Ancient British Timeline – A Work in Progress

Nature_Other_Stonehenge

3100 – 1500 BCE – The earthworks at Stonehenge were built in several stages on the land now known as Somerset, England, which some historians claim was known in ancient times as Egypt:

The Ethiopians boast that they were the first men which were created in the world, and therefore they that were engendered, so they were justly with the consent of all called Anthropoi. . . . The Ethiopians maintain also that the worship of the gods was first of all found out and observed by them; as also the sacrifices, solemnities and all other things whereby honour is done unto them by men . . . and hereof the most ancient and renowned of all Greek poets gives a good testimony as when, in his Iliad, he introduces Zeus and all the other gods, coming into Ethiopia.

They of Ethiopia affirm further that the Egyptians are descended from them in Egypt, which was not firm land before, not habitable, but was at the beginning covered with the sea and afterwards with slime and mud. . . . They say, moreover, that many laws of Ethiopia were transported into Egypt, the colonies keeping the statutes and ordinances of their ancestors; for, holding their kings to be gods, placing their chiefest study and affection on the sumptuousness of sepulchres, and many other things do proceed from the discipline of the Ethiopians, besides the use of great statues and the forms of letters were taken from them.

Bibliotheca historica, Diodorus Siculus 60-30BC.

The Hellenes, as I detailed in my former work, dwelt mainly in western Scotland and the Hebrides, and were closely related to those earliest Egyptians, who stretched southwards and westwards to Somerset and also had close contact with northern Ireland. In the western Highlands the Pelasgi nevertheless occupied a goodly part of Argyllshire with their colonies, such as the Magnetes and Pheres, and the Athenians, it is known, were partly of Pelasgian descent.

Britain – Key to World History, William Comyns Beaumont.

1347 BCE – A cometary body strikes the Earth, causing devastation to the islands we now know as Britain and Scandinavia, which were then situated at the heart of the continental empire of Plato’s “Atlantis”, according to the greatly suppressed 20th century work of antiquarian, William Comyns Beaumont [CB], who also diligently showed us that, on the balance of probability, the original scriptures

1100-400 BCE – According to CB, there is ample historical, geological, cultural and astronomical evidence which demonstrates that Brutus led the freed Trojan slaves to the island of their ancestors, which was variously known as The Sea Girt Green Land, The Western Isle and The Honey Island, in the aftermath of the Great Catastrophe, and was eventually named Prydain [Cambrian for Brutus], in honour of the Trojan general who led his people to the virtually uninhabited, temperate climes of the British Isles, thereby establishing the Trojan line of British kings.

This period was truly remarkable to many reasons, the most notable of which were:

a. The division of the British Isles into three independent sovereign kingdoms – Alba [Scotland], Lloegria [England] and Cambria [Wales] – led by Brutus and his two brothers, although the former was the undisputed Sovereign Paramount of Prydain [Britain], until his natural physical demise; and

b. The reign of the British king, Molmutius, who ended centuries of civil wars between the direct  descendents of the original lineage and various usurpers, by conquering the war-mongering tribes and uniting those clans which sought peace, freedom and tranquility between all men, under the laws he drafted in the triadic form of the Bards, so they were easy for people to understand and commit to memory. These laws became known as the Molmutine Laws, which have never been repealed and still represent the foundations of British Common Law.

399-56 BCE – During these years the Britons enjoyed centuries of peace, freedom and tranquility in their homelands, whilst venturing on to foreign soil only for the purposes of international trade or defending their allies from the tyranny of the encroaching Roman legions, which resulted in the famous sacking of Rome by the Britons, who were led by Brennus, the son of king Molmutius. Despite setting the slaves of Rome free wherever they had been enslaved and effectively subsuming Rome’s territories into the jurisdiction of the Molmutine Laws, under which no king has any more rights than any other man, over the course of the next three centuries the Roman legions conquered and subsequently enslaved every nation within its reach, save for the Britons, whose educated, fearless, technologically advanced peoples were the descendents of the men who sacked Rome to end its march towards hegemony.

55-54 BCE – The attempted invasions and eventual retreats of Julius Cesar from Britain.

If we summarise the facts we find Julius Caesar invading Britain in 55 BC and being forced to evacuate. He came back in 54 BC and was totally defeated. The Caswallon allowed Caesar to march inland, virtually unopposed, and to cross the Thames and to move northwards towards the midlands. Unfortunately for Julius Caesar the British had evacuated all their people, and their flocks and herds, ahead of his advance, and left his army nothing to eat. The Caswallon confidently disbanded most of his army and sent them off to winter quarters, whilst keeping only 4000 chariots with which to harass and prevent the Roman foraging parties from Caesar’s 40,000 army from gathering any food.

Then Julius Caesar, stranded and starving up in the midlands, got really bad news that a British army was attacking his base where his ships had landed his army, and another British army was moving to block his passage back across the Thames. It all ended up in another version of Napoleon’s retreat from Moscow, with a British army “escorting” Julius Caesar and his rabble back to their ships. In his own account in D Bello Gallico, Caesar tells of the scramble to get aboard with each ship carrying three times the normal number of soldiers. So much for Julius Caesar’s ‘conquest’ of Britain. Even this clear Roman humiliation is given an extraordinary explanation, as it is claimed that the British army… was performing a servile ceremonial escort duty.

The King Arthur Conspiracy, Grant Berkley [2005].

The transmission of all his forces to the continent was effected in the presence of Caswallon and most of the British nobility, in two embarcations. Cesar himself sailed with the second embarcation at night, and arrived at Portus Iccius (Vitsand), by day-break the next morning, September 26th, B.C. 54. […] The consequences attending the second Julian invasion, skillfully glossed over and coloured as they are in the Commentaries of the Roman general, demonstrates that both at Rome and the continent it was regarded as a more serious failure than the first.

For ninety-seven years no Roman again ventured to plant a hostile foot on our Island. And when the Roman eagle under Claudius once more expanded its wings to the stormy winds of Britain, it was when no other enemy unconquered met its eye from the Euphrates to Gibraltar, and the Empire it symbolized had leisure to turn the whole of its vast forces against the sole free people of the West.

Thomas Morgan’s History of Britain [1853].

AD 42-70 – The continued roman invasion of Britain and the story of Caradoc (Caractacus), one of the three most revered Kings of Ancient Britain.

The Claudian invasion which commences here, A.D. 43, and terminated after a war of forty-three years’ duration waged with fluctuating success, in the expulsion of the Romans from Britain, A.D. 86, is remarkable for the succession of able com­manders produced by it on both sides. Britain during this period, served the same purpose for Rome as Hindostan has, during the last century, for Britain—it was the nursery for raising generals and maintaining the efficiency of her troops. With the exception of the campaigns of Corbulo, in Germany (A.D. 47), and Armenia (A.D. 58), and of the conquest of Dacia effected in one campaign, (A.D. 86), no other foreign hostilities engaged the attention of the Roman arms. The emperors were at liberty to direct the whole force of the empire against this island alone—a fact as it has been carefully ignored by the Roman historians, so it excites no surprise that it should not have been observed by the modern writers who can see nothing British in these heroic old times except through the hostile and distorting medium of Roman eyes.

Thomas Morgan’s History of Britain [1853].

King Caradoc I ap Arch led the British opposition to Rome for nine years, from AD 42-51. Tacitus records that of eighty battles with his Trojan “Silures” the British won sixty… Finally, the Romans got their longed for big battle, and here there is a problem as the Romans claimed that they won, and the Southern Khumry claimed that they won. All the evidence points to a British victory, or at worst a drawn battle. The Romans, having celebrated the Triumphs of the conquest of Britain in AD 43 could hardly admit that they were losing the on-going war in AD 51…

The King Arthur Conspiracy, Grant Berkley [2005].

The fluctuations in the fortunes of the war which ensued till the recall of Aulus Plautus and the appointment of Ostorius Scapula to the chief mili­tary command of the armies of invasion, are tersely but graphically summed up by Tacitus the Roman oligarchic historian in his description of the career of Caradoc— “the Silures reposed unbounded con­fidence in Caractacus, enumerating the many drawn battle he had fought with the Romans, the many victories he had obtained over them.” The dis-ingenuousness of the Roman historians is in noth­ing more conspicuous than in the determined silence they observe as to the names, localities, and details of these British victories—every British reverse being on the other hand carefully and circum­stantially chronicled. The memory of the incor­ruptible and high-souled Patriot who led the Britons in so many fields against a succession of the most skilful generals Rome could command was long cherished with ardent affection by the Kymry. Three have been, declare their Triads, our Hero-Kings—Cynvelin—Caradoc, son of Brân—Arthur. These so conquered their enemies that except by treachery they could not be overthrown. “Three have been the Chief-Battle-Kings of the Isle of Britain—Caswallon, son of Beli—Arviragus, son of Cynvelin—and Caradoc, son of Brân.”

Our summary will not enable us to do more than state that at the end of the third campaign, A.D. 52, Caradoc was defeated and his forces dispersed at Caer Caradoc, on the Venedotian frontiers : his wife and daughter Gladys or Claudia, with his two brothers, falling into the hands of the conqueror. He himself took refuge at her repeated solicitations, with Cartismandua, queen of the Brigantes, was arrested when asleep in his chamber by a body of armed men, loaded with chains, and delivered up to the Romans. This infamous proceeding on the part of the granddaughter of the arch-traitor, Avarwy, inheriting his detestable spirit of falsehood and treachery, is known in the Triads as the “first of the three secret betrayals of the Isle of Britain.”

Sent to Rome under a strong guard, the arrival of the illustrious captive excited the attention of all classes. The populace thronged the roads leading to the city to obtain a view of the man whose name as the redoubted antagonist and often times victor of Rome in the great Isle of the West, had for nine years been familiar to their ears. The senate was con­vened, addresses comparing the event to the most glorious [incidents, such as the fall of Hannibal, Mithridates, and Jugurtha, in the times of the republic, were delivered, and triumphal honors decreed to Ostorius. The trial and speech of Caradoc before the throne of the Emperor in the presence of the senate are subjects too trite to be dilated upon. As free in chains as on his native hills, his calm and dignified demeanor commanded the admiration of the assembly. “Had my policy,” he said, “ in prosperous times been framed solely with a view to the preservation of my hereditary domains, or the aggrandizement of my own family, I might long since have entered this city a friend rather than a prisoner of war—nor would you have disdained as an ally a King descended from illustrious ancestors and the Pendragon of many nations. My present condition, striped of its former majesty as it is to me, is proportionately a triumph to you. I was lord of men, horses, arms, wealth —what wonder if I refused at your dictation to resign them? You aspire to universal dominion, does it follow that every nation should accept the vassalage you would impose? I am now in your power, betrayed, not conquered. Had I like others yielded without resistance where would have been the name of Caradoc, where your glory? Oblivion would have buried both in the same tomb. Bid me live, I shall survive for ever in history one example at least of Roman clemency.”

The custom at those most revolting exhibitions of Roman pride and blood-thirstiness called “Triumphs” was, that at a certain spot on the Sacra Via the captive Kings and Generals who followed barefooted, bareheaded, and in fetters, the triumphal car of their conqueror, should be removed from the procession, cast into the Tarpeian dungeons and there strangled, decapitated, or left to perish of hunger. The mass of common prisoners were condemned to slay each other in single combats at the next gladiatorial games, for the amusement of the most degraded rabble that perhaps were ever collected within the walls of a great city. The preservation of Caradoc forms a solitary exception in the long catalogue of victims to this cowardly and atrocious policy. He was permitted to reside for seven years in free custody at Rome; his aged father Brân, and the whole of the royal family of Siluria, being detained as hostages for him. His residence was in the palace on the declivity of the Mons Sacer, converted by his grand-daughter, Pudentiana, into the first Christian Church at Rome, known first as the “Titulus” and now as “St. Pudentiana.” Here his daughter Gladys, or Claudia, was married to Rufus Pudens, a Roman Patrician who had filled high civil and military positions in Britain, and whose estates lay in the Umbrian Apennines. Four children were the issue of this marriage, St. Timotheus, St. Novatus, St. Pudentiana, St. Praxedes. Two of the brothers of Claudia were St. Cyllinus, who ended his days in Britain, and Linus (Lleyn), who afterwards was ordained first Bishop of the Gentile Church of Rome, by St. Paul—as St. Clement was of the Hebrew Church. Rufus Pudens was converted to Christianity prob­ably by his wife, herself a convert of the Arimathean mission, certainly before the first arrival of St. Paul at Rome—for in his Epistle to the Romans written prior to such arrival, Rufus is mentioned as already “chosen in the Lord.” In A.D. 56, St. Paul came to Rome. In A.D. 57, Brân, Caradoc, and the other members of the royal family of Siluria were con­verted and baptized by him.

So there was a partial conquest of some Southern and Eastern areas of Britain. In the truce in the period around 44 AD, Claudius has adopted King Caradoc’s daughter Eurgain, and she had married a relative of Claudius in one Ruffus Pudens. A sister of Caradoc I then married Aulus Plautius, the Roman Governor of Southern Britain, and it is difficult to imagine these Imperial intermarriages if the British were even one tenth as primitive as Edwin Guest and Bishop Stubbs and their adherents would have us believe. The Boudicea risings of AD 56 and the rapid slaughter of some 100,000 Romans saw the beginning of new and different policies in Britain as the Romans finally realised how precarious and dangerous their position in Britain actually was.

In A.D. 59, Aristobulus, brother of St. Barnabas, and father-in-law of St. Peter, was ordained by St. Paul first Bishop of the Britons, and left Rome with Brân, Caradoc, and the royal family for Siluria. Two other missionaries, Iltyd and Cyndav, “men of Israel,” as they are termed in the Kymric genealogies of the primitive saints, accompanied him. Brân himself is on account of this the second phase in the introduction of Christ­ianity into Britain, known as one of the King-benefactors of the island, and the epithet Bendi­gedig (Benedictus, Blessed), generally attached to his name. The following year St. Paul himself visited his royal converts in Britain, and returned after a stay of some months with Claudia, Pudens, and Linus, to the continent. In A.D. 67, after his second imprisonment at Rome, and on the evening preceding his execution, he wrote from the house of Claudius his farewell epistle to Timothy of Crete. The only salutations in it are those of the family of the great British patriot—Pudens, Linus, Eubulus, and Claudia, who were thus, by the unsearchable ways of the Almighty exalted, through the fiery ordeal of national disasters and family humiliation, to administer to the departing hours of the Apostle and founder in Christ of the Gentile Church. No lovelier character than that of the high-born British matron thus tending Paul the aged during the interval between “the offering up of his body” and “his reception of the crown of glory prepared for him” is presented to our admiration in the pages of history; nor any instance more striking of the manner in which God, who bringeth good out of evil, over-rules temporal calamities into agencies of eternal salvation. The introduction of the Gospel into Britain from direct Apostolic sources and under the highest secular auspices in the kingdom is traceable to a catas­trophe which at the moment appeared not only irretrievable but to militate against the justice of Heaven in the government of nations.

In A.D. 53, Nero on the death of Claudius suc­ceeded Sept. 28th, to the throne. He remained for some time under the influence of Seneca, a Stoic philosopher in profession, but in practice a grinding usurer. The capital of this man amounted to nearly fifteen millions of modern money. Two millions of this he advanced on the security of their public buildings, to the Iceni of Britain, being the first instance of a national loan on record. The King of the Iceni was Prasutagus—his Queen, Victoria (Vuddig, Boeddig, Boadicea). The wealth of Prasutagus was notorious at Rome.

Arviragus meanwhile had been elected successor to Caradoc in the Pendragonate. Ostorius was defeated by him at Caer Belin, near Caerleon. Worn out in mind and body by the increasing difficulties of his position, Ostorius shortly afterwards resigned the command to Didius Gallus—Gallus to Veranius, but neither proved equal to the task of coping with the British sovereign. The Roman armies were driven behind the Plautian lines. Veranius was superseded by Suetonius Paulinus—a commander of very different stamp, having, among other able subordinates under him, Julius Agricola.

“Ferox Provincia,” an “untameable province,” is the name applied by the Latin historians to our Island at this period the Silurians especially, states Tacitus, “could neither be coerced by any measures, however sanguinary, nor bribed by any promises, however brilliant, to acknowledge the dominion of Rome.” Harassed by the same anxieties that had under-mined the constitution of Ostorius Scapula, Paul­inus at the expiration of A.D. 60, resigned in favor of Petronius Turpilianus. The whole of the Roman empire elsewhere enjoyed tranquillity; Syria alone excepted,—the disturbances in which were pacified the same year by Corbulo. It is to be noted that whatever emperor occupied the throne, the empire itself was never deficient in statesmen and generals of the highest order of ability. The genius of the world, from the Euphrates to Gibraltar, and from Calais to the Zahara, was at its command, ready to be employed with unswerving purpose for the incorporation of Britain.

In A.D. 64, the extinction of Druidism in the territories south of the Thames, and in those of Coritani and Iceni, was completed by Turpilianus. The first persecution of the Christians by Nero took place the same year.

In A.D. 65, Turpilianus was succeeded by Trebellius Maximus. Under his command the Roman frontiers receded to the district between Devon and Dover. Maximus was re-called and Vectius Bolanus appointed, but with no better success.

In A.D. 66, Linus, the second son of Caractacus was consecrated by St. Paul, Bishop of Rome.

In A.D. 67, St. Paul and St. Peter suffered martyrdom at Rome; St. Paul was buried in the Ostian way. The four children of Claudia were in after years buried by his side.

In June, A.D. 68, Nero was succeeded by Galba.

The year of Revolutions” (A.D. 69,) was long remembered for the rapid changes in the occupa­tion of the imperial throne. Galba being succeeded by Otho— Otho by Vitellius — Vitellius by Vespasian.

Titus, in A.D. 70, captured and razed Jerusalem to the ground; 1, 100,000 Jews being slain in the siege or having perished from famine. An armistice was concluded with Arviragus by Petilius Cerealis, apparently with no other view than to enable Ves­pasian to boast that during his reign the temple of Janus was shut for the sixth time since the founda­tion of Rome, B.C. 753,—a mournful comment on the history of man and his empires!

Thomas Morgan’s History of Britain [1853].

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