British History in Credo: Ancient History

From World History: A Comprehensive Reference Set
The Celts were a tribal people of the Bronze and Iron Ages united by a common language, culture, and art. Most were eventually conquered by the Romans and became a part of the Roman Empire. Many unconquered areas have retained their separate language and culture for centuries. Ireland and parts of France, England, Wales, and Scotland can claim to be largely Celtic to this day. Language studies indicate that the Celts were an Indo-European group, first identified in Switzerland and Germany.

From The Columbia Encyclopedia
Ancient Celtic alphabet of one of the Irish runic languages. It was used by the druids and abandoned after the first few centuries of the Christian era.

From Cassell's Peoples, Nations and Cultures
Ancient Bitons who inhabited present-day north Wales. Their name is thought to mean ‘hammer warriors’. The Ordovices put up stiff resistance to the Romans for nearly 20 years until they were finally pacified by Agricola in AD 78.

From The Columbia Encyclopedia
Ancient inhabitants of central and N Scotland, of uncertain origin. First mentioned (A.D. 297) by the Roman writer Eumenius as northern invaders of Roman Britain, they were probably descendants of late Bronze Age and early Iron Age invaders of Britain.

From Encyclopedia of Medieval Literature
Alfred the Great was king of Wessex from 871 to 899, and was successful in defending his kingdom from Danish invaders and even in expanding his holdings at the expense of the Danes. But beyond preserving an independent Anglo-Saxon kingdom, Alfred was also responsible for an Old English cultural renaissance through his support of learning, and, more specifically, through his own English translations of important Latin texts. An effective and inspirational war leader, as well as a builder, a lawgiver, a supporter of education and the arts and a scholar himself, Alfred is the only English monarch ever given the title “Great.”

Name given to the Germanic-speaking peoples who settled in England after the decline of Roman rule there. They were first invited by the Celtic King Vortigern, who needed help fighting the Picts and Scots.

An anonymous Old English epic poem in alliterative verse, believed to have been composed in the 8th century AD. Generally agreed to be the finest example of OLD ENGLISH literature, Beowulf, a poem of 3,182 lines, survives in a single manuscript, BL Cotton Vitellius A.xv, copied approximately 1000.

From Continuum Encyclopedia of British Literature
Cædmon is widely regarded as the first English poet, and “Cædmon’s Hymn” or the “Hymn of Creation” is the earliest surviving example of Anglo-Saxon vernacular verse. Most of what is known of Cædmon comes from the religious historian BEDE, in his Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum.

From Continuum Encyclopedia of British Literature
Cynewulf, an Anglo-Saxon poet writing sometime during the 8th-9th cs., created a unique fusion of Christian religious themes and the oral-formulaic style of OLD ENGLISH poetry in his Fates of the Apostles, Ascension, Juliana, and Elene.

From The Columbia Encyclopedia
Originally the body of law that prevailed in the part of England occupied by the Danes after the treaty of King Alfred with Guthrum in 886.

From The Columbia Encyclopedia
name traditionally applied to the kingdoms of Anglo-Saxon England in the period prior to the Danish conquests of the 9th century.

From The Oxford Companion to British History
Bede's account of the Jutes is highly specific—that they were a Germanic people who inhabited a region north of the Angles and that their settlements in England had been in Kent, the Isle of Wight, and on the mainland just north of the Solent. Their leaders had been Hengist and Horsa. Modern research has modified these suggestions, holding that the differences between Angles, Saxons, and Jutes was smaller than assumed and that the Jutes are less likely to have come from south Schleswig than from Frisia or even the mouth of the Rhine.

From The Columbia Encyclopedia
One of the kingdoms of Anglo-Saxon England, consisting generally of the region of the Midlands. It was settled by Angles c.500, probably first along the Trent valley.

From Chambers Dictionary of the Unexplained
A set of letters forming an ancient Germanic or Anglo-Saxon alphabet, in use from around the 2nd century ad to the end of the Middle Ages for writing, magic and divination; a set of tiles or stones inscribed with runes, used for divination.

From Brewer's Britain and Ireland
The contents of an Anglo-Saxon ship burial of the early 7th century (possibly the tomb of Rædwald, king of the East Angles), discovered beneath a mound near Sutton Hoo in 1939. It is one of the richest ever such finds.

(wĕsʹĭks), one of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms in England. It may have been settled as early as 495 by Saxons under Cerdic, who is reputed to have landed in Hampshire. Cerdic's grandson, Ceawlin (560-93), annexed scattered Saxon settlements in the Chiltern Hills and drove the Celts from the region between the upper Thames valley and the lower Severn.

From The Hutchinson Unabridged Encyclopedia
Joint attack in AD 367 on Roman Britain from the north by Picts, Scots and Attacotti, and from Continental Europe by Franks and Saxons. The Roman commanders in Britain, Jovinus and Severus, were unable to repel the raiders and the Emperor Valentinian sent Theodosius to restore order.

Also known as: Boadaecia; Boadecia; Boadicea; Bonduca; Boudica; Boudicea; Boudiga. (b. unknown–d. ca. 62 CE) Celtic warrior and queen of the Iceni. Boudicca led the Iceni, Trinivantes, and several tribes in a rebellion against the Roman Empire that lasted several months. The rebellion killed more than 100,000 people.

From Cassell's Peoples, Nations and Cultures
A tribe of ancient Britons whose territory covered most of northern England. The Brigantes originated as a federation of tribes, comprising the Carvetii, Setanti, Lopocares and Tectoverdi among others. The capital of the Brigantes may originally have been at present-day Almondsbury near Huddersfield, but by the time of the Roman conquest it was at Aldborough, near Richmond, North Yorkshire.

From Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable
The Roman name for Scotland but now used only in poetry and in a few commercial or geographical connections, such as the Caledonian Hotel or the Caledonian Canal.

From The Columbia encyclopedia
(kär´´tĭmăn'jəwə), fl. 1st cent. A.D., British queen of the Brigantes. Ruler of the largest and most powerful tribe in Roman Britain (inhabiting the area that is now Yorkshire), she surrendered Caractacus to the Romans (A.D. 51). The Romans supported her rule as a client-queen in order to stabilize the region and quell dynastic conflicts.

From Cassell's Peoples, Nations and Cultures
Ancient Britons whose core territory was the area of modern-day Hertfordshire, Buckinghamshire and Bedfordshire. Their name means ‘good in battle’. Cassivellaunus, who led British resistance to Caesar's invasions in 55–54 BC, was probably an early chief or king of the Catuvellauni. The main tribal centre of the Catuvellauni was Verulamium (St Albans).

From The Columbia Encyclopedia
A.D. 76-138, Roman emperor (117-138), b. Spain. His name in full was Publius Aelius Hadrianus.

Line of fortifications built by the Roman emperor Hadrian across northern Britain from the Cumbrian coast on the west to the North Sea on the east.

From Cassell's Peoples, Nations and Cultures
A tribe of ancient Britons who lived in what is now the county of Norfolk in eastern England. After the emperor Claudius ordered the invasion of Britain in AD 43, Prasutagus, the king of the Iceni, became a Roman ally. When the Romans tried to take over the kingdom after Prasutagus’ death, the Iceni and their neighbours the Trinovantes rebelled under the leadership of his wife Boudicca. Although Colchester, London and St. Albans were brutally sacked, the rebellion was quickly and decisively crushed by the Romans.

Roman general and dictator, considered Rome's most successful military commander. He formed with Pompey the Great and Marcus Licinius Crassus (the Elder) the First Triumvirate in 60 B.C.

In Architectural Excellence: 500 Iconic Buildings
Bath is the site of Britain's only geothermal spring and, as such, it was a place of worship from the earliest times.

In The Hutchinson Unabridged Encyclopedia
Period in British history from the two expeditions by Julius Caesar in 55 and 54 BC to the early 5th century AD. Roman relations with Britain began with Caesar's expeditions, but the actual conquest was not begun until AD 43. During the reign of the emperor Domitian, the governor of the province, Agricola, campaigned in Scotland. After several unsuccessful attempts to conquer Scotland, the northern frontier was fixed between the Solway and the Tyne at Hadrian's Wall.

From The Welsh Academy Encyclopaedia of Wales
The Iron Age tribe of south-east Wales, the Silures provided the most implacable resistance to Roman expansion of any of the British tribes.

Romano-British town near St Albans, Hertfordshire, occupied until about AD 450. Verulamium superseded a nearby Belgic settlement and was first occupied by the Romans in 44-43 BC.

Latin name: Titus Flavius Vespasianus, A.D. 9-A.D. 79, Roman emperor (A.D. 69-A.D. 79), founder of the Flavian dynasty. Consolidated Roman rule, especially in Britain and Germany. He began the building of the Colosseum.