I fear I must begin my communication to you, on the subject of an early phase in the history of English municipal institutions, with an apology; and an apology withal that has reference rather to my mode of treating the subject than to the subject itself. It is in this wise. The facts to which I beg leave to draw your attention cannot so well be considered new to the antiquary, as can the view I have taken of their value and relationship to each other. The result is, therefore, that the following pages may be thought a little more argumentative than they should in strictness be for an antiquarian subject. But this defect, if defect it be, will, I trust, be compensated by the value of the general subject I have ventured to treat upon, and by the fresh light which I may perhaps have thrown upon a class of English institutions, not the least important of those which uphold our great national fabric.

Although many places from their extent may have possessed greater importance in early times, no British camp is perhaps better known to ourselves than Mount Caburn. Situated, not in the midst of a deserted heath as some of them are, but in the centre of a populous district, a very conspicuous feature from the town of Lewes, and close to the junction of the railways from Eastbourne and Newhaven, it has necessarily attracted the attention of all who pass that way. Various conjectures have been hazarded in local histories as to its origin and uses, and more numerous by far must have been the unrecorded speculations of the curious during the long period that Lewes has figured in history.