SOCIAL ENGLAND Volume I. of SOCIAL ENGLAND contains from the Earliest Times to the Accession of Edward I. Price 15s. Vol. II., from the Accession of Edward I. to the Death of Henry VII. Vol. III., from the Accession of Henry VIII. to the Death of Elizabeth. " The history of social England is a stupendous undertaking, and Mr. Traill has realised his heavy responsibilities. Few men are better fitted to edit a work so comprehensive and exhaustive, for his knowledge is exceptionally wide and his intellect is singularly lucid." — The Times. " The utility of such a work is obvious, its interest to all cultivated people enormous, and the scale on which the book is to lie written, adequate." — The Speaker. "Social England is so admirably planned; the experts having charge of several departments are such masters of their subject ; it is so excellently prefaced by Mr. Traill, that for the moment the boundary line between an encyclopaedia and a history seems illusory, and in this case illuded." — National Observer. Volume IV. WILL CONTAIN FROM THE ACCESSION OF JAMES I. TO THE DEATH OF ANNE. SOCIAL ENGLAND A Uccorfl of tbc }Jron,rcss of tljc people /.. Religion Laws Learning Arts Industry Commerce Science Literature and Manners from the Earliest Times to the Present Day By Various Writers EDITED BY H. D. TRAILL D.C.L. SOMETIME FELLOW OF ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE OXFORD Volume 1 from the earliest times to the accession op edward the first THIRD EDITION CASSELL and COMPANY Limited LONDON PARIS ,'■•■ MELBOURNE 1895 A. I. Kll. i CONTENTS. I.I^T OF CONTRIBUTORS Introduction rur.E xi xiii CHAPTER 1. ENGLAND BEFORE THE ENGLISH. Celtic Britain Roman Britain Heathen Britain . Christian Britain Warfare .... Art AND ARCHITECTURE Trade and Industry: Pre-Roman Trade and Industry : Romano-British Social Like, Manners, and Customs Authorities . l 10 30 36 42 64 84 90 98 114 CHAPTER IL T11K DECLINE OF THE ROMAS POWER, A. Ik 287-460. BRITAIN UNDER ENGLISH AND DANES, 450-10GG. The Co.mino of the ENGLISH ...... Britain under the English. ...... Tin. I 'AM ii [NTASION 116 121 140 Vlll CONTENTS. Anglo-Saxon Paganism. The English Church . Uld English Law Puijlic Health .... Military Organisation: Old English Military Organisation : Danish . Old English Literature Old English Art and Architecture Old English Trade and Industry Social Life and Manners . Authorities PAGE 149 153 164 173 176 180 184 193 201 210 228 CHAPTER III. FROM THE CONQUEST TO THE CHARTER. 1066-1216. The Norman Conquest. Domesday Book ..... William Rufus — Henry 1. . The Church and the Conquest . Stephen — Henry II. — Richard I. — John The Church during the Anarchy — Thomas Becket. Church under Richard and John English Law under Norman Rule The History of Trial by Jury . Norman Warfare ..... The Norman Fleet: Maritime Affairs, 1066 — 1216 Norman and Early English Architecture and Art Learning and Science . Literature and Language . Trade and Industry . Public Health .... Social Life, and Manners . Authorities, 1066 — 1216 The 231 236 244 248 255 267 274 285 299 304 319 332 344 356 367 371 388 CONTENTS. iX CHAPTER IV. FROM CHARTER TO PARLIAMENT. 1216-1273. Tiik Reign of IIinkv III. The Genesis of Parliament. The ChuR( h I mm i: IIi:m:v III. The Growth <»f Jii;isprudkni i: Tin-: Development of the Art of The Navy of Enoi \m> Art ami Ar< eutei n re Learning and Science: History Language and Literature . Agriculture .... Trade and [ndusi ry Pi blic Health - i w. Life and Manners At raoRiTiEs, 1216- -1273 PAGE . 391 . 396 . . 403 . . 40S •• Was 411 . 411 . 415 of the Universities 429 . 440 . 450 . 457 . 472 . 473 490 INDEX 493 CONTIMUI'TORS TO THIS VOLUME. Clowes, W. Laikd, Fellow of King's College, London ; Gold Medallist, U.S. Naval Institute. • per-King, Lieut.-Colonel ('., late RM.A. ; Author of ./ History of Berkshire; I J. i. of George Washington, etc. Cobbbtt, W. •'.. M.A.. Fellow of King's College, Cambridge. Ckkighton, C. M.A., M D. ; Author of -/ History of Epidemics in Britain. Edwards, Owen M, M.A., Fellow of Lincoln College, Oxford; Lecturer in Modern History at Lincoln and Corpus Christi Colleges, Oxford. Ham.. Hubert, F.8.A., Public Lcem-d < nl'n c; Author of A History of the Customs ];. r, ,,,,, . B :n. II. Frank, Ph.D. Strashurg; Professor of English Language and Literature at Bedford College, London. ies, Reginald, D.C.L., sometime Kxhibitionerof St. John's College, Oxford. 11 iTOS Rev. W. II.. M.A.. Fellow and Tutor of St. John's College, and Examiner in the Honour School of Modern History at Oxford; Author of The Marquess WeUesley; and of The Misrule of Henry III., Simon <1e Montfort and his Cause, and St. TJiomas of Canterbury, in. English History from Contemporary Writ Maitland, F. W., LL.D., Downing Professor of Law in the University of ' ' imhridge. M ox, A. H., M.A., sometime Exhibitioner of Jesus College, < ixfon 1 Mafdb, Rev, J. II., MA., Fellow, Dean, and Lecturer of Heitford College, Oxford. Newman, r. II.. M A. Oman, C, M.A., Fellow of All Souls' College, Oxford; Author of The Art of War hi the Middle Ages ; Warwick tin King-Maker; The History of Europe, 4 76-918, etc. Pooi.f. Reginald L., M.A., Ph.D., Lecturer of Josus College, Oxford; Assistant l litor of the "English Histot ieal Review; Author of Illustrations of the Hist ry of Medieval 'thought. Powell, F. York, MA., Student and Tutor of Christ Church, Oxford; Author of A School History of England to 1509; Co-Editor of Corpus Poeticum j, ... Richards, F. T., MA., Fellow and Tutor of Trinity College, Oxford. Smith, A. I... MA., Fellow and Tutor of B dliol < loll -•• , ' Ixford. Williams, Lev. 1;., B.A., Keble College, Oxford; formerly Bangor Diocesan l irei m Church History; Author of J History of the Church in li (in Welsh). INTRODUCTION. A civilised nation has many aspects, and the story of its life might be told in as many ways. Hut, broadly speaking, the tonus under which it presents itself to observation may be reduced to three. We may consider it either as a Society, as a Polity, or as a State among State-. The first and simplest conception of it is, of course, as a Society — a body of indivi- duals associated, primarily, for purposes of mutual support in the struggle with the hostile forces of Nature, and of common advantage in the acquisition and distribution of her products. A sociation, however, necessarily creates rights and duties; from rights and duties spring law and government; with law and government the Polity is born ; and from the intercourse of one polity with another arises the still wider conception of the State among States. Under which of these three aspects we propose to review the life of the English nation in the following pages is sufficiently indicated by the title of the work. It is with our er as a Society, and not as a Polity, nor as a State among States, that this history is concerned. At the outset, how- r, it may be as well to guard against the risk of any miseoii'-eption us to the sense in which our title is employed and the limits within which it applies. Every civilised Society is in the nature of an organism, the shape' and direction of whose evolution depend in part upon the action of internal forces and in part upon the influence of its surroundings. Among those surroundings the laws and insti- tutions of every such Society form a most, important element and play a very potent part. True as it, may be that they often owe both their origin and complexion, wholly or iii large measure, to the character of the people who devise or who accept them, it is no less true that they react powerfully upon that character and materially affeel its development Still more obvious is it that, whatever may have been a nation's xiv INTRODUCTION. natural tendencies of growth, they are liable to be profoundly influenced by the nature of its relations with other States — with States from whom it may learn arts and industries or derive wealth — with States whom it may conquer or be con- quered by — with States who may strengthen it by alliances or exhaust it in wars. In strictness of language, therefore, the social history of any country is not, and cannot be, absolutely separable from the history of its political events, its legal and administrative institutions, and its international fortunes. The undue prominence formerly given by historians to these matters has produced a reaction, which is, perhaps, in some danger of running to excess ; and the influence of politics upon social progress is again, perhaps, beginning to assert itself as a force of greater activity and potenc}^ than a certain modern school of historical writers are disposed to acknow- ledge. " Drum-and-trumpet histories," no doubt, deserve much of the contempt which the late Mr. Green, by implica- tion, cast upon them in the preface to his famous work ; but nevertheless there are passages in the epic of a nation's life which seem imperatively to require recitation to the strains of these martial instruments. Without such an accompani- ment, indeed, the historical narratives would sometimes be not only inadequate, but positively unintelligible. Yet, although we cannot entirely detach the history of the Society from that of the Polity and State, although we cannot escape the necessity of combining with our narrative of the material, moral, and intellectual progress of the people some parallel record of their politics at home and abroad, we can approximate sufficiently for our present purpose to a separa- tion of the two subjects. It is open to us, and it has been the object aimed at in these pages, to abstract from the political, and to isolate the social facts of our history wherever this can be done ; to deal as concisely as the demands of clearness will permit with matters of war and conquest, of treaty and alliance, of constitutional conflict and dynastic struggle ; but to treat at length and in detail of the various stages of our English civilisation, whether as marked by recognisable epochs in moral and intellectual advance, or as indirectly traceable through those accretions of wealth which, by in- creasing comfort and enlarging leisure, do so much to promote the intellectual development, and, within certain limits, the INTRODUCTION. xv moral improvement of peoples. It is possible, and it is here intended, to dwell mainly on such matters as the growth and economic movements of the population, the progressive expansion of industry and commerce, the gradual spread of education and enlightenment, the advance of arts and sciences, the steady diffusion, in short, of all the refining influences of every description which make for the "humane life." Such a treatment of the history of a people must obviously follow one or other of two methods. Either their forward movement, from the first rude and simple beginnings of Society t" the complexity of modern life, may be viewed throughout as a whole ; or the progress made by them in all the various departments of human activity may be examined period by period, in detail. In other words, we may take up a position from which we can survey the entire array of our civilising forces in their wide-winged advance; or we may collect reports from those who have separately followed the onward march of each of the great divisions of which the army is composed. Either method has its advantages, and either its drawbacks. The former undoubtedly presents us with a picture more impressive to the eye, but the latter yields results less bewildering to the mind. What is lost to the imagination through the employment of this method is the gain of the understanding, and perhaps no other justification :- needed for its adoption in a work of this kind. For it may at least he claimed for a Social History of England compiled on this principle, that if it will not of itself enable the reader to comprehend the entire subject in all its vast proportions, it is tie- besi preparation which he could have for an attempt grapple with that formidable task. A powerful imagination, aidt Learning, and the appearance of the names of many early writers and their works, both in this and in the foregoing division, was. therefore, inevitable. Nevertheless, the capacities in which they will thus appear being distinguishable from ea h «>ther, the) 7 have a right to the double mention. Primi- tive epic, for instance, and ancient chronicle may be one ; but the influence of the bard on the future of letters and of the language is something quite distinct from his contribution to contemporary Learning and to our own knowledge of his time. His achievements in each capacity must be separately studied if his place in the history of English Social Life is to be ac surately adjudged. Still, it is only in the earliest volume of this work that cases of this kind will be likely to occur. Later on the distinction between Literature and Learning will become and remain sufficiently well marked. The subject of Section V. is from the outset more clearly ted. [t is, indeed, in its earliest stages that Art is most distinctly independent and selt'-su Hieing— most clearly the product of tin: natural human striving after the beautiful In tin- Btory of almost, every nation the progress of this struggle .m interest of its own, irrespectively of the measure of its success, and it is far from being wanting in such interest in our own country. for a long time, however, the record <>f success, or at least of distinguished success, is with us, in a certain sense, a limited one. The history of English art is, for many ages, the history of a great architecture -mainly, in- deed, of a greal religious architecture alone. With the two other leading art-forms— with painting and sculpture — it is long before English Social Hi tory has to concern itself; and b 2 xx INTRODUCTION. we approach almost within sight of our own time before the subject of this section so expands as to compel its- subdivision. It is in the section which follows that the need of special- isation is soonest felt. Under the joint heading of Trade and Industry we have been able at the outset to deal in one and the same article with the entire history of national industry and of national and international exchange, whether of natural or manufactured products. But at an early stage of the work the urban industries claim separation from agriculture ; pro- duction and exchange soon after part company ; and it may be that at last the ever-growing volume of our foreign com- merce will require to be treated apart from the history of inland trade. To the comprehensive title of Section VII. it may be objected that it is of somewhat indefinite import and extent; but it is on that account all the more fitted to describe the miscellaneous character of the matter which it covers, and to enable us to sum up under it all that remains to be recorded in the history of social progress. Needless to say, perhaps, it makes no pretence to be scientific, and indeed it so far departs from strictly logical principles of classification as to introduce a new order of phenomena to the group. For it will, of course, be observed that whereas Religion, Industry, Learning, and the other titles which have been already under consideration, represent forces as well as their realised effects, the title now to be considered has not that duality of mean- ing. It is, in fact, only a name for the resultant of all the forces in question. The manners of a people are simply such as its industries, its religion, its art and learning and literature combine to make them ; for upon the first of these factors depends that wealth which determines the material aspect of manners, while the other factors represent the humanising, refining, and sanctifying influences to which their moral aspect at any given stage of a people's social history is due. Hence, no doubt, it may be said with truth that every phenomenon recorded in our sections on manners is, strictly speaking, referable to one or more of the sections into which the work is divided. For Avhere it is not the expression of some physical fact or material force, it is the product of some moral INTRODUCTION. xxi or spiritual agent in the formation of a national character, which has, or should have been, already dealt with elsewhere. Nevertheless, the phenomena in question are so multitudinous that in the vast majority of eases it is only possible to note them in the mass, and without endeavouring to correlate them with each other, or to trace them to their creative causes. To the senses of most of us the social state of any country at any given stage of its civilisation is expressed by — is, indeed, almost identical with — the condition of its manners: and however thoroughly a social history may investigate the inner forces which have made for the civilisation and advancement of the community, it could not complete the picture to the eye, and still less to the imagination of a reader, without devoting an ample, perhaps even a relatively greater space to the presentment of the outward aspect of their lives. I. Civil Organisation. It is difficult for those who are confronted as we are at every turn by that endless intertexture of institutions of which contemporary society is made up, to realise the begin- nings of our English life. Civil organisation among the earliest inhabitants of these islands — what was it? What meaning would the words have had? Or, if the words themselves are too abstract, what things and thoughts which we should nowa- days contemplate under that subject-name were before tin 1 eyes and in the minds of the men among whom Caesar's legionaries sprang, sword in hand, from their galleys on a certain day in the fifty-fifth year before the birth of Christ? < mi "Civil Organisation" of any sort be predicated of them; or are not the words, it may be asked, altogether too big to describe appropriately the rude and primitive arrangements of their common lit'- I Modern research is not of that opinion. It is not so very long, it is true, Bince tin- youthful student of this era of our history was not taught to ee anything in the men who re- sisted lb'' Roman invasion but a mere horde of naked bar- barians, as little entitled to the name, and as destitute of any of tli*- character] I ios, of a civil society as a band of Blackfeot - r of Sioux. This yelling, woad-bedaubed savage, however, xxii INTRODUCTION. has been by this time expelled, it may be hoped for good, from the popular imagination. Much, no doubt, is yet to learn about the race on whose shores the Roman conqueror planted his eagles before the dawn of the Christian era ; but enough is known to satisfy us that the words in question are far from being unapt of application to their mode of ordering their lives. Cassar, in fact, descended upon a country which had been the scene of repeated invasions and of successive conquests before his arrival ; and so far were its people from being without civil organisation that they possessed a polity and society, in some measure compounded of and often visibly traceable to preceding ones, which it had in part assimilated and in part displaced. At some early stage or other in that westward movement of peoples which has continued from prehistoric periods down to our own times, a wave of non- Aryan immigrants, short of stature and swarthy of complexion, had swept over the island, to be followed in course of time by first one and then another incursion of Aryans — of Gaelic, that is to say, and Brythonic Celts ; and when Ceesar came, the mixed community deposited by these succeeding floods of invaders showed a distinctly legible history of social growth. The earliest settler, the dark Iberian, had long since been subdued and enslaved by the tall and fair-hued Celt who had followed him, and from whom in language, in character, in mode of life, and form of institutions, the conquered Iberian conspicuously differed. But the Aryan tribesman, with his pride of race and his more advanced conception of property as of a subject not of common but of family ownership, had declined to the condition of a despised villager, so far as social and political importance were concerned, before the Roman conquest. The tribal chief had by that time grown into the tribal king ; the free land of the tribe, alike with the common land of the villagers, had become tributary to him ; and the two communities, family and communistic, were alike his subjects. It was through the strife of tribal kings, with its consequences of the flight, the exile, and the appeal for Roman assistance of those who had been worsted. in the struggle, that the way was opened for the conquest of Britain to the conquerors of Gaul. A people who had already passed through such a history are surely well entitled to a record of their civil organisation. INTRODUCTION. xxiii But the claim of the inhabitant of pre-Roman Britain is stronger and more enduring than this; for the social system which grew up in these islands between the date of their earliesl settlement by westward-journeying explorers and their subjugation by the Mistress of the World has left ineffaceable marks behind it to this day. Dim with the dust of centuries, y< i still distinctly visible in dialect and tradition, in boundary lines of shire and. diocese, and in the strange survivals of pre- historic feud, the tribal divisions of Celtic England can still be traced, while " the rule of the Roman has been forgotten, even where his villa and his storied gravestone remain." Long, indeed, as was the period of Roman domination, its four centuries must be regarded from the point of view of our civil progress as a mere interval of arrested growth. Here, indeed, as everywhere, the conquerors set their mark deeply enough upon the outward features of the land which they had made their own. Roman road and Roman villa preserve for us the traces of their labours and their luxuries, and history testifies, in scattered but sufficient records, to the material prosperity, with its oppor 1 tunities of education and enlightenment for those within the area of diffusion, which grew up under the Roman IVaee. lint they never succeeded in — they never, indeed, system- atically attempted — that work of civil reconstruction which followed so many of their Continental conquests. The great mass of the British remained untouched alike in political institutions and laws as in language, religion, and manners, by civilisation of their masters. Britain, after four hundred years of government as a conquered province, had done nothing but unlearn the rude military virtues which she originally : ed. She bad neither assimilated the administrative • in ->t' her rulers nor developed such germs of self-govern- ing capacity as were to be found in her pre-existing social order. Eence in the history of our civil organisation the Roman dominion can only be regarded as, politically speaking, an irrelevant episode — adigression from the main narrative, which does not resume its course again until the Imperial ■us have been withdrawn. And then the thread La taken up by another hand, and from the new masters to which Britain has now to submit elf her civil life receives an impress and her social forces xxiv INTRODUCTION. a direction which are the most marked and most potent that she is destined in all her history to undergo. For the English conquest of Britain laid the foundations of the English social order that Ave know to-day. The Norman conqueror who came after did for England what the Roman conqueror had not endeavoured, or had failed, to do. He built upon the main lines of that civil organisation which he found in exist- ence at his coming, and widely as the " elevation " of the com- pleted structure may have departed from the prospective ideal of the Saxon architect the ground plan remains his. Hence- forth, at any rate — from the " English conquest" of Britain in the seventh century down to the close of the nineteenth — the history of our social order is a history of uniform growth. There are no violent breaks in the narrative, nor, indeed, is there any material departure from what one may call the logical evolution of the " plot." Norman and Angevin, Tudor and Stuart, often working unconsciously enough, added each his chapter to the story ; but its lines were laid from the beginning, its development has been continuous, and its course, through all political fluctuations and vicissitudes, orderly. At whatever period in our annals we turn away from the often troubled current of politics to survey the stream of social progress we find the same regularity in its steady onward flow. II. Religion. Of the other great agent in civilisation — Religion — a somewhat different story has to be told. Christianity dawned in Western Britain at a period when the civil virtues of the conquered Celts were declining under the paralysing effects of Roman rule ; but its early light was naturally feeble, and ere it had time to broaden eastward and southward, Rome with- drew her legions, and a fresh flood of paganism poured over the land. The precise duration of the era thus brought to so disastrous a close is hard to determine. Secular legend con- tends with religious myth in the pious but futile effort to indi- cate the apostle of Britain; but history, which cannot even fix with precision the date of the conversion, is naturally silent as to its author. All we know for certain is that there were IXTBODUCTIOX. xxv Christians in Britain at the commencement of the third century, and that in the early years of the fourth there is evidence of the existence in this country of a fully-organi ( Ihurch. But the faith spread slowly,and had not permeated the mass of the people even of Southern Britain when the Human upation came to an end. and the one bond of connection between these islands and the western centre of Christianity was thus violently severed. The conquest of Britain by the pagan English "thrust a wedge of heathendom," as Mr. Green has picturesquely put it. " into the heart of that great ( Christian communion which comprised every country, save Germany, in Western Europe, as far as Inland itself"; and it was from this furthest point of illumination that the rays of Christianity were destined to be reflected back upon the intervening dark- ness It was due to the ardour and devotion of Irish missionaries, and to the spirit which they infused into the Saxon princes who had embraced Christianity, that the light kindled by Augustine in South-eastern Britain was not ex- tinguished in 1>1 1. Nevertheless, if it was the Celtic Church which conquered England for Christianity, it was to the Roman obedience that the countrv was won. The struggle of over two centuries between the old faith and the new was followed within a few years of its close by a controversy among the victors as to the ecclesiastical rule which it was their dutv to follow. At the Council convened for the settlement of this momentous question the claims of the Irish Church were rejected and the authority of Borne prevailed. Following up her victory with her wonted promptitude, she despatched the Greek monk, Theodore of Tarsus, to fill the arohiepiscopa] & i of < Canterbury, and the Church of Ekgland as we know it to-day was born. Its history for the twelve hundred years which have since elapsed has been, in large measure, the history of the nation, fox which, hide, d, during some nine or ten of these centuries, it was only another and a spiritual name. That its periods of development and of arrested growth, of prosperity and ad- ity, of splendour and obscuration, have always bad their counterparts in contemporary Becular eras, it would be too natch to say. Th< temporal history of the Church in 1 land, as in moat European countries, lias always been a xxvi INTRODUCTION. subject of controversy. It touches the burning fringe of party politics at many points, and men of opposite opinions as to the proper policy of the State in civil matters cannot be expected to take the same view of the influence of the Church on social progress at certain given periods of her history. True, their differences turn mainly on political questions ; true, the direct action of the Church upon society has, except during certain rare and brief intervals of corruption or stagnation, been too manifestly beneficent to admit of dispute ; yet nevertheless — and there is here an illus- tration of the truth on which it seemed desirable to insist at the outset of these remarks — it is impossible so to separate the social from the political organism as to justify us in regarding the political conduct of the Church of England throughout the various ages of our history as without bearing on our social destinies. It would be the merest pedantry, for instance, to treat the great conflict of the twelfth century between the Church and the Crown — between the civil and the ecclesiastical jurisdictions — as a mere episode in our political history, as an incident which the social historian as such can afford to regard with indifference, or at any rate to study as a subject lying outside the sphere of his special work. The importance of that struggle was no less momentous from the social than from the political point of view. It would, indeed, be abso- lutely irrational to suppose that a question so profoundly affecting civil life in so many of its relations as was then in issue could have nothing or but little to say to social history. Should the Church possess judicial authority co-ordinate with and independent of, if not encroaching on, that of the State ? Or were the State courts to be supreme ? Primarily, no doubt, the issue here is an issue of politics, yet it is surely evident that its decision in a great measure determined the line of development of our English social body. Clearly it cannot be a matter of indifference to any society whether civil or ecclesiastical influences prevail in directing its advance. Sometimes, it is true, in those shifting scenes which show us the Church of England now active in the assertion of its spiritual privileges or temporal pretensions, now allied with the champions of popular rights against the Crown, the INTRODUCTION. xxvii political side of its history overshadows every other aspecl it. Throughout the reign of John and into thai of his son aud successor it may, with substantial truth, be said thai the political and the social importance of the Church varied in- versely with each other. Its prominence as a participator in the strife of politics had never been so marked ; but it was a stationary, and became at last a declining, influence on private life and manners. Great as had been its puns in popularity through its attitude in the struggle for the < barter, they were not so great or nearly so important as its losses in popular reverence. Everywhere its prelates and clergy displayed signs of a growing secularisation of temper and of habits. Preaching had fallen into disuse, the monastic orders had degenerated into mere wealthy landowners, the ignorance of the priest left parishes without the reality of spiritual direc- tion, even when his non-residence did not deprive them of its very form. Services were neglected and pluralism abounded, abuses of all kinds were rife, and the temporary failure of the Church to keep pace with the moral needs of the nation was attested by the eager interest with which the coming of the friars was welcomed by the people. For the revival of religion that followed, these devoted sionaries are no doubt entitled to the chief credit. Vet the Church which their enthusiasm did something to awaken on to find them sharing with her in that process of d< generation which went on through the next period of relap It is curious to contrast their condition in the first quarter of the thirteenth century with what it had become in the second half of the fourteenth, to reflecl on the change which had taken place between the time when thousands of followers flocked, lull of religious zeal, to the outstretched hand of the mendicant preacher, and the time, not much more- than a century later, when Wyclif could, with general applause, denounce them as "sturdy beggars," and declare that "the man who gives alms to a begging friar is ipso facto excommunicate." These words were uttered by a man who was qo! content with mere denunciation and in the struggle of Lollardism, from the initiation of the movement by Wyclif to its final sup]'!-' ion Borne thirty years after his death, we have an illustration of that i & iup -rat ive principle within the Church xxviii INTRODUCTION. itself by which it was revived and preserved from age to age, until, purged more thoroughly and renovated more com- pletely than ever before by the great convulsion of the Reformation, it finally assumed that place in the guidance of the moral and spiritual progress of the people which, except for one comparatively brief period in a later century, it has never lost. And it is, of course, on that momentous crisis in the fortunes of Europe that the profound interest which the Church and religion of the nation possess for the student of its social history mainly concentrates itself. For the future of civil society in England, as in every European country, may almost be said to have turned on its choice between the old faith and the new. The far-reaching consequences of that choice stand inscribed for us indeed on wider tablets than those of the history of a single continent : they are written across the face of the world. There is a form of civilisation suited to the erenius of Catholicism and to the racial characteristics — on which, however, it also importantly reacts — of the nations which took the Romeward road at that great parting of the ways ; and it is not the concern or within the purpose of this work to compare this form of civilisation, either favourably or unfavourably, with that which has flourished and advanced in countries holding the Protestant form of the Christian faith. It is enough that the two forms are essentially distinct, that they lend themselves respectively to the development of wholly different moral and intellectual qualities, and that the people which definitely accepts one of them must be content to travel to its goal at a different rate, if not by a different route, of progress from that of the other. Hence it is that the decision between the claims of the two faiths which con- tended at the Reformation was of such vast social as well as political and religious importance. Issues inconceiv- ably remote from the question of the number of the Sacra- ments, or the Petrine Commission of the Pope, and — if temporal may be compared with spiritual things — of vastly greater moment, it might be said, to humanity, were tried out in that tremendous struggle; and the results of the trial for most European countries, and for England pre- eminently, are visible to those who look around the world to-day, with an impressive clearness which even the most iXTnoDurrrox. «□* vivid and powerful imagination of the great men of either Church who took part in that conflict could not possibly have realised. By that fateful decision of the sixteenth century the whole future course of our social history, so far as religious influences have guided it. was determined. For the Ileforniation was the unquestionable though not the immediate progenitor of that great spiritual movement of the ensuing century which left an impress on the life and manners of the nation so deep and so abiding as to be still plainly discernible, after an interval of two hundred and fifty years, in some of the most conspicuous and characteristic qualities of our people. With- out Protestantism, no Puritanism ; and without Puritanism the Englishman of to-day would have been a different man. Not only in thought and feeling, not only in moral and intellectual temperament must he have deviated from the existing type, but his whole scheme and theory of life, his rules of individual conduct, his code of social usages, his tastes and amusements,, his preferences in literature, his attitude towards Art — in a word his entire estimate of the relative proportions of human interests and human objects, would have been other than they are. The history of Puritanism is properly speaking, of course, a part of the general history of religion ; and after the birth of the Puritan movement the religious factor in our social growth can no longer be identified as heretofore with the now waxing, now waning influence of the English Church. Yet the Church, though it resisted and for a time suppressed the Puritan movement, was itself and still is affected by it, and indeed may fairly be said, from the date of the Wesleyan revival to that of the Tractarian reaction, a period of a hundred years, to have \<<-<'}i indebted for the chief sources of its vital energy to the Puritan spirit And since it was in the largest, the soberest, and on the whole the most conservative class of Englishmen that this spirit arose in the Bizteenth and renewed itself in the seventeenth century, bo it is in this great middle class — the class that typifies the whole people lor the foreigner, and even, so for as we may judge from popular con- ceptions, and from the caricatures that refleel them, for themselves-— that LtS survival is the most marked at the present day. Culture and scepticism, and the growth of luxury and xxx INTRODUCTION. refinement are no doubt affecting it, but to an extent which only seems considerable because the cultivated and sceptical, the refined and luxurious minority exaggerate it, The exaggeration is apt to deceive, because the classes who have outgrown the influence of Puritanism are as disproportion- ately vocal as they are relatively small, Avhile the classes among whom that influence is still dominant are a virtually voiceless multitude. But the impartial student of the national character is constantly being confronted with evidence to the fact that the process of so-called " emancipation " has reached but the merest fringe of the community, and that the great bulk of middle-class Englishmen are still, to all intents and purposes, the true spiritual descendants of a Puritan stock- Ill. Learning and Science. The spiritual and intellectual factors in our social develop- ment may here, perhaps, with advantage be still pursued, though another order of arrangement is for the most part followed in the body of the work ; and here, perhaps, it may be in place to say that the sequence of subjects will often vary in successive chapters, according to the prominence or importance of those subjects at the particular period dealt with. The history of Learning and Science runs parallel with that of religion, and sometimes, though not always, in the same channel. In the earlier ages of our social history, however, the identity of the two is, of course, almost unbroken. At a time when Learning was the monopoly of the ecclesiastical order it was inevitable that its progress should mainly follow religious lines. The careers and charac- ters of those who promote it will often fall to be dealt with under the head of Religion, and sometimes under that of Litera- ture also ; for the earliest literary efforts of men so situated will, for the most part, be devoted to religious subjects, while at the same time they naturally form the beginnings of Learn- ing for the otherwise rude and unlettered society in which they appear. Thus Csedmon, among the earliest of Saxon poets, throws Scripture into metrical paraphrase ; and Alfred, INTRODUCTION. xxxi as a translator of Beda, lays the foundations not only of a Saxon prose but of English history. It is not, indeed, till after the rise of the English Universi- nor even then immediately, that the fortunes of Learning can he said to have detached themselves from those of the Church. The academic system was. it is true, ecclesiastical in form and origin, and even to a certain exl ni. in affiliation 'I'll.' wide extension which mediaeval usage gave to the word '•orders" still gathered the whole educated world within the pale of the clergy. -Whatever might be their proficiency, scholar and teacher were alike clerks, free from lay responsi- bilities "i- the control of civil tribunals, and amenable only to the rule of the bishop and the sentence of his spiritual courts." Nevertheless, as the collegiate foundations testify in their very origin to a decline of the impulse towards exclu- sively rehsrious endowments and reveal anew desire to dedicate wealth to educational instead of to more literally "pious uses," so in their development and in that of their mother Universi- does the secularising spirit which gave birth to them become more and more conspicuous in its operation and potent in its effects. The influence of the Church, so seriously threatened by that great expansion of the field of education which coincides with the rise of the Universities, was to some extent indeed to be re-established by the aid of the Friars and the renewed supremacy which their teaching procured for scholastic theology in the academic course. Yet from this very school sprang Roger Bacon, whose hand was to unlock the doors of the temple of Science, and to reveal at least a glimpse of those treasures within it which future generations were to explore. The great Friar, however, was born before his time; the in which he lived was no! yel ripe for those studies which in after ages were to be pursued to such mighty issues. Scholasticism was destined to remain for yet two centuries supreme Bui it is no unmeaning chapter in the history of our intellectual progress that contains the record of its iy. Its system was .m unrivalled course of discipline in clear thinking, in rigorous analysis, in searching criticism, in the comprehension and use of every weapon in the armoury of human reason. If knowledge made no advance under the reign of scholasticism, the instruments of knowledge were xxxii INTRODUCTION. being steadily, it undesignedly, brought by it to perfection. It was the schoolmaster to lead men to science. Such fruits as it produced in the meantime were exclusively, it is true, of the theological or ecclesiastical order ; they are to be traced in the daring Erastianism, as a later age would have called it, of Ockham, and in the reforming energies of Wyclif. But its methods were all the while preparing the faculties of man to appropriate and profit by the great possessions into which they were one day to enter. With the discovery of the New World a new era dawned upon the human mind. The great period of the Renaissance opened ; and first in Italy, then over all the Continent, and then finally in England, the Revival of Letters stirred the human mind into more vigorous activity. The rise and progress of the New Learning belongs in part, but in part only, to the history of Religion. It has had much to say to the advance of knowledge on the secular side, and pre-eminently so through its influence on education. Dean Colet's founda- tion of St. Paul's was the first step in an educational move- ment which was destined, in the course of a generation or two, to transform the face of the country. The aim of the founder was the union of rational religion with sound learning, the exclusion of the scholastic logic, and the steady diffusion of the two classical literatures. Greek, the newcomer, did not obtain admission without a struggle, but it established itself in time. Not only did its study creep gradually into existing schools, but the influence of Colet's example was so powerful that new foundations came in numbers into existence in which Greek was from the first included in the curriculum. More grammar schools, it has been said, were founded in the latter years of Henry, than during the whole of the three preceding centuries. The grammar schools of Edward VI. and of Elizabeth carried forward the movement, which by the end of the century had completed its. transforming work. Nor was the influence of the New Learning confined to the earlier, the primary and secondary, stages of education ; it invaded, and, after a sharp conflict at each of the two Universities, it mastered the higher education also. For a time it divided Oxford between its partisans and its opponents — the "Greeks" and "Trojans"; and the spirit of TNTBODUGTION, xxxiii contention rose high enough in one instance, at any rate, to provoke interference and call forth rebuke from the kinsr. But in the Universities, as in the schools, the triumph ot the New Learning was not long delayed. A newly-founded college in I >xford signalised itself by the establishment of the first Greek lecturership ; the Crown at a later time created a professorship of the same study ; and the work was con- summated by Wolsey's munificent foundation of Christ Church. At the full tide of the educational movement, in the first years of the reign of Elizabeth, Bacon was born — Bacon, who may with substantial accuracy be described as a born philo- sopher who mistook himself for a man of science, and whose contribution to the intellectual advancement of mankind, thou-h large in amount, was widely different in character from his own conception of it, His design was to lay the foundations of a true method of scientific inquiry; his achieve- ment was to devise and expound a system which, while as a whole it is not that of science, yet anticipates modern scientific methods in many striking ways. He insisted, and rightly, on the Experimental Principle, though he attained to qo true eon i prehension of experimental methods; and to have succeeded in the former, even while failing in the latter point, was an achievement which can only be properly appre- ciated by those who have due regard to the educational dogmas and intellectual superstitions against which Bacon had to contend, lint apart from the services — great, if mis- understood, both by himself and others — which he indirectly rendered to the cause of natural science, a large debt is due to him from the whole body of human studies then awaiting the application of that great principle which Bacon insisted upon in physic t condition of advance. If the two words which entitle this section be distinguished— if Learning, thai is to !»• treated as a generic and S-ience as a specific appellation — we shall have i<> adinil thai the work of Bacon in behalf of the wider was even greater than (hat which he accomplished for the aarrowi r i .mse. A- the seventeenth century advances, the horizon of knowledge — including thereunder the contributions made l>\ deductive reasoning, by inductive inquiry and bj criticism of ancient records immeasurably widens. Old methods of inquiry are more fruitfully pursued; scholarship, wielding i xxxiv INTRODUCTION. fresh weapons, enlarges the borders of erudition ; new ex- perimental sciences are born, and the oldest of all the de- ductive sciences achieves its greatest triumph in the hands of the most illustrious of its students. It is the age of Harvey and Sydenham, of Boyle and Gilbert, of Locke and Hobbes ; above all, it is the age of Isaac Newton. The Royal Society is founded, and enrols the greatest astronomer of all time in the list of its presidents. By the close of the seven- teenth century the whole face of the intellectual world had been transformed. The Science upon which Swift looked forth in scorn at the beginning of the next age, and on which he cut his irreverent jests in "Gulliver" ; the philosophy which he ridicules in the " Voyage to Laputa " ; nay, the very Learning against which he so audaciously measured himself in the " Battle of the Books," wear an aspect wholly different from that which they would have presented to the eye of any observer at the beginning of the reign of James I. Philosophy and Science bore indelible traces of the labour of Locke and Newton, and Learning would have been at another stage than it had by this time reached in England if Bentley had never lived. Through the first half of the ensuing century the rate of progress in the sciences a little slackens, but it recovers towards its close. There are foreshadowings of the age which was to follow and in its course to add more by a thousandfold to the volume and import of scientific discovery than had been slowly and doubtfully accumulating during the countless cycles that had elapsed since the dawn of human intelligence. In its earlier years, as has been said, the eighteenth century was more remarkable as an era in the history of our national literature than for any contributions to the advancement of Science. Its second half was rendered memorable by the application of physical research and mechanical invention to industrial purposes ; and in this respect its achievements belong rather to the economic division of our survey. Yet pure science was not neglected in any of its main depart- ments. Herschel in astronomy, Hunter in anatomy and physiology, Black, Cavendish, and Priestley in chemistry, are names memorable and reverend in the annals of British Science, and every one of them recalls some important conquest won for humanity in the region of the unknown. IN TH OD rC TION. xx i v But. if for no other cause, the period would deserve to be lastingly remembered as having, in the great work of Adam Smith, given birth to a new science, which, it' the successors of its founder have failed to advance it to conclusions as universally true and as irrefragable as was once expected, has probably done more for human happiness and prosperity during the hundred and twenty years which have elapsed since its principles were first enunciated in the " Wealth of Nations," than any other product of the pure intellectual energy <>f man. The birth and early years of the nineteenth century found our country still locked in the death-grapple with Napoleon ; and though even so, there is, of course, discernible, as with every nation which still retains its vitality, a steady, if not very rapid or extensive, widening of the field of knowledge throughout this period, it was not till the century had well- nigh half run its course that that extraordinary scientific movement which has given it its place among the ages first took its rise. The application of steam to terrestrial locomo- tion dates from late in its fourth decade, and it was only in its fifth that our railway system first flung wide thai net whose meshes we have ever since been weaving closer and closer over the land. Electric telegraphy dates its beginning from much about the same time, though the growth of its employ- ment in the arts of life was for a long time sensibly slower than that of its coeval power. It was, perhaps, not until the Fifties that Science 1 egan to advance in earnest, but from thenceforward its rate of progress has been increasing almost itinuously, until it hasreached its present bewildering speed. No doubt it is in the domain of applied physics, and notably in thai part of their domain to which belongs the wonder- work'u. nee of electricity, that this rush of discovery and utilisation of discovery is the most conspicuous. The employment of this force for the three purposes of sound- transmission, of illumination, and of locomotion, represent tin tinctly novel applications of it. dating all of them from within the last quarter, if not the last twenty years, of the expiring century. And uol onl; as we can judge, is the uuinbor of these applications still a long way from oinj.l. ted. but the extent of progress possible in those departments of activity to which this Protean force has 2 xxxvi INTRODUCTION. already been applied seems quite beyond the reach oi precise estimation. Nevertheless, it is not in applied physics alone that the progress of human knowledge, and the part played in it b}^ our country, have during the last and present generations been remarkable. Nay, it is not in that domain that our conquests, though the most striking to the eye, have been the highest as achievements of the human mind, or even, perhaps, the most potent in their ultimate effects upon the future of the race. While the discoveries of the physicist, appropriated and applied by the engineer, have transformed the outward aspect of English life, the great work of Darwin has been effecting a silent revolution in the mind of man. The publication of the " Origin of Species " marked an epoch, not merely in the record of scientific inquiry, but in the whole history of human thought. It has profoundly affected all studies, of whatsoever description, into which the nature of man — whether in its moral, its physical, its intellectual, or its spiritual asj>ect — enters as a factor to be considered. History, psychology, ethics, economics, have all taken a new depar- ture from the starting-point indicated to them by the doctrine of Evolution. It may be said to have founded that science of Comparative Theology — if we may so call it — which for the first time has brought the methods of scientific inquiry to bear on the history of religion and of the religious instincts in man. There is, it must be repeated, not a single study having any affinities with biological science or depending in any of its processes on the conclusions of the biologists, which has not received both a new impetus and a new direction from the Darwinian theory. But in every branch of Science the progress made during the last half-century has been immense. It is scarcely an ex- aggeration to say that in almost every department of scientific inquiry— not only among those to which the name of "physics" should in strictness perhaps be confined, but among those also which are more directly concerned with the human economy than the constitution and laws of external Nature, and among those, lastly, such as chemistry, which may be regarded as intermediate between the two — discoveries of a far-reaching, sometimes of a revolutionising character, have during the period in question been made. Chemistry has IXTUODUCTION. xxxvii developed its always subtle processes to a pitch of almost inconceivable delicacy; physiology has widely extended its domain and revised its conclusions by the increasingly helpful aid of microscopic research ; surgery, through the invention of the antiseptic treatment, and in many other ways, has made vast advances: therapeutics and sanitation have achieved successes which would have been unattainable, and have entered upon an almost boundless field of conquest which would never have been opened to them but for the con- struction and application of the germ theory of disease. In branches ^\ inquiry unconnected — except as all instruments of human enlightenment are related to human interests — with the physical nature of man, the progress accomplished has been more remarkable still. The laws of the great cosmic forces — of heat and light, of magnetism and electricity — have been investigated, with the result that our knowledge of the behaviour of these forces, in regions or at stages of their operation which lie outside the cognisance of the senses, has now been placed on a basis of more assured hypothesis than they ever rested on before. And, highest triumph of all, the discovery of the world-embracing and time-spanning principle of the < lonservation of Energy has knit the entire body of the physical sciences together, and practically made one science vi the whole. IV. Literature. To tell the story of English literature adequately within the limits of this preliminary sketch would be an even more hope- task than that which has just been imperfectly attempted in the case of beaming and Science ; for the beginnings — even tie noticeable beginnings — of literature are earlier, the con- itories to its growth are much more numerous, the causes which have directed the course of its development in this direction or in thai are al once more obscure in their origin and more subtle in their operation ; while, finally, the facl that the history of a literature is al once a history of thoughl and a history of language, instead of being, as is the case with religion or science or philosophy, a history of thoughl alone, must, indefinitely enlarge the field of inquiry. A subject so xxxviii INTRODUCTION. vast, however, may be said, in a certain sense, to simplify itself. A survey of it within the limits of a few of these preliminary pages must ot necessity conform to one of two types. It must either take the shape of one of those severely compressed summaries which always threaten to resolve themselves into a mere catalogue of names and dates, and frequently fulfil the threat; or it must content itself with merely noting the great " periods " in the history of English letters and its great epochs of change. In such a sketch, for instance, as the present it would be impossible to traverse otherwise than cursorily that long and interesting era of literary growth which stretches, roughly speaking, from the seventh to the fourteenth century. The history of Old English poetry, whether in its lyric form from Casdmon downwards, or in that rude barbaric shape of which the epic of "Beowulf" is the earliest example; the development of Old English prose, from its cradle, so to speak, in the Anglo- Saxon Chronicle, to that arrest of its growth which befell it in the eleventh century, will be found traced in adequate detail in the second chapter of this volume. So, too, with that critical period in the fortunes of the language and its litera- ture which began with the Norman Conquest and may be said to have lasted until after the accession of the dynasty of Anjou — that period during which our speech and literature, banished from the Court by French and Latin, still main- tained themselves among the people, giving proof of that indestructible vitality in the strength of which they were ultimately to prevail. Over this era and the most memorable work which it produced — the " Brut" of Layamon, that monu- mental testimony to the self-sustaining vigour of our English tongue which, written nearly a century and a half after the Conquest, contains in thirty thousand lines but some fifty words of the Conqueror's language — it is impossible to linger here. One must hasten onward through another century and a half, when the struggle between the two languages had at. last ended in the final triumph of the native speech, and Chaucer entered in, not merely to reap the fruits of victory,, but to reunite the victor and the vanquished, and to work the surviving remnants of the Norman-French into that matrix of pure English from which the pure gold of his poetry emerged. INTRODUCTION. xxxix For the philologist himself, as distinct from the critic, the poems of Chaucer must ever possess supreme interest, for they constitute an imperishable record of the state of the written language at a momentous epoch of transition. That the poet himself did not merely register but contributed to the transitional process is probable enough. Inspired innova- tion has been the prerogative of the high.es! literary genius in all ages, and it may well be that Chaucer's courtly, official, : . diplomatic training revealed to him points of vigour or of grace in words and idioms of the Norman-French with which he was tempted to strengthen and enrich the English of his verse But it is certain thai these additions cannot have in important in amount, The old notion of the seven- teenth- century writers — that Chaucer, writing-in English upon st familiar English subjects, and producing works which at once made him the most popular writer of his time and country, yet "corrupted and deformed the English idiom by an immoderate mixture of French words" — is repugnant to common sense. There can be no rea onable doubt that the bulk of the words in question — and their proportion to the whole is small — had already won their way into the speech of the nation, and that all that the poet did was to fix them in its literary language. And it is literature — the world's literature — not English philology, which has the first claim upon I lhaucer. Whatever had been the linguistic peculiarities in the external structure of his poetry — if, that is to say, it had taught us as little of the history of our tongue as, in fact, it teaches us much — the place of thai poetry in the story of our civilisation would neverthe- Li as ha • remained unafli cU d. The unrivalled array of poetic qualities both of feeling and expression, which it presents to 11- th< and gaiety of the poet, his humour and pathos, his dramatic force of portraiture, the catholicity of his sym- v< r to 1"- again approached in Literature till the coming of Shakespeare, his fine broad artistic treatment of the human figure, the dewy freshness of his landscape studies, and the char sunny at mosph< re through which he looks out alike upon Nature and upon man— it is these things which bav< I the father of I'll i g 1 i si i I'oei ry to the rani? of one of .it po t8 of the world. It is in virtue of such things that that train of pilgrims which lefl S uthwark for the xi INTRODUCTION. shrine of St. Thomas of Canterbury, on a certain day of April in or about the year 1383, remains so real to us, that the student still labours to fix the precise date of its departure and the times and places of its halts. It is for such reasons that these shadows of the poet's fancy are shadows more enduring than their substance, and that knight and squire, clerk and franklin, reeve and miller, pardoner and sompnour, prioress and nun, and wife much widowed, move still, and will ever move, before us across the great imaginative panorama of the past, joyous and immortal as a Bacchic procession on a frieze of Phidias. But Chaucer's light in literature was of as brief a radiance as Wiclifs in religion, and was followed by the re-invasion of as dense a gloom. Again we have to carry the eye forward for another century over the sombre period covered by the long war with France and the civil strife which followed it in England ; nor do we find anything to arrest the gaze until we reach that great time of awakening which dawned for England, as for all Western Europe, with the Revival of Letters, the invention of printing, and the discovery of the New World. The story of the century that followed is itself the history of a literature. England was slower than some countries to feel the quickening of the Renaissance, but that magical influence made itself felt at last. First the poets of medieval Italy, then the Greek and Latin classics, began to win their way to the heart of English culture. Translations of Tasso and Ariosto showed the new interest of Englishmen in the chosen land of this intellectual dayspring ; versions of the more famous works of classical antiquity followed, and before the close of the sixteenth century the greater poets and historians of Greece and Rome had been given to the English people in their own tongue. But meanwhile to the native Muse herself the awakening had come. In the poems of Wyatt and Surrey and their contemporaries there were signs not only of the stirring of that new life of thought and fancy, but of the beginnings of that new feeling for metrical form which were to find their culmination in the " Faerie Queene." An English prose began to feel its way in the writings of Ascham and of Hooker to its present structural form, and to dare with Sidney — if experimentally, and not always in a INTRODUCTION. xli spirit of wisdom — to borrow colour from imagery and warmth from rhetoric. And, last and greatest birth of all, the "Morality" and Mystery play of the Early Tudor period brought forth that glory of the world's literature, the Elizabethan drama — that ever-broadening light upon the face of man and Nature which had its flush of dawn in Marlowe and its meridian splendour in Shakespeare. The sixteenth cunt my passes into the seventeenth ; the burst of song sinks gradually into silence; the tire of dramatic genius burns lower and lower and at last expires, never again to be rekindled, except at times into a faint and transient flicker, throughout the ages which have since passed. But still the stately inarch of English literature, in mighty verse or memorable prose, through Milton and Dryden, through Bacon and Jeremy Taylor, through Browne and Hobbes and Clarendon, moves on. Even the Restoration comedy, morally corrupt and dramatically imitative though it be, has yet its part in the movement; for the literary quality of Congreve, and in a lesser degree of Vanbrugh, is of high excellence, and the former was the first to teach the English writer how to impart somewhat of that point and balance to the prose epigram in which he may approach, though the g< mius of our language forbids him to rival, the French. The services of Dryden to English letters in every depart- ment were inestimable. He not only gave order and regularity to the heroic couplet, but he left behind him a more mobile and elastic prose than he found ; and both by the style and matter of his literary dissertations he may claim to have been the father of the modern science of criticism. He imes the literature of the later seventeenth century both in prose and verse, and he wielded over the former the reignty which passed at his death into the hands of as many partitioners as did the empire of Alexander. Within little more than a dozen years from his decease the sceptre. of poetry was ;i s firm in the grasp of Pope as it had ever been in hi-- own: but many writers of high merit, among whom the names of Swift and Addison are the most distinguished, were the BUCCesSOn tO hi8 fame in pi-use. The fortunes of this latter portion of his bequeathed work were more evenly prosperous, and ultimately not less brilliant, than those of the former English prose, strengthened by xlii INTRODUCTION. Swift, refined and purified by Addison, has had to pass through no interval of decline or retrogression between that day and our own, and has proved itself an instrument of equally marvellous reach and power in the hands alike of every great master of fiction, from Fielding and Richardson to even the too negligent Scott, and from Scott to Dickens, Thackeray, and George Eliot ; of every historian, from Hume and Gibbon to Macaulay and Froude; of every critic and essayist, from Johnson and Goldsmith to Southey and Landor, Lamb and Hazlitt, and from them to Piuskin and Carlyle. English poetry, on the other hand, after being carried through, at no little cost in sincerity of feeling, to the highest possible technical perfection by Pope, was destined to decline in the hands of his innumerable imitators into a lifeless art, a con- dition from which Gray and Cowper — true poets as they were — were only forerunners of its redemption. It is not till we reach the very threshold of the nineteenth century that a new poetic movement sets in, less potent of immediate influence,, but in literary distinction second only to that of the Elizabethan period, and of so much more lasting vitality that it has hardly even yet exhausted its force. The publication of the Lyrical Ballads in 1798 was the birth- cry of that new poetic spirit — a spirit part romantic, part mystical, part naturalist — which has transmitted its triple influence from Coleridge and Shelley, from Keats and Wordsworth, to Swinburne and William Morris on the one hand, to Matthew Arnold and his school on the other, and may be regarded as having reached its highest pitch of inspiring power in the poetry of Tennyson, wherein all three of its constituent elements unite. V. Art. The student of the history of art in England has no such many-threaded narrative to follow out as the explorer of this subject in Italy or even in other less artistically famous Continental countries would find it necessary to trace. England has produced many great works of art, but at no period of her annals has she produced great art-works of many kinds. With substantial accuracy indeed it may be said that until a comparatively recent period of her annals she IKTliODVCrmx. xliii produced them only in one kind. Painting and sculpture had elsewhere had a long and glorious history before we meet with the name of any Englishman born which has acquired a right of enrolment beside those of foreign masters in these branches of art Ev< n the very breath of the Renaissance, which passed over certain other countries like that wind of resurrection whichswept the valley of the (had at the summons of Ezekiel, awoke no new artistic life in England. Centuries had yet to pass, and the one great form of art in which Englishmen excelled, even then declining, was to die out altogether, before an English school of painting arose. Fortunate is it for us that tin' form in question is prominent over all others for the durability of its creations, and that many a majestic monument remains to attest the power and nobility to which English architecture attained. If, how< ver, the history of our art in its greater and more famous departments has, so to speak, but little lateral extension, yet if we take major and minor art-forms together, the record of its total activities stretches wide, and is of deeply significant bearing on the general narrative of our advance in civilisation. In the pages which we here devote to it we shall endeavour to trace its lineage, as near as may be, in continuous descent from the remotest past. In so doing wo shall show how the arts of design began before the be^innin^s of history, and how the earliest conceptions of architectural grandeur date from the prehistoric builders. We shall show how the Roman invader found means to beautify his place of exile with the work of British craftsmen: and how his rude English successor in conquest developed here into the most Laborious of illuminators, the most skilful of embroiderers. We >hall note the suggestive importance of the English loom centuries In -fore the Frenchman or the Fleming came to •h us a more perfect method, and a thousand years before the first spindle turned in Manchester. Later on we shall see h<>\v, with the coming of the Norman, the English burgh gave place to the imjiregnahle eavtle, and how the perishable wooden churches of the Saxon were replaced by Norman Btonework, built as for eternity. < >r, later still, how a profusion of carving and decoration covered the churches of the day of Anselm and Lanfranc. We shall watch the rise, and follow the decline and fall, of Gothic architect lire ; its coining, under xliv INTRODUCTION. the first of the Angevins ; the grace of its springtime under Richard and John and Henry ; its sumptuous decoration under the Edwards ; its grave, autumnal beauty under their successors ; its Indian summer and final eclipse under the Tudors. Our survey of the development of lay architecture will show its moving along similar, but not parallel, lines. The massive Norman castle — the great seal which William set everywhere on his conquests — outwardly gave little promise of progress. Yet even these stones, cemented with the tears and sweat of the conquered, soon bear witness to the outward movement of material civilisation. New fashions rapidly invade the keep and donjon. The stronghold grows larger ; it becomes commodious ; later it is seen to aim at actual comfort ; finally it approaches something like luxury. The manor-house now begins to compete with it, and in the end successfully, save in those few cases where under the pressure of military discipline the castle has to serve the purpose of an elaborate government fortification. Later on we shall see how, while retaining the old menace of external aspect, it becomes internally a residence not unfitted for civilised man. At length the castellated form entirely disappears, and the country houses built by English magnates show their military descent only in a certain soldierly stateliness. The Re- naissance, too, comes in to derange further the old designs, though it must be confessed that in comparison with religious architecture our lay buildings suffered little injury from the new influence. The art of painting seems to have begun everywhere (except possibly in Egypt) as ancillary to some other art. In England it appeared as the handmaid— and the humble handmaid — of architecture. But England was not singular in this respect ; nor shall we find any proof that in the infancy of art the fresco painters of York or Canterbury were behind those of Tuscany and the Romagna. Though, of course, behind the Italians, they were not more so than were the artists of France and Flanders ; but while those countries suffered nothing worse than an arrest of growth, in England there was actual death. The seed of artistic genius, which in more fortunate lands was alive if dormant, seems to have perished altogether. The long and exhausting INTRODUCTION. xlv war with France, and the internecine strife of York and Lancaster, were not merely unfavourable to the harvest of art-production; apparently they sterilised the soil Painting, like Christianity, had a second time to be imported into England Sculpture, though nowadays regarded somewhat as the Cinderella of our national art, had rather better fortune, probably because it was more an integral part — indeed, almost a branch — of architecture. It happened, moreover, to I the one form of artistic effort in which Englishmen early displayed what in our modern phrase we call "a feeling for decoration." The reader will see in the course of these pages how largely it was developed by the Gothic masons in tinial and ornament, and how sepulchral sculpture (including portraiture in stone and bronze) assumed an importance which even in our darkest architectural age it never after- wards lost. The art of painting as we rind it in the England of the Tudors came from abroad, and had all the tenderness of an exotic. It struck no roots into our chilly soil. The illus- trious artists who were tempted from Italy and Switzerland and the Low Countries by the hope of enriching themselves at the Tudor and Stuart Courts had pupils indeed, and imitators, but neither they themselves nor their disciples bucci eded in founding any school, in establishing any tradition. Yet, small and infantile as their influence 1ms been, we shall have briefly to record the English doings of these artistic settlers on our shores, as well as of the comparatively obscure Englishmen who were tempted to emulate their achievements. These were not few, but hardly any of them attained commanding success. Some good miniaturists in the sixteenth cenhiry, one great English and one' great Scottish portrait-painter in the seventeenth, form a promising beginning, but the promise is not ful- filled. The want of public appreciation, the troubles of the civil War, thesubjet tion to Prance, and, above all, the blighting influence of Protestantism in the former century, and of Puritanism its quintessence in the latter, go far to account for the failure, reinforced as they, moreover, were by simple bad luck in the early deaths of artists of ability. The story which we have to tell is full of interest, but nol of thai xlvi INTRODUCTION. interest which attaches to a phase of national development. That comes later. Any consecutive history of English-bred art must naturally begin with Hogarth. During his life nearly all our greatest artists were born, and the last of the survivors of the band lived on into the second quarter of the present century. It will be our privilege to summarise, however briefly, the fascinating record of their splendid achievements, and to indicate their hardly less splendid failure. We shall mark, too, that strange phenomenon which seems the abiding note of English effort, that our victories in art, as in war, have mostly been " soldiers' victories," where every man did that which was right in his own eyes. This is true not only of the painters of our age, but also of the men who succeeded them, and of the men of to-day. There have, of course, been movements dis- tinguished by more orderly aims and the effort after a more uniform artistic ideal. The most important of these is still great, if no longer a directly vitalising one; but here, since we are trespassing on the threshold of the present, our survey of English art must be closed. VI. Trade and Industry. And now that the moral, the intellectual, the spiritual factors, in the sum of our modern civilisation have thus been passed in review, it remains only to glance at the physical agencies which have contributed to its growth. We shall have in these volumes to trace the progress of our material prosperity, step by step, and through stage after stage of its advance. We shall have to note the successive utilisation of the various sources of wealth; the development of the corre- sponding methods of production ; the chequered fortunes of our agriculture ; the rise and growth, in its later stages so enormous, of our manufacturing industry ; the progressive expansion to its present astonishing volume of our external trade. Incidentally thereto, of course, we shall have to render, period by period, an account — for it will be hardly less than that — of the physical well-being of the great body of the English people ; to show how it has been affected by causes natural and artificial, by " act of God " or ordinance of man; by laws, in the legislator's literal sense of the word, INTRODUCTION, xhii and in the economist's figurative use of it; b} r war, pestilence, or famine, with their depletions of population, arrests of production, and displacements of industries; and last, and most important of all influencing causes, by those applica- tions of man's inventive faculty to his productive work, which by directing the stream o( industry into new channels and leaving others bare and dry, may within a few score years reverse the work of ages, and not only transform the external aspect of a society, but almost create a new type of national characu r. It is 0:1 this side of the subject that the history of a nation's industry is so intimately bound up with the history of its manners; and though for convenience of treatment the two subjects have of course been severally dealt with in the body of the work, I need make no attempt to separate them lure. The external aspects of the life of any people — their manners and customs, their social institutions and usages, their habits in short (from the broadest down to the narrowest sense of that word, from the most important observances of social intercourse down to the very cut and colour and material of costume), are, if not in exclusive, in obviously closer dependence upon the character of their industries than on any other cause. No sooner has colonisa- 1 or conquest laid the bases of civil society; no sooner does the war witli Nature, or with human rivals, for territorial possession come to an end, and the colonist or the con- queror settle down to live of his labour, than a process of mutual interaction between industries and habits sets in, the resultant of which defines the particular line of development alon_r which such ;l society must advance in the arts of hie. and climate, opportunity and instinct, combine to direct a people to one kind of industry or another ; but the indusl ry ti, and any others subsequently added to it, leave an ever deepening mark upon their character. Our own early history Supplies one of 'he most, notable of all the illustrations of this truth in the tale of Saxon and Dane. The ea rovers who descended upon Britain in the fifth century had before the close of the eighth been transformed into the race of home-keeping Landsmen in whom another breed of maritime marauders found at first an almost def< nceless prey. xlviii INTRODUCTION. In the order of man's advance towards civilisation, agri- cultural or pastoral industry was everywhere no doubt his earliest form of settled labour. The plough-handle or the crook was the first implement to his hand after the hunting-spear. Undoubtedly he must have tilled the earth before he mined it : yet, inasmuch as the most primitive form of agriculture originates in the immediate personal needs of the cultivator, and for a long time seeks no other object than the satisfaction of those needs through more or less rude processes of local barter, its beginnings may leave no deep trace upon the history of a people. It is not until a race is far enough advanced to become producers for the purposes of exchange against the products of other and more advanced communities that their industries find their way into written record. In the case of countries more favoured by climate than Britain their earliest trade with the foreigner which histoiy has to record is usually in the surface products of the earth — in corn or wine, in the yields of the olive-grove or the orchard. But it is as a producer of minerals that our group of islands is first met with in the pages of the historian and the geographer ; and a varietv of evidence goes to show that its inhabitants must have possessed the art of working in metals before the Roman occupation. The country, however, which had been marked out by destiny to become the greatest manufacturer in the world was slow in taking its place among the manu- facturing nations of Europe. Other peoples whom the English race have since far outstripped were ahead of us for many centuries, and throughout that period England existed mainly as a producer of raw material, and as, what she still pre-eminently remains, an emporium of exchange. In Roman and Saxon, as in later times, our great capital was a- notable centre of international commerce, and to the Danish invasion and the rule of the Danes we owe the rise and growth of the trading ports on our eastern coasts. It is. before the fall of the Danish rule that the merchant, asked in the Old English Dialogue " What do you bring to us?" replies, " I bring skins, silks, costly gems, and gold, besides various garments, pigments, wine, oil, and ivory, with brass and copper and tin, silver and gold, and the like." It was as a trader that England first began her career of prominence in the history of the world ; but long after she IXTRODUCTIOX. xlix had become a producer far beyond her own needs she still remained, so to speak, at the first stage of production The great wool-producing country of the Western world, she was for long dependent mainly on the demand of the Flemish looms for the exchange of this product, and it was not till the reign of Edward 111. that an attempt was made t»> promote the manufacture in this country, lint here, of course, we approach a subject of such magnitude that in a few prefatory observations of this kind it is impossible to do more than touch upon it, It is one upon which the two sections of agriculture and commerce come in contact with each other, and it forms a main element in that great question which will fall to be dealt with in the economic department of these volumes — namely, the reciprocal action and reaction of trade upon industry, and of industry upon trade. Other, however, than economical factors will, of course, have to be taken into account. Influences wielded by legis- lation and royal policy, such as are particularly noticeable in the thirteenth century; the shock of great physical calamities, such as made memorable the succeeding age; civic move- ments and developments, active throughout both these periods and thereafter — these and many other foices have to be reckoned with in tracing the vicissitudes of our in- dustrial and commercial history, even as far down as the accession of Elizabeth, while with the sudden outburst of the exploring and colonising spirit which marked that, glorious era a new chapter opens in the history of our com- merce. Then comes the long pause of the seventeenth century, when the eye of England, no longer sweeping the horizon of the outer world, as under the Tudor princes, turned inwards, and tin- ad venturer- race of the preceding age rned absorbed in the work, to use an expn mw French phr.i e, of " making their souls," and, — what has been known to a< mpany that process in private families, fighting among themselves. Upon this follows the Revolution and the exhausting European war which succeeded it; then that, revival and growth of British trade under the peaceful policy of Walpole which carries us well nigh to the middle of the seventeenth century; then the new Empire won for us. and the world-wide market thrown open to us, bj the elder Pitt ; ,1 — Vol i. i INTRODUCTION. until at last we are in sight of those epoch-making inventions and discoveries which finally settled the future of England as a manufacturing nation, and started her on the career which she has pursued to such mighty issues down to the present day. Thus in the first of the periods above referred to we shall have to trace the history and to record the great industrial change which, beginning in the reign of Henry III., con- tinued with increasing energy during the reign, and through the legislation, of his son — a change which, in the domain of agriculture, created out of the masses of rural bondsmen a new class of tenant farmers, and, in the department of com- merce, was attended by a rapid increase in the wealth. Pass- ing on to the next century we shall see how the progressive and hitherto peaceful development of that new agrarian system, which based on the contract of landlord and tenant, and worked on that of hire and service, had replaced, or was replacing, the old feudal relations of tenure and feudal organisation of labour, received a sudden check from the terrible national visitation known as the Black Death ; and how from the widespread mortality which attended that scourge, and the consequent depletion of the cultivator class which was caused by it, there followed — through successive stages of harsh legislation, popular revolt, and executive re- pression which left untouched the root of evil — an enforced diversion of productive effort on the part of the owners of the -oil, which in the end revolutionised the whole agricultural system of this country. Through the centur}^ which follows, a period of exhausting warfare abroad and at home, we shall trace the continued operation of the same causes in the still prevail- ing distress and discontent of those rural labouring classes whom this great agricultural change above referred to, with its incidents of eviction and dispossession, the consolidation of small holdings, the expansion of pasture land, and contraction of arable, was throwing in ever increasing number out of employment. To these classes the word " enclosure " became as hateful as, in its supposed portent of peril to their means of subsistence, was the word " machinery " to the urban artisan of three centuries later ; and their fears found vent like his in outbreaks of violence and riot. Still onward through its political and social consequences shall we pursue IXTHODUCTIOX. n the record of this slow and painful re-adjustment of agricul- tural labour to its Dew conditions, till the more urgent of the sufferings inflicted in the process are alleviated by the Eliza- 1 i than poor-law, while agriculture, now beginning to reap the tefits incidental to its change of method, re-absorbs much of the surplus labour which had been flung off al the com- mencement of the transition period, and a sensible growth of manufacturing industry, accompanied by a far greater expan- sion of commi rce, comes finally to complete the relief of the unemployed. English commerce, born to a less chequered career and to milder vicissitudes than agriculture, lias been all this while, "without haste but without rest," maintaining its progress. Already, as has been remarked, a striking feature in the general life of the country many centuries before its gr< at manufacturing industries came into existence, and while some of its richest natural products were still unexploited, English commerce never loses, nor even seems to suffer any temporary decline of, importance during the ensuing ages Neither conquest nor change of dynasty does other than increase it. Under Angevin as under Norman, under Dane as under Saxon, the external trade of England is conspicuous for i^ steady growth. The history of its internal trade is bound up with the stirring narrative of the struggle for municipal liberties, with the rivalry of the guilds, and with the 1. ss eventful but no less interesting annals which record the rise and progress of the English towns. With the story of our commerce in both its branches another subject will be found inseparably intertwined. Side by side with the English trader marches for a thousand years and upwards the English lator— a travelling companion whose attentions were uot always disinn rested, and even when they were, were too oft< □ embarrassing it" not injurious to their object The record of their long journey together reveals an alternation of attempts on the part of the legislator now to protect the trader, now to enrich the king or tbe community at his expense, and in each case with either manifest damage to one or with doubt- ful advantage to the others. Through chapter after chapter of the Statute Book— in fiscal, sump! uary, and protective laws of all descriptions; in enactmi ota for the promotion of one form of production and tbe repression of another, for ill'' d -1 Hi INTRODUCTION. encouragement of an export here and the prohibition of an import there; in laws against forestalling, regrating and engrossing; in an endless series of "Statutes of the Staple"; in incessant attempts to fix the prices of goods and regulate the wages of labour— the incidents of this secular companionship of trade and legislation are plainly traceable ; and though the interference of the latter with the former becomes rarer in its occurrence and less disturbing in its character as we approach our own times, it is not till close upon the middle of the present century that the ill-assorted fellow-travellers finally part company. But the long story of their intercourse affords perhaps the most striking illustration of national progress. It is in this very record of the innumerable obstacles against which English industry and trade have had to fight their way, that their unconquerable vitality finds its strongest proof. And the national qualities by virtue of which alone could these obstacles have been overcome are, of course, equally well attested by the victory. It is through the tenacity of their life and the energy of their operations that, in the teeth of many if not all those adverse influences which Macaulay enumerates in a famous passage, the prosperity of the country lias steadily grown. It is through these causes, as he has said, that " the national wealth has, during at least six centuries, been almost uninterruptedly increasing ; that it was greater under the Tudors than under the Plantagenets ; that it Avas greater under the Stuarts than under the Tudors ; that, in spite of battles, sieges, and confiscations, it was greater on the day of the Restoration than on the day when the Long Parliament met; that, in spite of maladministration, of ex- travagance, of public bankruptcy, of two costly and unsuccess- ful wars, of the pestilence and the fire, it was greater on the day of the death of Charles II. than on the day of his Restoration " ; and (to add a last and most marvellous chapter of all to the history which Macaulay here breaks off) that, in spite of the loss of the American Colonies and the exhausting drain of a war of more than twenty years' duration, it was greater on the day of the meeting of the Congress of Vienna than on the day of the accession of George III. INTROPn-TION. liii VII. Manners. Concurrent everywhere with the growth of a nation's wealth is its advance in refinement of manners and its progress in what are called the arts of life. A primordial instinct of human nature insures this concurrence and maintains it. It is guaranteed by the universal tendency of mankind to save labour and procure leisure, to diminish pain, to increase pleasure, to avoid discomfort. The surplus of national wealth which is applicable to this purpose may be differently applied in different ages (and the history of manners is to a large extent the history of its variations), but on the whole the sum of the material luxuries of a nation and of the appliances for obtaining them increases in direct proportion to the amount of this disposable surplus. It is only to a partial and im- perfect view of the manners of the past — to an eye that concentrates its gaze upon some single feature of the national life instead of surveying it as a whole — that any doubt of this could be possible. Extravagance of outlay on costume, on domestic establishment or personal retinue, or on other like matters, may attract to itself so much of the effective desire for material pleasure in any given historical period, that if we were to contemplate it alone Ave should form an altogether false idea of the contemporary standard of luxury. A man of fashion, for instance, in the time of Richard II. might spend as much as £200 on the "clothes he stood upright in," while a dandy of the Victorian era attires himself to perfection for little more than as man)- shillings. The personal attendants of a great noble under the Tudors would often outnumber twentyfold the average domestic staff of a duke of to-day. the food and lodging, the lighting and warming, the household comforts and conveniences, the medicine and surgery, the means of communication and locomotion, at the disposal of tic fourteenth century courtier, or the sixteenth century grandee, were of a rudeness which far more than made up for their luxury of apparel or the pomp and circum- stance of their lives. A prince or a peer of the Angevin period might wear velvet and ermine on his back, but he had rush* • under his feel ; Ids ball mighl I"- grand in proportions and rich in decorations, but its primitive illuminants made Jittb; more than darkness visible; his meal mighl be served liv INTRODUCTION. up to him on costly dishes, but he fed himself with his fingers. Yet the full extent of the contrast between the civilisa- tion of the present and that of the past would never be realised if we were to confine our attention to the change of manners which has taken place among the richer orders of society alone. In the famous chapter of Macaulay's History which has been already quoted, the historian compares the condition of the labouring class at the time at which he was writing with that of the nobility and gentry, of the higher professions, and of the magnates of commerce at the end of the seventeenth century, and shows how well provided were the former with many of those equipments and agencies of civilised life which the latter altogether lacked, or which they enjoyed in far scantier measure. He shows how, as regards the facilities of travel, the opportunities of communication, the amenities of social intercourse, the protection of life and property, the securities for the preservation of health, the appliances for the cure of disease, the position of the humblest members of the community in his own time was preferable to that of the wealthiest citizen of the age of which he writes. But the interval between his own time and ours has had a history hardly less remarkable. The vast develop- ment of production which has followed upon the economical liberation of commerce and industry, with its corresponding increase in the purchasing power of money and cheapening of the necessaries of life, has, no doubt, been the principal cause of progress. But the ever-widening conquests of science, the immense extension of the means of communication by steam and electricity, and the enlightening and humanis- ing influences of education, have all contributed in their respective degrees to the same happy result. It is due to the combined operations of all these causes that that chapter of the social history of England, which commenced about the middle of the present century, has, in point alike of the material gains which it records, and the intellectual interest which it inspires, so immeasurably surpassed all previous periods in the annals of our nation. So rapid, so almost breathless, has been the rate of our material progress during the present generation that it has, more naturally, perhaps, than reasonably, provoked INTRODUCTION. lv utterances of disappointment from those who, like the divine or the philosopher, are mainly concerned with other than the material aspects of human life. Such persons, however, too often begin by demanding more from what is known as Progress than it can be justly expected to yield, and then on to arraign it for its failure to satisfy their excessive require- ments. Perpetually reminding us that "Man cannot live by bread alone," they seem to think that this entitles them to deride the cultivation of wheat. No doubt there is truth in their complaint that our increased and increasing mastery over the physical world has been attended by no correspond- ing—that is. by no proportionate — elevation of the moral and spiritual faculties of human nature. But the truth is one which they systematically exaggerate. It is true that man as a moral and spiritual being changes little and changes slowly in the course of ages, and that in these respects the re- action upon him of his material surroundings is very gradual and very slight It is untrue to say, as those we speak of are apt to say. that as a moral and spiritual being man changes uot at all, and that the reaction of his surroundings upon his character i< nil. The Englishman of the nineteenth century, no doubt, differs far less in his inner nature than in the out- ward circumstances of his social life from the Englishman oft ho fifteenth or even of the eleventh century ; but still lie differs; and the changing circumstances of his social life from as/e to _ have played their part with other causes in producing this difference. Let us not tear to add that it is on the whole a difference for the better, and thai to the pessimist, therefore, who contends that the Englishmen of the future will not differ, or only differ tm- the worse, from the Englishman of lay, we- are entitled to say that the burden of proof rests upon him. It is tor him to show cause for believing that the path which throughout the centuries bason the whole ho upwards will hereafter Btretch forever over a monotonous plateau, if not descend to lower levels. It is lor him to rebut presumption, forced upon us bymany examples in the QO appaivm arrest of the progress of the human i- more than temporary, and that its general onward : rement is as little affected, even by brief intervals of actual retrogri don ae the inflowing tide is affected by the reflux of the broken v.a\e. In all periods of man's history this lvi INTRODUCTION. mistake of the casual and transitory for the uniform and permanent has been made by one age to be discovered by the next ; and those among us who are apt to despond of our future can safely assure themselves that the Englishmen of a century hence, though possibly enough they may be occupied with their own misgivings, will at any rate smile at ours. H. D. Traill. SOCIAL ENGLAND. CHAPTER I. ENGLAND BEFORE THE ENGLISH The history of the most important part of the world is the history of the migration of nations from east to west. From the dawn of history to our ^tS^S^JSEr own time we see nations moving westwards. Rome placed boundary marks and built boundary walls, but its power waned, and the nations passed on as before. Until the fifteenth century, when a daring Genoese ventured out into the ocean to discover a new world, our islands lay on the confines of the earth, beyond which no man could go. It was the most adventurous nations that reached it, and they only. It became the home of those who stopped because they had reached the furthest limit of migration. The first wave of immigrants that reached Britain — for tin.- primaeval people of the island will be dealt with Inter- -was a wave of men of short The l™Sin 8 ° f stature and of swarthy countenance, whose puresl descendants may be seen among the miners of the Rhondda Valley <>r in the quadrangles of Jesus College at Oxford We call them Iberians, and we Buppose that they came from the deserts of the Mast -from Arabia and from Egypt. .Many imagine a resemblance between their faces and the tares of men depicted on Assyrian stones and Egyptian mummies, and Buppose they followed the northern shore of the Mediterranean in their journey westwards. The second wave- we rail the Celtic wave. The Celt was taller than the Iberian, of fair complexion, and had reached a higher in the development of civilisation — having B '• i 2 SOCIAL ENGLAND. reached the marriage stage, and having domesticated every creature that we regard as domestic now, except, perhaps, the pig and the bee. The Celts journeyed, probably, through Central Europe. They seem to have come to the British Islands in two divisions : the Gaelic Celt was followed by the Biythonic Celt. The language of the Gaelic Celt still survives in the Isle of Man, in the west of Ireland, and in the north- west and north of Scotland. The language of the Brythonic Celt is still the language of Brittany and of Wales ; it was the language of the district between the Dee and the Clyde eight centuries ago ; Cumberland shepherds still count their sheep in Welsh ; and it was only during the last century that it died in Cornwall. The Gael passed over into Ireland, and then, finding only the boundless ocean ahead of him, he turned back. On the western coast of Britain, from St. David's to Dumbarton, he found the Brythonic Celt folio whig in his footsteps ; and the early history of Wales and of Scotland consists of the history of the struggle between these kinsmen. At the time of the birth of Christ, Celtic tribes were following each other from the Continent into 1116 Anested* 1011 Britain, and the closest connection existed between the people on each side of the Channel. At the same time the conquests of Julius Csesar and the extension of the power of Rome had checked the advance of the tribes who were pressing onwards from the east and south-east. Rome had arisen in the path of the migrating nations, and the pressure on Britain became less. The tribes began to settle down, and the tribal king was beginning to develop into something like a national sovereign, with his capital on the eastern shore, from which he exercised a sovereignty that became more vague and shadowy as one travelled westwards to the country of the unconquerable Silures. Rome built its walls and constructed its roads across the old paths of the Celt and of the Iberian ; the villas of new rulers arose by its road-sides, and flourishing towns around its garrisons. But it could only stop the migration for a time. Other tribes — the Teutonic tribes — were gathering beyond its northern boundaries, and preparing to pour south- wards and westwards by land and sea. Finally these burst through the defences of the Roman Empire, and Britain saw ENGLAND BEFORE THE ENGLISH. 3 new invaders : first came the Teutonic Angles and Saxons, ami then came the Teutonic Normans. From the earliest rimes to the beginning of the twelfth century, invasion after invasion broke over Britain, and each invasion brought a new class. During four hundred years, from A.D. 50 to 450, the Romans prevented or checked the migration, and taught the restless tribes the ways of fixed habitation and consolidated government. When the Roman Empire fell, its ideas remained in the countries which had once formed part of it. And when the Teutonic invaders forced their way into any of the Roman countries they were conquered by Roman ideas. The West Saxon chieftain, after ruthlessly destroying the Roman city and temple in the south of Britain, eventually bedecked himself with the insignia of Roman sovereignty, and took the title of the Roman governor a- his own. The Norman pirate, after devastating every river-mouth on the Atlantic side, became the defender of France and the final consolidator of Britain. The leaders of the old migration became the defenders of the newly-formed countries. In the last invasion of England, when a Norse descent was made upon the isle of Anglesey, at the beginning of the twelfth century, the defenders as well as the invaders were Normans. The Norman earl of Roman Chester, with its Roman traditions and judices, defended his country against invasion, as his Roman predecessor had done six hundred years before. Though the Norwegian Magnus was able to nd an arrow into Hugh of Shrewsbury's eye, the last in- vasion was beaten off. But traces of the successive invasions remained in the classes into which the inhabitants of Britain were and are divided — the highest class representing the -i invaders. Having related so much political history, let US look at the social side of early British history. Before the rise of the Roman city in Britain, the characteristic institutions of the island were , ,, c , , „ -.. . Social Organisation, what we may call, tor the Bake ol distinction and for the Bake of brevity, the free tribe and the bond village. It is the relations between the tribesmen and the villagers that ocial British history before the Roman conquest Tribe and village represenl two races, different in origin, in language, in character, in institutions. The free Aryan tribesman thought that he himself had come from the east. B -i 4 SOCIAL ENGLAND. from the land of the rising sun, while he regarded the short, dark, Iberian villager as one who had emerged out of some dim, mysterious western land, a land on the confines of the nether reR-ions of the earth. There are traditions of the struggle between the two languages ; and though the Iberian eventually forgot his own language and learnt a Celtic one, he has given his acquired language peculiarities which are still a continual stumbling-block to Welsh grammarians. The tribesman was tall and fair-haired, hospitable and generous, fond of war and of the chase ; the villager was cunning and deceitful, adept in handicraft and magic, rarely venturing far from his hill-side or hill-top home. The tribesman ruled, with all his pride of race ; the villager, who could boast of no ancestry, served or paid tribute. Let us first look at the tribe. It is a community of free heads of families, united together for purposes of defence, of law, and of tillage. The homesteads are scattered along the borders of the woods, between the pasture-lands and the hunting-grounds. Each homestead is large enough to contain a whole family in its one room. It is a square or a round edifice, built of unhewn or roughly hewn trees placed on end, with a roof of interlaced boughs, covered with rushes or with turf. In the middle of the floor the family fire burns, and the members of the family sit round it, along the side of the room, upon a bed made of rushes and covered with hides or coarse cloth. Upon this bed, around the fire which continued to burn by night as well as by day, the members of the family had the right to sit at meal-times and to He at night. At meal- times large platters, containing oatmeal cakes, meat, and broth, would be placed on the rushes and green grass which intervened between the family bed and the family fire. At nightfall the fire would be renewed, and the privileged circle — from grandfather to grandson — lay with their feet towards it. The land belonged to the family ; the right of sitting in the circle round the family hearth and the right of reposing in the family bed carried with them the tribesman's right to his acre strips, his share of the waste, and his privilege of hunting the wild boar and the wolf and the deer in the family hunting-grounds. The family remained united to the third generation. When the head of the household died, his youngest son took BfNGLAND BEFORE THE ENGLISM. 5 his place as the master of the old homestead, and the remaining brothers built other homesteads on the family land. When all the brothers died, there was a second division of the family land among first cousins : and finally, on the death of all the first cousins, the second cousins might divide the family land for the third time. Then the old family was regarded as having broken Up into new families — all anxious, however, to remember their common descent. All crime was crime against the family: it was the family that was regarded as having committed the crimes of its members ; it was the family that had to atone, or to carry out the blood-feud. In time, money payments were fixed as commutations for injury: but, even as late as the twelfth century, Welsh blood-feuds were fought out to the death, and whole families rose at the command of the master of the household to pursue the murderer. Every free tribesman had the right of bearing arms, and the young men of the tribes were often engaged, under a chosen leader, in warlike expeditions against their neighbours. While so engaged, no homestead belonging to their own tribe could be closed against them. In time this privilege became a dangerous one, for brothers quarrelled about their shares in the divisions of the family land, and a turbulent tribesman, when driven from his family, could gather an army of followers and live upon the country. A legend, written in its present form in the thirteenth century, tells how a prince, jealous of his brother's position as head of the household, called together ;m army of foster-brothers and dependents— -an army that soon became the terror of the country. Some of his pursuers are described as entering a house which may well be taken as the ruined homestead of an old free family. They saw an old homestead, so the legend runs, black and upright, and from it there came :i greal smoke. The floor was uneven and miry, with holly boughs spread over it. When they came to the entrance the) -aw that the family seats around the inside of the homestead were dusty and poverty-stricken, and the smoke which arose from the fire could hardly be borne* They around the hearth, while their barley-cakes were being made; and they tried to sleep in the old family bed a bed of boughs and straw, covered with a coarse cloth of British manufacture (me of them, however, slept on an enchanted 6 SOCIAL ENGLAND. yellow calf-skin, probably the privileged place of the old master of the household, and saw passing before him, in review, the old gods and heroes of his county, transformed into Arthur's knights. Subject to the free tribal communities were the villagers — the taeog of later Welsh law — quite distinct from the tribal slaves. The characteristics of the villagers, whose descendants are called " villeins " in the thirteenth century laws, were their communism and their subjection. Probably they were at first a totemistic community, and their totems may still survive in the local nicknames of Celtic localities — such as the pigs of Anglesey, or the goats of Arvon. Land belonged equally to all, son and stranger alike. In later times there could be no escheat on the failure of heirs, for no heir was recognised save the whole community. The land was tilled in common, and its produce was common property. These bond communities were, doubtless, non- Aryan ; and their name remained in proverbs as a term of reproach when the distinction between them and the tribesmen had long been forgotten. When subjected to the Celtic tribesmen, their land was divided among the villeins equally, without any reference to kinship. They were not allowed to bear arms ; their property- was theoretically regarded as that of their conquerors ; they could not rise into an equality with the tribesmen, by learn- ing, or manufacture, or trade, and it was impossible to enter into a free tribal family by marriage, or to become the head of a new free kindred. Gradually, however, the conditions of tribesman and villager became assimilated ; and it is this organisation assimilation that accounts, if not for the rise ot the tribal king, at least for the increase of his power. The tribal king was at first, perhaps, a purely military leader ; but his position became perpetuated, even in times of peace, because of the presence of subjugated communities. The villein lands were divided, when the periodical divisions came, by the tribal lord's officer, and not, as was the case with the tribal lands, by the owners themselves. The governing of the subject people was the tribal chief's source of strength, as well as his duty. By them his dwelling-place was built or repaired ; by them his table was furnished ; by them his dogs and slaves were maintained. Gradually he distanced his ENGLAND BEFORE THE ENGLISH. 7 fellow heads of families in wealth and in power, and the free land of the tribe as well as the geldable land of the villeins came under tribute to him. The two communities — family and communistic — were finally united in one comniot, under the jurisdiction of a lord and his officers. When .Tulius ( Isesar had conquered Gaul, refugee kings eame from the isle of Britain to implore his help. Many of tlie numerous tribal kings were in "conquest 11 danger from the growing power of some am- bitious tribe and itskimr. The districts of the headwaters of the Nen and the Oust' were occupied by the Catuvelauni, whose able kin-'. I 'assivelaunus, seems to have reduced the tribes of the south-cast of the island under his own sway. Julius Ctesar tried to destroy the power of this king by protecting the kings of the tribes he had subjugated, especially Mandubratius, king of the Trin< 'hantes. The encroachments of the Catuvelauni did not eease; and, by the time of the Claudian conquest in a.d. 48, nearly a hundred years after Ca?sar's departure, they seem to have established a kind of shadowy right over the whole of Southern Britain. The tribes under their sway were probably divided into two groups — the tribes of the plains of the south- east, and the tribes of the mountains of the west and north. These two confederacies occupied the lands which, after the lh iman conquest, became respectively Lower and Upper Britain. Cunobelinus, "the radiant Cymbeline," had died before the comimr "I the Romans, and his kingdom was ruled by his two son-, < aractacus (properly Caratacus) and Togodumnus. Aulus Plautius wrested the eastern portion from the sons of ( Jymbeline ; Togodumnus fell, and ( lamulodunum, ( lymbeline's capital, was taken. The kingdom of the sons of Cymbeline was the more easily conquered nil account of the disaffection of the subject tribes. These tribes soon found that the Roman yoke was no lighter than thai of Cymbeline and his sons. The Romans established a colony of veterans at ( lamulodunum, and each tribal revolt was Bternly and speedily put down. ( 'aractacus fled westwards, and took the command of the Silures and other tern tribes that had, perhaps, acknou [edged his fat tier's rule. When tin- silures were defeated in battle by Orosius, Caractacus I i cd to the Brigantes uf the north, to organise another oppo- sition in addition to that of the still unconquered silures. The submission of the Brigantes and the capture of Caractacus put 8 SOCIAL ENGLAND. an end to all unity among the British tribes, and the Roman conquest of the island became a comparatively easy task. When Julius Agricola came in the summer of 78 to organise the conquered tribes, he found that the only opposition he need meet was that of some isolated British tribes. Agricola's son-in-law tells us that the Britons were once under kings, but that in his time they were divided into factions and parties. It* was the greatest advantage of the Romans that the tribes could no longer act in concert. Between 78 and 450 the Romans introduced into Britain a unity of their own. The island is divided Conquered Britain. ^ . . ,. . , ,. , , „ geographically into mountainous west and liat> east — the scenes of the later and earlier struggles of Caractacus. But the fortresses which the Romans built along the valleys of the Severn and the Dee to protect the frontiers of their earlier conquests soon became flourishing and prosperous cities as well as the homes of the letrions of the west. Before Britain was thoroughly Latinised, however, it was attacked by the new nations who were threatening the whole length of the northern boundary of the empire. For purposes of defence against the tribes who attacked the eastern shore and the northern wall, Britain fell apart into its old natural divisions, north-west and south-east, under the Dux Britanniarum, who ruled over the two Britains. The eastern province was con- quered by Teutonic invaders between 450 and GOO ; the western province, though divided into the three districts of Cornwall and Wales and Strath clyde, by the battles of Deorham and Chester, remained independent. Here the old tribal wars began anew, and some powerful tribal king was ever trying to Set himself acknowledged as the successor of the Duke of the Britains. In the east the British tribes were merged in the conquering Teutonic tribes, and among them also the memory of the Roman sovereignty remained. The title of Bretwalda, applied to some of the more important English tribal kings, is simply a translation into English of the title Dux Britan- niarum. Throughout the Middle Ages the dream of British unity lives in chronicle and romance, and Arthur's crown was supposed to exist at Carnarvon until the Plantagenet conqueror took it away in 1284. But, however affected by ideas of imperial unity, the oldest tribal divisions still exist. Dialect and traditions still ENGLAND HEFORE THE ENGLISH. 9 show that the division into shires and dioceses is based upon the old division into Uibes. The tribal king amalgamated his free tribe and his subject communities; Cassivelaunus and Caractacus aimed at subjecting the tribal chief to an island king; the Roman introduced a still wider conception of sovereignty — subjecting kings to the emperor, as each king had subjected tribal lords. The first struggle, however, has left more lasting effects than the last; in Celtic portions of modern Britain there are traces of the old antipathy between tribesman and villager, while the rule of the Roman has been forgotten even where his villa and his storied gravestone remain. Briefly to recapitulate what has been written, the begin- nings of our social history may thus be summarised : — When the Romans invaded Britain in 54 B.C. and 43 a.d., they found a great tribal king trying to ii i -i t i <• i Summary. Mil nine other tribes. In 54 B.C. they found ( lassivelaunus extending his sway over the eastern portion of the island ; in 43 a.d. they found that Caractacus had some shadow of sovereignty over even the Silures of the west How had the tribal kings arisen ? The peojjle of Britain had come in two waves. First the short, dark Iberian came; then came the mighty Celt who conquered him. The two peoples existed side by side, with very different social characteristics, and the Iberian com- munities remained subject to the leader of the invading Celtic tribe. Hence the leader became very powerful — became a king among his own people. The Celtic tribes were not at peace among themselves. New invading tribes were ever coming, with better weapons. In a condition of incessant war, it was possible for one tribal king to become powerful enough to subject the others. It against the encroachments of a great king that minor kings appealed to the Romans, and the Romans came. The Roman destroyed, for the time, the power of tribal chiefs, and united the southern part of Britain under his own rule, as a part of a wider empire. The Celtic tribe and the Iberian community remained, however, when the Roman was forced to depart The later history exhibits, in various tonus, a struggle between the old tribal independence and the traditions of Roman unity. 10 SOCIAL ENGLAND. The social condition of Britain in British times is ex- plained by this political history. The lowest class, a class- subjected to all invaders, was composed of the first inhabitants of Britain — the so-called Iberian, with his dark Druidism and communal life. Above the Iberians we get the Celtic tribesmen, united in families and tribes, and jealous of their privileges. Above the Celtic tribesmen were the kings, who, owing to political reasons, distanced their fellows. And in time even they were subjected to the Romans, whose " red tunic" was regarded as a sign of nobility long after their departure. When these classes had once been formed, Druidism forged chains of iron for each subject class. In the world to come, as in Britain, the slave was never to be free from his master. New invasions and higher classes came, old social history repeated itself with weary monotony until the time came when the levelling influence of two widely different agencies — religion and military invention — was to bring a new social era into being. On Britain, as upon the other neighbours of the great empire, „ m „,„„.„„„ Roman influence began to tell even before F. T. RICHARDS. ° Roman Britain. Roman arms. It crossed frontiers in a a.d. 48 4io. thousand forms. Now a slave escaping from his master, and, aware that within the empire there waa no safety for him, fled to the barbarians, taking with him Borne sparks of the civilisation which he had renounced. Sometimes Roman merchants pushed over the border and risked their goods and even their lives in the pursuit of new markets. Traffic went to and fro across the boundary. Sometimes bold foreigners passed within the dominion of the emperors, on business or for mere curiosity, and came home dissatisfied with the simple ways in which they had grown up. Contending parties among the barbarians looked for Roman support, courted it by assuming Roman ways, and invited Roman interference. Even Csesar found that part of the island which lay nearest to the Continent the most polished - T and in all the above ways the Roman civilisation, as it spread in Gaul, must have begun to influence Britain from the moment when Ciesar retired from its shore. It is probable that South Britain made no inconsiderable strides in development EXOLAXD BEFORE THE ENGLISH. 11 during the interval between the second landing of Caesar (B.c. 54) and the conquests of Claudius' generals (beginning a.d. 4s). The Britons of Tacitus are no longer the downright savages of Caesar's narrative. London, of which the latter makes no mention, is, in the year 61 a.d., a town "crowded with merchants." Coins were struck by British chiefs, bearing Latin legends. Even diplomatic intercourse and some ex- change, perhaps, of friendly services had taken place with the Roman government. The chiefs set up offerings in the great temple of the Capitol. The broken marbles of Angora, which still bear fragments of the record made by the Emperor Augustus of his own reign, tell how Dumnobellaunus and another British prince fled to him for help. Some years later, when a Roman fleet w as shattered by a storm in the North Sea, the petty chiefs of our island sent home those soldiers or sailors who were cast away on the British coasts. We may suspect that they all wished to stand well with their great neighbour, that they aspired to be honoured, while they kept their independence, with the ivory staff, and the embroidered robe, and the titles of King and Friend of Rome ; and that each hoped that, if subjection must come, he might be the prince through whom the Romans would control his country. Subjection did come, before many years were passed, and at least one king kept his place under Roman m S . ™ t /-i • i i The Conquest. sovereignty, libenus l laudms Uogidubnus is to have united a royal title with the position of a Roman orH'ial, and, receiving some districts from the conquerors, lie gov rned for a time the neighbourhood of Chichester (Regnum). But the new government by no means intended to exercise sway through native princes. Its control was direct, and the conquered people had to look up to a Roman magistrate, not to a ruler of their nun blood. Peace and security were aimed at by uniform subjection, and, very probably, by disarming the ] pla But yel the "fierce Britons" never seem to have wanted arms. and. if Rome could control the island with a small fore of perhaps thirty to forty thousand men, it was chiefly • she was civilising —or, as some people would have sail I corrupting — the aearesl parts, while, of the land generally, it was true that feuds set the natives one against another, ami made the task of the foreigners easy. •• Nothing," says 12 SOCIAL ENGLAND. a philosophic Roman observer, " helps us better against the strongest of the tribes than the fact that they never agree.". The whole of the island, however, was never brought under Roman sway. The north refused to be either conquered or conciliated, and Rome, with all her apparent strength and wealth, found herself in the early centuries of the Christian era too weak to complete the conquest of so remote an island, or too pinched for means to keep on foot the necessary forces. The northern limit of Roman government fluctuated, advancing or receding according to the fortune of war or the spirit of an emperor. But Graham's Dyke, or Grime's Dyke, a line of earthworks running between Kinneil on the Forth and Kilpatrick on the Clyde, indicates the furthest limits which that government ever realty undertook to maintain, and the so-called Picts' Wall, or Roman Wall (crossing the neck of land between Carlisle and Newcastle), a stronger work by far, represents the more modest boundary which she was really able to make good.* (Ireland was never occupied at all.) Within these limits, the famous Roman Peace was supposed to reign supreme. It was upheld by the system of provincial government. Britain was governed as one province from the time of the conquest down to the year 197 a.d. It was DivMons 1 not ' tfta<: * s to sa y> ^id-ed- for purposes of ad- ministration into distinct territories, as Gaul was divided into four, and Spain into three provinces, but knew only one governor. It belonged to the list of provinces admin- istered by the emperor's deputies, not by officers of the Senate of Rome, and therefore the full title of the governor was Lega- tus Augusti pro prcctore. He was understood to have charge of the ordinary administrative business of law, and of the military forces ; and by his side stood a procurator, charged with financial affairs. The governor need by no means be a mere soldier, rough and illiterate. The recorded careers of many men who rose to provincial governorships show that they saw service of many kinds, and in many lands ; and one governor of Britain, about whom we happen to have rather full particulars, received a Greek education at Massalia (the later Marseilles), and took keenly to the study of philosophy. When * No Roman tomb has been found north of Ardoch, near Stirling. ENGLAND BEFORE THE ENGLISH. 13 he received the charge of our island, lie interested himself in the elevation and improvement of the natives.* After 197 we rind Britain divided by the Emperor L. Sep- timius Severns, between two provinces and two governors. Speaking roughly, the western half of England ( not of the whole island) wasBritam nia &v/p< /'''"/'.and the Eastern vrd&Britam nia Inferior. Each governor was now called a Presses, and the garrison was divided between them. The interests of the State suffered. War could not be so well carried on against the Northern tribes. But it was probably thought unsafe to leave the whole island and the whole force in the hands of one man D. Clodius Albinus, governor of the united Britain, had been a formidable adversary to Severus; and that emperor, after defeating Clodius, was minded to run no such risk again. Bui ><• long there was introduced the policy of breaking up into small and safe — but helpless — units the great provinces which the founders of the empire had organised, and Britain shared the fate of the other countries. We find it under the arrangements of Diocletian, or not long after, divided into four districts or provi ncia — Britannia Prima (which probably answered to England south and west of the Thames), B. Se- cv/nda < Wales), B. Maxima t tesariensis(perhaps the Midlands), and /)'. Flavia Cas&aru >m8(the North). Somewhat later still, A.D. 369 the successes of Thcodosius against the troublesome land-neighbours of Roman Britain recovered from them what bad beeu Roman territory north of the Picts' Wall, and justi- fied his dividing the north country into two provinces, and naming the further one Valentia, in honour of his imperial master Valentinian I. (In what towns the governors of the provinces had their official residences we cannot tell. London is likely to have been the residence of one, and York seems certainly to have been the headquarters of another; but that is as much as we can say.) But it was already found that subdivision of provinces had its drawbacks, and so the four or five governors of the island (of whom some were called Pra aides, others Oonsulares) were placed under a common superior, a 1 vri/Ut llr'ihi i, niti rn ni . who was himself answerable to * Bat, ire &re told, the Britons In the early part of the period in question complain- <1, "Wo have now two king! "ii oar shoulders instead of one, a "iiii'la procurator; the former iweep-t oil' our \oum^ m.-n into the army, the latter tweepe off our goods." 14 SOCIAL ENGLAND. a great officer on the other side of the British Channel, the JPrcefectus prcetorio Galliarum. Finance-officers there were of course also ; and, toward the close of our period, when enemies were closing in from all sides upon the Roman world, and Britain had to face something more than its share of them, there were three high military commanders, independent of all the authorities in Britain, but subject to the Gallic prcufectus. These were the Dux Britanniarum, the Comes Britanniarum, and the Comes Litoris Saxonici — a soldier in charge of the whole south-eastern coast. It was by arrangements more centralised or less cumbrous than this that the older Romans had given peace to the world, and the new scheme was no success.* Within the area above described, however, order and all that was essential to good government were Government secured — at least, during the long interval between the close of the conquest and the coming of the bad days. There were risings among the people, of course, at times, and we must suppose that the walled towns of South Britain, where no open warfare was to be feared (such as Silchester), were meant as places of refuge for such a crisis — unless, indeed, Ave hold that these fortifications only date from the days when the Roman Peace had broken up. But order was maintained as a rule, and, when taxes were once paid, the people were left pretty well alone. The Govern- ment which we have described was all foreign,f external to the people — giving them certain undoubted benefits, such as the English give to India, but making no attempt, as the English do, to elevate the subjects to the power of self-govern- ment. There may have been a sort of national council allowed, or even convoked, by the Romans. If so, it was at Caniu- lodunum or Colonia Victricensis (probably Colchester), in connection with the temple where the Emperor Claudius, the first conqueror, was honoured. But we know nothing of such a council, and only think it likely from the analogy of other provinces. We find no Britons rising in the Roman service, except in the army — and not very high there. Nor do we * The Saxon shore, which needed to be specially guarded, included all the district which in modern times has been protected by martello towers. t The Emperor Magnentius, however, is said to have been the son of a British father. ENGLAND BE FOB E THE ENGLISH. 15 know how tar local self-government was allowed to the towns. We ran only make a conjectural picture of certain townships mana ging their own affairs if we take the two or three titles of local officials found here in inscriptions of the Roman period and add to them a great many particulars known of Gallic or other continental towns, but not known to be true of Britain Town councils there were, miniature senates, for we have inscriptions on stone referring to town councillors of Gloucester, York, and probably Lincoln ; but to know more about the administration of a town in a Roman province we should have to cross the Channel. With the help of what we find there we may imagine the towns of our island controlled by a governing J ° . ° Roman Towns. class, or senate, ot well-to-do men {cwnmes or ■•// /• tones), originally rilled up from ex-officials of the town ; but later, sitting for life, and transferring the qualifi- cation from father to son. When this state of things had come in, the officials were elected by the senate out of its own members, no longer chosen by the people. These magistrates might bear various titles: that of Duumvir occurs most often elsewhere. In Britain we can only point to a < • usitor, or censor, at Colchester. A council filled up as just described was, of course, quite out of touch with the people. It must be kept up, and could not be abolished, because there was no other class of persons whom the Government could use, and from whom it could raise taxes directly, but it ceased to represent the citizens of the town. In consequence, a new officer was called into being by the Emperor Valentinian I., a Befi nsor civitatia in each town — a champion of the people against the town council. Bu1 this was only done in 3G4, about forty years before the Romans abandoned Britain A /• from York is mentioned in one of the inscriptions which have come down to us; and therefore, arguing from the analogy of continental provinces, we may suppose that one or more British towns contained corporations {collegia) of Auguetalet '•• worshippers of the deified Emperor Augustus. such corporations the Sevvri were the officiating members, serving for a year. But still the worship of Augustus can hardly be supposed to have flourished in Britain as much as in Gaul, seeing thai the former country was not conquered till after August us' death. 16 SOCIAL ENGLAND. Differences of size and importance were, of course, recog- nised in speaking of the groups of houses, as we distinguish between a hamlet, a town, and a city. Townships of any size were called oppida (as London, then Londinium, or Augusta). More important, perhaps, were mv/inicipia, a title which had long since ceased to imply the considerable powers of self- government which the word once suggested to a Roman ear. Such was Verulamium (the later St. Albans). The name of " colony " might indicate a real settlement of strangers, as at Camulodunum, where the Romans planted at the very outset a garrison of old soldiers ; but it might also be merely an honourable title for a town of importance, as Eboracum (after- wards York), which presently became the chief town of the island, Lincoln (Lindum Colonia), or Glevum (Gloucester). A tombstone of a citizen of Glevum found at Rome makes it probable that Glevum was made a colony by Nerva, i.e., between 96 and 98 a.d. Colonies in the latter sense might, in other parts of the Roman Empire, enjoy more self-government and lighter financial burdens, and they may have had the same privileges in Britain. Some of the Britanno-Roman towns appear to have had mints, distinguished by initials placed on the coins struck ; but the coinage was not theirs, not local, but always imperial. The most important, of the towns must, in the long run, have been York, the administrative centre and imperial residence, and London, the place to or from which so many routes are marked in an ancient itinerary or road-book of the third or fourth century. Beside the towns which we have already mentioned, several others rose to importance. It is true that we hear little of them in books, but the remains found on the sites show us, on the best of evidence, what places were centres of population and of luxury. Bath (Aquse Sulis) was frequented in Roman days — and probably even earlier — for the sake of the waters. The baths attracted visitors whose number and wealth must be measured by the greatness of the preparations made to receive them. The still existing masonry and lead- work show how large and costly was the actual bathing institution.* Wroxeter (Viroconium or Uriconium) has been called the * The great bath, placed in a hall 1 1 1 ft. 4 in. long by 66 ft. 6 in. wide, is about 6 ft. 8 in. deep. The bottom measures 73 ft. 2 in. by 29 ft. 6 in. (" The Excavations of Roman Baths at Bath." By C. E. Davis.) ENGLAND BEFOliE THE EXGLISIT. 17 British Pompeii, from the richness of its remains. Cirencester (i "rinium or Durocornovium) gained importance perhaps as a meeting-place of roads. In or near several of our old towns, as at the Dorsetshire Dorchester (Durnovaria), the ground is full of Roman interments. But there were also towns which, though they may have existed in some sense earlier than the Roman conquest, owed their greatness, if not their very existence, to the Roman garrisons which held them. Population naturally gathers to any place where there is a strong and permanent military force. The various wants of the men must be provided for. The officers build themselves cottages in the neighbourhood, and bring servants. Civil officials prefer to reside in spots where they can get society; and, in some cases, the court of the Roman governor would keep the place full of petitioners and litigants. The poor quarter which inevitably grew up outside a great Roman camp was called Cannabce ( " The huts") in certain parts of the continent of Europe, and though the name has not yet been found in Britain, the thing itself no doubt existed. Thus, even when the legions and auxiliary forces (i.e., non-Roman troops) were withdrawn from these centres, they still had a population left, and Caerleon-upon- Usk, Chester, and York have probably never ceased to be inhabited since they were Roman stations. At Caerleon (Isca Silurum)* was long posted the Second Legion (Legio Secunda J ugusta ), a body of, say, 5,000 men, bringing with it various minor 1 ""lies of foreign soldiery. At Chester ( Deva) stood the Twentieth Legion, which bore the proud title of Legio Ficesima VaJU r'ni Victrix. At York (Eboracum) the long presence of the Ninth, and afterwards of the Sixth Legion (Legio Nona Hi*i»tiiv. T-ostiniate the good service which the Romans have done in putting an end to human sacrifices." Nor did the benefits which Rome conferred on her province end here. She gave it roads, marked out with milestones, and tit, not only for the march of troops or for pack-horse traffic, but for driving too; and she thereby threw the whole country open to trade and intercourse. Such roads as the Romans made could not be kept up by their successors, and our island saw nothing more like them for many a century. The remains of the ruined lighthouse within Dover Castle still point to tin; Roman care for Hi<- interests of navigation. The introduction of theatres crave at once a civilised amusement and a means of education.* The varied collections in our museums show how far some, at •. of the population had progressed in the direction of and external civilisation Keys and steelyards, roofing tiles and hair-pins, glass bottles and spoons, statues and bells, represent wants and comforts Btrange to the "savage and shivering Britons," dressed in skins, whom earlier waiters knew. Theyoungmen of the province who joined the army, • v. rioua ories beard in the theatre ;i' Oolohe b c (Camulo- ilniiiiiii . •.•■!•• among the signs whioh presaged tlio destruction of that oit> Roman officials, and which was applied chiefly to provisioning the army in Britain or on the Continent. Admission to the II 'man franchise brought with it liability to the further burden of a legacy duty of 5 per cent, (vicesvma hereditatwm et legatorv/m). Revenue was raised, too, by import duties portoria), levied on imported goods at the harbours where they were landed. To them reference is probably made in a Latin speech, whose author lands Britain as "a land wealthy from its heavy crops, its rich pastures, its veins of metal, its revenues, and its mem/ I irbours." There is a story told, too, of the rich philosopher Seneca, that some of immense wealth was Lent to the British "against their will," and that his calling the debt in was among the causes or occasions of the rebellion of Hoadicea. This is all we hear about it, but, if we may judge from what happened in some other provinces, Seneca had lent the townships of Britain money at high interest to meet the immediate demands of tax-collectors. As the times grew worse, the weight of taxes rested more and more heavily on the well-to-do members oi the town-councils, and, if in various parts of the Continent these sank under their burden, utterly ruined, it is not likely that the British counsellors were much better oft*. Yet of taxation as a regular charge the British were patient enough. "Taxes and other burdens," says a con- temporary observer, "they bear cheerfully if they are spared actual outraj It may be believed, though we can hardly that we know it for certain, that outrageous treatment rare or accidental The foundation of the colony of I chestei led to hardship. The original dwellers on the spot lost tlnir land, and the old soldiers embittered the quarrel by taunting the ejected possessors as prisoners and slaves. Bui Buch plantations were certainty few, and probably confined to early days. The abominable usage of lioadicca (properly Boudicca)and her daughters is not to be forgotten : — lie they seized and me they tortured, me fchey lashed and humiliated, |£e the sport oi ribald veterans, mine of ruffian violators"; 22 SOCIAL ENGLAND. and some of the dealings of the government — or at least of its officials — in the matter of the corn-supply bore a stamp of wanton insolence which made them hard to bear for a high-spirited people, who were, as one of the conquerors said, "reduced to obedience, but not yet to slavery." That the Britons, who had corn to pay and actually had none in hand, should be compelled to buy it, and buy it at a fancy price, of the officials in order to pay it back imme- diately to those officials, was an arrangement so clumsy and withal so irritating that we are not surprised to find a wise governor doing away with the system. But his reform came early in the history of Roman Britain, and the story of Boadicea, earlier still, belongs to the period of the invasion and to the lawless deeds of conquest. Time brought law, for conquerors as well as for conquered. But there were still some permanent grievances, worse than taxation. " We pay," one of the Britons is made to cry in a narrative of the conquest, " We pay a yearly tribute of our bodies." Every year the conscription carried off a fixed number of the young men to serve in the auxilia or " native regiments," and, as these were employed abroad, no British soldier could be sure of seeing his home and his friends again. The terror of being thus banished, " mixed with other nations and dragged to the ends of the earth," would weigh with both the men and their parents ; and the native chiefs, while there were any, must have reflected with disgust how they were strengthening the Roman forces with all their strongest men. The fleet, too, the Glassis Britannica, which guarded the coast and kept up communications with the rest of Europe, may have been partly manned in the same way. This fleet was probably created by the Emperor Claudius at the time of his conquest. It was employed by the Governor Agricola to circumnavigate the island, but seems to have been given up before the fall of the Roman dominion ; perhaps, united with a Continental squadron, it lost its name. It had stations at Dubrae (the later Dover), Portus Lemanis (Lymne), and Gesoriacum or Bononia (Boulogne.) There is a tablet with figures of ships preserved in the museum at Boulogne which is apparently an ex-voto from the crew of a ship of this fleet, the Triremis Radians. Bitterly, too, would forced labour ENGLAND BEFORE THE ENGLISH. 23 on road-making, or in the mines, be felt; and wherever native simplicity and virtue were conjoined with intel- ligence, or wherever a Briton had imbibed the best side of the Roman civilisation, there the resentment would be deep against those who were bringing strange vices into the country. With these causes in our minds, we shall not wonder that there was plenty of discontent among the Britons in at hast the earlier generations. The later ones had grown up in their splendid cage, but the earlier men were furious at their position The free Caledonii, or northern tribes, and the free Irish were a reproach to their conquered neighbours. Moreover, there was the hope of plunder to encourage the subjects if they rose, or the yet unconquered North Britons if they raided into the province. Hence the Kornan position was Long an anxious one, and the garrison was always on the defensive. The great island was simply held down by foreign troops. The Britons who were enlisted could, it seems, not be trusted fully, for there is no known case of any native force being permanently stationed within the island. We hear rumours of various risings among the rest of the population. Bare hints survive to show us that Yorkshire was a hard region to control, and when we find the Ninth Lesion leaving no trace of itself after 108 or 109 in the monumental records at York, where it was stationed (and Done elsewhere), we may not unfairly suspect that it had cut to pieces. It was not for nothing that the great Roman wall from Newcastle to Carlisle was made defensible both m that it could be held no less against the restless subjects within than against the untamed Caledonii without. But with all this restlessness, time fought OD the side of idy and civilised government ; and even J ° ' Roman Influence. . 1 1 early day the BOUtn-east of the island was reconciled to Its position and sought a new outlook by becoming as Roman as possible. The legions could, with safety, be moved away from those parts of the country. The governors favoured the change. They encouraged and helped the Romanising partj to decorate the towns with temples, showy market-places, and fine houses; and the leading men among the South Britons were nol slow either in taking or in Betting the new example. A whimsical 21 SOCIAL ENGLAND. (consciousness of the work which the conquerors were doing is shown in the frequency with which the mosaic pavements of Roman villas in England exhibit the device of Orpheus tamino - the birds and beasts. The Britons were the birds and the beasts, and, if they did not know it, the Romans did. The sons of British nobles were trained up in "liberal Ftudies " and set the fashion to their countrymen. The great number of the inscriptions which have come down to us shows a widespread use or knowledge of writing, and even of Latin — though, of course, more than half of the whole number comes from non-British writers. It was thought at least possible that young British lawyers should go to be trained at Augustodunum (An tun), a great school in Gaul. The Roman dress and Roman habits of the table established themselves on British soil; and a Greek " grammatikos," or lecturer on literature, might find it worth his while to travel even from Asia Minor to Britain. Another side of Roman life, too, made itself at home here — the bloody sports of the arena. One or two amphitheatres of a rough kind yet survive, as at Dorchester and Silchester ; and the use to which they were put may be inferred from the vigorous group of gladiators depicted in mosaic-work on the Roman pavement which has been unearthed at Bignor, and from some designs on pottery. Still, we must not exaggerate the extent of the Romanised area. There are few inscriptions from Devon and Cornwall, and very few from- the greater part of Wales ; and it is, therefore, not without significance that we find Celtic speech still surviving in Wales and not long dead in Cornwall. No Roman villas have been discovered north of Aldborough in Yorkshire. Britain produced no distinguished Latin author, no one to set off against an Ausonius from Gaul, a Quintilian or a Martial from Spain. It had no famous schools or great professors, such as the Gallic ones made known to us by the piety of Ausonius. The works of art from British soil which are stored in our museums are often, like many of the inscriptions, of singularly rough and, indeed, barbaric char- acter. Hewn in coarse material, ill-proportioned, and clumsily wrought, they show what the art of Greece, transmitted by Roman teachers, might come to in a remote land. The tombstones and other such records mention comparatively ENGLAND BEFORE THE ENGLISH. 25 few but military and official people. Of the ( rreek civilisation, which had elevated and softened that of Rome and which \\vnt hand-in-hand with it in its conquests, Britain has but poor traces to show. Some Greek inscriptions there arc, but tiny arc t'rw and uninteresting. The fact is that there was a wide gulf between the polished gentleman of British descent, who had embraced the Roman life and Learning, and his poor countrymen, unim- proved and obstinate in adhesion to their own ways and their own religion, Some such contrast between classes as Russia can show now, Britain might show then. In spite of the fact that Martial could boast of his books finding readers in this island, and that Juvenal could jestingly talk of Thnlo < Shetland or Iceland?) engaging a teacher of rhetoric, the ma^-s of the folk must have been plunged in the deepest ignorance. No wonder that Britain, like other Western provinces, was a favourite hunting-ground of eye-doctors and other quacks. No wonder that of the very few doctors' names which are come down to us as those of men practising in the island, half are good Roman names and the other half are Greek. Where science languished, magic, throve, and British magic was know r n even in Rome. Two curses written out on leaden plates, and probably left buried to work out their fulfilment, have been preserved into our time According to one found at Bath, somebody has stolen the writer's napkin: "May he melt (or rot) for it!" From the other, discovered in Gloucestershire, it appears thai Silvulanus has lost a ring. The gods shall have half the value if they will briii'/ it to light. "May they refuse health to tin; thief!" Charms were in use too, either among the nun of the garrison or among the Britons. There were signs by which the evil eye could be batlled. There were forms of words likely to bring good hick, and, therefore, engraved on objects of daily use, as Vli-ns — " Long life to you I " Uterefelix — " Use me and prosper I" A belief in magic has been found compatible with :ill forms of religion, but in Britain magical rites were very closely connected with the Druid system. Religion. which had been crushed in the [aland of Mona (Anglesey) by the two campaigns of 61 and 78. The curses which the I Iruids uttered "with hands raised to heaven," as thei stood on the 26 SOCIAL ENGLAND. shore of the sacred island, had for a moment frozen the blood of the soldiers and stayed their advance ; and even after the hopeless defeat of these priests and of the excited women who stood by them, " dressed in black like furies, with loose hair and brandishing torches," the various forms of British religion by no means died out. The Roman government did not try to destroy the religion of any of its subjects. If they were orderly and law-abiding, they might worship what they pleased and as they pleased. They were encouraged to take part in emperor- worship, but no one save a madman tried to make that worship compulsory. If they would identify their gods with those of their conquerors, so much the better ; but they could do as they liked. Tolerance bore its natural fruit : religious strife was unknown, and worshippers of a most motley host of deities have left us their names and those of their gods, chiefly engraved upon votive offerings. Who these worshippers were it is not always easy to say. Sometimes there is but the name of a good Italian deity, and we have no means of knowing whether the dedicator was a Romanised Briton or a soldier of the garrison. Thus Neptune and Hercules, Mars and Minerva, Jupiter Optimus Maximus and Apollo found worshipj)ers here. The words Fidgur divom seem to mark, with old- fashioned Italian scrupulousness, the place which the wrath of Heaven had struck with lightning somewhere on the bleak line of the Northumberland Wall. Dedications to the Genius loci, which occur often, have a true Roman ring about them. But when Apollo's worshipper cannot spell Apollo's name, we begin to think he was not much of a Roman ; and when Minerva is identified with dea Sulis, or dea Sulis with Minerva, we suspect that the dedicator was a provincial trying to stand well with both his own old god and the new one of his masters. " Mars Camulus," again, represents an attempt to unite a Roman deity with the British god after whom Colchester took its early name of Camulodunum. Sometimes a group of Oriental deities goes along with the name of Syrian votaries. Sometimes we can trace the gods to Gaul or Germany ; they may then be deities whose worship was widely spread among the Celts on both sides of the sea, or they may have been brought in by foreign settlers or by foreign cohorts serving with the army of occupation. The deae Matres or Matronae, who appear on (foreign) carved stones as three seated figures, ENGLAND BEFORE THE ENGLIBH. -27 holding what may be symbols of increase and fertility, are known in Roman (u-miany as well as in Britain But then, again, we find swarms of barbarous god-names, to which wo can assign no meaning and no home. The strange human figure with the Legs and head of a cock, which appears in the mosaic pavement of the Roman villa at Brading, had perhaps a religious meaning now lost. A few of the deities arc dis- tinctly national or tribal, as dea Brigantia, the goddess of the "blue (painted) Brigantes" of Yorkshire. Here and there natural features or powers were worshipped The dedication to the uyinphs and fountains found near Chester reminds us that our holy wells are older than Christianity; so does the image of the goddess I loventina Boating on a water-lily, found in a will near Newcastle; while the respect paid to the dea T> rtiana, a personification of lever or ague, shows the natural tendency to worship what is dreaded and not understood. In fact, the religious monuments of Roman Britain exhibit a compendium of the religious state of the world in those days — of its old cults still surviving, and of its new tendencies. The altars and the votive-tablets are probably the most numerous class of the inscribed stones, and they illustrate fully the diversity of belief and practice. The worship of emperors, dead or living, was a common rite in which all provinces might join, and Britain was probably not behind the rest, although we cannot point with confidence to any cntral altar at which all the tribes might meet for the purpose, as we can point to the altar of Rome and of Augustus at Lugdunum (Lyon), the religious centre of Roman (bud. A pious regard for the emperors is illustrated by many inscriptions, beside that one about the 8evi/r at Fork which was noticed before (p. 1~>>. Dedi- cations are frequent to the deity of the emperor, nu/men Tmperatoris or Augueti, or nu/mi/na Augustorwm. The worship "t' Asklepios or zEsculapius, so fashionable under the early Empire in lauds further Kast, may possibly have been discouraged in Britain by the greatness of the goddess Sulis and her medical springs at Bath, but still traces of it are found The more mystical religions which had crept into the Empire from the Kast are represented here too. A dedication to the god .K"ii, set up by some one with the name <>t Arimanius, perhaps a Persian, reminds us bow far beliefs and 28 SOCIAL ENGLAND. believers could travel in days of universal peace. Serapis, originally a god from the south coast of the Black Sea, illustrates the tendency of the enlightened later paganism to fuse its deities and seek for one godhead under various titles. He was identified with Egyptian and with Greek objects of worship ; he became great and fashionable in Alexandria and in Rome; and he has left traces of his worship even in this remote island of the Northern sea. Mithras- worship, too — a dangerous rival at one time of Christianity — had travelled all the way from Persia to South Wales and to Northumberland. This god was generally identified with the Sun, and the curious symbolic representations of him in the act of sacrifice are well known from the collections at the Louvre and the British Museum. On the line of the " Picts' Wall," near Housesteads, was found a cave, chosen, as caves or pits usually were, for the celebration of his secret rites ; and we can imagine the believer, ardent for the remission of his sins, descending into the pit to be washed clean by the blood of the victim — a sheep or a bull — slain above him on a platform of pierced planks. It had been a very common feature of religious practice in Greece and in Rome for individuals to combine voluntarily into associations for the honour of the deity whom they preferred ; and this way of organising religious service is repre- sented in Britain by a collegium Ajwllinis, and by a guild of worshippers of Mercury, and one of votaries of Sulis. A number of inscriptions in honour of " the old gods " (Di veteres) suggest to us the probability that many persons must, while they adopted a certain amount of Roman cultivation, have yet disapproved the religious innovations which they saw creep in. The name of " Druid " does not occur among the Romano-British inscriptions, but the Druidical system would not be easily forgotten (what religion is easily forgotten ?), and loyalty and superstition would co-operate in keeping up a reverence for the old faith. Another kind of lingering regret breathes in the tomb-formuloe which the province took over from Roman usage — Dis Manibus. or the rarer Memorial. The affectionate words which the sorrow of father or child, of husband or of wife, carved below these standing expressions, remind us of the common people, and of the daily sorrows and joys of which sight is so often lost, when we study the external history and the administrative mechanism of a nation. The ENGLAND BEFORE THE ENGLISH. -29 Roman garrison and the Romanised provincials are brought very near to ns when we read expressions of grief whose genuineness would suffer by translation* : — Bimplicia clorentine anvme innoeentiaaime. (From Ym-k.) Filin iiuitri ef frotri fiiaaimo. (Foimd near Caerleon.) FiJie duleisaime. (Northumberland.) Fil ia Kxuiiasimce). (Bath.) Conju(gi etfilia pienti8ai(mi8). (Old Penrith.) ' ".// sanctfssimce quae viseitanniaxxxiiiaineulla macula. (North- umberland.) (ConjiKji cum qua) viri sin e ulla querella). (Somersetshire.) It is generally in Britain a man's heirs who have buried him. not, as so often in Italy, a club (collegium) to which he belonged. This probably does not point to the strength of domestic affection, but is due to two facts. (1) The tombstones which we have are those of soldiers or of men of position, who would not have to rely on a burial club. c2) The poorer Britons cannot have been educated up to the point of peaceful co-operation at which burial clubs could be founded and regularly worked. About Christianity in Roman Britain we must speak with caution, because so very little is known. While it is not true to say that we can find no traces of Christianity from Britain while it was under Roman dominion, we may safely affirm thai the traces are of the very scantiest. The Christian inscriptions are few, and chiefly from sites not then of great importance. To adopt the careful summary of a modern inquirer: "Statements about British Christians at Rome or in Britain, or apostles or apostolic men preaching in Britain in the first century, rest on guess, mistake, or fable Evidence for the existence of a Christian Church in Britain during the second century is also unhistoricaL" Rut the names of Bome British bishops arc known from the end of the third century or beginning of the fourth; and at the end of the fourth there was " a Bottled ( Ihurch " in Britain with churches, altars. Bcriptures, discipline, holding the Catholic faith, and having intercourse with both Rome and Palestinaf • The spelling and other peouliaritiea of form are preserved as they stand on the originals. fHaddan and 8tubb I *&, 1, S3, 24, 7, 10. 30 SOCIAL ENGLAND. Paganism, to use a later word, was the religion of the classical world during the heyday of its civilisation. HlSBrlSL Consequently there is a plentiful supply of materials, in writings, structures, etc., which render the depicting of the religious life, and the reconstruc- tion of the religious creed, of the Greek and the Roman a comparatively easy undertaking. With the Celt it was other- wise : he abjured his paganism at a time when civilisation can scarcely be said to have dawned upon him. The picture of Celtic heathenism can, therefore, be drawn only in a faint and often uncertain outline. Such information as we do possess is derived from three sources: — (1) The writings of Greek and Roman authors, recording the writers' observations or the narratives of such as had travelled, commanded, or governed in countries inhabited by Celts. (2) Writings of Celts themselves, of a later and chiefly post- pagan date. (3) The results of modern anthropological and antiquarian researches. At the time of Julius Caesar's invasion (b.c. 55), the first dawn of history in Britain, it was peopled by the Iberians, the earliest known inhabitants, supposed to be non-Aryan, and two branches of the Celtic family — the Goidels and the Brythons. These two latter divided the island between them, somewhat as the Britons and the Saxon tribes did at a later period — the Goidels answering to the Britons, the Brythons to the Saxons. All that remained of the Iberians were traces, more distinct in the northern parts, among the Goidels. These three different peoples, though alike much given to religion, as Caesar relates, yet differed in their religion as in their civilisation. Civilisation travelled westwards, and carried with it religious as well as social and political inno- vations ; so that what were at one time the religious practices of the Brythons of the eastern districts, became, at a later period, those of the Goidels of the west. And with the advent of the Romans, considerable modification of the old Celtic religion took place in the direction of the conquerors' faith. Caesar identities the chief Celtic deities with the Avell- known gods of the Roman pantheon — TtiG Gods Mercury, Apollo, Mars, Jupiter, and Minerva. The basis of this identification was, we cannot doubt, identity ENGLAND BEFORE THE ENGLISH. 31 of attributes and powers ascribed to the various deities by- Celt and Roman In the main, therefore, the Leading ideas of the heathen Celt were those of heathen nations generally — the deification of Nature and the personification of its powers. "Such is to me," says Carlyle, "the secret of all forms of paganism. Worship is transcendent wonder; wonder for which there is now no limit or measure; that is worship. To these primaeval men, all t hin gs and every- thing they saw exist beside them were an emblem of the godlike, of some god." ( tf these deities, Mercury, probably known in Britain as Ofydd (Ovyth), was considered the chief. He was the in- ventor of all the arts, the patron of all roads and journeys, and his was the most potent influence in the acquiring of money and in commercial transactions. Of him, Caesar states, there were very many representations, and of these Luean has left us an interesting description The god was represented as an extremely old man, with bald fore- head, the remaining hair quite grey, the skin wrinkled by years and embrowned as that of men who have grown old in seafaring life. His clothing was a lion's skin. In his right hand he held a club and in his left an outstretched bow, for which a supply of arrows was provided in the quiver which hung at his side. But Ofydd was also the god of speech. In the representation, he drew after him, by means of amber and gold cords fastened to their ears, a willing crowd of men The other ends of the cords passed through tlic tip of the god's tongue, who, so far from appearing to suffer in the ordeal, smiled benignantly upon his audience. Of Apollo, Caesar merely states that lie was considered the repeller of diseases. Resides this, h<>we\.r, he was the Celtic sun-god His British name was Mapon -later, Mabon — meaning "a boy, or male child." He was generally repre- sented accompanied by an elderly goddess known as Sirona, his mother, according to Welsh mythology, where Mapon figures as •• Mabon mab Modron " Mabon, son of Modron The god of war, Mars of classic mythology, was specially venerated among the Celts. Camulus, as he was mosl popularly known, in addition to presiding over and deciding the fortunes of war, also ruled the winds. At an early period he seems to have occupied the position of the stati.: god 32 SOCIAL ENGLAND. par excellence. Upon the outbreak of war a public vow was made that all the spoil taken from the enemy should be devoted to the war-god. And when the war was ended, and victory assured, the captured animals were sacrificed, and the other booty heaped up in the sacred spots of the cities. Any violation of this vow, either by withholding, like Achan, or subsequently purloining the booty, was regarded as the highest form of treason, and treated accordingly. Jupiter was known under various names, according to the functions and powers attributed to him. As Sucelo or Tarannus, he wielded the thunderbolt. As Esus or Hesus, he was the lord of woodlands, fields, and gardens, and the patron of the shepherds. Under the name Nodens — Welsh, Nudd or Lludd (Lud) — he answered to the Roman Neptune, the ruler of the sea. Under this character he had a temple at Lydnoy, on the Severn, where a picture of him has been discovered. He is shown as a youthful deity, crowned with rays, standing in a chariot drawn by four horses, and accompanied by winged figures representing the winds. The only goddess mentioned by Caesar is Minerva. She was not, however, by any means the only female deity, most of the gods having goddesses associated with them. The goddess whom Csesar identified with Minerva, and to whom the initiation of the various arts and trades was ascribed, was Brigantia, the Irish Bridget, known in later Welsh mythology as Keridwen. There remains Dis Pater, or Cernmmos, as the Celts called him. He was the Celtic Pluto and Janus in one. To him the Celts traced their descent, and in honour of him, in all probability, it was that they started all their computations of time with the night. In addition to these, there was a multitude of inferior deities, fairies, genii, and demons — remains, andDemons probably, of the element-worship supposed to have prevailed among the Iberians, and nourishing principally among the Goidels of the Western districts. First among these came the Genius Loci. Every neighbourhood had its special protecting genius, whose festival was annually celebrated with offerings and libations. Next came the mother goddesses, called in Latin inscriptions Matres or Matronse. These were sometimes benignant fairies, ENGLAND BEFORE THE ENGLISH. S3 sometimes malevolent ogresses. There was also a host of divinities, friendly and unfriendly to man, with whom the salient features of the landscape were peopled. Each forest, every mountain peak, rock, lake, river, and spring had its divinity. The name Dee, so common for British rivers, is a survival of these times. The North Wales Dee enjoyed special renown as the A.erven, or genius of war. Even as late as the twelfth century its hanks were carefully and eagerly scanned upon the outbreak of war between the English and the Welsh. The eatimr away by the river of its English or Welsh bank foretold disaster to the corresponding army in the pending struggle. Like the Greeks, the Welsh also personified diseases. The yellow death was " Y Fad Felen," while to this day the ague is known in some parts of Wales as " Yr hen wraeh," the old hag. Closely allied to this was the belief in witches and witchcraft which prevailed. A statue dedicated to "The Three Witches " was recently discovered at Hexham. This, like many of the other beliefs of these earlv times, long baffled all the efforts of Christianity and enlightenment to banish it. Within living memory in North Wales a bedridden young poet's long-continued infirmity was implicitly believed to be the result of his having been " offered to the sea" by an old hag animated by family spite.* The Druidical system, also supposed to be a modified form of the Iberian religion, prevailed among the Druids. Goidels. Its most remarkable feature was the powerful hierarchy by which it was ministered — the Druids, so called from " dru," the Gaulish for oak. They were exempted from payment of the tribal taxes, and the obligations of military service. So great was their influence, thai when two armies were on the point of joining battle, the Druids, rushing in between, could forbid the combat. And the excommunicatioD of Bildebrand was not more feared nor followed by Stricter Ostracism than that, of the Druids. from -e high privileges many either voluntarily entered their order (the Druids were not a caste), or were brought up for. and placed in it by parents or friends. The whole order was presided over by an Arehdruid, * sine- the al written, the writer hai been Mtoniehed n> find, in bral WaL i fcriol when witohoraft ia etill Implicitly believed in, and •■I i" pra . • l. D — you i. 34 SOCIAL ENGLAND. elected for life from among the senior Druids. If there was one whose merits rendered him pre-eminent, he succeeded without dispute. If several eligible candidates entered the field, the chief was chosen by the vote of the order — not always, however, without an appeal to arms. Besides the chief, or Archdruid, the order comprised three grades — Druids proper, Bards, and Ovates. The respective status and the distinctive functions of each grade are difficult to ascertain. But thus much is generally agreed upon — that the Druids were the philosophers and the masters of religious ceremonies, presiding at, while others performed, the sacrifices ; the Bards were poets and singers, setting forth the praises of their benefactors, invoking confusion for their enemies, and recording the prowess and excellencies of the departed, in verses, which they accompanied on the harp ; the Ovates, as their title signifies, were augurs and diviners — the Roman Vates — and possibly chroniclers. An order of Druidesses is also supposed to have existed. When Suetonius Paulinus pursued the Druids into Anglesey, a.d. 56, on his landing, women in mourning robes, with flowing tresses and flaming torches, were seen rushing among the British warriors, inciting them to valour in defence of the last stronghold of their order. The Druids in general were priests, judges — both crimina* and civil — medicine-men, magicians, and the instructors of youths. So famous were the British Druids in this lattei capacity, that in Csesar's time Gaulish youths often resorted to them to complete their education. No sacrifice, either private or public, could be offered without the sanction and the presence of a Druid. These sacrifices, more especially in times of war or pestilence, often consisted of human victims. He who could not procure such a victim vowed to immolate himself. For the public and state sacrifices each tribe had its settled sacrificial code. The immortal gods, if greatly incensed, could only be propitiated with human blood — that of condemned criminals being specially acceptable. On more than usually solemn occasions huge images of wicker-work were constructed, filled with these unhappy victims, and set ablaze. The event of a war, or other important future matter, was also not unfre- quently sought by means of a human victim. He was struck EXGLAXD BEFOliE THE ENGLISH. 35 ■with a sword upon his loins, and the future divined from his contortions or sought in his entrails. The great veneration of the mistletoe was a curious feature O in the Druids' system. Its discovery on an oak was the occasion of a general festival. The presiding Druid, clothed in long, flowing robes of white, ascended the tree, and with a -olden sickle cut the precious plant, which was received below into a white linen cloth held between two Druids, and a thankoffering of two white bulls was sacrificed. Another equally curious superstition was the myth of the snakes' egg. A multitude of snakes, it was asserted, came to- gether in summer, and, by blowing into the air a kind of foam, artificially formed an egg. The Druids pretended that they were able to divine the exact time when this took place, and i hat the)' caught the descending egg in a linen sheet. This, however, was a perilous undertaking, as the snakes fiercely pursued the thief till a river was placed between them. When possessed, the egy' was supposed to ensure success in legal matters and access to the presence of kings. The Emperor < laudius put a Roman knight to death for wearing it in his ■in while prosecuting a legal action. And Pliny relates that he had himself seen one of these eggs, of the size of an ordinary apple. The truth respecting it seems to have been that the egg was made of glass and used by the Druids to further their impostures. The doctrinal svstem of the Druids is all the more difficult to ascertain inasmuch as all their teaching was oral — partly the ber to preserve its secrets, partly for the culture and pre- b rvation of the memory. The teaching, so far as it is known, comprised the knowledge of the immortal gods — chiefly, it is inferred from their open-air worship, of Jupiter; the immor- tality of the human soul, and the Pythagorean doctrine of its transmigration; the movements of the stars, and the extent of the earth. This teaching lasted sometimes for twenty ind usually consisted in committing to memory oracular uerally expressed in triplets (triads) and often in i mode of imparting knowledge which lusted among the Welsh down to a comparatively late period The power of the Druids was irretrievably broken by the invasion of Anglesey, the slaughter of the , , . ... . . .... Celtic ChriBtlaaitj. order, and the telling ot the groves. Winn i. 2 36 SOCIAL ENGLAND. we next meet them in Irish and Scotch history they are little more than the counterparts of Elymas the Sorcerer, pre- tenders to magical powers, hanging about the courts of the tribal chieftains. Celtic heathenism became, especially in the towns, more and more assimilated to the eclectic paganism, the then fashionable religion of Rome, till at length both disappeared before the advance of Christianity. Who the first apostle of Britain was cannot now be deter- mined. St. Clement's words, that St. Paul C ° Britain 11 ° f travelled " to the extremities of the West," led some to assert that he was the great apostle of the Gentiles himself. Another tradition attributed the work to Bran, the father of Caractacus, the brave Silurian leader who, for nine years successfully resisted the valour and discipline of the Roman armies. Bran, detained in Rome as a hostage for his son, was converted by St. Paul, a contemporary prisoner, and ultimately returned to carry the good news to his country- men. While a third, and the most renowned legend, claims St. Joseph of Arimathea as the founder of the British Church. According to this legend, St. Joseph, Lazarus, and his two sisters, having been exposed by their persecutors in an open boat, without either oar or sail, were providentially carried to Southern Gaul. Thence St. Joseph, always bearing with him the Holy Grail, with twelve companions started to convev the Word of Life to Britain. Landing in the Bristol Channel, they settled on the Isle of Glastonbury, where St. Joseph, constrained by the incredulity of his hearers to perform a miracle, planted his staff in the earth, commanding it to put forth leaves and blossom. This led to the conversion of the king — St. Joseph's staff becoming the famous Glastonbury thorn which ever after bloomed on Christmas morninsr, the anniversary of the miraculous event. These, and other stories, do not possess the historical authority, antiquity, or consistency sufficient Probable Agencies. • ■, c 1 i <• i t to raise them irom the domain of legend into that of even probable history. Like many another good man's name, that of the first apostle of Britain is lost in the mist and haze of the past. The probability is that Christianity reached this country as it reached others — through a variety of agencies. Individual Christian believers among the soldiers and civil officers, who were continually ENGLAND BEFORE THE ENGLISH. 37 passing and repassing between Rome and Britain, in all like- lihood made the first converts, while missionaries from the Greek missions at Lyons and Vienne, in Gaul, founded before A.D. 150. organised these scattered converts into a Church. The earliest historical evidences on the subject confirm and seem to mark the successive steps in this theory. The exist- ence oi Christians in Britain is first mentioned by Tertullian about a.i>. 208. In a.i>. 304, during the Diocletian persecution, St Alban was martyred at Verulam, since called St. Albans. < Ihristianity had then attained a position deserving the notice of the civil powers. In A.D. 314 the presence of the British Hi shops of York, London, and (probably) Caerleon on Usk, at the Council of Aries in France, proves the existence of an organised Church in the southern half of the island. It must not, however, be supposed that the whole, or the mass, <»f the nation had yet been converted. Though, thanks to their religious disposition and their quick, sympathetic temperament, the Britons were in a marked degree predisposed To welcome the call of Christianity, yet it was not till centuries later that the Church had penetrated among the mountains and glens of even Southern Britain. Churches in Wales were ori'.'inallv dedicated to their founders. At the beginning of the eighth century this practice was superseded in favour of dedication to St. Michael. Now the churches dedicated to St. Michael — Llanlihangels — are, with scarcely a single exception, situated in wild mountain glens or marshy fastnesses. These mar!; the last retreats of dying paganism, and were evidently not occupied by the Church until about the beginning of the 1 1 1 1 century. ( hristendom was as yet undivided, and the leading features of the universal < ihurch, episcopal orders, the < atholicfirith,and a sacramental Liturgy, appear ch Sp£? 8 ics: from the first in the British branch. The ex- ace of the threefold minisl ry— bishops, priests, and deacons — is shown by the presence of British representatives of each order at the Council of Aries. From the beginning the episcopate was diocesan or territorial, but possessed some features peculiar to 11 eofthi the absence of an archbishop. Though onal eminence secured a primacy of honour for bishops of diii'< p • different time no archbishop, in the < on ptation of the title ted in Wales even down to t lio 3S SOCIAL ENGLAND. union of the Church in Wales with the Church in England in the twelfth century. Another peculiarity was the absence of any obligate >n of celibacy— a condition of things which lasted in the Welsh ( 1 mrch down at least to the eleventh century. A son frequently succeeded his father in the episcopate, as was the case with Sulien and Rhyddmarch of St. David's, in 1088, two names unsurpassed in Welsh history for piety and learning. There were also peculiarities of ritual in the consecration ot bishops. Consecration might be performed by one bishop instead of three, which was elsewhere the rule, and was attended with some ceremonies, such as anointing the hands and head of the consecrated, not in vogue in other Churches. But what more than anything else distinguished the British episcopate was the noble origin of its members. The bishops were either princes or members of princely houses. St. David, the founder of the diocese called after his name, was a Prince of Ceredigion. Saints Teilo, Deiniol, and Cyncleyrn, the founders of the other Welsh dioceses, were also scions of the noblest families. Members of the princely houses were also the leaders in what constituted the special glory of the British Missionary or w e i s n Church, viz., its numerous monastic Monasteries. ' ' establishments, or " coreu " (sing., cor), as they were termed. The chieftain often became the abbot, and the clan the members of his cdr. The country was covered with a network of these houses. The smallest had a roll of fifty inmates. The largest, such as the famous colleges — for they Avere educational as well as religious institutions — of Bangor-is-Coed in Denbighshire, and St. Illtyd's College at Llantwit Major, reckoned their members by thousands. The time was apportioned between worship, study, and hard manual labour, the latter being a distinguishing feature of Welsh monasticism. But the great purpose of these settle- ments was missionary. The Celtic monastery had an entirely different rationale from that of the later English and Con- tinental monastery. The latter was the refuge of them that fled from the evils of the world. The former was the training- home of those who sallied forth to battle with those evils Each house was the centre of missionary efforts. The daily round was varied with evangelising journeys into neigh- bouring districts. Stone crosses were set up to mark the preaching stations; and, in course of time, converts were ENGLAND BEFORE THE ENGLISH. 3D made and a rude building, answering in purpose to the corrugated-iron mission room of the present, was con- structed. Ultimately a suitable church was erected, an endowment and a burial-ground provided, and the whole const'- rated by the tasting and prayers of the mission-priest and then called after his name. Thirty-one parishes in Carnarvonshire alone still bear the names and testify to the missionary labours of the original founders of their churches. such as St. Tudno. St. Peris, and St. Cybi, in Llandudno, Llanberis and Llangybi. Often the name of the church does not appear in the parish name. St. Beuno, having obtained from Cadwallon the township of dynog, in Carnarvonshire, settled there with his c6r. The conversion of the neigh- bourhood, and the erection of a church dedicated to the saint, quickly followed. The surrounding districts were next invaded, and, in addition to those dedicated to members of his college, no less than seven parish churches dedicated to St. Beuno himself testify to his missionary activity. During succeeding centuries waves of religious enthu- siasm, or revival, still characteristic of Celtic religion, swept over these monastic colleges, always resulting in a fresh swarm of missionary offshoots, which issued in the successive conversion of Ireland. Scotland, and, thence, of the greater portion of Saxon England. The earliest Creed was the Apostles'. In 325 a.d. the British bishops assured St. Athanasius, the great champion of the true faith in that and°worship. age, of their acquiescence in the Creed of Nicica. put forth seven years before, and of their adherence to the Catholic faith. These, with the later so-called Athanasian Creed, completed the triad of formularies which continue to this day the standard expression of the faith in the Anglican Church. But this adherence to orthodoxy was not by any means a matter of course With his religious propensities the Celt has a distinct turn for meta- physics. Controversial questions of this nature produced violent disputes. When Morgan the Briton, better known as Pelagius, about the year W)0 a.d. promulgated his heretical notions respecting original sin and man's natural powers of spiritual recovery, in no part of Christendom did the con- troversy rage more fiercely than among the heeresiarch's 40 SOCIAL ENGLAND. compatriots. The tribal character of British monasticism tempted the monks to interfere in intestine strifes. During religious controversies the civil and ecclesiastical issues were often intermixed, and the inter-tribal struggles assumed the aspects of religious wars. Thus it happened during the Pelagian controversy, till, at last, the British bishops in despair appealed to their kinsmen in Brittany for assistance in combating the error ; and two Breton bishops, Saints Ger- manus, or Gannon, and Lupus, or Bleiddyn, were deputed to come over for the purpose. Of the Liturgy in use in the British Church prior to this visit of St. Garmon, a.d. 429, little is known. It was probably the old Gallican modification of the Ephesine Order, originally brought by the founders of the Gallic missions from Ephesus. During St. Garmon's sojourn the Liturgy was again brought into con- formity with the later Gallican use. The services consisted, besides the occasional services, such as baptism, burial, etc., of the offices for the hours and the Liturgy proper, or the service of the Holy Communion. The latter consisted of two portions — the service of the catechumen, for those under instruction preparatory to baptism, and the service of the faithful, from which the catechumen was excluded. The services for the hours consisted of hymns, psalms, collects, and lessons from Holy Scripture. Of this latter, the British Church jiossessed a version peculiar to itself, differing from both the Vetus Latin and the Vulgate. The method adopted in the instruction of the laity re- sembled, and was probably borrowed from, that of the Druids. Moral, spiritual, and scriptural truths were expressed in the form of poetical aphorisms. " The best of occupation, work " ; " The best of sorrows, sorrow for sin " ; " The best of attitudes, humility," are among the recorded sayings of the prince- abbot St. Cadoc of Llancarvan. Sunday was strictly observed in the monasteries, but it was long before cessation from work became total and general. The ecclesiastical season of Lent and the great festivals were also duly celebrated. The time for celebrating Easter was one of the subjects of dispute between St. Augustine and the British bishops, on the arrival of the former to evangelise the Saxons. Single immersion in Holy Baptism and the shaving of the front ENGLAND BEFORE THE ENGLISH. 4l portion of the hair, "from ear to ear," constituted the other differences when the British Church, after its isolation consequent upon the Saxon conquest, again came into contact with Christian Europe. With Rome the relation oi the Celtic Church was what might be expected under the circumstances of the time. To the Briton Rome repre- sented the heart and centre of the world, the home of civilisation and the source of all learning. The bishop of such a city was naturally honoured and respected. But, as was afterwards shown, this was not meant to imply any supremacy or authority, which, when claimed centuries later, was promptly repudiated. Until persecution had ceased at the Edict of Milan, a.d. 313, but few ecclesiastical buildings iii i rrn &. Buildings, could have existed, lhe structures after- wards erected partook of the character of the surrounding buildings. Town and country churches differed then as now. In the towns, where the Romans had reared, or taught the natives to rear, stone buildings, such edifices were constructed for ecclesiastical purposes. Remains of some, even of Roman date, are still existing, such as Reculver, Lyminge, and St. Martin's, Canterbury. In the country, on the contrary, where the inhabitants still dwelt in rude structures of wood logs or wattle, the churches were of similar construction. The erection of a stone church, in 401 A.D., by St. Ninian at Candida Casa is recorded as a "practice uncommon among the Britons." The model upon which these early churches were built was the Roman Basilica; and they generally consisted of a nave and chancel — in the cases of stone buildings, also of side aisles. Inside the chancel, which had a raised floor, were placed an altar, usually of stone, a wooden pulpit, and seats for the clergy. Endowments have already been mentioned. Cildas, writing 550 A.D., states that the " narochi;e " „ . ' i j i • Endowments. (>t Wales were formed and endowed m Ins time. These parochise were not, at least in most eases, the modern parishes, but the spheres of labour assigned to, or undertaken by, the monastic centres. The duty of almsgiving was taughl as one of the Bpecial obligations of the Christian life; and the Script mill, and indeed heathen, precedent of giving a tenth, generally recommended. Testamentary 4-j. SOCIAL ENGLAND. bequests to the Church, recognised in the earliest known code of Welsh laws, were also sources of endowments; while the privileges attaching to a consecrated church ren- dered "arglwydd" and "taeog" equally ready to further its erection and endowment. The existence of a church on his estate doubled the "arglwydd's" (lord's) rent. The consecration of a church in a township of " taeogiaid," or serfs, enfranchised the inhabitants. This last provision is an instance of the many ways in which the Church of that day sought to mitigate the con- dition of the miserable and to succour the oppressed. It is not easy to overrate the value, in an age of brutal violence, of a system which cowed unrestrained physical force with moral power. The power and influence of the clergy were great, and were unsparingly exercised on behalf of the unprotected. The dying lord was exhorted to will the freedom of his slaves. The weak and the pure were fearlessly defended from violence and lust. The churches and their precincts were sacred, and afforded a refuge which even kings durst not violate. This led to the entrusting of charters to the care of the monastic colleges. "Breiniau Arfon," the privileges of Arvon, were consigned to the custody of the coreu of Clynog and Bangor. Even the brute creation were safe. King Meirchion dared not drag the hunted stag from the feet of St. Illtyd, where it had sought safety. The earliest rude implements of the primitive races in Britain are found either in patches of river- C * C warfare KING g raYe l s > on the banks of rivers, or in caves and rock-shelters near water. The former may be looked on as representing mere halting-places on the line of march, the debris of feasts such as the "kitchen-middens" of Denmark probably Avere, or fishing stations ; the latter may indicate more prolonged occupation as dwellings. The implements hi both cases are of the simplest character ; but, naturally, a greater variety of chipped weapons!* 3 stones are found in the second group. The river-gravels contain rough flakes of flint that might be used as skin-scrapers or lance-heads, together with ovate or pointed stone axes, which may have been either mere ENGLAND BEFORE THE ENGLISH. i: hand-weapons or may have been hatted, there is no evidence to show which. The eaves contain similar relics, together with occasionally better Hakes, bearing traces of use as scrapers of bone-implements or lance-shafts, rude " strike-a-lights," apparently, from the nature and direction of the minor chippings, and roughly-fashioned masses that may have beeD either hammerstones or missiles. As with savage races now, there was in these early days probably no real distinction between tools, domestic imple- ments, and weapons. What would split a marrow-bone would cleave an enemy's skull as well ; the flake represented the knife, used for all purposes for which such an implement would prove useful. The weapons of these earliest inhabitants of Britain were intended for close fighting evidently, as their axes show, of useful spear-heads or arrow-heads as missile weapons there are none that seem worth the using, according to our modern ideas. "In so hard a life only the fittest survived, and pos- sible Palaeolithic man's mistrust of living things extended to bis brother man, as well as to the fierce beasts of the chase. His habits may well have been those of a family gathering laud even that isolated) rather than those of a community. The community is only possible with mutual trust, and that implies a higher form of life than his. But little removed fr< 'in I be beast he slew for food, he was a savage though a man." He had no military organisation, in all probability, higher than that of the "household." Like later nomads of a higher class, sons helped fathers Warfare 10 in defence; and the possession of stalwart lads was a blessing which enabled the fortunate possessor to fear- lessly " speak with his enemy in the gate." Long after Palaeolithic man bad passed away, the race arrived with which history can be said in some sense to begin. he anthropologist they are classed as Neolithic; ethno- I -ally they may be called [berian, and their U 1 possibly runs to-day in the Basques, and even, to a limited degree, among the populations of the extreme wesl of our islands, BUCh as those Of South Wales and ( oinuall. These so-called [berians, or Neolithic men. introduce ns to a higher form of life, though the^ are still .... ..... • , Iberian Weapons. tar from being highly civilised. Apparently 4^ SOCIAL ENGLAND. their domestic morals were not highly developed ; their power oi erecting great works of stone or earth was still limited. Higher civilisation than theirs depends on the means of carrying out artistic or massive design's, and that the long-skulled or dolichocephalic Iberians in their early days could scarcely hope to do. They had not, practically and physically, the power of developing them. Barrows that contain undoubted remains of them abound mainly in tools of stone. Delicately chipped and fashioned as they are, polished and beautifully formed, they still could not with these leave such lasting traces of their lives as were left by those who followed them. The a?e was still one of stone. None the less, their implements are divisible into those for peace and war. There are arrow-heads, and lance-heads, axes, and what seem to be either throw-stones or sling-stones. Some of the so-called " celts " are gouge-like in form, and were destined for deft work. Spindle-whorls and net-sinkers belong probably as much to this age as to that in which bronze nourished. Yet clearing the land of wood and copse must have been so slow a process as to be much neglected, organisation. Cesar's account of Britain gives the impres- sion that the tribes even of his day were either nomads with flocks and herds, or hunters. They were not a settled people yet, and their military organisation — possibly still only that of the family, or, at the best, the group of wandering families — was purely temporary for the purposes of blood-feud, or raids for plunder. The sparse population was not settled enough for purposes of tribal war oii a deiinite scale. It may well be argued, therefore, that such people were little likely to erect protective earthworks Strongholds. J r except tor two specific purposes — the one the " cattle pound," the other the "place of refuge." Towns— "oppida" — real centres of life, business, and defence, can never wandering Tribes. ^ with imsettle d peoples. The stationary village community only comes into being with agriculture and trade. Only such associations lead to further clearance of the land and improvement of the communica- tions between settled centres, however poor, which, as the years go on, become roads. Nomads and a limited population ENGLAND BEFORE THE ENGLISH. 45 have neither the time, nor the strength numerically, to create highways: they must rest satisfied with such tracks as their • wear on the highest, because the dryest, land, beyond the marsh and flood of ill-drained river valleys. These early trackways arc always t raceable from ford to ford, winding along the ridges that bound the former , i -i -i /• t i Communications. bog, and marked frequently, near the water ar.-as themselves, l>y the flint flakes and rough, half-chipped flints where the nomad halted for his daily meal by the side of the water he could not carry. Here he pointed and re-furbished his weapons, for war or for the chase, much as a modern Yankee or an English schoolboy whittles a stick or fashions his childish lance. When he failed to produce any useful result, or when the tools were worn out, he left them there, as we rind them now, with the cores whence he struck the flakes for arrow-heads. The refuse flakes themselves, and the " briquets," or " strike-a-lights," he used for fire-raising. Bere and there only do these trackways lead to the faint traces on the dry hillside where his poor pit-dwellings, or kraals, stood. Near them, in some cases, arc the low outlines of the earthern enclosure which, only some two or three feet high now, enclose an area where his cattle sheltered at night fr<»m wolf or other wild beast, and Avhich in his time was possibly surmounted by, and formed the base of, the hedge of stakes and wattle that fenced his living possessions in. Their present magnitude, their limited area, their being com- manded by heights within range, whence missiles could be thrown, preclude the idea that the}' ever were defensive against ;l resolute armed foe. Such an instance is well shown at Knook Castle, near Heytesbury.* It is but ISO yards long by loo yards wide, and is seen into from the neighbouring hill-land : and near it are the traces of old division lines and circular marks, rich with black earth and fragments of rude tools and ruder pottery, where, when he halted, he enjoyed BUCh domestic life as he eould get. [1 does not, follow that it was only occupied thus early, for it Lived Ear on to Roman times, a- other remains show; hut it, .,} of the weak entrenchments thai a people provided with simple tool- only — sueh as pointed sticks or deer's horns, • C'.it Boare'i Wiltshire," vol. i.. p. -r 46 SOCIAL ENGLAND. whereby to loosen the earth ; flat stones, split wood, or the bladebones of animals, to lift it with ; wicker baskets, or even the skins of beasts, to transport it to its proper place — could alone be expected to make. The collection of huts in these early times which we dignify by the name of village, was not itself fortified. It was not large enough, nor was it worth the trouble. 1 defensive measures for the protection of the nomad families or septs were taken elsewhere. If each small clan was too weak in itself to offer serious resistance to an invading raid, the whole number of such, within a Camps. . ,. , ,. -■ , certain radius, may have, combined, been able to hold their own. For such purposes a central defensive portion — a ground selected for its defensive value — concealed, may be, in ground difficult of access, or which, from its com- mand, possessed value because of the extended view it afforded, may well have been chosen as the place of refuge of the flying families with their herds, their women and children, and their few poor valuables. The British town, even according to the Latin writers, was an enclosure in a " thick wood, with ditch and rampart." It is difficult to account otherwise for the construction of " camps " of weak trace, large area, and on ground that is simply commanding, unless it were such as to effect the purpose of a Ramoth or a Shechem. Such form no part of any general system of defence of a district. They are quite isolated, as the " Caesar's Camps " at Aldershot and Easthamj}- stead Plain ; or as Ogbury, in Wiltshire, north of old Sarum, and Yarnbury, near Lavington, are. Their very extent points to great capacity to hold beasts and non-combatants, with a very strong force of fighting men to keep their earthen parapets; yet withal there is rarely within them — and those of quite a simple trace, without complex ramparts, are referred to — any traces of such permanent occu- pation as the near neighbourhood of " Knook Castle " shows. Moreover, on such high land the water supply is scanty. Wells are rare ; and, if they had been made, it is unlikely all relics of them would have disappeared. There are dew-ponds, it is true, but only in the open chalk downs, not on the breezy, fir-clad heaths of the " Bagshot sand " district, where such isolated works occur as much as they do on less pervious strata. ENGLAND BEFORE THE ENGLISH. 47 Great works, with great interior extent and an insufficient water supply, arc neither towns nor places of permanent occupation by the large numbers that could alone defend them. If simple, they are the centres of local defence of people who could do no better, and who had not yet learnt that the permanent union of families in large bodies meant strength physically and numerically, as well as morally. Thus round isolated Ogbury, which follows simply the shape of the hill top and has its entrance near the r , . , . Hill Forts, river, arc many places with ancient names on sites which Celtic groups may have first selected to be occupied in succession by all those who in turn seized upon the land. There are Wilsford (wil, a willow), D urn ford (deor, a wild animal), Netton (net, cattle), Sallerton (salh, a willow), and Upper, Middle, and Lower Woodford. Again, near Varnbury (which may take its name from yarn or gam, a heap of stones; and beorg, a hill) are Orcheston (prceard, a garden), Shrewton (sceam, a division or district), -Maddenton (mai-dun, the great hill), Codford (coed, a wood), Chittern (cht U /. a name), Berwick (her, a hedge ;wick, a village), Winterbourne (venta, winter), and Elston (Ella's toiun). In the last four cases the modern villages, situated at the footoi the hill, have traces of the ancient villages on the adjacent spurs. The hill fort lies in an angle between two streams, over which the points of passage are marked by ancient names. Both of these hill castles, then, may have been the local centres to which the people fled when some neighbouring marauder made a hostile raid. Such raids must have been short in duration, for the enem} r could carry few supplies, and when the country had been ravaged and its spoil taken, the victorious invaders retreated whence they came. That spoil was poor enough, doubtless. But polished-stone implements meant, the employment of slave or women's labour. Either would be gained by such a raid, and as the Zulu Impis overran their less powerful neighbours to " wash their assegais," and indulge their lust for conquest, so the British chieftain may have led the turbulent spirits of bis tribe to glory and to plunder. Then it was thai the bill fortress bad its work to do. Tho chord of human sympathy thai lies within us all must throb a Little at picturing thai crowd of weeping women and anxious men assembled behind the earthen walls of Ogbury, while far 4S SOCIAL ENGLAND. around the light of burning fires told the story of ruined homes. Many of these camps were altered and improved by conquering invaders, especially those of real strategical importance, whether by Gaulish invaders before the Roman time, by the Romans themselves, or by Saxon and Dane afterwards, would always be difficult of proof. But it seems certain that massive hill fortresses were later than simple forms like Ogbury. This, from its character, its workman- ship, and its stone relics, may fairly be called British, if not pre-Celtic. Examining any one in detail, we find that it is frequently situated on a prominent space, in which case the rampart is only lofty across the level neck joining the projection to the main hill mass ; or on an isolated hill, in which case it is fairly even all round, and not now lofty. Doubtless it was formerly higher, though probably not much higher than a man's breast, as is the case with a modern field parapet in fortification ; and it may have been furnished on top, as Viollet-le-Duc suggests, by a fence of stakes and wattle stout enough to stop a sling- stone or throw-stone, and prevent the entrance of a thrown lance or a shot arrow. Only on steep parts is it " scarped," and only at very weak points are there multiple ditches, for in such simple works as those referred to, complex ditches are most rare. The whole effort seems to have been to enclose a sufficient space with a single rampart, and increase the obstacle of approach by higher parapets, where necessary, to get com- mand over an assailant, and by making steeper or more troublesome the approaches to other faces of the work. Better weapons of Neolithic type, and large, simple, outlined earth- works possibly mark the defences of the scattered Iberian tribes. The long-skulled and probably pastoral population here described as Iberian were succeeded and conquered by a fair, round-skulled people variously classed as Belgae (and therefore, perhaps, Germanic), Finns, and the Celtic van- guard. Here, for convenience, the latter view will be adopted. They were, at any rate, better armed and more highly skilled than those whom they vanquished. Art, and especially the art of war, based on the superior tools and weapons and there- fore organisation, of the new-comer, naturally led to increased civilisation for the conquered, as missionary effort now follows the soldier's sword. ENGLAND BEFORE TnE EXGLISH. 49 The only way of getting at what pro-historic people did is by discussing what work they could physically do. Great earthworks — "oppida" — such as Silchestcr, the Callova of the Attrebates, or Maiden Castle, near Dor- chester, imply superior organisation, warlike Fortification capacity for recognising the value of great defensive works, the power — possibly by slave labour after a successful campaign — of erecting monuments of the first class. As occupation became more sedentary, the easier it was to make and hold great fortresses, for those who had to defend them lived there. By so doing there was greater clearance around, both for agricultural purposes and for protection. As arms improved, a "clear front of fire" was as valuable relatively then as it is all-important now. Roads became better as they became more necessary for t rode, or even for tribal concentration for defence. Earthworks were no longer isolated, they were grouped to defend these roadways, or to hold the tribal boundary against a possible adversary, as France has lined with fortresses the open frontier from Verdun to Besancon. "When we find entrenchments multiplied and distinguished by the vastness of their banks, the height of their keeps, and extreme depth of their ditches, we may suppose these to have been the work of people better versed in the art of castrametation." * Thus arose great inter-tribal roads, the main lines of communication and a vast improvement . , it- i • British Main Roads. b vond the poor tracks ot an earner time between one part of Britain and another. There are five of these known: — 1. Tin- Watling Street, leading to Ireland, and starting from KiphlM.roiigh by London and Worcester to Festiniog. Thence it had two branches — the left to Carnarvon, the right by Chester, Manchester, and Corbridge to Cramond, Jedburgh, and the Qorl li. 2. The [kenield Street, from the county of the [ceni (about the Wash and Yorkshire), \>\ Newinarkel and Dun- stable to Streatley. Eere it branched— the right by the Berkshire Ridgeway to Arebury; the left by Newbury • < '..it BoawV* Wiltshire," vol. L, i>. 17. E — v..i i 50 SOCIAL ENGLAND. and Tangley to Old Sarum, Dorchester, Honiton, Exeter, Totnes, and the Land's End* 3. Akeman Street, from the eastern counties by Bedford, Buckingham, Alcester, Woodstock, Cirencester, Aust (where it crossed the Severn), Caerleon, Cardiff, Caermarthen, and St. David's. 4. Ryknield Street, from the Tyne by Bruchester, Bor- oughridge, Aldborough, Ribston, Bolton, Chesterfield, Burton Wall, Birmingham, Tewkesbury, Gloucester, Chepstow, and so by Abergavenny and Caermarthen to St. David's. 5. Ermyn Street, from East Scotland by Berwick, Bramp- ton, Corbridge, to Catarick, where it divided; the western branch along the Ryknield Way to Alborough, Houghton, Doncaster, Southwell, and Staveley, where it rejoined its own eastern branch which had proceeded from Catarick by North- allerton, Stamford Bridge, South Cave, Lincoln, Ancaster, and near Witham. Thence the road ran to near Stamford, Chesterton, Royston, Ware Park, Enfield, and Wood Green, to London. Here it again divided — the western branch passing by Dorking and Pullborough to Chichester ; the easterly pass- ing by Bromley, Tunbridge, Wadhurst, and Eastbourne to Pevensey.f Two subordinate roads are also mentioned by Sir Richard Colt Hoare : — 6. The Fosse Way, from about Seaton by Ilchester, Bath, Cirencester, Northleach, Claychester, to Lincoln. 7. The Via Julia, from Bath, Bilton, Caerwent, Caerleon, Cowbridge, Neath, and Caermarthen to St. David's. Still irregular and winding, still making for ford- ways and the high land — though not so high as heretofore, for the lower slopes of the hill-land were clearer — these roads are much more definite, because, being links between settled places, they are more used. Not that they are metalled or made ; and frequently from this cause (more probably than from reasons of conceal- ment, which seem futile) they are sunken as fosse-ways from the traffic of people and of pack animals. But if the map be * Stukeley. t Only a few places on these roads are mentioned to give their general direction. ENGLAND BEFORE THE ENGLISH. 51 examined, it will be seen that these roads are guarded at important points, that now -would be called strategic, by works which even a modern engineer -would call important. Tiny arc not the massive earthen walls of man}- acres in ex t -.lit. which enclosed the " Gwahl Vawr" of the Attre- bates, -which the Romans, later, christened " Calleva," and the Saxons w Silchester." Such as these were the cities of late Celtic times, while the others, formidable earth-castles o( smaller ana. were the "forts d'arrets" that guarded either the great roads — such as they were — or the boundaries of the Celtic tribes Of these latter " Wansdyke " is the most important. Throughout its trace from the Severn Sea ,«• I, , t , , , Frontier Defences. to Marlborough, and thence, though now obliterated, to the Thames, east of Reading, this old Celtic frontier was strengthened by massive works. No Roman would have thought it worth his while or worth his time to make such complex ditches as many of these show, except as mere obstacles to an enemy's assault. Well-armed men did not want such complexity, and the Celts were probably, as a rule, only provided with fairly good weapons of bronze. But though the Romans may have occupied them, as they stood, later; and even with small works, weakly garrisoned, adopted the same defensive methods, these irregularly-traced works, following the hill-contour, are Celtic in their tribal origin and are not based on any tactical organisation of the defending bodies. These strong works, with deep ditches and powerful ramparts, are superior to the earlier works because erected by men with better implements, but are not Roman, because they do not fit into their battle organisation. Celtic Britain's fighting strength was an improvement on that of Iberian days because there was greater local concen- tration of lighting-men in the "oppida" and greater garrisons distributed in the defensive frontier fortresses. All this displays greater tactical and administrative skill, based on the towns and villages, which had become permanent centres of life Better means of communication, better roads, and therefore more rapid carriage of men and things, indicate greater defensive power because more concentrated power — than the earlier population had dreamed ol. E 2 — 52 SOCIAL ENGLAND. Probably even now the lighting was local rather than general. Family feuds may have still existed; but they were giving place to tribal forays for the sake of slaves,, plunder, or martial glory. The bronze spear and axe had taken the place of stone weapons, as armour of skins, or what not, was supplying the want of that defensive equipment which the earlier population had lacked.* And while the tribes of Iberian origin still kept up friendly communications with their co-religionists, the Veneti and others in Western Gaul, the immigrants, on the other hand, received aid and reinforcements from their powerful tribes- men and brethren in what now is Belgium. Bronze weapons, powerful and multiplex earthworks, characterise this later population. But their military system was but an extension of the family gatherings for defence which the conquered race had organised, and which the conquerors developed into clan gatherings, powerful for offence too. Yet they had a certain skill in war, though its method was that of the guerilla, whether of an The Celts in Battle. ... .. » ' Afghan tribe or a JNew Zealand clan. Like their modern survivors in Britain, they for long "did not know they were beaten." They used "long and pointless" swords, and carried small bucklers also, both probably of bronze, or bronze-bedecked. They had in their scythe- axled chariots a force of mounted infantry that was not to be despised ; for, if the curious chariot-charge failed, their occupant jumped to the ground to fight on foot, while his driver "took cover" and awaited his return. They used mounted men as well as cavalry, and seemed to have trained dogs to help them in their outpost work.t Above all, they feared not death, for "their dogmas taught that souls never perished, but passed, at death, into other bodies." Those who have faced an Afghan rush or a Soudan charge can best appreciate the fighting power of the coastal British who first came face to face, and sword to sword, with the military might of Rome. *The tribes generally carried buckler, poignard, and short lance, "at the lower end of which is a piece of brass in the form of an apple, with which it, is their custom to frighten their enemies."— Xiphilinus. (Colt Hoare, i. 10.) t Ilozier, " Invasions of England," vol. i., p. 7. EKGLAXD BEFORE THE EXGLISII. 53 And this, the leading military power, and at that time the Leading colonising power of the world too, came as the next invading wave from ^JuSt* 1 the south. Julius Caesar had conquered Gaul, and in so doing had found that British fighting men had joined in the resistance o\ the Gallic tribes which he had beaten down. It was the old story re-told of the wolf and lamb in the fable. Britain had, for family and racial sympathies, aided the invaded, and had disturbed the stream of Roman conquest. So it was that, on the 20th September, 54 B.C., the great general decided on invading Britain. But the Jullus Cfflsar> M BC> Story of its conquest must be very briefly told. The first effort made from "Tortus Itius" — Boulogne — was nearly a disaster, certainly a failure. But for the personal courage of the standard-bearer of the 10th Legion (there were only the 7th and 10th), it is an open question whether the troops would have got on shore at all. The expedition "from find to finish" had lasted just three weeks. Even the second attempt — in May, 53 B.C. — only reached the Chilterns, though this time Caesar led five legions; but he based on Richborough, crossed the Thames at Cowe}' Stakes and defeated Cassivelaunus, Captain of the Trinobantes, at Verulamium (St. Albans), and, receiving hostages, made peace. But no Roman garrison was left in Britain, and for nearly one hundred years the country was left to independ- ence and external peace. This was not broken until a.d. 43, when the Emperor Claudius sent Aulus Plautius and Vespasian Claudiug 43AJ) to Britain with the 2nd, 9th, 14th, 12th, and possibly the 7th Legions. Cunobeline was defeated, and Camulodunum, now Colchester, was taken; and while Vespasian subdued, in thirty-two battles, the district south of the Thames as far as Cornwall, Plautius broughl into subjection the distncl north PlautlU8 ostorius. of the river a, far as Gloucestershire. Publiua Ostorius Scapula waged war againsl the tceni near the Wash, and then turned his victorious anus againsl Caractacus in Siluria. Bui bis defeat, after a mosl stubborn r< i tance in his last Btronghold, Caer-Caradoc, in Shropshire, did nol cow the native tribes. Again 54 SOCIAL ENGLAND. the Iceni rose, under Boadicea, to be again heavily de- feated by Suetonius Paulinus. But exhaustion led to peace, and the appointment of a wise administrator, as well as a skilful general, in Atmcola did much to consolidate the Roman power and civilise the conquered race. Agricoia. r^ Qre were ^ the tlirl>ll i eilfc tribes of the extreme north of the island to be dealt with; but Agri- cola, like a wise general, assured the peacefulness of the country in his rear before he moved against the northern Celts. During his government, therefore, the great military roads which crossed Roman Britain were com- The Earu^Roman pig^^ though possibly some may have been traced before ; but it required peace and time to complete them as they were when the Romans left, and this the turbulent past had not fully afforded — certainly not in that portion of the land north of the Thames. Agricoia saw that the necessary security of his "base of operations" depended on the civilisation which his wise administration began and which the growing years completed. "He saw that this could only be effected by giving them a relish for the arts and a taste for elegant pleasures. To this he excited them by his conversation in private and by his public measures. He encouraged them to erect temples, forums, and houses. He caused the sons of the British chiefs to be instructed in the language and knowledge of their conquerors. Such measures produced rapid effects. The Britons soon began to adopt the Roman dress, and they changed the rude garb of their ancestors for the dignified toga. The manners of the Romans also gradually took root among them, and they gained a taste for erecting porticos and baths, and indulging in other luxuries." And while this was going on he advanced into Scotland, and, ufter a two years' campaign, finally defeated — at least for a time — the northern tribes under Galgacus, on the Grampian slopes about Dealgin Ross.* Moreover, in order that he might further protect the steadily progressing civilisation of the south against savage raids, he built between the Tyne and Solway, and again * General Roy, " Military Antiquities of the Romans in Britain," p. 83. ENGLAND BEFORE TEE ENGLISH. 55 between the Forth and Clyde, a chain of torts, both eventually to be the bases of more extensive lines of defence. One of these more extensive lines was the Wall of Hadrian, "the Roman Wall" par excellence, L ^s of° Defence. since it is better known to ns than any other Roman work of its kind; the other, the Wall of Antonine, repaired later by Severus, from the Forth to the Clyde. Hadrian's Wall is described by Mommsen ["Roman Provinces," I., p. 186] as in strictness "a military road protected on both sides by fortifications, leading from sea to Bea for a length of about seventy miles, westward to the Sol way Firth, and eastward to the mouth of the Tyne. The defence on the north is formed by a huge wall, originally at least sixteen fe6t high and eight feet thick, built on the two outer sides of square stones, filled up between with rubble and mortar, in front of which stretched a no less imposing fosse, nine feet in depth, and thirty-four feet or more in breadth at the top. Towards the south the road is protected by two parallel earthen ramparts, even now six to seven feet liigh, between which is drawn a fosse seven feet deep, with a margin raised to the south, so that the structure from ram pari to rampart has a total breadth of twenty-four feet. Between the stone wall and the earthen ramparts on the road itself lie the camp-stations and watch-houses, viz., at the distance of about four miles from one anothei the cohort camps, constructed as forts, independently capable of defence', with gate openings towards all the four sides; between every two of these a smaller structure of a similar kind with sally-ports to the north and south ; between every two of the latter four smaller watch-houses within call of each other." The more northern line of defence, the Wall of Antonine, consisted, according to the same writer, of " a considerable earthen wall, with fosse in front and road behind, and so was not adapted [like the Wall of Hadrian] for defence toward the south; moreover, it also included a number of smaller camps." * The country had been mapped out into five districts (p. 13), of which the names are preserved in the [mperii Notitia, but ill-- situations are almost entirely conjectural These were protected by works of varying size at important strategic points at first, but later, ;it points joining the centres of national and civilised lite. * The work of Several is, however, referred by some Inquirers to the Wall of Hadrian. On the- whole subject, see J. 0. Brace, "Handbook to the Roman Wall" (8rd Ed., 1885), So of Momm-rii's statcm.nts cited altove, however, arc. from a military point of view, iii my opinion, absolutely untenable — 0. 0. K 56 SOCIAL ENGLAND. There were five classes of roads. The Vice Militares, or military roads, ran as nearly straight as Mm^ G Roads possibly and were designed for military pur- poses. Rapid concentration of troops, or reinforcement of isolated garrisons in a disturbed country, was as necessary then as now. It was only by such means that skill and discipline could prevail against great masses of brave but savage foes. To them the quickest were the shortest roads. They were not made for trade, commerce, or civil convenience. They linked only strategic points fortified, which were in their turn to become, or to be replaced by, towns. They were made by drawing two parallel furrows, between which the ground, levelled and beaten hard, was the " Pavimentum " ; on this were placed in succession the " Statunien," a concrete of mortar and gravel; the "Rudus " of small stones and lime; the " Nucleus," a mixture of lime, chalk, broken tiles, or earth, or of gravel, sand and lime with clay ; and lastly, the " Snmmum Dorsum," or " Summa Crusta," composed of either Ha^-stones or a surface of gravel and lhne.* The whole mass was called the "Agger." On them at other intervals than the towns or camps were the Diversoria and Caupones — inns or resting-places ; and at regular intervals of a Roman mile (the mille passus, equal to 4,834 - 28 ft.) were the " Milliaria," or milestones, f The other roads, often " Romanised " on existing winding native trackways rather than originally Roman, were the " Vicinal es," or branch roads ; " Vise Privatae," or private roads; " Agrarias," or country roads ; and " Devise," or by-roads. Guarding these were "camps" or fortresses, which were also divided into three classes : — Camps. . . . 1. lne Gastra Exploratoria, mainly of a temporary character and of weak trace. 2. The Gastra ^Estiva, of a semi-permanent character, sometimes strengthened still more if held on into the winter, as Gastra Hiberna. 3. The Castra Stativa, or permanent holdings, which either became towns or were replaced by them when the fortress was no longer wanted to overawe the land and its people. * Vitruvius. f The inscription on one at Leicester is " Imp. Cassar, Div. Traian. Parth- F. Div. Traian. Hadrian Au^. Pont. IV. Ces III. A Rates II." ENGLAND BEFORE THE ENGLISH. 57 But whatever these were, they had a definite form, if originally const rue ted by Roman hands, unlike the irregular earthworks of the Celts they supplanted, or the circular works of the Sax. >us and Panes who followed them. Tin y were more or less rectangular. They were square or oblong because their form depended on the parade formation of the Roman army. The legion, or any of its component parts, was an organised, disciplined body that " fell in for duty " as systematically and regularly as an English battalion or brigade. It was not unlike the latter, for it ranged under the Empire from 4,000 to 0,000 or more regular troops, to which might be added an equal number of auxiliaries. The .--pace naturally varied with the strength of the force encamped, but a full legion occupied an area of about 1,020 ft. by 2,320 ft., and was covered by a rampart G ft. high and 8 ft. thick, with a ditch in front 3 ft. deep and 5 ft. broad.* The dimensions of the latter, of course, varied with the necessity of holding the work with a small garrison, when the parapet was heightened and the ditch made complex with obstacles. A good example of this is shown in the fort at Ardoch, in Strathallan, on the line of Agricola's conquest. Its regularity of form marks it Roman; in it was found an inscribed stone, showing it was once garrisoned by the first cohort of the Spanish auxiliaries; its compound ditches indicate a small garrison which had enlisted all the elements of defence that a successive series of obstacles against a savage rush could give. Only the inner rampart could have been seriously guarded. On each side was a gateway : in fronl the " prsetorium" or "qua'storium," in rear the " decuman" or extraordinary, and on cither side the "left and right principal" gates. I n those ascribed to Agricola, these entrances are protected by bending ou1 and overlapping the parapets where the gate was cut. In England and Wales true Roman camps are rare, unless they be such as were afterwards converted into towns, such as Wareham, Colchester, Winchester, etc. In other instances they may have improved an existing fern-ess. as possibly pasiau did the Uriiisli camp a< Amesbury, which bears Ins name, [f not quite regular, itis more o than a Celtic fort * Godwin, I b Arohnologioal Handbook," p. 22. 58 SOCIAL ENGLAND. Or, as in the somewhat prolonged campaign against Caractacus, an important square camp, capable of resisting a sudden attack,, was made at Brandon. Other good examples are to be found at Caistor, Norfolk, and Sherwood Forest ;* but the following, often called "Roman," would seem rather to be "Romanised" — Castle Acre, Yarmouth; Egbury, Andover; Grimsby, Newbury; Godwin, Painswick; Masbury, Shepton Mallet; Perborough, Hampstead Norris ; and Roundway, Devizes. As a general rule, those made distinctly for military purposes along the great roads were about twenty miles — or a day's march — apart and were square. Those that were occupied temporarily, or re-made from existing earth castles, may be identitied — 1. By actual Roman remains, such as wheel-turned pottery, scattered coins, and oyster shells. 2. By their being in the neighbourhood, and especially at the intersection, of undoubted Roman or Romanised roads. 3. By Roman names when such are traceable, or by survivals thereof, such as Street, Stone, Stretton, Wick, Cold Harbour, etc. The legionf was the tactical unit of a Roman army, and consisted, under Julius Csesar, of ten cohorts of infantry of about 3G0 men each, and each divided into three maniples. Under the Empire the cohorts ordinarily numbered 600 men each, the first cohort of each legion, however, being double the strength of the rest. Cavalry and light troops were attached to each legion, but were invariably recruited from among the provincials ; while the legions, though recruited in the provinces as a rule, and very rarely indeed in Italy, contained only Roman citizens, for the most part, no doubt, of provincial descent. The military colonies, composed of discharged soldiers, to whom land had been granted by way of pension, must have afforded excellent recruiting grounds ; and while the legions were kept in the same province for years in succession, recruits raised in one province were commonly sent to serve in another, in order to check the growth of a spirit of nationalism in the army. In battle each legion would be drawn up, ordinarily, in * Archaeologia. t The above account is based on \V. Rustow's Heervoesen und Kriegfuhrvng C. Julius Cdnara, Gotha, 1855. EXGLAND BEFORE THE EXGLISE. 59 two or three lines of cohorts (aciea duplex, triplex). Spaces were left in the front between the cohorts, the lines being so drawn up that the intervals of the first were in front of the cohorts in the second, and vice versd. All the in- fantry were armed alike — with shield, sword, and pilv/m,, a lance some six feet in length, with a heavy head of soft iron, hardened only at the point. Each cohort was ordinarily ten ranks deep. Advancing till within ten or twelve paces of the enemy, the first rank of the first line of cohorts would hurl their pila with the design, not unfrequently successful, of spreading confusion in the ranks of the enemy. Tor ihese weapons, apart from the grievous wounds they could cause, would often stick in the shields, when the heads would bend and drag the shield down ; and meanwhile, the soldiers of the first rank, who had thrown their pila, would spring forward and attack with the sword, while the second rank, after hurling their pila over the heads of the first, would strike in as opportunity offered to fill the places of their dead or wounded comrades. The rear ranks acted both as a reserve and " a wall behind which exhausted warriors could find shelter," and, in the last resort, they served to cover the retreat. The heavy load carried by the Roman soldier did not materially Li --en his mobility. The cavalry, which was stationed on each Hank of the legion, watched the enemy's cavalry, in order to prevent its charging or outflanking the Roman troops, and in case of a victory followed up the retreating foe. This arrangement, the account of which is based mainly on the recorded battles of Csesar in Gaul, may or may not have been exactly followed in the British wars, for all "drill formations" must have then, as they do now, depended on the nature of the ground, and it is clear that much of the country was at that time densely forested, ill-drained, and with much marsh land. There is practically no detail of any Roman battle fought on British soil, but it is stated that, when three Legions were sent to collect forage, the cavalry, which seems to have been Gaulish horse, were sent to guard them and scout. Similarly in the advance against CassivelaunuB, the cavalry crossed the Thames ford at Cowey Stakes, followed by the Legion in close order; but in BUCb a cramped terrain the Cohorts must have crossed in succession to form line on (ho 60 SOCIAL ENGLAND. far bank. It must be remembered that the tactics of the opposing Britons were, apparently, simply those of savages in all periods. Isolated attacks, under skilled leaders, each with his own following, and delivered against any part of the enemy's column ; and to this may be added the usual savage " stratagem " of the ambuscade into which the enemy were to be drawn by a feigned retreat. Chariots were used to carry the mounted infantry when the ground was suitable for the movement of wheeled vehicles. Thus, after the defeat of Cassivelaunus, he is said to have dismissed his demoralised infantry and kept only 4,000 chariots.* Again, when Suetonius fought with Boadicea he seems to have arrayed his 10,000 men, composed of the 14th Legion, the vexillarii of the 20th, and some auxiliaries, in line with his flanks, secure so that they could not be " turned," and that the numerical superiority of the British could not be fully developed. The frontal attack that ensued was fierce and bloody, and cost the assailants 80,000 killed, while the Romans lost but 400. Finally, during the invasion of Caledonia by Agricola, the Roman army was formed on one occasion in two lines. The first had 800 auxiliary infantry in the centre, and 3,000 cavalry on the flanks ; the second consisted of the regular legions in line. It is noted here, too, that great confusion was occasioned among the British by the chariots ; " their horses, without managers, frightened and wild, running hither and thither .... bearing down everything before them." Poly- bius, writing two centuries earlier, gives the following details of the tactical formations of the Roman soldiery, which pro- bably still held good : — " The Roman soldier when in fighting order does not cover more than three feet of ground. But since it is necessary for him to move as well as to stand, in order that he may be enabled to cover himself with his shield, and to deliver blows with both the point and the edge of his weapon, each legionary requires to have a space of at least three feet about him on every side, clear and free from every obstacle." In the attack of such strong closed bodies as the Greek phalanx, their tactics were that while "they oppose one division of their force to the enemy, they always hold the other division in reserve." While, speaking of their fighting power * General Roy, " Military Antiquities of the Romans in Britain," p. 6. ENGLAND BEFORE THE ENGLISH 61 generally, he says, "Always in readiness for prompl and decided action, they cannot be embarrassed by any particular form or aspect of the hostile demonstration Whether formed up in the ranks of the legions, or in small detachments, or in open skirmishing order, when man might be opposed to man, the soldiers of Rome are prepared, as they are qualified, to go gallantly into action" According to the Imperii Notitia* the Roman army in Britain numbered 19,200 infantry and 1,700 cavalry, under the command of the Comes s V^? n iJf t °° an Army in Britain. Sii.rn,, ;<■; Litnris, who governed the southern and south-eastern coasts; the Comes BHtanniarum, who had charge of the general administration of the army, and \\\c Dux Britanniarum, or commander-in-chief, who had his headquarters with those of the 6th (Yietrix) Legion at Eboracum, or York. The other legions were the 2nd (Augustan), at Isca Silurum, or Caerleon ; the 9th (Hispanica), which was incorporated with the 6th; the 10th (Victoria Yietrix), and the 20th Legions - ( Valens Yietrix), at Deva, or Chester.! There are many traces of these old legionaries, showing how they had settled in the land of their military exile, perchance with British wives. Most of inSp^Jons the sepulchral inscriptions refer to soldiers or their people. Thus at Cirencester died " Rufus Sita, horseman of the Gth Cohort of Thracians, aged forty-six years, served twenty- two years"; and near Caerleon is a tomb inscribed to Julius Valens, a veteran of the Second Legion, the Augustan, who lived a hundred years Intersecting Britannia, and guarded b} r these semi-perma- i - « iit fortresses, abandoned when their military use was passed away (such as Ardoch); or by stronger earth-castles, which were altered as they stood, and occupied as towns (such as Wallingford) ; orbygreal fortresses of Celtic or Belgic trace, strengthened by Roman skill, which though for a time a settlement, gave place on low< r grounds to a more convenient for occupation (such as Dorchi ster, in Dorsetshire), ran a • i i tea fonrl li to tif' M oentury. f The 14th had been stationed here, but withdrawn. C2 SOCIAL ENGLAND. network of military roads as straight as hands could make them. How they were so driven through wild forest, thick marsh, and pathless downs it is very hard to tell. But the Itineraries of Antonine, dating about a.d. 320, show fifteen great itinera, or military ways, of which six converge on Londinium, and three on Calleva (Silchester), from which, in addition, start two others not in the Itineraries. Sorbiodunum (Old Sarum) is the meeting-point of six, and one runs in a perfectly straight line to Axium, on the Somersetshire coast, near where is now the pretty village of Uphill.* In all, there are some 218 Roman stations known in Britain, of which two (Verulamium and Eboracum) ^sSions 13 ^ are municipal towns ; and nine (Aquse Sulis, Camboricum, Camulodunum, Glevum, Isca Silurum, Lindum, Londinium, Rutupias, and Deva) were colonice, having the rights of Roman citizens. Probably for the first two centuries these stations remained unwalled, even if converted into permanent towns. It is difficult otherwise to account for the complete destruction of Verulamium, etc., during Boadicea's rising. But as the country became more settled, the wall of stone either supplanted the rampart of earth, or, as at Silchester, the Roman Calleva, grew up inside the earthern vallum of the Attrebatian town. These fortified cities were formidable. They were still rect- angular, if not square, and had also the four entrances of the Roman camps they superseded, these being now provided with gates and gateways, often flanked with towers. Many of these were, as at Richborough, round and solid at their base. The walls themselves consisted of two parallel facings of stones, roughly squared, inter-stratified with tiles, often laid in herring- bone fashion, the space between being filled up with rubble and mortar. Where tiles were not readily available, as at Silchester, rows of flat stones were substituted. Roman arms in Britain are much the same matter of con- Arms and Armour J ecture tnat tne y are elsewhere ; but it is hard to imagine on what ground it is assumed t that iron weapons characterised the Teutonic rather than the Roman race. That the armour, whether of plates, or bands round the waist and chest and over the shoulders (Lorica * Colt Iloare, vol. i., p. 38. -j- Boutell and Llewellynn Jewett, ENGLAND BEFORE THE ENGLISH. 63 perforate and Itumcralia), or of pieces of metal sewn on a leather coat (Lorioa squamata), may have been of brass or iron is evident. Either metal would serve the purpose of defence. But as the long-shafted pilum was without, doubt of iron, so it may be assumed that the short hand-to-hand gladius was of steel, as the broad para/.onium, or dagger, was. The high civilisation of the Roman implies the knowledge of how to make steel, and this is the true metal for offensive tactics. The pilum was like the bayonet, the gladius like the cavalry- man's sword — weapons for close quarters; and thus the best method of fighting, before heavy missiles were used in war was the method of lighting best calculated for disciplined and organised i roops. Whatever metal it was made of, it hung on the right side, so as not to interfere with the shield {clypeus, of iron; or scutum, of wood and leather) carried on the left arm. A statue in the London Guildhall Museum shows this. Arrow- heads of iron, introduced from, if not entirely used by, the auxiliaries of the legion, have been frequently found, as in the excavations at Vindomis ; but there is no evidence that the legionary was so armed. Bronze weapons have lived on, and are found solely because they are less liable to rust. Saxon swords of iron in a tumulus are usually entirely destroyed. Mediaeval arms and armour have suffered in the same Avay, but in their case they have been converted to secular uses, if not to ploughshares and pruning-hooks. Of the standard, or signum, of the legion, one undoubted, if not unique, example has been found in the ruins of Silchester. It was of special importance in Roman warfare. Its loss was dishonour ; on it the military sacramentum, or oath, was taken. On many coins it is shown as a bird with wings horizontally Btretched; but on Trajan's Column it is carved as one with wing- standing vertically, as if the bird were swooping down. The bronze eagle now at Strathfieldsaye is but the body with a square socket at the base to hold the staff; but in the upper Burface of the back are two square holes, in which the wings were Bockefo r siKer for victories won, is unknown , bul it 64 SOCIAL ENGLAND. is possible that in the troubles of Carausius and Allectus the body of the eagle may have been hidden away, and the remainder of the signum taken or lost by an auxiliary. Hidden as it was, buried in the ashes of a wooden roof or what not, it represents the end of the days of Roman rule in Britain. Long before the last legion left for home, sea pirates of all sorts — Saxons and Norsemen, Jutes and Angles — had troubled the repose of the Count of the Saxon shore. The mighty Empire of Rome was falling to pieces at last, and Honorius, to strengthen its feeble heart, recalled his legions from all distant shores, and left Britain to self-government, self-defence, and despair. The earliest trace of art in Britain hardly perhaps comes within the scope of our history, for it takes Art and us back to the pakeolithic era, when men had Architecture. nQt yet i eame( j to polish the chipped flint implements which served for all their needs. The range of these primitive wanderers was wide, and they have left their stone arrow-heads and hatchets in half the Paijeoiitnic river-drifts of the world. It was, however, Period. only a section of their descendants, the men who made their homes in the caves of North-Westem Europe, who possessed the rare gift of artistic design. These Cave-men of France and England were the " Greeks " of palaeolithic humanity, and it is to one of them that we owe this con- vincing proof of the antiquity of art on British soil.* It consists of an exceedingly spirited sketch of a wild horse with an upright or hog mane, etched with a flint point on a fragment of rib, and was found in the Robin Hood Cave in the Cresswell Crags, on the dividing line between Nottingham and Derbyshire. It was buried under many feet of rocky deposit, so hard as to require blasting, which itself underlay a dark stratum of earth containing fragments of Roman pottery. This unique specimen has indeed a special value, for it con- clusively connects the inhabitants of what is now England with the hunters and engravers who lived in the caves of what is now France. These were the men who etched the * Boyd Dawkins, " Early Man in Britain," p. 185. ENGLAND BEFORE THE ENGLISH. 65 contemporary mammoth on his tusk, and the reindeer on his antler, and wore as necklaces or amulets the engraved teeth of the Cave-lion. It is necessary to be guarded in our geography in dealing with the people of this ancient time, because our modern England was then but the centre of a broad promontory divided by a narrow sea from Scandinavia, while neither the English Channel nor the Bay of Biscay was in existence. But these gifted savages passed away, having us in utter ignorance of their appearance and their habits — of all, in short, except their genius in art; and though a hazardous attempt has been made to connect them with the Eskimo, it is probable that no existing race can claim to bo of their descendants or their kindred. It is otherwise with the next race, the long-headed and short-statured people who, after an interval the length of which we leave geologists to fix, inhabited England — and England practically as we know it now. Possibly among the small dark Welshmen and the black Irish of the Wes1 the type of these people may still survive ; and there is less doubt that the swarthy Silurians, whose obdurate ferocity, not move than their unlikeness in character and physique to the Celts of Gaul and Britain, so deeply impressed the Roman invaders, were their lineal descendants. Probably they were a non-Aryan people, akin to the Basque or Tchudic races; and their sepul- chres, in the shape of the famous long barrows, are with us to this day. Though still ignorant of the use of metals, they had learned the art of grinding the flint, and their polished stone implements, their axes and their knives, are of excellent workmanship. In some respects they were comparatively advanced, but in artistic matters they were far behind the dwellers in the caves, who, with all their talents, had neither In it nor sepulchre. Unlike the Cave-men, all ._ ..,*. . .,, ,, Neolithic Period. the N'-ohthic races were ceremonious with the d<;ul, and it is on their tombs that we find the first trace of th.- modern decorative feeling. Some of these tombs, which also served as crematories, are not only iiiii 11 i Tombs flagged and el in inhered, but elaborately orna- mented with whorls and spirals. They had learnt the art of making pottery, though without the potter's wheel, and of decorating it, though only with the simplest geometrical forma F — Vol I 66 SOCIAL ENGLAND. It is not until after the arrival of another race— a tall, round-headed people whose affinities are un- The Bronze Age. certa i n _ t } iat anv advance in the rudimentary arts takes place in Britain. Whether the new-comers were the vanguard of the Celtic army, or a hybrid race, or a tall Finnish stock, it is not necessary to determine ; but Ave may note as evidence in favour of the latter view that the Aryan has not, as a rule, been a tomb-builder, as this early Briton emphatically was. In default of more precise information, these two races— the short-statured, long-skulled people and the tall, round-skulled race (though conceivably two families may be covered by the latter description) — can be conveniently distinguished as the people of the long and of the round barrow, though the latter may belong to two stocks, or two divisions of the same stock. The long barrows are plentiful, but the round are still more numerous, crowding every spot sacred to the elder race. It was these people of the round barrows who brought us the use of bronze, if not the art of making it ; and with the age of bronze we enter the domain of consecutive historj^. Pottery in Britain at this epoch is still hand-made, but it exhibits considerable skill in the making. The shapes are good, and some examples are of considerable dimensions, approaching three feet in height. The variety of ornamentation also is, within certain limits, extraordinary. We find food-vessels, cinerary urns, drinking- D6c0r3.fci.v6 Art vessels, and the somewhat mysterious per- forated cups which have been variously taken for lamps and incense-burners, but which are now generally believed to have been fire-baskets for conveying the lighted embers to the funeral pile. The patterns are generally made up of straight lines, arranged in crosses (of which there is an endless variety), in network, and in zigzag; sometimes with toothed im- pressions filled with white, or diversified with alternate cut and raised squares, and rows and groups of dots — round, oval, and triangular. Sometimes, too, we find impressions of a withe or twisted thong, and in one case a braid of three distinct plaits is clearly visible. Though the results are so various, the method of making seems to have been of extreme simplicity, the patterns having been worked either with some pointed instrument, or by pressing a notched stick or braid ENGLAND BEFORE THE ENGLISH. 67 against the wet clay. Curved and circular patterns ind exist, but they are far from being common, and more probably indicate a later date; but there is never any trace of the attempt to delineate animal or vegetable life. Nor is there much change in the character of ornament as the Bronze Age becomes more completely developed: the advance being shown by the increasing substitution of metal for bone and horn, stone and clay, rather than by any progress in the taste displayed in working it. The decoration of the bronze is also geometric, and so remains until the coming of the Iron Age, though the increased desire of personal adornment is attested by elaborately graduated necklaces of imported amber, by the frequency of rings and armlets, and by stone wristlets adorned with gold, or with the mixed gold and silver which the native workers had not yet learned to separate. Britain, moreover, is now entering on the period of written history. It is impossible to be sure that our shores were not touched on by th a Car- ^ginning of J . History. thaginian Himilco, though the ideiitiricati™ of his (Estrymnides with the Scilly Islands must be aban- doned : and if, as is likely, they were reached soon after by other Sidonian navigators, no record has come down to us. But in the fourth century B.C., probably before the death of Alexander, Pytheas, a citizen of the Greek colony of Marseilles, had certainly visited Britain, and the account of his voyage in search of new markets became the centre of a literature, partly romantic and partly serious, which served for the next four centuries as the general storehouse of information about these islands. This was the case with numerous writers of Imperial times, some of whom, like Strabo, persistently decried Pytheas and his travels. It is to one of the compilers of this period, Diodorus Siculus, a contemporary of Juvenal, thai we owe the preservation of a most interesting story. He tells us <|i: from Hecata-us, a writer whose work is openly aded on Pytheas -thai Britain is the birthplace of Latona, and in consequence thai Apollo was honoured there above all the other gods, and, more remarkable still, thai he possi >sed in the island "a m:i j niiieeiit sacred enclosure and a remark- able temple of circular Bhape." Of course, this ma) be a mere coincidence, bul one cannot, help remembering the f2 68 SOCIAL ENGLAND. existence of Stonelienge. That extraordinary erection suf- ficiently answers the description in Diodorus, and whether referred to or not, it was certainly the greatest architectural effort of the early Britons. It is unnecessary to discuss whether it was erected as a place of burial or a place of worship ; for among rude races the honours paid to the dead ancestors are apt to blend inextricably with those paid to the living gods. But the people who raised these great trilithons in the centre, and ringed them round with that gigantic palisade, had a fine sense of what constitutes imposing architecture. Moreover, the large upright blocks which form the circumference bore imposts dovetailed into each other so as to form a continuous architrave, evidence that the methods as well as the spirit of architecture were then in course of development. An examination of the tombs in its neighbourhood — some of which seem later, some older, than the temple — point to its being a work of the bronze epoch ; nor does its method of construction, any more than its conformation, justify the opinion put forward by one arclneologist — that it is subsequent in date to the Roman invasion. Later in date than the vast stone circle of Avebury, which from time immemorial has been quarried by the inhabitants of the district, it Avas probably somewhat earlier than the Age of Iron, the next chapter which an examination of British soil opens to the reader. That age could not have been many centuries old at the time of Caesar's landing, for bronze was not wholly The Iron Age . . . superseded. But the introduction of iron pro- duced vast improvement in the tools of the craftsman, and in this way made a considerable difference in the art, though hardly in the architecture, of Britain. But the improvement in design is not less striking in the Iron Age than the improvement in manufacture, though the former seems to have been rather the result of external influences than of esoteric development. The Celtic population, albeit the date of their coming is a matter of controversy, had by that time consolidated a great part of their conquest ; yet fresh swarms must have for a long time been passing from the mainland and establishing the various kingdoms which the Romans found. This close intercourse between the Continental and the island Celts would naturally lead to the export into Britain of products. ENGLAND BEFORE THE ENGLISH. 69 which the former obtained from adjacent and more civilised communities, and it is precisely at this time Celtic Art that we meet with metal work distinctly borrowed from southern forms. The gold corselet disinterred at Mold in North Wales, the gold cup found in Tipperary, are obviously conies of Etruscan repousse, and Metnl Work may be matched by finds at Corneto and Prseneste ; while the British metal work of this period includes, besides Celtic torques and bracelets, rings and safety-pins and brooches, which loudly proclaim their foreigD parentage. Combinations of the spiral and the volute, and various examples of flamboyant tracery, now become abundant, many of their forms being of extreme beauty. Such are the designs on the famous head-ring dug up at Stitchel in Roxburghshire, and on the da<_r> which the art must have been practised, may be guessed from these details, which, it must be remembered, represent only a part of what has survived in one of the many villas scattered throughout the country. These, indeed, are so numerous that anything like an exhaustive sketch of them is impracticable. We may note, however that as a rule mythical legends arc the first choice of the designers. The demigods, the Naiads and the Tritons, and Orpheus with his lyre, are the most popular figures; Bacchus with his panther, Mercury, Cupid, and Tan are also common. The great gods are rarer, Neptune and Jupiter being most often met with. Jupiter is found at Bignor with Ganymede, and with Mars at Frampton. Venus and Mars and Diana are also found at Bramdean. Apollo is hardly known, unless some of the supposed figures of Orpheus were meant for him. Representations of birds and beasts are tolerably common, and there are hunting and fishing scenes, though they are not numerous. One of the most interesting of these is in the mosaic discovered at Lydney, where fishermen in their leather coracles (the rude <.val boats still in use on the Dee) arc depicted, one of them bring in the act of Landing a British salmon. Scenes from the arena are rare; only a few such, besides the one at Trading, are known, One of these is at Bignor; and, oddly enough, while the beasts at Brading have wings, at Bignor the gladiators are thus equipped The borders of these mosaics are also often extremely elaborate. That, al W Ichester, for instance, shows on a grey ground in the first place a red border, then a line of bricks of two colours, then the (J rot ik 82 SOCIAL ENGLAND. or key pattern, then a broad twist or braid ; next comes a series of most intricate squares and medallions, then another plait, then a foliated arabesque, then a narrower braid, then the procession of beasts, and, after more plaits, the procession of birds, to whom Orpheus is playing. The centre is lost, but in the square corners are elongated human figures or genii, arranged with exquisite feeling for decorative effect. When the wooden walls of the villas — which, as we have said, were raised on brick or stone foundations — fell in, the pavements were covered up with the debris, and were soon smothered with vegetation, which formed a soil, preserving them from the violence of the weather and the more destruc- tive violence of man. The public buildings, being in towns, were not thus protected, and have suffered accordingly. Of these the baths have had the best fortune, and in places like Aqua3 Sulis, or Bath, the remains are still visible, and in some cases in actual use. Theatres and basilicas and 'prodoria there must have been in abundance ; and though of the latter several foundations have been discovered, only one theatre has been certainly identified. Of amphitheatres, too, which were a necessary ingredient in the life of every true AmphiUi^atr^s 8 R° man > an d which, owing to their size, shape, and position, were less likely entirely to dis- appear, there is only a meagre list. They were in the main seemingly earthen structures, rarely faced with stone, and, unless the great cavity at Cheriton be the site of one of them, did not equal in size those of second-rate Gaulish towns, such as Orange and Vienne, not to speak of Aries and Treves. This disappearance, though not unaccountable, is exceedingly un- fortunate, particularly in reference to the Christian architecture of the time. We know that long before the time of Constan- tine churches were plentiful, and that those ArchnecUire. destroyed in Diocletian's persecution (when Constantius was governor) were rebuilt (as Bede expressly states) when, in the reign of the son of Constan- tius, Christianity became the State religion. Many more must have arisen when the pagan rites were forbidden, and during the century and a half — in some parts of England two or three centuries — which elapsed before the arrival of that pre-eminently destructive people the pagan English. Destruc- tive as their paganism was, probably their conversion and the ENGLAND BEFORE THE ENGLISH. 83 erection of their churches on the old sites was still more destructive to the evidences of British Christianity. But, whatever be the cause, the fact is that of the ecclesiastical architecture of Christian Britain scarcely one authentic fragment has survived. St. Martin's Church at Canterbury, a church at Reculver, another at Dover, and possibly the Abbey of St. Albans, may perhaps contain consecrated fragments of Roman-British origin. A coin found at Ciren- cester (having on the reverse the sacred monogram of A and 12), some Christian symbols inscribed on stone, a pinion of a doubtful sarcophagus, and a palm-branch roughly scored on a sepulchral slate — such are the vestiges of Christian art and architecture in Britain. This is true not only of the reigns of the Christian Caesars, but also of the period of quasi-independence before the Roman civilisation was drowned in the flood of English barbarism. Though glass of every kind seems to have been manu- factured by the British provincials, they do not seem to have given much attention to art *otterymd Metai- pottery. The Samian vases with their tine red glaze, though made elsewhere than in Southern Europe, never seem to have been manufactured here. The best British manu- facture was the figured ware made at Durobriva3 or Castor, near Peterborough. It is not of great beauty, but finer than the ordinary English pottery, for the manufacture of which extensive works existed in Lincolnshire, Hants, Somerset, Worcestershire, Northamptonshire, and Essex. Terracotta toys and statuettes were also manufactured: metal-work both hi iron and bronze, and occasionally in gold, has been discovered, and rings and brooches, mirrors and spoons (resembling the old Apostle spoons), in immense variety. i-pt in .small works of this kind, bronze in Britain belong. iir_ r to this period rarely reaches a high standard, the very line pieces discovered being almost certainly due to some of the hungry Greeklings of Imperial Rome, and transported thence by their Roman owners. I )[' course the Boil of Britain, like the soil of other pro\ in of the Roman Empire, teems with Roman ,.,, t • ,• • i l , i Roman Coins. corns, lli. list is rainy complete from the time when Augustus gave the world its law in Home to the time when Bonorius shivered in Ravenna But only a small q 2 St SOCIAL ENGLAND. part of these are the indigenous mintage of Britain. It is not important to discuss whether the coins of British kings, made chiefly in Verulamium and Camulodunuin, were the work of British or Roman artificers. There is but little doubt that Agricola, at any rate, established regular Roman mints in the quieted province ; there is none that they existed at a somewhat later date, and were in working order in the second century. Hadrian's exploits in Britain and elsewhere are written in his coinasre, and the commonest of all our Roman coins are those of Antoninus Pius, Avhich frequently show on the obverse the ficmre of Britannia seated on a rock with a shield at her side and a spear leaning against her shoulder. Other indigenous coins belong to the reigns of Commodus and Severus, of Caracalla (" who assumed and polluted the respectable name of Marcus Aurelius "), of Geta, of Diocletian and Maximian (whose coinage is scanty), of "the glorious usurper" Carausius, of Allectus (who betrayed and murdered him), of Constantine the Great, of Fausta his wife, of Crispus and Constantine his sons, the list ending with the younger Constantius. The greater part of these belong to the mint of London, established in the reign of Constantine, which apparently superseded the older places of manufacture. The coins vary in fineness of execu- tion — the gold being generally excellent work, the silver not unf'requently rough, and the brass occasionally barbarous. But however inferior in point of mechanical finish they may be, in boldness and vigour of design they fairly put to shame the coinage of our own day. Even those not struck but cast, either by forgers, or in irregular mints set up to supply the temporary needs of temporary governments, are usually of respectable quality. Fhom the earliest times there was a belief that a happy o. m. edwards. l an( i m ll of pearls and sunshine, lay far out in British Trade and the Western Ocean. The first wall of its kind's. Industry. , , . , , , © palace was coated with brass, the next with tin, and the third flashed with the red light of orichalcum. During the decay of the Phoenician cities, when all the isles of the ocean mourned over the fall of Tyre, the Greek and the Roman longed for a share in the Phoenician trade with the mysterious tin islands of the west. During the lifetime ENGLAND HE FOSE THE ENGLISH. 85 of Alexander the Great, and of Aristotle, about .*)•'>() B.C., the Greek colonists of Marseilles fitted out an expedition for exploring the Western Ocean. The command was given to Pytheas, who had won renown by his studies in mathematics and navigation. It is .from the fragments that remain of his works that we get our information about the earliest stage of the history of British trade and industry. He saw the abundant wheat of a Kentish harvest, he was struck by the 1 1 barns in which the corn was threshed, he tasted the •1 mad.' of wheat and honey, but did not visit the interior, and did not see the tin mines. Two hundred years after Pytheas, the geographer I\>si- donius, Cicero's tutor, visited the west. Expecting, probably, to rind the islands of the ocean even richer than the farthest regions of the mainland — the soil of which glittered with silver, tin. and white gold — he crossed over to Britain, and pierced further into the west than Pytheas had done. He saw the more savage life of the interior, and visited the tin districts of Cornwall. He found the tin- Tin workers hospitable, civilised, and expert at their work. The ground is described as rocky, but containing earthy veins, from which the tin was ground down, and smelted, and purified, before being made into knuckle-shaped slabs for transportation. It was carried in waggons, during the ebb of the tide, to a neighbouring island, whither the merchants came to seek it. The tin island has been supposed by different writers to be St. Michael's .Mount, the Isle of Wight, and the isle of Thanet. From it the tin was carried in Bhips to the coast of Gaul, and thence overland to the Rhone Valley and Marseilles. During the three hundred years that elapsed between the visit of Pytheas and the Roman intercourse the trade and industries of Britain must have developed very rapidly. Pytheas says nothing about towns: in his time, probably, there were only huge hill-fortresses, into which a whole tribe fled for safety in time of invasion. By the time of the Roman Conquest, inhabited towns were taking the place of these hill or marsh fortifications. The intercourse with Greek and Roman merchants was closer, as the number and character of British coins show. The Britons' firs! standard of \ahie was cattle, and perhaps bars of iron 86 SOCIAL ENGLAND. or small slabs of tin. About the time of Pytheas' visit, or very soon after, they had coins in imitation of Greek coins. It is supposed that they began by imitating Gaulish copies of the gold stater of Philip II. of Macedon. Later, they coined silver and bronze. Before the Roman Conquest they had begun to letter their coins, in consequence of the growing intercourse with the Roman conquerors of the mainland. The corrupt Greek models were no longer followed, and British kings described themselves, in imitation of what they saw on Augustus' coins, as " Tincommios Commi Filius," or " Cunobelinos Rex." Csesar, however, in a passage which has certainly been altered (B. G., v. 12), says that the British money was either brass or oblong pieces of iron of a certain weight. Before the Romans came, iron as well as tin was found and manufactured in Britain. Caesar says that iron was found on the coast, but only in small quantities. There is no doubt that there were ironworks in the Severn valley before the Romans beofan to work them or to tax them. At first British weapons were made of bronze, and probably imported. But, before the coming of the Romans, the bronze axes had been discarded in favour of the new iron swords and spears. These were at first imported from Gaul, but the Britons soon learnt to manufacture them for them- selves. The sword-blades were iron, manu- factured in the south-west of the island ; the sheaths were bronze, and the hilts were beautifully decorated with studs of red coral. The scythe-blades attached to the war chariots of Cassivelaunus were undoubtedly of British manufacture. In the earliest Welsh romances — romances full of pagan reminiscences, long anterior to the Arthurian c} r cle — the western parts of Britain are regarded as the home of skilful handicraft. The fashioning of iron cauldrons, the enamelling of sword-hilts, the colouring of sword-blades, the sharpening of whalebone javelin-points, the dyeing of shields, the plying of crafts bordering on magic, are generally associated with the west. One romance describes the journey of needy kings of Dyfed into Llcegr, plying a craft. They came first as saddlers, and their saddles were so beautifully coloured that none could be sold but theirs. Driven into another place by the jealousy of the saddlers, they tried shoe-making, with the same ENGLAND BEFORE THE ENGLISH. 87 success, on account ot the beauty and excellence of their work. They had also succeeded as manufacturers of shields, which they c iuld work in blue enamel The romaiuvs arc full of legends concerning the begin- nings of agriculture and stock-farming. Hugh A °Ti culture the Mighty is described as bringing the plough into the Isle of Britain, and many a Legend is connected with the first sowing of seed. At the dawn of historical times, all animals that have been domesticated at all were in domestic use amoDg the Britons. Probably the last to be domesticated were swine and bees, and concerning the domestication of these we have legends. Swine were first brought into Britain by Gwydion ab Don, and he stole them from a kingdom lying on the border of Eades. Bees, on the other hand, were a gift from Heaven, and a mediaeval Welsh poet refers to the legend in his description of snow-flakes — " Bees from Heaven, so white, are they." On the eve of the Roman conquest, Britain was rich in agricultural produce. Whatever invaders had come into the island, Caesar says, they had given up war for tillage. The island was densely populated, Caesar thought, the buildings were numerous, and the number of cattle great. Among the agricultural exports were cattle and hides, and wheat and barley, of which there was abundance in the island. British hounds were highly prized, being used in war by the Gauls and in the chase by the Romans. Slaves were probably exported, and the slave-trade was not condemned until St. Patrick censured the Welsh king of Ceredigion for selling Christian slaves to the pagan English. In exchange for these exports, the Hritons obtained manufactured iron and bronze articles, pottery, salt, and manu- factured cloth. It is known, however, that they had, besides iron articles of their own, pottery of native manufacture, and coarse cloths which were gradually coining into use instead of skins. Pliny, who wrote between the firsl ami second Roman invasions, describes the texture of the cloth from which the Briton's sleeved jacket, trousers, hut, and cloak were made. It was a COarse felt, and SO thick as tO be a protection against, a sword The doth was worked in glaring colours, and the Briton seems to have been excessively vain. His favourite 88 SOCIAL ENGLAND. dress was one of striped cloth, containing little squares of all bright colours. The favourite colour seems to have been naming red. Dyes were obtained from the bark of various trees and from lichen; lichen is still used in Wales as a dye, and it produces a very lovely colour. The gold torques and rings were probably of native manu- facture ; but the glass beads, with which the Briton so loved to decorate himself, were probably brought by Greek merchants from Egypt. From time immemorial the Britons had beads of amber, jet, and various stones ; they wore beaten gold and silver on their coats of various colours ; they had pins and brooches made of polished boars' tusks. The smith was in the highest estimation, and the potter, as yet without his wheel, could produce vases and cups of various kinds. Caesar says that Britain contained all the trees of Gaul with the exception of the beech and the fir. Tacitus heard that all ordinary produce could be found in Britain, except such as that of the olive and the vine. The vine was in- troduce* I by the Romans, and the vineyards of the south-east had not become quite unimportant even in Norman times. In a Welsh poem written in its present form in the thirteenth century, there is a description of a battle between trees. The birch is there, but the fir is still probably a stranger ; the , pear-tree is newly introduced, and the plum-tree is scarce. Internal communication was carried on by means of rivers and of ridge ways. On inland rivers, the Inland Trade. 1 -, ■,-, 1 n .,•■ coracle was used — a small round boat, with a keel of thin planking and sides of basketwork covered with hides. The inhabitants of the south-western parts, especially, were good sailors. The Gaulish tribes of Morbihan summoned them to their aid against Caesar, who gives us a description of their ships. The ships were adapted both for coasting purposes and for putting out into the deep sea. Their bottoms were considerably flatter than those of Roman ships, in order to be able to land everywhere and to pass over shallows. Their poops and prows, on the other hand, stood high out of the water, in order to withstand the storms of the open sea. The vessels were strongly built of oak, the cross-benches were fastened by iron spikes, and the anchors were secured by chains of iron, and not by ropes. Their sails were raw hides — often painted blue in order to escape observation at a ENGLAND BEFORE THE ENGLISH. 89 distance. Caesar does not think they used hides because they had no canvas, or were unaccustomed to its use. They pro- bably thought that no canvas sail would be strong enough when sudi huge vessels were battling against a storm. The ships were too strongly built to be injured by the beaks of the Roman ships, too high to be caught by grappling irons, and excellently fitted for fighting among shallows and rocks. They were manned by intrepid sailors, who would dare to put out into the Irish Sea even in open boats. The commercial intercourse between Britain and Gaul explains the coming of the Etonians, as the like intercourse between Wales and Ireland in later times explains the conquest of Ireland by the kings of England. The two important rivers in the history of British com m irce are the Thames and the Severn. On the bank of each of these rivers a temple had been erected to Lud, the god ol commerce. On a hill on 'he western side of the Severn, in Gloucestershire, where the river is tidal, the fisherman and the merchantman sacrified to Lud. The place — L} r dney — still bears the god's name, and the remains of the temple have been discovered. Another temple stood, undoubtedly, on a hill by the Thames, still called Ludgate Hill. It might be mentioned, also, that the Welsh name for London is Caer Ludd — " Lud's town." In British legend, Lud was his people's protector and the cause of their prosperity. He has a silver hand; he delivered his people from three scourges ; he had twenty-«>iie thousand milch cows ; he was famous among the gods for his generosity and for the prosperity he caused. He has a fleet, and occasionally appears as a god of war. King of the Orkneys, with a temple at the mouth of the Severn and of the Thames, his reputation undoubtedly grew with the increase of British commerce, and the Roman merchant came and Worshipped at his altars. Wh> n the Romans conquered it, Britain had ceased to be a land of sunshine and pearls. Tacitus knew that the ocean produced pearls, but of a dusky and bluish hue. Nevertheless he thought that the island contained gold and silver and other metals, as the prize of <■< >i i- jik st. The Romans did much Gov British mining, and especially for internal traffic. But tin, Wad, and iron had been worked, perhaps, centuries before tine. The Roman invasion helped the development of 90 SOCIAL ENGLAND. British trade and industry, but the development was proceed- ing steadily before they came. Military conquest followed in the wake of Roman commercial enterprise. Summing up, we may say that, before the Roman conquest, there was commercial intercourse between all the tribes within the island of Britain, for we find the coins of the south-eastern districts in the valley of the Severn and in the valley of the Clyde. There was also a close commercial intercourse between the western coast and Ireland, and between the whole length of the southern coast and Gaul. The exports were almost entirely raw produce, the imports almost entirely manu- factured goods. Still the Briton wove cloth of various colours, manufactured gold ornaments and iron weapons, and was expert in enamelling and in the manufacture of chariots. AY hen the Roman came, he found that the tin mines, the gold mines, and the iron mines were being busily worked. The Roman occupation put an end to the native coinage, but it greatly developed British agriculture and manufactures, and greatly extended British trade. And the sway of Lud's silver hand became wider than ever. In spite of all the civilising power and appliances which the f t richards R° mans brought to bear upon their province, industry and Trade it inust have been widely different in ap- in Roman Britain. <• ±i i i i • i i pearance from the land which we know. Centuries of drainage, of tree-felling, and of road-making have altered our country to an immense extent. A thousand swamps, which the old roads had to bridge or to avoid, have disappeared. The land was then covered with deep forests, of which only fragments survive in parks, or memories in such names as " the Weald " of Kent. Through these forests the Romans cut their long, straight highways, but the primitive wood stood close on either side, and the Stone Street, across Surrey and Sussex from London to Chichester, must have been like our shadowy New Forest roads. Wild beasts there were, such as have now vanished. The beaver dammed the streams; wolves wasted the flocks all over the island, bears remained in some parts ; red deer were common. Near Durham has been found a tablet of thanksgiving to Silvanus, the hunter's god, dedicated by a Roman cavalry officer, who had killed a wild ENGLAND BEFORE THE ENGLISH. PI boar of remarkable size, "which many people before him could not briii*'- in.'' The Romans are said to have introduced fallow-deer, pheasants, hornless sheep, geese, and fowls: but the evidence is, perhaps, not conclusive for all these things. Nor can we be sure, though it is possible, that they began some of the embankments which protect our low grounds against the sea or against river-floods. The climate was much what it is now. The Romans were pleased to think — and they were right — that they held the best part of the island; but they noted of the climate that it was "rather rainy than snowy, and, when it is tine, there is a fog." The goddess of ague, Tertiana, was not worshipped for nothing. Vines were introduced later: olives would not grow, but corn and timber throve. The island was " very woody," and produced, as we have seen, all the trees of Gaul, " except the beech and the fir," and in excepting even these Caesar was possibly mistaken. Having no vines, the island had to import wine ; and ivory and amber also occur in a list (obviously very imperfect) of its imports. To set off lndu ^ e &na against these, corn may have been one of the chief exports. The export trade in corn with the Con- tinent began before the Roman occupation, but was no doubt methodised and extended by the new government, An his- torian of about A.D. 380 speaks of " the corn supply usually brought over (to Gaul) from the Britons," indicating that the supply was a regular, not an occasional, one ; while another writer of about the same time shows that the corn (or some of it) was habitually sent from Britain up the Rhine. But so much of this corn as was annona (p. 22) was, of course, n<>t. paid for. Another thing by the export of which the provinee was able to pay for what it imported in the way of wine or other foreign luxuries, was its metal. The mine-, were often, though not perhaps invariably, in the hands of the Roman government, but, no traces have been found in Britain of such elaborate organisation of the mining community as the records of Vipasca, in Spain, sh<>w us. Roman mining t|s bave been preserved in the galleries of the Mendip Hills, and elsewhere have been found bars ofsilverand bin, pieces of copper, and blocks of lead. The pigs of lead were often dated in the mould, and we see from them that the Romans lost no time in exploring the resources of a new province. Theconquest 92 SOCIAL ENGLAND. began in 48 A.D., and there is a mass of lead from Somerset with a date equivalent to 49 a.d. The lead came partly from the Mendips, partly from Derby and other counties ; the tin is from Devon and Cornwall. The lead was so abundant that the output was limited by law — in order, we may suppose, to keep up the price. Copper was got from Anglesey and Shropshire. Beds of iron scorise, containing coins or other Roman remains, tell where iron was extracted in the Forest of Dean, in Herefordshire, and in Monmouthshire. The Sussex clay-ironstone was known, but was not worked on so large a scale as afterwards by the English from the thirteenth to the eighteenth century. It may well have been these beds which Csesar had in mind when he said that iron was got in the coast region. Gold and pearls, we suspect, were more often talked about than found. But cattle and sheep, skins or furs, and slaves were regularly exported, as also wild beasts for shows at Rome.* British dogs were valued abroad for hunting ; and hunting scenes with dogs are not uncommon on the British pottery of the age. A Roman satirist speaks as if Kentish oysters were well known on dinner-tables at Rome toward the end of the first century. The value of jet and of " Kimmeridge coal " for ornamental purposes was well understood ; jet ornaments have been found in graves of this period, but there is nothing to show that jet was exported. Nor is it likely that British coal was then sent abroad, although it was certainly burnt on British soil, Coal ready for use has been found among the fortifications of the wall in Northumberland, and reminds us how Wallsend (the Roman Segedunum) has been famous for coal in modern times. Of woven fabrics we do not hear that any were ex- ported from Britain ; but still of home labour and of products for home consumption there was no lack. The stone-cutter was a busy man. Slates were dressed for roofing ; bronze articles were probably cast here as well as imported. Beer was brewed. Glass and pottery were made in large quantities, so that the importation of glass, which an early writer men- tions, may have ceased to be necessary. The red earthenware, called Samian, was very possibly imported ; but the coarser kinds of pottery were made in many parts of Britain. Kilns * The wild beasts, however, may not have been paid Tor. ENGLAND BEFORE THE ENGLISH. 93 for making them, and even parts of makers' stocks, have survived. Among the chief centres of production were London: Unchurch, on the Medway; parts of the New Forest; Dymehurch; and Castor, in Northamptonshire (Durobrivae ? ). Pottery, too, of many more or less artistic kinds was either made in Britain or at least valued there. An enormous trade was done in bricks, and in tiles for building, flooring, or roofing. These were made by soldiers for military purposes, but also by manufacturers, and probably in any part of the country where suitable earth could be obtained. Whether here, as elsewhere in the Roman world, trade gathered itself into guilds or corporations, we do not know. Two inscriptions, which seem to speak of collegia of smiths, may perhaps mean only army-smiths. We cannot, on the whole, think of Britain in the first centuries after Christ as a very rich province, but it is one of the provinces in which the existence of a wealthy class has left the plainest traces. This class may be accounted for by wealth made in business, by wealth seized in war, or by the salary and emoluments of office. The bodies iii r i i vi Roman Villas, and the huts of the poor have alike crumbled away and left no trace ; but the tombs of the well-to-do survive to show us their jewellery, and there is no country within the Roman Empire in which the remains of Koman town houses and country villas are more numer- ous or finer. These ruins are now found underground, sometimes in our towns, sometimes well out in the country away from any modern building, and with nothing to draw aii -nt ion to the spot save the oyster-shells which the plough brings to the surface. But it will generally be found that these country houses stood near, not on, the line of a Roman road, so that an easy approach was secured. They prefer a wist or south aspect, and always have plenty of water in the neighbourhood, or even brought on to the premises in pipes Baths formed a regular part of such houses; just as many inscriptions referring to larger baths being built or rebuilt, show how important bathing was thought to be wherever bodies of men were gathered together, in towns or on the lines of the great fortifications. The profound peace of the inner countr] is indicated by the fact that none of the country houses show any traces of havinir been fortified. In spite of 94 SOCIAL ENGLAND. the decay of centuries, we can often still follow the ground plan of the villa, see the arrangement of small sleeping-rooms and store-rooms round a quadrangle, and find our way to the reception- or dining-rooms. The well can be cleared out, and yields very curious finds. We can explore the system of warming the house — more applicable to a one-storeyed building than to a building of many floors. Below the ground was a low crypt or series of chambers placed under- neath the living-rooms. Slaves, told off for the purpose, kept up great fires in these vaults (the hypocausis), and the hot air was made to circulate in pipes under the floor and round the walls of the rooms above. The risk of fire was diminished by using pipes of thick pottery. The mere size of these houses is in some cases worth noting. Built low, they naturally spread out ; but, even when we allow for that, we shall find that the area covered by the structure and its outbuildings indicates great wealth and great numbers of slaves. The buildings at Woodchester, which have never been explored to the end, are known to stretch 330 feet in one direction and more than 300 in the other. But the glory of the villa is usually its tesselated or mosaic pavement. Such pavements have been found in England of great splendour but even the simple geometrical patterns, in quiet and har- monious colours, are pleasant to the eye and creditable to the taste of the designer. The fragments of painted stucco which have been found in the ruins show how the walls were decorated internally. Slices of foreign marble, as a wall-decoration, though not unknown in Britain, are very rare. They were probably too costly. None of the houses have yet yielded anything to show the name and quality of the owner, but the signs of taste and wealth are generally unmistakable. There is no more splendid pavement than that of Wood- chester, in Gloucestershire, on which the figure of Orpheus appeared in the midst of his birds and beasts, placed within a most elaborate design of conventional ornament. The pavement at Bignor has the four seasons, represented by human heads with symbols, a figure of Ganymede, and groups of gladiators. At Brading the mosaic bears dancing figures, and, other designs, whose meaning is not so clear. Other good pave- ments have been found at Cirencester, Handboro' (in Oxford- shire), York, Leicester, Canterbury, London, and Frainpton ENGLAND BEFORE THE ENGLISH. 95 in Dorset). Among the other representative remains of the Roman period, we must mention the earthworks of North- umberland (the masonry ot' the wall is mostly ^mc), the camp at Housesteads, the market-place at Chollerford, the Roman bath in the Strand, and the imposing walls of Por- chester, Richborough, and Pevensey (Anderida). Nothing gives one a better idea of the greatness of scale in what the Romans undertook than to see the Norman castle lost, as it were, within the enclosnre of Pevensey. Among the best of the collections to which the finds of miscellaneous objects have made their way, may be mentioned the museum at the Guild- hall, London ; the collection of the Society of Antiquaries of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, to which have flowed so many curiosities from the line of the Roman wall ; and the Shrewsbury Museum, where most of the objects from Wroxeter (Viroconium or Uriconium) have found a home. The museum at Reading is acquiring the movables found in the systematic excavation of Silchester (Calleva). But it is likely that many grassy meadows and unsuspected mounds yet cover remains of bygone days. The Roman occupation must have done a good deal toward making the mixed population of Britain more mixed still. New comers from . J 0Tei s^ Admixture. any land under the Roman government might settle here. We find a Palmyrene at home under the pale sky of Northumberland, and a Moor or Mauritanian in the service at Ellenborough. The men of the legions, where- ever they came from, were not of British birth— the officers illicit be of Italian origin ; and the strong auxiliary forces — called Belgians or Bat avians, Alpine troops or Spaniards, Gauls or Germans, Dalmatians or Sarmatians— whether they \\-r a farmhouse; there, they have been (\u