The History of British Commerce/Volume 1/Chapter 1
HISTORY
OF
BRITISH COMMERCE.
CHAPTER I.
BEFORE AND DURING THE ROMAN OCCUPATION.
The small beginnings, hidden in the depths of ancient time, of that which has become so mighty a thing as British commerce, have an interest for the imagination, the same in kind with that belonging to the discovery of the remote spring or rill which forms the apparently insignificant source of some famous river, but as much higher in degree as the history of human affairs is a higher study than the history of inanimate nature.
The Phoenicians, the great trading people of antiquity, are the first foreigners who are recorded to have opened any commercial intercourse with the British islands. There are some facts which make it probable that this extremity of the globe was visited even by the navigators of the parent Asiatic states of Sidon and Tyre. Tin, a product then to be obtained only from Britain and Spain, was certainly used in considerable quantities by the civilized nations of the earliest times. It was the alloy with which, before they attained the knowledge of the art of giving a high temper to iron, they hardened copper, and made it serve for warlike instruments and many other purposes. A mixture of copper and tin, in due proportions, was perhaps fitted, indeed, to take a sharper edge as a sword or spear than could have been given to iron itself, for a long time after the latter metal came to be known and wrought. It is certain at least that swords and other weapons fabricated of the compound metal continued to be used long after the introduction of iron. This composition was really what the Greeks called chalcos and the Romans aes, although these words have usually been improperly translated brass, which is compounded not of copper and tin, but of copper and zinc. There is no reason to suppose that zinc was at all known to the ancients; and, if so, brass, properly so called, was equally unknown to them. What is commonly called the brass of the Greeks and Romans, being, as we have said, a mixture of copper and tin, is not brass, but bronze. This is the material, not only of the ancient statues, but also of many of their other metallic articles both ornamental and useful. It was of this, for instance, that they fabricated the best of their mirrors and reflecting specula; for the composition, in certain proportions, is capable of taking a high polish, as well as of being hammered or filed to a sharp and hard edge in others. This also is the material of which so many of the Celtic antiquities are formed, and which on this account is sometimes called Celtic brass, although it might with as much propriety be called Greek brass, or Roman brass. In like manner the swords found at Cannæ, which are supposed to be Carthaginian, are of bronze, or a composition of copper and tin. Tin, too, is supposed, with much probability, to have been used by the Phoenicians at a very early period in those processes of dyeing cloth for which Tyre in particular was so famous. Solutions of tin in various acids are still applied as mordants for fixing colours in cloth. Tin is understood to be mentioned under the Hebrew term bedil, in the Book of Numbers;[1] and, as all the other metals supposed to have been then known are enumerated in the same passage, it would be difficult to give another probable translation of the word. The lexicographers derive it from bedl, to separate; tin, they say, being a separating metal. This would carry the knowledge and use of tin back to a date nearly 1500 years antecedent to the commencement of our era. At a much later date, the prophet Ezekiel is supposed to mention it under the same name as one of the conmodities in which Tyre traded with Tarshish, probably a general appellation for the countries lying beyond the Pillars of Hercules. The age of Ezekiel is placed nearly six centuries before the birth of Christ; but we have evidence of the knowledge and employment of tin by the Ph{{oe}s}nicians at a much earlier period in the account of the erection and decoration of the Temple of Solomon, the principal workmen employed in which—and among the rest the makers of the articles of brass, that is, bronze, and other metals—were brought from Tyre.
The oldest notice, or that at least professing to be derived from the oldest sources, which we have of the Phœnician trade with Britain, is that contained in the narrative of the voyage of the Carthaginian navigator Himilco, which is given us by Festus Avienus.[2] This voyage is supposed to have been performed about 1000 years before the commencement of our era. Himilco is stated to have reached the Isles of the Œstrymnides within less than four months after he had set sail from Carthage. Little doubt can be entertained, from the description given of their position and of other circumstances, that these were the Scilly Islands. The Œstrymnides are placed by Avienus in the neighbourhood of Albion and of Ireland, being two days' sail from the latter. They were rich, he says, in tin and lead (metallo divites stanni atque plumhi). The people are described as being numerous, high-spirited, active, and eagerly devoted to trade; yet they had no ships built of timber wherewith to make their voyages, but in a wonderful manner effected their way along the water in boats constructed merely of skins sewed together. We must suppose that the skins or hides were distended by wickerwork which they covered, although that is not mentioned. There are well authenticated accounts of voyages of considerable length made in such vessels as those here described at a much later period.
It is observable that in this relation neither the Œstrymnides, nor the Sacred Isle of the Hiberni, nor that of athe Albiones in its neighbourhood, appear to be spoken of as discoveries made by Himilco; on the contrary, the Isle of the Hiberni is described as known by the epithet of the Sacred Isle to the ancients, and the resort for the purposes of traffic to the Œstrymnides is declared to have been a custom of the inhabitants of Tartessus and Carthage.
No mines of any kind are now wrought in the Scilly islands; but they present appearances of ancient excavations, and the names of two of them, as Camden has remarked, seem to intimate that mining had been at one time carried on in them. They may in early times have produced lead as well as tin; or, these metals here obtained by the Phoenicians, or their colonists of Tartessus and Carthage, may have been brought from the neighbouring peninsula of Cornwall, which produces both, and which besides was most probably itself considered one of these islands. Pliny, it may be noted, has preserved the tradition, that the first person who imported lead (plumbum—by which name, however, he designates both lead and tin) from the island of Cassiteris was Midacritus,[3] which has been supposed to be a corruption of Melicartus, the name of the Phoenician Hercules. Cassiteris means merely the land of tin, that metal being called in Greek cassiteron.
The next notice which we have of the trade of the Phoenicians, or their colonists, with Britain, is that preserved by Strabo. His account is, that the traffic with the isles called the Cassiterides, which he describes as being ten in number, lying close to one another, in the main ocean north from the Artabri (the people of Gallicia), was at first exclusively in the hands of the Phoenicians of Gades, who carefully concealed it from all the rest of the world. Only one of the ten islands, he states, was uninhabited; the people occupying the others wore black cloaks, which were girt about the waist and reached to their ankles: they walked about with sticks in their hands, and their beards were as long as those of goats. They led a pastoral and wandering life. He expressly mentions their mines both of tin and lead, and these metals, he adds, along with skins, they give to the foreign merchants who resort to them in exchange for earthenware, salt, and articles of bronze.
We may here observe that the geographer Dionysius Periegetes gives the name of the Isles of the Hesperides to the native country of tin, and says that these isles, which he seems to place in the neighbourhood of Britain, are inhabited by the wealthy descendants of the famous Iberians. It is remarkable that Diodorus Siculus describes the Celtiberians, or Celts of Spain, as clothed in black and shaggy cloaks, made of a wool resembling the hair of goats, thus using almost the same terms which Strabo employs to describe the dress of the people of the Cassiterides. The chief island of the Scilly group is called Silura by Solinus ; and perhaps the original occupants of these isles were the same Silures who are stated to have afterwards inhabited South Wales, and whose personal appearance Tacitus has expressly noted as betokening a Spanish origin.
It was undoubtedly through the extended commercial connexions of the Phoenicians that the metallic products of Britain were first distributed over the civilized world. A regular market appears to have been found for them by these enterprising traffickers in some of the most remote parts of the earth. Both Pliny and Arrian have recorded their exportation to India, where the former writer says they were wont to be exchanged for precious stones and pearls. It is probable that this commerce was at one time carried on, in part at least, through the medium of the more ancient Palmyra, or Tadmor of the Desert, as it was then called, which is said to have been founded by Solomon a thousand years before our era.[4]
The Phoenicians, and their colonists settled in Africa and the south of Spain, appear to have retained for a long period the exclusive possession of the trade with the British islands, even the situation of which they contrived to keep concealed from all other nations. It appears from Herodotus, that, in his time, about four centuries and a half before the birth of Christ, although his countrymen knew that tin came from certain islands which, on that account, went by the name of the Cassiterides, or Tin Isles, yet all that was known of their situation was, that they lay somewhere in the north or north-west of Europe. It is generally supposed that the first Greek navigator who penetrated into the seas in this part of the world was Pytheas of Marseilles, who appears to have flourished about a hundred years after the time of Herodotus. From this celebrated colony of Marseilles something of the Greek civilization seems early to have radiated to a considerable distance over the surrounding regions; but whether there ever was any direct intercourse between Marseilles and Britain we are not informed. The only accounts of the trade which have come down to us, represent it as carried on through the medium of certain ports on the coast of Gaul nearest to our island; and we are probably to understand that the ships and traders belonged, not to Marseilles, but to these native Gallic towns. From the north-west coast of Gaul, the tin and lead seem to have been for a long time transported across the country to Marseilles by land carriage.
Strabo relates, on the authority of Polybius, that, when Scipio Africanus the younger made inquiry respecting the tin islands of the people of Marseilles, they professed to be totally ignorant of where they lay. From this we must infer, either that the Massilians had adopted the policy of the Carthaginians with regard to the navigation to these isles, and studiously concealed what they knew of them, or, what is more probable, that they really knew nothing of the countries from which their tin came, the trade being, in fact, carried on, as we have just supposed, through the medium of the merchants of the north-west coast of Gaul. The Romans, according to the account given by Strabo in another place, had made many endeavours to discover the route to these mysterious isles, even while the trade. was still in the exclusive possession of the Carthaginians. He relates, that, on one occasion, the master of a Carthaginian vessel finding himself pursued, while on his way to the Cassiterides, by one whom the Romans had appointed to watch him, purposely ran his vessel aground, and thus, although he saved his life, sacrificed his cargo; the value of which, however, was repaid to him, on his return home, out of the public treasury. But the Romans, he adds, at length succeeded in discovering the islands, and getting the tin trade, or at least a part of it, into their own hands. As Strabo died A.D. 25, this commercial intercourse of the Romans with the south-west of Britain must have long preceded the invasion of the south-eastern part of the country by Claudius, and may very possibly have preceded even the earlier invasion by Cæsar. It is remarkable that Strabo does not speak of it as having been a consequence of, or in any degree connected with, the last-mentioned event. He says, that some time after its commencement a voyage was made to the island by a Roman navigator of the name of Publius Crassus, who, finding the inhabitants of a pacific disposition, and also fond of navigation,gave them some instructions, as the words seem to imply, for carrying it on upon a larger scale. This passage has attracted less attention than it would seem to deserve; for, if the Cassiterides be, as is generally supposed, the Scilly Islands, we have here the first notice of any commercial intercourse carried on with Britain by the Romans, and a notice which must refer to a date considerably earlier than that at which it is usually assumed that the country first began to be resorted to by that people.
We are inclined to believe, however, that the trade of the Romans with the Cassiterides was entirely confined to their colonial settlements in the south of Gaul. Of these the city of Narbonne, situated about as far to the west of the mouth of the Rhone as the Greek city of Marseilles stood to the east of it, was the chief, as well as one of the oldest, having been founded about the year B.C. 120, The historian Diodorus Siculus, who was contemporary with Julius Cæsar, has given us an account of the manner in which the trade between Britain and Gaul was carried on in his day, which, although it does not expressly mention the participation of either the Romans or any of their colonies, at least shows that the Cassiterides and the island of Britain had become better known than they were a hundred years before in the time of the younger Scipio. Diodorus mentions the expedition of Caesar, of which he promises a detailed account in a part of his history now unfortunately lost; but he tells us a good many things respecting the island, the knowledge of which could not have been obtained through that expedition. We must, therefore, suppose that he derived his information either through an intercourse with the country which had arisen subsequent to and in consequence of Cæsar's attempt, or, as is much more probable, from the accounts of those by whom the south-western coast had been visited long before. . Indeed, various facts concur to show that, however ignorant of Britain Cæsar himself may have been when he first meditated his invasion, a good deal was even then known about it by those of the Greeks and Romans who were curious in such inquiries. Caesar notices the fact of tin, or white lead, as he calls it, being found in the country; but he erroneously places the stores of this mineral in the interior (in mediteraneis regionibus), probably from finding that they lay a great distance from the coast at which he landed; and he does not seem to have any suspicion that this was really the famous Land of Tin, the secret of whose situation had been long guarded with such jealous care by its first discoverers, and which his own countrymen had made so many anxious endeavours to find out. But a century and a half before this date Polybius, as he tells us himself, had intended to write respecting Britain; and Strabo informs us that the great historian had actually composed a treatise on the subject of the British Islands, and the mode of preparing tin. His attention had probably been drawn to the matter by the inquiries of his friend Scipio; for Polybius, as is well known, was the companion of that celebrated general, in several of his military expeditions and other journeys. No doubt, although the people of Marseilles were unwilling or unable to satisfy the curiosity of the travellers, they obtained the information they wanted from some other quarter.[5] And in the title of this lost treatise of Polybius, as quoted by Strabo, it is important to remark that we find the tin country distinctly recognized as being the British Islands, the vague or ambiguous name of the Cassiterides being dropped. It is so, likewise, in the account given by Diodorus. That writer observes that the people of the promontory of Belerium (the Bolerium of Ptolemy, and our present Land's End) were much more civilized than the other British nations, in consequence of their intercourse with the great number of foreign traders who resorted thither from all parts. This statement, written subsequently to Cæsar's expedition, warrants us in receiving that writer's assertion as to the superior refinement of the inhabitants of Kent as true only in a restricted sense. In fact, there were two points on the coast of the island separated by a long distance from each other, at which the same cause, a considerable foreign commerce and frequent intercourse with strangers, had produced the same natural effect. Diodorus goes on to describe the manner in which these ancient inhabitants of Cornwall prepared the tin which they exported. To this part of his description we shall afterwards have occasion to advert. After the tin has been refined and cast into ingots, he says, they convey it in wheeled carriages over a space which is dry at low water, to a neighbouring island, which is called Ictis; and here the foreign merchants purchase it, and transport it in their ships to the coast of Gaul, The Ictis of Diodorus has, by the majority of recent writers, been assumed to be the Isle of Wight, the Uectis of Ptolemy, and the Vectis or Vecta of some of the Latin writers. But this seems to us altogether an untenable supposition. It is impossible to believe either that Diodorus would call the Isle of Wight an island in the neighbourhood of the promontory of Bolerium, seeing that it is distant from that promontory about 200 miles, or that the people of Bolerium, instead of carrying down their tin to their own coast, would make a practice of transporting it by land carriage to so remote a point. Least of all is it possible to conceive how a journey could be accomplished by wheeled carriages from the Land's End to the Isle of Wight over the sands which were left dry at low water, as Diodorus says was the case. There canbe no doubt whatever that Ictis was one of the Scilly Isles, between which group and the extremity of Cornwall a long reef of rock still extends, part of which appears, from ancient documents, to have formed part of the main land at a comparatively recent date, and which there is no improbability in supposing may have afforded a dry passage the whole way in the times of which Diodorus writes. The encroachments of the sea have unquestionably effected extensive changes in that part of the British coast; and at a very remote period it is evident from present appearances, as well as from facts well attested by records and tradition, that the distance between the Scilly Isles and the main land must have been very much less than it now is. "It doth appear yet by good record," says a writer of the latter part of the sixteenth century, "that, whereas now there is a great distance between the Scyllan Isles and point of the Land's End, there was of late years to speak of scarcely a brook or drain of one fathom water between them, if so much, as by those evidences appeareth that are yet to be seen in the hands of the lord and chief owner of those isles."[6] Some of the islands may even have been submerged in the long course of years that has elapsed since the Ictis was the mart of the tin trade ; and the numerous group of islets which we now see may very possibly be only the relics left above water of the much smaller number of a considerable size, which are described as forming the ancient Cassiterides. It may be added that, if the south-west coast of Brittany, where the maritime nation of the Veneti dwelt, was, as seems most probable, the part of the continent from which the tin ships sailed, the Isle of Wight was as much out of their way as of that of the people of Bolerium. The shortest and most direct voyage for the merchants of Vannes was right across to the very point of the British coast where the tin mines were. It appears to us to admit of little doubt that the Ictis of Diodorus is the same island which, on the authority of the old Greek historian, Timaeus, is mentioned by Pliny under the name of Mictis, and stated to lie six days' sail inward (introrsus) from Britain (which length of navigation, however, the Britons accomplished in their wicker boats), and to be that in which the tin was produced. It must no doubt have taken fully the space of time here mentioned to get to the Scilly Isles from the more distant parts even of the south coast of Britain.
Diodorus goes on to inform us that the foreign merchants, after having purchased the tin at the Isle of Ictis, and conveyed it across the sea to the opposite coast of Gaul, were then wont to send it overland to the mouth of the Rhone, an operation which consumed thirty days. At the mouth of the Rhone it was no doubt purchased by the merchants of Marseilles, and at a later period also by their rivals of Narbonne, if we are not rather to suppose that the Gallic traders who brought it from Britain were merely their agents. Cæsar, however, expressly informs us that the Veneti, who occupied a part of the present Bretagne, had many ships of their own, in which they were accustomed to make voyages to Britain. From the two great emporia in the south of France the commodity was diffused over all other parts of the earth, as it had been at an earlier period from Cadiz and the other Phœnician colonies on the south coast of Spain.
It appears from Strabo, however, that the operose and tedious mode of conveyance by land carriage from the coast of Brittany to the gulf of Lyons was eventually abandoned for other routes, in which some advantage could be taken of the natural means of transportation afforded by the country. By one of these, the British goods being brought to the mouth of the Seine, in Normandy, were sent up that river as far as it was navigable, and then, being carried on horses a short distance overland, were transmitted for the remainder of the way down the Rhone, and afterwards along the coast to Narbonne and Marseilles. It is probable enough that the Isle of Wight, which is opposite to the mouth of the Seine, may have been used as the mart of the British trade in this navigation, for which purpose it was also well adapted as lying about midway between Cornwall and Kent, and being therefore more conveniently situated than any other spot both for the supply of the whole line of coast with foreign commodities, and for the export of native produce. When the route we are now describing came to be adopted for the British trade generally, even a portion of the tin of Cornwall may have found its way to this central depot. But, even after land carriage came to be displaced by river navigation, a large portion of the British trade still continued to be carried on from the west coast of Gaul, through the medium both of the Loire and the Garonne. The Loire seems to have been taken advantage of chiefly to convey the exports from Narbonne and Marseilles down to the sea-coast after they had been brought by land across the country from Lyons, to which point they had been sent up by the Rhone. The Garonne was used for the conveyance to the south of France of British produce, which was sent up that river as far as it was navigable, and thence carried to its destination over land.
This is nearly all that is known respecting the commercial intercourse of Britain with other parts of the world before the country became a province of the Roman empire. The traffic both with Carthage and the Phœnician colonies in the south of Spain had of course ceased long before Cæsar's invasion; at that date the only direct trade of the island was with the western and north-western coasts of Gaul, from the Garonne as far probably as to the Rhine; for, in addition to the passage of commodities, as just explained, to and from Provence, the Belgic colonists, who now occupied so large a portion of the maritime districts in the south of Britain, appear also from their first settlement to have kept up an active intercourse with their original seats on the continent which stretched to the last-mentioned river. The British line of communication, on the other hand, may be presumed to have extended from the Land's End to the mouth of the Thames; though it was probably only at two or three points in the course of that long distance that the continental vessels were in the habit of touching. There is no evidence that any of the vessels in which the trade with the continent was carried on belonged to Britain. The island in those days seems only to have been resorted to by strangers as the native place of certain valuable commodities, and to have maintained little or no interchange of visits with foreign shores. Even from this imperfect intercourse with the rest of the world, however, the inhabitants of all this line of coast must have been enabled to keep up, as we are assured they did, a very considerably higher degree of civilization than would be found among the back-woodsmen beyond them. It is to be remembered that no small amount of the commercial spirit may exist in a country which maintains no intercourse with foreigners except in its own ports. The situation of Britain in this respect, two thousand years ago, may be likened, indeed, to that of Spitzbergen or New Zealand at present; but the same peculiarity, which at first sight seems to us so remarkable and so unnatural, characterizes the great commercial empire of China. There the national customs and the institutions of the government have done their utmost to discourage and restrain the spirit of commercial enterprise; but that spirit is an essential part of the social principle, and as such is unextinguishable wherever the immutable circumstances of physical situation are not adverse to its development. Hence, although their laws and traditionary morality have operated with so much effect as to prevent the people of China from pushing to any extent what may be called an aggressive commerce, that is to say, from seeking markets for their commodities in foreign countries, these adverse influences have not been able so far to overcome the natural incentives arising out of their geographical position as to induce them to refrain equally from what we may call admissive commerce, or indeed to be other than very eager followers of it. The case of the early Britons may have been somewhat similar. The genius of most of the Oriental religions seems to have been opposed to foreign intercourse of every kind, the prohibition or systematic discouragement of which the priests doubtless regarded as one of their most important securities for the preservation of their influence and authority; and very probably such may also have been the spirit of the Celtic or Druidical religion. It is remarkable, at least, that the well ascertained Celtic tribes of Europe, though distributed for the most part along the sea-coast, have never exhibited any striking aptitude either for navigation or for any employment in connexion with the sea.
The most particular account of the exports and imports constituting the most ancient British trade is that quoted above from Strabo, and it is probably not very complete. It only adds the single article of skins to the tin and lead mentioned by Festus Avienus and others. It is probable, however, that the island was known for a few other products besides these, even before the first Roman invasion. Cæsar expressly mentions iron as found, although in small quantities, in the maritime districts. And it appears from some passages in the Letters of Cicero, that the fame of the British war-chariots had already reached Rome. Writing to Trebatius, while the latter was here with Cæsar, B.C. 55, after observing that he hears Britain yielded neither gold nor silver, the orator playfully exhorts his friend to get hold of one of the esseda of the island, and make his way back to them at Rome with his best speed. In another epistle he cautions Trebatius to take care that he be not snatched up and carried off before he knows where he is, by some driver of one of these rapid vehicles. Strabo's account of the foreign commodities imported into Britain in those days is, that they consisted of earthenware, salt, and articles of bronze, which last expression is undoubtedly to be understood as meaning not mere toys, but articles of use, in the fabrication of which bronze, as we have explained above, was the great material made use of in early times, Caesar also testifies that all the bronze made use of by the Britons was obtained from abroad. The metal, however, as we shall presently have occasion to show, was probably imported to some extent in ingots or masses, as well as in manufactured articles. Much of the bronze which was thus brought to them, whether in lumps of metal, or in the shape of weapons of war and other necessary or useful articles, had no doubt been formed by the aid of their own tin. Neither the Britons themselves, nor any of the foreigners who traded with them at this early period, appear to have been aware of the abundant stores of copper which the island is now known to contain. Indeed the British copper-mines have only been wrought to any considerable extent in very recent times.
There is no reasonable ground for supposing, as some writers have done, that the ancient Britons possessed any description of navigating vessels, which could properly be termed ships of war. The notion has been taken up on an inference from a passage in Cæsar, or rather from a comparison of several passages, which the language of that writer rightly understood certainly does not at all authorize. Cæsar gives us in one place an account of a naval engagement which he had with the Veneti of western Gaul, whose ships appear, from his description, to have been very formidable military engines. In a preceding chapter he had informed us, that in making preparations for their resistance to the Roman arms, the Veneti, after fortifying their towns, and collecting their whole naval strength at one point, associated with them, for the purpose of carrying on the war, the Osismii, the Lexobii, and other neighbouring tribes, and also sent for aid out of Britain, which lay directly over against their coast. But it is not said that the assistance which they thus obtained, either from Britain or any other quarter, consisted of ships. It does not even appear that it consisted of seamen; for, although it so happened that the war was terminated by the destruction of the naval power of the Veneti in the engagement we have just mentioned, preparations had evidently been made in the first instance for carrying it on by land as well as by sea. The supposition that the Britons possessed any ships at all resembling the high-riding, strong-timbered, iron-bound vessels of this principal maritime power of Gaul——provided, amongst other things, Cæsar assures us, with chain cables (anchoræ, pro funibus, ferreis catenis revinctæ)——is in violent contradiction to the general bearing of all the other recorded and probable facts respecting the condition of our island and its inhabitants at that period. There is no evidence or reason for believing that they were masters of any other navigating vessels than open boats, of which it may be doubted if any were even furnished with sails. Their common boat appears to have been what is still called the currach by the Irish, and the coracle (cwrwgyl) by the Welsh, formed of osier twigs, covered with hide. The small boats yet in use upon the rivers of Wales and Ireland are in shape like a walnut-shell, and rowed with one paddle. Pliny, as already noticed, quotes the old Greek historian Timseus, as affirming that the Britons used to make their way to an island at the distance of six days' sail in boats made of wattles, and covered with skins ; and Solinus states that, in his time, the communication between Britain and Ireland was kept up on both sides by means of these vessels. Cæsar, in his history of the Civil War, tells us that, having learned their use while in Britain, he availed himself of them in crossing rivers in Spain; and we learn from Lucan, that they were used on the Nile and the Po, as well as by the Britons. Another kind of British boat seems to have been made out of a single tree, like the Indian canoes. Several of these have been discovered. In 1736 one was dug up from a morass called Lockermoss, in Dumfries, Scotland. It was seven feet long, dilated to a considerable breadth at one end; the paddle was found near it. Another, hollowed out of a solid tree, was seen by Mr. Pennant, near Rilblain. It measured eight feet three inches long, and eleven inches deep. In the year 1720 several canoes similar to these were dug up in the marshes of the river Medway, above Maidstone; one of them so well preserved as to be used as a boat for some time afterwards. On draining Martine Muir, or Marton Lake, in Lancashire, there were found sunk at the bottom eight canoes, each made of a single tree, much like the American canoes.[7] In 1834 a boat of the same description was found in a creek near the village of North Stoke, on the river Arun, Sussex. It is now in the British Museum, and measures in length thirty-five feet four inches; in depth one foot ten inches; and in width, in the middle, four feet six inches. There are three bars left at the bottom, at different distances from each other, and from the ends, which seem to have served the double purpose of strengthening it and giving firm footing to those who rowed or paddled the canoe. It seems to have been made, or at least finished, by sharpened instruments, and not by fire, according to the practice of the Indians.[8]
Among the useful arts practised by the ancient Britons, they must be allowed to have had some acquaintance with those relating to the metals, but how much it is not easy to determine. Both Strabo and Diodorus Siculus have briefly noticed their mode of obtaining the tin from the earth. The former observes that Publius Crassus, upon his visit to the Cassiterides, found the mines worked to a very small depth. It may be inferred from this expression, that the only mining known to the natives was that which consisted in digging a few feet into the earth, and collecting what is now called the stream tin, from the modern process of washing and separating the particles of the ore thus lodged by directing over their bed a stream of water. No tools of which they were possessed could have enabled them to cut their way to the veins of metal concealed in the rocks. The language of Diodorus supports the same conclusion. He speaks of the tin as being mixed with earth when it is first dug out of the mine; but, from what he adds, it would appear that the islanders knew how to separate the metal from the dross by smelting. After it was thus purified, they prepared it for market by casting it into ingots in the shape of dice. What lead they had was no doubt procured in like manner from the surface of the soil or a very small depth under it. Pliny indeed expressly states that, even in his time, this latter metal was found in Britain in great plenty lying thus exposed or scarcely covered.
There is reason to believe that some knowledge of the art of working in metals was possessed by the Britons before the Roman invasion. Moulds for spear, arrow, and axe heads have been frequently found both in Britain and Ireland;[9] and the discovery in 1735, on Easterly Moor, near York, of 100 axe-heads, with several lumps of metal and a quantity of cinders, may be considered sufficient testimony that at least the bronze imported into Britain was cast into shapes by the inhabitants themselves.[10] The metal of which the British weapons and tools were made has been chemically analyzed in modern limes, and the proportions appear to be, in a spear-head, one part of tin to six of copper; in an axe-head, one of tin and ten of copper; and in a knife, one of tin to seven and a half of copper.[11]
Whatever knowledge the Gauls possessed of the art of fabricating and dyeing cloth, the more civilized inhabitants of the South of Britain, having come originally from Gaul, and always keeping up a close intercourse with the people of that country, may be fairly presumed to have shared with them. The long dark-coloured mantles, in which Strabo describes the inhabitants of the Cassiterides as attired, may indeed have been of skins, but were more probably of some woollen texture. The Gauls are stated by various ancient authors to have both woven and dyed wool; and Pliny mentions a kind of felt which they made merely by pressure, which was so hard and strong, especially when vinegar was used in its manufacture, that it would resist the blow of a sword. Cæsar tells us that the ships of the Veneti of Gaul, notwithstanding their superior strength and size, had only skins for sails; and he expresses a doubt as to whether that material was not employed either from the want of linen or ignorance of its use. At a somewhat later period, however, it appears from Pliny that linen cloth was fabricated in all parts of Gaul. The dyes which the Britons used for their cloth were probably extracted from the same plant from which they obtained those with which they marked their skin, namely, the isatis, or woad. "Its colour," says a late writer, "was somewhat like indigo, which has in a great degree superseded the use of it....The best woad usually yields a blue tint, but that herb, as well as indigo, when partially deoxidated, has been found to yield a fine green...The robes of the fanatic British women, witches, or priestesses, were black, vestis feralis; and that colour was a third preparation of woad by the application of a greater heat."[12] Woad is still cultivated for the purposes of dyeing in France, and also, to a smaller extent, in England.
Some of these facts would seem to afford us reason for suspecting that Britain was better known even to the Roman world before the two expeditions of Cæsar than is commonly supposed, or than we should be led to infer from Cæsar's own account of those attempts. We may even doubt whether he was himself as ignorant of the country as he affects to have been. He may very possibly have wished to give to his achievement the air of a discovery as well as of a conquest. Tacitus appears to be disposed to claim for Agricola, a century and a half later, the honour of having first ascertained Britain to be an island, although even Cæsar professes no doubt about that point; and, from the language of every preceding writer who mentions the name of the country, its insular character must evidently have been well known from time immemorial. The Romans did nothing directly, and, notwithstanding all their conquests, little even indirectly, in geographical discovery; almost wherever they penetrated the Greeks or the Orientals had been before them; and any reputation gained in that field would naturally be valued in proportion to its rarity. But, however this may be, Cæsar's invasion certainly had the immediate effect of giving a celebrity to Britain which it had never before enjoyed. Lucretius, the oldest Roman writer who has mentioned Britain, is also, we believe, the only one in whose works the name is found before the date of Cæsar's visit. Of the interest which that event excited, the Letters of Cicero, to some passages of which we have already referred, written at the time both to his brother Quintus, who was in Cæsar's army, and to Atticus and his other friends, afford sufficient evidence. In the first instance, expectations seem to have been excited that the conquest would probably yield more than barren laurels; but these were soon dissipated. "It is ascertained," Cicero writes to Atticus, before the issue of the expedition was yet known at Rome, "that the approaches to the island are defended by natural impediments of wonderful vastness (mirificis molibus); and it is known too by this time that there is not a scruple of silver in that island, nor the least chance of booty, unless it may be from slaves, of whom you will scarcely expect to find any very highly accomplished in letters or in music."[13] So, also, in the epistle immediately following to the same correspondent, he mentions having had letters both from his brother and from Cæsar, informing him that the business in Britain was finished, and that hostages had been received from the inhabitants; but that no booty had been obtained, although a pecuniary tribute had been imposed (imperata tamen pecunia).
Although the island was not conquered by Cæsar, the way was in a manner opened to it, and its name rendered ever after familiar, by his sword and his pen. Besides, the reduction of Gaul, which he effected, removed the most considerable barrier between the Romans and Britain. After that, whether compelled to receive an imperial governor or left unattacked, it could not remain as much dissociated from the rest of the world and unvisited as before. A land of Roman arts, letters, and government,—of Roman order and magnificence, public and private,—now lay literally under the eyes of the natives of Britain; and it was impossible that such a spectacle should have been long contemplated, and that the intercourse which must have existed between the two closely approaching coasts could have long gone on, without the ideas and habits of the formerly secluded islanders, semibarbarians themselves and encompassed by semibarbarians, undergoing some change. Accordingly, Strabo has intimated that, even in his time, that is to say, in the reign of Augustus, the Romkan arts, manners, and religion had gained some footing in Britain. It appears also, from his account, that, although no annual payment under the obnoxious name of a tribute was exacted from the Britons by Augustus, yet that prince derived a considerable revenue, not only from the presents which were made to him by the British princes, but also by means of what would certainly now be accounted a very decided exercise of sovereignty over the island, the imposition of duties or customs upon exports and imports. To these imposts, it seems, the Britons submitted without resistance; yet they must of course have been collected by functionaries of the imperial government stationed within the island, for it was a leading regulation of the Roman financial system that all such duties should be paid on goods exported before embarkation, and on goods imported before they were landed. If the duties were not paid according to this rule, the goods were forfeited. The right of inspection, and the other rights with which the collectors were invested to enable them to apportion and levy these taxes, were necessarily of the most arbitrary description; and they must have been even more than ordinarily so in a country where the imperial government was not established, and there was no regular superintending power set over them. Strabo says that a great part of Britain had come to be familiarly known to the Romans through the intercourse with it which was thus maintained.
All this implies, that the foreign commerce of the island had already been considerably extended; and such accordingly is proved to have been the case even by the catalogue—probably an incomplete one—of its exports and imports which Strabo gives us. Among the former he mentions gold, silver, and iron, but, strangely enough, neither lead nor tin; corn, cattle, skins,—including both hides of horned cattle and the skins and fleeces of sheep,—and dogs, which he describes as possessing various excellent qualities. In those days slaves were also obtained from Britain as they now are from the coast of Africa; and it may be suspected, from Cicero's allusion already quoted, that this branch of trade was older even than Cæsar's invasion. Cicero seems to speak of the slaves as a well-known description of British produce. These several kinds of raw produce the Britons appear to have exchanged for articles the manufacture of which was probably of more value than the material, and which were, for the greater part, rather showy than useful. The imports enumerated by Strabo are ivory bridles, gold chains, cups of amber, drinking glasses, and a variety of other articles of the like kind. Still, all these are articles of a very different sort from the brass buttons and glass beads, by means of which trade is carried on with savages.
After the establishment of the Roman dominion in the country, its natural resources were no doubt much more fully developed, and its foreign trade both in the way of exportation and importation, but in the latter more especially, must have assumed altogether a new aspect. The Roman colonists settled in Britain of course were consumers of the same necessaries and luxuries as in other parts of the empire; and such of these as could not be obtained in the country were imported for their use from abroad. They must have been paid for, on the other hand, by the produce of the island, of its soil, of its mines, perhaps of its seas, and by the native manufactures, if there were any of these suited to the foreign market.
The chief export of Roman Britain, in the most flourishing times of the province, appears to have been corn. This island, indeed, seems eventually to have come to be considered in some sort as the Sicily of the northern part of the empire; and in the fourth century we find the armies of Gaul and Germany depending in great part for their subsistence upon the regular annual arrivals of corn from Britain. It was stored in those countries for their use in public granaries. But on extraordinary emergencies a much greater quantity was brought over than sufficed for this object. The historian Zosimus relates that in the year 359, on the Roman colonies situated in the Upper Rhine having been plundered by the enemy, the Emperor Julian built a fleet of 800 barks, of a larger size than usual, which he dispatched to Britain for corn; and that they brought over so much that the inhabitants of the plundered towns and districts received enough not only to support them during the winter, but also to sow their lands in the spring, and to serve them till the next harvest. It is probable also that Britain now supplied the continental parts of the empire with other agricultural produce as well as grain. No doubt its cattle, which were abundant even in the time of Cæsar, frequently supplied the foreign market with carcases as well as hides, and were also exported alive for breeding and the plough. The British horses were highly esteemed by the Romans both for their beauty and their training. Various Latin poets, as well as the geographer Strabo, have celebrated the pre-eminence of the British dogs above all others both for courage, size, strength, fleetness, and scent.[14] Cheese, also, which the natives, when they first became known to the Romans, are said not to have understood how to make, is stated to have been afterwards exported from the island in large quantities. The chalk of Britain, and probably also the lime and the marl, seem to have been held in high estimation abroad; and an altar or votive stone is related to have been found in the seventeenth century at Domburgh, in Zealand, with an inscription testifying it to have been dedicated to a goddess named Nehaiennia, for her preservation of his freight, by Secundus Silvanus, a British chalk-merchant (Negociator Cretarius Britannicianus).
We may fairly presume that the trade in the ancient metallic products of the island, tin and lead, was greatly extended during the Roman occupation. It seems to have been then that the tin-mines first began to be worked to any considerable depth, or rather that the metal began to be procured by any process which could properly be called mining. It has, been supposed that convicted criminals among the Romans used to be condemned to work in the British mines. Roman coins, and also blocks of tin, with Latin inscriptions, have been found in the old tin-mines and stream-works of Cornwall. The British Museum contains several pigs of lead stamped by the Romans, which have been discovered in different parts of the country. Britain then, as now, seems to have produced much more lead than all the rest of Europe. But we have no direct information as to any actual exports of the metals from Britain in the Roman times, and can merely infer the fact from the mention which we find made of them as important products of the country, and from the other evidences we have that they were then obtained in considerable quantities. On those grounds it has been supposed that supplies were in those days obtained from Britain not only of lead and tin, but also of iron, and even of the precious metals. Tacitus expressly mentions gold and silver as among the mineral products of the island.[15]
The same writer adds that Britain likewise produces pearls, the colour of which, however, is dusky and livid; but this he thinks may probably be attributed to the unskilfulness of the gatherers, who do not pluck the fish alive from the rocks, as is done in the Red Sea, but merely collect them as the sea throws them up dead. The pearls of Britain seem to have very early acquired celebrity. A tradition is preserved by Suetonius that Julius Cæsar was tempted to invade the island by the hope of enriching himself with its pearls; and Pliny speaks of a shield studded with British pearls which, after his expedition, he dedicated to Venus, and suspended in her temple at Rome. Solinus affirms that the fact of the pearls being British was attested by an inscription on the shield, which agrees very well with Pliny's expression, that Cæesar wished it to be so understood. The oldest Latin writer, we believe, who mentions the British pearls is Pomponius Mela, who asserts that some of the seas of Britain generate pearls and gems. They are also mentioned in the second century by Aelian in his History of Animals, and by Origen in his Commentary on St. Matthew, who, although he describes them as somewhat cloudy, affirms that they were esteemed next in value to those of India. They were, he says, of a gold colour. Some account of the British pearls is also given in the fourth century by Marcellinus, who describes them, however, as greatly inferior to those of Persia. In the same age the poet Ausonius mentions those of Caledonia under the poetical figure of the white shell-berries.[16] But the British pearls have also been well known in modern times. Bede notices them as a product of the British seas and rivers in the eighth century. There is a chapter upon those found in Scotland, in the description of that country prefixed to Hector Boece's History, in which the writer gives an account of the manner of catching the fish in his time (the beginning of the sixteenth century). It is very different from that which Tacitus has noticed, as will appear from the passage, which is thus given in Harrison's English translation:—"They are so sensible and quick of hearing, that, although you, standing on the brae or bank above them, do speak never so softly, or throw never so small a stone into the water, yet they will descry you, and settle again to the bottom, without return for that time. Doubtless they have, as it were, a natural carefulness of their own commodity, as not ignorant how great estimation we mortal men make of the same amongst us; and, therefore, so soon as the fishermen do catch them, they bind their shells together, for otherwise they would open and shed their pearls, of purpose for which they know themselves to be pursued. Their manner of apprehension is this; first, four or five persons go into the river together, up unto the shoulders, and there stand in a compass one by another, with poles in their hands, whereby they rest more surely, sith they fix them in the ground, and stay with one hand upon them; then, casting their eyes down to the bottom of the water, they espy where they lie by their shining and clearness, and with their toes take them up (for the depth of the water will not suffer them to stoop for them), and give them to such as stand next them." The Scotch pearls, according to Boece, were engendered in a long and large sort of mussel, called the horse-mussel. On the subject of the origin of the pearl he follows Pliny's notion. These mussels, he says, "early in the morning, in the gentle, clear, and calm air, lift up their upper shells and mouths a little above the water, and there receive of the fine and pleasant breath or dew of heaven, and afterwards, according to the measure and quantity of this vital force received, they first conceive, then swell, and finally product the pearl." "The pearls that are so got in Scotland," he adds, "are not of small value; they are very orient and bright, light and round, and sometimes of the quantity of the nail of one's little finger, as I have had and seen by mine own experience." In his own Description of England, also, written about the middle of the sixteenth century, Harrison notices those still to be found in that part of the island. He accounts for their having fallen into disrepute in a curious way. "Certes," he writes, "they are to be found in these our days, and thereto of divers colours, in no less numbers than ever they were of old time. Yet are they not now so much desired because of their smallness, and also for other causes, but especially sith clmrcli-work, as copes, vestments, albes, tiinicles, altar-cloths, canopies, and such tr£trashare worthily abolished, upon which our countrymen superstitiously bestowed no small quantities of them. For I think there were few churches or religious houses, besides bishops' mitres, books, and other pontifical vestures, but were either thoroughly fretted or notably garnished with huge numbers of them." He adds, "I have at sundry times gathered more than an ounce of them, of which divers have holes already entered by nature, some of them not much inferior to great peason (peas) in quantity, and thereto of sundry colours, as it happeneth among such as are brought from the easterly coast to Saffron Walden in Lent, when for want of flesh stale stinking fish and welked mussels are thought to be good meat, for other fish is too dear amongst us when law doth bind us to use it. They (pearls) are also sought for in the latter end of August, a little before which time the sweetness of the dew is most convenient for that kind of fish which doth engender and conceive them, whose form is flat, and much like unto a lempit. The further north, also, that they be found, the brighter is their colour, and their substances of better valure, as lapidaries do give out." In another place, Harrison mentions, as found in England, what he calls mineral pearls, "which," he says, "as they are for greatness and colour most excellent of all other, so they are digged out of the main land, and in sundry places far distant from the shore." Camden, and his translator, Gibson, have given us an account of pearls found in the river Conway in their time. "The pearls of this river," saysthe latter, "are as large and well coloured as any we find either in Britain or Ireland, and have probably been fished for here ever since the Roman conquest, if not sooner." The writer goes on to inform us, that the British and Irish pearls are found in a large black mussel; that they are peculiar to rapid and strong rivers; and that they are common in Wales, in the North of England, in Scotland, and some parts of Ireland. They are called by the people of Caernarvonshire, kretyin diliw, or deluge shells. The mussels that contain pearls are generally known by being a little contracted, or contorted from their usual shape. A Mr. Wynn had a valuable collection of pearls, procured from the Conway, amongst which Gibson says that he noted a stool-pearl, of the form and bigness of a lesser button mould, weighing seventeen grains. A Conway pearl presented to the queen of Charles II., by her chamberlain, Sir Richard Wynn (perhaps of the family of this Mr. Wynn), is said still to be one of the ornaments of the British crown. Camden also speaks of pearls found in the river Irt, in Cumberland. "These," he says, "the inhabitants gather up at low water; and the jewellers buy them of the poor people for a trifle, but sell them at a good price." Gibson adds (writing in the beginning of the last century), that not long since a patent had been granted to some persons for pearl-fishing in this river; but the pearls, he says, were not very plentiful here, and were most of the dull-coloured kind, called sand-pearl. Mention is made in a paper in the Philosophical Transactions, of several pearls of large size that were found in the sixteenth century in Ireland; among the rest, one that weighed thirty-six carats.[17] Pennant (Tour in Scotland, 1769) gives an account of a pearl-fishery then carried on in the neighbourhood of Perth, in Scotland, which, though by that time nearly exhausted, had, a few years before, produced between three and four thousand pounds' worth of pearls annually. An eminent naturalist, we observe, has recently expressed some surprise that the regular fisheries which once existed for this native gem should have been abandoned.[18] The pearl, however, though still a gem of price, is not now held in the same extraordinary estimation as in ancient times, when it appears, indeed, to have been considered more valuable than any other gem whatever. "The chief and topmost place," says Pliny, "among all precious things, belongs to the pearl."[19]
Another product of the British waters, which was highly prized by the luxurious Romans, was the oyster. From the manner in which the oysters of Britain are mentioned by Pliny, their sweetness seems to have been the quality for which they were especially esteemed.[20] Juvenal speaks of them as gathered at Rutupiæ, now Richborough, near Sandwich.[21] Pliny also mentions as among the greatest delicacies of Britain a sort of geese which he calls chenerotes, and describes as smaller than the wiser, or common goose.[22]
Solinus[23] celebrates the great store found in Britain of the stone called the gagates, in English the black amber, or jetstone. This mineral, as may be seen from Pliny,[24] was held by the ancients to be endowed with a great variety of medical and magical virtues, Camden mentions it as found on the coast of Yorkshire. "It grows," he says, "upon the rocks, within a chink or cliff of them; and before it is polished looks reddish and rusty, but after, is really (as Solinus describes it) diamond-like, black, and shining." "Certain it is," says Harrison, "that even to this day there is some plenty to be had of this commodity in Derbyshire and about Berwick, whereof rings, salts, small cups, and sundry trifling toys are made; although in many men's opinions nothing so fine as that which is brought over by merchants daily from the main." Marbodaeus, however, gives the preference to the jets of Britain over those of all other countries.
The inhabitants of Britain under the Roman government no doubt carried on traffic with the other parts of the empire in ships of their own; and the province must be supposed to have possessed a considerable mercantile as well as military navy. It is of the latter only, however, that the scanty history of the island we have during the Roman domination has preserved any mention. A powerful maritime force was maintained by the Romans for the defence of the east, or, as it was called, the Saxon coast; and about the end of the third century we have the first example of an exclusively British navy under the sovereignty of the famous Carausius. The navy of Carausius must have been manned in great part by his own Britons ; and the superiority which it maintained for years in the surrounding seas, preserving for its master his island empire against "the superb fleets that were built and equipped," says a contemporary writer,[25] "simultaneously in all the rivers of the Gauls to overwhelm him," may be taken as an evidence that the people of Britain had by this time been long familiar with ships of all descriptions.
Wholly uncultivated as the greater part of the country was when it was first visited by the Romans, it was most probably not unprovided with a few great highways, by which communication was maintained between one district and another. Cæsar could scarcely have marched his force even so far into the interior as he did, if the districts through which he passed had been altogether without roads. Rude and imperfect enough these British roads may have been, but still they must have been to a certain extent artificial; they must have been cleared of such incumbrances as admitted of being removed, and carried in a continuous line out of the way of marshes and such other natural impediments as could not be otherwise overcome. Tacitus would seem to be speaking of the native roads, when he tells us that Agricola, on preparing in his sixth summer to push into the regions beyond the Forth, determined first to have a survey of the country made by his fleet; because it was apprehended that the roads were infested by the enemy's forces. The old tradition is, that the southern part of the island Avas, in the British times, crossed in various directions by four great highways, still in great part to be traced, and known by the names of the Fosse, Watling-street, Ermine-street, and the Ichenild. The Fosse appears to have begun at Totness, in Devonshire, and to have proceeded by Bristol, Cirencester, Chipping Norton, Coventry, Leicester, and Newark, to Lincold. Watling-street is said to have commenced at Dover, to have proceeded thence through Kent, by Canterbury, to London; then to have passed towards the north, over Hampstead Heath, to Edgeware, St. Alban's, Dunstable, Stoney Stratford, in Northamptonshire, along the west side of Leicestershire, crossing the Fosse near Bosworth, and hence to York and Chester-le-Street, in the county of Durham. Some carry it, in later times, from this point as far as to Lanark and Falkirk, in Scotland; and others even to Caithness, at the extremity of the island. The Ermine-street is understood to have run from St. David's, in Wales, to Southampton, crossing the Fosse between Cirencester and Gloucester. The Ichenild is supposed by some to have been so called from having begun in the country of the Iceni, on the east coast. It is commonly thought to have crossed Watling-street, at Dunstable, and thence to have taken a north-easterly direction, through Staffordshire, to the west side of the island. The utmost, however, that can be conceded in regard to these roads being of British origin is, that lines of communication in such directions may have existed in the time of the Britons. It was the Romans, undoubtedly, by whom they were transformed into those elaborate and almost monumental works which their remains declare them to have been. Roads constructed to last for ever were laid down by that extraordinary people, as the first foundations of their empire, wherever they planted themselves, and seem to have been considered by them as the indispensable veins and arteries of all civilization. In Britain it is probable that they began their operations with the great native high roads, the course of which would be at least accommodated to the situation of the principal towns and other more important localities throughout the country. These they no doubt levelled, straightened, and paved, so as to fit them not only for the ordinary purposes of pedestrian and carriage communication, but also for the movements of large bodies of infantry and cavalry in all weathers and in all seasons. But they formed also many new lines of road, leading from one to another of the many new stations which they established in all parts of the country. Camden describes the Roman ways in Britain as running in some places through drained fens, in others through low valleys, raised and paved, and so broad that they admit of two carts easily passing each other. In this country, as elsewhere, the Roman roads were in great part the work of the soldiery, of whose accomplishments skill in this kind of labour was one of the chief. But the natives were also forced to lend their assistance ; and we find the Caledonian Galgacus, in Tacitus, complaining, with indignation, that the bodies of his countrymen were worn down by their oppressors, in clearing woods and draining marshes—stripes and indignities being added to their toils. To this sort of work also criminals were sentenced, as well as to the mines. The laws of the empire made special provision for the repair of the public ways, and they were given in charge to overseers, whose duty it was to see them kept in order. The ancient document called the Itinerary of Antoninus, enumerates fifteen routes or journeys in Britain, all of which we may presume were along regularly formed high-roads; and probably the list does not comprehend the whole number of such roads that the island contained. In every instance the distances from station to station are marked in Roman miles; and no doubt they were indicated on the actual road by milestones regularly placed along the line. Of these, the famous London stone, still lo be seen leaning against the south wall of St. Swithin's church, in Cannon-street, London, is supposed to have been the first, or that from which the others were numbered along the principal roads, which appear to have proceeded from this point as from a centre. The Roman roads in Britain have undergone so many changes since their first formation, from neglect and dilapidation on the one hand, and from many repairs which they are known to have received long after the Roman times, and in styles of workmanship very different from the Roman, that the mode in which they were originally constructed is in most cases not very easy of discovery. One of those which had probably remained most nearly in its primitive condition was that discovered by Sir Christopher Wren under the present Cheapside, London, while he was preparing to erect the church of St. Mary-le-Bow. "Here," says the account in the Parentalia, "to his surprise, he sunk about eighteen feet deep through made ground, and then imagined he was come to the natural soil and hard gravel; but, upon full examination, it appeared to be a Roman causeway of rough stone, close and well rammed, with Roman brick and rubbish at the bottom for a foundation, and all firmly cemented. This causeway was four feet thick. Underneath this causeway lay the natural clay, over which that part of the city stands, and which descends at least forty feet lower." Wren eventually determined to erect the tower of the church upon the Roman causeway, as the firm- est foundation he could obtain, and the most proper for the lofty and weighty structure he designed. Some of the other Roman roads in Britain, however, and especially those connecting some of the lines of military posts, were constructed in a more ambitious style of workmanship than appears to have been here employed—being paved, like the famous Appian way and others in Italy, with flat stones, although of different sizes, yet carefully cut to a uniform rectangular shape, and closely joined together. Some of our great roads still in use were originally formed by the Romans, or were used at least in the Roman times. One example is the great western road leading to Bath and Bristol, at least for a considerable part of its course.[26]
There has been much speculation and controversy on the subject of the description of Money in use among the ancient Britons. Cæsar's statement is, distinctly, that they had no coined money. Instead of money, he says, they used pieces either of bronze or of iron, adjusted to a certain weight. There is some doubt, owing to the disagreement of the manuscripts, as to whether he calls these pieces of metal rings, or thin plates, or merely tallies or cuttings (taleæ); but the most approved reading is rings. A curious disquisition on this ring-money of the Celtic nations was published a few years ago by Sir William Betham.[27] Specimens of this primitive currency, according to Sir William, have been found in great numbers in Ireland, not only of bronze, but also of gold and silver. Sometimes the form is that of a complete ring, sometimes that of a wire or bar, merely bent till the two extremities are brought near to each other. In some cases the extremities are armed with flattened knobs, in others they are rounded out into cup-like hollows. Sometimes several rings are joined together at the circumferences; other specimens consist of rings linked into one another. The most important peculiarity, how- ever, distinguishing these curious relics, and that which Sir William Betham conceives chiefly proves them to have really served the purposes of money, is, that, upon being weighed, by far the greater number of them appear to be exact multiples of a certain standard unit. The smallest of gold which he had seen, he says, weighed twelve grains, or half a pennyweight; and of others, one contained this quantity three times, another five, another ten, another sixteen, another twenty-two, another four hundred and eighty (a pound troy), and another five hundred and thirty-four. The case he affirms to be similar both with those of silver, and those of bronze. All, he says, with a very few exceptions, which may easily be accounted for on the supposition of partial waste or other injury, weigh each a certain number of half pennyweights. The smallest specimens even of the bronze ring-money are quite as accurately balanced as those of the more valuable metals; and among these bronze specimens, indeed, he states, that, after having weighed a great many, he has never found a single exception to their divisibility into so many half pennyweights. It would thus appear that the ancient Celtic scale was the same with that which we now call troy weight. Sir William conjectures that the Latin uncia, an ounce, is the Celtic word itnsha, which he says signifies one-sixth; in which case we must suppose the original integral weight of which the ounce was a fraction to have been half our present pound troy. "To what remote period of antiquity," he observes, "do these singular facts carry us back! To many ages before the time of Cæsar, or even Herodotus. The latter speaks of the Lydians as the first who coined metallic money, at least six centuries before our era. These are no visionary speculations; we have here the remains and imperishable relics of those early times to verify the whole; and recent investigations and discoveries, in a most singularly convincing manner, come to our aid, by showing that the fresco paintings in the tombs of Egypt exhibit people bringing, as tribute to the foot of the throne of Pharaoh, bags of gold and silver rings, at a period before the exodus of the Israelites." These rings, however, are not the only specimens that have been found of the substitutes used by the Britons before the introduction of coined money. Both in barrows and elsewhere there have been occasionally turned up hoards of what has all the appearance of being another species of primitive currency, consisting of small plates of iron, mostly thin and ragged, and without any impression.
Of British coined money the description which is apparently of greatest antiquity is that of which the specimens present only certain pictorial figures, without any legends or literal characters. Of this sort of coins a considerable collection was discovered about the middle of the last century, on the top of Carnbre Hill, in Cornwall. Of these, some were stamped with figures of horses, oxen, hogs, and sheep; a few had such figures of animals on one side, and a head apparently of a royal personage on the other. All of them were of gold; and perhaps it was only money made of the more precious metals which it was thought necessary at first to take the trouble of thus impressing. When the convenience of the practice had been experienced, and perhaps its application facilitated, it would be extended to the bronze as well as to the gold and silver currency. Although even that point has been disputed, it may be admitted as most probable that the Carnbre coins were really British money, that is to say, that they were not only current in Britain, but had been coined under the public authority of some one or more of the states of the island. This we seem to be entitled to infer, from the emblematic figures impressed on them, which distinguish them from any known Gallic or other foreign coins, and are at the same time similar to those commonly found on what appears to be the British money of a somewhat later period. The questions, however, of when, where, and by whom they were coined, still remain. Although the figures upon them are peculiar, they still bear a general resemblance to the money, or what has been supposed to be the money, of the ancient Gauls ; and, as well from this circumstance as from the whole character of the early British civilization, which appears to have been mainly borrowed from Gaul, we may presume that they were either fabricated in that country, or were at least the work of Gallic artists. It is remarkable that these coins are all formed of pure gold; and Diodorus Siculus informs us, that in no articles which they made of gold did the Gauls mix any alloy with the precious metal. As to their date, it would seem to he subsequent to the time of Cæsar, since, according to his account, as we have just seen, the Britons were then unacquainted with the use of coined money of any description; and it may be placed with most probability in the interval between his invasion and that of the Emperor Claudius—a period, as we have already endeavoured to show, during which British civilization must have made a very considerable, though unrecorded, progress.
Besides this merely pictured metallic money, however, there exist numerous British coins, or what bear the appearance of being such, which are marked not only with figures of various kinds, but also with legends in 
the abbreviations Cun, Cuno, Cunob, or Cunobe. Several have, in addition, what has been supposed to be the abbreviated name of their place of coinage; being most frequently Cam, or Canm, for Camulodunum, as it is conjectured; in one instance Ver, perhaps for Verulamium; in other cases No, or Novane, or Novanit, of which no probable interpretation has been given. And in addition to these inscriptions, the greater number resent the singular word Tascia, or Tascio, either written at length, or indicated by two or more of its commencing letters. This word has given occasion to much disputation; but perhaps nothing has been proposed on the subject so probable as Camden's suggestion, who conceives that the word, derived apparently from the Latin taxatio, signified, in the British language, a tribute, or tribute-money. The figures upon these coins of Cunobeline are very various. Some have a head, probably that of the king, occasionally surrounded with what seems to be a fillet of pearls, in allusion, we may suppose, to the ancient fame of the island for that highly prized gem; others have a naked full length human figure, with a club over his shoulder; many have the figure of a horse, sometimes accompanied by a wheel, which has been supposed to convey an allusion to the formation of highways, but perhaps is rather intended to indicate the national war-chariot: a crescent, an ear of corn, a star, a comet, a tree, a hog, a dog, a sheep, an ox, a lion, a sphinx, a centaur, a Janus, a female head, a woman riding on an animal like a dog, a man playing on a harp, are some of the representations that have been detected on others. One shows what evidently appears to be a workman in the act of making money; he is seated in a chair, and holds a hammer in his hand, while a number of pieces lie before him. About forty of these coins of Cunobeline have been discovered. Many others also exist, which, from the names, or fragments of names inscribed on them, have been assigned to Boadicea, Cartismandua, Caractacus, Venutius, and other British sovereigns. The legends on most of these, however, are extremely obscure and dubious. What is somewhat remarkable is, that no two, we believe, have been found of the same coinage. They are almost all more or less dish-shaped, or hollowed on one side—a circumstance which is common also to many Roman coins, and may be supposed to have been occasioned by the want of the proper guards to prevent the metal from being bent over the edges of the die by the blow of the hammer. The British coins thus inscribed with Roman characters are some of them of gold, some of silver, some of bronze, some of copper. Unlike also to the coins, mentioned above, without legends, all of them that are formed of the more precious metals are much alloyed.
It must be confessed that the whole subject of these supposed British coins, notwithstanding all the disputation to which they have given rise, is still involved in very considerable obscurity. It has even been denied that they ever served the purposes of a currency at all. "They are works," observes a late writer, "of no earlier date than the apostasy and anarchy after the Romans. Moreover, they were not money. They were Bardic works belonging to that numerous family of Gnostic, Mithriac, or Masonic medals, of which the illustration has been learnedly handled in Chifflet's 'Abraxas Proteus,' Von Hammer's 'Baphomctus,' the Rev, R. Walsh's 'Essay on Ancient Coins,' and (as applicable to these very productions) the Rev. E. Davies's 'Essay on British Coins.' The coins engraved by Dom. B. de Montfaucon as remnants of ancient Gaulish money are productions of similar appearance and of the same class. Paracelsus alludes to them as money coined by the gnomes and distributed by them among men. Their uses have never been known; but I explain them thus. Money is a ticket entitling the bearer to goods of a given value.....Masonic medals were tickets entitling one initiate to receive assistance from another. It may be objected, that there was no great difficulty of stealing or forging them. True; but to be a beneficial holder of these baubles it was necessary that you should be able to explain the meaning of all the devices upon them. According to the sort of explanation given by the party, it would appear whether he was an authorized holder, and, if such, what rank of initiation he had attained, and consequently to what degree of favour and confidence he was entitled. The names selected to adorn these British medals are unequivocally marked with hatred for the Romans, and love for the memory of those Britons who warred against them ; and they imply an exhortation and a compact to expel and exclude the Roman nation from the island."[28] This view is supported by some plausible arguments; but it is far from being altogether satisfactory. The denial, however, of the title of these coins or medals to be accounted a species of ancient money, is no mere piece of modern scepticism. Camden, though he inclines to a different opinion, expresses himself upon the point with the greatest hesitation. "For my part," he says, "I freely declare myself at a loss what to say to things so much obscured by age; and you, when you read these conjectures, will plainly perceive that I have groped in the dark." "Whether this sort of money passed current in the way of trade and exchange," he observes in conclusion, "or was at first coined for some special use, is a question among the learned. My opinion (if I may be allowed to interpose it) is this. After Cæsar had appointed how much money should be paid yearly by the Britons, and they were oppressed under Augustus with the payment of customs, both for exporting and importing commodities, and had, by degrees, other taxes laid upon them, namely, for corn-grounds, plantations, groves, pasturage of greater and lesser cattle, as being now in the condition of subjects, not of slaves; I have thought that such coins were first stamped for these uses; for greater cattle with a horse, for lesser with a hog, for woods with a tree, and for corn-grounds with an ear of corn; but those with a man's head see to have been coined for poll-money. Not but I grant that afterwards these came into common use. Nor can I reconcile myself to the judgment of those who would have the hog, the horse, the ear, the Janus, &c., to be the arms of particular people or princes; since we find that one and the same prince and people used several of these, as Cunobeline stamped upon his coins a hog, a horse, an ear, and other things. But whether this tribute-money was coined by the Romans, or the provincials, or their kings, when the whole world was taxed by Augustus, I cannot say. One may guess them to have been stamped by the British kings, since Britain, from the time of Julius Caesar to that of Claudius lived under its own laws, and was left to be governed by its own kings, and since also they have stamped on them the effigies and titles of British princes."
After the establishment of the Roman dominion in the island, the coins of the empire would naturally become the currency of the new province; and indeed Gildas expressly states that from the time of Claudius; it was ordained by an imperial edict that all money current among the Britons should bear the imperial stamp. These expressions, by the by, would rather seem to countenance the opinion, that coined money not bearing the imperial stamp had been in circulation in the country before the publication of the edict. Great numbers of Roman coins of various ages and denominations have been found in Britain. "There are prodigious quantities found here," observes Camden, "in the ruins of demolished cities, in the treasure-coffers or vaults which were hidden in that age, and in funeral urns; and I was very much surprised how such great abundance should remain to this day, till I read that the melting down of ancient money was prohibited by the imperial constitutions."
It is highly probable, also, that some of this imperial money was coined in Britain, where the Romans may be presumed to have established mints, as they are known to have done in their other provinces. There are several coins extant both of Carausius and of Allectus, and these it can hardly be doubted were the productions of a British mint. It is remarkable that in the sepulchral barrows there has been found imperial money of the times of Avitus (A.D. 455), of Anthemius (A.D. 467—472), and even of Justinian (A.D. 527—565). Many of the Roman coins, also, or imperial medals struck upon particular occasions, from the time of Claudius, bear figures or legends relating to Britain, and form interesting illustrations of the history of the island.[29]
- ↑ xxxi. 22.
- ↑ Avienus wrote his work, entitled " Ora Maritima," in Latin iambic verse in the fourth century; but he states that he drew his information from the ancient Punic records.
- ↑ Nat. Hist. VII. 57.
- ↑ See in Maurice's Indian Antiquities, vol. vi. pp. 249, &c., a " Dissertation on the Commerce carried on in very remote ages by the Phoenicians, Carthaginians, and Greeks, with the British Islands, for their ancient staple of tin, and on their extensive barter of that commodity with those of the Indian Continent ; the whole confirmed by extracts from the Institutes of Menu, &c." The extracts from the Institutes of Menn, however, hardly deserve this formal announcement ; and the essay, altogether, is, like everything else of this author's, a very flimsy performance.
- ↑ Camden has here expressed himself in a manner singularly contrasting with his customary, and, it may be justly added, characteristic accuracy. First, in order to prove "that it was late before the name of the Britons was heard of by the Greeks and Romans," he quotes a passage from Polybius, which in the original only implies that it was doubtful whether the north of Europe was entirely encompassed by the sea, but which he renders as if it asserted that nothing was known of Europe to the north of Marseilles and Narbonne at all. Polybius has, in fact, himself described many parts of Gaul to the north of these towns. Next he makes the historian to have been the friend, not of the younger, but of the elder Africanus, and to have travelled over Europe not about B.C. 150, but 370 years before Christ. Even if he had been the contemporary of the elder Scipio, this would be a monstrous mistake. The whole of this passage in Camden, however (it is in his chapter on the Manners of the Britons), is opposed to his own opinions as expressed in other parts of his work. The authority of Festus Avienus, which he here disclaims, he elsewhere makes use of very freely (see his chapter on the Scilly islands, at the end of the Britannia). And, whereas he contends here that Britain had never been heard of by the Greeks till a comparatively recent date, he has a few pages before a long argument to prove that it must have been known "to the most ancient of the Greeks." In the same chapter (on the Name of Britain) he quotes a passage from Pliny, in which that writer characterizes the island as famous in the writings (or records, as it may be translated) of the Greeks and Romans—"clara Grsecis nostrisque monumentis."
- ↑ Harrison's Description of England. b. iii. c. 7.
- ↑ King's Munimenta Antiqua, vol. i. page 28, &c.
- ↑ Archæologia, vol. xxvi. p. 257, &c.
- ↑ Archæologia, vol. xiv. pl. lv. and vol. xv. pl. xxxiv. Collectanea de Reb. Hibern. vol. iv. pl. x.
- ↑ Borlase's Cornwall, p. 287
- ↑ Meyrick's Original Inhabitants; and Philosophical Transactions for 1796, p. 395, &c.
- ↑ Britannia after the Romans, p. 56.
- ↑ Epist. ad Att. iv. 16.
- ↑ See a curious collection of these testimonies in Camden's Britannia, by Gibson, i. 139-40. See also Harrison's Description of England, B. iii. c. 7.
- ↑ Agric. 12.
- ↑ Ausonius, in Mosella. His expression is, "Albentes concharum germiua baccas;" literally, the white berries, the buds of shells. This appears to be the origin of the verse "Gignit et insignes antiqua Britannia baccas," quoted by Camden, and by other writers after him, from Marbodaeus, a Frenchman of the eleventh century, who wrote a Latin poem entitled "De Gemmarum Lapidumque preciosorum formis, natura, et viribus." Of course a writer of that age can be no authority in this case.
- ↑ Phil. Trans, for 1693, p. 659.
- ↑ Swainson on the Zoology of England and Wales, in Macculloch's Statistical Account of the British Empire, vol. i. p. 160.
- ↑ Nat. Hist. ix. 54.
- ↑ Nat. Hist. ix. 29, and xxxii. 21.
- ↑ Sat. iv. 141.
- ↑ Nat. Hist. x. 29.
- ↑ Polyhistor, 22.
- ↑ Nat. Hist, xxxvi. 34.
- ↑ The Orator Mamertinus, c. xii.; quoted in Britannia after the Romans, p. 10.
- ↑ In the "United Service Journal" for January, 1836, is an account of a survey of the Roman Road from Silchester to the station on the Thames called Pontes, made shortly before by the officers studying at the Senior Department of the Royal Military College.
- ↑ Papers read before the Royal Irish Academy, 4to., Dublin, 1836.
- ↑ Britannia after the Romans, pp. 218, &c.
- ↑ See upon this subject, "The Coins of the Romans relating to Britain," by J. G. Akerman, 12mo. Lond. 1836.