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By Law Established
The Beginnings of the English Nation and Church
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 23 October 2024
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When I was a youth in England, a favourite anti-Protestant argument ran: ‘We were here first.’ ‘We’ meant St Augustine of Canterbury. When I came to Wales, this would not do, for as Bede tells us, there were Christians here before St Augustine, and, when he met them, they rejected his authority. To the argument that these Christians were obviously not Roman Catholics, we used to reply: ‘Yes, they were, but cut off by barbarian Saxon invaders of England, they were unaware of Roman liturgical changes and were so attached to old Roman ways that they quarrelled with Augustine.’
I began to study the validity of this reply and hence, twenty years later, this article. My amateur thesis is based on the work of the late Rev. A. W. Wade-Evans, complemented by that of three Blackfriars contributors: Mr Donald Nicholl, Professor Finberg and, especially, Mr Eric John.
That barbarian Saxon invaders cut off Wales from the Continent rests entirely on the story of the Loss of Britain, which forms part of a work ascribed to the Welshman Gildas. Bede made important changes in this story and also wove into it independent traditions of a Saxon advent in Kent. He interpreted the whole in the light of his knowledge that the Saxons were of Germanic stock.
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- Copyright © 1941 Provincial Council of the English Province of the Order of Preachers
References
page 455 note 1 Which is an unsolicited prologue to a solicited article on Christianity in Wales.
page 455 note 2 The Emergence of England and Wales, 2nd edition (EEW), Heffer and Sons, 1959. The eccentric and polemical style may be the reason why many historians have treated the argument of the book with scorn or silence (cf. Kirby, D. P., Bulletin, Board of Celtic Studies, 23, 196870, pp. 37–59Google Scholar). Mrs N. K. Chadwick (e.g. in Angles and Britons, University of Wales, 1963, pp. 120–121) is an exception.
page 455 note 3 ‘Celts, Romans and Saxons’ in Studies, Autumn 1958, pp. 298–304
page 455 note 4 Lucerna, Macmillan, 1964.
page 455 note 5 Orbis Britanniae, Leicester, 1966 (OB). These last three authors have also helped me personally, but are not, of course, accountable for errors in this article.
page 455 note 6 Text and translation: Cymmrodorion Record Series, No. 3, 1899 (G).
page 455 note 7 I shall use ‘Saxon’ as Romans and Welsh used it: to denote all Germanic peoples in Britain, and ‘Welsh’ as those Saxons came to use it: to denote the Welsh‐speakers of modern Wales, Cornwall and Southern Scotland. But they first used ‘Welsh’ to mean ‘Roman’.
page 456 note 1 ‘But before beginning, God willing, a few things…’
page 456 note 2 Cf. Stephen's hisotry of Israel. Acts, 7.
page 456 note 3 Leslie Alcock: Arthur's Britain, Allen Lane, 1971 (AB), p. 25. Cf. F. Kerlouégan in Christianity in Britain 300–700, ed. Barley and Hanson. Leicester, 1968. p. 151.
page 456 note 4 EEW, chapters III and IV.
page 456 note 5 Just possibly of Clydeside.
page 457 note 1 The first Western king whose anointing has been recorded was the Spanish Goth, Wamba, in 672. L. Musset: Les Invasions: les vagues germaniques. P.U.F., 1965, (VG), p. 91.
page 457 note 2 The name ‘Saxon’ occurs once only. An earlier reference to the third‐century Saxon pirates is veiled. Was open criticism of Saxons as a whole not politic?
page 457 note 3 The Latin of the phrase referring to forty‐three years is obscure, but only the above interpretation seems to make sense. Bede had no grounds for his referring the forty‐three years to the year of the Saxon advent. It seems likely then that the Loss was written about 708 (665+43) by a contemporary of Bede. The late date is supported by the note that the heathen idols of the patria survive only in some cases and then deserted and decayed. (G, chapter 4). If patria means all Britain, then Earconberht of Kent (640–664) was the first English king to persecute pagans and destroy idols (Bede H.E., III, 8), while the Gewisse in the West Country were pagan in 635 (H.E., III, 7).
page 458 note 1 EEW, p. 23, note 4. OB, p. 55.
page 458 note 2 Who speaks of the Island of Australia?
page 458 note 3 Trioedd Ynys Prydein, ed. Rachel Bromwich University of Wales 1961 (TYP), p. 228.
page 458 note 4 TYP, p. 228. The figure given: 500 m., is far too long for either place.
page 459 note 1 Cf. the use of ‘Protestant’ and ‘Catholic’ for British and Irish in Ulster.
page 459 note 2 EEW, p. 81. AB, p. 117.
page 459 note 3 EEW p. 43, note 1.
page 459 note 4 Asser's Life of Alfred, chapter 2.
page 459 note 5 EEW. pp. 77, note 1; and 86.
page 459 note 6 After allowing for rhetorical exaggeration, the account of the Saxon attack in the Loss needs nor revision to accord with the Jutish attack deduced from the Chronicle, provided the Roman, Ambrosius Aurelianus, who conter‐attacks the Sasons, is not identified with the Ambrosius who was active between 420 and 440. Even if the chronology based on the heathen prophecy is rejected, it is plain from the Loss that this counter‐attack was long after 440.
page 459 note 7 The ‘invasion’ of Northumbria by Ida is a later addition to Bede's strangely terse note that Ida ‘began to reign’ there in 547. Data given by Nennius put the names of the two Saxon kingdoms of Northumbria into the mid‐fifth century and archaeology shows a large Saxon settlement at York at that period. Cf. P. H. Blair, Roman Britain and Early England. Nelson, 1963, p. 164.
page 459 note 8 EEW, chapter VII.
page 460 note 1 Archaeology suggest that Octha found both Romano‐Britons and Saxons living peaceably in Kent. AB, pp. 183 and 294. One MS. reading Octha ‘came here’ (advenit) to the ‘Cantpariorum’ (Cantware, with a runic ‘w’) suggests that the story was accepted in Kent.
page 460 note 2 Outside the Loss, there is nothing of such disasters in early Welsh tradition, nor of any mass flight (or even flight of nobles), into Wales, except from west Shropshire about 640; i.e. the Welsh nation did not arise from dispossessed refugees.
page 460 note 3 AB, p. 106.
page 461 note 1 Bede uses Brittani when following other writers (except that he is inconsistent when retelling the Loss) and Brettones elsewhere. One writer is particularly interestng, the author of the epitaph of Caedwalla (died 689 in Rome) who has this Saxon king come ex orbe Britanni.
page 461 note 2 Cf. Rhodesia today.
page 461 note 3 The kingdoms around London which entitle themselves ‘——Saxon’, not because of a racial difference, may mark the limits of a particular Britannia, Cf. EEW, p. 60.
page 461 note 4 Our Welsh source may reflect this: ‘There should be held (in the Island of Britain) a Crown and three coronets. The Crown should be worn in London and one of the Coronets. at Penrhyn Rhionydd in the North (possibly Dunragit, Wigtown), the second at Aberffraw (Anglesey) and the third in Cornwall’ (TYP, p. 229). The Island probably owed immediate allegiance to a ruler whose formal title ‘insularis Draco’, Island‐Dragon, may have been kept for us in the Open Letter (G, chapter 33). Cf. the Pendragons, Head Dragons, of Welsh legend.
Faced with troop shortages, it was common late Roman practice to set up what amounted to autonomous states on the frontiers, bound by a treaty (foedus) and aided by centrally‐based armies of regular troops (see VG, p. 69 and passim).
page 462 note 1 Emperor of all Britain' (see OB, pp. 6–13).
page 462 note 2 Cf. Bretwalas, ‘Britain‐Romans’, i.e. Welsh. These Bret terms are probably formed from Brittia, a variant attested by Procopius (ca. 550), via *Brettia, which has also given Breizh, where zh succeeds earlier th, the native name for Brittany.
page 462 note 3 ‘Walda’ is cognate with W. gwlad, country, whose derivative gwledig seems to be confined, as a fromal title, to Magnus Maximus, who was probably in chagre of the regular garrison of the West Coast, and to Welsh rulers of the immediate sub‐Roman period.
page 462 note 4 AB, p. 299.
page 462 note 5 OB, p. 13.
page 462 note 6 E.g. in the old Burgundian kingdoms (see VG, pp. 113–115).
page 463 note 1 The Bretons, often taken to be refugees from the Saxons, seem to have many Germanic words in their language, which may indicate friendly intermingling at some period. Wade‐Evans' suggestion (EEW, p. 61) deserves study.
page 463 note 2 Life of Columba, Book III, chapters x and xxii. Plotting the progress of the Saxons by pagan burial‐sites is therefore unreliable.
page 463 note 3 Warfare was endemic in sub‐Roman Britain. The critical struggle was Welsh and Saxon against Pict and Scot. There followed ‘civil wars’, mostly intra‐Welsh or intra Saxon though Saxon and Welsh against other Saxons was also possible. Civil wars some what resembled modern professional football, with the fame and wealth of the Bretwaldeship corresponding to the First Division Championship.
page 463 note 4 Bede's calm note that the prediction was fulfilled by the slaughter of 1,200 heretical perfidi monks contrasts with his bitterness at the harrying of Christian Northumbria by the Welsh Christian, Cadwallon, and his pagan ally, Penda, which, Bede omits to note, followed a hot pursuit after the eventual defeat of the Christian Edwin's attacks on Christian North Wales attacks which almost certainly involved trespass on Penda's lands. This bias of Bede, reinforced by the Saxon‐Welsh wars within Northumbria, in which the Welsh of southern Scotland were probably the aggressors, seems to be the origin of the myth of a general Saxon‐Welsh war.
page 464 note 1 History of the Wars, VIII, xx. Theudebert's imperialist designs on other Germanic peoples are attested by one of his own letters (VG, p. 132n). Perhaps he saw himself as successor of the Gallic Prefecture of which the Britains were a ‘diocese’ and of which the last leader, Syagrius, a successor of Aeëtius, had been supplanted by Theudebert's ancestor Clovis, with Catholic approval.
page 464 note 2 P. H. Blair: The World of Bede, Secker & Warburg, 1970, p. 63 (but contrast p. 62).
page 464 note 3 ‘Mers’ boundary. The river has no Welsh name.
page 464 note 4 And possibly the Picts and Scots of the Highlands, for Augustine would know of Columba. The next Archbishop, Laurentius, even ‘sought to extend his pastoral care’ to Ireland, ‘the next island to Britain’.
page 464 note 5 There were also Archbishops in provincial cities. Those of Tours plainly thought that the Bretons, who had settled in Gaul with Roman consent, but had kept their identity as far as using Romania for the rest of Gaul, were under their jurisdiction. Thus Mansuetus, episcopus Britannorum, went to the Council of Toun in 461. Licinius, Archbishop of Tours, 509–521, wrote to two Breton priests to condemn breaches of clerical discipline and the Council of Tours of 567 decreed that ‘bishops should not be ordained in Brittany without the consent of the metropolitan and his co‐provincials’ (G, p. 155n). But it seems that the Bretons took as little notice of Tours as the Welsh did of Canterbury‐and there were similar attitudes among the Irish continental missionaries. Yet all these ‘Celts’ belonged to churches who had received, ca. 430, either Palliadius or Germanus, envoys who were known and approved by Pope Celestine I, and they had not lost physical contact with Europe meanwhile. The later disagreements arose because a period of automatic slackening (not breaking) of bonds was followed by deliberate tightening to an apparently unprecedented degree.
page 465 note 1 Bede states that they did not accept the last three, though the Kentish wives of two of these made possible the Paulinus mission and the Whitby synod. The second was on fighting terms with Kent, as was possibly the fourth, after the death of Aethelberht, his overlord; while the first, Aelle, may have resisted Octha, the founder of Kent.
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