"Celt, Druid and Culdee"

(1973)

by

Isabel Hill Elder 

THE EARLY BRITONS

IT has been said that the only excuse for writing a book is that

one has something to say which has not been said before. That

this claim cannot be made on behalf of this little volume will be

very evident to the reader as he proceeds, since it is a

***compilation from a variety of sources,*** from which evidence

has been brought together, to support the belief that the

civilization of the early Britons was of a high standard, and

that they did not deserve that contempt with which they have been

treated by many historians, nor the odious names of 'savages' and

'barbarians' by the supercilious literati of Greece and Rome.

When evidence, admittedly fragmentary, of the real conditions in

these islands, from the earliest times, has been brought to light

throughout the centuries, it seems, almost invariably, to have

been rejected in favour of Roman teaching.

In his History of Scotland, the Rev. J. A. Wylie, LL.D., say:

     'We have been taught to picture the earliest conditions of

     our country as one of unbroken darkness. A calm

     consideration of the time and circumstances of its first

     peopling warrants a more cheerful view."

By examining the available evidence it may be possible to obtain

this more cheerful view, and to show that in the darkest eras of

our country the rites of public worship were publicly observed.

It is ever true to say that, 'The history of a nation is the

history of its religion, its attempts to seek after God.'

Wilford states that the **old Indians** were acquainted with the

**British Islands,** which their books described as the sacred

islands of the west, and called one them Britashtan, or the seat

or place of religious duty.

The popular idea that the ancestors of the British were painted

savages has no foundation in fact. It was a custom of the Picts

and other branches of the Celtic and Gothic nations to make

themselves look terrible in war, from whence came the Roman term

'savage'. The 'painting' was in reality tattooing, a practice

still cherished in all primitive crudities by the British sailor

or and soldier.

Far from these ancestral Britons having been mere painted

savages, roaming wild in the woods as we are imaginatively told

in most of the modern histories, they are now, on the contrary,

as disclosed by newly found historical facts given by Professor 

Waddell, known to have been, from the very first grounding of

their galley keels upon these shores, over a millennium and a

half before the Christian era, a literate race, pioneers of

civilization.  The universally held belief that the mixed race

has prevailed during many centuries; this  belief, however, is

now fading out of the scientific mind and giving place to the

exact opposite. Britons, Celts, Gaels, Anglo-Saxons, Danes and

Normans when warring with each other were kinsmen shedding

kindred blood.

Professor Sayce, at a later date, in one of his lectures,

observes that he misses no opportunity of uprooting the notion

that the people who form the British nation are descended from

various races, all the branches that flowed into Britain being

branches of the selfsame stock. Not a single pure Saxon is to be

found in any village, town or city of Germany. Our Saxon

ancestors rested there for a time in their wandering to these

islands.

Dr. Latham says, "Throughout the whole length and breadth of

Germany there is not one village, hamlet or family which can show

definite signs of descent from the Continental ancestors of the

Angles of England."

It was against this, race, now in possession of the whole of

Southern Britain, that Caesar led his legions. The Belgae, the

Attrebates, the Parisii and the Britanni were all British tribes,

having kinsmen on the Continent, yet moving westward, who had

fought against Caesar in the Gallic wars.

It is noteworthy that during the occupation of Britain by the

Romans the inhabitants led a life as separate as possible from

their invaders and, according to Professor Huxley, when the

Romans withdrew from Britain in A.D.410 the population was as

substantially Celtic as they found it.

Huxley in 1870, in the earlier years of the Irish agitation,

applied the results of his studies to the political situation in

Ireland in the following words in one of his lectures:

     "If what I have to say in a matter of science weighs with

     any man who has political power I ask him to believe that

     the arguments made about the difference between Anglo

     Saxons and Celts are a mere sham and delusion."

The Welsh Triads and the 'Chronicum Regum Pictorum' as well as

the 'Psalter of Cashel' give us the chief early information about

the inhabitants of Scotland, and all agree as to the racial unity

of the peoples, much, however, as they fought each other.

This unity is recognized by Thierry Nicholas, Palgrave and Bruce

Hannay.

The Britons were renowned for their athletic form, for the great

strength of their bodies, and for swiftness foot. Clean-shaven,

save for long moustaches, with fair skins and fair hair, they

were a fine, manly race of great height (Strabo tells us that

British youths were six inches taller than the tallest man in

Rome) and powerfully built. They excelled in running, swimming,

wrestling, climbing and in all kinds of bodily exercise, were

patient in pain, toil and suffering, accustomed to fatigue,

to bearing hunger, cold and all manner of hardships. Bravery,

fidelity to their word, manly independence, love of their

national free institutions, and hatred of every pollution and

meanness were their noble characteristics.

Tacitus (the Roman historian - Keith Hunt) tells us the northern

Britons were well trained and armed for war. In the battlefield

they formed themselves into battalions; the soldiers were armed

with huge swords and small shields called 'short targets', they

had chariots and cavalry, and carried darts which they hurled in

showers on the enemy. Magnificent as horsemen, with their

chargers gaily caparisoned, they presented a splendid spectacle

when prepared for battle. The cumulative evidence is of a people

numerous, brave and energetic. Even Agricola could say that it

would be no disgrace to him, were he to fall in battle, to do so

among so brave a people. Farther south similar conditions

prevailed; the Romans, led by Plautius and Flavius Vespasian, the

future Emperor and his brother, assailed the British, and were

met with the british 'stupidity' knows when it is beaten.

The British have been from all time a people apart,characterized

by justice and a love of religion. Boadicea, in her oration as

queen by Dion Cassius, observes that though Britain had been for 

centuries open to the Continent, yet its language, philosophy and

usages continued as great a mystery as ever to the Romans

themselves.

The monuments of the ancient Britons have long  since vanished

(with the exception of Stonehenge and other places of Druidic

worship), yet Nennius, the British historian who was Abbot of

Bangor-on-Dee about A.D. 860, states that he drew the greater

part of his information from writings and the monuments of the

old British inhabitants. Our early historians were undoubtedly

acquainted with a book of annals written in the vernacular tongue

which was substantially the same as the Saxon Chronicle.

Nennius disclaims any special ability for the task of historian

set him by his superiors, but is filled with a keen desire to see

justice done to the memory of his countrymen, saying, 'I bore

about with me an inward wound, and I was indignant that the name

of my own people, formerly famous and distinguished, should sink

into oblivion and like smoke be dissipated....It is better to

drink a wholesome draught of truth from a humble vessel than

poison mixed with honey from a golden goblet.'

What were once considered exaggerated statements on the part of

Nennius, Geoffrey of Monmouth and other early historians, are now

discovered to be trust-worthy. In their day these writers were

regarded as historians of repute. Many of the ancient British

writers were professed genealogists, men appointed and patronized

by the princes of the country, who were prohibited from following

other professions. It was left a later age to throw doubt on

their veracity. Since it is the nature of truth to establish

itself it seems the reverse of scholarly to disregard the

evidence of ancient reports as embodied in the Welsh Triads and

the writings of early British historians.

Milton says, 'These old and inborn names of successive kings

never to have been real persons, or done in their lives at least

some part of what so long hath been remembered cannot be thought

without too strict incredulity.'

A great deal of history, so-called has come dow to us from Latin

sources, whose one object was, from the very first to make us

believe that we owe all to Rome,  when, in fact, Rome owes a

great deal to us: so much error has been taught in our schools

concerning the ancient Britons that it is difficult for the

average student to realize that the British, before the arrival

of Julius Caesar, were, in all probability, among the most highly

educated people on the earth at that time and, as regards

scientific research, surpassed both the Greeks and the Romans - a

fact testified to by both Greek and Roman writers themselves.

In all the solid essentials of humanity our British ancestors

compare to great advantage with the best eras of Greece and Rome.

Lumisden has shown in his treatise on the 'Antiquities of Rome'

that many of the fine actions attributed by Roman historians to

their own ancestors are mere copies from the early history of

Greece.

It is unfortunate for posterity that the histories from which

modern historians have drawn their information were written by

hostile strangers. That they have been accepted all along the

centuries as true is a striking tribute to a people who, valiant

in war and fierce in the defence of their rights, think no evil

of their enemies. Truly has it been said that an essentially

British characteristic is the swift forgetfulness of injury.

(Source facts for this chapter by Isabel Hill Elder, were taken

from the following- Keith Hunt)

1 History of Scotland, Vol.I, p.31.

2 Asiatic Researches, Vol.3

3 Origin of Britons, Scots and Anglo-Saxons, p.14.4 Hibbert

  Lectures (1887).

5 Ethnology of the British Islands, p.217.

6 Gilbert Stone, England, p.9.

7 Anthrop. Rev. 1870, Vol.8, p.197, Forefathers and Forerunners

  of the British People.

8 Norman Conquest, p.20.

9 Pedigree of the English People.

10 Palgrave, English Commonwealth, Ch.I, p.85.

11 Hannay, European and other Race Origins, pp.365,470,371.

12 Pezron, Antiq, de la Nation et de la Langue Gaulaise. 

13 Vita Agricolae, c.28.

14 Historiae Brittonum of Nennius, Harleian  MS 3859 (British    

   Museum).

15 Vide Geoffrey of Monmouth, I, 1. See Cave Hist.Lit. II,18. 

16 Nennius, Hist. of the Britons, trans. J. A. Giles, Prol. p.2.

17 Gir. Camb. Cambriae Descript., Cap. XVIII. Anglica Hibernica, 

   ed. Camden, p.890.

18 History of England, Vol. 8, p. i 1.

19 Strabo, I,IV, p.197. Mela Pom., III, 2,18. N.H., I, 30. 

20 Antiq.of Rome, pp.6,7,8.

LAWS AND ROADS

That Britain had an indigenous system of law centuries before the

Christian era is abundantly clear from ancient histories of our

islands.

The lawgiver, Molmutius, 450 B.C.(1) based his laws on the code

of Brutus, 1100 B.C. He was the son of Cloton, Duke of Cornwall

(which was and continued to be a royal dukedom) and is referred

to in ancient documents as Dyfn-val-meol-meod, and because of his

wisdom has been called the 'Solomon' of Britain. 'Centuries

before the Romans gained a footing in this country the

inhabitants were a polished and intellectual people, with a

system of jurisprudence of their own, superior even to the laws

of Rome, and the Romans acknowledged this.'(2)

We have it from the great law authorities and from the legal

writers, Fortescue and Coke, that the Brutus and Molmutine laws

have always been regarded as the foundation and bulwark of

British liberties, and are distinguished for their clearness,

brevity, justice and humanity.(3)

'The original laws of this land were composed of such elements as

Brutus first selected from the ancient Greek and Trojan

institutions.'(4)

A Trojan law mentioned by E.O.Gordon, decreed that the sceptre

might pass to a queen as well as to a king; this law was embodied

by King Molmutius in his code and remains an outstanding feature

of the rulership of these islands.(5)

The liberty of the subject, so marked a feature of British

government today, runs from those remote times like a gold thread

through all the laws and institutions in this country.

King Alfred, it is recorded, employed his scribe, Asser, a

learned Welsh monk from St. David's (whom he afterwards made

abbot of Amesbury and Bishop of Sherborne), to translate the

Molmutine laws from the Celtic tongue into Latin, in order  

that he might incorporate them into his own Anglo-Saxon code.(6)

'The Manorial system had its beginning in Celtic Britain and was

so deeply rooted in the soil that when the Romans came they were

wise enough in their experience as colonists not to attempt the

redistribution of the old shires and hundreds.'(7)

King Alfred's ideas of rulership maintained the earlier and

sometimes unwritten laws of Britain in these words: 'A king's raw

material and instruments of rule are well-peopled land, and he

must also have men of prayer, men of war and men of work.'

From the earliest Code of Laws known as the Molmutine, the

following are appended as examples:

'There ate three tests of civil liberty; equality of rights;

equality of taxation; freedom to come and go.

'Three things are indispensable to a true union of nations;

sameness of laws, rights and language.

'There are three things free to all Britons; the forest, the

unworked mine, the right of hunting. 

'There three property birthrights of every Briton; five British

acres of land for a home, the right of suffrage in the enacting

of the laws, the male at twenty-one, the female on her marriage.

'There are three things which every Briton may legally be

compelled to attend; the worship of God, military service, the

courts of law.

'There are three things free to every man, Briton or foreigner,

the refusal of which no law will justify; water from spring,

river or well; firing from a decayed tree, a block of stone not

in use.

'There are three classes which are exempt from bearing arms;

bards, judges, graduates in law or religion. These represent God

and His peace, and no weapon must ever be found in their hands.

'There are three persons who have a right of public maintenance;

the old, the babe, the foreigner who can not speak the British

tongue.'(8)

From time immemorial the laws and customs differed from those of

other nations, and that the Romans effected no change in this

respect is very plainly set forth by Henry de Bracton, a

thirteenth-century English judge of great experience. 'He was

thoroughly acquainted with the practice of the law. His "Note-

Book" is our earliest and most treasured of law reports.'(9)

Judge de Bracton states, 'Whereas in almost all countries they

use laws and written right, England alone uses within her

boundaries unwritten right and custom. In England, indeed, right

is derived from what is unwritten which usage has approved. There

are also in England several and divers customs according to the

diversity of places, for the English have many things by custom

which they have not by written law, as in divers countries,

cities, boroughs and vills where it will always have to be

enquired what is the custom of the place and in what manner they

who allege the custom observe the custom.'(10)

Another point on which Britain differs from other countries is

that she has ever maintained the Common Law which holds a person

under trial innocent until proved guilty, whereas the Continental

nations maintain the Civil Law which holds him guilty until

proved innocent.

Molmutius, the first king in these islands to wear a crown of

gold,(11) is said to have founded the city of Bristol, which he

called Caer Odor, 'the city of the Chasm'. His son Belinus, who

succeeded him, built a city where London now stands which he

called Caer Troia, and also the first Thames Embankment. He

constructed a sort of quay or port made of poles and planks, and

erected a water-gate. That age, the only gate admitting into

London on the south side, became Belinus Gate or Belins Gate.

(12)

Belinus lived to the age of eighty. When he died his body was

burned (they did not call it cremation in those days) and his

ashes were enclosed in a brazen urn, which was placed on top of

the gate; henceforth it was Belin's Gate and it requires no undue

stretch of imagination to see that Belin's Gate became

Billingsgate.

Bellingsgate enjoys the proud distinction of being the first Port

of London, the only Port of London at that time, and thus the men

of Billingsgate became the first Port of London Authority.

Cambria Formosa, daughter of Belinus, 373 B.C. greatly promoted

the building of cities. She is said to have taught the women of  

Britain to sow flax and hemp and weave it into cloth. Her brother

Gwrgan first built the city of Cambridge which he called Caer

Gwrgan.(13)

In these early times Britain was a wealthy country, with fine

cities, a well organized national life, and an educated and

civilized people.

The so-called Roman roads in Britain were constructed centuries

BEFORE the Romans came to these islands. The dover to Holyhead

causeway, called Sarn Wydellin or Irish Road, later became

corrupted into Watling Street; the Sarn Ikin, later Icknield

street, led from London northwards through the eastern district,

and Sarn Achmaen from London to Menevia (St. David's).

These were causeways or raised roads (not mere trackways as

sometimes erroneously stated), except where raised road were

impossible, and this accounts for the term 'Holloway' in some

parts of the country.

Our roads were begun by Molmutius (c.450 B.C.) and completed by

his son Belinus. On their completion a law was enacted throwing 

open these roads to all nations and foreigners: 'There are three

things free to a country and its borders; the roads, the rivers

and the places of worship. These are under the protection of God

and His peace.' In this law originated the term 'The King's

Highway.'(14)

Writers who maintain that the British roads were simply unmade

trackways seem unaware of the fact that the British were skilled

charioteer this fact, without other evidence, should go a long

way to prove that the roads of ancient Britain were hard and well

made. Charioteering is not brought to perfection on soft, boggy

trackways, nor are chariots built without wheelwrights and other

mechanics skilled in the working of iron and wood.

Only once before, in the war with Antiochus, 192 B.C., the Romans

met with similar chariots, but never in any European country. The

British chariot was built after the Eastern pattern, adorned with

carved figures and armed with hooks and scythes. British chariots

were prized possessions of the Romans.

Diodorus Siculus, 60 B.C., states, 'The Britons live in the same

manner that the ancients did; they fight in chariots as the

ancient heroes of Greece are said to  have done in the Trojan

wars.....They are plain and upright in their dealings, and far

from the craft and subtlety of our countrymen.... The island is

very populous.... The Celts never shut the doors of their houses;

they invite strangers to their feasts, and when all is over ask

who they are and what is their business.(15) 

Britain, long before the Roman invasion, was famous for its breed

of horses and the daring and accomplishment of its charioteers;

and after the arrival of the Romans the large space given by

their historians to the wars in Britain, demonstrate the interest

felt in them by the whole empire. Juvenal could suggest no news

which would have(16) been hailed by the Roman people with more

satisfaction than the fall of the British king Arviragus

(Caractacus), a direct descendant of King Molmutius.

     'Hath our great enemy, Arviragus, the car-borne British

     king, Dropped from his battle-throne?'

1. Ancient Laws of Cambria (British Museum, 5805, A.A. 4). Myv.  

Arch., Vol. II, Brut Tysillo.

2. Yeatman, Early English History, p.9.

3. De Laudibus Legum Angliae. Coke Preface, third volume of      

Pleadings. Fortescue Brit. Laws, published with notes by      

Selden, Ch.17, pp.38,39.

4. Ibid.

5. Prehistoric London, p.115.

6. Summarized by Edmund Spenser, Faerie Queen, Bk.II, Stanza     

XXXIX (ed. Morris).

7. A Manor through four Centuries, by A.R.Cook.

8. Triads of Dynvall Moelmud, ap. Walter p. 315 Myv Arch., Vol.  

III. Ancient Laws of Cambria, ap. Palgrave and Lappenberg.    

9. Gilbert Stone, England from Earliest Times, p.385.

10.Legibus et Consuet, pp.4,5.

11.Holinshed, Chronicles, Ch. XXII, p.117. Geoffrey of Monmouth,

Bk.II, Chap.XVII.

12.E. O. Gordon, Prehistoric London, p.146.

13.Lewis, Hist. of Britain, p.52. See Baker's MSS. in the        

University Library, Cambridge,XXIV,249.

14.Ancient Laws of Cambriae (British Museum,A.A.4). Stukely,     

Abury, p.42.

15.Dio.Sic., Bk.V,Chap.X. Senchus Mor., IV,237.

16.Juvenal lived through the reigns of Caligula, Claudius, Nero,

Vespasian, Domitian and Trojan, in whose reign he died at the

age of eighty.

COMMERCE AND DRESS

Tacitus (the Roman Historian - Keith Hunt) and Strabo describe

Londinium as famous for the vast number of merchants who resorted

to it for its widely extended commerce, for the abundance of

every species of commodity which it could supply, and they make

note of British merchants bringing to the Seine and the Rhine

shiploads of corn and cattle, iron and hides, and taking back

iron, ivory and brass ornaments.(1)

That Londinium was considered by the Romans as the metropolis of

Britain is further established by the fact that it was the

residence of the Vicar of Britain!(2) The abode of such an office

clearly marks London as having been a seat of justice, of

government and of the administration of the finances which

consequently contributed to its extent, its magnificence and its

wealth.(3) Britain was, in fact, from at least 900 B.C. to the

Roman invasion, the manufacturing centre of the world.  

The Abbe de Fontenu proved that the Phoenicians, the name by

which the tribe of Asher was known after the Conquest of the

Phoenician territory, had an established trade with Britain

before the Trojan war, 1190 B.C.(4) Admiral Himilco of Carthage,

who visited Britain about the sixth century B.C. to explore 'the

outer parts of Europe', records that the Britons were 'a powerful

race, proud-spirited, effectively skilful in art, and constantly

busy with the cares of trade.(5)

Nor was Ireland less forward than Britain, for from the ancient

Greek records it would appear that trade routes both by sea and

land existed in these very early times, the latter route being

across Europe through the territories of the Scythians. A most

curious belief of the Greeks was that the inspiration which led

to the institution of the Olympic Games was derived from the

observance of ancient Irish festivities.(6)

The British farmer had a market for his produce beyond the shores

of Britain. We learn from Zosimus that in the reign of Julian,

A.D.363, eight hundred pinnaces were built in order to supply

Germany with corn from Britain.(7)

When the Romans invaded Britain in A.D. 43 they found the

inhabitants in possession of a gold coinage, wrought shields of

bronze(8) and enamelled  ornaments.(9) Fine specimens of richly

enamelled horses' trappings may be seen in the British Museum,

and the bronze shield found in the Thames, near Battersea,

adorned with enamelled designs, Rice Holmes describes as 'the

noblest creation of late Celtic art.'(10)

The beautiful brooches discovered in different parts of these

islands clearly demonstrated that the Britons were skilful and

artistic metal workers, and in the centuries of Roman

domination(more like "occupation" than "domination" - Keith Hunt)

The Celtic patterns did not die out. A peculiarly Celtic type is

the 'dragon' brooch 'representing a conventionalized writhing

dragon often magnificently inlaid with enamel, and recalling in

its vigorous design and curvilinear motives all the essential

qualities of late Celtic art'. Thus the native tradition of metal

work continued under Roman rule to flourish and to produce types

which were not merely Roman but recognizably Celtic.(11) In a

further description Mr. Collingwood says. 'In the true Celtic

spirit the ornament on the trumpet head is often made with eyes

and nostrils to resemble the head of an animal, but however the

brooch is finished in detail it is always a masterpiece of both

design and manufacture.'(12)

Enamelling was an art unknown to the Greeks until they were

taught it by the Celts.(13)

Dr.Arthur Evans tells us that the Romans carried off some of the

Britons to Rome to teach them the art of enamelling as well as

that of glass-making.

Stukeley, giving an account of a glass urn discovered in the Isle

of Ely in the year 1757,observes the Britons were famous for

glass manufacture.(14)

The early Britons were workers in pottery, turnery, smeltings and

glasswork.(15) In the excavations at Glastonbury well-made

instruments of agriculture were found such as tools, files,

safety-pins and also the remains of wells and bridges.

The British tin mines were, from the earliest times, world

renowned. Diodorus Siculus states, 'These people obtain the tin

by skilfully working the soil which produces it.'(16)

Herodotus speaks of the British Isles under the general term

'Cassiterides or the Tin Islands.(17)  Bede mentions copper,

iron, lead and silver. 'Gold, too, was mined on a small scale in

Wales, and on a large scale in Ireland where was situated in

early times the centre of the goldmining industry.' Bede mentions

also, as semi-precious, the jet for which Whitby is famous even

now.(18)

The lead mines of Britain were worked long before the Roman

occupation, and it is believed that during the partial domination

by Rome, the mining continued to be carried out by Celtic

workmen.(19)

Dr.John Phillips, the geologist, stated in 1855 that without due

consideration being given to the lead-mining industry, our ideas

'of the ancient British people would be altogether conjectural,

derogatory and erroneous'(20)

Derbyshire was the chief centre of lead-mining, and is so

mentioned in Domesday Book.

Eumemus, A.D.266, private secretary to Constantius Chlores,

states, Britain is full of skilled craftsmen.(21)

The coins of ancient Britain  are worthy of more than passing

notice. (Yes, I have a personal friend here in Calgary, Alberta,

who is probably the world's foremost expert on Celtic coinage.

His Website is world famous if you are in that line of study, or

Celtic research in any way. His Website is: writer2001.com  and

go to the link which he tells me you cannot miss - Keith Hunt).

Numismatists tell us that our ancient British types cannot amount

to many less than four hundred in number, of which possibly two

hundred may have inscriptions,(22) this variety is to be

accounted for by the fact that each tribe had its own stamped

currency in gold silver and bronze.(my friend John who I have

just talked to on the phone says the number 400 is now way out of

date. He tells me there were at least 1,000 coins that were

"struck" or "used" [some coming from the Europe Celts] in the

Britain - Keith Hunt).

Canon Lysons state, 'It is to be remembered that the earliest

British coins are not imitations of the Roman coinage, they much

resemble the coinage of Philip of Macedon, Alexander the Great,

and the Greek and Eastern mintage.(23)

Dr.Borlase in his Antiquities of Cornwall asserts that the wheel

under the horse seen on Cornish coins intimated the making of a

highway for carts, and that the wheel is common on the coins of

Cunobelinus, 14 B.C., on those of Cassebelinus, 51 B.C., and also

on the Cornish coins which from their character appear to be

older than the rest.

Sir John Evans devotes sixty-four pages of his standard work

"Ancient British Coins" to the coins of Cunobelinus and the

history of his reign.

That Cunobelinus, the Cymbeline of Shakespeare, was a man of

education and refinement is well borne out by his coins,

universally considered to be a true index and reflection of the

mind. Numismatists tell us that the Cunobelinus types are by no

means a Roman type and could hardly have been struck except by

express command.(24)

The coins of Arviragus, son of Cunobelinus, are, where they are

included, the gems of every collection. The horse, sometimes

thought to have been introduced as a national emblem by the

Saxons, is one of the most common types upon the coins of the

ancient Britons.

M. de la Saussaye, in describing the old coin assigned to the

British Druid Abaris, who visited Greece, mentioned by Hecataeus,

states, 'I have been induced to modify my assertion on more than

one point and I particularly recognize religious ideas peculiar

to the Celts expressed on their monetary uninscribed types.(24)

The palm trees on the coins of the Southern Belgae, who settled

in Kent, Sussex, Hants, Wits, Dorset and Devon proclaim the

Eastern origin of these people.

From them modern pictorial representation of our ancestors we are

expected to believe that their dress consisted of an animal skin

fastened round the waist, and that they wandered, thus scantily

clad, about their island home, living on nuts and berries.

Boadicea, Queen of the Iceni (the inhabitants of Norfolk and

Suffolk), was described by Dion Cassius as a woman of commanding

appearance. 'Her stature exceeded the ordinary height of women;

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.'(26)

In these descriptions of native dress it is interesting to note

the early use of the tartan. A British hooded cloak was evidently

regarded by  the Romans as a superior garment, for in

Diocletian's Edict of Prices issued in A.D.301, the price of the

British cloak was the highest on the list, with the exception of

the Gallic. If the price was high on account of the quality of

the wool, the statement of the epigrammatist, Martial, A.D.60, is

given as substantiating that among other attractions, Britain was

'for wool past compare.'(27)

Ireland kept pace with Britain in the farming for wool, both for

export and domestic use; the Irish cottiers were always warmly

clad in their own home spun.(28)

The Briton in battledress was an impressive figure being clad

precisely as were the men of Gaul; clean-shaven, save for long

moustaches, with fair skins, fair hair, gorgeously clad in

breeches, bright-colored tunics and woollen cloaks dyed crimson

and often a chequered pattern with torques, armlets and bracelets

of gold, shields of enamelled bronze, and swords of fine

workmanship, they presented a splendid spectacle when prepared

for battle.

The Britons appear to have been also importers of cloth.

According to one authority, Phoenician cloths of Beyrout were

largely worn by the inhabitants of ancient Britain. At Beyrout

our Patron Saint George held for a time an important post under

the Roman Government.(29)

A torque or gold collar was worn by the wealthier inhabitants and

worn also as a distinguishing sign of eminence.(30) Specimens of

these torques have been discovered from time to time, and may be

seen in various museums, notably Dublin National Museum, and in

private collections. A very good example acquired by the late

Duke of Westminster and deposited at Eaton Hall was found at Bryn

Sion Caerwys Mill; it is thirty-two inches long and weighs

twenty-four ounces.

1. Strabo, Geogr. III,175; IV,199.

2. A Roman office.

3. Amm. Marcell, Lib.15, Chaps.8,9.

4. Mem. de Littirature, tome VII, p.126.

5. Fragment preserved by Festus Avienus, Ora Maritama, V, 98-100.

6. C. F. Parker, On the Trail of Irish Identity. National

Message, March 8, 1939.

7. Zosimus, Lib. III, p.43 (Ed. Bas.).

8. Philostratus. A Greek sophist (third century) who resided at

Court of Julia Domna, describes the British process.

9. Gilbert Stone, England from Earliest Times, p.9 

10.Anc. Brit., p.244..

11.R.C Collingwood, Roman Britain, p. 76. 

12.Archaeology of Roman Britain, p.253. 

13.J. Romilly Allen, Celtic Art, p.136.

14.Minutes of Antiq. Soc., March 1762.

15.Gallic Antiq.,p.64 (J. Smith).

16.Bk. V, Chap. X

17.Thalia, Section C, XV (Bel.ed).

18.Gilbert Stone, England from Earliest Times, p.15.

19.Gordon Home, Roman York, p.27

20.YorkPhilos. Soc., Vol.1, p.92

21.Panegyric Constanteus, C, 111.

22.J.Evens, Coins of the Anc.Brit., O, 171.

23.Our British Ancestors, p.41.

24.Coins of Cunobelinus and of the Ancient Britons, p.26

25.La Revue Numismatique, for 1842, p.165

26.Dion Cassius (Xiphilinus Excerpta), p.176, See Strabo,

Bk.1V, 3.

27.Martial, Lib, 1, ep. 2; and Lib.111, ep.20.

28.Stephen Gwynn, History of Ireland, p.330

29.Rev.Canon Parfitt, M.A., St. George of Merry England, 1917

30.Gibon's Camden, p.653. Hoare, Ancient Wilts,Vol.1,p.202

THE ROMAN INVASION

AT the time of the Roman invasion evidence of prosperity and

culture existed in Britain to arouse the envy of the Romans, and

it is a matter of history that the inhabitants led a life as

separate as possible from them.

It was only after ten years incessant warfare that the Romans in

A.D.43 succeeded in effecting a footing in Britain. This is not

reconcilable with the view that the Romans were invading the

territory of untrained, undisciplined savages. The resistance of

Britain was, in reality, against the whole of the north of

Europe, and was highly creditable to the brave defenders of their

country. In the immortal words of SHAKESPEARE in his "Cymbeline,"

'CAESAR MADE NOT HERE HIS BOAST OF CAME AND SAW AND

OVERCAME.'(1)   

To estimate aright the military abilities of the 

British general, Caswallon, and the resources of the people at

the 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. The DOUBLE

REPULSION of the JULIAN expedition, 55 and 54 B.C., remains

UNPARALLELED in British history.

In Britain there was one supreme Crown and three Coronets or

Princes' Crowns; there were numerous other 'kings' who never wore

crowns. 

The sovereign who reigned in Britain at the time of the Claudian

invasion was Cunobelinus, or King Belinus, the CYMBELINE of

SHAKESPEARE. Cuno, Cun and Can have their equivalents in the

Saxon Cynig; in modern German, Konig, and in English, King.

Cunobelinus and his ancestors ha much intercourse with the

Romans; he is said to have spent he greater part of his boyhood

at the Court of the Romans.(2)

The Roman invasion of his reign was met by Cunobelinus and is

sons with a stubbornness of defence and bravery which earned for

them admiration of the enemy an aroused the wonder of all Europe.

Cunobelinus, after a reign of thirty years, abdicated in favour

of his third son, Caradoc (Caractacus), who now became Arviragus

or high king and by this title is most frequently referred to in

the British Chronicles.

Tacitus (the Roman historian of the time - Keith Hunt)reluctantly

tells us that: 'In Britain after the capture of Caractacus

(Arviragus) the Romans were frequently defeated and put to rout

by the single state of the Silures alone.'(3) The Silures, the

inhabitants of south-west Britain were noted for their military

prowess and culture.

It is evident from the partial story furnished by the invaders

themselves that the resistance offered by the Britons to their

invaders was a surprise for which they were ill-prepared, for

this resistance came not from hordes of savages but from a nation

whose leaders were well versed in military tactics. The Britons

were determined to defend their ancient laws and institutions at

all costs. They evinced profound homage for the memory of their

forefathers, and from their inborn love of liberty sprang the

undaunted energy with which they met the mercenary and implacable

plunderers of the world. By no people was every inch of the

country contested with more bravery and surrendered more

stubbornly than by these Britons; on terms, indeed, which

rendered every victory for the Romans little better than 

defeat.(4) It is absurd to suppose that such a nation could be

barbarous.

If popular amusements are to be taken as the test the Romans were

themselves the MOST BARBAROUS of the nations of Europe. When the

brutal sports of the gladiators were proposed to be introduced at

Athens even the cynics 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 comparison of the latter people with regard to the former

should be received with the caution which we would exercise today

in receiving the accounts of hostile strangers.

All the evidence supplied by Caesar refutes the

notion of material barbarism. Agriculture was universal, corn

everywhere abundant, pasturage a distinct branch of national

wealth, and the population so numerous as to excite his

astonishment - 'hominum, multitudo infinito' - the surest and

most satisfactory proof of and social state and ample means of

sustenance.(5)

Having effected a landing (and the testimony of their own

historians is that never was a country more dearly purchased nor

held with greater difficulty) the Romans proceeded with their

policy of destruction for which they had become notorious on the

continent of Europe.

One notable instance has come down to us of the Roman spirit of

cruel indifference to human feelings and sufferings. The

immensely wealthy Prasutagus, King of the Iceni, apprehensive, in

the event of his death, of the Roman brutality likely to be

experienced by his queen, BOADICEA, and his two daughters, left

one half of his fortune to the Emperor Nero, endeavouring thus to

secure for them a measure of protection. When, however, his death

took place in A.D.60, the Roman 'praefect,' Caius Decius, seized

the royal hoard on the pretext that it came under the

denomination of public property. Resistance being made, the

legionaries stormed the palace and carried the treasures off to

the Castra.(6) The story of the barbarous treatment meted out to

its inmates need not be repeated here, nor of Boadicea, stung to

frenzy by these atrocities, bravely taking to the field in

defence of her family and her people, the Roman 'praefect'

having, in direct violation of the Claudian treaty, also

confiscated the estates of the Icenic nobility.

Seneca, the usurious, millionaire philosopher, advanced to the

Iceni, on the security of their public buildings, a sum of money

-  about two million pounds sterling in modern currency,(Elder

was writing in 1973...so much more than 2 million in 2003 as I

present to you this chapter - Keith Hunt)at ruinous rate,(7) this

loan, suddenly and violently called in, was the indirect cause of

the Boadicean war. It was a disgrace for a Roman to lend to a

Roman for interest; they were permitted, however, to lend to a

foreigner. (sound like the romans had an OT law that Israel was

given by God through Moses - Keith Hunt).

The territories of the Iceni were rich in lead-mines, some of

which were known to have been worked in times of even greater

antiquity; the Romans seized these mines soon after their arrival

in Britain, thus cutting off an important source of the wealth of

the Icenic people and obliging them to borrow money from Seneca

for the maintenance of their state.(8)

Boadicea, before leading her people and the tribe of the

Trinobantes who joined them, to war, to redress her wrongs,

ascended the 'generals' tribunal and addressed her army of

120,000 in these words:

"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 eunuchs - such is the precious knowledge such

foreigners introduced 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 your

aid for freedom, for victory over enemies infamous for the

wantonness of the wrong they inflict, for their perversion of

justice, 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 over my countrymen; never let slavery reign in this

island."(9)

(As I type and read these words, I have the hairs on the back of

my head stand up. They are words like a "Drake" or a "Nelson" or

a "Churchill" or even as George Bush the second, has used against

the Terrorists that took down the two Trade Towers in New York

city on September 11th 2001. No wonder the British have a

sculptured monument of Boadicea in her chariot to this very day

in London - Keith Hunt).

Boadicea's many SUCCESSFUL engagements with the Roman armies are

RECORDED in our histories, and when her DEATH took place in

Flintshire, after her eventual defeat, the Romans were IMPRESSED

with her EXTRAORDINARY MAGNIFICENCE of her obsequies. According

to Tacitus,(10) Boadicea died by poison; in the course of nature

according to the Greek historian Dion Cassius. 

Boadicea's kinsman, Caradoc, on meeting the invading Romans,

displayed a like spirit of bravery and courage; perhaps indeed no

warrior of ancient times succeeded in WINNING so much ADMIRATION

from the enemy as this king of the south-western Britons, better

known by his Latinized name of CARACTACUS.

The Welsh or Cymry, as the eldest tribe, held three

priorities. Priority as the first colonizers of Britain;

priority of government and priority in matters of learning and

culture.(11) From this premier tribe was to be elected the

Pendragon, or military dictator with absolute power for the time

being in the case of national danger or foreign invasion.

Caractacus, third son of Cunobelinus, had now succeeded his

father as Pendragon under the title Arviragus, or 'high king'.

This Pendragon was proudly referred to by his fellow countrymen

as 'The Praiseworthy Opposer'. Arviragus had yet another name,

Gueirydd (Justiciary), from his office of administrator of

justice, and by this name is mentioned in the Welsh Chronicles.

These three titles by which this ancient king of renown was known

have been a source of confusion in the minds of historical

students and others, which would not exist if the custom of the

ancient Britons, that of using titular designations, were better

known. The case under consideration is a good example of this

custom; in elucidation the following may be noted: in seven

genealogical charts setting forth his pedigree, Arviragus is

shown to be the son of Cunobelinus and grandsire of Lucius (in

whose reign Christianity was established as the national

religion); in the pedigree according to the classics, i.e. Julius

Caesar, Tacitus, Suetonius, Dion Cassius and Orosius, Caractacus

is shown to be the son of Cunobelinus; in Rome Caractacus was

known also by his title, Arviragus, and is so referred to by the

poet Juvenal. In the pedigree according to Tysilio and in the

Welsh Chronicles, Caractacus appears under his title Gueirdd

(Justiciary), son of Cunobelinus and grandsire of Lucius.

Further, in the Triads, and some of the Welsh genealogies,

Caractacus appears as the son of Bran and grandsire of Lucius.

Bran, a contraction of Brenhan, i.e. 'King', is mentioned in the

Triads as 'Bran the Blessed' (the Blessed King). This was the

designation of Cunobelinus following his acceptance of

Christianity and his resignation of the crown in favour of his

third son, Caractacus. Bran the Blessed became Archdruid of

Siluria in order to devote the remainder of his life to

Christianity into which Druidism was beginning to merge.

Caradoc (Caractacus) was no rude savage fighting out of mere

animal instinct or in ignorance of the might of his adversary.

Familiar with the Latin language, this king was a true

representative of the higher classes of the Britons,'among whom a

as general taste for literature, a keen susceptibility to all

intellectual gratifications, a minute acquaintance with all the

principles and practice of their own national jurisprudence, and

a careful training in the schools of the rhetoricians, was very

generally diffused. Hence the rejoicing at Rome when this

military leader was BETRAYED and subsequently conducted through

the capital, amidst the excitement of three MILLION inhabitants

who thronged the line of procession to obtain a view of the

formidable captive.' The Senate was convened; the famous trial of

Caradoc followed, in which before the tribunal of the Emperor he

delivered himself thus : 

"Had my government in Britain been directed solely with a view to

the preservation 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 prince, descended from illustrious ancestors, and the dictator

of many nations. My present condition, stripped 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, arms, horses, wealth.

What wonder if at your dictation I refuse 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

[Caractacus]? 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."

(Wow....I get goose-lumps reading this. So mighty a warier was

this man, so amazed were the Roman Empire generals, leaders, and

people, by his many battle wins over the Roman armies, that

INDEED the Roman senate granted him and his family their lives -

Keith Hunt)

The preservation of Caradoc forms a solitary EXCEPTION in the

long catalogue of victims merciless policy of Imperial Rome. His

life was spared on condition that he never again bore arms

against Rome. After a residence of SEVEN years in FREE custody in

Rome he was permitted to return to Britain.

The British prince, Caradoc, in maintaining his descent from

illustrious ancestors, could bring from the clan records evidence

of his pedigree; in those remote times genealogies were guarded

with extreme care and recorded with exactitude by the heral-bard

of each clan.(12)

On the public reception of a child, at the age of fifteen, into

the clan, his genealogy was proclaimed and challengers of it

commanded to come forward.

Pedigree and inheritance were so identified in the ancient

British code that an heir even in the ninth descent could redeem

at a valuation by jury any portion of an estate with which his

forefathers had been compelled to part.(13)

All the family of Caradoc were attached to literary pursuits;

copies of the best Greek and Roman authors were circulated in

Siluria and deposited in the chief centres of druidic 

learning.(14)

Caradoc's daughter, Claudia, who with other members of her family

remained in Rome as hostages during her father's captivity there,

wrote several volumes of hymns and odes.(15) Her praises were

sung by the poet Martial: 

     "Our Claudia named Rufina, sprung we know 

     From blue-eyed Britons; yet behold, she vies

     In grace with all that Greece or Rome can show. 

     As bred and born beneath their glowing skies."

In a later epigram Martial writes:

     "For mountains, bridges, rivers, churches and fair women,

     Britain is past compare."(16) 

Caradoc's sister, 'Pomponia Grecina', received her cognomen

through her acquaintance with Greek literature, while her aunt,

Blonwen, daughter of Cunobelinus, is believed to be the Imogen of

Shakespeare in his "Cymbeline." The great poet immortalized this

ancient British king in the lines:

     "The lofty cedar, royal Cymbeline personates thee."(17) 

The state of the country of the northern Britons is indicated by

the number of large cities beyond the Forth which Agricola

explored with his fleet. This could not mean cities which he had

erected, he having been only six years in the country, nor could

cities have arisen in that period, 'amplas civitates', as we

learn from his biographer, Tacitus.

In a general account of Britain, Ptolemy, in A.D. 110, enumerates

fifty-six cities; later, Marcianus enumerated fifty-nine.

It was not until the reign of Hadrian A.D. 120, that Britain was

INCORPORATED BY TREATY, NOT CONQUEST, with the Roman

dominions,(18) the Britons retained their kings, land, laws and

rights, and accepted a Roman nucleus of the army for the defence

of the realm. These local kings and princes of Britain were

obliged to become lieutenants of the Roman Emperor, just as the

heads of our countries are now styled lieutenants of the

Sovereign. They were bound to permit the construction of a Roman

'castra' garrisoned by Roman legionaries, with their usual staff

of engineers, in their chief city. On the ruins of British

buildings and monuments rose the Roman 'castras' and villas, the

remains of which are treasured by many in this country who

appear to be quite unaware of the earlier civilization. The

buildings erected by the Romans were foreign to British ideas and

never became an integral part of British life.

When Alaric and his Goths were engaged in the sack of Rome, the

Britons remembered their ancient independence and their brave

ancestors; and having armed themselves, they threw off the Roman

yoke, deposed the imperial magistrates and proclaimed their

insular independence. The Emperor Honorius sent letters addressed

to the civitates of Britain, clearing them from the

responsibility of being any part of the Roman world.(19)    

The Romans came to a country which was in all its essentials

prosperous and free. They left it in many places devastated.

Roman policy is tersely summed up in the words of the Pictish

sovereign Galgacus, "To robbery, slaughter, plunder, the Romans

give the lying name of Empire; they make a solitude and call it 

peace."(20)

The Roman imperial system had its strong points, but it had many

weak ones - the two main weak points were WAR and SLAVERY. With

the Romans war became the instrument of progress, but it was a

system fatal to real progress and to the domestic virtues. To

plough the soil and wait for the harvest seemed to them a

spiritless method of acquiring that which might more easily be

obtained, by conquest. Eloquence and the affairs of government as

well as the exciting and barbarous sports of the arena, were

esteemed and valued by Rome more than religion; hence her

basilicas and her amphitheatres were far more spacious and

magnificent than her temples. 

(One may wonder how a relatively small in height people, as the

Italians are, could conquer so much of the world. The answer is

given by Tacitus, the Roman historian of the first century A.D. -

the most part of the Roman army was made up of hired Germanic

fighters, who were from ancient times well known for fierce

fighting - Keith Hunt)

The temper of the Britons may be judged by the evidence of the

important part a non-idolatrous religion exercised in their daily

lives; it has been said that the history of Britain is written in

her churches. This truism is applicable from the most remote

times, and from the nature of ancient worship it is possible to

discover the source of the uprightness, the independence and the

tolerance which characterized the early Britons.

These characteristics were noted by the Romans without their

effecting the least check on unprincipled avarice and ambition.

Salvian, A.D.430, does not hesitate to say that the barbarians

(so-called)led better lives than the Romans even of those who

were orthodox. 'Their modesty,' he says. 'purifies the earth all

stained by Roman debauchery.'(21) Amid the calamities and

sufferings of the first invasion of Rome by our Gothic ancestors

in A.D.402, St.Augustine of Hippo remarked upon the marvellous

forbearance of the soldiers of Alaric before the tombs of the

Christian martyrs; he even went so far as to speak of the mercy

and humility of these terrible victors.

To British genius alone we owe the foundation of our modern

civilization, including roads, laws, learning and a culture of

world-wide fame for more than two thousand years. From a more

accurate knowledge of British history we shall gain some notion

of that primeval liberty and self-government, common at first to

the early Britons and preserved today by the British people.

That the Britons adopted anything they thought good from the

romans is perfectly true; they did not, however, abandon any of

their old essential laws and customs and still less their

religion. (Actually, if the truth be known, Christianity entered

Britain during the 30s A.D. not long after Jesus had died and

rose again from the dead. This truth is attested to in the

recorded history of the Roman Catholic Church. Such proof will

need wait for another study on that matter specifically - hence

Britain would indeed NOT give up its religion even when Rome

occupied parts of the British soil in the first centuries of the

present Christian age - Keith Hunt).

But it is untrue to say that the Britons had no previous

civilization of their own as it is to pretend that Roman laws and

customs permanently established themselves in Britain and

remained AFTER the legions were withdrawn. there is sufficient

EVIDENCE to PROVE that the ancestors of the British, centuries

before the Romans gained a footing in these islands, were a

POLISHED and INTELLECTUAL people, skilled in ARMS as well as

LEARNING, with a system of JURISPRUDENCE of their own SUPERIOR

even to the laws of Rome.(22)

To these early Britons we owe what we prize most - FREEDOM,

KNOWLEDGE, and a HIGHER SENSE of RIGHT and WRONG. This goodly

heritage comes to us NEITHER FROM the Roman conquest NOR through

Roman influence.

MONTALEMBERT declares:

"It is in England that the nobility of man's nature has developed

all its splendour and attained its highest level. It is there

that the generous passion of INDEPENDENCE, united with the genius

of ASSOCIATION and the constant practice of SELF-GOVERNMENT, have

produced those MIRACLES of fierce energy, of dauntless COURAGE

and obstinate HEROISM which have TRIUMPHED over seas and climate,

time and distance, nature and tyranny, exciting the perpetual

envy of all nations, and among the English themselves a proud

enthusiasm. It is not however, for the British to pride

themselves as a SUPERIOR race, but rather that they are a

MINISTERING people, and that through them should FLOW THE

BLESSINGS OF PEACE AND GOODWILL TO ALL THE NATIONS OF THE WORLD;

LOVING FREEDOM FOR ITSELF, and loving nothing without

FREEDOM.....Upon herself alone weighs the formidable

responsibility of her history."(23)

     "Love thou thy land with love far brought 

     From out the storied Past, and used 

     Within the Present, but transfused

     Thro' future time by power and thought

     True love turned round on fix'd poles 

     Love, that endures not sordid ends

     For English natures, freemen, friends, 

     Thy brothers, and immortal souls."   

                                         Tennyson

1. Act. V, Sc. i. 

2. Ibid.

3. Annals, XII, 38,39.

4. Beale Post, Britannic Researches, p.74.

5. Rev. R.W.Morgan, St.Paul in Britain, p.79. 

6. Tacitus, Annals, XIV, 31.

7. Dion Cassius (Xiphilinus Excepta).

8. Beale Poste, Britannic Researches, P.411. 

9. Dion Cassius (Xiphilinus Excepta).

10.Annals, XIV,37.

11.Triads of the Cymry.

12.Anglica Hibernia, ed. Camden, p.890.

13.Richard of Cirencester, Bk. I, Chap. III, note. 

14.Rev. R.W.Morgan, St.Paul in Britain, p.104.

15.Collier's Eccl. History, Bk. I.

16. Martial, IV, 13; XI, 54.1

17.Cymbeline, Act 5, Sc. I. 

18.Spartian's Vita Hadrian, Chap. I.

19. Zosimus VI, pp.376,381. Also du Bos, Gibbon, Procopius

Gildas and Bede.

20.Tacitus, Vita Agricola, XXX.

21.On the government of God, Salvian.

22.John Pym Teatman, Early English History, p. 9. 

23.Monks of the West, Vol.II, pp.366,367.

THE ANGLO-SAXON INVASION

THE Anglo-Saxon invasion, which resulted in the most important

and complete of all the tribal settlements in Britain, took pace

between A.D.446 and 501.

In these incursions the Jutes and Angles were the first to

arrive, and the Angles being numerically the strongest

constituent, gave their name in this country to the entire group.

which on the Continent were known as Saxons.

Curiously enough a belief persists that the Anglo-Saxons on their

first arrival in this country were entirely pagan and that their

conception of the Deity was expressed in the worship of numerous

gods of their own imaginative creation. The exponents of this

belief urge, in support of it, that memorials of these gods still

exist, as, for instance, in the names of the days of the week;

they cite Odin in connection with Wednesday as an outstanding

example. Belief supported on such ground does not hold a position

that is uncontestable. Grimm says: 'Among old Saxon and all

Teutonic nations Odin signifies Divinity'; Peterson likewise:

'Odin's name bears allusion to mind and thought and breathing; it

is the quickening, creating Power; it denotes the all-pervading

spiritual Godhead.'(1) Odin was, therefore, the Scandinavian name

for the Infinite Being.(2)

Confusion on this point arose in the minds of historians, owing

perhaps to the fact that Sigge, son of Fridulph, a pontiff prince

of Azoff in the Crimea, 72 B.C., took the name of Odin when he

assumed the leadership of the early Saxons, spiritually as well

as temporally, and led them with magnetic instinct from Asgard to

north-western Europe.(3) As the Gigla-Saga says, 'Sometimes a

chief's name referred to the Gos he especially worshipped.'(4)

Snorre, in his 'heimskringla' or 'Home Chronicles', tells how

Odin was a heroic prince in the Black Sea region, with twelve

peers and a great people straitened for room and how he led them

across Europe. Odin and his peers became heroes to the

descendants of these early saxons and as such passed into legend

and song,(5)

The modem Germans claim a share in the legends and traditions

that have accumulated around the name of Odin; that illustrious

individual, however, belonged exclusively to the Sakian (Saxon)

race, and was in no way connected ethnically with the Germans.(6)

With the anglo-Saxons as with the Britons, the king was the last

resort of justice and the source of all honour and mercy; he was

to be prayed for and revered of all men of their own will without

command, and was the special protector of all churches, of widows

and of foreigners.(7)

The Anglo-Saxon invasion had the effect of gradually pushing the

Celts to the west of England and south-west Scotland. when this

occurred and the Archbishop of Caerleon-on-Usk, London and York,

saw all the churches in their jurisdiction lying level with the

ground, they fled with all the clergy that remained after so

great a destruction, to the coverts of the woods in Wales, and to

Cornwall.(8) From this fact it is easily discernible how it came

to pass that the Culdee or British Church has been associated to

so great an extent with Wales and Southern Scotland.

It has been said of the British Church that it made no effort to

convert the Saxons to Christianity. In connection several facts

stand out very clearly: Druidic religion had not yet died out in

Britain and the Saxons found sufficient similarity between their

own form of worship and that of ancient Britain to permit them to

unite under the ministrations of a Druidic hierarchy,(9) deriving

their religion, it may be concluded, from the same patriarchal

source as the Druids.

The Druidic law of tithing was observed by the Anglo-Saxons, as

by the Britons; the laws of Edward the Confessor speak of them as

claimed by Augustine and conceded by the king, Ethelbert.

The Saxons looked with suspicion on efforts to convert them to

Christianity by those whom they were endeavouring to subjugate,

and who, though worshippers of the Infinite Being, were still

non-Christian when, in 597, the Augustinian mission sent by Pope

Gregory to introduce the Latin form of Christianity, reached

these shores.

The British Church was not unaware of the errors of Rome, for we

have Columbanus, a saint (whom the Roman Church has calmly

annexed, as they have St.Patrick, St.Columba and other saints of

the primitive Church), writing to Pope Boniface IV 'Your Chair, O

Pope, is defiled with heresy. Deadly errors have crept into it;

it harbours horrors and impieties. Catholic? The true Catholicism

you have lost. The orthodox and the true Catholics are they who

have always zealously persevered in the true faith.'

The civil power of Rome being dead, the ecclesiastical power

began to rise on its ruins; and there may have been a connection

between the two processes. The loss of one sphere of power may

have helped to impel an ambitious people, accustomed to universal

dominion, to seek after another sphere of power. The  ambition of

Pope Gregory became that also of the priest an delegate

Augustine, to see the world  brought under the sway of the

fast-developing kingdom of Papal Rome, and when, in one day,

Augustine baptized 10,000 Saxons the news of these 'conversions'

created great joy in Rome.

The immediate success achieved by Augustine in Kent so impressed

Pope Gregory that he dispatched more missionaries and with them

Church ornaments and vestments. Among these was the famous

'pallium'. This cloak, of ancient origin, the Roman emperors had

been accustomed to present to anyone whom they wished to mark

with special honour. When the Popes began to assume imperial

authority and to covet all the worldly splendour of the Caesars,

they adopted the practice of bestowing the 'pallium' on those

whom they wished to elevate.

The arrival of the 'pallium' in England for Augustine, was a

significant event. By favour of the Saxon king, Ethelbert, the

Roman Church was set up at Canterbury; it became the chief seat

of episcopal authority and was the origin of the Church known

today as the Church of England. 

It will be observed that the origin of the British Church and

that of the Church of England are quite distinct, with an

interval of 560 years, and that the theory that Britain owes her

Christianity to Augustine is without foundation in fact.

The majority of the Saxons converted to Christianity in 597 soon

gave evidence that their hearts were unchanged; they quickly fell

away to their old religion. By 635 the Latin Church in Kent had

become reduced to inactivity through continual hostilities

between the Britons and Saxons, to be revived thirty years later

when Roman teaching and practices were imposed on the British

Church of Northumbria and to spread rapidly over the whole

country.

There was already at Canterbury the British church built by St.

Martin (traditionally the brother of St. Patrick's mother,

Conessa), who founded also various churches in Scotland, i.e.

Kilmartin, and later that of Tours with which he has been

historically associated. In passing it should be noted the

British Church founded the churches of Gaul. The Archbishops of

Treves were, according to the 'Tungrensian Chronicles,' always

supplied from Britain and, coming nearer Rome itself, St. Cadval,

a British missionary, founded in A.D.170 the Church at Tarentum,

after whom the Church at Tarento is still named.

The year 597, memorable alike for the death of St. Columba and

the arrival of Augustine, has other outstanding claims to notice.

When Augustine came he found in the province of the Angles seven

bishoprics and an archbishopric, all filled with most devout

prelates, and a great number of abbeys."(10)

The testimony of many writers that the intrusion of an emissary  

of the Pope was resented and resisted by the British Church, is

supported by facts of history.

At a council held shortly after Augustine's arrival he was told

that they 'knew no other Master than Christ', that 'they liked

not his new-fangled customs', and that they refused

subjection.(11) Augustine angrily replied, 'If we may not preach

the way of life to you, you shall at the hands of your enemies,

undergo their vengeance.' At the second conference with Augustine

the British Church was represented by seven of her prelates, and

although Baronius had the assurance to pronounce these bishops

guilty of schism, he allows their governments to have been

regular, and their faith orthodox. Both Augustine and his

successors, by making the submission of the Britons to their

authority, as metropolitans, the primary article of communion,

leave it beyond doubt that they were fully satisfied with the

purity of their doctrine, if not with the canonical succession of

their bishops.

The British Christians scorned the idea that identity in certain

tenets and practices with Papal Rome constituted even the shadow

of title, on the part of Papal Rome, to their allegiance. It is

then no matter for surprise that on their first meeting with     

the delegate from Rome they should 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.'

The Britons told Augustine they would not be subject to him, nor

allow him to 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 for five hundred years

after his time, and were the last of all the Churches of Europe

to give up their power to Rome.(12) This fact cannot be set aside

in an unprejudiced study of British Church history: Rome found

here a Church older than herself, ramifications of which struck

into the very heart of the continent of Europe. The farther we go

back into British history, the clearer shines forth in all our

laws the fact that the British Crown, Church and people were

entirely independent of all foreign authority.(13)

All our great legal writers concur on this point. 'The ancient

British Church', writes Sir William Blackstone, 'by whomsoever

planted was a stranger to the bishop of Rome and all his

pretended authorities.'(14)

The Christians of Britain could never understand why the Church

of Rome, because she professed certain truths, should arrogate

spiritual despotism over all who held the same. When Augustine

demanded of Dionoth, Abbot of Bangor Iscoed or Bangor-on-Dee,

that he acknowledge the authority of the Bishop of Rome the reply

of the Briton was a memorable one: 'We desire to love all-men,

but he whom you call "Pope" is not entitled to style himself

the "father of fathers" and the only submission we can render him

is that which we owe to every Christian.'(15)

Cadvan, Prince of wales, A.D.610, expresses himself thus to Abbot

of Banjor: 'All men may hold the same truth, yet no man can

hereby be drawn into slavery to another. If the Cymry believed

all that Rome believes, that would be as strong a 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 Truth of Christ made

slavery and not freedom.' (16), 

Wilfrid, a clever young priest, who had been brought up in the

school of Iona, but had afterwards travelled to Rome and had

become fascinated by her customs and grandeur, threatened, in his

long-drawn suit with the See of Canterbury, in 670, to appeal to

Rome. The threat was received with laughter as a thing never

before heard of in England.(17)

The British church recognized the Scriptures alone for its rule

of faith,(18) was subject to no other Church on earth, and firmly

resisted the unwarranted intrusion of a Pope.

For almost two centuries Britain had been free from the 

domination of Imperial Rome; this fact enabled the supporters of

the British Church at this time to quote the second canon of the

Council of Constantinople, held in A.D.381, which ordained that

the Churches that are without the Roman Empire should be governed

by their ancient customs.(19) But the canon was not held

sufficient by Augustine and his successors to justify the British

Church in its contention.

Though the doctrinal controversies which divided British and

Roman Churches may seem unimportant to us, they plainly show our

original ecclesiastical independence, and the stubborn resistance

of our Church fathers to papal pretensions to supremacy.(20)

Beyond all question, to the national Church of Britain belongs

that pre-eminence which the old British Triads claimed for it of

being 'primary in respect to Christianity'.

The most famous of the British monasteries at the coming of

Augustine was the monastery of Bangor-on-Dee, Wales. Bishop

Dionoth presided over a flourishing body of Christians (numbering

some thousands) whose headquarters were at this monastery.(21)

The youths there educated were trained in Christian doctrine and

sent forth as missionaries and teachers. Bangor, like Iona, was

renowned for its zeal in propagating Christianity abroad. The

refusal of its bishop, Dionoth, to acknowledge the authority of

the Pope was the first of a long series of denials of the 

authority of the Pope in Britain.(22)

At the Synod of Chester held in 601, there were present, besides

Augustine and some of his followers, seven British bishops and

many men of great learning from the monastery of Bangor-on-Dee.

Augustine, at this Synod, suffered a second defeat; the general

assembly spoke out against the encroachments of Rome. 'The

Britons', they exclaimed, 'cannot submit either to the

haughtiness of the Romans, or the tyranny of the Saxons.'(23)

Augustine did not live to take vengeance on these early

protestors; it was left to his successor to lead the Saxons

against them, and in the massacre of Bangor, A.D.613, twelve

hundred Christians perished.(24)

William of Malmesbury, A.D.1143, describes the ruins of Bangor

Abbey in his day as those of a city - the most extensive he had

seen in the kingdom.(25) Two other foundations in Britain

retained their superiority over all others of a later date, under

every change of ruler till the Reformation - St. Albans and

Glastonbury.

The next, interference of papal Rome with British  customs took

place in A.D.664, the excuse for this attempt being the correct

date for the observance of Easter. 

King Oswy of Northumbria, with his brother Okwald, was converted

by missionaries from  Iona while in exile for seventeen years in

Scotland, during  the reign of the rival king, Edwin. Oswy

adhered,  naturally, to the usages of the Culdee Church, having 

been taught by the Scots. His queen, daughter of Ethelbert, King

of Kent, had been brought up to observe the Latin way of

reckoning, and each year the strange anomaly occurred of the king

and his followers, observing one day and the queen observing

another day for the Easter festival.

The queen's chaplain, Romanus, and Wilfrid, tutor to the princes,

were priests of the Roman Church, and urged the acknowledgment of

the Roman calculation for Easter as being correct. At last the

king resolved that the whole question would be debated May

and settled once and for all at the Synod of Whitby.(26)

Bishop Colman (Culdee Church of Northumbria) pleaded the British

cause as having been derived from his forefathers and originating

in the teaching of St. John. Wilfrid, a cleverer man, was on the

papal side and ridiculed British custom as compared with that of

the Apostle 'to whom Christ had given the keys of heaven'. The

king, eager to learn the truth, inquired further into this

statement. Colman, simpleminded and honest, admitted that these

words applied to St.Peter. The king then asked Wilfrid whether

Christ had really given the keys of authority to Peter. Wilfrid

answered in the affirmative, whereupon the king decided in favour

of the papal party. Colman resigned his bishopric, and with many

of his clergy went back to Iona, from which monastery he had come

to Northumbria, and where the ancient British Easter continued to

be observed for many years.

From the day of the historic Synod of Whitby the province ruled

to observe Easter the Latin way; the British Church, though

proven to be the oldest national Church in the world, as

confirmed by the Councils of Arles, Basle, Pisa, Constance and

Sienna, was more and more coerced into conforming to papal

customs and claims. For a time there were in Britain two Churches

- the old British and the new Roman.

At the Council of Hertford, A.D.673, only nine years after the

Synod of Whitby, presided over by Archbishop Theodore, the

British Church was condemned as non-Catholic.(27)

Wilfrid, at an assembly at Nesterfield, near Ripon, A.D.705,

declared, 'Was not I the first after the death of those great men

sent by St.Gregory, to root out the poisonous seeds sown by

Scottish missionaries? Was it not I who converted and brought the

whole nation of the Northumbrians to the true Easter and an

tonsure?'(28)

In A.D.705 Adelm wrote to the Britons as being outside the

'Catholic' Church. 'The precepts of your bishops', he says, 'are

not in accord with Catholic faith.(29) . . . We adjure you not to

persevere in your arrogant contempt of the decrees of St.Peter

and the traditions of the Roman Church by a proud and tyrannical

attachment to the statutes of your ancestors.'(30)

The British Church, now openly declared heretical by Rome,

struggled on for a time as a separate Church, and was known,

particularly from this time, by the original title, 'The Culdee

Church', as distinct from the Roman, and its ecclesiastics

referred to by the Latin intruders as the 'British clergy'.

Adamnan, the first of the Ionian Culdees to swerve from the

faith, strained every nerve to reduce the monks of Iona to Roman

Catholic obedience. Bede says that Adamnan in A.D.679 visited the

churches of Northumbria and Ireland and brought almost all of

them that were not under the domination of Hii (Iona) to the

'Catholic' unity.

The resistance of the premier monastery (Iona), the abbot of

which was viewed as the primate of all the Hibernian bishops,

prevailed for a time to retain their liberties. By the eleventh

century, however, the Iona Church had become thoroughly Romanized

and had sunk into comparative unimportance.

Of Palladius, a Culdee of the fifth century who had visited Rome

and had become a Romanizing bishop, Fordun says: 'Before whose

coming the Scots had, as teachers of the faith and administers of

the Sacraments, presbyters only and monks, following the order of

the primitive Church.'(31)

Kentigern (St.Mungo), A.D.514, is numbered among those who

adorned the name of Culdee: for many years he was the disciple

of St.Servan at Culross who taught and preached there as a

Christian missionary, according to the system of the ancient

British Church.

The Culdees or British clergy were, from Augustine's day, in

constant collision with the, Raman clergy; the Culdees seem to

have been too much in love with simple Bible truth to find favour

with those who aimed at wealth and power. Even the Venerable Bede

could not escape the prejudices of his 'modern' times, saying:

'The Culdees followed uncertain rules in the observance of the

great festival (Easter) practising only such works of piety and

chastity as they could learn from the prophetical, evangelical

and apostolical writings.'(32) 

It is of consequence to note that in the early accounts which we

have of the state of the Church, the final appeal in all

doctrinal questions is to the Scriptures. It was remarked by

Polydore Vergil that Gildas, in his long letter on the state of

the Britons, quoted no book but the Bible,(33) and certainly his

quotations from it show on the part of the British historian a

very thorough acquaintance with the Word of God. At this period

of

the Church (fifth century) the Scriptures were very generally

disseminated,(34) and men used such translations of the sacred

text as commended themselves to their own judgment. The

withholding of the Bible from the people and the exclusion of

every translation from use but the Latin translation, even among

the ministers of the Church, belonged to the ecclesiastical

legislation of a later and more corrupt age; an age when

ecclesiastical power came to be based not on the intelligence but

on the ignorance of the people.(35)

The Culdee or British Church had pervaded Britain with the

knowledge of the Gospel, and for centuries after the domination

of Rome the Culdees continued to hold services frequently in the

same Church with Roman priests.

The catalogues of their books show beyond a doubt that the

ancient British ecclesiastics were not destitute of literary

culture.(36) Corruption was powerfully retarded by the firmness

of the hierarchy of the Culdees; they were looked up to as the

depositaries of the original national faith, and were most highly

respected for sanctity and learning. They acquired great

missionary zeal and great numbers of them went forth as

missionaries and Christianized the whole of Europe from Iceland

to the Danube.(37) This is a fact of history which has been

diligently suppressed, but it is a fact which cannot be denied.

It is remarkable that while the Church of Rome was sending her

emissaries to "Christianize" the Saxons, the Celtic Church was

sending her missionaries to convey the Gospel of salvation to

France.(38)

Dr.Wylie says: 'It was the Culdee lamp that burned at Constance,

at Basle, at Ypres, at Worms and Mainz. Boniface, the emissary of

Rome, came afterwards to put out these lights. The real apostle

of the provinces was the Culdee Church.'

A study of the history of the Culdee Church shows that wherever

the influence of Rome prevailed its clergy were removed; not,

however, without resistance. But the struggle was a hopeless one.

The Charter of David of Scotland (1084-1155), who was an adherent

of the Latin Church, runs thus: 'David rex Scotorum, etc. Be it

known, that we have granted to the Canons of St.Andrews the 

Canonical Order; and if the Culdees who shall be found there,

remain with them, living according to rule, they may continue to

do so in peace; but if any one of them resist, we order hereby

that he be ejected from the island.'

In this high-handed manner was the property of the Church

transferred to the Roman hierarchy. Only a century earlier

Macbeth and his queen are recorded in the register of this same

Priory of St.Andrews as the liberal benefactors of the Culdee

monastery at Loch Leven.(39)

The property which the Culdees held in their own right was

gradually confiscated by the Latin hierarchy until the day came

when they were dispossessed of everything, including their

ancient privileges, and were absorbed into the Cathedral Chapters

of the Roman Church.(40)

Ledwich, the Irish antiquarian, says: 'The Culdees did not adopt

the corruptions and superstitions which had contaminated

Christianity for centuries. They preserved their countrymen from

the baleful contagion and, at length, fell a sacrifice in defence

of the ancient faith. Superstition found in them her most

determined foes. The Culdees continued until a new race of monks

arose, as inferior to them in learning and piety as they

surpassed them in wealth and ceremonies, by which they captivated

the eyes and infatuated the hearts of men. The conduct of the

Romanizers towards the Culdees was uniformly persecuting; and by

force, cunning and seduction of every kind, by degrees bereft

them of their privileges and institutions.'(41)

The monks of the papal Church were almost wholly employed in

metaphysical or chronological disputes, legends, miracles and

martyrologies - a sad contrast to the pure Scriptural teaching

disseminated by the Culdees.

The history of the Culdee Church in Ireland is largely the

history of that church in England, Scotland and Wales, except

that in the case of Ireland she did not come, national, under the

domination of rome until 1172, five centuries later than in

England.

From this fact may be accounted the theory held by many

historians that the Culdee and Irish Church were synonymous

terms, and that from it the Culdees spread to other parts of

Britain and, further, it accounts for the strength of that Church

in Ireland centuries after its submission to papal claims in

England and elsewhere.

O'Driscoll, a noted Roman Catholic writer, states 'The ancient

Order of the Culdees existed in Ireland previous to Patrick; and

all their institutions proved that they were derived from a

different origin from that of Rome.'(42) This celebrated Order

gave many eminent men to the Irish Church, and to Scotland and to

other parts of the world, among whom Columbkill has still a name

in Ireland as venerable and revered as that of Patrick himself.

The Church discipline of the Culdees seems to have afforded the

model for the modern Presbyterian establishment of Scotland.'(43)

The mission of Palladius in A.D.421 signally failed. His effort

to introduce papal Christianity in Wicklow met with firm

resistance, and shortly afterwards he left the country.(44)

The following year, St.Patrick, who belonged to the Culdee

Church, began his work as a missionary revivalist. Christianity,

according to Gildas, had been introduced to Ireland three and a

half centuries earlier and, according to tradition, about the

same date by Caradoc, the Silurian king. Caradoc, is said, while

a prisoner at Rome, was converted to Christianity by St.Paul, and

it is to his children, Linus and Claudia, and his son-in-law

Pudens that St.Paul sends a greetings in his second letter

to Timothy.

From the days of St. Patrick to the reign of Henry II the Church

in Ireland was renowned, not only for its learning but for its

missionary zeal. Its evangelists spread the light of Truth

wherever they travelled in Britain and to many places on the

Continent, where the monasteries (afterwards Romanized) were set

up on Culdee foundations. To these, many of the Culdee monks fled

for refuge in the ninth and tenth centuries when Ireland was so

sorely ravaged by the Danes. They took with them, for safety,

many of their precious manuscripts, which may, in a future day,

should they be discovered, throw valuable light on the early

Christian Church in these Islands.

O'Driscoll presents a true picture of the early Irish Church when

he says: 'The Christian Church of that country, as founded by St.

Patrick, existed for many centuries free and unshackled. For

about seven hundred years this Church maintained its

independence. It had no connection with England, and differed on

points of importance from Rome. The first work of Henry II was to

reduce the Church of Ireland into obedience to the Roman Pontiff.

Accordingly he procured a Council of Irish Clergy to be held in

Cashel in 1172, and the combined influence and intrigues of Henry

and the Pope prevailed. This Council put an end to the ancient

Church of Ireland; she submitted to the yoke of Rome. This

ominous apostasy has been followed by a series of calamities

hardly to be equalled in the world. From the days of Patrick to

the Council of Cashel was a bright and glorious career for

Ireland. From the sitting of the Council to our own times the lot

of Ireland has been unmixed evil and all her history a tale of

woe.'(45)

The following letter tells a curious story. It is from the Bishop

of Mentz to Shane O'Neill, the Irish chief and rebel, dated from

Rome, April 28th, 1528, in the name of the Pope and Cardinals:

     'My dear Son O'Neill - Thou and thy fathers are all along

     faithful to the Mother Church of Rome. His Holiness Paul

     III, now Pope, and the Council of the Holy Fathers there,

     have lately found a prophecy of one St.Lazerianus, an Irish

     Bishop of Cashel, wherein he saith that the Mother Church of

     Rome falleth, when in Ireland the Catholic faith is

     overcome. Therefore, for the glory of the Mother Church, the

     honour of St.Peter, and your own secureness, suppress heresy

     and His Holiness's enemies, for when the Roman faith there

     perisheth, the See of Rome falleth also. Therefore, the

     Council of Cardinals have thought fit to encourage your

     Country of Ireland as a Sacred Island; being certified,

     whilst the Mother Church hath a son of worth as yourself,

     and those that shall succour you and join therein, that she

     will never fall, but have more or less hold in Britain, in

     spite of fate.'(46) 

This letter was written in the reign of Henry VIII when the first

indications were received with alarm by the Roman hierarchy, of

the approaching end of papal domination and of the mighty change

about to take place in these realms.

1. Oxford Icelandic Dictionary.

2. See Prelim. Dissert. Laing's 'Heimskrongla,' p.86.

3. See H. Munro Chadwick, 'The Origin of the English,' p.32 

4. Oxford Icelandic Dictionary.

5. Rollaston, Mazzaroth, III, 23.

6. Bruce Hannay, 'European and Other Race Origins,' p.456. 

7. 'Annals of England,' Vol. I, p.164.

8. Geoffrey of Monmouth, Bk. XI, Chap. X.

9. Palgrave, 'History of the Anglo-Saxons,' p.44.

10.Geoffrey of Monmouth, Bk. XI, Chap. XII.

11.Brit. MSS. quoted in the second volume of the Horae

Britannicae, p.267. Spelman's 'Concilia,' p.108.

12.Bede, E. H., Chap. II, 2. Haddan and Stubbs, 'Councils,' 

III, 38 'Hist. of Wales' (1911), p.173.

13.Bacon, 'Government of England,' p.13. 

14.'Laws of England,' Vol.IV, p.105.

15.Hengwst MSS. Geoffrey of Monmouth, Bk. XI, Chap. XII. Humphrey

Lloyd, 'Sebright' MSS.

16.Caerwys, MSS.

17.Paton, 'Brit. History and Papal Claims,' p.4.

18.Bede, 'Eccles.History,' Bk. III, Chap. 4.

19.Paper in the 'Ecclesiastic' for April 1864 on Dr. Todd's 'St.

Patrick.' Concilia Constantiano Theodore-Martin (Lovar), 1517.

20.McCallum, 'History of the Culdees,' pp.60,61.

21.Ban-gor, 'Magnus Circulus.'

22.MS. in the Mostyn Collection. 

23.'Annals Cambraiae,' CLVII.

24.D'Aubigne, 'History Reform,' Vol. V. Milman, 'History of Latin

Christianity,' Vol. II, p.234. 'Annales Cambraiae,' VLXIX. 

25.Malmes, History of the Kings, p.308.

26.Malmes, 'History of the Kings,' p.308. 

27.Haddon & Stubbs, III, pp.256 ff.

28.Montalembert, 'Monks of the West,' Vol. IV, p.79.

29.Adelmi opp., ed. Giles, pp.24 ff. Monumenta Germ. History

Tom, III, pp.231 ff.

30.'Monks of the West,' Vol. IV, p.233. 

31.Scotichron, Lib. III, Chap. VIII. 

32.'Eccles. History,' III, Chap. IV.

33. 'De Excid. Britt.'

34.Williams, 'Early Christianity in Britain,' p.447. Ulphilos,

Bishop of the Goths (A.D.38), MS. in the Library of Upsal

Naseau, VIII, 40.

35.'Vide' Ussher's 'Historia Dogmatica.'

36.Keith Bish. App., p.5871. 'Regist Priorat,' St.Andree,

p. 17.

37.Dasent, Introduction to 'Burnt-Nyal,' p. vii. 'De Mensura

Orbis,' written by Dicuil an Irish monk, in the year A.D.835.

38.D'Aubigne, 'Hist. of the Reformation,' Vol. IV. McLauchlan 

'The Early Scottish Church,' p.216: 'There was a Continental

mission scheme in Scotland as early at 588.'

39.Registrum Prioralus St. Andree, p.188, Keith Catalogue of

Scottish Bishops, p.9.

40.Alexander, 'Ter-Centenary of the Scottish Reformation' (Edin.

860), pp.13,17.

41.Ledwich's 'Antiquities.'

42.'Vide' Reeve's 'Culdees,' p.25. 

43.'Hist. of Ireland,' pp.26,27.

44.Bury, 'Life of St. Patrick,' pp.44,45.

45.'Views of Ireland,' Vol. II, p.84.

46.Mant's, 'History of the Irish Church,' p.140.   

DRUIDISM

THE popular belief that Druidism was the religion of ancient

Britain and nothing more is entirely erroneous. Duidism was, in

fact, the centre and source from which radiated the whole system

of organized civil and ecclesiastical knowledge and practice of

the country.(1) 

The Order constituted its church and parliament; its courts of

law, its colleges of physicians and surgeons, its magistracy and

clergy. The members of the Order were its statesmen, legislators,

priests, physicians, lawyers, teachers and poets.

The truth about the Druids, to be found amongst fragments of

literature and in folk-memory, is that they were men of culture,

well-educated, equitable and impartial in the administration of

justice. These ancient leaders of thought and instruction in our

islands had lofty beliefs as to the character of the one God,

Creator and Preserver, and of man's high origin and destiny.

There is reason to believe that this doctrine included the need

for atonement or sin and the resurrection of the body.  

To reverence the Deity, abstain from evil and behave valiantly

were, according to Laertius, the three grand articles enjoined by

the Druids,((2)

In Druidism the British nation had a high standard of religion,

justice and patriotism presented to it, and a code of moral

teaching that has never ceased to influence national character.

It has been frequently stated that the name 'Druid' is derived

from Drus, an oak; the oak was held by the Druids to symbolize

and eternal. The idea arose from the apparent similarity of the

two words, Drus and Druid, and was merely incidental. A much more

likely derivation is from Druthin, a 'servant of Truth.'(3)

The motto of the Druidic Order, "The Truth Against the World" was

the principle on which Druidism was based and by which it offered

itself to be judged.

"It, may be asked," says the Venerable Archdeacon Williams, "how

has it come to pass, if great events marked the epoch between the

departure of the Romans and the death of Bede, that the whole

history is so obscure, and that no literary documents remain to

prove the wisdom of the teachers and the docility of the people?

The answer is very plain. Such documents do exist; they have been

published, for more than half a century but have hitherto wanted

an equate interpreter."(4)

The published compositions of the Druids and remains of their

works. The Myvyrian MSS. a alone, now in the British Museum,

amount to 47 volumes of poetry, containing about 4,700 pieces of

poetry, in 1,600 pages, besides about 2,000 epigrammatic stanzas.

Also in the same collection a 52 volumes of rose, in about 15,300

pages, containing many curious documents on various subjects,

being 17th or 18th compilations embodying early writings.

Besides there are a vast number of collections of Welsh MSS in

London and in private libraries in the Principality.(5)

In A.D. 383 Druidism, while accepting Christianity, submitted to

the judgment and verdict of country and nation the ancient

privileges and usages; the ancient learning, science and

memorials were confirmed, lest they should fail, become lost and

forgotten - this was done without contradiction or opposition.(6)

The education system adopted by the druids is traced to about

1800 B.C., when Hu Gadarn Hysicion (Isaacson),(7) or Hu the

Mighty, led the first colony of Cymri into Britain from

Defrobane, where Constantinople now stands.(8)

In the justly celebrated Welsh Triads, Hu Gadarn is said to have

mnemonically systematized the wisdom of the ancients of these

people whom he led west from the Summerland. He was regarded as

the personification of intellectual culture and is commemorated

in Welsh archaeology for having made poetry the vehicle of

memory, and to have been the inventor of the Triads. To him is

attributed the founding of Stonehenge and the introduction of

several arts including glass-making and writing in Ogham

characters. On Hu Gadarn's standard was depicted the Ox; in this

possibly may be discovered the origin of the sobriquet, 'John

Bull.' Hu established, among other regulations, that a Gorsedd or

Assembly of Druids and Bards must be held on an open, uncovered

grass space, in a conspicuous place, in full view and hearing of

all the people.

Concerning the educational facilities available to the so-called

barbarous people of these islands, there were at the time of the

Roman invasion forty Druidic centres of learning which were also

the capitals of the forty tribes; of these forty known centres

nine have entirely disappeared. These forty college were each

presided over by a Chief Druid (9) There were also in Britain

three Archdruids, whose seats were at York, London and

Caerleon-on-Usk.

The territories of the forty tribes (the original of our modern

counties) preserve for the most part the ancient tribal limits.

Yorkshire, for instance, retains the same disproportionate

magnitude to our other counties - the territory of the large and

powerful tribe, the Brigantes.

The students at these colleges numbered at times sixty thousand

of the youth and young nobility of Britain and Gaul. Caesar

comments on the fact that the Gauls sent their youth to Britain

to be educated. One notable instance has been mentioned by J. O.

Kinnaman,D.D., in his work on Archaeology: "Pilate was not a

Roman by nationality, but by citizenship. He was born a Spaniard

and educated in Spain as far as the schools of that country could

take him. Then he went to Britain to study in the universities of

that country under the administration of the Druids. How long he

studied in England is not now known; it was Pilate's ambition to

become a Roman lawyer and the future governor of Palestine

studied long enough in Britain to achieve not only this ambition

but to absorb the Druidic philosophy rather than the Greek and

Roman. 'Vide' Pilate's question to our Lord as they were walking

out of the Praetorium, 'What is Truth?'(10) This was a question

which the Druids were accustomed to debate."(11)

It required twenty years to master the complete  circle of

Druidic knowledge. Natural philosophy, astronomy, mathematics,

geometry, medicine, jurisprudence, poetry and oratory were all

proposed and taught - natural philosophy and astronomy with

severe exactitude. (12)

Caesar says of the Druids: 

"They hold aloof from war and do not pay war taxes; they are

excused from military service and exempt from all liabilities.

Tempted by these great advantages, many young men assemble of

their own motion to receive their training, many are sent by

parents and relatives. Report says that in the schools of the

Druids they learn by heart a great number of verses, and

therefore some persons remain twenty years under training. They

do not think it proper to commit these utterances to writing,

although in almost all other matters, and in their public and

private accounts they make use of Greek characters. I believe

that they have adopted the practice for two reasons - that they

do not wish the rule to become common property, nor those who

learn the rule to rely on writing, and so neglect the cultivation

of the memory; and, in fact, it does usually happen that the

assistance of writing tends to relax the diligence of the student

and the action of memory.... They also lecture on the stars in

their motion, the magnitude of the earth and its divisions, on

natural history, on the power and government of God; and instruct

the youth on these subjects."(14)

While the Druids used writing for all other subjects taught in

their colleges, they never used this in connection with the

subject of religion To the spread of Christianity we owe most of

the information we possess of the Druidic religion; their secret

laws gradually relaxed as they became Christian, and some of heir

theology was then committed to writing.

Dr. Henry, in his 'Histor of England,' has observed that

collegiate or monastic institutions existed among the Druids.(15)

Caesar several times calls the Druidic institution a

'disciplina,'(16) a term that implies a corporate life

organization as well as the possession of learning. Mela speaks

of the Druids as 'teachers of wisdom,'(17) The affirmation of

Diodorus that 'some whom they call Druids, are very highly

honoured as philosophers and theologians' is repeated by

Hippolytus. (18)

Not only the supreme king, but every other king

had his Druid and Bard attached to his court. This Druidic

chaplain had charge of the education of the youthful members of

the house, but was also allowed to have other pupils. He taught

and lectured on all appropriate occasions, often out-of-doors,

and when travelling through the territory of his chief, or from

one territory to another, his pupils accompanied him, still

receiving instruction; when, however, the pupils exceeded in

number that which he was entitled by law on such occasions to

have accommodated as his own company at a house, those in excess

were almost always freely entertained by neighbours in the

locality.

The chief poet seems to have been always accompanied by a number

of assistants of various degrees, who had not yet arrived at the

highest attainment of their profession.(19)

The theological students were given a particularly long course of

training, and no Druidic priest could be ordained until he had

passed three examinations in three successive years before the

Druidic college of his tribe. The head of the clan possessed a

veto on every ordination.(20)

By very stringent laws the number of priests was regulated in

proportion to the population; and none could be a candidate for

the priesthood who could not in the previous May Congress of the

tribe prove his descent from nine successive generations of free

forefathers. Genealogies, therefore were guarded with the

greatest care. This barrier to promiscuous admission had the

effect of closing the Order almost entirely to all but the

Blaenorion or aristocracy, making it literally a 'Royal

Priesthood'.

Degrees were conferred after three, six and nine years training.

The highest degree, that of Pencerdd or Athro (Doctor of

Learning), was conferred after nine years. All degrees were given

by the king or in his presence, or by his license before a

deputy, at the end of every three years.(21)

Druidic physicians were skilled in the treatment of the sick;

their practice was far removed from the medicine-man cult, so

unfairly ascribed to them by their contemporary enemies, and

lightly followed ever since. They prayed to God to grant a

blessing on His gifts, conscious that it should always be

remembered that no medicine could be effective nor any physician

successful without Divine help. The chief care of the

physicians was to prevent rather than to cure disease. Their

recipe for health was cheerfulness, temperance and exercise.(22)

Certainly the power of physical endurance displayed by the early

Britons was a strong testimony to the salutary laws of hygiene

enforced and the general mode of life encouraged by the Druids.

Human bones which had been fractured and re-set by art have been

found in Druidic tumuli.(23)  

Astronomers were deeply versed in every detail of their

profession; such classic judges of eminence as Cicero and Caesar,

Pliny and Tacitus, Diodorus Siculus and Strabo, speak in high

terms of the Druid astronomers.

Strabo has left us a vivid description of the dress of the

Britons of his day. On the visit to Athens of the British Druid

astronomer Abaris (Hebrew Rabbi) the Greek geographer writes: 

"He came not clad in skins like a Scythian, but with a bow in his

hand, a quiver hanging on his shoulders, a plaid wrapped about

his body, a gilded belt encircling his loins, and trousers

reaching down from the waist to the soles of his feet. He was

easy in his address; agreeable in his conversation; active in his

dispatch and secret in his management of great affairs; quick in

judging of present accuracies, and ready to take his part in any

sudden emergency; provident withal in guarding against futurity;

diligent in the quest of wisdom; fond of friendship; trusting

very little to fortune, yet having the entire confidence of

others, and trusted with everything for his prudence. He spoke

Greek with a fluency that you would have thought that he had been

bred up in the Lyceum; and conversed all his life with the

academy of Athens. This visit oft was long remembered at Athens."

This visit of the British Druid was long remembered at Athens.

Abaris travelled extensively in Greece; Greek fancy transformed

the magnetic needle by which he guided his travels into an arrow

of Apollo which would transport him at wish whithersoever he

pleased.(24)

Ammianus Marcellus, A.D. 350, says, "The Druids are men of

penetrating and subtle spirit, and acquired the highest renown by

their speculations, which were at once subtle and profound.(25)

Pomponius Mela(26) plainly intimates that the Druids were

conversant with the most sublime speculations in geometry and in

measuring the magnitude of the earth

Stonehenge, 'the Greenwich Observatory' and great solar clock of

ancient times, was pre-eminently an astronomical circle.

Heliograph and beacon were both used by the ancient British

astronomer in signalling the time and the seasons, the result of

observations, for the daily direction of the agriculturist and

the trader.

The unit of measure employed in the erection of Stonehenge, and

all other works of this nature in our islands was the cubit, the

same as used in the Great Pyramid.(27)

The supposed magic of the Druids consisted in a more thorough

knowledge of some of the sciences than was common. - astronomy,

for instance. Diodorus Siculus states that the Druids used

telescopes (28) - this evidently is the origin of the story that

the Druids could by magic bring the moon down to the earth.

Many of the wells on Druidic sites, known today as holy wells,

were the old telescope wells of the Druids, connected with their

astronomical observations.(29) The old saying, 'Truth lies at the

bottom of a well', comes down to us from those ancient times.

British architects trained in Druidic colleges were in great

demand on the Continent. In this country the profession of

architect was legally recognized. There were three offices of

chief Architect,(30) the holders of which were privileged to go

anywhere without restriction throughout the country, provided

they did not go unlawfully.

James Ferguson, the writer of one of our best histories of

architecture, says: "The true glory of the Celt in Europe is his

artistic eminence, and it is not too much to assert that without

his intervention we should not have possessed in modern times a

church worthy of admiration, or a picture, or a statue we could

look at without shame, and, had the Celts not had their arts

nipped in the bud by circumstances over which they had no

control, we might have seen something that would have shamed even

Greece and wholly eclipsed the arts of Rome. . . . The Celts

never lived sufficiently long apart from other races to develop a

distinct form of nationality, or to create either a literature or

a policy by which they could be certainly recognized; they mixed

freely with the people among whom they settled and adopted their

manners and customs ."(31)

C.J.Solinus, the Roman geographer, in his description of Britain,

mentions the hot springs of Bath, and the magnificence with which

the baths at that place had already been decorated by the use of

bathers.(32)

The primitive religion of Britain associated in so many minds

with the worship of the heavenly bodies, was the worship of the_

'Lord of Hosts,' the Creator of the Great Lights, the sun and

moon, not the worship of the heavenly bodies themselves. The

Universe was the Bible of the ancients, the only revelation of

the Deity vouchsafed them. The wonders of nature were to them as

the voice of the All-Father, and by the movement of the heavenly

bodies they ordered their lives, fixed religious festivals and

all agricultural proceedings.

The way to Christianity for the early inhabitants of Britain was

traced by Nature herself, and from Nature to Nature's God. St.

Paul, in his letter to the Corinthians, writes, "Howbeit that was

not first which is spiritual, but that which is natural; and

afterward that which is spiritual."

Strabo observes that the care of worshipping the Supreme Being is

great among the British nation; and the history of Hume records

that no religion ever swayed the minds of men like the

Druidic.(33)

It has been said that the Druidic Circles cannot, in strictness,

be termed temples, for the Druids taught that there were but two

habitations of the Deity - the soul, the invisible - the

universe, the visible. The word 'temple,' in its primitive

meaning, is simply a place cut off, enclosed, dedicated to sacred

use, whether a circle of stones, a field or a building. In the

old British language a temple or sanctuary was called a 'caer',

a sacred fenced enclosure. The stone circles or caers of Britain

were therefore, essentially temples and held so sacred by the

people that reverent behaviour in their vicinity was universal.

Joshua, it will be remembered, by God's command, erected a circle

at Gilgal (circle) immediately upon the arrival of the chosen

People in the Promised Land. 

The British 'caer' has no connection with 'castra.'

There seems, however, to be no doubt that generally the chambered

barrows and cairns of Britain were used as temples; several

points in their construction lead to this assumption. 

Mr.MacRitchie, in his "Testimony of Tradition," mentions several

of these points, among them fireplaces and flues for carrying

away smoke.

Sir Norman Lockyer (34) states: "Mr. Spence has pointed out the

extreme improbability of Maeshowe (Orkney) being anything but a

temple and, I may now add, on the Semitic model. There was a

large central hall and side-rooms for sleeping, a stone door

which could have been opened or shut from the inside, and a niche

for a guard, janitor or hall porter.(35)

The great circle and temple known as Avebury ('Ambresbiri, the

Holy Anointed Ones') is of special interest as the Westminster

abbey of ancient times,(36) the last resting place of princes, 

priests and statesmen, warriors, poets and musicians. One of the

old Druids alluding to Avebury calls it 'The Great Sanctuary

the Dominion'"(37)

The Circles or temples were composed of monoliths upon which the

employment of metal for any purpose was not permitted. Druidic

worship was without figure or sculpture of any kind.(38)

The monolithic avenues, symbolic of the sun's path through the

Zodiac, were in some instances seven miles long. The national

religious procession moved through these to the circle on the

three great festivals of the year. In several of our own

cathedrals we have the signs of the Zodiac, represented as sacred

emblems on the tiles of the sanctuary floor, for instance at

Canterbury and Rochester.

In his description of the temple at Jerusalem, Josephus states:

"The loaves on the table, twelve in number, symbolized the circle

of the Zodiac."(39)

Druidic services were held while the sun was above the horizon;

the performing of ceremonies at any other time was forbidden by

law.(40) The Chief Druid,  or the Archdruid when he was present,

occupied a position by a large central stone, approaching it with

a sword carried by its point to signify his own readiness to

suffer in the cause of truth.(41) This central stone

called 'Maen Llog,' or the Stone of the Covenant, and now

distinguished by the name of Cromlech, was in Ireland called

'Bethel.'(42) or the house of God. Near to it was another, which

received in a cavit water direct from the clouds. This water, and

the waters  the river Dee (called Drydwy, the Divine water), the

Jordan of ancient Britain, were the only waters permitted to be

used in Druidic sacrifices.

In the 'Faerie Queen' Spenser speaks of the:

     ' . . Dee which Britons long ygone

     Did call divine, that doth by Chester tend.'

For centuries after Druidism had merged into Christianity the Dee

continued to be regarded as a sacred river. A striking instance

of folk-memory is recorded in connection with the Battle of

Britain, A.D.613, when Dionoth, Abbot of Bangor, delivered an

oration to the defeated Britons (who had retreated along the

banks of the river), and concluded by ordering the soldiers to

kiss the ground in commemoration of the body of Christ, and to

take up the water in their hands out of the river Dee and drink

it in remembrance of His sacred blood. This act gave the men

fresh courage; they met the Saxons bravely, and Ethelfrid, the

Northumbrian invader, was defeated.(43)

The Bards of Britain, whose office it was to cultivate the

art of music and poetry as well as literature are referred to by

Strabo as hymn-makers,(44) they were responsible for the temple

music and for the conduct of the musical part of the temple

services. On these occasions they wore white robes - from this

custom has descended our English Church custom of clothing the

choristers in white surplices.(45)

It was not until the fist century A.D. that the Jews

introduced the wearing of surplices into their services.

Josephus states: "Now as many of the Levites as were singers of

hymns persuaded the king (Agrippa) to assemble a Sanhedrin and to

give them leave to wear linen garments as well as the priests;

for, they said, this would be a work worthy of the times of his

government, that he might have a memorial of such a novelty as

being his doing; nor did they fail of obtaining their

desire."(46)

Referring to Stonehenge, Hecataeus, a Greek writer, 320 B .C.,

says that the people living these islands worshipped in a

beautiful temple, whose minstrels hymned with their golden

harps,(47) the praise of the god they adored, and whose

priesthood was a regular descent from father to son.

While every British subject was entitled at birth to five

British(ten English) acres of land for a home in the hereditary

county of his clan, priests were entitled to ten acres (twenty

English),(48) exemption from combative military service,

permission to pass unmolested from one district to another in

time of war, maintenance when absent on duty from their home, and

contribution from every plough in their district. 

The ceremonial dress of the Archdruid was extremely gorgeous, no

metal but gold being used on any part of it. The Cymric Cross was

wrought in gold down the length of the back of the robe; he wore

a gold tiara and a breastplate of the same precious metal.(49) A

breastplate was found in an excavated cist at Stonehenge, on the

skeleton of an important Briton,(50) Five similar breastplates

have been found in Britain and Ireland.

The Chevron Bead, a bead encased in gold was worn by the

Archdruid as a symbol of the Deity(51) and designated by the

Roman historians the 'Druid's Egg', around which so much legend

has been woven by the imaginative uninformed, who saw in the

symbol only a talisman endowed with most magical powers.

The stories that are told and believed of human sacrifice by

the Druids are pure inventions of the Romans to cover their

own cruelty and to excuse it. The Druids sacrificed sheep, oxen,

deer and goats; charred remains of these have been found at

Avebury, Stonehenge and in the vicinity of St.Paul's Cathedral.

NO TRACE OF HUMAN SACRIFICE HAS EVER BEEN DISCOVERED IN

BRITAIN(52)

(The modern authority on the Druids, Peter Ellis, upholds Isabel

Elder's words that human sacrifice by the Druids was an invention

of the beastly Roman mind - who were indeed far more to be

involved in human sacrifice via their blood-thirsty games and

gladiator spectacles, and later Christians thrown to the lions

etc. than anything near this ever taking place where the Druid

order prevailed - Keith Hunt).

It is very generally believed that the Celts were nature

worshippers, that they gave Divine honours to rivers, mountains

and woods. It is entirely a mistake to believe that they did so.

They were nature love - never nature worshippers; neither had

they a multitude of gods and goddesses, as is often affirmed. The

gods and goddesses were mere mascots, and even their

descendants(53) 53 mascots and charms have lost none of their

popularity.

Other nations never obtained a proper comprehension of Druidism;

they corrupted what they had learned of the Druidism of Britain,

blending with it religions less pure. It is recorded by Caesar

that those in Gaul who wished to be perfectly instructed in

Druidism crossed the sea to what they believed to be its birth-

place.

In the Christian era St. Patrick used the shamrock to instruct

the people in the doctrine of the Trinity, and in earlier days

the Druids used the oak for same the same purpose. They sought a

tree having two principal arms springing laterally from

the upright stem, roughly in the form of a cross. Upon the right

branch they cut the name Hesus; upon the middle or upright stem

Taranis; upon the left branch Belenis; over this they cut the

name of God - Thau.(54) The Hebrew prophets, it will be noted,

referred to their expected Messiah as 'The Branch.'

The mistletoe was another form of representation to them of their

Hesus, to whose coming they looked forward with as great

expectancy as did the Jews in the East to their Messiah - the

Britons were actually in advance of the Jews, for while the

Britons believed in the resurrection of the body, many of the

Jews did not. (It is indeed remarkable that one branch of God was

called "Hesus" - it is only a very small step to the word

"Jesus." And maybe when we understand all that Isabel Elder

writes about here, we can gain a better insight into how and why

we had "wise men" coming from the East, to worship Jesus the baby

who was born to be King Messiah. These wise men of the East (and

the Druids we have seen came originally from the "east") knew a

whole lot more than most of the rest of the world about the

things of God and His word and His prophecies of the one who was

"the Branch."

"The Druids," writes Caesar, 54 B.C. "make the immortality of

the soul the basis of all their teaching, holding it to be

the principal incentive and reason for virtuous life."(55) 

(Yes the Druids like many religious orders from the East, held

the false doctrine of the immortality of the soul. I do not want

you to think the Druids had some "perfect" religion and

understanding of the full truths of God, they did not! I just

want you to realize the Druids were not in many respects the way

many have assumed they were or have been misled to believe they

were by the scanty writings of some, who really had never studied

in any detail, the FULL historical facts on what the Druids were

all about - Keith Hunt).

The similarity of the Semitic and British forms of worship has

been commented upon by archaeologists and others who have

explored megalithic remains in this country. 

Sir Norman Lockyer states: 

"I confess, I am amazed at the similarities we have come

across,"(56) 

and Edward Davies: 

"I confess that I have not been the first in representing the

Druidical as having had some connection with the patriarchal

religion.(57) 

William Stukeley, from a close study of the     

evidence affirms:

"I plainly discerned the religion professed by the ancient

Britons was the simple patriarchal religion"(58) an opinion which

every critical and candid student of Druid ritual, customs, and

teaching must endorse.  

The unity of the Godhead was the very soul and centre of

Druidism, and this unity was a Trinity.

Procoius of Caesarea, A.D. 530, states : 

"Jesus, Taran, Bel - One only God.  All Druids acknowledge one

Lord God alone."(59)

The indisputable fact is that the Druids proclaimed

to the universe, 'The Lord our God is One!' WHEN CHRISTIANITY

PREACHED JESUS AS GOD, DRUIDISM HAD THE MOST FAMILIAR NAME OF ITS

OWN DEITY PRESENTED TO IT!!

In the ancient British tongue Jesus had never assumed its Greek,

Latin or Hebrew form, but remains the pure Druidic Yesu. It is

singular that the ancient Briton never changed the name of the

God he and his forefathers worshipped, nor has he ever worshipped

but one God.(60)

In the Cornish folk-lore whole sentences were treasured up

(without being understood), and when written down were found to

he pure Hebrew, Three of these rendered into English are:    

"Lift up your heads, O ye gates, and be ye lift up ye everlasting

doors, and the King of Glory shall come in"; "Who is this King of

Glory?"; "The Lord Yesu, He is the King of Glory."(61)

(Wow....to hear all this makes my heart take a leap....God KNEW

that His people Israel, the House of Israel, would one day be

centred in the British Isles, that NT Christianity would FLOURISH

in Britain, that the Kingdom would be taken away from the Jews,

and given to a people to protect and proclaim....yes not only the

spiritual Israel, but spiritual Israel centred in the British

Isles, and from there Christianity would be preached, published,

and proclaimed around the world. The English speaking people have

done MORE to teach and proclaim God's Holy Word and the New

Testament, than any other peoples in the last 2,000 years. We

shall see in further studies the truth that Christianity came to

the British Isles not many years after Jesus had died and was

resurrected again. God was already in ancient Britain preparing a

people, parts of his people Israel who had broken away from the

main trunk centuries before, to receive Christianity and the New

Testament Word of God - Keith Hunt).

Druidism with its self-evident Old Covenant origin, which latter

was, indeed, the great 'oral secret' transmitted by Druid sages

from generation to generation, its doctrine of the Trinity,

worship entirely free from idolatry, furtherance of peace and

contribution to the settling of disputes among the laity, high

moral tone, and insistence on the liberty and rights of the

subject, was a perfect (the word "perfect" maybe an over-

statement, but how Britain received and welcomed Christianity,

and the news of Hesus or Jesus, cannot be over-stated, for all

historical writings and facts, only prove it to be so - Keith

Hunt) preparation for the reception of Christianity.

Upon the introduction of Christianity the Druids were called

upon, not so much to reverse their ancient faith, as to "lay it

down for a fuller and more perfect revelation."  No country can

show a more rapid, and natural merging of a native religion into

Christianity, than that which was witnessed in Britain in the

first century A.D. The readiness with which the Druids accepted

Christianity, the facilities with which their places of worship

and colleges were turned to Christian uses, the willingness of

the people to accept the new religion are facts which the modern

historian has either overlooked or ignored.(62)

1. Ed.Davies, "Celtic Researches," pp.171,182.

2. Diogenes Laertius in proem., p.5. In proem., p.6. 

3. Macpherson, "Dissertations," p.341.

4. Gomer.A Brief Analysis of the Language and Knowledge of

Ancient Cymry. London,1854.

5. Matthew Arnold, "Celtic Literature," p.254.

6. Triodd Braint a Defod, Walter, op. cit. p.33. Lloyds "History

of Cambria," ed. Powell, praef. p.9.

7. Myvy Arch., II, 57.

8. "Traditional Annals of the Cymry," p.27. Triad H. Sharon

Turner,"History Anglo Saxon," Vol.1.

9. Gildas, MS. (Julius, D.XI), Cottonian Library. Morgan's

"British Cymry."

10.John 18:38.

11."Diggers for Facts," pp.226-229.

12.Strabo, I, IV, p.197. Caesars Comm. Lib. V. Sueotonius, V.

Calegula. E. Campion, "Account of Ireland," p.18.

13.See Toland's "History of the Druids," p.50. 

14.De Bell Gall. VII, 15, x6.

15.Vol. I, Chap. II, p.142, Amm. Marcel, "History," IV,9. 

16.De Bell Gall, VI, 13,14.

17.Pompon Mela, III, 2, 

18.Philosoph, I.

19.O'Curry's "Manners and Customs of Anc. Irish," Vol. II. School

of Simon Druid on O'Mulconry's Glossary: M.S.H. 2, 16 (Coll.

116),in Trinity College Library, Dublin. See also Reeve's

"Adamnan," p.48.

20.Stanihurst, "De Rebus in Hibernia," p.37.

21."Book of Lecain," folio 168. Toland, "History Druids," p.223.

22.J.Smith, "Gal. Antiq," p.8o.

23.S.Lysons, "Our British Ancestors," p.44.

24.Hecat. ab. Diod. Sicul, Lib. III. Avienus, "The Britannia."

Smith, "History of the Druids," pp.69,70, Cartes, "History

England," Vol.I, p.52.

25.See note 3,p.35. 

26.Lib. III.

27.Vide Sir Norman Lockyer, "Stonehenge," 1906. 

28.Wm.Stukeley, "Stonehenge," p.1l.

29.Strabo, Bk. XVIL Chap. I, Sir G. Cornwall. Lewis "Ast. of the

Ancients," p.198.

30.Triad,32.

31."History of Architecture," p.73.

32."Momumenta Historica Britanica," p.12

33."History of England," Vol.1. p,6

34."Stonehenge," p.254.

35."Standing stones and Maeshowe of Stennes," 1894.

36.Stukley, "Abury," p.40.

37.P.Llyod, "Island of Mona," p.41.

38.Origen on "Ezekiel," Homily 1V.

39.Josephus, "Jewish Wars," Bk.V, p.132.

40.Myo.Arch., Vol.III (laws of dynwal Moelmud).

41.Ibid.

42.Vallancy, "Collectanea de Rebus Hibernicus," p.211. Lysons,

"Our British Ancestors," p.196.

43.King's "Vale Royal," p.2. Annales Cambriae, CLXIX.

44.Strobo, "Geogr," 1V, 4,5; XV, 1,5.M.F. Cusack, "History of

Ireland," p.116, note.

45.E.Wilson, "Light and Shadows," p.262. Triad 233.

46.Josephus, Antiq., Bk.XX, p.9.

47.Dio.Sic.Tom.I, p.158. Taliesen, "Bards and Druids of Britain,"

Nash,p.15.

48."Ancient Laws of Cambria" (British Museum).

49.Crania Britannicaw, Vol.I,p.78.

50.Ibid.

51.See E.Wilson's "Lights and Shadows," pp.6,7.

52.Hulbert's "Religions of Britain," p.37. Hen.Huntingdon

History, Lib.III, apud res Anglia Script, p.322, ed. Saville.

53.See Stukley, "Abury," pp.2,38,49,76.

54.Schedius, "Treatise de Mor. Germ," XXIV. Thomas Maurice,

"Indian Antiquities," Vol.VI, p.49.

55.De Bell. Gall.Lib., VI, chap.XIII.

56."Stonehenge and other British Monuments," p.252.

57."Mythology and Rites of the British druids as ascertained from

National Documents," Pref. p.vii.

58."Abury," Pref. p.i. G.Smith, "Religion of Ancient Britain,"

p.43.

59.Origen on "Ezekile." (Richardson's "Godwin de Presulibis.")

60.Dr.Henry, "History of Great Britain," I, 2.

61.Rev.Dr.Margoliouth, "Jews in Britain," Vol.1, p.23; Vol III,

p.198.

62.Rolleston, Mazzaroth, 113.

To trace the history of the Culdees from the days of St. Columba

is a comparatively easy task; to find their origin is more

difficult. In the minute examination which such an investigation

involves the name Culdee is discovered to have quite a different

origin from that usually assigned to it.

The obscurity of the origin of the Culdich (Anglicized Culdees)

has led many writers to assume that their name was derived from

their life and work. The interpretations 'Cultores Dei'

(Worshippers of God) and 'Gille De' (Servants of God) are

ingenious but do not go far to solve the problem. Culdich is

still in use among some of the Gael, of Cultores Dei and Gille De

they know nothing.(1)

John Calgan, the celebrated hagiologist and topographer,

translates Culdich 'quidam advanae' - certain strangers(2) -

particularly strangers from a distance; this would seem an

unaccountable interpretation of the name for these early

Christians were it not for the statement of Freculphus(3) that

certain friends and disciples of our Lord, in the persecution

that followed His Ascension, found refuge in Britain in A.D.

37.(4) Further, here is the strong, unvarying tradition in the

West of England of the arrival in this country in the early days

A.D. of certain 'Judean refugees'. It seems impossible to

avoid the conclusion that Colgan's Culdich, 'certain strangers',

were one and the same with these refugees who found asylum in

Britain and were hospitably received by Arviragus (Caractacus),

king of the West Britons or Silures and temporarily settled in a

Druidic college. Land to the extent of twelve hides or ploughs,

on which they built the first Christian church, was made over to

them in free gift by Arviragus. This land has never been taxed.

Of the twelve hides of land conferred by Arviragus on this

church, the Domesday Survey, A.D. 1088, supplies conformation.

'The Domus Dei, in the great monastery in Glastonbury. This

Glastngbury Church possesses in its own villa XII hides of land

which have never paid tax.(5)

In Spelman's 'Concilia'(6) is an engraving of a brass plate which

was formerly affixed to a column to mark the exact site of the

church in Glastonbury.(7) 'The first ground of God, the first

ground of the Saints in Britain, the rise and foundation of all

religion in Britain, the burial place of the Saints.'(8) This

plate was dug up at Glastonbury and came into Spelman's

possession.

From a 'mass of evidence' to which William of Malmesbury gave

careful study, the antiquity of the Church of Glastonbury was

unquestionable. He says:

     'From its antiquity called, by way of distinction, "Ealde

     Chirche", that is the Old Church of wattlework at first,

     savoured somewhat of heavenly sanctity, even from its very

     foundation, and exhaled it all over the country, claiming

     superior reverence, though the structure was mean. Hence,

     here assembled whole tribes of the lower orders, thronging

     every path; hence assembled the opulent, divested of their

     pomp; hence it became the crowded residence of the religious

     and the literary. For, as we have heard from men of elder

     times, here Gildas, an historian, neither unlearned nor

     inelegant, captivated by the sanctity of the place, took up

     his abode for a series of years. This Church, then, is

     certainly the oldest I am acquainted with in England, and

     from this circumstance derives its name. Moreover there are

     documents of no small credit, which have been discovered in

     certain places, to the following effect: No other hands than

     those of the disciples of Christ erected the Church at

     Glastonbury .... for if Phillip the Apostle reached to the

     Gauls, as Freculphus relates in the fourth chapter of his

     second book, it may be believed that he also planted the

     word on the hither side of the channel.'(19)

The first converts of the Culdees were Druids. The Druids of

Britain, in embracing Christianity, found no difficulty in

reconciling the teaching of the Culdees, or 'Judean refugees',

with their own teaching of the resurrection and inheritance of

eternal life.

Numerous writers have commented upon the remarkable coincidence

which existed between the two systems - Druidism and

Christianity. (Amongst the Druidic names for the Supreme God

which they had in use before the introduction of Christianity

were the terms: 'Distributor', 'Governor', 'The Mysterious One',

'The Wonderful', The Ancient of Days', terms strictly of Old

Testament origin.(10)

Taliesen, a bard of the sixth century, declares :

     '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.'(11)

From 'Ecclesiastical An Antiquities' of the Cymry we learn that

the Silurian Druids embraced Christianity on its first

promulgation in these islands, and that in right of their office

they were exclusively elected as Christian ministers, though

their claims to national privileges as such were not finally

sanctioned until the reign of Lles ap Coel (Lucius), A.D. 156.

Even so all the bardic privileges and immunities were recognized

by law before the reign of this king.

     'And those Druids that formerly had dominion of the Britons'

     faith become now to be helpers of their joy and are become

     the leaders of the blind, which through God's mercy hath

     continued in this Island ever since through many storms and

     dark mists of time until the present day.'(12)

A Welsh Triad mentions Amesbury (Avebury) in Wiltshire as one of

the three great Druidic 'Cors' or colleges of Britain, and one of

the earliest to be converted to Christian uses. In the church

attached to this college there were two thousand four hundred

'saints', that is, there were a hundred for every hour of the day

and night in rotation, perpetuating the praise of God without

intermission. This mode of worship was very usual in the early

Church.(13)

The Christian king Lucius, third in descent from Winchester, and 

grandson of Pudens and Claudia(14) built the first minister on

the site of a Druidic Cor at Winchester, and at a National

Council held there in A.D.156 established Christianity the

national religion as the natural successor to Druidism, when the

Christian ministry was inducted into all the rights of the

Druidic hierarchy, tithes included.(15)

The change over from Druidism was not a mere arbitrary act of the

king, for, according to the Druidic law, there were three things

that required the unanimous vote of the nation: 

deposition of the Sovereign, suspension of law, introduction of

novelties in religion.(16)

Archbishop Usher quotes twenty-three authors, including Bede and

Nennius, on this point and also brings in proof from ancient

British coinage.(17) So uncontested was the point that at the

Council of Constance it was pleaded as an argument for British

precedence.

     'There are many circumstances', writes Lewis Spence,

     'connected with the Culdees to show that if they practised a

     species of Christianity their doctrine still retained a

     large measure of the Druidic philosophy, and that indeed

     they were the direct descendants of the Druidic caste....

     The Culdees who dwelt on Iona and professed the rule of

     Columba, were Christianized Druids, mingling with their

     faith a large element of the ancient Druidic cultus. . . .

     But all their power they ascribed to Christ - Christ is my

     Druid, said Columba.'(18)

Toland says that:

     '...the Druidical college of Derry was converted into a

     Culdee monastery. In Wales Druidism cease to be practised by

     the end of the FIRST century, but long after the advent of  

     St.Patrick the chief monarchs of Ireland adhered to

     Druidism...

     Laegaire and all the provincial kings of Ireland, however,

     granted to every man free liberty of preaching and

     professing the Christian religion if he wished to do

     so.'(19)

The cumulative evidence of early historians leaves no shadow of

doubt that Britain was one of the first, if not THE FIRST country

to receive the Gospel, and that the apostolic missionaries were

instrumental in influencing the change whereby the native

religion of Druidism merged into Christianity.(20)

It is a remarkable circumstance that while statues of gods and

goddesses prevail throughout the heathen sites of Egyptian,

Greek, Roman, Hindu and other idolatrous nations, NOT A VESTIGE

of an IDOL or IMAGE has been found in Britain.

If Mithraism is argued to contest this statement it should be

observed that invaders were not free from idolatry. Mithra

worship was a Roman importation. The British were entirely free

from all forms of idolatry; they never adopted Mithraism.

The Druids' invocation was to ONE all-healing and all-saving

power. Can we be surprised that they so readily embraced the

gospel of Christ?

Further support for the early introduction of Christianity to

Britain is gathered from the following widely diverse sources:   

EUSEBIUS of Ceasarea speaks of apostolic missions to Britain as

matters of notoriety. 'The Apostles passed beyond the ocean to

the isles called the Brittanic Isles.'(21)

TERTULLIUS of Carthage, A.D.208, the embodiment of the highest 

learning of that age, tells us that the Christian Church in the

second century extended to 'all the boundaries of Spain, and the

different nations of Gaul and parts of Britain inaccessible to

the Romans but subject to Christ.'(22)

ORIGEN, in the third century states: 'The power of Lord is with

those who in Britain are separated from our coasts.'(23)

'From India to Britain', writes St.JEROME, A.D.378, 'all nations

resound with the death and resurrection of Christ.'(24)

ARNOBIUS, on the same subject, writes: 'So swiftly runs the word

of God that 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.'(25)

CHRYSOSTOM, Patriarch of Constantinople, A.D.402, supplies

evidence in these words: 'The British Isles which lie beyond the

sea, and which lie in the ocean, have received the virtue of the

Word. Churches are there found and altars erected. Though thou

should'st go to the ocean, to the British Isles, there thou

should'st hear all men everywhere discussing matters out of the

Scriptures.'(26)

GILDS, the British historian, writing in A.D.542, states: '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 Tiberias Caesar, A.D.37.'(27)

Sir HENRY SPELMAN states: 'We have abundant evidence that this

Britain of ours received the Faith, and that from the disciples

of Christ Himself soon after the Crucifixion',(28) 

POLYDORE VERGIL observes: 'that Britain was of all kingdoms the

first that received the Gospel'.(29)

The fact that Lucius established Christianity as the State

religion excludes the claim of the Latin Church to that eminence.

That this early establishment was acknowledged beyond the

confines of Britain is well expressed by Sabellius, A.D.250.

'Christianity was privately expressed elsewhere, but the first

nation that proclaimed it as their religion, and called itself

Christian, after the name of Christ, was Britain';(30) and Ebrard

remarks, 'The glory of Britain 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.'

The writer of 'Vale Royal' states: 'The Christian faith and

baptism came into Chester in the reign of Lucius, king of the

Britons, probably from Cambria, circa A.D.140.'(31)

Missionaries are said to have come from Glastonbury, only thirty

miles distant, to instruct the Druids of Amesbury in the

Christian faith. When the Druids adopted and preached

Christianity, their universities were turned into Christian

colleges and the Druid priests became Christian ministers; 

the transition was to them a natural one.

In the days of Giraldus Cambrensis (twelfth century), as a result

of Roman Catholic doctrine, martyrdom and celibacy were much

overrated, and it was thought a reproach to the Druids that none

of their saints had 'cemented' the foundation of the Church

with their blood, all of them being confessors, and not one

gaining the crown of martyrdom.(32)

An absurd charge, blaming the people for their reasonableness,

moderation and humanity, and taxing the new converts for not

provoking persecution in order to gain martyrdom.

It is not contended that every individual Druid and bard accepted

Christianity on its first promulgation in Britain Even after 

Christianity had become a national religion, petty kings, princes

and the nobility retained, in many instances, Druids and bards.

Druidism did not entirely cease until almost a thousand

years after Christ.

Had the large collection of British archives and MSS deposited at

Verulum as late as A.D.860 descended to our time, invaluable

light would have been thrown on this as on many other subjects of

native interest.

We read in an historical essay, 'The Ancient British Church', by

the Rev.John Pryce, which was awarded the prize at the National

Eisteddfod of 1876, these words: 

     'In this distant corner of the earth (Britain), cut off from

     the rest of the world, unfrequented except by merchants from

     the opposite coast of Gaul, a people who only conveyed to

     the Roman mind the idea of untamed fierceness was being

     prepared for the Lord. Forecasting the whole from the

     beginning and at length bringing the work to a head, the

     Divine Logos unveiled Himself to them in the person of

     Christ, as the realization of their searching instincts and

     the fulfilment of their highest hopes. It would be difficult

     to conceive of Christianity being preached to any people for

     the first time under more favourable conditions. There was

     hardly a feature in their national character in which it

     would not find a chord answering and vibrating to its touch.

     Theirs was not the sceptical mind of the Greek, nor the

     worn-out civilization of the Roman, which even Christianity

     failed to quicken into life, but a religious, impulsive

     imagination - children in feeling and knowledge, and

     therefore meet recipients of the good news of the kingdom of

     heaven.

     To a people whose sense of future existence was so absorbing

     that its presentiment was almost too deeply felt by them,

     the preaching of Jesus and the Resurrection would appeal

     with irresistible force.

     There was no violent divorce between the new teaching and

     that of their own Druids, nor were they called upon so much

     to reverse their ancient faith to lay it down for a fuller

     and more perfect revelation.

     Well has the Swedish poet, Tegner, in 'Frithiofs Saga',

     pictured the glimmerings of the dawn of Gospel day, when he

     described the old priest as prophesying

          'All hail, ye generations yet unborn

          Than us far happier; ye shall one day drink 

          That cup of consolation, and behold

          The torch of Truth illuminate the world, 

          Yet do not us despise; for we have sought 

          With earnest zeal and unaverted eye, 

          To catch one ray of that ethereal light, 

          Alfader still is one, and still the same; 

          But many are his messengers Divine.'

1. Rev. T. McLauchlan, 'The Early Scottish Church,' p.431. 

2. Trias Thaumaturga, p.156b.

3. Freculphus apud Godwin, p.10. See Hist. Lit.,II,18. 

4. Baronius add. ann. 306. Vatican MSS. Nova Legenda. 

5. Domesday Survey Fol., p.449.

6. See Epistolae ad Gregorium Papam.

7. See Joseph of Arimathea, by Rev.L.Smithett Lewis. 

8. Concilia, Vol.I, p.9.

9. Malmes., 'History of the Kings,' pp.19,20.

10.G.Smith, 'Religion of Ancient Britain,' Chap. II, p.37. 

11.Morgan, 'St.Paul in Britain,' p.73.

12.Nath. Bacon, 'Laws and Government of England,' p.3.

13.Baronius ad Ann 459, ex. Actis Marcelli.

14.Moncaeus Atrebas, 'In Syntagma,' p.38.

15.Nennius(ed.Giles), p.164. Book of Llandau, pp.26,68,289.

16.Morgan's 'British Cymry.'

17.Ussher (ed.1639), pp.5,7,20.

18.'The Mysteries of Britain,' pp.62,64,65. 

19.Dudley Wright, 'Druidism,' p.12.

20.Holinshed, 'Chronicles,' p.23.

21.'De Demostratione Evangelii,' Lib. III.

22.'Adv.Judaeos,' Chap. VII. Def. Fidei, p.179.

23.Origen, 'Hom. VI in Lucae.'

24.'Hom. in Isaiah,' Chap. LIV and Epist. XIII ad Paulinum. 

25.'Ad Psalm,' CXLV, III.

26.Chrysostom, 'Orat O Theo Xristos.'

27.'De Excidio Britanniae,' Sect. 8, p.25. 

28.'Concilia,' fol., p.1.

29.Lib. II.

30.Sabell. Enno, Lib. VII, Chap. V. 

31.King's 'Vale Royal,' Bk. II, p.25.

32.Topograph. Hibern Distinct. III, Cap. XXIX.

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