Northerners

A History, from the Ice Age to the Present Day

Brian Groom

• Verlag: HarperNorth
• Jahr: 2022
• ISBN:
  9780008471217
• Thema: History
• Thema: British History

CHAPTER 1

First Northerners to the Romans

Life was hard for the first northerners, almost certainly a hunting group of an early human species, taking advantage of a warmer interlude during the last ice age to range north in search of food at least half a million years ago. Britain, on the north-west corner of north-west Europe, was at the edge of their range. It was occupied intermittently by small groups who ventured across the land bridge known as Doggerland. There were at least ten separate waves of occupation as people were repeatedly driven out by extreme changes in the environment.

All that these intrepid venturers will have known about the north was that it presented a physical challenge in a hostile landscape. Northernness, a state of mind as much as a feature of geography, was fashioned over subsequent millennia. It is as well, though, to start at the beginning. Only by seeing how each stage built upon another can we know how northerners’ collective experience began to form. The physical environment was an important factor.

Britain’s climate fluctuated between Mediterranean-like conditions and long stages of cold in which ice sheets up to three miles thick covered the land as far south as the Thames valley. In warmer periods, vegetation was like today, a mix of woodland and grassland, though animals were more exotic. Remains of lions, straight-tusked elephants, mammoths, rhinoceroses, hippopotamuses and hyenas have been found at sites in the north.1

Much earlier, there were dinosaurs. We may not know exactly who the first humans were, but there is a name for the north’s – indeed Britain’s – earliest identified sauropod dinosaur. It lived 176 million years ago in what is now Yorkshire. It is nicknamed Alan. A fossil vertebra of the creature was identified in 2015, having been found on a beach near Whitby after it fell from a cliff face; it is in the Yorkshire Museum in York. Alan was named after Alan Gurr, an amateur geologist who found it.2

The earliest evidence of people in the north is indirect. Hand-axes found in Waverley Wood, Warwickshire, are made of andesite rock likely to have come from the Lake District about 500,000 years ago.3 The axes were wielded by Homo heidelbergensis, tall and heavily built people, who used stone blades to butcher large animals. These may have followed an earlier, unidentified species similar to Homo antecessor, so far found only in Spain.

Next came Homo neanderthalensis, small and stocky. Creswell Crags in Derbyshire, south of Sheffield, contains Neanderthal stone tools. It also has the northernmost cave art in Europe: twenty-five engraved figures depict deer, birds, bovids (probably aurochs, extinct wild cattle) and horses.4 Theses were made by Homo sapiens, or modern humans, whose presence in Britain, initially sporadic, has been continuous since about 12,000 years ago.

As the last ice age ended, sea levels rose, cutting Britain off from continental Europe permanently. There is evidence of occupation. A large circular building at Howick in Northumberland dating from about 7600 BCE is thought to have been a permanent dwelling.5 An even older one has been excavated at Star Carr in Yorkshire, sometimes described as ‘Britain’s oldest house’, dating from about 9000 BCE. It may have been a hunting camp.6 Finds at Star Carr include headdresses made from red deer skulls (possibly used by shamans in ritual practices), barbed points used in hunting and fishing, and the earliest evidence of carpentry in Europe.

The Neolithic period brought farming and a more settled way of life. The best-known monument is Stonehenge, but there are important edifices in northern England. Thornborough Henges, a Neolithic/Bronze Age complex of three circular earthworks in north Yorkshire, has been described as one of Britain’s premier ‘sacred landscapes’ during the third and second millennia BCE.7 Cumbria is notable for the ‘Langdale axe industry’, the manufacture of polished volcanic stone axes at Great Langdale in the Lake District. Axe-heads from there have been found all over Britain and in Ireland. The fact that these were widely traded, and that some appear unused, suggests they were of high value and may have had religious as well as practical purposes.8 They may have been used in gift exchanges.

In the 1930s, archaeologist Cyril Fox identified a highland–lowland divide, described by some as a ‘Jurassic divide’.9 A ridge of Jurassic limestone runs through England from Dorset to the Yorkshire coast. To the north-west lies a highland zone, with harder rocks, suitable for pastoral farming such as raising sheep. To the south-east is a lowland zone suitable for arable farming such as grain. Pastoral communities tended to consist of isolated farmsteads or small hamlets, while arable communities created larger villages. The south-east appeared wealthier, producing more decorated pottery. This division is now seen as an over-simplification, though geography clearly has some influence.

The north is rich in Bronze Age sites such as barrows. In the Iron Age, people lived in small villages, in thatched roundhouses with wooden or wattle and daub walls and a central fire. There were also so-called ‘hill forts’, communal spaces possibly used for ceremonies or trading; Northumberland, with 271, has the largest number in England.10 Iron Age Britons are thought to have spoken variants of Brythonic, the southern group of Celtic languages that now consists of Welsh, Cornish and Breton.

Did Iron Age people indulge in human sacrifice, as Julius Caesar and others suggested? A body known as Lindow Man, discovered in 1984 and preserved in Lindow Moss, a Cheshire peat bog, is cited as probable evidence of ritual killing.11 He was about twenty-five years old, of robust frame, bearded and naked apart from a fox-fur band round his left arm. He appears to have been of high social rank because his manicured fingernails showed he had done little manual work. He suffered blows to the head, was garrotted, swallowed mistletoe and then drowned in the waters of the bog. Why he met this grim fate is unknown.

Northern England’s principal Iron Age tribe was the Brigantes, centred on Yorkshire and occupying much of Lancashire, Northumberland and Durham – the first sign of a northern geographical identity emerging. Their name means high or elevated – brig is a top or summit in modern Welsh – which could refer to the Pennines. Their territory, the largest in Britain, was bordered by five other tribes: the Carvetii in the north-west, Votadini in the north-east, Parisii to the east and, to the south, Cornovii and Corieltauvi.

Cartimandua, queen of the Brigantes, in power around the time of the Roman conquest, ought to be as famous as Boudica or Cleopatra. She is the first British queen known to history and the first northerner we can identify (Tacitus consistently names her as a queen, but does not describe her contemporary, Boudica, as such12). While Boudica, leader of East Anglia’s Iceni, is seen as a resistance heroine, Cartimandua tends to be relegated to a few disparaging lines in history books. She collaborated with the Romans, divorced her husband, married one of his aides and was overthrown by a revolt. She was portrayed by Roman historians, despite her loyalty, as an adulterous betrayer of British men, a picture that modern accounts often do little to challenge. Yet she succeeded in keeping her territory free from annexation for up to thirty years. A more balanced assessment is justified.

The Romans invaded Britain in 43 CE and stayed until 409, no doubt aiming to exploit Britain’s land, people and resources. They faced strong resistance in Wales where a guerrilla campaign was led by a chieftain called Caratacus. For the Roman governor of Britannia, Publius Ostorius Scapula, having the Brigantes as a northern ally helped to protect his flank. Finally, Caratacus’s luck ran out. In 51 CE he lost a pitched battle with the Romans in Snowdonia. His wife and daughter were captured and his brother surrendered.13 He fled to Brigantia, possibly to seek support among anti-Roman factions, but Cartimandua captured him and handed him over to the Romans. As an ally of Rome, she could hardly do otherwise. Caratacus was taken to Rome, where his capture was hailed as a great prize. He took part in Claudius’s triumphal parade and made a speech so stirring that, according to Tacitus, the emperor pardoned him and allowed him to live in exile there.14

Cartimandua is not generously treated in Roman sources. Although Tacitus refers to her loyalty to Rome, he also talks of her ‘treacherous’ role in the capture of Caratacus, her ‘wanton spirit’, her sexual impropriety in rejecting her husband, Venutius, in favour of a common soldier and her ‘cunning stratagems’ in taking Venutius’s relatives hostage.15 To understand this, we need to consider women’s role in the empire. No Roman woman became emperor. Female rulers on the empire’s fringes were seen as exotic, but their authority was at variance with Rome’s culture and so invited disapproval. They tend to be stereotyped in Roman sources either as women of loose morals (Cartimandua, Cleopatra) or as fierce and unladylike (Boudica). Sarah Pomeroy summed up the attitude to women in classical antiquity in the title of her 1975 book Goddesses, Whores, Wives and Slaves.

Tacitus suggests Cartimandua had ruled the Brigantes for some time and was of ‘high birth’.16 How she came to her position is not clear. Some suggest that her predecessor may have unified the diverse tribes of Brigantia, while others speculate that her marriage to Venutius, a fellow northerner, could have cemented an alliance between tribal units.17 It is not known which tribal group Venutius came from, though some suggest he came from the north-western people known as the Carvetii.

Not long after the handing over of Caratacus, Venutius and Cartimandua divorced. Whether the causes were personal or political is not known. Fighting broke out among the Brigantes, which led to Venutius’s brother and other relations being seized and imprisoned. The conflict escalated as Venutius raised support from outside the kingdom and led an invasion. A new Roman governor, Didius Gallus, sent auxiliary troops into Brigantia. There were several skirmishes before the rebellion was finally put down by a legion. Venutius probably fled to his own people.18 Twelve years later, in 69, Venutius rebelled again over Cartimandua’s decision to marry a man called Vellocatus, formerly Venutius’s armour-bearer. Tacitus says her decision was reckless because ‘her house was at once shaken by this scandalous act’.19

Venutius again attacked with external forces and there was also an internal Brigantian revolt. Cartimandua appealed to her Roman allies for help, but the governor, Vettius Bolanus, sent auxiliary infantry and cavalry instead of legionary troops. His decision cost Cartimandua her throne. The rescue mission initially struggled to succeed, according to Tacitus,20 probably because the Roman governor had sent inadequate forces. After some ‘desperate fighting’ they managed to extricate Cartimandua, who would otherwise have been killed or held hostage. What became of her is unknown: she may perhaps have died soon after, or lived under Roman protection elsewhere in Britain, or lived out her days in exile in Rome. Venutius lasted less than five years as ruler of Brigantia. Bolanus was replaced as governor by Petillius Cerealis, a seasoned soldier. Cerealis advanced into Brigantia and brought it directly under Roman rule.21 Like Cartimandua, Venutius disappeared from the record, his fate unknown.

It is hard to know what Cartimandua was like, beyond the outlines. Almost everything we know about her is from Roman sources, coupled with archaeological evidence such as a fortified site at Stanwick, near Darlington, north Yorkshire, which may have been her capital. The Brigantes themselves are shadowy. They appear to have worshipped a goddess called Brigantia, who may have given them their name, ‘the people of the high one’. There were similarly named tribes in Gaul, Austria and Ireland, though it is not known whether these were in some way related.

Cartimandua arguably served Brigantia’s interest by preserving quasi-independence, albeit temporarily and at the price of internal strife over whether to work with or against the Romans. She cannot be labelled a betrayer of Britons because there was at that time no British nation to betray; each tribe pursued its own interests. Boudica, by contrast, revolted against Roman rule, though she ultimately failed and her people suffered savage retribution. In the end, however, Cartimandua was unable to halt the spread of Roman rule northwards.

Another governor, Gnaeus Julius Agricola, came close to annexing Caledonia. Scotland has never been fully conquered by forces from the south: neither the Roman Empire nor English medieval kings achieved it. Agricola arguably came closest. He became governor in 77 or 78 and remained in office for about six years, an exceptionally long term. The Roman army moved steadily north throughout his governorship, building forts on the way. He reached the Forth–Clyde isthmus and then the River Tay.22

In 83 or 84, Agricola defeated the Caledonian tribes at the Battle of Mons Graupius. All we know about the location is that it was near a mountain. The tribes were led by Calgacus. Tacitus portrays him as making a rousing speech (certainly fabricated) in which he excoriates the Romans as ‘robbers of the world’: ‘To robbery, slaughter, plunder, they give the lying name of empire; they make a solitude and call it peace.’23 The battle took place on the slope of a hill where Calgacus’s warriors had assembled. Agricola’s cavalry broke through the tribesmen’s ranks and attacked them from behind. The warriors...

Inhaltsverzeichnis

• Title Page
• Copyright
• Note to Readers
• Dedication
• Contents
• Introduction
• BEGINNINGS
• Chapter 1 – First Northerners to the Romans
• Chapter 2 – The Kingdom of Northumbria
• Chapter 3 – Bede, Hilda and the Golden Age
• Chapter 4 – Life with the Danes
• Chapter 5 – William, the North’s Nemesis
• FRONTIER REGION
• Chapter 6 – A Violent Border
• Chapter 7 – John and the Northern Barons
• Chapter 8 – The Wars of the Roses
• Chapter 9 – Tudor Rebels
• Chapter 10 – Witchcraft and Civil Wars
• INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION
• Chapter 11 – Why the North?
• Chapter 12 – Cotton Empire
• Chapter 13 – Engine Power
• Chapter 14 – Trouble at th’mill
• Chapter 15 – Hail to the Sheep
• IMMIGRATION AND SLAVERY
• Chapter 16 – Migrant Land
• Chapter 17 – Tainted Wealth
• Chapter 18 – Irish Influence
• THE VICTORIAN AGE
• Chapter 19 – The Great Cities
• Chapter 20 – Friends or Rivals
• Chapter 21 – York, Lost Capital
• Chapter 22 – Northern Women
• Chapter 23 – At Leisure
• Chapter 24 – Engineers or Poets?
• Chapter 25 – Divided Tongues
• TWENTIETH CENTURY AND BEYOND
• Chapter 26 – Abrupt Reversal
• Chapter 27 – Sing As We Go
• Chapter 28 – Hopes Disappointed
• Chapter 29 – The Twenty-first Century
• Postscript
• References
• Select Bibliography
• Picture Section
• Acknowledgements
• Index
• Book Credits
• About the Publisher