their corn and threshed it out from hand to mouth as their need required. Fair conditioned people, they were plain and of upright dealing, far from the subtlety and craft of the Romans. Their food was simple and nothing dainty, nor like the full fare of rich men." 66 They had ships of which the footstocks or upright standards were made of slight timber; the rest of the body framed of windings and osier covered over with leather; and on one of Cæsar's engagements with the Gauls, the Britons sent a fleet of ships to their assistance." Then as to their highways: it is said they can bo distinguished from those subsequently made by the Romans by unequivocal marks. They were not raised or paved, nor always straight, but often wound along the tops or sides of the chains of hills. The one called the Ermyn Street led from the Anderida Portus (Pevensey), in Sussex, and passed through the Weald by Wadhurst, Tunbridge Wells, Bromley, and so on to London; and this Ermyn Street road continued on to Scotland. The Romans adopted this and other roads. These roads do not lead to Roman towns or notice them except when placed on the sites of British fortresses. It has been conjectured that a road followed the shore round the island. Modern writers are of opinion that mining operations were carried on in this woody vale of the Britons previous to the invasion of Cæsar; and when he speaks of the iron to be found near our coast, though not in large quantities, he clearly refers to the Weald. I may here observe that Kent was called Cantium by the Romans; and Lambarde, one of our earliest Kentish writers, was of opinion that it owed this name to the fact that the district was shadowed with woods; while Camden, who published his Britannia shortly after Lambarde, conjectured that the name was derived from Cant or Canton (written Chent in the record of Domesday), a corner, nook, or angle of land; and subsequent writers have generally adopted this derivation. Whether or not Gaul and Britain were anciently joined CHAP I. CHAP. I. The Druids. "The Faiths of the World." by an isthmus or neck of land, as Camden, Somner, and other learned antiquaries have supposed, it is quite certain that the inhabitants had one and the same religion, and the Druids had the direction of this religion. Britain was the chief seat of Druidical learning; and Cæsar tells us that such of the Gauls as were desirous of being thoroughly instructed in the principles of this religion usually took a journey into Britain for that purpose; which Mackintosh says may be explained by the natural proneness of such superstitions to take refuge among the blindest of their votaries, and to flee from the scrutiny of civilized and inquiring men. The priesthood was divided into different ranks, which were distinguished from one another by a particular dress. There was an Arch-Druid who resided in Anglesea and lived in great pomp for those days. The office of the priesthood was hereditary, passing from father to son, but the Arch-Druid was elected from the most eminent of the priestly order by a plurality of votes; and such was the anxiety to obtain this exalted dignity that the election sometimes occasioned a civil war. With the sacred duties of the Druids were also combined important secular ones, for they educated the young, and they interpreted the laws and officiated in civil and criminal matters. The Druidical students were instructed in the depth of forests like the Weald, that their lessons might not be overheard ; and nothing was committed to writing. But when the people were taught, the instruction was given from little eminences, of which some are yet supposed to remain. Their hymns, which it was unlawful to commit to writing, were so numerous and long that they occupied frequently twenty years to learn. Man was placed (according to their doctrine) in the circle of courses, good and evil being set before him for his selection, and upon his making choice of the former, death transmitted him from the earth into the circle of felicity. If, however, he became vicious, death returned him into the circle of courses, wherein he was made to do penance in the body of an animal, and then permitted to resume his human form. The length and repetition of this probation was determined by the vice or virtue of the individual, but after a certain number of transmigrations his offences were supposed to be expiated, his passions subdued, and his spirit dismissed to the circle of felicity. CHAP. I. Their places of worship, like their places of instruction, were to be found wherever the oak most flourished, and consisted of a spacious circular area in one of the shady thickets, which though surrounded by oak trees was open at the top; so that Kent, and especially the borders of the Weald, abounding with oak, was well adapted for Druidical worship. Now, groves of oak trees have been reckoned from the earliest times as peculiarly appropriate places for the celebration of religious worship as well as for idolatrous practices. The oak, the noblest Ezek. vi. 13. of trees, was sacred to Zeus among the Greeks, and among the Romans to Jupiter. Oak worship was, however, one of the most remarkable peculiarities of their religion, and the Druids esteemed the oak the most sacred object in nature. Everything that grew on an oak they believed came from Heaven, and nothing was considered more sacred than the mistletoe if it vegetated on the oak. It was deemed a preservative from all poisons, and was cut with a golden knife, and that on the sixth day of the moon, which was the beginning of their months and years, and of their period of thirty years. They came to the oak on which they observed any of the parasitical plant (which they called all healing), prepared a sacrifice and a feast under this venerable tree, and brought thither two white bulls whose horns were then first tied. The officiating Druid, in a white garment, ascended the tree, and with the golden knife pruned off the mistletoe, which was received in a white woollen cloth below. They then sacrificed the victims, and addressed their gods to make the mistletoe prosperous to those to whom it was given, for they believed that it caused fecundity. They performed no ceremony without the leaves of the oak. CHAP. II. The Landing The place of IT CHAPTER II. THE ROMAN INVASION. T will be found that the landing of Julius Cæsar, 55 years before the Christian era, is generally made the starting point by those historians who profess to give an authentic history of Britain. Cæsar having conquered Gaul, now turned his attention to Britain. He knew not whether it was a continent or an island. He prepared a small fleet, and resolved, with two legions (the 7th and his favourite 10th, composing an army of about 12,000 infantry) to penetrate a country which none of the conquerors of the civilized world appear to have seen. As an excuse for his ambitious design, he professed to be offended at the supplies that the Britons had furnished to the Gauls during their wars with him. With all his love of glory, he was no doubt in quest of plunder; and the merchants who found a market in Britain furnished him with the information upon which the plan of his invasion was founded. It would be foreign to my object, were I to enter at any great length upon the long-controverted subject of the precise spot where the landing of the Romans was effected, and whether Cæsar first planted his foot in Kent or Sussex; but I cannot pass it by unnoticed, especially as the majority of the writers in our day agree that whether it was in Kent or Sussex it was on or near the borders of the Andred Forest. Our early historians have pointed to Deal,* "At this Deale or Dole the constant report goes that Julius Cæsar did arrive and fought a battaile there."-Camden. as the probable place of disembarkation. Dr. Harris (who published his History of Kent just a century and a half ago) says, "It may be pretty well determined that Cæsar anchored off Dover, and the next inquiry will be, whether he sailed from the place of his first dropping his anchor towards Sandwich, or towards Hythe? Which will also be determined by his own account, that the tide was with him in his course, for it being then four days before the full moon at three of the clock in the afternoon the tide would run or set towards Sandwich, and not the other way towards Hythe;" and he then proceeds to give his reasons, and concludes by expressing his opinion that the landing must have been somewhere between Deal and the old harbour of Sandwich. CHAP. II. Of the eight subsequent writers on this subject, four still point to Deal, while four have selected a more westerly direction, and prefer Pevensey and St. Leonards in Sussex, and Lympne and Appledore Bay in Kent. The main question is, how are Cæsar's words, "ab eo loco progressus,' to be understood? Did he sail in a northerly or southwesterly direction? Mr. Horsley ("Britannia Romana," 1732) asserts that it must have been towards the north, near Richborough, and in the direction of Sandwich, "though the particular spot on which he landed and encamped may now be washed away by the sea.' Dr. Halley says Cæsar sailed to the east and disembarked Phil. Trans., vol. iii., p. 440. at Deal. The present Astronomer Royal (Professor Airey) seeks to overrule the opinion of Dr. Halley, in a paper sent to the Society of Antiquaries in 1852, and assumes that Cæsar embarked from the Somme, and that the landing took place at Pevensey. Then I find a paper from Mr. R. C. Hussey, in the first volume of the Transactions of the Kent Archeological Society, in which this gentleman assumes that the debarkation was on the coast between Bulverhithe and St. Leonards in Sussex; and it is rather fortunate that the Council of this Society announce that they are not responsible for the opinions of their contributors; for in their introductory remarks, in the very same |