Langtoft's Chronicle

Wander witt of Wiltshire, rambling to Rome to gaze at Antiquities, and there skrewing himself into the company of Antiquaries, they entreated him to illustrate unto them, that famous Monument in his Country, called Stonehenge. His Answer was, that he had never seen or ever heard of, it. Whereupon, they kicked him out of doors, and bad him goe home, ans ee Stone henge; and I wish all such Æsopicall Cocks, as slight these admired Stones, and other our domestick Monuments (by which they might be admonished, to eschew some evil, or doe some good) and' scrape for barley Cornes of vanity out of forreigne dunghills, might be handled, or rather footed, as he was. If I had been in his place, I should have been apt to have told them) that, surely, it was some heathonish temple demolished by the immediate hand of God, as an intollerable abomination unto him: yet reserving so much of it standing, as may deeclare what the whole was, and how, and why, so destroyed, that, as we are to remember Lot's wife, turned into a Piller of Salt, for looking back-ward towards Idolatrous Sodome, so we should remember, that these forlorne Pillers of Stone are left to be our remembrancers, dissuading us from looking back in ‘our licarts upon any thing of Idolatry, and persuading us, in imitation of Moses, and the Prophets, so to describe, and deride, it in it's uglie Coullers, that none of us, or our posterity, may returne, with Doggs, to such Vomit, or Sows to wallowing in such mite. And since all, that have (as yet) written on this Subject, have contradicted and: confuted each other, and never any hath as yet revealed this mysterie of iniquity to this purpose, and that Pedlers and Tinckers, vamping on London way near. it, may, and do, freely spend their mouthes on it, I know nothing to the contraty, but that also may shoot my bolt a little farther into i, however:I will adventure, were it: for nothing else, but to recreate my self somtimes, after other studies, and to provoke my friends, which imiportun'd mie to it, to shoote their acute shafts: at it ‘also, ‘hoping, that one or other of us, by art or accident, shall hit the mark. - My bolt is soon shott in this short conjecture: that Stondge was an old: British triumphall tropical temple, erected to Anaraith, their Godess of victory, in a blondy field there, wone, by illustrious Stanengs and his Cangick Giants, from K. Divitiacus and his Belgæ. In which temple the Captives and spoiles were sacrifised to the said Idol Aniraith. So that these 12 particulers hereof are to be demonstrated: