Routledge Revivals A HISTORY OF ENGLAND ENGLAND BEFORE THE NORMAN CONQUEST BEING A HISTORY OF THE CELTIC, ROMAN AND ANGLO-SAXON PERIODS DOWN TO THE YEAR A.D. 1066 BY Sir CHARLES OMAN, K.B.E. ALL SOULS COLLEGE, OXFORD; HON. D.C.L., OXFORD; HON. LL.D., CAMBRIDGE AND EDINBURGH CHICHELE PROFESSOR OF MODERN HISTORY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD, FELLOW OF THE BRITISH ACADEMY, AND PRESIDENT OF THE ROYAL ARCHAEOLOGICAL INSTITUTE WITH THREE MAPS First published in 1938 by Methuen & Co. Ltd. This edition first published in 2018 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN and by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business ©1938 Taylor & Francis. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Publisher’s Note The publisher has gone to great lengths to ensure the quality of this reprint but points out that some imperfections in the original copies may be apparent. Disclaimer The publisher has made every effort to trace copyright holders and welcomes correspondence from those they have been unable to contact. A Library of Congress record exists under ISBN: 10026803 ISBN 13: 978-1-138-55886-1 (hbk) ISBN 13: 978-1-315-12345-5 (ebk) A HISTORY OF ENGLAND IN BIGHT VOLUMBS GBNBRAL EDITOR: SIR CHARLES OMAN, K.B.E. VOLUME J ENGLAND BEFORE THE NORMAN CONQUEST A HISTORY OF ENGLAND IN EIGHT VOLUMES EDITED BY SIR CHARLES OMAN I. ENGLAND BEFORE THE NORMAN CONQUEST. By Sir CHAIU.ES OMAN, K.B.E., M.A., F.B.A., All Souls College, Oxford. [Eighth Edition. 11. ENGLAND UNDER THE NORMANS AND ANGEVINS. By H. W. C. DAVIS, M.A., LL.D., C.B.E., late Regius Professor of Modern History in the U ni­ versity of Oxford. [Eleventh Edi#on. Ill. ENGLAND IN THE LATER MIDDLE AGES. By KENNETH H. VICKERS, M.A., Principal of Uni­ versity College, Southampton. [Sixth Edition. IV. ENGLAND UNDER THE TUDORS. By ARTHUR D. INNES, sometime Scholar of Oriel College, Oxford. Revised by J. M. HENDERSON, M.A., Lecturer in British History in the University of Aberdeen. [Eleventh Edition. V. ENGLAND UNDER THE STUARTS. By G. M. TRE­ VELYAN, O.M., Regius Professor of Modern His­ tory in the University of Cambridge. [Seventeenth Edition. VI. ENGLAND UNDER THE HANOVERIANS. By Sir CHARLES GRANT ROBERTSON, M.A., LL.D., Vice­ Chancellor and Principal of the University of Birmingham, Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford. [Eleventh Edition. VII. ENGLAND SINCE WATERLOO. By Sir J. A. R. MARRIOTT, M.A., Honorary Fellow, formerly Fellow, Lecturer and Tutor in Modem History, of Worcester College, Oxford. [Eleventh Edition. VIII. MODERN ENGLAND, 1885-1932. By Sir J. A. R. MARRIOTT. ENGLAND BEFORE THE NORMAN CONQUEST BEING A HISTORY OF THE CELTIC, ROMAN AND ANGLO-SAXON PERIODS DOWN TO THE YEAR A.D. 1066 BY SIR CHARLES OMAN, K.B.E. ALL SOULS COLLEGE, OXFORD; HON. D.C.L., OXFORD; HON. LL.D., CAMBRIDGE AND EDINBURGH CHICHBL& PROPESSOR OF MODERN HISTORY IN THE UNIVERSITY OP OXFORD, FELLOW OF THE BRITISH ACADEMY J AND PRESIDENT OP THE BOY AL ARCBAtOLOGICAL INsTlroTa WITH THREE MAPS EIGHTH EDITION, REVISlfD METHUEN & CO. LTD. 36 ESSEX STREET W.C. LONDON Fil'st Published April zznd I9IO Second Edition Septembel' I9IO Thil'd Edition APl'il I9I3 Fourlh Edition May I9I9 Fifth Edition, Revised January I9zI Sixth Edition Februal'Y I911S Seventh Edition, Revised Octobe1' I9z9 Eighth Edition, RMJised I938 HINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN INTRODUCTORY NOTE BY THE GENERAL EDITOR N England, as in France and Germany, the main I characteristic of the last fifty years, from the point of view of the student of history, has been that new material has been accumulating much faster than it can be assimilated or absorbed. The standard works of the 19th-century historians need to be revised, or even to be put aside as obsolete, in the light of the new information that is coming in so rapidly and in such vast bulk. The series of which this volume forms a part is intended to do something towards meeting the de­ mand for information brought up to date. Individual historians will not sit down, as once they were wont, to write twenty-volume works in the style of Hume or Lingard, embracing a dozen centuries of annals. It is not to be desired that they should-the writer who is most satisfactory in dealing with Anglo-Saxon antiqui­ ties is not likely to be the one who will best discuss the antecedents of the Reformation, or the constitutional history of the Stuart period. But something can be done by judicious co-operation. In the thirty-four years since the first volume of this series appeared in 1904, it would seem that the idea has iustified itself, v vi INTRODUCTORY NOTE as the various sections have passed through many editions and revisions varying from six to seventeen. Each is intended to give something more than a mere outline of one period of our national annals, but they have little space for controversy or the discussion of sources. There is, however, a bibliography annexed to most of the series, which will show the inquirer where information of the more special kind is to be sought. Moreover, a number of maps are to be found at the end of each volume which, as it is hoped, will make it unnecessary for the reader to be continually referring to large historical atlases-tomes which (as we must confess with regret) are not to be discovered in every private library. The general editor and his collaborators have been touched lightly by the hand of time. All regret the too early decease of our colleague Henry Carless Davis, sometime Regius Professor of Modern History in this University, who wrote the second of the eight volumes of the series. He had several times revised his contribution. Most of us survivors continue to do the same from time to time, as the pen (or sometimes the spade) produces new sources of information. Naturally the spade is particularly active for the purveying of fresh material for the first of our volumes, and the pen (or the press) for the two last. Informa­ tion must be kept up to date, whatever the epoch concerned, even though it is known that much undis­ covered evidence may yet be forthcoming in the near future. C. OMAN OXFORD, 1st Jan., 1938 PREFACE HEN the first edition of this volume was sent W to the press in 1910, I had the privilege of finding three good friends, who each revised one section of its contents. All three, alas! are now gone from us, but my gratitude persists. The first was T. Rice Holmes, who looked over the prehistoric and early Celtic chapters. The second was myoId school­ fellow and colleague, Francis Haverfield, the greatest of specialists in his day for all that concerned Roman Britain: indeed he might well be called the father of modern Roman-British research. The third was H. Carless Davis, then a fellow of All Souls and after­ wards Regius Professor of Modern History. I rewrote or retouched many a paragraph in my Anglo-Saxon chapters after considering his comments. But since 1910 much has been done in the way of excavation and other forms of research, leading to conclusions which were not available when this book first went to the press. The problem of the N orthum­ brian wall and "vallum," still a subject of controversy in 1910, has been settled. An immense amount of new evidence concerning the Scottish Wall of Antoninus, and Roman Scotland in general, has been produced by Sir George Macdonald, who has :.tlways been good enough 1111 viii PREFACE to help me in keeping abreast with recent discovery. The spade has been busy at Lydney, Wroxeter, and Richborough, and more recently at Colchester and Verulam, Margidunum, Leicester, and Maiden Castle. Discoveries there made have led to the cancelling of some of my original paragraphs, and the modification of others. Dr. Mortimer Wheeler's work on the Lydney Sanctuary, for example, has forced me to rewrite much that had been held about the early extinction of Paganism in Britain, and it is to him that I owe the discovery that the site of the original fortress-capital of Cassivelaunus was at Whethampstead and not at Verulam, a slightly later stronghold of the Catuvel­ launi. Whenever I found it possible, I have visited the spots where important excavation was in progress, and tested deductions with my own eyes. Hence three tours along Hadrian's Wall, one (in company with Sir George Macdonald) to parts of the Wall of Antoninus between Forth and Clyde. I have thrice inspected Veru­ lam (once in drenching rain), twice Colchester. I have looked over Richborough with care, Whethampstead, Corbridge, Chester, Caerleon and Maiden Castle, besides a great number of Roman villas. On several of these occasions I was leading my flock of the Archreological Institute, and profiting by the observations of its members. I am well aware, therefore, that more has been done with the spade for our knowledge of Roman Britain since 1920 than in any other previous term of sixteen years, great as had been the work of Haverfield and his contemporaries in the time between 1890 and 1914. Some old problems have been solved since my first edition appeared, but several new ones have PREFACE ix emerged.