Latin in Post-Roman Britain – An Old Debate Revisited

By Gareth Griffith

The current orthodoxy among historians of post-Roman Britain would seem to be that Latin was spoken and written widely in the century or so after the departure of the legions in around 410. This applies with particular force in what is called the Lowland Zone, the region in the south of the country where villa civilization proliferated. 

The issue is significant, not least because former assertions of the widespread displacement and even genocide of the native British population were sometimes based in part on the lack of Brittonic loan-words in Anglo-Saxon (for example, Ronald Hutton, p 296). But if Latin was the most common language encountered by the incoming Germanic people, at least in lowland Britain, then such assertions must look to new and different evidence. 

An example of the contemporary approach is found in Guy Halsall’s 2013 book, Worlds of Arthur: Facts and Fictions of the Dark Ages, where language is only one part of a larger and novel re-interpretation of the period. Halsall challenges the assumption, “still more or less universal,” he claims, that the people the Anglo-Saxons encountered in the Lowland Zone spoke Brittonic or Brythonic. He argues that: “This is very rarely questioned but it is more than a little problematic, being based upon absolutely no evidence.” Halsall’s view is that, while Brittonic was indeed the main language of the highland regions, the same cannot be said of what he calls “the lowland villa-zone.” By analogy with northern Gaul, he maintains that, after 400 years of Roman rule, in this zone “the local Celtic language was replaced by low Latin.” If that was so, then the “Anglo-Saxons’ lack of contact with British speakers would be entirely unsurprising.”

According to Halsall:

If we look for Latin loan-words in Old English, we find hundreds: about as many as there are in Old Welsh. It is usually claimed that these words were introduced during the Anglo-Saxons’ conversion to Christianity, yet that argument is itself founded ultimately on two propositions. 

One proposition is that, because the British spoke Brittonic, these Latin loan-words could not have been introduced earlier. The other is that Christianity died out in the lowland region before Augustine’s mission in 597. “Neither assumption is secure,” Halsall asserts. 

A similar, if less categorical version of this argument is found in Nicholas J Higham’s most recent book, King Arthur: The Making of the Legend. His conclusion is that, “Latin was widespread in late Roman Britain, particularly in the Lowland Zone, and literacy along with it, but Celtic was still heard everywhere and was for many their first language – particularly in the north and west.” 

In Wales and the Britons 350-1064 TM Charles Edwards wrote that in 400: 

…many Britons then spoke Latin, though many of them would also have been able to speak British…In the sixth century, Gildas referred to Latin as ‘our language’, contrasting it with the Germanic of the Anglo-Saxon settlers. 

This language issue is not new. For that reason, it is worth looking at it in a wider context, that of the development of scholarly thinking on the Latin question. Taking a step back a few generations, therefore, the issue of the use of Latin in post-Roman Britain, from around 410 to 600, can be viewed through the prism of Kenneth Jackson’s seminal 1953 book, Language and History in Early Britain. 
In Chapter 3, in his discussion of Roman Britain, Jackson looked back at the state of scholarship in the late 19th century. He noted: 

Since it was a Roman province, like the others [Gaul and other provinces], the natural tendency was to assume a priori, that Latin was the regular language everywhere, except for a few remote half-barbarous peasants who may have clung to their Celtic tongue in the East and (because of the existence of Welsh and Cornish) admittedly must have done so in the West. 

Jackson then commented that since the First World War, with the growing “interest in the Celtic side of all questions,” the pendulum swung the other way, possibly “a little too far.” Taking recent developments into account, Jackson presented a nine-point summary of the “probable situation” of the Latin and British languages in Roman Britain, as follows:

Latin was the language of the governing classes, of civil administration and of the army, of trade, of the Christian religion, and very largely (but perhaps not entirely) of the people of the towns. The rural upper classes were bilingual; the peasantry of the Lowland Zone, who constituted the great bulk of the population, spoke British and probably spoke little Latin; and the language of the Highland Zone (apart from the army and its native camp followers) was to all intents and purposes exclusively British. 

On this account, the speaking of Latin “coincided roughly with the ability to read and write,” making it largely “a polite tongue of the upper classes,” which for Jackson accounted for the “peculiarities of British Vulgar Latin.” On a technical note, Jackson was of the view that the superior British Latin from which loan words in Brittonic were derived was “quite different in certain important respects from Continental Vulgar Latin.” He estimated that Latin remained the “official” language up until around 450, after which it found refuge for a time in the Highland Zone; in the same period, the “British language came into its own among the upper classes in the Lowland Zone, as it had always been among the lower.”

Armed with this interpretation, Jackson then proceeded in Chapter 6 to analyse in more detail the situation in post-Roman Britain, as regards the influence of Latin on Anglo-Saxon. Jackson’s main point of departure was the work of the German scholar K Luick (Historische Grammatik der Enlischen Sprache, 1914). Luick divided Latin words in Anglo-Saxon into two main groups, as follows: firstly, popular oral borrowings from colloquial Vulgar Latin, which were early and almost all taken to belong to pre-Christian times; and secondly learned loan words, chiefly from the ecclesiastical spoken and written in Latin, which were late and subsequent to the conversion of the Anglo-Saxons to Christianity.

The first early group, Luick further divided into two classes: (1) those loanwords adopted on the Continent by the West Germanic peoples during the Empire and inherited by the Anglo-Saxons prior to their coming to Britain; and (2) those loanwords which came into Anglo-Saxon between around 450 and the 7th century. Distinguishing between these two classes of loan words was far from straightforward, with Jackson describing the criteria for words in the (2) class as “vague and unreliable.” There was also the question of the extent of Anglo-Saxon intercourse with the Continent in this period, which could well have meant that some Latin words were derived from the spoken Latin of Gaul. He continued:

…the existence of the group (2) loanwords cannot be taken as positive proof that Latin was at all widely spoken in the Lowland Zone of Britain in the fifth and sixth centuries. 

In 1939, Sir Ivor Williams had argued that the larger number of borrowings from Latin than from Brittonic into Anglo-Saxon was evidence that the Lowland Zone was Latin rather than Brittonic in speech. Jackson disagreed:

But even if all the group (2) loanwords were adopted in Britain (and it is possible that none or almost none of them were), it would still not be safe to come to any such conclusions, because we are dealing with such small figures on both sides – about eighteen Brittonic versus a round two dozen Latin at most – that proportions are of little significance.  

Jackson went on to say:

Besides, assuming that the Latin words were taken over in Britain, some such relative number is only what would be expected, for Latin was the speech of an admired and superior culture, with expressions for ideas not existing in Germanic…. 

The conclusion arrived at by Jackson was that: “although it does not prove anything for certain, the heavy accumulation of negative evidence does seem to suggest strongly that the English met very few people who talked any sort of Latin at all during the course of the occupation of Britain.”

From this account, it would seem that Jackson’s views are not consistent with those of such contemporary historians as Guy Halsall whose argument is, in part, based on the evidence of Christian loanwords, which he claims were pre- and not post-600.

A number of questions and observations follow. One question is how persuasive is that element Halsall’s argument, bearing in mind that even if ecclesiastical words were imported early into Anglo-Saxon, many of these could very easily have been loaned from the Latin of Gaul. After all, modern historians are inclined to take a less insular view of this period of British history, with a new focus on links between the Anglo-Saxons and the continent of Europe. Moreover, even if British Christianity did endure in the Lowland Zone, might it not have been the case that Latin was primarily, if not exclusively, the language of the church, as it proved to be subsequent to the conversion?

More broadly, are contemporary interpretations of the prevalence of Latin in post-Roman Britain based on new evidence, sufficient to set aside the obvious counter arguments. If so, what is the nature of this evidence? Is it archaeological? Does it rest on new linguistic interpretation of a technical nature? Discounting Christian loanwords, Jackson counted a mere two dozen Latin imports into Anglo-Saxon in the period 450 to 600. Have more now been identified? For Jackson, the evidence was still largely a priori, which is to say based on deduction, using inference and analogy in place of inductive empirical proof. How far advanced are we since 1953 along the inductive route as far as the language question is concerned? Whereas other questions may lend themselves more to the archaeological and other tools available to contemporary research, language would appear to be a more recalcitrant customer, leaving room for continuing doubt and debate. The less than categorical conclusions reached by Nicholas J Higham would seem to indicate as much.

From Kenneth Jackson to the contemporary historians cited, there would seem to be broad agreement that Latin was the language spoken by the reading and writing classes of the Lowland Zone; that is, the administrators, traders, the army and the like. The difficult question is how far down the social scale did Latin reach? Was Latin the more or less universal language of the Lowland Zone in Roman and, for a time, in post-Roman Britain? Is there a case to be made, as Jackson thought, for bilingualism, at least outside the cities of Southern England? If bilingualism did endure in the country areas, did it conform to the model of social hierarchy suggested by Jackson? Was it the case that Brittonic displaced Latin in the 5th century as the spoken language of all classes of the native population in the former Lowland Zone? Alternatively, was Latin still the dominant language, to be replaced ultimately by Anglo-Saxon? For Gildas, writing in the 6th century, Latin was still “our language.” But then, Gildas was writing in a rhetorical vein, very much from an educated, Christian standpoint.

One thing we can say with assurance is that Kenneth Jackson was of the view that the evidence he had at hand in 1953 did not “prove anything for certain.” Has much changed in the intervening 66 years? It seems the language question will not go away. It has long been and still remains an important aspect of any analysis of the post-Roman era.

Reading
Kenneth Jackson, Language and History in Early Britain, Edinburgh University Press 1953
Ronald Hutton, Pagan Britain, Yale University Press 2014
Guy Halsall’s 2013 book, Worlds of Arthur: Facts and Fictions of the Dark Ages, Oxford University Press 2013
Nicholas J Higham, King Arthur: The Making of the Legend, Yale University Press 2018
TM Charles Edwards, Wales and the Britons 350-1064, Oxford University Press 2013

Images
A replica of the Old Roman Cursive inspired by the Vindolanda tablets, the oldest surviving handwritten documents in Britain - public domain via Wikipedia
Historische Grammatik der Enlischen Sprache, 1914 Image from Internet Archive.Org
Statue of Saint-Gildas. It on the shore line in a small bay near the "Grand-Mont" (Morbihan, France) Via Wiki commons

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Originally from Penmaenmawr, North Wales, Gareth Griffith now lives in Sydney, Australia with his wife Sue.

His career has encompassed teaching, research and writing, including many years working as the manager of research for the parliament of New South Wales. He has a PhD from the University of Wales. His academic publications include a study of George Bernard Shaw's politics, published by Routledge, and several publications on the study of parliament and constitutional law.

 These days, when Gareth isn’t writing, he enjoys reading, music, dark Scandi film and TV, and Dark Age Britain. Glass Island is his first historical novel.

Ten Seconds Before Midnight at the Edge of Empire

by Ed McWatt

Imagine, if you can, being a member of a fiercely proud island nation with a reputation for bleak weather and stubbornness, somewhere just off the forbidding Atlantic coast of mainline Europe. Factor in years of economic decline set against a background of anti-immigrant fear and a growing sense of dislocation from the rest of the civilised world. Now consider how it might feel to be facing an imminent break with the rest of the continent and all the financial and social uncertainty that such a fundamental change in government would bring...

Current residents of the UK may find this leap of empathy easier to make than other readers – the parallels between the modern day Brexit and the situation which confronted the Romano-British in the early 5th century CE are inescapable (even if slightly hyperbolically expressed above).

What do we know about the Britain that experienced this ancient precursor to Brexit?

As usual, from this distance, the evidence is patchy and mostly archaeological in nature. The buried hoards of coins, silver and gold objects and precious stones which have been discovered in recent decades across the east of England provide the best insight into the psychology of the time – or at least the psychology of the elite of the time. People were hiding enormous wealth and, from the very fact that it remained hidden for detectorists to find, were never in a position to recover it. From this we can infer brigandage, fear and the chaos of social breakdown in the waning years of Rome’s influence. That is, to me, what makes this little-covered period of history such a rich one for authors of fiction.

Several of these hoards stand out for what they tell us about the lives they must have touched. The Hoxne hoard (Suffolk) comprises the largest collection of Roman gold and silver objects ever found, many of which are the personal artefacts of real lives – make-up brushes, pepper pots, and lots and lots of silver spoons. It is estimated that the thousands of coins in the hoard would have represented around three years' pay for the province’s governor. No small change, and probably only the more portable parts of a larger fortune.

Hoxne Hoard Empress Pepper Pot - reproduced
under Commons Licence

The Mildenhall treasure, also found in Suffolk and also now in the British Museum, is remarkable for the grandeur of the enormous silver serving dish, exquisitely decorated with scenes of gods and maenads. It must have belonged to people with deep, historic ties to a mythology stretching back to classical Greece, in the context of a society where Christianity was the new orthodoxy. This evolving religious landscape is reflected in the Water Newton treasure (Cambridgeshire), which is made up of silver jugs, bowls and plaques (votive offerings, possibly) inscribed with the periods main Christian symbol, the chi-rho. Britannia was a country of religious diversity then as it is now.

The Mildenhall Treasure, British Museum
reproduced under Commons Licence

Textual evidence about this period is slight – there is a contested reference (it may actually be referring to similarly-named tribe in Italy rather than the Britons) from a 6th century report on Honorius's reign which has been read as the Emperor telling the island in 411 CE to "look to its own defence". The same source indicates that there was a management takeover at the very death, with the locals expelling the remaining Roman officials in 410.

Whilst we lack direct evidence, it can be assumed that no popular mandate ushered in the end of (undemocratic!) Roman Britain – the island was effectively abandoned by a retrenching Rome over decades, through the withdrawal of the troops which were the backbone of defence as well as law and order. Even at its economic zenith, Britannia carried a significant overhead due to the high cost of garrisoning the rebellious island when compared to the return it was capable of generating. Its geographical isolation and distance from the centre can only have further devalued the province in the minds of many emperors. By the 4th Century CE, maintaining it as part of the Empire had become an exercise in conspicuous munificence.

The entropy which was tearing at the Empire's fabric elsewhere began to unravel Britannia's defences, with a steady withdrawal of troops to support the claims of various usurpers (such as Magnus Maximus in 383 CE) and to defend Gaul and Italy against tribes from east of the Rhine. This is the opinion of Gildas, a monk writing a generation after the end of Roman Britain. Certainly, this slow weakening of human resources correlates with the building of physical barriers – the walls around towns and shore forts around the coast – as well as increased border incursions such as the Barbarian Conspiracy of 317 CE and the serious incursions of Picts in the late 390s. It seems that late Roman Britain faced growing external threats of military and migrant nature – Gildas paints a picture of a Saxon invasion, bravely resisted.

The factor which will have affected the most people most profoundly is financial: the country was getting poorer and poorer immediately before the break with Rome. Public building, once the pride of the local aristocracy, had ended by the late C4th – towns would have rapidly sunk into a state of disrepair. Some argue that the hoards point towards the polarisation of wealth, the creation of a super-rich elite controlling most of the remaining resources. Coinage provides some of the strongest evidence we have of Britannia's slide into destitution. Coin clipping (the practice of carefully shaving coin edges to harvest precious metal, whilst preserving the object as passable legal tender) becomes widespread in coin finds from the mid-4th Century CE, hinting at a scarcity of cash, both in physical and liquidity terms. Analysis of the finds shows that coinage reaching Britannia starts to decline in the 370s CE and the supply dries up entirely at the start of the 5th Century – indeed, the last coinage to reach the island from the imperial mints can be dated to 402. It seems likely that a lack of pay locally accelerated the army's withdrawal and a return to earlier methods of payment (barter, services) is likely.

Bredon Hoard - via Commons Licence

Happily, for those of us wondering what 2017 will bring to a stand-alone Britain, we can draw reassurance that we live in a society where violent struggle for land and livelihood no longer threatens our stable and peaceful lives, regardless of the changing political backdrop.

Anyway, I'd better end this piece here, as it's getting dark and I need to go and dig a hole in my garden for something..

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Ed McWatt is a first time novelist from East Anglia in the UK. His novel 'The Silver Empress' is aimed at a young adult audience and tells the story of how the Hoxne hoard may have come to be buried. You can read an extract and find out how to buy the book at www.edmcwatt.com

Rochester Castle: The Rise and Fall of a Fortress

by Lauren Gilbert

Steel engraving, hand tinted c 1860

 

On a visit to Faversham (see a previous post HERE, I took the opportunity to wander around the charming town and went into a small antique shop.  I found a small print of Rochester Castle, and could not resist.  Although I did not have the opportunity to visit Rochester Castle, my little picture piqued an interest in this fascinating structure. The ruins that stand today are the remains of a mighty fortress with an incredible history, including three sieges.

Rochester Castle Keep with Cathedral

There appears to have been a defensive structure on this site since the first century.  On the River Medway, this is a strategic defensive location.  The Romans under Aulus Plautius built a fort here to guard a bridge and river crossing.  The Venerable Bede wrote of “the fortress of the Kentish men”. After besieging the city of Rochester in 884, the Danes built a fortress outside it.

After the Norman Conquest in 1066, the first Norman castle was quickly built on a hill near the site where the current fortress remains stand. Odo, Bishop of Bayeux, held the site and probably rebuilt existing fortifications with a wooden motte and bailey design to discourage any Saxon resistance and to guard the river crossing.  In 1087, after William the Conqueror’s death, there was conflict over who would control Normandy--Robert, Duke of Normandy or William Rufus, King of England?  Odo and many of the barons supported Robert, and Rochester Castle became a headquarters for Robert’s supporters.   After a siege, the castle fell to William II (William Rufus) in 1088 and Odo was banished.

Gundulf, the Bishop of Rochester, was also a builder.  He had been involved in the work on William the Conqueror’s keep, the White Tower, in London.  Gundulf built a stone castle near the Norman cathedral in Rochester in about 1090.  He used existing Roman walls, repairing damage and making them higher.  These walls and new walls specially constructed enclosed a large bailey with a ditch outside.

In approximately 1126, Henry I granted the Archbishop of Canterbury custody of Rochester Castle and the office of Constable.  Sometime after that, William de Corbeil, Archbishop of Canterbury was given custody and rebuilt the castle.  The keep was built 125 feet high, with a square ground plan and four corner towers.  The keep is the tallest in England.  The walls of the keep measured 12 feet thick, and a drawbridge separated the keep from the fore building (a square tower) for additional protection.  Between 1130-1139, fireplaces were added.  The Great Hall and a chapel were on the second floor, with the State Apartments on the fourth floor.

In 1141, Canterbury supported Empress Matilda for the throne of England.  The castle was taken.  Robert, Earl of Gloucester (Henry I’s natural son) was held there by William de Ipre, Earl of Kent. After the smoke cleared and Henry II was on the throne, sometime between 1154-1189, the Archbishop of Canterbury Thomas Becket asked that the rights of the castle be returned to the Church.  Henry II, of course, refused, being more interested in curbing the power of the Church.  Henry II and subsequently Richard I both strengthened the castle.

Rochester Castle did not return to church control until 1201, when King John turned the rights over to Archbishop of Canterbury Hubert. King John made some improvements to Rochester Castle in 1206.  Then, in 1215, came the First Barons War. Certain barons, supported by Steven Langton, Archbishop of Canterbury, rebelled against John for increasing taxes and his failure to implement changes required by the Magna Carta. Under the terms of the Magna Carta, Rochester Castle was turned over to the control of Steven Langton in May of 1215.  Langton and John got into an argument, and Langton escaped the country.  

Subsequently, rebels supported by French knights took control of the castle.  Langton disapproved of the violence espoused by the rebels.  John besieged Rochester Castle (the second siege). It took seven weeks for the rebels to surrender, which happened only when they ran out of food, despite significant damage to the curtain wall and the south tower, and the King’s army taking the bailey.  After some rebuilding, John took back control of the castle and put William de Albini in charge.  In 1216, King Louis VIII of France invaded England.  John fled and subsequently died in October. After the Battle of Lincoln in 1217, the Treaty of Kingston-Upon-Thames was signed September 12, 1217.  The English people and the barons did not want French rule, and John’s son Henry was made King Henry III at the age of nine.

During Henry III’s reign, Rochester Castle was rebuilt, with additions including a chapel and gateway.   Control of the castle changed several times as appointees fell out of favour.  In 1264, Henry had the fortifications increased, and the castle was fully stocked with men and provisions. The barons were afraid that Henry III was following King John’s path, because of Henry’s increase of taxes and the barons’ dissatisfaction with Henry’s methods of government.  Simon de Montfort, who was married to Henry’s sister Eleanor, wanted to reassert the provisions of the Magna Carta, and became the leader of the rebels.  The situation deteriorated, with Henry and his son Edward captured and Henry forced to agree to the Provisions of Oxford which established rule by a council of twenty-four barons.  This led to civil war (the Second Barons War) and, in April of 1264, the third siege of Rochester Castle occurred.

Simon de Montfort’s rebels entered the city of Rochester and attacked the castle, which the constable held for King Henry III.  The castle’s defenders held out against the rebels, ultimately retiring to the keep.  Although the castle was badly damaged, the defenders held out and the siege was ultimately lifted when Henry and his army came to relieve the defenders.  This siege lasted approximately nine days. Simon de Montfort’s government became unpopular, and his allies began to defect.  The war ended with the Battle of Evesham in August of 1264, where Simon de Montfort was slain and his body mutilated. 

Under Edward III, between 1367-1383, Rochester Castle was repaired and refortified to defend against possible raids from France.  The last significant military action there occurred in 1381 during the Peasants’ Revolt when it was sacked.  After that, the castle was not used.  Materials were stripped and used elsewhere, and in 1613, James I granted the castle to Sir Anthony Weldon.  At one time, it was owned by Robert Child, Esq. (the grandfather of Sarah, Lady Jersey, patroness of Almack’s).  In 1870, it was owned by Lord Jersey, who leased the grounds to the City of Rochester, which were used as public gardens.  Today, the ruins are an English Heritage property, and repairs to preserve them are in process.

Sources include:

Phillips, Charles. The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Royal Britain.  New York: Metro Books, 2010, 2011.

British Castle website.  http://91.186.0.3/~planetar/britishcastle/index.php?pageID=RochesterCastle_History

Fortified England website.  http://www.fortifiedengland.com/Home/Categories/ViewItem/tabid/61/Default.aspx?IID+3364

HistoryExtra.com http://www.historyextra.com/visit/rochester-castle

Medway Council website.  http://www.medway.gov.uk/leisureandculture/libraries/archivesandlocalstudies/medwaytimeline/medievalmedway1066-1485/rochestercaste.aspx

Restore Rochester Castle website. Chronology.  http://www.restorerochestercastle.co.uk/page11.php

Picture from Wikimedia Commons:  http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/be/Rochester_Castle_courtyard%2C_2010.jpg/320px-Rochester_Castle_courtyard%2C_2010.jpg 

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Lauren Gilbert is the author of Heyerwood: A Novel.  She is a contributor to Castles, Customs, and Kings: True Tales by English Historical Fiction Authors, which was just released!  Castles, Customs, and Kings can be purchased at Amazon.com and other retailers.  She lives in Florida with her husband. Please visit Lauren's website.