Land of the Iceni Conference 2008

 

The last Land of the Iceni Conference, focussing on the archaeology of Iron Age East Anglia, took place at UEA in 1995, and like this one it was organised by John Davies. The previous conference produced the volume Land of the Iceni: The Iron Age in Northern East Anglia, published in 1999. It has been thirteen years, therefore, since there has been a conference on the Iceni and a gathering of all the scholars working in the field. On Saturday 17th May such a gathering did finally take place at the King of Hearts in Norwich. There has been no want of interest in the Iceni during the intervening period – indeed, as John Davies remarked at the end of the conference, there was a large field of scholars to choose from when deciding who to invite as speakers. The growth of digital mapping technology (described at the conference by Sophie Tremlett) and the ever increasing number of known coin types being produced by metal detecting are all making Iron Age archaeology one of the most exciting and fastest growing areas of British archaeology.

 

My chief interest in the Iceni is numismatic and I was not disappointed by the coverage given to coins at this conference; Amanda Chadburn, who wrote on Icenian mints in the 1999 volume, presented the latest evidence for the ‘Three Pagi’ theory of the Iceni based on coin series; John Talbot presented the latest research on Icenian die types; Adrian Marsden pondered the predominance of counterfeit foreign coins in the Snettisham hoards; Daphne Nash Briggs presented a controversial analysis of Icenian coin legends and finally Megan Dennis described a very detailed analysis of the Bury A unit (incidentally my favourite Iceni silver coin). Everyone seems now to be giving coinage its proper place as one of the richest sources of evidence available for the East Anglian Iron Age.

 

Derek Allen first suggested that the Iceni were divided into three pagi based on the Horse/Face, Boar/Face and Boar/Horse series, all of which are supposed to date from after 20BC. In the period AD10-45 at least eight rulers appear in legends on coins; if these were sequential then they had very short reigns; Allen therefore suggested that they were leaders of different pagi. Amanda Chadburn suggested that ‘Pagus 1’ was associated with the ANTEDI dynasty and the Boar/Horse series, perhaps based at Thetford. ‘Pagus 2’ is associated with the ECE legend and perhaps Stonea, and ‘Pagus 3’ with the ECEN legend and Face/Horse types, based at what was later Venta Icenorum. John Talbot in his study of dies shed further light on a possible chronology, with the general observation that with the passing of time dies within the Freckenham series get cruder and cruder; so we begin with the Irstead types and move through the Early Boar/Horse to the Boar/Horse types. Talbot associates the ‘Large Flan A’ types (linked to the Waveney Valley area) with a ‘diamond dot’ ‘privy mark’ (to use the term current in Anglo-Saxon numismatics), changing later to the hollow star.

 

Talbot sees local issues such as Bury A and Bury B as being replaced in the period c. 15BC-5AD with a denominational coinage; the Snettisham stater, the Irstead quarter stater and the Early Boar/Horse silver unit, 23 of which made up the weight of the stater. This was succeeded by a late denominational coinage in the period c. 5-43AD which is linked with Trinovantian types. For instance, on late Irstead quarter staters we find the triquetra symbol that appears on coins of Dubnovellaunus. It appears that the production of gold coinage shrank in the period 20-43AD, explaining why the triquetra quarter staters are rare. This is a revision of Van Arsdell’s view, who believed the Irstead quarter stater and Bury types were contemporaneous.

 

 

The Bury A unit received a lot of attention in the course of the day; John Talbot made the observation that a Bury A unit, if turned on its axis so that the face is looking at the viewer, will reveal a three-dimensional face since the lock of hair will form a second eye. I have tried this with my own Bury A unit (see picture) and I am not entirely convinced, but this may be because the condition of my example is not good enough and the face does not stand proud of the flan. Megan Dennis has made a metallurgical analysis of the Bury A and found it to have a high silver content compared with the Early Face/Horse type. The silver content of Bury A is comparable with issues in southern Britain, as well as Roman denarii of the 1st century BC. This fact, combined with the comparison of Bury A with a northern French coin (Delestree DT 350) leads Dennis to conclude that ‘the catalyst for East Anglian silver production came from France.’ The Bury A type shared its style and metallurgy with Gaulish types and may even have been engraved by a Gaulish craftsman. Megan Dennis suggested that the Early Face/Horse types were debased local copies of the Bury series and struck from debased silver recycled from Bury coins.

 

The Bury series made yet another appearance in Edward Martin’s paper on the territorial boundaries of the Iceni. In the 1999 volume Martin proposed a Lark-Gipping boundary for the Iceni and Trinovantes which has largely held up through thirteen years of discoveries. However, the Bury coins tend to turn up a lot in south east Suffolk around Ipswich and Burgh, raising questions about the significance of Burgh as a fort that may have been on a shifting tribal boundary.

 

I am delighted that someone studying the Iceni is taking John Creighton’s theories (in Coins and Power in Iron Britain) about the Romanisation of pre-Roman Britain seriously (I find them quite compelling); as soon as I read Creighton’s study of the coins of Atrebates and Regni, with the coins of the Catuvellauni and Trinovantes occasionally touched upon, I found myself wishing that someone would apply his analysis of Roman-derived images to the coinage of the Iceni. Daphne Nash Briggs did not quite do this but I allow myself to hope that she will in the course of her later research. Her paper focussed instead on the ethnic and linguistic identity of the Iceni – a somewhat perilous area of speculation given the thinness of the evidence. Beginning with the palaeogeneticist Stephen Oppenheimer’s claim in The Origins of the British (2006) that a substratum of the population of eastern England has been there since the Mesolithic, Briggs noted that the same genetic signal is to be found in northern Europe as here; this makes eastern England unlike the west, where a population of Ibero-Atlantic origin was dominant. She links this observation with the disquiet of Peter Forster concerning the peculiarity of English among Germanic languages. It is so different from its relatives, Forster argues, that it must have been developing from a Proto-Germanic common ancestor for longer than history appears to permit.

 

Daphne Nash Briggs made the startling suggestion that English had its original heartland among the indigenous population of eastern Britain; to support this hypothesis she relied largely on Icenian coin legends. Brythonic philologists have struggled to accommodate Icenian names and legends within what is known of P-Brythonic, the Celtic language undoubtedly spoken by the southern and eastern kingdoms. For instance, the name Eceni, which uniquely among tribal names appears on Icenian coins, has long been argued to have something to do with horses. However, there are innumerable examples of Brythonic personal names (Epona, Eppillus, Eppius etc.) in which the epo- prefix is uniformly used. An ec- prefix would be more at home in a Q-Celtic (Goidelic) language like Irish where the eoch- prefix indicates an association with horses. Briggs claims that the linguistic problem associated with the Iceni disappears once one attempts to interpret the names and coin legends in the light of Old English. Eceni comes from the OE eacen, to enlarge and increase; the magni of [E]cenimagni (the name used by Caesar for the Iceni) is related to the OE maegen, power or strength. Likewise the name of the first king testified on Icenian issues, ANTED, is interpreted as OE ant- (intensifying prefix) and eðan (‘lay waste’), i.e. ‘one who lays waste.’ The legend ALE SCA is interpreted as OE al (‘all’) and sceawean (‘scrutinising, divining’), perhaps the title of a Germanic priest-ruler – although Briggs conceded that on a few examples the name is ALEF SCAVO and she suggested ALEF could relate to the OE alf (‘elf’) or ale (‘ale’ – does this mean the Iceni used alcohol in divination rites?). SAENV is associated with OE sae (‘sea’) and CANI DVRO, probably a place name, with OE cane (‘reed’) and OE dur (‘gate’). Even the gruesome goddess Andraste gets a Germanic makeover as OE an- (intensifying prefix) and OE draeden (‘to fear’); a wood in Kent is called Andred. Furthermore OE anda means anger, envy, malice, enmity and andetan means to give thanks or praise; the word ander means ‘duck,’ which could make Andraste a water-deity (shown riding on ducks in Gaulish representations). Andraste’s name was discussed in Chris Rudd’s List 41. AESV is related by Briggs to the Gaulish Esus, usually thought to mean ‘lord.’ Briggs suggests that this was not a name but a royal title.

 

When approaching that most enigmatic of Icenian issues, the late and Romanised ESVPRASTV coin, Briggs points out that no pr- sound exists in Gallo-Brythonic, and suggests that PRASTV may stand for the Latin praestes, a title that may have been used by ESVPRASTV after he returned from his time as an obsides in Rome (cf. Creighton’s theories). This suggests to Briggs that the title RIGON was never used by Icenian leaders (except perhaps temporarily in periods of war) as praestes suggests a first among equals. Icenian leadership, in Briggs’ view, is summed up by the two titles AESV (a sacred lord) and PRASTV, which is why the issuer of the ESVPRASTV coin was given both. She compares this with the nature of kingship among Germanic peoples, where the king convened the tribal assembly and discerned omens but had little power beyond this; she points to Boudica’s discernment of omens and the rage of the Iceni at the rape of Prasutagus’ daughters – could this have been a sacrilegious act against the children of a priest-king?

 

The final piece in Briggs’ jigsaw is her suggestion that the images on Icenian coins can be related to Germanic mythological themes known to us through Norse mythology. For instance, the ‘stitched up’ eye on the Early Face/Horse type could refer to Odin; likewise the substitution of a wolf for the standard horse on the British N (Norfolk Wolf) stater, the first Icenian issue, could refer to the ravenous wolf who devours the world at the end of time in Norse myths.

 

Daphne Nash Briggs’ linguistic thesis does not convince me. She herself conceded that one important Icenian name, Boudica (Gallo-Brythonic ‘victory’) is indisputably Celtic. Yes, Boudica may have been a foreign princess (e.g. of the Trinovantians) who came into Icenian territory to marry Prasutagus, but she might also have been the daughter of a chieftain of one Icenian pagus (e.g. ANTED) who inherited his property (hence the anger at Nero’s confiscation of estates that may have been hers, on the analogy of female property rights in the Old Irish Brehon Law). Prasutagus seems to have been installed as Icenian leader after the Icenian revolt of 47, and the fact that the name EVPRASV appears on Corieltauvian coins in Lincolnshire (see Chris Rudd List 95) could suggest that the Romans went for an outsider as client king of the Iceni, who would then have married Boudica in order to gain acceptance. This, however, is to oppose speculation with speculation. What Briggs did not provide was an analysis of the name Prasutagus itself; what is its relation to ESVPRASV and is it the result of Latinisation or scribal error (or is it a different person)?

 

Forster’s anxiety about the development of English is an area that needs the comment of a specialist in Old English rather than me, but one should never underestimate the speed with which a language may develop, especially when the circumstances that preserved inflection are removed; Old Welsh, for instance, is not substantially different except in spelling and some grammar from Middle Welsh and modern Welsh, but it is substantially removed from its Brythonic ancestor; the change must have taken place over 200 years between AD400 and 600. Likewise, Cornish and Breton developed over the same period into two entirely distinct (and mutually incomprehensible) successor languages over the same short period. Linguistic inflection is preserved by a written language and the chaos of post-Roman Britain led to the rapid deterioration of Brythonic (e.g. by the loss of the final syllable from most words). If this could happen to Brythonic, why not to English in its north German homeland?

 

The sad truth is that we still know so little about Brythonic that we cannot say whether the Icenian coin legends represent a Brythonic language or not with any certainty; indeed, the few coin legends are themselves among the only source materials we have for Brythonic! Some words on Icenian coins are clearly Brythonic, like DVRO – this is found in innumerable place names (Durolipons, Durovigutum, Durolitum etc.) and requires no Germanic interpretation. Briggs herself admits that Andraste may be related to the Welsh word andras (‘a curse, evil, devil’); likewise she acknowledges a Gaulish cognate for AESV. The Latin on the ESVPRASTV coin is perfect: SVB ESVPRASTV ESICO FECIT. Why then should the moneyer have blundered praestes as PRASTV? This is far more likely to be a Brythonic dative. Furthermore, Briggs did not mention those examples of the same coin on which the legend is SVB RI ESVPRASTV ESICO FECIT. What does RI stand for if not the Brythonic RIGON?

 

Finally, we surely know far too little about Brythonic mythology (which survives in Welsh only in euhemerised forms) to make assertions about the Germanic origin of images on Icenian coins; we still do not know how to interpret images on coins of people who undoubtedly spoke Brythonic. Wolves appear on only 2% of Icenian issues (as Amanda Chadburn pointed out).

 

Perhaps Briggs’ thesis is a fair speculation, at best – it explains the relative isolation of the Iceni from other British peoples, the rapid assimilation of the local population into the Angles in the 5th century and the absence of any Brythonic survivals in the English language. Yes, we have no place names from Iceni territory (apart from the anodine Roman Venta Icenorum and the hydronymic Gariannonum); although it is worth bearing in mind that the certainly Brythonic Camboritum (Lackford) was probably in Icenian territory. However, all of these matters could be explained by many other factors and the orthodoxy that the Iceni were a Brythonic-speaking people does not, in my view, merit a reassessment in the light of the evidence Briggs has brought forward.

 

In this report on the proceedings I have touched on only some of the issues raised – others, such as the equal distribution of potins north and south of the Lark-Gipping line, will need further attention at some other time.

A Jacobite Song from Suffolk

The Battle of Sole Bay (28th March 1672)

 

From A. S. Harvey, Ballads, Song and Rhymes of East Anglia (1936), pp. 29-31

 

One day as I was sitting still

Upon the side of Dunwich hill,

And looking on the ocean,

By chance I saw De Ruyter’s fleet

With royal James’s squadron meet;

In sooth, it was a noble treat

To see that brave commotion.

 

I cannot stay to name the names

Of all the ships that fought with James,

Their number or their tonnage;

But this I say, the noble host

Right gallantly did take its post,

And covered all the hollow coast

From Walberswyck to Dunwich.

 

The French, who should have joined the Duke,

Full far astern did lag and look,

Although their hulls were lighter;

But nobly faced the Duke of York,

(Though some may wink and some may talk)

Right stoutly did his vessel stalk

To buffet with De Ruyter.

 

Well might you hear their guns, I guess

From Sizewell Gap to Easton Ness,

The show was rare and sightly;

They battled without let or stay

Until the evening of that day,

’Twas then the Dutchmen ran away,

The Duke had beat them tightly.

 

Of all the battles gained at sea

This was the rarest victory

Since Phillip’s grand armada;

I will not name the rebel Blake,

He fought for Whore-son Cromwell’s sake,

And yet was forced three days to take

To quell the Dutch bravado.

 

So now we’ve seen them take to flight,

This way and that, where’er they might,

To windward or to le’ward;

Here’s to King Charles and here’s to James,

And here’s to all the captains’ names,

And here’s to all the Suffolk dames,

And here’s the house of Stuart!

Mysteries of Cockley Cley

The open-air museum at Cockley Cley near Swaffham in Norfolk, consisting of a reconstructed Iceni Village, a 17th century farmhouse and an alleged ‘7th century church’ is an eccentric private collection created by Sir Peter Roberts, 3rd Baronet of Cockley Cley Hall, in the late ’60s and early ’70s. Sir Peter appears to have fancied himself as something of an antiquary, and I was delighted to find that the memorial to this gentleman (who died in 1985) in All Saints’ church is one of the few modern examples of a proper heraldic monument, even if its description of Sir Robert as ‘Historian’ is questionable. The late baronet appears to have left more questions unanswered than answered, since Cockley Cley is indeed a fascinating site buried in misinformation.

In the first place, the Iceni village (heralded by a friendly wicker man) has no apparent warrant for its location – the guide to the village merely states that the Iceni lived in villages like this near here. Quite true, but unlike West Stow the village does not seem to be based on any nearby post-hole discoveries. Furthermore, the reconstruction is both small and highly speculative. Its situation, with a little stream forming a moat and a larger stream bubbling behind the village, is thoroughly delightful, and viewed from a distance through trees and reedbeds one can indeed imagine it as an Iron Age settlement. A closer inspection, however, is a little more disappointing. The buildings are constructed using machine cut timber and they are as far from the original building methods as they could be; the tree-post in the roundhouse, for instance, has been haphazardly shored up by pieces of plank from a builder’s yard. The appearance of a ‘longhouse’ is puzzling – yes, there were longhouses in Iron Age settlements but they tend to be associated with high status late Iron Age contexts; the Romanised aristocracy of the south and south east began to favour rectangular architecture before the invasion, and the likelihood of a longhouse existing in an Icenian village is slim. The guidebook describes the ’sharpened posts’ of the pallisade but they look rather more like ordinary flat wooden posts at a modern farm. What we do know about the Iceni is that they tended to rely on earthworks to raise the height of a palisade (even if only low ones as at Stonea), and those are distinctly lacking at Cockley Cley. The gatehouse and guard towers are entirely speculative, and the well in the centre of the village is amusingly filled with gory remnants of sacrifice – the inhabitants clearly not interested in whether they contaminated their water supply. The inhabitants themselves are dubious manikins with pasted on beards and blue paint, draped in tartan picnic blankets and looking very sorry for themselves. Even more unfortunately they have been given Welsh names (e.g. ‘Cynric’ – only a little research would have produced Cunorix).

 

The 17th century farmhouse is likewise a reconstruction of slightly dubious merit; diamond-glazed glass is pinned over Victorian windows and a number of modern features (including a letterbox) intrude. At the top of an avenue of trees is the church claimed to be ‘7th century.’ Sir Peter appears to have based his outlandish claim for the church’s age on the theory that it is ‘Byzantine’ in form, and there was a Byzantine influence on English architecture only for a brief period – from 597 to the arrival of the Celtic missionaries. These Celtic missionaries, Sir Peter argues, built rectangular churches (he is presumably thinking of St. Peter-on-the-Wall). Therefore he extrapolates that the church was built in the early part of the 7th century, 628 to be precise (one expects him to give the date to the very day…). Sir Peter’s grounds for thinking that English architecture was ‘Byzantine-influenced’ in the early 7th century is flimsy indeed – he claims to have found correlations between this building and others in Asia Minor. He goes further and claims that it might have been overseen by a Syrian monk escaping persecution in Persia, a theory in the realm of the truly bizarre. What Sir Peter has not considered is that there was very little point going to the effort of constructing a stone church in the early days of Augustine’s mission, and that apart from the Cratendune episode there is no evidence of a Christian mission being established in East Anglia that would have been sufficiently important to justify a stone structure.

However, I am not willing, as some are, to pour water completely on the idea that the chapel of St. Mary is a Saxon church. Yes, certain parts (the door on the south side and the stonework of the chancel arch) are clearly Norman. However, other aspects of the church, in particular the undressed flint windows and the long and short work at the west end, could well be Saxon. Yes, the apsidal east end resembles Norman Hales, but Hales does not have windows as tiny and crude as these. Saxon minsters also favoured an apsidal groundplan, and this church could possibly, notwithstanding the Norman features, be as early as the 9th century. The date of the church needs a great deal more investigation to be established, and for the present the lurid assertions of Sir Peter Roberts go unchallenged.

Cunning rogues in the Scottish Parliament

Wendy Alexander’s sudden change of heart on the issue of a referendum on Scottish independence is likely to be a cunning attempt to hijack the referendum in order to pose a frightening question to the Scottish people. Realising that Labour is losing the argument in Scotland, Alexander is attempting to portray the SNP as sluggish in its referendum plans. I imagine that most people in Scotland will see through yet another flimsy attempt to shore up the rotting Act of Union. The phrasing of the referendum question is crucial; the Labour Party and other Unionists must not be allowed to portray the cause of independence as a nationalist or ethnic issue.

The argument advanced by Unionists against independence are beginning to sound worryingly like the arguments used by the British government to secure Dominion status within the British Empire for the Irish Free State, or indeed the arguments used to justify punitive action against the Highlands in 1746; the protection of commerce and trade. With any luck, such arguments are now wearing thin with the Scottish people.

Male Primogeniture and the Act of Succession

Two issues related to the royal succession have surfaced in the media recently – first, the abolition of male primogeniture and secondly the ban on Catholics in the line of succession.

The abolition of male primogeniture seems, in 21st century eyes, an entirely reasonable measure. However, before jumping to the conclusion that the exclusion of first-born females is an injustice it is worth considering the reasons male primogeniture exists in the first place. It is not an equality issue; English succession law has clearly acknowledged, at least since the reign of Mary, that a woman can succeed to the throne. The Empress Matilda contended for the throne on the understanding that England lay outside the scope of the Salic Law that dominated much of Europe. Matilda had a better right to the throne than Stephen because she was the heir of Henry I’s body, and thus took precedence over a male cousin; furthermore, it was Matilda who initiated a new dynasty when her son Henry of Anjou succeeded rather than Stephen’s son William of Blois. The reason why the female issue of a king did not succeed before a male issue was not sexism (the view that women made weaker monarchs, or some such) but dynastic and genealogical concerns. The right to kingship must be as unambiguous as possible; this could be guaranteed (theoretically) through inheritance in the female line but historically it is through inheritance in the male line. This means that a daughter who is the only issue of a male line will continue that male line (e.g. Margaret of Scotland continued the House of Wessex). The one thing that is not possible is for succession to be in both the male and the female lines; if a female heir took precedence, each male heir would produce rival lines. One only has to consider the Carlist Wars in 19th century Spain to see the problems that a change to succession law can cause.

Of course, in a world of constitutional monarchy none of this matters. And it is only because this does not matter that a change in the law is contemplated. If the monarch had power the identity of the monarch would matter; and consequently the dynastic succession would matter.

It has been widely reported (e.g. The Daily Telegraph, 10th April) that a repeal of that part of the Act of Succession that bans a Catholic from a place in the line of succession could lead to the succession of the de jure King, Franz of Bavaria. Sadly, this seems unlikely. Succession legislation has traditionally been couched in terms of succession from a specified ancestor; for instance, the Act of Succession itself defined the ‘legitimate’ royal house as that which descended from Sophia of the Palatinate. If succession legislation were left open to retrospective application then numerous spurious claims could be made. The best new Act of Succession would define the royal house as the senior descendents of James I; this would be the Wittelsbachs, where the Windsors are the junior descendents (being descended from Elizabeth of Bohemia). However, I suspect that in reality the new Act of Succession will permit Catholic descendents of Elizabeth II to succeed, and thus will not herald a Jacobite springtime…

This is the letter I wrote to The Daily Telegraph on the issue:

Sir,

Male primogeniture in the succession to the English crown is not, and never has been, an issue of equality and it is ignorant of politicians to believe it is. The reason for male primogeniture is a dynastic, not a sexist one. It has been established since the reign of Mary Tudor that a woman can be Queen; in the 12th century a civil war between Stephen and Matilda was fought over this issue, and it was Henry of Anjou, Matilda’s son, who became king after Stephen’s death. However, succession to the throne cannot be ambiguous and must, therefore, be through either the male or the female line. If it is through a mixture of the two, rival lines could be created in every generation. Admittedly, in a constitutional monarchy the likelihood of pretenders and usurpers is slim, but the monarchy remains part of the British constitution and consequently the identity of the monarch must be clear.

The Jacobite

Chorea Gigantum

 

From early childhood I have longed to see Stonehenge, yet the opportunity never arose until this Easter – and then the weather proved so bad that a visit to the monument itself proved impossible and a brief drive-by view was all I was permitted. The visitor is warned that a first sight of Stonehenge may be an anticlimax but for me this was far from the case; the long drive up the desolate A360 from Salisbury had prepared me, perhaps, for the otherworldly nature of Stonehenge itself. Salisbury Plain is an abandoned place; no wonder that it has stimulated so many overactive imaginations over the centuries. I was impressed not by the massiveness of Stonehenge but by its alien nature. Was this a place of worship? A little earlier that morning I had visited Salisbury Cathedral, a successor to the temples of the Romans and even the sacred groves of the Britons – an enclosed place of contact with the gods. Churches follow a culturally familiar temple theme at least three millennia old; and yet here, at Stonehenge, is something altogether other – set far outside any centre of population, as it were deliberately in the centre of a desolate wasteland, by a people to whom a pantheon of anthropomorphic gods and even a seasonal cycle would have been meaningless – a culture of the most extreme, almost cubist abstraction (as the lozenge on the chest of the Amesbury Archer demonstrates). What language did these people speak (an ancestor of Basque, perhaps)? What gods did they worship, if any? What were their social structures? The modern observer may believe that, in contrast to William Stukeley, he has thrown off the straitjacket of ‘historical’ thinking that led the 18th century antiquary to attribute the structure to the Druids. Yet we still feel uneasy once far removed from our historical reference points. 800BC means Homer, 1400BC the fall of Troy – but what does 2500BC mean? Stonehenge seems needlessly, uncomfortably old when we know so little still about our more recent ancestors, the Britons. The builders of Stonehenge are more distant from us than Australian Aborigines or stone age tribes in New Guinea – for them we have no point of reference; we cannot trace the links (are there any?) between their culture and ours. The Englishman surveying the ruins of Rome enjoys Roman culture, a Roman-influenced language, Roman laws, Roman government – to all intents and purposes he is still a Roman. The Englishman surveying Stonehenge might as well be gazing into the stars; he knows as little and has as little in common with the mysterious culture that gave this monument birth, even before one considers the questions of why and how Stonehenge was built. His Roman and British ancestors would have gazed at Stonehenge with the same wonderment and confusion that he, with all available archaeological knowledge, still cannot shake off. Prehistory is usually hidden; to investigate it is a choice, and a difficult one; but Stonehenge is prehistory that refuses to be hidden and obscure. Whoever built to last millennia purchased immortality at the price of a frustrating anonymity.

Jacobite Rome and the Church of St. Edmund

          

There are more sites of Jacobite interest in Rome than in any other European city, although on my recent visit there I saw only one or two of them. The Venerable English College remains a den of Jacobite sympathy – or at least it was a few years ago when I last visited, albeit the seminarian who showed me around this time gave me a blank look when I pointed out the portrait of Henry IX. I photographed this portrait and the arms of King Henry, for whom Pius VII made an exception when he prohibited the display of coronets on Cardinals’ coats of arms.In St. Peter’s I paid homage to the monument to the Stuart kings and the monument to Queen Clementina; later I passed the tomb of James III in the crypt (he seems to be the only non-Pope buried down there) but I was unable to photograph it. It is a fittingly distinguished burial place, although I should still prefer him to be in Westminster Abbey…

Another aim I had in Rome was to track down any remains of the Church of St. Edmund on Campo dei Fiori, recorded by J. B. Mackinlay in 1893 as having been founded either in 1300 or 1350 by a Mr and Mrs Whyte as the chapel of a hostel for English pilgrims; it was absorbed into the Hospital of the Most Holy Trinity and St. Thomas of Canterbury (now the English College) in 1463 (hence the appearance of Edmund in the Hospital seal and later in the Martyrs’ Picture) but a pediment bearing the Plantagenet arms survived near the Church of the Genoese and the Church of St. Cecilia until about 1888 if Mackinlay is to be believed. Unfortunately, there do not appear to be any churches now on Campo dei Fiori at all – the nearest is St. Bridget of Sweden on Piazza Farnese.

The Horrid Thirtieth

 

The Horrid Thirtieth returns again, once a day of national repentance and Tory pride, now unmarked by anyone except the Society of King Charles the Martyr. A recent glance at a 1734 Book of Common Prayer revealed that the service for the 30th January remained, as did the Gunpowder Plot service albeit unhappily joined to a commemoration of the landing of the Prince of Orange on the same day as the ‘Deliverer from Popery.’ In fact, I am not sure when the service for the 30th ceased to be appended to the Prayer Book, although I have no doubt that by 1734 it was rarely used. By 1858, when Lord Stanhope petitioned for its removal, it was doubtless the sole preserve of pretentious Tractarians. The last great flowering of the 30th as a day of Tory political theatre was surely the reign of Queen Anne, when members of the ‘October Clubs’ maintained the Divine Right of Kings in a vain attempt to stave off the abomination of a Hanoverian succession.

The question of what King Charles represented, and why a feast day was initiated in his honour, is an important one insofar as the celebration of his feast day today can all too easily become no more than a legitimist or Anglo-Catholic festival. The extent to which Anglo-Catholics can claim any inheritance from the seventeenth century I discussed in an earlier post. Certainly, the petititions for the prayers of King Charles (who was never known as St. Charles, incidentally) were never part of the official liturgy. Furthermore, it would be a travesty for the 30th January to have merely a cosmetic religious significance – a way of giving honour to legitimism and not to God.

Charles I was a Protestant through and through; it was on this fact that he fought the Civil War, resenting the implication that his court and his religious policy was infected with ‘popery.’ Charles’ belief was that the episcopal order was Scriptural, and that it best effected the godly order of the English nation. As such, he differed in no way from Elizabeth in his religious policy. Charles was martyred not for ‘Popish prelacy’ as his enemies would no doubt have claimed, but for the episcopal order as established by Scripture, as the preface to the 1559 Prayer Book makes clear. Charles understood better than anyone that the Church of England was imperfect and needed reform; perhaps his reform moved too quickly and antagonised too many, but he lived and breathed the eirenic world of early 17th century utopian Protestantism, which had emerged from the hostile reaction of the 16th century and now longed for the re-union of Christendom in a new culture of freedom. This was his father’s dream and yet for Charles’ sons such a vision would be inaccessible, prompting their eventual conversion to Catholicism (although James II never forsook the dream of toleration).

When Charles’ commemoration was included in the Prayer Book in 1660 it was after careful theological consideration. The commemoration of martyrs with feasts was recognised by antiquaries as a custom of great antiquity in the Church, going back to the apostolic period, and therefore the fact that Charles had been a martyr eased his passage into the Prayer Book. Furthermore, in a national church as the Church of England then was, the only figure who could command universal reverence (and who was effectively uncontroversial) was the King who was Supreme Governor. Consequently, as King and Martyr Charles could be commemorated without theological issues arising (the apostles whoe feasts occurred in the Prayer Book were martyrs, too) and without overt political controversy.

The Horrid Thirtieth is a day on which we remember the challenge posed to the apostolic constitution of the Church of England by the tyranny of Parliament, and inevitably our thoughts are also drawn to the more subtle dismantlement of the Church of England’s integrity in 1688. Charles was the Church of England’s first martyr; by the end of the century there was no Church of England left for which to die.

O LORD, our heavenly Father, who didst not punish us as our sins have deserved, but hast in the midst of judge­ment remembered mercy; We acknowledge it thine especial favour, that, though for our many and great provoca­tions, thou didst suffer thine anointed blessed King Charles the First (as on this day) to fall into the hands of violent and blood-thirsty men, and barbarously to be murdered by them, yet thou didst not leave us for ever, as sheep without a shepherd; but by thy gracious providence didst miracu­lously preserve the undoubted Heir of his Crowns, our then gracious Sovereign King Charles the Second, from his bloody enemies, hiding him under the shadow of thy wings, until their tyranny was overpast; and didst bring him back, in thy good appointed time, to sit upon the throne of his Father; and together with the Royal Family didst restore to us our ancient Government in Church and state. For these thy great and unspeakable mercies we render to thee our most humble and unfeigned thanks; beseeching thee, still to continue thy gracious protection over the whole Royal Family, and to grant to our gracious Sovereign a long and happy Reign over us: So we that are thy people will give thee thanks for ever, and will alway be shewing forth thy praise from generation to gene­ration; through Jesus Christ our Lord and Saviour. Amen.

At the tomb of Sancroft

A few days ago I visited the church of St. Peter and St. Paul, Fressingfield in order to view the tomb of William Sancroft. He is buried outside the north side of the chancel, in death as in life refusing to enter a church whose prayers for a usurping tyrant he considered sinful. Thus the last Archbishop of the true Church of England lies in the humble country churchyard of the church in which he was baptised.

Time for Tories to unite against the Union

The suggestion of Murdo Fraser, the Deputy Leader of the Scottish Tories, that the United Kingdom should become a ‘federal’ state seems to have caused great concern to David Cameron, who has jumped to the defence of the Union. The Scottish Tories are supposed to be ‘too close’ to the SNP. If only we could believe that were true! Fraser’s federalism sounds pretty crass but at least it is better than the unthinking, dogmatic Unionism one sees in Gordon Brown and David Cameron.

So many Tories in England are opposed to the Union because they are possessed of a ‘coarse, narrow nationalism’ (as David Cameron said today) that rests on a dislike of the Scots and a ‘little England’ mentality. Unfortunately, that ‘nationalistic’ agenda also prevents them forming an alliance with anyone else, non-English, who opposes the Union. None of this foolishness would exist if only opposition to the Union were on constitutional, rather than quasi-nationalistic grounds. The intrusion of nationalism always gives so much ammunition to Unionists, who cannot after all defend a Union that, on any reading of history, was formed without the consent of the people with no other purpose than to prevent a Stuart succession north of the border – so the Unionists are forced to resort to ad hominem attacks on those opposed to the Union, which sadly is not always a difficult task to accomplish.

On a related note, all parties now seem united on the issue of removing the infamous third verse, with its reference to Marshal Wade and rebellious Scots, from the national anthem. What most have failed to realise is that the words of the first verse were stolen from the Jacobites, and are first recorded on a Jacobite glass discovered at Oxburgh Hall.