Roman Britain

Chapter. V

The End of Roman Britain, A.D. 211-455

Section A

Era of Pretenders—Probus—Vandlebury—First notice of Saxons—Origin of name—Count of the Saxon Shore—Carausius—Allectus—Last Romano-British coinage—Britain Mistress of the Sea —Reforms of Diocletian—Constantius Chlorus—Re-conquest of Britain—Diocletian provinces —Diocletian persecution—The last “Divus”—General scramble for Empire—British Army wins for Constantine—Christianity established.

A. 1.—After the death of Severus in A.D. 211, Roman historians tell us nothing more concerning Britain till we come to the rise of the only other Emperor who died at York, Constantius Chlorus. During the miserable period which the wickedness of Caracalla brought upon the Roman world, when Pretender after Pretender flits across the scene, most to fail, some for a moment to succeed, but all alike to end their brief course in blood, our island remained fairly quiet. The Army of Britain made one or two futile pronunciamentos (the least unsuccessful being those for Postumus in A.D. 258, and Victorinus in A.D. 265), and in 277 the Emperor Probus, probably to keep it in check, leavened it with a large force recruited from amongst his Vandal prisoners,316 whose name may, perhaps, still survive in Vandlebury Camp, on the Gog-Magog317 Hills, near Cambridge. But not till the energy and genius of Diocletian began to bring back to order the chaos into which the Roman world had fallen does Britain play any real part in the higher politics.

A. 2.—Then, however, we suddenly find ourselves confronted with names destined to exert a supreme influence on the future of our land. The Saxons from the Elbe, and the Franks from the Rhine had already begun their pirate raids along the coasts to the westwards.318 Each tribe derived its name from its peculiar national weapon (the Franks from their throwing-axe (franca),319 the Saxons from the saexes, long murderous knives, snouted like a Norwegian knife of the present day, which they used with such deadly effect);320 and their appearance constituted a new and fearful danger to the Roman Empire. Never, since the Mediterranean pirates were crushed by Pompey (B.C. 66) had it been exposed to attacks by sea. A special effort was needed to meet this new situation, and we find, accordingly, a new officer now added to the Imperial muster,—the Count of the Saxon Shore. His jurisdiction extended over the northern coast of Gaul and the southern and eastern shores of Britain, the head-quarters of his fleet being at Boulogne.

A. 3.—The first man to be placed in this position was Carausius,321 a Frisian adventurer of low birth, but great military reputation, to which unfortunately he proved unequal. When his command was not followed by the looked-for putting-down of the pirate raiders, he was suspected, probably with truth, of a secret understanding with them. The Government accordingly sent down orders for his execution, to which he replied (A.D. 286) by open rebellion, took the pirate fleets into his pay, and having thus got the undisputed command of the sea, succeeded in maintaining himself as Emperor in Britain for the rest of his life.

A. 4.—His reign and that of his successor (and murderer) Allectus are marked by the last and most extraordinary development of Romano-British coinage. Since the time of Caracalla no coins which can be definitely proved to deserve this name are found; but now, in less than ten years, our mints struck no fewer than five hundred several issues, all of different types. Nearly all are of bronze, with the radiated head of the Emperor on the obverse, and on the reverse devices of every imaginable kind. The British Lion once more figures, as in the days of Cymbeline; and we have also the Roman Wolf, the Sea-horse, the Cow (as a symbol of Prosperity), Plenty, Peace, Victory, Prudence, Health, Safety, Might, Good Luck, Glory, all symbolized in various ways. But the favourite type of all is the British warship; for now Britannia, for the first time, ruled the waves, and was, indeed, so entirely Mistress of the Sea that her fleet appeared even in Mediterranean waters.322 The vessels figured are invariably not Saxon “keels,” but classical galleys, with their rams and outboard rowing galleries, and are always represented as cleared for action (when the great mainsail and its yard were left on shore).

A. 5.—The usurpation of Carausius, “the pirate,” as the Imperial panegyrists called him,323 brought Diocletian’s great reform of the Roman administration within the scope of practical politics in Britain. The old system of Provinces, some Imperial, some Senatorial, with each Pro-praetor or Pro-consul responsible only and immediately to the central government at Rome, had obviously become outgrown. And the Provinces themselves were much too large. Diocletian accordingly began by dividing the Empire into four “Prefectures,” two in the east and two in the west. Each pair was to be under one of the co-Augusti, who again was to entrust one of his Prefectures to the “Caesar”324 or heir-apparent of his choice. Thus Diocletian held the East, while Galerius, his “Caesar,” took the Prefecture of Illyricum. His colleague Maximian, as Augustus of the West, ruled in Italy; and the remaining Prefecture, that of “the Gauls,” fell to the Western Caesar, Constantius Chlorus. Each Prefecture, again, was divided into “Dioceses” (that of Constantius containing those of Britain, Gaul, Spain, and Mauretania), each under a “Vicar,” and comprising a certain number of “Provinces” (that of Britain having four). Thus a regular hierarchy with rank above rank of responsibility was established, and so firmly that Diocletian’s system lasted (so far as provincial government was concerned) till the very latest days of the Roman dominion.

A. 6.—When Constantius thus became Caesar of the West, his first task was to restore Britain to the Imperial system. He was already, it seems, connected with the island, and had married a British lady named Helen.325 Their son Constantine, a youth of special promise (according to the panegyrists), had been born at York, about A.D. 274, and now appeared on the scene to aid his father’s operations with supernatural speed, “quasi divino quodam curriculo.”326 Extraordinary celerity, indeed, marked all these operations. Allectus was on his guard, with one squadron at Boulogne to sweep the coast of Gaul, and another cruising in the Channel. By a sudden dash Constantius [in A.D. 296] seized the mouth of Boulogne harbour, threw a boom across it, “defixis in aditu trabibus,” and effectually barred the pirates from access to the sea.327 Meanwhile the fleet which he had been building simultaneously in various Gallic ports was able to rendezvous undisturbed at Havre.

A. 7.—His men were no expert mariners like their adversaries; and, for this very reason, were ready, with their Caesar at their head, to put to sea in threatening weather, which made their better-skilled pilots hesitate. “What can we fear?” was the cry, “Caesar is with us.” Dropping down the Seine with the tide on a wild and rainy morning, they set sail with a cross wind, probably from the north-east, a rare thing with ancient ships. As they neared the British coast the breeze sank to a dead calm, with a heavy mist lying on the waveless sea, in which the fleet found it impossible to keep together. One division, with Constantius himself on board, made their land-fall somewhere in the west, perhaps at Exeter, the other far to the east, possibly at Richborough.

A. 8.—But the wonderful luck which attended Constantius, and on which his panegyrists specially dwell, made all turn out for the best. The mist enabled both his divisions to escape the notice of the British fleet, which was lying off the Isle of Wight on the watch for him; and the unexpected landing at two such distant points utterly demoralized the usurper. Of the large force which had been mustered for land defence, only the Frankish auxiliaries could be got together in time to meet Constantius—who, having burnt his ships (for his only hope now lay in victory), was marching, with his wonted speed, straight on London. One battle,328 in which scarcely a single Roman fell on the British side, was enough; the corpse of Allectus [ipse vexillarius latrocinii] was found, stripped of the Imperial insignia, amongst the heaps of slain barbarians, and the routed Franks fled to London. Here, while they were engaged in sacking the city before evacuating it, they were set upon by the eastern division of the Roman army (under Asclepiodotus the Praetorian Prefect)329 and slaughtered almost to a man. The rescued metropolis eagerly welcomed its deliverers, and the example was followed by the rest of Britain; the more readily that the few surviving Franks were distributed throughout the land to perish in the provincial amphitheatres.

A. 9.—The Diocletian system was now introduced; and, instead of Hadrian’s old divisions of Upper and Lower Britain, the island south of his Wall was distributed into four Provinces, “Britannia Prima,” “Britannia Secunda,” “Maxima Caesariensis,” and “Flavia Caesariensis.” That the Thames, the Severn, and the Humber formed the frontier lines between these new divisions is probable. But their identification, in the current maps of Roman Britain, with the later Wessex, Wales, Northumbria, and Mercia (with East Anglia), respectively, is purely conjectural.330 All that we know is that when the district between Hadrian’s Wall and Agricola’s Rampart was reconquered in 369, it was made a fifth British Province under the name Valentia. The Governor of each Province exercised his functions under the “Vicar” of the “Diocese,” an official of “Respectable” rank—the second in precedence of the Diocletian hierarchy (exclusive of the Imperial Family).

A. 10.—With the Diocletian administration necessarily came the Diocletian Persecution—an essential feature of the situation. There is no reason to imagine that the great reforming Emperor had, like his colleague Maximian, any personal hatred for Christianity. But Christianity was not among the religiones licitae of the Empire. Over and over again it had been pronounced by Imperial Rescript unlawful. This being so, Diocletian saw in its toleration merely one of those corruptions of lax government which it was his special mission to sweep away, and proceeded to deal with it as with any other abuse,—to be put down with whole-hearted vigour and rigour.

A. 11.—The Faith had by this time everywhere become so widespread that the good-will of its professors was a political power to be reckoned with. Few of the passing Pretenders of the Era of Confusion had dared to despise it, some had even courted it; and thus throughout the Empire the Christian hierarchy had been established, and Christian churches been built everywhere; while Christians swarmed in every department of the Imperial service,—their neglect of the official worship winked at, while they, in turn, were not vigorous in rebuking the idolatry of their heathen fellow-servants. Now all was changed. The sacred edifices were thrown down, or (as in the famous case of St. Clement’s at Rome) made over for heathen worship, the sacred books and vessels destroyed, and every citizen, however humble, had to produce a libellus,331 or magisterial certificate, testifying that he had formally done homage to the Gods of the State, by burning incense at their shrines, by pouring libations in their name, and by partaking of the victims sacrificed upon their altars. Torture and death were the lot of all recusants; and to the noble army of martyrs who now sealed their testimony with their blood Britain is said (by Gildas) to have contributed a contingent of no fewer than seventeen thousand, headed by St. Alban at Verulam.

A. 12.—So thorough-going a persecution the Church had never known. But it came too late for Diocletian’s purpose; and it was probably the latent consciousness of his failure that impelled him, in 305, to resign the purple and retire to his cabbage-garden at Dyrrhachium. Maximian found himself unwillingly obliged to retire likewise; and the two Caesars, Galerius and Constantius, became, by the operation of the new constitution, ipso facto Augusti.

A. 13.—But already the mutual jealousy and distrust in which that constitution was so soon to perish began to manifest themselves. Galerius, though properly only Emperor of the East, seized on Rome, and with it on the person of the young Constantine, whom he hoped to keep as hostage for his father’s submission. The youth, however, contrived to flee, and post down to join Constantius in Gaul, slaughtering every stud of relays along the entire road to delay his pursuers. Both father and son at once sailed for Britain, where the former shortly died, like Severus, at York. With their arrival the persecution promptly ceased;332 for Helena, at least, was an ardent Christian, and her husband well-affected to the Faith. Yet, on his death, he was, like his predecessors, proclaimed Divus; the last formal bestowal of that title being thus, like the first,333 specially connected with Britain. Constantius was buried, according to Nennius,334 at Segontium, wherever that may have been; and Constantine, though not yet even a Caesar, was at once proclaimed by the soldiers (at his native York) Augustus in his father’s room.

A. 14.—This was the signal for a whole outburst of similar proclamations all over the Roman world, Licinius, Constantine’s brother-in-law, declared himself Emperor at Carnutum, Maxentius, son of Maximian and son-in-law of Galerius, in Rome, Severus in the Illyrian provinces, and Maximin (who had been a Caesar) in Syria. Galerius still reigned, and even Maximian revoked his resignation and appeared once more as Augustus. But one by one this medley of Pretenders swept each other away, and the survival of the fittest was exemplified by the final victory of Constantine over them all. For a few years he bided his time, and then, at the head of the British army, marched on Rome. Clear-sighted enough to perceive that events were irresistibly tending to the triumph of Christianity, he declared himself the champion of the Faith; and it was not under the Roman Eagle, but the Banner of Christ,335 that his soldiers fought and won. Coins of his found in Britain, bearing the Sacred Monogram which led his men to the crowning victory of 312 at the Milvian Bridge (the intertwined letters Χ [Chi] and Ρ [Rho] between Α [Alpha] and Ω [Omega], the whole forming the word ΧΡΑΩ [ARChÔ], “I reign”), with the motto Hoc Signo Victor Eris, testify to the special part taken by our country in the establishment of our Faith as the officially recognized religion of Rome,—that is to say, of the whole civilized world. And henceforward, as long as Britain remained Roman at all, it was a monarch of British connection who occupied the Imperial throne. The dynasties of Constantius, Valentinian, and Theodosius, who between them (with the brief interlude of the reign of Julian) fill the next 150 years (300-450), were all markedly associated with our island. So, indeed, was Julian also.

Section B

Spread of Gospel—Arianism—Britain orthodox—Last Imperial visit—Heathen temples stripped
—British Emperors—Magnentius—Gratian—Julian—British corn-trade—First inroad of Picts and
Scots—Valentinian—Saxon raids—Campaign of Theodosius—Re-conquest of Valentia.

B. 1.—For a whole generation after the triumph of Constantine tranquillity reigned in Britain. The ruined Christian churches were everywhere restored, and new ones built; and in Britain, as elsewhere, the Gospel spread rapidly and widely—the more so that the Church here was but little troubled336 by the desperate struggle with Arianism which was convulsing the East. Britain, as Athanasius tells us, gave an assenting vote to the decisions of Nicaea (σύμψηφος ἐτύγχανε) [sumpsêphos etunchane], and British Bishops actually sat in the Councils of Arles (314) and of Ariminum (360).

B. 2.—The old heathen worship still continued side by side with the new Faith; but signs soon appeared that the Church would tolerate no such rivalry when once her power was equal to its suppression. Julius Firmicus (who wrote against “Profane Religions” in 343) implores the sons of Constantine to continue their good work of stripping the temples and melting down the images;—in special connection with a visit paid by them that year to Britain337 (our last Imperial visit), when they had actually been permitted to cross the Channel in winter-time; an irrefragable proof of Heaven’s approval of their iconoclasm. It is highly probable that they pursued here also a course at once so pious and so profitable, and that the fanes of the ancient deities but lingered on in poverty and neglect till finally suppressed by Theodosius (A.D. 390).

B. 3.—And now Britain resumed her rôle of Emperor-maker.338 After the death of Constans, (A.D. 350), Magnentius, an officer in the Gallic army of British birth, set up as Augustus, and was supported by Gratian, the leader of the Army of Britain, and by his son Valentinian. Magnentius himself had his capital at Treves, and for three years reigned over the whole Prefecture of the Gauls. He professed a special zeal for orthodoxy, and was the first to introduce burning, as the appropriate punishment for heresy, into the penal code of Christendom. Meanwhile his colleague Decentius advanced against Constantius, and was defeated, at Nursa on the Drave, with such awful slaughter that the old Roman Legions never recovered from the shock. Henceforward the name signifies a more or less numerous body, more or less promiscuously armed, such as we find so many of in the ‘Notitia.’ Magnentius, in turn, was slain (A.D. 353), and the supreme command in Britain passed to the new Caesar of the West, Julian “the Apostate.”

B. 4.—Under him we first find our island mentioned as one of the great corn-growing districts of the Empire, on which Gaul was able to draw to a very large extent for the supply of her garrisons. No fewer than eight hundred wheat-ships sailed from our shores on this errand; a number which shows how large an area of the island must have been brought under cultivation, and how much the country had prospered during the sixty years of unbroken internal peace which had followed on the suppression of Allectus.

B. 5.—That peace was now to be broken up. The northern tribes had by this recovered from the awful chastisement inflicted upon them by Severus,339 and, after an interval of 150 years, once more (A.D. 362) appeared south of Hadrian’s Wall. Whether as yet they burst through it is uncertain; for now we find a new confederacy of barbarians. It is no longer that of Caledonians and Meatae, but of Picts and Scots. And these last were seafarers. Their home was not in Britain at all, but in the north of Ireland. In their “skiffs”340 they were able to turn the flank of the Roman defences, and may well have thus introduced their allies from beyond Solway also. Anyhow, penetrate the united hordes did into the quiet cornfields of Roman Britain, repeating their raids ever more frequently and extending them ever more widely, till their spearmen were cut [Errata: to] pieces in 450 at Stamford by the swords of the newly-arrived English.341

B. 6.—For the moment they were driven back without much difficulty, by Lupicinus, Julian’s Legate (the first Legate we hear of in Britain since Lollius Urbicus), who, when the death of Constantius II. (in 361) had extinguished that royal line, aided his master to become “Dominus totius orbis”—as he is called in an inscription342 describing his triumphant campaigns “ex oceano Britannico.” And after “the victory of the Galilaean” (363) had ended Julian’s brief and futile attempt to restore the Higher Paganism (to which several British inscriptions testify),343 it was again to an Emperor from Britain that there fell the Lordship of the World—Valentinian, son of Gratian, whose dynasty lasted out the remaining century of Romano-British history.

B. 7.—His reign was marked in our land by a life-and-death struggle with the inrushing barbarians. The Picts and Scots were now joined by yet another tribe, the cannibal344 Attacotti345 of Valentia, and their invasions were facilitated by the simultaneous raids of the Saxon pirates (with whom they may perhaps have been actually in concert) along the coast. The whole land had been wasted, and more than one Roman general defeated, when Theodosius, father of the Great Emperor, was sent, in 368, to the rescue. Crossing from Boulogne to Richborough in a lucky calm,346 and fixing his head-quarters at London, or Augusta, as it was now called [Londinium vetus oppidum, quod Augustam posteritas apellavit], he first, by a skilful combination of flying columns, cut to pieces the scattered hordes of the savages as they were making off with their booty, and finally not only drove them back beyond the Wall, which he repaired and re-garrisoned,347 but actually recovered the district right up to Agricola’s rampart, which had been barbarian soil ever since the days of Severus.348 It was now (369) formed into a fifth British province, and named Valentia in honour of Valens, the brother and colleague of the Emperor.

B. 8.—The Twentieth Legion, whose head-quarters had so long been at Chester, seems to have been moved to guard this new province. Forty years later Claudian speaks of it as holding the furthest outposts in Britain, in his well-known description of the dying Pict:

“Venit et extremis legio praetenta Britannis,
Quae Scoto dat frena truci, ferroque notatas
Perlegit exsangues Picto moriente figuras.”

[“From Britain’s bound the outpost legion came,
Which curbs the savage Scot, and fading sees
The steel-wrought figures on the dying Pict.”]

The same poet makes Theodosius fight and conquer even in the Orkneys and in Ireland;

“—maduerunt Saxone fuso
Orcades; incaluit Pictorum sanguine Thule;
Scotorum cumulos flevit glacialis Ierne.”349

[“With Saxon slaughter flowed the Orkney strand,
With Pictish blood cold Thule warmer grew;
And icy Erin wept her Scotchmen slain.”]

The relief, however, was but momentary. Five years later (374) another great Saxon raid is recorded; yet eight years more and the Picts and Scots have again to be driven from the land; and in the next decade their attacks became incessant.

Section C

Roman evacuation of Britain begun—Maximus—Settlement of Brittany—Stilicho restores the Wall —Radagaisus invades Italy—Twentieth Legion leaves Britain—Britain in the ‘Notitia’—Final effort of British Army—The last Constantine—Last Imperial Rescript to Britain—Sack of Rome by Alaric—Collapse of Roman rule in Britain.

C. 1.—By this time the evacuation of Britain by the Roman soldiery had fairly begun. Maximus, the last victor over the Scots, the “Pirate of Richborough,” as Ausonius calls him, set up as Emperor (A.D. 383); and the Army of Britain again marched on Rome, and again, as under Constantine, brought its leader in triumph to the Capitol (A.D. 387). But this time it did not return. When Maximus was defeated and slain (A.D. 388) at Aquileia by the Imperial brothers-in-law Valentinian II. and Theodosius the Great350 (sons of the so-named leaders connected with Britain), his soldiers, as they retreated homewards, straggled on the march; settling, amid the general confusion, here and there, mostly in Armorica, which now first began to be called Brittany.351 This tale rests only on the authority of Nennius, but it is far from improbable, especially as his sequel—that a fresh legion dispatched to Britain by Stilicho (in 396) once more repelled the Picts and Scots, and re-secured the Wall—is confirmed by Claudian, who makes Britain (in a sea-coloured cloak and bearskin head-gear) hail Stilicho as her deliverer:

Inde Caledonio velata Britannia monstro, Ferro picta genas, cujus vestigia verrit Coerulus, Oceanique aestum mentitur, amictus: “Me quoque vicinis percuntem gentibus,” inquit, “Munivit Stilichon, totam quum Scotus Iernen Movit, et infesto spumavit remige Tethys. Illius effectum curis, ne tela timerem Scotica, ne Pictum tremerem, ne litore toto Prospicerem dubiis venturum Saxona ventis.”352

[Then next, with Caledonian bearskin cowled, Her cheek steel-tinctured, and her trailing robe Of green-shot blue, like her own Ocean’s tide, Britannia spake: “Me too,” she cried, “in act To perish ’mid the shock of neighbouring hordes, Did Stilicho defend, when the wild Scot All Erin raised against me, and the wave Foamed ’neath the stroke of many a foeman’s oar. So wrought his pains that now I fear no more Those Scottish darts, nor tremble at the Pict, Nor mark, where’er to sea mine eyes I turn, The Saxon coming on each shifting wind.”]

C. 2.—Which legion it was which Stilicho sent to Britain is much more questionable. The Roman legions were seldom moved from province to province, and it is perhaps more probable that he filled up the three quartered in the island to something like their proper strength. But a crisis was now at hand which broke down all ordinary rules. Rome was threatened with such a danger as she had not known since Marius, five hundred years before, had destroyed the Cimbri and Teutones (B.C. 101). A like horde of Teutonic invaders, nearly half a million strong, came pouring over the Alps, under “Radagaisus the Goth,” as contemporary historians call him, though his claim, to Gothic lineage is not undisputed. And these were not, like Alaric and his Visigoths, who were to reap the fruits of this effort, semi-civilized Christians, but heathen savages of the most ferocious type. Every nerve had to be strained to crush them; and Stilicho did crush them. But it was at a fearful cost. Every Roman soldier within reach had to be swept to the rescue, and thus the Rhine frontier was left defenceless against the barbarian hordes pressing upon it. Vandals, Sueves, Alans, Franks, Burgundians, rushed tumultuously over the peaceful and fertile fields of Gaul, never to be driven forth again.

C. 3.—Of the three British legions one only seems to have been thus withdrawn,—the Twentieth, whose head-quarters had been so long at Chester, and whose more recent duty had been to garrison the outlying province of Valentia, which may now perhaps have been again abandoned. It seems to have been actually on the march towards Italy353 when there was drawn up that wonderful document which gives us our last and completest glimpse of Roman Britain—the Notitia Dignitatum Utriusque Imperii.

C. 4.—This invaluable work sets forth in detail the whole machinery of the Imperial Government, its official hierarchy, both civil and military, in every land, and a summary of the forces under the authority of each commander. A reference in Claudian would seem to show that it was compiled by the industry of Celerinus, the Primicerius Notariorum or Head Clerk of the Treasury. The poet tells us how this indefatigable statistician—

“Cunctorum tabulas assignat honorum,
Regnorum tractat numeros, constringit in unum
Sparsas Imperii vires, cuneosque recenset
Dispositos; quae Sarmaticis custodia ripis,
Quae saevis objecta Getis, quae Saxona frenat
Vel Scotum legio; quantae cinxere cohortes
Oceanum, quanto pacatur milite Rhenus.”354

[“Each rank, each office in his lists he shows,
Tells every subject realm, together draws
The Empire’s scattered force, recounts the hosts
In order meet;—which Legion is on guard
By Danube’s banks, which fronts the savage Goth,
Which curbs the Saxon, which the Scot; what bands
Begird the Ocean, what keep watch on Rhine.”]

To us the ‘Notitia’ is only known by the 16th-century copies of a 10th-century MS. which has now disappeared.355 But these were made with exceptional care, and are as nearly as may be facsimiles of the original, even preserving its illuminated illustrations, including the distinctive insignia of every corps in the Roman Army.

C. 5.—The number of these corps had, we find, grown erormously since the days of Hadrian, when, as Dion Cassius tells us, there were 19 “Civic Legions” (of which three were quartered in Britain). No fewer than 132 are now enumerated, together with 108 auxiliary bodies. But we may be sure that each of these “legions” was not the complete Army Corps of old,356 though possibly the 25 of the First Class, the Legiones Palatinae, may have kept something of their ancient effectiveness. Indeed it is not wholly improbable that these alone represent the old “civil” army; the Second and Third Class “legions,” with their extraordinary names (“Comitatenses” and “Pseudo-Comitatenses”), being indeed merely so called by “courtesy,” or even “sham courtesy.”

C. 6.—In Britain we find the two remaining legions of the old garrison, the Second, now quartered not at Caerleon but at Richborough, under the Count of the Saxon Shore, and the Sixth under the “Duke of the Britains,” holding the north (with its head-quarters doubtless, as of yore, at York, though this is not mentioned). Along with each legion are named ten “squads” [numeri], which may perhaps represent the ten cohorts into which legions were of old divided. The word cohort seems to have changed its meaning, and now to signify an independent military unit under a “Tribune.” Eighteen of these, together with six squadrons [alae] of cavalry, each commanded by a “Praefect,” form the garrison of the Wall;—a separate organization, though, like the rest of the northern forces, under the Duke of the Britains. The ten squads belonging to the Sixth Legion (each under a Prefect) are distributed in garrison throughout Yorkshire, Lancashire, and Westmoreland. Those of the Second (each commanded by a “Praepositus”) are partly under the Count of the Saxon Shore, holding the coast from the Wash to Arundel,357 partly under the “Count of Britain,” who was probably the senior officer in the island358 and responsible for its defence in general. Besides these bodies of infantry the British Army comprised eighteen cavalry units; three, besides the six on the Wall, being in the north, three on the Saxon Shore, and the remaining six under the immediate command of the Count of Britain, to whose troops no special quarters are assigned. Not a single station is mentioned beyond the Wall, which supports the theory that the withdrawal of the Twentieth Legion had involved the practical abandonment of Valentia.359

C. 7.—The two Counts and the Duke were the military leaders of Britain. The chief civil officer was the “respectable” Vicar of the Diocese of Britain, one of the six Vicars under the “illustrious” Pro-consul of Africa. Under him were the Governors of the five Provinces, two of these being “Consulars” of “Right Renowned” rank [clarissimi,] the other three “Right Perfect” [perfectissimi] “Presidents.” The Vicar was assisted by a staff of Civil Servants, nine heads of departments being enumerated. Their names, however, have become so wholly obsolete as to tell us nothing of their respective functions.

C. 8.—Whatever these may have been they did not include the financial administration of the Diocese, the general management of which was in the hands of two officers, the “Accountant of Britain” [Rationalis Summarum Britanniarum] and the “Provost of the London Treasury” [Praepositus thesaurorum Augustensium].360 Both these were subordinates of the “Count of the Sacred Largesses” [Comes Sacrarum Largitionum], one of the greatest officers of State, corresponding to our First Lord of the Treasury, whose name reminds us that all public expenditure was supposed to be the personal benevolence of His Sacred Majesty the Emperor, and all sources of public revenue his personal property. The Emperor, however, had actually in every province domains of his own, managed by the Count of the Privy Purse [Comes Rei Privatae], whose subordinate in Britain was entitled the “Accountant of the Privy Purse for Britain” [Rationalis Rei Privatae per Britanniam]. Both these Counts were “Illustrious” [illustres]; that is, of the highest order of the Imperial peerage below the “Right Noble” [nobilissimi] members of the Imperial Family.

C. 9.—Such and so complete was the system of civil and military government in Roman Britain up to the very point of its sudden and utter collapse. When the ‘Notitia’ was compiled, neither Celerinus, as he wrote, nor the officials whose functions and ranks he noted, could have dreamt that within ten short years the whole elaborate fabric would, so far as Britain was concerned, be swept away utterly and for ever. Yet so it was.

C. 10.—For what was left of the British Army now made a last effort to save the West for Rome, and once more set up Imperial Pretenders of its own.361 The first two of these, Marcus and Gratian, were speedily found unequal to the post, and paid the usual penalty of such incompetence; but the third, a private soldier named Constantine, all but succeeded in emulating the triumph of his great namesake. For four years (407-411) he was able to hold not only Britain, but Gaul and Spain also under his sceptre; and the wretched Honorius, the unworthy son and successor of Theodosius, who was cowering amid the marshes of Ravenna, and had murdered his champion Stilicho, was fain to recognize the usurper as a legitimate Augustus. Only by treachery was he put down at last, the traitor being the commander of his British forces, Gerontius. Both names continued for many an age favourites in British nomenclature, and both have been swept into the cycle of Arturian romance, the latter as “Geraint.”

C. 11.—Neither Gerontius nor his soldiers ever got back to their old homes in Britain. What became of them we do not know. But Zosimus362 tells us that Honorius now sent a formal rescript to the British cities abrogating the Lex Julia, which forbade civilians to carry arms, and bidding them look to their own safety. For now the end had really come, and the Eternal City itself had been sacked by barbarian hands. Never before and never since does history record a sacked city so mildly treated by the conquerors. Heretics as the Visi-goths were, they never forgot that the vanquished Catholics were their fellow-Christians, and, barbarians as they were, they left an example of mercy in victory which puts to the blush much more recent Christian and civilized warfare.

C. 12.—But, for all that, the moral effect of Alaric’s capture of Rome was portentous, and shook the very foundations of civilization throughout the world. To Jerome, in his cell at Bethlehem, the tidings came like the shock of an earthquake. Augustine, as he penned his ‘De Civitate Dei,’ felt the old world ended indeed, and the Kingdom of Heaven indeed at hand. And in Britain the whole elaborate system of Imperial civil and military government seems to have crumbled to the ground almost at once. It is noticeable that the rescript of Honorius is addressed simply to “the cities” of Britain, the local municipal officers of each several place. No higher authority remained. The Vicar of Britain, with his staff, the Count and Duke of the Britains with their soldiery, the Count of the Saxon Shore with his coastguard,—all were gone. It is possible that, as the deserted provincials learnt to combine for defence, the Dictators they chose from time to time to lead the national forces may have derived some of their authority from the remembrance of these old dignities. “The dragon of the great Pendragonship,”363 the tufa of Caswallon (633), and the purple of Cunedda364 may well have been derived (as Professor Rhys suggests) from this source. But practically the history of Roman Britain ends with a crash at the Fall of Rome.

Section D

Beginning of English Conquest—Vortigern—Jutes in Thanet—Battle of Stamford—Massacre of Britons—Valentinian III.—Latest Roman coin found in Britain—Progress of Conquest—The Cymry—Survival of Romano-British titles—Arturian Romances—Procopius—Belisarius—Roman claims revived by Charlemagne—The British Empire.

D. 1.—Little remains to be told, and that little rests upon no contemporary authority known to us. In Gildas, the nearest, writing in the next century, we find little more than a monotonous threnody over the awful visitation of the English Conquest, the wholesale and utter destruction of cities, the desecration of churches, the massacre of clergy and people. Nennius (as, for the sake of convenience, modern writers mostly agree to call the unknown author of the ‘Historia Britonum’) gives us legends of British incompetence and Saxon treachery which doubtless represent the substantial features of the break-up, and preserve, quite possibly, even some of the details. Bede and the ‘Anglo-Saxon Chronicle’ assign actual dates to the various events, but we have no means of testing their accuracy.

D. 2.—Broadly we know that the unhappy civilians, who were not only without military experience, but had up to this moment been actually forbidden to carry arms, naturally proved unable to face the ferocious enemies who swarmed in upon them. They could neither hold the Wall against the Picts nor the coast against the Saxons. It may well be true that they chose a Dux Britannorum,365 and that his name may have been something like Vortigern, and that he (when a final appeal for Roman aid proved vain)366 may have taken into his pay (as Carausius did) the crews of certain pirate “keels” [chiulae],367 and settled them in Thanet. The very names of their English captains, “Hengist and Horsa,” may not be so mythical as critics commonly assume.368 And the tale of the victory at Stamford, when the spears of the Scottish invaders were cut to pieces by the swords of the English mercenaries,369 has a very true ring about it. So has also the sequel, which tells how, when the inevitable quarrel arose between employers and employed, the Saxon leader gave the signal for the fray by suddenly shouting to his men, Nimed eure saxes370 (i.e. “Draw your knives!”), and massacred the hapless Britons of Kent almost without resistance.

D. 3.—The date of this first English settlement is doubtful. Bede fixes it as 449, which agrees with the order of events in Gildas, and with the notice in Nennius that it was forty years after the end of Roman rule in Britain [transacto Romanorum in Britannia imperio]. But Nennius also declares that this was in the fourth year of Vortigern, and that his accession coincided with that of the nephew and successor of Honorius, Valentinian III., son of Galla Placidia, which would bring in the Saxons 428. It may perhaps be some very slight confirmation of the later date, that Valentinian is the last Emperor whose coins have been found in Britain.371

D. 4.—Anyhow, the arrival of the successive swarms of Anglo-Saxons from the mouth of the Elbe, and their hard-won conquest of Eastern Britain during the 5th century, is certain. The western half of the island, from Clydesdale southwards, resisted much longer, and, in spite of its long and straggling frontier, held together for more than a century. Not till the decisive victory of the Northumbrians at Chester (A.D. 607), and that of the West Saxons at Beandune (A.D. 614) was this Cymrian federation finally broken into three fragments, each destined shortly to disintegrate into an ever-shifting medley of petty principalities. Yet in each the ideal of national and racial unity embodied in the word Cymry372 long survived; and titles borne to this day by our Royal House, “Duke of Cornwall,” “Prince of Wales,” “Duke of Albany,” are the far-off echoes, lingering in each, of the Roman “Comes Britanniae” and “Dux Britanniarum.” The three feathers of the Principality may in like manner be traced to the tufa, or plume, borne before the supreme authority amongst the Romans of old, as the like are borne before the Supreme Head of the Roman Church to this day. And age after age the Cymric harpers sang of the days when British armies had marched in triumph to Rome, and the Empire had been won by British princes, till the exploits of their mystical “Arthur”373 became the nucleus of a whole cycle of mediaeval romance, and even, for a while, a real force in practical politics.374

D. 5.—And as the Britons never quite forgot their claims on the Empire, so the Empire never quite forgot its claims on Britain. How entirely the island was cut off from Rome we can best appreciate by the references to it in Procopius. This learned author, writing under Justinian, scarcely 150 years since the day when the land was fully Roman, conceives of Britannia and Brittia as two widely distant islands—the one off the coast of Spain, the other off the mouth of the Rhine.375 The latter is shared between the Angili, Phrissones,376 and Britons, and is divided from North to South377 by a mighty Wall, beyond which no mortal man can breathe. Hither are ferried over from Gaul by night the souls of the departed;378 the fishermen, whom a mysterious voice summons to the work, seeing no one, but perceiving their barks to be heavily sunk in the water, yet accomplishing the voyage with supernatural celerity.

D. 6.—About the same date Belisarius offered to the Goths,379 in exchange for their claim to Sicily, which his victories had already rendered practically nugatory, the Roman claims to Britain, “a much larger island,” which were equally outside the scope of practical politics for the moment, but might at any favourable opportunity be once more brought forward. And, when the Western Empire was revived under Charlemagne, they were in fact brought forward, and actually submitted to by half the island. The Celtic princes of Scotland, the Anglians of Northumbria, and the Jutes of Kent alike owned the new Caesar as their Suzerain. And the claim was only abrogated by the triumph of the counter-claim first made by Egbert, emphasized by Edward the Elder, and repeated again and again by our monarchs their descendants, that the British Crown owes no allegiance to any potentate on earth, being itself not only Royal, but in the fullest sense Imperial.380

Section E

Survivals of Romano-British civilization—Romano-British Church—Legends of its origin—St. Paul—St. Peter—Joseph of Arimathaea—Glastonbury—Historical notices—Claudia and Pudens —Pomponia—Church of St. Pudentiana—Patristic references to Britain—Tertullian—Origen —Legend of Lucius—Native Christianity—British Bishops at Councils—Testimony of Chrysostom and Jerome.

E. 1.—Few questions have been more keenly debated than the extent to which Roman civilization in Britain survived the English Conquest. On the one hand we have such high authorities as Professor Freeman assuring us that our forefathers swept it away as ruthlessly and as thoroughly as the Saracens in Africa; on the other, those who consider that little more disturbance was wrought than by the Danish invasions. The truth probably lies between the two, but much nearer to the former than the latter. The substitution of an English for the Roman name of almost every Roman site in the country381 could scarcely have taken place had there been anything like continuity in their inhabitants. Even the Roman roads, as we have seen,382 received English designations. We may well believe that most Romano-British towns shared the fate of Anderida (the one recorded instance of destruction),383 and that the word “chester” was only applied to the Roman ruins by their destroyers.384 But such places as London, York, and Lincoln may well have lived on through the first generation of mere savage onslaught, after which the English gradually began to tolerate even for themselves a town life.

E. 2.—And though in the country districts the agricultural population were swept away pitilessly to make room for the invaders,385 till the fens of Ely386 and the caves of Ribblesdale387 became the only refuge of the vanquished, yet, undoubtedly, many must have been retained as slaves, especially amongst the women, to leaven the language of the conquerors with many a Latin word, and their ferocity with many a recollection of the gentler Roman past.

E. 3.—And there was one link with that past which not all the massacres and fire-raisings of the Conquest availed to break. The Romano-British populations might be slaughtered, the Romano-British towns destroyed, but the Romano-British Church lived on; the most precious and most abiding legacy bestowed by Rome upon our island.

E. 4.—The origin of that Church has been assigned by tradition to directly Apostolic sources. The often-quoted passage from Theodoret,388 of St. Paul having “brought help” to “the isles of the sea” (ταῖς ἐν τῷ πελάγει διακειμέναις νήσοις) [tais en to pelagei diakeimenais nêsois], can scarcely, however, refer to this island. No classical author ever uses the word πέλαγος [pelagos] of the Oceanic waters; and the epithet diakeime/nais [diakeimenais], coming, as it does, in connection with the Apostle’s preaching in Italy and Spain, seems rather to point to the islands between these peninsulas—Sardinia, Corsica, and the Balearic Islands. But the well-known words of St. Clement of Rome,389 that St. Paul’s missionary journeys extended to “the End of the West” τό τέρμα τῆς δύσεως [to terma tês duseôs], were, as early as the 6th century, held to imply a visit to Britain (for our island was popularly supposed by the ancients to lie west of Spain).390 The lines of Venantius (A.D. 580) even seem to contain a reference to the tradition that he landed at Portsmouth:

“Transit et Oceanum, vel qua facit insula portum,
Quasque Britannus habet terras atque ultima Thule.”
[“Yea, through the ocean he passed,
where the Port is made by an island,
And through each British realm,
and where the world endeth at Thule.”]

E. 5.—The Menology of the Greek Church (6th century) ascribes the organization of the British Church to the visitation, not of St. Paul, but of St. Peter in person.

Ο Πέτρος... εἰς Βρεταννίαν παραγίνεται. Ενθα δὴ
χειροτριβήσας [sic] καὶ πολλὰ τῶν ἀκατανομάτων ἐθνῶν
εὶς τὴν τοῦ Χριστοῦ πίστιν έπισπασάμενος... καί πολούς
τῷ λόγῳ φωτίσας τῆς χάριτος, ἐκκλησιάς τε συστησάμενος,
ἐπισκοπούς τε καὶ πρεσβυτέρους καὶ διακόνους
χειροτονησας, δωδεκάτῳ ἔτει τοῦ Καίσαρος αὖθις Πώμην
παραγίνεται.

[O Petros... ehis Bretannian paraginetai. Entha dô
cheirotribôsas [sic] kai polla tôn hakatanomatôn hethnôn
eis tôn tou Christou pistin epispasamenos... kai pollous
toi logoi photisas tôs charitos, ekklaesias te sustêsamenos,
episkopous te kai presbuterous kai diakonous
cheipotonhêsas, dôdekatôi etei tou Kaisaros authis eis Rômên
paraginetai.]391

[“Peter... cometh even unto Britain. Yea,
there abode he long, and many of the lawless folk did
he draw to the Faith of Christ... and many did he
enlighten with the Word of Grace. Churches, too,
did he set up, and ordained bishops and priests and
deacons. And in the twelfth year of Caesar392 came he
again unto Rome.”]

The ‘Acta Sanctorum’ also mentions this tradition (filtered through Simeon Metaphrastes), and adds that St. Peter was in Britain during Boadicea’s rebellion, when he incurred great danger.

E. 6—The ‘Synopsis Apostolorum,’ ascribed to Dorotheus (A.D. 180), but really a 6th-century compilation, gives us yet another Apostolic preacher, St. Simon Zelotes. This is probably due to a mere confusion between Μαβριτανία [Mabritania] [Mauretania] and Βρεταννία [Bretannia]. But it is impossible to deny that the Princes of the Apostles may both have visited Britain, nor indeed is there anything essentially improbable in their doing so. We know that Britain was an object of special interest at Rome during the period of the Conquest, and it would be quite likely that the idea of simultaneously conquering this new Roman dominion for Christ should suggest itself to the two Apostles so specially connected with the Roman Church.393

E. 7.—But while we may possibly accept this legend, it is otherwise with the famous and beautiful story which ascribes the foundation of our earliest church at Glastonbury to the pilgrimage of St. Joseph of Arimathaea, whose staff, while he rested on Weary-all Hill, took root, and became the famous winter thorn, which

“Blossoms at Christmas, mindful of our Lord,”394

and who, accordingly, set up, hard by, a little church of wattle to be the centre of local Christianity.

E. 8.—Such was the tale which accounted for the fact that this humble edifice developed into the stateliest sanctuary of all Britain. We first find it, in its final shape, in Geoffrey of Monmouth (1150); but already in the 10th century the special sanctity of the shrine was ascribed to a supernatural origin,395 as a contemporary Life of St. Dunstan assures us; and it is declared, in an undisputed Charter of Edgar, to be “the first church in the Kingdom built by the disciples of Christ.” But no earlier reference is known; for the passages cited from Gildas and Melkinus are quite untrustworthy. So striking a phenomenon as the winter thorn would be certain to become an object of heathen devotion;396 and, as usual, the early preachers would Christianize the local cult, as they Christianized the Druidical figment of a Holy Cup (perhaps also local in its origin), into the sublime mysticism of the Sangreal legend, connected likewise with Joseph of Arimathaea.397

E. 9.—That the original church of Glaston was really of wattle is more than probable, for the remains of British buildings thus constructed have been found abundantly in the neighbouring peat. The Arimathaean theory of its consecration became so generally accepted that at the Council of Constance (1419) precedence was actually accorded to our Bishops as representing the senior Church of Christendom. But the oldest variant of the legend says nothing about Arimathaea, but speaks only of an undetermined “Joseph” as the leader [decurio]398 of twelve missionary comrades who with him settled down at Glastonbury. And this may well be true. Such bands (as we see in the Life of Columba) were the regular system in Celtic mission work, and survived in that of the Preaching Friars:

“For thirteen is a Covent, as I guess.”399

E. 10.—And though such high authorities as Mr. Haddan have come to the conclusion that Christianity in Britain was confined to a small minority even amongst the Roman inhabitants of the island, and almost vanished with them, yet the catena of references to British converts can scarcely be thus set aside. They begin in Apostolic times and in special connection with St. Paul. Martial tells us of a British princess named Claudia Rufina400 (very probably the daughter of that Claudius Cogidubnus whom we meet in Tacitus as at once a British King and an Imperial Legate), whose beauty and wit made no little sensation in Rome; whither she had doubtless been sent at once for education and as a hostage for her father’s fidelity. And one of the most beautiful of his Epigrams speaks of the marriage of this foreigner to a Roman of high family named Pudens, belonging to the Gens Aemilia (of which the Pauline family formed a part):

“Claudia, Rufe, meo nubet peregrina Pudenti,
Macte esto taedis, O Hymenaee, suis.
Diligat illa senem quondam; sed et ipsa marito,
Tunc quoque cum fuerit, non videatur anus.”401

[To RUFUS.
Claudia, from far-off climes, my Pudens weds:
With choicest bliss, O Hymen, crown their heads!
May she still love her spouse when gray and old,
He in her age unfaded charms behold.]

It may have been in consequence of this marriage that Pudens joined with Claudius Cogidubnus in setting up the Imperial Temple at Chichester.402 And the fact that Claudia was an adopted member of the Rufine family shows that she was connected with the Gens Pomponia to which this family belonged.

E. 11.—Now Aulus Plautius, the conqueror of Britain, had married a Pomponia, who in A.D. 57 was accused of practising an illicit religion, and, though pronounced guiltless by her husband (to whose domestic tribunal she was left, as Roman Law permitted), passed the rest of her life in retirement.403 When we read of an illicit religion in connection with Britain, our first thought is, naturally, that Druidism is intended.404 But there are strong reasons for supposing that Pomponia was actually a Christian. The names of her family are found in one of the earliest Christian catacombs in Rome, that of Calixtus; and that Christianity had its converts in very high quarters we know from the case of Clemens and Domitilla, closely related to the Imperial throne.

E. 12.—Turning next to St. Paul’s Second Epistle to Timothy, we find, in close connection, the names of Pudens and Claudia (along with that of the future Pope Linus) amongst the salutations from Roman Christians. And recent excavations have established the fact that the house of Pudens was used for Christian worship at this date, and is now represented by the church known as St. Pudentiana.405 That this should have been so proves that this Pudens was no slave going under his master’s name (as was sometimes done), but a man of good position in Rome. Short of actual proof it would be hard to imagine a series of evidences more morally convincing that the Pudens and Claudia of Martial are the Pudens and Claudia of St. Paul, and that they, as well as Pomponia, were Christians. Whether, then, St. Paul did or did not actually visit Britain, the earliest British Christianity is, at least, closely connected with his name.

E. 13.—Neither legendary nor historical sources tell us of any further development of British Christianity till the latter days of the 2nd century. Then, however, it had become sufficiently widespread to furnish a common-place for ecclesiastical declamation on the all-conquering influence of the Gospel. Both Tertullian and Origen406 thus use it. The former numbers in his catalogue of believing countries even the districts of Britain beyond the Roman pale, Britannorum inaccessa Romanis loca, Christo vero subdita407. And in this lies the interest of his reference, as pointing to the native rather than the Roman element being the predominant factor in the British Church. For just at this period comes in the legend preserved by Bede,408 that a mission was sent to Britain by Pope Eleutherius409 in response to an appeal from “Lucius Britanniae Rex.” The story, which Bede probably got from the ‘Catalogus Pontificum,’410 may be apocryphal; but it would never have been invented had British Christianity been found merely or mainly in the Roman veneer of the population. Modern criticism finds in it this kernel of truth, that the persecution which gave the Gallican Church the martyrs of Lyons, also sent her scattered refugees as missionaries into the less dangerous regions of Britain;—those remoter parts, in especial, where even the long arm of the Imperial Government could not reach them.

E. 14.—The Picts, however, as a nation, remained savage heathens even to the 7th century, and the bulk of our Christian population must have been within the Roman pale; but little vexed, it would seem, by persecution, till it came into conflict with the thorough-going Imperialism of Diocletian.411 Its martyrs were then numbered, according to Gildas, by thousands, according to Bede by hundreds; and their chief, St. Alban, at least, is a fairly established historical entity.412 Nor is there any reason to doubt that after Constantine South Britain was as fully Christian as any country in Europe. In the earliest days of his reign (A.D. 314) we find three bishops,413 together with a priest and a deacon, representing414 the British Church at the Council of Arles (which, amongst other things, condemned the marriage of the “innocent divorcee”415). And the same number figure in the Council of Ariminum (360), as the only prelates (out of the 400) who deigned to accept from the Emperor the expenses of their journey and attendance.

E. 15.—This Council was called by Constantius II. in the semi-Arian interest, and not allowed to break up till after repudiating the Nicene formula. But the lapse was only for a moment. Before the decade was out Athanasius could write of Britain as notoriously orthodox,416 and before the century closes we have frequent references to our island as a fully Christian and Catholic land. Chrysostom speaks of its churches and its altars and “the power of the Word” in its pulpits,417 of its diligent study of Scripture and Catholic doctrine,418 of its acceptance of Catholic discipline,419 of its use of Catholic formulae: “Whithersoever thou goest,” he says, “throughout the whole world, be it to India, to Africa, or to Britain, thou wilt find In the beginning was the Word.”420 Jerome, in turn, tells of British pilgrimages to Jerusalem421 and to Rome;422 and, in his famous passage on the world-wide Communion of the Roman See, mentions Britain by name: “Nec altera Romanae Urbis Ecclesia, altera totius orbis existimanda est. Et Galliae, et Britanniae, et Africa, et Persis, et Oriens, et Indio, et omnes barbarae nationes, unum Christum adorant, unam observant regulam veritatis.”423

[“Neither is the Church of the City of Rome to be held one, and that of the whole world another. Both Gaul and Britain and Africa and Persia and the East and India, and all the barbarian nations, adore one Christ, observe one Rule of Truth.”]

Section F

British Missionaries—Ninias—Patrick—Beatus—Heresiarchs—Pelagius Fastidius—Pelagianism stamped out by Germanus—The Alleluia Battle—Romano-British churches—Why so seldom found—Conclusion.

F. 1.—The fruits of all this vigorous Christian life soon showed themselves in the Church of Britain by the evolution of noteworthy individual Christians. First in order comes Ninias, the Apostle of the Southern Picts, commissioned to the work, after years of training at Rome, by Pope Siricius (A.D. 394), and fired by the example of St. Martin, the great prelate of Gaul. To this saint (or, to speak more exactly, under his invocation) Ninias, on hearing of his death in A.D. 400, dedicated his newly-built church at Whithern424 in Galloway, the earliest recorded example of this kind of dedication in Britain.425 Galloway may have been the native home of Ninias, and was certainly the head-quarters of his ministry.

F. 2.—The work of Ninias amongst the Picts was followed in the next generation by the more abiding work of St. Patrick amongst the Scots of Ireland. Nay, even the Continent was indebted to British piety; though few British visitors to the Swiss Oberland remember that the Christianity they see around them is due to the zeal of a British Mission. Yet there seems no solid reason for doubting that so it is. Somewhere about the time of St. Patrick, two British priests, Beatus and Justus, entered the district by the Brunig Pass, and set up their first church at Einigen, near Thun. There Justus abode as the settled Missioner of the neighbourhood, while Beatus made his home in the ivy-clad cave above the lake which still bears his name,426 sailing up and down with the Gospel message, and evangelizing the valleys and uplands now so familiar to his fellow-countrymen—Grindelwald, Lauterbrunnen, Mürren, Kandersteg.

F. 3.—And while the light of the Gospel was thus spreading on every side from our land, Britain was also becoming all too famous as the nurse of error. The British Pelagius,427 who erred concerning the doctrine of free-will, grew to be a heresiarch of the first order;428 and his follower Fastidius, or Faustus, the saintly Abbot of Lerins in the Hyères, the friend of Sidonius Apollinaris,429 was, in his day, only less renowned. He asserted the materiality of the soul. Both were able writers; and Pelagius was the first to adopt the plan of promulgating his heresies not as his own, but as the tenets of supposititious individuals of his acquaintance.

F. 4.—Pelagianism spread so widely in Britain that the Catholics implored for aid from over-sea. St. Germanus of Auxerre, and St. Lupus, Bishop of Troyes (whose sanctity had disarmed the ferocity even of Attila), came430 accordingly (in 429) and vindicated the faith in a synod held at Verulam so successfully that the neighbouring shrine of St. Alban was the scene of a special service of thanksgiving. In a second Mission, fifteen years later, Germanus set the seal to his work, stamping out throughout all the land both this new heresy and such remains of heathenism as were still to be found in Southern Britain. While thus engaged on the Border he found his work endangered by a raiding host of Picts or Saxons, or both. The Saint, who had been a military chieftain in his youth, promptly took the field at the head of his flock, many of whom were but newly baptized. It was Easter Eve, and he took advantage of the sacred ceremonies of that holy season, which were then actually performed by night. From the New Fire, the “Lumen Christi,” was kindled a line of beacons along the Christian lines, and when Germanus intoned the threefold Easter Alleluia, the familiar strain was echoed from lip to lip throughout the host. Stricken with panic at the sudden outburst of light and song, the enemy, without a blow, broke and fled.431

F. 5.—This story, as told by Constantius, and confirmed by both Nennius and Bede, incidentally furnishes us with something of a key to the main difficulty in accepting the widely-spread Romano-British Christianity to which the foregoing citations testify. What, it is asked, has become of all the Romano-British churches? Why are no traces of them found amongst the abundant Roman remains all over the land? That they were the special objects of destruction at the Saxon invasion we learn from Gildas. But this does not account for their very foundations having disappeared; yet at Silchester432 alone have modern excavations unearthed any even approximately certain example of them. Where are all the rest?

F. 6.—The question is partly answered when we read that the soldiers of Germanus had erected in their camp a church of wattle, and that such was the usual material of which, even as late as 446, British churches were built (as at Glastonbury). Seldom indeed would such leave any trace behind them; and thus the country churches of Roman Britain would be sought in vain by excavators. In the towns, however, stone or brick would assuredly be used, and to account for the paucity of ecclesiastical ruins three answers may be suggested.

F. 7.—First, the number of continuously unoccupied Romano-British cities is very small indeed. Except at Silchester, Anderida, and Uriconium, almost every one has become an English town. But when this took place early in the English settlement of the land, the ruins of the Romano-British churches would still be clearly traceable at the conversion of the English, and would be rebuilt (as St. Martin’s at Canterbury was in all probability rebuilt)433 for the use of English Christianity, the old material434 being worked up into the new edifices. It is probable that many of our churches thus stand on the very spot where the Romano-British churches stood of old. But this very fact would obliterate the remains of these churches.

F. 8.—Secondly, it is very possible that many of the heathen temples may, after the edict of Theodosius (A.D. 392), have been turned into churches (like the Pantheon at Rome), so that their remains may mark ecclesiastical sites. There are reasons for believing that in various places, such as St. Paul’s, London, St. Peter’s, Cambridge, and St. Mary’s, Ribchester, Christian worship did actually thus succeed Pagan on the same site.

F. 9.—Thirdly, as Lanciani points out, the earliest Christian churches were simply the ordinary dwelling-houses of such wealthier converts as were willing to permit meetings for worship beneath their roof, which in time became formally consecrated to that purpose. Such a dwelling-house usually consisted of an oblong central hall, with a pillared colonnade, opening into a roofed cloister or peristyle on either side, at one end into a smaller guest-room [tablinum], at the other into the porch of entry. The whole was arranged thus:

Small
          Guest
          Room.
P P
e e
r r
i Central Hall, i
s with pillars s
t on each side t
y (often roofless). y
l l
e e
          Porch
          of
          Entry.

It will be readily seen that we have here a building on the lines of an ordinary church. The small original congregation would meet, like other guests, in the reception-room. As numbers increased, the hall and adjoining cloisters would have to be used (the former being roofed in); the reception-room being reserved for the most honoured members, and ultimately becoming the chancel of a fully-developed church, with nave and aisles complete.435 It may be, therefore, that some of the Roman villas found in Britain were really churches.436

F. 10.—This, however, is a less probable explanation of the absence of ecclesiastical remains; and the large majority of Romano-British church sites are, as I believe, still in actual use amongst us for their original purpose. And it may be considered as fairly proved, that before Britain was cut off from the Empire the Romano-British Church had a rite437 and a vigorous corporate life of its own, which the wave of heathen invasion could not wholly submerge. It lived on, shattered, perhaps, and disorganized, but not utterly crushed, to be strengthened in due time by a closer union with its parent stem, through the Mission of Augustine, to feel the reflex glow of its own missionary efforts in the fervour of Columba and his followers,438 and, finally, to form an integral part of that Ecclesia Anglicana whose influence knit our country into one, and inspired the Great Charter of our constitutional liberties.439 Her faith and her freedom are the abiding debt which Britain owes to her connection with Rome.

Footnotes

3 His later books only survive in the epitome of Xiphilinus, a Byzantine writer of the 13th century.

4 See p. 171.

5 See p. 256.

6 In the British (?) village near Glastonbury the bases of shed antlers are found hafted for mallets.

7 This name is simply given for archaeological convenience, to indicate that these aborigines were non-Aryan, and perhaps of Turanian affinity.

8 Skeat, however, traces “ogre” (the Spanish “ogro”) to the Latin Orcus.

9 The latest excavations (1902) prove Stonehenge to be a Neolithic erection. No metal was found, but quantities of flint implements, broken in the arduous task of dressing the great Sarsen monoliths. The process seems to have been that still used for granite, viz. to cut parallel channels on the rough surface, and then break and rub down the ridges between. This was done by the use of conical lumps of Sarsen stone, weighing from 20 to 60 lbs., several of which were discovered bearing traces of usage, both in pounding and rubbing. The monoliths examined were found to be thus tooled accurately down to the very bottom, 8 or 9 feet below ground. At Avebury the stones are not dressed.

10 Sarsen is the same word as Saracen, which in mediaeval English simply means foreign (though originally derived from the Arabic sharq = Eastern). Whence the stones came is still disputed. They may have been boulders deposited in the district by the ice-drift of the Glacial Epoch.

11 Professor Rhys assigns 600 B.C. as the approximate date of the first Gadhelic arrivals, and 200 B.C. as that of the first Brythonic.

12 Whether or no this word is (as some authorities hold) derived from the Welsh Prutinach (=Picts) rather than from the Brythons, it must have reached Aristotle through Brythonic channels, for the Gadhelic form is Cruitanach.

13 A certain amount of British folk-lore was brought back to Greece, according to Plutarch (‘De defect. orac.’ 2), by the geographer Demetrias of Tarsus about this time. He refers to the cavern of sleeping heroes, so familiar in our mediaeval legends.

14 The word is said to be derived from the root kâsh, “shine.” Some authorities, however, maintain that it came into Sanscrit from the Greek.

15 ‘Hist.’ III. 112.

16 See p. 48.

17 For a full notice of Pytheas see Elton, ‘Origins of English History,’ pp. 13-75. See also Tozer’s ‘Ancient Geography,’ chap. viii.

18 Posidonius of Rhodes, the tutor of Cicero, visited Britain about 100 B.C., and wrote a History of his travels in fifty volumes, only known to us by extracts in Strabo (iii. 217, iv. 287, vii. 293), Diodorus Siculus (v. 28, 30), Athenaeus, and others. See Bake’s ‘Posidonius’ (Leyden, 1810).

19 The ingots of bronze found in the recent [1900] excavations at Gnossus, in Crete, which date approximately from 2000 B.C., are of this shape. Presumably the Britons learnt it from Phoenician sources.

20 Saxon coracles are spoken of even in the 5th century A.D. See p. 245.

21 ‘Coins of the Ancient Britons,’ p. 24.

22 This familiar feature of our climate is often touched on by classical authors. Minucius Felix (A.D. 210) is observant enough to connect it with our warm seas, “its compensation,” due to the Gulf Stream.

23 ‘Nat. Hist.’ xviii. 18.

24 Ibid. xvii. 4.

25 Solinus (A.D. 80) adds that bees, like snakes, were unknown in Ireland, and states that bees will even desert a hive if Irish earth be brought near it!

26 Matthew Martin, ‘Western Isles,’ published 1673. Quoted by Elton (‘Origins of English Hist.,’ p. 16), who gives Martin’s date as 1703.

27 Strabo, iv. 277. The word basket is itself of Celtic origin, and passed into Latin as it has passed into English. Martial (‘Epig.’ xiv. 299) says: “Barbara de pictis veni bascauda Britannis.” Strabo wrote shortly before, Martial shortly after, the Roman Conquest of Britain.

28 One of these primitive mortars, a rudely-hollowed block of oolite, with a flint pestle weighing about 6 lbs., was found near Cambridge in 1885.

29 Diod. Siculus, ‘Hist.’ v. 21.

30 ‘British Barrows,’ p. 750.

‘Geog.’ IV.

32 ‘Legend of Montrose,’ ch. xxii.

33 Diod. Sic. v. 30: “Saga crebris tessellis florum instar distincta.” This sagum was obviously a tartan plaid such as are now in use. The kilt, however, was not worn. It is indeed a comparatively quite modern adaptation of the belted plaid. Ancient Britons wore trousers, drawn tight above the ankles, after the fashion still current amongst agricultural labourers. They were already called “breeches.” Martial (Ep. x. 22) satirizes a life “as loose as the old breeches of a British pauper.”

34 Pliny, ‘Nat. Hist.’ viii. 48.

35 Id. xxviii. 2. Fashions about hair seem to have changed as rapidly amongst Britons (throughout the whole period of this work) as in later times. The hair was sometimes worn short, sometimes long, sometimes strained back from the forehead; sometimes moustaches were in vogue, sometimes a clean shave, more rarely a full beard; but whiskers were quite unknown.

36 Tozer (‘Ancient Geog.’ p. 164) states that amber is also exported from the islands fringing the west coast of Schleswig, and considers that these rather than the Baltic shores were the “Amber Islands” of Pytheas.

37 ‘Nat. Hist.’ xxxvii. 1.

38 See p. 128.

39 A lump weighing nearly 12 lbs. was dredged up off Lowestoft in 1902.

A.D. 50.

41 Seneca speaks of the blue shields of the Yorkshire Brigantes.

42 See Elton, ‘Origins of English History,’ p. 116.

43 Thurnam, ‘British Barrows’ (Archaeol. xliii. 474).

44 Propertius, iv. 3, 7.

45 ‘Celtic Britain,’ p. 40.

46 This seems the least difficult explanation of this strange name. An alternative theory is that it = Cenomanni (a Gallic tribe-name also found in Lombardy). But with this name (which must have been well known to Caesar) we never again meet in Britain. And it is hard to believe that he would not mention a clan so important and so near the sphere of his campaign as the Iceni.

47 See p. 109.

48 These tribes are described by Vitruvius, at the Christian era, as of huge stature, fair, and red-haired. Skeletons of this race, over six feet in height, have been discovered in Yorkshire buried in “monoxylic” coffins; i.e. each formed of the hollowed trunk of an oak tree. See Elton’s ‘Origins,’ p. 168.

49 This correspondence, however, is wholly an antiquarian guess, and rests on no evidence. It is first found in the forged chronicle of “Richard of Cirencester.” The names are genuine, being found in the ‘Notitia,’ though dating only from the time of Diocletian (A.D. 296). But, on our theory, the same administrative divisions must have existed all along. See p. 225.

50 General Pitt Rivers, however, in his ‘Excavations in Cranborne Chase’ (vol. ii. p. 237), proves that the ancient water level in the chalk was fifty feet higher than at present, presumably owing to the greater forest area. “Dew ponds” may also have existed in these camps. But these can scarcely have provided any large supply of water.

51 The word is commonly supposed to represent a Celtic form Mai-dun. But this is not unquestionable.

52 ‘De Bello Gall.’ vi. 13.

53 ‘De Bell. Gall.’ vi. 14.

54 Jerome (‘Quaest. in Gen.’ ii.) says that Varro, Phlegon, and all learned authors testify to the spread of Greek [at the Christian era] “from Taurus to Britain.” And Solinus (A.D. 80) tells of a Greek inscription in Caledonia, “ara Graecis literis scripta”—as a proof that Ulysses (!) had wandered thither (Solinus, ‘Polyhistoria,’ c. 22). See p. 248.

55 ‘De Bell, Gall.’ vi. 16.

56 ‘Hist.’ v. 31.

57 ‘Celtic Britain,’ p. 69.

58 ‘Nat. Hist.’ xvi. 95.

59 So Caesar, ‘De Bell. Gall.’ vi. 17.

60 Pliny, ‘Nat. Hist.’ xxiv. 62. Linnaeus has taken selago as his name for club-moss, but Pliny here compares the herb to savin, which grows to the height of several feet. Samolum is water-pimpernel in the Linnaean classification. Others identify it with the pasch-flower, which, however, is far from being a marsh plant.

61 Suetonius (A.D. 110), ‘De xii. Caes.’ v. 25.

62 Pliny, ‘Nat. Hist.’ xxx. 3.

63 Tacitus, ‘Annals,’ xiv. 30. See p. 154.

64 Pliny, ‘Nat. Hist.’ xxix. 12.

65 See Brand, ‘Popular Antiquities,’ under Ovum Anguinum. He adds that Glune is the Irish for glass.

66 Lampridius, in his life of Alexander Severus, tells us of a “Druid” sorceress who warned the Emperor of his approaching doom. Another such “Druidess” is said to have foretold Diocletian’s rise. See Coulanges, ‘Comme le Druidisme a disparu,’ in the Revue Celtique, iv. 37.

67 See Professor Rhys, ‘Celtic Britain,’ p. 70. The Professor’s view that the “schismatical” tonsure of the Celtic clergy, which caused such a stir during the evangelization of England, was a Druidical survival, does not, however, seem probable in face of the very pronounced antagonism between those clergy and the Druids. That tonsure was indeed ascribed by its Roman denouncers to Simon Magus [see above], but this is scarcely a sufficient foundation for the theory.

68 They may very possibly have been connected with the Veneti of Venice at the other extremity of “the Gauls.”

69 See p. 37.

70 Caesar, ‘Bell. Gall.’ iii. 9, 13.

71 Elton, ‘Origins of English Hist.,’ p. 237. Though less massive, these vessels are built much as the Venetian. But it is just as probable they may really be “picts.” See p. 232.

72 This opening of Britain to continental influences may perhaps account for Posidonius having been able to make so thorough a survey of the islands. See p. 36.

73 Elton (‘Origins of English Hist.’) conjectures that these tribes did not migrate to Britain till after Caesar’s day. But there is no evidence for this, and my view seems better to explain the situation.

74 Solinus (A.D. 80) says of Britain, “alterius orbis nomen mereretur.” This passage is probably the origin of the Pope’s well-known reference to St. Anselm, when Archbishop of Canterbury, as “quasi alterius orbis antistes.”

75 A Roman legion at this date comprised ten “cohorts,” i.e. some six thousand heavy-armed infantry, besides a small light-armed contingent, and an attached squadron of three hundred cavalry. Each of Caesar’s transports must thus have carried from one hundred and fifty to two hundred men, and at this rate the eighteen cavalry vessels (reckoning a horse as equivalent to five men, the usual proportion for purposes of military transport) would suffice for his two squadrons.

76 An ancient ship could not sail within eight points of the wind (see Smith, ‘Voyage of St. Paul’). Thus a S.W. breeze, while permitting Caesar to leave Boulogne, would effectually prevent these vessels from working out of Ambleteuse.

77 Hence the name Dubris = “the rivers.”

78 The claims of Richborough [Ritupis] to be Caesar’s actual landing-place have been advocated by Archdeacon Baddeley, Mr. G. Bowker, and others. But it is almost impossible to make this place square with Caesar’s narrative.

79 This was four days before the full moon, so that the tide would be high at Dover about 6 p.m.

80 The “lofty promontory” rounded is specially noticed by Dio Cassius.

81 The principle of the balista that of the sling, of the catapult that of the bow. Ammianus Marcellinus (xv. 12) speaks of “the snowy arms” of the Celtic women dealing blows “like the stroke of a catapult.”

82 Valerius Maximus (A.D. 30) has recorded one such act of daring on the part of a soldier named Scaeva, who with four comrades held an isolated rock against all comers till he alone was left, when he plunged into the sea and swam off, with the loss of his shield. In spite of this disgrace Caesar that evening promoted him on the field. The story has a suspicious number of variants, but off Deal there is such a patch of rocks, locally called the Malms; so that it may possibly be true (‘Memorabilia,’ III. 2, 23).

83 Valerius Maximus (A.D. 30) states that the Romans landed on a falling tide, which cannot be reconciled with Caesar’s own narrative (see p. 88). The idea may have originated in the fact that it was probably the approaching turn of the tide which forced him to land at Deal. He could not have reached Richborough before the ebb began.

84 Every soldier was four feet from his nearest neighbour to give scope for effective sword-play. No other troops in history have ever had the morale thus to fight at close quarters.

85 See Plutarch, ‘De placitis philosophorum.’

86 Each chariot may have carried six or seven men, like those of the Indian King Porus. See Dodge, ‘Alexander,’ p. 554.

87 Pomponius Mela (‘De Situ Orbis,’ I) tells us that by his date (50 A.D.) it had come in: “Covinos vocant, quorum falcatis axîbus utuntur.”

88 It is thus represented by Giraldus Cambrensis, who gives us the story of Caesar’s campaigns from the British point of view, as it survived (of course with gross exaggerations) in the Cymric legends of his day.

89 Lucan, the last champion of anti-Caesarism, sung, two generations after its overthrow, the praises and the dirge of the Oligarchy.

90 See my ‘Alfred in the Chroniclers,’ p. 44.

91 ‘Ad Treb.’ Ep. VI.

92 ‘Ad Treb.’ Ep. VII.

Ep. 10.

Ep. 16.

Ep. 17.

IV. 15.

III. 1.

II. 16.

II. 15.

III. 10.

101 Wace (‘Roman de Ron,’ 11,567) gives 696 as the exact total.

102 ‘Strategemata,’ viii. 23.

103 This was probably not Deal, which had not proved a satisfactory station, but Richborough, where the Wantsum, then a broad arm of the sea between Kent and Thanet, provided an excellent harbour for a large fleet. It was, moreover, the regular emporium of the tin trade (see p. 36), and a British trackway thus led to it.

104 Otherwise Cadwallon, which, according to Professor Rhys, signifies War King, and may possibly have been a title rather than a personal name. But it remained in use as the latter for many centuries of British history.

105 Vine, ‘Caesar in Kent,’ p. 171. The spot is “in Bourne Park, not far from the road leading up to Bridge Hill.”

106 See p. 244.

107 See II. G. 8. The tradition of this sentiment long survived. Hegesippus (A.D. 150) says: “Britanni... quidesse servitus ignorabant; soli sibi nati, semper sibi liberi” (‘De Bello Judiaco,’ II. 9).

108 Polyaenus (A.D. 180) in his ‘Strategemata’ (viii. 23) ascribes their panic to Caesar’s elephant. See p. 107.

109 At Ilerda. See Dodge, ‘Caesar,’ xxviii.

110 Frontinus (A.D. 90), ‘Strategemata II.’ xiii. II.

111 Coins of all three bear the words COMMI. F. (Commii Filius), but Verica alone calls himself REX. Those of Eppillus were struck at Calleva (Silchester?).

112 See p. 54.

113 This is the spelling adopted by Suetonius.

114 The lion was already a specially British emblem. Ptolemy (‘de Judiciis II.’ 3) ascribes the special courage of Britons to the fact that they are astrologically influenced by Leo and Mars. It is interesting to remember that our success in the Crimean War was prognosticated from Mars being in Leo at its commencement (March 1854). Tennyson, in ‘Maud,’ has referred to this—“And pointed to Mars, As he hung like a ruddy shield on the Lion’s breast.”

115 See p. 38.

116 The site of this town is quite unknown. Caesar mentions the Segontiaci amongst the clans of S.E. Britain.

117 In S.E. Essex, near Colchester. See p. 176.

118 See pp. 109, 122.

119 Aelian (A.D. 220), ‘De Nat. Animal.’ xv. 8.

120 Ελεφάντινα ψάλια καὶ, περιαυχένια, καὶ νιγγούρια καὶ ὑαλᾶ σκεύη ὑαλᾶ σκεύη, καὶ ῥῶπος τοίουτος [Elephantina psalia, kai periauchenia, kai lingouria kai huala skeuê, kai rhôpos toioutos]. Strabo is commonly supposed to mean that these were the imports from Gaul. But his words are quite ambiguous, and such of the articles he mentions as are found in Britain are clearly of native manufacture. British graves are fertile (see p. 48) in the “amber and glass ornaments” (the former being small roughly-shaped fragments pierced for threading, the latter coarse blue or green beads), and produce occasional armlets of narwhal ivory. Glass beads have been found (1898) in the British village near Glastonbury, and elsewhere.

121 Strabo, v. 278.

122 Propertius, II. 1. 73: Esseda caelatis siste Britanna jugis.

123 Ibid. II. 18. 23. See p. 47.

124 Virgil, ‘Georg.’ III. 24.

125 Virgil, ‘Eccl.’ I. 65; Horace, ‘Od.’ I. 21. 13, 35. 30, III. 5. 3; Tibullus, IV. 1. 147; Propertius, IV. 3. 7.

126 Suetonius, ‘De XII. Caes.’ IV. 19.

127 The lofty spur of the Chiltern Hills which overhangs the church of Ellsborough is traditionally the site of his tomb.

128 This whole episode is from ‘Dio Cassius’ (lib. xxxix. Section 50).

129 He places Cirencester in their territory, while both Bath and Winchester belonged to the Belgae. To secure Winchester, where they would be on the line of the tin-trade road (see p. 36), would be the first object of the Romans if they did land at Portsmouth. Their further steps would depend upon the disposition of the British armies advancing to meet them,—the final objective of the campaign being Camelodune, the capital of the sons of Cymbeline.

130 This is stated by both Geoffrey of Monmouth and Matthew of Westminster.

131 For three centuries this legion was quartered at Caerleon-upon-Usk, and the Twentieth at Chester. See Mommsen, ‘Roman Provinces,’ p. 174.

132 This was the honorary title of several legions; as there are several “Royal” regiments.

133 Tac, ‘Hist.’ III. 44.

134 The Flavian family was of very humble origin.

135 Bede, from Suetonius, tells us that Vespasian with his legion fought in Britain thirty-two battles and took twenty towns, besides subduing the Isle of Wight (‘Sex. Aet.’ A.D. 80).

136 If the Romans were advancing eastward from the Dobunian territory it may have been the Loddon. Mommsen cuts the knot in true German fashion by refusing to identify the Dobuni of Ptolemy with those of Dion, and placing the latter in Kent on his own sole authority. (‘Roman Provinces,’ p. 175.)

δυσδιέξοδα [dusdiexoda.]

138 See p. 139.

139 ‘Orosius,’ VII. 5.

140 A victorious Roman general was commonly thus hailed by his troops after any signal victory. But by custom this could only be done once in the same campaign.

141 Suet. v. 21.

142 Dio Cassius, lx. 23. The boy, who was the child of Messalina, had previously been named Germanicus.

143 Suet. v. 28.

144 Suet. v. 21.

145 Tac., ‘Ann.’ xii. 56.

146 Dio Cassius, lx. 30.

147 Suet. v. 24.

148 Dio Cassius, lx. 30.

149 Eutropius, vii. 13.

150 Muratori, Thes. mcii. 6.

151 ‘De XII. Caesaribus,’ v. 28.

152 Dio Cassius, lx. 23.

153 See Haverfield in ‘Authority and Archaeology,’ p. 319

154 ‘Laus Claudii’ (Burmann, ‘Anthol.’ ii. 8).

155 See p. 152.

156 The inscription runs thus:

NEPTVNO. ET. MINERVAE
          TEMPLVM
pro SALVTE. DO mus DIVINAE
ex AVCTORITATE. Ti. CLAVD
Co GIDVBNI. R. LEGATI. AVG. IN. BRIT.
Colle GIVM. FABRO. ET. QVI. IN. E.
..... D.S.D. DONANTE. AREAM.
Pud ENTE. PVDENTINI. FILiae

(The italics are almost certain restoration of illegible letters.)

157 See p. 256.

158 Claudia, the British Princess mentioned by Martial as making a distinguished Roman marriage, may very probably be his daughter.

159 See p. 130.

160 Thus in St. Luke ii. we find Cyrenius Pro-praetor (ἡγεμων [hêgemôn]) of Syria, but in Acts xviii. Gallio Pro-consul (ὰνθύπατος [hanthupatos]) of Achaia.

161 See p. 131.

162 See p. 170.

163 His reputation for strength, skill, and daring cost him his life a few years later, under Nero (Tac, ‘Ann.’ xvi. 15).

164 Pigs of lead have been found in Denbighshire stamped CANGI or DECANGI. Mr. Elton, however, locates the tribe in Somerset. Coins testify to Antedrigus, the Icenian, being somehow connected with this tribe.

165 A Roman “Colony” was a town peopled by citizens of Rome (old soldiers being preferred) sent out in the first instance to dominate the subject population amid whom they were settled. Such was Philippi.

166 Tacitus, ‘Annals,’ xii. 38.

167 The distinction of an actual triumph was reserved for Emperors alone.

168 Tacitus, ‘Annals,’ xii. 39.

169 See p. 239. Uriconium alone has as yet furnished inscriptions of the famous Fourteenth Legion, “Victores Britannici.” (See p. 160.)

170 ‘Ep. ad Atticum,’ vi. 1.

171 See Dio Cassius, xii. 2.

172 The Procurator of a Province was the Imperial Finance Administrator. (See Haverfield, ‘Authority and Archaeology,’ p. 310.)

173 An inscription calls the place Colonia Victricensis.

174 Tacitus, ‘Ann.’ xiv. 32.

175 Demeter and Kore. M. Martin (‘Hist. France,’ i. 63) thinks there is here a confusion between the Greek Kore (Proserpine) and Koridwen, the White Fairy, the Celtic Goddess of the Moon and also (as amongst the Greeks) of maidenhood. But this is not proven.

176 The former is Strabo’s variant of the name (which may possibly be connected with σεμνός [semnos]), the latter that of Dionysius Periegetes (‘De Orbe,’ 57). In Caesar we find a third form Namnitae, which Professor Rhys connects with the modern Nantes.

177 See p. 127.

178 As Agricola, his father-in-law, was actually with Suetonius, Tacitus had exceptional opportunities for knowing the truth.

179 Suetonius probably retreated southward when he left London, and reoccupied its ruins when the Britons, instead of following him, turned northwards to Verulam.

180 The Roman pilum was a casting spear with a heavy steel head, nine inches long.

181 Tac., ‘Agricola,’ c. 12.

182 That the well-known coins commemorating these victories and bearing the legend IVDAEA CAPTA are not infrequently found in Britain, indicates the special connection between Vespasian and our island. The great argument used by Titus and Agrippa to convince the Jews that even the walls of Jerusalem would fail to resist the onset of Romans was that no earthly rampart could compare with the ocean wall of Britain (Josephus, D.B.J., II. 16, vi, 6).

183 The spread of Latin oratory and literature in Britain is spoken of at this date by Juvenal (Sat. xv. 112), and Martial (Epig. xi. 3), who mentions that his own works were current here: “Dicitur et nostros cantare Britannia versus.”

184 Mr. Haverfield suggests that Silchester may also be an Agricolan city (see p. 184).

185 Juvenal mentions these designs (II. 159):
“—Arma quidem ultra
Litora Juvernae promovimus, et modo captas
Orcadas, et minima contentos nocte Britannos” (i.e. those furthest north).

186 According to Dio Cassius this voyage of discovery was first made by some deserters (‘Hist. Rom.’ lxix. 20).

187 The little that is known of this rampart will be found in the next chapter (see p. 198).

188 Sallustius Lucullus, who succeeded Agricola as Pro-praetor, was slain by Domitian only for the invention of an improved lance, known by his name (as rifles now are called Mausers, etc.).

189 See p. 117.

190 All highways were made Royal Roads before the end of the 12th century, so that the course of the original four became matter of purely antiquarian interest.

191 Where it struck that sea is disputed, but Henry of Huntingdon’s assertion that it ran straight from London to Chester seems the most probable.

192 The lines of these roads, if produced, strike the Thames not at London Bridge, but at the old “Horse Ferry” to Lambeth. This may point to an alternative (perhaps the very earliest) route.

193 Guest (‘Origines Celticae’) derives “Ermine” from A.S. eorm=fen, and “Watling” from the Welsh Gwyddel=Goidhel=Irish. The Ermine Street, however, nowhere touches the fenland; nor did any Gaelic population, so far as is known, abut upon the Watling Street, at any rate after the English Conquest. Verulam was sometimes called Watling-chester, probably as the first town on the road.

194 The distinction between “Street” and “Way” must not, however, be pressed, as is done by some writers. The Fosse Way is never called a Street, though its name [fossa] shows it to have been constructed as such; and the Icknield Way is frequently so called, though it was certainly a mere track—often a series of parallel tracks (e.g. at Kemble-in-the-Street in Oxfordshire)—as it mostly remains to this day.

195 This may still be seen in places; e.g. on the “Hardway” in Somerset and the “Maiden Way” in Cumberland. See Codrington, ‘Roman Roads in Britain.’

196 Camden, however, speaks of a Saxon charter so designating it near Stilton (‘Britannia,’ II. 249).

197 The whole evidence on this confused subject is well set out by Mr. Codrington (‘Roman Roads in Britain’).

198 It is, however, possible that the latter is named from Ake-manchester, which is found as A.S. for Bath, to which it must have formed the chief route from the N. East.

199 See p. 144. Bradley, however, controverts this, pointing out that the pre-Norman authorities for the name only refer to Berkshire.

200 Thus Iter V. takes the traveller from London to Lincoln viâ Colchester, Cambridge, and Huntingdon, though the Ermine Street runs direct between the two. The ‘Itinerary’ is a Roadbook of the Empire, giving the stages on each route set forth, assigned by commentators to widely differing dates, from the 2nd century to the 5th. In my own view Caracalla is probably the Antoninus from whom it is called. But after Antoninus Pius (138 A.D.) the name was borne (or assumed) by almost every Emperor for a century and more.

201 See p. 237.

202 Ptolemy also marks, in his map of Britain, some fifty capes, rivers, etc., and the Ravenna list names over forty.

203 The longitude is reckoned from the “Fortunate Isles,” the most western land known to Ptolemy, now the Canary Islands. Ferro, the westernmost of these, is still sometimes found as the Prime Meridian in German maps.

204 Thus the north supplies not only inscriptions relating to its own legion (the Sixth), but no fewer than 32 of the Second, and 22 of the Twentieth; while at London and Bath indications of all three are found.

205 The Latin word castra, originally meaning “camp,” came (in Britain) to signify a fortified town, and was adopted into the various dialects of English as caster, Chester, or cester; the first being the distinctively N. Eastern, the last the S. Western form.

206 Amongst these, however, must be named the high authority of Professor Skeat. See ‘Cambs. Place-Names.’

207 Pearson’s ‘Historical Maps of England’ gives a complete list of these.

208 This industry flourished throughout the last half of the 19th century. The “coprolites” were phosphatic nodules found in the greensand and dug for use as manure.

209 These are of bronze, with closed ends, pitted for the needle as now, but of size for wearing upon the thumb.

210 There seems no valid reason for doubting that the horseshoes found associated with Roman pottery, etc., in the ashpits of the Cam valley, Dorchester, etc., are actually of Romano-British date. Gesner maintains that our method of shoeing horses was introduced by Vegetius under Valentinian II. The earlier shoes seem to have been rather such slippers as are now used by horses drawing mowing-machines on college lawns. They were sometimes of rope: Solea sparta pes bovis induitur (Columella), sometimes of iron: Et supinam animam gravido derelinquere caeno Ferream ut solam tenaci in voragine mula (Catullus, xvii. 25). Even gold was used: Poppaea jumentis suis soleas ex auro induebat (Suet., ‘Nero,’ xxx.). The Romano-British horseshoes are thin broad bands of iron, fastened on by three nails, and without heels. See also Beckmann’s ‘History of Inventions’ (ed. Bohn).

211 This is true of the whole of Britain, even along the Wall, as a glance at the cases in the British Museum will show. There may be seen the most interesting relic of this class yet discovered, a bronze shield-boss, dredged out of the Tyne in 1893 [see ‘Lapid. Sept.’ p. 58], bearing the name of the owner, Junius Dubitatus, and his Centurion, Julius Magnus, of the Ninth Legion.

212 The wall of London is demonstrably later than the town, old material being found built into it. So is that of Silchester.

213 York was not three miles in circumference, Uriconium the same, Cirencester and Lincoln about two, Silchester and Bath somewhat smaller.

214 Roman milestones have been found in various places, amongst the latest and most interesting being one of Carausius discovered in 1895, at Carlisle. It had been reversed to substitute the name of Constantius (see p. 222.). It may be noted that the earliest of post-Roman date are those still existing on the road between Cambridge and London, set up in 1729.

215 See p. 117. When the existing bridge was built, Roman remains were found in the river-bed.

216 The Thames to the south, the Fleet to the west, and the Wall Brook to the east and north.

217 See p. 233. The city wall may well be due to him.

218 See p. 233.

219 On this functionary, see article by Domaszewski in the ‘Rheinisches Review,’ 1891. His appointment was part of the pacificatory system promoted by Agricola.

220 An archigubernus (master pilot) of this fleet left his property to one of his subordinates in trust for his infant son. The son died before coming of age, whereupon the estate was claimed by the next of kin, while the trustee contended that it had now passed to him absolutely. He was upheld by the Court. Another York decision established the principle that any money made by a slave belonged to his bonâ fide owner. And another settled that a Decurio (a functionary answering to a village Mayor in France) was responsible only for his own Curia.

221 Inscriptions of the Twentieth have been found here.

222 Legra-ceaster, the earliest known form of the name, signifies Camp-chester (Legra = Laager). In Anglo-Saxon writings the name is often applied to Chester. This, however, was the Chester, par excellence, as having remained so long unoccupied. In the days of Alfred it is still a “waste Chester” in the A.S. Chronicle. The word Chester is only associated with Roman fortifications in Southern Britain. But north of the wall, as Mr. Haverfield points out, we find it applied to earthworks which cannot possibly have ever been Roman. (See ‘Antiquary’ for 1895, p. 37.)

223 Bath was frequented by Romano-British society for its medicinal waters, as it has been since. The name Aquae (like the various Aix in Western Europe) records this fact. Bath was differentiated as Aquae Solis; the last word having less reference to Apollo the Healer, than to a local deity Sul or Sulis. Traces of an elaborate pump-room system, including baths and cisterns still retaining their leaden lining, have here been discovered; and even the stock-in-trade of one of the small shops, where, as now at such resorts, trinkets were sold to the visitors.(See ‘Antiquary,’ 1895, p. 201.)

224 Similar excavations are in progress at Caergwent, but, as yet, with less interesting results. Amongst the objects found is a money-box of pottery, with a slit for the coins. A theatre [?] is now (1903) being uncovered.

225 See II. F. 4; also Mr. Haverfield’s articles in the ‘Athenaeum’ (115, Dec. 1894), and in the ‘Antiquary’ (1899, p. 71).

226 Mr. Haverfield notes (‘Antiquary,’ 1898, p. 235) that British basilicas are larger than those on the Continent, probably because more protection from weather was here necessary. Almost as large as this basilica must have been that at Lincoln, where sections of the curious multiple pillars (which perhaps suggested to St. Hugh the development from Norman to Gothic in English architecture) may be seen studding the concrete pavement of Ball Gate.

227 A plan of this “church” is given by Mr. Haverfield in the ‘English Hist. Review,’ July 1896.

228 An inspection of the Ordnance Map (1 in.) shows this clearly. It is the road called (near Andover) the Port Way.

229 See p. 46.

230 The water supply of Silchester seems to have been wholly derived from these wells, which are from 25 to 30 feet in depth, and were usually lined with wood. In one of them there were found (in 1900) stones of various fruit trees (cherry, plum, etc.), the introduction of which into Britain has long been attributed to the Romans, (See Earle, ‘English Plant Names.’) But this find is not beyond suspicion of being merely a mouse’s hoard of recent date.

231 Roman refineries for extracting silver existed in the lead-mining districts both of the Mendips and of Derbyshire, which were worked continuously throughout the occupation. But the Silchester plant was adapted for dealing with far more refractory ores; for what purpose we cannot tell.

232 See paper by W. Gowland in Silchester Report (Society of Antiquaries) for 1899.

233 A glance at the maps issued by the Society of Antiquaries will show this. The massive rampart, forming an irregular hexagon, cuts off the corners of various blocks in the ground plan.

234 The well-known Cambridge jug of Messrs. Hattersley is a typical example.

235 “Samian” factories existed in Gaul.

236 See p. 43.

237 TI. CLAVDIVS CAESAR AVG. P.M. TRIB. P. VIIII. IMP, XVI. DE BRITAN. This was found at Wokey Hole, near Wells.

238 Haverfield, ‘Ant.’ p. 147.

239 See ‘Corpus Inscript. Lat.’ Vol. VII.

240 A specially interesting touch of this old country house life is to be seen in the Corinium Museum at Cirencester—a mural painting whereon has been scratched a squared word (the only known classical example of this amusement):

ROTAS
OPERA
TENET
AREPO
SATOR

241 The word mansio, however, at this period signified merely a posting-station on one or other of the great roads.

242 Selwood, Sherwood, Needwood, Charnwood, and Epping Forest are all shrunken relics of these wide-stretching woodlands, with which most of the hill ranges seem to have been clothed. See Pearson’s ‘Historical Maps of England.’

243 Classical authorities only speak of bears in Scotland. See P. 236.

244 Cyneget., I. 468.

Ibid. 69.

246 In II. Cons. Stilicho, III. 299: Magnaque taurorum fracturae colla Britannae.

247 ‘Origins of English History,’ p. 294.

248 A brooch found at Silchester also represents this dog.

249 Symmachus (A.D. 390) represents them as so fierce as to require iron kennels (Ep. II. 77).

250 Prudentius (contra Sab. 39): Semifer, et Scoto sentit cane milite pejor.

251 Proleg. to Jeremiah, lib. III.

252 Flavius Vopiscus (A.D. 300) tells us that vine-growing was also attempted, by special permission of the Emperor Probus.

253 The Lex Julia forbade the carrying of arms by civilians.

254 See Elton’s ‘Origins,’ p. 347.

Proem, v.

256 See Fronto,’De Bello Parthico’, I. 217. The latest known inscription relating to this Legion is of A.D. 109 [C.I.L. vii. 241].

257 Spartianus (A.D. 300), ‘Hist. Rom.’

258 About a fifth of the known legionary inscriptions of Britain have been found in Scotland.

259 See p. 233.

260 At the Battle of the Standard, 1138.

261 That Hadrian and not Severus (by whose name it is often called) was the builder of the Wall as well as of the adjoining fortresses is proved by his inscriptions being found not only in them, but in the “mile-castles” [see C.I.L. vii. 660-663]. Out of the 14 known British inscriptions of this Emperor, 8 are on the Wall; out of the 57 of Severus, 3 only.

262 Hadrian divided the Province of Britain [see p. 142] into “Upper” and “Lower”; but by what boundary is wholly conjectural. All we know is that Dion Cassius [Xiph. lv.] places Chester and Caerleon in the former and York in the latter. The boundary may thus have been the line from Mersey to Humber; “Upper” meaning “nearer to Rome.”

263 Neilson, ‘Per Lineam Valli,’ p.I.

264 See further pp. 203-212.

265 The figure has been supposed to represent Rome seated on Britain. But the shield is not the oblong buckler of the Romans, but a round barbaric target.

266 So Tacitus speaks of “Submotis velut in aliam insulam hostibus” by Agricola’s rampart. And Pliny says, “Alpes Gcrmaniam ab Italia submovent.”

267 Corpus Inscript. Lat, vii. 1125.

268 Dio Cassius, lxxii. 8.

269 Aelius Lampridius, ‘De Commodo,’ c. 8.

270 Inscriptions in the Newcastle Museum show that bargemen from the Tigris were quartered on the Tyne.

271 Dio Cassius, lxxii. 9.

272 Julius Capitolinus, ‘Pertinax,’ c. 3.

273 Orosius, ‘Hist’ 17.

274 Herodian, ‘Hist.’ iii. 20.

275 Lucius Septimus Severus.

276 Herodian, ‘Hist. III.’ 46. He is a contemporary authority.

277 Also called Bassianus. His throne name was Marcus Aurelius Antoninus Pius.

278 Publius Septimus Geta Antoninus Pius.

279 Aelius Spartianus, ‘Severus,’ c. 23.

280 Dion Cassius, lxxvi. 12.

281 Severus gave as a mot d’ordre to his soldiers the “No quarter” proclamation of Agamemnon. (‘Iliad,’ vi. 57): τῶν μήτις κφύγοι αἰπὺν ὄλεθρον [ton mêtis hupekphugoi aipun olethron].

282 Dion Cassius, lxxvi. 12.

283 See p. 195.

284 Aurelius Victor (20) makes him (as Mommsen and others think) restore Antonine’s rampart: “vallum per xxxii. passuum millia a mari ad mare.” But more probably xxxii. is a misreading for lxxii.

285 The very latest spade-work on the Wall (undertaken by Messrs. Haverfield and Bosanquet in 1901) shows that the original wall and ditch ran through the midst of the great fortresses of Chesters and Birdoswald, which are now astride, so to speak, of the Wall; pointing to the conclusion that Severus rebuilt and enlarged them. In various places along the Wall itself the stones bear traces of mortar on their exterior face, showing that they have been used in some earlier work.

286 This is the number per lineam valli given in the ‘Notitia.’ Only twelve have been certainly identified. They are commonly known as “stations.”

287 Antiquaries have given these structures the name of “mile-castles.” They are usually some fifty feet square.

288 The familiar name of “Wallsend” coals reminds us of this connection between the Tynemouth colliery district and the Wall’s end.

289 So puzzling is the situation that high authorities on the subject are found to contend that the work was perfunctorily thrown up, in obedience to mistaken orders issued by the departmental stupidity of the Roman War Office, that in reality it was never either needed or used, and was obsolete from the very outset. But this suggestion can scarcely be taken as more than an elaborate confession of inability to solve the nodus.

290 It should be noted that the “Vallum” is no regular Roman muris caespitius like the Rampart of Antoninus, though traces have been found here and there along the line of some intention to construct such a work (see ‘Antiquary,’ 1899, p. 71).

291 In more than one place the line of fortification swerves from its course to sweep round a station.

292 Near Cilurnum the fosse was used as a receptacle for shooting the rubbish of the station, and contains Roman pottery of quite early date.

293 See p. 233.

294 See p. 232.

295 The existing military road along the line of the Wall does not follow the track of its Roman predecessor. It was constructed after the rebellion of 1745, when the Scots were able to invade England by Carlisle before our very superior forces at Newcastle could get across the pathless waste between to intercept them.

296 Mithraism is first heard of in the 2nd century A.D., as an eccentric cult having many of the features of Christianity, especially the sense of Sin and the doctrine that the vicarious blood-shedding essential to remission must be connected with a New Baptismal Birth unto Righteousness. The Mithraists carried out this idea by the highly realistic ceremonies of the Taurobolium; the penitent neophyte standing beneath a grating on which the victim was slain, and thus being literally bathed in the atoning blood, afterwards being considered as born again [renatus]. It thus evolved a real and heartfelt devotion to the Supreme Being, whom, however (unlike Christianity), it was willing to worship under the names of the old Pagan Deities; frequently combining their various attributes in joint Personalities of unlimited complexity. One figure has the head of Jupiter, the rays of Phoebus, and the trident of Neptune; another is furnished with the wings of Cupid, the wand of Mercury, the club of Hercules, and the spear of Mars; and so forth. Mithraism thus escaped the persecution which the essential exclusiveness of their Faith drew down upon Christians; gradually transforming by its deeper spirituality the more frigid cults of earlier Paganism, and making them its own. The little band of truly noble men and women who in the latter half of the 4th century made the last stand against the triumph of Christianity over the Roman world were almost all Mithraists. For a good sketch of this interesting development see Dill, ‘Roman Society in the Last Century of the Western Empire.’

297 Of the 1200 in the ‘Corpus Inscript. Lat.’ (vol. vii.), 500 are in the section Per Lineam Valli.

298 ‘Corpus Inscript. Lat.’ vol. vii., No. 759.

299 Some authorities consider him to have been her own son.

300 See p. 126.

301 The Gelt is a small tributary joining the Irthing shortly before the latter falls into the Eden.

302 Polybius (vi. 24) tells us that in the Roman army of his day a vexillum or manipulum consisted of 200 men under two centurions, each of whom had his optio. Vegetius (II. 1) confines the word vexillatio to the cavalry, but gives no clue as to its strength.

303 On this inscription see Huebner, C.I.L. vii. 1. A drawing will be found in Bruce’s ‘Handbook to the Wall’ (ed. 1895), p. 23.

304 The name Cilurnum may be connected with this wealth of water. In modern Welsh celurn = caldron.

305 “All hast thou won, all hast thou been. Now be God the winner.” (These final words are equivocal, in both Latin and English. They might signify, “Now let God be your conqueror,” and “Now, thou conqueror, be God,” i. e. “die”; for a Roman Emperor was deified at his decease.) Spartianus, ‘De Severo,’ 22.

306 Aelius Spartianus, ‘Severus,’ c. 22.

307 See p. 46.

308 Dio Cassius, lxxvi. 16.

309 Ibid. lxxvii. I.

310 In 369. See p. 230.

311 Constans in 343. See p. 230.

312 See Bruce, ‘Handbook to Wall’ (ed. 1895), p. 267.

313 Such tablets, called tabulae honestae missionis (“certificates of honourable discharge”), were given to every enfranchised veteran, and were small enough to be carried easily on the person. Four others, besides that at Cilurnum, have been found in Britain.

314 None of the above-mentioned tabulae found are later than A.D. 146, which, so far as it goes, supports the contention that Marcus Aurelius was the real extender of the citizenship; Caracalla merely insisting on the liabilities which every Roman subject had incurred by his rise to this status.

315 See pp. 175, 176. Only those fairly identifiable are given; the certain in capitals, the highly probable in ordinary type, and the reasonably probable in italics. For a full list of Romano-British place-names, see Pearson, ‘Historical Maps of England.’

316 Probus was fond of thus dealing with his captives. He settled certain Franks on the Black Sea, where they seized shipping and sailed triumphantly back to the Rhine, raiding on their way the shores of Asia Minor, Greece, and Africa, and even storming Syracuse. They ultimately took service under Carausius. [See Eumenius, Panegyric on Constantius.] The Vandals he had captured on the Rhine, after their great defeat by Aurelius on the Danube.

317 This name may also echo some tradition of barbarians from afar having camped there.

318 Eutropius (A.D. 360), ‘Breviarium,’ x. 21.

319 By the analogy of Saxon and of Lombard (Lango-bardi = “Long-spears”), this seems the most probable original derivation of the name. In later ages it was, doubtless, supposed to have to do with frank = free. The franca is described by Procopius (‘De Bell. Goth.’ ii. 25.), and figures in the Song of Maldon.

320 See Florence of Worcester (A.D. 1138); also the Song of Beowulf.

321 Eutropius, ix. 21.

322 The Franks of Carausius had already swept that sea (see p. 219).

323 Mamertinus, ‘Paneg. in Maximian.’

324 Caesar, originally a mere family name, was adapted first as an Imperial title by the Flavian Emperors.

325 Henry of Huntingdon makes her the daughter of Coel, King of Colchester; the “old King Cole” of our nursery rhyme, and as mythical as other eponymous heroes. Bede calls her a concubine, a slur derived from Eutropius (A.D. 360), who calls the connection obscurius matrimonium (Brev. x. 1).

326 Eumenius, ‘Panegyric on Constantine,’ c. 8.

327 Eumenius, ‘Panegyric on Constantius,’ c. 6.

328 Salisbury Plain has been suggested as the field.

329 The historian Victor, writing about 360 A.D., ascribes the recovery of Britain to this officer rather than to the personal efforts of Constantius. The suggestion in the text is an endeavour to reconcile his statement with the earlier panegyrics of Eumenius.

330 See p. 59. An inscription found near Cirencester proves that place to have been in Britannia Prima. It is figured by Haverfield (‘Eng. Hist. Rev.’ July 1896), and runs as follows: Septimius renovat Primae Provinciae Rector Signum et erectam prisca religione columnam. This is meant for two hexameter lines, and refers to Julian’s revival of Paganism (see p. 233).

331 Specimens of these are given by Harnack in the ‘Theologische Literaturzeitung’ of January 20 and March 17, 1894.

332 See Sozomen, ‘Hist. Eccl.’ I, 6.

333 See p. 123.

334 The name commonly given to the really unknown author of the ‘History of the Britons.’ He states that the tombstone of Constantius was still to be seen in his day, and gives Mirmantum or Miniamantum as an alternative name for Segontium. Bangor and Silchester are rival claimants for the name, and one 13th-century MS. declares York to be signified.

335 The Sacred Monogram known as Labarum. Both name and emblem were very possibly adapted from the primitive cult of the Labrys, or Double Axe, filtered through Mithraism. The figure is never found as a Christian emblem before Constantine, though it appears as a Heathen symbol upon the coinage of Decius (A.D. 250). See Parsons, ‘Non-Christian Cross,’ p. 148.

336 Hilary (A.D. 358), ‘De Synodis,’ § 2.

337 Ammianus Marcellinus, ‘Hist.’ XX. I.

338 Jerome calls her “fertilis tyrannorum provincia.” [‘Ad Ctesiph.’ xliii.] It is noteworthy that in all ecclesiastical notices of this period Britain is always spoken of as a single province, in spite of Diocletian’s reforms.

339 See p. 202.

340 These Scotch pirate craft (as it would seem) are described by Vegetius (A.D. 380) as skiffs (scaphae), which, the better to escape observation, were painted a neutral tint all over, ropes and all, and were thus known as Picts. The crews were dressed in the same colour—like our present khaki. These vessels were large open boats rowing twenty oars a side, and also used sails. The very scientifically constructed vessels which have been found in the silt of the Clyde estuary may have been Picts. See p. 80.

341 Henry of Huntingdon, ‘History of the English,’ ii. I.

342 Murat, CCLXIII. 4.

343 See p. 225.

344 Jerome, in his treatise against Jovian, declares that he could bear personal testimony to this.

345 See p. 194.

346 Marcellinus dwells upon the chopping seas which usually prevailed in the Straits; and of the rapid tide, which is also referred to by Ausonius (380), “Quum virides algas et rubra corallia nudat Aestus,” etc.

347 To him is probably due the reconstruction of the “Vallum” as a defence against attacks from the south, such as the Scots were now able to deliver. See p. 207.

348 Marcellinus, ‘Hist.’ XXVIII. 3. See p. 202.

349 ‘De Quarto Consulatu Honorii,’ I. 31.

350 Theodosius married Galla, daughter of Valentinian I.

351 For the later migrations to Brittany see Elton’s ‘Origins,’ p. 350. Samson, Archbishop of York, is said to have fled thither in 500, and settled at Dol. Sidonius Apollinaris speaks of Britons settled by the Loire.

352 ‘In Primum Consulatum Stilichonis,’ II. 247.

353 Alone amongst the legions it is not mentioned in the ‘Notitia’ as attached to any province.

354 ‘Epithalamium Paladii,’ 85.

355 The first printed edition was published 1552.

356 See p. 90.

357 Portus Adurni. Some authorities, however, hold this to be Shoreham, others Portsmouth, others Aldrington. The remaining posts are less disputed. They were Branodunum (Brancaster), Garianonum (Yarmouth), Othona (Althorne[?] in Essex), Regulbium (Reculver), Rutupiae (Richborough), Lemanni (Lyminge), Dubris (Dover), and Anderida.

358 There were six “Counts” altogether in the Western Empire, and twelve “Dukes.” Both Counts and Dukes were of “Respectable” rank, the second in the Diocletian hierarchy.

359 See p. 237.

360 This word, however, may perhaps signify Imperial rather than London.

361 Olympiodorus (A.D. 425).

362 ‘Hist. Nov.’ vi. 10. He is a contemporary authority.

363 Tennyson, ‘Guinevere,’ 594. The dragon standard first came into use amongst the Imperial insignia under Augustus, and the red dragon is mentioned by Nennius as already the emblem of Briton as opposed to Saxon. The mediaeval Welsh poems speak of the legendary Uther, father of Arthur, as “Pendragon,” equivalent to Head-Prince, of Britain.

364 See Rhys, ‘Celtic Britain,’ pp. 116, 136.

365 Gildas (xxiii,) so calls him.

366 “The groans of the Britons” are said by Bede to have been forwarded to Aetius “thrice Consul,” i.e. in 446, on the eve of the great struggle with Attila.

367 Nennius (xxviii.) so calls them, and they are commonly supposed to have been clinker-built like the later Viking ships. But Sidonius Apollinaris (455) speaks of them as a kind of coracle. See p. 37.

“Quin et Armorici piratam Saxona tractus
Sperabant, cui pelle salum sulcare Britannum
Ludus, et assuto glaucum mare findere lembo.”

(‘Carm.’ vii. 86.)

368 See Elton, ‘Origins,’ ch. xii.

369 Henry of Huntingdon, ‘Hist. of the English,’ ii. 1.

370 Nennius, xlix. This is the reading of the oldest MSS.; others are Nimader sexa and Enimith saxas. The regular form would be Nimap eowre seaxas.

371 A coin of Valentinian was discovered in the Cam valley in 1890. On the reverse is a Latin Cross surrounded by a laurel wreath.

372 Cymry signifies confederate, and was the name (quite probably an older racial appellation revived) adopted by the Western Britons in their resistance to the Saxon advance.

373 Arthur is first mentioned (in Nennius and the ‘Life of Gildas’) as a Damnonian “tyrant” (i.e. a popular leader with no constitutional status), fighting against “the kings of Kent.” This notice must be very early—before the West Saxons came in between Devon and the Kentish Jutes. His early date is confirmed by his mythical exploits being located in every Cymric region—Cornwall, Wales, Strathclyde, and even Brittany.

374 The ambition of Henry V. for Continental dominion was undoubtedly thus quickened.

375 Procopius, ‘De Bello Gothico,’ iv. 20.

376 These presumably represent the Saxons, who were next-door neighbours to the Frisians of Holland. But Mr. Haverfield’s latest (1902) map makes Frisians by name occupy Lothian.

377 Ptolemy’s map shows how this error arose; Scotland, by some extraordinary blunder, being therein represented as an eastward extension at right angles to England, with the Mull of Galloway as its northernmost point.

378 This fable probably arose from the mythical visit of Ulysses (see p. 64 n.), who, as Claudian (‘In Rut.’ i. 123) tells, here found the Mouth of Hades.

379 Procopius, ‘De Bello Gothico,’ ii. 6.

380 See my ‘Alfred in the Chroniclers,’ p. 6.

381 See p. 175.

382 See p. 168.

383 ‘Anglo-Saxon Chronicle,’ A. 491: “This year Ella and Cissa stormed Anderida and slew all that dwelt therein, so that not one Briton was there left.”

384 Chester itself, one of the last cities to fall, is called “a waste chester” as late as the days of Alfred (‘A.-S. Chron.,’ A. 894).

385 In the districts conquered after the Conversion of the English there was no such extermination, the vanquished Britons being fellow-Christians.

386 For the British survival in the Fenland see my ‘History of Cambs.,’ III., § 11.

387 Romano-British relics have been found in the Victoria Cave, Settle.

388 ‘Comm. on Ps. CXVI.’ written about 420 A.D.

389 ‘Epist. ad. Corinth.’ 5.

390 Catullus, in the Augustan Age, refers to Britain as the “extremam Occidentis,” and Aristides (A.D. 160) speaks of it as “that great island opposite Iberia.”

391 ‘Menol. Graec.,’ June 29. A suspiciously similar passage (on March 15) speaks of British ordinations by Aristobulus, the disciple of St. Paul.

392 Nero. This would be A.D. 66.

393 It is less generally known than it should be that the head of St. Paul as well as of St. Peter has always figured on the leaden seal attached to a Papal Bull.

394 Tennyson, ‘Holy Grail,’ 53. This thorn, a patriarchal tree of vast dimensions, was destroyed during the Reformation. But many of its descendants exist about England (propagated from cuttings brought by pilgrims), and still retain its unique season for flowering. In all other respects they are indistinguishable from common thorns.

395 See also William of Malmesbury, ‘Hist. Regum,’ § 20.

396 See p. 62.

397 See Introduction to Tennyson’s ‘Holy Grail’ (G.C. Macaulay), p. xxix.

398 See Bp. Browne, ‘Church before Augustine,’ p. 46.

399 Chaucer, ‘Sumpnour’s Tale.’

400 Epig. xi. 54: “Claudia coeruleis... Rufina Britannis Edita.”

401 See p. 141.

402 Epig. v. 13.

403 Tacitus, ‘Ann.’ xiii. 32.

404 See p. 69.

405 Lanciani, ‘Pagan and Christian Rome,’ p. 110. The house was bought by Pudens from Aquila and Priscilla, and made a titular church by Pius I.

406 Homily 4 on Ezechiel, 6 on St. Luke.

407 ‘Adversus Judaeos,’ c. 7.

408 ‘Eccl. Hist.’ iv.

409 Pope from 177-191.

410 Haddan and Stubbs, i. 25. The ‘Catalogus’ was composed early in the 4th century, but the incident is a later insertion.

411 See p. 225.

412 He is mentioned by Gildas, along with Julius and Aaron of Caerleon. These last were already locally canonized in the 9th century, as the ‘Liber Landavensis’ testifies; and the sites of their respective churches could still be traced, according to Bishop Godwin, in the 17th century.

413 Eborius of York, Restitutus of London, and Adelfius of “Colonia Londinensium.” The last word is an obvious misreading. Haddan and Stubbs (‘Concilia,’ p. 7) suggest Legionensium, i.e. Caerleon.

414 It is more reasonable to assume this than to imagine, with Mr. French, that these three formed the entire British episcopate. And there is reason to suppose that York, London, and Caerleon were metropolitan sees.

415 Canon x.: De his qui conjuges suas in adulterio deprehendunt, et iidem sunt fideles, et prohibentur nubere; Placuit... ne viventibus uxoribus suis, licet adulteris, alias accipiant. [Haddan, ‘Concilia,’ p. 7.]

416 ‘Ad Jovian’ (A.D. 363).

417 ‘Contra Judaeos’ (A.D. 387).

418 ‘Serm. de Util. Lect. Script.’

419 Hom. xxviii., in II. Corinth.

420 This text seems from very early days to have been a sort of Christian watchword (being, as it were, an epitome of the Faith). The Coronation Oath of our English Kings is still, by ancient precedent, administered on this passage, i.e. the Book is opened for the King’s kiss at this point. In mediaeval romance we find the words considered a charm against ghostly foes; and to this day the text is in use as a phylactery amongst the peasantry of Ireland.

421 Ep. xlix. ad Paulinum. These pilgrimages are also mentioned by Palladius (420) and Theodoret (423).

422 Ep. lxxxiv. ad Oceanum.

423 Ep. ci. ad Evang.

424 Whithern (in Latin Casa Candida) probably derived its name from the white rough-casting with which the dark stone walls of this church were covered, a strange sight to Pictish eyes, accustomed only to wooden buildings.

425 The practice, now so general, of dedicating a church to a saint unconnected with the locality, was already current at Rome. But hitherto Britain had retained the more primitive habit, by which (if a church was associated with any particular name) it was called after the saint who first built or used it, or, like St. Alban’s, the martyr who suffered on the spot. Besides Whithern, the church of Canterbury was dedicated about this time to St. Martin, showing the close ecclesiastical sympathy between Gaul and Britain.

426 The cave is on the northern shore of the Thuner-See, near Sundlauenen. Beatus is said to have introduced sailing into the Oberland by spreading his mantle to the steady breeze which blows down the lake by night and up it during the day. The name of Justus is preserved in the Justis-thal near Merlingen.

427 This name is merely the familiar Welsh Morgan, which signifies sea-born, done into Greek.

428 See Orosius, ‘De Arbit. Lib.,’ and other authorities in Haddan and Stubbs.

429 Sidonius, Ep. ix. 3.

430 Constantius, the biographer of Germanus, says they were sent by a Council of Gallican Bishops; but Prosper of Aquitaine (who was in Rome at the time) declares they were commissioned by Pope Celestine. Both statements are probably true.

431 The lives of Germanus, Patrick, and Ninias will be found in a trustworthy and well-told form in Miss Arnold-Foster’s ‘Studies in Church Dedication.’

432 See p. 185.

433 Bede, ‘Eccl. Hist.’ I. xxvi.

434 Many existing churches are more or less built of Roman material. The tower of St. Albans is a notable example, and that of Stoke-by-Nayland, near Colchester. At Lyminge, near Folkestone, so much of the church is thus constructed that many antiquaries have believed it to be a veritable Roman edifice.

435 See Lanciani, ‘Pagan and Christian Rome,’ p. 115.

436 At Frampton, near Dorchester, and Chedworth, near Cirencester, stones bearing the Sacred Monogram have been found amongst the ruins of Roman “villas.”

437 The British rite was founded chiefly on the Gallican, and differed from the Roman in the mode of administering baptism, in certain minutiae of the Mass, in making Wednesday as well as Friday a weekly fast, in the shape of the sacerdotal tonsure, in the Kalendar (especially with regard to the calculation of Easter), and in the recitation of the Psalter. From Canon XVI. of the Council of Cloveshoo (749) it appears that the observance of the Rogation Days constituted another difference.

438 The Mission of St. Columba the Irishman to Britain was a direct result of the Mission of St. Patrick the Briton to Ireland.

439 Magna Charta opens with the words Ecclesia Anglicana libera sit; and the Barons who won it called themselves “The Army of the Church.”