In answer to this enquiry, we are to reflect, that the Britons were under the ecclesiastic regimen of the Druids, who were of the patriarchal religion, the religion indeed of ABRAHAM: for they came from him. We find in sacred writ, wherever he removed from one country to another, “there builded he an altar to Jehovah, and invoked in the name of Jehovah,” who sometimes personally appeared to him: consequently we must infer Jehovah to be the Messiah, or Son of God, in an angelic form.
Other times ABRAHAM removed into a country abounding with groves of oak; sometimes he planted a grove of oak for religious purposes, as a temple. All these things the Druids did; they built such open temples as the great patriarch; they used oak-groves, or planted oak-groves as temples: we cannot say that Jehovah appeared personally to them; yet we may well think they were sometimes vouchsafed the spirit of prophecy, and particularly in regard to Messiah, who they knew was to be born of a virgin, and likewise was to be born at the winter solstice, whence their famous misleto solemnity.
Moreover, at Chartres in France, which was the place of the principal meeting of the Gaulish Druids, there is now a magnificent church, built upon the spot where then was that most celebrated open temple: for the Druids very easily passed over into christianity; the transition was but natural. This church is dedicated to the Mother of God, as they there style the virgin Mary: there is under it a chapel cut in the rock, with a flight of stairs descending to it: on the door of the frontispiece is this inscription in Latin,
“To the Virgin who bears the Child.”
I apprehend this to be analogous to the caves of Mithras in Persia; for Mithras is Mediator, or Messiah; and they say there, that Mithras was born in such a rocky cave; and they worship him therein. Both the ancient Persians and the Druids, who were of the same patriarchal religion, had the same notion of the Messiah to be born in the rocky stable at Bethlehem.
We have many instances of Druid men and women endowed with the spirit of prophecy. I shall mention but one, out of Josephus, Antiq. xviii. The Jewish Agrippa fell into the displeasure of Tiberius, who put him in bonds. As he stood leaning against a tree before the palace, an owl perched upon that tree: a German Druid, one of the emperor’s guards, spoke to him to be of good cheer, for he should be released from those bonds, and arrive at great dignity and power; but bid him remember, that when he saw that bird again, he should live but five days. All this came to pass: he was made king by Caligula; St. Paul preached before him: Josephus speaks of his death, agreeable to the prediction. But concerning the Druids, I have before now opened my mind largely, in some papers read at the Antiquarian Society; wherein I have sufficiently vindicated them from the imputation of paganism and idolatry.
As to the temple belonging to the city of Trinobantum, or London, we may be assured, they erected no temple within the city. When the Romans became masters here, they built a temple of their own form, to Diana, where now St. Paul’s stands: they placed it in the open space, then the forum; but the British temple, appropriate to the city, was upon the open rising ground to the west, where now is Knave’s-acre. The name of the place both gives a very good foundation to my opinion, and also at the same time acquaints us with the particular form of the temple: for the Druids, as I have shown, had three kinds of temples, of the patriarchal mode. 1. The round, or circular work of upright stones, innumerable to be seen. 2. The serpentine temple, or a snake transmitted through a circle; as those of Abury and Shap. 3. The alate, or winged temple, composed of a circle and wings: and this was the sort of temple here placed; of which the name of Knaves-acre is a sure memorial. This was made only of mounds of earth, in Latin agger, thrown out of the ditch camp-fashion: this word is corrupted into acre. The word knave is oriental, canaph, volavit; the Kneph of the Egyptians; by which they meant the Deity, in the most ancient times, before idolatry prevailed.
The form of our alate temple here exactly corresponds with that now to be seen on Navestock common, Epping forest; which name of Navestock preserves its memorial, meaning the sacred tree by the alate temple: it is composed of mounds of earth and ditch; as ours was at Knaves-acre.
Observe, the word agger remains at Edgeware, the Suellanacis of our king Casvelhan, uncle to Mandubrace: it is the Roman road called Watling-street. Egham by Stanes acknowledges the like derivation, being upon the via Trinobantica at Stanes, the Ad Pontes of the Romans. Many more like instances I could give.
These sort of temples were properly dedicated to the Divine Spirit, the author of motion, which moved upon the face of the new-created matter, as Moses writes, and were more particularly assigned to the religious festivity celebrated at the summer solstice, when the pigeon was the first and peculiar sacrifice of the season. I shall not speak more about them here: but besides this temple, the Britons had a magnificent cursus, or place for sports and races on foot, in chariots, on horseback, when they celebrated their public sacrifices and religious observances on the solstices and equinoxes.