The first foundations of history are very often mere traditions, which are transmitted from parents to their children, from one generation to another. Probable only in their origin, they become less probable in every succeeding age. In process of time fable gains and truth loses ground. Hence it is almost impossible to ascertain the origin of any place claiming a high antiquity. The early writers could not divest their minds of the fascinating fables of Geoffrey of Monmouth. In former times, when the power of imagination prevailed, the distinction between legend and history was scarcely recognised. For centuries there are not even legendary accounts of East Anglia or of its capital. But instead of legends, there are permanent memorials of the past; great earthworks, fortifications, camps, strongholds, buildings, churches, ruins of monasteries and abbeys. The soil has yielded up relics of the dead—weapons, utensils, coins, ornaments, and sepulchral urns, showing the presence of the Iceni, the Romans, the Angles, Saxons, Jutes, Danes, and Normans, at different periods. All these energetic nations were concerned in events that took place in Norfolk and Norwich.
The Iceni appear to have been politically independent up to the period of the Roman invasion, B.C. 55. Their alarm in consequence of that invasion led them to negociate an alliance, but we have no reason to suppose that it was ever carried into effect. They took the lead in a rebellion which the Roman General Ostorius was barely able to quell; and Roman historians bear testimony to the valour with which they struggled to maintain their liberty. The superior discipline of the Roman soldiers enabled them, however, to triumph over a semi-barbarous people, unprotected by body armour and unused to military tactics; but it was no easy victory. For about 600 years after the defeat of the Iceni, no reliable information respecting that people is to be found in any history. Indeed they disappear from history altogether, and we can only infer what advances they made in civilization from the scattered remains that have been found in the eastern counties. These remains prove that the Iceni were not semi-savages, but that they had made some progress in useful arts, that they built houses, and wore woven garments.
There are no remains in the eastern counties of cairns, cromlechs, Druidical circles, or other memorials of ancient perseverance and mechanical skill, nature having interposed an absolute veto. But there are remains of earth works and tumuli, burrows or artificial mounds in which were deposited the urns or ashes of the dead. There are thousands of pits in many places, and these are supposed to have been the foundations of Icenian houses. Remarkable excavations are thickly clustered all over Weybourne Heath, varying from 8 to 20 feet in diameter, and from 2 to 6 feet in depth.
The Norwich Museum contains some remains of articles made by the Iceni, amongst which may be mentioned sepulchral urns, varying from the most primitive simplicity, up to forms and patterns worthy of any age. The chevron ornament, which is by far the most usual style of decoration, has been traced not merely in India, Egypt, Etruria, and Nineveh, as well as in Saxon and Norman work, but even among the works of ancient American settlers in Yucatan! The Museum also contains specimens of Icenic Celts or javelin heads, made of flints, which appear to have been originally fitted on a wooden shaft or handle, with a provision for drawing it back after the infliction of the wound, by means of a cord passing through the ring, as in the metal specimens. It is probable that these flint specimens were in use long anterior to the Roman invasion.
About 1844 or 1845, some discoveries were made in Norfolk of gold torques and coins of the Iceni. In March 1855, at Weston in Norfolk, 300 coins of the Iceni were found. The most ordinary type is the rude representation of a horse on each side; others have two crescents placed back to back; and on some (in about the proportion of one in twenty,) is a rude profile of a human head, while in a few instances there is a figure of a wild boar. Beneath the horse in some cases are the letters E C E or E C N, (supposed to be a contraction of Iceni,) also C E A, T, A T D, A T E D, or A N T D, which antiquarians are as yet unable to explain. Probably all the coins, like a single coin which has been found of Boadicea, the unfortunate Queen of the Iceni, were subsequent to the Roman invasion, for Cæsar expressly tells us that the Britons in his time used metal rings instead of money, the value being determined by their weight; and Camden, with great probability, supposes that most of the British coins must have been struck as a sort of poll tax or tribute money to the Romans.
Generally speaking, the antiquities of the British period are articles of the most urgent necessity, and of the rudest possible form; but a long interval of tranquillity brought even luxuries in its train, and it is a very remarkable fact that even the lapse of 1800 years has scarcely effected any change in some articles of general utility. The discoveries made at Herculaneum and Pompeii have led to a revival of the classical forms, both in porcelain and in plate, the greatest practical compliment that could be paid to the taste of the Roman artists.
Among the objects which have been found at different places may be mentioned sepulchral vases, varying, of course, in style and taste, but in some instances most beautifully formed; funeral lamps, lacrymatories, (or phials supposed to have contained the tears of the sorrowing relations,) fibulæ (or brooches), gold rings, gold seals, steelyards, weights, tweezers, a curiously formed brass lamp for three lights, a patera of Samian ware, and coins of the Roman emperors. All these may be seen in the Norwich Museum.
There is no evidence of the existence of Norwich as a city for 400 years after the Christian era. The whole island was a howling wilderness, and Norfolk was a vast common, like Roudham Heath. The natives lived by hunting or fishing, and sheltered themselves in the woods, or in caves, or huts. Water covered nearly all the area in which the city is now built, and filled all the valley of the Yare. The aborigines, called the Iceni, probably lived in huts near the banks of the river, as it afforded a good supply of fish; but there is no proof that they lived in any place that could be called a town or even a village. There is in fact, no reliable account whatever of the natives, how they lived, or where they lived in this district; for they have not even left any names of places, and very few traces of any progress in the useful arts, and certainly none of any buildings. On Mousehold Heath, near the city, and at various places in the county, there are hollows supposed to have been made by the Iceni as the foundation of huts, or of houses of wicker work, or some other perishable material, with a conical thatching at the top. Externally they must have looked like very low bastions, having doorways, but apparently neither chimneys nor windows.
CHAPTER III.
Norwich in the Roman Period.
When Julius Cæsar invaded the island, B.C. 55, he found seventeen tribes of the ancient Britons or Celts, and the Iceni, inhabiting this eastern district. They belonged to a very old family of mankind, of whose beginning there is no record, and their end is still more remote in the future. They first planted this island and gave to the seas, rivers, lakes, and mountains names which are poems, imitating the pure voices of nature. Julius Cæsar only made an inroad into the country through a part of Kent, and gained no permanent hold of the island. The Rev. Scott F. Surtees, in a recent work, maintains (and some persons think successfully) that Julius Cæsar effected his first landing on the coast of Norfolk.