Through East Anglia in a Motor Car

by James Edmund Vincent

In a.d. 43 came the second and most effectual Roman invasion. That extraordinary person the Emperor Claudius, persuaded by a British exile named Berre, who had got the worst of one of the petty quarrels in which the Britons then, like the Welsh later, were constantly engaged, dispatched Aulus Plautius with four legions and some Gallic auxiliaries to reconquer Britain. So much is certain, and there is no doubt that a year sufficed to quell the resistance of south-eastern Britain, although Caradoc, Cunobelin's son, held out in the west for a long time. In the next year Claudius himself crossed the Channel—one authority says he brought elephants in his train—and joined Plautius on the north of the Thames. Shortly afterwards he entered Camulodunum, or Colchester. Did he enter it as having himself conquered, or as an Emperor taking the credit of his general's victories? It is really almost impossible to say. Merivale, having previously mentioned the elephants, says, "At Gessoriacum he embarked for the opposite shores of Cantium (Kent), and speedily reached the legions in their encampment beyond the Thames. The soldiers, long held in leash in expectation of his arrival, were eager to spring upon the foe. With the Emperor himself at their head, a spectacle not beheld since the days of the valiant Julius, they traversed the level plains of the Trinobantes, which afforded no defensible position, till the natives were compelled to stand at bay before the stockades which encircled their capital, Camulodunum. It is not perhaps too bold a conjecture that the lines which can still be traced from the Colne to a little wooded stream called the Roman river, drawn across the approach to a tract of twenty or thirty square miles, surrounded on every other side by water, indicate the ramparts of this British oppidum. Within this enclosed space there was ample room, not only for the palace of the chief and the cabins of her people, but for the grazing ground of their flocks and herds in seasons of foreign attack; while, resting on the sea in its rear, it commanded the means of reinforcement and, if necessary, of flight. But the fate of the capital was decided by the issue of the encounter which took place before it. The Trinobantes were routed. They surrendered their city and, with it, their national freedom and independence. The victory was complete; the subjection of the enemy assured. Within sixteen days from his landing in Britain, Claudius had broken a powerful kingdom and accomplished a substantial conquest."

Exactly so, but is not the story a little too complete to gain absolute credit? Is not the historian, justly indignant at the injustice done by Suetonius and others to Claudius, inclined to press down the balance too heavily in his favour? After all, Suetonius says there was no resistance or bloodshed, and that really is much the more probable story. We all know that Claudius, the deformed child who was regarded as an imbecile, the coward who hardly dared to accept power when it was thrust upon him by the Prætorians, showed a remarkable genius for administration, and had the ambition to imitate Augustus. He might easily have been a great general in spite of his gluttony, his vice, and his cruelty. For all that, this rapid entry into Colchester, combined with what we know of his delight in shows, and with the suspicious fact that he brought his elephants with him, gives the whole affair an air of pre-arrangement The chances are that Aulus Plautius did the work and that Claudius took the credit. Certainly he returned to Rome and celebrated a triumph in great style; and on his arch of triumph is an inscription (largely conjectural now) which, says Merivale, shows the estimation in which his exploits were held. It is much more likely to show the view which Claudius wished to be taken, for the incestuous, gluttonous, cowardly, and yet politically sagacious Emperor, had a pretty style in prose. Of course it is just possible that Plautius was doing but ill over his campaign, and that the Emperor with his elephants—tradition says that the Britons were very much afraid of them—turned the scale; but the probability is that the whole affair was what they call a "put-up thing" on the far side of the Atlantic, and that the elephants were brought over simply for the sake of pomp and circumstance.

Now comes a confusing passage in the usually sinless "Murray," wherein the author is himself quoting in part from the Quarterly Review, No. 108: "Sixteen years later, 'to overawe the disaffected, and to show to the more submissive an image of Roman civilization,' a Roman Colony was founded in the capital of the conquered Trinobantes. 'It was dignified with the name of Claudian, from the Emperor himself, or Victricensis, from the conquest of which it was the symbol, which was also typified by a statue of Victory, erected in its principal place.' The place received indiscriminately the name of Colonia, Camulodunum,—or sometimes Colonia Camulodunum. It was the first Roman Colony founded in Britain. 'Claudius determined to inform the minds of his remotest subjects on the article of his own divinity—and accordingly directed the Colonists of Camulodunum to consecrate to him a temple, and appoint from among themselves an order of priests to minister therein.'" Nothing could be more in this picture, nothing more thoroughly in harmony with the character of Claudius; but the words "sixteen years later" give pause. Sixteen years would bring us to a.d. 60, when Nero wore the purple and misbehaved himself generally; and six years before that Agrippina, who was already more than wife to Claudius, since she was his niece also, became his murderess by the aid of the physician Xenophon. But it is only the date that is wrong. It was in the year 50, six years later, not sixteen, that the successor of Plautius, having been many times worsted by the hard-fighting Silures of South Wales, was ordered to found a colony at Camulodunum.

If Claudius had a political hobby it was the foundation of colonies, which he usually permitted to be known as Colonia, "the Colony," simply. Such was Colchester; such was Cologne, founded by him a year later at the asking of Agrippina, who had been born there. But the English Colonia did not quite come up to expectations, for the image of Roman civilization shown by it was not attractive, and its military organization was non-existent. The worn-out veterans, who were the colonists, did not build for themselves a concentrated city, a sort of stationary camp. On the contrary, they settled themselves in the scattered houses of the Britons. "The houses even of the Britons," says Merivale, "were to the rude inmates of the Tent not inconvenient." The Dean of Ely, as he afterwards became, wrote these words somewhere between 1850 and 1860, and had not the chances open to us of knowing that the families of the Britons of this epoch, the period of Cunobelin's coinage be it remarked, most likely enjoyed quite comfortable houses. A theatre, too, these colonists constructed, for their own amusement. To the question of defences they gave no heed. Caradoc and his fighting Welshmen were far away in South Wales. The Trinobantes around them were quite subdued. The Iceni, to the eastward, owed and paid tribute to Rome through their Prince Prasutagus. The luxury of Neronian Rome was repeated no doubt, on a small scale, in the distant and careless colony.

In a.d. 61 came the ill-treatment of Boadicea, the widow of Prasutagus, already recorded, and the revolt of the Iceni under her leadership. Then, the moment being well chosen, for the Governor was away as before stated, the colonists had bitter cause to rue their previous indolence, for the colony was quite defenceless. As we have seen before, Boadicea and her Britons enjoyed a short-lived but very complete revenge. Dion, indeed, goes into details, making out the Britons to have been, if possible, rather worse than Bashi Bazouks, as painted by the atrocity-monger. The ultimate result, of course, was that the Iceni were wiped out of existence, and the chances are that the Trinobantes also felt the strong wrath of Suetonius. The steed having been stolen and recaptured, the stable door was locked, so to speak, once and for ever. That is to say, the walls of Colchester were built with such strength that no rising of the kind was likely to succeed again; and that is why in Colchester we have the finest and most complete Roman walls to be found in the kingdom.

Colchester is rich in Roman relics also, to be found stored in museums, and in the form of Roman bricks and tiles built into the walls of the Norman keep to the north of the High Street, and into the ruined walls of St. Botolph's Priory Church, to the south-east of the town. This same keep, the largest in England, was probably built by Eudo, high steward to William the Conqueror, possibly on the site of the temple of Claudius, but as to that there can be no assurance. What is certain is that much Roman material was incorporated in the rubble of which the very solid walls are made; and this is natural enough when we reflect that Colchester was a real Roman colony for nearly 350 years. The most interesting objects in the Museum, which is housed in the ancient chapel of the castle, are a curious sphinx, two feet high, with the wings of a bird, the breasts of a bitch, the head of a woman, and the paws of a lion, squatting over the lacerated carcase of its human prey; the famous Colchester vase and a bust of Caligula, and there have been a number of smaller "finds." Colchester is no doubt derived from Colonia and castrum, but it has a legendary connection with King Cole of happy memory, and the principal bastion in Balcon Lane is still known as Colking's Castle. The theory of the Britons, to summarize first and to quote later a Quarterly Reviewer, was that the descendants of Cunobelin continued in Colchester under the Romans, and that one of them was Coilus, alias Cole, the same music and liquor-loving potentate who called for his pipe a good many centuries before the uses of the soothing herb were known in this country; of course, his pipe may have been an instrument of so-called music. After the usurpation of Carausius and his successor, Cole or Coel, Duke of Kaer-Coloin (Colchester), surrendered the island to the Romans, "in return for which service he was allowed to retain the nominal sovereignty in Britain, and has become renowned as the 'Old King Cole' of popular song. On his dying soon afterwards, the British legends went on to declare that Constantius the Senator, the representative of the Roman power on the island, received the crown of Coel, but only in virtue of marriage with his daughter Helena; and Colchester has hence enjoyed the reputation of giving birth to Constantine, the first Christian Emperor. There is no trace, however, of Constantius having been in Britain at all before the year 296, at which time his son was twenty-four years old; and the most credible writers assert that his consort was not a Briton, but a Bithynian. We leave the good citizens of Colchester in possession of their arms 'a cross intagled between four crowns,' in token of Helena's invention of the Cross of Christ; but we cannot allow that they have any historical title to them."

How others may feel in a matter of this kind it is not for me to say, but in me the serene air of superiority with which the ultra-learned brush away a tradition usually excites a suspicion, not wholly dissociated from a desire, that they may be wrong. "The most credible writers" of the Quarterly Reviewer produce no impression on me. It is the kind of expression one would expect of a writer who did not feel inclined to be at the pains of research. Equally, when a presumably learned writer in the Encyclopædia Britannica says, under the heading "Constantine," "a later tradition, adopted with characteristic credulity by Geoffrey of Monmouth, that Helena was the daughter of a British king, is a pure invention," I reflect that assertion is not argument, although it often passes for such. After all, this same contemptuous writer can but tell us that Constantine was born in 274 to Constantius and Helena, "the wife of obscure origin (daughter of a stabularia, or innkeeper, according to St. Ambrose), whom her husband was compelled to repudiate on attaining the dignity of Cæsar." And when "Helena" is referred to, we find another learned author saying that of her nationality nothing certain is known. Again, the statement that there is no trace of Constantius ever having been in Britain before 296 (at which time, by the way, Constantine was twenty-two, not twenty-four), does not satisfy the court. In 273, the year in which the wanderings of the father of Constantine would be material, Constantius Flavius Valerius was but a young soldier, of Dalmatian origin, in whom nobody yet recognized the future Emperor. He was twenty-three years of age, or thereabouts, for so little is known of his early life that the exact year even of his birth is unknown. It was not until nearly twenty years later that, having distinguished himself in Dalmatia, he was adopted and appointed Cæsar by Maximian. There was no reason in life why he should not have gone to Britain without attracting notice at the age of twenty-three, every reason why, if he did so, he should visit the flourishing, comfortable, and very accessible colony on the banks of the Colne. There he certainly did not find Coel, or Cole, a reigning sovereign, but he might very possibly have found a "merry old soul" of an innkeeper, who vowed that he was descended from Cunobelin, and possessed a charming daughter.

It is not suggested that these things actually happened, but it is most distinctly suggested that, unless the learned can trace the wanderings of the father of Constantine all through 273 and show that he was not in Britain, to say there is no trace of his having been in Britain before 296 is entirely beside the question. Here we have an example of a frequent kind of historical incapacity, that of failing to realize the life of the past. The dashing young officer might, in fact, have been in Colchester very easily, and if he succumbed to the charms of the inn-keeper's daughter, the event was not of a kind contrary to human experience. It is for the sceptic to prove an alibi if he desires to upset tradition. Helena may, then, have been the daughter of a Colchester innkeeper, she was certainly the mother of Constantine. Equally certainly, when her son became Emperor, she took a great interest in Britain, which tends to show that she may have been British by birth. It is true that cities in Syria and Bithynia were named Helenopolis after her, and this might be cited in favour of her Bithynian origin, only it could not be more in favour of one than the other, since she could not have been born in two places.

Here let a little confession and explanation be made. The Quarterly Reviewer's statement that the arms of Colchester might be left to it "in token of Helena's invention of the cross of Christ," left me quite in the dark; and the darkness was dispelled in the most commonplace way by reference to books. Helena did not invent the cross of Christ, in one sense of the word, because the Romans had done so before her time. But, according to tradition, she made a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, and found there the Holy Sepulchre and the true cross of Christ. That is a tradition which I do not attempt to justify, or to criticize beyond saying that the pilgrimage would really be an easy one for the mother of a powerful Emperor who was absolute in Jerusalem, and that the fabric might easily have been sound in Helena's time.

Of the siege of Colchester during the Rebellion, and of the cruel vengeance exacted by Fairfax, under the relentless influence of Ireton, on Lucas and Lisle, mention has been made at an earlier point, but at the moment of mention I was not aware that the populace of Colchester, like that of most of East Anglia, was essentially in sympathy with the Parliament, and had helped its cause over and over again. It was the necessity of war that drove the Royalists—"undaunted Capel" was of their number too—into Colchester, and it may well be that through familiarity with the place Lucas was enabled to make exceptionally capable use of the outlines of the town for purposes of defence. For the Lucases were tenants in fee of the Abbey of St. John, the gate of which still remains, restored it is true. "The last abbot," says Murray, "was hanged at his own gate for contumacy in refusing to acknowledge the Royal Supremacy." The last owner, whose ancestors had come in by purchase and not by force, faced death hard by with equal resolution and cheerfulness for the cause which he held dear. The defence had been a gallant but a hopeless enterprise. Reduced to the last extremity for lack of provisions, "after feeding on the vilest aliment," worn out by hunger and desperate sallies, surrounded by a hostile population, the leaders must indeed have been weary of life. How they lost it we know; but Ireton was not satisfied with the blood of the leaders. The common soldiers were dispatched to the American plantations, were in fact converted into white slaves by the champions of freedom and of religion; and the unhappy townsfolk, who certainly had no wish to take the Royalist side, although it is probable that many of them felt personal regard for Lucas and his family, were mulcted in the sum of £12,000, a very large sum in those days. "Soon after, a gentleman appearing in the King's presence, clothed in mourning for Sir Charles Lucas; that humane Prince, suddenly recollecting the hard fate of his friends, paid them a tribute, which none of his own unparalleled misfortunes ever extorted from him; He dissolved into a flood of tears." These words, with their peculiar punctuation and their copious capitals, are those not of the stately and partisan Clarendon but of David Hume, whom Adam Smith considered "as approaching as nearly to the idea of a perfectly wise and virtuous man as perhaps the nature of human frailty will permit."