'I should have answered your knid letter of 8th ult., but the continued illness that has been in our fimily has hitherto prevented me. I have made enquiry about the coins at Landguard fort, but there is no such thing as coming at the coins themselves. The legends of them I have formerly sent you. Dr. Symond's I will endeavour to get the first opportunity. I have the promise of others, but I find people very averse to lending the coins themselves, though hope to procure some. The silver Carausius you mention was IMP : CARAVSIVS : P : F: AVG. Caput Carausii Laureat. Rev., FELICIT . . . AVG. RSR. Navis Pretoria.
Upon revisal of my letters I find the account of the above with ten other brass coins of Carausius was sent to me June 22d, 1751, from W. Myers, of Walton, near Landguard fort. I have the legends of the rest now before me, of which, if you have not my account by you, I will send you particulars. I cannot get Tom Martin's coins : nothing but fair promises from that quarter. I have heard a great character of the ruins of Palmyra. I am promised the perusal of them from a neighbour.
I have lately been highly entertained with a discovery that has been made by a gentleman in this neighbourhood who was heightening a meadow of his, in order to which he was carrying on some sand from a sand-pit that was sunk in the side of a hill, and when they had entered the hill a little way they found a number of broken fragments of Roman urns, they say in the whole to the amount of above an hundred already, and they have by computation above three thousand loads of the hill to remove still ; but through the carelessness of the workmen they have not preserved above thirteen entire, every one of which are differently wrought. I took draughts of the thirteen whole ones, and have a promise of all those that they shall find (for they continue discovering them daily). There is one among them, a very small one ; we examined it, but found nothing in it but pure sand. The rest of them had only sand at bottom and top, and the ashes and bones near the centre of the urn. When they have finished their enquiries I will send you draughts of the urns, and further particulars. The spot where they were found is between Rushforth and Brettenham, in Suffolk, and about a furlong east of the great Roman road, and within a stone's cast of the river. In one of the urns was found part of a Roman lady's comb made of box, and a piece of iron. The comb is broken and verj brittle. No coins have as yet been found in any of the urns. In a close some distance off was found a very fine medal of the emperor Vespasian, the reverse Judæa Capta, and another of the empress Justina, a medal but of middle size and whitish metal. You see I am not inattentive to affairs of this kind when chance directs me to them. I shall be extreamly glad if I can procure you any further discoveries from this fragment of arabia deserta, and that it will raise your opinion of our barren lands as a nursery of antiquity if not fertility.'
(Lukis 1882-1887, vol. 3 pp. 196-8)
