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TECHNOLOGIES OF ENCHANTMENT?

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Technologiesof
Enchantment?
Exploring Celtic Art: 400BCtoAD100
DUNCAN GARROW
AND
CHRIS GOSDEN
1

3
Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, OX2 6DP,
United Kingdom
Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford.
It furthers the University’ s objective of excellence in research, scholarship,
and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of
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#Duncan Garrow and Chris Gosden 2012
The moral rights of the authors have been asserted
First Edition published in 2012
Impression: 1
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in
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You must not circulate this work in any other form
and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
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Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
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ISBN 978–0–19–954806–4
Printed in Great Britain
on acid-free paper by
MPG Books Group, Bodmin and King’s Lynn

Contents
List of Figures ix
List of Tables xiv
List of Appendices xv
Acknowledgements xvi
1. People and Materials in the Iron Age and Early
Roman Period 1
Aspects of the Iron Age 6
Reciprocity and Reproduction 7
Bronze and Iron 14
Social Ontologies 21
The Later Iron Age and Romano-British Periods 28
The Structure of the Book 35
2. But is it Art? Past and Present Approaches
to Celtic Art 38
Approaches to Prehistoric Art 39
Philosophical, Anthropological, and Art-Historical
Approaches to Art 43
Celtic Art? 46
Past Approaches to Celtic Art 48
A Summary of Our Approach 57
3. The Database and Our Methodology 60
Deciding What to Include 61
Constructing the Database 62
Celtic Art: The Basics 64
Biases to Consider 66
The Spatial Distribution of Objects 68
The Temporal Distribution of Objects 70
Dating Stylistic Change 79
Concluding Discussion 84
4. Making Materials 87
Making Iron 89
Making Bronze 93
Making Deposits: The Beaten and the Cast 97
Making Decoration 100
Concluding Discussion 107

5. Artefactual Times: Swords, Torcs, and Coins 112
Swords 114
Late Iron Age Swords 119
Sword Deposition 123
The Life Histories of Swords 128
Torcs 134
Torc Decorations 141
Coins and Torcs 143
Summary 149
Concluding Discussion 152
6. Hoards 155
Hoarding: Recent Discussions 158
Hoards and Celtic Art: Broad Patterns 160
Object Networks 163
Object Types 166
Object Connections 167
Summary 169
Material Networks 170
Fragmentation, Attrition, and Wear 172
Case Study 1: An‘Early’Hoard at Ringstead, Norfolk 179
Object Connections 179
Interpretations 182
Case Study 2: A‘Late’Hoard at‘Polden Hill’, Somerset 185
Object Connections 185
Interpretations 189
Concluding Discussion 191
7. Burials 194
Iron Age Burial: Recent Discussions 197
Burials and Celtic Art: Broad Patterns 199
Burial Types 202
Object Networks 205
Object–Object Connections 205
Object–Human and Object–Animal Connections 206
Summary 208
Introduction to the Case Studies 209
Case Study 1: A Chariot Burial from Kirkburn, East
Yorkshire 210
The Burial Process 210
Object and Human Histories 214
Object–Human Connections 216
Horse/Chariot Gear 217
Mail Cloak 219
Pig Bones 220
vi Contents

D-Shaped Box 221
Connections Beyond the Grave 222
Summary 224
Case Study 2: A Warrior Burial at Mill Hill, Deal, Kent226
The Burial Process 226
Object and Human Histories 229
Assemblage History 235
Constructing the‘Warrior’within the Grave 236
Summary 240
Case Study 3: A Welwyn-type Burial from Baldock,
Hertfordshire 241
The Burial Process 241
Object–Object Connections 243
Object–Human Connections 246
Summary 247
Case Study 4: A Mirror Burial at Portesham, Dorset 249
The Burial Process 250
Object and Human Histories 252
Summary 254
Concluding Discussion 255
8. Settlements 258
Settlements: Recent Discussions 259
Settlements and Celtic Art: Broad Patterns 261
Introduction to Case Studies 1 and 2 264
Wessex in the Iron Age 264
Metalworking in Wessex 266
Celtic Art in Wessex 266
Case Study 1: The Manufacture of Celtic Art at Gussage
All Saints 267
An Introduction to Gussage 267
Celtic Art at Gussage 269
Metalworking Evidence 271
Pit 209 271
Summary 276
Case Study 2: Horse Gear (and Horses) at Bury Hill 280
An Introduction to Bury Hill 280
Celtic Art at Bury Hill 281
Pits P23, P24, P45, and P57 283
Special Deposits? 284
Summary 285
Introduction to Case Study 3: Newstead Roman Fort 287
Celtic Art in Roman Forts 290
Case Study 3: Celtic Art and Roman Identities at Newstead 291
An Introduction to Newstead 291
Artefact Assemblages and Interpretations 292
Celtic Art at Newstead 294
Fragmentation, Attrition, and Wear 297
Contents vii

Broader Assemblages 299
Summary 300
Concluding Discussion 304
9. The Art of Community 307
Dispersed Communities 311
Theatre and Performance 313
Multiple Meanings and Cumulative Styles 316
Negotiating Identities 318
The Dinnington Torc 323
Appendix 1 327
Appendix 2 331
Appendix 3 336
Appendix 4 338
Bibliography 342
Index 367
viii Contents

List of Figures
1.1 Hoard L Snettisham, upper deposit 2
1.2 Hoard L Snettisham, lower deposit (Stead 1991d: Plate 8)3
1.3 Hoard L Snettisham, the‘Grotesque’torc 3
1.4 Detail of the‘Grotesque’torc, with a possible human face
(Stead 1991a: Fig. 11) 4
1.5 Linch pins and terrets (Stead 1985b: Fig. 88) 18
1.6 Tower Hill hoard, socketed axes 19
1.7 The Desborough mirror 30
1.8 A Dragonesque brooch 34
2.1 Fox’s‘Grammar of British Early Celtic Ornament: I’
(Fox 1958: Fig. 82) 51
2.2 Aspects of Jope’s‘Anatomy of Early Celtic Ornament’
(Jope 2000: Plate IV) 53
2.3 Decoration on the Witham scabbard (Stead 2006: 217)54
2.4 The Cerrigydrudion‘crown’ (detail) 56
2.5 The Battersea shield (Stead 1985a: Plate 13) 57
3.1 Quantities of different object types within the database
(total no. 2,580) 64
3.2 Overall distribution ofﬁndspots within the database
(total no. 2,530) 65
3.3 Percentage of artefacts within each context (total no. 1,679) 66
3.4 Distribution of Iron Age brooches (black squares) in relation
to all objects within the database (grey squares) 67
3.5 Distribution of Iron Age coins (black dots) in relation to
all objects within the database (grey squares) 68
3.6 Amounts of all horse gear within each context (total no. 400) 70
3.7 Percentage of arm rings within each context (total no. 21) 70
3.8 Percentage of massive armlets within each context (total no. 18) 71
3.9 Numbers of objects deposited per phase (total no. 1,491) 72

3.10 Numbers of objects deposited per year per phase
(total no. 1,491) 73
3.11 Distribution of all datableﬁnds by phase 74 –5
3.12a–b Distributions of contextually dated artefacts by phase 77–8
4.1 Two-dimensional decoration on the mirror from Trelan
Bahow, St Keverne 88
4.2 Three-dimensional horse gear from Stanwick/Melsonby 88
4.3 The depositional contexts of cast objects 98
4.4 The depositional contexts of beaten objects 98
4.5 The depositional contexts of copper alloy objects 99
4.6 The depositional contexts of iron objects 99
4.7 Relative contribution of each object type to the total of all
‘2-D’surface-decorated objects in the database 102
4.8 Numbers of‘2-D’surface-decorated objects with each motif type 103
4.9 Flowing repoussé decoration on the Battersea shield
(Stead 1985a: Plate 6) 104
4.10 Relative contribution of each object type to the total of all
‘3-D’objects in the database 105
4.11 Numbers of‘3-D’objects with each motif type 105
4.12 The distribution of‘2-D’surface-decorated objects in the three
impact classes across depositional contexts 107
4.13 The distribution of‘3-D’objects in the three impact classes
across depositional contexts 107
5.1 Scabbard decoration on a sword from Wetwang Slack
(Stead 2006: Fig. 88) 118
5.2 Kirkburn sword, exploded view (Stead 2006: Fig. 87)129
5.3 Scabbard from the River Thames (Stead 2006: Fig. 70)131
5.4 Torc terminal types (after Stead 1991: Figs. 7– 10) 135
5.5 The Ipswich torcs 135
5.6 European distribution of torcs (after Hautenauve 2005: Carte 1) 136
5.7 A selection of the objects from Snettisham, Hoard F
(Stead 1991: Plate 2) 139
5.8 The‘Great’torc from Snettisham 139
5.9 SchematicdiagramofSnettisham,HoardsG,H,J,K,andL,showing
metallic composition and stratigraphic position of each torc 141
x List of Figures

5.10 The‘Great’torc from Snettisham (detail) 142
5.11 Gallo-Belgic A coin 144
5.12 Ternary diagrams showing the relationship between metal
composition and colour in torcs and coins 146
5.13 Gallo-Belgic C coin abstraction 148
5.14 The Sutton scabbard (Stead 2006: Fig. 49) 150
6.1 Torcs within Hoard L at Snettisham, being recorded on site
by Ian Stead 160
6.2 A selection ofﬁrst century
ADhorse gear 161
6.3 Sizes of hoards containing Celtic art 162
6.4 Distribution of hoards containing Celtic art and multiple
iron deposits by context 163
6.5 Total numbers of each object type within all hoards
(total: 1,393) 164
6.6 Relative proportions of each Celtic art object type found
within hoards in comparison to those from all other contexts 165
6.7 Percentage of early hoards containing each object type 166
6.8 Percentage of late hoards containing each object type166
6.9 Object connections in early hoards 167
6.10 Object connections in late hoards 168
6.11 Percentage of Celtic art hoards containing each material 171
6.12 Contribution of each period in terms of all hoards containing
each material 171
6.13 Proportion of complete and incomplete items for each
object type 174
6.14 Bridle bits,‘plates’, and ingot‘cake’from Ringstead
(Clarke 1951: Plates 16, 18 and 19e) 181
6.15 Three of the bridle bits from Polden Hill (Brailsford 1975:
Fig. 3) 187
6.16 Three of the terrets from Polden Hill 188
7.1 Relative proportions of each Celtic art object type within
burials in comparison to those from all other contexts200
7.2 Numbers of burials containing each object type over time 201
7.3 Spatial distribution of burial types 204
7.4 Number of burials containing each object type 206
List of Figures xi

7.5 Burial K5 at Kirkburn (Stead 1991b: Fig. 127) 211
7.6 Kirkburn, Site 1 (Stead 1991b: Fig. 23) 212
7.7 Kirkburn K5 linch pins (Stead 1991b: Fig. 37) 216
7.8 Kirkburn K5 terrets (Stead 1991b: Fig. 40) 217
7.9 Kirkburn K5 box lid (Stead 1991b: Fig. 47) 222
7.10 Kirkburn K6 (Stead 1991b: Fig. 69) 223
7.11 Burial G112 at Mill Hill, Deal 227
7.12 Mill Hill, Deal, excavations 229
7.13 Photo of skull and crown 230
7.14 The crown’ s construction 232
7.15 Modern reconstruction of the crown, showing the point
at which the decoration schemes on each of the two different
segments (riveted together) meet 233
7.16 Photo of scabbard decoration 234
7.17 Photo of brooch, strap end, and suspension ring 235
7.18 Reconstruction drawing of grave (Stead and Rigby 1986: Fig. 20) 244
7.19 Fire-dog and bucket drawing (Stead and Rigby 1986: Fig. 24) 245
7.20 Photo of mirror (Fitzpatrick 1997: Plate 1) 249
7.21 Plan of grave (Fitzpatrick 1997: Fig. 2) 250
8.1 Relative proportions of each type of Celtic art object within
settlements in comparison to those from all other contexts 262
8.2 Numbers of Celtic art objects found on each site type262
8.3 Distribution of Celtic art by settlement type 263
8.4 Relative proportions of each type of Celtic art object within hill
forts and all other settlement contexts in Wessex 267
8.5 Distribution of metalworking debris at Gussage, by phase 270
8.6 Section of Pit 209 (Wainwright 1979: Fig. 96) 272
8.7 Moulds for making bridle bits (after Wainwright 1979:
Fig. 104) 273
8.8 Bury Hill: overall site plan and trench locations (Cunliffe
and Poole 2000: Fig. 2.2) 281
8.9 Features in Area 2, Bury Hill 282
8.10 Numbers of each type of Celtic art object found within Roman
forts in northern Britain 290
xii List of Figures

8.11 A selection of swords and shield mountings from Newstead
(Curle 1911: Plate 34) 298
8.12 A selection of horse gear from Newstead (Curle 1911: Plate 75) 300
8.13 Locations of features producing Celtic and Roman horse gear
(plan based on Clarke and Jones 1996: Fig. 2) 301
8.14 Locations of features producing Celtic and Roman swords
(plan based on Clarke and Jones 1996: Fig. 2) 302
9.1 Battersea shield (detail) 318
9.2 The occurrence of Celtic art on large Late Iron Age sites
known asoppida 319
9.3 Dinnington torc (Beswick et al. 1990: Fig. 2) 324
List of Figures xiii

List of Tables
3.1 Chronological subdivisions used (note that calendar dates and
correspondences with other schemes are approximate;
see Haselgrove 1993 for details of coin phasing) 72
4.1 The links between material, techniques, and depositional context 97
4.2 The links between surface, form, decoration, and depositional
context 100
4.3 The links between motif and form 101
5.1 The typology, history, and depositional contexts of relatively
complete swords (information from Stead 2006) 120–2
5.2 The depositional contexts of Iron Age swords (data from
Stead 2006: Table 11) 123
5.3 The history of damage, repairs, and replacements on scabbards
and swords (data from Stead 2006) 127
7.1 Number of burials within each category 203
8.1 Celtic art objects from Newstead 295

List of Appendices
Appendix 1 Artefacts illustrated in some of the main works on
Celtic art 327
Appendix 2 List of objects used in motif analysis 331
Appendix 3 Hoards containing Celtic art 336
Appendix 4 Burials containing Celtic art 338

Acknowledgements
TheTechnologies of Enchantmentproject aimed to take a fresh look at
so-called Celtic art–the body of mainly metalwork from the late Iron
Age and early Roman period in Britain. The project was funded by
the Arts and Humanities Research Council (grant number 112199)
between October 2005 and September 2008, and we are very grateful
for AHRC support.
Looking back on a project of this kind it is interesting to note how
many relationships were involved, some of which haveﬂourished
during the course of the project and others less so, for a range of
reasons. The project was originally written with Natasha Hutcheson
as the named researcher, but between the submission of the appli-
cation and the result being announced, Natasha gained a permanent
job. Duncan Garrow joined the project as a result. John Mack and
J. D. Hill were co-applicants on the application and we have worked
together productively in various ways, John feeding in anthropologi-
cal insights and helping to organize a conference at the University of
East Anglia, Norwich, in 2007. J. D. has made his own inimitable
form of contribution and we are sad that the pressure of work at the
British Museum has meant that he has not been a co-author of this
book. However, J. D. made very full and forceful comments on an
earlier draft, thereby improving it hugely, and his inﬂuence is felt
throughout, so that he acts as a silent third author.
The project has gone through a number of stages. In theﬁrst year
Duncan constructed the database on which the work is based, and
also organized a conference on new approaches to Celtic art in
Oxford that took place on 25 and 26 November 2006. From this, a
conference volume (Garrow et al. 2008) resulted, and the work for
the conference and edited book has helped shape our subsequent
thought. During the next year we worked on theﬁrst major dating
programme for Celtic art in Britain. The radiocarbon dates
were generously funded by the AHRC via the Oxford Radiocarbon
Dating Service (ORADS) programme. This resulted in an article
(Garrow et al. 2010). The work on dating was surprisingly time-
consuming, but the nature of the dates was also formative in our
thinking as a whole and indispensable to the rest of the thought and

writing we have undertaken. The Norwich conference on 30 No-
vember and 1 December 2007 was theﬁnal event of the project, and
theﬁnal publication for this is in preparation.
When the project formally ended in September 2008, Duncan
took up a lectureship in Liverpool, having completed a number of
chapters inﬁrst draft. Over the last two years we have sent chapters
back and forth between Oxford and Liverpool, with comments
from a variety of people, principally Anwen Cooper, Jody Joy, and
J. D. Hill. Jody has also generously provided information and con-
text from his own ongoing work,ﬁrst on mirrors and more latterly
on the Snettisham hoards, which have helped sharpen our own
thoughts. Other major repositories of Celtic art are found in the
National Museums of Wales and Scotland. We thank Adam Gwilt
and Fraser Hunter for providing access to the material and for
insightful discussions about it.
Many people have contributed to the project with advice and
comments. In particular we would like to thank Richard Bradley,
Anwen Cooper, Barry Cunliffe, Andrew Fitzpatrick, Melanie Giles,
Helena Hamerow, Colin Haselgrove, Dan Hicks, Natasha Hutcheson,
Zena Kamash, Gary Lock, Vincent Megaw, Wendy Morrison, Rachel
Pope, and Niall Sharples. Special thanks go to those two doyens of
British Celtic art, Mansel Spratling and Ian Stead, who have gen-
erously offered ideas and support throughout the course of the
project. Reading their work, we have become increasingly aware of
the acuteness and detail of their observations as well as their ability to
relate any individual item to the broadest canvas of metalwork and
otherﬁnds.
We would also like to thank Dave Allen for his help in enabling us
to study theﬁnds from Bury Hill at Andover Museum; Simon Clarke
for answering our questions about as yet unpublished excavations at
Newstead; Mary Davis for letting us read a chapter (about the Polden
Hill hoard) of her forthcoming Cardiff PhD in advance of publi-
cation; Andrew Fitzpatrick for commenting on the Portesham mirror
section of Chapter Seven; Jennifer Foster for taking the time to
discuss the metalworking moulds from Gussage All Saints and
Weelsby Avenue; Melanie Giles for providing us with access to her
PhD (2000); Colin Haselgrove for providing unpublished infor-
mation about the chronology of ironwork hoards; Dan Pett and
Sally Worrell for providing us with data from the Portable Antiquities
Scheme so readily; Niall Sharples for saving us a great deal of effort
Acknowledgements xvii

and time by providing access to all of his book on Iron Age Wessex
(2010) just before it was published; Mansel Spratling for his insightful
comments on Chapters Six and Seven; andﬁnally Mike Athanson,
John Pouncett, and Fraser Sturt for answering many GIS-related
questions over the course of the project. We would also like to
thank our families for living with this work for so long and being
supportive throughout.
Many individuals and institutions have been very kind in granting
us permission to reproduce images. In evidence throughout this book,
from the front cover to theﬁnal chapter, are photos of some of the
many beautiful Celtic art objects held at the British Museum, along
with numerous illustrations from British Museum publications; we
are extremely grateful to J. D. Hill, Jody Joy, and the Trustees of the
British Museum for allowing us to use these–the book would have
looked very different without them. We would also like to thank John
Creighton for allowing us to use versions of his coin images in
Chapter Five, Barry Cunliffe for allowing us to use the images from
his Bury Hill publication; English Heritage for images from Gussage
All Saints; Andrew Fitzpatrick and the Trust for Wessex Archaeology
for images from Portesham; Adam Gwilt and National Museum
Wales for the image of the Cerrigydrudion‘crown’ and permission
to reproduce Fox 1958. Keith Parﬁtt and the Dover Archaeological
Group for images from Mill Hill, Deal; Julie Gardiner and the Pre-
historic Society for images from Polden Hill and Ringstead; the
Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies for images from Baldock;
and Ian Stead for numerous images in his publications (most notably
those from Kirkburn, Snettisham, and hisIron Age Swords and
Scabbardsbook). Finally, it is important to thank Ian Cartwright
and Alison Wilkins, who prepared many of these images forﬁnal
publication, and constructed a number of the site plans, distribution
plots, etcetera, scattered throughout the book.
Finally, we would like to thank a number of people at, and asso-
ciated with, OUP for their assistance, patience and skill in bringing
this book through to publication: Hilary O’Shea (commissioning
editor), Taryn Campbell (assistant commissioning editor), Desirée
Kellerman (production editor), Marilyn Inglis (proofreader), Richard
Mason (copy editing), and Kim Birchall (indexing).
xviii Acknowledgements

1
People and Materials in the Iron Age and
Early Roman Period
‘You will need your sunglasses to look at that lot’, said a seasoned
curator at the British Museum in London as we went to examine
some of the gold and silver torcs from Snettisham. There, in the
Students’Room of the British Museum, lying in two drawers, were
parts of hoards F and L, spectacular items in their own right, but a
very minor part numerically of the whole Snettisham assemblage.
From 1948 onwards between 12 and 14 hoards were discovered on a
low hilltop in Norfolk, some still buried in small pits, others scattered
through the topsoil (hence the uncertainty about the numbers of
hoards). Some 75 complete torcs were found, with fragments of up
to 100 more (to give a sense of scale, it is estimated that only around
275 torcs have been found from the whole of Europe). The torcs and
fragments of other artefacts represent 20 kg of silver and 15 kg of gold
(Stead 1991c; see also Chapters Five and Six).
Theﬁnds from Snettisham have radically changed our views of the
skills and scale of Iron Age working in gold and silver, a relatively rare
occasion on which a single site makes a real difference to our percep-
tion of the past. But it is not just the scale of theﬁnds that is so
striking, it is also their nature. Let us take one example. Hoard L was
found in a comparatively large pit (Stead 1991d: 450). In the upper
deposit was a compact stack of seven silver and bronze torcs (Fig. 1.1)
with a layer of earth 17 cm (6⅝in) deep separating these from a lower
deposit with four gold torcs, seven of gold/silver alloy and one of
silver (Fig. 1.2). The so-called‘Grotesque’torc is found in this
lower group and is an assemblage all on its own (Fig. 1.3). This is
made of four sets of twisted wire strands, which are in turn inter-
twined. These terminals have high-relief decoration in a variety of

generally circular forms, divided by high ridges and given emphasis
by stippling and dots. There is an ambiguity to this decoration–
aspects of it could be read as human faces (Fig. 1.4), but only when the
torc is turned through 90˚from the angle when worn on the neck. In
any case, the three-dimensional nature of the decoration means that
not all of it could be seen at once, with the unseen elements to be
remembered or imagined. The decoration shows some wear, indi-
cating that the torc had been worn or handled for some time prior to
burial. Its colour is strikingly yellow and there is some suggestion that
the hoards of torcs were arranged by colour, with the more golden
items lower down.
The‘Grotesque’torc has a mini-torc threaded through its terminals
in the form of a two-stranded gold wire. Aﬂat silver wire is wound
round one end of the loop and through the adjacent terminal. Opposite
the terminals the loop of the torc is wrapped in gold sheet and at either
end the sheet of gold is wrapped round with thin wire andﬂat silver
wire. The diameter of the torc is 203 mm (8 in) and it weighs 801.3 gm.
Fig. 1.1 Hoard L Snettisham, upper deposit#Copyright the Trustees of
The British Museum
2 Chapter One

Fig. 1.3 Hoard L Snettisham, the‘Grotesque’torc#Copyright the Trustees
of The British Museum
Fig. 1.2 Hoard L Snettisham, lower deposit (Stead 1991a: Plate 8)
#Copyright the Trustees of The British Museum
People and Materials in the Iron Age and Early Roman Period3

The‘Grotesque’torc can be seen as an element in a series of
relationships spanning the past and into the present. First of all, the
torc itself is a multiple object requiring varied skills to make, from the
ﬁnding and reﬁning of the gold and silver, through the drawing of
multiple strands of wire, the casting of the terminals with subsequent
enhancement of the decoration, and the soldering of those terminals
onto the wire loop. The torc was worn, used, and added to, with its
various additions of gold sheet, gold and silver wire. Some of these
would have made the item less comfortable to wear, perhaps indi-
cating it was displayed as much as worn prior to its burial. The
deposition of the torc was a complex matter, with decisions having
to be made as to combinations of colours and types, indicating a
complicated aesthetic of colour and form.
The Snettisham torcs are part of a larger European corpus of neck
rings and torcs, many decorated with motifs usually thought to be
Celtic art. The wide sharing of motifs is nuanced by regional differ-
ences, so that the plasticity of decoration and the use of stippling and
hatching characterize British variants of European styles, and within
Britain there are hints of slightly varying styles. At a very broad spatial
and temporal level, Iron Age torcs are part of a longer-term history of
Fig. 1.4 Detail of the‘Grotesque’torc, with a possible human face (Stead
1991a: Fig. 11)#Copyright the Trustees of The British Museum
4 Chapter One

metal neck ornaments from the Early Bronze Age onwards, as well
as aﬂuctuating use of gold and silver. These two metals were newly
deployed in the Late Iron Age to make coins, with torcs having a com-
plicated relationship to coinage, not least in Snettisham itself, where
the hoards included large numbers of coins (see also Chapter Five).
Iron Age torcs therefore required skills on the part of their maker
or makers, but they also demanded skills of discrimination and
appreciation from the user. As mentioned, the motifs on decorated
torcs occur as part of a broader class of Celtic art objects with
decoration in three and two dimensions. By the third century
BC,
when the Snettisham torcs probably start to be produced, their users
and viewers would have been aware of decorations on beaten metal
items, such as casques or sword scabbards and three-dimensional
pieces such as horse gear. A single torc was both sufﬁcient unto itself
but also linked in multiple ways to a broader corpus of metalwork.
Over the last two centuries antiquarians and archaeologists have
taken up the task of trying to link together and to understand this
complex corpus. Despite considerable efforts many uncertainties still
exist. Some of them are due to gaps in our knowledge–for instance,
were torcs personal possessions or badges of ofﬁce? More interest-
ingly, some uncertainties may be inherent in the material itself. There
is an ambiguity to many of the designs in Celtic art that lead some
scholars to seeﬁgurative elements–human faces, birds, vegetation–
and others to see only abstract forms. Our view, developed later in the
book, is that this was an art of ambiguity and enchantment, open to
multiple readings and signiﬁcances, which overall helped to negotiate
an inherently unstable social world from around 400
BConwards.
This was not an art ofﬁxed orﬁxable meanings, but one designed to
have an impact on the senses, the emotions, and on notions of key
relations with human and non-human forces. We cannot share much
experience with people of the past, but something of the general
wonder of this material still comes through even in the present day
when we are saturated with form and image.
Taking the impact of the corpus of Celtic art as our starting point,
what role did it play in Iron Age relations? In order to approach such
a question we need a theoretical stance, and ours concerns ontology,
or the nature of being. Ontologies emphasize the interactions of Iron
Age peoples with the material world, and what sorts of outcomes they
were trying to achieve (see below). In order to be able to analyze these
interactions, we need to re-immerse Celtic art into the broader
People and Materials in the Iron Age and Early Roman Period5

archaeological record of the later Iron Age and Early Roman periods.
Celtic art is found in settlements, burials, hoards, rivers, and bogs. It is
connected to a mass of features (the pits at Snettisham) and artefacts
(the coins). Recent approaches to the subject have reinforced the‘art’
aspect of the Celticﬁnds, by tracing similarities of form and motif
over time and space. Such efforts have been valuable in deﬁning the
internal links within the assemblage of Celtic art, but have tended to
cut it off from many other aspects of archaeological evidence. We will
work to renew the connections to this evidence, without losing the
insights that can be gained from considering Celtic art as a corpus.
Our methods are described in more detail in Chapter Three; our
starting point is usually a database, which we constructed by putting
onto it all the items of Celtic art in Britain known to us. The database
has provided us with a central resource from which to trace out
relations over time and space, between the objects on the database
and with other aspects of archaeological evidence. Dating has been a
key issue in discussing Celtic art, and therefore we have also made
efforts to gain radiocarbon determinations of key pieces (Garrow
et al. 2010). Our next steps here are to provide a brief, relevant
background to the Iron Age, then to outline initially our theoretical
approach, before discussing the structure of the book.
ASPECTS OF THE IRON AGE
Our approach is an object-centred one. We shall start from the form
and decoration of artefacts. There are many possible accounts of the
British Iron Age and ours will privilege the role of objects, especially
metalwork. In order to understand the role that metalwork played in
the laterﬁrst millennium
BC, we need to think about long-term and
larger-scale trends in cultural approaches to the world. Obviously
there was a great deal of change between the Middle Bronze Age
and the coming of the Romans, but surprisingly some elements of
continuity are also obvious. The main one is a continuing emphasis on
deposition in rivers, bogs, dry land hoards, and graves. The emphases
of what is placed where shift over time and vary from region to region,
but the compulsion deliberately to deposit material carries on. Such a
compulsion potentially derived from the need for reciprocity. We
argue that people were then enmeshed in a series of reciprocal
6 Chapter One

relations with each other and with broader spiritual powers, in which
the basic rules of gift exchange applied–all gifts had to be recipro-
cated, whether a metal axe or pot given by a neighbour or access to
powers of production granted by cosmological powers. Spiritual
powers demanded repayment, which were met in part by deposits of
metals. All societies are concerned with continuation and repro-
duction, not just of the physical aspects of life, but of a world that
makes sense and has a knowable form. Marx (1973 [1857–8]), writing
in theGrundrisse, outlined the conjoined nature of consumptive
production and productive consumption, regarding production and
consumption as so intimately linked that they were almost the same
thing. The cyclical nature of human action, whereby all production
uses up existing materials and all consumption helps create something
new, is complemented by the notion that production and consump-
tion are simultaneously creative of objective and subjective states. To
paraphrase Marx–people objectify themselves in the things they
make and things subjectify themselves through being shaped by
human hands. Here we arrive at the central Marxist notion that people
make themselves in the act of making the world. People strive not just
to make the world but to make the world meaningful, where things
and people are entities that are signiﬁcant within the processes of
everyday life. In later prehistoric Britain, we argue, reproduction of
people and of things depended on a fundamental notion of reciprocity
that does form a long-term background to life, against which metal-
working and other productive activities need to be understood.
Reciprocity and Reproduction
We wish to emphasize two key points and connections here (ﬁrst
discussed by Brück 1999), which complement the one we have just
made about the need for reciprocity. Firstly, that from the Middle
Bronze Age onwards the domestic sphere of settlements and houses
was echoed by the ways in which dead bodies were burnt, buried, or
circulated. Secondly, that over the same period life revolved around
cycles of transformation in which the human life course of birth,
maturation, and death was linked to the making, moving, and depo-
sition of objects (again see Brück 1999). People as individuals
and groups were linked in cycles of transformation with house and
settlement structures in which everyday activities took place and
People and Materials in the Iron Age and Early Roman Period7

more unusual and dramatic forms of action, such as the burning of
bodies or the working of metal. We currently have theoretical reasons
to link people and things, but there are also compelling empirical
reasons to do so in late prehistory, whether these things be house
structures, pottery or axes, or human bones. Time is also key. Over
short timescales we can see cycles at the scale of human generations in
which houses are made and abandoned, metal deposited, etc. But
much longer continuities are also evident from the Middle Bronze
Age to the Late Iron Age in the patterns of building and replacing
houses, making and depositing metalwork at special spots within
rivers, and so on. The short-term cycles continue, change, modify,
and contradict the longer-term ones, so that there is a dynamic
interaction between human action unfolding at different scales.
A lot changes in theﬁrst century
BC, but even here there are hints
of continuities reaching back into earlier prehistory.
The Middle Bronze Age, from 1500 to 1150
BC, is the period in
which the British landscape isﬁrst laid out inﬁelds and enclosures,
with a small number of houses and structures for productive activi-
ties. Especially in southern Britain, decorated Deverel-Rimbury styles
are known in the form of Globular, Bucket, and Barrel urns, which
have variants in western and northern Britain. Ellison (1981) outlined
differences in the distributions of Deverel-Rimbury pottery, which
she links to spheres of exchange, with everyday wares moving 10–20
km from their source, andﬁne wares being exchanged over longer
distances. Distributions ofﬁne wares bear some comparison with the
axe and ornament classes of metalwork recognized by Rowlands
(1976: 164; 1980: 33). Rowlands further divided southern Britain
intoﬁve main metalworking centres–East Anglia, the Thames
Valley, the south coast in Hampshire/Sussex/Kent, south Wiltshire/
Dorset, and Somerset/Devon–on the basis of distributions of tools,
weapons, and ornaments (Rowlands 1976: 117–18). The distribution
of large weapons, such as rapiers, swords, and basal-looped spear-
heads, cut across these distributions and were found in considerable
quantities in the Thames Valley and in East Anglia where links with
the continent, and especially the Seine Valley, were marked. The
distribution of metalwork indicated patterns of exchange and alli-
ance, where competition was endemic and warfare a constant feature.
There was also something of a division of activities, with upland chalk
areas of southern England producing food and especially cattle that
people exchanged for metal.
8 Chapter One

The sets of exchanges evidenced by pottery distributions, metal,
and other materials continue on into the Iron Age, as Cunliffe’ s
analysis of pottery distributions shows (Cunliffe 2005). There has
been a stress on the competitive nature of exchanges as the basis for
social hierarchy, which emerges in Yates (2007) from his analysis of
the nature and distribution ofﬁeld systems in the Bronze Age, where
he makes a link between the concentration ofﬁeld systems and of
metalwork, such as that deposited in the Thames.
1
What Yates’s
analysis ignores is why competition involved throwing bronze and
other things into rivers. And here we would see the reciprocal prin-
ciple as key, building as it does on much previous discussion,
especially by Bradley (2005, 2007), who makes a number of major
points that we accept rather than feel the need to argue further for.
These include the deliberate nature of much deposition and the need
to look holistically at material that goes into graves, hoards, and
rivers. When the number of items in one context increases, it often
leads to a decrease in other areas, suggesting that emphases shifted
over time. The distribution of coarse andﬁne pottery, together with
metalwork of various types, helps indicate the patterns of local ex-
change and broader regional forms of trade in which communities
were enmeshed, demonstrating too the obligations within which they
worked. The disposal of the dead shows that obligations were not just
to the living, but also to the deceased.
A conventional sequence sees a prevalence of cremations in undec-
orated urns andﬂat graves in the Middle Bronze Age gradually dis-
appearing in the Late Bronze Age, from which point forwards
burial evidence is scarce over much of the country until cremations
re-emerge in the south and south-east in the Late Iron Age. The mass
of new evidence now emerging reveals a more complicated situation.
In the Middle Bronze Age cremation is without doubt the more
archaeologically visible rite and cremation cemeteries are regularly
associated with settlement sites. Indeed there are cases where the layout
of settlements and cemeteries parallel each other, with the same pottery
and metal types being deposited in both (Bradley 2007: 197).
1
As Sharples (2010: 41) has pointed out, there is reason to doubt whether the
laying out of Middle Bronze Ageﬁeld systems was due to the need for agricultural
intensiﬁcation, spurred in turn by competition in exchange. The crops for rotation did
not exist in the Bronze Age and nor is there a marked increase in the cereal production
at this time, which would have been needed to underpin exchanges of artefacts.
People and Materials in the Iron Age and Early Roman Period9

Metalwork that was deposited in burials prior to 1500BCis now found
more commonly in hoards on dry land and in bogs, in settlements and
in rivers. In both theﬁrst and last of these contexts contemporary
human bones are also found and the hoards sometimes look like sets of
personal equipment (Bradley 2007: 200; Brück 1995). Although crema-
tion was the most common form of burial, parts of human bodies may
have been circulating in association with metalwork. Links between
settlement and burial contexts were made, blurring any clear distinc-
tion between the two.
In the Late Bronze Age, after 1150
BC, deposition of metalwork and
possibly bodies in rivers intensiﬁed, with objects sometimes being
deliberately damaged (‘killed’) before deposition. Such deposits were
more often associated with structures over bogs or rivers, the most
famous of which is Flag Fen (Pryor 2001). Such structures continued
to be built into the Iron Age, famously at Fiskerton (Field and Parker
Pearson 2003). Cremation is not very obvious in the Late Bronze Age,
but nor is it absent. Small quantities of human bone are found in pits
within settlements in an area from Kent to the Severn, and these
appear to be token deposits taken from the pyre, the majority of
which is deposited elsewhere. As Bradley notes (2007: 214), this
‘implies that the burning of human bodies may have been more
common than archaeologists had supposed’. Metalwork is deposited
near settlements and this might represent part of the group of metal-
work produced near the site (Bradley 2005: Chapter 5).
Cremations probably continue into the sixth century
BC, but these
lack grave goods, and without radiocarbon-dating programmes it is
hard to be sure when they end. Indeed some cremations are buried
under small mounds in Yorkshire and eastern England (Cunliffe
2005: 544). Inhumations before theﬁfth century are rare, in marked
contrast to the continent. Two areas, the south-west and east York-
shire, practised inhumation burials, the latter producing important
ﬁnds of Celtic art (as we shall see below), but in general grave goods
are rare.
The most common indications of the dead across much of Britain
in the Iron Age are scatters of human bone in a variety of contexts
across settlements, leading to the conclusion that the predominant
rite was excarnation. Recently this picture has changed somewhat
with three sets ofﬁnds of crouched inhumations in shallow graves
at Yarnton, Oxfordshire (Hey et al. 1999), Kemble, Gloucestershire
(King et al. 1996), and Suddern Farm, Hampshire, of Middle Iron Age
10 Chapter One

date (Cunliffe 2005: 552). These cemeteries varied in size withﬁve
inhumations at Kemble, around 35 at Yarnton, with a similar number
excavated at Suddern Farm, but out of an estimated cemetery of 300
adults there were 80 children and 180 infants (Cunliffe and Poole,
2000: 201). These newﬁnds have led Sharples to wonder whether
inhumation was not a much more dominant element of the burial
record than has hitherto been perceived (Sharples, 2010: 280).
What seems clear is that some of the burials were dug into
subsequently to remove bones, as also happened at Cookey Down,
Wiltshire (Lovell 1999). Few grave goods accompanied the bodies.
From the late second century
BConwards a small number of burials
with rich ornaments are known, for example from Owslebury,
Hampshire (Collis 1973), Mill Hill, Deal, Kent (Parﬁtt 1995), and
Whitcombe, Dorset (Aitken and Aitken 1990). These are sometimes
known as‘warrior burials’, although they do not always contain a
full set of warrior equipment. Again, these are an important source
of evidence for Celtic art and are discussed more fully below (see
especially Chapter Seven).
Overlapping in time with these burials, there is a resurgence of the
cremation rite in the south-east from the beginning of theﬁrst
century
BC, sometimes known cumulatively as the Aylesford-Swarling
rite, after two rich graves in Kent. One of the earliest and most
recently excavated cemeteries is that of Westhampnett, West Sussex,
where 161 cremation burials were made over a 40-year period in the
ﬁrst half of theﬁrst century
BC(Fitzpatrick 1997b). The burials were
arranged around a semicircular space with funeral pyres still evident
along with X-, Y-, or T-shaped structures. Only a proportion of the
human bone was collected from the pyre for burial. In the very Late
Iron Age, from around 100
BCuntil after the Roman Conquest, large,
rich cremation burials of the Welwyn (Stead 1976a) and Lexden
(Foster 1986) types are known in the south-east, where elaborate
rites are evident in which the ashes of the dead person were deposited
in a variety of locations, accompanied in the main burial chamber by
rich grave goods, some of which had also been burnt on the pyre
(again, see especially Chapter Seven).
In the domestic sphere, if we can call it that, continuity and change
are evident, a continuing feature being the tendency to abandon
houses regularly (Sharples 2010). Houses from the Middle Bronze
Age were rarely repaired, indicating a restricted lifespan of their
occupants, perhaps linked to the lifespan of signiﬁcant members of
People and Materials in the Iron Age and Early Roman Period11

the occupying group (Brück 1999). This has the confusing effect for
the archaeologist of producing what look like large settlements, which
were in fact only occupied by one or two households at any one time.
As Sharples (2010: 222–35) has noted, the tendency to abandon
houses long before this needed to happen for functional reasons
carried on through until the end of the Middle Iron Age, providing
a long-term continuity in the basic periodicities of later prehistoric
society. Houses might be burnt or dismantled, but the effect was the
same: a linkage between the history of the human group and the
physical space it inhabited.
In the Late Bronze Age larger enclosures, known as ring works, are
found from Yorkshire down to Wessex which often have a single
large house and evidence of metalworking, such as the sword moulds
found at Springﬁeld Lyons, Essex (Buckley and Hedges 1987). There
has been some debate as to whether these were centres of communal
activities of production, exchange, and feasting or elite residences
where these activities were controlled. In the Late Bronze Age and
Early Iron Age many of theﬁelds created in the Middle Bronze Age
go out of use, with some not coming back into commission until the
Late Iron Age. Instead, extensive land boundaries in the form of linear
ditches are constructed in many areas, especially on the chalk, some
of which remain in use until the Roman period (Giles 2007a; Gosden
and Lock 2007).
Late Bronze Age and Early Iron Age houses were often larger than
their Middle Iron Age successors, and Sharples (2010: 202–7) has
impressiveﬁgures for the amount of wood, thatch, and mud needed
for the large Early Iron Age Pimperne house, compared with the
more modest structures from Middle Iron Age Danebury. The other
key change was the agglomeration of houses in hillforts from the
Early and Middle Iron Age, theﬁrst time in Britain that large num-
bers of households had ever been brought together. The early hillforts
often had timber-laced ramparts, increasing the pressures on wood-
land, as well as bringing a broader community together to construct
the banks and ditches enclosing the hillfort. Many people carried on
living in small enclosed settlements in the countryside made up of
one or two households, but they may have contributed labour and
food to the hillforts. From around 400
BConwards many of these
hillforts were abandoned, or used more intermittently, with some
such as Maiden Castle and Danebury gaining enlarged enclosing
banks and ditches (now using much less wood) and becoming the
12 Chapter One

sole centres of occupation in a countryside in which the smaller
settlements were more or less abandoned (Sharples 2010: 76–7).
This model works well for Danebury and Maiden Castle, but is less
convincing in other areas, where hillforts were not permanently
occupied by large numbers of people at any stage (Gosden and
Lock 2007).
The disposal of the dead was a matter of choice and judgement,
perhaps because a dead body was potentially powerful, either posi-
tively or negatively, and needed to be treated thoughtfully and with
care. What we might see as two worlds, that of humans and of spirits,
interpenetrated, and the movement of a person between these realms
at death was perhaps notﬁnal or one-way. The dead were members of
society and needed their own protocols and forms of approach.
In these post-Cartesian days we might want also to separate people
and things, but here again caution is needed. As we have mentioned,
metal items entering rivers were subjected to violence, perhaps in
ways that echoed the harm they had helped wreak on humans.
Furthermore, humans were involved in cycles of transformation
from conception to death and beyond; so too might things be.
Brück (2006) has emphasized the use ofﬁre in making pots, metal-
work, and drying grain. We might go a step further and see the
interplay of the major elements–earth, air,ﬁre, and water (also
wood?)–as key to social and political relations. It is possible that
human bodies were surrendered to one of these elements: burial link-
ing to earth, excarnation to air, cremation toﬁre, and river deposit to
water. Making pots involved a combination of earth, air, andﬁre.
Metallurgy, particularly that involving bronze, gold, or silver, applied
ﬁre to a solid ore that was melted to a liquid, cast, and returned to
a solid state. The technologies available in the pre-modern period
could not reach temperatures sufﬁcient to melt and cast iron, so that
it could only be worked in a solid state.
Metalworking was a technology capable of producing both striking
and useful items, but it involved harnessing dangerous forces of
transformation, such as extreme heat and physical strength, which
made it an arena both of possibility and danger. Transformations
were key in later prehistoric Britain, as people went through their life
course that included the social use of the body after biological death.
Things were also transformed and few of these transformations were
more dramatic than that of metalworking, which involved extreme
People and Materials in the Iron Age and Early Roman Period13

temperatures, the large-scale consumption of a great range of mate-
rial, human strength, and skill.
BRONZE AND IRON
Metals participated in and dramatized broader sets of transform-
ations that can be seen in Bronze and Iron Age society. Changes in
the nature of metalwork were not primarily to do with technology, as
we might conceive of this, but concern broader sets of values con-
nected ultimately to the reproduction of society. Iron technology was
thought to have taken over from bronze because it was technologi-
cally superior–iron is particularly suited to implements for cutting
and piercing, given its qualities of hardness and sharpness. Iron
implements, it was thought, quickly became widespread and access-
ible to more (all?) levels of society and so brought about a democ-
ratization of arts and crafts generally (a classic statement of this view
is put forward for the Aegean by Snodgrass, 1991, Chapter 5, 1980,
1983, inﬂuenced by Childe 1942: 183). The Bronze Age has been seen
as more open and international than the Iron Age, in large part
because of the trade in copper and tin ores or inﬁnished bronze
artefacts. Evans (1881) was one of theﬁrst to laud the open and
aristocratic nature of the Bronze Age world, sentiments echoed most
recently by Kristiansen (1998) and Kristiansen and Larsson (2005).
The Iron Age is characterized as more pragmatic, technically effec-
tive, and to some degree a more democratic world, which lacked the
openness, innovation, and heroism of warfare and travel seen in the
Bronze Age.
We will argue that bronze and iron had a long relationship before
iron became common. This happened not for purely technical rea-
sons, but because iron eventually helped a new set of values to
develop. Iron only became common in Britain after 400
BC, which is
when bronze also returned after an absence of centuries. This was also
the point at which Celtic art appeared in Britain and it did so as part
of a positive re-evaluation of metalwork. In order to understand this
whole process of change, we need the perspective provided by the
long history of the relationship between bronze and iron.
Aﬁrst point to make is that iron objects are almost as old as those of
bronze, going back in very small numbers to the third millennium
BC,
14 Chapter One

pre-dating the movement to a full-scale bronze technology in many
cases (see Pare 2000:ﬁg. 14.1). It is now recognized that different
regions started producing bronze in larger amounts at different
times, with the British Isles being relatively precocious with bronze
production pre-dating 2000
BC, whereas Crete may not have produced
its own bronze for at least another 500 years (Sherratt 1994). In the case
of iron, there was a more exaggerated version of this pattern of delayed
and regionally differentiated uptake. Second-millennium ironworking
was mainly restricted to Anatolia and Georgia as far as we know, with
occasional objects of iron, such as the dagger from Ganovce in Slovakia,
dating back well into this millennium (Harding 2000). Precocious
ironworking is also in evidence, notably at Hartshill Copse near Read-
ing in southern Britain around 1000
BC, where it is carried out with
bronzeworking (Collard et al. 2006). We can conclude that iron was a
known, if minor, element of people’s material culture across Europe
and throughout much of the second millennium
BC, but that ironwork-
ing was reluctantly adopted as it did not easilyﬁt the set of values that
were connected to bronze.
One of the classic statements of the shift from bronze to ironwork-
ing is provided by Snodgrass (1991). His scheme for change had three
stages. In Stage 1, which pre-dates 1150
BCin the Aegean, the area of
his interest, iron was known but used in small quantities and had a
semi-precious value. In Stage 2 (1150–1050
BCin Greece) a shortage
of bronze causes experimentation with ironworking, which becomes
more proﬁcient and efﬁcient. In Stage 3 iron is widely available and
largely replaces bronze for making practical artefacts (Snodgrass
1991, Chapter 5). Snodgrass’ s scheme is reprised, although often in
less explicit form, across Europe (1991, Chapter 5). Haarer (2001)
uses historical records ranging between the Old Assyrian period
(2000–1600
BC) and fourth-century Greece to show that between
the start of the second millennium
BCand the middle of theﬁrst,
iron demonstrated a continual decline in value, whereas bronze kept a
more constant worth. This has two implications–there was no
sudden drop in the value of iron to make it much more accessible
(indeed it was still relatively valuable at the beginning of theﬁrst
millennium
BC, being found in rich graves along with gold); there was
no sudden spike in the value of bronze indicating a crisis in supply.
Even once iron started to become common this did not happen
everywhere, so that it only became common in Mesopotamia after
750
BC(Haarer 2001: 265), several centuries after this happened in
People and Materials in the Iron Age and Early Roman Period15

Cyprus, Crete, or Greece (Sherratt 1994). The advantages of iron were
not immediately self-evident, but were enmeshed in a complex
system of values, a point to which we will return.
An idea once prevalent in north-western Europe was that iron took
over from bronze partly because of problems with the bronze supply.
Features of Late Bronze Age depositions include both their scale and
the large numbers of identical axes, some of which have very high
levels of lead, making them functionally useless as chopping tools
(O’Connor 1980; Huth 2000: 184–8). Given the scale of this depo-
sition at the end of the Bronze Age, many are now concluding that
bronze was not in short supply. The opposite might even be true–
‘over-production probably killed bronze’ s symbolic value and attrac-
tion’(Verlaecht 2000: 203). Rather than supply and demand as
straightforward economic drives, it is preferable to see complicated
shifts in value systems as the cause of change.
In Britain after around 800
BCthe deposition of bronze declined
markedly, and this is true of hoards, riverﬁnds, and evidence of
settlements (O’Connor 1980; Needham 2007)–there being few burials
at this time, as we have seen. The deposition of iron does not become
common until 400
BCor later. Looking at one of the best-understood
sequences of material culture from Danebury hillfort, the number and
weight of iron objects only increase in ceramic phase 6, which is
currently dated as starting in 400
BC(Salter and Ehrenreich 1984,
ﬁgs. 10.4 and 10.5). It might be that there is little iron in evidence
before this date because it was scarce and/or being recycled. However,
the data on production that we have, albeit fairly slim, indicates that
specialist smelting and smithing sites do become more common after
400
BC(Salter and Ehrenreich 1984: 151). Rachel Pope (personal
communication) has found the same pattern when looking at evidence
of production in individual houses. Looking again at deposition, Ha-
selgrove and Hingley (2006) have found a considerably larger number
of iron objects being deposited after theﬁfth century
BC.
From around 400
BCthe assemblages known as Celtic art also start
to be produced in bronze, iron, and later gold and silver. This happens
as metals are subject to a different value, so that as iron becomes
common so too do these other metals. As we shall see in more detail in
Chapter Two, the corpus of material we have come to call Celtic art is
made up of a broad spectrum of objects, including horse and chariot
gear, human ornaments, swords, shields, mirrors, tankards, helmets,
andﬁgurative objects. This miscellaneous group is picked out by a
16 Chapter One

relative complexity of form and decoration from other contemporary
items and compared to most metalwork that precedes it. In terms of
decoration, Celtic art is part of a set of styles found across Eurasia from
the earlyﬁrst millennium
BCto the early Medieval period (Wells 2008).
To gain an initial impression of the nature and signiﬁcance of Celtic
art, let us contrast it with earlier periods of Bronze Age metalwork.
Between the Middle Bronze Age metalwork known as the Acton Park
phase and the Early Iron Age Llyn Fawr assemblages metalwork
behaves typologically. Needham et al. (1998) have demonstrated
through a programme of radiocarbon dating that Bronze Age metal-
work phases each last around a century, changing in a regular typo-
logical manner. As we shall discuss in more detail in the next chapter,
the material we know as Celtic art does not generally change in an
easily understood typological manner (although some aspects, notably
ﬁbulae and coins, do). For instance, terrets
2
(Fig. 1.5), the most
common of all Celtic art forms, are not easily typed, nor are their
changes easily understood or charted. Each new worker dealing with
terrets comes up with a slightly different grouping to those previously
(compare Fox 1958, Spratling 1972, Palk 1992, and Macdonald
2007b). This, we argue in more detail in the next chapter, is due to
an emphasis on variety and difference on the part of the metalworkers
of the later Iron Age and not a function of small sample sizes or
taphonomy. In generalizing this point, we would say that the metal-
work of the Bronze Age emphasized quantity, whereas that of the Iron
Age stresses quality. The large assemblages of similar objects, princi-
pally axes (Fig. 1.6) and spears from the Ewart Park phase (Needham
2007) can be contrasted with the mixed hoards of the later Iron Age.
Not all is difference and some mark of the crucial nature of the changes
can be discerned by looking at the resemblances echoing between
items from the Wilburton and Ewart Park phase and (to some degree)
Llyn Fawr and the later Iron Age. From the Wilburton phase onwards
offensive and defensive weaponry deriving from the Middle Bronze
Age is joined by horse gear, such as cheek pieces, phalerae, and slightly
enigmatic double loops that might be terrets, as well as nave rings
(O’Connor 1980). Personal ornaments, such as pins and bracelets, are
rare. In the following Ewart Park phase pins diversify in form and
increase in numbers, to be joined byﬁnger and neck rings. Tweezers
2
Terrets are metal rings used to guide the reins from the horse(s) to the cart/
chariot and then the charioteer.
People and Materials in the Iron Age and Early Roman Period17

and razors are more in evidence. Horse gear has also diversiﬁed with
new and continuing types. Evidence of attention to the human body
and of horses is still found in attenuated form in the following Llyn
Fawr phase, before the evidence fails.
This mix of types, including horse and chariot gear, weaponry and
personal ornament, is found again from the fourth century
BC,an
interesting return to some of the tropes of the Bronze Age. But in
addition to this echo of earlier ways is a massive difference in form
and decoration. Bronze Age metalwork is decorated with studs,
rivets, simple geometrical patterns, or ribs and pellets. This cannot
Fig. 1.5 Linch pins from Kings Langley (above) and Stanwick (below) and
terrets from Westhall (above) and Stanwick (below) (Stead 1985b: Fig. 88)
#Copyright the Trustees of The British Museum
18 Chapter One

compare in its complexity to the decorations found on Celtic art,
which is aimed at quite different effects.
3
One only needs to compare
0 100 200 mm
Fig. 1.6 Tower Hill hoard, socketed axes (after Miles et al. 2003: Figs. 11.4,
11.5, 11.10, and 11.11)
3
Elsewhere in the Bronze Age world, heavily decorated metalwork is found, but
again in fairly standard forms. In looking at southern Scandinavia, Sorensen (1989a
and b) has contrasted a formalized world of later Bronze Age ritual and artefacts in
Montelian periods V and VI (roughly 800–500 BC) with the Pre-Roman Iron Age
period 1 (c.500–300 BC), but this is not the case in Britain.
People and Materials in the Iron Age and Early Roman Period19

the Snettisham torcs with any of the neck ornaments of the Bronze
Age to detect quite a different set of sensibilities brought about by a
desire for complexity. A Snettisham torc requires considerable skill
from the maker, but also from the viewer whose senses are educated
and skilled in quite new forms of appreciation. To say that Iron Age
metalwork is more complex and the product of greater skill than that
of the Bronze Age is not to make an argument for progress or to
denigrate the products of the earlier age. Instead we wish to make a
more cultural point, which is that metalwork had a different role in
the transformations linking people and the powers of the world in
the Iron Age than it had played previously. Relationships in the Iron
Age were arguably moreﬂuid and negotiable than in the earlier
period. Metalwork was not just more complex but also ambiguous
in its decoration, which was open to multiple interpretations. This
argument is key to our approach and will take the rest of the book to
develop and ground. This decorated world of qualities in metalwork,
which starts around 400
BC, persists in changing forms through the
Romano-British and Early Medieval worlds. It contrasts in many
ways with that of the Late Bronze Age, which nevertheless developed
the types and assemblages that carry on for many centuries in
elaborated form.
Metal is a quick medium, able to take on inﬂuences from elsewhere
and transform them. Bronze and iron have contrasting qualities. As
noted earlier, bronze can transform from a solid to a liquid and back
to a solid again, a dramatic change of state. But iron can only be
worked in a solid state. Hingley (1997) argues that the capacity of iron
to rust, returning it to a state like that of soil, gave it a series of links to
notions of fertility that inﬂuenced its deposition in ditches and pits. If
this argument is correct, iron became common in the Middle Iron
Age not because methods for working it became more sophisticated,
but rather because iron achieved a new and interesting position
within the notions of transformation developing from around 400
BConwards. Iron did not replace bronze but rather repositioned it,
and became part of a broader shift within the world of objects from an
emphasis on quantity to one of quality. Metals were less prominent in
the Early Iron Age than at any other time in the later second orﬁrst
millennia. They then re-emerged as central after 400
BCas part of a
new emphasis on quality.
20 Chapter One

Lying behind our arguments so far have been a series of broader
theoretical discussions. We will now consider these before looking in
a little more detail at the world of the later Iron Age.
SOCIAL ONTOLOGIES
Over the last few hundred years we have separated the terms science,
religion, and magic. This seems a natural separation to us, but is in
fact historically and culturally unusual. In thinking about periods of
the past like the Iron Age, our task is not so much to imagine what it
would be like to recombine these terms, but to think what it would be
like if we had never separated them in theﬁrst place. In our ontology
science denotes eternal, unchanging, and empirically veriﬁable forms
of cause and effect contained today within the laws of biology,
physics, and chemistry. Religion emphasizes a single or multiple set
of divine powers. Magic is a tricky and denigrated term, so that
dictionary deﬁnitions encompass meanings that include the ability
to produce illusions or tricks, the use of incantations and spells to
procure desired outcomes, and the human control of supernatural
agencies. Magic is linked to enchantment. Even in our world of today,
science and magic can overlap to produce wondrous effects, in the
form of substances that burn under water, or simulating a volcano
using baking soda and vinegar.
Nineteenth-century thinkers, including the sociologist Max Weber
and the anthropologist Sir Edward Burnett Tylor (1871), thought the
human history of engagement with the world moved from magic to
religion to science, each more institutionally based and objectively
correct than the previous one. As part of this progressive movement
of history, people shifted from a belief in spirits and magical powers,
to a belief in many gods and then just one, to emancipate themselves
ﬁnally through the application of reason, which found its purest
expression in science. The separation between science and religion
is now being questioned (Gaukroger 2006), whereby religion is seen
to provide the context for science over the last few centuries when
vicars have been naturalists, chemists, or geologists. Only in the last
century has real antagonism grown up between advocates of science
or religion, and then only on the part of a few. Science and magic
have also been closely related: the economist John Maynard Keynes
People and Materials in the Iron Age and Early Roman Period21

described Sir Isaac Newton not as theﬁrst of the age of reason, but as
the last of the magicians, struggling to understand the riddles of the
universe in the same manner as the ancient magi. The progressive
move from magic to science provides too partial an account, and in
all our minds there are aspects of religion (even if we are atheists),
magic (despite our rationalism), as well as a broader scientiﬁc idiom.
The history of the three terms is not one of replacement, but of
co-existence in cultural worlds emphasizing each discipline in differ-
ent measure.
There are grounds for thinking that in many periods of the pre-
historic past the mix of these three terms was different and indeed
seamless, so that separate concepts for each may not have existed. In
order to look at varying conceptions of powers in the world, and
human relations with plants, animals, and things, the term‘ontology’
is becoming central. Ontology is conventionally used as a singular
noun to refer either to the study of being and existence, or being and
existence in general. In this latter usage, which is the one we shall
develop, ontology refers to the things of which the universe is com-
posed and the relationships between them. In a Western approach to
ontology, it is the speciﬁcation of energy, mass, chemical compo-
sition, or biochemical operations that are important. In such an
objective view of the world there can be only one reality, so that our
use of ontologies in the plural is controversial. We are not so much
arguing that matter, or cause and effect, take multiple forms, but
rather that people engage with the multiplicity of the universe in
different ways. Each cultural engagement highlights and renders
differing aspects of the world, each with their own concepts of
cause and effect. The world and its workings become apparent to
people not through passive contemplation, but through practice
and practical knowledge. Skilled action represents a series of little
experiments in what it is possible to do with materials in concert or
competition with other people. Every type of cultural engagement
has a different skills base from which people consequently under-
stand the world differently. In the Iron Age and Roman periods, as we
have argued, reproduction revolved around a notion of reciprocity that
aimed to meet the demands of the non-human and the human
worlds, and it is within these demands that the technical aspects of
metalworking are embedded.
In an older usage of the word, ontology came to designate the really
real, the nature and structure of reality, which humans attempted to
22 Chapter One

apprehend and work with or against (Gosden 2008). Brute, inanimate
reality stood opposed to the lively and active intentions or desires of
human beings. In a Western view, as Viveiros de Castro has written
(1998: 469), a series of opposed terms connect to reality on the one
hand and human society on the other, so that nature opposes culture,
as a universal against the particular, the objective to the subjective, the
physical to the social, fact to value, the given to the initiated, body to
mind, necessity to spontaneity, and so on. This series of oppositions
has grown up in a Western, scientiﬁc mindset, and not all cultural
forms take these divisions for granted. Descola (1994) lays out three
different ways of conceiving of the world–animism, totemism, and
naturalism. The last of these is the Western view, dividing nature (to
be investigated by the physical or biological sciences) from culture
(probed by social sciences and humanities) in a manner that is
historically particular, having evolved in the last few hundred years.
Both animism and totemism blur the difference between culture
and nature. The former term does this by allowing aspects of person-
hood to adhere to animals, plants, rocks, rivers, and so on, which may
have desires and intentions in some ways similar to human motiv-
ations. Totemism mixes things up in the opposite direction, as it
were–if a wallaby or cockatoo can be emblematic of a clan or
other human group, then people may share characteristics of beha-
viour or inclination with those species, which are not truly separate
from the human group. A particularly inﬂuential account of such
blurring between our categories of people and the broader world is
contained in the work of Viveiros de Castro (1998), who coins the
term‘perspectivism’to understand the manner in which in Amazonia
plants and animals are seen as subjects that apprehend reality from
their own points of view, but in ways that echo human perceptions and
relations. Animals and spirits see themselves as humans of slightly
different kinds, and outward differences of the body conceal a human
soul within a jaguar or tapir. The author says that where Westerners
see a world of multiculturalism in which there is both difference
and equivalence between human cultures, Amerindian people see
multinaturalism in which various species have their differences under-
pinned by basic similarities of spirit (Viveiros de Castro 1998: 470).
The echoes between varying types of being require particular kinds of
respect, so that these schemes of reality have a moral element to them
tellingpeoplewhattheyneedtodotolivewell.
People and Materials in the Iron Age and Early Roman Period23

Both Descola and Viveiros de Castro draw their ideas from work
with Amerindian hunter-gatherers and horticulturalists. Similar ideas
are developed by Ingold (2000), stemming from understandings of
circumpolar hunter-gatherers. These insights are drawn from
the American continent and from work amongst mobile peoples,
providing an interesting but rather particular empirical basis to the
ethnography. Recently there has been a growing discussion of ontol-
ogy (or animism) within archaeology.
4
Within archaeology the term
ontology has useful overlaps with other discussions, principally those
concerning ritual and functional action (Brück 1999, Bradley 2005),
and those around the agency of objects or their ability to affect people.
As with the broader discussions from which they derive, archaeolo-
gical thoughts on ontology oppose two sets of dualisms: that between
mind and body and the difference made between culture and nature.
Things, plants, and animals can be mindful, purposive, and able to
inﬂuence people, so that they might be seen as persons, having many
of the key characteristics of personhood. If things can be persons then
it makes less sense to see them as part of nature and outside of culture,
thereby blurring or dissolving this distinction. In a Western ontology
nature is governed by laws that lie outside history and are invariant
over time and space. If nature is done away with, its workings can be
historicized and the possibility then arises that things can act differ-
ently at varying times, depending on the relationships in which they
are enmeshed. Human beings may relate to things, such as metal
artefacts, as animate objects with whom they have to cultivate
relationships, both with the objects themselves and the powers that
lie behind them. The idea of reciprocity is not limited to the human
world in which gifts must be acknowledged and repaid, but to many
other things. Or rather the human world is extended to include
persons of many different kinds, some of whom might look to us
like objects or biological species. Such beliefs are not random, ir-
rational, or optional, but part of how the structure of the world is seen
to be. They can be debated, challenged, and rethought, just as our own
beliefs can, but it would be dangerous in the extreme to ignore or
refuse to engage with the most potent powers in the world. The task
of the archaeologist is to lay out the key relationships and the human/
material practices associated with them. Such ideas overlap with other
4
See the special section in theCambridge Archaeological Journal, vol. 19 (2009),
and that inArchaeological Method and Theory, vol. 15 (2008).
24 Chapter One

recent discussions in anthropology and Science and Technology
Studies concerning the relationships between people and things. We
shall pick out three key thinkers–Alfred Gell, Bruno Latour, and Tim
Ingold–as a brief entry point into these discussions.
In a paper entitled‘The Technology of Enchantment and the
Enchantment of Technology’(1992) and a posthumously published
book,Art and Agency: An Anthropological Theory(1998), Gell devel-
oped what he described as an‘anthropological theory of visual art’.It
is not necessary here to recount in detail all of the arguments he puts
forward, many of which are undoubtedly best encounteredﬁrst hand
in any case. However, given the title of this book, it is certainly worth
discussing brieﬂy what he is getting at with the‘technology of
enchantment’idea.
Essentially, Gell advocates a move away from an anthropology that
discusses art in a purely aesthetic sense, or that focuses on symbolic
meanings. Rather, he would prefer us to view artworks as a kind of
‘technology’; that is, as objects whichdothings, haveeffectsoragency,
within society (1992: 43). Of key importance to his argument is the
notion that‘the power of art objects stems from the technical pro-
cesses they objectively embody: thetechnology of enchantmentis
founded on theenchantment of technology’ (ibid: 44, original empha-
sis). The main example that Gell uses to illustrate this point is that of
the canoe prow from the Trobriand Islands (off the eastern coast of
New Guinea). He argues that these intricately decorated and visually
striking objects have very real effects on people as they approach from
across the sea, essentially enchanting islanders into offering more
valuable shells or necklaces, as part of a Kula exchange, than they
would otherwise have done. It is in this sense that the canoe prows
work as atechnology of enchantment. The reason why this enchant-
ment occurs is not some hidden meaning within the decoration, nor a
neuro-psychological effect of the complex patterns;‘the canoe-board
is not dazzling as a physical object, but as a display of artistry
explicable only in magical terms’(ibid: 46). As the Trobriand
Islanders understand it, the skill involved in carving a prow in such
a way could only have come about as a result of magic; if the owner
had access to a carver with such magical powers, then the owner too
must be in possession of impressive powers (ibid). It is in this sense
that people areenchanted by the technologyof the canoe prow’s
manufacture (Gell 1998: Fig. 5.2/1).
People and Materials in the Iron Age and Early Roman Period25

It is worth mentioning that others writing about Celtic art have
discussed Gell’s work before. Gell himself brieﬂy mentions Celtic
knot-work in his exploration of art’s apotropaic effects (1998: 84).
Within Iron Age archaeology, Macdonald has discussed the potential
that Gell’s theories might have to offer for the study of La Tène art
(2007a: 336), while Giles has drawn on aspects of his work in her
consideration of the aesthetics of martial objects (Giles 2008). Our
intention in including a reference to Gell’s work in the title of our
book was not simply to borrow a catchy phrase. We felt speciﬁcally
that it would be interesting to explore the idea that Celtic art objects
could themselves have functioned as‘technologies of enchantment’,
working in comparable ways to Trobriand Island canoe prows. Cer-
tainly, in many cases, Celtic artefacts were produced as a result of the
impressive technical prowess that Gell views as crucial, and even
today do have an undeniable effect on the senses. We also draw
inspiration more generally from broader aspects of Gell’s work,
perhaps most of all his move away from simply discussing the
aesthetic valueof‘art’objects, and towards trying to understand
theireffectson people and each other.
Enchanting objects are one instance in which things have agency
over people, causing them to act in ways they would not if objects
were not there. Gell’s central question is not what objectsmeanbut
what they candoin the creation or nuancing of social relations. In the
rest of this book, we too have not attempted to enquire into the
meanings of Celtic art, exploring instead the relations that objects
have with each other in creating an‘inter-artefactual domain’, to use
another of Gell’s terms. The inter-artefactual domain concerns links
of style and form between objects so that they come together to form
a meta-domain having inﬂuence over human actions, perceptions,
and modes of value creation. This is an idea preﬁgured and paralleled
in David Clarke’ sAnalytical Archaeology(1968) where he talks of
objects en masse inﬂuencing people, using human muscles and skills
to reproduce them. Similar ideas have also been developed by art
historians (e.g. Mitchell 2005) looking at the rules of appreciation that
paintings and other forms impose upon the viewer.
Latour (1993, 2005) is developing a related but different idea when
writing of a‘symmetrical anthropology’or actor-network theory.
Human life is not just social, in that it is made up of objects as well
as people in ever-changing networks. Both people and objects can be
actors in such networks and we should not judge prior to an
26 Chapter One

investigation what either people or things can do–these capacities
can only be established empirically situation by situation. But because
both people and things can potentially be active we must always have
a balanced or symmetrical consideration of human and non-human
actors. In Latour’s view, people have tended to obscure objects,
securing for themselves the only active roles, making it important to
insist on the role of objects in human life. We should note that the
opposite problem can often obtain in archaeology, where people are
often occluded by things. As archaeologists we have to work hard to
create symmetry by reintroducing people as convincing analytical
categories, but it is not always clear what analytical forms prehistoric
people should take. We are not convinced that people of the
distant past without written or oral records present us with the
same analytical categories as those in anthropological, sociological,
or historical study.
Ingold emphasizes more the ecological or biological sets of re-
lations in which people and their objects grow into forms created
by the totality of relationships (Ingold 2000). He raises the possibility
that growing children and making things are not as different as they
might seem, as both are creative processes that depend for their form
on numerous other relationships. Like many scholars, Ingold refuses
to make a distinction between cultural and natural worlds, seeing
relationships of growth, change, and decay operating across a
differentiated globe, but not one divided simply between cultural
and natural forms. Ingold has also emphasized that many forms of
cultural knowledge allow animacy to rocks and trees or personhood
to bears and elk.
How far are such approaches helpful to the study of Celtic art? First
of all, issues of reproduction are key. Metalwork in the Iron Age and
Roman periods seems to have been enmeshed in a series of cycles of
transformation linking the human lifespan, groups occupying house
structures, the making of pottery, metal, and the processing of grain.
Furthermore, there may well have been play between the elements of
earth, air,ﬁre, and water that were all important in making, using,
and depositing key materials, such as pottery and metalwork (Hill
1995). All this happened within an ethic of reciprocity between
humans and broader powers of the universe, which include the
dead and other spirits. The regular, intentional deposition of bones,
both human and animal, pots, metalwork, as well probably as many
perishable items hard to detect archaeologically, indicates a need to
People and Materials in the Iron Age and Early Roman Period27

bury materials in particular ways, probably as an attempt to maintain
the productive powers of the world. From the Middle Bronze Age
onwards the archaeological evidence is replete with instances of
individual or mass deposition of objects, which changes constantly
over time, but never goes away. There is a pattern and purpose to
these deposits, which suggests that people did not casually seek a
relationship with other powers, but that these relationships had rules
specifying what appropriate deposits were, when they should be
made, and by whom. The existence of rules or practices specifying,
for instance, that a proportion of newly made metalwork should be
buried, seems to be evidence of magical beliefs. But the making of
metal was also bound by very precise actions. To make a bronze
object of a speciﬁc type needed the exact combination of copper with
tin or lead, the correct steps to be followed in smelting and casting, as
well as a knowledgeable deployment of wood, clay, wax, bone, and so
on (see Chapter Four). We would consider such precise steps to
belong to the realm of science or technology, as skills to be applauded.
To the metalworkers any such distinction between technical skills and
spiritual relations would seem odd and unnecessary. Just as much
skill might have been needed to deposit someﬁnished metal as to
make it in theﬁrst place, and the necessities in each case were equally
binding. Having undertaken this considerable excursion into theory,
let us return to the archaeological material, as we have not yet focused
in detail on the later Iron Age during which period most of the
material we shall discuss is to be found.
THELATERIRONAGEAND
ROMANO-BRITISH PERIODS
The period we are centrally concerned with is that from 400
BCtoAD
100, spanning the later Iron Age (using the terminology of Haselgrove
and Pope 2007) and the earliest Roman period. A dating programme
has shown that Celtic art in Britain starts around 400
BC, not much
later than that on the Continent (see Chapter Two for a broader
discussion of dates, and especially Garrow et al. 2010). In southern
Britain Celtic art was conceived in a world of developed hillforts and
small settlements, with the former lasting into theﬁrst century
BCor
28 Chapter One

longer. In the Midlands and East Anglia people lived in small open
settlements and sometimes larger agglomerations. There were enclosed
farmsteads and hillforts in northern England and Scotland, together
with more strongly enclosed single settlements in the western zone
encompassing the West Country, coastal Wales, and western Scotland
and the isles (Cunliffe 2005: Fig. 4.3). Pottery traditions varied, with
much of the country north of the Severn-Humber line being aceramic
at the start of the later Iron Age, except for north-western Scotland.
Elsewhere a variety of bowls and jars were found in locally distinct
forms, such as the well-known saucepan pottery groups in southern
and central England (Cunliffe 2005: Fig. 5.11). From theﬁrst century
BC
(or slightly before) wheel-turned wares are found in the south and
south-east, sometimes connected with the new cremation rite. These
new pottery distributions cut across the old, indicating that basic
connections of local exchange were changing. Elsewhere older tra-
ditions continued, including large areas that still lacked pottery (Hill
2007). Regional differences are marked, as are changes through time.
Therefore, as one looks at the distribution of Celtic art (discussed more
fully in Chapter Three), it is striking how ubiquitous it is, especially in
the southern part of Britain. Less is found in the Atlantic west than
elsewhere and little is known from the Highlands, but other than that
lacunae mainly exist in places like the Weald which seem relatively
devoid of Iron Age settlement. East Anglia, the Thames Valley, and
Yorkshire show especially marked concentrations. In contrast, both
brooches and coins (see Figs. 3.4 and 3.5) present a much more south-
erly distribution. One immediate comment we would make about
Celtic art is that it links communities that might otherwise be different
in most aspects of the archaeological evidence.
The early start we have given to Celtic art, at around 400
BC, might
seem controversial to some, appearing to be too early. Even more
debatable is a hiatus we have recognized between roughly 20
BCand
AD40. During this period we believe few objects that can be classed as
Celtic art were being made or deposited, and when this form of art
returns in the early Romano-British period it is of a quite different
type, emphasizing colour onﬂat surfaces (for instance on plateﬁbulae
and horse gear), as well asﬁgures of humans and animals or other
forms of cast and repoussé decoration on decorative plaques. The
complex engraved decorations with their asymmetrical patterns have
People and Materials in the Iron Age and Early Roman Period29

mostly disappeared (Fig. 1.7). In theﬁrst century BCconsiderable
cultural changes are evident, especially in the south and south-east.
The most discussed of these are connected with the so-calledoppida,
large sites with many foreign imports of artefacts from Gaul and
elsewhere in the Roman world. The term‘oppidum’refers in its
simplest form to a town. However, with the exception of Silchester
(Fulford and Timby 2000), none of the otheroppidaappear to have
been large centres of population. Instead sites like Camulodunum
(Colchester) (Hawkes and Crummy 1995), Verulamium (St Albans)
(Niblett 1999, 2001), or Bagendon (in Gloucestershire) (Moore 2006)
have complex ditches enclosing a large area with small centres of
productive activity and burials but no large centres of population.
Rather than being based on old centres of power, many of these new
sites were in areas that had had little or no occupation in earlier
centuries (Hill 2007), showing a certain volatility in relations from the
ﬁrst century
BConwards. A feature of the evidence at this time is a
marked rise in the production of metalwork, principallyﬁbulae and
coins, which by the lateﬁrst century
BCare being minted with rulers’
names on them for theﬁrst time. None of theoppidasites have any
Fig. 1.7 The Desborough mirror#Copyright the Trustees of The British
Museum
30 Chapter One

‘classic’works of Celtic art–swords, shields, mirrors, and torcs were
all absent from these sites–although Silchester shows evidence of the
production of horse gear (Fulford and Timby 2000). Indeed, a more
limited range of metalwork is present generally across Britain, includ-
ingﬁgural ornament, such as animal and humanﬁgurines, bowls, and
so on. Shrines also emerge for theﬁrst time in theﬁrst century
BC,
with square or rectangular structures and considerable depositions of
coins andﬁbulae (Smith 2001). Again, classic works of Celtic art are
absent. The shrines may demonstrate the emergence of ritual as a
separate category of action in people’s lives, a point we will develop
later. In other areas of material culture, wheel-turned pottery is taken
up in the earlyﬁrst century
BC(or earlier) in some places, but not until
after the Roman invasion of
AD43 in others. New pottery forms
include plates, dishes, cups, and bowls, indicating quite new forms
of food consumption (Cool 2006, Hill 2007).
In the later Iron Age new foci of production emerge, especially to
the south and east of the Severn-Pennine line. One set of foci is within
theoppida. At Silchester theﬁrst three phases are characterized by
features cut into the natural subsoil and overlain by a dark earth,
indicating a period of abandonment between the Late Iron Age and
Flavian deposits (Fulford and Timby 2000: 9). In period 2 (c.15
BC–
c.
AD40/50) what would previously have been round houses give way
to rectangular buildings in an orthogonal layout with streets. One
grave (F1297) contains evidence of moulds and crucibles, as well as
pot and bone. The moulds were used to produce winged terrets like
those at Stanwick and Polden Hills, as well as knobbed/platform
terrets of a previously unidentiﬁed type, in addition to rings, linch
pins, and pennanular brooches (Fulford and Timby 2000: 407). Much
more mould debris was scattered elsewhere. Period 3 (c.
AD40–50/60)
has a more varied set of evidence from pits along the northern
palisade, indicating precious metalworking, especially silver, for
coins and jewellery. Period 2, by contrast, shows bronze casting of
Iron Age type, paralleled by the roughly contemporary working at
Gravelly Guy (Lambrick and Allen, 2004), together with coin mint-
ing. Metalworking on the site sees a switch from earlier traditions of
metalwork on Period 2 to more Romanized practices in Period 3.
Other contemporary sites show broadly similar evidence, although
it is less full or well reported due to more partial and older exca-
vations. In the Chilterns, to the north around the River Ver, is a
dispersed multi-centred set of sites of habitations and burial, unlike
People and Materials in the Iron Age and Early Roman Period31

Exploring the Variety of Random
Documents with Different Content

“Committed to him the custody of Norwich, which his father
Sweyn burnt and destroyed; and to keep the East Angles secure
to him, he (Canute) was most like to be the builder of the
present stone Castle of Norwich. F or when by compact with the
English nobles, the law called Engleshire was made by universal
consent, for the safety of the Danes that were by agreement to
remain in England, Canute sent home to Denmark his
mercenary army of Danes, but in great caution built several
strong forts and castles, garrisoning them with such Danes as
had been settled in England before his time, intermixed with
such English as he had confidence in.”
The author of this ingenious Essay produces sufficient arguments to
show that there was a building in the fortifications in the reign of
Canute, and that there had been one since the time of King Alfred,
and that Canute might have repaired or even rebuilt it. Indeed,
there must have been a castle before the Conquest, as in Domesday
Book a number of tenements are stated to have belonged to the
castle. The pr esent building was probably reared after the
Conquest, it being so like Rising Castle and others. R oger Bigot very
likely built it, and Thomas Brotherton repaired it in the reign of
Edward I., as proved by his arms still in the stone work. Certain i t is,
from the time of Sweyn’s settling in the city in 1010, and the Danes
swarming hither in large numbers, it rose almost at once to great
importance, as appears from the Survey in the reign of Edward the
Confessor. This is highly probable if we believe the best authority on
the subject, namely the Saxon Chronicle, which states that the city
rose from desolation, in 50 years, to be a place of great magnitude,
far exceeding its former size. The Danes came hither in such
numbers that they became the parent stock of the people of
Norwich and Norfolk; and this is proved by the names of many
places in Norfolk.
Edward the Confessor began his reign in 1041, and the Earldom of
Norfolk was given to Harold, son of Earl Godwin, who was
afterwards king of England, and on his rebellion was seized by the

king and given to Algar, son of Leofric, Earl of Chester, who resigned
it again to Harold at his return; and in 1052, on the death of Earl
Godwin, Harold, in recompense for his generosity, gave Algar his
earldom again; but he being banished in 1055, it came to the king,
who pardoned him at Harold’s request, so that he enjoyed it till his
death, when it came again to the king.
CHAPTER VI.
Norwich in the Norman Period.
The Norman Conquest of England caused many changes in Norfolk
and Norwich. One of the immediate r esults of the invasion, in 1066,
was a vast influx of foreigners into the county and city; and the
pressure of the Norman yoke was felt as much in Norwich as in any
part of the kingdom. It w as about the same period that Jews began
to settle here for the first time, enriched by the extortions incident to
a conquest, and, as Fuller says, “buying such oppressed
Englishmen’s goods as Christians did not care to meddle with.”
William the Conqueror caused a survey to be made of all the lands in
the country, the register of which is called the Domesday Book, and
was finished in 1081. It is wri tten in Roman with a mixture of
Saxon, and is still preserved in the chapter-house at Westminster,
amongst the national archives. It was printed in the 40th of George
III. for the use of the members of both houses of parliament, and
the public libraries of the kingdom. It speci fies the extent of the
land in each district; the state it was in, whether meadow, pasture,
wood, or arable; the name of the proprietor; the value, &c.
Domesday Book, p. 13, states:—
“In Norwic, in the time of King Edward, were 1320 burgesses, of
whom one was so much the king’s vassal, that he might not
depart or do homage (to any other) without his licence. His
name was Edstan; he possessed 18 acres of land and 12 of
meadow, and two churches in the burgh and a sixth part of a

third, and to one of these churches there belonged one mansion
in the burgh and six acres of meadow: these six acres Roger
Bigod holds by the king’s gift. And of 1238 (of the said
burgesses) the king and the earl had soc, sac, and custom; and
of 50 Stigand had the soc, sac, and patronage; and of 32 Harold
had the soc, sac, and patronage,” &c., &c.
Soc, sac, and custom was the entire jurisdiction, for soc is the power
that any man had to hold courts, wherein all that dwell on his land,
or in his jurisdiction are answerable to do suit and service; sac is the
right of having all the amerciaments and forfeitures of such suitors;
and custom includes all other profits. At this time, also, there were
no fewer than 136 burgesses who were Frenchmen, and only six
who were English in the new burgh, which comprised the parishes of
St. Giles’ and St. Peter’s Mancroft. The Dutch and the Flemings,
about this time, came over the sea and located themselves in the
city and county, and introduced the worsted and other
manufactures.
William I. gave the Earldom of the city of Norwich to Ralph de
Guader, who designed to wed the daughter of one William Fitz-
Osbern, sister of Roger Earl of Hereford, and a relative of the king.
This matrimonial scheme not pleasing the king, it was prohibited,
but barons in those days would sometimes have a will of their own,
and the fair affianced was made a bride within the castle walls,
whose doorway in an angle marks the site of the act of disobedience
to the sovereign. After the sumptuous feast, with its attendant
libations, a rebellion was planned by Waltheof, Earl of
Northumberland, Huntingdon, and Northampton, and Roger, Earl of
Hereford. Having carried the forbidden marriage into effect, they
became bold in their language and designs, until a chorus of excited
voices joined them in oaths as conspirators against their lord the
king. T reachery revealed the plot, and the church lent its aid to the
crown to crush the rebels. Lanf ranc, then the primate and
archbishop, sent out troops, headed by bishops and justiciaries, the
highest dignitaries of church and law, to oppose and besiege them.

The bridegroom fled for succour to his native Brittany, leaving his
bride for three months to defend the garrison with her retainers, at
the end of which time the brave Emma was forced to capitulate, but
upon mild terms, obtaining leave for herself and her followers to flee
to Brittany. Her husband became an outlaw, her brother was slain,
and scarcely one guest present at that ill-fated marriage feast
escaped an untimely end.
Nor did the city go unscathed. The dev astation carried into its midst
was heavy; many houses were burnt, many were deserted by those
who had joined the earl, and it is curious to read in the valuation of
land and property, taken soon after this event, how many houses are
recorded as void, both in the burgh or that part of the city under the
jurisdiction of the king and earl, and in other portions, subject to
other lords; for it would seem that the landlords of the soil on which
the city stood were the king or earl of the castle, the bishop, and the
Harold family. Clusters of huts were then built round the base of the
hill, and constituted the feudal village; its inhabitants consisting of
villains, of which there were two classes, the husbandmen or
peasants annexed to the manor or land, and a lower rank described
as villains in gross, or absolute slaves, transferable by deed from one
owner to another, the lives of these slaves being a continual state of
toil, degradation and suffering.
After the banishment of Earl Ralph, the king, having obtained
possession of the castle, appointed Roger Bigod constable, with a
limited power as bailiff, he having to collect the rents and revenues
belonging to the crown. He r etained these honours during the reign
of the succeeding monarch, William Rufus, though he joined in the
fruitless attempt to place that king’s elder brother, Robert Curthose,
on the throne. These troubles were not ended till 1091, when the
king made peace with his brother Robert, agreeing that the lands of
those who had assisted him should be restored to them.
CHAPTER VII.
Norwich in the Twelfth Century.

About the commencement of this century, a considerable addition
was made to the population of the city by a vast influx of Jews, who
originally came from Normandy, and were allowed to settle in
England as chapmen for the sale of confiscated goods. They
afterwards became numerous, and were so much in favour with
William Rufus that he is said to have sworn, by St. Luke’s face, his
usual oath, that “If the Jews should overcome the Christians, he
himself would become of their sect.” In his reign the present castle
is supposed to have been built.
Henry I., on his accession to the crown, met with great opposition
from many of the nobles who were in the interest of his elder
brother, Robert, Duke of Normandy; but Roger Bigod strongly
espousing his cause, became a great favourite. In the first part of
his reign, the king gave him Framlingham in Suffolk, and continued
him Constable of the Castle till his death. He w as succeeded by his
son William Bigod, on whose decease Hugh Bigod, his brother, who
inherited his estate, was appointed Governor of the Castle. I n 1122,
the king kept his Christmas in Norwich, when, being pleased with
the reception he met with, he severed the government of the city
from that of the castle, the constable of which had been heretofore
the sole governor. Henry I. granted the city a charter containing the
same franchises as the city of London then enjoyed, and the
government of the city was then separated from that of the castle,
the chief officer being styled Propositus or Provost. The liberties of
the city from the time of Henry I. to Edward III., were often
suspended and gradually enlarged. In 1403 the city was separated
entirely from the county of Norfolk, under the name of the county
and city of Norwich; and the first Mayor was then elected by the
citizens. The old corporation generally comprised a dignified body of
men, who maintained the hospitalities of the city. Under the ancient
charter the corporation of Norwich consisted of a mayor, recorder,
steward, two sheriffs, twenty-four aldermen, including the mayor,
and sixty common councilmen. The Municipal R eform Act
transferred its government into the hands of a mayor, a sheriff, and
a town council consisting of forty-eight councillors, and sixteen

aldermen elected by the council, who unitedly elect the mayor and
sheriff. To these, and to a recorder, with an indefinite number of
magistrates appointed by the crown, the government of the city is
entrusted.
King Stephen, on his accession, granted the custody of the castle to
his favourite, Hugh Bigod, who was a principal instrument in
advancing him to the crown, by coming directly from Normandy
where Henry I. died, and averring that he on his deathbed had
disinherited his daughter Maud, the empress, and appointed
Stephen, Earl of Bolyne, his heir. The citizens, therefore, taking this
opportunity, used what interest they could with the king to obtain a
new charter, vesting the government of the city in coroners and
bailiffs instead of provosts; but the affair took a different turn to
what they expected, for the king, upon a distrust of Bigod favouring
the cause of the Empress Maud, seized the castle and all the liberties
of the city into his own hands, and soon afterwards granted to his
natural son William, for an appanage or increase of inheritance, the
town and burgh of the city of Norwich, in which were 1238
burgesses who held of the king in burgage tenure; and also the
castle and burgh thereof, in which were 123 burgesses that held of
the king in burgage, and also the royal revenue of the whole county
of Norfolk, excepting what belonged to the bishopric, &c. The whole
rent of the city, including the fee farm, was then about £700 per
annum. The king r estored the city liberties for a fine in 1139.
During the reign of King Stephen more Flemings came over; and
these successive immigrations were a real blessing to the land.
England had not been a manufacturing country at all till the arrival
of the Flemings, who introduced the preparation and weaving of
wool, so that, in process of time, not only the home market was
abundantly supplied with woollen cloth, but a large surplus was
made for exportation. The Flemings wer e kinsmen of the Anglo-
Saxon race, and were distinguished for that probity in their
commercial dealings which afterwards became the characteristic of
the English merchants at large.

Henry II., in the first year of his reign, 1155, took the city, castle,
and liberties from William, the natural son of Stephen; but, as a
recompense, restored to him all those lands which his father held in
the reign of Henry I. He also pr evailed upon Hugh Bigod to yield up
all his castles, whereby the whole right became vested in the crown;
the king governing the city by the sheriff, who paid the profits
arising therefrom into the exchequer. About the year 1163 Hugh
Bigod was restored to the title of the Earl of Norfolk, and at the
same time appointed Constable of Norwich Castle, by which means
he became sole governor of the city. In 1182, the citizens recovered
the liberties of the city on paying a fine of 80 marks to the king.
Richard I. was crowned September 4th, 1189, and a riot happened
on account of a Jew attempting to enter Westminster Hall contrary
to the king’s express command. Man y of the Jews were killed, and
their houses plundered and burnt. A rumour w as thereupon spread
throughout the nation that the king did not favour them, on which
the people of Bury, Lynn, and Norwich, took occasion to rise and rob
great numbers of them. On No vember 27th following, Roger, son of
Hugh Bigod, was created Earl of Norfolk, and steward of the king’s
household. B y his means the city regained as ample a charter as
London then possessed, for in 1193, the king granted the city in fee
farm to the citizens and their heirs, for a fee farm rent of £180
yearly.
CHAPTER VIII.
Norwich in the Thirteenth Century.
King John ascended the throne in 1193, and in a few years
afterwards the barons rebelled against him. I n 1215, Roger Bigod,
Earl of Norfolk, joined the insurgent barons. The king seized the
castle, expelled the earl, and appointed the Earl of Pembroke and
John Fitz-Herbert Constables of the Castle. Lewis, the Dauphin of
France, having obtained a grant of the kingdom from the pope,
brought over a large force, ravaged the counties of Norfolk and

Suffolk, took the castle, and reduced the city. He made William de
Bellomonte his marshal and constable, and placed him with a
garrison within the castle walls.
King John granted two charters to the citizens, bestowing certain
privileges; and he came to the city in 1256, as is evident from the
Charter of Liberties granted to the port of Yarmouth, it being dated
March 25, 1256, by the king at Norwich. On the same da y he
likewise granted his third Charter to the city, bestowing certain
commercial privileges. I n 1265 Simon Montfort and his adherents
seized all the king’s castles and committed the custody of them to
their own friends, and having also gotten the king’s person into their
power, they obliged him to send letters to the sheriffs of counties,
including Norfolk, commanding them to oppose all attempts in
favour of the king. B ut the king having routed the barons at
Eversham, removed all the constables which the confederates had
appointed, and amongst the rest Roger Bigod; in whose stead, John
de Vallibus, or Vaux, was made Constable of this Castle, and Sheriff
of Norfolk and Suffolk, and soon afterwards, in consequence of great
disturbances in the city, he was ordered to enter it, and did so,
notwithstanding its liberties. I n December, 1266, the displaced
barons, headed by Sir John de Evile, entered the city and killed
many persons, imprisoned more, plundered the town, and carried
away the wealthiest of the inhabitants.
According to Blomefield, about this time, on a Good Friday, the Jews
were accused of having crucified a boy, twelve years of age, named
William; and the date of his alleged death, March 24th, was marked
as a holiday. No evidence is adduced that the crime was committed,
and no motive is assigned for it. The date of the year is not given,
and the boy’s name besides William is not stated. The Jews denied
the charge, but it was generally believed, and they were terribly
persecuted. The people then seiz ed upon every pretence for
robbing and plundering the poor Jews. It is said that the crime w as
discovered by Erlward, a burgess, as they were going to bury the
body in Thorpe Wood. On this the Jews applied to the sheriff, and

promised him 100 marks if he would free them from this charge.
The sheriff sending for Erlward obliged him to swear that so long as
he lived he would never accuse the Jews nor discover the fact.
About five years afterwards, Erlward, on his deathbed, made known
the whole affair, and the body, it is said, having been found in the
wood, was taken and buried in the churchyard of the monks. They
alleged that many miracles were there wrought by it which
occasioned its being removed into the church and enshrined in the
year 1150.
Edward I. succeeded to the throne in 1272, and in the next year the
king appointed Roger Bigod, Earl of Norfolk, to be Constable of the
Castle. The inter dict, which was removed on Christmas eve, was
renewed on the day after Epiphany, but was taken off till Easter,
when it was renewed the third time. I n 1274, the affair between the
monks and citizens continuing unsettled, it was referred to the pope,
who left it to the decision of the king, who adjudged the citizens to
pay 500 marks yearly for six years, and to give the church a cup of
the value of £100, and weighing 10 lbs. in gold. The monks wer e to
repair their gates and to have access to all parts of the city, and
some of the chief citizens were to go to Rome to beg the pope’s
pardon. These conditions being agreed to, the king restored to the
city all its ancient privileges on payment of a fine of 40s. yearly,
besides the old fee farm. The interdict was also removed on
November 1st, 1275. The king k ept his Easter in the city in 1277,
and he granted a new charter in 1285. In 1289 the liberties were
seized, but were restored again at the end of the year. Soon
afterwards the king, while on a pilgrimage to Walsingham, granted a
new charter. In 1296, the city first sent representatives to
parliament, originally four in number, who were paid for their
services, but on account of the expense the number was reduced to
two members.
CHAPTER IX.
Norwich in the Fourteenth Century.

In this century this city and other towns began to obtain political
privileges. The kings of the middle ages found themselves obliged
to summon burgesses to parliament in order to obtain supplies. The
early parliaments appear to have been convened chiefly for this
purpose, and were constantly dissolved as soon as the business for
which they met was transacted. F ormerly the burgesses returned
were always citizens, who really were representatives of the city and
its interests, and not merely supporters of the ministry of the day.
There is no record of the early local elections, but lists will be given
of the burgesses returned.
Edward II. began his reign on July 7th, 1307, and he reigned
nineteen years. W alter de Norwich, son of Jeffry de Norwich, was so
much in favour with the king as to be one of the Barons of the
Exchequer in 1311, and in 1314 was summoned as a parliamentary
baron, and afterwards made the Treasurer of the Exchequer, which
office he held several years. He obtained liberty for free warren in
all his demean lands, and a fair to the manor of Ling in Norfolk, on
July 20th, and two days following. He continued in f avour till his
death.
In the reign of Edward III., A.D. 1328, the king, by a statute, made
Norwich a staple town for the counties of Norfolk and Suffolk, by
which the trade of the city was much increased. I n the “Paston
Letters” we find the following reference to articles of Norfolk
manufacture:
“I pray that you will send me hither two ells of worsted for
doublets, to happen me this cold winter, and that ye enquire
where William Paston bought his tippet of fine worsted which is
almost like silk, and if that be much finer that ye sh’d buy me,
after seven or eight shillings, then buy me a quarter and the nail
thereof for collars, though it be dearer than the other, for I
would make my doublet all worsted for the honour of Norfolk.”
In 1340, Norwich Castle was made the public prison for the county
of Norfolk, and the custody thereof was committed to the sheriff. A

great tournament was held in Norwich, at which the king, with his
queen Phillippa, was present; and they kept their court at the
bishop’s palace. I n 1342 the king and queen honoured the city with
another visit.
In 1344 a new charter was granted, by which the liberty of the
castle was reduced to the outward limits of the present ditch, and so
continues. B y this charter, the citizens became proprietor’s of the
ancient fee of the castle, that is, the castle ditches, and the great
croft, now the market place.
In the reign of Richard II., A.D. 1381, Wat Tyler’s rebellion broke out
in London. I nsurrection became prevalent in many parts of the
kingdom, manufactures declined, and discontent became general.
Norwich and Norfolk shared in the general plunder at the hands of
armed bands. Under John L yster, Litister, or Linster, a dyer, 50,000
men attacked the city and committed great depredations. They
were, however, pursued to North Walsham by the king’s troops
under the command of Henry Le Spencer, Bishop of Norwich, and
defeated. Their leader and man y of his adherents were taken and
executed for high treason. They wer e hung, drawn, and quartered,
according to the barbarous usage of the times. I n 1399, the bailiffs
having put the city into a proper posture of defence, openly declared
for Henry Duke of Lancaster, son and heir of John of Gaunt, the late
deceased duke, their especial friend. On this declaration, Henry
gave them strong assurances that, whenever it was in his power, the
charter which they so earnestly desired for electing a mayor, &c.,
should be granted them, and he was afterwards as good as his
word. The great connection there was between John of Gaunt and
this city, arose through William Norwich, a knight, who was a friend
of the Duke’s, and who frequently visited the town, for which he
always expressed great regard. In 1389, the great John of Gaunt,
Duke of Lancaster, visited this city, and was honourably received.
In the first year of Henry IV., Sir Thomas Erpingham, knight, a
Norfolk man, Warden of the Cinque Ports, and Lord Chamberlain,
obtained the King’s Charter, dated at Westminster, February 6th,

1399, confirming all the former charters ever granted to the city. In
1409, through the interest of Sir Thomas, a grant was made to the
city for a certain term of years of the alnage and survey of all
manner of worsteds made in Norwich and Norfolk.

St. George’s Company took its rise in the second half of the fourteenth
century, and consisted of a society of brethren and sisters associated
in honour of the Martyr St. George, who by voluntary contributions
supported a chaplain to celebrate service every day in the cathedral
before the altar, for the welfare of the brethren and sisters of the
Guild, whilst living, and of their souls when dead. I n this state they
continued till the fourth year of Henry V., when that prince granted
them a charter dated at Reading, incorporating them by the name of
the Aldermen, Masters, Brethren, and Sisters of the Fraternity and
Guild of St. George in Norwich; and empowering them to choose
yearly, one Alderman and two Masters, and to make all reasonable
orders and constitutions for their own government; to have a
common seal; to sue and be sued; and to maintain a chaplain to
pray daily for the health of the king, the alderman, masters, and
sisters whilst alive, and their souls when dead; and lastly to
purchase £10 per annum in mortmain. The prior , mayor, sheriffs,
and aldermen of the Guild, had power to expel or remove any
member for bad behaviour. In consequence of this charter,
ordinances were made for the well-governing of the society, and for
yearly choosing one alderman, four masters, and twenty-four
brethren, for the Assembly or Common Council. In 1451, by the
mediation of Judge Yelverton, the disputes between the Guild and
the city were settled; when it was agreed that the mayor for the
time being should yearly, on the day after the Guild, be chosen
Alderman of the Guild for the year following his mayoralty, that the
Assembly of the Guild should consist of twenty persons, and that the
common council of the city should be eligible for admission into the
company, but be liable to the charge of the feast. I ndeed, the chief
object of the Guild was feasting. Ev ery brother took an oath on
admission. The Aldermen and Common Counci l of the Guild had

power to choose such men and women, inhabitants of the city, to be
brethren and sisters of the Guild, as they might think fit. But no
man living out of the city could be chosen unless he was a knight,
esquire, or gentleman of note. Man y other orders were made in
regard to their procession, which was always very grand. This Guild,
with the other ancient crafts or companies of the city, made a very
splendid appearance on all public occasions. The companies wer e
then on the same footing as those of the city of London now are,
and some of the trades long continued as a fraternity, and chose
wardens among themselves. From the Friday after May day, to the
Friday before the Guild day, the members of St. George’s Company
used to meet every evening at the Guildhall in the Market Place,
where they refreshed themselves with as much sack and sugar rolls
as they pleased, besides two penny cakes from the baker’s. Being
thus assembled they sent for the last chosen feast-makers, and
asked them whether they intended to bear the charges of the feast,
“which” (said they) “will cost you more than you think.” By this they
so terrified timorous, wary people, that they were persuaded to buy
it off, though, had they agreed to make the feast, it would not have
cost them much more than £6 or £7, which sum they were glad to
save. The Company continued till February 24th, 1731, when the
committee appointed for the purpose reported to an assembly held
that day, that they had treated with St. George’s Company, who had
agreed to deliver up their charters, books, and records, into the
hands of the corporation, provided the latter would pay their debts,
amounting to £236 15s. 1d., which, being agreed to, they were
accordingly delivered up and deposited with the city records in the
Guildhall. Thus terminated this ancient feasting company by the
surrender of all their goods to the corporation.
CHAPTER X.
Norwich in the Fifteenth Century.
At the commencement of this century (in 1402) the grand affair of
obtaining a new charter occupied the greater part of the time of the

citizens, but as nothing could be done without the concurrence of
Bishop Spencer, they at last found means to soften him, and to
obtain his promise that he would not oppose them in this their
favourite object. Al l obstacles being now removed, they offered to
lend Henry 1000 marks, which so far obliged the king that he was
willing to give them as full a charter as they could desire. This was
accordingly done, and the new charter was granted on January 28th,
1403. B y this charter the city obtained a full power of local self-
government.
Henry V. began his reign on March 20th, 1412, in which year the city
was in great disorder, occasioned by the disputes between the Mayor
and the Commons, respecting the election of mayors, sheriffs, and
other officers of the corporation, and the powers granted by the
charter, concerning which they could not agree. These contentions
exhausted the city treasury, and at length they were settled by the
mediation of Sir Robert Berney, John Lancaster, William Paston, and
others. The bur gesses who served in Parliament in this reign were
R. Brasier, R. Dunston, W. Sedman, J. Biskelee, H. Rufman, W. Eton,
J. Alderfold, W. Appleyard, R. Baxter, and Henry Peking.
In 1422 the doctrines of the Reformation were introduced into the
city, and several persons were executed as Wickliffites or Lollards. A
large chalk pit, in Thorpe Hamlet, on the outskirts of the city, is to
this day called “Lollards’ Pit.”
Henry VI., when only nine months old, was proclaimed king on
August 31st, 1422, and in his reign a general persecution of the
Lollards broke out in this diocese. The Lol lards were men who
earnestly desired the reformation of the church, and they were
followers of that great and good man John Wickliffe, but they were
called Lollards as a name of infamy. They were so zealous for the
truth that they chose rather to suffer grievous torments and death
than forsake their faith. On this account about 120 persons were
persecuted for their profession of the pure gospel of Christ.

On June 6th, 1448, the king paid a royal visit to the city, and among
other preparations the gates were decorated, and the King’s arms,
and the arms of St. George, were painted and raised on six of the
gates. I n 1449, his Majesty paid another visit, after a sojourn with
the Earl of Suffolk at Costessey. The king entered Norwich by St.
Benedict’s Gate, which was especially ornamented for the occasion.
These peaceable entries, with the picturesque pomp of a royal
procession, always pleased the loyal citizens.
In 1452, it being rumoured that Edward earl of March, son to the
duke of York, was advancing towards London, the queen, much
terrified thereat, tried to make as many friends as she could, and for
that purpose came to this city, when, in full assembly, the Commons
resolved to advance 100 marks as a loan to the king; and the
aldermen at the same time presented the queen with 60 marks, to
which the Commons added 40 more, so that the king had now 200
marks of the city. The citizens then obtained a new charter, dated
March 17th, and consented to in full parliament. It contained a
restitution of all liberties, a general pardon of all past offences, and a
confirmation of all former charters.
In 1460, during the contest between the houses of York and
Lancaster, the mayor and aldermen raised forty armed men and the
Commons eighty, and appointed Wm. Rookwood, Esq., their captain,
with whom they agreed for six weeks’ pay, at six-pence a day for
each soldier, and sent them to the assistance of the king, who wrote
them a letter of thanks, with a request that they would maintain the
soldiers for one month longer, which was readily complied with. In
1474, the king visited the city, and was presented with a sum of
money by way of benevolence; but in the following year the city had
to pay £80 6s. 11d. for the forces employed in France.
In July 1469, Elizabeth Woodville, the queen of Edward IV., visited
Norwich and remained here several days. Her majesty, with a great
retinue, entered the city through “Westwyk Gate,” which was
decorated for the occasion. John P arnell was brought from Ipswich
to exercise his skill in ornamentation; and under his

superintendence, a stage covered with red-and-green worsted was
erected, adorned with figures of angels, escutcheons, and banners
of the royal lady and the king, with a profusion of crowns, roses,
fleur-de-lys, &c. Gi lbert Spurling exhibited a fragment of the
salutation of Mary and Elizabeth, which required from him a speech
in explanation.
In 1486, being the 1st Henry VII., on the rebellion of Lambert
Simnel, who assumed the name of Edward Plantagenet, the king,
expecting an invasion of the eastern parts of his kingdom, made a
progress through Norfolk and Suffolk to confirm the inhabitants in
their loyalty, and spent his Christmas at Norwich, when the city
made him a handsome present. Hence he went a pi lgrimage to
Walsingham, so famous for its pretended miracles, where he made
his vows; and after he returned victorious, he sent his banner to be
offered there as an acknowledgment of his prayers having been
heard.
The monastic institutions of this city might claim the honour of
having some learned men connected with them in the 15th century.
Thomas Brinton, or Brampton, a monk of Norwich, attained to such
an eminence in the schools of England that his fame was spread
abroad, and he was sent for by the pope to Rome. He often
preached before the pope in Latin, and being first made his
penitentiary was afterwards raised to the see of Rochester. His
sermons preached before the pope were published, with some
others. John Stow , who flourished in 1440, was a Benedictine monk
of the monastery of St. Saviour, in Norwich, and doctor of divinity of
Oxford. It appears, by his works, that he was at the council of
Basil. His works were The Acts of the Council at Basil; various
Collections; and Solemn Disputations, &c. John Mear , a monk of
Norwich, and D.D. of Oxford, was a person of subtle art for
explaining difficulties. He w as divinity reader at several monasteries,
and the author of several works, which have all been lost.

CHAPTER XI.
Norwich in the Sixteenth Century.
At the commencement of this century most of the houses in the city
were built of wood with thatched roofs. This accounts for the
number of fires which broke out at different times, and which, in
1507 and 1509, reduced a large portion of the city to ashes, no
fewer than 718 houses being consumed in the latter year. These
conflagrations induced the corporation, in 1509, to issue an order
that no newly-erected buildings in the city should be covered with
thatch, but this injunction not extending to those previously erected,
some few still retain this dangerous covering.
In 1501, John Rightwise, then mayor, began building the cross in the
Market Place, and finished it in 1503. It w as a commodious and
handsome pile, but falling into decay, it was sold by the Tonnage
Committee in 1732 for £125, and soon afterwards it was taken
down. About 1506, St. Andr ew’s Church was built, near the site of
the old church of St. Christopher.
Henry VIII. began his reign on April 22nd, 1509, when the city was
in a state of great distraction, on account of the terrible fires which
caused much destruction of property. In that year a great part of
the cathedral, with its vestry, and all the ornaments and books were
destroyed by a fire, which broke out on St. Thomas’ night. I n 1515,
the Lady Mary, sister to the king, and her consort the Duke of
Suffolk, visited the city on their return from France, and were nobly
entertained. Henry VIII. , while he continued a papist, burned the
reformers; and when in a fit of anger he disowned the pope and
assumed the English tiara, he was no less zealous against both
Papist and Puritan, who would not bind their consciences to his royal
decrees. During the prelacy of Richard Nykke or Nix, the bigotted
bishop of Norwich, several church reformers were burnt here and at
other places.

In 1517, Cardinal Wolsey visited the city to mediate between the
citizens and the monks, but their disputes were not finally settled till
1524, when the jurisdiction of the convent was ascertained and
separated from that of the corporation until 1538, when they were
converted into a dean and chapter.
On March 2nd, 1520, Queen Catherine and Cardinal Wolsey visited
the city, and all the city companies went to meet the queen “in Puke
and Dirke Tawney Liveries,” and the city presented her with 100
marks.
In 1522, in consequence of the many vexatious suits in the Sheriff’s
Court for words and trifling debts, it was agreed that four aldermen
be named, one out of each of the great wards, to sit in person, or by
deputies, every Wednesday, from eight till nine in the morning, to
adjust all debts under two shillings, and all actions on words, for the
ease and peace of the city. This institution was of great benefit, and
in some measure answered the purpose of the old Court of
Conscience.
In 1524, on September 2nd, through the mediation of Cardinal
Wolsey, a composition and final agreement was sealed between the
prior and the city at the Guildhall, by which the city resigned all
jurisdiction within the walls of the priory, the whole site thereof
being hereby acknowledged to be part of the County of Norfolk and
in the Hundred of Blofield; and the church gave up all right of
jurisdiction in every place without their walls and within the walls of
the city; so that now, Tombland, with the fairs kept thereon, and all
things belonging to those fairs—and Holmstrete, Spytelond, and
Ratten Row, with their letes—were adjudged to belong to the city,
and to be part of the county thereof. The prior and convent and
their successors were also exempted from all tolls, customs, and
exactions whatever, by land or water in the whole city, or county of
the city and its liberties, for goods or chattels bought or sold for the
use of the prior and convent, their households, or families.

In 1525 the king granted the city another charter, confirmed likewise
by parliament, in which the late composition and agreement
between the city and prior was fully recited and established, and
new privileges were granted.
In 1530 the king was declared supreme head of the church of
England; and was acknowledged so by act of parliament in 1535. I n
the latter year an act was passed for recontinuing liberties in the
crown, by which all cities, boroughs, and towns corporate, had their
liberties and privileges fully confirmed.
BILNEY’S MARTYRDOM.
A short account of the martyrdom of Thomas Bilney, in 1531, may
serve to illustrate the persecuting spirit of the age. He had
renounced the tenets of the Church of Rome, and was condemned
on the following passages extracted from two sermons which he had
preached in 1527, at Ipswich.
“Our Saviour Christ is our Mediator between us and the Father;
what need have we therefore for any remedy from saints? It is
a great injury to the blood of Christ to make such petitions, and
blasphemeth our Saviour.”
“Man is so imperfect by himself, that he can in no wise merit by
his own deeds.”
“The coming of Christ was long prophesied before, and desired
by the prophets; but John Baptist, being more than a prophet,
did not only prophesy, but with his finger shewed Him, saying,
‘Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sins of the
world.’ Then, if this was the very Lamb which John did
demonstrate, that taketh away the sins of the world, what injury
is it to our Saviour Christ, that to be buried in St. Francis’ cowl
should remit four parts of penance? What is then left to our
Saviour Christ, which taketh away the sins of the world? This I
will justify to be a great blasphemy to the blood of Christ.”

“It is great folly to go on pilgrimages; and preachers in times
past have been antichrists; and now it hath pleased God
somewhat to shew forth their falsehoods and errors.”
“The miracles done at Walsingham, Canterbury, and Ipswich,
were done by the devil through the sufferance of God, to blind
the poor people; and the Pope hath not the keys that St. Peter
had, except he followeth Peter in his living.”
“Christian people should set up no lights before images of
saints, for saints in heaven need no lights, and images have no
eyes to see; and, therefore, as Ezechias destroyed the brazen
serpent that Moses made by the commandment of God, even so
should the kings and princes of these times destroy and burn
the images of saints set up in churches.”
It was further deposed against Bilney, that he was notoriously
suspected to be a heretic, and that in his sermons he had exhorted
the people to put away their gods of silver and gold, and to desist
from offering to them either candle, wax, money, or any other thing;
and that in rehearsing the litany he said, “pray you only to God and
no saints;” and when he came to that part, Sancta Maria, &c., or, O
Saint Mary pray for us, he called out, “stop there.”
These and many other articles of the like nature being proved, he
was exhorted to recant and abjure them; and upon his refusing to
do so, the Bishop of London, having pulled off his cap, and made the
sign of the cross on his forehead and breast, pronounced the
following sentence:—
“I, by the counsel and consent of my brethren here present, do
pronounce thee, Thomas Bilney, who has been accused of
divers articles, to be convicted of heresy; and for the rest of the
sentence we will deliberate till to-morrow.”
The next day Bilney was again asked whether he would recant and
return to the unity of the church; when he desired a day or two for

consideration and to consult his friends. I n fear of a dreadful death
at the expiration of the time, he subscribed his abjuration; and being
absolved, he had the following penance enjoined him; to bear a
faggot at the procession at St. Paul’s, bareheaded, and to stand
before the preacher during the sermon there, and to remain in
prison till he should be released by Cardinal Wolsey. When in prison,
the reflection on what he had done drove Bilney almost to despair,
and he suffered all the agonies of remorse for more than twelve
months.
At length he resolved to seal that truth which he had so shamefully
abjured, with his blood. F or this purpose he travelled to Norwich,
and on his way to the city he openly preached those doctrines for
which he had been condemned; and being apprehended, was
confined in one of the cells under the Guildhall. On August 19th, he
was taken to Lollards’ pit, outside of Bishopsgate, and burnt there in
the presence of a crowd of horrified spectators.
This and many other instances may serve to show the persecuting
spirit of a church which had arrogated to itself a dominion over the
consciences of men, and dared to propagate a religion of fear as the
religion of Christ. After the R eformation, which had now begun, the
same persecuting spirit was manifested by the Church of England;
and many suffered here for their nonconformity to the
Establishment. S everal other martyrs were burnt in Norwich during
the same reign, and in 1539, one William Leyton, a monk of Eye, in
Suffolk, was burnt here, for speaking against a certain idol which
used to be carried about in procession at Eye; and for asserting that
the sacrament ought to be administered in both kinds.
In the same year peace and amity were settled between the church
and the city on a much more stable foundation than had been
previously effected, by an arrangement as to jurisdictions of the
authorities.

In 1534 an act was passed for rebuilding those parts of the city
which were laid waste by the late fires; by which it was enacted that
if the owners of such void grounds should, by the space of two years
after proclamation made by the mayor for all persons to rebuild or
enclose their grounds, neglect to rebuild on such ground, or
sufficiently enclose the same with mortar and stone, then it should
be lawful for the mayor, etc., to enter on such vacant grounds, and
hold and retain them to their own use and their successors’ use for
ever, discharged of all rents and outgoings whatsoever, provided
that, within two years after such entry made, they either rebuild or
enclose them as aforesaid.
DISSOLUTION OF THE MONASTERIES.
If, in giving an account of the state of society in the middle ages, we
were to omit from our enumeration of causes the vast influence of
the clergy of the church of Rome, we should present a very
imperfect view of the subject. The priests dominated o ver the minds
of men for many centuries, and their influence either for good or evil
pervaded all classes of society. This influence caused the erection of
monasteries, nunneries, priories, and friaries, nineteen in number, in
Norwich before the 16th century. Monastic institutions were
originally beneficial to society. In the dark ages, they preserved
learning to some extent, and were houses of refuge for the
destitute. No doubt there were many good self-denying men and
women amongst the monks and nuns, who did some service to the
poor who then abounded in the land. B ut in time the monasteries
sunk for the most part into dissolute confraternities; stupid and
sleepy, where not vicious; and banded together against the liberties
of the nation; and there were constant broils between the monks
and the citizens in Norwich.
The king having entirely renounced the authority of the church of
Rome, and assumed the title of Head of the Church of England,
caused a very strict inquiry to be instituted into the state of all

monastic institutions. This inquiry r esulted in their suppression,
more for the gratification of the monarch’s avarice than from his
desire to benefit his subjects; and most of the monks in Norwich and
Norfolk, as well as in other parts of England, were sent adrift with
small pensions. The king, indeed—in r evenge for being
excommunicated by the pope—suppressed 1148 monasteries in
England, whose revenues amounted to £183,707 yearly. He either
seized the property for himself or divided it amongst his favourites,
and the Duke of Norfolk obtained a great part of it in Norwich. The
dissolution of those ancient institutions caused a great deal of
poverty; the priests were driven out homeless over the land, and the
poor had no houses of refuge and no means of relief.
In 1538, Thomas Cromwell, lord privy seal, the king’s vicegerent,
sent injunctions to all bishops and curates, charging them to take
care that an English bible of the largest size be placed open in each
parish church, for every one to have recourse to. The open bible
was generally read in this city and elsewhere, and this, no doubt,
promoted the reformation of religion. I n spite of the tyranny of
kings, the domination of priests, and the superstition of the people,
the Reformation still advanced, and the national mind was
emancipated by degrees from ancient thraldom.

In 1545, one Rogers, of Norfolk, was condemned and suffered
martyrdom, for opposing the six articles of an act passed for
abolishing diversity of opinions in religion. This act inflicted the
penalty of death upon those—1st, who by word or writing denied
transubstantiation; 2nd, who maintained that communion in both
kinds was necessary; 3rd, or asserted that it was lawful for priests to
marry; 4th, or that vows of chastity might be broken; 5th, or that
private masses are profitable; 6th, or that auricular confession is not
necessary to salvation.
The king died on the 28th January, 1546; and his exequies were
celebrated here with great pomp, as appears from the chamberlain’s

account; though what good he ever did for the city it would be hard
to say. He was a king who spared no man in his anger and no
woman in his lust. I n his reign, 72,000 persons were hung for
political offences or for the crime of poverty as a warning to others.
The “Merry England” of those days was in fact a terrible country to
live in. Men wer e beaten, scourged, branded with hot irons, and
killed without mercy or limit.
Edward VI. was proclaimed king on January 28th, 1546; and on
February 25th, his coronation was celebrated with much pomp in
Norwich, where great rejoicings took place. Six lar ge guns were
fired on Tombland; the populace were treated with plenty of beer;
and bonfires were lighted in several of the streets. Ther e was a
grand procession with a pageant, in which the king was represented
by an effigy of king Solomon.
On March 8th, 1546, Edward VI., and the executors of his deceased
father, granted to the mayor, sheriffs, citizens, and commonalty, the
hospital of St. Giles’ in this city, now called the Old Men’s hospital,
with all the revenues belonging thereto for the maintenance of poor
people dwelling therein, all which the late king had promised to give
them at the request of the citizens, a short time before his death.
Norwich has always been noted for its civic feasts and good cheer;
and Bale, writing at this time (1549), in his “Continuation of Leland’s
Antiquities,” says:—
“Oh, cytie of England, whose glory standeth more in belly chere
than in the searche of wisdome godlye, how cometh it that
neither you nor yet your ydell masmongers have regarded this
most worthy commodytie of your countrye? I mean the
conservacyon of your antiquyties, and of the worthy labours of
your learned men. I th ynke the renowne of such a notable act
would have much longer endured than of all your belly
banquettes and table triumphes, either yet of your newly
purchased hawles, to keep St. George’s feast in.”

And again he says:—
“I have been also at Norwyche, our second cytie of name, and
there all the library monuments are turned to the use of their
grossers, candelmakers, sope sellers, &c.”
Small credit is here given to the city for the patronage and
promotion of intellectual pursuits.
KETT’S REBELLION.
In 1549 the city was the scene of an insurrection resembling that of
the Jacquerie in France, and the War of the Peasants in Germany.
The facts of this local rebellion were simple enough. The poor
people objected to the enclosure of waste lands, in the
neighbourhood of Attleborough and Wymondham, by the nobility
and gentry, who had been put in possession of the abbey lands,
which had been previously appropriated for the use of the poor, who
still considered that they had a right of commonage on the waste
lands and open pastures. The rebellion commenced at Eccles, Wilby,
Attleborough, and the neighbouring villages, the inhabitants of which
were enraged at Mr. John Green, lord of the manor of Wilby, who
had enclosed that part of the common belonging to his manor, which
had from time immemorial been open to the adjoining commons of
Hargham and Attleborough, and in which the people had enjoyed all
rights of intercommoning with each other. The people continued
quiet till Wymondham fair, on July 7th, when they collected in large
numbers. The leaders of the mo vement, accompanied by a large
number of others, went to Morley, about a mile from Wymondham,
and laid open the new enclosures; and on returning to Wymondham,
they destroyed all the fences by which the commons and wastes
were enclosed. John Flower dew, of Hethersett, incensed at the
destruction of his fences, gave forty pence to a number of the
country people to throw down the fences of Robert Kett, alias
Knight, whose pasture lay near Wymondham Fairstead. They carried
out his wishes to the full, and on the following morning returned to

Hethersett, where, at Kett’s instigation, they laid open other
enclosures of Flowerdew’s. After this, the rioters appointed Robert
Kett and his brother William, a butcher, to be their captains, and the
movement soon assumed the form of an organized rebellion. The
numbers of the rebels quickly increased, and marching on
Mousehold Heath, they took possession of the mansion of the Earl of
Surrey; and thence proceeded to lay siege to the city. They held
courts of justice under a large tree, called the “Oak of Reformation:”
and having augmented their numbers to 16,000 from the citizens,
and strongly fortified their camp, they summoned the city to
surrender. For months they maintained hostilities, and the country
round was pillaged and laid waste, until at length they gained an
entrance to the city, and took the mayor and several councillors
prisoners to their camp. A strong force was thereupon sent down
for the defence of the city, under the Marquis of Northampton, and a
regular battle was fought at the base of the hill on St. Martin’s
Palace Plain. I n this engagement Lord Sheffield was slain; and the
rebels, having forced the Marquis to retreat, plundered the city, and
set fire to it in many parts. I n short, all attempts to quell this violent
insurrection were ineffectual, till a large army, which had been raised
to proceed against the Scots, was ordered to march to the relief of
Norwich, under the command of the Earl of Warwick, who arrived
under the city walls on the 23rd of August. On the f ollowing day,
after making an ineffectual offer of pardon to the insurgents, on the
condition that they should lay down their arms, the king’s troops
commenced their attack; and having made several breaches in the
walls, and forced open some of the gates, they soon entered the
city, and took possession of the Market Place. I n the midst of this
scene of blood, the king’s ammunition carriages, having entered
apart from the main body of the army, were captured by the enemy,
but were soon retaken by a detachment from the Market Place. A
large body of the rebels still remaining in the city now made a
lodgement on Tombland, and through their superior local
knowledge, greatly annoyed the soldiers by posting small parties at
the angles of the different streets leading to the Market. The Earl of
Warwick, however, brought out his whole force to scour the city, and

the rebels, after setting fire to their camp, were obliged to quit their
post on the hill and retreat to Dussyn’s Dale, on Mousehold,
resolving to finish the business by a general engagement in the
valley.
On August 27th, being re-enforced by a newly-arrived detachment of
troops, the Earl marched out of the city to attack the rebels, to
whom he again offered pardon, provided they would quietly lay
down their arms; but, confident in their numbers, they refused to
capitulate. A bloody confl ict ensued, but the rebels, being
unaccustomed to the discharge of artillery, were soon in confusion.
Of this the Light Horse took advantage, and advancing to the
charge, drove the rebels from the field and pursued them with great
slaughter. Over 3000 were killed, and about 300 of the ringleaders
were afterwards executed. The gates of the ci ty suffered much
damage during this insurrection. The r ebels set Bishop’s gate on
fire, with some of the houses in the street, and those belonging to
the Great Hospital. Pockthorpe, Magdalen, St. Augustine, Coslany,
and Ber Street gates, shared the same fate. When the disturbances
ceased, the repair of the city generally was commenced, and
especially of the gates. Outside Magdalen Gates a gal lows was
erected, at which place and at the cross in the Market Place 300
rebels were executed. T wo, styled prophets, were hanged, drawn,
and quartered, their heads being placed on the towers, and their
quarters on the gates.
Robert and William Kett were tried in London for high treason and
rebellion, and convicted. On No vember 29th, they were delivered to
Sir Edmund Windham, High Sheriff of the counties of Norfolk and
Suffolk, to receive punishment. R obert was conveyed to Norwich,
and being brought to the foot of the castle, was drawn up to a
gibbet erected at the top, and there left hanging alive till he died by
famine; and his body, being entirely wasted, at length fell down. A
similar sentence was executed upon William, who was suspended
alive upon the top of Wymondham steeple. This f earful rebellion
having been thus brought to an end, the citizens, after the departure

of the kings troops, began to repair the damages to the walls and
gates. Unhappi ly, however, their trials were not yet over, for the late
disastrous occurrences were followed by such a scarcity and
dearness of provisions, that the corporation issued an edict,
requiring all the wealthier inhabitants to find corn for their own
households elsewhere, so that their poorer neighbours might have
the exclusive benefit of the city markets.
QUEEN MARY.
The Princess Mary was proclaimed here on July 18th, 1553, and was
the first English Queen in her own right, and the people of Norwich
and Norfolk rushed to her standard, impelled by the memory of
Kett’s rebellion. The queen w as a bigoted Roman Catholic, and in
her reign popery was revived in its worst form, associated with all
the atrocities of the most sanguinary persecution. Pr otestants were
gathered like fuel for burning; and as for the Puritans, no fate could
be too severe for them.
In March, 1556, William Carman, of Hingham, was burnt in Lollards’
pit, outside of Bishop’s Gate. He w as charged with being an
obstinate heretic, and actually having in his possession a bible, a
testament, and three psalters in the English tongue.
On July 13th, of the same year, Simon Miller, merchant of Lynn, and
Elizabeth Cooper, a pewterer’s wife, of the parish of St. Andrew,
were burnt together in Lollards’ pit. On August 5th, Richard
Crashfield, of Wymondham, Thomas Carman, William Seaman, and
Thomas Hudson, were burnt for heresy in the same place.
On July 10th, 1557, Richard Yolman, a devout old minister, seventy
years of age, was burnt for heresy. He had been curate to that
learned and pious martyr, Mr. Taylor, of Hadleigh.
As if a judgment had come on the country for such atrocities, the
quartan ague and a new sickness soon afterwards raged so violently,
that it was said that “fire, sword, and pestilence,” had swept away a

third part of the men of England; and it is recorded that ten of the
Norwich aldermen fell victims to the latter scourge.
During this short reign, the city was afflicted by the presence of
those merciless persecutors, Bishop Hopton and Chancellor
Dunnings, at whose instigation several martyrs to the reformed
religion were burnt here in 1557 and 1558. Happi ly the career of
this bigoted, blood-thirsty, priest-ridden queen, was cut short, and a
new and brighter era dawned upon the nation.
THE REIGN OF QUEEN ELIZABETH.
This queen ascended the throne on Nov. 7th, 1558, and was
proclaimed here on the 17th of the same month. She w as a zealous
promoter of the Reformation. The f orm of worship used in the
churches was similar to that in the time of Edward VI.; but the
protestants were almost as intolerant in this reign as the Romanists
had been before, though they claimed the right of private judgment;
and the principle of toleration was not recognised for centuries by
any church, or sect, or party.
In 1561, on the Guild day, the Duke of Norfolk, and the Earls of
Northumberland and Huntingdon, with many other nobility and
gentry, dined with the Mayor, William Mingay, Esq., in St. Andrew’s
Hall, which could scarcely contain the company and their retinue.
The entertainment is said to have been very magnificent, and the
expense of the feast amounted to 32s. 9d.
In 1565, the prosperity of the city, which had begun to decline, was
again revived by the settling here of 330 Flemings and Walloons,
who had fled from the Netherlands, from the rigid persecution under
the sanguinary Duke of Alva. In 1570, by the fostering
encouragement of Queen Elizabeth, the number of these foreign
settlers had increased to 3925, and by the introduction of
bombazine, and other manufactures, they contributed much to the
wealth and prosperity of Norwich.

During the long reign of Elizabeth, numerous conspiracies were
formed for the re-establishment of Popery, and in 1570, John
Throgmorton, Thomas Brooke, and G. Redman, were hanged and
quartered here for having joined in these traitorous enterprises. I n
1572, the Duke of Norfolk and several other noblemen were
attainted and beheaded for similar offences, at London, York, and
other places. The Duk e not only espoused the cause of Mary, Queen
of Scots, but even offered to marry that Roman Catholic Princess.
In 1574, a rumour was spread of invasion by the so-called invincible
Armada. Norwich, tow ards the general defence, exhibited on its
muster roll 2120 able men, of whom 400 were armed; the total
number enrolled in the whole county of Norfolk, being at the same
time, 6120 able men, of whom 3630 were armed. Happi ly there was
no occasion for their services, the Armada being destroyed by a
storm at sea.
Queen Elizabeth made a progress through Suffolk and Norfolk, from
the 16th to the 22nd August, 1578. She came on horseback f rom
Ipswich to Norwich, though she had several coaches in her train;
and she lodged in the Bishop’s Palace. F or several days she was
entertained by splendid pageantries, principally allusive to the trade
and manufactures of the city. Whilst here she dined publicly in the
North Alley of the Cathedral Cloister, and often went a hunting on
horseback, and to witness wrestling and shooting on Mousehold
heath. The ci ty records contain full details of the pageantries on the
occasion of the royal visit. In no other city was the Queen received
with greater cordiality and pageantry than in Norwich. The
corporation, the inhabitants, the clergy, with the nobility and gentry
of the county, contributed largely to afford the royal lady as pleasant
and costly a reception as should be pleasing to her as a spectacle,
and demonstrative of exuberant loyalty. This joy was soon turned
into mourning; for, says a record known as the Norwich Roll, “The
trains of Her Majesty’s carriage being many of them infected, left the
plague behind them, which afterwards increased and contynued, as

it raged about a year and three quarters.” Nearly 5000 fell victims to
this dreadful malady.
In 1578, Matthew Hamond, of Hethersett, wheelwright, a heretic
and blasphemer, being convicted of reviling the queen and of
denying the authority of the Scriptures, the Godhead, the atonement
of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the existence of the Holy Ghost, was
set in the pillory on May 13th, and both his ears were nailed.
Afterwards, on May 20th, he was burnt in the castle ditch. In 1587
and 1588 Francis Knight and Peter Cole, of Ipswich, were burnt in
the same place for their deistical sentiments.
The Reformation was not only stayed, but thrown backward by this
arbitrary, despotic queen. Though she w as well disposed to
reformation in the abstract, yet the fear of popish influence and a
jealousy for her ecclesiastical authority over the church, made her
act in the spirit of the worst excesses of popery. She persecuted all
who disputed her authority in religious matters. In vain did the
exiles return, hoping for peace and “freedom to worship God.” The
expulsion of a multitude of clergy, who refused to conform to many
impositions, and the many hardships suffered by the puritans,
especially in Norfolk and Suffolk, evinced that no concession was to
be expected from her. Her great idol was perfect uniformity. To
enforce it, she passed many laws, which made nonconformity worse
than felony, and she treated the Puritan as a rebel against all
authority, both human and divine. A beauti ful “Memorial” of the
ministers of Norfolk is still preserved in vindication of their loyalty,
and in advocacy of greater liberty of conscience. The r esult of it,
however, was that seven or eight of them were suspended in
Norwich. B ut instead of this being the means of stopping the
progress of Puritanism, the sincere inquirers after truth were incited
by such harsh measures to fresh investigations, and more
emboldened to declare their views.
In 1582, on a second return made of the strangers settled here, they
were found to be 1128 men; 1358 women; 815 children, strangers
born; 1378 children, English born; in all 4679. The whole population

was about 15,000, and the citizens continued to return burgesses to
parliament from time to time, but not so frequently as in former
reigns. During this reign William Kemp, a comic actor of high
reputation, and greatly applauded for his buffoonery, danced a
morris dance all the way from London to Norwich in nine days, and
was accompanied by crowds of people as he passed on from town to
town. When he arriv ed in Norwich he was very kindly treated by the
citizens, who turned out to meet him in large numbers.

Noêwich Pageants were celebrated during the middle ages, and
occupy a large space in the records of the corporation. B ooks of the
several companies relating to the pageants have been lost except
that of St. George, but some additional information has come to light
on the subject. A series of extr acts were made early in the last
century from the Grocers’ book, showing the proceedings and
expenditure of that company in regard to their pageants from 1534
to 1570, and also the versions of the plays in 1533 and in 1563. Al l
the plays of that period were called mysteries or miracle plays, and
were founded on bible history. The play was performed in a carriage
called a “House of Waynscott, painted and builded on a cart with
fowre whelys.” Painted cloths were hung about it, and it was drawn
by four horses, “having head stalls of brode inkle with knoppes and
tassels.” The vehicle had a square top with a large vane in the
midst, and one for the end, and a large number of smaller ones.
The company was evidently unable to afford the cost of four horses
in 1534; only one was hired, and four men attended on the pageant
with “Lewers.” One of the plays was called “Paradyse,” and was
performed by the Grocers and Raffmen. It begins much in the same
manner as the Coventry play, with God the Father relating the
planting of the garden of Eden, the creation of man and placing him
there, and God’s intention to create woman. The other char acters
are Lucifer, Adam, and Eve, who exhibit the incidents related in
Genesis. Of the good taste or pr opriety of these entertainments any
observation is needless. They f ormed a remarkable feature in the

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