after this battle, Hengist dies, and afterward Osc ruled twenty-four years (6 x 4), to the end of a cycle of eight times eight years from the first arrival of the Saxons in Britain. In the year 568 (71 x 8) Ethelbert is mentioned, as well as two immediate successors, who each ruled twenty-four (6 x 4) years. These are sufficient to prove the frequent introduction of the favourite unit, and to throw doubts on our earliest annals, for analogous reasons to those by which Sir Isaac Newton was first induced to suspect the authenticity of the first books of Livy and the oldest periods of Roman history; an idea afterwards so satisfactorily followed up by Niebuhr. That, however, the first impulse of the inquiry did not originate with Sir Isaac Newton, or with Niebuhr, seems apparent from the following extract from Spence's Anecdotes, published by J. W. Singer, London, 1820, p. 109:—"The first four hundred years of the Roman history are supposed to have been fabulous, by Senator Buonaroti; and he gives several good reasons for his opinion. He suspects that Borne in particular was built by the Greeks; as Tarentum, Naples, and several other cities in Italy were." These instances are introduced in this place, to prove in our kingdom the prevalence of the duodecimal system; and it will now remain to apply it to the aggregation of the stone circles remaining in Britain, as far as their imperfect preservation will permit.
It seems, in the first place, most reasonable to admit that the great palladium of our laws and constitution—the trial by twelve jurors[1]—was the most enduring and important continuance in this ancient reverence of the duodecimal number of rulers and usages. The most perfect Druidical circle at present in Britain, and perhaps at the same time (possibly from this very circumstance),
- ↑ The trial by twelve jurymen.—Nicholson, Preface to Wilkins's A.S. Laws, p. 10:—"D. H. Spelman ex adverso, duodecim virale judicium apud A. S. obtinuisse sat clarum putat; idque ex lege R. Ethelredi apud Venktingum lata; ut duodecim seniores Thani cum præposito prodeuntes supra sacra quæ ipsis in manus traduntur, jurabant se neminem innocentem accusaturos, sonteni excusaturos."
