Foundation (History of England Vol 1) (5 page)

Caesar’s account of the high priests of England, the Druids, adverts to the practice of human sacrifice. They created images of wicker-work which ‘they fill with living men and, setting them on fire, the men are destroyed by the flames’. In his account the Druid priests are the lawmakers of the land who determine rewards and punishments. They settle disputes over boundaries and over property.

The Roman writer Pliny records that they ‘esteem nothing more sacred than the mistletoe’; the high priests ‘select groves of oak, and use the leaves of the mistletoe in all sacred rites’. The sacrificial victim was tied to the trunk of the oak tree, and his priestly killers wore chaplets of oak leaves. They practised divination, magic and astrology; they believed in the immortality of the soul that passes through various incarnations. This doctrine of immortality was considered by the Roman writers to make clear the contempt for death revealed by the native English; the English were noted for this quality of indifference in subsequent centuries.

The Druids worshipped the sun and moon also, but their solar belief persisted long after the passing of the priestly caste. A butcher from Standon in Hertfordshire was accused, in 1452, of proclaiming that there was no god except the sun and the moon. In the
second chapter of
Tess of the d’Urbervilles
Thomas Hardy remarks that ‘old customs’ last longer on clay soils. The power of the Druids was retained by the bishops of the Anglo-Saxon church, just as the tonsure of early Christian monks may reflect Druidical practice.

By 100
BC
, at the very latest, the eyes of Rome were turned towards England as a source of wealth and of trade. What did they see? They saw a land made up of tribal kingdoms, large and small, that had kept to the old tribal boundaries. The Dumnonii inhabited the south-west peninsula, while the Durotriges were the people of Dorset; the Cantii of Kent comprised four separate kingdoms; the Iceni were of Norfolk. The Brigantes controlled the smaller tribes of the entire northern area from the Irish Sea to the North Sea; they occupied the Pennines and their tribal name means ‘the high ones’.

There were altogether fifteen large tribes in England, now coming under the control of leaders who were being described as kings. Suetonius named Cunobelinus, the leader of the Catuvellauni in the years preceding the main Roman invasion of Claudius, as ‘
rex Britannorum
’. From his capital at St Albans he controlled a great area north of the Thames – including Cambridgeshire and Bedfordshire and Oxfordshire – and has since entered English mythology as the Cymbeline of Shakespeare’s play. His was a fully formed elite culture of warriors and priests, with its traditions going back to the early Bronze Age. One or two more recent tribal migrations have been identified. Members of a tribe from North Gaul, the Parisii, had settled in Yorkshire at some time in the fifth century
BC
and created an archaeologically distinctive community. More recent visitors arrived in Kent; a tribe known as the Belgae launched a small invasion in the first century
BC
and eventually settled in Hampshire, Essex and Kent. The Roman name for Winchester is Venta Belgarum, or the market of the Belgae.

The population of England in the late Iron Age has been estimated at approximately 2 million, rising to 3 million by the end of the Roman dominion. It was in every respect a wealthy and flourishing country. That is why the Romans chose to invade it. They wished to exploit the surplus of corn. There was in particular
a spread of settlements in the south-east and central southern regions with extensive fields, shrines, cemeteries, industries, markets, towns and villages. In his
Commentarii de Bello Gallico
Julius Caesar remarked that ‘the population is very large, their homesteads thick on the ground and very much like those in Gaul, and the cattle numerous. As money they use either bronze or gold coins or iron bars with a fixed standard of weight.’ Coins, in particular, facilitated trade between tribes and bore the stamp of a powerful leader. The further north a traveller progressed, however, the fainter was the evidence for these material benefits.

That is because the southern tribes were engaged in extensive trade with Rome and Romanized Gaul long before Caesar’s invasion. They had, in a sense, already become Romanized with their predilection for certain foods and luxury goods. Yet, if you look beneath the surface, you find ancient tribal ways. There seems to have been consistent inter-tribal warfare, for example, with various leaders appealing to Rome for assistance. Large earthworks were created as boundaries. The warriors came to battle in chariots, their naked bodies covered with blue woad and pierced with tattoos. ‘They wear their hair long’, Caesar wrote, ‘and shave all their bodies with the exception of their heads and their upper lips.’ They had not quite left the domain of prehistory.

Nor have we yet. The legacy of prehistory is all around us. The clearances of prehistoric farmers helped to create the English landscape, and there are still places where the division of the land follows its prehistoric boundaries. In southern England the field systems of the Bronze Age and Iron Age inform and maintain the layout of modern farming. Modern roads follow the line of ancient paths and trackways. The boundaries of many parishes follow ancient patterns of settlement, and their irregular outlines enclose land sufficient to maintain a small farming community; ancient burials are often to be found on the boundaries of such a parish, and even the orientation of the church may obey old laws. Churches and monastic communities were placed close beside the sites of megalithic monuments, as well as sacred springs and early Bronze Age ritual spaces. The churchyard of the parish church of Rudston, in East Yorkshire, harbours the tallest Neolithic standing stone in England. The pilgrim routes of medieval Kent trace the same
pattern as the prehistoric tracks to holy wells and shrines. We still live deep in the past.

Many villages, and towns, are built upon the sites of prehistoric originals. Leicester and Lincoln, Cambridge and Colchester, Rochester and Canterbury – to name only a few examples – were settled in the Iron Age or earlier. Village communities endure through recorded and unrecorded history. They may begin as simple family units, surrounded by ancestral spirits, before the natural process of extension. But we cannot dig down to the prehistoric origins of most English villages precisely because they are still in thriving occupation. Many Iron Age settlements became the market towns of the twenty-first century, where surplus produce has always been traded.

Certain customs, and festivals, belong to the prehistoric past. The celebrations of the Iron Age were incorporated into the Christian calendar, with the festival of the dead or ‘Samain’ becoming All Souls’ Day, and the midwinter solstice commemorated as Christmas. The Bronze Age practice of scattering white quartz stones upon freshly dug graves was still being observed in early twentieth-century Wales. In nineteenth-century Scotland many inhabitants still lived in stone ‘beehive’ houses from the Neolithic period. The famous public house beside Hampstead Heath, Jack Straw’s Castle, stands on the site of an ancient earthwork. The historic and the prehistoric exist simultaneously. Catterick in North Yorkshire remains a military base, just as it was when the mead-drunk warriors of the Gododdin assailed it at the end of the sixth century
AD
. There is scarcely one spot in England that does not contain memorials of an ancient past.

2

The Roman way

Julius Caesar’s ‘invasion’ of 55
BC
was more in the nature of a preliminary patrol; he said that he wanted to acquaint himself with ‘the lie of the land’. The Romans did not like the sea, but the pull of the island was irresistible. Britain was already a trading partner, and was rumoured to be rich in metal and wealthy with wheat. Some of its tribes had allied themselves with the northern Gauls whom Caesar was fighting. So there was every reason for a visit.

Several of the tribal leaders, informed in advance of his preparations, sent emissaries to treat with him; he in turn despatched an envoy who urged them to collaborate with their putative conqueror. Then Caesar set sail with two legions, each of approximately five thousand men, transported in eighty ships; when they eventually landed near Deal, the English were watching them. A skirmish took place on the beach, in which the Romans were victorious, and once more the tribal leaders sued for peace. Yet it was of short duration. A storm blew up, compounded by the force of a high tide at a time of full moon. The Romans were not aware of the phenomenon. All the ships were damaged.

The English tribes now broke the vow of peace, and a number of skirmishes took place in the immediate vicinity of Deal where Caesar was hard-pressed. His one thought now was of retreat across the water. He managed to repair the ships, and sought
material aid from Gaul. Then, taking many hostages from the English, he sailed back vowing to return.

In the following year he kept his promise. On this occasion he was more determined and more resourceful. He brought with him 800 ships, 25,000 infantry and 2,000 cavalry. It was a true invasion. In the face of this threat the warring tribes of the region were animated by a single purpose and chose Cassivellaunus, king of territory north of the Thames, as their war leader. The English fought the Romans just as they fought each other – warriors on foot, warriors on horseback and warriors in chariots, each attacking and withdrawing at opportune moments. Cassivellaunus had an army of 4,000 chariots; the charioteer would drive to the front line, and the warrior would jump out while the driver retired and waited for his return. Caesar reported that, by steady practice, ‘they attain such proficiency that even on a steep incline they are able to control the horses at full gallop, and to check and turn them in a moment’. They were a difficult and formidable force, motivated by sheer courage and ingenuity.

Yet the steady and disciplined army of the Romans withstood them. After a number of battles, the English retreated into the woods. Caesar followed them, and laid waste to Cassivellaunus’ stronghold. The chieftains of the various tribes sought peace, and in the end Cassivellaunus himself capitulated. Taking hostages and exacting tribute, Caesar returned to Rome.

There was to be no subsequent invasion for ninety years, but the advent and victory of the Roman forces had left their mark. Their success, ironically, can be seen in the gradual Romanization of southern Britain where tribal leaders began to import wine and luxury goods from the Roman Empire. When old ways of life have been defeated, they begin to lose their potency. The dwellings of the elite were beginning to change their shape, from round to rectilinear; this is profound evidence of cultural transition. The tribal leaders of the south, at least, wished to imitate the victors.

Some of them changed their allegiance altogether, and became the client kings of Rome. According to one Greek historian, Strabo, they procured the friendship of the first master of the Roman Empire, Augustus, ‘by sending embassies and paying court to him’. They exported grain and iron and slaves, while in return
obtaining glass vessels, amber ware and other goods on which they were obliged to pay duty to the Roman state. No better way could be found of binding them to mainland European culture.

The Romans had become well aware of the material benefits to be found on the island. They simply needed the right moment to strike. This was given to them when the leaders of the tribe or kingdom of the Atrebates appealed to Rome for assistance against one of their hostile neighbours. It is clear that certain tribes welcomed the intervention of Rome. The new emperor, Claudius, needed an opportunity to prove himself in the field. He had small military reputation and, in the words of Cicero, ‘glory in war exceeds all other forms of success’. Glory was also to be found on English soil.

In
AD
43, under the leadership of Aulus Plautius, four legions comprising some 20,000 men landed in two separate locations, thus confusing any English counter-attack. The tribes dispersed in front of them, but rallied for a major battle by the Medway; the fighting lasted for two days but the native forces under the leadership of Caratacus were eventually defeated. It was one of the most significant battles in English history, but its precise site is not known. Plautius now sent for Claudius to deliver the final and triumphant
coup de grâce.
Two months later the emperor arrived, together with twenty-eight elephants; he stormed the native capital of Camulodunum, and Caratacus fled westward. When Claudius returned to Rome, he was celebrated for having received the surrender of eleven kings. The conquest of the country had begun. It would take almost forty years before it was complete.