ancient, and most authentick Historians, whoCommitted to Record the most memorable Actions and Traverses ofFortune among the Britains j and who may with good Reason beallowed to have been not much above one Age younger than Stone-Heng it self; have passed it over in Silence, as a Thing, either ofwhose Being they were utterly ignorant, or of whose Beginningthey were utterly uncertain. So that from their Writings, nothingcan be deduced toward our Information.

And then, as for such others of our Countrymen, as well Histori-ographers , as Antiquaries, who living at less or greater Distance ofTime after the former, have treated, exprefly of it; they deliver Re-ports so various and inconsistent among themselves, and severally soembroiled with Improbabilities and Incongruities; that they appearto have taken up their respective Opinions either from obsolete and.darksome Traditions, or from Bender and questionable Authorities,or at best from plausible Conjectures. So that from these Authorslikewise, little is to be borrowed toward our Determination. How-ever, it being my Duty to presume, you are not unwilling to hearthese Opinions, what and whose they are; I (hall not decline theLabour of collecting and reciting them sincerely and faithfully: E-specially forasmuch as many Things are well worthy our Knowledge,that cannot yet deserve our Belief- 3 and even Fictions sometimeshave accidentally given Light to long obscured Verities.

The eldest and most vulgarly received Opinion, then, concerningthe first Foundation of Stone-Heng , is, that it was erelfed by thatso much renowned Britisli-Roman (for a Roman he was, materna exparte , by the Mother’s Side) Aurelius Ambrosius, in Memory os thosefour hundred and sixty Noble Britains, in peaceable manner invitedto a Treaty of Accommodation, to be held in or near the Town osAmbresbury, by that bloody Invader and Leader of the Saxons, Hen-gist; and upon a Watch-word given , most treacherousty murdered byhim and his equally inhuman Confederates , upon the Place in whichthey were assembled. And the principal, if not the first Author ofthis Report, was Jejsery Monmouth (in Lib. 6. Hiflor. Britannic .) towhom I remit you for a more full Narration of the manner howthis perfidious Massacre was designed and executed, and how theMonument of Stone-Heng was set up, as a perpetual Memorial ofthose many Worthies, who there suffered a Civil Martyrdom, beingsacrificed in Honour of their Country.

The next (near of Kin to the first, as to Time, though e diametrocontrary in all other respects) is, That the fame Aurelius Ambrosiusbeing deceased , his sorrowful Subs ells, the Britains, to testify to suc-ceeding Ages how high an Honour they had for the Reliqucs of him,under whose valiant and prudent Conduit, and by whose Courage-infpiring Example , they had so often repulsed and defeated their fa-"vage Enemies , raised this magnificent Strullure over the Place ofhis Sepulture, as a most durable Witness of his heroical Virtues, andtheir own grateful Piety. And this Conceit seems derived chieflyfrom Poly dor e Virgil, who (in Lib. 3 •) relating the Passages of Warbetwixt the Britains and Saxons of those Times, exprefly affirms itas a memorable Truth, in Words of this Sense. " In Memory of

his Achievements for the Liberty and Good of his Country, the1 " Britains