by R.W. Morgan (1860)
PREFACE
A FAITHFUL account of the origin of native British Christianity
as opposed to the Papal system first introduced four hundred and
fifty-six years subsequently by Augustine the monk, is here, in
readable compass, presented to the public. The history of such
origin is inseparably blended with the long-sustained resistance
of our early forefathers to the invasions of their liberties by
the greatest empire of antiquity, wielding against them the
military forces of nearly three-quarters of the globe. The events
thus recorded have left their moulding power to this day on our
constitution in Church and State. The most cursory glance at them
is sufficient to demonstrate the untenableness of the supposition
that Britain is indebted to Germany - a country which has never
itself been free-for its free institutions, or to Italy for its
Gospel faith. The leading principles of her laws and liberties
are of pure indigenous growth; and her evangelical faith was
received by her directly from Jerusalem and the East, from the
lips of the first disciples themselves of Christ. The struggles
in after ages down to our own period for the restoration and
preservation of these indigenous birthright liberties, this
primitive apostolical faith, constitute the most stirring and
ennobling portions of our annals; and we may rest assured that as
long as in their modern developments of British Protestantism,
British Patriotism, and British Loyalty, they continue to inspire
the national heart, our island will continue to retain her
position in the van-ward of the march of Order, Liberty, and
Progress.
Dec. 24, 1860
ST. PAUL IN BRITAIN
CHAPTER I
THE RELIGION OF BRITAIN AND WESTERN EUROPE - DRUIDISM.
ITS PRINCIPLES AND INFLUENCES. - THE PREPARATION FOR
CHRISTIANITY.
WESTWARD of Italy, embracing Hispania, Gallia, the Rhenish
frontiers, portions of Germany and Scandinavia, with its
headquarters and great seats of learning fixed in Britain,
extended the Druidic religion. There can be no question that this
was the primitive religion of mankind, covering at one period in
various forms the whole surface of the ancient world.
The ramifications of Druidism penetrated, indeed, into
Italy, Greece, and Asia Minor; nor did Plato hesitate to affirm
that all the streams of Greek philosophy were to be traced, not
to Egypt, but to the fountains of the West. The pre-historic
poets of Greece anterior to the mythologic creations of Homer and
Hesiod, were, as their names imply, Druids--Musaeus, Orpheus,
Linus, (knowledge, the harp, the white-robed). Such historians
were necessarily poets, for with the Druids metre was the vehicle
of instruction. The visit of the British Druid, Abaris, was long
remembered at Athens. Greek fancy converted the magnetic needle
by which he guided his travels into an arrow of Apollo which
would transport him at wish whithersoever he pleased. A more
celebrated Druid, Pythagoras, founded a school in Italy the
effects of which, though he himself and many of his leading
scholars perished in a popular commotion, were never wholly
obliterated; the transmigration of souls, their preexistence and
immortality, the true theories of the heavenly bodies and their
revolutions, the severity of the esoteric system with its silence
and secrecy, being observed by various Italian sects down to the
Christian era. In the AEgean Sea, Samothrace and Delos were
Eastern cells of the same priesthood, the same rites being
observed as in Britain, and embassies at stated periods
exchanging visitations. 1 In earlier ages the City of Circles in
Asia Minor-Troia (Troy)- and the Minoan Labyrinth in Crete were
seats of the same widely-extended religion, and in Egypt the name
of the great mothertemple, Carnac, identifies its remote founders
with those of the mother-temple of the same name in Bretagne,
both meaning 'the high stones of worship.' In the East, however,
the principles of Druidism could only be traced in its earliest
records, whilst on the continent of Europe they bore in practice
and development the same corrupt relation to primitive Druidism
as at present the Roman Catholic religion in the same countries
does to primitive Christianity. In Britain on the contrary, it
had, for many reasons - the inaccessibility the island, its
freedom from foreign invasion, its character of sanctity, its
possession by Gomeridae--retained in great degree its on final
purity.
In the time of St. Paul it had been for a period of two
thousand years the established religion; and the attachment of
the people to its rule, with the desperate an well-sustained
defence they made in its behalf and that of their country against
the whole force of the Roman Empire in the meridian of its power,
confirm the impression left by a dispassionate examination of the
remains of its theology which have descended to us in the ancient
British tongue, namely, that it was a highly moral, elevating,
and beneficent religion, a superstructure not unworthy the prin-
......
1 Artemidorus, quoted by Strabo, the Orphic Hymns; Avienus de
Britannia.
......
ciple on which it assumed to be built, and by which it offered
itself to be judged, "The truth against the world," (Y Gwir erbyn
y Byd)
It has been observed by the historian Hume, "that no
religion has ever swayed the minds of men like the Druidic." The
determined efforts of the Roman empire to overthrow its
supremacy, and, if possible, suppress it altogether, prove that
its rulers had been made practically aware of this fact. A
Druidic triad familiar to the Greeks and Romans was, "Three
duties of every man: Worship God; be just to all men; die for
your country 2." It was this last duty, impressed by a thousand
examples and precepts, and not its religious tenets or
philosophy, which caused Druidism to be marked for destruction by
an empire which aspired to universal dominion and to merge all
nationalities in one city. The edicts of the Emperors Augustus
and Tiberius proscribed it throughout their dominions, making the
exercise of the functions of a Druidic priest, as those of the
Roman priest in the reigns of the Tudor sovereigns in England, a
treasonable offence. But nations cannot be proscribed. The
Druidic colleges in Britain, the only free state in Europe at
this period, continued to educate and send forth their alumni to
all parts of the Continent. Not till A.D.43, that is, fourteen
years only before the arrival of St. Paul in Rome, did the
second, or Claudian invasion of Britain take place. It took, ten
years of incessant warfare to establish a firm footing in the
south of the island; nor was it till seven years after the fall
of Caractacus that the Roman state ventured to give its legions
orders to carry out the leading object of
......
2 There is touching beauty in many of the Druidic triads, as in
the following:- "There are three men all should love: He that
loves the face of his mother Nature; he that loves rational works
of art, he that looks lovingly on the faces of little children."
......
the invasion -- the destruction by force of arms of the Druidic
cori, or seminaries, in Britain. The Boadicean war and the death
of 80,000 Roman citizens were the first results of this policy of
religious "dragonnades."
Summary of Druidic in Britain
Druidism was founded by Gwyddon Ganhebon, supposed to be the
Seth of the Mosaic genealogy, in Asia, in the year when the
equinox occurred in the first point of Taurus; or the
constellation of the Bull. Every year the equinoctial year is
completed about twenty minutes before the sun has made a complete
revolution from a certain star to ttc same star again. This
arises from the precession of the equinoxes, or from a slow
revolution of the pole of the equator round that of the ecliptic.
In 25,920 years the pole of the equator makes one entire
revolution round that of the ecliptic - hence the equinoctial
colure occurs before it did the preceding year. In 72 years the
precession amounts to one degree. If therefore, we have the
equinoctial or solstitial point given in the ecliptic at any
unknown period, it is easy to discover, by comparing it with the
present solstitial point, how long that period is past. When the
Druidic system was founded, the equinox, on the 1st of May,
occurred in the first point of Taurus, which first point is now,
on the 1st of May, 80 degrees from this solstitial point. It
requires 72 years to recede one degree. Eighty degrees multiplied
by 72 gives 5,760, the exact date when Druidism commenced, i.e.,
3,903 years before the Christian era, 181 years after the
creation of man, (This idea of when man was created is now
totally obliterated by science and historical facts - man has
been on the earth for at least 10,000 years - Keith Hunt) and 50
years after the birth of Seth. The astral bull of milk-white hue,
its horns crowned with golden stars, became the symbol, or
visible sacrament, of Druidism, In process of time the symbol,
as usual, superseded in the East the thing signified, and
Druidism became that tauric religion which gave the Crimea the
appellation of the Tauric Chersonese. Extending thence, this
corruption became the religion of Mithras in Persia, of Baal in
Assyria, of Brahma in India, of Astarte or the, Dea Syria in
Syria, of Apis in Egypt, and in later ages, transferred from
Egypt, of the two. "Apis" (or - calves as they are rendered in
our version of the Scriptures) of the kingdom of Israel. 3 In all
these religions the bull, or Taurus, was the sacred animal, and
the symbol was preserved free, as far as we can judge, from
idolatry by the Gomeridae of Britain. The bull was he sign and
representant of the great Druidic isle, and the name still, in
common parlance, continues to indicate a Briton of Britain as
distinguished from the rest of the world.
From Asia Druidism was brought into Britain by Hu Gadarn, or
the Mighty; its first colonizer, a contemporary of the Patriarch
Abraham, and under his successors, Plennydd, Coron, Alawn and
Rhivon, it assumed lts complete organization, becoming both the
ecclesiastical and civil constitution of the island. About five
centuries before the Christian era, its civil laws were codified
by Dunwal Moelmud the British Numa, and have since that period
remained the common, unwritten, or native laws of the island,
as, distinguished from the Roman, the canon, and other codes of
foreign introduction. These British or, Druidic laws have
been always justly regarded as the foundation and bulwark
of British liberties. 4 The examination of them does not
fall within our present purpose. The civil code and the sciences
were taught by
......
3 The symbol of Druidism in Crete was the Menw-tarw, or Menw-bull
and its chief temple the Labyrinth. Out of such simple elements
the imaginative Greek mind forged the fable of Minos, the
Minotaur, and the Pasiphae, as it did that of the rape of Europa
from the Astarte of Syria.
......
the Druids---orally or in writing indifferently---to every
citizen, but the Druidic system of divinity was never committed
to writing, nor imparted except to the initiated, and then under
obligations to secrecy of a very awful character. It is, however,
to the infraction of these obligations, when their force had been
impaired by the influences of Christianity, that we are indebted
for such knowledge as we possess of the real principles of the
primitive religion of our island.
Some of the Druid Teachings:
The universe is infinite, being the body of the being who
out of himself evolved or created it, and now pervades and rules
it, as the mind of man does his body. The essence of this being
is pure, mental light, and therefore he is called Du-w, Duw (the
one without any darkness). His real name is an ineffable mystery,
and so also is his nature. 5 To the human mind, though not in
himself, he necessarily represents a triple aspect in relation to
the past, present, and future; the creator as to the past, the
saviour or conserver as to the present, the renovator or
re-creator as to the future. In the re-creator the idea of the
destroyer was also involved. This was the Druidic trinity - the
three aspects of which were known as Beli, Taran, Esu or Yesu,
When Christianity preached Jesus as
......
4 Sir John Fortescue, "De Laudibus Legum Anglice Coke," Preface
to third vol. of Pleadings; Origin of the Common Law of England.
5 There are now three states of existence; the cycle of
'Ceugant,' where there is nothing of living or dead but God, and
God alone can traverse it; the cycle of 'Abred,' where all
natural existence originates from death - this man has traversed;
the cycie of 'Gwynfyd,' where all existence is from life to
life--this man will traverse in the 'Nevoedd' (changes of life
in heaven)....The Druids, contrary to the Mosaic account, made
the creation of man simultaneous with that of solar light. "Three
things came into being at the same moment - light, man, and moral
choice," --(Druidic Triads.)
......
God, it preached the most familiar name of its own deity to
Druidism; and in the ancient British tongue 'Jesus' has never
assumed its Greek, Latin, or Hebrew form, but remains the pure
Druidic 'Yesu' It is singular thus that the ancient Briton has
never changed the name of the God he and his forefathers
worshipped, nor has ever worshipped but one God. 6
The symbol of the ineffable name of the Deity were three
rays or glories of light. Every Druid bore these in gold on the
front of his mitre.
Other names of the deity were Deon, Dovydd, Celi, Tor,
Perydd, Sol, Rhun, Ner.
In the infinite Deity exist in some incomprehensible mode,
indivisible from himself, infinite germs, seeds, or atoms
(manred, manredit), each in itself full and perfect deity,
possessing the power of infinite creativeness. This branch of
Druidic theism is involved in profound obscurity. It appears to
have supplied Democritus with his theory of the atomic powers of
nature, and Plato with his typal forms in the mind of the Deity.
Matter was created and systematized simultaneously by the
Creator's pronouncing His own name. It cannot exist without God.
Nature is the action of God through the medium of matter. The
laws of nature are, in the strictest sense, the laws of God, and
that which is a violation of the laws of nature is necessarily a
violation of the laws of God?
The universe is in substance eternal and imperishable,
......
6 So Procopius also testifies:
"Hesus, Taranis. Belenus unus tantummodo Deus
Unum Deum Dominum universi Druides Solum agnoscunt."
De Gothicis, lib, iii.
7 The Druid regarded himself as the priest of the deity of
nature, but in addition to this hierarchic character there
appears to have been the following observances derived from
one original family, language, and religion common to his with
all the other forms of the primitive truth---libation,
sacrifices, tradition of the Deluge, of the war of the Titanidae
against Heaven, metempsychosis, adoration towards the East, the
division of the circle into 360 degrees, of the zodiac into
twelve signs, of the week into seven days. Most of these we find
in the Chaldaean faith, and it is certain the Chaldaeans were
highly civilised 2,000 years before the Christian era.
......
but in form it is subject to successive cycles of dissolution and
renovation. There is no such thing as annihilation in matter.
Every particle of matter is capable of all forms of matter, and
each form has its own laws of existence and action.
Around every separate existence, wherever it be, extends
infinity; this is 'Ceugant' (the infinite space, or allof-being,
ubiquity), which God alone can fill, sustain, or uphold.....
The faculty of the soul which constituted more especially
its eternity, or imperishable self-identity, is "cov," or memory. The
memory of all the evils and existences it has undergone in
'abred;' forms or develops in the soul immediately it re-enters '
gwynfyd,' and not before. For the end of such memory is to
preserve such 'Gwynfydolion' from a second fall. In the 'abred'
cycles there is a suspension of 'cov,' and of the consciousness
of selfidentity.
The doctrine of transmigration was certainly Druidic
but it is equally certain that it was held by the Druids in a
sense the Greek and Italian schools of philosophy have failed to
transmit to us....
......
10 Three things decrease continually, darkness, evil, and death.
Three things increase continually, light, truth, and life. These
will finally prevail over all; then 'abred' will end. (Druidic
Triads.) The idea of the eternal progression of man and the
universe which pervades the Triads is very fine.
11 A Druidic Catechism, of which fragments only are extant.
......
From a "Coelbren Rodd" extract:
"Master. What art thou?
"Disciple. A man.
"M. How?
"D. By the will of God. What God wills must be.
"M. Why art thou not something else than man?
"D. What God wills cannot be otherwise.
"M. Where art thou?
"D. In 'byd bychan.'
"M. Whence art thou come?
"D. From 'byd mawr.'
"M. What wert thou doing in 'byd mawr'
"D. Traversing the cycle of 'abred.'
"M. Where wert thou before thou didst begin to traverse 'cylch
abred'?
"D. In 'annwn.'
"M. What wert thou in 'annwn'
"D. The least of life that could be in itself, the nearest to
the teeth of the dead. And in all forms and through all forms
that are called body and life am I come hither into 'byd bychan,'
and misery and trouble have been my condition for ages and ages
since I was delivered from 'annwn' and separated therefrom
through the hand of God and His love, endless and indestructible.
"M. Through how many 'rhith' (forms of life) art thou come,
and what has been thy 'damwain' (character of life)?
"D. Through every 'rhith' that can possess or be called
life-in-itself, and my 'damwain' has been all misery, all
hardship, all evil, all suffering, and little of good or
happiness has there been of me before I am man......"
A new form of life, or the entrance of existence, ensued
simultaneously with death.
(SO WAS THE TEACHING OF THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL WITH THE
DRUIDS - A FALSE TEACHING, AS MANY OTHER RELIGIONS OF THE WORLD
HAD ALSO ACCEPTED - Keith Hunt)
Man had the power by accepting every evil as his part of
'abred' (or purification for 'gwynfyd'), to turn it to good.
Hence willing suffering for our own good or that of others was
the test - virtue of humanity, or 'byd bychan.'
(THE TEACHING OF FREE WILL WAS CORRECT BY THE DRUIDS - Keith
Hunt)
Every soul guilty of crime, by voluntarily confessing it and
embracing the penalty prescribed, expiated its guilt, and if in
other respects good, re-entered 'gwynfyd.'
Except by the laying down of life there could be no expiation or
atonement for certain kinds of guilt. Caesar's words on is point
are remarkable;--
"The Druids teach that by no other way than the ransoming of
man's life by the life of man, is reconciliation with the
divine justice of the immortal gods possible." - ("Comment.,"
lib. v.)
The doctrine of vicarious atonement could not be expressed
in clearer terms.
The value of an atonement, or expiatory sacrifice, was in
proportion to the value of the life sacrificed.....
(WHAT WE ARE SEEING IS THE DRUIDS HAD SOME THINGS CORRECT AND
SOME THINGS VERY INCORRECT - Keith Hunt)
Druid Temples
The temples of the Druids were hypaethral, circular, and
obelistic, i.e., ,open above and on every side, representing in
form the dome of heaven, and composed of monoliths, or immense
single stones on which metal was not allowed to come. The
dracontic, or circular form, symboled the eternal cycle of
nature. The monolithic avenues leading to and from the temple,
usually known as the dragon's head and dragon's tail, were in
some instances seven miles long. The national religious
processions move through these on the three great festivals of
the year.
All the prehistoric temples of Palestine, Persia, Italy, and
Greece, commonly called Cyclopean or Pelasgic, were Druidic.
Stonehenge, the Gilgal of Britain, is the wreck of four thousand
years' exposure to the elements. Its first founder, was Hu
Gadarn, B.C.1800.
Druid Universities
There were in Britain, south of the Clyde and Forth, forty
Druidic universities, which were also the capitals of the forty
tribes, the originals of our modern counties, which preserve
for the most part the ancient tribal limits. Hence, for instance,
Yorkshire retains the same disproportioned magnitude to our other
counties as the territories of the Brigantes, its British tribe,
did to those of the other tribes. Of these forty seats nine have
disappeared, the remainder were as follows:-
Three seats of the three Arch-Druids of Britain. 14
Caer Troia, or Caer Lud, or Caer Llyndain (the city of the lake
of the Tain (Thames), or of the beautiful lake, "tain" meaning
fair
or beautiful, hence the Tain so called in British, Tyne still in
North Britain), London.
Caer Evroc, York.
Caer Lleon, Caerleon.
Seats of the Chief Druids of Britain:--Caer Caint, Canterbury.
Caer Wyn, Winchester.
Caer Werllan, afterwards Caer Municipium, St. Alban's, or
Verulam.
Caer Salwg, Old Sarum.
Caer Grawnt, Cambridge, or Granta.
Caer Lell, Carlisle.
Caer Meini, Manchester.
......
14 The Gildas MS. (Julius, D. xi.), Cottonian Library, calls
these the three arch-flamens and twenty-eight flamens of Britain.
Geoffrey of Monmouth appears to have found the same titles in the
Armorican version of Tyssilio's History.
......
Caer Gwrthegion, Palmcaster.
Coel, Colchester.
Caer Goangon, Worcester.
Caerlon ar Dwy, Chester.
Caer Peris, Dorchester.
Caer Don, Doncaster.
Caer Guoric, Warwick.
Caer Meivod, Meivod.
Caer Odor, Bristol.
Caer Llyr, Leicester.
Caer Urnach, Uroxeter.
Caer Lleyn, Lincoln.
Caer Gloyw, Gloucester.
Caer Cei, Chichester.
Caer Ceri, Cirencester.
Caer Dwr, Dorchester,
Caer Merddin, Caermarthen.
Caer Seiont, Caernarvon.
Caer Wysc, Exeter.
Caer Segont, Silchester.
Caer Baddon, Bath.
The lapse of two thousand years has made but slight
alteration in the names of these primitive cities of Britain. The
Romans invariably fixed upon the chief caer of a British tribe,
generally the strongest military position in its bounds, for
their "castra:" hence the castra and chester superseded the caer
or British citadel; but the British name itself survived the
Roman. Llyndain is still London, not Augusta; Werllan, Verulam,
not Municipium; Caer Col, Colchester, not Camalodunum, &c.;, &c.;
The students at these universities numbered at times sixty
thousand souls, among whom were included the young nobility of
Britain and Gaul. It required twenty years to master the circle
of Druidic knowledge; nor, when we consider the great range of
acquirements which the system included, can we wonder at the
length of such probation. Natural philosophy, astronomy,
arithmetic, geometry, jurisprudence medicine, poetry; and oratory
were all proposed , and taught, the first two with severe
exactitude. The system of astronomy inculcated had never varied,
being the same as that taught by Pythagoras, now known as the
Copernican or Newtonian. 15 The British words for 'star,'
'astronomer,' 'astronomy,' are "seren", "seronydd,"
"seronyddiaeth;" hence the usual Greek term for the Druids was
"Saronidoe," astronomers. Of the attainments of the Druids in all
the sciences, especially in this of astronomy, classic judges of
eminence, Cicero and Caesar, Pliny and Tacitus, Diodorus Siculus
and Strabo, speak in high terms. In the Druidic order indeed
centred, and from it radiated, the whole civil and ecclesiastical
knowledge of the realm: they were its statesmen, legislators,
priests, physicians lawyers, teachers, poets; the depositaries of
all human and divine knowledge; its Church and parliaments; its
courts of law; its colleges of physicians and surgeons;
its magistrates, clergy and bishops. The number of Druids was
regulated by very stringent laws in proportion to the
population. None could be a candidate, for the Order who could
not, in the May congress of the tribe, prove his descent
from nine successive generations of free fore-
......
15 "He that will be a prophet of God," writes Gildas, "must never
rest till he has traced everything to its cause and mode of
operation. He will then know what God does, for God does nothing
but what should be, in the manner it should be, at the time and
in the order it should be. By understanding these laws of God, he
will be able to see and foretell the future." (Principles of
Prediction of Gildas the Prophet, lolo MSS., p.609.) Prophecy,
then, was with the Druids nothing but the theological term for
science, and Gildas supplies a useful commentary on Caesar's
words - "The Druids discuss many things concerning the stars and
their revolutions, the magnitude of the globe and its various
divisions, the nature of the universe, the energy and power of
the immortal gods." (Caesar's Com., lib. v.)
......
fathers. No slave could of course be a Druid; becoming one, he,
forfeited his Order and privileges; and hence perhaps one of
the reasons of the protracted, stubborn, and finally successful
resistance of the Druidic island to the Roman arms; for it was
not till the reign of Adrian, A.D.120, that Britain was
incorporated, and then by treaty, not conquest, with the Roman
dominions, the Britons retaining their kings, land, laws and
rights, and stipulating return to raise and support three legions
to be officered by the Emperor for the defence of the common
empire. 16 Bycommon law every Briton was seized as his
birthright five acres (ten English) of land in the "gweli
cenedl," the 'bed' or hereditary county of his clan. If the clan
land was exhausted, recourse was had to emigration or conquest,
and for this purpose the superfluous population was draughted off
as an army, or more generally as a colony. Hence the mother-tribe
and daughter-tribes of the same name which so frequently occur in
Britain, Gaul, Germany arid Hibernia. In addition to these five
acres, the Druid received five acres more and a certain fixed
income from his tribe. The difficulty of admission into the Order
was on a par with its privileges. The head of the clan possessed
a veto on every ordination. Every candidate was obliged to find
twelve head of families as sureties for moral conduct and
adequate maintenance; nor could he be ordained until he had
passed three, examinations three successive years before the
Druidic college of the tribe.
......
16 The accepting or circulating of Roman coin in Britain was made
a capital offence by Arviragus; for such an act, according to
the Roman construction, inferred the right of levying tribute, as
we see in the Scriptures: "Whose image and superscription is
this? Caesar's. Render therefore unto Caesar the things that are
Caesar's." From the reign of Claudius to that of Hadrian no
coins, therefore, of the intervening Roman emperors have been
found in Britain. From Hadrian onward there have been found a
nearly complete series.
......
These barriers to promiscuous admission threw the Order
almost entirely into the hands of the "blaenorion" or
aristocracy, making it literally a "royal priesthood," kings,
princes, and nobles, entering largely into its composition.
Druids Power
"All power," states Caesar, speaking of Gaul, "is vested in
the two orders of the Druids and aristocracy: the people
are nothing." This however, was evidently not the case in
Britain, where the primitive Druidic laws, unaffected hitherto by
foreign innovations, referred the source of all power to the
people in congress, and every congress was opened with the words
"Trech gwald n' arglwydd" - "The country is above the king."
Nevertheless, the authority and influence of the Druids were very
great, and, on the whole, as popular as they were great. The
extreme penalty lodged in their hands, and the one most dreaded,
was that of excommunication - "poena gravissima," states Caesar -
which was, in fact, a decree of expulsion from both worlds, the
present and future. The terror it inspired is the best proof that
it was not abused and but rarely resorted to; for the most
terrific punishments, if abused, soon lose their effect and
become despised.
Druids Sacred Animals etc.
The sacred animal of Druidism was the white astral bull, the
sacred bird, crested wren; the sacred tree, the oak; the sacred
grain, wheat; the sacred plant, the mistletoe; the sacred herbs,
the trefoil, vervain, and hyssop.
Druid Sacred Feasts
The great festivals of Druidism were three: the vernal, on the
1st of of May; the autumnal; and the mid-winter, when the
mistletoe was gathered by the arch-Druids. The mistletoe with its
berries, was the symbol of the Druidic Trinity, and its growh in
the oak of the type of the incarnation of the Deity in man.
Druid Altar
The hypaethral altar in the Druidic circle was called
cromlech (stone of bowing, or adoration). Near it another
stone received in a cavity water direct from heaven (holy
water.) This holy water and the waters of the river Dee, the
Jordan of ancient Britain, were the only waters permitted to be
used in Druidic sacrifices. No Druid could wear arms of any
description. None but a Druid could officiate at a sacrifice.
Druid Dress
The canonicals of the Druid were white linen robes, no metal
but gold being used in any part of the dress. The canonicals of
the arch-Druids were extremely gorgeous, not very dissimilar from
those of the high-priest of the Hebrew religion. The Druidic
cross was wrought in gold down the length of the back of his
robe.
Druid Service
No Druidic service could be celebrated before sunrise or after
sunset.
Druid = Peace
The Druidic was essentially a priesthood of peace, neither
wearing arms nor permitting arms, to be unsheathed, in its
presence; and though patriotism, or the defence of one's country
in a just war, was a high virtue in its system, we have no
instance of Druidism persecuting or using physical force against
any other religion or set of opinions. Its whole theory, indeed,
would have stultified itself in so doing; and herein consists no
small part of its identity with Christianity. 17
The saying of Taliesin, the prince-Bard and Druid, conveys a
great historic truth, though over-strongly expressed:- "Christ,
the Word from the beginning, was from the beginning our teacher,
and we never lost His teaching. Christianity was a new thing in
Asia, but there never was a time when the Druids of Britain held
not its doctrines."
Having thus passed in review the religious status of our
......
17 "In the ancient world," observes Higgins (Celtic Researches,
p.196), "the Druids were the only priesthood of peace. Clad in
his white canonicals, the Druidic herald presented himself
between two armies, and every sword was instantly sheathed."
......
own country, in the apostolic era, we proceed to give an epitome
of the events in British history which brought the royal family
of Britain into contact with St. Paul at Rome.
..........
To be continued with "Historic Positions of Britain and the Roman
Empire at the commencement of the Christian Era"
Note:
WE SEE THAT IN THE OVERALL THE FAITH AND IDEAS OF THE DRUIDS
WOULD MAKE CHRISTIANITY MOST ACCEPTABLE, AND WOULD BE FREELY
ALLOWED TO BE PREACHED AND TAUGHT IN BRITAIN. THE DRUIDS WERE
TRUTH SEEKERS, PEACE MAKERS, AND "YESU" OR AS THE JEWS WOULD
SAY "YESHUA" WAS ALREADY IN THE DRUIDS THEOLOGY. THEY HAD MANY
WRONG TEACHINGS AND TRADITIONS BUT AS TRUTH SEEKERS THEY WOULD
HAVE THE ATTITUDE OF LISTENING AND PROVING THE TRUTH AS BROUGHT
TO THEM THROUGH THE HOLY SCRIPTURES BY JESUS' DISCIPLES IN THE
FIRST CENTURY. AND SO WE FIND IN BRITISH HISTORY NO FRICTION
BETWEEN THE DRUIDS AND CHRISTIANITY, MAKING IT POSSIBLE THAT IN
THE SECOND CENTURY CHRISTIANITY WOULD BE THE NATIONAL RELIGION OF
BRITAIN, AS BRITISH HISTORY SO CLEARLY ASSERTS.
Keith Hunt
The Apostle Paul in Britain #2
Britain and Rome when Christianity started
HISTORIC POSITIONS OF BRITAIN AND THE ROMAN EMPIRE AT THE
COMMENCEMENT OF THE CHRISTIAN ERA.
JULIUS CAESAR, in justification of his invasion of Britain,
alleges the Britons to have been the aggressors, British levies
taking the field against him in every Gallic campaign. Those
singular collections of cardinal events known as the "Triads of
the Isle of Britain," corroborate the statement. Prior to
Caesar's campaigns in Northern Gaul, a British army of 50,000
men, termed in these Triads the "second silver host," under the
command of the two nephews of Cassibelaunus, or Caswallon,
invaded Aquitania, routed the Roman proconsul, Lucius Valerius
Praeconinus, at Tolosa, and compelled Lucius Manilius, the
consul, to fly with the loss of all his commissariat. On
receiving intelligence of these reverses, Caesar turned his arms
against the Veneti (Vendeans), who carried on a flourishing
commerce with Britain, and whose navy supplied the transport for
these auxiliaries. As long as the Venetine fleet, which from
Caesar's description of it would do no discredit to our present
state of nautical architecture, remained mistress of the narrow
seas, invasion was impracticable. Upon its destruction, Caesar
advanced by slow marches to Portius Iccius (Witsand), near
Calais, and on the 5th of August, B.C.55, the Roman fleet crossed
the Channel in two divisions. This first campaign lasted
fiftyfive days, during which Caesar failed to advance beyond
seven miles from the spot of disembarkation, lost one battle, and
had his camp attempted by the victorious enemy, a thing
unprecedented in his continental career. 1
The second expedition embarked in above a thousand ships,
and carrying the army which afterwards completed
......
I Dion Cassius states that Caesar's original intention was to
carry the war into the interior, but finding his forces
inadequate to cope with the British in the field, he abruptly
determined to close the campaign. (Lib. xxxix. p. 115, ed. 1606,
fol.)
......
the conquest of the world on the fields of Pharsalia and Munda,
set sail from Witsand May 10, B.C.54. The campaign lasted till
September 10, when peace was concluded at Gwerddlan (Verulam, or
St. Albans), the furthest point (70 miles) from the coast Caesar
had been able to attain. The conditions are not particularized in
either the Triads or Commentaries. Hostages and a tribute are
mentioned by Caesar, but it is certain from numerous passages in
the Augustan authors that no Briton of eminence left the island a
hostage or prisoner. On the conclusion of the treaty, Caesar
moved from Verulam to London, where he was entertained at the
Bryn Gwyn (white mount 2) by Cassibelaunus, the British
pendragon, or military dictator, with a magnificence which appears to have
found great favour in the eyes of the ancient Bards, who record
it with great exactness. Leaving not a Roman soldier behind,
......
2 The old belief that part of the Tower of London was built by
Julius Caesar is known to every one; and the White Tower was
pointed out as the part. "The White Tower" appears a version of
the original British name Bryn Gwyn, but whether Caesar was
lodged therein, or laid its foundation-stone, or was never at all
entertained in London, there seems to us to be so much good sense
in the sentiments put by Shakespeare on this point in the mouth
of the young king Edward V, that we make no apology for
transcribing them:--
"Prince Edward. Did Julius Caesar build the Tower, my lord?
Gloucester. He did, my gracious liege, begin that place; which
since succeeding ages have re-edified.
Pr. Ed, Is it upon record, or else reported Successively from age
to age he built it?
Glo. Upon record, my gracious lord.
Pr. Ed. But say, my lord, it were not registered; Methinks the
truth should live from age to age, As 'twere entailed to all
posterity,
Even to the general all-ending day.
Glo. So wise, so young!
I say, without characters, fame lives long."
King Richard 111, act. iii, sc. 1.
......
Caesar disembarked his forces at Rutupium, at ten at night, and
arrived at Witsand by daybreak the next morning, September 20,
B.C.54.
The tests of the success or non-success of a campaign are
its effects. The effects of the second Julian invasion
demonstrate that both at Rome and in Gaul it was considered a
more serious failure than the first. The line quoted by Lucan---
"Territa qucesitis ostendit terga Britannus 3"—
as a common sarcasm in the mouths of the Pompeian party against
Caesar, may be thrown aside as the invidious exaggeration of the
defeat on the Darent, and the loss of his sword to Nennius, the
brother of Caswallon; but it is undeniable that the invasion cost
Caesar for a time the loss of all his continental acquisitions.
Before he could dispose of his troops in winter quarters, the
Treviro, Eburones, Senones, and Sicambri rose in arms, and the
work of Gallic conquest had to be re-enacted.
To estimate aright the military abilities of Caswallon, and
the resources of the British people at this period of the first
collision of our island with the continent, it should be borne in
mind that they were engaged against perhaps the ablest general of
antiquity, heading an army to which, either before or after the
invasion, France, Spain, Western Germany, Africa, Egypt, Asia,
and finally Rome itself succumbed; the conquerors, in fact, of
Europe, Asia, and Africa, and the real founders of the imperial
dynasty of the Caesars. The double repulsion of the Julian
expedition by the ancient Britons has never received due weight
......
3 Aulus Gellius wrote an account of Caesar's invasion of Britain.
He commemorates a British cry which seems to have produced a very
lively impression on the Roman mind "Horribilis ille Britannorum
clamor, Tori pen i Caisar" ('Off with Caesar's head').
......
or consideration. It yet remains unparalleled in British history.
BARBARISM is a very indefinite term. To the Greeks and Romans all
other nations were in common parlance "barbarians," by which
was meant no more than "foreigners." If popular amusements are to
be taken as the test, the Romans were themselves the most
barbarous of the nations of Europe. The Coliseum is the gigantic
evidence of the race of human evolves which they not unaptly
considered themselves to be. When the brutal sports of the
gladiators were proposed to be introduced at Athens, even the
Cynic philosopher cried out, "We must first pull down the statue
to Mercy which our forefathers erected fifteen hundred years
ago." A similar gulf separated the British from the Roman
temper, and the accounts of the latter people with regard to the
former must be received with much the same caution as those of
the modern enemies of the same reserved and incommunicative
insular race. Boadicea, in her oration as given by Dion Cassius,
observes, that though Britain had been for a century open to the
continent, yet its language, philosophy, and usages continued as
great a mystery as ever to the Romans themselves; and the same
remark, with little modification, applies still. All the
evidences supplied by Caesar refute the notion of material
barbarism. Agriculture was universal, corn everywhere abundant,
pasturage a distinct branch of national wealth, the population so
thick as to excite his astonishment - "infinity multitudo
hominum" - the surest and most satisfactory proof of a sound
social state and ample means of sustenance. 4
......
4 "Hominum infinita multitudo" is Caesar's expression. Diodorus
calls Britain (Greek). In A.D.110. Ptolemy enumerates fifty-six
cities; later, Marcianus fifty-nine. British architects were in
great demand on the Continent. "Redundabat Britannia
artificibus," states Eumenius in his era.
......
The points which appear to have originated the idea of
barbarism connected in some minds with the ancient Britons are,
that they stripped to fight, which every Briton, every British
schoolboy continues to do, and no other nation does: and,
secondly, that they tattooed their bodies with various devices in
deep blue lines, a practice which the British sailor cherishes in
all its original freedom, and from which probably he will never
be weaned, for these immemorial usages seemed rooted in something
mach deeper than taste or imitation. Our soldiers also still
retain the propensity of getting rid of every accoutrement and
incumbrance in battle, and of charging as naked as military
regulations will allow them. Yet it would be ridiculous to term
our sailors and soldiers barbarians in the modern sense of the
word because they continue in these respects to be "true blue
ancient Briton." In all the solid essentials of humanity our
British ancestors will compare to great advantage with the best
eras of Greece or Rome. In war the Briton, after the Julian
invasions, walked the streets of Rome the only freeman in Europe,
pointed at as the exception to the world:---
"Invictus Romano Marte Britannus." 5
For ninety-seven years no Roman again ventured to set
hostile foot on the island, and when the eagle of Romulus once
more expanded its pinions to the stormy winds of
......
5 Tibullus. Horace implies that the Briton had scarcely been
touched by Caesar's campaigns:--
"Intactus aut Britannus ut descenderet Sacra catenatus via."
In another ode he writes that nothing but the conquest of
Britain was wanting to make Augustus "presens divus in terris,"
Od. lib. iii. 5.
......
ocean, it was when no other enemy, unconquered, confronted its
gaze from the Euphrates to Gibraltar, and the forces of the whole
empire were ready to follow its leading against the solitary free
nationality of the West.
Caswallon, the able antagonist of Caesar, reigned after the
invasion seven years. Augustus Caesar succeeded Julius B.C.30.
Henceforth Rome is to be regarded as the unity of the continent
of Europe, Northern Africa, and Asia, in action from a central
court under a series of autocrats rarely swerving from the
imperial policy laid down by the Julian family. Augustus sent
ambassadors to Britain demanding the restoration of the three
Reguli of the Contani, or Coraniaid, Dumno, Belaunus, and
Jernian, to their estates, confiscated for treason. Tenuantius,
the son of Caswallon, a mild, pacific monarch, had sent his two
sons, Cynvelin and Llyr (Lear) to be educated at Rome, where
they were brought up with his nephews in his palace by Augustus
himself, who made a rule, as Suetonius informs us, of teaching
the younger branches of his family in person. Cynvelin
subsequently served in the German campaigns under Germanicus. He
had now succeeded his father, and received the Roman ambassadors
with courtesy, but peremptorily rejected the interference of a
foreign potentate in the affairs of the island. Augustus moved
half the disposable forces of the empire to the Gallic harbours
on the Channel, but he never entertained serious intentions of an
invasion. Cynvelin concentrated his army at Dover, A British
fleet, as we learn from Dion Cassius, swept the Channel. The
preparations of Augustus, tardily urged, indicated that
prudential motives had already superseded the suggestions of
pride. He had never conducted his campaigns in person, and where
the genius of Julius had been baffled, inferior skill was likely
to incur nought but disgrace and disaster. A reverse, as Horace
had the courage to warn him (Ode 35, lib. v.), would be followed
by a rising of the oligarchic faction in Italy. Cynvelin was not
slow to take advantage of this reluctancy. A conference with the
imperial friend and tutor of his youth was solicited.
The result was the triumph of British diplomacy, a much
rarer success than that of the British arms. Not only did the
emperor abandon his demands, but the heavy duties previously
levied on British goods were reduced to a very light tariff
(Strabo, lib. iv. c. 5). Friendly relations were restored.
British nobles again took up their residence at Rome, and were to
be seen dedicating their offerings at the shrines of the Capitol.
Cymbeline, or Cynvelin, after a reign of thirty-five years,
was succeeded by his eldest son Cuiderius (Gwyddyr), his younger,
Arviragus (Gweyrydd), receiving the dukedom of Cornwall (Cernyw),
which by the British laws was a dukedom royal. The numerous coins
of Cynvelin (Cunobelinus) which remain in our days, are the only
monuments we possess of a national mint in Western Europe apart
from that of Rome. The horse, sometimes thought to be introduced
as a national emblem by the Saxons, is one of the most common
types upon them, Britain being long before the reign of Cymbeline
famous for its breed of steeds, and the daring and accomp-
lishments of its charioteers.
We now enter the times contemporary with St. Paul. As the
central figure in the group of the historic characters we are
about to portray is Caradoc, king of Siluria, we are called upon
to notice somewhat at large his birth and character. 6
It is a matter of wander and indignation how few
......
6 The accent in the British language is invariably on the penult
--Caradoc, Cynvelin, Taliesin, Llewelyn, &c.; The Romans latinized
Caradoc by Caractacus, the Greeks hellenized it more correctly by
Caratacos.
......
patriotic heroes the long annals of history present to our view.
One in a century is not to be found. Turning over the pages which
record the aggressions of the Romans on various nations, we
inquire in vain for the most part for heroes to confront them.
When we have named a Viriathus for Spain, a Hannibal for
Carthage, an Arminius or Herman for Germany, a Mithridates for
Asia, we have exhausted the catalogue of three continents.
Britain is here also an exception to the world, for it shews an
almost uninterrupted succession of patriots of the highest order,
from Caswallon and Caradoc, through the Arthurs and Cadwallos, to
the Wallaces and Glyndores of the Norman period. Nor have we any
wars on record so long and stubborn as those which were waged,
first between the Britons and the Romans, and secondly between
the same Britons and the Saxons with other Teuton tribes, after
the fall of the great empire. But Caradoc stands forth
pre-eminently as the ideal of what a patriot in the field should
be. With Arminius the last spark of liberty had expired on the
Continent. Northern Africa had finally been incorporated, by the
arms of Suetonius, Paulinus, and Cneius Geta, into the Roman
empire. Gaul, Spain, Southern Germany, Italy, Eastern Europe, and
Asia as far as the Euphrates enjoyed profound peace and no small
amount of material prosperity under the enormous shadow of the
Roman Capitol. The Caesars were seated, firm as the seven hills
themselves, on the throne. East and west, north and south, there
was no enemy to be encountered; all was subjection and repose.
The formidable armies of the imperial state hung up their shields
for lack of a foe, or were employed in the formation of the
numerous military roads which radiated like a network from Rome
to Finisterre and Calais westward, and to the shores of the
Persian Gulf eastward. It was in truth the grandest and most
magnificent of empires, the extent of which, though embracing
1,600,000 sq. miles, and a population of 120,000,000 of Caucasian
or semi-Caucasian blood, was its least glory. Nothing has risen
like it since. Its mere fragments have sufficed for modern
kingdoms. Countries ruled by proconsuls now term their rulers
emperors. Fertile and well-cultivated, not only were these
countries situated in the healthiest part of the temperate zone,
but they teemed with all the materials of the finest soldiery,
with all the resources of inexhaustible physical wealth. "Urbs
Roma orbs humana" was no unfounded boast, for within the
circumference of the empire were contained almost every land and
race that had contributed to the civilization and progress of
humanity. All the appliances of this vast unity of law and arms
were at the command of one despot, and were now about to be moved
towards the northern harbours of Gaul for the invasion of the
only unconquered land of the ancient civilization.
One army and one general constituted the force which
Caswallon was called upon to resist; but Caradoc was summoned by
the voice of his country to take the field against an empire
pouring forth a succession of armies in the highest state of
discipline, under a succession of able and experienced
commanders. This is the first time Britain was matched against
the world in arms, and right nobly did the little island acquit
herself.
Bran, or Brennus, the father of Caradoc, was the son of
Llyr, brother of Cynvelin, surnamed Llyr Llediaith, from the
foreign accent imparted to the pronunciation of his native tongue
by his education under Augustus at Rome. During threatened
invasion of Augustus he commanded the British fleet in the
Channel. Augustus was succeeded by Tiberius Claudius Caesar, and
Tiberius by Caligula, A.D.37, a year marked by the births of
Nero, Josephus the Jewish historian, and Julius Agricola, the
future commander of the Roman forces in Britain. The tranquility
pervading. The empire instigated Caligula to renew the attempts
at a conquest which the first and second Caesars had either
failed to achieve, or prudently bequeathed to their successors.
The character, however, of this emperor, compounded of mania and
vice, left a memorable stamp of ridicule upon the whole
expedition. The armies of Gaul and the Rhine rendezvoused
at Boulogne. A Roman flotilla collected from the Spanish ports
was moored, ostensibly prepared to embark the troops, in the
Seine. The appearance, however, of a British fleet under
Arviragus disconcerted and put an abrupt end to the enterprize,
if indeed it was ever seriously meditated. Caligula, who felt a
morbid gratification in burlesqueing the most momentous measures
of state, and scandalizing his subjects by the maddest freaks of
imperial caprice, held a grand review of his splendid
expeditionary force on the sands at Boulogne. At its termination,
ascending the tribunal, he expiated on the glory which already
encircled his brow as one who had led his troops like Bacchus,
Hercules, and Sesostris, to the confines of the earth-surrounding
ocean. He asked if such renown ought to be jeopardized by an
armed exploration of an island which nature itself had removed
beyond the power and jurisdiction of the gods of Rome, and which
the campaigns of the deified Caesar himself had only succeeded in
pointing out to the wonder of the continental world. "Let us, my
comrades," he continued, adopting the well known phrase of the
great Julius (commilitones), "leave these Britons unmolested. To
war beyond the bounds of nature is not courage, but impiety. Let
us rather load ourselves with the bloodless spoils of the
Atlantic ocean which the same beneficient goddess of nature pours
on these sands so lavishly at our feet. Follow the example of
your emperor-behold," he added, suiting the action to the word,
"I wreathe for laurel this garland of green sea-weed around my
immortal brow, and for spolia optima I fill my helm with these
smooth and brilliant shells. Decorated with these we will return
to Rome, and, instead of a British king, Neptune and Nereus, the
gods of ocean themselves, shall follow captives to the Capitol
behind our triumphal car. To each of you, my fellow soldiers in
this arduous enterprize, I promise a gratuity of a year's extra
stipend in merited acknowledgment of your services and fidelity
to your emperor."
This singular harangue, which we are tempted to regard as
the practical sarcasm of a despot not altogether insane on the
ambition of the whole race of conquerors, was welcomed with
thunders of acclamation. The projected expedition had been from
the first viewed with extreme distaste by the soldiery, and
despite the indignation openly expressed by the officers, they
did not hesitate to give vent to their satisfaction, and, with
military jests and peals of laughter, imitate the example of
their imperial master. The British fleet gazed with astonishment
on these bronzed and mail-clad veterans disporting themselves in
the childish amusement of collecting shells on the seashore. The
camp was broken up, and Caligula entered Rome in triumphal
procession, with his army, on his birthday, August 31, A.D.40.
He was assassinated next year, in the 29th year of his age
(January 24th), and succeeded by Claudius, then in his 50th year.
The father of Tiberius Claudius Caesar was Drusus
Claudius Nero, elevated first to the quaestorship, then to the
praemtorship, subsequently appointed to conduct the Rhaetian and
German campaigns. He was the first Roman commander that navigated
in force the German Ocean. He carried his arms to the centre of
Germany, and is stated by Suetonius to have been deterred from
further advance by the sudden apparition on his march of a female
of more than mortal stature and beauty, bidding him halt the
Roman banners where she appeared. He died suddenly, not without
suspicion of foul play, in the Castra AEstiva, thence called
Scelerata, whilst preparing to extend his conquests in another
direction. His body was conveyed from town to town, and
buried with state honours, Augustus himself pronouncing the
funeral panegyric, in the Campus Martius at Rome. Nearly
connected as he was with the Caesars, Drusus remained to the last
a stern republican. He left three children, Germanicus, Livilla,
and Claudius; the last born at Lyons. The infancy, childhood, and
youth of the future emperor were spent under the strictest state
of surveillance. He was regarded as but one remove from an idiot.
"He is as imbecile as my son Claudius" was an ordinary phrase in
his mother Livia's mouth when she wished to imply an
extraordinary degree of stupidity. His appearance did not belie
his character. Tall and full in person, and possessed, when
seated, of the external show of dignity, in motion his knees
shook, his head perpetually trembled, his tongue stuttered, his
laughter was outrageously violent, and his anger marked by
profuse foaming at the mouth. Cruel and bloodthirsty by nature,
as indeed every Roman was, he insisted on being present whenever
any criminal was put to the torture. He never failed to give the
sign of "no quarter" against disabled gladiators, and delighted
with a horrible voracity to gloat over the dying expression of
their faces. He sat from morning to night, neglecting the
ordinary hours of refreshment, at the bestiaria, or combats of
wild beasts, and yet personally was the rankest and most
contemptible of cowards. He never attended an invitation except
surrounded by guards, who searched every guest before he entered
the apartment, a precaution exercised on every citizen who
accosted him. In many points there exists a strong resemblance
between Claudius and our James the First - both were addicted to
the lowest companions and buffoonery, both were poltroons, both
coarse gourmands, and both were pedants of the deepest dye. Yet
it must be confessed that the loss of the work of Claudius on the
Races and Antiquities of Primitive Italy is one that can never be
replaced, the few fragments we possess evincing it to have been a
mine of undigested, but very valuable and authentic matter.
Let us with the Roman emperor contrast the British patriot.
Caractacus was born at Trevran, the seat of his father Bran,
within the present parish of Llanilid, in Glamorganshire. He
received his education at the Druidic cor of Caerleon-on-Usk,
where most of the Silurian nobility were trained in the cycle of
Celtic accomplishments. Of these, oratory was one of the chief,
and we possess in the speech of the British king before Claudius
a fair specimen of the bold, free, terse style inculcated in
these ancient national colleges. Allusion is made in it to a long
line of illustrious ancestors - "clari majores." It sounds
strange to persons accustomed to think a Norman pedigree, dating
from A.D.1066, ancient, to hear this British king, a thousand
years before, face to face with a Roman emperor, and in the heart
of the Capitol deliver himself proudly of a royal lineage, the
fount of which, like that of the Nile, was lost in its very
remoteness.
In the clan times, however, the preservation of a pedigree
meant the preservation of all that was valuable in blood,
station, and property. Without it a man was an outlaw; he had no
clan, consequently no legal rights or status. Genealogies were
guarded, therefore, with extreme jealousy, and recorded with
painful exactitude by the herald-bards of each clan. On the
public reception, at the age of fifteen, of a child into the
clan, his family genealogy was proclaimed, and all challengers of
it commanded to come forward. Pedigree and inheritance, indeed,
were so identified in the ancient British code, that an heir even
in the ninth descent could redeem at a jury valuation any portion
of an hereditary estate from which necessity had compelled his
forefathers to part. As the succession of these clari majores may
be interesting to the antiquary, we extract it from the
Pantliwydd Manuscripts of Llansannor:
"Genealogy of Caradoc. Caradoc ab Bran Fendigaid, ab Llyr
Llediaith, ab Baran, ab Ceri Hirlyn Gwyn, ab Caid, ab Arch, ab
Meirion, ab Ceraint, ab Greidiol, ab Dingad, ab Anyn, ab Alafon,
ab Brywlais, ab Ceraint Feddw, ab Berwyn, ab Morgan, ab Bleddyn,
ab Rhun, ab Idwal, ab Llywarch, ab Calchwynydd, ab Enir Fardd, ab
Ithel, ab Llarian, ab Teuged, ab Llyfeinydd, ab Peredur, ab
Gweyrydd, ab Ithon, ab Cymryw, ab Brwt, ab Selys Hen, ab Annyn
Tro, ab Brydain, ab Aedd Mawr."
Reckoning thirty years for a generation, this pedigree
carries us back 1,080 years, that is, 330 years before the
foundation of Rome. Not all of these ancestors have escaped the
reprobation of the blunt Bardic chroniclersone of them
especially, Ceraint Feddw, is stigmatized as an irreclaimable
drunkard, deposed by his subjects for setting fire just before
harvest to the corn lands of Siluria. In the year A.D.36, Bran
resigned the Silurian crown to Caradoc, and became Arch-Druid of
the college of Siluria, where he remained till called upon to be
a hostage for his son. At the period of his accession Caradoc had
three sons, Cyllin or Cyllinus, Lleyn or Linus, and Cynon, and
two daughters, Eurgain and Gladys, or Claudia.
In July, A.D.42, a British embassy arrived at Rome from
Guiderius, complaining of the encouragement extended by the
Emperor to the intrigues of Beric and Adminius, two reguli of the
Brigantes and Coritani, who, in consequence of being detected in
a treasonable correspondence with Caligula during the late
menaced invasion, had been banished by Britain. Claudius had
powerful reasons for temper, Plautius embarked the army in three
divisions, and landed two days afterwards at Rutupium, or Ynys
Ruthin, between Thanet and Richborough.
From Dover to Holyhead ran the British causeway, constructed
by Dyfnwal and his son, Beli the Great, B.C.400, called Sarn
Wyddelin, or the Irish Road, Wyddelin being the British term for
'Irish.' The corruption into Watling Street is not great. Along
the Sarn Wyddelin Caesar had directed his march, and Plautius
moved his forces on the same line. He found the British army
drawn up under Guiderius and Caradoc at Southfleet, across the
Sarn on the flat between the Kentish hills and the Thames. The
action terminated in the Britons falling back to Wimbledon Heath,
where a second battle was fought, in which Guiderius fell. He was
succeeded on the throne by his brother Arviragus, but the
national emergency requiring the establishment of the
pendragonate, or military dictatorship, Caradoc was unanimously
elected to that high office, Arviragus giving his vote first in
his favour, and consenting to act under him.
Caradoc withdrew his forces across the Thames at Chertsey,
Plautius following along the Sarn, now called "The Devil's
Causeway." In attempting to force the passage of the Thames at
Kingston, the Roman general was thrice foiled. He then proceeded
to Silchester, by means of his German cavalry defeated a British
division at Nettlebed, in Oxfordshire, and returning by a forced
march to Wallingford, crossed the Thames there, after a desperate
resistance. Dion Cassius, the Greek historian, gives a vivid
description of the action. The Romans, led by Plautius, Flavius
Vespasian, the future emperor, and his brother, entered the river
in three columns, whilst the German cavalry swam it lower down,
and assailed the British position in flank. But the British
stupidity, which never knows when it is beaten, appears to be of
very old date. Dion states the contest continued with slight
intermissions for two whole days on the northern side, and that
the defeat of Caradoc was eventually effected by a daring
manoevre on his flank and rear made by Cneius Geta, the
conqueror of Mauritania, who was rewarded for it, though he had
not yet attained the consular dignity, with the honours of a
triumph. It tells well for the abilities of Caradoc that in this
first battle as pendragon he was able to hold his ground for two
days of incessant fighting against three such generals as
Plautius, Vespasian, and Geta. Undismayed, he collected his
forces again, and Plautius, on attempting to follow him, was so
roughly handled that messages were sent to Rome for instructions
and reinforcements. Claudius himself immediately quitted Rome,
and passing through Gaul, landed at Richborough, with the second
and fourteenth legions, their auxiliaries, and a cohors of
elephants brought over for the express purpose of neutralizing
the British chariot-charges. He effected a junction with Plautius
at Verulam. Beric and Adminius had accompanied him, and, as had
been previously arranged, the two states of the Iceni and
Coritani, or Coraniaid, on their making their appearance among
them, rose in arms and proclaimed their alliance with the
invaders, Caradoc had thus the Romans in front and an insurgent
country in the rear. Dion terms Caer Col, or Colchester, the
basileion or royal residence of Cynvelin. It was known at this
period as Comulodunum, the city of Camul, an Umbric or Cymric
term for the God of War. 7 In its defence Caradoc fought two more
battles - the first at Coxall Knolls, and the second at Brandon
camp, on the Teme. In this latter the horses of the British
chariots, the odour of elephants being insupportable to this
animal, gave way in all directions, and Caradoc suffered his
first decisive defeat. Col-
.......
7 "Camulo Deo Sancto et Fortissimo."---Umbrian altar inscription.
......
chester in a few days surrendered. A treaty was concluded, known
as the Claudian treaty, by which it was stipulated that the
Coranidae and Iceni, on the payment of a certain amount of
tribute, should, under the Roman protectorate, be guaranteed
their land, laws, and native government. Claudius is said to have
promised also his natural daughter, Venus Julia, called in the
British accounts Venissa, to Arviragus. The alliance in after
years took place, and Arviragus built Caer Gloyw, or Gloucester,
in honour of his imperial father-in-law. Claudius left the
further prosecution of the war to his generals, and, returning to
Rome, celebrated his triumph with signal magnificence - the more
impressive from the humility displayed by himself in ascending
the steps of the Capitol on his knees, supported on either side
by his sons-in-law. But the war had in reality only just begun.
Caradoc, having carried fire and sword through the
territories of the revolted tribes, transferred hostilities from
the champaigns of the eastern counties to the hilly districts of
the southwest. Here he proceeded to levy and arm fresh forces. It
is instructive to study the movements on both sides, for never
was war carried on with greater energy and laboriousness.
Plautius marched against the pendragon by land, whilst Vespasian
was dispatched with the Roman fleet to effect a landing at
Torbay. Geta was left at Colchester, his legions commencing the
construction of that celebrated line of fortresses which extended
from the head of the fens, now forming the Isle of Ely, to
Gloucester. This immense work, the object of which was to mark
off southern Britain at once as a Roman province, was carried on
day and night with the usual indefatigability and science of the
Roman service. Castra after castra rose, each as completed being
occupied by its appropriate garrison, and the British pendragon
heard at the same time of the rising of the formidable
circumvallation in his rear, of the advance of Plautius on his
flank, and the disembarkation of Vespasion in his front.
Devonshire (Dyvnaint, the deep vales), Dorset (the water land),
and Somerset (Gwlad, yrhav, summerland), were, however, admirably
adapted for the display of British intrepidity and tactics. The
camps, Roman and British, pitched at almost regular intervals in
hostile frontage of each other over the whole surface of these
counties, bespeak better than any history the desperate and
long-sustained character of the campaigns which now ensued. In
the art of castrametation we fail to detect any evidence of
scientific superiority on the part of the invaders, it appears to
us to be. if anywhere, on the British side, especially in the
ramparts and in the strength of the approaches. But it is certain
that both the British and Roman soldier must have been in the
highest condition of military discipline before earthworks
necessitating such labour to construct and such vigilence to
defend could have been carried out as part of the ordinary drill
of the day. The 'navvy' power displayed in them is not unworthy
of the present century. Here the war rolled backward and forward
for seven years, absorbing during that time the almost undivided
military interest of the Roman world; for, with the exception of
the rebellion, soon crushed out by Corbulo, in Armenia, the
British pendragon was bearing the whole brunt of the arms of the
empire, under a series of its finest generals. In these seven
years, according to Suetonius thirty; according to Eutropius
thirty-two battles were fought. The central camp of Plautius was
fixed between Silbury Hill and Amesbury, that of Vespasian and
his son Titus on Hampden Hill, near Ilchester, the area of which
was able to accommodate 100,000 men. On the ground now forming a
farm called Conquest-farm, Bishops Lydiard, near a smaller camp
of twenty acres, Arviragus sustained a total defeat by Vespasian,
who proceeded to invest Caer Usc (Exeter). On the eighth day of
the siege he was surprised in his intrenchments by Caradoc and
Arviragus, and roused with great slaughter. Titus had on this
occasion the glory of saving his father's life. The British
attack was so sudden that Vespasian was on the point of being
slain in his tent, when Titus, divining his father's danger,
charged his captors at the head of the first cohort of the
fourteenth legion, and rescued him from their hands. 8
Plautius, Vespasian, Geta, and Titus were successively
recalled. We cannot do better than use the significant language
of Tacitus in describing the fluctuations of the war, victory
hovering now over the Romans, now over the British standards:--
"The Silures reposed unbounded confidence in Caractacus,
enumerating the many drawn battles he had fought with the Romans,
the many victories he had obtained over them." 9 The passionate
attachment, indeed, of his countrymen to their high-souled and
incorruptible compatriot is abundantly evidenced by the fond
allusions to him in their ancient Triads. "Three have been,"
declare these records, "our hero-kings---Cynvelin, Caradoc,
Arthur. Except by treachery they could not be overthrown."
"Three have been the chief battle-kings of the Isle of
Britain---Caswallon, son of Beli; Arviragus, son of Cynvelin;
Caradoc, son of Bran." "Caradoc, son of Bran, whom every Briton,
from the king to the peasant, followed when he lifted his spear
to battle."
But we must draw his military career, which is but
indirectly connected with this essay, to a close. On the recall
of Plautius, who had married Gladys (Pomponia
......
8 "In Britannia circumdato a barbaris Vespasiano et in extremo,
periculo versante Titus filius ejus patri metuens coronam hostium
incredibili audacia disjecit."---Suetonius in Vita Vespas.; Dion
Cass., lib. ix.
9 Taciti Annal., lib, ii. c. 24. The era of Tacitus was A.D.80
......
Graecina), the sister of Caractacus, a truce was concluded for
six months, during which must be fixed the visit of the British
chief to Rome. What credence to attach to the British story in
the lolo MSS., which represents him as appearing before the
senate, and stating that he had ordered "everv tree in Siluria
to be felled, that the Romans might no longer allege it was the
British forests, and not British valour, which baffled him," we
hardly know. It is in accordance with his character, which we
recognise also in the anecdote recorded by Dion. "When
Caractacus," says that historian, "was shewn the public
buildings of Rome, he observed, 'It is singular a people
possessed of such magnificence at home should envy me my
soldier's tent in Britain.'" On the expiration of the truce and
the return of Caradoc to his command, Ostorius Scapula, with the
Plautian line of fortresses for his base of operations, proceeded
to carry the war westward. Supported by the Silures and
Ordovicians, the fierce indomitable mountaineers, whom the Roman
arms never succeeded in subduing, the Pendragon contested every
advance of the invaders. Around Caer Essylt (the Hereford Beacon)
a succession of encounters took place for six months. The winter
did not interrupt hostilities. A Roman division which had
penetrated as far as Caerleon was cut to pieces. Ostorius, in the
next campaign, fixed his headquarters at Castra Ostorii, in
Dinder, Herefordshire, now ludicrously corrupted into "Oyster
Hill." Towards the end of the campaign, in the autumn of
A.D.52, the battle which terminated the career of Caradoc in the
field was fought close to the confines of the Teme and the Clune
in Shropshire. The Roman victory was complete. 10 The wife of
Caradoc and his daughter Gladys fell into the hands of the
conquerors, and were conveyed to the Castra at Urechean
(Uriconium, Wrekin). Caradoc
......
10 Tacit; Annal., lib. xii.
......
himself took refuge, at her repeated solicitations, at Caer Evroc
(York), with Aregwedd or Aricia, the Cartismandua of Tacitus,
queen of the Brigantes, and grand-niece of the infamous traitor
in the Julian war, Mandubratius, or Avarwy. Here by her orders,
with hereditary treachery, he was seized while asleep in her
palace, loaded with fetters, and delivered to Ostorius Scapula.
On intelligence of the event, Claudius ordered him and all the
captive family to be sent to Rome. The British Triads commemorate
this captivity of the royal Silurian family in their quaint
fashion. "There were three royal families that were conducted to
prison, from the great-great-grandfather to the
great-grandchildren, without permitting one of them to escape.
First the family of Llyr Llediaith, who were carried to prison at
Rome by the Cesaridae... Not one or another of these
escaped. They were the most complete incarcerations known as to
families." The great great-grandfather on this occasion was Llyr,
the father of Bran, who subsequently died at Rome. Bran
voluntarily surrendered himself as a hostage. The approach and
arrival of Caradoc at Rome are finely described by the ancient
historians:---
"Roma catenatum tremuit spectare Britannum 11."
Since the days of Hannibal and Mithridrates, the only foe
worthy the Roman arms entered the Eternal City amidst the
excitement of three millions of inhabitants, who blocked up the
line of the procession to obtain a view of the formidable and
illustrious captive. The Senate was convened. The trial and
speech of Caradoc are familiar to every schoolboy. With an
unaltered countenance, the hero of forty pitched fields, great in
arms, greater in chains, took his position before the tribunal of
the emperor, and thus delivered himself:--- "Had
......
11 ... " Rome trembled
When she saw the Briton, thcwh fast in chains."
......
my government in Britain been directed solely with a view to the
preservation of my hereditary domains, or the aggrandizement of
my own family, I might long since have entered this city an ally,
not a prisoner; nor would you have disdained for a friend a king
descended from illustrious ancestors, and the dictator of many
nations. My present condition, stript of its former majesty, is
as adverse to myself as it is a cause of triumph to you. What
then? I was lord of men, horses, arms, wealth: what wonder if at
your dictation I refused to resign them? Does it follow, that
because the Romans aspire to universal dominion, every nation is
to accept the vassalage they would impose? I am now in your
power - betrayed, not conquered. Had I, like others, yielded
without resistance, where would have been the name of Caradoc?
Where your glory? Oblivion would have buried both in the same
tomb. Bid me live, I shall survive for ever in history one
example at least of Roman clemency."
Such an address as this, worthy a king, a soldier, and a
freeman, had never before been delivered in the Senate. Tacitus
thought it worthy to be reported and immortalized by his pen. Its
spirit reminded him of the old republican times of the Camilli,
the Cincinnati, the Catones; a spirit long since extinct. The
custom at those revolting displays of Roman pride and
bloodthirstiness called "triumphs," was that at a certain spot on
the Sacra Via the captive kings and generals should be removed
from the procession, cast into the Tarpeian dungeons, to be there
starved to death, strangled, or decapitated, and their dead
bodies dragged by hooks into the Tiber. 12 Alas! for the
chivalry of heathen warfare. The preservation of Caradoc forms a
solitary exception in the long catalogue of victims to this
dastardly and nefarious policy; nor can it be accounted
......
12 Jugurtha, king of Numidia, went mad during the procession, as
he followed the car of his conqueror Marius.
......
for, considering the inflexibility of Roman military usage, in
any other way than by an immediate and supernatural intervention
of Providence, which was leading by the hand to the very palace
of the British king at Rome the great Apostle of the Gentiles.
The family of Aulus Plautius, indeed, was already connected with
that of Caradoc, and an engagement existed between his daughter
Gladys and Aulus Rufus Pudens Pudentinus, a young senator of
large possessions in Samnium. But their united influences would
never have sufficed to alter a fixed law of the Roman state in
favour of an enemy that had tasked its utmost prowess and
resources for so many years. The defeat at Caer Caradoc and the
betrayal of their sovereign had, moreover, served not to
intimidate, but to infuriate and rouse to greater efforts, his
subjects in Britain, The Silures elected his cousin Arviragus his
successor in the pendragonate. The Romans were beaten back across
the Severn. Disaster followed disaster. Tacitus, loth to dilate
on the misfortunes of the imperial arms, sums up the reverses of
the war in a few expressive lines:- "In Britain, after the
captivity of Caractacus, the Romans were repeatedly conquered and
put to the rout by the single state of the Silures alone." 13
Perhaps this knowledge, that the execution of Caradoc might
still further imperil the Roman states in Britain, and the
consideration that clemency might be the wisest policy towards a
highspirited and loyal enemy, dictated the course of Claudius. Be
this as it may, the life of Caradoc was spared, on condition of
his never bearing arms against Rome again. A residence of seven
years in free custody (libera custodia) at Rome was imposed upon
him. His father Bran was accepted as one of the hostages, and he
was allowed the
......
13 "In Britannia Rornanos post Caractaci captivitatem ab una
tantum Silurum civitate saepius victos et profligatos." - Tac.
Ann., lib. v. c. z8.
......
full enjoyment of the revenues of the royal Silurian domains,
forwarded to him by his subjects and council. Gladys, his
daughter, was adopted by the Emperor Claudius, and assumed, of
course, his family name---Claudia. Caradoc took up his residence
in the Palatium Britannicum, on the side of the Mons Sacer,
converted afterwards by his grand-daughter, Cladia Pudentiana,
into the first Christian Church at Rome, known, first as the
"Titulus," and now as St. Pudentiana. Here the nuptials of
Claudia and Rufus Pudens Pudentinus were celebrated A.D.53. Four
children were the issue of this marriage. St. Timotheus, St.
Novatus, St. Pudentiana, St. Praxedes. Of the sons of Caradoc,
Cyllinus and Cynon returned to Britain, the former succeeding on
his death to the Silurian throne. The second Lleyn, or Linus,
remained with his father, and was, as we shall see subsequently,
consecrated by St. Paul first bishop of the Roman church.
Martial the epigrammatist was born A.D.29: he went to Rome
A.D.49; he left Rome A.D.86; and died at his native place,
Bilbilis in Spain, A.D.104, aged 75. As far as we can collect by
collation, Claudia was born A.D.36, and at her marriage with
Rufus was in her 17th year. Martial was a familiar frequenter of
the Pudentinian house, and in the habit of submitting his verses
for emendations to its heir, Rufus. We have an epigram extant in
which the witty but licentious poet complains of the severity of
his young critic's castigations. It would have been well for his
reputation, with no loss to his wit, had he allowed all his works
to pass through the hands of Rufus before he had consigned them
to the public ear. The epigram he addressed to the cousin of
Rufus, Quintus Pomponius Rufus, then on military service in
Dalmatia, on the nuptials of Claudia and Rufus, at which he
appears to have been present, is subjoined in the note below. 14
[see footnote 14]
Four years afterwards, on the birth of Pudentiana, Martial
addressed a second highly complimentary poem to the British
princess, celebrating her beauty, grace, wit, and fascination. He
represents her as uniting the separate accomplishments of the
Roman and the Athenian ladies. Claudia, though the mother of
three children, was only in her twenty-first year, and might with
propriety be still termed "puella" by the poet. In the interval
between the first and the present epigram, Pudens had been
converted to Christianity, hence he is called Sancto Marito:--
"Claudia Ceruleis quum sit Rufina Britannis Edita quam Latia
pectora plebis habet!
Quale decus forma! Romanam credere matres
Italidum possunt Attides esse suam
Die bene quod sancto peperit foecunda marito
Quod sperat generos quodque puella nurus
Sic placeat superis ut conjuge gaudeat una
Et semper natis gaudeat ipsa tribus."
All the family of Caradoc were attached to literary
pursuits. Bran introduced the use of vellum into Britain from
Rome; 15 and by the younger members copies of the best Roman
authors were circulated in Siluria, and deposited in the
principal receptacles of Druidic learning. Martial was no
exception, and his verses appear to have become popular:--
"Dicitur et nostros cantare Britannia versus." - Lib. xi.
14 "Claudia, Rufe, meo nubit Peregrina Pudenti:
Macte esto taedis, O Hymenaee, tuis.
Tam bene rara suo miscentur cinnama nardo,
Massica Theseis tam bene vina cadis,
Nec melius teneris junguntur vitibus ulmi,
Nec plus Lotos aquas, littora myrtus amat.
Candida perpetuo, reside, Concordia, lecto,
Tamque pari semper sit Venus aequa jugo.
Diligat illa senem quondam: sed et ipsa marito,
Tunc quoque quum fuerit, non videatur anus."
Lib. iv. p.18.
15 Coelbren, p. 25.
......
Claudia wrote several volumes of odes and hymns. Her aunt,
Pomponia Graecina, received her agnomen from her intimate
acquaintance with Greek literature. The palace, indeed, of the
British king formed a focus and rendezvous, and perhaps the
safest they could frequent, for the poets and authors of Rome.
Nor did it cease to be so on his return to his native country; it
continued to be the residence of Pudens and Claudia and their
children. Some conception may be formed of its size and
magnificence from the number of servants who constituted its
ordinary establishment. These, as we learn from the Roman
Martyrology, were two hundred males and the same number of
females, all born on the hereditary estates of Pudens, in Umbria.
16
The attachment between Pudens and Claudia first grew up when
the former was stationed by Aulus Plautius as praetor castrorum
at Regnum, now Chichester. We still possess in the Chichester
Museum a remarkably interesting monument of the residence of
Pudens in this city. Cogidunus, regulus of the Regni, was one of
the kings included as allies - in fact, tributaries - under the
Roman protectorate in the Claudian treaty of Colchester. Their
native dynasties, laws, and lands were guaranteed to such states
- the kings themselves becoming and being titled Legati Augusti,
Lieutenants of the Roman emperor, as the heads of our counties
are now styled Lieutenants of the Queen. They were bound to
permit the construction of a Roman castra, garrisoned by Roman
legionaries with their
......
16 Adiacent to the palace were baths on a corresponding scale,
known subsequently as Thermae Timothinae and Thermae Novatianae.
The palace baths and grounds were bequeathed by Timotheus to the
Church at Rome. And these were the only buildings of any
magnitude possessed by the Roman Church till the reign of
Constantine. Hermas terms the Titulus "amplissima Pudentes
domus." It was the hospitium for Christians from all parts of the
world.
......
usual staff of engineers, in their chief city. The praetor of the
castra held the military command within the allied territory.
Such kings were considered and dealt with as traitors to the
national cause by the Silurian and independent Britons, and their
names either branded with the disgraceful stigma of "bradwr"
(traitor), or consigned to oblivion by the Bardic chroniclers.
Hence we find not a few commemorated in the pages of the Roman
historians, of whose existence we can trace no vestige in the
British. Of these Cogidunus is one. Tacitus remembered him, as he
well might. For Tacitus was born A.D.56, the year of the death
of Claudius, and Cogidunus was alive A.D.76, ten years after St.
Paul's martyrdom, when Tacitus was in his twentieth year. In the
year A.D.1723, whilst excavating the foundations of some houses,
the monument to which we refer, generally known as the Chichester
stone, was discovered. The inscription, which was partly
mutilated, and is cut in very bold characters, as restored by
Horsley and Gale, is as follows:
NEPTUNO ET MINERVAE
TEMPLUM
PRO SALUTE DOMUS DIVINE
Ex AUCTORITATE TIB : CLAUDII
COGIDUNI
REGIS LEGATI AUGUSTI IN BRITANNIA
COLLEGIUM FABRORUM ET QUI IN EO
A SACRIS SUNT DE SUO DEDICAVERUNT
DONANTE AREAM PUDENTE PUDENTINI FILIO.
"The College of Engineers, and ministers of religion attached to
it, by permission of Tiberius Claudius Cogidunus, the king,
legate of Augustus in Britain, have dedicated at their own
expense, in honour of the divine family [the imperial family]
this temple to Neptune and Minerva. The site was given by Pudens,
son of Pudentinus."
Apart from its value in other respects, the inscription is
interesting as evidence of the naturally pious bent of the young
Roman commander's disposition, and, secondly, of the fact that to
every legion in the Roman service was attached a staff of
ministers of religion - a part of moral discipline in which these
iron-minded heathens put to shame our own and other countries
professing Christianty. The temple appears to have been erected
about A.D.50, before, of course, the conversion of Pudens or his
marriage with Claudia.
We have now, A.D.56, the royal Silurian family located at
Rome on that part of the Mons Sacer called Scaurus, in the
Palatium Britannicum, afterwards called the Titulus, or Hospitium
Apostolorum, then St. Pudentiana, which name the building still
retains. The minister of this church, and of the family of
Pudens, was Hermas, mentioned by St. Paul, 17 surnamed, from his
work bearing the title of Pastor, Hermas Pastor. The church was
called also after him, Pastor. In front of this relic of eminent
British and Apostolic times may still be seen, carved in
characters corroded by age, the Latin inscription, attributed to
the second century, of which the following is a translation:
"In this sacred and most ancient of churches, known as that of
Pastor, dedicated by Sanctus Pius Papa, formerly the house of
Sanctus Pudens, the senator, and the home of the holy apostles,
repose the remains of three thousand blessed martyrs, which
Pudentiana and Praxedes, virgins of Christ, with their own hands
interred." 18
......
17 Rom. xvi. 14.
18 " n hac sancta antiquissima ecclesia," &c.;, &c.--Baronius;, ad
Maii 19.
......
Baronius l9 has the following note upon the Titulus: "It is
delivered to us by the firm tradition of our forefathers that the
house of Pudens was the first that entertained St. Peter at Rome,
and that there the Christians assembling formed the Church, and
that of all our churches the oldest is that which is called after
the name of Pudens."
......
19 Annales Ecclesias, in Notis ad 19 Maii. Note on Pastor. Some
authors affirm there were two distinct Hermas Pastors - one the
above minister of the Titulus, so called because he belonged to
the senatorian family of the name of Pastor; the second of later
date, author of the treatise Pastor, and brother of Pius Papa. If
this view is correct, both were ministers of the Titulus, for the
letters of the latter from the Titulus to Timotheus in Britain
are extant.
Vide also Moncaeus, Syntagma de Claudia Britannica, p.18;
Pastoris Epistolae ad Timotheum; Justini Martyris Apologia; Greek
Menology, ad dies Pudentianx et Praxedis. That the palace of
Claudia was the home of the apostles in Rome appears agreed upon
by all ecclesiastical historians - even Robert Parsons, the
Jesuit, admits it. "Claudia was the first hostess or harbourer
both of St. Peter and St. Paul at the time of their coming to
Rome." - Parsons' "Three Conversions of England," vol. i. p.16.
..........
To be continued with "The British Royal Family at Rome"
The Apostle Paul in Britain #3
First Introduction of Christianity into Britain
THE BRITISH ROYAL FAMILY AT ROME. THE ARTMATHACAN, OR FIRST
INTRODUCTION OF CHRISTIANITY INTO BRITAIN
HAVING thus established the British king and his family in
the Titulus, we turn our attention to St. Paul, who arrived at
Rome for the first time on his appeal to Caesar, A.D.58.1
A strong Christian Church, celebrated for its zeal and fidelity,
existed in Rome before the visit of St. Paul or any other apostle
to it. We know, from many passages in the Epistle to the Romans
itself, that at the time of its composition and despatch St. Paul
had not yet been to Rome. Amongst the members of the Church,
however, were some not only of the most intimate fellow-labourers
and friends, but relatives of the Apostle. Some of the latter,
such as Andronicus and Junia, had been converted before him.
Herodion is mentioned as another kinsman. In connection with
Rufus Pudens who is saluted by name, occurs another salutation
which originates an interesting question, the right solution of
which would throw a flood of light on this part of the history
both of Paul and Pudens -- Salute Rufus chosen in the Lord, and
his mother and mine." Does this mean natural or spiritual
relationship? We are inclined to believe the former. A spiritual
father or mother is, in Gospel phraseology, the person who
converts another to Christ. St. Paul's conversion was effected
......
I Jerome states St. Paul was sent to Rome in the second year of
Nero, i.e. A.D.56. in which date agree Bede, Ivo, Freculphus
Platina, Scaliger, Capellus, Cave, Stillingfleet, Alford, Godwin
De Proesulibus, Rapin, Bingham, Stanhope, Warner, Trapp. We
believe this to be the true date, and its assumption would be
more favourable to the tenor of this essay, as it would allow
three years instead of one for the interview at Rome between St.
Paul and Caractacus. We prefer, however, not to insist upon it.
......
by Christ Himself by a direct miracle. With respect to him the
terms could not be applied to any human being. Was, then, the
mother of Rufus the mother also of Paul? Were Rufus and Paul
half-brothers - the latter, the elder, by a Hebrew, the former,
the younger, by a second marriage with a Gentile, or proselyte
Roman?
This mother was a Christian, living with Rufus, and is
termed also his mother by St. Paul. In the palace of Rufus, when
at Rome, Paul spent most of his time, though he had also his own
hired house. 2 The children of Claudia and Pudens, as we learn
from the Roman Martyrologies, were brought up on his knees, and
we find in the last scene of his life preceding his martyrdom,
the only salutations sent by him to Timothy to be those of
Eubulus, Claudia, Linus, and Pudens - the same family evidently
ministering and attending to him to the last. There is, whichever
way we decide, a closeness in the connection between the Apostle
and the family of Pudens which has hitherto escaped observation,
and remains to be explained. And this continued even after death,
for the children of Pudens, all of whom suffered martyrdom, were
interred by the side of the Apostle, as in a common family
cemetery, in the Via Ostiensis. Leaving the question of the
nature of this affinity in abeyance, we now observe --
1. That Pudens was converted before St. Paul came to Rome, and by
some other Christian than Paul.
2. That Hermas Pastor appears at this very early date to have
been the pastor at the Titulus, which constituted the place of
meeting for the Gentile Church, or Church
......
2 That the apostles having once been received into the Palatium
Pudentinum, should continue to make it their home in Rome, is in
conformity with our Lord's instructions, "Into whatsoever city
or town ye enter, inquire who in it is worthy, and there abide
till ye go thence." - Matthew x. ii. At the same hospitium Justin
Martyr was received. "Nobili revera atque praecipua in urbe
Christi familia."--Baron, vol. i. p.228.
......
of the uncircumcision. The Hebrew Church, or Church of the
circumcision, met at the House of Aquila and Prlscilla. 3
3. That the household of Aristobulus is greeted, but Aristobulus
himself is not, being absent at the time from Rome. Hence arise
the questions - Who were the evangelizers of the family of
Claudia Britannica and Pudens? Where was Aristobulus absent? Was
it in Britain? Was Britain evangelized in any degree before St.
Paul came to Rome? and if so, by whom?---: an investigation of
the utmost interest.
The fairest way of treating the subject of the first
"Introduction of Christianity Into Britain" seems to be to lay
down an affirmative statement, adduce what evidence there is in
support of it, and leave the reader to draw the conclusion
whether it makes good such statement or not. We write as
investigators, not as dogmatists, but our propositions must of
necessity often assume the affirmative form, or we should be mere
negationists of history.
Our statement, then, will take the following form:--
Christianity was first introduced into Britain by Joseph of
Arimathaea, A.D.36-39; followed by Simon Zelotes, the apostle;
then by Aristobulus, the first bishop of the Britons; then by St.
Paul. Its first converts were members of the royal family of
Siluria - that is, Gladys, the sister of Caradoc, Gladys
(Claudia) and Eurgen his daughters, Linus his son, converted in
Britain before they were carried into captivity to Rome; then
Caradoc, Bran, and the rest of the family, converted at Rome. The
two cradles of Christianity in Britain were Ynys Wydrin, 'the
Crystal Isle,' translated by the Saxons Glastonbury, in
Somersetshire, where Joseph settled and taught, and Siluria,
where the earliest churches and schools, next to Ynys Wydrin,
were founded by the Silurian dynasty. Ynys Wydrin was
......
3 Rom. xvi. 5.
......
also commonly known as Ynys Avalon, and in Latin "Domus Dei,"
"Secretum Dei."
Now for the consecutive evidences of this statement. They
have been collected at the cost of much research from various
quarters, but the reader will remember that they are not
presented as decisive. All historic evidence must be ruled by
times and circumstances. If it be such as the times and
circumstances of the era alone admit, it is entitled to be
received in court, and if there is no contrary evidence which can
be brought forward to cancel it, we must bring in, till such
evidence be produced, a verdict of proven. The testimony in other
historical cases may be stronger and more satisfactory, but we
must be content in all cases to give judgment by such evidence as
we can command. In ages when literature or written evidence had
but very limited existence, tradition and general belief are the
chief sources to which we can apply for the knowledge of broad
facts, their details being a minor consideration.
The constant current of European tradition affirmed Britain
to have been the first country in Europe which received the
Gospel, and the British Church to be the most ancient of the
Churches of Christ therein. The universality of this opinion is
readily demonstrated.
I. Polydore Vergil in the reign of Henry VII, and after him
Cardinal Pole (A.D.1555), both rigid Roman Catholics, affirmed
in Parliament, the latter in his address to Philip and Mary, that
"Britain was the first of all countries to receive the Christian
faith." "The glory of Britain," remarks Genebrard, "consists
not only in this, that she was the first country which in a
national capacity publicly professed herself Christian, but that
she made this confession when the Roman empire itself was Pagan
and a cruel persecutor of Christianity."
II. This priority of antiquity was only once questioned, and that
on political grounds, by the ambassadors of France and Spain, at
the Council of Pisa, A.D.1417. The Council, however, affirmed it.
The ambassadors appealed to the Council of Constance. A.D.1419,
which confirmed the decision of that of Pisa, which was a third
time confirmed by the Council oú Sena, and then acquiesced in.
This decision laid down that the Churches of France and Spain
were bound to give way in the points of antiquity and precedency
to the Church of Britain, which was founded by Joseph of
Arimathaea "immediately after the passion of Christ." 4
We may therefore accept as the general opinion of
Christendom, the priority in point of antiquity over all others
of the British Church. This opinion is well expressed by
Sabellius:--" Christianity was privately confessed elsewhere, but
the first nation that proclaimed it as their religion, and called
itself Christian after the name of Christ, was Britain." 5
It is certain that the primitive British, Irish. Scot, and
Gallic Churches formed one Church, one communion, and that on the
assumption of the Papacy, A.D.606, by Rome, this great Celtic
Church, which had been previously in full communion with
primitive Rome, refused in the most peremptory terms to
acknowledge her novel pretensions.
......
4 "Statim post passionem Christi." An account of the pleadings at
the Council of Constance will be found in a thin quarto,
"Disceptatio super Dignitatem Analioe et Gallice in Concilio
Constantiano," Theod. Martin (Lovar. 75117).
Robert Parsons, the Jesuit, in his "Three Conversions of
England," admits, in common with the great majority of Roman
Catholic writers, that Christianity came into Britain direct from
Jerusalem. "It seems nearest the truth that the British Church
was originally planted by Grecian teachers, such as came from the
East, and not by Romans."-- vol. i. p.15. The Eastern usages of
the British Church would alone attest the fact.
5 Sabell. Enno., lib. vii. c. 5.
......
It is, of course, this primitive British Church, and not the
Roman Church introduced by Augustine, A.D. 596, into Kent among
the Pagan Saxons, of which such priority must be understood. That
such a Church existed on a national scale, and was thoroughly
antagonistic to the Roman Church in its new form and usurpations
in the person of Augustine, is so notorious, that we may dispense
with all but a few testimonies in proof of the fact. "Britons,"
declares Bede 6 "are contrary to the whole Roman world, and
enemies to the Roman customs, not only in their Mass, but in
their tonsure." The Britons refused to recognise Augustine, or to
acquiesce in one of his demands. "We cannot," said the British
bishops, "depart from our ancient customs without the consent
and leave of our people." Laurentius, the successor of Augustine,
speaks yet more bitterly of the antagonism of the Scottish
Church:--
"We have found the Scotch bishops worse even than the British.
Dagon, who lately came here, being a bishop of the Scots, refused
so much as to eat at the same table, or sleep one night under the
same roof with us." 7
......
6 Bede's Hist. Frag., quoted by Usher, "Ancient Irish Church," c.
4, Hist., lib. ii. c. 2. One demand of Augustine was that the
British Church should recognise him as Archbishop, "At illi,"
says Bede, lib. ii. p.112, "nihil horum se facturos neque illum
pro Archiepiscopo habituros esse respondebant." Bede must
himself, one would suppose, from his own testimony in favour of
the British Church, and his knowledge of its extent and
institutions, have felt some astonishment at this demand of an
emissary whose only religious establishment in Britain was a
solitary church among the Pagans of Kent. "The Britons," he
writes, lib. i. c. 4. "preserved the faith which they had
received under King Lucius uncorrupted and entire in peace and
tranquillity, until the time of the Emperor Diocletian." Nicholas
Trivet says, "Abbot Dinothus, of Bangor, treated Augustine with
contempt."
7 Laurentii Epist. ad Papam: Bede, Eccles. Hist., ii. c. 4.
......
And the protest of the British Church itself, signed on its
behalf by the Archbishop of St. David's, six bishops, and the
abbot of Bangor, who conducted the conference with Augustine at
Augustine's Oak, A.D.607;, place in still clearer light the gulf
which the change of the primitive Roman Church into the Papacy
formed between the Churches hitherto in full communion, It ran as
follows:--
"Be it known and declared that we all, individually and
collectively, are in all humility prepared to defer to the Church
of God, and to the Bishop of Rome, and to every sincere and godly
Christian, so far as to love every one according to his degree,
in perfect charity, and to assist them all by word and in deed in
becoming the children of God. But as for any other obedience,
we know of none that he whom you term the Pope, or Bishop of
Bishops, can demand. The deference we have mentioned we are ready
to pay to him, as to every other Christian, but in all other
respects our obedience is due to the jurisdiction of the Bishop
of Caerleon, who is alone, under God, our ruler to keep us
right in the way of salvation." 8
It is plain from these and similar testimonies that
Britain--I. Was a distinct diocese of the empire. 2. That it was
subiect neither to the partriarch of Rome, nor to any foreign
ecclesiastical jurisdiction. 3. That it had its sovereignty
within itself. 4. That it never consulted the See of Rome nor any
foreign power in its rites, discipline, government, or
consecration of bishops and archbishops. 5. That it recognised no
surperior but but God to its archbishop of Caerleon, or St.
David. 9
As late as the twelfth century no instance could be
......
8 Hengwrt MSS.; Humphry Llwyd; Sebright MSS.; Cottonian Library
(British Museum), Cleopatra, E.i. i.
9 Spelmanni Concilia; Sir Roger Twysden, Historical Vindication;
Brerewood, p.113: Collier, vol. i. p.6, &c.; Bishop Lloyd's
Government, &c.;, &c.;
......
produced of the British metropolitan receiving the pall from
Rome.
The two British metropolitans of London and York, Theon and
Tediac, had retired from their Sees into Wales A.D.586, ten
years only before the arrival of Augustine.
In the Diocletian persecution the British Church supplied
the following remarkable list of native martyrs :--Amphibalus,
Bishop of Llandaff; Alban of Verulam; Aaron and Julius,
presbyters of Caerleon; Socrates, Archbishop of York; Stephen,
Archbishop of London; Augulius, his successor; Nicholas, Bishop
of Penrhyn (Glasgow); Melior, Bishop of Carlisle, and above
10,000 communicants in different grades of society.
Its religious institutions were on an immense scale. William
of Malmesbury describes the ruins of Bangor Iscoed Abbey in his
days as those of a city - the most extensive he had seen in the
kingdom. Two other British foundations in England retained their
superiority over all others of a later date, under every change
of rulers till the Reformation - St. Alban and Glastonbury. Of
all the monasteries these continued the most popular and highly
venerated. 10
......
10 It is certain, states Spelman (p.18), that the people of that
province held no oath so sacred as that "by the old church"
(Glastonbury), fearing nothing so much as to incur the guilt of
perjury in taking it, "The church of Glastonbury, from its
antiquity called by the Angles 'Ealde Churche,' savoured of
sanctity from its very foundation. Here arrive whole tribes of
the lower orders, thronging every path. Here, divested of their
pomp, assemble the opulent. It has become the crowded residence
of the literary and religious. There is no corner of the church
in which the ashes of some saint do not repose. The very floor
inlaid with polished stones, and the sides of the altar, and even
the altar itself, above and beneath, are laden with the multitude
of relics. The antiquity, and multitude of saints, have endowed
the place with such sanctity that at night scarcely any one
presumes to keep vigil there, or during the day to spit upon
the floor. St. Patrick is buried by the right side of the altar
in the 'old church.' The men of lreland frequent it to kiss the
relics. St. David, that celebrated and incomparable man, built
and dedicated the second church here. He sleeps by St.
Patrick." William of Malmesbury, b. i. c. 2. St. Aidan was buried
by the side of St. David.
......
Tracing our course back from the Diocletian era, a consensus
of authorities fixes the national establishment of Christianity
in Britain somewhere about the middle of the second century. From
A.D.33, then, to A.D.150, we have in round numbers a space of
120 years left for the propagation of the faith and the gradual
conversion of the nation.
All accounts concur in stating that the person who baptized
Lucius, or Lleeuer Mawr, the monarch who thus established the
Church, was his uncle, St. Timotheus, the son of Pudens and
Claudia, who was brought up on the knees of the apostles.
The infancy of Timotheus carries us back to Paul himself, to
Claudia, to Pudens, to Linus, Caractacus, Bran, and the other
members of the Silurian house in their captivity at Rome.
But we have seen that Pudens and others were Christians
before Paul came to Rome, which carries the first British
conversions to an earlier date than A.D.58.
And thus we arrive within twenty-five years of the
Crucifixion. In which of these years, then, was the Gospel first
introduced into Britain?
Gildas, the British historian, who flourished A.D.520-560,
states expressly that it was introduced the last year of the
reign of Tiberius Caesar. 11
The Crucifixion took place in the seventeenth year of
Tiberius. The last year of Tiberius would be his twenty
......
11 "We know that Christ, the true Son, afforded His light to our
island in the last year of Tiberius Caesaris."--Histor. Briton.
Usher terms Gildas " auctor veracissimus."
......
second. Consequently, if we follow Gildas, Christianity was
introduced into Britain five years after the Crucifixion, that
is, A.D.38
(The author is wrong here. Jesus was crucified in 30 A.D. making
it 8 years later that Christianity was introduced to Britain -
Keith Hunt)
This is certainly an early period, but Gildas speaks
positively-- "ut scimus." It synchronizes with the first
persecution of the Church by Saul of Tarsus, and its general
dispersion. "They were all scattered abroad except the apostles."
12
If all, then Joseph of Arimathaea among them. Regarding
Gilda's date as our starting-point, we have the following
testimonies assigning the introduction of Christianity in or
about the same year to Joseph of Arimathaea:--
1. Gregory of Tours, in the "History of the Franks:" He
flourished circiter A.D.544-595. This is Gallic testimony.
2. The Pseudo-Gospel of Nicodemus, 14 supposed to be a
composition of the fourth century. This is Oriental tradition.
3. Maelgwyn of Llandaff, the uncle of St. David. His era is
circiter A.D.450. His words being remarkable, we insert them at
length:-- "Joseph of Arimathaea, the noble decurion, received his
everlasting rest with his eleven associates in the Isle of
Avalon. He lies in the southern angle of the bifurcated line of
the Oratorium of the Adorable Virgin. He has with him the two
white vessels of silver which were filled with the blood and the
sweat of the great Prophet Jesus. 15
(This idea of the blood and sweat of Jesus is goobydigoo nonsense
that would have arisen from misinformation and as nearly all
basic truth gets corrupted over the centuries with silly aditions
- keith Hunt)
12 Acys viii. 1.
13.p.133
14 Ad finem.
15 "Joseph ab Arimathea nobilis decurio in insula Avallonia
cum xi. Sociis suis somnum cepit perpetuum et facet in meridiano
angulo lineae bifurcatae Oratorii Adorandae Virginis. Habit enim
secum duovascula argentea alba cruore et sudore magni prophetae
Jesu perimpleta."--Thick vellum Cottonian MS., quoted also by
Usher, "Melchini Fragmentum." Joseph of Arimathaea is by Eastern
tradition said to have been the younger brother of the father of
the Virgin Mary. The records of Glastonbury, as cited by
Malmesbury and others, preserved the genealogy of his descendants
in Britain:- "Helias nepos Joseph genuit Josua, Josua genuit
Amminadab, Amminadab Castellor," 8:c.--"Historia de Glastonbury."
......
This is British testimony, of one also personally acquainted
with the interior of the church of Avalon, or Domus Dei, and the
exact spot within it of the restingplace of Joseph. The greater
weight is due to Maelgwyn's evidence, as no fact is better
established than the reconstruction of the Domus Dei on a
cathedral scale by his nephew, St. David the Archbishop. 16
4. The Vatican manuscript, quoted by Baronius in his
"Ecclesiastical Annals," ad annum 35 (the same year in which the
Acts of the Apostles state all, except the apostles, were
scattered abroad from Judaea). The manuscript records that in
this year! Lazarus, Maria Magdalene, Martha, her handmaiden
Marcella, Maximin a disciple, Joseph the Decurion of Arimathaea,
against all of whom the Jewish people had special reasons of
enmity, were exposed to the sea in a vessel without sails or
oars. The vessel drifted finally to Marseilles, and they were
saved. From Marseilles Joseph and his company passed into
......
16 In the two "vascula argentea alba," full of the Saviour's
blood and sweat shed on the cross and at Gethsemane, we have the
first nucleus of the celebrated legend and a quest of the
SantGreal. They gave the name of the Crystal Isle to Glastonbury.
The Britons commemorate (writes Forcatulus) that Joseph brought
with him the pledge and testimony of the sacred Eucharist,
namely, the chalice which was used by the Saviour, and placed
before His most holy guests the apostles, and which is preserved
by them (the Britons) as the pledge of the safety of Britain, as
the palladium was of that of Troy.---Fortaculus de Gallor.
Imperio et Philos., lib. vii. p.989. Greal in British is a
collection of elements; Sant-Greal, the holy elements.
......
(All this about the cup and the blood and sweat of Christ on that
14th Passover day is nothing but silly aditions over time, Roman
Catholic type traditions that are so common in thier history.
There is an outside chance that someone went back into that upper
room of the last Passover Jesus observed with his disciples and
retreived the "cup" but it has become totally lost today; and the
blood and sweat of Jesus is total garbage of crazy things that
get added to basic truth as time goes on - Keith Hunt)
Britain, and after preaching the Gospel there, died. 17 "
(this would have been about 3 years later - if as the author has
given 38 AD for Christianity to come into Britain. It is common
sense that those people would have remained in Marseilles for 3
years or so to preach the Gospel there also before some moved on
to Britain - Keith Hunt)
5. The "Chronicon" of Pseudo-Dexter, the "Fragmenta" of Haleca
Archbishop of Saragossa, Freculphus and Forcatulus, 18 deliver
the same statement professedly from primitive sources of unknown
date. Cressy, Pitsaeus, Sanders, Alford, the Roman Catholic
historians, concur with Gildas in the year, and with the above
authorities in holding Joseph of Arimathaea to have been the
first who preached Christ in Britain.
(as the author has given - 38 AD - 8 years after the death and
resurrection of Christ - which makes common sense that they would
not leave Judea earlier than that and under the sacttering of the
saints as recorded in the book of Acts - Keith Hunt)
6. We possess abundant proofs that Britain was studded with
Christian churches before the end of the second century, and
whatever direction our investigations take, we find authorities
unanimous in the statement that the church of Joseph in Avalon,
or Glastonbury, was the first and oldest of these churches, many
affirming it to be the oldest or senior Christian church in the
whole world. It will be useful to transcribe the conclusions
arrived at by the historians who have treated on this subject
before us.
"The church of Avalon in Britain no other hands than those of
the disciples of the Lord themselves built - Publius Discipulus.
"The mother church of the British Isles is the Church in Insula
Avallonia, called by the Saxons Glaston." - Usher.
"If credit be given to ancient authors, this church of
Glastonbury is the senior church of the world." - Fuller.
"It is certain that Britain received the faith in the first age
from the first sowers of the Word. Of all the churches whose
origin I have investigated in Britain, the church of Glastonbury
is the most ancient." - Sir Henry Spelman.
......
17 The respective dates of A.D.35 and 38 allow three years
between the expulsion of Joseph from Judea and his settlement in
Britain - an undesigned harmony which goes far chronologically to
confirm the common record.
(And that would make sense - about 35 AD for the first
persecution of saints and their scattering as recorded in the
book of Acts - Joseph and company in Marseilles for about 3 years
teaching the Gospel and arriving in Britain in 38 AD. - Keith
Hunt)
18 Lib. vii. p.989.
Had any doubt existed on this point of priority, it
certainly would have been contested by some other church in our
island, for it was not a question of mere chronology, but one
which drew with it enormous privileges and advantages. It never
was disputed. It was universally conceded: and upon it the long
series of the royal charters of the church and monastery, from
that of King Arthur, the nephew of its second founder, St. David,
to that of Edward III, proceed. "The first church in the kingdom,
built by the disciples of Christ," says the charter of Edgar.
"This is the city," states the charter of Ina, or Ivor, "which
was the fountain and origin of Christ's religion in Britain,
built by Christ's disciples."
The tombs of Saxon and British kings, saints, bishops, and
abbots, buried in and around its confines, confirm the charters.
Of the general truth of the Arimathaean mission there have been
numerous supporters. No author, indeed, who has taken due pains
to examine its evidences, rejects its main facts. "We dare not
deny," writes the caustic Fuller, "the substance of the
story." Bishop Godwin, in his quaint style, writes, "The
testimonies of Joseph of Arimathaea's coming here are so many, so
clear, and so pregnant, as an indifferent man cannot but discern
there is something in it. 19" Archbishop Usher defends it with
his usual display of erudition, and with unusual vehemency of
manner, as if the honour of ecclesiastical Britain rested on its
truth. The reader will form his own judgment.
For our part, we cast aside the addenda and crescendo, the
legends, poems, marvels which after ages, monk, troubadour, and
historian piled high and gorgeously on the original foundation.
That foundation must indeed have originally possessed no mean
strength, depth, and solidity,
......
19 Godwin's "Catalogue of Bishops," Prasul., p.11.
......
to bear the immense superstructure which mediaeval superstition
and literature emulated each other in erecting above the simple
tomb of the Arimathaean senator in the Avalon isle. This
superstition was rising tide-high in the time of Augustine, A.D.
600. "In the western confines of Britain," he writes to the
Pope, "there is a certain royal island of large extent,
surrounded by water, abounding in all the beauties of nature and
necessaries of life. In it the first neophytes of the catholic
law, God beforehand acquainting them, found a Church constructed
by no human art, but by the hands of Christ Himself, for the
salvation of His people. The Almighty has made it manifest by
many miracles and mysterious visitations that He continues to
watch over it as sacred to Himself, and to Mary the mother of
God." 20 The same edifice of figments has been built in all ages,
more or less, on Christianity itself, but we do not therefore
demur to the primitive facts of Christianity. Leaving details out
of the question, the cardinal features of the first, or
Arimathaean, mission of Christianity into Britain are, in our
opinion, entitled to historic acceptance and registration.
These cardinal features we consider to be the
following,:--Joseph and his company, including Lazarus, Mary,
Martha, Marcella, and Maximin, came at the invitation of certain
Druids of high rank, 21 from Marseilles into Britain, circiter
A.D.38,39; were located at Ynys Avalon, the seat of a Druidic
cor, which was subsequently made over to them in free gift by
Arviragus. Here they built the first church, which became the
centre and mother of Christianity in Britain. Here also they
terminated their mortal career, the gentle and conciliatory
character of Joseph securing the protection of the reigning
family, and
......
20 Epistolae ad Gregorium Papam.
21 "Negotium habuit cum Druidis quorum primi precipuique
doctores erant in Britannia" - Freculphus, apud God., p.10
......
the conversion of many of its members. Joseph died and was
interred A.D. 76.
The church was 60 ft. in length by 26 in breadth, built
Gallico more of timber pillars and framework doubly wattled
inside and out, and thatched with straw? 22 This simplicity might
have been the effect of necessity or design. The Druidic faith
required three essentials in every temple:--1. It must be
circular; 2. Hypaethral, or roofless at top, and open at the
sides; 3. Its materials must be monoliths, vast single stones
unhewed, untouched by metal. The Arimathaean church rose in
direct though humble antagonism to the old Cyclopean architecture
- it was oblong, it was of wood, it was roofed and covered in.
The Druidic mind could not, without a strong effort, connect such
a building with the ideas of religion and worship. It carried
with it no image, no symbolism of the One, the Infinite, and the
Darkless.
The Briton on his way to one of the great cosn--Amesbury or
Stonehenge, with their miles of obelisks - would smile with pity
on the ecclesia, or, as he rendered this new word from the East,
the eglwys of the Wyr Israel (men of Israel). But the Druidic
religion knew of no such monstrous abortions as intolerance and
persecution. There is no instance of Druidism persecuting
conscience or knowledge. Such crime was left for Rome, for a
religion of foreign importation. Casting his eye round the circle
of the horizon, and then upwards to the vast open dome of heaven,
the Briton saw the outer ring, as it were, the circumference of
his own Druidic cor; he would resume his march, trying to
discover some possible identification in nature between an oblong
pitched roof and the temple of the universe.
......
22 And such also was the primitive Capitol of Rome: "Quae fuerat
nostri si quaeras Regia nati, Adspice de Canna straminibusque
Domum." Ovid, Faest. ad Fest. Roma.
......
The tomb of Joseph was inscribed with the following epitaph,
touching from its spirit of faith, peace, and humility:-- 23
"AD BRITANNOS VENI POST CHRISTUM SEPELIVI. DOCUI. QUIEVI."
Of the perpetual exemption of the twelve ploughs of land
conferred by Arviragus on the Arimathaean Church, the Domesday
Survey of A.D.1088 supplies curious confirmation. "The Domus
Dei, in the great monastery of Glastingbury, called the Secret of
the Lord. This Glastingbury church possesses, in its own villa,
xii. hides of land which have never paid tax." 1
After A.D.35-36 Joseph disappears from the Scripture
narrative.
The Greek and Roman menologies and Martyrologies commemorate
with scrupulous jealousy the obituaries and death-places of all
the earlier Christian characters of mark who died within the pale
of the Roman empire. They nowhere record those of Joseph. Now we
know from Tertullian that Britain was Christian before it was
Roman. The Dove conquered where the Eagle could make no progress.
"Regions in Britain which have never been penetrated by the
Roman arms," are his words (A.D.192) "have received the
religion of Christ." If this statement were correct, after the
war between Rome and Britain had raged for a century and a half,
from A.D.43 to A.D.192 and in a national point of view it is
impartial testimony, for Tertullian was an African - it is
obvious that the
......
23 Hearne's Antiquities of Glastonbury; Leland, ibid.; John of
Tynemouth, Ad Josephum Arimath.
1 "Domus Dei in magno Glaston. monasterio quod secretum Domini
vocatur, Ecclesia Glaston. habet in ipsa villa xii. hydas quae
nunquam geld averunt."--Domesday Survey, fol., p.449.
......
Arimathaean mission must have been founded in the heart of
independent Britain, quite out of the pale, therefore, of the
Roman empire. And this inference tallies with the rest of the
evidence. Joseph died in these "loca inaccessa Romanis." His
death, therefore, could not be chronicled by Greek or Roman
Churches.
Lazarus is asserted to have accompanied Joseph. The only record
we possess of him beyond the Scripture narrative 2 is in a very
ancient British Triad: "The Triad of Lazarus, the three,
counsels of Lazarus: Believe in God who made thee; Love God who
saved thee; Fear God who will judge thee." 3 It is difficult to
explain how the name and counsel of Lazarus could find their way
into these peculiarly British memorials except by his presence
and teaching in Britain.
Finally, were there any other eminent converts, besides
those of the Silurian family, made at this very early date in
Britain? Three are particularly mentioned - Beatus, whose first
name was Suetonius, Mansuetus, and Marcellus. Beatus, born of
noble parents in Britain, was there also converted and baptized.
He became the founder of the Helvetian Church. He fixed his
mission at Underseven, on the lake of Thun, disposing of all his
property to ransom prisoners of war. His death occurred in the
cell still shown at Underseven, A.D.96. 4
Mansuetus, born in Hibernia, converted and baptized in
Britain, was sent afterwards from Rome with St. Clement,
afterwards the second bishop of Rome, to preach the Gospel in
Gaul. He founded the Lotharingian Church.
......
2 The tradition of the Church of Lyons makes him return with
Martha and Mary to Marseilles, of which town he became the first
bishop, and there died.
3 Triads of Primitive Britain.
4 Theatr. Magn. Britan., lib. vi. p.9.
......
fixing his mission at Toul, where, after extending his labours to
Illyria, he suffered martyrdom, A.D.110. 5
Marcellus, a noble Briton, became bishop of Tongres, and
afterwards founder-bishop of Troves - the diocese which for
centuries exercised the chief influence in the Gallic Church. The
conversion of Linus, the son of Caractacus, is attributed to him.
6
Before, therefore, the incorporation of Britain with the
Roman empire, whilst the war of invasion raged, we have before us
these remarkable facts:--1. A young and vigorous Christian
Church, direct from Jerusalem and the East, and which had never
touched or passed through Rome, was in full and successful work
in the heart of independent Britain, under the protection of the
very sovereign and family that conducted the war against Rome. 2.
This native Church, though so young, does not limit its
operations to Britain. It ramifies from Britain to the Continent,
and becomes, through native-born missionaries, the mother-Church
of Gaul, Lotharingia, and Helvetia. Providence, for the most
part, works in a very noiseless way, by natural means. Nothing
could be more natural than that Joseph and his companions - for
whom, as Christians, there was neither peace nor safety among
their own countrymen; for whom, as Christians and Jews, there was
no assurance of their lives in any Roman province - should seek
refuge in the only independent kingdom of the West, whose
national religion, like their own, was marked for destruction on
the Continent; for, as we have seen, the decrees of Augustus,
Tiberius, and
......
5 Pantaloon, De Viris Illus. Germaniae, pars. L; Guliel.
Eisengren, cent. 2, p.5; Petrus Mersaeus, De Sanctis German.;
Franciscus Guilliman, Helvetiorum Historia, lib. i. c. 15; Petrus
de Natalibus, Episcop. Regal. Tallensis.
6 Marcellus Britannus, "Tungrorum episcopus postea Trevirorum
Archiepiscopus," &c.; --Mersaesus, De Archiepiscopis Trevirensium.
......
Claudius constituted Druidism a capital offence? Nothing could be
more natural than that Guiderius and Aviragus, on the
intercession of influential Druids, should receive and protect
such refugees, and in accordance with their own Druidic
principles, leave whatever religion they professed to the
voluntary acceptance or rejection of their subjects. All this, we
repeat, was very natural, yet we may well affirm that Providence
was working in the wheel of Nature. If the stoker was Nature, the
engineer was Providence. Under this reflection lies another.
Whatever the errors of Druidism were, it was, in its main truths,
a grand religion, forming grand and truthful characters. Its
foundation - maxim was, "Truth against the world "; literally,
against "all being."
Now, if we just cast one eye on Britain, on a Druidic
Caractacus, Arviragus, or Claudia, listening from their thrones
to a Christian missionary, because he professed to bring and to
preach truth, and Christ as the Truth, the Way, and the Life;
then cast the other on a Pilate, asking, in the profoundest
disbelief in all virtue and goodness, "What is truth?" we shall
see at a glance that Britain was prepared, and the Roman empire
not prepared, for Christianity. The British and Roman minds were
different. Druidism, therefore, dissolved by the natural action
of its own principles into Christianity. No persecution until
the tenth, under Diocletian, touched Britain, for Christianity
had become nationality. And the Diocletian was stopped in two
years, on his own responsibility, at the hazard of civil war, by
Constantius. Then rose Constantine, with a British army sworn to
put down the persecution of
...... 7 "Penitus religionem Druidarum abolevit Claudius."--Suetonius,
in Vita Claud.
8 St. Paul's maxim, "We can do nothing against the truth,"
breathes a kindred spirit, and would at once conciliate a Druidic
hearer.
......
Christianity for ever. The clue is a national, a British one. The
next missionary after Joseph was Simon Zelotes the apostle. There
can be little doubt, we think, on this point. One Menology
assigns the martyrdom of Zelotes to Persis in Asia, but others
agree in stating he suffered in Britain. Of these the principal
authority is Dorotheus, Bishop of Tyre, in the reigns of
Diocletian and Constantius (A.D.300). His testimony we consider
decisive:-- "Simon Zelotes traversed all Mauritania, and the
regions of the Africans, preaching Christ. He was at last
crucified, slain, and buried in Britain." Crucifixion was a Roman
penalty for runagate slaves, deserters, and rebels: it was not
known to the British laws. We conclude Simon Zelotes suffered in
the east of Britain, perhaps, as tradition affirms, in the
vicinity of Caistor, under the prefecture of Caius Decius, the
officer whose atrocities were the immediate cause of the
Boadicean war. Two things strike the investigator of early
Christian history: the marvellous manner in which Christian seed
is found growing and fructifying in unheard-of places; the
indifference of the sowers to perpetuating their own name and
labours. They seem to have been quite satisfied and blest in
sowing Christ, and then resting. The epitaph of Joseph of Avalon
would express the feelings of all:- "Docui, Quievi," "I taught, I
have entered on my rest." Beautiful as is this in fact and faith,
it is very unsatisfactory in history. As Christians we feel its
propriety; as writers we desiderate more of that yearning for
immortality on earth which inspires the Greek and Latin authors,
and inspires us also in reading them. Yet the effects of the
Christian principle are undoubtedly greater; for the principle it
is which meets us face to face. It is Christ or self. We come on
a field: the sower has inclosed it, built round it strongly,
sowed proved seed in it, entrusted it to a few like-minded men,
and he vanishes.
......
9 Dorotheus, Synod. de Apostol.; Synopsis ad Sim
Zelot.
......
He is crucified a thousand miles off, leaves no memoir of
himself, no message to posterity, no foot-mark on the geology of
the Church. In perusing the Apostolic Epistles we are struck by
the maximum of censure, the minimum of approval conveyed to the
Churches. We are apt to think they had little force or vitality.
But when we extend our survey to the whole empire of Rome, we
are almost terrified at the subterraneous mocks with which these
Churches are everywhere brining Pagan temple and tower to the
ground. We try to calculate and value this power. We fail in
doing it. The Roman government failed also. It is an unknown
power, the source of which is from above.
3. Next to Joseph and Simon Zelotes came Aristobulus. "It is
perfectly certain," writes Alford, 10 "that before St. Paul had
come to Rome Aristobulus was absent in Britain." We have seen
he was not at Rome when Paul wrote his Epistle. Now Aristobulus
must have been far advanced in years, for he was the
father-in-law of St. Peter. His wife was the subject of the
miracle recorded by St. Matthew. His daughter bore Peter a son
and a daughter. We have the following evidences that he preached
the Gospel and was martyred in Britain:--
The Martyrologies of the Greek Churches: -- "Aristobulus
was one of the seventy disciples, and a follower of St. Paul the
Apostle, along with whom he preached the Gospel to the whole
world, and ministered to him. He was chosen by St. Paul to be the
missionary bishop to the land of Britain, inhabited by a very
warlike and fierce race. By them he was often scourged, and
repeatedly
......
10 Alford's Regia Fides, vol. i. p.83. Alford, whose proper name
was Griffiths, and who assumed the name of Alford on entering the
Society of Jesuits, is next to Baronius, the most learned of the
Roman Catholic historians. His Regia Fides is a wonderful
monument of erudition and research.
......
dragged as a criminal through their towns, yet he converted many
of them to Christianity. He was there martyred, after he had
built churches and ordained deacons and priests for the island."
11
Haleca, Bishop of Augusta, to the same effect:-- "The memory
of many martyrs is celebrated by the Britons, especially that of
St. Aristobulus, one of the seventy disciples." 12
Dorotheus, A.D.303:-- "Aristobulus, who is mentioned by the
Apostle in his Epistle to the Romans, was made bishop in
Britain." 13
Adonis Martyrologia:-- "Natal day of Aristobulus, Bishop
of Britain, brother of St. Barnabas the Apostle, by whom he was
ordained bishop. He was sent to Britain, where, after preaching
the truth of Christ and forming a Church, he received
martyrdom." 14
The British "Achau," or Genealogies of the Saints of
Britain:-- "These came with Bran the Blessed from Rome to
Britain--Arwystli Hen (Senex), IIid, Cyndaw, men of Israel; Maw,
or Manaw, son of Arwystli Hen." 15
According to the genius of the British tonguc, Aristobulus
becomes Arwystli:
A district in Montgomeryshire, on the Severn, perpetuates by
its name (Arwystli) the scene of his martyrdom.
The Britons must have had Arwystli in person among them;
they must have been struck by the age of the venerable
missionary, or the epithet "Senex" would not have become amongst
them part of his name.
There are several points here to be noted. The first is,
......
11 Greek Men., ad 15 March.
12 Halecae Fragmenta in Martyr.
13 Synopsis ad Aristobulum.
14 In Diem Martii 17.
15 Achau Saint Prydain.
......
that Aristobulus was sent into Britain by St. Paul before St.
Paul came himself to Rome, and even before the Epistle to the
Romans was written, for Aristobulus, when St. Paul wrote it, had
left for his mission. The large space given by the Roman
historians to the wars in Britain demonstrates the interest felt
in them by the whole empire. Britain was a familiar term in every
household. Upon it the whole military attention had for some
years been concentrated. The name of Arviragus had by this time
attained as great a celebrity as that of his cousin
Caractacus--it was in every one's mouth; and Juvenal could
suggest no news which would have been hailed by the Roman people
with more intense satisfaction than that of his fall:--
"Hath our great enemy Arviragus, the car-borne British king.
Dropped from his battle-throne?"
It is certain, therefore, that St. Paul, who travelled
everywhere, mixing with every kind of society, must have been as
well acquainted with Britain, and the events passing therein, as
any other intelligent Roman citizen. There was everything to
attract his eye to it as a field for Gospel labour and
enterprise.
But have we any Scripture evidence that St. Paul at this
time thought at all of Western Europe? Undoubtedly we have.
Commentators and writers of his life generally refer to his visit
to Spain as contemplated after his first imprisonment at Rome. A
reference to the passage in the fifteenth chapter of the Epistle
shows, on the contrary, that his journey to Spain was meditated
not only before he came to Rome, but that it was his principal
object in leaving the East, his call at Rome being simply on the
way. "Whensoever I take my journey into Spain, I will come to
you, for I trust to see you on my journey, and to be brought on
my way thitherward by you." 16 He speaks of the journey as a
thing decided upon, taking Rome by the way. Literally, in the
original it is, "I hope in passing through to see you." It was
the West of Europe, then, beyond Rome, not Rome itself, which was
the Apostle's mark, even at this comparatively early date. All
the incidents and delays which occurred between this date (A.D.
56), and the termination of his first imprisonment at Rome, were
interruptions of his original plan of operations. His destination
was the extreme West, and this was in accordance with the command
of Christ, "I will send thee far hence to the Gentiles."
According to the Scriptures, therefore, and the view we have
therein of Paul's own mind, we think we are justified in
concluding that having already sent Aristobulus into Britain, he
intended to traverse Spain himself, and thence join his
fellow-labourer in our island; for it is plain that Aristobulus
acted as wholly under Paul's instructions in Britain as Titus in
Crete or Timothy in Asia Minor. "He preached the Gospel with St.
Paul to the whole world, and ministered to him." 17
It appears that Bran left Rome with Aristobulus, his son
Manaw, Ilid, and Cyndaw, before Caradoc. He was accompanied also
by Eurgain, the eldest daughter of Caradoc, and her husband Salog
lord in her right of Caer Salog (Salisbury), a Roman patrician.
Ilid established his mission under the protection of Bran, his
grandson Cyllinus (eldest son of Caradoc), Salog and Eurgain, in
the centre of Siluria, on the spot in Glamorgarshire known from
that period till the present as Llan-Ilid. At this Llan, or
'consecrated inclosure,' the Princess Eurgain founded and endowed
the first Christian cor, or choir, in Britain. From this
Cor-Eurgain issued many of the most eminent
......
16 Rom. xv.24.
17 Greek Menology, ad Diem Martii 17.
......
teachers and missionaries of Christianity down to the tenth
century. Of the saints of this cor, from Ilid in succession,
there are catalogues in the "Genealogies of the Saints of
Britain." 18
Eastern and Western testimonies concur in thus proving the
Aristobulian mission to Britain under the Sanction of Bran and
his family. We complete the chain with the two following, from
historic sources:--
"The three blessed sovereigns of the isle of Britain:-- 1. Bran,
son of Llyr Llediaith, who first brought the faith of Christ to
the Cymry from Rome, where he had been seven years a hostage for
his son Caradoc, whom the Romans put in prison, after being
betrayed by the plotting, deceit and enticement of Areddig. 2.
Lleuver, or Leirwig (Lucius), son of Coel, son of St. Cyllin, son
of Caradoc, son of Bran, son of Llyr Llediaith, called Lleuver
the Great, who founded the first church of Llandaff, and first
gave the privileges of the country and nation to all who
professed the faith in Christ. 3. Cadwalladr the Blessed, who
gave protection within all his lands to the Christians who fled
from the pagan Saxons who wished to slay them." 19
"The three priorities of the Cymry:--1. Priority as the
first colonizers of Britain; 2. Priority of government and
civilization; 3. Priority as the first Christians of Britain." 20
......
18 Acbau Saint Prydain. In these "Achau," or genealogies, Eurgain
is commemorated as the first female saint of the isle of Britain,
Her conversion, therefore, preceded that of her sister Claudia.
Ilid was a Hebrew:--
"Hast thou heard the saying of Ilid,
One come of the race of
Israel?
'There is no mania like passion.'" -- British Proverbs.
19 Triads of the isle of Britain.
20 Triads of the Cymry.
......
In an ancient collection of British proverbs we find certain
sayings transmitted of Bran and the first Christians of Britain:-
"Hast thou heard the saying of Ilid,
The saint of the race of Israel?
'No folly but ends in misery.'
Hast thou heard the saying of the noble Bran,
The blessed, to all the renowned?
'There is no good but God Himself.'
Hast thou heard the saying of Caradoc,
The exalted son of the noble Bran?
'Oppression persisted in brings on death.'"
We have at this stage of the inquiry two distinct cradles of
Christianity in Britain - the mission of Joseph in Avalon, and
the Cor-Eurgain at Llan-Ilid in Wales; the former protected by
Arviragus, the latter fostered by the family of Caradoc, his
cousin. We can entertain no reasonable doubt that very intimate
ties bound these two Christian missions together. St. Barnabas,
Aristobulus his brother, and Joseph were members of the Jerusalem
Church - they were of the one hundred and twenty which
constituted it prior to the day of Pentecost - the same spiritual
union, the same friendship, the same one faith, one heart, one
mind, one baptism, one hope, one Lord, would joint them together
in Britain as in Jerusalem. Both establishments were out of the
pale of Rome, both among the free states of Britain. Beyond
Siluria, among the Ordovices, the protection of Bran did not
avail Aristobulus: Joseph came direct from Jerusalem, and was
therefore regarded with favour; Aristobulus came from Rome, from
the metropolis of the national enemy, and fell, perhaps, rather a
victim to this fact than a martyr to religion. In Siluria itself
the royal family were hard pressed to reconcile their subjects to
the presence of men in any way, however slightly, connected with
Rome, so unappeasable was the hatred borne to the invaders, so
easily misapprehended and confounded every embassage from their
city. Every overture of peace made by the Roman government to
this "ferox provincia" was sternly rejected; rigour and mildness
were alike thrown away. "The race of the Silures," observes
Tacitus, "was not to be changed by clemency or severity." 21 Even
after the treaty which incorporated Britain with Rome (A.D.118),
two-thirds of the whole military force of the island continued to
be stationed on the frontiers of Wales, at Chester and Caeleon.
The same dogged opposition to the foreigner characterised the
same race in the West in the later Saxon eras. "It is certain,"
writes Kemble, "that neither Roman nor Saxon produced any effect
worth mentioning on the Cymric race and language west of the
Severn. We see indeed what little effect all the centuries since
then, though but a river divides the two races, has produced upon
the British language." 22
Great caution, therefore, was called for in the exercise,
under these circumstances, of the royal protection. Meanwhile,
however, the cor continued to strike roots. The royal family
themselves remained firm in the profession of Christianity.
Cyllinus, who acted as regent in the absence of his father
Caradoc, had all his children baptized. Converts increased, and
more teachers arrived from
......
21 "Silurum gens non atrocitate, non clementia mutabatur"--Tociti
Annal, lib. ii. c. 24.
22 History of the Anglo-Saxons, vol. i. Tacitus, in his Life of
Agricola (c. 21), takes occasion to notice the stubborn
attachment of the Briton to bis native tongue. And it is one of
the most remarkable facts connected with the occupation of
Britain by the Romans, that though they entirely recast the
languages of the Continent through the medium of their own, they
did not leave probably a hundred Latin words behind them in
Britain: within twenty years of their departure Latin had ceased
to be spoken in the island.
......
Greece and Rome. The following notice of St. Cyllinus is
extracted from the family records of Jestyn ap Gwrgant, Prince of
Glamorgan, in the eleventh century:--
"Cyllin ab Caradog, a wise and just king. In his days many of
the Cymry embraced the faith in Christ through the teaching of
the saints of Cor-Eurgain, and many godly men from the countries
of Greece and Rome were in Cambria. He first of the Cymry gave
infants names; for before, names were not given except to adults,
and then from something characteristic in their bodies, minds, or
manners." 23
Nero had succeeded Claudius Sept.28, A.D.53. He was in his
seventeenth year, and for some time remained under the influence
of Seneca, a Stoic philosopher in profession but in practice a
grinding usurer. The capital of this minister amounted to fifteen
million pounds sterling of modern money. Two millions of this he
advanced to the Iceni of Britain on the security of their public
buildings. We doubt if Rothschild or any modern capitalist would
advance half the sum on such buildings as may now be found in the
old Icenic counties. The king of the Iceni was Prasutagus, his
queen Victoria (in British, Vuddig or Boeddig--Boadicea). Tacitus
speaks of him as a sovereign whose wealth was notorious at Rome -
"longa clarus opulentid."
The commerce between Britain and the Continent continued to be
vigorously conducted. Tacitus informs us that the great foreign
emporium was London, a city the foundation of which the British
annals carried back 270 years before that of Rome, i.e. B.C.
1020. 1 Above 80,000
......
23 Gwehelyth Iestyn ap Gwrgant.
1 "Londinum vetus oppidum quod Augustam posteritas
appellavit."--Ammianus Marcellinus, lib. xxvii. c. 8, 9. If
London was not a prae-Roman city, Ammianus could not term it "an
ancient city:" for supposing it founded the first year of the
Claudian invasion, A.D. 43, it would still, in A.D. 350, be quite
a new town; and as the Boadicean war broke out A.D. 6o, it would
be absurd to affirm that it rose in sevens?en years to the
condition described by Tacitus: "Copia negotiatorum et commeatuum
maxime celebre."--Tacit. Annal., lib. i; Hist., lib. i., and lib.
xiv. c. 27-30.
......
Roman citizens, according to the Roman historians, perished in
the Boadicean war, of whom the greater number resided in London.
A Roman garrison stationed in the Praetorium--which extended
along the Thames from the temple of Diana, where now stands St.
Paul's, to the Bryn Gwyn, or White Mount, the site of the
Tower - protected their property and interests. It was just as
easy for an apostle to find his way into Britain as for any of
these 80,000, amongst whom there must have been a fair proportion
of Christians. The Roman citizen could travel from Babylon to
London along the great military itinera of the empire, more
slowly indeed, but with fewer civil inconveniences in the shape
of passports and stoppages, and no less security, than an
Englishman can now. It was not in medieval Europe, divided
amongst a thousand independent marauding states and barons, nor
in the pathless wilds of a new world, but over the length and
breadth of an empire possessed of a system of roads laid down
with consummate engineering skill, and remaining, until the
invention of railroads, without rivals on a great scale, that the
first preachers of the Gospel had to travel. The Roman "iter" at
Babylon would conduct them, under the protection of one law, one
government, without a frontier, to Calais. The whole empire was a
network of connected arteries, along which a traveller might take
his ease from anywhere to anywhere under the overshadowing
protection of the Eagles of the Caesars. It was not till he had
crossed the British Channel that the din and terror of war
assaulted his senses, So profound, indeed, until the brief civil
commotion that resulted in placing the Vespasian family on the
throne, was the peace which prevailed through Europe, that the
Roman annalists are driven, for lack of national events, to fill
page after page with court scandals, with the personal
debaucheries and cruelties of the emperors. These emperors were
despots created by the democracy against the oligarchy; they held
the same position as the Tudors of later times in Britain. When a
noble raised his head above his fellows, like Tarquin and the
poppies, they cut it remorselessly and unscrupulously down. A
lover of the old oligarchic times, such as Tacitus, would - and
no doubt in many cases justly stigmatize such executions as
judicial murders, and transmit their authors to the execration of
posterity. The people at large were unaffected; the lightning
passed over them; and, in return, it was the dagger of the
oligarch in the chamber, not the popular tumult, which the
Caesar dreaded. He walked the streets a simple citizen without
guards, but he went to the Senate armed. Meanwhile, Ostorius
Scapula in Britain suffered a defeat from Arviragus at Caervelin,
near Caerleon. Exhausted in mind and body by the harassing
vicissitudes of the war, he petitioned to be recalled. He was
succeeded by Didius Gallus, who founded Cardiff, still called by
the Welsh Caer Dydd, 'the Castle of Didius.' After a short
command Didius gave way to Veranius, under whom the Roman armies
were again driven behind the Plautian line of fortresses, and
their headquarters fixed at Verulam. Veranius was superseded by
Suetonius Paulinus, a second Fabius Cunctator, and regarded as
the ablest tactitian in the Roman service? He had under him the
ninth, fourteenth, twentieth (Vicesima Valens Victrix), and
second ,(Augusta) legions.
The expression of Tacitus, that Britain had long been
......
2 "Cunctator natura, nemo rei militaris callidior habe
batur."--Taciti Hist., lib. xiv. c. 20.
......
the field for the employment of the great generals and picked
armies of the empire, 3 may be readily understood by merely
reading over the names of the Roman commanders who were
successively entrusted with the conduct of war - Aulus Plautius,
Geta, Vespasian and Titus, Qstorius Scapula, Suetonius Paulinus.
Cerealis, Julius Frontinus, Julius Agricola, Sallustius,
Lucullus, under whom the island was lost, and the Roman armies a
second time withdrawn to the Continent, A.D.86; from which time
till A.D.118 we have but one solitary Roman name occurring in
British history, Neratius Marcellus. From A.D.43 to A.D.86
sixty pitched battles were fought. "The series of invasions and
sanguinary conflicts," observes Smith in his "Ancient Religions,"
4 "between the Romans and Britons have no parallel in any age or
country." "We are able to perceive," writes Richardson," from
the partial story furnished by the invaders themselves, that
conquest was never more dearly attempted than in the case of
Britain by the Romans. By no people was every inch of country at
any age contested with more bravery and surrendered more
stubbornly than by the aboriginal fathers of this isle. They had
become a very populous nation, so versed in military tactics as
to meet the armies, which had been carrying the Roman banners
over the most famed and intellectual quarters of the world, on
such formidable terms, as to render victory at every encounter
little better than defeat. They had settled laws and
institutions, were distinguished for an ardent love of liberty,
in defence of which the highest degree of valour and selfdevotion
were on all occasions manifested. It is certain they reverenced
the laws by which they had been long governed, and evinced
profound homage for the memory of their forefathers: nor can we
less credit their un-
......
3 "Magai duces, egregii exercitus."--Tacitus, Annal., lib. ii.
c. 24
4 p.457.
......
daunted energy against the mercenary and implacable plunderers of
the world, against whose experienced arms they had to contend. A
man must be a barbarian himself to suppose that such a nation
could be barbarous. The idea is simply ludicrous." 5
This firm resistance to the Roman arms was mainly due to the
national religion - to Druidism, which acted then much the same
as Protestantism did on the British mind in the popish invasion
of the Armada. Druidism had been persecuted by pagan Rome on the
Continent as Protestantism in the Tudor era was by papal Rome:
both had their headquarters and stronghold in Britain, both had
common points admirably suited to the native bent and genius of
the British race; both were religions of freedom; and both were
thoroughly identified with British independence and grandeur. The
Druid, indeed, regarded the Roman mythologic religion with much
the same mixture of contempt and hatred that a strong Protestant
does still the image system and inquisition practices of the
Papacy. "When the Romans," observes Cleland, "effected a
footing in Britain, they found in Druidism a constant and
implacable enemy to their usurpation. They would have been glad
to introduce their religion, but to that point there was an
invincible obstacle in the horror and contempt of the natives for
a religion formed by a corruption of their own allegories; which
made the name of their heathen gods as familiar to them as Julius
Caesar states, but in a sense which excluded them from reception
in a divine one." 6
The Briton soon perceived the fact that Christianity and
Druidism were the two religions persecuted by Rome. The gathering
prejudice against the former, because the Aristobulean mission
came from Rome, gave way to strong
......
5 Richardson's Historian, p.10.
6 Cleland's Ancient Celtica, p.13.
......
predilections in its favour. A large class of Britons, it is
true, cared as little then, as now, for religion in itself, but
they were ardent patriots, and Druidic because patriots; they
were indifferent what the national religion was, provided it was
thoroughly anti-foreign, anti-Roman - that it was thoroughly
British. Nothing, therefore, served so much to recommend
Christianity and extend it in Britain, as its persecution by
Rome. Common oppression drove the two religions into each other's
arms, and finally united them in so indissoluble a union, that we
cannot now separate in British Christianity the Druidic from the
Christian element. Two events now occurred which crowned the
national hatred towards both the arms and religion of Rome, and,
in the same degree, disposed Druidism to identify its sufferings
with those of Christianity - these were the Boadicean outrage and
the Menai massacre.
Orders were issued from Rome to Suetonius Paulinus to
extirpate, at any cost, the chief seat of Druidism among the
Cymry, or Western Britons. Seneca, who still, in some respects,
acted as Nero's adviser, demanded repayment, at the same time, of
his loan to the Iceni, charging exorbitant interest. The Icenic
senate demurred; whereon Caius Decius, the Roman praefect at
Caistor, was instructed to take possession of all the temples,
castles, and palaces belonging to the state. These orders were
vigorously executed. Prasutagus, the king, dying in the midst of
these measures, left Nero co-heir, with his two daughters, to his
accumulated treasures. On the pretext that the whole of the royal
hoard came under the denomination of public property, Decius
proceeded to seize it. Resistance being made, the legionaries
stormed the palace, perpetrated the most inhuman outrages on the
persons of Queen Victoria and her daughters, and carried the
treasures off to the Castra. Not content with these atrocities,
Decius confiscated, in direct violation of the Claudian treaty,
the estates of many of the Icenic blaenorion, or nobility. The
Iceni sent Venusius to Arviragus, adjuring the Roman
protectorate, and placing themselves and the Coraniaid at his
disposal. Suetonius, meanwhile, by forced marches along the
Wyddelian road, had reached the banks of the Menai. On either
side extended the myvyrion, or colleges, and the cemeteries of
the ancient religion, the tumuli of which are yet traceable. Here
reposed, between the soaring ramparts of Snowdon, the sacred
mountain, the Zion of Cymru, and the blue waters of the
unexplored Atlantic, the fathers of the British Isle: chiefs
whose ashes for fifteen hundred years had never been desecrated
by the tramp of a foreign foe; arch-druids, the depositaries of
the hoary wisdom of the East; kings whose Cimbric names had
carried terror over the continents of Europe and Asia. Through
these sanctuaries of so many and such ancient memories, the
regulated march of the mailed legions of Rome now resounded.
Anglesey was then known as Mon, and ecclesiastically, from the
number of Druidic groves which covered it, sweeping down to the
margin of the Menai, as Ynys Tywyll, the dark isle. The massacre
of the Druidic priests and priestesses which ensued is
graphically described by Tacitus. It was a complete surprise.
Effecting the passage of the Menai, opposite the present seat of
the Marquis of Anglesey (Plas Newydd), Seutonius gave the
colleges to the flame and their inmates to the sword, the
resistance attempted by the native force on the spot being easily
overcome. The myvyrion were levelled with the soil, and for many
nights and days the waters of the Menai were illuminated with the
glare of the conflagrations of the sacred luci - the favourite
haunts of Druidic meditation and philosophy. Tacitus endeavours
to palliate this foul wholesale assassination of the ministers of
religion, by stating that the Druids were in the habit of
sacrificing the Roman prisoners of war on their altars. The
Romans themselves, we know, after exhibiting them in triumph,
slaughtered every captive king and chief in the Tarpeian
dungeons, whilst the privates were condemned in thousands to
butcher each other on the public altar, or the arena of the
circus, in the gladiatorial games - even the vestal virgins
smiling on the sanguinary holocausts. The immolation, on the
other hand, of Roman prisoners by the Druids, rests on the
solitary assertion of an enemy who, with a like scandalous
indifference to truth, terms almost in the same page the
Christian religion itself "a destructive superstition. 7"
The news of the massacre was no sooner diffused through
Britain than it excited the nation to frenzy. The war from this
moment became a religious war; a crusade accompanied with all the
frightful and remorseless cruelties on either side which have in
all ages distinguished such hostilities. 8 The Iceni and
Coranidae had entirely forfeited the name of Britons, and their
oppression alone might have been regarded in the light of a just
retribution, but the Menai massacre merged all other feelins in
one torrent of universal indignation and horror. Boadicea soon
found herself at the head of 120,000 men in arms. The Roman
accounts impress us vividly with the profound gloom in which
their forces
......
7 Suppose we knew nothing more of the Jewish dispensation and of
the Levitical priesthood than we find in Greek and Latin authors,
it must be confessed we should have either to remain in total
ignorance, or to embrace very absurd misconceptions. It may,
however, be added, that the Greeks were equally unjust towards
the Romans, for no Greek writer deigns to mention the name of any
of their authors, or, indeed, to suppose that they had any
literature at all.
8 In the Boadicean war, states Tacitus, no quarter was given or
asked on either side: "Neque enim capere aut venumdare alludve
quod belli commercium sit," &c.--Annal.;, lib: xiv. c. 29--39.
......
were plunged, by the heavy shadows of the forthcoming disasters.
Portent on portent is recorded. At Colchester the statue of
Victory, like that of Dagon at Joppa, fell backward and was
shattered to fragments. A Pythoness, agitated, like Cassandra on
the eve of the fall of Troy, with the insuppressible spirit of
divination, caused the streets to re-echo with the cry - "Death
is at hand." In the senate-house the British warcry, uttered by
invisible tongues, terrified and dispersed the councillors. The
theatres resounded with the shocks and groans of a field of
battle. In the waters of the Thames appeared the mirage of a
Roman colony subverted and in ruins. The channel between Dover
and Calais ran at high tide with blood. On the tide receding, the
sands revealed, in long lines, the impressions of files of bodies
laid out for burial. The Menai massacre had, in fact, terrified
the consciences of its perpetrators, as it had roused to fury the
passions of the whole Druidic population.. The return of Caradoc
also about this period to Siluria, though bound by solemn
stipulation, which he faithfully observed, not to bear arms again
against Rome, augmented the general commotion. The British army,
assembled at Caer Llyr (Leicester) under Venusius, was harangued
by Boadicea in person. Boadicea was a near relative of Claudia.
We have seen the latter princess cultivating the "belles
lettres," throwing her palace open to Martial and the "iterati"
of the capital of Europe, receiving apostles, establishing the
first Christian Church in her own household, uniting the graces
of religion with refined art and high personal accomplishments.
This is the royal Christian lady, such as we should expect to
find, presiding, surrounded by the elite of Roman society, over
the household of a Roman senator of ample possessions and
powerful connexions.
Dion Cassius gives us a sister picture of her cousin
the Druidic queen, under very different circumstances during the
same year in Britain. It is a grand and imposing composition,
quite unique in history. Greece and Rome shew us nothing like it.
The Maid of Orleans, in more modern times, is the only approach
to it, but all the terrible features are supplanted by gentler
ones. We see a queen, stung to madness by the wrongs which most
nearly affect womanhood, leading a whole nation to battle; the
sense of injury has changed her whole nature into that of a
Bellona, an incarnate goddess of war, and she lives only for
revenge. In her eyes every Roman is a monster already doomed. She
would have been less than woman not to have felt her dishonour,
more than human not to have panted for the hour of retribution.
"Boadicea," writes Dion, "ascended the general's tribunal: her
stature exceeded the ordinary height of woman; her appearance
itself carried terror; her aspect was calm and collected, but her
voice had become deep and pitiless. Her hair falling in long
golden tresses as low as her hips, was collected round her
forehead by a golden coronet; she wore a tartan dress fitting
closely to the bosom, but below the waist expanding in loose
folds as a gown; over it was a chlamys, or military cloak. In her
hand she bore a spear. She addressed the Britons as follows." -
We give only her peroration:--
"I thank thee! I worship thee! I appeal to thee a woman to a
woman, O Andraste! I rule not, like Nitocris, over beasts of
burden, as are the effeminate nations of the East, nor, like
Semiramis, over tradesmen and traffickers, nor, like the
man-woman Nero, over slaves and eunuchssuch is the precious
knowledge these foreigners introduce amongst us - but I rule over
Britons, little versed indeed in craft and diplomacy, but born
and trained to the game of war: men who, in the cause of liberty,
stake down their lives, the lives of their wives and children,
their lands and property. Queen of such a race, I implore thine
aid for freedom, for victory over enemies infamous for the
wantonness of the wrongs they inflict, for their perversions
of justice, for their contempt of religion, for their insatiable
greed; a people that revel in unmanly pleasures, whose affections
are more to be dreaded and abhorred than their enmity. Never let
a foreigner bear rule over me or these my countrymen: never let
slavery reign in this island. Be thou for ever, O goddess of
manhood and of victory, sovereign and queen in Britain. 9"
Colchester was carried on the first assault by the British
army. The temple, garrisoned by the veterans, held out for two
days, then shared the same fate. Petilius Cerealis, the Roman
lieutenant, was defeated, with the loss of the ninth legion, at
Coggeshall (Cocci Collis). Cerealis himself, with a few horsemen,
escaped into camp. The municipal town of Verulam was then
stormed, gutted, and burnt. London had received a Roman garrison,
under the name of a colony, within its walls. Against it the
British army, now swelled to 230,000 men, directed its vengeance.
A battle was fought and lost in its defence, at Ambresbury,
between Waltham and Epping. 10 Such of the inhabitants as
possessed the means fled, at the approach of the British Queen,
to Regnum and Rutupium. The rest, including the Roman citizens
and foreign merchants, took refuge with the garrison in the
fortifications of the Praetorium, extending from the temple of
Diana to the White Mount. The ramparts were escaladed, the city
fired, public and private edifices reduced indiscriminately to
ashes, the walls levelled, and above 40,000 residents put to the
sword. Leaving
......
9 Dion Cassius, "Xiphilini Excerpta," printed in the government
"Monumenta Britannica," ad an. 58,59.
10 The spot of Boadicea's camp is approached across the old
Ermine Street by the Camlet (Battle-way). Its figure is described
in Cromwell's "Colchester," vol. i. p.32 as irregular,
containing twelve acres, surrounded by moats and high ramparts,
overgrown with oaks and hornbeams.
......
behind this terrible example of a metropolis in conflagration,
quenched with blood, Victoria swept westward to intercept
Paulinus. Tacitus records but two, Dion many engagements, between
her and the Roman forces. Her British epithet, Buddig, or Vuddig
(the Victorians), implies that in more than one battle success
followed her standard. Tacitus localizes the last battle or the
margin of Epping forest - a plain error. The British traditions
place it on Oe Wyddelian road, near the modern town of Newmarket,
in Flintshire. The names still attached to the various sites of
the field confirm this statement. Here are "Cop Paulinus," the
"Hill of Arrows," the "Hill of Carnage," the "Hollow of Woe,"
the "Knoll of the Melee," the "Hollow of Execution," the "Field
of the Tribunal," the "Hollow of No Quarter." Half-a-mile further
is a monolith, the "Stone of Lamentation," and on the road to
Caerwys was formerly - now removed to Downing - the "Stone of the
Grave of Vuddig."
Turning to the pages of Dion, we read the description of a
conflict such as these names suggest a deadly melee of
legionaries, auxiliaries, archers, cavalry, charioteers,
mingled together and swaying to and fro in all the heady currents
of a long-sustained and desperate combat. Towards sunset the
fortune of the day was decided in favour of the Romans. The
Britons, driven back on their intrenchments, left a large number
dead on the field, or prisoners in the hands of the enemy. They
prepared, however, to renew the conflict, but in the interim,
Victoria died, by poison according to Tacitus - in the course of
nature according to the Greek historian, who adds that her
obsequies were celebrated with extraordin ary magnificence. Her
death little affected the spirit or resources of the western and
northern Britons, who continued hostilities with unabated vigour
under Arviragus, Venusius, and Gwallog, or Galgacus. 11 Harassed
by the same anxieties that had undermined the constitution of
Ostorius Scapula, Paulinus, at the expiration of the year A.D.
61, resigned his command to Petronius Turpilianus. The whole of
the Roman empire elsewhere continued to enjoy tranquility, Syria
alone excepted, the disturbances in which were pacified in a few
months by Corbulo. Whatever emperor occupied the throne, the
military service was never deficient in generals of the highest
order of ability. The war had now lasted eighteen years, and the
Roman province was still limited by the Exe and Severn westward
and the Humber on the north. Even within these lines its bounds
fluctuated with the success of reverses or the imperial arms. 12
......
11 We have elsewhere observed that the gallant and successful
resistance of Britain to the Roman invasions was mainly due to
the patriotic spirit and exalted doctrines with regard to the
indestructibility of the soul breathed by their Druidic religion.
Seneca was the indirect cause of the Boadicean war. His nephew
Lucan, in the first book of Pharsalic, attributes the British
fearlessness of death to Druidic teaching in the following fine
lines:--
"Certe populi quos despicit Arctus.
Felices errore suo, quos ille timorum
Maximus haud urget, lethi metus. Inde ruendi
In ferrum mens prona vivis animaeque capaces
Mortis et ignavum rediturae parcere vita."
Cicero had noted the fact before--"In proelio morituri exultant
Cimbri."--Tuscul. Disp., lib. ii.
12 "Non poterant Britanni sub Romana ditioni teneri," is the
frank admission of the Augustini Scriptores, p.68.
..........
NOTE:
Such is the history of Britain, that so many English historians
till late, wanted to ignore and forget. Yet at the same time for
stood in London (and to this very day) in honor of Boadicea, her
statue in her chariot, leading the British forces against the
Roman legions.
I have the BBC movie on "Boadicea." It is a Hollywood type
production and shows the WHY as to the rise of this woman against
the Roman forces.
Recently also (writing in 2012) was the Hollywood movie "The
Eagle" which shows the power and might of the tribes of Scotland
in so defeating the Romans that General Adrian of Rome needed to
build a wall across northern England to keep the Scots and Pits
from coming down and driving the Romans back to the continent of
Europe, so determined were they that the Romans would never rule
them.
It was by treaty NOT conquest that Rome occupied what we now know
as the land of England. The British still kept their laws and
kings and way of life, which became Christian. When Rome left
England, the only thing that was ever left of Roman society was
its brokem down building and some of its roads. The CULTURE of
Roman NEVER took hold in Christian Britain.
Keith Hunt
To be continued with "The Tracing up of the ancient Royal Church
of Britain to its Apostolic Foundation."
....................
The Apostle Paul #4His coming to BritainPAUL IN BRITAIN #4
THE TRACINGS UP OF THE ANCIENT ROYAL CHURCH OF BRITAIN TO ITS
APOSTOLIC FOUNDATIONS. ST. PAUL IN BRITAIN.---HIS CONNECTION
WITH THE ROYAL SILURIAN FAMILY OF BRITAIN.
TWO cardinal reasons, we have seen, each of national weight
and extent, inclined the British mind to accept Christianity--the
first, its identity in many important points with Druidism; the
second, its uncompromising antagonism to the whole system of the
Roman state mythology. The Roman persecution of both religions
identified them still further in the popular mind. Nowhere, then,
in Asia, Africa, or Europe, could the apostles find richer or a
better-prepared soil for the Gospel. If we add that Britain was
the only country in these ages where the Christian could profess
and practise his religion free from persecution, we reasonably
and antecedently conclude that a strong Christian current must
have set in from both Jerusalem and Rome to this island from the
first or Pentescostal days of the Church.
We shall better estimate the force of the following
testimonies if we keep steadily in mind the fact that the great
British Church which Augustine found A.D. 596 established in
Britain and Ireland, was essentially Eastern, proclaiming by
every usage in which she differed from Rome her direct and
independent birth from Jerusalem and the apostles themselves in
the first throes of Christianity. It is, indeed, an absurdity to
go about explaining the existence of such a Church, abounding in
all the characteristics of an ancient institution, deeply fixed
in the native mind and soil, in any other way than by a frank
accceptance of its apostolic origin. Every other attempt at
solution fails us. How came these archbishoprics, bishoprics,
dioceses, Christian colleges, parochial churches and endowments,
royal Christian houses, genealogies of saints, immense and
opulent monasteries, a whole nation of believers, to be in
Britain? How came they, on their first meeting with the
missionary of the Bishop of Rome, to proclaim with one voice, "We
have nothing to do with Rome; we know nothing of the Bishop of
Rome in his new character of the Pope; we are the British Church,
the Archbishop of which is accountable to God alone, having no
superior on earth. 1" This is one of those tremendous facts
which rise before us like a huge mountain in the plain of
history. Rome found here a Church older than herself,
ramifications of which struck into the very heart of the
Continent, the missionary triumphs of which in Italy itself in
the life of Augustine were greater than his own among the British
Saxons; for Columba and his associates from the primitive
colleges in Ireland were the evangelizers of the barbarian
conquerors, the Lombards,
......
1 The continental Churches admitted, for the most part, a Primacy
when they rejected the Supremacy of the Bishop of Rome. The
British Church admitted neither; it knew nothing of the Bishop of
Rome, except on an equality with any of its own British bishops,
or any other bishop in the Christian Church. The further we go
back into British history, the clearer shines forth in all our
laws the entire independence of the British crowns, Church, and
people, of all foreign authority. All our great legal authorities
concur on this point. "The ancient British Church," writes
Blackstone, vol. iv. p.105, "by whomsoever planted, was a
stranger to the Bishop of Rome and all his pretended
authorities." "The Britons told Augustine," writes Bacon,
Government of England, "they would not be subject to him, nor
let him pervert the ancient laws of their Church. This was their
resolution, and they were as good as their word, for they
maintained the liberty of their Church five hundred years after
his time, and were the last of all the Churches of Europe that
gave up their power to the Roman Beast, and in the person of
Henry V111, that came of their blood by Owen Tudor, the first
that took that power away again."
......
of Northern Italy. The Gallican Church was entirely one with the
British in this opposition to Roman assumptions. The archbishops
of Treves were, as we learn from the Tungrensian Chronicles,
always supplied from Britain. Treves and Rheims became the
headquarters of Gallic liberties, and here rose, under Hincmar,
as powerful a resistance as in Britain to Italian supremacy. The
Briton could never understand why, because Rome professed certain
truths, she should arrogate spiritual despotism over all who held
the same. He does not appear to have troubled himself about her
errors and corruptions; these he regarded as her own matters,
with which, as not belonging to him, he did not interfere.
Cadvan, Prince of Wales, expresses himself thus to the Abbot of
Bangor: "All men may hold the same truths, yet no man thereby be
drawn into slavery to another. If the Cymry believed all that
Rome believes, that would be as strong reason for Rome obeying us
as for us to obey Rome. It suffices for us that we obey the
truth. If other men obey the truth, are they, therefore, to
become subject to us? Then were the truths of Christ made slavery
unto men, and not freedom."
The soldier who interrogated Augustine at the oak of
Conference seems, in like manner, to treat the question between
them as one quite apart from doctrine.
"Does Rome possess all the truth?"
"All."
"And you say we do--our usages only differ. Now of two men,
if both have all their limbs and senses complete, both are equal.
Because the Romans have noses and we have noses, must we either
cut off our noses to be Romans? Must all who have noses be
subject to the Romans? Why, then, should all who hold the faith
be subject to Rome because she holds the faith?"
This rough, broad reasoning allowed almost identity in
doctrine and practices to be maintained by any Christian with
Rome, or any other Church, without in the most remote degree
admitting any claim Rome might advance on the ground of such
identity. The Briton thus had his festivals, processions, floral
decorations, antiphonal choirs, cathedrals - an immense deal in
common with Rome but he had had them for centuries before Papal
Rome was ever heard of. And he would have ridiculed the notion
that he was to give up a good thing because Rome also had it, as
he scorned the idea that a community in such things constituted
the shadow of a title on the part of Rome to his allegiance. His
position, in fact, was a very strong one, thoroughly Catholic,
thoroughly anti-fanatical, and at the same time thoroughly
anti-papal: and he knew its strength, resting on historical
monuments which could neither be ignored nor destroyed: around
him rose hoary cathedrals, churches, abbeys, colleges,
"imperishable stones of witness" that his Church was the
primitive apostolical Church of Britain, that the Papacy, with
all its claims, was a novelty, an intrusion, an invention, a
fable, that there never was a time when the eyes of the Christian
pilgrim did not rest in this island on vast evidences bespeaking
a Church subject to no other Church on earth, built on its own
apostolic foundations, and recognising the apostolic Scriptures
alone for its rule of faith. 2
......
2 Bede's testimony as to the pure scriptural character of the
teaching of the British Church is full and explicit, and he
contrasts, with feelings of shame and reluctance, the apostolic
lives of the British missionaries with those of his own Papal
Church. Of Columba he writes. "He taught only what was contained
in the prophetic, evangelic, and apostolic writings, all works of
piety and charity being at the same time diligently
observed." - Lib. iii. c. 41. Of Aidan: "All who resorted to him
applied themselves either to reading the Scriptures or to
learning Psalms. -- "Lib. iii. c.5. Of Adamnan: "He was most
admirably versed in the knowledge of the Scriptures." -- Lib.
iii. c.15. How entirely the British Church rejected human
authority in matters of faith may be collected from the saying of
Columba, "Except what has been declared by the Law, the prophets,
the evangelists, and apostles, a profound silence ought to be
observed by all others on the subject of the Trinity." -- Lib.
iii. c. 4.
......
The general conclusion arrived at by the writers who have
previously investigated this final part of our question may be
given in the words of Capellus: "I scarcely know of one author,
from the times of the Fathers downwards, who does not maintain
that St. Paul, after his liberation, preached in every country in
Western Europe, Britain included." 3 "Of St. Paul's journey to
Britain," writes Bishop Burgess, "we have as satisfactory proof
as any historical question can demand." 4 The same view is
substantially maintained by Baronius, the Centuriators of
Magdeburg, Alford or Griffith, next to Baronius the most erudite
of the Roman Catholic historians; Archbishops Parker and Usher,
Stillingfleet, Camden, Gibson, Cave, Nelson, Allix, &c.;
Let us preface the catena authoritaturn on this point with a
few general testimonies from widely different quarters.
"The cradle of the ancient British Church was a royal one,
herein being distinguished from all other Churches for it
proceeded from the daughter of the British king, Caractacus,
Claudia Rufina, a royal virgin, the same who was afterwards the
wife of Aulus Rufus Pudens, the Roman senator, and the mother of
a family of saints and martyrs." 5
"We have abundant evidence that this Britain of ours received
the Faith, and that from the disciples of Christ Himself, soon
after the crucifixion of Christ." 6
......
3 Hist. of the Apostles.
4 Independence of the British Church.
5 Moncaeus Atrebas, the learned Gallican divine, "In Syntagma,"
p.38.
6 Sir Henry Spelman's Concilia, fol., p.1.
......
"Britain in the reign of Constantine had become the seat of a
flourishing and extensive Church." 7
"Our forefathers, you will bear in mind, were not generally
converted, as many would fain represent, by Roman missionaries.
The heralds of salvation who planted Christianity in most parts
of England were trained in British schools of theology, and were
firmly attached to those national usages which had descended to
them from the most venerable antiquity." 8
"The Christian religion began in Britain within fifty years of
Christ's ascension." 9
"Britain, partly through Joseph of Arimathaea, partly through
Fugatus and Damianus, was of all kingdoms the first that received
the Gospel." 10
"We can have no doubt that Christianity had taken root and
flourished in Britain in the middle of the second century." 11
......
7 Soames' "Anglo-Saxon Church," Introd.. p.29.
8 Soames' "Bampton Lectures," pp.112-257. This statement is so
true, that sixty-three years after the landing of Augustine, that
is, A.D.660, when all the Heptarchy, except Sussex, had been
converted, Wini, Bishop of Winchester, was the only bishop of the
Romish communion in Britain, and he had purchased his first
bishopric of London from Wulfhere, King of Mercia: all the rest
were British. And the cause is patent: Maelwyn or Patrick, the
apostle of Ireland Ninian, the apostle of the southern Picts,
Aidan of the Northumbrians, Paul Hen his successor, Columba of
the Scots, Finan of the East Angles, Cad or Chad of the Mercians,
were all native Britons, educated in the native colleges. The
Romish succession had died down to one prelate, and Saxon
Christianity was kept alive or refounded by British Christians.
The succession of Augustine in Canterbury and Rochester expired
in Damianus, A.D.666.
9 Robert Parsons the "Jesuit's Three Conversions of England,"
vol. i. p.26.
10 Polydore Vergil, lib. ii.
11 Cardwell's (Camden Prof.) "Ancient History," p.18, 1837.
......
"It is perfectly certain, that before St. Paul had come to Rome
Aristobulus was absent in Britain, and it is confessed by all
that Claudia was a British lady." 12
"The faith which was adopted by the nation of the Britons in the
year of our Lord 165, was preserved inviolate, and in the
enjoyment of peace, to the time of the Emperor Diocletian." 13
Let us now trace our way back from the time of Venerable
Bede, A.D.740, step by step, to the apostolic era and the
apostles themselves.
In the seventh century we have a galaxy of Christian bishops
in England, Wales, Ireland and Scotland, whose names alone would
make a considerable catalogue.
In the year A.D.596 we have the Augustine mission landing in
Kent, followed by three conferences with the bishops of the
British Church. In A.D.600, Venantius Fortunatus, in his
"Christian Hymns," speaks of Britain as having been evangelized
by St. Paul. 14
In A.D.542, Gildas writes: "We certainly know that Christ,
the True Sun, afforded His light, the knowledge of His precepts,
to our island in the last year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar."
15
In A.D.500-540, we have various productions of Christian
bards, such as Taliesin and Aneurin, emanating from the courts of
the Christian sovereigns of Britain - one of the latter, "The
Crowned Babe" (i.e., Christ), interesting as the earliest
European specimen, of any length, of rhyme in poetry: it is
composed in the ancient British tongue.
In the year A.D.408 Augustine of Hippo asks, "How many
churches are there not erected in the British isles
......
12 Alford's Regia Fides, vol. i. p.19.
13 Bede, lib. i. c. 4.
14 "Transit et oceanum vel qua facit insula portum. Quasque
Britannus habet terras atque ultima Thule."
15 De Excidio Britanniae, p.25.
......
which lie in the ocean?" 16 And about the same time Arnobius
writes: "So swiftly runs the word of God that though in several
thousand years God was not known, except among the Jews, now,
within the space of a few years, His word is concealed neither
from the Indians in the East nor from the Britons in the West."
17
Theodoretus in A.D.435 testifies: "Paul, liberated from his
first captivity at Rome, preached the Gospel to the Britons and
others in the West. Our fishermen and publicans not only
persuaded the Romans and their tributaries to acknowledge the
Crucified and His laws, but the Britons also and the Cimbri
(Cymry)." 18
To the same purport in his commentary on 2 Timothy iv.16:
"When Paul was sent by Festus on his appeal to Rome, he
travelled, after being acquitted, into Spain, and thence extended
his excursions into other countries, and to the islands
surrounded by the sea."
More express testimony to Paul's preaching in Britain could
not be delivered, nor from a more unexceptional quarter.
Theodoret was Bishop of Cyropolis, attended both the General
Councils of Ephesus (A.D.431), against the Nestorians, and of
Chalcedon, A.D.451, consisting of 600 bishops. As an excellent
interpreter of Scripture, and a writer of ecclesiastical history,
he deservedly ranks high.
Chrysostom, Patriarch of Constantinople, supplies (A.D.402)
cumulative evidence of the existence of pure British
Christianity. "The British Isles," he writes, "which are beyond
the sea, and which lie in the ocean, have received the virtue of
the Word. Churches are there founded and altars erected. Though
thou shouldst go to the ocean, to
......
16 Opera, fol., Paris Edit., p.676.
17 Arnobius. Ad. Psalm cxlvii.
18 Theodoret, De Civ. Grcec. Off., lib. ix. Nicephorus seems to
have followed Theodoretus (Niceph., lib. ii. c. 40); and Eusebius
Pamphilus, lib. iv.-- (Greek is given)
......
the British Isles, there thou shouldst hear all men everywhere
discoursing matters out of the Scriptures, with another voice,
indeed, but not another faith, with a different tongue but the
same judgment." 19
"From India to Britain," writes St. Jerome (A.D.378), "all
nations resound with the death and resurrection of Christ." 20
In A.D. 320, Eusebius, Bishop of Caesarea, speaks of
apostolic missions to Britain as a matter of notoriety "The
apostles passed beyond the ocean to the isles called the
Brittanic Isles." 21
The first part of the fourth century is the era of
Constantine the Great and his mother Helena. Gibbon, with that
perversity which beset him as a mania in dealing with the leading
facts of Christianity, strives to persuade himself that
Constantine and Helen were not Britons, but natives of some
obscure village in the East 22; his sole support for such a
supposition being the fragment of an anonymous author, appended
to Ammianus Marcellinus. "The man must be mad," states Baronius,
"who, in the face of universal antiquity, refuses to believe that
Constantine and his mother were Britons, born in Britain." 1
......
19 Chrysostomi, Orat. 'O Oeos...' the rest of the Greek is given.
20 Jerome, "In Isaiam," c. liv.; also, "Epistol"., xiii. ad
Paulinum.
21 Eusebius. "De Demonstratione Evangelic," lib. iii.
22 Naissus. Colchester, the birth-place of Helen of the Cross,
has, from time immemorial, borne the cross with three crowns for
its arms.
1 Baronius, ad ann. 306: "Non nisi extremae dementiae hominis."
Until the reign of Constantine the Roman Christians had no other
church than the Titulus to worship in: "Ante Constantini
imperium templa Romae non habuerint Christiani," observes Bale
(Scriptores Britan., p.17.) The Pope, it is well known, claims
the sovereignty of the States of the Church by right of the
decree of the British Emperor Constantine making them over in
free gift to the Bishop of Rome. That this decree was a forgery
no one doubts; it was, however, confirmed by Pepin. By the papal
Church's own showing, it is infinitely more indebted to the
ancient British Church and sovereigns than they ever were to it.
Without the benefactions of the Claudian family and Constantine,
it would never have risen above the character given it by Pius
the First, the brother of Hermas Pastor-- "Pauper Senatus
Christi." For its earthly aggrandisement it is mainly indebted to
ancient British liberality.
......
Archbishop Usher delivers a catalogue of twenty continental
authorities in the affirmative - not one to the contrary. The
Panegyrics of the Emperors, the genealogy of his own family, as
recited by one of his descendants, Constantine Palaeologus,
native records and traditions, all the circumstances of his
career, demonstrate Constantine a Briton, bred in the strongest
British ideas. "It is well known," states Sozomen, "the great
Constantine received his Christian education in Britain." 2
"Helen was unquestionably a British princess," writes Melancthon.
3 "Christ," declares Pope Urban in his Brief, Britannia, "chewed
to Constantine the Briton the victory of the cross for his
sceptre." "Constantine," writes Polydore Vergil, "born in
Britain, of a British mother, proclaimed Emperor in Britain
beyond doubt, made his natal soil a participator in his glory."
4
Constantine was all this and more - by his mother's side he
was the heir and representative of the royal Christian dynasty of
Britain.
The policy of Constantine, in carrying out which for twenty years
with admirable wisdom and inflexible purpose he was supported by
armies levied for the most part in his native British dominions,
consisted in extending to the whole Roman world the system of
constitutional
......
2 Sozomen, Eccles. Hist., lib. i. c. v. So Eumenius, in his
Panegyric on Constantius to Constantine: "He begot thee in the
very flower of his age." --Pan. 9.
3 Epistola, p.189.
4 Historia Brit., p.381.
......
Christianity which had long been established in Britain. But his
religious sympathies, as well as those of his mother, were wholly
Eastern, not Roman. They were those of the British Church. They
revolved round Jerusalem, and the Holy Land, and not Rome.
Constantine made but two brief visits, during his long reign, to
the Italian capital. Helen spent all her declining years in
restoring the churches and sacred sites of Palestine. The objects
of Constantine's life are well explained by him in one of his
edicts: "We call God to witness, the Saviour of all men, that in
assuming the government, we are influenced solely by these two
considerations - the uniting of the empire in one faith, and the
restoration of peace to a world rent to pieces by the insanity of
religious persecution." Regarded in his threefold character of
general, statesman, and legislator, the British founder of
secular Christendom may justly be considered the greatest of the
Roman emperors. The British Church was represented during his
reign by native bishops at the Councils of Arles, A.D.308, and
Nice, A.D.325. 5
In A.D.300 the Diocletian persecution raged in Britain, but
was stopped in one year by Constantius Chlorus, continuing to
ravage the rest of the empire for eighteen years. We have
elsewhere given a list of the British martyrs who perished in it.
We cannot doubt that we stand, during these centuries, in the
midst of a Church as broad and thoroughly national as the present
Protestant establishment: indeed, in one chief respect more so,
for the present national Church of England is not that of the
people of Scotland, Wales, or Ireland, whereas the ancient
British Church embraced all these populations in its fold. Their
very names indicate the broader national character
......
5 The archbishopric of York was founded, at the request of Helen,
bv Constantius the Emperor, A.D.290. Its second archbishop,
Socrates, was martyred in the Diocletian persecution.
......
of the ancient and primitive Church, one being the British
Church, or Church of Britain, the other the Church of England.
Continuing to trace the British Church back, we find Origen,
A.D.230, alluding thus to its existence: "The divine goodness
of our Lord and Saviour is equally diffused among the Britons,
the Africans. and other nations of the world. 6
In A.D. 23o, however, Britain had been re-incorporated in
the Roman empire. What was the case in A.D.192-198, in the reign
of Commodus, when it proclaimed its independence, and the British
legions elected Albinus Caesar? Was the Church confined to the
Roman province then insurgent, or were the stubborn British
tribes - the Cymri, the Caledonii, the Picts, whom no efforts of
peace or war could succeed in bringing to acknowledge the right
of a foreigner to plant hostile foot in Britain - within its
pale? Tertullian, who flourished during the war of Commodus in
Britain, which Dion Cassius terms "the most dangerous in which
the empire during his time had been engaged," says expressly that
the regions in Britain which the Roman arms had failed to
penetrate professed Christianity for their religion. "The
extremities of Spain, the various parts of Gaul, the regions of
Britain which have never been penetrated by the Roman arms, have
received the religion of Christ." 7 We have seen that the British
Church had, long before Tertullian's age, founded the Churches of
Gaul, Lorraine, and Switzerland, and that its missionaries had
made their way into Pannonia. Corning nearer Rome itself, we find
that in Tertullian's own age a missionary of the British Church
founded, A.D.170, the Church of Tarentum. This was St. Cadval,
after whom the cath-
......
6 Origen, In Psalm cxlix.
7 Tertulliam, Def. Fidei, p.170.
......
edral at Tarento is still named. 8 Not only, therefore, did the
British Church, A.D.170, embrace Roman and Independent Britain,
but it had struck its roots in France, Switzerland, Germany, and
the extremities of Italy.
We now come to A.D.120-150, within the era of the disciples
of the apostles. It is certain from St. Paul's own letters to the
Romans and to Timothy, that he was on the most intimate and
affectionate terms with the of Rufus Pudens. With Pudens himself,
with Claudia and Linus. The children of Claudia and Pudens
instructed in the faith by St. Paul himself, The eldest was
baptized Timotheus, after Timothy, Bishop of Ephesus, the
Apostle's "beloved son in Christ." The four, Timotheus, Novatus,
Praxedes, Pudentiana, with their Pudens, sealed at different
times their faith with their blood in Rome, and were, with Linus,
the first Britons who were added to the glorious army of martyrs.
And, Pudens excepted, they were not only martyrs, but royal
martyrs, not only martyrs, but martyrs of the most patriotic and
heroic blood in Britain. Let us confirm these statements by the
evidences of primitive antiquity.
The reader will recollect the "natal day " of a martyr is
the day of his martyrdom.
Pudens suffered A.D.96, Linus A.D.90; Pudentiana
suffered on the anniversary of her father's martyrdom, in the
third persecution, A.D.107; Novatus in the fifth persecution,
A.D.139, when his brother Timotheus absent in Britain, baptizing
his nephew, King Lucills. 9 Shortly after his return from
Britain, and in extreme old
......
8 MS. Vellum of the Church of Tarentum: Catalogue of Saints in
the Vatican, published A,D.1641; Moronus, "De Ecclesia
Taren-tina."
9 All authors concur in this fact, though all do not see how
naturally it followed that the relationship between the royal
house of Britain and its branch settled in Rome.
......
age, about his ninetieth year, Timotheus suffered with his
fellow-soldier Marcus in the same city of Rome, "drunk with the
blood of the martyrs of Jesus." Praxedes, the surviving sister,
received her crown within the same year.
Claudia alone died a natural death, in Samnium, before any
of her children, A.D.97, surviving Pudens one year. They were all
interred by the side of St. Paul in the Via Os ti ensis.
May 17. Natal day of the blessed Pudens, father of Pra
axedes and Pudentiana. He was clothed with baptism by the
apostles, and watched and kept his robe pure and without wrinkle
to the crown of a blameless life. 10
November 26. Natal day of St. Linus, Bishop of Rome. 11
May 17. Natal day of St. Pudentiana, the virgin, of the most
illustrious descent, daughter of Pudens, and disciple of the holy
apostle St. Paul. 12
June 20. Natal day of St. Novatus, son of the blessed
Pudens, brother of St. Timotheus the elder, and the virgins of
Christ Pudentiana and Praxedes. All these were instructed in the
faith by the apostles.
August 22. Natal day of St. Timotheus, son of St. Pudens, in
the Via Ostiensis. 13
September 21. Natal day of St. Praxedes, virgin of Christ,
in Rome. 14
Have we, again, any direct contemporary evidence that Linus,
the first bishop of Rome, was the son of Caractacus, and brother
of Claudia Britannica? Putting aside, for a moment, British
genealogies and tradition, does any con-
......
10 Martyr. Romana, ad diem Maii 17. To the same effect the
Martyrologies of Ado, Usuard and Esquilinus.
11 Matyr, Rom., ad diem; Martyrologies oú Ado; Greek Menologies;
Usuard, &c.;
12 Martyr. Rom., ad diem; Ado, &c.;
13 Martyr. Rom., Ado, Asuard, Greek Menol.
14 Martyr. Rom., Ado, &c.;
......
temporary of St. Paul and Linus, in Rome itself, assert the fact?
Undoubtedly. Clemens Romanus, who is mentioned by St. Paul,
states in his epistle, the genuineness of which has never been
questioned, that Linus was the brother of Claudia --
"Sanctissimus Linus, frater Claudia." 15 Clemens succeeded Cletus
within twelve years of the death of Linus, as third bishop of
Rome. He had also been associated with the British missionary
Mansuetus, in evangelizing Illyria. His sources of information
are, therefore, unquestionable. St. Paul lived, according to all
evidence, whenever he was at Rome, whether in custody at large
(libera custodia) or free, in the bosom of the Claudian family.
There is no dispute that Claudia herself was purely British, and
whether Linus was her son or brother, the British character of
the family, and the close, the domestic ties of affection between
such family and St. Paul, are equally manifest. The relationship
is, in many important regards, more intimate between St. Paul and
the British mind - that mind being the leading, because the
royal, influence in Britain - in the domestic circle and family
worship of the Claudian palace at Rome, than
......
15 In the Oxford edition of Junius, published A.D.1633, "The son
of Claudia." Apostolici Patres, lib. vii. c. 4; Apostolici
Constitutiones, c, 46. The Apostolic Constitutions may or may not
be what their present title infers; but no scholar who peruses
the opinions "pro et contra," collected by Iltigius, (De Patribus
Apnstolicis), Buddaeus, (Isagoge in Theologiam), and Baratier,
(De Successione Primorum Episcoporum), will assign them a later
date than A.D.150. The mention of Linus in them runs thus:
"Concerning those bishops who have been ordained in our lifetime,
we make known to you that they are these: Of Antioch, Euodius
ordained by me, Peter; of the Church of Rome, Linus, the (son) of
Claudia, was first ordained by Paul, and after Linus' death,
Clemens the second, ordained by me, Peter." Lib. i. c. 46. In the
original, (Greek is given...) Analogy requires (Greek) to be
supplied, but the relationship might have been so well known as
to render (Greek) superfluous.
......
when he addressed the British people themselves in Britain. But
Clemens Romanus not only proves to us that the family which the
Apostle thus honoured with his constant residence and instruction
was British, that the first bishop appointed by him over the
Church at Rome was of this British family, but that St. Paul
himself preached in Britain, for no other interpretation can be
assigned to his words, Greek "---" the extremity of the
West." "Paul, after he had been to the extremity of the West,
underwent his martyrdom before the rulers of mankind; and thus
delivered from this world, went to his holy place." 16
It may be suggested that Linus, the first bishop of Rome,
was, however, some other than the brother of Claudia, mentioned
by St. Paul. Not so; for if the above authorities permitted a
doubt to remain, the evidence of Irenaeus as to their identity is
conclusive. "The apostles," writes Irenaeus, A.D.180, "having
founded and built up the Church at Rome, committed the ministry
of its supervision to Linus. This is the Linus mentioned by Paul
in his Epistle to Timothy." 17
......
16 Clement. Rom., Epistola ad Corinthios, c, 5. The passage in
"exterso" runs thus: "To leave the examples of antiquity, and to
come to the most recent. Let us take the noble examples of our
own times. Let us place before our eyes the good apostles. Peter,
through unjust odium, underwent not one or two, but many
sufferings; and having undergone his martyrdom, he went to the
place of glory to which he was entitled. Paul, also, having seven
times worn chains, and been hunted and stoned, received the prize
of such endurance. For he was the herald of the Gospel in the
West as well as in the East, and enjoyed the illustrious
reputation of the faith in teaching the whole world to be
righteous. And after he had been to the extremity of the West, he
suffered martyrdom before the sovereigns of mankind; and thus
delivered from this world, he went to his holy place, the most
brilliant example of stedfastness that we possess."
17 Irenaei Opera, lib. iii. c. r. Irenaeus was born in Asia,
became a disciple of Polycarp Bishop of Smyrna, afterwards a
presbyter of Lyons, whence he was sent as a delegate to the
Asiatic Churches. He succeeded Photinus in the bishopric, and
suffered under Severus.
......
We are not aware we should be stating anything improbable if
we regarded St. Paul's domiciliation at the house of Pudens, or
his being ministered to immediately before his martyrdom by
Pudens, Claudia, and Linus, as additional presumptive evidence of
his sojourn in Britain. At any rate, we observe that all the
sympathies with which he was surrounded, after his arrival at
Rome, in the Claudian family, all the influences of that family
in their native country, would lead him to Britain in preference
to any other land of the West. This was the great isle of the
Gentiles, the centre and source of their religion, and, through
his royal converts, a "mighty door and an effectual" for its
conversion was opened to him.
Caractacus meanwhile continued to reside at Aber Gweryd, now
St. Donat's Major (llan Ddunwyd), in Glamorganshire, where he had
built a palace, more Romano. Everything invited Paul to Britain,
to follow the bishop he had already commissioned for the work of
the Gospel therein, and to be the guest of the royal parent of
Claudia. Considering the combination of circumstances which now
favoured the execution of his long-cherished design of visiting
the West of Europe, we should regard it much more extraordinary
if the Apostle had not come to Britain than we do his coming
here. When to this circumstantial evidence we add the written
testimonies we have adduced of Eusebius, Theodoret, Clemens, and
others, that he positively did preach in Britain, we see fair
reason for concurring in Bishop Burgess's conclusion, though the
bishop had but a part of the evidence we have collected before
him, "That we possess as substantial evidence, as any historical
fact can require, of St. Paul's journey to Britain."
There are six years of St. Paul's life to be accounted for,
between his liberation from his first imprisonment and his
martyrdom at Aqua Salviae in the Ostian Road, near Rome. Part
certainly, the greater part perhaps, of this period, was spent in
Britain - in Siluria or Cambria, beyond the bounds of the Roman
empire; and hence the silence of the Greek and Latin writers upon
it.
Has any portion of his doctrine or teaching in Britain come
down to us? Any such would be sure to be transmitted in a British
form, and most probably in that triadic form in which the Druids,
the religious teachers of Britain, delivered their teaching. Now
we find in the ancient British language certain triads which
have never been known otherwise than as "the triads of Paul the
Apostle." They are not found "totidem verbis," either whole or
fragmentally, in his epistles, but the morality inculcated is, of
course, quite in unison with the rest of his Gospel preaching.
Triads of Paul the Apostle
"There are three sorts of men: The man of God, who renders good
for evil; the man of men, who renders good for good and evil for
evil: and the man of the devil, who renders evil for good.
......
18 The ancient MS, in Merton College, Oxord, which purports to
contain a series of letters between St. Paul and Seneca, has more
than one allusion to St. Paul's residence in Siluria.
Had the large collection of British archives and MSS, deposited
at Verulam as late as AD.860, descended to our times, invaluable
light would have been thrown on this as on many other subjects of
native interest. Amongst these works were the Poems and Hymns of
Claudia. Vide Matthew of Westminster, William of Malmesbury,
"Life of Eadmer."
......
"Three kinds of men are the delights of God: the meek, the
lovers of peace; the lovers of mercy.
"There are three marks of the children of God: Gentle
deportment; a pure conscience; patient suffering of injuries.
"There are three chief duties demanded by God: justice to every
man; love; humility.
"In three places will be found the most of God: Where He is
mostly sought; where He is mostly loved; where there is least of
self.
"There are three things following faith in God: A conscience at
peace; union with heaven; what is necessary for life.
"Three ways a Christian punishes an enemy: By forgiving him; by
not divulging his wickedness; by doing him all the good in his
power.
"The three chief considerations of a Christian: Lest he should
displease God; lest he should be a stumblingblock to man; lest
his love to all that is good should wax cold.
"The three luxuries of a Christian feast: What God has prepared;
what can be obtained with justice to all; what love to all may
venture to use.
"Three persons have the claims and privileges of brothers and
sisters: the widow; the orphan; the stranger." 19
(These are truly exactly what Paul would have taught; absolutely
in line with his teachings in his books of the New Testament -
Keith Hunt)
The evangelical simplicity of these precepts, contrasting so
forcibly with monkish and mediaeval inventions and superstitions,
favours the traditional acceptance of their Pauline origin. Their
preservation is due to the Cor of Ilid.
The foundation of the great abbey of Bangor Iscoed is
assigned by tradition to St. Paul. Its discipline and doctrine
were certainly known as "the Rule of Paul" (Pauui
......
19 Ancient British Triads; Triads of Paul the Apostle.
......
Regula, and over each of the four gates was engraved his
precept, "If a man will not work, neither let him eat." Its
abbots regarded themselves as his successors; they were always
men of the highest grade in society, and generally of the blood
royal. Bede and other authors state the number of monks in it at
2,100. The scholars amounted to many thousands. Pelagius was its
twentieth abbot. St. Hilary and St. Benedict term it "Mater
omnium monasteriorum," the mother of all monasteries. The first
Egyptian monastery was founded by Pachomius, A.D.360. 20
In what language did St. Paul preach in Britain? This
question, if pursued, would open an interesting but difficult
investigation. Every apostle, by the Pentecostal inspiration,
possessed the command of every known tongue then in the world.
This supernatural faculty was part of the "power from on high"
with which they were endowed, and the lingual credential of their
divine mission. Of the fact that Paul preached in the British
tongue we have no evidence; neither have we any that he ever
preached in Latin; yet with both languages he must, as an
apostle, have been familiar. We infer he often preached in both.
The Druids in their sacred writings used the Bardic alphabet, of
forty-two characters; but in their civil transactions, as Caesar
informs us, the Greek alphabet. St. Paul wrote all his Epistles
in Greek, and Greek continued some time after the apostolic age
the language of the Church at Rome. The royal family of Britain
were, as we have seen, ardently attached to both Greek and Latin
literature. Cymbeline and Llyr, the old generation, had received
their education, which must necessarily have been the highest
Rome could impart, from Augustus Caesar
......
20 "Pelagius heresiarchus ex Britannia oriundus famati
illius collegii Bangorensis praepositus erat in quo Christianorum
philosophorum 2,100 militabant suarum manuum laboribus juxta
Pauli doctrinam victitantes." --Vita Magi ii, p.3.
......
himself. Caractacus must, unless we have recourse to the rather
violent supposition that Claudius, who heard, and Tacitus, who
has recorded, his oration, were proficients in British, have
delivered himself in Latin. 21 Paul, it is certain, used the
tongue of the people in preaching to the people. The canon he
laid down for the Corinthian Church was that which he practised
himself: "If I know not the meaning of the voice, I shall be to
him that speaketh a barbarian, and he that speaketh shall be to
me a barbarian.... I would rather in the church speak five words
with my understanding than ten thousand words in an unknown
tongue." 22 He must, therefore, according to this rule, have
preached to the Britons in their vernacular tongue.
By the conversion of the British dynasty in its various
members, a very important class of prophecies were fulfilled. The
expressions, also, "the ends of the earth," "the uttermost
parts of the earth," "the isles afar off," used by Isaiah, are
precisely those which the Roman authors also used to designate
Britain.
From the captivity of Caractacus and the life of St. Paul in
the family of his daughter Claudia at Rome, to the turning of the
Roman empire into Christendom, the history of the royal dynasty
of Britain in connection with
......
21 Claudia herself was the authoress of a volume of epigrams, a
volume of elegies, and a volume of sacred poems or hymns. Copies
of these were preserved in the library at Verulam as late as the
thirteen century.
22 1 Cor. xiv. 11:19: It was the uniform practice of Christians,
from the earliest times, to read the Scriptures in the vulgar
tongue, and it was not till the period of Charlemagne that Latin
became the language of the Church services. Vide Usher's
"Historia Dogmatica." No two causes contributed so much to
the declension of Christianity and the progress of Mahometanism,
as the suppression by the Church of Rome of the vernacular
Scriptures, and her adoption of image-worship.
......
the Church of Christ is indeed one long, continuous, and exact
verification of Scriptural prophecy? 23
Against the British Church itself no charge of heretical
doctrine has at any time been advanced, though the heresiarch,
the very prince of heretics - Pelagius, was nursed in her bosom.
Bede's reluctant testimony is, on this point, decisive. Whilst
the Christian Churches in Asia, Africa, and on the Continent of
Europe were overrun with false doctrines, the British Church grew
up and covered with its shade the whole nation, untroubled for
the space of four centuries by any root of bitterness. It is
reasonable to infer that the foundations of such a Church were
very deeply and faithfully laid by the hands of wise master-
builders. According to the foundation rose the superstructure,
resting on these four pillars - St. Paul, Simon Zelotes, Joseph,
Aristobulus. Its great evangelist in the second century, St.
Timotheus, the baptizer of his nephew King Lucius and of his
nobility at Winchester, had also received the faith from the
mouth of Paul him-
......
23 A few of these prophecies we subjoin:
"It is a light thing that thou shouldest be My servant to raise
up the tribes of Jacob, and to restore the outcasts of Israel: I
will also give thee for a light to the Gentiles, that thou mayest
be My salvation unto the ends of the earth. Kings shall see and
arise; princes also shall worship. Behold they shall come from
the north and from the west. Kings shall be thy nursing-fathers
and queens thy nursing-mothers. Arise, shine, for thy light is
come, and the glory of the Lord is risen upon thee. The Gentiles
shall come to thy light, and kings to the brightness of thy
rising. Thy sons shall come from far, and thy daughters shall be
nursed at thy side. The sons of strangers shall build up thy
walls, and kings shall minister unto thee. Thou shalt suck the
milk of the Gentiles, and shalt suck the breast of kings. I will
set My sign among them, and send them that escape of them unto
the nations, unto the isles afar off, and they shall declare My
glory unto the Gentiles. They shall inherit the land for ever,
the branch of My planting." - Isaiah xlix, Ix, lxvi.
(As often is the case with Bible prophecy, there can be more than
one fulfilment - a type - and then the full fulfilment. This
prophecy of Isaiah is for the Kingdom of God on earth, when Jesus
will return, when Israel shall be delivered from captivity, and
finally be the witness to the whole world of salvation and the
light of God - Keith Hunt)
......
self. This unanimity of faith in the founders impressed itself on
the Church they founded, which "continued in the things it had
learned and been assured of, knowing from whom it had learned
them."
Having thus first surveyed the religions of the ancient
world at the birth of Christianity, and next traced the
introduction of the latter, and its progress in Britain, a
bird's-eye-view will shew us the following Churches, making up
the Catholic Church sixty-six years after the Incarnation:--In
Palestine - Jerusalem, Samaria, Caesarea, Lydda; in Assyria -
Babylon; in Syria - Antioch, Damascus; in Asia-Minor - Antioch of
Pisidia, Iconium, Lystra, Ephesus, Smyrna, Sardis, Thyatira,
Pergamos, Philadelphia, Caesarea in Cappadocia; Laodicea,
Colosse, Galatia; in Greece - Athens, Corinth, Thessalonica,
Beraea, Philippi, Crete; in Egypt - Alexandria; in Italy - Rome;
in Gaul - Lyons; in Britain - Cor Avalon (Glastonbury), Cor Salog
(Old Sarum), Cor Ilid (Llan Ilid) in Siluria.
The force of the testimony for St. Paul's residence in
Britain may be more clearly estimated by comparing it with that
for St. Peter's at Rome. The earliest testimony in favour of the
latter is that of Irenaeus, bishop of Lyons, A.D.180, 1 prior to
which we find no indication in the Scriptures or ecclesiastical
authors that St. Peter ever visited or ever intended to visit
Rome, which, as a Gentile Church over which St. Paul in the most
pointed manner claimed jurisdiction, 2 was certainly not within
the province of the apostle of the circumcision. Britain, on the
contrary, was within Paul's province, placed already, as
......
1 Irenaei Opera, lib. iii. c. 1: "Matthew published his Gospel
among the Hebrews in his own language while Peter and Paul were
engaged in evangelizing and founding the Christian Church at
Rome."
2 "My apostleship for obedience to the faith among all nations,
among whom are ye also ... that I might have some fruit among you
also, as among other Gentiles." - Rom. 1. 5, 13.
......
Ephesus and Crete had been, by Paul himself under one of his
bishops, Aristobulus. If we are to concede that St. Peter founded
the Roman Church in person, much more are we compelled by
infinitely stronger evidence to acknowledge that St. Paul in
person founded the British Church. 3
Of St. Paul's life after quitting Britain no particulars
have descended to us. After visiting Asia we find him in the last
scene of his life returned to the bosom of the British royal
family at Rome. In his farewell charges to Timothy he sends him
the greetings of Pudens, Linus, and Claudia. These, with that of
Eubulus, the cousin of Claudia, are the only names of the
brethren mentioned by him; these ministered to him on the eve of
his martyrdom, these attended him when he was on the block of the
state lictor at Aquae Salviae, a little out of Rome, and these
con-
......
3 If we desired to strengthen from Roman Catholic evidence the
apostolical foundations of the British Church, or to insist that
it can with equal justice, at least, as the Roman Church, claim
St. Peter amongst its founders, it would not be difficult to
adduce the affirmative evidence of Roman Catholic authorities
upon the point. Cornelius a Lapide, in answering the question
"How came St. Paul not to salute St. Peter in his Epistle to the
Romans," states, "Peter, banished with the rest of the Jews from
Rome by the edict of Claudius, was absent in Britain." (Cornelius
d Lapide, in "Argumentum Epistolce St. Pauli ad Romanos," c.
xvi.) Eusebius Pamphilus, if we can credit the quotation of him
by a very untrustworthy author, Simeon Metaphrastes, states St.
Peter to have been in Britain as well as Rome. - (Metaphrastes ad
29 Junii.) The vision to which St. Peter refers, 2 Pet. 1. 14,
"Knowing that shortly I must put off this my tabernacle, even as
our Lord Jesus Christ hath shewed me," is said to have appeared
to him in Britain on the spot where once stood the British Church
of Lambedr (St. Peter), and now stands the Abbey of St. Peter's,
Westminster. Lambeth may be a corruption of Lambedr. But this
question lies between Roman Catholic authors and their own
Church, which will scarcely put the seal of its infallibility on
a position that places the British Church on its own special
appropriated Rock.
......
signed his remains with their own hands to the Pudentinian family
tomb on the Ostian Road. Like his Divine Master, "he made his
grave with the rich in his death." Linus, Claudia and Pudens and
their four children, when God in His appointed time called them
to receive the same crown of the Cross, were buried by his side
the other royal converts, Bran, Caractacus, Cyllinus, and Eurgain
died peaceably in Britain, and were interred in the cor of llid
in Siluria. All-kings, heroes, apostles, martyrs, saints - were
united in the kingdom of light, in the joy of their Lord. 4
......
4 Bede was a very earnest adherent of the novel papal Church,
introduced A.D.596, by Augustine into Britain, but the honesty
and simplicity of his character has rendered his history in many
respects a very inconvenient and obnoxious record to the said
Church. What became of the remains of St. Peter and St. Paul? At
Rome they still pretend to exhibit them, but Bede - and it must
be remembered he is a canonized saint in the Roman calenda
expressly states that the remains of the bodies of the apostles
Peter and Paul, the martyrs St. Lawrence, St. John, St. Gregory,
and St. Pancras, were, at the solicitation of King Oswy to Pope
Vitalian, removed from Rome to England, and deposited at
Canterbury A.D.656, Pope Vitalian's letter to Oswy being extant.
(Bede hist., lib. iii. c. 29.) Their remains, then, if any,
repose in British soil.
CONCLUSION
FROM the preceding investigation ensue the following
conclusions:-
1. Before Christianity originated in Judaea, there had existed
from the remotest period in Britain a religion known as the
Druidic, of which the two leading doctrines were identical with
those of Christianity, viz., the immortality of the soul and
vicarious atonement.
(The author is of course very wrong in supposing that true
Christianity taught and held the doctrine of the "immortality of
the soul." The author has become blinded to the fact that the
true Christianity introduced to Britain was eventually overcome
by the Roman Catholic church, and hence many teaching of false
theology became a part of "popular" Christianity of today - Keith
Hunt)
2. That this identity pointed out Britain as of all Gentile
countries the one best prepared for the reception of
Christianity.
3. That the only religions persecuted by the Roman government
were the Druidic and the Christian.
4. That this common persecution by the great military empire with
which Britain was engaged in incessant hostilities from A.D.43
to A.D.118, materially aided in predisposing the British mind in
favour of Christianity.
5. That Britain, being the only free state of Europe, was the
only country which afforded a secure asylum to the Christians
persecuted by the Roman government.
6. That a current of Christianity flowed into Britain from the
East contemporaneously with the first dispersion of the Church at
Jerusalem, A.D.35-38.
7. That the first planters of the Gospel in Britain never were in
Rome at all, but came hither from the mother Church at Jerusalem.
8. That these first planters were Joseph of Arimathaea and his
associates, who settled under the protection of the British king
Arviragus, in the Isle of Avalon, Glastonbury - one of the
Druidic cors of Somerset.
9. That among the earliest converts of Joseph and his fraternity
were Gladys (Pomponia Gracina) the sister, Gladys or Claudia,
and Eurgain, the daughters, and Linus the son of Caractacus,
prince of Siluria, and military dictator of the national forces
against the Romans.
10. That the second planter of the word was Simon Zelotes the
apostle, who was martyred and buried in the Roman province,
probably near Caistor, in Lincolnsbire.
11. That the third planter was Aristobulus, one of the seventy,
brother of St. Barnabas and father-in-law of St. Peter;
commissioned first bishop of Britain by St. Paul, and consecrated
by St. Barnabas, the two apostles to the Gentiles. That
Aristobulus was engaged in his mission in Britain when St. Paul
wrote his Epistle to the Romans, some years before his first
visit, or the visit of any other apostle, to Rome.
12. That Pudens, the husband of Claudia, Claudia herself, the
sister Eurgain, her brother Linus, and aunt Pomponia, being
converted prior to St. Paul's visit to Rome, the rest of the
British royal family, Bran, Caractacus, Cyllinus and Cynon, were
converted and baptized by St. Paul himself during his detention
in that city preceding his first trial. That the palace of Pudens
and Claudia was the home of St. Paul and the other apostles; that
their four children, Timotheus, Novatus, Pudentiana and Praxedes,
were instructed in the faith by St. Paul; and that Linus, the
brother of Claudia and second son of Caractacus, was appointed by
the same apostle first bishop of the Church of Rome, such Church
meeting at that time, and till the reign of Constantine, in the
aforesaid palace, called indifferently Domus Pudentis, Palatium
Britannicum, Domus Apostolorum, Titulus, Pastor, St. Pudentiana."
13. That after the return of Caractacus to Siluria, St. Paul
himself, following the footsteps of his bishop and forerunner,
Aristobulus, visited Britain, and confirmed the British Churches
in the faith.
14. That the last days of St. Paul, preceding his martyrdom at
Rome, were attended by Pudens, Claudia, Linus, Eubulus, whose
salutations he sends in his dying charge to Timothy, and that his
remains were interred by them in their family sepulchre.
15. That the foundations of the British Church were Apostolical,
being coeval, within a few years, with those of the Pentecostal
Church in Jerusalem--preceding those of the primitive Church of
Rome, so far as they were laid by either an apostle or apostolic
bishop, by seven years preceding the arrival of St. Peter at
Rome, as fixed by the great majority of Roman Catholic historians
(thirteenth year of Nero), by thirty years - preceding the first
arrival of the papal Church of Rome in Britain, under Augustine,
by 456 years.
16. That the British Church has from its origin been a royal one;
the royal family of ancient Britain - of whom our present
sovereign is, through the Tudors, the lineal blood representative
- being the first British converts to Christianity; 2. the
founders of the first Christian institutions in Britain; 3. the
chief instruments, in the second century, in the establishment of
Christianity as the state religion; and in the fourth century, in
the persons of Helen and Constantine the Great, the chief
instrument in the abolition of Paganism, and the substitution, in
its place, of Christianity over the whole Roman Empire.
(Again the author is blinded to the fact that the true
Christianity of Britain was being corrupted by the time of
Constantine; and when he became the Roman Emperor, brought into
Rome and Europe the first day sanctification; Easter instead of
Passover already in place in Europe. This false Christianity then
came into Britain in 596 AD and over many centuries, finally won
victory over the ancient British church. Britain became Roman.
When Britain broke with the Pope, and the Anglican or Church of
England was formed, it remained deeply entrenched with most of
the Roman Catholic traditions, rites, fancy dress for its
bishops, fancy altar incarnations and practices and teachings
etc. as it is today. The main difference between the Roman
Catholic church and the Church of England (Anglican church) is
that the Anglican church does not recognize the Pope. The author
cannot see that the Queen of England sits astride just as false
and deceptive a church as the Pope sits astride the deceptive
Roman church - Keith Hunt)
17. That the spiritual or ecclesiastical head of the British
Church was always a Briton, resident in Britain, amenable to
British laws, and British laws only, and having no superior in
the Church but Christ.
(But that does not mean the British church today, or Church of
England, is pure in doctrine, traditions, rites and practices.
Far from it; the Anglican church with its arch-bishop head, is
very much as false and deceptive as her mother church - The
church at Rome - Keith Hunt)
18. That whatever may be the religious advantages or
disadvantages of the union of the ecclesiastical and civil
governments in the person of the Sovereign, such union has been,
from the first colonization of our Island, first in Druidic and
then in Christian times, the native British, as opposed to the
foreign papal - and, in later times, dissenting principle of
their separation.
(Once more the fact is the modern British church - the Anglican
church or Church of England, is just as false and deceptive in
teachings and practices, as the Roman church. The Anglican church
was born out of the Roman church, and is today as far apart from
the original ancient British church as is the church of Rome -
Keith Hunt)
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