The numismatic chronicle and journal of the Royal Numismatic Society

516 SIR ARTHUR EVANS.
It is certainly an interesting coincidence that this
half-ingot, which must have reached Ireland about the
time when St. Patrick was carried captive thither,
should have the name of Patricius. St. Patrick himself,
the son of a Decurion with the equally Roman name
of Calpurnius, was born in Britain at Bannaventa,
"near the Western Sea", according to his biography
by Muirchu, written in the seventh century. 141 It
may well be therefore that he belonged to the same
Western region which produced the silver ingots,
and the date of his arrival in Ireland as a boy of
sixteen, approximately placed by Professor Bury in
A.D. 403-4, 142
corresponds very nearly with that of the
Coleraine hoard. The coincidence afforded by the
name on the ingot corroborates the fact that the name
of Patricius was one rife among the Romano-Britons
at the beginning of the fifth century. It is by no
means improbable, moreover, that the booty represented
by the Coleraine hoard and the captivity of
the boy Patrick were actually due to the same Irish
raid, perhaps one of the latest enterprises of King
Niall, 143 who perished in "the Sea of Wight" about
A.D. 405.
The most recent find of this nature was made in
1900 during Prof. Garstang's excavations 144 around the
great cruciform platform of concrete that occupies the
centre of the Roman fort at Richborough (llutupiae).
11
See especially Bury, Life of St. Patrick, pp. 23seqq., 290seqq.,
and, for Bannaventa, pp. 322 seqq.
12
Op. cit., pp. 331 seqq.
13
Bury, op. tit., pp. 25, 26, connects St. Patrick's captivity
with the last expedition of the Irish High-King who died about
A. D. 405.
144 J. Garstang, Arch. Cant/ana, xxiv, p. 272.