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The Strange History of Buckingham Palace
By Patricia Wright The History Press
Copyright © 2012 Patricia Wright
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-7524-8713-7
CHAPTER 1
A Frontier of Empire
The earliest glimpse of the palace site occurs in connection with the second Roman invasion of Britain, nearly two thousand years ago. In the first expedition Julius Caesar was forced to retreat after reaching the Thames, and once he had gone Britain was left to its own devices for nearly another hundred years. The palace land then was a secret place, caught between marsh and ancient forest, intersected by pools and springs and tiny trails. A single path emerged out of the trees, to curl through undergrowth until it reached a steep-sided stream at a point where its bank had been worn down to make the crossing easy. From there, a causeway probably led out across marshland, marked by driven poles because whenever the floods came it disappeared completely. This causeway would have been a ramshackle affair, zig-zagging wherever gravel banks offered a foothold above the bog, and reached southwards to the Thames.
These long ages of isolation were abruptly shattered when, in AD 43, four Roman legions landed at Richborough in Kent, prepared for a full campaign. Their commander, Aulus Plautius, was tough. He was also angry. His men had mutinied rather than embark for Britain, a place, they said, renowned only for its evil; where magicians tore out the entrails of living men and drank their blood. To add to Plautius's humiliation, it had not been his threats which eventually forced the legionaries to march down to the boats, but the taunts of a Greek freedman called (of all things) Narcissus, a creature of the Emperor Claudius. And if Claudius was enough to turn any soldier's stomach, Narcissus was worse.
Now that his men had finally braved the passage and disembarked, Plautius was determined to drive them to success. Unfortunately, Claudius needed a glittering victory just as much as his general did, and had sent orders that once this was assured he personally would travel from Rome to lead his troops. It was up to Plautius to judge when this moment had arrived. If he followed his military instincts and routed the Britons as and when the chance arose, Claudius would revenge himself on a general who had stolen his glory; if he sent for the Emperor too early, a fool like Claudius was bound to foul up the whole campaign by taking command while there was real soldiering to be done.
When the legionaries eventually slithered off the North Downs and into the flood plain of the Thames, the river looked very different from today. Then it was neither embanked nor dredged, and spread over a much greater area; even in summer, marshland stretched widely on either side. A formidable barrier, where the Britons were certain to stand and fight. Aulus Plautius had collected all the intelligence he could about the Thames, the largest natural defence before he could march on the south-eastern tribal capital at Colchester, and he knew that a crossing place existed. A later Roman historian even mentioned a bridge, but no evidence has been found to support this and it is likely he misunderstood the evidence he handled.
Where was the ford that Plautius's men found? It used to be thought that the Romans crossed the Thames near where they would later build a bridge, at the north end of which Londinium, the City of London, grew. Modern archeology points to Westminster as the likelier site, where the pattern of early tracks suggests that a crossing predated the invasion. The earliest Roman roads, too, reinforce this evidence.
Probably somewhere in the region of the Elephant & Castle, Plautius's men squelched through pools making their preparations for assault, often glancing in fear or eagerness to where the enemy waited on the opposite bank. Among the legionaries were some Batavii from the Lower Rhine, a more hostile place than this; in their homeland, wetlands spread for hundreds of miles around what today is the centre of industrial Europe. Then, an infinity of fenland stretched from the Ruhr into modern Holland, and the native Batavii spent more of their lives on or under the water than they did on dry land.
These were the men Plautius sent forward under cover of darkness to find and measure and assess the ford he had to use, if he was to have any hope of clinching this campaign in a single season.
And while everyone else waited, even across such a width of water it was possible to see that the opposite bank was so cut up by rivulets that the ford emerged on to a triangular islet, perhaps half a mile wide and surrounded by swamp. Beyond that triangle, a single causeway wound away into the distance, the stakes marking its course just visible if gulls sat on top. On the Roman side, speculation must have centred on the advantages such a constricted battlefield offered, if only they could succeed in fighting their way ashore. The Britons were crammed together even before the battle started, shouting defiance and getting their chariots stuck on the boggy foreshore. They would not find it easy to launch their tactical speciality in such conditions: reckless charges which in the heat of action helped their warriors to disregard even mortal wounds. And if they were forced to retreat, that single exit offered the hope of turning victory into a slaughter which might destroy all further will to fight again.
The principal British chiefs were Caradoc and Togodumnus, and they led a mixed array of footmen and chariot-fighters. Their men were largely Celts who had absorbed an older culture still, and the Romans had learned to their cost elsewhere in Europe that Celts fought like rabid wolves. They loved to fight. If other enemies were lacking, they fought for the pleasure of it among themselves. While this may have honed their skills in battle, it also fuelled bitter hatreds between tribes, and the force the Romans faced was by no means disciplined or unified.
Nevertheless, they made a terrifying sight as the sunlight flashed on the gold ornaments their chieftains wore, on spears and the blades fixed to the wheels of their chariots. Defiant shouts and weird brayings floated across the water and all that restless, bold stir of colour left no doubt in anyone's mind that the British yearned to make the river run red with Roman blood.
The Celts were taller and fairer on average than the majority of men in the legions, and some warriors stiffened their hair into spikes with lime or dung to frighten their enemies more. They liked bright colours and display, but were said to strip naked for battle and paint themselves blue with magic able to turn the edge of a driven sword. Romans were superstitious at the best of times, and the mutiny before embarkation had a great deal to do with the soldiers' dread that Celts could control the supernatural.
In reality, most of the Britons awaiting battle on the far bank of Thames probably wore skin trousers, a tunic and cloak, often clasped with the curved brooches they were skilled in making. They looked forward to an exceptionally promising fight, but understood that they lacked the weaponry of the Romans. Body-armour was rare among them and their throwing spears and thin-bladed swords were unsuited to close combat with heavy infantry. To many, this genuinely may not have mattered much. They possessed significant advantage of position and fought for honour, lacking the concept of total conquest that the Romans cherished. Anything approaching national resistance would take time and other circumstances to develop.
As soon as the Batavii brought back the information Plautius needed, the battle began. There was no point in waiting, while his legionaries camped in such discomfort that each day a little of their courage leaked away. Besides, there remained the Emperor's order to send word for him to come and take command before the campaign ended. A pampered court might take weeks, if not months, to travel from Italy to Boulogne, and then on to Britain. There was even a rumour that Claudius intended to bring elephants with him, to terrify the Britons and act as a stage from which to acknowledge his triumph. Loading those on unseaworthy cross-channel barges in a gale did not bear thinking about, when a single drowned beast could cost Plautius his career.
The assault did not go well. Probably the Second Legion spearheaded it, a formation whose commander, Vespanianus (later the Emperor Vespasian), was known for his flair and steadiness in attack. Vespasian was the son of that first-century rarity, an honest tax collector. Much later, he was nearly executed for dozing off during one of Nero's stupefying bouts of self-glorification; contemporaries described him as deliberate, a good organizer, and, less flatteringly, looking as if he suffered from permanent constipation, with his face screwed up in folds.
Once he and his men started to cross the Thames, they confronted a nightmarish situation which gave all the advantages to the British. Plautius's staff must have found it extraordinarily difficult to keep the forward movement orderly; the troops would be tense, grumbling over inevitable snarl-ups as they shuffled slowly forward, held up by the narrowness of the ford. Centurions prowled up and down the lines, lashing out with their staffs if any man broke order, and water reached to their knees, lapped icily up their thighs, long before they reached the river proper. When they did, the legionaries slithered and slipped in the strengthening current and sometimes lost their footing, to bob screaming for a moment before they vanished, dragged down by their equipment.
As they reached closer to the northern bank, the unencumbered Britons darted in and out of the shallows, maiming, aiming slingshots and throwing spears, their chariots scything bloodily through the Roman ranks as these emerged in increasing disorganization on the foreshore. All the bellowings from centurions, the example of Vespasian and urgings from Aulus Plautius for the rest of his men to get across the river fast, were failing to stop escalating disaster from turning to bloody rout. Triumphant braying from the British horns, shouts of command, the desperate clash of metal on metal, the hiss of missiles, all began to betray an unmistakable whiff of panic.
In this extremity the Romans somehow held their nerve. Gradually small knots of men coalesced in the shallows, protecting their comrades as they waded to join them, stabbing the fearsome Roman short sword into their assailants' unprotected bodies. The auxiliary horse lost heavily in a British counter-attack, but perhaps distracted the Britons from the crucible of battle – the place where the ford reached dry land, which must be held at all costs. Because slowly, slowly, the Romans were fighting their way towards solid ground and even a handful of armoured men established there would make their weight and discipline tell. As rank after rank arrived and the legionaries began to widen and strengthen their line, the constricted battlefield became their ally, trapping the British against a delta of steep-sided streams, preventing their warriors from using agility to compensate for their lack of armour.
Then from among the British a cry went up that their chief, Togodumnus, was killed, and all his personal following wavered in dismay. Caradoc, his brother, survived, but almost immediately afterwards took the decision to withdraw. The Roman advance, although still contained, was gaining momentum and he probably realized that his men, however brave, could not now stand against it. He must save what he could before the entire fighting strength of his tribe was destroyed. In Germany not many years before, three legions had been annihilated by native warriors fighting as guerrillas in the forest; the tale of the lost legions had shaken the entire Roman world and probably Caradoc had heard it. In the English midlands the forest was as black and trackless as any beyond the Rhine; he could reasonably hope to wait, and win on a more auspicious day.
Now it was a question of trying to get his men away, down that single causeway which curled across the surrounding marsh until it reached the safety of the forest, in distance little more than a mile away. But if the Romans could reach where that causeway left the island before Caradoc's withdrawal was complete, everything was lost, because the legionaries would drive fast and hard down into the retreating Celts jammed inextricably along its length, and turn a rout into a massacre.
Yet the Romans never did quite reach it in time. Only those Britons who could not fight on because they were helpless in the crush seem to have retreated; the rest continued to fling themselves against armoured legionaries until they died. By the time Vespasian's men leant on their swords as victors, Caradoc had gone.
Once Plautius realized this, he knew it was time to send for Claudius, elephants and all. Possibly he was glad of an excuse to consolidate his victory, since other hostile tribes still threatened his army on every side. Better still, he could blame delay on the Emperor, while remaining sure that everyone in Rome understood whose triumph this really was.
Caradoc's retreat from the Thames must have been a fearful business, with everyone around him by now aware that this was not just another tribal battle to be revenged next season. It was something fearful, alien, as yet incomprehensible in its impact.
The causeway down which they retreated snaked from one foothold to the next until it reached a stream called Eia Burn, the first natural barrier since the Thames, but nothing, nothing at all compared to the defensive position they had lost: little more than a drain within a fenland wilderness, carrying clear water which was sweet to drink; a mercy for wounded and worn-out men. Beyond it, the Thames flood plain petered out in thickets and clearings where deer grazed off sufficient undergrowth for coarse grasses to grow. The causeway became a continuous path beyond Eia Burn and as soon as the ground dried out sufficiently, there was forest to offer sanctuary.
Very likely Caradoc paused by the Eia and stood to offer encouragement at the place where steep stream banks dipped down to make his men's passage easier, and they could scoop up water to slake their thirst. All their proud colours of the dawn were splattered with blood and mud, sweat had dissolved the lime out of their hair and plastered it in streaks across their faces, a further agony on open wounds. Some glanced over their shoulders, ashamed because their deeds had not been as valorous as their dreams, but thankful all the same when they saw that the Romans were not yet at their heels. Once through Eia Burn the Britons scattered to walk home, except for Caradoc and his close following. When he looked back and in the distance saw the dust of battle begin to settle on men who had honoured him, and died while he escaped, an enduring hatred of Rome burned in his heart. He would not give up. Never, never. An oath he kept for eight long years and in the end only treachery defeated him.
With time, the name of the Eia Burn would be slurred into T'iaburn, or Tyburn, and it runs today beneath the courtyard and south wing of Buckingham Palace; quite swiftly still after heavy rain. The place where its banks dipped down to make a crossing would soon be called Cow Ford and also lies beneath the palace site. A small stream, and an insignificant crossing place; but Cow Ford would become crucial to the development of the palace site.
It would be surprising if Aulus Plautius did not push an outpost forward along the causeway to the Eia Burn crossing, with orders to keep watch on the forest, for a few brief weeks making the Buckingham Palace site the frontier of Imperial Rome. Whether, some twelve weeks later, Emperor Claudius and some rather unwell elephants also came this way on their triumphal route to Colchester is impossible to say, but very likely they did; elephants could easily wade the Thames in summer and be a tremendous spectacle. Nor is there archaeological evidence of downstream settlement for another seven years.
There are traces of occupation from around this time on the triangular island at the north end of the Thames ford, which for the next thousand years or so would be known as Thorney Island and only later as Westminster, but with the abbey and Houses of Parliament now occupying much of it, excavation has necessarily been very patchy.
Cow Ford became the place where Roman Watling Street crossed Eia Burn. As Londinium grew on the present site of the City a muddy lane began to follow the north bank of the river from there towards Thorney, wherever this strand (which eventually became The Strand) normally stood above flood level. Inland of this, a huge semi-tidal swampland stretched, where only the old staked causeway remained passable in all but the foulest weather.
Once over Eia Burn, where the Romans probably built a timber bridge, Watling Street struck through forest to cross the Military Road (Oxford Street), near modern Marble Arch. From there it drove north-westwards, an artery of Roman civilization and supply route for her armies. Any guardpost at Cow Ford would have vanished as pacification pushed into the Midlands, but the crossing became a place many travellers knew, and cursed perhaps for its mud and dubious causeway in the wet. Probably they could buy a drink there, or a woman to keep out the chills. Then they remembered it with more pleasure, as a good place to rest before tackling the long haul north, or the hazards of crossing Thorney's ford travelling south.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from The Strange History of Buckingham Palace by Patricia Wright. Copyright © 2012 Patricia Wright. Excerpted by permission of The History Press.
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