Cunorix Stone, Wroxeter, England, 460-475
It is a broken gravestone, with a crude inscription: CVNORIX MACVSMA VICOIE. The slab, found in 1967, had probably been re-used from someone else’s burial. Yet it is a resonant object, evidence of the way Irish invaders and raiders took advantage of the collapse of Roman Britain.
The slab was found in Wroxeter, near Shrewsbury in the western English county of Shropshire. This village was once Viroconium, the fourth-largest city in Roman Britain, a thriving hub of 5,000 people – about the same size as Pompeii. After the Roman legions were withdrawn from Britain, in 410, even places as far inland as Viroconium became vulnerable to attack from Irish raiders.
The significance of this gravestone is that the inscription is in a partly Latinised version of the Irish language. It means “Hound-king, son of the tribe of Holly”. Cunorix was Irish, and he was declaring himself a king in this part of England.
From the fourth century AD, the Romans were building forts on the west coast of Britain (at Holyhead and Cardiff) to defend against the Irish raiders they called ‘Scotti’. (The name survives as Scotland.) We know from the Roman writer Ammianus that they had diplomatic relations with the Scotti but that in 360 AD the breaking of a treaty led to devastating raids from both Ireland and Scotland. The ability to mount major seaborne raids suggests a resurgence of wealth in Ireland, connected to the expansion of agriculture and the building of huge numbers of stone ring forts.
As Roman power collapsed entirely, Irish raiders were followed to Britain by Irish settlers. The most important colony was Dyfed, in southwest Wales, but Argyll, in western Scotland, the Isle of Man and parts of southwest England were also colonised.
This expansionary drive had huge consequences in Ireland. The Romans had done deals with, and helped to keep in place, the old kingships in Ireland. But the new money that both drove and resulted from attacks on Britain allowed the formation of numerous small tribal units, or túatha.
“There were,” says Conor Newman of the National University of Ireland, Galway, “new kids on the block in these centuries. Before the fourth or fifth centuries you’ve got five great royal sites. It’s not coincidental that Roman material has turned up at all of those sites. Afterwards, the country is fragmented into 150 smaller túatha. Something pretty radical has happened. I think it’s the impact of the collapse of the Roman Empire on Ireland. Britain becomes an open cash register for Irish raiders. Things are being robbed – and so are people. The status quo is undermined.”
For the existing British population, much of this was deeply unpleasant. But the colonisations did result in much closer ties between the two islands and a stronger British influence on Irish culture. Ironically, one of the long-term results of this was the spread from Britain to Ireland of what had become the official Roman religion.
Thanks to English Heritage
Where to see it Wroxeter Roman City, Shropshire, England, 00-44-1743-761330, english-heritage.org.uk/daysout/properties/ wroxeter-roman-city
