And Did Those Feet

The Story and Character of the English Church AD 200-2020

Patrick Whitworth

• Publisher: Sacristy Press
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781789591545
• Topic: Historia
• Subtopic: Historia social

Discover the story of the English Church from its earliest times to the present day. Having taken root in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms, it emerged in the medieval world amidst poverty, pandemics and power struggles, and not free from abuses. We see here its struggles during the Reformation, leading to an English Bible and Prayer Book, and the virtual banishment of Roman Catholicism for three hundred years. We see the spawning of new forms of Protestantism, inimical to the Crown, with the emergence of Quakers, Independents and the Methodists among many others. Following the ending of the Slave Trade in 1807, the Church became a force for both social change and spiritual endeavour in the Victorian period.

Patrick Whitworth charts both the contribution and shortcomings of the English Church. An extraordinary story well told, surely this will remain the standard work on the Church in England for many years to come.

Part I

The Conversion of England

Chapter 1

Christianity in Roman Britain

Christianity came to Britain with the Romans, either with the army or through the administration of the province. It is uncertain when Christians first arrived; what we do know is that the earliest Christian martyr, St Alban, was traditionally believed to have been killed at the very beginning of the fourth century, quite possibly in the Great Persecution of Emperor Diocletian (AD 284–305).

There could well have been Christians in England much earlier than the fourth century, however, since the Roman occupation dated from AD 43, when a campaign, led by the Emperor Claudius (AD 41–54) for publicity purposes, succeeded in occupying the country. From then on thousands of soldiers and auxiliaries were stationed in Britain, with the likelihood that by the third century at least some officials or soldiers may well have been Christians. Christians appear to have arrived in Rome from Palestine—without any Apostolic mission—in the AD 40s. Suetonius records their expulsion from Rome in c. AD 49 by Emperor Claudius, who complained of riots caused by one Chrestus (Christ) in the Jewish community. It is thus not unreasonable to suppose that some Christians may have found their way to Britain during the next 150 years, some arriving through the activities of Jewish traders.1 The movement of Christians to this new northern province of the Empire by the third century seems quite possible, or even probable. Indeed, by the early third century, both Origen in Alexandria, and later in Caesarea, and Tertullian (see Against the Jews 7.4) in Carthage, wrote of Christians living in Britain.2

Invasion

It was Gaius Julius Caesar who put Britain on the Roman map. The reasons for invading Britain were part military, in that he maintained that Britons were helping his Gallic enemies, but mostly political. Caesar needed a quick victory to further advance his popularity and prestige in Rome. To this end a successful invasion of Britain would only add to his kudos. So, after relatively scanty planning, Caesar decided to invade Britain. Pompey and Crassus were informed at a meeting in Lucca in 56 BC.3 An envoy, Commius, king of the Gaulish Atrebates tribe, was sent to Britain from France to win hearts and minds. Caesar then prepared to invade Britain, having concluded a ruthless campaign on the Rhine. At midnight in late August 55 BC, his fleet crossed to Dover, but found that “enemy forces were lined up on the cliff tops and that the cliffs came straight down to the sea to the narrowest of beaches”.4 The legionaries had to disembark directly into the sea as they were unable to get the ships to dry land. The soldiers were encumbered by their armour and immediately opposed by British fighters. Caesar wrote in his history of the Gallic War: “All this struck terror into the hearts of our men, who were completely unfamiliar with this type of warfare, so that they did not demonstrate that alacrity and zeal that was usually their hallmark in infantry battles.”5

The unwilling troops were eventually galvanized by the sight of the standard-bearer of the Eagle of the Ninth Legion in the waves, whereupon they entered the sea and made for the shore, but worse was to follow. The transport and cavalry ships were delayed by a storm in the Channel and forced to turn back to Gaul. Caesar found himself marooned on a beach. His soldiers were attacked on the shoreline and barely survived. They soon re-embarked for Gaul. To use his famous saying: Caesar had certainly come to Britain, he had seen it, with its inclement weather of storms and heavy rain—and the difficulties of turning a bridgehead into an occupation—but he had not, as yet, conquered. Being Caesar, as soon as he reached Boulogne, he planned a much larger expedition for the following year.

Caesar was determined that his invasion would succeed. In 54 BC, he gathered a huge force: five legions (approximately 27,000 troops), a further 2,000 cavalry and an armada of over 200 ships. It was an invasion force of shock and awe proportions; in fact, it would not be equalled until William of Orange brought an army with him to take the English throne in 1688. On 7 July 54 BC, after sixteen hours crossing the Channel, the armada made landfall between Deal and Walmer. They were opposed by a coalition of tribes led by Cassivellanus, a powerful chief of the Catuvellauni in his own right who was determined to put up a fight. After securing the fleet and leaving a garrison to guard it, Caesar marched north again to attack Cassivellanus’s main fortress, which he took after a pitched battle. Then, with the coming of the autumn equinox and sharp storms in the Channel, and having taken slaves and booty, Caesar decided to return to Gaul and eventually to Rome.

Back in Rome, news of the British expedition received a muted response. Cicero, Caesar’s political foe and foil to his populist stance and dictatorial ambitions, wrote to Atticus about the expedition in these terms: “We await the outcome of the British war; it is well known that the approach to the island is ringed round with rigid ramparts; it’s already clear that there is not an ounce of silver on the island nor any hope of booty except slaves; and I imagine you’re not expecting much in the way of literary or musical accomplishments from them.”6 Cicero held out scant hope of British culture.

Apart from the pursuit of military glory, what was it that commended Britain to the Romans, necessitating this risky and expensive invasion and subsequent occupation? As Cicero pointed out, Britain was certainly not a sophisticated culture of art, music and literature. Britain in 54 BC was illiterate, with neither written language nor literature. To a Roman bathed in the Greek and Roman classics, as Cicero was, Britain’s attractions were limited. The great historian Bede, to whom we will return at much greater length later, said the island of Britain had much to commend it agriculturally, but not culturally:

Britain excels for grain and trees, and is well adapted for feeding cattle and beasts of burden. It also produces vines in some places, and has plenty of land and waterfowls of several sorts; it is remarkable also for rivers abounding in fish, and plentiful springs. It has the greatest plenty of salmon and eels; seals are frequently taken, and dolphins, as also whales; besides many sorts of shell fish, such as mussels, in which are often found excellent pearls of all colours, red, purple, violet, and green, but mostly white. There is also a great abundance of cockles, of which the scarlet dye is made.7

Britain was culturally primitive compared with Rome but blessed with natural agricultural prosperity and minerals. It was, however, occupied by many competing and at times belligerent tribes. Caesar divided these tribes into two main groups: those on the south coast, who he said were Gallic or Belgic immigrants like the Atrebates and Cantiaci, while further north, the Catuvellauni (whom Caesar attacked) and the Iceni were more autochthonous and aggressive. Tacitus noted the large limbs and red hair of the Caledonians (in Scotland) were similar to the Germans, while the Silures of South Wales reminded him of the Spaniards.8 These tribes were Celtic and drawn from the people groups that were spread over the Atlantic seaboard of Europe, from Britain in the north to Portugal in the south. Over preceding centuries forests had been cleared, such that by 1000 BC, Iron Age Britain had a patchwork of open fields of grain and beans. Trade existed between tribes, many of them of Celtic extraction that had moved across northern Europe and the Channel around 500 BC. The population appears to have numbered about two million. Minerals were plentiful and soon to be exploited by Roman surveyors and engineers: lead from the Mendips; copper from Anglesey; tin from Cornwall; iron from the Forest of Dean and the East Midlands; stone and marble from Bath and the south coast; and some silver and gold. Such metals were essential for arming the 30,000 Roman soldiers based in Britain and for providing a coinage minted in the province.

Worship, which had once been centred on innumerable stone circles from the Orkneys in Scotland to Stonehenge and Avebury in Wiltshire, was now based upon the worship of trees, stones and special places of ancient significance, and was conducted by Druids, who were anathema to the Romans. According to Caesar, Druids were “in charge of religion. They have control over public and private sacrifices and give rulings on all religious questions. Large numbers of young men go to them for instruction, and they are greatly honoured by the people.”9 Caesar went on to record their practice of sacrifice, in which humans and animals were bundled into giant wicker frames in the shape of humans to be killed and burnt. Pliny recorded their use of mistletoe in the oak groves where sacrifices were conducted. The Romans stamped out these practices and their presence wherever they found them, not least in Anglesey, where Tacitus describes their role in supporting the Ordovices tribe.10

Occupation and possession

Despite Caesar’s invasion in 54 BC, it would be another ninety years before another invasion with the intention of occupying Britain occurred. In 44 BC, Caesar was assassinated, and a further civil war was conducted against Caesar’s assassins by his heir Octavian. This war ended with a final campaign against Mark Antony and Cleopatra in Egypt after the Battle of Actium in 31 BC.

Augustus, as he became in 27 BC, had little opportunity for a further invasion of Britain, and little appetite for the exertion and expense required. In 34 BC, he had intended to invade Britain, but instead had to quell an invasion in Dalmatia. An invasion was again considered in 27 BC, but this time unrest in Gaul intervened. Strabo repeated what was probably the official line of Augustus’s administration in explaining the failure to invade: the cost of direct rule, including an army and an administration in Britain, would not be recouped. It was not until the reign of Caligula (AD 37–41), properly known as Gaius Julius Caesar Germanicus, whose father was the brilliant Germanicus (grandson of Livia, Augustus’s wife), that the idea of an invasion of Britain was reinstated. At the invitation of Adminius, the son of a British chief of the Catuvellauni, Caligula reassembled an invasion force with the support of the Senate. But his army refused to obey orders and embark for Britain because they feared the Channel crossing! They thus humiliated Caligula and he sought to humiliate them in turn by ordering them to gather seashells from the beach in their helmets and by erecting a lighthouse to commemorate their revolt. Before any further invasion could take place, Caligula was assassinated. In his place the much-maligned member of the imperial family, the absent-minded, historically obsessed, short-sighted, limping and drooling Claudius, succeeded as Emperor. He was to be more effective than anyone could have guessed. With the support of the Senate, and a political situation in Britain that provided an opportunity to ally with a client king, a full-scale invasion and occupation was planned.

The invasion force was led by the experienced commander Aulus Plautius, a former governor of Pannonia and well connected to the imperial family. He led 40,000 troops, roughly five times the size of William the Conqueror’s invasion force of 1066 and one of the largest invasion forces to cross the Channel until the D-Day landings in 1944. The crossing of the Roman army, as on previous occasions, was delayed by bad weather, but also, once again, by their own reluctance. For the Roman soldiers, crossing to Britain was like falling off the edge of the earth. Once again, they refused to embark, but Plautius, having executed the ringleaders, cajoled the legionaries to cross the Channel. Eventually a beachhead was made, most probably at Richborough, and after the landings a full-scale campaign of occupation ensued.

Cassius Dio, the Roman historian, records that the British army of resistance under Togodumnus and Caratacus was nowhere to be seen. Eventually they were found and engaged near the Medway. Vespasian, later Emperor and the suppressor with his son Titus of the Jewish revolt in AD 70, and Gnaeus Geta, were given command by Plautius; and over a two-day engagement they defeated the Catuvellauni tribe. At a subsequent engagement near Westminster on the Thames, Togodumnus was killed. With victory assured, Claudius was invited to take command of his troops at what would be a mixture of a durbar and formal surrender of defeated British rulers. As Josephus says of Vespasian in his Jewish War: “It was Vespasian who acquired Britannia for the empire through armed struggle (until then it had been unknown); thus he enabled Nero’s father, Claudius, to be awarded a triumph, which had cost him no sweat of his own.”11

Claudius journeyed by boat from Ostia, the port of Rome, to Massilia (Marseilles), up the River Rhone, and across Gaul to Boulogne, arriving in Britain in August AD 43. He eventually came to Colchester. It was there, as if in some Roman pageant lifted from the Coliseum, that Claudius received the surrender of Camulodunum (Colchester) and the homage of various British kings, one from as far away as Orkney. Other obeisant rulers came to do homage to Claudius: Togidubnus, king of the Regini, later to be given a fabulous palace at Fishbourne, near Chichester, and who took the names Tiberius Claudius in faithful homage, as well as rulers from the Iceni tribe of East Anglia and the queen of the Brigantes from Yorkshire. However banal this occasion may have been, with Claudius accompanied by elephants, never before seen in Britain, it changed the course of British history for the next 400 years, and arguably forever. Claudius remained in the cold and damp climes of Britain for sixteen days before returning to Rome, no doubt purring over this climax to his military career, having achieved what the great Julius Caesar had not been able to do. In recognition, he was given the title Britannic Majesty by the Senate. Thereafter he was commonly called Britannicus, after his greatest victory! Coins were minted, the Senate awarded him a triumph, victory arches were erected, and an annual festival was declared. Claudius was assured of his place in history. But it would be wrong to suppose that in this contrived piece of imperial theatre at Colchester Pax Romana came to Britain. In fact, for the next forty years Britain would only be won by Rome after a great spilling of blood.

The conquest period, which included the revolt of Boudicca, continued from AD 43–83, and it was bloody indeed. At first, four legions were stationed in Britain, a number that was later reduced to a permanent deployment of three. There were about 5,500 soldiers in each legion, with a large number of supporting troops as well, making a permanent garrison in Britain of around 30,000 soldiers, one of the largest in any province of the Empire. This was a formidable force, and it shaped both the economy and many landholdings, especially for retired soldiers. The governor Scapula (AD 47–52) took on the task of mopping up the opposition. Caratacus, the famous British leader who escaped from the earliest battles against the Romans, continued resistance from Wales until he was defeated and captured by Scapula. Deported to Rome as a captive, he was given his freedom for his spirited defence and martial bearing. He was to remain in Rome for the rest of his life. Others were not so well treated. The Iceni tribe from East Anglia had long been a client kingdom of the Romans and was based in Norfolk, around Thetford. By AD 60, the relationship had turned sour: traditional places of worship had been closed, and very large loans made to the tribe through Seneca, Nero’s tutor, were being recalled. Dio writes that the loans made to British rulers by Seneca totalled as much as 40 million sesterces. The Empire, under the tyrannical and rapacious rule of Nero, needed money. The treatment of the king of the Iceni, Prasutagus, was high-handed, with attempts by Nero’s finance office in Britain to forcibly take all the Iceni’s assets. When King Prasutagus suddenly died, his wife Boudicca raised a revolt against the Romans. Of Boudicca, Dio writes: “She was very tall and stern; her look was penetrating; her voice harsh; her auburn hair fell to her waist and around her neck was a heavy golden torc; she wore a patterned cloak with a thick cape over it fastened with a brooch.”12

Standing on a platform, she addressed 120,000 troops, Dio says. The size of the army was in fact greatly exaggerated by Dio. It was probably much closer to a third of this size. Boudicca’s appeal was to liberty, and the idea that Britons should never be subservient to Rome. Ever since then, deep in the psychology of the British has been the notion, which, apart from Winston Churchill, has often been expressed most sharply by female leaders, that “Britons never, never shall be slaves”.13

A small force of 2,000 legionaries from the Ninth Legion stationed at Peterborough managed to engage Boudicca, but they were easily cut down. Their commander, Petilius Cerealis, escaped with his life back to Peterborough. Boudicca drove on to London, which Paulinus decided to sacrifice rather than defend with inadequate forces, and the city was destroyed. Around 70,000–80,000 had lost their lives in the campaign to that point.

Paulinus mustered 10,000 troops against what Dio describes as 230,000 Britons. However much this figure might be exaggerated, it does show that the Romans were significantly outnumbered. Boudicca once again raised the blood of her troops with a speech reported by Tacitus as follows: “It is not as the daughter of a noble family that I fight now, avenging my lost kingdom and my wealth; but rather as a woman of the people avenging our...

Table of contents

• Preface
• Part I. The Conversion of England
• Part II. The Late Middle Ages
• Part III. Medieval Religion
• Part IV. Reformation and Revolution
• Part V. The Church in the Hanoverian Age 1714–1901
• Part VI. A Nation Slips its Moorings
• Appendix. Chronology of the English Church
• Suggestions for Further Reading
• Notes