Strona 1 Strona 2 BOUDICA Strona 3 This page intentionally left blank Strona 4 Boudica Iron Age Warrior Queen Richard Hingley and Christina Unwin hambledon continuum Strona 5 Hambledon Continuum The Tower Building 11 York Road London, SE1 7NX 80 Maiden Lane Suite 704 New York, NY 10038 First Published 2005 in hardback This edition published 2006 ISBN 1 85285 438 3 (hardback) ISBN 1 85285 516 9 (paperback) Copyright © Richard Hingley and Christina Unwin, 2005 The moral rights of the author have been asserted. All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyrights reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of the book. A description of this book is available from the British Library and from the Library of Congress. Typeset by Carnegie Publishing, Lancaster, and printed in Great Britain by MPG Books, Cornwall. Strona 6 Contents Illustrations vii Acknowledgements xi Introduction xiii P A R T O N E :B O U D I C A 1 Iron Age and Roman Britain 3 2 The Classical Sources 41 3 The Archaeological Evidence 63 PART TWO! BOADICEA 4 Finding Boadicea 111 5 Subordination 129 6 Imperial Icon 147 7 In the Modern World 173 8 A Woman of Many Faces 205 Notes 223 References 251 Index 267 Strona 7 This page intentionally left blank Strona 8 Illustrations Plates Between pages 142 and 143 1 Bunduca, from Heywood's Exemplary Lives of 1640 2 Boadicia, by William Fairthorne, from Aylett Sammes's Britannia Antiqua Illustrata of 1676 3 'Mrs Powell as Boadicea' in Richard Glover's play of 1753 4 'Boadicea in her Chariot'. The frontispiece to volume i of Tobias Smollett's A Complete History of England of 1758, by Charles Grignon, after Francis Hayman 5 'Will you follow me, men?' Illustration of Boadicea by A. S. Frost. From Our Island Story by H. E. Marshall (1905) 6 Miss Elizabeth Kirby as Boadicea in a 1909 production of Cicely Hamilton's A Pageant of Great Women 7 An image of Boadicea in stained glass, from a window in Colchester Town Hall, dating to around 1901-2 8 Thomas Thornycroft's statue Boadicea and her Daughters, erected in 1902 Strona 9 VIII BOUDICA Text Illustrations 1 A map of the Roman Empire in AD 60, showing places outside Britain connected with the story of Boudica xii 2 A map of Britain, showing places connected with the story of Boudica xv 3 An Iron Age roundhouse from West Stow in Suffolk, with a cut-away section to show the construction and interior 5 4 The Iron Age hillfort at Maiden Castle in Dorset 6 5 Roman imperial expansion 9 6 Late Iron Age coinages 10 7 The Iron Age tribes of Britain 13 8 Late Iron Age Camulodunon 14 9 Early Roman Camulodunum 20 10 The fortress at Camulodunum 21 11 Early Roman Britain and the rulers friendly to the Romans 22 12 A selection of coins of the Iceni 28 13 Distribution of the coins of the Iceni 29 14 The Iron Age settlement at Harford Farm, Caistor St Edmund 30 15 The Iron Age fort at Stonea Camp in Cambridgeshire 32 16 Possible tribal centres among the Iceni 34 17 The late Iron Age site of Fison Way, Thetford, in Norfolk 35 18 Three silver coins struck for 'Esuprastus'. 36 19 The tombstone of Longinus Sdapeze 65 20 Samian pottery from the destruction layer at Colchester 68 21 The Roman colony at Colchester 72 22 The remains of a building in Colchester destroyed by fire in AD 60 or 61 75 23 Charred dates from the destruction layer of AD 60 or 61 in Colchester 78 Strona 10 ILLUSTRATIONS IX 24 The tombstone of Marcus Favonius Facilis from Colchester 79 25 The head of a life-size bronze statue of the Emperor Claudius, found in the River Aide 81 26 The enclosure at Ashill in Norfolk 82 27 Early Roman London 84 28 A reconstruction of early Roman occupation at i Poultry, London 87 29 Late Iron Age Verlamion and early Roman Verulamium 92 30 Verulamium around AD 60 to 61 93 31 The workshops in Verulamium, Insula XIV 94 32 Gorhambury around AD 60 to 61 97 33 Iron Age hoards in Norfolk and northern Suffolk 99 34 A reconstruction of the tomb of Gaius Julius Classicianus, found in London 106 35 A woodcut from Raphael Holinshed's The Chronicles of England, Scotland and Ireland of 1586, showing Voadicea making her speech to the Britons 121 36 Woodcut print of an ancient Briton from John Speed's The History of Great Britaine of 1611 126 37 Woodcut print of Boadicea from the 1632 edition of John Speed's The History of Great Britaine of 1611 127 38 The British Empire in 1815 149 39 'An Antient Briton' and 'Queen Boadicea' 155 40 'Boadicea shows the marks of the Roman rods' 161 41 George Gale's cartoon of Margaret Thatcher as Boadicea, from The Daily Telegraph of 11 June, 1987 189 42 A balanced view of Boudicca 192 43 The label design for 'Boadicea Chariot Ale' 202 44 Reconstruction drawing of Boudica in a chariot with war trappings 219 Strona 11 This page intentionally left blank Strona 12 Acknowledgements We very are grateful to the following individuals for their comments and kind assistance in the preparation of this book. Professor Colin Haselgrove of the University of Durham and Dr J. D. Hill of the British Museum for comments on the Iron Age sections of the book; Dr Philip de Jersey of the Celtic Coin Index, Institute of Archaeology, University of Oxford for information and advice about the coins of the Iceni; Dr John Davies, Chief Curator at Norfolk Museums for assistance regarding Iron Age Norfolk and the Norwich Boudica Gallery; Trevor Ashwin of Norfolk Archaeology and Environment for advice on Iron Age Norfolk; Dr Rosalind Niblett of St Albans City Council for information about Verulamium; Philip Crummy of the Colchester Archaeological Trust for the considerable assistance that he provided with information about Iron Age and Roman Colchester and his careful comments on the text; Dr Paul Sealey of Colchester Muse- ums for advice about Roman Colchester and other issues related to the events of AD 60 to 61; Francis Grew of the Museum of London for advice on Roman London and the Museum of London Boudica display; Professor Edith Hall of Durham University for media extracts about Boudica and several lively discussion of the subject; Theresa Calver for information on the stained glass window from Colchester Town Hall; Dr Roger Tomlin and R. D. Grasby for advice on the redrawing of Julius Classicanus's tomb; Alex Thorne, Iceni Brewery, Terry Deary and Martin Brown for help with the illustrations; Dr Valentina Vulpe and Dr Robin Skeates for translating Ubaldini's medieval Italian; Dr Ardle MacMahon for advice on published sources; Ruth Hingley for her comments on the text; University of Durham Library and the Sackler Library, Oxford for access to books and Professor Barry Cunliffe of the University of Oxford Institute of Archaeology and Professor Peter Wells of the University of Minnesota for the original idea for this book. Strona 13 XII BOUDICA Special thanks are due to our editors, Martin Sheppard and Tony Morris, for their interest in the topic and meticulous attention to the editing and production of this book. Strona 14 To the memory of Peter and Jean Unwin Strona 15 i. A map of the Roman Empire in AD 60, showing places outside Britain connected with the story of Boudica. Strona 16 Introduction Just about everyone who learns the history of England is taught a ver- sion of the story of Boudica. She is one of those rare individuals from the past who have become folk heroes and play an important role in many of the popular accounts of the history of England and of Britain.l In this select group are a variety of historical and legendary characters including Julius Caesar, King Arthur, Alfred the Great, Robin Hood and Winston Churchill. Boudica has long been popular in Britain and appears regularly in school history books and televisual accounts of the British past. She is familiar to us, yet at the same time a shadowy figure. Although she lived in the ancient past and is recorded by our history, we really know very little about her, despite the fact that she has been studied for almost five centuries. Boudica's story is sufficiently dramatic that it has excited, enthused and, sometimes, revolted generations of people. Information about her is to be found in books and articles, popular television dramas, plays, galleries in museums, festivals and novels together with many webpages on the internet — a web-search in June 2004 located an astonishing 89,400 web pages with references to 'Boadicea' or 'Boudica'. In the past, Boudica was the subject of an equally wide variety of representations, including works of art (paint- ings, engravings and sculptures), poems, books, political works and plays. All these draw in some way upon the historical and archaeologi- cal knowledge that we possess, yet they represent her in widely differing ways. In brief, Boudica was a woman who appears to have been the wife of the king (or leader) of one of the British tribes (or peoples), the Iceni. She led a rebellion against the Roman government seventeen years after the initial invasion of Britain by the Romans. We know that she lived through the first sixteen years of the Roman occupation of Britain and Strona 17 XVI BOUDICA that she died resisting Roman rule, with the aid of her own tribe and others, probably in AD 60 to 61. Boudica did this through direct action that led to the destruction of several towns and thousands of deaths. She was eventually defeated by the Roman army and died, either from ill health or by suicide. She is one of a number of native leaders who, according to Roman literary sources, led opposition, revolts or rebel- lions against Roman rule in the early years of the empire.2 These included Viriatus in Iberia,3 Vercingetorix in Gaul,4 Civilis and Arminius (Herman) in Germany,5 and Caratacus in Britain.6 Boudica's life as a member of the aristocracy of an Iron Age tribe when Rome dominated Britain during the first century AD, the infor- mation for the rebellion that she led against Rome and a review of her story through to the internet age are all included. We shall explore the knowledge that we have for Boudica, derived from the classical writers who wrote about her. The detail provided by the two classical authors does not mean, however, that we actually know very much about her. The Roman accounts were written by wealthy and powerful men who lived at the Mediterranean core of the Roman Empire and who had cer- tainly never met her nor even visited Britain. They also wrote some time after the end of the events that they described. For these two writers, the tale of Boudica was useful because it provided a moral story for their intended audiences in Rome and the Mediterranean. The only other source that we have for her is the archaeological material that has been collected during the past few hundred years which serves to support some of the classical writing. All knowledge of Boudica seems to have been lost during the decline and fall of Roman power over Britain during the late fourth to sixth cen- turies and the next surviving written references to her do not appear until the early sixteenth century. With the rediscovery of the classical sources during the Renaissance, the views that were expressed by the classical authors appealed to the later writers who took up her story. Writers and artists, with different aims and ambitions, made moral observations about their own societies by developing the story of Boudica. From the sixteenth century onwards writers and artists por- trayed Boadicea in a wide variety of ways. She became a popular figure in history books and plays. Boudica has been given a variety of other names over the past few Strona 18 2. A map of Britain, showing places connected with the story of Boudica. Strona 19 XVIII BOUDICA hundred years, in particular 'Boudicca' and 'Boadicea', but Boudica appears to be the correct form of the spelling of her name. Research on Celtic languages in Europe has indicated that Boudica's name means Victory'. Boadicea remains, however, a better-known version of her name. The first part of the book, 'Boudica', explores the evidence for the 'real' character; while the second part, 'Boadicea', reviews the stories woven around her from the sixteenth century to the twenty-first.7 Peo- ple interpreted her in the context of their own times and explored their concerns and interests through the example she provided. Strona 20 PART ONE Boudica